Tell me about your vision.
You know, my vision really started
with my own entrepreneurial career
in that many people enter the world of business.
They work for someone else and one day they realize,
hey, I might wanna try to do this myself.
So they become entrepreneurs.
And the end game of that is,
do I build something valuable and can I monetize that?
Can I sell that?
Can I turn my life's work into a legacy,
whether it's financial or otherwise?
So my vision is to help people realize that legacy
and to take whatever they've created
and turn it into somebody else's baby,
which means that they usually get a lot of zeros
in their bank account.
Very good.
Why, Craig, you?
Where did this vision come from?
Why should we believe that you're the guy who does it?
I'm gonna hit kind of hard on this
because I think the audience deserves it.
Well, I spent 12 years in a corporate career.
Then I spent the next 15 years in an entrepreneurial career
in which I started seven businesses,
acquired seven businesses,
and then did 22 add-on or bolt-on acquisitions
on those various businesses.
So then after selling my last company
and I had several successful exits,
I decided to kind of take what I've learned the hard way
by hiring great investment bankers
and some not so great investment bankers
and creating those liquidity events
and said, I'm gonna help clients for the next 10 years.
And so for the last 10 years,
we've been helping clients monetize their life's work
and help them grab the brass ring, so to speak,
by achieving a sale to a third party.
So why me?
Is because I've been there, done that,
I've walked the walk, I've sat in a shoe.
I gotta ask more about the depth though.
I know most people would bow to you
on what you just said.
And they wouldn't be wrong to, you know,
it'd be easy to piss somebody off
that was as direct as I am,
but so did 37 Signals, which has become Basecamp.
And most of those projects failed.
Successful exit, people love to say things like that.
I think you have a depth here, which is why I'm going there.
Help us understand, quantify that for us.
To a degree that's not too personal, perhaps,
but you know what I mean?
There's a lot of people who can say that
without actually having done those things
in a way that was productive and helpful
for both their life and society.
Yeah, I think like anything else,
early lessons are usually good ones.
And I started my first company in my early 20s
as a hobby and a passion.
That's how most people get into their chosen business.
And then one of my lessons learned
was not so much in a amazing successful outcome,
even though my return on equity was great,
was during the Great Recession
when I was forced to sell one of my businesses
because we were growing 40% a year
and I had taken on a bunch of debt to buy out a partner.
And then all of a sudden the world stopped.
And I had to figure out very quickly
how to break my company up
into three different divisions
and sell those divisions individually
within a very tight timeframe
because there was no capital in the market,
there was no lending going on in the market,
and the bank had called my note.
So ultimately it's all about the experience
you bring to the table,
the good, the bad, and the indifferent.
If people were to say to me,
okay, you've been in my shoes, I get it,
but where did you learn the most?
I learned the most in terms of how to create
that supply and demand
that you and I were talking about earlier
in my first successful sale.
But I learned the most about the technical
and when to hold them, when to fold them,
all of that experience,
not only through those other divestitures and exits,
but in that tough one
where I probably left about $10 million on the table
because I had to, I had no choice.
My other choice would have been to walk away
and say, I'm done, I can't figure it out,
it's beyond me, and hand the bank the keys.
But instead I orchestrated three separate exits
for that one company,
and I still managed to put a nice return in my pocket.
So I would say, you know, the plaques on the wall are great
and a lot of people talk about them,
but the scars on the back
that really teach you how to win at this game.
You have me absolutely fascinated and intrigued.
I'm excited to explore more with you.
So I wanna do that for the show.
I wanna do that outside of the show.
It's not easy to find people, you know,
and it's not easy to find specialists in any expertise.
And this is one of those that as a society,
96% failure rate of business, you know, within 10 years,
4% who survive.
You said something that intrigues me too.
Maybe we debated a little bit.
You said most people get into business
because of a passion or a hobby.
I don't believe that, not for the newer generations.
And there's some data to support my argument
if it's not argument, you know,
you might be right, I might be right.
But a lot of people, there was a Ted talk by a kid
doing a study and most of his friends
wanted to be either doctors or lawyers.
Why?
Because we're indoctrinated as kids to want to do that.
Because our parents want us to make a lot of money,
you know, and have that stability that comes along with that.
And so I look out in my neighborhood
and I drive through San Antonio and New Braunfels
and I see a bunch of ape shops as well popping up.
I don't personally think it's passion and hobby
that's driving those to open just like laundromats
with Rich Dad Poor Dad's advice, right?
To diversify your income and get things going.
I think a lot of people do things
because they think it's the smart thing to do
and what they're told by society to do to fit in.
Either rate, the fact that you look at it from that lens,
you're probably the first M&A guy
out of all the ones I've talked to,
to look at it from that hopeful lens of,
okay, this is kind of how I got started.
And so that's just neat to me.
Yeah, that's not all inclusive, right?
Some people get into business because, you know,
they have a certain amount of expertise, they built it up.
Others are personality types that,
look, I can do it better
and I don't wanna work for the man, right?
There's an element of freedom, there's an element of,
so there's a lot of reasons folks get into that.
But if you follow some of the other folks
like the John Morillos of the world,
you know, he talks about, he breaks down this group
and 75% of business owners started off as a welder.
They wanted to be a welder,
they went to school to be a welder
and all of a sudden now all of a sudden
they're the biggest welder in town, right?
They've started their own business
and they're industry guys, right?
That was their passion and, you know,
they take their wife to the industry trade show in Vegas
and they make a vacation out of it, right?
So there are a lot of those folks that, you know,
and then like you said, there's others that just say,
oh, I can make money at this
or I can make money in my sleep, right?
And that's where, you know, you listen to Gary Vee, right?
He goes off on passive income and laundromats, right?
It's like, there's no such thing as passive income, right?
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is gonna get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show
and thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.