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Tell me about your vision.

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You know, my vision really started

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with my own entrepreneurial career

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in that many people enter the world of business.

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They work for someone else and one day they realize,

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hey, I might wanna try to do this myself.

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So they become entrepreneurs.

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And the end game of that is,

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do I build something valuable and can I monetize that?

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Can I sell that?

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Can I turn my life's work into a legacy,

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whether it's financial or otherwise?

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So my vision is to help people realize that legacy

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and to take whatever they've created

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and turn it into somebody else's baby,

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which means that they usually get a lot of zeros

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in their bank account.

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Very good.

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Why, Craig, you?

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Where did this vision come from?

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Why should we believe that you're the guy who does it?

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I'm gonna hit kind of hard on this

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because I think the audience deserves it.

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Well, I spent 12 years in a corporate career.

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Then I spent the next 15 years in an entrepreneurial career

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in which I started seven businesses,

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acquired seven businesses,

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and then did 22 add-on or bolt-on acquisitions

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on those various businesses.

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So then after selling my last company

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and I had several successful exits,

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I decided to kind of take what I've learned the hard way

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by hiring great investment bankers

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and some not so great investment bankers

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and creating those liquidity events

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and said, I'm gonna help clients for the next 10 years.

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And so for the last 10 years,

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we've been helping clients monetize their life's work

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and help them grab the brass ring, so to speak,

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by achieving a sale to a third party.

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So why me?

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Is because I've been there, done that,

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I've walked the walk, I've sat in a shoe.

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I gotta ask more about the depth though.

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I know most people would bow to you

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on what you just said.

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And they wouldn't be wrong to, you know,

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it'd be easy to piss somebody off

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that was as direct as I am,

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but so did 37 Signals, which has become Basecamp.

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And most of those projects failed.

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Successful exit, people love to say things like that.

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I think you have a depth here, which is why I'm going there.

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Help us understand, quantify that for us.

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To a degree that's not too personal, perhaps,

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but you know what I mean?

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There's a lot of people who can say that

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without actually having done those things

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in a way that was productive and helpful

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for both their life and society.

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Yeah, I think like anything else,

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early lessons are usually good ones.

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And I started my first company in my early 20s

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as a hobby and a passion.

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That's how most people get into their chosen business.

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And then one of my lessons learned

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was not so much in a amazing successful outcome,

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even though my return on equity was great,

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was during the Great Recession

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when I was forced to sell one of my businesses

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because we were growing 40% a year

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and I had taken on a bunch of debt to buy out a partner.

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And then all of a sudden the world stopped.

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And I had to figure out very quickly

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how to break my company up

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into three different divisions

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and sell those divisions individually

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within a very tight timeframe

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because there was no capital in the market,

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there was no lending going on in the market,

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and the bank had called my note.

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So ultimately it's all about the experience

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you bring to the table,

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the good, the bad, and the indifferent.

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If people were to say to me,

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okay, you've been in my shoes, I get it,

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but where did you learn the most?

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I learned the most in terms of how to create

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that supply and demand

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that you and I were talking about earlier

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in my first successful sale.

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But I learned the most about the technical

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and when to hold them, when to fold them,

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all of that experience,

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not only through those other divestitures and exits,

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but in that tough one

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where I probably left about $10 million on the table

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because I had to, I had no choice.

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My other choice would have been to walk away

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and say, I'm done, I can't figure it out,

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it's beyond me, and hand the bank the keys.

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But instead I orchestrated three separate exits

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for that one company,

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and I still managed to put a nice return in my pocket.

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So I would say, you know, the plaques on the wall are great

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and a lot of people talk about them,

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but the scars on the back

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that really teach you how to win at this game.

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You have me absolutely fascinated and intrigued.

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I'm excited to explore more with you.

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So I wanna do that for the show.

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I wanna do that outside of the show.

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It's not easy to find people, you know,

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and it's not easy to find specialists in any expertise.

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And this is one of those that as a society,

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96% failure rate of business, you know, within 10 years,

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4% who survive.

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You said something that intrigues me too.

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Maybe we debated a little bit.

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You said most people get into business

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because of a passion or a hobby.

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I don't believe that, not for the newer generations.

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And there's some data to support my argument

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if it's not argument, you know,

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you might be right, I might be right.

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But a lot of people, there was a Ted talk by a kid

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doing a study and most of his friends

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wanted to be either doctors or lawyers.

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Why?

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Because we're indoctrinated as kids to want to do that.

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Because our parents want us to make a lot of money,

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you know, and have that stability that comes along with that.

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And so I look out in my neighborhood

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and I drive through San Antonio and New Braunfels

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and I see a bunch of ape shops as well popping up.

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I don't personally think it's passion and hobby

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that's driving those to open just like laundromats

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with Rich Dad Poor Dad's advice, right?

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To diversify your income and get things going.

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I think a lot of people do things

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because they think it's the smart thing to do

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and what they're told by society to do to fit in.

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Either rate, the fact that you look at it from that lens,

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you're probably the first M&A guy

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out of all the ones I've talked to,

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to look at it from that hopeful lens of,

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okay, this is kind of how I got started.

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And so that's just neat to me.

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Yeah, that's not all inclusive, right?

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Some people get into business because, you know,

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they have a certain amount of expertise, they built it up.

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Others are personality types that,

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look, I can do it better

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and I don't wanna work for the man, right?

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There's an element of freedom, there's an element of,

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so there's a lot of reasons folks get into that.

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But if you follow some of the other folks

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like the John Morillos of the world,

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you know, he talks about, he breaks down this group

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and 75% of business owners started off as a welder.

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They wanted to be a welder,

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they went to school to be a welder

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and all of a sudden now all of a sudden

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they're the biggest welder in town, right?

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They've started their own business

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and they're industry guys, right?

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That was their passion and, you know,

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they take their wife to the industry trade show in Vegas

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and they make a vacation out of it, right?

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So there are a lot of those folks that, you know,

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and then like you said, there's others that just say,

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oh, I can make money at this

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or I can make money in my sleep, right?

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And that's where, you know, you listen to Gary Vee, right?

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He goes off on passive income and laundromats, right?

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It's like, there's no such thing as passive income, right?

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Thank you for being here today.

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I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.

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I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions

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as these episodes continue to move forward.

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This is gonna get more and more fun.

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We'll have more and more engagement as well.

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We'll invite people to participate in the show

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and thank you for giving us your time and attention.

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Have an excellent time building out your vision

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and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.