I Started with ONE Employee, 20 Acquisitions Later, I Have 100+

Summary
In this conversation, Marshall Doyle shares his entrepreneurial journey, detailing his experiences with business acquisitions, the challenges he faced, and the strategies he employed to grow his company. He emphasizes the importance of trust, transparency, and support from family in navigating the complexities of entrepreneurship. Doyle also discusses his evolution in business mindset and the impact of coaching others in the acquisition process. In this conversation, Jon Stoddard discusses his journey in acquiring and transitioning businesses, focusing on operational challenges, the importance of mindset, and the vision for his legacy. He shares insights on how he navigated the complexities of business ownership, the role of family in his ventures, and the significance of personal growth in achieving success. Jon emphasizes the need for a strong mindset and the importance of helping others in the business community.
Takeaways
Marshall's first acquisition was in 1998, where he mortgaged his house for the down payment.
He faced significant challenges in the early years, including price wars and near bankruptcy.
Building trust and transparency with sellers is crucial for successful acquisitions.
Marshall's wife played a vital role in his decision to pursue entrepreneurship.
He expanded his business through strategic acquisitions, growing from one company to multiple.
The importance of customer care was a key motivation for sellers in his acquisitions.
Marshall emphasizes continuous improvement and learning in business.
He developed a coaching program to help others navigate business acquisitions.
Meeting Roland and joining Epic significantly impacted his business approach.
Marshall's focus shifted from just making money to creating stability for his family. We can spruce up struggling businesses with the right strategies.
Operating above the business allows for better strategic decisions.
Mindset is the key limiting factor for business owners.
Intentional relationship building is crucial for success.
Understanding strengths and weaknesses leads to better team dynamics.
Procrastination can hinder relationship building and business growth.
Surrounding yourself with inspiring people fosters personal growth.
Establishing a clear vision helps guide business decisions.
Helping others can lead to personal fulfillment and success.
Building a legacy involves empowering the next generation.
Watch the Interview:
Transcript:
Jon Stoddard (00:00.214)
Want more Deal Flow from LinkedIn? Get the LinkedIn Deal Flow system, the ultimate LinkedIn training for unstoppable acquisition growth. Get it at dealflowsystem.net. Welcome to the top &A entrepreneurs. My guest today is Marshall Doyle. Marshall Doyle is actually a student of Epic, the Rollins Group. He's done about 20 deals. He's run a company, he runs a company called CalCirc, who's also in the Air Force.
which I was too. So welcome to the show, Marshall. How are you? Awesome. Welcome, John. Thanks for having me. Looking forward to our chat. Yeah. So let's go back. How did you start? I mean, where was the very first acquisition and was it before Epic or Epic was the inspiration? Yeah, I it was long before Epic. In fact, was as when I met Roland, met him at a speaking event in San Diego and he described
his process and I thought, I've been doing that. Not really on that extent, but back in 98, that's 1998 for young people. I bought my first company, I bought CalCert. CalCert was a one person company, one employee company with two owners and they wanted to retire.
and a friend of a friend of friend kind of a connection. And I did some calibration in the Air Force. And so I was introduced. We put a deal together in June of 99. I bought the company from him after working for him for eight months. First one, I mortgaged my house for the down payment. And then he carried a note for 10 years. years. So he definitely trusts you. And this was off market, right? mean, wasn't- market, yeah. He was, he was-
It was just a small company. He had actually been larger, had a shareholder dispute with family and all the stuff earlier before me. the company was kind of, well, he didn't, his words, he was going to bury it before his family member, which was his son would get it. So, it's pretty ugly. It's still pretty ugly actually between them two. So, but that was my first business and still have that business running.
Jon Stoddard (02:22.638)
And, sorry, my phone there.
You know, it was my first move into the entrepreneurial world. I was operations manager in a property management company before that. And I grew that company. We were around 40 employees. When I left eight years later, we were 140 employees. And I'd like to think I had a little something to do with that as our operations manager. And you know, the old carrot on the stick was out there, but never really was coming to fruition. So. Well, what was going through your mind?
you know, going from a W two to owning it. mean, what did you want to own your own company? Like put your, put your money where your mouth is or somebody. I've always been kind of self driven. always, you know, I'm one those guys that can do anything, fix anything, at least somewhat decently. I've always been one of those guys. I never really had an aspiration to be a business owner. I grew up very poor. the oldest boy of nine kids, my dad was in the army.
and then you were in the Air Force, you know what they pay, right? So. Yeah, I got laughed at one time when I showed my check to somebody. Right, yeah, exactly. But the job I was at, I was doing really well, was paying, paid pretty well, but it was a pressure cooker, it was terrible. And the thing I didn't like about it is that although I was responsible for everything, I wasn't empowered to make decisions on everything. And so I think that's what I was really looking for. And I was in this pressure cooker, so.
anything looked good to me back then. So I left and I remember my wife and I talking about what we needed to do to prepare for this. And so I got a second mortgage on my house. We sold my wife's car to get out from her the car payment, bought her this piece of junk, little Chevy Corsica for cash. We just got ourselves prepared for that entrepreneurial world, knowing that we would probably need to put more money into the company.
Jon Stoddard (04:27.362)
But was excited about being in control. How integral was your wife in the decision making? I mean, you said, hey, I want to buy this business. Obviously she didn't go, you know, you're crazy. That's not happening. No, actually she didn't. You mentioned that, you know, my wife's an accountant. That's helpful, isn't it? Yeah, she worked for the same company as their accounting manager. And so she stayed there while after I left and I gave him like six or eight weeks notice just to, you
you help them out. And when we looked at the deal, in the midst of all of this, it was kind of a verbal deal, come to work for me, and then you can buy it a year from now, these are the terms, this is what we'll do. It's kind of a handshake deal. And we're four or five months in, and he had got an offer from one of our customers to buy it. And he said, you're gonna have to buy it from Marshall, I have a deal with Marshall, which is...
Which is awesome, right? He's honorable. Yeah. Let me ask you about that. How grateful do you feel knowing you got involved with somebody like that, that honored that word? You know, I still get a little tingly inside from that a little bit. I mean, just saying it because, know, the guy was a man of his word and, and I still am friends with him today. He's 85 years old. So, and, lives in Deming, New Mexico. So, and so, you know, he said, Hey, if you want to buy it, you're have to buy it from Marshall. And this was like a $400 million company that
They can just write the check tomorrow and absorb it. So at the time I was going to get 25 % more than we had agreed to buy it for. They were going to pay me 25 % of that more and pay me a nice salary to run it. And my wife sat across the table. I remember it was at Denny's at all places, but we were sitting at Denny's after we met with our attorney. And I'm like, well, what do you think about this? And I said, I got this job offer. They want to buy the company. I can run it.
She said, why did you want to do this to begin with? And I said, well, I wanted to be in charge of my own destiny. I want to be my own person and develop something for myself. She said, then why would you take this job? Cause it'd just be another job. And so we did it. for the wife of putting what's important. Yeah, it was, it was really cool. She really supported me really well in there. And so, and, you know, people think, you know, I'm going to go into business. I'm going to be rich or I'm going to make a lot of money or whatever, but.
Jon Stoddard (06:52.993)
you know, doesn't work for most of us. Yeah, doesn't work for most people out there. And so, you know, we went through our struggles. I mean, we went through price wars with competitors. We went through lots of stuff, you know, nearing bankruptcy, nearing divorce actually. And it was pretty ugly in the first few years. By 2001, you know, we were, it was tough. And so that's when I decided that I needed to do something different because I had a competitor.
who was sucking the prices down in our territory. We were in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Alaska and Hawaii. That was our territory for the most part. And pricing was going down and down and down. was a race to the bottom. And I like, how can I get out from underneath this guy? And so I had made friends with another calibrator in Minnesota at a training conference for manufacturer.
2005 I bought his company. bought your competitor. Well, he wasn't really a competitor. It was kind of a territorial thing. We crossed over a little bit in Wyoming, but I bought another company outside of the territory of the competitor that was killing me. so it was like a manufacturer and you were assigned territories sort of? Sort of, yeah. It was kind of a gentleman's territory back then, you know, even though there was really no real contracts, everybody kind of had their own spot, you know. And of course with
You know, the internet, mean, 1999, you know, AOL was coming online and internet was coming online, Y2K. And so we just started, we just started spreading out and driving further and doing more. And so I bought this second guy out terms deal also. How did that conversation go? mean, you, at some point you realized, I can't beat them on price. can't do them.
And then there was somebody said in your head or your wife's again said, well, why not just buy it? Well, we, wasn't just to be clear. didn't buy out the competitor. I bought another guy in a different territory to stand out from underneath this other guy. And, and so that's how I got into the Midwest in calibration. And, and it was, and I had gotten to know this guy. had, his name was Bill and we, we had like exchange customers, like helped each other out.
Jon Stoddard (09:16.365)
You know, with that gentleman's agreement, like, Hey, this is my annual customer, but he's in a jam, something broke. You've got to have a fixed. And calibration is a reoccurring thing almost every year. Yeah. What kind of machines are they again? Mostly like concrete break machines they use for breaking concrete cylinders for testing concrete strength, asphalt strength, and then all the other peripheral equipment there. so, so that, that other acquisition in 2005, we closed that deal. And I got one employee.
out of it and the husband and wife retired. And then we hired another employee in that area. And then my office, I think at that time we had grown, we had grown CalCert by, I think we were at about 12 employees at this point. So we were growing. We were growing. Let me ask you about that. How the conversation started. Were you putting seeds out there that to the seller? Hey, if you were ever interested in selling.
Let me know. was actually. Did they start it? No. Well, you know, in this world, there's factory training. so the factory guys are about 35 companies in this niche in the U S that worked for this one particular factory as vendors or as a warranty guys. And so we went to the training back in Minnesota or Pennsylvania, and you meet, you meet all these people in the training.
And then you go to the bar afterwards, Bar afterwards and me and another guy, guy named Lane who's in Pennsylvania. I was 30 years old and we're looking around the room and we're like, man, these guys are like, like they're like 50 something at least I'm 55 now. So, you know, they're like, and look at all the gray hair. This industry is going to bust open. Someone's going to need to be able to take this over. And so we kind of jokingly said, Hey, I'm in Oregon. You're in Pennsylvania. I'll start.
I'll start heading east, you start heading west and we'll take over the country. And so that's kind of what the mindset was a little bit. you know, almost in a joking way, but, and as I was talking to these guys, they're like, yeah, I need to hang this up someday or whatever. I'm like, Hey, you know, I bought out, I bought out the owner of Calcer. Let's talk when you're ready to exit, let's talk. And so that's how we, that's how it started. then, then the other guy started doing, taking over the
Jon Stoddard (11:39.053)
that part of his territory with that conversation or? The other guy was growing organically staying in the territory we were in, my main competitor. And I think I, and he still has this company, he's still a competitor. He's got like 15 employees. And in my calibration company, I have close to 60 employees. Yeah. And so he, and he could have grown just as easily as I did. But
So in 2005, I got the second one. Then in 2007. Let me ask you about that, the second one and what kind of deal terms was that again with it was selling? Okay. So that's a good story. Actually. This one was, we did, it's kind of funny. I mean, I was really transparent with them and I said, look guys, you know, I'm carrying some overhead. And at this point, my wife had joined the company and my brother had joined the company and not as owners, but.
you know, as workers and of course my wife, you know, they own everything, right? So, but. It's a community property statement. Right, exactly. So, but at this point, you know, I didn't have cash. mean, I was still upside down on payables and stuff. I was still, you know, just barely making my profit was starting to get dialed in because I was learning, you know, what I needed to do there. I engaged with a small business development centers, SBDC centers, and they were business coaching me and helping me kind of figure out.
This is seven years later after your first acquisition. Yeah, exactly. When we bought that company, they did eight-year financing and they financed 100 percent. They left $10,000 in the bank for operating. Wow. Why did they take that deal? What advantage was it to them?
I think, well, number one, the guy was in his seventies, so he was ready. Yeah. And him, his wife, you know, she was a little younger, but they were ready and motivated. Like Roland always talked about motivated. So, right. Was he not motivated by money? Seeing a big number in his checking account or just having the bills paid? He had done well his whole career. Yeah. And he'd, he'd run pretty lean. So he had done well. His wife was handling the financial part of it. He was like just a caliber.
Jon Stoddard (14:02.541)
And that's what he did. And so they were their number one thing they were after was someone to take care of their customers. I love that. That's what they wanted. They want someone to take care of their customers. And we knew each other for five years and we'd cover each other once in a while. We'd talk. I talked to his wife constantly. We have what we call windshield time because we're driving. And so I'd call her and we'd talk for like two hours. And this is and she's like, you're to buy our company someday. And I said, okay, when I'm ready.
And finally they said, look, we're ready. And I said, I'm not ready. Like I haven't dug out a hole that I started in, you know, I don't have the cash, but you know, I can do the cashflow and we can manage this, manage the guys. And so we just, really transparent with the conversation, really open and honest about the whole scenario. And they put a deal together that I could do. Why do you think your transparency turned into advantage?
I mean, you're honest, your ethics. It was trust. Yeah, we built trust over the years. Did you think they put you through some kind of ethical test maybe that you didn't know of or, you know, how you treated your customers? Maybe they called your customers or something and you know, like, how did he do business? Because, I don't think they had any like strategic plan for that. I think it just happened naturally. And because we
you know, sometimes would help cover each other's customers. We always had good feedback. And I would always say, hey, you know, you want me to cover this emergency, you want them back next year during the routine calibrations? And sometimes they'd say, yeah, we want them back. Sometimes they say, no, it's out of cycle. We can't get there. You can take them. And so we had this real open, honest, integrity-based conversation and agreement. And we really became friends and that was a big part of it. And it's...
And their motivation was customers. And what I found out later is that it's almost always their motivation was take care of customers. And then if they had employees, they wanted employees taken care of. that, leads me to the next one that I did, which was in 2007 or eight. I can't remember when the disaster of the great recession started, but it was in the midst of all.
Jon Stoddard (16:23.373)
And this guy had sold his company to a different company. They were in due diligence and they were, they had docs getting developed and everything else. And then the crash happened. type of company. Same type of company. These have, these guys happen to be here in Portland where I'm at, did a different thing. They did a temperature calibration, which we kind of did, but not a lot. And he had one employee and then him and his wife did their books and stuff. And so,
their deal fell through because of the recession. And he knew one of my employees and I knew of him, but I never really talked to him. My employee said, you should talk to Marshall. And he came to me and said, look, I want to retire. I'm 70 something. I could taste it. It was so close. I could taste it. And these guys pulled out. And so I got his financials. I got all that stuff, analyzed them. And at this point I'm still using the business coach from the SBDC.
which is an accountant and they're helping me figure it out. Yeah. and, so I came back to him and I said, you know, cause he told me what they were going to sell it for first. I'm like, can't, you know, you've lost 40 some percent of your business. Like I can't, I can't buy it for that. he's like, what could you buy it for? And so I told him and, he said, I'll take it. And I said, it's gotta be terms. And so I gave him 10,000 down.
which essentially was designed to pay his attorney's fees from the failed deal. Yeah. Because he had to pay his attorney's fees through a failed deal. Right. And we used the documents that the other buyer... These are same documents. Yeah, we used the same documents. We just adjusted them and used them and changed the pricing. And then we got one employee with that one and we had the infrastructure to manage the overhead side of it. Yeah. So that's when we started to scale.
So was there any point you're realizing this is stuff is starting to happen to me? What's the end game? Because you fast forward to 2021, 22, and you're talking to Roland and goes, the end game is, you know, a higher multiple, cause you're larger. Was there anything coming in? Yeah. That was kind of in my head a little bit. It was really more about, for me personally, it was really more about getting me off the road.
Jon Stoddard (18:50.913)
because I was a technician and it was threatening my marriage and threatening my relationship with my kids. And so I was trying to grow enough to get enough income that I could be in the office and just do sales and do scheduling and do those kinds of things and not travel. And so it was never about money. It's still a lot about money, honestly. But we were able to build a pretty good portfolio of clients and client base. And then, well,
we, you the industry changed a little bit in 1999. They published a document called ISO 17025. It's a quality assurance accreditation. And by 2002, 2003, the state agencies, the federal agencies were starting to require this accreditation. And so I needed to get it in order to move forward. But the other thing that it did is it, companies that we were doing like a concrete machine for,
all of they needed everything else done too. yeah. Like their ovens and their scales and their thermometers and their torque wrenches and all that stuff. Yeah, let me, before you jump into that, let me ask you, when you said it's not about money, is there another word that you'd use that it's about? And how do you stop the word money from keep creeping in? You know, sometimes you're patient. You get impatient by seeing something else.
And you have to let that keep those from creeping in like weeds in your garden. Well, I mean, it started out, you I wanted to create stability for my family. Yeah. And of course, you know, money does give you some stability, right? So that's freedom. But reoccurring income gives you stability and money. And so when money gives you little stability, it's well, money was really not there. I never really wanted to be rich. And, you know, we grew up so poor, I, you know, anything we did.
you know, was better. Right. was new territory. Yeah. I I was, you know, never graduated high school. Same thing. Yeah. I mean, I barely graduated from high school and, you know, I went straight in the air force when I was junior in high school. So, I mean, I, I graduated, but then I went on and delayed enlistment. But, the, the money thing for me is, someone told me once, you know, if you focus on money, you'll never have it. Yeah. Yeah. It's just energy. You have to focus on this energy.
Jon Stoddard (21:14.091)
And now I'm just kind of addicted to the whole game. You know, it's, I like the whole game of it. And so most of the companies that I bought were small one, two person companies that could blend right into CalCert. Right. You're just basically buying maybe an employee and a customer list. Yep. Some equipment, an employee or two, you know, customer list, you know, I was always looking for like, you know,
maybe they've got like some service that's so proprietary, we can, you know, own that market or higher profit margin or some software that's going to make everything, you know, way more profitable or something like that. And so, so I've always, always just continually looking for improvement, improvement, improvement, improvement. And, and, and although we still acquire smaller companies as part of our strategy, you know, we acquire bigger companies now too. And
And so, but all of them I'm doing, I'm doing what I now I've learned, you know, Roland, of course Roland's program is really kind of on steroids compared to what I was doing, but it's, I was doing the same thing. was like, just being transparent and saying, look, I don't have the cash for this, but I can pay you payments because I can do the cashflow of it. So I was using it as marketing. so, so we grew the company and to that by 2009, we had done three acquisitions and we grew the company by about 65%.
Yeah. And what was next after that? Let's see. Let's kind of jump to where maybe there's an epiphany. I need to buy a bigger company or I need to go to a different industry. What happened there?
Well,
Jon Stoddard (23:04.365)
Like most entrepreneurs, I'm ADD or ADHD, right? So I was like something new and exciting. And so I was always jumping around to different things. And I think this roll-up was giving me that ability to feed that a little bit. And so learning new things for us, was growing the territory was scaling it. But while we were growing the territory, we were growing the services too. so we've got like- to that ISO.
Because the ISO thing, we started out with like six services. We've got like 380 some services now in the calibration business itself. And so it's, it's, and we're in 42 states. So, I mean, we've grown, you know, a little bit. and so, and when I, when I, when I met Roland, so I met Roland.
I guess maybe almost five years ago now. Yeah. So this is way before Epic. What was this about? Yeah, it was way before Epic. And so I met Roland, yeah, in 2005. He spoke at an event with Alison Maslin. I don't know if you've heard of Alison Maslin. It's Pinnacle Global Network is the name of her company. She's out of San Diego and she's a coaching group. It's a coaching group, coaching, masterminding, know, that kind of stuff.
And so I was at one of her events. I had become a member of one of her coaching groups and was at an event when he spoke. And I'm like, I gotta talk to the This is what I'm doing. And so, and one of the things when you go to events, you probably go to some events before COVID. One of the things I always did is I always watched the speakers, how they entered the stage and how they exit the stage.
So once I figured that out, I'd always sit where they were exiting. So that if they were a great speaker, I'd get a chance to exchange cards or meet with them or something. And so I did that with Roland. He was up there and I read a little bit about him, but that was my introduction to him. And I sat over to the left side of stage, which is where she was having everybody go down. And when he came up, of course, know, speaker's over and they're going to break, right? And so he comes down and I like stopped him and I said,
Jon Stoddard (25:32.427)
I need to talk to you. And he's like, what's up? said, I've been doing what you're doing on a much smaller scale and I want to learn more from you. How do I do that? And because these events, won't let them sell anything. And he wasn't doing Epic then. He wasn't doing any of that stuff. And so, and then we exchanged a couple of emails and then kind of nothing for a while. And then of course I was following his podcast, Business Lunch.
Yep, business lunch, 330 something. Yeah. so anyway, so I kind of got to know him and not know him, but know of him and all that. And then he started Epic during the pandemic. by this time in Epic, I'd already bought 14 companies. These are all just the kind of the normal person. Yeah. some were small, some were big. Biggest one I ever bought was a 14 employee company.
before I met Roland. And did you, let me ask you about that. Did you have a set checklist or system of what happens when you acquire now after your 14th? Is this needs to happen? Yeah, yeah, I've got, it's loose cause I'm kind of a visionary guy, you know, so it's loose and everything has the basics that you need. So I have that down. But the, you know, the fine tuning of it, just have the mind for it.
So let's go through it. I just signed papers on Friday for another acquisition. Yeah. How big was that? How many people in revenue? That was a $1.3 million acquisition. And we acquired, I think, four employees. But as a product sales company, so all of those numbers, they're not huge because it's products, right? Yeah. But in your industry.
Yeah, they're in my industry. They don't do calibration. They do instrument sales. But these are instruments that need to be calibrated. Yeah. And so, and they actually would sub some things to us and we would buy some instruments from them. you're so you're going to be calibrating the instruments you sell, which should help your product margin supply. Yeah. And the owner there, two owners, husband and wife. The husband's a little bit older than the wife.
Jon Stoddard (27:54.293)
she's the sales engine. She's like the rock star salesperson. And so she's coming on as our sales manager. And we lost the sales manager just almost a year ago. And I stepped back into that role a little bit. We have five people on our sales team and our sales manager took a job as a GM at one of our vendors. No surprise. We still get a lot of sales from him because he's GM for one of our vendors, but he's not on our salary anymore. So.
But yeah, so when I go through the checklist, I've made a checklist over the years and I actually developed a process to help what I call micro businesses sell. And so my daughter and I started a company called Small Business Coaching, LLC. And this is before the pandemic and that was designed to help either help like what Roland's doing, but help people buy
businesses like what Roland's doing, but on a much smaller scale. Like, you know, buying like the local barbershop or, you know, things like that. Solar pernuna kind of businesses. And because I had bought a lot of those guys out and when I bought them out, they had no clue how to exit or no clue how to set the company up for sale. Yeah. what do mean? I'm an independent now I'm a W-2. What's the, you know, what do- Yeah. I was just, you know, they had no idea how to do it. how to do it. So I set up this
business coaching thing with my daughter, where we coach people on how to buy their first business or how to buy existing businesses as a roll-off strategy. Like for example, a nail salon, right? You buy a nail salon, then instead of like starting a new one on the other side of town, buy another nail salon and then buy another nail salon. And so we kind of had that figured out and started coaching on that. And then pandemic,
decided, okay, let's help them sell too. Like let's help these solarpreneurs that have three or four employees maybe want to sell. So this is independent of Epic, right? This is, yeah. This is before Epic even started. Yeah. And so we were setting this up, my daughter and I, and we were building an online course for it. Yeah. It was going to be a hybrid online course kind of done with you kind of a thing.
Jon Stoddard (30:15.029)
And at this time I was stepping away from Cal State a little bit because I have a team that's running it now. You know, I've got a six person leadership team. They're running it now. I meet with them once a week for 90 minutes. And so I don't get involved other than the acquisition stuff. And so I was bored. So I needed to do this other stuff. so we started that coaching business and then when the pandemic hit, well, that's no time to sell, right?
That's no time to be in a panic and sell. So we didn't really want to coach our clients. That's not a lot of people feel. The first thing they do is, mean, I got to get out. Right. Exactly. But for a strategic seller, that's not a best time to sell. Right. And so I didn't want to get people on fire sales and help them fire sell their company. Did you feel ethically bad about that or did you? Okay. Yeah, I didn't. That's not the right thing to do. I want to see them get top value for the company. So. Right.
And so it started out with a client and we were coaching that had a welder repair company and five employees, been in business. was his dad's business before him, been in business 1956. And he was second generation owner in his seventies. And he was scared of the pandemic. His wife's health was challenging. And so he was scared of the pandemic and I was coaching him to get his company ready to sell before the pandemic hit. Yeah.
And then they hit. You charged him or how did that work? yeah, they paid me a monthly fee to coach them. and I mean, I'm charging, I think for that level client, if you did a time thing, I charged about $7.50 an hour. And, but you know, I, most of what I had, I had already developed. So we could get a lot of things done in an hour. Yeah, it's just him executing on what?
Right. Yeah, exactly. And so we were doing price strategies. were getting his margins right. We're getting his books straight. We're getting his marketing straight. Get all the things you need to look at on a business. Who would want to take over a second generation where the second owner is 70 plus, welding repair business. I love it with repair business because I love the way the beads look and the else look, but finding somebody to step in that role. Well, as it turns out, I would. You did.
Jon Stoddard (32:39.541)
Okay. bought the company. I not set you up for that question. Yes, you did. I didn't know you were setting me up. My daughter's like, why don't we buy it? I'm like, really? Now CalSTR, we calibrate welders. we, and we had in the coaching, we kind of learned that they, you know, we had some shared customers and some other stuff. This guy kind of owns an itch in the Portland market. And part of the reason he owns an itch, because it's very difficult to make money doing that.
because they're rebuilding torches and regulators, labor is your biggest burden. And then you're fighting, you know, like knockoff products that are being made overseas for cheaper than it costs to fix the one you have. And so, I mean, you don't get the quality you need, but so we looked at it said, you know, I think we can spruce this up. He needed to move out of his family home. They were working out of a garage with a grandfathered clause for the county. So he could work there.
I, because of the pandemic, my admin staff had moved to their home. And so I had space in my building. So I'm like, well, okay, we'll buy them out. We'll move them into this space. We'll tear the carpeting out, which turned out to be more expensive than I thought it was gonna be, but I'll tear the carpeting out, expose the concrete floors again. That's curious that she was like, wait a minute, why do they have carpet on a welding place?
No, no, this is calibration. took all the calibration. Okay. I industrial space and turned it into office space for CalSert. And then when the staff went home, I turned it back in industrial space for the welding company. And I moved them. So I moved into my building. And then I got introduced to another guy who did the electric welding repair stuff.
who was somebody we referred to, because we didn't do electrical welders. We did gas, what they call gas apparatus. And I met him and the owner of the welder company that I bought said he wants to get out. And so I met with him and he's like, you know, I'm great at fixing welders. I just suck at being in business and I'm tired of doing this alone. I don't want to do it. I'm like, you want to just close your business down and come to work for us? He's like, yeah.
Jon Stoddard (34:55.479)
So we did an asset evaluation of what he had. He had a lot of customers, a lot of backlog, a lot of equipment, a truck, a couple of trucks. Was he profitable? Not really, but partly he wasn't profitable because the system sucked. He just didn't know. He just didn't know how to do it. He was spending money on things that not he wasn't being irresponsible, but he was just didn't know how to manage the finances of cashflow.
His pricing was too low. His turnarounds were terrible. was lots of. Yeah. That's danger of working in the business. You can't see above it where. said, look, I don't work in businesses. In fact, I'm not even, and I love this from Roland. I'm not on the org chart of any of my businesses. Yeah. I love that. So, and so, and I told them that, so I'm not on the org chart. I don't operate within the business. I operate above the business. We figure out the strategies and.
and then you guys execute them. And we'll bring in some of my other team to execute them. Like my executive assistant, Sky, who's scheduled with you. She does a little bit of that execution stuff, process evaluation and those things. My daughter does that as well. So my daughter's the CEO of the Weller company now. Anyway, we exchanged the guy for a little bit of minority share in exchange for his assets. Came in, now he's our service manager.
You you evaluated his assets, his assets purchase agreement, and you said, it's worth X amount of dollars. We didn't give you cash for that. We're just an exchange for a percentage of the surviving company, surviving company. How much of this? Let me let me go back to this because I had an interview with another guy where, you know, in the age of the Internet, everybody wants to do the zoom call. How much was this face to face negotiation versus over the phone or?
With him was mostly face to face because he's here in town. Yeah. Yeah. So, and, yeah, it was, and honestly, it wasn't even that much because, you know, back to what Roland talks about, he was super motivated. Yeah. Super motivated. wanted to be out. And then after we took it over, we realized that his cash wasn't floating on him. And so we did end up feeding it a little bit of cash to get, you know, get some things set up. We had to set up all the electrical systems to, to do the testing in our new build, in our building.
Jon Stoddard (37:20.461)
Did you subtract any expenses, just cut stuff out? We don't need this, we don't need that. Yeah, we went through each category and figured it all out. we actually took over operating of his entity, which is an LLC, and did the closeout for him. That was part of the deal. Like we'll do the closeout, because that's what he was having trouble with. What do you mean closeout?
We merged his operations into our existing company. His LLC needs to be no more, needs to dissolve. So we worked on the dissolution of it. So you filed with the state and everything to dissolve Yeah, and that's not quite done yet, but they're doing the taxes right now. But we basically balanced out the assets and the liabilities. We balanced out the cash. We did fees back and forth. And we basically got it to his tax liability is super low at the end because he was profitable that last year.
And so we wanted to get his tax burden lowered. In the meantime, we'd invested a whole bunch to bring him in on the other side, remodeling the building, putting electrical in. So we had some expenses. So we actually dipped into a negative profit for the other company and got him to a zero. Because- Let me ask you about that. So you didn't ask kind of an exchange for his assets for his assets.
Was there a tax bill for him? Yeah, small tax bill, not much. Not much. Like 3,000 bucks. yeah, okay. Yeah, it was, and my daughter, who also does accounting, she kind of got it all figured out working with our CPA and getting that figured out. And the thing is, because we were doing all of that and we were handling customer interactions, I wasn't doing any of it, but my daughter and my assistant and
and our accounting team was handling that stuff, he was able to start fixing welders. What do know? You know, he had 80 welders backlog that needed to be fixed and he couldn't get to because it was too busy. And let me guess, they were doing a really profitable project. yeah. yeah. So because he wasn't able to get to that business. And now that was cleaned from his plate. Yeah. He was dealing with credit card processing or dealing with like, you know, the
Jon Stoddard (39:45.653)
Service software, he used a software called ProMax or something ProMax. It's like a CRM kind of thing. Yeah, I know who ProMax is. Anyway, so he was too busy doing all this inertial stuff that he wasn't fixing equipment. It's like, dude. It's like, what rings your bell? What rings the bell here, which is bringing in profits? And it's not talking to credit card companies. Nope. Yeah. Not. So we let our team handle that and he started being profitable.
The other thing is he had two employees that were working for him that were dogs. He was letting them get away with murder. He was like, one of them was his son. And I'm like, look, man, we got to deal with your son. goes, I know. And I said, it's just not going to work. And he's like, I know. And so the two employees that he had working for him, they don't work for us. Did you fire them or did he fire them? So you got to go. Actually, my daughter fired him. So one of them quit.
Here, I gotta tell you, what's going on? Your daughter came into this picture and she's just loving this environment you created. Yeah, she's, she's a mini me for sure. She's get this man. She's 32 years old. She's got three babies under the age of four. She's running two businesses. technically three businesses, the coaching business, the welding business. And then we, she's partners with my son and his business. We own a company called the nerd stuff.
and it's a computer IT company. And the kickoff for that business was a side gig for years with my son. The kickoff for that business was we bought a small computer repair store in Springfield, Oregon. As a kickoff, they had four employees. And so we've grown that. We're looking at two acquisitions now to grow that, to expand and to bend and somewhere on the coast.
and well three technically, one in Tacoma Washington. So I'm going to take the model I did with CalCert, we're going to do it with the IT company and we're going do it with the welder company, same model. We're just going to scan it. Does it make sense? When you look at this and goes, what do I need to grow to get a higher multiple to some eventual exit or acquisition or whatever it is? Yeah, mean, CalCert's already achieved that. I CalCert's multiple could be
Jon Stoddard (42:09.131)
you know, pretty good if I was ready to sell now, but you got to get it over a million and even to write. So, the other two, you know, they're not there yet, but they'll, they'll get there, you know, and, the, are already talking to buyers? yeah. I always have buyers talking to me about CalCert. I calls all the time. So my number one buyer that I identified 15 years ago, it's a publicly owned company. That was $400 million company. Yeah. No, no, that was a customer.
This was a public owned company that does calibrations. I mean, they want to buy us. And I'm like, we're not ready. can't imagine somebody not a better acquisition target than you are, because how you've grown it and say, hey, look, man, you just saved us all this time and energy and stuff. Yeah. There's definitely some roll up stuff going in at a higher level. The funny thing is this public company.
They started their rollup strategy about the same time I started my rollup strategy, but they did it with funding. I did it organically. Yeah. They're a lot bigger than us. yeah. Sure. Sure. Well, what's your thought about that now? I mean, use another, you know, think, I like the game, you know, and, it's, I mean, I got, I don't have to worry about money, you know,
I live the way I want to live. buy what I want to buy. I do what I want to do. And maybe my palette for that is much different than others would be. I'm not a big money guy. I have nice cars and I have a nice home. I have a couple of homes. We go to Cabo all the time and been to Europe. I spent a month in Italy with my wife, a month in Australia. Well, three weeks. Do you ever see a I can't drive 55 guy down there in Cabo?
I did. Yeah. We went to his bar all the time. that's cool. Yeah. Can I ask you a question about the, management stuff? Because this is the point of why Roland talks about, go and join a mastermind like war room, because, you know, I'll talk to a lot of people about selling their business and, know, they took five years to build it to 2 million bucks or 10 years to million, to million bucks.
Jon Stoddard (44:33.149)
And when you're talking about going, hey, we can get you to 4 million or 6 million in six months, they go, breaks their head. How do you get the skills and acquire the skills to be able to see that, how to work above the business and grow it faster? Do it in six months, add in zero. For me, I had to learn that the vast majority of the limiting factor of a business owner is
has nothing to do with the mechanics of the business, has everything to do with what's in here. It's like looking in the mirror every morning. Exactly, it has everything to do with your mindset, what you think is possible, and then taking the action to make it possible. And the way that I, you know, I've always had a pretty aggressive mindset, but the way that I really got my mindset straight was by getting into high level coaching stuff, you know, by connecting to guys like Roland and really watching, listening, reading, everything. mean, my audible man.
I can scroll here through the rest of your show and we wouldn't reach all the books that I've listened to. And how many books? Let me ask you a question. I buy about three, sometimes four books a month on Amazon. How many? I'm probably like 10 or 15. 10 or 15. So you just push me to push myself a little bit more. You know, it's, it's whenever anybody recommends a book about something that interests me,
while I'm talking to them, I buy it on. You know, I do the same thing and I have to tell you, Carl Allen, he's been doing this for a while too. He's kind of a competitor Roland and he's probably worked on 300 deals and very large deals like 50 billion and stuff. And I actually recommended a book that he's never read before. Really? And he bought it while I'm talking to him and he showed me the receipt. Yeah. Well, you know,
just to swing back for a second on the mindset thing, know, getting the, you know, I always said, like, I surround myself with inspiring people that I can learn from. Like, I always want to be the dumbest person in the room. Like that's who, that's who I want to hang out with. I want to hang out with people that I can learn from. And I'm a talker. I like to talk, you know, I'm an outward guy. But I had to learn how to listen more. I had to learn how to shut up and listen.
Jon Stoddard (46:58.343)
and take notes. Is it shut up and listen or ask the right questions? Well, I think it's both actually. think it's both. But it's, you know, I mean, I've had an opportunity to meet some pretty incredible people with the connections that I've made. And it's, you know, I think it's about your network. think it's about your network. I think it's about the people you hang around with. think it's about the mindset you're developing.
Do you know, speaking of books, do you know Gay Hendrix books, the big loop? I've heard of it. It's called the big leap. He's got a second book out now. I don't remember the name of it, but, if you have someone that's like struggling with mindset, he has a thing in his book, called the zone of genius. And he says people, people live in there, like, like they're, what do they call it? Their zone of expertise or they live in their.
came over the other terms with lower down on the tier, but he's got this thing's zone of genius concept. And he's a, he's an old time professor. He's like in the seventies or something like that. And he says that most people live in their zone of expertise. Like they get really good at something and they just keep doing that. But they're still doing an awful lot of things that aren't in that zone of genius. They're still doing a lot of this piddly stuff that are auxiliary to what they're doing. And they're not reaching their zone of genius.
And your zone of genius is something that you can do without intention to do it. It just happens. You just do it. It's like your mastery. Like role in the zone of genius is how to structure deals on a company. How to creatively see that and structure the deals on how to put that actually how to approach a seller on what that would look like. Yeah, absolutely. it's, mean, and so, and so, he probably knows Gay Hendrix. He probably knows of his book and stuff, but
Anyway, that's a book that really helped me get out of my shell a little bit, not socially, but business-wise, looking at this and saying, look, I'm this niche business and I could only grow it so much. And that book, along with a guy named Stuart Borey, he was an advisor for Pinnacle or a mentor. was my business coach.
Jon Stoddard (49:27.465)
He said to me, we talked about growing and he said, how big is big? And I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, do you want to be a hundred million? Do you want to be 500 million? Do you want to be a billion? Do you want to go public? Like, what do you want to do? Like, no, I don't want to go to public because I don't want to answer to any shareholders. I don't want to, I don't want to do the work to be that size because I don't want to answer to anybody else.
only one answer to myself. So that's why I'm myself investor. Right. I don't have any outside investors. And, and so, I mean, I use banks. By the way, I just bought a gay Hendrix Big League. Yeah, it's, it's, it's a good one. It'll help you and your listeners, you know, with the mindset that's necessary to get past this. Cause I'm telling you, I barely graduated in high school. And I figured this out. Yeah.
I tell everybody this, said, look, I've done over 50 episodes of this and the people that have bought over five or 10 businesses versus the people that bought one or two, one or two, they talk about tactics and strategy, 10 or more, it's mindset. It's always mindset. So I've got the welder company, I've got the calibration company, I've got the coaching company, I have a hotel, I have some commercial real estate, I have some residential real estate.
I have a, well, we're looking at buying a bookkeeping firm right now and a product sales. I've just got my first e-commerce product business. And, you know, it's just fun. Yeah. Let me ask you, let me ask you about this. Sometimes achieving the big leap, taking off to the next step, you have to take your foot off first base, which is subtraction of some things.
How are you, how do you see those things that you need to extricate yourself from? Like maybe it's limiting beliefs, maybe it's a bad habit, maybe it's a routine you have. Well, I think early on and it still affects me a little bit is procrastination. Like, you know, you can't procrastinate. Like if you say, hey, like you got friends, right? You've run into friends, you haven't seen them in a month.
Jon Stoddard (51:53.485)
You run them in the grocery store and like, Hey, how's it going? It great seeing you. We should get together sometime. And what do do? Don't talk to them. You never get together, right? Yeah. So pull out your fricking calendar while you're standing there and go, let's put a date on the calendar.
So I stopped procrastinating relationship building and started making it intentional. And I started being connected to more people. There's a guy I was good friends with in high school that I haven't talked to in 30 years, 35, 40 years. I know, I've been married 35 years. So, you know, a long time. And he put a really funny post on Facebook the other day, because he did some standup comedian training. And he said, hey, I can share it, but it's inappropriate. So I'll have to share it privately. So I said, yeah, share it.
Haven't talked to this guy in years.
We're gonna go to dinner next week. Yeah, good. Because I'm intentional about it. Like, don't just say we should get together sometime. I want to get on your calendar. Let's grab lunch. Let's grab dinner. I'll buy you dinner. you lunch. Really enjoyed your comedy. You seem like a fun guy to hang around. You know, let's reconnect. We haven't seen each other since we were 16. Yeah. And so procrastination, think people have lot of good ideas. I'm one of those people.
But if you don't execute on at least some of them, you'll never get anywhere. Yeah. So that was for me, one thing. The other thing was you got to understand your strengths. You got to understand your weaknesses and you got to start leaning on people that have strengths in areas you don't. Yeah. And so I've been successful in doing that, building teams. So we have about hundred and four, 105 employees with all the companies, which isn't huge. I mean, compared to some of your guests, I mean, this is peanuts, right?
Jon Stoddard (53:41.805)
But yeah, it's all I feel like, you know, it's a lot of fun and I'm helping a lot of people. Well, yeah, I don't think there's anybody judging you saying, hey, you need to be, you're not a, I mean, Elon Musk where I need to put star links over the Ukraine. Right, yeah. Yeah, that's cool though. But you know, but if you understand who you are, you get into your zone of genius and you understand that you can help other people by getting them into their zone of genius and they can help you.
then it works, you know? And so I do a little business coaching through Pinnacle now. I got a handful of clients that I help. I still have clients with my SB coaching for acquisition stuff where that's kind of firing back up a little bit, although we don't really try. It's mostly referral base. My wife retired last Friday, or Friday before last. Well, great. Congratulations to her. Yeah. asking you the most important question that started the launch of your career.
What do really wanna do? Do you really wanna be in a W-2? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My goal really was to just, and this is gonna sound kind of funny, but I wanna do what I want, when I want, with the people that I want for as long as I want to be. Yeah. And that's it. so it's, I was at a, you know, he passed away now, but know Sean Stevenson? I don't. He was a speaker.
speaker trainer. He was born with a deformity and he was in a wheelchair and his bones would break really easy. You might have saw him on Facebook. put the thing, the sticky notes up. He's one of the first guys that did that kind of stuff. anyway, was a phenomenal speaker trainer, just a phenomenal guy. And one of the things that he believed in is that he wanted to rid the world of
with the world of insecurity.
Jon Stoddard (55:43.465)
And I thought that's really awesome that he's found such a big vision for that. And so he started, he ended up doing it through speaker training, teaching people how to speak. So I went to several of his events. fact, I went to his last event. He died not too long after his last event. and, and I thought, okay, I think I need to get in tune with what my vision is. And so I,
I established a way of saying what my vision is, which is to help small business owners find joy in wealth. Yeah. Now, do you think this was your vision from the beginning and you just took away the marble for a statue of David to reveal itself? I think it was my vision for that for myself, for my family. And then it evolved to other families, evolved to other people. I think that's what ended up happening. Yeah. So. And how has that affected your time?
people wanting more of your time to learn from you.
I have to be pretty guarded with my time. I have to make sure I'm working on the right things, but, I've connected to a lot of people and a lot of people are connected to me. and I like to make sure that no matter what the interaction is, even if it's a small interaction at the gas station with the guy pumping your gas, which they still do here in Oregon, you know, for a much higher price. But,
My goal is that, you if I can make that person's day a little bit brighter, just by giving them the respect they deserve as a human being, then I do that. Yeah. So, and so, you know, I, just, I'm kind of high on life a little bit. So, I it. love it. Enjoy stuff and all that's too much bothering me. And, but, it's, yeah, it's just a fun business being growing businesses is a fun business to be in.
Jon Stoddard (57:41.101)
You know, obviously there's risk in doing that, but it's, know, I bought a company in down in Anaheim. It's an industrial vacuum pump, a sales and rebuilding company called AVAC. And the owner wanted out. And how did they find you? Was it on market? market? His best friend is brothers with one of the bookkeepers of a company I bought five years ago. Okay.
Did you follow that? Yeah. So that's the lead. You don't know where these leads come from. That's how I found them. And then he's referred me to another company that wants to sell, that is in the gas apparatus stuff down in Huntington Beach, I think. And so I'll be meeting with them in a couple of weeks just to see what's up with them. But when it comes to acquisitions, I've got four to five deals.
going right now and I'm always working on some sort of relationship build or something for somebody. And I will feel like I've reached success. I have one particular company I've been wanting to buy for 23 years, 22 years. Yeah. Who's that? It's good friend of mine that's in the calibration business that I've known for years. I've become pretty good friends with them in small companies, got 15, 16 employees.
And we get together and have coffee or breakfast or whatever once a month. And he's just not ready to leave. He's in his seventies and, and I want his company and he knows I want his company. And so it's, and some of my team, they're like, I won't mention his name, but they basically have you guys had.
breakfast lately. kind of stuff. changed his mind. Anything in life change. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, but if you can help people find their way, you know, so my big, my big, thing is retiring guys, or most of the guys, but retiring business owners that are in the million dollar, million and a half dollar, maybe $2 million range gross revenue range. So, you know, they're EBITDA.
Jon Stoddard (01:00:08.609)
you know, is likely somewhere around, you know, five, three to 500,000, somewhere in that range, you know. That's kind of my target company size. Now, multiples are, you know, averaging three, three and a half, you know, and sometimes four, depending on what they've got. And as I roll these three industries up, the dust repair industry, which is we're starting with welders,
computer IT industry, which is an MSP industry. And then of course, CalCert. Yeah. You know, if I can roll them all up, CalCert's already there, but if I can roll them all up, you know, to be in that VC range multiples, then. Yeah, yeah. Why would you want to leave? And I know we're really getting close because I'm already an hour and I want to thank you so much for your time. yeah, no problem.
So I mean, but, you know, look at Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett. mean, he's 89, 91, like still tap dancing to work. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we were having my wife's retirement party yesterday. Yeah. And, somebody said, when are you going to retire? And almost everybody in the room said never. They know me and, and I, it's that same thing, right? Just control, you know, what you spend your time on. I'm 55 years old. It's still a lot of energy in me.
But I am working on making sure my daughter's locked in, making sure my son's locked in, making sure that the companies won't suffer if something happens to me. And so I'm confident that if I died tomorrow, which hopefully I don't, right? But if I died tomorrow, things would still operate. Now the acquisitions might not be happening as much as they are, but everybody would be in good shape. Yeah, because you're not really.
mean, you're building a business, but it's not really about building a business. You're building people. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And my, my, you know, you talk about this vision for a company or mission for a company. My mission for CalSTRS is to provide opportunities for innovative people to thrive.
Jon Stoddard (01:02:24.141)
And that's the vision for all the companies. Because if you can help people and make their life a little better, then you don't have to worry about your life. So, you know. Well, Marshall, I gotta be very respectful of your time. Cause I keep these about an hour long. I want to- no problem. Yeah, we should have to. Thank you so much for this hour. mean, this is a perfect way-
to step into what you were doing and not close your eyes off of what's happening right in front of you. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. Thank you for the time. I really appreciate it. I've been watching your shows. actually not that far in, but I'm going to continue to catch up. And I'll keep following. you so much. All right, man. All right. Take Have a great time. You too. Bye. Bye.