Intentional Growth

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be on the buyer's side of a private equity exit? Adam Coffey has spent the last twenty years as CEO of three private equity-backed national service companies and intimately understands the unique concerns from the buyer’s perspective during a sale. Through his experience executing a buy-and-build strategy, he has bought and sold more than 100 companies ranging in size from $1 million to $1 billion. 

 

In this episode, Adam unpacks the strategies that allow PE firms to get the huge returns that have made the industry—for both investors and sellers—so popular. Adam dives into the three different areas of growth he focuses on to achieve a 30% CAGR, a recipe that even worked on companies that were at a stagnant 5% growth for years. He also talks about how private equity firms create their strategic planning and investment models based on what ‘good’ looks like for their investments. Tune in if you’re ready to capitalize on growth and be more knowledgeable about the buy side of the deal table.

 

What You Will Learn 

How a private equity firm structures their investments with their limited partners and future stakeholders (e.g., previous owners who sold)

How a private equity firm structures their investments with their limited partners and future stakeholders (e.g., previous owners who sold)

What the perceptive is like as the CEO of a PE firm negotiating a purchase with one of the founders of a business

The rule of 72 that private equity firms use to double, triple and quadruple their investments

Understanding the role of a PE firm makes you less likely to get screwed on a deal

A detailed overview of the buy-and-build strategy from a private equity CEO’s perspective

Why Adam doesn't like earnouts, even though it might be good for him as a buyer

The math behind rollover investing and the real reasons why the second bite of the apple (second sale of the company) can mean even more money than the first sale

How to using a phone book to identify if an industry is fragmented and ripe for a rollup

The three primary levers private equity firms use to get a higher multiple on their investments

Where and how the investment thesis of the PE firm plays a role in the deal structure and how that impacts how they view a target acquisition 

The three types of growth private equity firms use when performing a buy-and-build

How an entrepreneur’s personality influences if a private equity firm will even make an offer

 

// USE YOUR FINANCIALS TO CLARIFY A PATH TOWARDS A MORE VALUABLE BUSINESS: Intentional Growth Financi

“Take your customers through a journey by telling a story” is a phrase we have all heard before, but have you ever learned how to actually put storytelling into action that generates the results you want in your business?On today’s show, David Mann — who is a leading expert in creating simple messaging — shares with us how to master your sales and marketing by turning your IDEAS into WORDS that inspire ACTION.David believes in opening opportunities — and therefore growing the value of your business — by closing communication gaps. When David graduated from Northwestern University's theater program more than three decades ago, he has earned an enduring reputation as a dynamic theater artist, author, educator, speaker, and the creator of storytelling programs for lawyers and business leaders.David’s philosophy:If it's clear, they'll understand. If they understand, they'll care. If they care, they'll take action.

 

What You Will Learn

How much time you actually have to capture someone's attention, no matter their level of interest

How one person shows force you to grab - and keep - an audience's attention, and how that helps David create stories for businesses and lawyers 

How to tie your marketing and messaging to your products and services and ultimately to the EBITDA and value of your business

The role practice, revision, and truth-seeking play in creating your business message and how that imitates art

Why it’s so important to talk to your customers and understand what they really want

How to balance your message so it speaks to a very specific audience but also presents a generic statement that the audience relates to

What it means to sell with a good story and how to apply it to your business

Why every product or service you offer needs to link back to the core idea of what your business does and how it helps your customer make progress towards their goals

Why the first words a customer reads should speak about them, not you

The truth about authenticity and why being authentic and gaining trust takes practice

What role messaging has in defining your business

How just talking about what you want for your customer is a great exercise to find your message

 

// USE YOUR FINANCIALS TO CLARIFY A PATH TOWARDS A MORE

Shahar Erez is an expert in the gig economy. He’s co-founder and CEO of Stoke, an on-demand talent platform empowering companies to adopt a hybrid workforce model that scales as quickly and efficiently as needed. The platform provides a streamlined interface to make sure all your “non-employees” are operating according to the correct policies, legal constraints and workforce classification. Because let’s face it, most of us only need a specialist’s help a few times a year—but when we do, we need that person right now.Services providing on-demand specialists have been growing in popularity in recent years for both employers and workers alike. As companies downsize and turn more positions into remote work, the number of skilled workers becoming permanent freelancers has increased significantly in recent years. Shahar understands this all-too-well and grew his company into an appealing $110M acquisition for industry giant Fiverr in 2021 that took only 15 months once he exited a strategic "stealth mode."In this interview, Shahar shares how this trend toward freelancing is dramatically impacting the economy and how you could be capitalizing on it. We’ll look at the changing labor market, how companies access talent, and who is competing for that talent. This is a must-hear if you’re looking at creative ways to get the knowledge and talent you need, without breaking the budget.

 

What You Will Learn

Shahar explains his mindset about the risk of leaving corporate America to start a new business with 3 little kids

The mission behind stoke and why COVID accelerated their mission

The mismatch with what companies need/want from an employee and the compensation they’re willing to provide (or that the company can afford)

Why highly skilled freelancers have more job security - and potentially a higher income - than taking a traditional W2 job 

Why Shahar has the “grab a beer rule” when looking for capital

The definition and strategy overview of “stealth mode” and why it’s important

Why Shahar only paid attention to FOUR KPI’s and still does today

How Shahar confronted the out of the blue offer and why he believed being blunt helped the transparency aspect of the deal

Why the 45 days post LOI is the time to perform for an entrepreneur 

Why Shahar wasn’t nervous of Fiverr taking his code during the due diligence process

 

// USE YOUR FINANCIALS TO CLARIFY A PATH TOWARDS A MORE VALUABLE BUSINESS: Intentional Growth Financial Assessment

 

Bio:

Shahar Erez is a tech-scene veteran and serial entrepreneur in Israel and Silicon Valley and has 20 years of executive experience in engineering, product and marketing under his belt at companies like HP, VMware and Kenshoo. He sold his gig-economy on-demand talent platform Stoke in 2021 to F

Feisal Alibhai was born into an entrepreneurial family but decided to venture out on his own after Wharton and a short period on Wall Street. By the time Feisal was 35 he had scaled internationally to over 15 countries, employed 10,000 people, and was doing $100s of millions in revenue. Then his life changed. At the age of 35, Feisal received a surprise stage three cancer diagnosis. 

 

On today’s show, Feisal walks us through what it was like getting a life-altering diagnosis and how it changed the way he looked at his life and business. He reflects on his new mindset, and the shift in his approach from a work-work-work to a “game time then, and game time now” view. He shares his insights on stress and health, as well as some key measures every business owner should take to keep their mind and body healthy for the years to come.

 

What You Will Learn

What drove Feisal to start his international business in repressed countries lacking resources widely available in developed countries

How owning both sides of a market - the buy side and sell side - can create a protective moat, increase enterprise value, and keep competition out

The customer insights Feisal gained from personally going into every world market - accompanied by armed guards - and how that impacted his strategies

How a cancer diagnosis almost derailed his business alongside his personal life

What kept Feisal’s business performing during his 10-month absence

Why Feisal was able to sell his company in under 10 minutes

The challenges of bridging significant market gaps between dominant and emerging markets

Why preparing for crisis in a business is essential to not only preserve the wealth created but also to allow one to focus on the present issue

When to tell you’re physically present but not mentally

The impact of giving it all at work and half-assing it at home

Why Feisal says stress doesn’t cause sickness, but how someone handles it does

 

// USE YOUR FINANCIALS TO CLARIFY A PATH TOWARDS A MORE VALUABLE BUSINESS: Intentional Growth Financial Assessment

 

Bio:

As a 35 year old 3rd generation family business entrepreneur with over 10,000 employees in 15 countries, Feisal received a wake-up call one day with the news that he had stage three cancer. He felt his life was over, but when he was unable to visualize saying goodbye to his two toddler sons, he chose to do whatever it took to transform the cancer.

Looking back, he recognized all the warning signs he had missed, and spent the next seven years helping his family and friends to prioritize what matters most. In 2013, Feisal founded Qineticare, the world’s first family health office. Qineticare’s mission is to empo

A physician by trade and an entrepreneur by passion, Dr. John Shufeldt has become a healthcare venture capitalist helping other entrepreneurs start and scale their businesses. Like many entrepreneurs, John noticed a problem within his work space that he wanted to fix. And another. And another. Over the course of his career, John founded 15 businesses, including NextCare Urgent Care—which he scaled to 60 locations generating over $100M in revenue—and MeMD, a telehealth company that he sold to WalMart in 2011.In this episode, John talks about why efficiency was his core focus in the founding of NextCare and why he hired a CEO to take over the “operator” part of the business instead of running the day-to-day himself. He also talks about the process of selling MeMD to WalMart and why he chose them as the buyer based on what they wanted to do with his company after they bought it. John's ability to maintain his vision across multiple ventures will inspire you to tighten up your own and see what you're really capable of achieving.

 

What You Will Learn

Why efficiency was the core focus of John's franchise urgent care businesses

Why John hired a CEO years after he started and what led him to make that decision

John’s definition of founder versus operator and why they are vastly different

Why building a company culture from the ground up is so important

The “if only” look John experienced that drives him everyday

How John knows if he’s on track or off track

Why doing something different will increase a businesses intrinsic value

Why John chose WalMart as the buyer of MeMD based on WalMart’s healthcare vision

How John learned the lesson of “hire for culture fit”

  

// USE YOUR FINANCIALS TO CLARIFY A PATH TOWARDS A MORE VALUABLE BUSINESS: Intentional Growth Financial Assessment

 

Bio:

Dr. John Shufeldt is an emergency physician and the ForbesBooks author of Entrepreneur Rx: The Physician’s Guide To Starting A Business.

In 1993, when John noticed the ER was overcrowded with minor illnesses and injuries, he launched his first urgent care practice. The business saw explosive growth, expanding from one to 60 locations during his tenure doing over $100M.

Shufeldt has founded about 15 businesses, including NextCare Urgent Care; MeMD, used by more than 450 providers to virtually treat more than 6 million patients (a telehealth company that was sold to WalMart in 2011); and Tribal EM, dedicated to improving the delivery of healthcare for Indigenous People.

Shufeldt also is the business manager and a founding partner of Empower Emergency Physicians, where he continues to practice and “in his spare time” has started a VC firm that raised $20M to invest in local healthcare startups. In addition to his medical degree, he has an MBA, a law degree and a Six Sigma black belt.

 

Quotes:

12:03  - “We grow the business, then hire the staff. But what I try to do over the years is, ‘Let’s build this thing to handle a hundred patients a day officially, then when we’re only at 50 or 60, we’ll be screamin’.”        - John Shufeldt

15:58  - “I was never one of those fragile perfects who got knocked off the ledge and laid there. I was always like, ‘So?’ and just got back up, because I was so used to screwing this up.” - John Shufeldt

23:31  - “I’ve always coached people to have that fallback. I realized, in

In this episode Andy Cabasso shares his story of leaving the grind of the legal industry to start, grow, and exit JurisPage (a Marketing Agency focusing on law firms).  Even though Andy’s new company was a professional services firm, he explains how he created a hyper valuable marketing agency by focusing on their niche, implementing productization based processes, and never going outside their skill sets and scope of services - even when clients begged him to do a unique project. Andy gives examples on how he scaled his agency using streamline procedures, independent contractors, and focusing NOT on paid ads but content and affiliate marketing to get leads. Whether you’re a professional services firm looking for ways to scale the business and make it more valuable so it can give you exit options, or a business owner looking for an inside scoop as to what makes a great marketing partner, this episode is for you!

What You Will Learn

The challenges - and solutions - to scaling a professional services firm 

Productization in a service versus standardization in a service and what the difference is between the two

Why specialization in a services firm helps you increase client satisfaction, profit margins, effectiveness of your marketing, and the ability to scale 

Why - and when -  a fixed scope / flat fee pricing structure works in a services firm

Why Andy shifted his payment plan for clients to a percentage-by-project (at the start of the contract) and why that approach got his projects through the pipeline a lot faster

Why it’s so important to partner with a niche specific agency as a business owner seeking marketing help

How Andy leveraged partnerships and affiliates for scaling his agency rather than paid search

How Andy reacted to his out-of-the blue offer from a competing agency

Why coaching and mentorship was particularly helpful to Andy’s exit

Why Andy didn’t want his offer to be based off EBITDA 

Why you must be able to hand off most of the day to day in order to get a good offer 

 

// USE YOUR FINANCIALS TO CLARIFY A PATH TOWARDS A MORE VALUABLE BUSINESS: Intentional Growth Financial Assessment

 

Bio:

Andy Cabasso is the co-founder of Postaga, a new all-in-one platform for link building and email outreach. He is also co-founder of Offsprout, which helps web design agencies more easily build websites for their clients by using white-label website building tools. 

Prior to Postaga and Offsprout, Andy capitalized on his life as a lawyer and co-founded JurisPage, an Internet marketing agency focusing on helping law firms create a professional Internet presence and get better visibility on

Shawn Burcham is founder and CEO of PFSbrands, a branded food service company that he started in his garage and grew at over 100% ARR year-over-year for the first few years. Now the company does $100 million in revenue and has an excellent culture that incorporates financial literacy at all levels. Shawn even wrote a book about it all called Keeping Score with GRITT: Straight Talk Strategies for Success to help other entrepreneurs achieve their goals as well.

 

On today’s show, Shawn talks about when he hit a multi-million dollar threshold and realized he needed to start setting goals and teaching his employees financial literacy so they could better understand how the company ran, made money, and reinvested to keep scaling. He believes culture is at the core of a company’s success, and should always lead naturally into an ESOP before an owner considers exiting. He explains his journey of turning PFSBrands into an ESOP and how it has benefited his business, company culture, and the community around him—and makes it accessible to any business owner. Whether you are looking to build a sustainable company culture or exit your business through an ESOP, this audio master class is for you.

 

What You Will Learn

The benefits of actively teaching your employees financial literacy 

The business model and growth strategies Shawn used to scale his company from his garage to $100M

Why you need to build a good company culture before you ESOP, not after 

A basic breakdown on how ESOPs work, when, and why

Why setting and chasing goals is so important to Shawn, how it helped him scale, and why clarity on one’s vision is so important for every business owner

The tax advantages of an ESOP

Shawn’s argument for selling the equity in the business to an ESOP if you still want to be the leader of the company

What can happen if you combine company culture and financial literacy in your company regardless of whether you are and ESOP or not

Why Shawn’s journey as an entrepreneur  dramatically changed in 2011 after he picked up and read his first book since grade school 

The three reasons Shawn chose the ESOP route to exit his equity ownership of business

 

// USE YOUR FINANCIALS TO CLARIFY A PATH TOWARDS A MORE VALUABLE BUSINESS: Intentional Growth Financial Assessment

 

Bio:

Shawn Burcham, author of Keeping Score with GRITT: Straight Talk Strategies for Success, is the founder & CEO of PFSbrands, which he and his wife, Julie, started out of their home in 1998. The company has over 1,900 branded foodservice locations across 40 states, is now doing over $10

An avid builder is probably the best way to describe Will Pemble. Will is a serial entrepreneur who loves building and selling businesses. His most famous venture was building Web.com, a domain hosting and services firm that he sold in 2008. If you haven’t seen Will in business headlines, you may have seen Will on Youtube or Netflix talking about and showing his backyard roller coaster amusement park with five fully functional roller coasters.

In today’s show Will talks about vision. In his early career he attended college to become a pilot purely out of interest. In college he learned how important it is to have a crystal clear vision and direction on where you want to go or else, you crash. Taking his pilot philosophy to business, he talks about how the slightest adjustments in the day to day operations of your company can affect the long term value of your brand in the market and valuation when you decide to exit. Understanding what you want from your business before you take off (start) will make those trainwrecks that we all know too well way more manageable from a leadership perspective and strategic planning perspective. If you want to learn about why vision clarity is so important and have a couple laughs in the process, this episode is for you.

 

Disclaimer: more-than-usual swearing

 

What You Will Learn

How Will knew his job at IBM was not the right fit and took the entrepreneur path

Why Will believes flying an airplane relates to starting and growing a business

Why Will believes if wrote an acquisition plan for the sale of web.com, it would have sold for way more.

How if you are clear where you want to go, the trainwrecks within your business will be more manageable

Why undervaluing and overvaluing ASPECTS of a business rather than the whole entity is one of the biggest mistakes Will makes

Why discipline will allow you to make better emotional decisions

Why time management is a skill that will allow a company to compete with the big players

Why business owners need to practice for emergencies just like pilots

What Will looks for in a deal structure (his favorite aspect)

 

// USE YOUR FINANCIALS TO CLARIFY A PATH TOWARDS A MORE VALUABLE BUSINESS: Intentional Growth Financial Assessment

 

Bio:

Internet pioneer Will Pemble built and sold Web, one of the largest web hosts on earth. As a Top 100 Domain Name Millionaire and serial entrepreneur, Will has been building and growing businesses of all shapes and sizes for over 25 years. In addition to Web.com, Will built and sold a national technical training company, and one of the first Internet Service Providers in San Francisco. Through his executive and personal consulting and coaching, Will brings his passion for giving back to millions of people in person and online.

Will's success extends well beyond the business world. Known worldwide as "CoasterDad," Will and his kids have built several backyard roller coasters which have been featured on Good Morning America, Discovery Channel, CBS News, NBC News, ABC News, and dozens of television shows worldwide. Will has been featured in hundreds of online media outlets, including AOL.com, Hackaday.com, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Make Magazine, Edutopia, to name a few.

 

Quotes:

12:14  - “If I had made the decision [to be an entrepreneur], it would be because I wasn’t suited for anything else.” - Will Pemble

12:50  - “Could you imagine just getting up and being satisfied? I can’t imagine anything like that.” - Will Pemble

12:57 - “That’s why I am an entrepreneur. I’m always eit

Lowell Ricklefs is a 30-year veteran in the SaaS and M&A space. He is currently co-founder & CEO of Traction Advising, a company that helps B2B SaaS companies get acquired. Before starting his firm, Lowell was the COO of a publicly traded company he helped bring to a $260M exit.

We cover a lot of ground on today’s show around why buyers want to purchase a business and the real reasons why sellers want to exit. With decades of experience in mergers and acquisitions, Lowell gives his thoughts on business owners tying their identity to the business and the impact that has on everything else, from your family to your health. He has seen this many times — as a buyer as well as an investment banker — and when it comes time to sell, these kinds of owners have a really hard time letting go . . . even after saying, for years, that they want out. We get into the weeds about why it’s so important to understand what you want from the business, emotionally and financially, and the potential challenges you’ll face if you aren’t clear on your intention. If you’re ready to run a better business, this episode is for you!

 

What You Will Learn

The drivers behind financial buyers vs strategic buyers

Why strategic buyers will buy a company to avoid losing out on a competitive advantage rather than the benefits the new company will provide

Why playing “the emotional game” will place your business in the right hands when selling

Why Lowell believes selling a business is no different than a product or service

Why certainty and alleviating risk (that the buyer identifies) before the deal is final will suppress the “ripple effect.”

How the owners identity impacts what they want long term for the company

Why it’s important to understand what you “what you want to leave behind” when it comes to an exit

Why Lowell moved to SaaS startups after being in the corporate world for years

How a consulting company can create automated platforms to solve a problem in their business and sell it to similar companies with the same problem

Why no attorney should solely do a deal and who they need on their deal to get the deal done right

 

// USE YOUR FINANCIALS TO CLARIFY A PATH TOWARDS A MORE VALUABLE BUSINESS: Intentional Growth Financial Assessment

 

Bio:

Lowell is the CEO & Founder of Traction Advising which specializes in helping B2B SaaS companies with >$5M ARR get acquired. Lowell’s been a Co-founder/CEO/Chairman, COO of a $120M public company, Startup CRO and Global VP Rockwell. He’s a Global Mentor, Investor, Board member and CEO coach.

With company buying/selling experience of more than 30 organizations, he knows what internal stakeholders need to approve a transaction. As a founder/CEO he knows what it’s like to start up a company, build a product, hire employees, raise money, find customers, keep them happy and make payroll. He leverages this experience to craft acquisitions that get the best outcome for the founders/investors structured to maximize success.

 

Quotes:

09:21  - “Ultimately the company is worth what somebody is willing to pay for it. And that can be wildly different, and they can pay for it in different way.” - Lowell Ricklefs

22:53  - “The goal is to have multiple options because it drives competition and drives the price up.” - Lowell Ricklefs

28:00  - “I find some people don’t realize how much of the business has become an extensi

Tae Hea Nahm is a venture capitalist who has invested in over 200 B2B companies leading to 11 unicorns like Marketo, TalkDesk, and Workato. Tae Hea is also the founding CEO of software startup, Airspace (who sold to Cisco for $450 Million) and the co-author of Survival to Thrival. 

In Today’s show Tae Hea talks about his four steps for nailing your go to market fit so you can unlock your growth and scale your company. He uses a great metaphor of a surfer to hit the point home. We pick apart the steps from Nailing the Customer Journey and solving your customer’s urgent pain (the wave), building the go to market playbook (the surfboard), Operationalizing the playbook and allowing marketing and sales to work together all being backed by clear metrics or magic numbers (continuing to ride the wave). If you are a believer in frameworks for scale, this episode is for you!

 

What You Will Learn

What it means to “catch an emerging wave” when starting a business

Founder-led growth vs repeatable process-led growth

What “go-to-market fit” is, and how it’s all derived from repeatable processes

Tae Hea’s surfer metaphor for directed towards B2B CEO’s

Why it’s so important to focus the entire customer journey on transforming your customer to a hero

The four steps to take when going to market from Tae Hea’s book, Survival to Thrival

Why it’s important to clearly identify when your customer receives their first piece of value

Where marketing and sales hand off responsibilities in the customer pipeline

Why it’s so important, as an investor, to see the business from the founder’s eyes in order to provide guidance effectively 

 

// USE YOUR FINANCIALS TO CLARIFY A PATH TOWARDS A MORE VALUABLE BUSINESS: Intentional Growth Financial Assessment

 

Bio:

Tae Hea co-founded Storm Ventures, an early stage VC fund based in Silicon Valley and investing worldwide. Storm has invested in nearly 200 B2B software companies leading to 11 unicorns, including Marketo, Pipedrive, Solarisbank, Talkdesk and Workato. At Storm, Tae Hea was the founding CEO of Airespace, a B2B startup, which was later sold to Cisco for $450m.

Based on his experience, Tae Hea also co-authored Survival To Thrival to help founders unlock growth by finding go-to-market fit.

Tae Hea majored in applied math at Harvard and has a JD from University of Chicago Law School. He was born in Seoul, Korea.

 

Quotes:

07:29  - “The first thing we looked at is, ‘Is there an emerging wave?’ And creating your own wave is almost impossible.” - Tae Hea Nahm

08:05  - “People are only founders, generally, if they’re really passionate about something.” - Tae Hea Nahm

12:00  - “You need product/market fit to have that product-happy customer and the best indicator is retention.” - Tae Hea Nahm

12:50   - “In B2C, you only need the product/market fit but for B2B you need both: product/market fit and go-to-market fit.” - Tae Hea Nahm

15:39  - “That’s how we want to give people the visual feeling of how to unlock growth, is to go from paddling to surfing and become a surfing unicorn.” - Tae Hea Nahm

19:24  - “The most important thing in catching the wave is to identify the urgent pain for your ideal customer pro