Ed Kuhlenkamp: Entrepreneur & Business Investor

Alright everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner and today's sponsor is Flipboard. Flipboard curates the world's stories so you can be smarter in your work, life, and play. Choose from thousands of topics to personalize Flipboard and get the latest stories from the best publishers and experts delivered to you 24/7. So You can get started now at flipboard.com. And now, let's jump into the episode. All right, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. Today, I have Ed Koolenkamp with us. He is an entrepreneur and business investor. His experience includes building, rebuilding, managing, and selling companies in a variety of industries including online marketing, financial, media, publishing, corporate consulting, and communications. So welcome to the show, man.

Thanks, nice to be here.

Of course, grateful to have you on. So, Ed, the first question we ask on this show is, what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?

So the best story that I thought about when I saw this question, well, there's a few, but the one that really kind of resonated with me was the, it comes from a quote like, sometimes losses can be wins. And I had a situation back early in my career where I was very successful with this one company, but I had a falling out with the partners and probably for ridiculous reasons now at this point when I look back, it was a lot of ego. But when I was young, I was in my late 20s, I contributed quite a bit. I brought in over $1 million in sales and I helped the company quite a bit with strategy, but I ended up leaving. And then the company ended up getting bought out years later and I would have made millions of dollars. But in hindsight, you know, you think through your life and you're like, wow, that would have been life-changing. You know, that would have been like— but then I was talking with my son recently and I was speaking with him about— he was having some struggles with sports. He plays football and I was like, you know, you have to— life works out. I mean, I'm 54 now and I look back on my life and I think through, like, had I not had that situation occur, I wouldn't have met my wife and then I wouldn't have had the boys that I have. And like, my life is really— I wouldn't have the life that I have right now, which is I live in North Carolina. I left New York. I did a bunch of different things because of all the different situations. And so it was an interesting kind of helping him understand that sometimes you think you're losing something because he was starting on one team and then he went to another team and they wouldn't start him. It wasn't fair, it was kind of ridiculous, but I was like, look dude, trust me, life works out. Subsequently, some things have happened for him that have been really positive. He's in high school and so he's like, he's starting to see, I was like, it all works out. So sometimes losses can be wins.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

And then what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?

So my big sort of how I've built my career and what I've done, I focus very much on quality and reliability. And so to me, I feel like quality is the way it pays for itself over and over again. And that is everything that you do, whether it's the relationships that you have, how you approach your job every day, what you do. I always acted like an owner when I worked at companies, even though in some of them I wasn't. Now later on, I ended up becoming an owner, and many times I became an owner because I worked like that from the get-go. I acted like an owner, and I really took care of their money, took care of everything that was going on, really took it very seriously. Made them a lot of money. But yeah, I'm a big believer in quality and I think people try to rush and try and figure things out and do things sometimes maybe a little sloppy and I think you end up, that ends up costing many, many times and you can lose clients, you can't really get a good base. I see it with this company now, this Get You Found, which I bought into back in 2014. We have an amazing reputation for quality and so selling becomes much easier. People are pretty much going after us. We'll sometimes let clients go if it's not really working for us. It puts you in a very strong position in business. I think sometimes it's overlooked. I think everyone's kind of rushing, rushing, rushing. Like I said, sometimes if you go a little slower, you get there faster. It's kind of odd.

Yeah. No, no. It makes sense though. I always tell people the best way for a book to travel is to be just extremely valuable, like word-of-mouth marketing. Instead of going through it really fast and just putting together a book just to have a book, instead maybe take an extra month or two and make sure it's an incredible book. That will get you to where you want to be quicker even though it took you a little longer to finish because of the quality of the product. Next one, and it could tie in, next one I got for you is, what is your best piece of overall business advice, so not necessarily industry-specific?

So overall, I come from— I started in a sales background, and so I believe in really strong, solid foundations for operations. So I started in sales, but I always had an operations bent to me. And sorry about that alarm.

No, you're good.

But, and so, you know, I view sales and operations are like sort of like a seesaw. You want to balance them. And I feel that many companies, they can't quite get it right. You know, like, generally, the more emphasis is on sales sales. Um, but you know, you've got to really put a lot of value on the, on the numbers, on the operations, and on the sales. Because if you grow too fast, that can be detrimental to a business. You know, if you're growing too slow, that can be detrimental to a business. Let's say, but the operations have to be in sync with, with what you're doing. Um, and, and if they are and you balance them out, you tend to have steady growth, uh, quality company. And again, those, those are the companies when you look to sell your company that people want to buy. You know, I see, I get a lot of deals come across my desk and people email me a lot of businesses and it's always the ones, you know, you see like, oh, the last 3 years, boom, the numbers like shot through the roof. And I'm like, okay, what are the operate, have the operations kept up? Like 5 years ago they weren't doing this. So what's going on? Or if you see 2 years of, you know, really high and they're just trying to juice the numbers to get a really high sale value. But ultimately what people want to buy is something that's going to run. And so I just, I'm a very, I take a very common sense approach to business and pragmatic approach and it's always suited me pretty well. When things don't add up or numbers don't look quite right, there's usually something else going on and I see that, it's funny how full circle in SEO, it's the same thing. Like if your numbers aren't working right and if things aren't working and you, I can tell like what's going on just based on looking at the SEO numbers.

Absolutely. And then if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?

Yeah, so this is a fun question. I thought a lot of things I'd probably give myself, but one piece of advice, I would have gotten started a lot earlier with businesses, owning businesses or working in business or thinking about owning a business. I tell my boys, my one son is studying at UNCG, He's in the business program for entrepreneurship. And my other son, the same thing. We've been talking about entrepreneurship since they were very young. And I think you get in there and you go after what you really love and what you're passionate about. That's the other big thing. And you gotta be happy. I mean, I was very successful working on Wall Street in business, but I didn't really like what I was doing. I mean, I was working around a lot of smart people, which I appreciated, but I really, you know, it just wasn't what I wanted. And so now the way I am now, where my lifestyle is now, it's far better. I'm much more in a situation where this is businesses that I'm passionate about, people that I really enjoy working with. And so, yeah, I tell people to get going early, and that doesn't mean that you have to start your own company. I mean, it does— sometimes it means just kind of getting in the business that you really like, getting around the right— the people you really want to be with. I think when I started— I don't think, I know when I started, it was sort of secondary to me, the people and really their values and what they stood for and what they were all about. But I think what ends up happening is you come to a point where you're like, well, we're really different people. Like, I can't, that's not what I'm about. Like, I'm a very honest guy and I'm very straightforward. You know, I like to do things that are of value to society and I'm just not in it to make a bunch of money. And that's just, you know, so I think there's, that would be my advice to my younger self. Get started early, focus on the things you're passionate about. Don't worry about the money because the money comes, it always comes.

And then kind of going a little bit down a different path here, in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?

So the key to happiness, you know, my opinion is it comes down to appreciation. And well, a couple— I wrote a few things down for this. I wrote appreciation, sense of humor, thick skin, and perspective. You know, I think the number one thing that I would have to say is appreciation and fun and finding humor in life, because there's a lot of— there is a lot of humor despite what I think a lot of people think. And we have more, most of us, I mean, have more to be appreciative of than we realize, especially living in this country. My grandfather came here from Germany, he built delis and was successful. My father also came from Germany and was in insurance and real estate and was very successful, had a great life. And I've had a great life. And I tell my boys that, despite the ups and downs and opportunities that were missed, I appreciate all the things that I've been able to do and continue. I'm still able to do them. I think people miss that. When you appreciate, you're just happier. It seems like you're happier when you laugh a little bit more. Life seems to move better, it seems like. You got to maintain a perspective. I think we're so bombarded by the media and these extreme lifestyles. Again, I was around a lot of money. I worked on Wall Street around a lot of very powerful people, Fortune 100 CEOs. In the end, people are people and they still— it gets down to what do you really enjoy doing, what kind of people do you want to be around. It comes down to simpler things than people realize. I think I had the benefit of making a lot of money and then not having money for a while and then having money again, but I think people would realize that what really matters to you are the simpler things. People say that and it sounds trite, but it's really true. It's absolutely true. And if you thought about, I had $10 million, what would I do differently? And start living your life like you already had it. And I think you'd be surprised, you'd see that life would kind of work out better.

Mm-hmm, I agree. And then what is the best book that you've read and what's the number one thing you learned from that?

Okay, this was a hard, this is hard. I read a lot of books. And I don't remember, like, and I kind of, I've read so many good books, it was really hard. The one book that really— it's going to be weird because this guy, it's Robert Kiyosaki. It's not his first book, which I thought his first book was okay, but I thought he kind of slammed too much on his dad, his real dad, who was a very smart guy. And you know, he wasn't rich. Like, Kiyosaki was pretty materialistic, and I think he kind of dissed his dad for reasons that I didn't feel were— they were both good dads in my opinion. They both had something to teach him. But his book on Cashflow Quadrant was an amazing book, and it really helped me a lot because it helped me shift my approach. Like, I think the society we live in is always about asset accumulation. You know, you can accumulate millions and millions of dollars, you know, and then we'll make interest for you. You can live off the interest. Like, that's kind of the model everyone— many people go for. But, you know, when I saw the cash flow, when I read that book, I was like, you know, it really comes down to cash flow. And it gave— it did a couple things. It gave me insights both into And I see this a lot with the entrepreneurs that I work with, because we do a lot of work with entrepreneurs for digital marketing. And some of these people just have jobs, like really overworking jobs. They haven't quite figured out how to run a company, how to hire good people, how to let go. And so they're not really doing— they have their own company, but they'd be better off probably working for somebody else in some of these situations. And when you understand cash flow, you can understand— like I knew it was better for me rather than trying to go out there and do something that I hated to make millions of dollars so that I could live off that money for the rest of my life, it would be better for me to take money and invest in businesses, which I love doing. So my brother was buying, when I was, I took $10,000, that's about $20,000, and my brother was buying properties in Charleston and doing things, and he did well on those, you know, and I was like, I'm gonna buy companies. Like, it's too risky. He says, it's too risky. And I was like, nope, I really like to run companies, that's what I wanna do. I can generate more cash flow out of them, I can generate income, I get all these benefits from it, from a tax standpoint, it's like, and I'm good at it, I can do it, and an asset, but to buy real estate for me, it just is boring. I don't wanna do it. He likes to work on the properties, I don't. But by understanding cash flow, I was able to turn that, like that money, what would 20 grand get you? I mean, nothing, right, from an interest standpoint. If you were getting, it's nominal, you'd never be able to live off of it, but I've been able to turn that 20 grand into an investment that generated a lifestyle for me, income, All sorts of cool stuff, relationship, like it's like, there's no, like, so, because I understood cash flow, I understood that cash flow is more important than just, you know, what most people think about, which is just asset, you know, asset, massive assets. And so, and that's a funny thing too, because if you're, you know, if you're a person who can live on, you know, let's say 70 or 80 grand a year, and then you got a person who can't, and they like, they make a million, but they spend a million and a half, They're gonna be in a lot more, like, the person who's able to live within their cash flow is gonna be happier, less stressed, much better lifestyle than the person who has, you know, more money but can't manage their cash flow. And so I just feel, and even with businesses, cash flow is king. If you can understand cash flow and get a grasp on it, and it's a little tricky, but once you get a grasp on it, you're like, oh, I get it, you know, and it's so powerful. So that's why that book was the, that was the one that I was like, you know, that was probably, that changed my life the most, I would say.

Yeah, that is awesome. And then what is your favorite quote and why?

So, yeah, so my favorite quote is, well, in German it's "Das Beste oder Nichts," which is "The best or nothing," and it was from Gottlieb Daimler from Mercedes-Benz, Daimler Mercedes-Benz. And, you know, this quote, I found it a couple years ago. I was doing some stuff with with the team, and I came across the quote, and I was like, you know what? That's really, you know, that's me. I mean, that's who I am. I'm kind of a person who, it just describes my personality. I want the best, and if I can't have the best, I'm patient, I can wait until I do, because I'm not that, you know, it doesn't really matter to me that much that, it doesn't really matter to me that, you know, I just don't want the regular middle-of-the-road type stuff. I have a very narrow focus. I know what I like. I don't want everything in the world. I don't have to have fancy cars and all these things and jet planes and all that. But I'm willing to wait for the best. So that's sort of my quote, the best or nothing.

Yes. Dude, thank you so much for coming on. This was a really insightful episode. The last one I have for you before we let you go is where can our audience find you online?

The best place to find me is through LinkedIn or any of my companies. I mean, I don't— Get You Found is one of my companies. That's an easy company to find. It's a digital marketing, but LinkedIn is probably the best way if they need to get in touch with me or want to get in touch with me.

Okay, perfect, man. Thank you again for coming on.

Thank you.