Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Welcome to the Victory Show.
Welcome to this week's Victory Show. This is the first time you're joining us. I'm Travis Cody. I'm a best selling author of 16 books and I've had the privilege of helping hundreds of business consultants, founders, entrepreneurs write and publish their own best selling books. And during my journey I've discovered a really fascinating pattern with businesses. A lot of them hit revenue plateaus, usually around the million dollar mark, 10 employees and they really sort of struggle to break through that. So on this show I sit down with some of the world's most successful CEOs, leaders, founders and business owners to uncover the strategies that they use to break past those plateaus, scale and in a lot of times exit their businesses today. Joining me is Seamus Ruiz Earl. He's the founder and CEO of Carbine Group, the pioneering rev ops as a service firm that he established in 2020. And he has such a fantastic story because he launched that company from his bedroom during a delayed start at Deloitte due to the COVID 19 pandemic. Under his leadership, Carpenter Group reached 7 million in ARR by 2022, serving clients like KPMG, the National association of Intercollegiate Athletes Athletics, as well as hundreds of venture backed startups. In 2020 23, Forbes recognized him on their 30 under 30 list in enterprise technology. And in May 2024 SBI Growth acquired Carbiner Group for an undisclosed amount with Ruiz Earl continuing as managing director. So Seamus, thanks so much for being here. I'm really excited for our conversation today.
What, what a.
I shouldn't say it's amusing, but it's kind of amusing that you, you know, you, you, you've got it offered a job at a fantastic, you know, renowned company, Deloitte and you're all excited to start and then you know, this little pesky pandemic kind of changed the plans.
So I'm just curious, like I think most people would have just kind of hung out and been like, well, I'll just wait until it's over and then start, start my career with this great company. What, what was the spark that led you to creating the, the parking, harming a group?
[00:02:19] Speaker B: Well, honestly, I ran out of, I ran out of stuff to watch on Netflix.
It was, it was pretty, you know, the, the, you know, at a certain point you, you're stuck inside of a house and you don't have anything else to do.
You know, I, I grad, I just graduated. I had 90k in student loan debt that I was trying to pay off and so it was saying, hey, I've got a guaranteed job at the end of this thing. I've got 9 months, 90k in student loans, you know, can I, can I pay off some of that, you know, while, while still having a safety net of a full time gig at the end?
So very much one of those things of, you know, serendipity.
Had my, had this not happened, my life would have been extremely different.
I was very, very, very content, excited to go and work for Deloitte in their Deloitte digital practice. And I had aspirations of being there for many, many years.
And so it's one of those things that I think a lot of people don't realize just how important it is to not let your plan dictate, you know, turning down or taking advantage of a good opportunity, you know, given, given that opportunity.
[00:03:39] Speaker A: Sure. So how did, so let's talk a little bit about the rev ops as a, as a service. Explain that to people who may not know what that is.
[00:03:46] Speaker B: Yeah. So the premise was we initially started as a Salesforce consulting firm and you know, you buy Salesforce, you need to get it set up, you need to keep it working. But what I realized pretty quickly was that, hey, you know, it turns out people are buying all sorts of softwares and all of them need to talk to each other, all of them need to work together. And there were no firms that were doing this thing called revenue operations, which was really maximizing the revenue potential of an organization through the optimization of sales, customer success, marketing and finance and all of the tools and process that was underlying all of those things.
And we were like, well, you know, everyone keeps asking us to connect Salesforce to HubSpot, so Salesforce to Marketo, Salesforce to Netsuite, Salesforce to.
Why wouldn't we just start offering that and. Or one service, offering one platform, one subscription model where when you need somebody for any of those platforms, we have those people ready to help you instead of working with 5 or 10 or 15 different agencies all at the same time.
[00:04:52] Speaker A: So if I'm understanding this correctly, I'm a company, I'm using Salesforce, I'm using Marketo, I'm using the other ones. Normally they would have somebody internal or they'd be doing freelancers. And for you, they're basically like outsourcing. You're basically their tech team to deal with all that. So anytime, any of this stuff, they just come to you and someone on your team who's an expert in that can fix it.
[00:05:11] Speaker B: Precisely. Yeah.
[00:05:12] Speaker A: Wow. So, so when did you notice so, so for you, with your training, like, you were you. You were already familiar with Salesforce when you got out, and that's why you started working with people on that, or was that one of those things where somebody was like, man, this thing's. I'm pulling my hair out with this. And you're like, oh, I can fix that.
[00:05:29] Speaker B: Well, that was the kind of. The cool part is. So I got into the Salesforce ecosystem when I was 17, pre college, as a way to break into the investment banking industry.
And so I cold called a whole bunch of investment banks and they all said the same thing. Hey, you're crazy. You're 17. Why would you need to go into this, give it a couple years, then come back to us. But one of them had a real need for someone to help them move from Salesforce Classic to Salesforce Lightning. And they said, hey, if you teach yourself Salesforce, we'll give you a job.
And so I was able to teach myself Salesforce, train, train up on it and go work at that bank. And so I already knew Salesforce right before I started the company. So this was my marketable, you know, skill set. It was what I was being hired to do at Deloitte. Why not, you know, go and do that myself on the side?
[00:06:17] Speaker A: So when you got hired. So Deloitte specifically hired you to come into work.
[00:06:21] Speaker B: So.
[00:06:21] Speaker A: Specifically with their Salesforce department.
[00:06:23] Speaker B: Yeah. And so that was the thing. I was pretty fortunate. I got hooked up with Salesforce Corporate. I spoke at Dreamforce when I was 18 years old and sort of became their poster child for learn Salesforce while you're in college. Because at the time there was a big talent gap, right? Salesforce, all this stuff, but no one knew how to operate on it until you graduated from college and you landed somewhere. And lo and behold, everybody and their mother was using Salesforce to do something.
[00:06:50] Speaker A: And then they had to train you and take three, six months. So. Exactly. It's one like, again, from the outside, you look at it now and be like, well, duh, right? This is common sense. Like, why not do the college thing and have classes that train you on that thing? So when you hit the market, you're already fully. Like, isn't that kind of the idea of college anyway? Right. Giving you the skills you need to do it? So it's funny that you would think, right? Giving you the theory. So. And kudos to you. I mean, there's two things out of that, right? The fact that there was a bank that was willing to say, hey, if you're willing to learn this. We'll, you know, and give you the push though. Like we'll give you a job.
So in some ways for me as a business owner, I look at that going that whoever you had that call with, that was a pretty forward thinking person, I think. Right. And the fact that you took advantage of that and was able to do it, that, that's fantastic.
So how far into it in the, in the pandemic when you were working with people in Salesforce did you start realizing that, that all of the things not working together was a problem? Was it pretty quickly?
[00:07:48] Speaker B: We hit that after we had started the firm and it was right around January of February of 21.
But you know, I started doing the Salesforce consulting work in around March, April of 2020.
And so, you know, we were kind of at, you know, within three or four months I had had to hire four or five people just to keep up with the demand.
[00:08:10] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:08:11] Speaker B: Just the Salesforce stuff. Right?
And so that was kind of where we started.
But the real unlock for hyper growth was the full on rev ops.
[00:08:21] Speaker A: So how did you find people to hire? Did you have friends from college, the new Salesforce, or did you have to go out?
[00:08:27] Speaker B: I tried hiring people from high school. I tried hiring people from college. The original sentiment for Carabiner Group was the sentiment of, hey, can I take high school or college kids, teach them Salesforce and be the connection between the startup who needed the help and the college kid who wanted the experience.
But pretty quickly we pivoted away from that because we started doing things that were more complicated and with your.
[00:08:50] Speaker A: So then you actually had to. That's kind of funny because then you were becoming the person that like was hiring you. You're like, God, I need someone to help me with Salesforce.
[00:08:59] Speaker B: That was the whole thing. It was like, hey, that's an untapped labor source. Right. I could take those folks and use them. But you know, so what we ended up finding was, was honestly the first few hires were just people who had open to work on LinkedIn. And I reached out and said, hey, you know, let's have a conversation, see if we might be a good fit. And then eventually we ended up hiring an internal recruiter to help us with those, those growth efforts.
[00:09:25] Speaker A: So the first six, eight months you got to five employees, which in and of itself with the new business is pretty spectacular.
A lot of, you know, online entrepreneurs will, will take them years to get to that point.
So let's talk about when you finally said, oh wait, there's this Opportunity in the market. And now we can, we need to do this instead of this one thing. Like what, what was that first six months like? It was like first off, like, how did you start marketing that? And then what, what sort of level of growth did that have towards with the business?
[00:09:57] Speaker B: Yeah. So on our, our growth curve was pretty, was pretty great.
First year was about a million bucks. Second year was about 4.2. Right. And how you get from the million to the 4.2 was precisely that unlock. Right.
And so that's the easiest way to sort of point to it is saying, hey, you know, when you start offering a full platform of solutions. Right. And really it wasn't that we, you know, came up with this whole brand new concept. It was like we listened to the market, what the market was telling us. Right. Our customers kept asking us for Salesforce plus Salesforce plus Salesforce plus. Right. Salesforce being the center of the wagon wheel, but all of these other tools all around.
[00:10:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:42] Speaker B: And oftentimes we would say, oh, well, we can't do that. It's like, well, can't you partner with somebody and then you bring somebody in? You can't control their demand, you know, the quality of their product. And really what, what it took for me was the very first time we ever lost a customer was when we brought in someone else to manage a HubSpot piece project.
And you know, easy for me to say it was their fault that we. But it was the very first time we ever lost a customer. And I'm like, okay, well that's out the window. Time to bring the HubSpot in thing in house. Time to bring the everything else so that we can control the quality standards.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: Wow. So what was the, what was the employee like, growth in that, like first six months you were five employees. And like how quickly did you get up to 10 to 15 employees? Was that like at the end of the year? Did that happen in like the first six months?
[00:11:29] Speaker B: We finished so 2020 with about seven employees.
[00:11:34] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:11:35] Speaker B: And then 2021, we were probably at 15, and then end of 22, we were up to 40.
[00:11:43] Speaker A: So you doubled and then almost a little doubled more. Okay, so for you who went to college for tech stuff, now you're in this position where you're putting on an entirely.
[00:11:53] Speaker B: Hold on, you're jumping to an assumption there. Tech stuff, right? Well, I was a history major.
[00:11:58] Speaker A: You were a history major.
So how do you go from history major? Well, okay, but you were doing Salesforce while you were in college, right? You were still doing it. So Was that, was that your part time job then when you're or your side job in college, is that how you paid your way through college? Was doing.
[00:12:12] Speaker B: It was, yeah. So I did the Salesforce consulting thing on the side. I worked about 40 hours a week, 20 hours a week on, on campus jobs. Working for the police department or working for the marching band.
[00:12:23] Speaker A: I love it. Yeah, I got in college, I'm working police department. No big deal.
[00:12:27] Speaker B: It's the best job ever, man. It's the, you know, if you want to throw a party, you want to be in with the guys who are going to break out.
That's, that's the key.
[00:12:37] Speaker A: So when they show up and they're like, we'll give you five minutes before we come back around.
[00:12:41] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
If they even show up at all.
[00:12:44] Speaker A: All right, so let's talk about that. Because you're right, I didn't make the assumption there as somebody like that's heavily into like, you know, from my perspective and the clients that I've worked with, Salesforce is not an uncomplicated software for the people that don't know much about it. Right.
Because it just has so many features and things that you can do. For most, you know, I would say normal people, they, the brain goes, oh my God, this was super overwhelming.
So, so you had that background and were, were you already like going into college as like, was history your goal when you went into it? You're like, I'm going to be a history major. And like, so how does history in Deloitte tie into there? Because I'm like, I don't see the, I don't see how the, how that cross there.
[00:13:26] Speaker B: I wanted to be a banker. I wanted to be an investment banker. That was what I went to Boston College for. That's what I studied. I studied history and economics as my two degrees in school.
I was all geared up towards that. And what I realized was that as I was working with this bank and in this, the Salesforce space, I was really good at the Salesforce stuff.
I was good at business process and understanding. Hey, we're mirroring the technology to fit into here.
And my junior year I would go and interview with the investment banks and they would kind of the point of investment banking interviews is to see how you do under pressure.
[00:13:59] Speaker A: Right.
[00:13:59] Speaker B: And I had been in front of clients dealing with real business situations, you know, working directly with the COO and CFO of the investment bank I was working at, speaking in front of a hundred thousand people at Dreamforce. My point being is that I wasn't really breaking right, I wasn't.
[00:14:15] Speaker A: You weren't even like cracking a sweat. And they're like, it was like, hey.
[00:14:19] Speaker B: It'S another person on the side of the table. Let's see if this worked, right? Like a little bit more like this conversation, rather than, hey, I'm really, really stressed out about whatever's going on right now.
And so after about 15 minutes, they'd start giving me, you know, like, what, what's the deal? Let me take a second look at this resume. And they'd sort of start to understand who I was and what my background was. And they'd say, hey, man, like, all right, you know, cut the, cut the bs. Like, why, why are you interested in banking? Like, what's, what is it that you're trying to accomplish by coming and working at our firm?
And inevitably I would say, hey, I want to make good money and I want to work with smart people.
And, you know, figured that would be the right way to go. And they'd be pretty straight up and say, hey, you could probably get a job here, but you're going to start way back at the bottom, right? You're going to be an analyst and have to work 10 years before you get to work with the smart people and make the really good money. You're already way ahead of the curve on this consulting thing. Why wouldn't you focus on that instead?
And I like to say that I listened to the first person to tell me that, but it took three different partners at three different investment banks. Bulge bracket, big investment banks telling me the same thing before I said, okay, maybe I should pivot and focus on the consulting thing, because that's what I'm really good at.
[00:15:32] Speaker A: Interesting. And even then when you pivoted, the answer was like, deloitte's a good consulting firm.
[00:15:38] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:15:39] Speaker A: Let's go there.
[00:15:40] Speaker B: The funny thing is that I grew up in the Bay Area, where I'm located now in Silicon Valley. And so startups have, you know, it feels like it's in the water over here.
[00:15:48] Speaker A: Everybody say, you probably had high school friends that were like juniors in high school. I got my startup, we're up to.
[00:15:53] Speaker B: Exactly, exactly. And I, I wanted to be the big company guy. I wanted to go spend 20 years, make partner, you know, cash in my million bucks a year and be very, very happy.
But, but, but be sort of the guy with the suit and tie, right?
And it, you know, it very much fell into my lap that I ended up in startup ecosystem the way that I am. Now.
[00:16:15] Speaker A: Yeah. All right, so that brings me back to the.
We're right where we were before I made heinous assumptions about you.
So you. Now you've, you've got the skill, and you started off just as like, I'm just going to kill some time until I can start with Deloitte. And then very rapidly now you've got seven people that you're in charge of and then, and then, and then from. And this growing company.
So let's talk about, you know, what was that? Having to put that hat of just being. I'm a consultant to like, I'm working with friends to like, oh, now I'm a.
Because people are talking to you and you're like, I'm the owner of the company.
Right. So what were some of the challenges you had then of, like, what, what were some of the things about, I guess, getting the business going and then, you know, suddenly having employees?
Like, what were some of the things that surprised you in that state of like, oh, these are skills I didn't know I was supposed to have?
[00:17:10] Speaker B: Well, I think there's, there's any number of ways to take that conversation, but I will say that I think there are two. Two key parts of it. One was sacrifice for growth.
So, you know, I didn't take a salary really. I plugged everything back into the business and able to be able to grow. You know, my salary went to my first sales guy. My first sales guy ended up being the CRO who led us to millions and millions of dollars of business.
But that would never have been able to work if I didn't take all of the free cash flow of the business and push it into him instead of taking it to me. Wow. So, you know, that's one thing. It's like, if you want to grow, you either grow and you want to grow fast.
[00:17:50] Speaker A: Right.
[00:17:50] Speaker B: You got to sacrifice somewhere. And in my case, I sacrificed taking the money off the table for myself personally.
Great. If everything works, it's really shitty. Pardon my friendship. It doesn't. Right.
[00:18:01] Speaker A: Yeah, that's kind of. It's kind of a risk and a gamble.
[00:18:04] Speaker B: Absolutely. And so, you know, I've, I've lived to both enjoy some of the benefits of that and regret some of the moves that I made there. And. But the point being is that if you want really extreme growth, you got to either raise capital or plug it back into the business.
[00:18:17] Speaker A: So. Interesting. So just recently had a conversation with a CEO named Peter, and he scaled.
He, he's a, he's a buy, build, cell guy.
And he talked about the differences between what he does and the founder spit the startup space. And he, he, and he said, he's like, I, he's like, I was never good for startup space. He's like, because you just have to have this insanely high level of comfort with risk and you're just proving everything you just said there. You're like, yeah man, the first like several months I just didn't, I took all of my money and gave it to someone else and hope that that was the best, the best play well.
[00:18:58] Speaker B: And I should really, this is the point though, I really shouldn't toot my, my own horn too hard. I was a 20 year old kid out of college living with my folks during a global pandemic where my, my, my cost of living was hundreds of dollars if that a month. Right?
[00:19:14] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:19:14] Speaker B: But it's worth noting that like I had a lot of privilege there that I could rely on. But I think it is, it is something that people have to do because I am naturally not a risk taker. I'm a very risk averse person, or at least I was.
And so it was very much outside of my comfort zone.
[00:19:30] Speaker A: Well, but I think even having the wherewithal though of you saying like I'm not going to get paid for this thing that I'm growing and I'm just going to, I'm going to put it in the thing I think will help us grow faster. You know, most, most people are so kind of me oriented. It's like let me get myself situated first and then we can grow and that, you know, you're right that at that point that may be why some companies can scale and grow really fast and some people don't.
[00:19:54] Speaker B: We did 420% growth year over year at one point.
That was really incredible. Insane and incredible.
[00:20:01] Speaker A: And how much, how much sleep did you sacrifice that year?
[00:20:05] Speaker B: Right. We talked about sacrifice. You can see the bags under my eyes. That didn't exist before, before.
But the, the other piece that that's I think important to sort of recognize is that people are what make or break a business and people are also what make it very, very complicated. I think we're in a new world where businesses are going to get built without people more and more.
But that being said, I think it's different now.
You know, you humans are going to be a very interesting piece of capital to, in order to build, build businesses and that the right humans matter so much more and the, the way that you manage those humans and cater to those humans. We went from seven people to 35 people in a year. Right. It was a lot, that was a lot of change and frankly I didn't. That was one of the things I handled the least well I think was, was bringing all those humans aboard without understanding that with more humans, complexity scales in a way that, you know, you would not have expected it to be.
[00:21:12] Speaker A: So what were some of the challenges that you, you experienced right earlier? At the beginning, I would like all of my clients have told me that like, yeah, when we got to like 25 to 30 employees, like everything changed and like how we had to operate and do it. So like what were for you personally, what were some of the complexities that started showing up that were surprising?
[00:21:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I got disconnected from the culture in a way that probably wasn't healthy. Right. I was focused on growing the business, scaling the company, trying to get more, you know, high level stuff. But, but as a result, I had sort of built a foundation on other people in the firm to sort of outsource culture and outsource things.
[00:21:52] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:21:53] Speaker B: Which is all well and good when those people are happy, but if one of those people becomes unhappy and leaves the company or causes problems at a company or what have you, that can be very challenging to, to remedy. Right. If you don't actually own the culture and you don't have personal relationships with people anymore and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
And so I think that it's, it's one of those things of everything is really great. You know, when everything's really great, your culture can be, can seem really strong. But as soon as something happens that shakes the foundation of the business, I think you start to see just how strong your culture is. And if it's not that strong, people will start to leave and you'll have a talent gap that you really gotta sort of remedy.
[00:22:34] Speaker A: So did you experience that? Did you guys have any?
[00:22:36] Speaker B: Absolutely, yeah. In the, the between January, February, March. So Q1, end of Q1, 2023, little thing happened, the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.
[00:22:50] Speaker A: Oh yeah.
[00:22:51] Speaker B: The subsequent funding dry up for all of the startups and the vast majority of our customers were series A and B startups, you know, cut budgets, decided their things. We had to go through a riff, we had to scramble and try to stabilize the business. Not a fun time. Learn the hard way that people just because they've signed a contract doesn't mean that they have to pay their invoices.
[00:23:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:15] Speaker B: You know, and like I say, you know, that was one of those moments that, you know, we threw it all on red to grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. But that didn't mean that we had a whole bunch of capital in the bank to fall back on.
And so, you know, from Q1 of 23 and if Q1 of 23 through Q1 of 24, that was a tough, tough year. Right. In order to try and stabilize the business, keep going forward.
[00:23:41] Speaker A: But you still, you still had a fantastic growth through 2023.
[00:23:46] Speaker B: 23. We played, we stayed about flat, about flat. So that was the thing. We somehow.
[00:23:52] Speaker A: So you lost it all and then you were able to gain it back enough to kind of stabilize.
[00:23:55] Speaker B: We were, you know, went very much sort of back up. But that backup was a really challenging, you know, motion. And I think that was where I started to really understand human management person management was, you know, that's what makes it fun to show up to work every day. Or not fun show up to work.
[00:24:13] Speaker A: Yeah. Anybody who's been in a corporate space with a, a not fun environment knows exactly what you're talking about.
So were, did you, were you forced to, to like downsize the company at all or did people just kind of sort of self select and be like, peace out, I'm out?
[00:24:27] Speaker B: No, we did, we did one riff where we laid off, I think eight people and one fell swoop. And then we lost others along the way that sort of allowed us to, you know, they just sort of self.
[00:24:39] Speaker A: Selected because the, and that's when you're like, hey, the culture's different.
[00:24:43] Speaker B: Yeah, it's like, hey, you know, it's not super stable. I need something super stable or it's whatever. Right. We're not growing as we used to grow. We're not, you know, throwing super fun parties all the time or we're not, you know, like, you know, it. There's a really great.
Probably from a book, but wartime, peacetime CEO, right. Very different way. You have to run your organization.
And I think we get very complacent in peacetime and then we have to sort of buckle down in wartime and that can be challenging.
[00:25:15] Speaker A: So what have you done as a, as a, you know, from my perspective, a young leader, what have you done to, to expand and, and become a better leader? Like obviously I'm. Nature was sort of forcing some of these things, but along the way, were there things that you did to kind of try to get ahead of that as well?
[00:25:33] Speaker B: You know, I think honestly it was my first time doing it. So we were, we were sort of reacting to it all as it was going on. I, I don't know that I did any of it the way I would do it again, you know, short of one thing. And that was we built a really good brand in the marketplace and people knew us and trusted us and came to us. You know, almost all of our business was inbound.
[00:25:54] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:25:55] Speaker B: Which was, you know, solid. But I think no, the short answer is that I didn't really do much right.
As we were going through it. I think there's a phrase for that.
[00:26:09] Speaker A: It's called seat of your pants. Leadership growth.
[00:26:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
And I think, I mean that's, you know, I, I think if, if, if there was one real critical Achilles heel that I would do differently now, it would. It's saying, you know, being very upfront about two things. One is the professional sports team analogy versus the family analogy. Right.
Of saying, hey, this company is a professional sports team at times we're going to have to cut people. Doesn't mean we like, you know, don't. We don't like you. Or it's just the reality of the business versus the family of like hard to cut family members.
[00:26:40] Speaker A: Right.
[00:26:40] Speaker B: The harder thing, and I definitely ran the company like a family on the first run and I wouldn't do that again on the second run. I would be more on the professional sports team thing. And the other piece is we, we really weren't very upfront about the information of the business with our team because we were trying to portray, you know, confidence, solid foundation, etc. So it really came out of left field when we had to do our riff, for example.
[00:27:09] Speaker A: Ah.
[00:27:10] Speaker B: And you know, that in retrospect is not the right way to do it. You want to be messaging this stuff consistently, right. Saying, hey, this is how we're performing right now.
So that it doesn't really come as a surprise. Right. People can sort of understand the true realities and if you treat people like adults, hopefully they'll act like adults.
[00:27:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:28] Speaker B: And, you know, so two, two good lessons for everybody to learn.
[00:27:32] Speaker A: So, so when you got acquired, was, did, did you. Was that a point where you purposely started looking for acquisition or did somebody, did they, somebody approach you at that point?
[00:27:43] Speaker B: Yeah, so we, we were fortunate in that along the way we always had people who were interested in acquisition, given the growth and everything. So actually it was September of 24 when I decided I was on vacation in Italy, my first vacation in four years, and I had to come back 10 days into a 14 day vacation because one of those people that I mentioned before resigned with no notice and left a project in the lurch.
I really was like, okay, I bought this now for a good six months.
This is, I'm done. This is not, you know, worth.
[00:28:16] Speaker A: I'm ready, I'm ready for someone else to take over.
[00:28:19] Speaker B: Yeah. And so, you know, and it wasn't that I didn't love the business, didn't love the people, didn't work. It was, I didn't love trying to make payroll every two weeks. Right. And so we transitioned at that point to just responding to the emails that people were sending us.
And I responded to six or seven of them, ran a process, picked five, ran, you know, winnowed it down, went to three and then two and then finally, you know, SBI and move forward, you officially acquire.
[00:28:45] Speaker A: You were officially acquired in May of 2024.
Wow. And so what's the journey been like now since then? So you're, you're about eight, nine months into that having now. You're managing director now, right?
[00:28:58] Speaker B: I am, yeah. So I run the division and so not a lot has changed on the day to day. Got some bosses we need to answer to, got some numbers we need to hit, got some greater support on the human capital side and on the payroll side. Right.
And so, you know, in general, I'd rate it a solid, you know, double.
Not a home run, not a, you know, not a, not a, not a strikeout, but a double. For, for, for, for. Yeah.
[00:29:24] Speaker A: But your first time at bat though is. That's pretty impressive.
[00:29:27] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I'm, I'm very fortunate. And like I say, I think it's funny, so many, you know, you mentioned the Forbes thing and everything at the beginning. I was very fortunate, you know, to have gotten on some of these lists early in my career to be able to say just how full of shit most of people are who make these things.
Because, you know, it's so much more the team and the people we were able to partner with and everything than it was any individual outcome that I, you know, sort of willed into being right. Like, don't get me wrong, had to slave away, work 80 hour weeks for several years in order to make this thing happen. But at the same time, so much of that was dependent on the other.
[00:30:10] Speaker A: Team members and the people around you.
So if you, if somebody's in listening to this, this, you know, reading this chapter, written this show, and they're in the, say, the million dollar mark, trying to scale, maybe they've got like what you were, maybe they got five to six employees. Like any pieces of wisdom that you would care to share with them in that, that, that space?
[00:30:34] Speaker B: Yeah, we'll get very, very tactical.
You know, three things I think that people could focus on. Part one is recurring revenue sources scale easier than non recurring revenue sources. And that could be in any business.
[00:30:47] Speaker A: Right.
[00:30:47] Speaker B: So find things within your particular vertical that you can say that our customer will need this consistently for a long period of time and be very willing to sacrifice your short term profit margin for that long term revenue source.
You can't charge them the same for a one month project, you know, at the same rates and expect them to pay that for 12 months. It's just not going to work that way. Yeah, but what you really want is to assemble a portfolio that will continue to pay you for five years plus. Right. I have customers now that I signed in 2020 who are still customers and that's wild in, in a services business that they're continuing to pay. So you just got to find that offering and nail it and do good work and they'll continue to you to scale. You do a million bucks in sales your first year, you lose half of it. Fine. Second year, you've now onboarded a million and kept 500k. Great. We're at 1.5 now and we keep going. Now we're at 750 plus a million 1.75. Right. Like you're able to keep growing just by retaining your customer base if you have a new source.
[00:31:53] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I was going to say, I think it just, I think a lot of people, you know, over put too much emphasis on just getting the client in or getting a lead without the actual retained retention like that seems to drop way down. Again. My experience of working with service based businesses, you ask that and they're like, oh no, we do this thing and then the clients go on. It's like wait, what?
So yeah, number, number two didn't cut you off there.
[00:32:19] Speaker B: No, no, number two is just looking for alternative revenue sources. Partnerships and channel sales is something that I think a lot of people don't recognize how lucrative it can be.
The, the, the, the money that I did take from the business as we grew all came from us recommending products to people that we believed in and getting revenue share based off of those products.
[00:32:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:39] Speaker B: And so, you know, it can very quickly. If you sell a hundred thousand dollar piece of software to somebody, you know that 20% of that is 20 grand a year, right?
[00:32:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:50] Speaker B: You do that once or twice a year for five years, you start to get into real money real quick.
And so channel and partnerships is a unique way of both providing value to your customers. But Also acquiring distribution and revenue in a way you couldn't do as a smaller firm.
[00:33:08] Speaker A: That makes sense. A few years ago, I met a guy who started off as a web designer in a very specific software.
And so when people would come to him, they would usually be a mess. And he's like, there's a better tool.
Let me show you the tool. And then they would join it, and he would get a small commission.
I think within about 18 months, he was making over a million dollars a year just because of the amount of people that he had sent that way, going, this is going to make your life so much easier. And then for him, it made his life easier because it was a tool that he could use and whatever. And I was just. Eventually he stopped doing it and just then started finding people that were needing help and saying, hey, go use this thing over here. So that's fantastic.
[00:33:49] Speaker B: Great model.
[00:33:49] Speaker A: Great.
[00:33:50] Speaker B: And it works across all sorts of service lines, right? You're a dealership, you send them to the mechanic down the road. If you're a, you know, piano repair person, you send them to, I don't know, the piano distribution firm, right? Like, it's, it's.
[00:34:02] Speaker A: It's in every. It's every, almost in every nation vertical.
[00:34:06] Speaker B: Last thing is just picking the right people, right? At some point, you're going to have to scale up from the least expensive talent you can find and go for quality over quantity.
[00:34:18] Speaker A: Well, your professional sports team, eventually you got to go from the triples into the, you know, the majors. And when you get the majors, you got to start looking for the A players.
[00:34:26] Speaker B: Or the Moneyball approach. But regardless, right, you need to pick the right people for your firm. And sometimes that means turnover, sometimes that means upskilling. Sometimes that means, you know, you know, getting different sources of talent in a way that you might not have thought of before.
[00:34:43] Speaker A: So two final things. Someone's listened into this show and they're going, oh, my God, I have a salesforce nightmare. How do they. How do they. They track down the carabiner group and, you know, have a conversation about how you guys can help.
[00:34:55] Speaker B: Well, we're available on LinkedIn website inbound. You know, my. My information's out there. Always happy to help people and, and talk for free. Really. We only want to help people who need help. So, you know, reach out and we're happy to. To chat and see if. If we're the right fit or not.
[00:35:11] Speaker A: So for you having been to bat once now and, you know, over the next five years, what, what's your do you have a sort of a vision for what that looks like for you.
[00:35:22] Speaker B: I certainly think that I'll. I'll. I'll stick around with my acquirer for some time.
You know, there's a lot of great exposure, great experience that I'm able to get through that, making, you know, quality relationships with the team. And then I'm sure there is another thing down the pike.
Likely learning from all the mistakes I made the first time and hopefully not making the same mistakes the second time.
Making a whole new level of mistake.
[00:35:48] Speaker A: Yeah, right. You get to a new level and you're like, I think I got it figured out. And then you get new problems you didn't. Weren't even aware that were there.
[00:35:54] Speaker B: That is the fascinating part, I will tell you, from working now with enterprise companies all the way down to startups, the problems, they don't go away. They only get bigger.
So, yeah, I think it's part for the course.
[00:36:07] Speaker A: Yeah, I. So I was in Hollywood for 16, 17 years, and a couple of my friends were.
You know, two of them were on the A list. And out of respect for them, I'm not gonna say who they are, but that was at the time I was an actor. And you always think, like, oh, I'm gonna get to a point where I'm. I'm still not fighting for things. And, you know, my friends will come and they see I was like, really? Like, you're still dealing with that thing. And they're like, yeah, but now you're just dealing with that thing on, like, a bigger scale.
And so it's just one of the things that. This is the thing that really stuck with me is I had shifted. I had just gotten hired in development for a big producer, and one of my A list friends had just done a huge project, you know, gotten paid millions and millions of dollars for it. And they were like, how's the thing going? And I was like, you know, like, the best analogy I have is it's like, I'm a gladiator. And I get up in the morning, and then I put all my armor on and I got my shield and my sword, and I go out into this arena, and I just get the living crap kicked out of me the whole day.
And I come back and, like, my armor's dented, my sword is bent, my shield is, like, banged up, and I got to spend a few hours, like, you know, fixing everything, and then I just go repeat that the next day. And my friend was like, I feel the same way. And that's when I Was like, oh my God, it never ends well.
[00:37:32] Speaker B: Let me say one thing then as one last piece, then I do think there is a sweet spot to optimize for what matters most to you. Right?
[00:37:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:42] Speaker B: I still tell people today that one of my favorite jobs I've ever worked was as a cashier at a grocery store.
And I went to work, worked an 8 or 10 or 12 hour shift and then came home. I'd interact with people all day long and I was really. I got to interact with them, meet people, have my regulars, and working a physical role that, you know, my body felt tired, but I was able to come home and I was able to read, I was able to watch tv. My mind wasn't tired.
[00:38:11] Speaker A: Right.
[00:38:12] Speaker B: The same way.
And now I sit at a desk 10, 12 hours a day. And then afterwards my mind is so tired I got to go to bed. Right. That is any exercise.
[00:38:23] Speaker A: So that is a good insight. That's what happened to me when I. When I went from. So. So one of my favorite jobs was I worked as a studio guide at Universal Studios. Awesome. You've been there. And you go on the tram through the. Yeah, I did. That was my favorite. I got paid nothing when I was there. It was like $7 an hour, right. It was like no money.
And I loved it. And it was the same thing. And then when I started, when I got into development and you know, I was reading a hundred scripts a week and I was on the phone all the day. I used to go home and be like.
Like, I'm. I'm just sitting here all day. The other one was super physical and I'm. All the time and I'm like, I'm just. And that's when I realized, like, oh man, there's this. I never knew that whole mental fatigue and how much that can. Can really kind of wipe you out. So it's. Anyway, I'm glad there's someone out there was like, yeah, that's a real thing.
[00:39:11] Speaker B: Well, that's what for those folks at the million dollar mark, really question, do you really want more or do you want to be able to go with your kids for three weeks into a little lake somewhere?
[00:39:19] Speaker A: I don't think. And then we'll let you go because I respect your time. But I have a friend of mine who runs a fairly success, has an e. Comm store, a business, and he's doing about a million a year. And we were chatting a while back and he was like, dude, you're working so much. And I was like, well, I got this And I got this, and I got this. And what he said really stuck with me. And he said, if I'm working more than an hour a day on my business, something's broken.
And then we were talking, and I was like, what? And so he's showing me his business, and my background is in marketing. I was like, oh, man, dude. Like, if you did this thing, you could triple your revenue. And he's like, well, I could, but then I got to hire people for that, that, and that, and I don't want to do that. I was like, yeah, but if you do this other thing, you could probably, like, quadruple. And he's like, but then I got to do this thing over here, and I don't want to do that. And to your point, this is what he said. He said, travis, right now I spend seven days a week either on my mountain bike in the summertime or I'm skiing, because he lives in Colorado. And he's like, what is $3 million a year going to buy me that a million dollars a year isn't already getting me? And that was the first time I met someone who was just like, enough is enough. And, like, I got this amazing life, and it rattled my ent. Real thing because I'm like, I. I was working with guys that were like, oh, we did 10 million last year. We got to do 15 this year. And it's like, grind, grind, and go and go. And this guy was like, I could triple my revenue, but I just don't want to. I'm like, I just want to go ski and, like, do good.
[00:40:39] Speaker B: So optimize for what.
[00:40:42] Speaker A: What motivates y. Seamus, thanks so much for your time. This has been a great conversation.
[00:40:46] Speaker B: Happy to be here, Travis. Thank you.
