Intentional Growth

Paul Spiegelman founded BerylHealth and eventually sold to Stericycle, a global services organization with 25,000+ employees. He was able to take his most favorite part of his job and transition into the role of Chief Culture Officer at Stericycle in hopes of scaling the culture he built and cherished at his first company.

Paul’s first business was a medical alerts company he started with his two brothers. Within a year of starting the company, a hospital contacted the brothers in need of someone to handle physician referrals and their core business changed. They ultimately became an outsourced provider of call-center services for hospitals across the country taking calls and tracking patients into hospital systems.

A call-center operation can easily become a commodity business but Paul wanted to create value for their customers. They ended up building a great brand around their unique internal culture that drove customer loyalty and profitability. This created extreme value when they eventually decided to exit the company in 2012.

Paul explains a few different definitions of culture. “Culture is the extent to which team members or employees will do work beyond what is expected of them as well as the vibe that you feel when you walk through the doors of that business.”

“Culture and leadership are really the same thing and as leaders we have to make choices on how we lead. Culture and treating people well is not only the right thing to do, it is good for business. There is an ROI to it. It is as important of a process in our business than any other process we have. Not every company works this way,” explains Paul.

Paul helped create a brand around their culture that not only drove employee loyalty, but that drove customer loyalty. The culture allowed them to sustain and grow. A call-center is a tough place to work but they made it fun for their employees who they cared about, rewarded, and let them be themselves.

Paul and his brother that was still involved in the business didn’t have any intention of selling but knew it would come at some point. “All I wanted to do was build a great business and sustain it for as long as possible.”

An offer for the business did come up in 2010 and during due diligence, they walked away from the deal to protect their team members. It just wasn’t the right fit. A year later they were approached by Stericycle to become a part of their family, and it was a better fit for their company and culture.

Paul was curious to determine if his current company culture could scale to a bigger company like Stericycle which had been around for 25 years with 25,000 employees in 18 countries. He became Chief Culture Officer of Stericycle after the sale in 2012 with this goal in mind. After some work and overcoming challenges with management, Paul was successfully able to bring his company’s culture and vibe over to Stericycle.

The transition to life after business for Paul was pretty smooth as he felt good about the company taking over his business and he could continue to do the part of the work he lo

President and CEO of Make-A-Wish Minnesota, Mia Hoagberg, explains that business owners and entrepreneurs should be involved in non-profit work in a way that makes sense to them, their business, and that aligns with their skills and passions.

Mia didn’t start off her career in the non-profit world. After working in Marketing and Advertising for 13 years and staying home with her kids for 6 years while earning a Masters, she had a change of heart. Mia decided to become involved in fundraising and philanthropy work.

Mia talks in the podcast about what skills were transferable from her traditional work to non-profit work. The most transferable skill she took from one career to the next is relationship building. Fundraising is all about creating relationships with different people. She took her skills of working with clients and vendors in advertising and puts them to good use in her current role.

She also explains how people can use the skills they have in business to help Make-A-Wish or any non-profit they want to be involved with. 

There are many ways business owners and entrepreneurs can get involved in non-profits. The most important thing, as Mia explains, is for people to get involved in a way that is meaningful to them or in a way that brings joy back to the work that they already do.

She gives an example of a wish that an architecture firm helped with in Minneapolis. A little girl wanted a playset in her backyard and the architects put a plan together for the layout of the backyard and playset to support the wish. Individual people or a company must look at what their goals, objectives, and skills are and tie it in with the work they do with Make-A-Wish to make it meaningful for them.

Entrepreneurs and business owners are usually all about relationships, networking, and connections. Even if a person has exited their business, they still have these contacts and skills that may go unused. These are key skills in fundraising and can be used to help grant someone’s life-changing wish. If you help in a way that aligns with your skills, goals, and passions, the work and impact will be greater.

“We are all structured around making sure that a child’s one life-changing wish happens and putting everything into place to make sure that happens behind the scenes.” – Mia Hoagberg

Wishes drive everything that Make-A-Wish Minnesota does. They have a budget and work with individuals, schools, corporations, and foundations to raise money, get in-kind donations, and volunteers. They work with other chapters across the country to determine best practices, partner with local sports teams to make wishes happen, and are always looking for more people or organizations to donate things to keep costs down.

There are so many ways individuals and organizations can become involved in Make-A-Wish. It is all about granting life-changing wishes for those that need them.

Check out the podcast episode for more information and see below for a list of upcoming events:

Make-A-Wish MN EVENTS: http://mn.wish.org/news-and-events/calendar-of-events 

Stever Robbins, Executive Business Coach, podcaster, MIT and Harvard Business School grad, musical writer, producer, actor, singer, investor, and business owner, has made a life out of living in the moment andStever Robbins, Executive Business Coach, podcaster, MIT and Harvard Business School grad, musical writer, producer, actor, singer, investor, and business owner, has made a life out of living in the moment and focusing on the journey, not the goal.

Stever spends time looking back at the careers of his clients and going over what their goals had been and where they are today. He finds more often than not that people are not doing what they really want to be doing with their lives even if they have “achieved’ the goal they set out to do.

Most people set a life goal and then figure out how they are going to reach it. Stever explains in the podcast how this is not a smart course of action. Goals will change over your lifetime while you figure out who you are and what you want to be doing with your life. “Things that are attractive to you at 25 that inspire you to create your 40-year plan may not be as attractive at 65,” he explains.

“You don’t know where you are going to want to go because life happens.”

Put yourself out in the world and enjoy the journey. Don’t focus on a goal you made years ago, focus on your journey and allow yourself and your goals to change and evolve. “Decide the journey you want to take and then choose any goal that will force you to take that journey,” explains Stever.

Stever set out on a three-year experiment to just follow his heart and see where it went. He allowed himself to do things he had never done before. He put himself out in the world to see what would happen.

He added author, podcaster, producer, and playwright (among other things) to his resume during these three years.

He did not focus on a goal. He focused on taking the journey. He had conversations he wanted to have with people he wanted to have them with and ended up doing things very different from what he was doing before. 

Stever urges everyone he meets to not limit their self-identity. He explains in the podcast to not base your identity on one single thing. Someone may identify themselves as a “business person.” Identifying as this only limits your life experience to only what a “business person” can do.

Opening up how you define yourself will allow you to do things you have never thought you would have done before. It gives you more options and opportunities in life. This is the only way you can figure out what you like doing and want to continue to do to make every day of your life extraordinary.

Website: http://www.steverrobbins.com/

Stever Robbins creates online and in-person programs to help people “Live an Extraordi

John Brown, owner of Business Enterprise Institute (BEI), fell into the world of exit planning before there was even a term for the process. As an estate attorney in the 80’s, John was approached by clients wanting to exit their business without a clue how to do it. BEI was born from John’s realization of this unmet need in the marketplace. Now BEI educates, certifies and provides tools to Exit Planning Advisors who help owners create exit plans.

Back when John was an attorney in the 80’s he had one of his clients call him up because they wanted to exit their company. He said “that’s great when are you thinking” and they responded, “Friday.”

At that time, John didn’t quite know what “exit planning” totally entailed. However, coming from the estate planning world, he knew in order to truly maximize the hard work of building a business, longer term planning was a necessity.

After some research John realized there were a lot of owners who thought they could just “make the decision” to sell and it would be so. John states in his book, Exit Planning: The Definitive Guide, that “as a consequence of poor or no preparation, owners cannot leave when they want, with the money they need, and/or to the person they choose.” Now after decades in the business, it is clear to John that to exit in one week (or even one year) is impossible if the owners wants a truly successful exit.

“It’s All About the Owner’s Goals”

Every owner has a different view of what their life should be like after they sell their company. Certain parts of the process may be more important to one owner versus another.

John and BEI’s mission is to educate advisors so they can simply “help owners benefit from their lives’ work.” Exit Planning Advisors need to ask a lot of questions of the owner and understand their individual goals but also have a clear picture of where they stand on the three universal goals.

See how we at Solidity incorporate the 7 Steps and 3 Universal Goals in our Value Advantage program HERE

John dives deeper into these universal goals in the podcast interview and how they drive the exit planning process.

A written exit plan will give you the roadmap to the rest of the life of your business. Starting with the end in mind is key to any project, goal or strategy. If you know where you’re going and what is important to you, then you can put all the advice and obstacles you come across into the context of your grander plan.  Without a bigger vision you can be lead astray and find there are unintended consequences to decisions you made in a vacuum

After selling his online publication with over 220,000 subscribers, Mark Daoust was approached by a friend also wanting to sell his business. This was the start of what would become Mark’s next adventure, Quiet Light Brokerage, has currently sold over $100M in online companies.

Mark Daoust didn’t start out in the online business brokerage world. He first worked for an internet company in Maryland and made it through an extreme downsizing where he was then tasked with taking care of hundreds of clients.

Through this experience, he learned a lot about working with online businesses and eventually started an online publication called Site Reference. Site Reference generated revenue through sponsorships of the newsletter as well as direct mailings to their list of contacts.

[clickToTweet tweet=”“In the online world, if you have eyeballs..if you have an audience, you can make money.” ” quote=”“In the online world, if you have eyeballs..if you have an audience, you can make money.” ” theme=”style2″]

Mark was admittedly a little naïve and sold Site Reference for less than what the company should have been worth if he would have made slight changes. It is hard to put a price on a company where he was the sole contributor to the business and all he had was a list of followers. Admittedly, his business lacked transferability.

Mark now owns Quiet Light Brokerage which is in the emerging niche of selling and buying websites. He helps his clients with what he lacked in his previous business – how to make a business more transferable.

In this podcast, Mark discusses four main things that will impact the value of a company.

Check out Mark’s Ultimate Guide to Website Value here: https://www.quietlightbrokerage.com/resource/website-value

Quiet Light Brokerage works with different types of online companies including eCommerce, service based businesses, software as a service companies, content sites, subscriptions sites, and lead generation sites.

Online companies are not just websites. Traditional brick and mortar businesses that have a company website are not online companies. According to Mark, traditional companies have the opportunity to grow their business in a way they haven’t before with leveraging the internet.

“No one wants to talk to a salesperson. People don’t want to be sold. They want to make up their mind on their own.”

The marriage of online and offline worlds is happening. Mark gives examples and elaborates on this point in the podcast. Business owners do not have to get rid of what they have developed offline but they will need to apply it to the online world to continue to be successful. There is only a ton of upside for their business.

Email: [email protected]