Angels, Exits, & Acquisitions

On today’s episode, Laura speaks with Christopher Lochhead, author and the host of Legends & Losers and producer of 6 Minutes of Legendary Podcasts. Laura and Christopher talk about creating your niche by evangelizing the problem and then marketing the solution! The interview is full of so much valuable insight and information. Listen now!

Christopher Lochhead co-Authored the celebrated

“Niche Down: How To Become Legendary” By Being Different

and

Harper Collins’ “instant classic”

“Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets”.

Christopher is a former three-time public company CMO, category designer and entrepreneur.

Background:

• He’s been an advisor, board director and/or investor to over 50 Silicon Valley startups.

• Served as Chief Marketing Officer of Mercury Interactive, a $1B software company that was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 2006 for $4.5B.

• In 2001, he co-founded marketing strategy consulting firm LOCHHEAD.

• In 1998, he was the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient.

• Before that he was head of marketing at Vantive, a pioneer in customer relationship management software and a principal at consulting firm Always an Adventure.

• In 1989, with no other options he and his friend Jack founded Roger Pierce & Associates a computer consulting firm they named after a guy they made up to make it seem like an adult was in charge.

In 30 years he has:

worked with many great people, had wonderful mentors and coaches, started companies, designed new categories, raised capital, built brands, made a lot of friends, a few enemies, shipped new products, failed out of school at 18, became a public company CMO by 28, discovered he was dyslexic, gone public, bought and sold companies, crushed competitors, broken his nose surfing, cracked his arm skiing, co-authored a best selling book for Jack Welch’s publisher, gotten de-listed from NASDAQ, given hundreds of speeches, created a hit podcast, done business in over 20 countries, traveled millions of air miles, drank a little whiskey and a couple of beers, learned to take and throw a punch, and how to laugh about the whole absurd thing.

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On today’s podcast, Laura talks to Neil Anderson, fractional CMO of Cask, LLC. Neil speaks about the importance of understanding your market in order to develop your position and message to create successful tactics and plans to grow your brand.

Neil Anderson is Partner and CMO at Chief Outsiders, a national management consulting firm offering fractional CMO services to mid-sized growth companies. He is currently serving as a fractional CMO of Cask LLC, a business and technology consulting company based in San Diego, CA.

Since 2013 he has been an independent marketing consultant and since 2016 a CMO with Chief Outsiders, a management consulting company that provides fractional marketing services to mid-sized growth companies.

Neil serves on the board of Matrium Technologies PTY Limited. He was VP Global Services at Spirent Communications, Chief Operating Officer at The Tolly Group and CEO of Tolly Research. He has a BM degree in Classical Guitar Performance from the Hartt College of Music, University of Hartford.

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On today’s episode, Laura speaks to Kris Gosser, CMO of Datica. On the show, Kris gives talks about his experience with startups and building a better business model, as well his insight on product marketing, rebranding, and building brand authority. Kris Gosser guides the revenue machine as Chief Marketing Officer at Datica, a growth-stage startup focusing on enabling the cloud for regulated industries. He started as a product leader in enterprise workflow automation before moving to the marketing side of the business. He likes to sit at the intersection of design, technology, and business to help craft empathetic products for markets in need. You can find him in Seattle enjoying what the Pacific Northwest has to offer.

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On today’s episode, Cliff speaks with John Bennett, Executive Director of the Sunny Days In-Home Care franchise. John talks about his unique business model for franchising in-home care for the elderly, and how to create consistency while maintaining a high level of care.

John Bennett is a former high school stats and geometry teacher, athletic director and varsity football coach. That experience has led to John becoming a maverick in support development and operations, providing team member’s the tools needed to provide quality care. John’s mathematics background also allows him to implement financial analyses that optimize policies and practices at all Sunny Days In-Home Care locations.

Not only is Bennett the Executive Director for Sunny Days, he is also founder David Ellenwood’s son-in-law. By combining a personal and professional business relationship, Ellenwood and Bennett do not only encourage supporting a family atmosphere at every Sunny Days locations, they live it.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbennett88/

http://sunnydaysinhomecare.com/

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On today’s show, Cliff speaks with David Hunter, CEO of Star Rapid. David talks about his work in the manufacturing sector, what it takes to meet customer’s needs and improve product design and process, keep your employees up to date on procedure, and how to achieve sustainable growth.

David is originally from London, David has outstanding knowledge and know-how of doing business in China, where he has resided since 2003. David has a proven track record of success in general management and has held senior positions in sales, marketing, business development and operations. David is dynamic and forward thinking, striving always for continuous improvement in all aspects of business and business relationships.

Outside of work, he enjoys spending time with his wife and four children, traveling and playing sports. As CEO of Star, he plans to elevate the business by bringing additional customer focus along with implementing industry 4.0 and continuing to develop what is already a great team, ultimately leading to greater customer satisfaction, consistent world-class performance and enable Star to achieve sustainable growth.

At Star Rapid David specializes in producing high-quality plastic injection molded parts and mold tools, with machining and finishing services to make tools from a variety of materials and can produce 50 to 100k+ finished parts in all major resins.

The Star Rapid team is highly focused on advanced material verification, inspection and testing to ensure your clients parts meet and exceed their highest expectations.

Star Rapid has these best in class programs in place:

– Star Rapid a unique service called OMOM, which stands for One Man One Mold Service.

 This service provides quick-turnaround plastic injection tooling in half the time of conventional tools. By streamlining the entire tooling project, from conception to completion, using a single master machinist who takes ownership of the project from start to finish.

– Design for Manufacturing, it is important to design for manufacturing when developing a new product to avoid costs and delays down the line.

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On today’s show, Cliff speaks with Zvi Band, CEO and Founder Contactually, a business software developer. Zvi talks about how he quickly, and sustainable grew his company, as well as developed a very user-friendly software that automatically aggregates and pulls in all of your relationships into one place, from email, social media, phone, calendar, et cetera. Helping you identify and group relevant contacts to your business and career.

Zvi Band started Contactually in 2011. It is one of the fastest-growing companies on the INC 5000 list, listed at 513; you’ve raised $17.8 million in investors’ funds. Zvi is active in the Washington, DC Tech Community and created “Proudly Made in DC” to continue the support, of the greater DC community.

Contactually is a software and service company that has grown with its impressive growing and dynamic team. Zvi says his team loves strong coffee, the latest technology, strange internet memes, and accomplishing great things through better, stronger relationships.

Contactually is a leader in business software, Zvi and his team early on recognized software is something, people are forced to use, not enjoy using. This is the challenge. Zvi knew that needed to change. So, his team doesn’t design software products to fit an existing mold; they design it to help people with their work.

Zvi, created a collaborative office space environment to ensure his team would thrive, and do great work. The result is that Contactually is a rapidly growing learning organization that’s constantly seeking to be better for its customers, their product, their team, and our investors.

Contactually is rated very well and is a fantastic software to simplify and automate personal communications with an extensive and loyal network of Real Estate agents using the software. With one click, users, connect their email accounts, and Contactually with its automatic sync of contacts and communication history, makes it easy to stay in touch with contacts and build a robust referral network.

For more on Contactually, visit: try.contactually.com

For more on Zvi Band, visit: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zviband/

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On today’s show, Laura speaks with Reb Risty, founder of RebL Marketing about how she built her brand, and managed the growth of her marketing company with time management, automation, and set processes, as well as how she helps her clients manage their growth objectives and allowing the right marketing to develop as the company grows.

Reb Risty is an expert in corporate brand management and online marketing with a focus in SEO, inbound marketing and lead generation. She has been called on multiple times in her career to work with growing companies and serve as the driving strategic and operational force behind the marketing and communications department to support the company’s growth objectives, while creating and enhancing brand awareness and equity. www.reblmarketing.com

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On today’s show, Laura speaks with Hiten Shah, owner and President of MES, Inc. Hiten speaks about his positive spin on failure and how it can always be turned into a lesson on developing better long-term strategies. Hiten also talks about the importance defining what you do well, and what you better than anyone else, and how it is critical to continually redefine that, as clients and the market change.

Hiten Shah believes that human beings have unlimited potential and he is the living proof.

Having started his career as a plastics engineer, Hiten knew very little about overseeing a global supply chain. But with an experience as key manager, process engineer, engineering manager then director of engineering, vice president of sales, and director of joint venture sales, he was ready for the challenge.

Hiten built MES, Inc. on a culture of trust and honesty, where employees have the freedom to express themselves and where everyone in the company strives to treat all people—coworkers, customers, and suppliers—fairly and transparently. MES today incorporates both his ambitious work ethic and his personal values.

Hiten credits a lot of his success to his wife of 27 years, Heena.

MES develops custom engineered solutions by leveraging global manufacturing resources and implementing comprehensive supply chain solutions. It follows five distinct steps from finding and auditing suppliers to developing their quality systems, consolidating shipments at various ports, performing domestic value-added operations and warehousing near customers and shipping Just-In-Time.

For more about MES, Inc. visit: http://www.mesinc.net/

For more on Hiten Shah, visit https://www.linkedin.com/in/hitenshahmes/

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On today’s show, Cliff speaks with Tony Pompliano, President and CEO of ANEXIO, a Raleigh-based desktop to data center, infrastructure-as-a-service company. Tony talks about creating value for your product or service that draws in investors and delivers a successful return and profitable growth for the company.

Since 2013, Tony had led ANEXIO to grow more than 1,400 percent as it builds new, mission critical infrastructure for the world’s most innovative organizations. This growth is in large part due to Tony’s expertise in mergers and acquisitions, as he’s led the company to successfully acquire several companies in the past few years.

ANEXIO is included on the Inc 500 list of America’s fastest-growing privately held companies, and is transforming the IT industry by building high-performance technology infrastructure to serve the complex computing needs of the world’s most innovative companies. The company provides this mission-critical infrastructure across eight Tier III SOC-2 certified data centers, an IT solutions center, and a nationwide IP Network. ANEXIO continues to accelerate as the company builds new infrastructure for emerging technologies.

For more on ANEXIO, visit https://www.anexio.com/

For more on Tony Pompliano, visit https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonypompliano/

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The 6-Month Acquisition War Zone: Inside the Multi-Million Dollar Deal That ALMOST Died

Stop searching for a job and start buying profitable companies. This is the true acquisition playbook used by Patriot Growth Capital to close a multi-million dollar business acquisition—the 6-month war zone and mountain of due diligence nobody tells you about. Host Jeff Barnes walks through the harsh realities of securing an SBA loan (including the personal guarantee), vetting hundreds of businesses just to find one, and navigating the deadly financial pitfalls of a profitable company. If you want to build wealth by acquiring a business that runs on “autopilot”, you must understand the difference between buying a business and buying a problem.

In this episode, you will learn the secret strategies for successful M&A:

• How to vet military veterans to become high-performing operators, ensuring your acquisition runs effectively without the founder.

• The critical dangers of seller fatigue and financial “ad backs,” which can derail a deal even after six months of intense underwriting.

• Why finding a business that runs on documented Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) is essential to prevent key team members from leaving upon closing.

Episode Timestamps:

00:01 – Why We Only Buy Defense/E-Commerce Companies 

04:35 – From Nuclear Systems to Boiler Inspector: The Civilian World Insult 

09:07 – The Hell of Due Diligence and the SBA Personal Guarantee 

13:40 – Hand-Holding the Seller: Why They Might Fix Their Business and Bail 

20:02 – Financial Ad Backs, Multiples, and the Tax-Free Investor Hack (Section 1202)

Connect with Jeff Barnes: 

Website: https://www.jeffbarnes.ceo/  

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffpbarnes

Join the Mastermind Investment Club to learn what it takes to do deals with people who know what the hell they are doing, cutting down the time you need to spend vetting deals

https://mic.mastermindinvestmentclub.com/ 

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