Welcome to the Entrepreneurial Leap Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dubay. For context, this podcast is inspired by the book Entrepreneurial Leap by Gino Wickman. Gino is the founder of EOS Worldwide, and an author with over 2 million copies of his books sold worldwide. Now, in his next phase, he's taking his passion for helping entrepreneurs by partnering with five equally passionate, successful entrepreneurs, myself included, who have created the E LEAP Academy, where we teach the content from the book in a one year program guaranteed to increase the success of early stage businesses. Now, a quick note about me, I've been an entrepreneur since the age of 14. When I started my first business selling Blow Pop Lollipops outta my locker with my best friend, I ran a company that I sold to a public company and later bought back. I'm an author, speaker, host of an annual leadership retreat, and I'm partners in several other businesses.

I'll be your host for the Entrepreneurial LEAP Podcast, where every other week you will be hearing life stories from successful entrepreneurs who took the leap into entrepreneurship. You will learn from their mistakes and successes and be inspired as you move forward on your journey. Now, before I introduce my guest, I'm going to share with you a bit about Ewe Academy. The Entrepreneurial Leap Academy provides an immersive nine month experience for new entrepreneurs with a focus on the three Cs, clarity, competence, and community. Let's start with the first C Clarity. You'll learn to be clear about who you are, what you want from your business, and how to get it. The next C confidence, you will learn to be confident you are on the right path equipped with powerful mindset tools. The last C connected you will become connected to a community of entrepreneurs just like you. Now, all participants receive four full day in-person classes led by experience entrepreneurs to equip you with the tools and strategies necessary to build a successful business. The Academy's dynamic community connects participants with a tribe of like-minded individuals for support and networking opportunities. During in between classes, students also receive a seasoned mentor offering personalized guidance and expertise to help you navigate the challenges of entrepreneurship. To start building the business of your dreams, visit our website@eleap.com. Again, that's e leap.com. There you can learn more about and sign up for the next Entrepreneurial LEAP Academy.

Today's guest is Eric Rieger. Eric is the founder and CEO of Webit Services. webit runs on the entrepreneurial operating system EOS and is an employee-owned people-focused IT strategy, service and support company serving small to medium sized businesses in the eight counties around Chicago and northern Illinois. In addition to providing managed IT services, their secure bit managed security team helps organizations identify, managed and reduce risk in their business. Their upstream impact software division creates applications that help non-profit organizations achieve their mission. Their most recent application pantry Easy is an online market that helps food pantries get their goods to their clients quickly and efficiently. Their goal to be 100% employee owned with 100 employee owners by the year 2030. Eric is an amazing person and a close friend of mine, so I know you are going to enjoy my chat with him. Eric, it's awesome to see you again. I wish we were in person like the last time I saw you, but I'll take Zoom. How you doing? Thank you for doing this.

I, I concur. I I wish it was in person, but this is, this is a good alternative. I'm doing great. How are you?

I'm good. I said in the intro that not only are you an amazing entrepreneur, but you're a good friend. So it's really fun to be able to do this with you. And I always like to start with a quote, so I'm gonna read the quote and then you can, if you happen to know who it is, that's great, but no pressure, and then just whatever comes to mind for you when you hear it. So it goes like this. Every beginning has an ending, and when you're a business owner, that ending is referred to as your exit strategy. I still bristle at that term from the first time I heard it nearly 30 years ago at the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey, I thought, wow, that sounds like a lot like an escape plan. The visual imagery of me holding big bags of money and sneaking out the back door popped into my head. Yes, some of that was driven by my poor relationship with money at the time, and the fact that almost every close family member for the last century or so quote, died with their boots on unquote. Do you know who said that? And what comes to your mind?

Well, when you first started reading, I'm going, man, that sounds a lot like me. And then you kept reading and I'm going, that's me.

I love that though. I do love that what you said there. So anyway, just expand on that.

Yeah, so, you know, we're we're talking about like when you get started, you know, if you get into peer groups or, or start hanging around other entrepreneurs or, you know, being around seasoned business owners, the exit strategy conversation inevitably comes up. And the first time I heard it, it it just kind of hit me like, you know, that's never been a thing in our history. You know, like, and I, I, I was like half joking that planning was not like a, a big part of, you know, my life. It was just kind of things happened, I react to 'em move forward, and that's kind of how I was going with my business. And I got lucky in a lot of areas where I got introduced to the right people at the right time and things like that. But the exit strategy, it just hit me wrong of, you know, like, boy, I'm planning to escape, and that just didn't seem right to me. So that's, that's where that whole quote evolved from.

I love it. We're gonna talk a little bit more about what that means to you now, but before we do, I, we always like to hear the entrepreneurial journey that you've been on and, you know, where did it start for you? What was your first real business? And just take it from there and I'll maybe chime in a little as you go.

Sure. Well, you and I have similar traits in that regard where high school was kind of the, the start of the journey when I realized there might be some entrepreneurial tendencies in my DNA. We, a friend of mine and I were going to like a, a distributor warehouse and buying a bunch of cheap, like toy robots and, and little toy, and we were selling 'em in the cafeteria during breaks. And then finally the administrators, there's all these little robots running around, wind up robots, and he goes, where are these things coming from? And, you know, so it kind of evolved from there. But the, the first real business I, I started, I basically took over a friend's t-shirt, friend's father's t-shirt business. And that's what eventually evolved into webit that I'm still part of today.

Gotcha. And then I think you went to college, and if I'm right about that, was it worth it? And if so, what, what did you learn or if not, why?

Yeah, I went four times four different colleges, all c Explain that. Yeah, all community colleges. So one of the first real jobs I had as a, a warehouse manager, I wanted to, you know, go up the, the chain as it were. You know, that's kind of what people do when you have, you know, you wanna escalate, you know, your, your position. So my boss at the time said, well, if you want more money and, and more control, you have to get a degree. So they paid for me to go to community college to get a degree in materials management. So that's typically I'm a glorified warehouse manager from the educational system. And then I went, I took a year of accounting. I did before all this, like when I actually got outta high school, I went for photography and advertising art on two separate times I was gonna be an artist and that part of my brain just didn't cooperate with the rest of life.

So, and then I got in and got exposed to what that is like in the business world, and I went, okay, that's nothing like what I thought it would be. So from that perspective, college was good to be an eye-opener of what you thought something was versus what it actually was from a business perspective. And then as far as like, I have zero IT training in terms of like, that's our business. Is it, it security, software development, all of that. I'm self-taught. I would pick up these giant really thick books and, and kind of skim through 'em to the parts I needed to solve problems. And I know that's one of the, one of the things you guys teach is, you know, about being a problem solver. So I definitely have that in my DNA, but I take the shortcuts to get to the problem solving.

I don't wanna read the, the, the tome. I want to just get to the, the meaty part and get my problem and move on to the next thing. But the, the college experience, it opened my eyes and expanded some horizons. So like learning accounting, basic accounting, I'm a danger and I know enough to be dangerous in that area. Being in the, you know, having a degree in, you know, sort of kind of business in materials management, I learned purchasing, negotiating, things like that. So some of that wound up being useful in the big picture, but there's other ways to get that. So I mean, you know, I wouldn't drop 250 K on a degree today. That's just me because math. But that's a whole other animal.

That's great. Well, it's interesting too because you, you know, you had an employer who actually was willing to pay for you to go to college. So that's something we always throw out there is, you know, if you can find a way for someone to pay that bill for you, that's not a bad path. You know, I was curious, I didn't know that the T-shirt business turned into web it, which is an IT service at the, so how do you go from T-shirts to IT services? And just let me ask you one more piece to this. 'cause if I understand this correctly, you were actually working at the same time you started Webit, if I got that right, so kind of bring that all together.

Yeah, it, it's a mess. So, so the, the need for organizing things, so like I would go over to my friend's house and I would see everything kind of in disarray. So I would just kind of meander into the back room and start organizing the shelves and putting things together and labeling things and like, you know, hey, there's a real opportunity to make some money here and help people. And his father and my father were probably, you know, neck and neck for worst business person ever. They're great human beings, but just did not like understand functionally how to run a business that could stay in business. So there's that balancing act. So I, I did that for a while. And then my former boss, as we were doing this, I designed a logo for, for golf shirts that I thought was pretty cool. And this was back in the days now, you know, internet didn't really exist.

Di we were still dialing up into bulletin boards and things like that. So rudimentary drawing programs created this logo for a T-shirt or for a, for a golf shirt. And my, my old boss was gonna get Mike Ditka, the former coach of the Chicago Bears to rep this for us. So long story short, wound up getting about $3,500 worth of gear in his hands, and he gladly accepted it and then did no promotional marketing or anything for us. Of course. So that was an early lesson in, you know, marketing and branding and, and all that stuff. But I was still that it nerd. So, you know, people like, Hey, you're a computer guy, can you do this? And so I was starting to build up some revenue doing that, and it was kind of like, Hey, this is more lucrative and I am better at this and I don't have to stay up till midnight pressing t-shirts to make, you know, 20 cents on an order. So, ah, the T-shirt kind of just sunsetted. And then I just kind of started running revenue for the IT stuff I was doing for family, friends and all that other stuff through that part of the business. And here we are. While

You were working?

Yes.

And then at what point did you say, you know what, this is becoming enough of a thing, I'm gonna actually quit my job and do this full-time.

Yeah, I was a director of operations for a software company and I hated it there. We had grown from eight to 80 people. The culture went from very family oriented to very adversarial, a lot of cliques and groups, us versus them treated our employees like crap, treated the clients like crap. A lot of things changed in that environment. And I just, I was eating a bottle of Tums every week. Like that's no lie. I would go, you know, that's how painful and stressful that job was. And I just literally woke up one morning and decided I didn't want to do this anymore. I had a call with my father at the time, and, you know, he was, he was the one person that always believed in me. And I, I really truly believe that you have to have at least one person in your life who believes in you enough to give you that push into the, you know, taking that leap. And he was the guy, you know, he, I had that conversation. He goes, you have a credit card, go for it. And I'm not recommending that as a strategy for anybody listening, but that was, it was more the push and the belief that you could do this. So I just walked in and gave two weeks notice. And I remember sitting in this very room going, okay, now what? No kidding.

That exact room. Yeah. No kidding. Wow. Amazing. You know, it's, it's amazing like hearing it all in the culmination of all the experiences that you've had, because even with your college experience, advertising, photography, accounting, materials management, who knew that in your visionary, I mean, you're off the charts visionary, you know, who knew that actually this, all this experience that you were getting, everything that you were learning would really come into play as an entrepreneur running your own business. Do you, do you notice that?

Well, now I do, but back then I had, you know, it was just right. You know, why is the universe, you know, this is before I evolved as a, as a human as well, but it's like, why is the universe doing this to me? And it's like, I just got pushed till I couldn't take, take it anymore. And, you know, not having a plan was not necessarily a great thing, but I'm one of those I types of people that the more pressure there is, the better I perform. So I almost need that chaos to function. Yeah. If that makes sense to know it makes sense to you. Sure.

It makes sense to many, but I'm sure it makes sense to many listening to this as well, you know, so we, we always, oh, I wanted to ask you before I move on to my next question. How, how do you feel about entrepreneurs who do what you did? You stayed employed, but you kind of started your business, kind of got it going at the same time that as a strategy, as opposed to just dropping everything and being a hundred percent focused.

Yeah, I mean there's, there's no like perfect roadmap that it's more of a safety net to do it that way because you can kind of test some concepts out, but at the same time, you're not all in. So it's, it's kind of that mixed bag. I, I didn't realize I was doing it at the time because like the people I was helping, you know, they were just people that I cared about. So, you know, you've got this extra revenue stream coming in and, you know, there wasn't a lot of conscious thought behind it, but like, looking back on it now, at least there was some type of, you know, it's like it wasn't gonna be completely ramen noodles and grilled cheese forever. Right. But yeah, I mean there's, there's, there's definitely, you know, if you're gonna go, just go, there's gotta be some kind of funding strategy because you know, that's the cash is the oxygen of the business. You run outta that, that can be a tipping point pretty quickly. So

Let me ask you about that, because that's one of the stages that we talk about in the academy generating cashflow. So when did you begin to notice like, this is a really important thing here for my business?

Well, when, when you have a mortgage to pay and when you have your bills, it's like sitting in this room thinking like, what's next? You know, that's really important. And then, and then you gotta, like, I'm, I, I'm kind of a math person in that regard of you, you just start extrapolating the numbers out and it's like, okay, at what point do I run out? And back then, like when I started this, it was a lot easier to get access to cash for some people. Like, I'll caveat that I'm aware that the playing field is an equal for everybody, but in my circumstances it was surprisingly easy to get a loan and, and, and, you know, home equity loan and things like that, not advocating for that. But those are things you need to think about. And once you have the cash, you know, what you do with that is gonna determine how long you can survive in that kind of model before you actually are producing some revenue. I think that's what's wrong with a lot of these startups today. You see these private equity firms pumping tons and then they burn through cash so quickly trying to get to profitability and market share. And it's like, if you don't have a model design that's profitable pretty quickly, what do you like? This is not a thing where you figure this out as you go when you're taking somebody else's money because they wanna return at some point. So, I don't know. I disagree with a lot of what's going on in the world, but

Yeah, it's, it's almost like it's another like, unless you're, unless you're swinging for the fences on something Yeah. But your everyday business, like an IT services company or a manage print services company, like my company image one, you know, these are the up and down the street companies of America, you know? Right. And it's a different strategy and a different mindset, but you did have an early awareness of the importance of generating cash flow. And I just wanna bring that to the forefront for the listeners. 'cause it's super important, oftentimes gets overlooked. People are afraid of numbers, you know, what are your thoughts on that? Just understanding your numbers?

Well, I, I think first of all, finance, it doesn't have to be as scary as, as it seems. There's, there's several good resources out there that will teach basic finance. And, you know, the, the two things, understanding your income statement, understanding your balance sheet, like that would be one and two on my checklist of financial literacy early on is, is understanding the drivers of that. And that profit doesn't equal cash. And you can, you can get crazy profitable and go out of business pretty quickly too. So, and that people are probably going, huh? Wait, what? Yeah, if you're not careful, you can, you can be a very profitable company.

How does that happen?

Well, if you're, if you're taking on a lot of business and then you have to make investments in people, if you don't understand your curve, you could wind up with a really poor culture that now you're this loop of replacing people constantly. 'cause I don't know if anybody's tried hiring and recruiting can be expensive if you are. I, and we found this out early in our business too. We got, when there was just two of us, we got an $80,000 order for hardware and then I got back home and I went, oh, wait a minute, we have to buy this hardware before they pay it. Like, I didn't even ask for any money. You do that two or three times and now people are like, okay, well you sold some stuff and you're profitable, but you gotta outlay the cash. And then god forbid something happens where they don't pay you early on, you know, that can be catastrophic. So, yeah,

That's right.

Yeah. Don't learn the hard way on that one. That's

Right. Be on top of those receivables.

Absolutely.

We always like to ask, can you share your story of the nightmare as an entrepreneur?

So you want my everyday, every day could be we're, we're an IT security, so like every day is a potential nightmare. But so the, I mean, for me, the biggest, the biggest things are like losing a big client, having somebody do something unethical and having, you know, I mean, those are tough to conversations that're easy, they're easy to do because it's the right thing. But just, you know, or having a dry sales pipeline, like that's, those are nightmare scenarios because now you're just like, the way my brain works is it's always looking for that. You know, you talk about being driven and I've got the wiring for that is I'm always looking for the thing that's gonna come out of the sky and eat me. So there's a lot of that that plays into it. When, you know, sales are down or profit's down or, or you've got employee churn or client churn, those all tend to be bad days. Fortunately for us, like we haven't had very many security incidents. Everything knock wood has been recoverable and they're few and far between. But that is my nightmare scenario is somebody breaches your, like our company and like there there's dozens, hundreds of businesses that could be at risk by that. So yeah, it's, it's a daily nightmare.

And, well, what about the opposite? What's been your dream that has happened for you since you started the company?

Yeah. Well we've, we've gotten, I, I've gotten more clear on my purpose. So, you know, kind of taking a step back when you're talking about starting a business, you know, you kind of have to know your why. I mean, Simon Sinek has that book start with Why. And I think a lot of people gloss over it and you gotta dig deep. And for me, you know, going through the layers of, of what this all means and, you know, tying it to an exit strategy, like handing your company over to somebody, especially now, 27 years of my life have been poured into this, and now you're gonna just trust somebody you don't even really know that well, to take it and go to the next level. So you kind of have to decide are you, you know, a lifestyle business? Are you just kind of doing this to, there's a certain life I want to create.

And I'm not judging anybody's reasons for being in the business, but for me personally, like I've always had this weird relationship with money as, as it's another necessary evil, but financial freedom buys you time and time is the most valuable thing you have. So understanding that my why is I've been watching over my life, the this income inequality gap get bigger and bigger and we need more social services. And we deal with a lot of nonprofits. We've gotten into that as, as the company's evolved. And so that kind of became my personal drumbeat is I want to close the income inequality, I wanna stop it from growing and I wanna shrink it back down to a more reasonable level. You know, and, and again, when I look at my company, I'm not the only person generating value in the company. So at this end, with this exit strategy, why should I be the only one that benefits from it? And then they just get the reward of a job with somebody they don't know and they didn't sign up for. So we'll talk about that, I'm sure in a little bit about that part of it. Yeah. But just kind of understanding why you're in business will go a long way for making decisions, you know? 'cause then that's a guidepost. You can just line it up. Does it, does it match with this? If no, don't do it. Yeah. Or stop doing it.

I love what you're saying because we, part of what we teach is confirm. And so the first thing we want you to do, especially at this early stage, is confirm why you're doing this and are you made for it? Because you're about to have 10 years of potential. Hell, you know, you're gonna have your ups and your downs, and now's a great time to stop and realize maybe I shouldn't be going down this path, or I'm all in. Let's go. One of the things you and I talked about before we started recording is these six essential traits that we have. You think about, so you've talked about the why now let's talk about the traits. They are, as I always say on the podcast, visionary, passionate, problem, solver driven, risk taker, and responsible, of course. Eric, where do you fall on those? Do you have 'em all?

I, I definitely have 'em all. And some are too far off the charts for, for my own good, like the visionary tendency. I'm, I'm off the charts. And, and just so for everybody listening, if you are like that and you have a million ideas a day, chances are in the course of a month, one of them might be worth pursuing. So sit with it. And if you're still have that feeling about it a week or two or three later, that's something to explore. But if you've kind of forgotten about, you know, if you go to the next one and the next one and the next one. So yeah, they're, they're, I'm, I'm all of those things, some more than others. And it's kind of interesting when you have risk taker and responsible in the same bucket. I, I understand what you mean by that. Like, you don't get anywhere in business by not taking risks. There's, there's two states to a business, you're spiraling up or you're spiraling down. There's no, there's no stasis. Like, there's no static. You're either moving up or you're moving down. And you have to be aware of that. And in order to move forward, you gotta take some risks. But the responsible part is we're not just blindly jumping off a cliff and hoping somebody throws us a parachute. It's a calculated risk. It's right. Yeah. So I get all that. Yes, absolutely. A hundred percent.

What about mentors? Have you had mentors and how important are they if you have had them?

Yeah, they are essential. Like, I, I can't imagine being in business and not having a mentor. Now with that being said, like in our industry, there are a lot of snake oil salespeople out there. So there are people who couldn't succeed in the business, and now they coach other people because theoretically they understand how it's supposed to be done. They just couldn't execute themselves. It is what it is. So when you're getting into a relationship with a coach or a mentor, you know, my first piece of advice is do some homework and make sure this person can help get you where you want to go. And I, I read early in a book, you know, like somebody was, was just knocking on doors of people's houses that like, in an area they wanted to live in and just going, what do you do for a living?

What do you do for a living? Teach me how you got here. Maybe not that approach, but you know, again, if you're trying to aspire to something in a certain market or certain industry, who are the people who have demonstrated success with that? Who are their mentors? Or are they now mentoring people? That, that's a critical thing. And for me, I, I wound up having a, a coach mentor early on who understood the mental health aspect of it. And I still have mental health challenges. I think most people do. So I know Simon Sinek's talking about changing the con the, the conversation to mental fitness and not mental health. And it's the same thing. Like if your muscles are atrophying, you can go to the gym having a, a coach for that. Well, he, he got me into therapy. It took a year before I, you know, I begrudgingly did it because there's this whole stigma around therapy. But it really, it saved my life because I was in, I, I've gotten into a very dark place and I was having not great thoughts about the future and life and all the things that, and, and being an entrepreneur, that stuff will beat you down if you don't have proper channels and outputs and you can't talk to your employees about this stuff.

You know, you wanna drive people outta your company, you know, show 'em how unstable you are, watch them head to the door. So you, you have to have outlets for that, for somebody who has the framework to understand how to guide you, be sympathetic empathetic, but also, you know, hold you accountable when you need to. And that's what my coach did and got me into therapy and it changed the game. I mean, there were a lot of other things from childhood on that were unaddressed that I had to figure out. And the process of therapy, and it's gonna be ongoing for the rest of my life. It's just, it's just part of my fitness routine now.

Yeah, that's so good. You know, we talk about some eight must-dos for entrepreneurs. And you mentioned earlier that you had a partner and are you a partner person? We always ask that to the entrepreneurs that come through the academy. And if you are, is it beneficial if you're not? Is it, you know, what is your makeup that you're preferring to not have a partner?

Yeah, so for, I mean for me, I've, you know, I was raised an only child, so I have only child syndrome. They're all my toys and I don't be nice with others. So this is part of what therapy's been helping me with. But the, the whole trying to navigate, you know, like I'm, I'm tough to get along with. I just, I admit some of my flaws that I'm very determined. That's the, that's the politically correct way of saying stubborn. So for me, having a partner, like, you know, that, that was challenging. But through the course of the business, like when we started practicing EOS and then I, I, we brought in a person into the company who's now our president, and he's an integrator. Having somebody like I, I look at him as a partner in the business, we're employee owned now. So there's that part of it as well. But he's, his strengths are my weaknesses and vice versa. And that was a nice compliment. So what I've learned is there are stages when you have to start shedding responsibilities off of your plate. And I learned all of those the hard ways. So I'm, I'm kind of like, well, I'm, I do this better than anybody else, so I'll just keep doing this and

Well through you. Hopefully others won't make those mistakes. That's part of the goal here. But, you know, you talked about hiring an integrator and that's one of the stages that we talk about. At a certain point you kind of need your counterpart, especially you mentioned earlier, you have all these ideas. Sometimes you can be a little bit challenging to get along with, you know, because you're determined, et cetera. What does the integrator really do for you? Why is that so important at this stage in a business? Sure.

Well, a co couple things is when you're an unchecked visionary, you, you are happy to let everybody know all your crazy ideas. And when you put your shoes on from the employee's perspective, that's a chaotic environment. Like, hey, we're going this way and now today we're going this way and now we're going this way. And it's like, you know, most people want a stable environment where they know the trajectory. And if you're constantly changing course, it's like trying to go from New York to California by hitting every city in between. And nobody wants to go on that journey. So an integrator comes in, you know, if you've got, there's, there's a lot of nuance to this. You know, first and foremost, the integrator has to be wired to be an integrator and, and really embrace that role. So when you find somebody who's like that, now you have to form this, the vi pair, the visionary integrator pairing.

And our first year together, we fought all the time. It was like oil and water. And it was mostly because I didn't understand the dynamics. And then once I understood how he could help make everything better in the organization, so now I have one place to dump all my crazy ideas. We have a same page meeting once a month. I put 'em in a place. So I don't even bother with him. I just, I have this notebook, I put it all in, everything in one place. He goes to it and he'll pick what he thinks might be a good subject to talk about. And if I'm still interested in it, then we know maybe we got something. And if I'm like, oh yeah, I'm, I've lost interest, we move on to the next thing. But now the employees don't get any exposure to that. And, and we have this, we we're a lot more stable in terms of not changing course all the time. So they, the integrator's primary role is to keep the trains running on time and make sure there's accountability, which is something I'm not great at.

It's so ideal. And then, you know, even from your integrator or clients as you were going along, you know, one of the must-dos we talk about is taking criticism and doubt with a grain of salt. And I'm just curious how that showed up for you.

Yeah, I've, I've got a lot of challenges with being criticized. It depends on who's doing it and the tone and how, you know, so on any given day, it could land perfectly or it can just really sit with me for a week or more. And then doubt, I mean, you know, if you're, if you don't have doubt living in your head, you're probably not an entrepreneur because I mean, we, we, the imposter syndrome is something I am very comfortable with now. Like it's, it just, you know, I, and, and this is going back to the coaching, like every six to 12 months I would've a call with my coach and just be panicking, like, oh my God, well, like, I never signed up for this. I can't run a company. We, we have, we have 15 people now we have 20 people now we have to who let me run a company with this many lives at stake.

And he would do what you're doing is he would laugh at me and, and I, that would make me more agitated and he would then stop me and he goes, you know, he goes, I'll stop. I'll, I'll start getting serious with this when you come and say, I've got it all figured out. So it's kind of that productive paranoia. That's what we termed it. I'm sure it's not an original, other people have said that, but you need a healthy dose of that. And you know, the, the criticism, if it's given with love, you have to accept it and then really dive into it. Like, okay, put yourself in the other person's shoes, how are they seeing this? And, and you'd be surprised at what doors open up when you're willing to embrace that as opposed to bristle. And I, I, I still struggle in that regard, but getting better.

But you're self aware of it nowadays?

Oh, very much, yeah.

Becoming emotionally intelligent, for sure. All of us are on that path. You know, we, we talk about these eight critical mistakes that show up, and one of them is just not having a vision. So a must do from our standpoint is having a clear vision. Can you talk about your experience with that? And then you mentioned employee stock ownership plan, and I wonder how that fits in with your vision?

Yeah, well my, my vision has evolved over time. So when I, when I first, you know, kind of took the leap, I just didn't want to be where I was like, that was, the vision is get out and I could do it better. And I, that probably resonates with a lot of people because that's, you know, to me that's one of the things that's inside you is you want to improve. You know, you see, you see a gap or you see something that's not, and you want to go fix it or improve it or make the world a better place. So it took a while for me to kind of dive back into, that's that's who I am. And I think that's who a lot of entrepreneurs are. We wanna make the world a better place. So that's kind of your starting point. Now, how do you define that?

What are, what are you gonna do? And then when we got to the whole exit strategy conversations, one of my coaches introduced me to open book management, which that was like a light switch for me because opening the books is something that's a really taboo topic for a lot of people. And my question, and I, again, this comes from a place of love, not anything else. Why are you scared to open the books now in a very small percentage of the people, it's, they're doing something that they don't want anybody to see, or they've got two sets of books or whatever. It's a very tiny percentage. The others are, I'm not competent enough to explain it. So I don't want to have to get questions from people and then look like an idiot. And my response to that is, embrace your inner idiot. And that's how you learn together, right?

That's, I mean, just you have to preface how you roll this out when you're doing open book. Because if you come off as like, I know everything and here we go, you're gonna look like an idiot at some point. So getting somebody to help you do that. But that was the stepping stone that exposed us to this whole employee ENT or ownership. And I went, aha, that now ties into who better to take care of the company than the people who are creating the value and putting their heart and soul into it. And what a great reward. Let's share everything with them. And that's, and I, I went down that path. So now our, our big vision is not to just be a good IT company or make a difference, you know, like we're, we're involved in a lot of nonprofit work we're, we have the software division focused on food insecurity.

So we're, we're making a pretty decent dent in the local community on that. But becoming employee owned was like the first step. Now we have to become really good at being employee owned. And then the ultimate why is to become a beacon for other companies to see us as the blueprint of employee ownership. I've discovered a few things along the way where there's a few cracks in the armor I have to go back and fix, but that's the journey now is to get really good at this to where other companies look and go, Hey, and, and that's already kind of started. Some clients have had conversations, prospects, when I go in to meet with 'em, they're like, you know, because you bring that out in your, you know, that's a differentiator for sure. And it's, that kind of is what keeps me excited is when I see other, okay, this has some legs we can, and then that's eventually what's gonna close that income and quality gap.

And we haven't talked on the podcast much about employee ownership, and I don't wanna turn this into a conversation about that, but for many that don't understand it, especially at an earlier a an early stage, like they're at who they're just grinding it out right now, how do you just sell all the shares to the employees? Or can you explain exactly how you can take go about becoming employee owned?

Yeah, there's, there's people out there, advisors who can do a much better job than I can. There's different paths. So basically you kind of have to look at it as like, let's, and I'm just gonna use my case as a single owner. Perfect. So like, I own a hundred percent of the company. And when we first started it, when you incorporate it, there was a thousand shares. 'cause you have to do something when you register with the state. And so like, they're like, how many shares? I don't a thousand shares. I don't know. 'cause I, I did not have a plan. So we had to convert that into a hundred thousand shares because now you're gonna distribute that to everybody. But what basically you, what you do is, in our case, we set up a trust. The trust bought 30% from me, so 30,000 shares, and then the company pays me back over time I decided I didn't want to use a bank because I'm a control freak.

And I didn't want anybody, if they're, if we got into a little bit of a bumpy patch, I could say, stop paying me. So it's a much deeper conversation, but at the end of the day, it's just basically transferring your ownership to somebody else. And in this case, instead of private equity or another strategic buyer, you're, you're putting it in our, in, in our case, a trust. And then those shares get issued to the employees and when they leave, they go back into the trust. The employees can't sell 'em to anybody else. They can't hand 'em down. So once your employment ends, they go back and then you get paid out for whatever the value of the shares are at that time. Yep. So it's a great way to make a sustainable company, but there's definitely challenges in that model as well.

And it's a great explanation because you can do it over time. You can sell the shares over time, and as an owner you can retain some of the shares as well for as long as you'd like.

Absolutely.

So you kind of get the best of both worlds in a, in a way. Last question I want to ask you is about capitalizing on coaching, training and mentoring. You know, one of the things you talked about was being involved with different types of organizations. How has that showed up to help you and the company, you know, accelerate your growth and your culture?

Yeah, I mean, there's, there's nothing better than a well organized group of peers with, with a, a framework and, and coaches, mentors, leaders to help you navigate because it's, it's, it gets tougher every year to be a business owner. There's just a lot of, a lot of variables in play, economic, you know, a lot of stuff that's outta your control. And so trying to figure it all out on your own, it, it's insanity. I mean, it's, it's, it's almost an impossible task these days. It's not, it's it's not as simple as it used to be. And so having somebody who can guide you and see when you're heading down the wrong path or congratulate you when, because a lot of times we won't take credit and you do have to stop and pause and turn around and appreciate where you've been to where you've come and, and good peers and mentors and coaches can, can definitely do that for you. So I don't see how you can survive long-term in business without that structure in your life.

Hmm. Great. Thank you Eric. And Eric, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today. I really am grateful to you.

I am, I am equally grateful to, for you as well.

Such a great guy. And to all the amazing entrepreneurs listening today, I greatly appreciate you spending time with us and I wish you all, as always, much love and gratitude.