Episode 125: The Story Behind the RIGHTSLEEVE acquisition by Genumark

Welcome to Skucast, the podcast for entrepreneurs in the promotional products industry. Skucast shines a light on our industry's best work, features maverick personalities, and discusses what's really involved in running a modern promotional products business. SkewCast is the official podcast of Common Skew.

Last week, the news hit the industry that JanuMark had acquired Right Sleeve. Many of you know Mark and Catherine, and in typical SkewCast fashion, I wanted to interview them to discover what we could learn from their experience. But before we do that, if you're not familiar with Right Sleeve, here's a little background to their story. After college, Mark Graham went into investment banking and in a matter of time decided to swerve. He wanted to quit investment banking to sell, of all things, t-shirts. After working for about 18 months with a high school friend selling t-shirts to camps and schools, in 2000, Mark decided to open his distributorship, Right Sleeve. Catherine Graham, after several years doing financial planning for fast-track entrepreneurs at TD Bank, went on to pursue an MBA at the Rotman School of Management, during which time she joined the fledgling eBay Canada as employee number 4. After leaving eBay, Catherine worked as a management consultant at AT Kearney, working with Fortune 100 companies in a wide variety of areas, including merger integration, marketing strategy, and operational efficiencies. In 2007, Catherine swerved into the then growing business known as Right Sleeve. They will hate that I mention all this, but it's an important part of the story. With Mark's obsessive talent for marketing and merchandising and branding and Catherine's focus on operations and financials, The duo became a powerhouse, earning virtually every industry accolade possible: Pyramid Awards, PPB's Greatest Companies to Work For, Kounselor's Best Places to Work, ASI Distributor Entrepreneur of the Year, and the highly coveted Dell Small Business Excellence Award, recognized for their technological innovations, the foundation of which became Commenscue in 2011. About the Right Sleeve acquisition, Mark Freed, GenuineMark president and CEO, said the acquisition was a perfect match. Quote, "We share a similar philosophy which focuses on a customer-first culture supported by innovation, great technology, and a talented creative team." Mitch Fried, Geniumarc's Executive Vice President of Sales and Strategy, who guided the purchase, added, "We've known and admired Mark and Catherine for many years and have become even closer during Geniumarc's implementation of Commenscue. They are two of the smartest and nicest people in our industry, and as they turn their full attention to Commenscue, we will work hard to preserve and grow what they have built at Right Sleeve." which we plan to operate as a division of GenuineMark. Hi friends, I'm Bobby LeHew, the Chief Content Officer at Commonsku. In today's episode, we're going to learn all about it, from the emotional experience to identifying the right partners, knowing your numbers, and positioning your business to sell. But before we get into that, this is our last call for tickets to SKUCon. If you haven't registered yet to hear Brian Pappe with Mir, Vicki Ostrom with SanMar, Mimmo Conn with Promo Shop, and many more, it's not too late to get those last tickets. Visit skucon.com before they're gone. This episode is brought to you by Commonsku. Little known fact: Commonsku was known as Roman when it was first developed to become the operating engine that powered Right Sleeve. Today, Commonsku powers over $750 million in industry revenue, a connected workflow enabling you to process more orders and dramatically grow your sales. You can begin your free trial now at commonsku.com. Now here's my conversation with my friends and yours, Catherine and Mark.

Let's ask the one question that everyone will want to know right off the bat. Why did you decide to sell Right Sleeve? Catherine, I'm going to ask you first.

So, I think these things evolve over time as far as how you know kind of when you're ready and when the right time is. And I think we've always had this in the back of our mind, as I think that any business owner should always have in the back of their mind. The concept of selling your business because ultimately it gets you thinking about running your business in a way that's creating value. So the kind of nuance for us was the fact that we had this other business going on with CommonsQ that obviously introduced a whole other layer of complexity as far as trying to run two different things at the same time. And I think that the path started to become a lot clearer in terms of timing around this when it became obvious that the business needed more to get to that next stage of growth. And it needed owners that were focused and willing to put forward the time and money and energy and all of those things to give the business what it deserved as far as getting to the next stage of growth. So that's really kind of where things started to crystallize in our mind that we were almost doing a disservice to the potential of the business by not giving it what it needed.

I agree with what Catherine said in that it got to a point where we felt as owners of the business that we just did not have the emotional attention span to bring it to the next level. And we'd worked so hard in building this great foundation, a great brand foundation, a great technology foundation, a great people foundation and culture foundation that brought the business to a record level of profitability and sales volume. But we looked at each other and I was essentially out of the business almost entirely and had been for the last couple of years. And Catherine was spending around 90% of her time at common skew with 10% really more on like an oversight meeting capacity with Steven. And we looked at each other and said, Right Sleeve is a phenomenal business in terms of the foundation that's been built. Is it fair that you've got absentee owners at this point? And we're looking at the growth and the growth was moving along at a really healthy clip, about 15% a year. But we saw this and said this business could be growing at 50% a year. I'm just making that number up, but just something, something bigger. And that, I think, is what it deserved. And so as entrepreneurs, it was the right, I think, the right time for us to look for the right kind of buyer. And we can get into that later. But it felt really, really good. Not an emotionally difficult decision at all. Once we recognized that we were doing the the business a favor and that we as owner entrepreneurs could be, um, could, could have a great exit. Um, but way more importantly was seeing this business continue to thrive in the right hands. Um, yeah, and we were really picky about that.

So Mark, you didn't struggle to let it go?

Of course I struggled to let it go, but I think that for me specifically, because I had less to do with the business and Catherine did in recent years is that for me, it had been a journey that had been a few years in the making. And I think what's interesting is that for me personally, I always had this view that the best way to run Right Sleeve was as though we were going to sell it. And that's something I've talked about for years and years. And that's not to say that in any crass way, but it was if we were running this business as though we were going to sell it to someone else, then we knew that we were going to be running this business based on excellent business principles, building a business that could run without the owner, building a business that a new employee could come in and be successful right away. So with great systems, people, and culture and all that stuff. And I think that with that mindset, I always tried to run the business where I was not the bottleneck. I was not the choke point. And so you could argue that maybe as much as say 10 years ago, I had started thinking about this and not that I didn't love the business like my first child, which is what it was, but I always knew that ideal point for an entrepreneur was to sell a business at the height of its success to people that were going to take great care of it. For me, that was always my dream.

Yeah.

Catherine, did you struggle with the decision at all? Did you go through a longer period of not sure we want to do that? Or again, I think you answered it too, in that you've always built the business for this endgame eventually.

I mean, you asked the question first to the feeler and he gave you the answer first.

It's true.

Drop the hammer now. She's—

watch out, everyone. Right, right.

I think what's always really difficult is that in any kind of, you know, business, you're—

you're—

as a small business, your, your team is your family. And you feel kind of that sense of, of closeness, um, to them in the sense of, uh, you know, um, pride when they're doing well and, um, you know, anxiety when, when there's things that are, you know, going on in their personal lives or all these things of worrying about them And the same to kind of worry about your kids. And I think that the, where the kind of stress comes from when you're looking at, at moving on is that you wanna make sure that someone's going to treat them the way that, that you have as far as, you know, as family and that they're gonna take care of them. And I think that that's where the hardest point happens when you're making the decision to sell because you, you wanna have that faith and trust in the new owners that that they're going to carry on in the same direction. And that's where I think that comfort level came as we got to know, you know, Mitch and Marc Fried better, that there's just such great alignment there in terms of how it is that they think about, you know, their team and their business and how it is that they were talking about, you know, culture and all those pieces. So, I think that that's where you start to feel a sense of kind of relief almost because you're not, you know, abandoning, you know, it feels as if you're abandoning your family. You feel as if you're putting them into to a spot where they're going to be, you know, loved and cared for.

Yeah. And Catherine, as someone who has worked closely with you for a couple of years, you called Mark the feeler, but you have this, you have this tough persona and it's true, you are a tough CEO, but also you really care about the lives of your employees. And that is a good segue into the question of, you answered it partially, but Why GenuMark?

Yeah, I mean, that, that really was the, the key reason around feeling that there was such great alignment in terms of how it is that they thought about their business and, and, you know, the, the culture aspect and just, you know, personally getting to know, you know, Mitch and Mark. And, um, that, that was a, a key part about it. But also in looking at just the overall synergies between the businesses and, you know, what it is that they focused on and what it is that Right Sleeve focused on, um, that that there was, there was such a huge degree of complementary potential there that that's where I think things, things started to get really interesting because it's saying, all right, if we took these things and put them together, 1 1 would equal a heck of a lot more than 2. And I think that's where true value comes with any type of acquisition where the, you know, the business becomes totally additive to, to the, the new, the acquired business becomes totally additive to the existing business. And I think that. That's where things— that's where the magic happens.

Yeah. Mark, I'll let you answer that. Why GenieMark?

I think the other piece that was really important to us is that the legacy of Right Sleeve has been so heavily rooted in technology. It's such a core part of the identity of the business. I mean, we built prior to Commonsku, an internal ERP that we started writing that in 2005. And so the whole idea of like workflow and client experience and employee experience and how we all collaborated internally was absolutely essential to how the company operated internally as well as externally., and to, to align with a partner that was not using the same system that we were, in this case CommonSkill, would have been a really significant challenge. And we've, we've seen many acquisitions and mergers inside and outside the industry, just studied this for years. And Um, it, it's always amazing to me how technology friction and the, the inability to marry, uh, two businesses' technology platforms seems to bubble up to be pretty much the biggest reason why these things fail. And I always thought like, that, that is, that's crazy. Um, and so the fact that GenuMark, uh, had been on Commonsku for many years made them extremely attractive to us because we knew that there would be absolutely no disruption to this incredible freight train that Right Sleeve is. And imagining us having to put the team through some sort of archaic ERP integration with some old school system from an acquiring company, like, there's no way I could even sleep at night even considering that.

Yeah.

But, you know, where I'll expand upon that or extend it is that The— to me, what that is indicative of is, is the cultural alignment, because so much of, of, you know, what comes to play with, with Commenscue is the approach to running a business and, you know, the openness, transparency, the collaboration, you know, all those pieces that are inherently baked in. And, you know, when, when Genuine came on board Commenscue a couple of years ago, I think that's where the conversation started to happen around, you know, where they were looking to take the business, you know, from a, from a cultural perspective. And so to me, technology is, is the, the, what's that expression, you know, the canary in the coal mine around, you know, how it is that a company thinks about their business and where they want to take things. And so it's less around necessarily friction between kind of one system and another system. It's more around kind of what the system is, system selection is indicative of.

Right. And this is, this is obviously not just, just a common SKU issue, but I, you know, when a company acquires another distributor, the objective should be to grow them. You know, do they have— do we have resources we can bring to the table that they don't? Do they have complementary resources that can help us grow? And so it should be a mutual conversation about growth. Let's talk about building value in a business to make it worth buying. How do you build a unique business that is attractive to a buyer? Which factors are most important?

Katherine, you want to go first? So Jamie Watson did a session on this at SKU Camp a couple of years ago, and it was amazing in terms of just really understanding the nuts and bolts of ultimately what it is that matters within the structure of business, within the structure of a client base, and how to think about, you know, the numbers from that perspective. But when you look at kind of the different aspects of value, I mean, it starts on the revenue end of the equation. You know, what does the customer base look like? Is there concentration that is risk, that creates risk? Are the customers ones where there's a kind of more predictable element to their spend? There's longevity there, there's deep relationships. There's, you know, value being created that translates into good margin. Um, there's, you know, there's predictability from that perspective because that is the single biggest risk that ultimately, you know, a buyer has is the— is either revenue or talent. And if you can de-risk those elements, um, initially to begin with by, by looking at the structure of the client base and ensuring that it's attractive, you know, that's kind of point number one as—

yeah, in a value. Can I add to that? Can I add to that, Katherine? One time we were looking at a distributor and to acquire them and we had to look through to their client base because like with most distributors, their UVP was the salesperson. The owner was the salesperson and there was no unique value prop outside of her relationship with her customers. And so I knew that if we did this, if we, if we acquired them and she came on board, then we had probably a short 2 years to either endear ourselves to those buyers, or could we look at that buyer mix and add value to the buyers that were— that was beyond the personality that we were hiring? And that was one of the things we had to consider. Is that kind of what you're talking about when you, when you're looking at the client base?

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a combination of, you know, what the quality is of the client base, you know, at the, at the root level. But then it translates into what is the dependency, you know, of those clients on the individual salesperson's relationship. And I think this is where, you know, the traditional, you know, commission model, um, in this business is a lot riskier versus, um, a more kind of agency-style approach where you're wrapping your arms around the customer by having multiple people in the organization touch them in terms of interaction. Uh, and ultimately that they, they know that they are dealing with kind of the brand and the company as opposed to, you know, this person's my guy. And ultimately, you know, when you then remove, you know, the guy from the equation that client's not going to walk out the door. So I think that that's something that, you know, owner operators in particular really have to understand, in that if a big part of why it is that the customers buy from them is because you are the guy, then there's tremendous risk in that with, with someone else then coming along and trying to, to take— to work with those clients. But I think one piece that it'd be good to, to factor in here is, I mean, revenue is, is the, the top piece of the equation, but ultimately what matters, you know, just as much, if not far more is the bottom part of the equation. And having, you know, targets in your mind in terms of what it is that your, your profitability looks like, um, having, uh, you know, watching your EBITDA, understanding kind of those pieces and what the drivers are, um, within your EBITDA is the— is critically important to ultimately, you know, creating value, um, in the business. So watching both that top and the bottom is, is, is absolutely critical.

Yeah, I interviewed Joseph Summer today, and I was asking him about one of the, the key aspects that Commsky freed him up to do. And one of them was— his biggest one was he's allowed to become an entrepreneur owner, which means he's able to manage the business and sell, you know, lead through others. And it was all about that, getting looking at the numbers, making sure the business is healthy, focusing on all of those things. One of the things I love about Right Sleeve is because you two, the principals, were entrepreneur owners versus managing salespeople, like salespeople who were, uh, had major accounts and were just also managing other salespeople, you were able to hand over a strong account base not tied to the owner's relationship like we already talked about. But you diffused the dependence on one or two personalities. You kind of handed over this democratic book of business, which is a much more solid thing to get your hands around. But then the infrastructure all around— they had great people, had great systems obviously inside the business. And we didn't even talk about the brand. And then, Mark, maybe you want to touch on that, just the investment in the Right Sleeve brand and what that has meant to selling the business.

This is something that I have spoken about at many an industry trade show when I've done education sessions around building value in a business, and specifically as it pertains to marketing. It actually harkens back to a SkewCast episode we did recently, Bobby, on marketing. And at the time, it was killing me to not say what was happening because it was very much, very much happening while we were recording. That I have always felt, and in this case has been absolutely validated with the sale of the business, that brand drives value in a couple of ways. Number one, there's no question it differentiates within a crowded and commoditized space when you're competing with people that have boring brands, they look the same, they're white label websites and catalogs, and they're really just sales shops. It's, it's, it's very hard to break away from the pack doing that. Certainly, there are people that have done it and been great salespeople. But maybe in my case, I was like, well, I'm an okay salesperson, but I'd rather let the marketing and sales work in together. So there's that piece to it. And to go back to what Katherine was saying, that if that is a contributing factor to creating a reliable cash flow machine, then a buyer is going to absolutely value that because they want to buy a business that has got the people, has got the technology, has got the customers, has got the brand. And if all of that is in place, then they're going to want to keep that exactly as it is, which is which is what's happened with Right Sleeve. And I'm really excited about that, that this isn't being swallowed up into a larger company. I think that that would be a real shame. But I think brand, yes, I'm a marketing person. That's my bias. I think it drives so much, particularly in a marketing profession like like we have in the promotional products industry.

Bobby, I think that also, you know, it ties back to your question in terms of, you know, why GenuineMark, in that when we were, you know, thinking about this, that for us, a total deal breaker was someone who would, you know, acquire the business and fold it up in terms of the brand and, you know, go in and, you know, cut parts of the team and try to, you know, rationalize costs and all those pieces. And And that ultimately when we looked at kind of where there was gonna be a great fit, it was people that understood the, the power and the value of the brand. And when you can, you know, combine, um, two entities that have very different, um, positioning in the marketplace and different values in each of the brand, and there's a recognition of that, that they, that the combination becomes kind of, you know, more powerful together, that that's where, um, the, where it just seems so much more obvious in terms of it being a good, a good fit and a good home.

You have both talked to many distributors and you both have had lots of experience talking with others about buying and acquisitions. What did you learn from this process so far that surprised you or that, that was different than what you expected?

Kathy, it's funny. I've, I've talked to friends that have not in the industry, but friends that have been through this and One friend of mine said, they'll reach a point in the negotiations where you will hate them. And I think what was remarkable about this process is that just never happened. You know, I kept waiting for that moment of when it's like, all right, this is going to get really difficult. And it was just never that way. I mean, the whole experience was just so collaborative and amazing that I feel feel very lucky that we were able to kind of, um, to, to go, go through this process that way and also to go through it, from what I understand, to be a very accelerated timeline as far as what's typical. And I think that part of the reason behind that is because there was such great alignment, um, you know, between, uh, between— so it was, you know, it was Mitch and myself that were primarily— that were the, the primaries kind of on, um, on this. And there was such great alignment in terms of where we wanted to see this go and, and, um, you know, how to get there, that it just— it made the process, um, I think far, far easier and more enjoyable than what I have heard from a lot of people that have gone through this. Due diligence is difficult. You're having to, especially in a business that's almost 20 years old, you're having to, you know, pull up, find data information. And that was one kind of major learning around just be really organized around where your information is and how to access it. And, you know, thank goodness for the cloud that it made digging up, you know, old records a lot easier. But But ultimately, just, I think that when you, when you're going into these discussions with where there's mutual respect and, and great alignment, it just makes it, you know, a far better process. And I think it, it is when you're in a situation where you're basically just being swallowed by someone that you might not necessarily be that excited about. Yeah.

What, what, what did you learn, Mark? Was there anything that surprised you or anything that you learned that was kind of new to you or that went a different way than you thought through the buying selling process?

First of all, that it's a really good thing to have Catherine lead the due diligence and negotiation process. We all kind of took that for granted, but go ahead. But actually, in all seriousness, it was a really interesting process because you don't want to have too many cooks in the kitchen. And Katherine and I are very strong-minded, opinionated people, and particularly when it comes to this, like, this is our baby. We've never done this before. I think it would have been a disaster to have had the two of us in the kitchen doing this. And so we had a great discussion at the outset of this, as did the Geniumark team, that Mitch and Katherine were going to play point on this. And certainly I was involved, but way more in the background. Um, and so there's a level of trust there. I think it's checking your ego at the door. It's making sure that at the outset that Catherine and I were totally aligned on what it is that we wanted. Um, so, uh, you want to be aligned around the kind of buyer, you want to be aligned around the kind of, um, exit, uh, and, and financial, uh, side of it. Um, the terms, like whether we were going to be negotiating, um, um, some kind of earnout or whether we were negotiating a purchase price and we're, we're out the door kind of thing. All of those things, Catherine and I had a big checklist and we checked them off. And then it was Catherine, you have at it. And it was very, very efficient. And it was actually kind of surprising to me because I was laughing. It was actually a lawyer, our lawyer was indicating this to us at the outset, said, you know what, in my experience, you're probably going to hate the buyer. The deal is probably going to feel like it's going to fall through and it's going to be super stressful at some point in this process. And we were like, oh yeah, yeah, whatever, it's not going to happen. That didn't happen, which was really surprising. I think it's a huge credit to Catherine and Mitch and certainly their professionalism in going about this.

Well, it sounds like the wise takeaway there is you kind of already determined that they were the right partners, not as if you said, hey, privately behind the doors, you said to everybody that could work a deal, you didn't say, hey, we're selling and we're selling to the highest bidder, which would have made that an incredibly stressful process, it's almost as if you identified key partners and that helped narrow that down.

Yeah. Well, I think the other piece in this that makes these things go smoother is that you've got to know your numbers inside and out. You've got to know your business inside and out so that, you know, when questions come up that you have the answers. And I think that that kind of confidence going in that there's, you know, there's no skeletons in the closet. There's that when you, you know, open up your books to someone that you're not going to be scared that they're going to find something. So I think that You know, if you're a more hands-off owner from an accounting perspective, you got to get in there and know your books. And so, you might not necessarily need to know kind of, you know, how to do the accounting, but you better understand, you know, where to find the information, what it means so that ultimately you're not surprised by anything either.

Yeah.

Talk with us about transition so we can learn from that as well. How did your team take it?

Very well. I mean, it was, I think initially in any of these kinds of conversations, there's going to be shock and concern. And I kind of gauge it by how much— when initially you're going to see kind of saucer eyes of like, oh my God, what does this mean? Right. How quickly that goes back to normal, I think, is the biggest indication as far as the ability to communicate the vision around why this is happening and where we see things going. And I think that by the end of the discussion, I felt it huge sense of relief in that, you know, someone on our team said like, well, this is really exciting. And then everyone's like, yeah, this is exciting. So I think that when you can end off, you know, letting a team know with that feeling, that's really great.

So, Kathryn, you and I haven't had a lot of chance to speak since yesterday because there's been a few things on the go.

And so you're both responding to about 100 emails in your inbox.

Yeah, actually, this podcast is the first time Katherine and I have actually spoken since yesterday. So it takes you, Bobby, to bring us together.

So thank you for that.

Yes.

Well, that's my place. So what I thought was really funny, Katherine, yesterday is that we're telling the team. So this was so from a timeline perspective. So, so get this. So the deal officially closed, the lawyers and the banks and all that stuff was, was about noon. Then at 1 o'clock, we had a meeting with our senior account team. We call them the pod heads. And so there's 3 of them that run these different business units. And that was a great discussion. Then at 2 o'clock, we then told the whole team. And by 3:30, Mitch, Mark, and Emma Fried were in the door to go and hang out and speak to the team. And within like, it was so funny to me that I'm thinking it's taken us 20 years to build this business with this, like, loyalty. And within literally, like, a handful of hours, we're talking maybe no more than 2.5 to 3 hours, that the team, it was as though there was no turning back. The team was like, this is awesome. Let's get started. And I was like, well, hang on a second here. Like, I was actually kind of hoping a little bit that people would say, no, actually, we don't want this to happen.

Happened because maybe that's my ego.

But I thought to myself, and they're all surrounding Mitch, Mark, and Emma. Like, when they came in at 3:30, we opened a bunch of beer. It was jovial atmosphere by this point. And the whole team were surrounding the Freeds and peppering them with questions. And it was laughter and all this stuff. And I'm sort of standing off to the side going, I love this. But This happened so quickly. It can't be over. I know it's extremely early days, but that was just— it just filled me personally with a ton of pride and just really excited that the team was this curious about what the future would look like. I mean, I can't talk for the future. We'll maybe listen to this in 2 years and see what happens. But that would make me feel like this is a team that has that relentless curiosity that I was talking about at SKU Camp, and that made me really proud.

Yeah. I think the other piece of this that is, was so, you know, that brought such a sense of relief to me yesterday is that ultimately, you know, we've talked about this in the context of, you know, Simon Sinek's concept of safety and people's need to feel kind of safe and what that translates to from, in the kind of in the workplace. And I think that there's, when there's any kind of change and uncertainty that, you know, all of that that potentially goes out the window and there's huge risk that comes kind of with that. And I'll give huge credit to Marc Fried from this perspective that when they came in yesterday, that, you know, one of the first things that he said to the team was the, you know, the sense of obligation they felt in terms of, you know, what it is that had been built and the legacy around that and how it is that Marc and I had approached, you know, building the business. And with any kind of family business that ultimately the, the need to carry forward kind of, you know, that legacy and the obligation they felt to do that to the team. And to me, like, that was just all of a sudden I felt this huge sense of kind of, oh, like I could breathe again. And obviously I knew that, but, you know, having them hear that was just so important. So I think in terms of how it is that transitions go, ultimately being able to have the, you know, the new company coming in paint a picture for for, you know, their vision of, of, of where they want to take things, but ultimately, you know, the care in which they're going to do that. So I think that, that, um, you know, really did a lot to, to set people at ease and, um, give them kind of confidence that, uh, that it was going to be great.

Yeah.

And you know, it's also a great reminder that the success of the sale isn't the moment sold, it's the moment of transition so that you make sure the two integrate and continue to grow. Because probably like most deals, this has to do with some kind of factor of growth and success as you move forward. What I loved about— what I love about this story is often in your mind you think of selling your business, you're writing a check and you're running out the door. In this case, in our business, you have to make sure that integration happens. And so that one of the lessons I just took from this was that friendship that you've developed with, with the Jim Newmark family and folks is imperative to ensure the successful transition for the business, not only just for the health of the employees, but for the health of the deal.

Too. Well, it's that, it's that trust that ultimately comes into play, that you feel that there is trust there, that, that the intentions are genuine as far as, you know, as where they want to take the business. And I think when that trust is there and that translates to the team, that they feel that too, that, that, that goes a long way.

Yeah. Tell me about yesterday. Once people read the news, I'm curious. I know your phones blew up. Mine did. And I know your email, you probably still haven't recovered out of email. What were a few of the kindest remarks that you received from folks?

I think that, to me, one of the most kind of validating things that we kept hearing was good people plus good people. And what a great combination. And, you know, that's so, so amazing. And I mean, obviously, people are going to say nice things, but But ultimately, kind of the way in which it was phrased was just such a validation around how it is that we felt in terms of the, you know, the cultural alignment and all those pieces. It was, it was nice to hear that from others, especially suppliers who know kind of both of us well and know more of the, you know, the insides of our businesses and the people on the team well. So to hear that from them was really meaningful.

Yeah, I just pulled up an email from someone from yesterday who who said you should be really proud of what you built and the people you mentored who will take it to the next level. That will continue to be your legacy. That is the cool part. And it was an interesting thread where there was discussion about, like, hey, great, it's nice to get a nice financial settlement. I'm sure you're really happy about that, which is actually like, that's nice, but it's not really the most important part of this at all. This, what this particular person said is what is the most important part for us. I think if you do that, then everything else sorts itself out. But at the end of the day, I think that that's really what got me so charged up and invested in this industry so many years ago was, you know, taking things that we had learned and helping other people be successful. And That became the foundation of Common Skew, and we're having a blast with that as well. But have someone externally key in on that, um, this has certainly resonated and meant a lot.

Yeah, you know, I took away 3 big lessons from this. Number 1, Jamie Watson says this a lot: build to sell. You know, all of our conferences and our content and everything's about growth and growing strong distributorships, healthy distributorships, healthy businesses. Build to sell. Build a successful business that, that is built to sell. Number 2 was Know your numbers. Catherine, I thought that earlier as we were talking. I just know your numbers in and out. And then number 3, be patient. This is the hardest part, being patient for the right buyer. If you guys had to sum up advice for folks, maybe we just covered and that's fine. Do you have any other additional thoughts you want to pass along?

I think the piece about being patient is that these things take time in terms of building relationships to get to a point where you feel a comfort level that they think that there's going to be a good fit. And so if you're, if you kind of have that in the back of your mind, ultimately that you think someday that either you'll want to exit or you will, in our case, need to exit in terms of just, you know, from a focus perspective and bandwidth and capacity and all those things, that ultimately if you're thinking about kind of how it is that you are creating those relationships and being able to find, you know, alignment from that perspective, that it all becomes becomes a lot easier when that kind of more naturally reveals itself to you, as opposed to being in a position where either you're desperate or you've decided that you just, you have to get out now. And then, um, the— that, that creates all sorts of other challenges of having to make a decision quickly when you don't have that luxury of time to really get to know these people that ultimately, um, you're going to have to work with very closely, kind of during the, the, um, the process itself, but in the transition period. And, and ultimately that you're, that you're turning, you know, your baby over to. So you want to feel that comfort level, that it's, that it's going to be a good fit.

Yeah. Mark, final thoughts?

I think one of the things that really struck me in this whole process is the difference between having a job in this business and building a business. And what I mean by that is I think there's a lot of distributors, and I would put ourselves in the early days in this camp, build a business by building a portfolio and they're an independent distributor. They've got, you know, 100 customers, they're doing X amount of sales and it may be them, they may have an assistant and that's, that's the business. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. But that, that generally falls into the category of kind of having a job versus investing in infrastructure that can replace you. And that was a really, really extremely difficult transition for me to make so many years ago because I was the guy with the job and I was doing well, making great money, but was not generating any value in the business beyond me. And the reason I say a job is that if someone were to come along and say, hey, Mark, I want to buy your business. They would've been buying me and I would've been put on a 3-year earnout. And that's the way it would've been because they were buying my clients and buying me, and I would've effectively bought myself a job. The other path comes with quite a bit more risk because you're now investing in infrastructure, you're investing in technology, you're investing in brand, you're investing people, all this stuff, which to some extent I credit my father-in-law, Larry Ward, who pushed me in those early days. He said like, Mark, what the heck is this business that you're doing? Maybe because he was concerned about his daughter because she picked this like lunatic weird entrepreneur guy.

But you know, I think that you left this great investment banking job to sell t-shirts.

You gave him concern from day one, Mark.

This wasn't like new because we should get him on the podcast as well because I think he still is is concerned. But, um, but, but I do credit him for really challenging me in those earlier days. And, and Larry is, um, or at the time was a, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers on the accounting side. So had seen how businesses, uh, uh, build value for themselves, and it was by investing in infrastructure. And, um, that, that was a big risk for us in those early days. And I remember going, gosh, I was making so much more money before than I am now. And what's interesting at the, to finish this long-winded story here, is it's amazing now to see it so many years later as to how, uh, much that infrastructure paid off, um, in spades, um, not only in the profitability and the growth of the business before we sold it, but then at that point that we were able to sell it. Um, and I think that that's a message that that we feel really strongly about when we're talking to other entrepreneurs in the business, like invest in your business because it's going to pay way, way more dividends down the road if you choose to sell it. And it'll pay dividends today because it's a point of differentiation for yourself. And, and that's entrepreneurship. It's tough, it's risky, but man, is it, is it worth it if you stick to it.

Guys, on behalf of so many of us, we're very proud of you. We're very happy for you. We're happy for both teams. We're happy for Right Sleeve and Genuine Mark. What a great partnership there. And all I can say is, um, watch out world, the Grams have a little more capacity. Uh, thank you guys for, uh, for hopping on and talking about— we'll have more questions as we go down the road.

Um, but, uh, congratulations.

Thanks, Bobby. Thank you, Bobby. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of SkuCast. Be sure to keep up with our latest content by subscribing to SkuCast on iTunes or to our blog at community.commsku.com. Until next time, friends, thanks so much for listening.