Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: Welcome to the Victory show.
Hey victors. Welcome to this episode of the Victor Show. If this is the first time you're joining us, I'm Travis Cody, best selling author, 16 books, and the creator of bestseller By Design. I've had the privilege of helping hundreds of business consultants, founders and entrepreneurs write and publish their own best selling books. Along this journey, we've discovered a fascinating pattern. A lot of businesses hit revenue plateaus, usually around a million dollars, and they struggle to break through it. So on this show, we sit down with some of the world's most successful founders, CEOs, leaders and business owners to uncover the strategies they used to overcome those plateaus and scale their businesses to new heights. More importantly, how you can do the same. So get ready for some deep insights and actionable takeaways that you can implement in your life and business. Starting now.
Now, today's guest has walked both sides of the business world, from the structure of corporate life to the fast paced, often unpredictable world of startups. Brad Messer is a acquisition professional who started his journey in the traditional corporate sense, but along the way realized that chasing startup ideas without the right support system wasn't the path that truly fit. That insight led him to shifting gears to dive into private equity and the world of business acquisitions where strategy, structure and ownership meet real opportunity. Today, Brad focuses on helping business scale sales create value and grow through smart acquisitions and operational excellence. So we're going to talk about what he's learned along the way, why private equity became his true lane, why people need to think about, and I say people, business owners should think about smart acquisitions versus scaling or more importantly, how growth can better navigate the journey. So, Brad, thanks for being here. I appreciate you taking time out of your day.
[00:01:51] Speaker A: Yeah, thanks for having me, Travis. I appreciate it.
[00:01:54] Speaker B: All right, so like many people in the acquisition space and the consulting space, you started off in the corporate world.
What was it about the corporate world that, that eventually had you go, yeah, I think I'm, I think I'm good.
[00:02:08] Speaker A: You know, I, I was really just ready for more. You know, it's kind of like the, you know, stop, go life of just living in corporate. But then you're getting shifted over onto all these other projects and it's like, wait, but this is it.
I want more, but I want it at like this higher level.
And as much as I would love, you know, I want to share and work with all the resources here, you know, absolutely love everybody. You know, I just couldn't realize it there. And that was when I was like, okay, maybe it's time to go explore things on my own.
[00:02:44] Speaker B: So were you in the corporate world? Were you actually, was what you doing? Were you involved in startups from, from early stage or were you guys coming in a little later?
[00:02:53] Speaker A: No, so I was, I was working with mostly enterprise clients at the time and so we were just doing enterprise software development and so got a really good idea of, you know, what it looks like operating at like, you know, the big tech kind of plot, you know, kind of platform.
You know, I'd always been interested in startups on the side and that's when I had started, you know, I had started learning more about everything, but I hadn't really formally worked in smaller businesses before.
[00:03:31] Speaker B: So what was the most eye opening thing for you when you were so you're coming from the corporate world, working with huge industrial or enterprise level clients.
What thing shocked you the most when you then started getting into your consulting and your work with, with the smaller businesses that were, you know, in, in various V stages of startup?
[00:03:51] Speaker A: You know, one thing that was, I think the most difficult for me was navigating like the pricing negotiations so that I'm not coming on too strongly with the business owners, but still keeping things down to like a reasonably scoped level.
And so I think that was one of like the big, I think that was one of the biggest issues for me just because like the level of help that I could provide was like so much more than they would ever want or even knew to ask for even.
[00:04:25] Speaker B: It's sort of like the smaller businesses that are like we need to use Salesforce and they come in and they're using like two things out of the 875 features that they have.
[00:04:34] Speaker A: I mean, I've even talked with like mid market companies, let's say, you know, companies at like 110 million and they're just looking to hit like that next 1 or 2 million just by working for you. And for them that's like good. And they've been stuck at that level forever and it's like, well, you know, I can just come in and you know, just bust everything open for you. But they're like, oh no.
[00:04:58] Speaker B: We want growth, but not if it means we have to change.
So one of the things you talked about in your bio was you realized that chasing startup ideas without the right support system wasn't a great path.
Talk about that. Because in my work with a lot of, you know, smaller businesses, 500,000 to a million systems is really something that most of them don't have. So when you say support system for you as a consultant advising these leaders, what. What do you mean by that support system? And what is like a healthy support system look like for a business?
[00:05:35] Speaker A: Right.
You know, oftentimes that's, you know, it's very different based on, you know, where you're building from. But in the case of small businesses, sometimes it's just being well organized and having thoughts well put together.
You know, I think one of the biggest issues I see is they try to do too much at once, not be specific enough about the problem that they're trying to solve and, you know, just focus on tackling that specific problem, you know, from there.
[00:06:11] Speaker B: Do you have any real world examples without naming names of like, what companies?
What you see companies do that ends, which is exactly that, that they're focusing on too many things at the same time. What does that actually look like in reality?
[00:06:25] Speaker A: So one example I had was a company that was trying to, that was trying to be international by default. And also, you know, working with clientele in every industry and, you know, shifting, you know, coming up with new programs or product lines just to fit the client. That was.
And it was great because, like, you know, being able to travel around the world is perfect. You know, it's people's dreams.
But in my wife's engineering design business that I'm helping her build are very targeted in the.
It's something we're just getting off the ground.
We're targeting architects in the northeast and we have a social media campaign and a direct mail campaign, and that's it. We just let it churn.
[00:07:25] Speaker B: Yeah, that's pretty specific. That's a pretty specific audience.
[00:07:28] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think oftentimes the trouble, especially very early on, it's like, okay, well, I have the skills to go deliver at that super high level, but, you know, you have to dig in and start building your initial niche and then land and expand pretty much.
[00:07:51] Speaker B: That's interesting because I, I used to do direct response copywriting and I worked for some fairly significant.
They're pretty famous in their, in their industries and, and you know, they're marketers. That's straight up what they are. They started off as marketers, you know, just cranking out products, get to eight figures.
And so when I went to work with them, you think, man, I'm like working with like the Steven Spielbergs of the mic marketing world. But then you get behind the scenes and it was just like chaos.
And that was my first indicator where I was like, oh, this, like being able to make money through Marketing and good sales copy is a skill.
And then running a functional business, that's another skill. And a lot of times with online, because the barrier of entry is so low, a lot of people equate well, I'm really good at making money because I'm, you know, I'm making 8 to 10 million a year, therefore I'm a good business owner. And you're like, no, no, these are, these are two completely different skill sets.
So I, so let's talk a little bit about that because I've noticed that as well. And in my, in my business, when I hit those points, that certainly is what happened to me, where I was like, oh wait, I've got to have this system in place and oh, wait, I've got to work with this person. So how does somebody that, that is great in their profession, you know, maybe has achieved excellence in it and realizes, okay, like you did, like, I can let me go do my own thing and my own business.
How does someone, like, what's the progression of the skills they need to sort of grow as they go through? I mean, you just listed them out. But how does that, how does professional start to, I guess, evolve from being a professional into a business owner?
[00:09:25] Speaker A: So the basics that I started with were actually like Michael Porter's books. I'm not sure. Yep, some of his stuff about, you know, competing in the economy. Also, Y Combinator is a startup school on YouTube was actually very good. Just get started. But, you know, just getting comfortable with the basics of like, okay, what does it look like to run a business but you're starting from scratch? Like, what does it mean to form a business plan?
What does it mean to have targeted financials, you know, marketing and sales? What do those look like at the different stages? And you know, even at the inception, it's really just about, you know, a business is always an idea of a problem that you want to solve. And so, you know, oftentimes it's helping the prospective business owners just through the idea formation and then, you know, figuring out, okay, who am I going to sell it to?
What kind of money can this make? You know, getting the pricing schemas, making sure they're talking with enough people before they just like, take the jump. So, you know, that's kind of the start. And then, you know, once you've gotten to like about 500,000 and 1 million, it's like, well, okay, you've done enough to validate the idea, it's well out there. You know, hopefully at that point, usually you've built Pretty good word of mouth. And that keeps, you know, recurring business coming into you.
And you know, depending on word of mouth, word of mouth is good enough just as like a solo channel that you can actually get to about 10 to 20 mil just off of that.
You just have to go and keep meeting, you know, the, the bigger players in industry and then you just keep growing.
So you know, at that point it's like, well, do you want to keep growing?
Are you good enough where you're at and why?
But also one of the reasons to keep growing, it's harder to run a business when it's smaller.
You know, you're going to be spending more hours than if the business were bigger and you had more people to help.
And so that's, you know, that's just.
[00:11:51] Speaker B: Kind of, which is funny because I think most people equate like the bigger I get, the busier I'm going to become.
You're saying there's the middle point where like when you're trying to get break past a million, that's when the, you're the busiest you're ever going to be. So if you can break past that, you can hire help and your hours will start to go down.
[00:12:08] Speaker A: Yeah. So you know, oftentimes, you know, getting, you know, getting started is the hardest.
Then having money to start hiring resource. Okay. So you get to do less because say you were able to go hire like a social media marketer or like you know, paid mark, paid marketer, maybe a paid salesperson or something. So you don't have to do founder led sales as much anymore. You know, you still need to get out there and like meet people. But it's a little bit more fun than just have to go do it because otherwise like, you know, I'm not gonna have be making rent or I'm not gonna have my meal at the end of the week. You know, it's a very, it's a very different way to think about it. But usually still between 1 and 3mil, the founder is still going to need to be heavily involved on the business. But as you get after you get to about 3 mil or so, that's a swamp to where you're big enough that you start having more money to start hiring more help. And as you pretty much get through that swamp, it's, you're able to get all the help that you want. You can slow down a little bit and you can just focus on, you know, what you came here to do to begin with.
[00:13:24] Speaker B: Isn't that funny? You start off with a Vision. But then you get so busy you stop doing the thing that you got started in business to begin with.
[00:13:29] Speaker A: Exactly. So for example, I got started on my own in part because I wanted to write like very industry specific, you know, very research oriented AI models. Then I had to learn everything along the way and I got sidetracked.
[00:13:45] Speaker B: So. All right, so what I love about this is you start, you start off, you come into the acquisitions game and eventually you scale that down. Cause you realize you man like the biggest use, the best use of your time is working with actual, just the founders and the directors helping them get sorted. So can we talk a little bit about that? Like what, at what level would it make sense for someone to bring you on?
And then usually in that first six months to 12 months when you're working with someone, what are, what are the, you see as an outsider looking in? What are sort of the big challenges that the owners are running into?
[00:14:19] Speaker A: Yeah, so this is, there's definitely a lot so I have to order through. You know, I think anywhere from say 500,000 to like a million plus is probably a good time to start engaging because there's, you know, enough meat on the bone that I can start helping you out, organizing thoughts, etc.
[00:14:41] Speaker B: It's also when the, all the bad habits get formed, right, that you can come in and be like, stop, stop doing that.
It's fine now. But when you're at 5 million a year, that's going to be a problem.
[00:14:51] Speaker A: Very, very much so within, you know, within the first six months, you know, usually we're going to make sure, okay, the business is focused enough.
You know, you have good, stable revenue that's not just coming from, you know, four or five clients. Like you want to have very diversified portfolio coming in. So if one leaves, you're not going to get, you're not going to implode.
So usually see that, you know, hopefully at the very least, you know, you having good relationships through word of mouth is necessary.
Hopefully you also have a level of a marketing campaign going on so that it's starting to build out for you more.
We're going to need to look at the marketing channels based on the industry that you're in. Some are a little bit more, some are a little bit more relationship oriented. They like construction.
You know, E commerce is just like, well, I don't really need to know all of my customers, they just need to buy, click and pay. So very, very different marketing strategy there. Well, we're typically going to see that hopefully focused within a. Hopefully.
Well Focused within like a specific geo. You know, don't try to tackle the whole world at once. Take a small slice of it.
[00:16:15] Speaker B: It's so interesting how people try to, they think as they can go as broad as possible, it'll actually be better. Right. But in the long term that in many instances it ends up creating more problems than it solves.
[00:16:26] Speaker A: Oh, exactly. I mean, you gotta figure a lot of small businesses are successful operating in just a very small region of the world and they do just fine.
[00:16:38] Speaker B: So are there like, what are the, like, are there personality traits or leadership traits that, that professionals carry with them from their professional job into their business that actually prevents them from being able to scale or grow the way that they want to?
[00:16:54] Speaker A: So, you know, one of them, sometimes one of the most common can be the entrepreneurs. Bullheadedness.
[00:17:00] Speaker B: Surely this never happens.
[00:17:02] Speaker A: Yeah, it's goodness gracious. You know, entrepreneurs were definitely a different breed. And you know, we're supposed to be programmed that way because we see something special. But you know, also the equation to be successful or the routes to be successful have been well traveled. You don't have to recreate everything from scratch.
You know, just you can create like the fresh idea from scratch or whatever you're doing unique from scratch, but then just use all of the already created systems to get you going and up to speed faster.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: So what are some core base basic systems that you see are either missing or you know that like when you come in, regardless of what the company is or what size they're at, like what's the foundational system that a business owner needs to have in place? For any business of any size?
[00:17:55] Speaker A: Yeah. So for any business of any size. A lot of businesses that I work with don't tend to have a great marketing or sales pipeline put in place. You know, it's kind of a.
If I build it, they'll come and. Well, they don't typically come, you know, especially, you know, when you're early on. That is going to be your lifeline. You need to, you know, you need to put your money there and just keep going. You don't. Even if you're early on.
You know, while some people might say you need a CFO or a bookkeeper, there's so little going on that, you know, Mark, you need to have money to have the problem of needing a bookkeeper.
If you don't, well, why do you have a bookkeeper?
You know, just oftentimes getting yourself out there, making sure people know about you and the problems that you solve is one of the Biggest issues, you know, and not having a cohesive plan around how you're going to tackle that and how much money you're going to put to the various channels and why.
[00:19:10] Speaker B: That'S really okay.
So you have a unique introspective here because you, you're working with the founders, but you're outside of these things. So obviously a big part of your business is. And there was acquisitions for you personally as an investor, when you're looking to, to grow through an acquisition, what spec are you looking for? And then I, I guess more importantly, like what makes something a good acquisition versus something you'd go, yeah, I don't know.
[00:19:35] Speaker A: Yeah. So I always.
So the more acquisition is a little bit different from the.
What I want to say the stock market just to have something that's.
That everybody knows versus something that's a little bit more out there. You know, the companies on the stock market have been well proven. They've been in existence forever.
And you can stay as. Pretty much, you can be as naive as you want, you know, work with somebody that can help you build a portfolio and you will live a perfectly comfortable life. But when you're getting into more of like private assets, you really have to be able to make sure that there's a good business plan.
We have to make sure that the operations are solid, really great cash flow, you know, good number of employees to allow for good fulfillment.
We have to make sure that marketing and sales is very, you know, well established within the business we want to start under. I forget if I'd mentioned financials at this point, but just everything has to be very well organized as though a professional was running the business. In businesses that I choose not to invest in, I'm typically seeing one or more areas within the business is just a mess. I'm. Nope. But in businesses that present very well, and it looks like a professional has really say, if you're raising, if you're raising a child, do you let the child run wild or do you sit there and you nurture it?
[00:21:29] Speaker B: That's a good analogy that I don't think anybody's ever really put to business before. I think most businesses I've worked with are, you know, the terrible twos. Right. Every week is a different temper tantrum of some kind.
That's a good analogy.
[00:21:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
You know, it's the children or the businesses that have been well raised.
You know, in a sense, it's like, you can't take my money fast enough. You know, it's almost like fry from family. Gotta shut up and take my money. But, you know, in other businesses, it kind of gives you pause and you're like, no, I'm good. Thanks for getting in touch, though.
[00:22:08] Speaker B: All right, so somebody's listening to this and they're going, okay, I'm in the half a million to million range. Maybe I'm in the million to 2 million range. I know I'm a bit of a mess. Like how, how would someone connect with you to explore whether or not your coaching and your consulting would be. Be a good fit for where they're at?
[00:22:23] Speaker A: So LinkedIn is often the easiest place to get in touch with me. So I will drop that in here. LinkedIn.comN/BradMesser.
[00:22:35] Speaker B: Pretty Pretty straightforward.
All right. I always. I always like to wrap up every conversation with. With three questions. So if you could go back in time and give your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be and why?
[00:22:48] Speaker A: What would it be and why? Goodness gracious. Do the learning that you wanted to do on your own time and not get caught up in what other people think.
[00:22:57] Speaker B: That's a good one. What belief or mindset shift has had the biggest impact on your own personal success?
[00:23:03] Speaker A: On my own personal success. You know, slowing down and being more mindful of my thoughts and actions.
[00:23:11] Speaker B: You mean when you were working in the corporate world, you were running really fast and were scattered all over the place?
[00:23:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
In a sense, though, I found that once I got to the place I was supposed to be, once I found my tribe, as it were, everything just started working.
[00:23:32] Speaker B: That's actually really good insight as well.
[00:23:34] Speaker A: What's the best investment I ever made in myself? You know, willing to put the time and money, I would say, towards, you know, learning about, you know, more advanced technical and business concepts. You know, whether that's through self study or if you want to go back to. Or if you want to go back for like a graduate degree or anything that would. My goodness, the amount of leverage I've gained just from having that additional knowledge is insane, you know?
[00:24:09] Speaker B: Cool. Brad, thanks so much for your. Your time today. I appreciate the conversation and it's been some fantastic insights.
[00:24:16] Speaker A: All right, thank you so much.
