Sergeant to CEO: Marine Michael Johnson Buys a Sign Shop with an SBA Loan

In addition of Still Searching with Jed Morris, today on the show we've got Michael Johnson. He's the president of SpeedPro based out of Morristown, North Carolina, right next to Raleigh. And he's a Marine Corps. Morrisville. You were so close. Morrisville. Ah! So close. We're right next to the airport in Raleigh. Anyone from Raleigh knows the airport. They know Morrisville, so. Exactly. You're in the area. You're in the... Yeah. It's not the triad, is it? No. We're the Triangle. See? Triangle. Yeah. Yeah. That's research triangle park, Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill area. We're kind of right in the middle. Okay. Perfect. All right. And before that, he was a Marine Corps officer and just held a whole bunch of different positions ever since transitioning out of the Marine Corps until ultimately acquiring SpeedPro. Correct. So Michael, welcome to the show. Non-commissioned officer. Yeah. Oh, not even better. Yeah. What rank were you? I got out as an E5 Sergeant. Fantastic. I got out 10 years as an E7. And so I like having the NCOs on the podcast.

That's even better because a lot of times the enlisted guys, they self-select out, whether it's with NBA programs or buying a business or anything else that feels like it's towards like the top of either corporate America or one of these better outcomes. They kind of self-select out. And I love seeing the enlisted guys and gals get a little bit more involved because they're just as capable. I think so. Yeah. I mean, I feel like as a non-commissioned officer, we had to figure out a lot more things. We didn't necessarily have the training and we were given all of a sudden here, "Figure this thing out. Take 10 Marines and go do this mission that you've never had to do before. Figure out how to build this tent in the desert." Whatever it happens to me, it was just like there was quite often given tasks that there was not truly a manual for. Yep. Exactly. Roll up your sleeves and figure it out because the NCOs are the backbone of the military. So, hey, I'd love to have any on, Michael. All right. Well, hey, tell us a little bit about yourself and your background and kind of your journey since getting into the Marine Corps and then leaving. So I joined the Marines out of high school. I was a junior in 2001 when the towers came down and initially I was probably looking

at going to Air Force just for the technical training and everything, but a couple of towers fall in my backyard and I get emotional. I'm a teenager and decided that's it. I'm going. I'm joining the Marines. I can take this fight to them. So joined the Marine Corps right out of high school. I think I think, yeah, I left them like all graduated in June, left in August. And I really like the way everything was happening. I kind of remember watching the war play out on TV and always kind of thinking, well, it's going to be over by the time I get there. But still, whatever. I already signed the paper. So let's see what happens. And sure enough, the war was not over when I got there. I was, I ended up being on the second assault through Fallujah in 2000, November 2004. So that was the deadliest and most bloody battle the Marine Corps fought since Way City. It was just, it was, it was, it was an eye-opening experience. I'm happy I survived, you know, it was, but it was just, it was such a different world to go into when I thought I was going to miss the whole thing. I was kind of like, yeah, maybe I would have been better off if I had missed the whole thing. And you were just a couple of years ahead of me.

I graduated high school in 2005, saw a lot of my friends enlist and head off into the war. And it never really occurred to me that this was going to be an option. I didn't enlist until 2008. And just seeing everything that happened up until that point and then realizing that even by the time I got into it, you know, the fight was definitely not over. Wow. And like you said, Fallujah was, that was it in 2004. That was the big push. No. So my, my second deployment, I ended up being on a MIT team, military transition team. We just add the I in there. There's no I, but military transition team. So I lived in a, I lived on a base with about 3000 Iraqi soldiers and about 25 Americans. And so once again, huge shaft and experience I'd never had before. I went from kind of hating the Iraqis because you were more or less trained to as an infantry guy. You were supposed to hate everybody. You bet over there. Have a plan to kill them. This, that and the other. All of a sudden I'm on this base with 3000 Iraqi soldiers where I have to trust them. There's no way I can do my mission here unless I actually trust these people. 25 of you and 3000 of them. You have a choice.

Yeah. But that was a really eye-opened experience just to see the, the way they actually do live, the way they actually do care about their country and the way they cared about their family. And like end of the day, what it boiled down to was they're just like us. I've read books about people to call them lazy and this, that and the other. We dismantled all organization for them, you know, the anti-bathist party made it so anybody has ever been in charge of anything, couldn't serve in the new government. And it basically made it so that basically everybody that wasn't working is now supposed to be in charge. And, you know, that wouldn't work over here, everyone would think that, you know, if we put everybody from unemployment and put them in charge of the government over here, like, right, like, come on, you really think that that's just going to work and, you know, and then, oh, it's not working. So they're lazy. So, but it was, it was fascinating. I remember when we were about to leave for a transition, one of the colonels said, I have two daughters. You can take both of them if you stay. Like they were so, they really did want us there and, you know, the ones that we developed those relationships with, when it was more personal. So that was just, that was a really eye-opening experience.

And I venture to say, I don't know, I can't say for certain, there is about 10,000 Marines that went through Fallujah, and there was only a couple thousand Marines that were on these mid-teams. I don't know if I may be one of, if not the only one, very few people that experienced both those missions. And what an incredible perspective. Like you said, on mission number one, you're in there and it's a firefight. You know, like you said, your infantry, you're trained to like hate everybody, be ready to kill. And that's very much what Fallujah was like. But then on the second perspective, it's nation building, it's teamwork, it's, it's training and you're starting to see people from, you know, from a completely different perspective. And it's amazing. Like once you humanize with people from any, you know, it doesn't matter how different the background is, it completely changes your perspective. And man, what a, what a conflicting view, like especially for someone in your position. Well, I mean, end of the day, it, it, I came back from, from Fallujah and everything was black and white. You know, we were good, they were bad. That's just, it was so simple.

And coming back from the second one, everything turned gray and the more, the further I've gotten from being there, the more gray everything is. And actually I've even, I write, I write weird stuff sometimes. I think this is on medium, just a blog post, but it goes, I wrote a post about it. I just say, wow, it turns out I was the bad guy because I remember a time that we were rolling through this little town and it was the beginning of Ramadan and all the families were out watching the sunset and hanging out and their kids were playing and they were holding hands and like, you know, and then we roll through with six machine guns pointed at everybody. Now you tell me if it's Christmas Eve and you're standing out in your front porch and somebody rolls to a point machine and that you, you tell me the planet that you are the good guy, right? Like it's just, from their perspective, I was like, wow, because it was their Christmas, right? And maybe it's weird for us to see them starve themselves all day and then have a feast at night. It's probably weird to see us chop down a tree and drag it into our house and put lights all over it. Right? Like, you know, there's a company to do it. It doesn't make it not weird to somebody who hasn't seen it.

Yeah. I think that's a really good point because it just shows the nuance of war. Like, you know, there are definitely good guys out there and bad guys out there, but overall there's a massive gray space and we're all just doing the best we can with the information we have and the, you know, the perspective that we're coming from. But at the end of the day, like we're all just people, we're doing our absolute best and we're not always in the right position, but we try to. And the key is that you can look back and reflect on that and say, hey, like, how did this look to other people? Like, what, what can I learn from this? How can I grow from this and not just be like pigeonholed into one very small mindset or mind frame? Yeah. A hundred percent agree. I, like I said, I like reflecting on it because it is, it's a real, it's a real reflection of him saying, oh, wow, I'm not, you know, I wish I was the good guy, but it turns out I can, from their perspective, I seem like a real jerk. Yeah. That's amazing. I had a similar situation, at least on the reflection point. I was doing a team building when I was in Afghanistan and I wasn't there very long.

I was only actually in country for just over a month, but I had a similar situation where I had a, you know, one of our third country nationals who was there and it was my job to watch and make sure he's doing his stuff and nine times out of 10, they're all doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing. And this one time, this guy was just not listening, just going out of his way to be a pain in the butt. And I was having a rough day and I remember thinking, oh, I'm just so frustrated with this guy. And then, you know, it just, it hit me all at once. So I was like, I couldn't believe like just for a split second, I feel, you know, shame even saying it, but for a split second, I looked at him as like less than me, you know? And then, and then it hit me at once. And like, I'm the one here with the, with armor and the weaponry and, you know, 280 rounds of ammo sitting on my chest and I'm looking at this person with the stain. And you start realizing like, you know, I was a history student in college, so you start realizing like how with the proper structure and the proper motivation, you can absolutely change your worldview and the worldview of an entire group to hate people for no reason. And it's amazing how slippery that slope can be. Yeah.

No, it really is. You know, I don't know if there's much more to glean from that, but that's, it's, it's perspective that, you know, like I said, very, very great to me. And even, like I said, sometimes it seems like, yeah, I was actually legitimately the bad guy, even if my intentions were whole. So now you're back home and you're transitioning out of the Marine Corps at five years. What's the plan? So I didn't, I thought I would, I didn't really have a grand plan. I thought, all right, let me get out, get some schooling in, go to work, see what it's like out there. You know, I can always come back if I don't like it, right? And so I, my family, so I was from upstate New York and near Buffalo. And when I joined the Marines, my family went and moved to Minnesota, which is just unbelievably cold. I remember visiting them one time and like, I took off from the Raleigh airport. It's like 65 degrees on a Christmas Eve. I landed there. It's negative 10. I'm like, I can't move here, guys. So I had a few friends in Raleigh. And so when I, and it's just, it was just a couple hours from Camp Lejeune, we were coming up every, every weekend anyways, to hang out and everything. So I was like, well, let me just find the department, get a job, you know, settle in

for a little bit. And I'll start taking some classes and, you know, started like the community college ended up at finishing up at Strayer University, which is an online school. So super unpolished, you know, I don't have an, I didn't go to Duke or anything like that. But I was working the whole time, I got jobs in restaurants because I worked in restaurants in high school. So I was like, well, that's somewhere I can always go. I think I'm personable enough to be a waiter or bartender. And I basically waited, you know, waited in bartender for a few years and really dialed in customer service skills. I really did try to focus on getting good at it. And even the last restaurant I worked at was a second empire downtown Raleigh by arguably the best restaurant in town. You know, you went there for special occasions or when you had a pharmaceutical credit card in your pocket. Yeah. And I worked in a food service as well. And it's like a lot of people, you know, they skip out on that, that EQ that you build just being a people person and working in a service based industry. And you know, it doesn't matter how many times you talk to somebody who's ever been a waiter or bartender, it's like understanding how do you have learned to deal with people in

a good way, in difficult ways, because you're getting people all, all spectrum, like good days, bad days, all kinds of stuff and your ability to work with them and help them have a good experience. Like, I think it's, it's a lot of ways it's kind of like being in the military. It's a great experience for you to learn more about yourself and other people. And it's a kind of a growing experience. Yeah. One thing that somebody had told me, I think it was a manager or something at some point told me was, you know, yeah, you remember this, Michael, you're going to get another table tonight. Okay. But that person, they have one meal, they are going to eat one dinner tonight. And whether or not you gave them a good dinner or a bad dinner is up to you. And so, you know, and there are opportunities, you know, we're, we're, they're difficult people, right? And, you know, how do you, how do you navigate that? And I gravitated towards just killing them with kindness. When something went wrong, I usually completely blame me. Like, if a glass of wine was taking a while, I'm like, I'm sorry, I was out there stumping the grapes with my feet, you know, and then all of a sudden everyone's laughing and they lightens the mood. Right. And so I can definitely see how those skills are benefiting you now as a business owner,

you know, putting, having a very customer centric perspective and just going out of your way to make sure everyone's having the best possible experience with your company. Yes. Absolutely. And I mean, even when I've learned something weeks later that a customer didn't have a good of experience that I thought like, I even called what it was last week and I go, Hey, I just realized that this, what I thought had happened did not actually happen. And I go, and I, the guy was like super receptive of it. And I go, tell you what, that last 400 bucks, we're going to write it off. And, you know, if you want to give me some more business, I would appreciate it. And he did. He gave me an order right there. So, you know, it all kind of, it all kind of worked out. And it was just, once again, just being honest with him, right? He said, Hey, I just learned, I thought we did everything we could. It turns out we did something wrong. And, you know, when I talked my tail between my legs and said, you know, I'm learning, I, I try to be upfront with everyone too. Hey, we just got here. We just bought this business. You know, I've, I've been in the sign business for like five months now, not even. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing because it's those little things and that people just don't do. They don't follow up with their customers, especially when there's a bad experience. They just hope they just don't leave a bad review.

And I was reading Alex for a movie, 100 million dollar leads like last fall. And one of the lines in there was if you could never get another customer and you could only have your revenue, could only come from the current customers you have, how would you treat those customers? And you're limited and that, that's how you do it. A lot easier to keep customers than it is to generate new ones. You know, the guy, he already takes my call. He generally likes me. So, you know, he appreciated that I always answer the phone, which is, you know, I don't feel like that's a tall, you know, a tall order to do. But apparently a lot of people just don't answer the phones these days. You know, if you just like people are here to spend money, answer the phone and take their money. Like it's that simple a lot of times. Well, we're going to get more into that, but leaving food service, you kind of got into stock trading a little bit, right? So I had, yeah, so there was a, so I, I moved around a little bit, we'll give the high level. So I, my, my stepdad ran a metal fabrication, or I'm sorry, my stepdad in law ran a metal fabrication business and he was when I was dating his, his daughter in law or dating

his stepdad daughter, he was like, Hey, you know, he generally like we got along well. He knew I kind of had an entrepreneurial itch in the back and said, you know, Hey, I need some help at the shop. You don't have to know anything. Just come in and work hard. And so I did. I came in and worked hard and like, they started at 6am too. And it was like my first, my first job there was cleaning up the welds. They had these big aluminum paddles. They were just massive, maybe 12 foot wide and the welders would come along and they'd weld them and probably take them two hours to weld them. And then I'd come behind with this big circular brush and just clean them for, it would probably take me three, four hours a piece. If I was really, I don't know, for some reason I could do two a day. There was one guy there that was like three times my age, never seemed to move fast and somehow did three a day. I could just never keep up with him, but he was always moving slower than me. You know, so it was just like one of these things where he was just so skilled at it and just so good at what he was doing. He knew, you know, how to get through it quicker than me. So I started there, started on the shop floor, did take some welding classes, never really got good at welding. I'm not, I managed to make some metal stick together, but in terms of actually putting

down a really nice weld that's going to be x-rating and all that, really wasn't, wasn't my strong suit. But I got pretty good at doing like the QC checks and everything. And then he's like, well, you know, if you're interested, we can, we can bring you up into the office and you can learn kind of the business side of it to estimating. And within a few years, I was the operations manager. He showed up a couple of days, he showed up like once a week to sign checks and everything else. Like I was managing the shop schedule. I was managing the, all the quotes and sales that were going out. And even when we kind of hit a slow spot, I went out and pounded the pavement. I went, I'm like, well, RTP's right here. These guys, these guys have all the money in the world. Let me just go and pound the pavement some and see who needs brackets. Who needs a miscellaneous, you know, something for something they're inventing. And sure enough, there was jobs that, that where people were doing that, they were willing to spend five or $10,000 to have these little things fabricated. And then sometimes that would lead to other ones. I remember one that I did a couple of those and we actually had to screw one up and I went in there and the guy was like, he was like, well, one's perfect. One's not.

And I go, well, you, you like one, you'll pay for one. And obviously nobody was happy with that back at the office, but I felt like I just needed to settle that right then and there. And then they, they were doing a plan expansion later in the year and we literally were not on the bid list. And they said, oh, why isn't Carolina fabricators bidding the metal work? And it was an aluminum stainless job, good $70,000 project, you know, really a good bread and butter project for the, for our company too. And that, you know, it was landed because we were out there pounding the pavement. Yeah. Cause you had already built the relationship and, you know, made sure that like, hey, you like the one paid for when you like and the one you don't like, that, that's fine. Yeah. You're building those B2B relationships and it's, I loved hearing about how you really cut your teeth and small business early on, because one of the things that I see all the time with the buy a business movement is you get a lot of people who've never owned a business before. Now they're looking to get into business ownership for the first time and they've never worked in a small business, much less a trade like metal fab or H back or plumbing and they've never been in that operator seat.

And so it's not just the search process and putting a deal together and the financials that go into it. But now it's also the operations and the sales and the payment pounding like you've never done that. And so taking the time to actually cut your teeth ahead of time and learning how this works in a small business atmosphere is crucial. So yeah, no, I think that's one of the biggest advantages I have going had going into it. So I'll say, so I was like 2014 things just didn't quite work out between between us. So I ended up parting ways. And I remember it was like the 14th of December and I'm like, all right, you know, I'm taking a few weeks off. I'll start looking for something in the new year. I'm literally home for two hours and one of my customers calls me says, hey, heard you're available. And I like, we're standing up, they had actually just acquired a, they were creating a rigging outfit out in Greensboro and they were pretty big out there and they had bought a mom and pops creating a rigging outfit in the Raleigh Durham area. And so they said, we need somebody to kind of help with the operations in the back. Are you interested?

And I was like, well, I don't have any other prospects. Sure. And they're like, well, come on in on Monday then and shirt off, they came in on Monday. I remember I even like show up and like, I have like my resume, I'm dressed nice. I'm like, and they go, well, Michael, no, no, we, you're here to work. The job is yours. Do you want it? Well, that just speaks to your reputation, like you, how long were you at the metal fab company? So I was there for about five years. Yeah. Five years, operations, sales, really running the business and running it. And like, like you said, the owner was, you know, largely not, didn't need to come in very often. Like you're running a lot of it, a lot of the actual day to day operations. And so, you know, you build that reputation in the community. So like you said, like it'd been two hours and you got a phone call, hey, I hear you're free. No resume required. Just show up on Monday. Yeah. I mean, that was, it was pretty wild end of the day. I did take a pretty hefty pay cut. I think I was making like 75 or 80 at the fab shop and they were like, well, we've budgeted 50 for this. Do you want it? And I said, if you can move me up quickly and I go, you know that I can find other work,

but like, I'm willing to work with you. And they did, they did, they got me back up to 75 or 80 within a, within a year or two. And they just like, as I got there, they just let me take over things. Like every time they're like, oh, well here, Hugh manages the warehouse and I go, Hugh, where is this, that and the other. He goes, well, I think we set it over there. And then Hugh doesn't come in one day because he's sick and nobody knows where anything is. And we're warehousing like $5 million worth of customer equipment. If you're familiar at all with crane and rigging, a lot of times like the large HVAC projects, nobody has storage for those. So usually the crane and rigging outfits will store the large HVAC system. So they might come in and pieces from Canada or New Mexico or somewhere, we'll bring, we'll, we'll consolidate all the pieces on our yard. Once we have all the pieces, then we'll load them up on our trucks, take the crane out there and then our rigors bolt everything together. HVAC guys come in behind us, do all the piping, electric, whatever else they do, but we get the actual physical unit in place for them and bolt it up. And so. Yeah, amazing. So yeah. So I was able to kind of like build a warehouse system that any idiot, not calling anyone

an idiot, any idiot could use any monkey could get in there and use that warehouse system and be able to enter a new item that came in. Even if we didn't have all the information, because a lot of times, you know, that's just life. I think having the military background being like, no, you have to go. You don't get to wait until all of your checks are checked, you know, all your boxes are checked. They go, no, you start going when you're told to go. And so I just kind of built the system that wasn't relying on any single piece of information. And as I said, sure enough, it worked. Everyone was able to keep track of equipment. We knew what was in there, what was not in there, and it was just a good system. Besides that, we were, you know, kind of growing. I was, I think I was managing 20 to 30 people given our workload. So I was usually, but I already knew how to delegate. I didn't need to micromanage the rigging crews. I got with the foreman and I vary in every, even when somebody came and complained about a foreman to me, I was like, look, I've been working with Justin for five years or three years here now. I know his work. You've been here for six months and you're complaining that Justin's not nice enough to you. Take it up with Justin. You know, that's not my problem.

And I was able to, you know, just say, hey, he's the sergeant, let the sergeant lead that crew. And if somebody has a conflict there, that's on them to sort it out. I don't need to micromanage that. So many great nuggets there. I mean, one of the things right there that I think a lot of people were interested in buying up business that they're looking for is the autonomy that you just described. You know, yes, you took a pay cut, you know, right in the beginning that you were able to get back, but look at the amount of autonomy and flexibility you have. You basically were able to take over operations, build up things that need to be built out, expand what needed to be expanded, and very little oversight to be able to actually build something. And it's like, you know, a lot of us, we're not scared of hard work. We're just really just thick of doing work that doesn't matter. There are just another PowerPoint presentation with just a little with, with all this oversight. You know, you've got six, seven managers to, you know, look over your PowerPoint presentation. They're like, like, it's a scene out of office space that we're just like, man, just give me some space and let me get to work and do something and have a little bit of leadership and authority. And you were able to find that.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, they, they really did. Like I, so they are at their crate. I didn't do a lot of sales. I do offer the phone sales. Hey, I need a 40 ton crane. I would book that. But usually when it was a project, I would turn it over to one of the sales guys, but the guy that the division manager, he was a sales guy, you know, he had a background in it, but he really wanted to be up there selling. He had a couple other people that were selling, they were selling and they were just dropping it in my lap and, you know, we'd go look at it at the end of the day in case we wanted to make an adjustment for tomorrow or something. But yeah, he, I had a, I did have a lot of freedom there was a, it was a good, it was a good job. I had a lot of fun doing it. It was a lot of work too. Um, you know, I was your cranes cranes run all hours of the night. You know, you got, you got shutdowns. I dealt a lot with permits. I had to get, you put a crane year in airport, you have to get an FAA permit. And then everyone was like, what's taking so long? I'm like, it's the FAA, they, they, they told me it's six months, it's six months. What do you want me to do? Sorry. It's like some things you can control and some things you can't. And the FAA is not something I was capable of controlling. Oh yeah. I don't think anybody's really capable of controlling the FAA.

Sometimes you just have to put in your request and sit on your hands for a while, but like you said, like you said, I mean, as a, as a veteran, there are so many things that you're able to do, not just from like the NCO background of like, Hey, I'm gonna roll my sleeves and get to work. Cause it's a lot of work, but also the command and control structure were like, Hey, I've got four men in place and they're in charge of their divisions and I'm in charge of the forming. And, you know, sometimes when you're making that transition out of the military, you know, you, you're like, all right, well, you know, I can't treat civilians like I would military members. And that's true. It's very different. Your employees can quit. You know, they're not stuck to you legally and have to do what you tell them to do. But at the same time, understanding structure and understanding how, you know, a chain of command can work and how an organization organizational structure can work. That's proper delegation skills. You know, you don't really get to have that kind of experience delegating and working with teams like that, you know, without being like a junior enlisted guy at an NCO and having, you know, Marines under your command and, you know, having to leave them in some sort of way.

Yeah. I mean, and you got to let go of, you got to let go of some things like nobody's ever going to do it as good as you, right? Like, and as soon as you accept that, you can let go of it. But then sometimes a lot of times they surprise you like, you know, I, you know, I had the, I had crane operators, you know, and that was also what a crane was going out. If they had six loads of counterweights, you know, normally the drivers would answer to me. But when that happened, the drivers answered to the crane operator and I always, and I made that very clear. Hey, Ben's got this crane, you're reporting to Ben on this one. Obviously, my phone's always on, but it was just like, just giving him, making him in charge of building that crane out that day. And so, so yeah, and yeah, it worked out most of the time. I do remember a time that there was a, we had a guy call in and he, he needed a crane and it was a big crane. He needed this crane right now to make an emergency repair on a cell phone tower. And I, we can usually, if you didn't have the crane salesman and it had to be right then, it's either you or one of the crane operators you send out. And so we sent a crane operator out to look at it.

He comes back and goes, I can do it. I go load them up. Let's go. I'll pull your permit and everything. And he got out there and it was like four loads of counterweights and they ended up not being able to get in. And I remember right, my division manager, he was living, he goes, he will never go look at a job again. Blah, blah, blah, blah. And I go, okay, okay. Yep, I get it. And then he left for the day and then that operator shows up and I mean, tail between the legs, you know, I was like, well, I go, do you know what happened? Yeah. You'll never do it again. Will you? Nope. Okay. Have a good night. We'll talk in the morning. You know, like, I didn't have to yell and hoop and holler or anything. It was just, you know, it was like understanding that he's a good guy. He's a hard worker and he really wanted to do that project. I know it hurt him to not be able to get it done. So in that kind of situation, the failure is the last one. Yeah, exactly. And you know what? We never had an issue with him. Yeah. I don't even went to my division manager the next day. I said, well, you know, I don't, I think that he'll, I don't think he'll ever make that mistake again. He goes, yeah, you're probably right. So we didn't have to cut him off or anything. Yeah. All's well that ends well. Okay. Well, now how did you end up moving out of the crane business?

Was this around the COVID timeframe? Yeah. So I started side hustling, like just trying, I picked up a book called the $100 startup. Chris Gilliboo, I think is his name. He also side hustled really good book because I had just come out of business school and I went to Strayer Business Administration, Concentration and Entrepreneurship. And basically in that school, I learned you save up some money slash raise it from your friends and family. I don't have any rich friends and family, you know, and then you go and you launch something and then you do series A found in series B. And like, and I was like, none of that actually makes sense to me. I just don't feel like I have that. I don't have the Rolodex for it, right? I don't have the first person I can call and ask for $100,000. Yeah. And so I go, well, obviously money is an important part. So let me just start hustling, right? I ended up writing some vending machines. I just found those on Craigslist and started buying up some vending machines. So I was running around at night, filling up vending machines, making, you know, 3, 400 bucks extra a month.

I plugged all that. The market was going crazy. This is 2017 or 2018 markets just going insane. So I start putting some money into the market and then blogging about it. And I just, I did that for several years. As a total novice, right? Totally. Yeah. I didn't know the first thing about anything. And so I did that for two years though. I wrote this blog. I had a domain. I paid a few dollars to have it up there and have it professional. I got an editor to look over my stuff, to make sure it just sounded right. And then, and put it out there. And so I was continuing in that world and I went to a conference, a stock trading conference just to, you know, continue to learn from the people that are doing it and kind of built and build some connections. So I'm down there and at this conference, they go, hey, by the way, we're looking for people to join our writing team. If you'd like to join, go talk to Lisa in the back. So I was able to walk, walk right up to Lisa with a portfolio. I had actually written this book, Gluten Free Day One. It's still on Amazon there, but I'm gluten free. So I had written that gluten free day one book and I had that with me just in, just in

case, right? So I gave, I gave that to Lisa. I gave her a link to my website and asked for her email address. Two years worth of financial trading blog at this point. Yeah, exactly. And so, so she's able to go in there and look at this and say, oh, this guy is for real. He's actually putting in the time and effort. He's not just, he didn't just show up to this conference and now expects a, you know, a gig. So I had to follow up with her a few times and I think on the, like the second or third follow up, she always responded, but it's like, yeah, well, I'm getting to him, getting to it. And finally she's like, she gives me a test and she goes here, write this blog 2000 words have it. When do you have it back to me? I'm like three days. She goes perfect three days. And I had no idea what they were, I only found out later, but they were actually taking that and then putting it in front of readers in the wild and seeing if people would read down the page and see if they were, yeah, like I was able to keep up with the, you know, I mean, obviously there's bounces and everything, but if I was, if my writing was as good as anybody else's turned out, it turned out it was. And so I ended up working for, for them for a couple of years. I started off my very first gig paid me about $1,000 and the next one paid me $2,000.

So I was able to bank between $1,000 and $2,000 a month on this, after that, and like, yes, I had put in, I think my estimate is I put in about $300 over those two years just to have something out there. And then I had it all back and I actually bought a nice laptop and I'm talking to you on that laptop right now. So. Wow. What an experience and one that wouldn't have happened if you hadn't just put yourself out there and just documented what you were doing and it's like, it's what we hear about all the time. You know, it's like, you know, you don't have to be a professional just, you know, either blog or do a YouTube video or something and just document what you're doing as a novice and you just never know where that's going to go. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Two years, $300 sunk cost, right? And then all of a sudden I got a break. But obviously if I did not put that time and effort in, right, everyone wants everything, you know, quick, fast and at a hurry. And so like, yeah, you do have to put the work and I found, but if you do put the work and you never know what, what doors going to open. So yeah. So I was doing both for a while, COVID hits.

I had actually just moved into an outside sales position at the crane rigging outfit and nobody wanted an outside sales guy coming in. So I kind of sat at home and made some phone calls, but like, you know, if you're not, I don't know how much you know about outside sales, but like, if you do six or eight calls in a day, that's pretty good, especially since you have a long drive ahead of you and to get back at all. So I kept, you know, I'd call 10 people. They tolerated me because they were, you know, because, you know, they all knew me and everything for the most part. And then I was blogging on this computer answering an email on this computer. And so I did both right up to COVID, right up until August. And so August of 2020 hits and baby everly arrives. And so congratulations. Yes. Thank you. And so when she arrives, it was, it was a tough birth. It was tough on mom. Ended up being a C section. We were in the hospital for five or six days. I mean, it was a rough go. And then like, we get back, I think I took like a month off of my W two at that point

and I was trying to do some writing, but it was just like, nothing, we just, I was not able to function very high level there. So as things started to get back to normal, I go, well, like, I obviously can't do both. And I was, I set up a meeting with Lisa to tell her, I can't do it anymore just because time restraints, right? It was one thing. It was just me and me and Betsy, me and my wife, but now obviously we've got, we've got a child to take care of. So I went to her to quit and she goes, what does it take to make you full time? And I was like, Oh, I think I was getting like 15 cents a word at the time. So I was like 20 cents a word and she's like, done. I'm like, crap, I should have asked for more, you know? So I was like, you know, 20, 20 cents a word and I forget how many, you know, how many thousands of words I wanted a week and they were like, yeah, done. Absolutely. Here's, you can have this newsletter, this newsletter and then we'll put you on the breaking news stuff too. So breaking news was really fun because like literally like, I think, I remember like during one of the GameStop, uh, the sagas, Bitcoin actually exploded during the, during the congressional hearing. And so I was, I was writing about that and like, we were literally checking the mate,

the matrix and everything, trying to get us, and I had to keep updating it to get us up. We were like number two or three on the, on the, you know, on the Google news or whatever. So there was some fun projects there too. Man, that's amazing. And it's, it's great because you're like, Hey, now it's time. I can't do both of these, you know, let's look at full time, be able to, you're able to negotiate a way to be able to do it full time. And now you're one of the leading financial writers when it comes to like, man, all the craziness from COVID, all the ups and downs, the Doge coins, the Bitcoins, um, you know, the GameStop, uh, everything that was happening, it was wild. And I remember being from the outside, looking in like everybody else thinking, this is nuts, like looking, looking at all this trading, look at all this speculation and you're right there in the thick of it, you know, just man, in real time, and it's like, it was really fun to crane operations to now I'm like, I'm reporting on Doge coin and, uh, and GameStop. Man, that's quite a pivot. It was even when I remember, uh, I had like a reunion thing, uh, with my Marine platoon,

we actually had, somebody had passed away and so we all gathered to give him a proper send off and everyone's like, well, what are you doing? And I was like, oh, I'm, I go, I'm writing for the, for, for the financial times and they were like, we're not the financial times, but for the financial industry and they were like, really? They're like, okay, Johnson, you won't, you never sort of surprises. So that kind of makes sense. So, okay. So you're, you're writing, this is obviously going pretty well. How does this, uh, how did you start getting interested in wanting to buy a business and then moving back, especially into like a blue collar type of work as opposed to like, when you're writing, you're, it's all online, you're, you're working remotely, it's, you know, you're very much in this post COVID, you know, flexible, you know, remote work kind of area. What made you want to, you know, what kind of got your gears going as far as like having to go buy a business? Not just that, it's going to be, you know, a blue collar business. It's going to be something right here in Raleigh. I'm going back to kind of the operation routes. So I didn't necessarily decide that, uh, some of those decisions were made for me. It's like Lisa, who I was working with for a while, she one day just got fired.

I don't know why somebody else, uh, a different editor came in and took over. And when, I guess in the world of writing, when a new editor starts, they just work with their own people. We were all 1099. Okay. So it was very easy to clean house. So one day I got there and there was just no work for me, um, you know, and so that happened. I was connected enough that I found another place and I was doing that for a little bit and then pays, like they didn't pay the bonus. They promised to pay. They didn't give me the rate. They promised to pay me. Um, and then after that, it was just, it was getting as people were getting called back to the office. It got really cheap to stay home. And so even though, yeah, I got to work on some really cool projects. I got to work with like, I'm under NDA on a lot of stuff. So I can't tell you the names, but there are names that I worked with that I could tell you, you can pick. Oh yeah. I definitely know that guy. So, um, you know, not Brad Pitt or anything like that, but you know, definitely the very interesting stuff. Yeah. Like interesting people that are, are well known in our world. So I, um, from there, I, I was trying to get something else going. Um, every least about two years old at this point and it was interesting that Betsy and

I, we kind of, we, we worked a few different projects from here and there where she never went back to her W2. I think she went back to her W2 after the baby arrived for like a month and she is the management had changed over her position really wasn't there. So she decided to leave. She ended up getting some consulting work and it seemed like every time I'm one new gig started, another one cut off. And so we actually were able to kind of tag team a little bit where one of us would stay home parent and the other was working some sort of side hustle or hustle. It was main hustle for, for a few years there. Um, but as writing got cheaper and everything, I, I, I decided to hold my ground and say, you know, this is the rate I'm going to get. I, I know I'm worth this. Um, it's letting get a lot of work and I tried a few other things, just trying to get something else going and ended up just running out of runway. Uh, when I made the leap into full time writing, I always knew that, you know, what's the rule have two years salary, you know, banked for that, which I took a little bit of a different approach. I said, no, I need two years of expenses, not two years of salary. That's a lot smarter knowing like, why do I actually need to survive on not so much like

how much is coming in? Yeah. Because like, yeah, I was making, I don't remember like probably $80,000 a year at that point, but I was like, I don't need to actually sock up $160,000. I need to, and I looked in where we're, we're, we always try to turn a profit in our personal lives too. So we were putting money into savings, contributing to 401ks, IRAs, all that good stuff. And I said, okay, what do I actually have to put into the budget? So we make ends meet and it ended up being almost half. It was like, it was like 10, I figured out to be $10,000 a quarter, which is $40,000 a year, which is $80,000 for two years expenses. That's much more manageable than 160,000. And so, but my rule also was, if I get to half of that, I need to go find a W2. And that's kind of what happened. And also like, I got to half of that inflation was also hitting two. So I needed, I actually needed more than what I was, and the display is that the runway ran out. And so around the end of the year in 2022, I called up, I look, I started looking online and seeing who's hiring, and I saw one of my old vendors, Chatham Steel was hiring.

So when I was at the fab shop, I was selling, you know, I'd fab the steel and sell it to the Korean rigging people, but I was buying it from these guys to, you know, do the fabrication. And I still had the outside got outside sales guy's name and a number and I called him up, Chatham. What are you doing? I hear you guys are hiring. He goes, yeah, did you submit a resume? I go, I did. He calls it back a couple of days later. We can't find it. Can you send it again? I guess it was through like an agency. So they didn't deem me qualified for whatever reason, but as soon as I got it, he delivered it to the branch manager who was also a Marine, and he saw Marine and called me up and said, I will give you a chance because you're a Marine. And I was like, okay, cool. And then, you know, having been on the other side of the truck, as I always called it, I received from them. I knew how important these deadlines were. I could always, you know, empathize with our customers. I did really well there and I managed to, you know, start putting money away, making some good commissions and everything. And I kind of made it base level. Okay. 50 grand. I think if I can have 50 grand in the bank, I can start looking.

And so I, this past April, I had $50,000 saved up in liquid at between stocks and everything and said, okay, well, I can start looking for business to buy. Correct. And at this time, I was like, well, being a solo entrepreneur was really hard because it was just, you're everything, right? You are the janitor. You are the sales. You have to send out invoices. You have to collect. Like, you have to just literally do everything. So I go, next time out, I go, I'm not going to be the only one. I'm going to have a few employees to deal with the day-to-day. And that was kind of the base level parameter, but I go, you know, first off, I need to support cash. You're also leaning on your experience. Like, this was not a new thing for you to already operated multiple businesses at that level with teams and working in metal fab and working with cranes, like you'd already had a lot of experience here. And so one thing I really want to key in here is like, I mean, there's no shortage of people who are interested in buying a business these days, but you came at it from a very practical standpoint, like, hey, I know exactly what my expenses are. I know exactly how much money and you have saved up. So you came at it from a financially stable position, having some, having some liquidity

ready to start searching, got that W2 at the steel company to make sure that your liquidity was at the right place before you even started looking and then put that on top of your excellent experience already operating businesses in this space. So you're coming out from both perspectives, hey, I've got the money and the experience, not just trying to say, hey, I'm broke and I've never owned a business and never operated one. How can I buy one? I tell people, I'm like, if you want to, if you really want to buy a business, like a really good one, a high quality position, then be a high quality buyer and that's exactly what you set yourself up to be. Yeah, I didn't even know what a buyer was at the time, I didn't know what a searcher was. But, you know, as I started looking, all of a sudden I find the Walker DeBell's book, I find the Harvard Business Review book and I ripped through those in like a weekend. Because first off, I didn't need the first half of the book because I didn't need to be convinced. This was already the path I was going down, right? And then so I kind of was like, just jump to the how to portion of it, what do I need to do? And then that some of those things and they were really good because, you know, our good

friend General Mattis, he was a big proponent of reading books. And I think there's like an old quote out there, it's like, well, what do you say to people who say they're too busy to read books? And he goes, you can learn from these other people's experiences and the cost of not learning from their experience is filling body bags. So you better go read the books. So obviously the stakes were not that high here, but it was like, obviously there's people that have done this before. And then very quickly I was keyed into Will's podcast, I was driving 45 minutes each direction to get to my W2, which made it, you know, I was able to knock on a podcast today, sometimes a little more, driving back and forth. I reached out to a ton of those people too, like it was amazing how many times like people were just happy to take my call, happy. It's such a wonderful community, like every time you reach out to an ETA searcher who's bought a business, I did the same thing and they're absolutely happy to just take time out of their day. And now being an owner, I understand how difficult it is to carve out 30 minutes of your day to talk to a searcher, especially when you've got one calling every other day or reaching

out on LinkedIn. And it's just such a wonderful community because people are so, so open about doing that. Yeah. Well, I continue to, I've taken several calls. If you want to message me on LinkedIn, by all means, message me on LinkedIn, I'll set you a time and send me a calendar invite. We'll talk. I might be driving or something, but that's great time to talk, I think. I don't need my notes, it's all up here at that point. So you know, if you've got the time for, yeah, I've taken several of those calls and I'm happy to continue to do them because, yeah, I just, I want to give back because there's so many people that gave, that gave to me expecting nothing in return. I feel like the least I can do is, is continue to, you know, pay a bet, pay it forward in the community. Yeah, exactly. Right. So, so now you're moving into your search. Did you decide to, you know, did you reach out to a broker that you knew, or did you, is that the right event? When did you start just asking around, saying who's, you know, who's, who's looking to sell? So this moved very, very quickly. Like I was doing my initial, let's establish the search, like I registered a domain just so I would have a professional email account to email people from, little stuff like that.

I was, you know, reached out to Live Oak, reached out to Huntington, emailed some CPAs, and then all of a sudden I find this sign shop on like a Friday afternoon and it's just listed on Biz Buy A Cell and I was like, well, let me, let me send a message. And it was like, it wasn't super well camouflaged either. It was called a wide format printer. And so I Googled wide format printer in Morrisville and up came SpeedPro. And then I saw this, there was somebody named Kate that had listed it. And I Googled SpeedPro Kate with her last name. And sure enough, I'm LinkedIn. I'm like, okay, they didn't hide this. I know exactly what the business is kind of, you know, it's not, I never actually been to a wide format printer or anything. So basically I just reached out and I, you know, I knew that there was courses out there coming from the stock world. I knew that like one of the gurus I wrote for, everything he taught in his $6,000 course was in his $20 book, everything. There was no secrets that were going to be revealed in that $6,000 course. It was just more of the one-on-one attention, you know?

So I go out, I'm sure Walker's got a good course here for 10 or 15 grand, whatever it happens to be. I go, but I've already read the book, so I probably know it all and can reference it back. And I go in, I would probably spend the same amount in sunk costs if this deal doesn't go through. So let me get an at-bat. So I send the message to the franchise. They kind of pre-qualify me, you know, going through some stuff. One thing I did that set me apart was I created this one pager and we shared that on Will's podcast too, but you're welcome to share it with people here. Just kind of describing my search a little bit about me, but it was one page, literally talking about why I buy a business, who I am, and I was just like basically Marines, operations manager, operations manager, listed one thing I did better. And then at the bottom put some money. I got $50,000 in liquid assets. I got $175,000 in HELOC, and I did have some private investors that were willing to entertain me if I brought them a deal. So I went ahead and put that down there. I said, yeah, $200,000 commitment from private investors, which, if you have private investors, they might say, yes, I'm willing to entertain you, but usually they go bring me an LOY.

Yeah, it's not committed capital. They're interested in a deal if you find one that makes sense, but still it's good to have those conversations ahead of time, because finding investors, especially even in an SBA deal, but finding investors in the space is not overly difficult. It's finding a deal worth investing in and an operator you trust, that's the difficult part. Yeah. So the company had about 480 in SDE, and I put together an offer. Very quickly, just trying, like even Monday, I think I had a call with Live Oak. If you reach out to Live Oak, the first thing they do is say go to our office hours, and they do them every Tuesday. It was super informative. I did go to the office hours, and it was a really good thing. Anyone can go. It's totally free, super informative. They give you spreadsheets and everything to help you understand how they're evaluating the deal. But I was waiting for them, and Monday morning, I'm like, I've already got a call set up with the owner and everything, so I needed to move quicker, and I went on the SBA's website and looked for all the preferred vendors in North Carolina, and just started going down the

list. And somebody at Truist took my call and called me back, and was like, yeah, they didn't have so much process, like Live Oak did, but he's basically like, yeah, I don't have a problem if you bring the money out of HELOC, bring me, just go get me an LOI, and bring me three years of tax returns, and we'll go from there. And so literally the day we signed the LOI, I'm running around trying to wire them $10,000 deposit, and I'm like, well, they were waiting all on the wire or something, so I just called Todd, and Todd, what are you doing? He goes, ah, just hang on, can I have $1.3 million, and he goes, do you have the paperwork I asked for? And I go, I do, and he's like, I could probably get it for you then. So sure enough, I sent him all the information, the process of buying, this is literally my first conversation, and I transacted on it. So I don't necessarily have a grand way of how to conduct a search. I know that one pager made me stand out, every single, I sent that to the franchiser when I first got the introduction, I said, here's me, here's what I'm looking for.

They said, oh, this is really nice, this is very informative, thank you. Even when, so my father, my stepdad, when he did sell his business, he sold to somebody else a few years back, he actually, when he knew I was searching, he goes, let me put you in touch with my broker, for at least have a conversation, and I sent him that. And the guy was like, this is good. Did you come up with this? I was like, yeah, yeah, you know, put out some information, right? And he's like, no, it's really good, really well done, good on you, so. I love the initiative. I like how you see something, you see a deal you like, and you're reaching out to the professionals at Live Bank and everywhere else, but at the same time, you're like, hey, I ain't got time to wait for this, I'm gonna figure this out myself. And you make the deal happen. What was it about the sign shop that made you feel so comfortable with it so quickly? Because that's a very fast turnaround. I'm sure you did some more due diligence after signing the LLY, but, you know, walking through, like what made you feel so comfortable so fast? It checked every box, like that's end of the day, it checked every box I was looking for. I wasn't gonna be super scrappy because I was willing to go pretty low. I was willing to take a turnaround deal if that was, if that was what presented something

that was just, you know, basically in the gutter, and I could get real cheap and maybe turned around. Like I was willing to look at a lot of different options. And this one was just, you probably felt really comfortable with something like that because of your operational background. Like I know how to operate a business, even if it is a little bit lower. Exactly. And, you know, it's just, it was smaller equipment, less capital intensive to have that equipment, but it was also just, it was light manufacturing. I had been in heavy manufacturing, so I felt like I could, as long as I had the team, I knew like I didn't need to be the expert in making signs. I don't need to know exactly the nuances of these printers. I need to know somebody that knows what's wrong with it. You know, I relied very, in the cranes. I relied very heavily on my mechanic, because he knew it better than me. I wasn't going to try to learn a hydraulic system. I go, no, what can I do to get this moving for you? You don't need to chase down parts. You need to be turning your entries. So give me the parts to chase down, you know, things like that, took the things off of him that I could take off of him. So to keep him working on what I couldn't do. And so I've kind of come at this with the same thing. Okay. Well, there's people in place.

We ended up, I'll say it was a five person team, husband and wife were leaving. So, you know, I got to keep three people and they've all stuck around. And you got that first conversation with the husband, wife ownership team. You got the warm fuzzies on that that, you know, you felt like this was a couple that were selling for the right reasons. You felt like you could trust them going into the deal. Because again, I didn't feel like I could trust them. They were hit, Jerry especially was very difficult to deal with, you know, he wanted very heavy lawyer involvement. And I guess the one other part was, so I've got this run club I run with every Saturday. And when I mentioned to somebody over that weekend, hey, I'm going to look at this business because, you know, the one of the things is let your network know, let people know you're looking because you never know who knows who. Yeah. And yeah. So I mentioned to Stefan, who's kind of like the, I joke, he's the king of Raleigh trail runners. And I go, oh yeah, I'm going out to look at this business. He goes, what kind of business are you looking at? I go to the sign shop or printing shop and he goes, did you know Brian has a sign shop and he's actually looking to sell and I go, wait, Brian, Brian Thompson, I thought he

was an engineer. He's like, yeah, he's an engineer by trade, but he runs the sign shop. He was literally in the same parking lot as across the way they would like, when one of them ran out of ink, they would run across the parking lot and go get the ink from the other one and, you know, kind of help each other out like that. So technically they were competitors, but it was more of a friendly, friendly competition. So that actually helped me get pretty comfortable pretty quickly too. Hey, you ran, it was him and one of the other guy running a half million dollar sign shop, about 150 in SCE and he never advertised, never marked you just him and one of the guy putting out this product. He had some good customers and just the work just showed up year after year for him. And so that also made me get very comfortable having somebody that was so close to me that I did feel like I could trust that I've known for years say, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I do this all the time. We just sit here and make money. Yep. We're more or less printing money for lack of a better term. Incredible. Okay. So you get the business under LOI. What kind of due diligence did you do before closing? So we did a lot of financial due diligence.

We didn't, I didn't get in as much as I would have liked to see the operations. They would not let me, they would not let me show up and be anything but a prospective customer. And I was like, I, these were going to be my employees. I didn't want to meet them under false pretenses. So I only saw the place after hours. And basically it was just more of, you know, and I looked at, you know, their social who was complaining about them. I found one complaint on the better business bureau and I was like, and it, like their defense was justified, but like very legal. Like it gave him, it put a bad taste in that customer's mouth. I guarantee that never to mess with him again. You know, it was like, I have a time stamp this, that and the other that says, you approved this at this hour. And I was like, okay, that's not, you're not building relationships there. So I took it as he was probably, he was probably a jerk and I could get in there and just be a nice guy and probably, you know, do better than he did. Have you found that to be true? Yes. Absolutely. Going back to the customer relationships you were talking about. Well that, even the vendor or the employees, I made sure, like after, you know, the first

month is obviously insane, but after that I go, okay, I want everybody gets a lunch with me. Let's go out your time with me, whatever you want to ask or anything. And one of the guys told me, he goes, yeah, I was, I was about to quit. And then you walked in and he goes, but I was really not to quit. But I was like, I'll give this guy a week and then, you know, all of a sudden it was, it was okay. That was, and that was actually one of the biggest surprises on day one. When I was in that room, taking over, here's your new boss. I was the only person in that room who had not been through an acquisition before. And I didn't think that everybody else had worked in the company that was acquired at some point, most of them quite a few times, like most of them had like three or four acquisitions under their belt. And I was the only one there with zero. Wow. So that's amazing. So there you are on day one, you're taking over. Now there were five people in the business, husband and wife, so that was just three. So you and three employees. What was that transition like? Cause obviously you've been an operator in the past and your search was very, very short.

So now you've, you basically stepped into this operator role and it clarified, you took the SBA as the main financing, right? Yep, yep, SBA, truest, 90 percent. I came up with the rest from my home equity line of credit, um, sitting on the rest, kept the rest, uh, dry powder, which is mostly imported in because you always need more working capital and what do you think, um, but we're about to hit the busy season. So fingers crossed, we, uh, we get there. Yes. Well, yes, of course. So all right. So you've done the deal. Now it's day one. You're committed. So you've, you've bought the business, you've got this SBA, you've got the personal guarantee, you're committed, you're in there. What's it like? Did it feel different? It's like being the owner as opposed to just being the operator. Yeah. I mean, the, definitely over time, just seeing the balance sheet come and go ups and downs, just like, you know, the amount of money that flows through even this business, you know, they do, they did 1.2 million last year, right? Hopefully I can do 1.3, but like all of a sudden there's this, you know, $60,000 of inflow and then all of a sudden you got to send $50,000 back out and everything.

And now you got to send another $20,000 back out and it's just the amount of money coming and going. I had never been privy to that before and that definitely weighs on me a little heavier. I know that there was times where we had to, you know, get this material in to have it printed the next day to install the day after. And it was like, you know, it was coming FedEx overnight and like, I remember waking up at 3 a.m. be like, what if it doesn't show up? Well, that was it. I didn't go back to sleep that night. I had to be up from 3 a.m. on worrying about whether or not it was going to show up. It didn't show up, but you know, this is one of those things like I was always able to kind of separate myself from it and be like, it is what it is. I did my part. Here it's like, everything is weighing on me. You know, if I don't make this, will the customer ever come back to me? Right? Like those are the things that are weighing very heavily on me that I definitely did not before. Yeah. That's the real difference when now you're the one thinking about payroll, you're thinking about customer satisfaction and what are my, what are my good months? What are my dry months? Like how do I prepare, you know, ahead of time? Yeah, it's completely different when you're the one like laying, you know, laying awake

at night thinking, hey, you know, are we going to make it or how's this going to go? Like it's a completely different perspective. And so as you're going into it, you know, you've got, you're working on operations. Obviously, you've got the culture aspect of it because you've got three employees who are now having to learn how to trust you and you have build a relationship with them. And you're replacing the company culture that the previous seller had. What was one of the key things that was unexpected that you had to kind of like work quickly on to kind of make sure you're heading in the right direction? Well, I, I, I try to be a very proactive. So I feel like I remembered when I got a new Sergeant in the Marines, right? They always gave you their resume and who cares? Right? I'm thinking that when I show up on this Monday morning, actually it had to be a Friday morning. Who cares what my resume is? They don't care that I served in the Marines. They don't care that I did this, that and the other. Every single one of them is now worrying about their job. And so my first, first and foremost was you all have a job if you'll take it. You all get a dollar an hour raised if you'll accept this new job.

And we're adding, we're adding holidays, paid holidays to the calendar. Like immediately my first thing was, what's in it for you? And that part of that's like the writing to me is that's how you hook people is you tell them what's in it for them. And so that's how I started off is that this is what's in it for you. More money, your job is stable and you're getting more time, more paid time at home. And so generally they, everybody, every state, everybody's still there. So that was one of the biggest things. The next thing was that I'm not going to be a micromanager. It's Jerry struck me as very much a micromanager and he's been called out by several people that have worked for him in the past. And I said, nope, I'm going to, I'm going to delegate. I'm going to let you figure it out. And there was little things like, I remember there was this, this is one material called phone core and it was sitting on this, on this one shelf that was kind of bowed. And my work, one of the workers goes, Oh, well, what if we moved it down to this shelf? I said, that's a great idea. Let's move it. Right? Jerry was so mad about that one move like, I'm like, well, I'm not moving it back, Jerry. It happened.

It's moved. It's staying where it is. Right? So this is like kind of some of those little things that like, if you bring me an idea, it's going to, it's going to surface. And I remember one of my production meetings, we try to do two or three a week just to make sure everyone's on the same page. And I was so happy with my production manager was like, when I, when I listed off and said, we're going to do X, Y and Z. And he goes, actually we should do this. And I said, that is awesome. Do it. And that's perfect. And so I think that's one of the first things I did, I guess ultimately was give people some autonomy and let them, let them make their decisions, let them make their bed and you know, have their ships sink or swim. Yeah. And Foss was buying because if he comes forward in that meeting with his, he's like, Hey, we should do it this way. Like great idea. You do that. And like, okay. Well, now it's my plan. I'm responsible for the plan. I've got to put this plan to action and make it work. Yeah. And I remember that from some of the NCO days, some of your NCO training back in the Marines where it was like, it's good, like when I think I'm trying to remember which course it was or something, but they said when somebody brings something to you, let them go, give them enough rope to hang themselves with, because there's two things that are going

to happen. One, they're going to blow you out of the water. They're going to amaze you and you now know you can trust them more. Number two, they're going to fall right on their face, fail spectacularly and be so happy that the position they're in is the position they're in. And so I looked at it as that was, it was going to be the same way in this situation too. And so far, so good. And there's been a few things where sometimes the autonomy is that I've had to rein it in, like why are we working on things that are due next week when we have this much stuff due this week. So it was just kind of an expectation, hey, there's our board. If it's not in red, we shouldn't be working on it today kind of thing. And they've responded to it, I've only had to say it once. You know, Michael, there's a thread throughout this whole conversation that I've recognized, that I wonder if our listeners have recognized as well, which is business, especially small business is a people business. And from the very beginning, you know, as a, you know, coming out of the Marine Corps as a server and then working in metal fab and then with the crane business all the way here, we have really focused on your ability to work with people, build teams and build in

delegate and build autonomy and trust within those teams. Like that is really, but we haven't talked about spreadsheets, we haven't talked about your, you know, your debt financing, we haven't talked about your growth projections for 2025, which is great. I'm sure those are great things, but at the end of the day, a business is just a collection of people who are trying to create something with more value than is inherently there. You know, it's not like a real estate where it's like, you know, if everything, if you fail in real estate, at least you have property that you could sell and it's like some property value, but in business, you know, the physical assets are minuscule compared to the actual value of the business. And so it really is just a collection of people creating value out of thin air. Yeah. No, I 100% agree with that, that analysis it is. I'm not super spreadsheet. I love a spreadsheet. Don't get me wrong. I love a good spreadsheet, but no, I didn't like, I don't, you know, I've seen some of the articles out there, 15 ways to value a business. I have a third party value waiter. I just hire them. They cost $3,000. It's worth every penny. They come up with evaluation. They work with the seller because I'm working on my second deal right now.

I actually hope to close in the next two days. Is this an expansion with another sign shop? Yeah. Brian. Oh, no kidding. How did that happen? So Brian's situation, his life situation changed and assuming this is going to air after this week sometime, I can talk about it, assuming it all closes because there's some confidentiality here, but we are supposed to close on Wednesday this week. His life situation changed. He was working as the sign shop and his wife worked at SAS, best company in the world to work with according to X, Y, and Z. And they provided great benefits for the two teenage kids and she got laid off. And so he went to get a job as an engineer, which he's good at and got some benefits for the family, put her in the role of kind of operating the sign shop, not a great fit. And there's literally nobody else that would buy him out. Like no individual, like no searcher is going to show up at his door and have to replace somebody with, because he does so much work. But I have the employees, right? I have the infrastructure.

And you're running across the parking lot, like you said, and you're in a running group together. Yes. Man, yeah, exactly right. The relationships. Well, obviously, you know, wishing the best for Brian and his family. At the same time, you know, talk about putting yourself in a position to be successful long term. You know, building those types of relationships. And when things like this happen, you're like, hey, I can step in and we can expand this way. Obviously, it's not closed yet, but I believe we're almost there. We said Wednesday and, you know, I'm going to be the first one to congratulate you, I hope on a closed deal. So that's great. Thank you. Yeah, no, it's the last thing we were splitting hairs over was $1,300 and inventory, which I told him I will write you that check. I am not letting this deal fall apart for $1,300. So, no, I mean, long term, it's just going to be, it's going to be maintaining our core values. Day one, we also got the very, our first core value, I've developed three now. First core value is, it's an Andrew Carnegie quote, fill the other guy's basket to the brim and making money becomes an easy proposition.

You know, we're not, I don't split hairs over the little things, we're going to make the customers happy. I know even when I, we took a little vacation and I was gone for a few days and I, I know that there was like a $75 project that they drove like 45 minutes to deliver. So obviously that job lost money, right? And I have a feeling that the previous owners would have like ran booze them for that. How dare you spend all of our money on blah, blah, blah for $75, right? But I looked at it and when I got back in, I gave her kudos, I would, that is exactly the type of things I want to see happen here because we took care of the customer and they showed up the next day with a $4,000 order, you know, because we put forth that extra effort, they knew who they have this confidence in us that we're going to do it right and get it done. But what I found so far in the sign business is there's a very low bar in terms of customer service. I've had other sign shops literally will not pick up the phone and I've gotten those calls when they won't pick up the phone. I've gotten a few of those calls now and they turn into orders very quickly. And then after we do a deal together, the guy's like, I'm never calling them again. They're, you know, you're happy to hear from me. You'll answer a text, you answer a call, you'll answer an email and you get back to me quickly.

I'm like, literally, there's the very basics that I think a business should do. And so the first thing we're doing is kind of leaning into that, making sure that we're delivering good value and good customer service across the board. As I say, I have two more guiding principles if I can remember them. I think the second one is like the machines have to do the work. Like if we're, if we're messing with the machine and trying to like fix the machine to make it do the work by like, you know, creating some work around that that's not, that's not the right thing for us. When the machines break, we need to get them addressed or we need to get them fixed. Third guiding principle is it's a good one. You'll like it. Slowest, smoothest, smoothest, fast. There you go. Yep. That's a, I learned that changing magazines in the Marine Corps. But the same applies when you're doing things, when you're building, when you're physically building things. You know, there's, if you're, if you're doing something on a spreadsheet, you can go change that seven to a one and it fixes the whole thing, right? But no, when you actually physically build something and you mess up something on the last step, you have to literally go back to the beginning and we have sales goals.

We get bonus. The whole team, it's a team-based bonus too. The whole team gets bonus based on sales goals. But if you mess up that $10,000, $3,000 order, we don't get to invoice it twice. We only get to invoice it once and now we have to do the whole job again. The job is, you know, and, but it also hits the pockets, right? Because now they know it's going to be harder for them to make the sales goals. And you're exactly right. Slowest, smoothest, smoothest, fast. And it looks like, you know, just, just from the outside looking in, you're growing in a very structured way, in a very, like much like you were describing your personal, like your personal finances with your family, like making sure that you're doing the things you do to stabilize the business and then grow in a way that makes sense going forward, not being reckless and just acquiring whatever you can next, not, not having this, uh, these dreams of hold co in your head, like I'm going to buy all these businesses, but actually thinking, Hey, you know, now I've got this print shop. How can I make it really successful? How can I make all my team members bought in? How can I stabilize this business, you know, now with this culture change? Because again, you've only been operating in business for like six months now, right?

Not even. Yeah. We started August, August 15th. Yeah. And now you're already acquiring Brian's business. So being able to set that kind of foundation and then have a strategic acquisition, even with a business that's right across the street with an owner that, you know, that's still a lot. That's a pretty fast moving process. And so making sure that, uh, you know, things are stable throughout that process. It's really key. It is. And it's, you know, there's a lot going on too with it, with that acquisition, because it's like, you know, Brian's working two jobs right now, trying to basically keep his side shop running and sellable and also, you know, going and being an engineer during the day. Yeah. And, and, you know, for, for me too, I was like, the flip side is, as somebody even suggests this, they want you to just wait, why don't you just go after your customers after he goes out of business? Because that's a terrible thing to do. And that is absolutely horrible. How I could, I have an opportunity to give him a good exit, not everything he wants, but nobody gets everything they want in a deal, but I can give him a good exit that has been justified by a third-party valuation and, you know, and it's a hundred percent

seller financing too, because SBA didn't want to look at me again yet. They're like, I'm back in a year. That's something you can do when you already own a business in the industry and you've got the cashflow to support it and you're able to negotiate a deal with someone you already know, like you said, across the parking lot in the same business. That makes sense. This is, and that's why I tell people like, look, there's nothing wrong with a hundred percent seller financing. It is a tool, just like a lot of these other tools, but it's probably not a tool for a first-time buyer who's broke. However, if you already own a business and you've got liquidity and capital and you're in the same business, it's a great expansion tool and that's a lot of expansions happen that way. Yeah. And I mean, it's also like one of the options because I went, you know, I took the deal to the bank first and they told me no. And I'm, you know, like everything else. Any other time in this when somebody told me no, I didn't take no for an answer. I went and found another way. And that's what I had built a relationship with Adam Markley and when I was actually, I was out in Denver and I took him to dinner because he helped me out tremendously with that deal with asking nothing in return. So, you know, I bought him dinner and I told him what was going on with it.

He's like, what does it offer? He goes, just make it a seller financing. He's like, that's so simple to him. He's like, just make it a seller financing offer. I was like, okay. So I offered it and, you know, he, initially it wasn't what Brian wanted. He walked away, but I also, a good quote from Donald Trump here is you can't win a negotiation that you're not willing to walk away from. And so I go, well, I, I, I can't. Take this deal that's not going to be supported by the numbers. I can't take a deal that is going to make me look like an idiot later on when the third acquisition comes about, not that there is going to be one, but there, there's potential. It's actually funny how there's another, I have a friend that I worked with in fabrication and he has a sign shop and my first time stopping in to say, Hey, I'm in, I'm in the industry. He goes, we're looking to get it out and the next time I swing in his wife, his wife literally prints me off their financials and hands them to me and like, there you go. Make me an offer. So I experienced the same thing after I bought my first landscaping company. All of a sudden, the moment you buy a company, the moment you're in the industry, then all

the other owners, their heads perk up because they, they realize, oh, you're a qualified buyer. Oh, you're here. You made an acquisition. You might be interested in making another acquisition and you're not, you're not a tire kicker. And so the moment that happens and then everyone looks up and I joke with people, but I'm like, that's how you can find yourself in an accidental rollup. Yeah. And that's all that I told them that we could, we could continue discussions, but I would, I needed, for them, I needed to wait the year. Yeah. But I've kept that, I've kept that conversation going, you know, who knows. Maybe there is, maybe it works out. Maybe it doesn't. It's kind of like even on the first acquisition, if there's a blinking red light, I can stop at any point. I can, I can, I can pull out from the deal and, you know, have minimal sunk cost in it. But it never came. So I feel like I can continue to do that, especially with Bolton on Brian's business. I've already hired the salesperson to handle that book of business. He's been training the past two, three weeks. I get another production person, which is actually a huge benefit and de-risker as I look at it.

Cause right now my production manager is the only one that really knows how to run all the software where, you know, I don't, I have confidence he's going to keep coming to work, but what happens when he doesn't? What happens when, you know, his mom gets sick and he needs to move home or, you know, he's in a car accident, God forbid, right? Like, should our whole business go under because that happened or no, we, I have a backup on that now where I have somebody that, you know, that I've already, and him, I've been able to talk to you the whole time. Brian actually yelled at me one point because he's like, why are you keeping up with him anymore? I'm like, I thought, I can, we signed confidentiality. I was scared to say anything. And he's like, no, no, no, that's just for the customer. You keep up with the employee. So. Yeah, absolutely. And you got to find those single points of failure and de-risk them as much as you possibly can, especially as a small business owner, because even when, even if your employee is amazing and reliable, you know, life happens. Sometimes they have to take time off. Sometimes, you know, they have to step away from the job and you got to be able, the business has to continue. You have to keep moving forward. So that's really key. And Michael, I really love how you're just, you're just really laying it out, what it's

really like operating your business and everything that has basically built you to this position. If you're talking to, if you're talking to first time buyers, some of you who's never owned a business, what kind of advice do you have for them? Because I talk to, especially veterans, I talk to veterans all the time who, you know, they hear the hype online, they hear the, you know, the buy a business and, you know, how you can do that, use the SBA and, you know, they've never done it. And most of them have never actually worked in a small business. What kind of advice do you have to people who are interested in the space, but they're smart enough to know that they want to do it right? I would say, first, if you can, get a job in a small business, go and work at a small business where your job actually matters. And when you don't show up that day, it hurts, it hurts the rest of the team, you know, because even with the steel company, we're part of, that was part of reliant steel and aluminum. I don't show up one day, somebody doesn't show up, like everything kind of continues, no big deal. Right. And but like, when you're in a small business, like it hurts, like today I was out sick because I got the flu with the, you know, and I had the kid, my, you know, Everly was downstairs.

She's run a temperature of 102. I can't hardly talk. I know I sound awful here. But like, I was still trying to manage her and still on the phone, taking phone calls, sending out emails, trying to get the schedule going, like there was no just days off. So I think, I think one of the big things you can do if you can, go get a job in a small business and understand the importance of those, you know, every individual contribution. And then the other thing is like, the courses and all are great and you can get a lot of good information, but you got to pick up the phone, you got to start calling people and just understanding what it is they're looking at, because your situation, everyone's situation is going to be a little bit different. But you can call up, but you can, I'll introduce you to my banker, Todd. He will happily have a conversation with you, tell you what he's looking for and he'll present the deal to his SBA department and if they can go with there, if they can't, and they'll give you feedback too. It's not just a yes or a no, like he was, Todd and even Ronnie, the, the, the head of the SBA department, they're truest, like they were integral parts and they were constantly

giving me feedback and asking for this document and that document, but they were, I always felt like they were part of the team. And so it was like, just start having those conversations as soon as you can go to that office hours at Live Oak, even if you're not going to transact with Live Oak, because it's good information and it gets you a little bit more, just a little bit more information, a little bit more knowledge that'll make you sound a little bit smarter when you are talking to, you know, to, because I heard your interview with Kiera Hamilton, the Laundry Matt. That was so good. Cause I've seen her on LinkedIn quite a bit and I was, I was really glad that you got, you know, hurt to hear her story, but it was like, it sounds like she had a lot of tire kickers. So like the, the sellers are sick of it at this point too, like, and I can understand why they're probably, you know, just very dismissive until you can finally, you know, kind of get in that door and start to separate yourself, you know, Walker Debell's process is that your first meeting, you're interviewing for the CEO position, you're not going in there, spreadsheet, tell them if their, their valuation's wrong, no, you're taking everything they offered at face value and telling them how great of a company they built.

And then like, hopefully you have some genuine excitement about the business. And I did, I was like, when I got there the first time, I was like, I could actually do this. I could run this company. I go, yeah, there's going to be some learning, but I go, I think I can do that. I really do. And like, and so I just kind of kept portraying that the whole time and saying, Hey, every time we hit a snag, because like Jerry, they said he was a jerk, he called me up a couple times, custom me out. And I was like, all right, Jerry, all right, I hope you got that on your system. Now, let's, now let's work towards solutions. You know, and I try to stay positive about these things because things are going to happen, right? There's always, there's always something that can go wrong, but if you're, if you get mad about it and start kicking the dirt, well, it doesn't help anybody. When you're done being mad, you still have to fix it. And so, you know, and also to get, get things back to people, like I, that was another compliment I got from my bankers is every time they sent me a list of things, which there was a lot of lists. Every time you turn around, there's a, here's a new list. And I mean, some like, I remember the first one was give us your business plan. And I was like, oh crap, I haven't written a business plan.

So I stayed up that night, SBA has a template on their website. And I just filled it all in, took stuff from the franchises websites, took stuff from the financials that I knew, wrote it up, nobody ever questioned my business plan. They asked me for my resume, they asked me, why am I uniquely qualified for this? I've got one or two pages and like literally just poured my heart out and said, here's why. And I'm happy to share those documents with anybody because, but I never got pushed back on any of them because I just took the time and tried to really put a good, a good case together. So, So many good nuggets there, like the first and foremost, if you think that you're interested in operating a small business, and you're especially if you're in a place where you're like, I'm open to the idea of taking on $1 to $5 million debt to go buy this business. The ROI on spending at least a few weeks, months or even a year working in a business as an intern or as an employee with someone who has actually, like you said, committed to this, to the success of the business. That's huge. Like how would you not make that investment yourself to figure out whether or not this

is something that's actually for you. Like whether it's something that you actually want to do for the long term, because when you do decide to buy, and a lot of times it's kind of like doing the military, you don't get to quit. You don't get to walk away. Like, you don't get to just be like, Hey, this, you know, I thought this was this print shop was going to be for me, but six months later, I can definitely tell that I'm not the guy for this. Well, it's tough. You sign the loan friend. So there's no quitting for you. And then beyond that, you know, having the initiative to, you know, network within the community, you know, reach out to owners who have already acquired, reach out to bankers, reach out to SBA brokers, reach out to lawyers, like really do, you know, take the initiative to learn everything you possibly can about how the acquisition could go. Because like you said, everybody's situation is just a little bit differently. And then being professional about it, being responsive, like making sure that you're the one following up because at the end of the day, it's all on you. Like, you know, I search for a business, it's a startup. And then once you're in the, once you're buying, you're in the seat, it's really all on you now. So if you're, if you're going to be that guy or gal, then it's time to start acting like

it today. Yeah. No, you hit the nail on the head there. That was perfect. But I, because I got, that was one of the things that I got confidence on, like you, things don't die on your desk. I go, no, no, we, we clean this desk very, very quickly. Like there was times people, not people like companies got fired. If they didn't get back to me quickly, I moved on. I used somebody else. Like there was a, I remember the life insurance. You have to carry life insurance for the loan. And there was like a checkmark, a checkbox that was wrong. And so I sent them and I called them and sent them an email and said, Hey, you have literally till Friday to fix this. Otherwise I'm getting somebody else. And I actually signed up with another insurance company that same day. And I was like, you know, just kind of, they were a better rate. So I'd have rather paid a little bit less, but Friday came, they didn't fix it. I go, I need this in place. So I'm going to pay actually $20 a month for my life insurance. And that's what it is. And now everything is perfect. And there's no chance of it coming back on me because I know it's all done correctly. So, yeah, it is a very quickly, the second deal. I'm not using the same lawyer as the first deal. They just weren't as solution oriented as I want it to be. And I also realized too that they were, they're an enterprise lawyer, they're a big business

lawyer where I needed an entrepreneur's lawyer. And I didn't have that on the first go. So I probably overpaid by a lot. I think my lawyer bill came up to about $30,000. My current lawyer says I could probably, he probably could have done it in half that. So yeah, and it's also the expertise. And I love that you're saying this too, because the quality of your deal team matters, like making sure that your lawyer, that the kind of deal you're doing is the deal that they, that is their bread and butter, that that's what they know how to do. And not that they're just great at it, but they're responsive and they're aggressive and they're going to, you know, the real key with a lawyer is kind of like insurance where, you know, you hope you never really need them for litigation, but that's kind of the point. They're in the back pocket, making sure that they're protecting your interests. And the same thing is true with Q and V providers and understanding that like, look, in this position, you're the customer. You need to make sure that you're ready to properly vet the professionals around you and be ready to fire them and move on to someone who's more capable if, if that case may be, you know, if that need comes up. So again, like my CPA has been great. He hasn't changed because he actually did the same thing.

He bought his business with an SBA loan. So he understood the nuances of it. He understood, I think it's him and it's like him and his wife both have their own clients at his CPA firm. Like he gets it, he knows small business as good as anybody and he also understands the nuances of the loan and making sure the debt service and everything and making sure my bills are paid and all that good stuff. So he's been integral part, loved him. He's been a huge, huge asset to have. But you know, the ones that haven't been, you know, you got to, you got to find the ones that are like, I like my current role here. I'll probably, you know, if there is another deal to do with, you know, he'll be my first call. Michael, this has been invaluable, just filled with nuggets of wisdom, especially for first time buyers. If there's first time buyers out there and they want to get in touch with you and kind of get a better understanding about what it's like, especially operating a small business, how can they find you? LinkedIn, I would say probably link through this, through you because there's a lot of Michael Johnson's out there, but yeah, hit me up on LinkedIn. I accept every friend request I get and I try to respond to messages same day.

You know, obviously I can be busy, so it doesn't always, not always within 10 minutes, but sometimes it is in 10 minutes. So you never, you never know, but I usually do try to respond the same day to any message that I got on LinkedIn because I am very interested of it. I want to pay it forward. And you know, if there's something I can help somebody with, you know, I'm more than willing to jump on a call with you. That's great. And we'll also put your LinkedIn profile in the show notes as well, so people can find it easily. And then, uh, man, Michael, thank you so much for being here again, congratulations ahead of time on the acquisition on Wednesday, and we're going to have you back so we can talk about, you know, how that acquisition went, how the expansion has gone and some lessons learned from that too, because, uh, man, you're right in the thick of it. Yeah, yeah, I think, um, I know his lease is up in April, so I think the next four months are going to be a little bit of a wild ride, getting everything moved in, but like we got duplicate equipment. I can sell some of his. So, you know, there's, there's some good synergies there too. All right. Well, then maybe we can have you back towards the end of the summer when things kind of calmed down a little bit, uh, from the merger and then hopefully the busy part of the season

is starting to slow down too. That'd be awesome. I'd love that. All right. Well, hey, Michael, thanks again. This has been wonderful. Love talking with you. Love hearing about your experience, your background, and especially what it's been like, you know, acquiring a business and then now expanding. Thanks so much for being here. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.