Terence Channon – Scaling a Business and Making Informed Decisions
In this inaugural fourth episode, Lee interviews Terence Channon, a seasoned entrepreneur and angel investor who has recently launched a financial advisory firm geared towards helping startup founders. They discuss scaling small businesses and making informed decisions about money on both the business and personal side. Terence has a wealth of knowledge from his background in the start-up world, serving as a founder and CEO of a publicly traded company, to now being an angel investor and currently owning two companies.
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Connect with Terence Channon - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tchannon/
00:00:00:04 - 00:00:17:19
Lee Murray
Welcome back to the Exploring Growth podcast. I'm so glad you're here. In this episode, I discuss partnerships, strategic hires and common mistakes companies make when they're trying to grow. My guest today is Terence Shannon from Salt Mines Advisors. I hope you enjoy. All right. Hey, Terence, thanks for being here.
00:00:17:19 - 00:00:20:10
Terence Channon
Hey, Lee, how are you? Thanks for having me on today. I appreciate it.
00:00:21:11 - 00:00:39:14
Lee Murray
Yeah, definitely. So I'm all about getting to it, adding value to our listener. So let me give a quick introduction of who you are so they can cut out some context and then let's jump into our conversation. I think it's going to be a rich conversation today. So Terence and I have known each other for a long time.
00:00:39:14 - 00:00:57:07
Lee Murray
We actually went to school together at Stetson University, and we just finished up a small consulting project together. And we got to talking like, you know, I think that you really add a lot of value to a lot of insights on startups, especially, but but small growing companies that are looking to scale. So, you know, I brought Terence on.
00:00:57:18 - 00:01:22:23
Lee Murray
I mean, you make the call. I think he's got a pretty extensive background that can add value. So let me tell you about Terence. So very extensive background in Startup World, starting his first company when we were in school, doing very well with that. He served as founder and CEO of a publicly traded company, was also an early stage employee of a venture backed enterprise that experienced a $100 million exit.
00:01:23:16 - 00:01:45:09
Lee Murray
He's an angel investor and currently owns two companies. One is which is a technical and professional service company I'm sorry, technology and professional service company. And the other is his latest venture, Salt Mines Advisors where he helped startup founders, employees and investors make informed decisions about money on both the business and the personal sides as they're getting going.
00:01:45:24 - 00:01:53:00
Lee Murray
So Terrance has a wealth of experience and a wealth of knowledge, and I'm very excited to have him on today. Welcome again, Terrance.
00:01:54:12 - 00:02:10:22
Terence Channon
No, thank you so much, Lee, for that introduction. I don't know if I could say it better myself. I you know, I feel very, very important and accomplished hearing it. You know, when someone says that, you know, sometimes I think we it's easy to overestimate, you know, how well we've done. I think most people think they're above average.
00:02:10:22 - 00:02:40:19
Terence Channon
Right. And that's not the case. But but hearing it from someone else, I'm like, wow, it's you know, certainly I felt proud. But but but also, I think it covers it. And certainly, you know, I would I would like to add, you know, amidst all, you know, these accomplishments, at least say, you know, a lot of learnings, a lot of knowledge and also a lot of the difficult times and and and even just outright failures to get there, which is, you know, all part of the story so that, you know, maybe maybe there will as a conversation unfolds, we'll get into some of those a little bit.
00:02:41:19 - 00:02:51:21
Lee Murray
Yeah. Well, it's good to hear it back sometimes because you forget just how much you've done. I mean, what are you like 43, 45? I mean, 4442.
00:02:51:21 - 00:02:57:13
Terence Channon
And I hope that that feeling of feeling good about that, right? I feel good. I feel good.
00:02:58:04 - 00:03:23:04
Lee Murray
We've already accomplished all of that stuff. I mean, that, that, that's what I think is so great about your story is if we could have a little peek into your, your history, it's probably a roller coaster effect of a lot of ups and a lot of downs, you know, and just being able to hang in there and still be an entrepreneur, still investing in companies and still caring about people who want to do the same is pretty remarkable.
00:03:24:21 - 00:03:50:04
Terence Channon
No, no, I appreciate that. It's just it just would it's always driven me. I've always been a business owner, even going back to having a landscaping business and high school, you know, my father was a business owner and he credits that with a lot of the success, you know, he achieved. Yeah, he's he's retired now, but he was in the medical field, a surgeon but, you know, was a partner owner of all the businesses in the surrounding businesses in there.
00:03:50:04 - 00:04:10:04
Terence Channon
And and then also had some diversification and other businesses that he owned along the way that you know, kind of helped build his success. So it's just maybe a little bit in the blood, a little bit how growing up very fortunate to have that background and, you know, to learn as you as you, you know, as you age from being a little baby up until, you know, I guess for adults now.
00:04:11:03 - 00:04:29:19
Terence Channon
But also, you know, I think would always connect with me is I guess I never really thought of myself as being an entrepreneur or business owner. But I remember in college I became a father and I wanted to finish school, finish my degree and I was out there looking for regular jobs, even just kind of small part time jobs to make some money while I finished school.
00:04:29:19 - 00:04:49:24
Terence Channon
And, you know, I realized pretty quickly that the rest of the world didn't care about my other obligations and just say, hey, you can't just show up when you want to show up for a couple of hours here and there. So I had to kind of figure out a way to to make some money on on my schedule, my time to provide for a family.
00:04:49:24 - 00:04:51:21
Terence Channon
And it kind of let me down that path a little bit.
00:04:53:09 - 00:05:01:05
Lee Murray
Most definitely. Well, I mean, you can get some from genetics, but you still got to take the risk, right? So that's that's not always built in.
00:05:03:03 - 00:05:27:24
Terence Channon
No, absolutely. It's there's it's it's the you know, people people hear about business failure rates that are being very high and there's always debating statistics on it, but there's a lot of you know, for every success story you hear, there's a lot of failures. And a lot of times those failures go unrecognized, unnoticed and talked about. And, you know, nobody was talk about bad news that's right.
00:05:28:20 - 00:05:46:05
Terence Channon
You know, a lot of people, you know, run into, you know, problems do want to start a business in terms of in terms of where they end up you know. So sometimes the risk you take to start a business, you know, life goes on. The sun will come up the next day. You have to make the next day better, as anyone would say.
00:05:46:05 - 00:06:06:12
Terence Channon
But there's certain scars that people can can carry, you know, carry with them for for many, many years, even even permanently. There are there are some, you know, business losses that, you know, will put you off of trajectory almost sometimes almost permanently of where you maybe want to go. And that sounds a little negative. But again, you know, yeah, you have to recognize those those risk.
00:06:06:12 - 00:06:14:10
Terence Channon
But end of the day, there's a lot of reward success and, you know, autonomy and another flexibility you have pursuing that role.
00:06:16:07 - 00:06:47:12
Lee Murray
Most definitely. And actually, that leads me to my first question for you. I think you have had such a roller coaster of events play out in your career so far, both wildly great and some, you know, really learning the hard lesson of of what what it is to be an entrepreneur that I thought, well, maybe we could spend some time talking about common problems that you've seen both in your own businesses and businesses that you've advise businesses that you've invested in, you've invested in.
00:06:47:22 - 00:07:02:04
Lee Murray
You know, what are the things that you see most commonly that small business owners or CEOs well, the mistakes that they make, right, that they why they don't grow as fast as they would like or maybe not grow as fast as the next company.
00:07:04:01 - 00:07:32:24
Terence Channon
You know, that's a great question. And it's it's actually the answer is, you know, it can be somewhat complicated based on the situation and and where things are where the industry is, what the economy looks like. So there's really no, you know, great answer. You know, if you go back to you know, you know, if you look at the long term investing of things, you know, you know, buying houses in 2007 or a real estate 27 was probably a difficult, bad move, but it was a great move in 2009.
00:07:32:24 - 00:07:50:09
Terence Channon
Right. It's you know, a lot of people lost a lot and 27 betting on real estate. But certainly if they bet on in 2009 tech going against the grain, they you know, they did pretty well. But you know again just a couple of years difference in the industry and the economy makes all the difference. So there is no one size fits all.
00:07:50:23 - 00:08:23:18
Terence Channon
You know something that that I've seen a lot these days particularly with the the the attention startups have gotten and what entrepreneurship has gotten. It's it's it's become more mainstream. A lot of entrepreneurs, they they focus on, you know, the capital raising process. You know, we're we're so taken by by stories of companies that that grow and and get a lot of funding and then have, you know, a big cash out and everyone becomes kind of filthy rich.
00:08:23:18 - 00:08:44:05
Terence Channon
And and those certainly happen. But they're they're few and far between. But you know, you know, one thing that I see, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs doing is they they spend a lot of time seeking, seeking capital, seeking funding through a variety of ways. But they're they're not focusing on, you know, providing providing a service, addressing an opening in the market, you know, a basic way of saying it.
00:08:44:05 - 00:09:02:19
Terence Channon
You ask someone, why are you starting a business? A lot of times someone will say, well, I want to make some money. You we got to make some money. We all have to make money to pay some bills and accomplish what we want to accomplish. But there's there's a lot of distraction around that. And I think one quick story on that.
00:09:02:20 - 00:09:22:09
Terence Channon
There was someone had a poll on LinkedIn the other day, and they were saying, you know, what what is the what's the best skill that an entrepreneur a founder needs, Ryan? And he said, well, is it business savvy being able to, you know, find customers have good operations? Is it leadership, you know, building the right team and inspiring others?
00:09:22:09 - 00:09:44:04
Terence Channon
Or is it storytelling and the like of fundraising? Right. Basically saying things the right way to get people excited and certainly we do need to communicate our value to people, whether you're trying to raise money from an investor or whether you're just trying to sell a service to a client, whether that's an expensive piece of software or, you know, someone coming into some landscape.
00:09:44:04 - 00:10:05:00
Terence Channon
And you do need be able to communicate the value of your of your business to that customer. But if you know, a lot of people are focusing, oh, I can tell a great story. I can get people excited. I can, you know, sell the vision. Well, that's is a piece of it. But if that's all you have going on, you're going to run into some troubles.
00:10:05:00 - 00:10:30:00
Terence Channon
And I always like to use the examples of we work. And there are now two companies with very great storyteller that told a lot of stories. Right? I think sometimes storyteller has the the thought of being someone that's not being honest. And you saw what happened to those underperforming and but I think just, you know, focusing on, you know, focusing too much on on that storytelling, on how do I get money, how do I raise money, how do I get investors, how do I make money?
00:10:30:18 - 00:10:40:19
Terence Channon
That becomes, you know, an obstacle that a lot of business owners, entrepreneurs have to overcome to ultimately succeed most definitely.
00:10:41:16 - 00:11:10:16
Lee Murray
And I think that's that's really good for for, you know, startup founders, entrepreneurs and even those you know, from my side, I've seen quote unquote, business owner entrepreneurs that think they're business owner entrepreneurs. But essentially what they've done is they took out a big loan through SBA and they bought a company and they were really good at doing that.
00:11:10:24 - 00:11:35:19
Lee Murray
Right. But now they actually have to operate that company. They actually have to do sales in that company and marketing in that company and hire and fire people and cast a vision and all these other things and they're not really good at that. So to your point, the storytelling part, I think for these small growing companies, it's you have to be sort of self-aware to know, OK, what am I good at?
00:11:36:20 - 00:12:05:04
Lee Murray
You know, how how's that? How can I see that playing out? Right? If I'm good at putting together pitch decks well, maybe I should be a pitch tech consultant, right? I heard they make pretty good money and you know, in moved to Palo Alto and just, you know, get paid $10,000 per pitch deck or whatever they're paying these days or if I'm you know if I bought successfully bought you know and even strategically bought you know a one $2 million small company.
00:12:06:18 - 00:12:25:20
Lee Murray
Well now what OK I mean do I have the the the background the ability to grow it and if I don't, I mean, and maybe you don't figure that out until you get into it. So there's that maybe there's no one in that situation right now. It's surrounding yourself with the right people to know, you know, what to do next.
00:12:26:15 - 00:12:49:11
Lee Murray
So I think that's that's really good, really good insight and, you know, so if that's one thing telling stories right now, I agree. I'm in I like telling stories. Right. That's a that's a big deal. Right? You have to you have to communicate communicate stuff very well. And you have to convince people that what you have is the best.
00:12:50:08 - 00:13:13:04
Lee Murray
Hopefully it is on the back end. Right. To your point, what are some of the things that you've seen with small companies? You know, some mistakes they make or maybe some some some sort of main reasons why they aren't growing as fast as they'd like. Let's say they have a company is doing you know, I don't know, one to 5 million in revenue.
00:13:13:15 - 00:13:24:12
Lee Murray
It depends on on industry, what that actually looks like as a small company. And now they're looking to scale up and grow. What are some of the things you see them not doing that they should be doing?
00:13:26:15 - 00:13:47:04
Terence Channon
I think sometimes what owners aren't doing or founders aren't doing is they're not really taking inventory as as to what they really want the end game to be for them. And some illustrations of that. I know people that you know, that are founders of companies and, you know, they've had some great ideas, some great business. You've actually been successful operating a viable business.
00:13:47:12 - 00:14:04:06
Terence Channon
But when they started it, they're like, hey, now, you know, we're going to go make, you know, hundred million, $1,000,000,000 of this. We're got a big problem to solve. We're going to make things happen. And then there is a little bit of money. They, you know, get the business to a point where it's viable, it's producing, you know, maybe, you know, some income.
00:14:04:14 - 00:14:30:03
Terence Channon
And, you know, the year the days of them earning, you know, zero or or minimum wage salaries, as many founders do to start are gone. And, you know, their salaries or you know, you know, you know, 200, $300,000 a year, which is it can be a pretty good living. And in most parts of this country and certainly the world and some of that kind of hunger goes away right and and they say, well, you know, I'll just I'm feeling pretty good about it that way.
00:14:30:03 - 00:14:49:18
Terence Channon
You know, I thought you wanted to make $100 million. I thought you wanted to grow this thing and kind of change the world. And have, you know, certainly received the financial rewards that go along with that. Yeah, I don't know. I don't think so. Right. And that's that's OK, because we can change and evolve. You know, circumstances change families, health priorities.
00:14:49:18 - 00:15:05:11
Terence Channon
But I think a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners aren't really honest with themselves from the get go you know, they say they want to get there, but really they just want to kind of, you know, build a business that creates maybe the lifestyle they want. Others, you know, want to just be a one man show. They don't want to hire people.
00:15:05:11 - 00:15:23:18
Terence Channon
Right. They just say, I'm fine is just, you know, if I can get to a point where I'm, you know, billing out six to 8 hours a day at a big hourly rate, doing, you know, sell my expertize or my knowledge then that's good enough for me. Others, you know, don't don't think about the possibility of what an expansion looks like.
00:15:24:06 - 00:15:40:07
Terence Channon
So I think it's real important to kind of have a game plan, an end game for yourself personally with, you know, your friends and your family, those around you that you care to say, where is this thing going to take me? Because if you don't, you kind of end up not pursuing the original purpose that you were going after.
00:15:40:14 - 00:16:04:05
Terence Channon
And that's sometimes for Germans, it's OK. But that can have real kind of implications for employees and even yourself. You know, couple great examples. You know, the company MailChimp, very popular email marketing newsletter software, they had, you know, somebody, I think two gentlemen and they said, we're never sell on this thing. We're never selling it. So the employees never really, you know, sometimes I would stock on own part of that.
00:16:04:05 - 00:16:20:09
Terence Channon
I want to buy in because I love this place. You know, we don't really do that. You know, they were paying pretty well, but maybe not as well as they had to because look, we're not going anywhere. This is going to be friends and family. So they said they were never going to sell it. But, you know, Intuit came around and offered $4 billion and they said, that's enough for me.
00:16:20:09 - 00:16:43:02
Terence Channon
That's enough to change my mind to sell this thing. And be done with it. What the future of that organization, the employees there look like is kind of different. But all these employers are like, look, you changed your mind and you're entitled to do that. But now I've got to go and, you know, figure out something, because my guess would be some positions would be eliminated due to redundancy in that deal, even though people are like, hey, I gave up, you know, so much of my time to be with you there.
00:16:43:19 - 00:17:17:22
Terence Channon
You know, another thing that I can relate to, personal, personal story is sometimes the the, you know, maybe the paralysis to to to hire as quickly as you should. And, you know, as a business owner, if you're trying to grow it and get beyond a certain spot, getting beyond the the owner operator sort of piece, you say, well, you know, hey, you should probably hire someone to do whatever, you know, to go check the mail for you to, you know, you know, take your phone calls to to be where you can't be at all times where you don't really want to pay that person because that's kind of coming out of my pocket.
00:17:19:04 - 00:17:39:12
Terence Channon
That's fair because you can you know, certainly you can have a great one man show and be extremely successful for yourself. But if you're trying to grow it, the longer you delay in hiring people and letting go of certain things, the more your talent kind of get into the core of that business and its operations to the point where at some point it's almost you can't get them out.
00:17:39:18 - 00:18:00:20
Terence Channon
You know, it becomes like fuzed together right? And all of a sudden that might make it more difficult to bring someone on to spend the time you need to with the new person to take on new responsibilities, to free up your time, to even sell the business, to bring on a partner. So I think it's just about being honest from the get go is what do you really want out of this for yourself?
00:18:01:01 - 00:18:23:14
Terence Channon
And and for those around you? It's ultimately what really matters. If you don't answer that or you're not honest, you're going to probably upset a lot of people along the way. Example, if you took investor money and you say we're going to become the next, you know, Facebook and go up, you know, billion dollar valuation and then you start paying yourself, you know, $250,000 a year and say, well, it's cool, right?
00:18:24:08 - 00:18:40:17
Terence Channon
Wait a second, I own half this thing and it's worthless, but you've got a good lifestyle and you got a good where and when do I get my money out of it? Right. You know, what's it worth? Me? Yeah. I probably should have taken that investment. OK, OK. You know, you got a tough conversation to have the investors at some point.
00:18:41:10 - 00:19:02:20
Terence Channon
If you're trying to get to a point where you're building your business, sacrificing time with your friends and family, and you don't really figure out a way to let go all sudden you spend all your time away from your friends and family as the business grows and sustains over many years. And, you know, that's got implications. So I think just being honest about what you want from the get go and and, you know, there's a lot of success.
00:19:02:20 - 00:19:25:24
Terence Channon
There's a lot of people that have, you know, become billionaires or raised a lot of money that have been successful. I got to a debate the other day about it. They said, oh, you know, one man shows and owner operator businesses. Oh, they're not scalable. There's no wealth being created there. It's just not true. You know, the bulk of the the wealth and income in this country held by, you know, small percentage of people is not been done through venture backed stuff.
00:19:25:24 - 00:19:48:15
Terence Channon
It's not been done through raising capital. It's small businesses a lot of times with, you know, the owner or the family extremely hands on making things happen. So there's no wrong way to do it. But if you're not honest with yourself from the get go, you're going to go down a path where you're going to have to back out with some painful decisions and effort, investment along the way.
00:19:48:15 - 00:20:00:15
Terence Channon
So just be honest with yourself from the get go about what is it you really want out of it. And I know there's a lot to consume, but, you know, if you say, look, I want to grow a business and sell it and make it big because I kind of like the building and the excitement around that do that.
00:20:00:20 - 00:20:19:03
Terence Channon
If you say, look, I just want to be able to, you know, get to a point where I can work three or 4 hours a day and spend the rest of my family and friends or pursue my hobbies in the afternoons, but also having, you know, pretty good lifestyle, then that's completely fine, too. If it's the latter, you know, you don't need to be telling investors we're going to go to the moon and be worth hundreds of millions and take their money.
00:20:19:11 - 00:20:33:17
Terence Channon
Right. So if if you're trying to build a business and scale it to, you know, be the next thing, you don't have to tell people, well, I'm not going to hire. We got to keep things, you know, really really controlled cost wise. No, you need to let things go. So just be honest with yourself from the get go.
00:20:34:24 - 00:20:55:20
Lee Murray
Yeah, I like that a lot. I think there's a lot of merit and you know, for the person listening right now who maybe in that situation specifically where they're kind of lost track of where they're headed, a natural like practical next step for them, would that be looking internally, you know, introspectively and saying, OK, what is this all about?
00:20:55:20 - 00:21:04:11
Lee Murray
What am I doing for me and my family? Or for my loved ones or whatever? Is it? Is it is that a good place to start? Or should they be looking at it from a business standpoint? First.
00:21:05:09 - 00:21:22:05
Terence Channon
That's the thing I'm going to borrow to kind of maybe overused phrases, you know, that I kind of, you know, heard during maybe they're a little academic, but, you know, kind of learned them in my graduate school. But I'm sure a lot people heard these things before. You know, you know, you if you really want to get to the bottom of a challenge, you got to focus on the root, not the root of the problem.
00:21:22:05 - 00:21:48:10
Terence Channon
And that sounds really cliche, but, you know, if there's an underlying challenge you have to get to, you know, example, if you're like, geez, I'm not we're not generating enough revenue and I need to hire more salespeople, maybe. But it's probably do we have the right product, the right pricing, we in the right market. The other one, too, is, you know, you need to spend more time working, you know, working, you know, on the business instead of in the business.
00:21:48:10 - 00:22:04:20
Terence Channon
Right. You know, we all can. Sure. You know, not see the forest through the trees, right? So you have to sometimes take yourself out of the business and say all right, I need to work on it. I need to look at it externally, this whole business, rather than being kind of stuck in the middle of it, you know, head in the sand, getting stuff done, even if you're real successful.
00:22:05:03 - 00:22:22:22
Terence Channon
But work on it. Look from the outside and say, OK, I've got a you know, I've got a I've got a round hole and a square peg here. The old adage says, while but my business, you know, I'm trying to get to where I can put into a round hole, but it's square. How do I then work on the business to make it so it fits there?
00:22:22:22 - 00:22:46:14
Terence Channon
And that takes, you know, kind of stepping back and then looking at things from a, you know, a perspective of not being involved in the business. Right. What's what are the real challenges? What's really causing them? You know, the five whys it's a great exercise. You just keep asking yourself why and why and why until you get to a point or the the thought of saying, how do I look at this as an outsider?
00:22:46:14 - 00:23:06:11
Terence Channon
What would an outsider say? What would I tell a close friend who came to me with the same problem? What what advice would I give that person? And I think that holds true in a lot of things in our lives, relationships, finances, business. But you kind of have to put yourself that way. And then you say, well, I would tell my friend, you need to do X, Y, and Z to grow the business.
00:23:06:11 - 00:23:15:10
Terence Channon
You might say, as a business owner, I can't do that. That's ridiculous. But why would you tell your friend that? Well, it's the best advice. Well, you might need to, you know, learn to take your own advice. Right?
00:23:16:20 - 00:23:34:08
Lee Murray
Most definitely. Yeah. It's funny we're talking about this, too, because a lot of the the way I look at what I do as a consultant is just being the most honest person in the room. Right? I mean, to an extent, some people what do you do? They can't take brutal honesty. So you have to kind of sugarcoat it a little bit.
00:23:34:08 - 00:23:54:15
Lee Murray
But you know, being the outside voice that comes in and brings an outside objective perspective, you know, I would add to that that sometimes bringing in consultants that are like, say your figure, you're thinking about this personally and where do I want to go with my own personal vision and where am I taking this what does it mean to me?
00:23:55:05 - 00:24:12:15
Lee Murray
OK, well, then when you start to look at maybe step three, what does my business now look like in line with that? Well, maybe you need to bring somebody in that's focus on a particular area that can speak objectively into that area to help you maybe move past a barrier or something that may have been a barrier in the past.
00:24:13:23 - 00:24:37:05
Lee Murray
You know, in a certain area that maybe you're not strong strong at. So, you know, from a from a consulting standpoint, that always rings true to me. And I think I think small business owners, you know, having a vision of what you're trying to achieve personally, it always trumps everything else because if you go to work every day on mission to achieve that vision, you're more motivated.
00:24:37:05 - 00:24:54:24
Lee Murray
You know, you're you're going to be you're going to bring all of your people up around it. People are going to leave or cleave to that vision. You know, there's a lot of things that go into to having that frame of mind that is. But it's clear. Switching gears to the financial side, a lot of business owners have started their own company.
00:24:54:24 - 00:25:14:01
Lee Murray
They have art. They own art percent. You know, they're looking to scale up or grow. They may be looking for investment. Right. On the last episode I had Ryan James from Surety Bank talked a lot about taking on debt. You know, in appropriate times where you're looking to expand, it makes sense. You take on this debt to help you make money and then you can pay it off over time.
00:25:14:19 - 00:25:28:01
Lee Murray
You know, we talked a lot about that. So on the investment side, if you're looking at taking on equity or equity partners, how can owners be smart about what they give away? And when does that when would it make sense?
00:25:29:11 - 00:25:46:19
Terence Channon
Yeah, no, I mean, that's a super important question. And, you know, there's nothing more frustrating, I think, for anyone than for paying for something and not getting the value out of it. Right. I mean, if you go to a restaurant you order a, you know, a steak and you end up getting a bag of chips and they charge you for the steak.
00:25:46:20 - 00:26:08:07
Terence Channon
You know, I think that that might put a lot of people mentally into a tailspin. Myself included. Right. It's it's certainly, you know, to grow and to succeed, you always need the help of others in some way. Right. It's you need other people involved to help your business succeed. And certainly the baseline, you can just hire people to do that.
00:26:08:07 - 00:26:34:11
Terence Channon
You know, you can hire employees, you can hire contractors, to help with whatever need you have. But a lot of times, you know, you need people that that have kind of a vested interest in something to to make work. I'll borrow a story from from from my dad. Him and his partners owned a surgery center. And and with the surgery center, you know, they certainly would the way it works is you do the procedure, there's insurance coverage.
00:26:34:11 - 00:26:57:04
Terence Channon
You get built out for doing the procedure. Whoever, whichever doctor did that work get compensated for their time. And then but there's always, like, kind of excess things around it, right. That go along with things to actually provide the treatment. Some of the things which the doctors cannot provide some administrative support those then get billed to insurance. But then there's obviously a little bit of extra pot left over which they could, you know, share among themselves.
00:26:57:12 - 00:27:29:06
Terence Channon
And, you know, that's been a pretty successful, successful venture for for those involved. The interesting is not it would be impossible for one person to actually own and operate the surgery center to and actually have the success to the point where it was worth kind of growing. It's just the scale of it. You needed more people to drive more procedures or not enough procedures in the day to actually own your own surgery center and say, I own 100% and I only do my things in here.
00:27:29:11 - 00:27:48:13
Terence Channon
Right? It's like you might as well just say no. I might as well just not be involved. Let me just go to a, you know, a surgery center. I'll rent the space. You know, I'll just pay the, you know, the fee they'll pay. I'll just get paid for my time. Completely reasonable. But you need a handful of people in it to actually make it work and to kind of keep the machine going, particularly with the support staff it needs.
00:27:48:22 - 00:28:13:24
Terence Channon
So I think it's you have to always consider how you bring on partners and investment to your business. With that being said, bringing on the wrong partners and even a small way are can be extremely, extremely damaging to to the business and then to the ultimate value, you know, to stories on that. You know, one of them is, you know, you know, one company was started by three gentleman.
00:28:14:18 - 00:28:33:13
Terence Channon
They raised money along the way. They probably look back and said, we probably didn't need to raise as much as we saw. You know, you live and learn, you know, trying to grow. At some point they brought on a CEO from the outside. During that CEO's tenure, he you know, the business did not grow. The you know, the business took on a lot of debt.
00:28:35:01 - 00:28:49:08
Terence Channon
You know, it the company was even after an acquisition, the company was still smaller. Right. And and then it sold and the CEO walked out with more than the three founders who, you know, went on to other things. So, you know, it was maybe it wasn't terrible. They had other horses in the race. They were working on the thing.
00:28:49:08 - 00:29:04:08
Terence Channon
So it's all, hey, you know, I got you know, I didn't do anything. I checked them out. OK, great. But wait a second. You know, you you know, the three of you built this thing to a point, you know, from, you know, from, you know, three of you to, you know, a thousand employees. And then you brought in a professional manager to help manage it.
00:29:04:08 - 00:29:19:19
Terence Channon
Again, a difficult job, to say the least. And maybe it was an impossible job. Right. But during that time, the you know, the revenues declined that there was no debt when he joined. Now there was a bunch of debt, and then he he didn't get the deal done to sell it. But wait a second. Wait, wait a second.
00:29:19:19 - 00:29:37:20
Terence Channon
You're walking out with more than the three owners. How that happened right? Like you don't get a lot of opportunities there, right. So they can look back and say, geez, we probably should not have awarded this person as much stock or the stock the way we did. And maybe that's why it took to get it done. Something's better than nothing.
00:29:38:00 - 00:29:58:08
Terence Channon
But, you know, that's an expensive proposition. You know, a venture I was a part of but the second business here that that did not succeed. That actually was extremely costly to me financially, mentally, physically. You know, I was excited about bringing on a couple of partners they wanted to be a part of this thing. The values didn't align at the end of the day.
00:29:58:08 - 00:30:18:15
Terence Channon
And and that was extremely costly for me. You know, I wasn't about to leave the company. And meanwhile, what they never understood was what is you know, we had responsibility to to our shareholders and owners, which I was one of. They were one of them. But, you know, I gave up two thirds of the company to these gentlemen.
00:30:19:22 - 00:30:43:13
Terence Channon
Well, I guess last because we had investors, I would say, you know, I would say the investors owned the investors owned, you know, 35% of it. And then each of us owned about 20% of it. I was one of the investors in the 35%. So I may be a little extra, but it, you know, together they own 40% of it and they you know, it went to zero.
00:30:43:13 - 00:31:02:19
Terence Channon
And I think if we would have been more responsible about who we brought in and whatnot, we, you know, who knows what it again was an opportunity of a lifetime, if you ask me. Right, with the surrounding details of it. And it just didn't work. But talk about expensive proposition, right? And so what happened for me is, you know, the two of them said, well, I'm going to go back.
00:31:02:19 - 00:31:17:20
Terence Channon
And they went back to their regular jobs getting paid what they want to get paid. And, you know, I was kind of stuck holding the bag financially on things and had to kind of reset and reboot all because, you know, I was I was too anxious to bring on partners. I was too anxious to give up equity in the business.
00:31:19:12 - 00:31:33:04
Terence Channon
You know, we were going back, you know, almost ten years now. When we started it, we were one of the first doing the type of business we were, if we would have been around today, would have you know, we would have said, hey, we're one of the first would have been very successful. But who has that foresight sometimes?
00:31:33:11 - 00:31:50:19
Terence Channon
So I think that you do have to be very, very careful because bringing on the wrong investors, the wrong partners, can be the, you know, one of the most expensive mistakes you ever make. You can even have it work out where where you make some money. But wait, wait a second. Why did I make X and this other person made five X?
00:31:50:19 - 00:32:21:02
Terence Channon
They weren't even there. Well, yeah, this is how the deal worked. Well, wait a second. I need five extra. My plans, my personal finances. Well, sorry, someone else got it. And they put in a lot less time than you, and they didn't do as well as you did. Oh, deal's a deal, right? So I think you do have to be extremely selective and careful about when you take on investors, whether it's, you know, you know, a partner, whether it's a venture capital investor in startup mode, whether it's just maybe someone that wants to say, look, I want to give you some seed money.
00:32:21:19 - 00:32:28:23
Terence Channon
You need to really be careful about who you're partnering with because it can end up being the most expensive mistake. Even if things are successful.
00:32:30:06 - 00:32:50:14
Lee Murray
That's funny because I didn't expect that as the answer. Actually, I. I thought you were going to be more tactical on the financial side. Of, you know, percentages and that kind of thing. But I guess if visions and value aren't aligned, then it doesn't matter if you have 90% or 2% because it's not going to work.
00:32:50:19 - 00:33:08:19
Terence Channon
That's right. Yeah. It starts there for sure. Alignment of values, vision, purpose. You need to be different if you bring it on investors or partners whether they're active investors, you know, they're actively in the business or they're just writing a check. You know, you want to have, you know, the old one plus one equals three. You want to be better together than you are you know, alone.
00:33:09:02 - 00:33:43:20
Terence Channon
And that's in any situation. There's certainly a time to talk percentages. I've kind of recognized that to really have people feeling good, it's not about how do I keep as much for myself as possible. You've got to be open minded. So here's an example. One deal that I know I was involved in a company was acquired and the investors had what's called a liquidation preference, meaning that first they get all their money back, they put in and then everyone shares in what's left, including these investors with this liquidation preference.
00:33:43:20 - 00:34:05:21
Terence Channon
So example, if a company, if an investor put in $10 million and would say there were four owners, you know, three individuals, 25% and this investor of 25% and then the company sold for 10 million that investor has the right to exercise his or her liquidation preference say well I get 10 million and I guess we're splitting the rest zero. Wait wait a second.
00:34:05:23 - 00:34:27:14
Terence Channon
You know so that can happen but in this particular deal a deal like that came up where there was a purchase price which call it 10 million and the liquidation preference was 10 million. The the, the investor with liquidation preference actually for four go, he said I don't need, you know, I'm not going to do the 10 million right. He's like, we all worked on this I'm taking the loss.
00:34:27:14 - 00:34:45:09
Terence Channon
We, you know, everyone lost on it. So he forego that. He kind of eliminated that. And that sounds stupid because wait a second like come on man. Like you know, you're leaving this money on the table, right? But you know, he's a professional investor and he's like, you know, the relationships are important. Here's the three people I worked with that grew a business.
00:34:45:17 - 00:35:02:21
Terence Channon
I may want to work with them again. Right? They may want to work with me again. And if you've kind of muddied the waters and did kind of a deal where it's I can get as much as I can get, then you know, you're probably going to burn some bridges on the way and sometimes you have to. But that was you know, I talked to my uncle about that deal and I said, is this common?
00:35:02:22 - 00:35:30:11
Terence Channon
And he goes, oh, yeah, it happens a lot particularly when an investor wants to continue a good relationship with the people he or she invested in. So I think when you come down to percentages and get technical about it, yeah, it varies tremendously by my business valuation. So people want it, but you do want to create a landscape and platform that everyone feels good about.
00:35:30:18 - 00:35:53:07
Terence Channon
But if you don't start with matching the values and the purpose and and making sure the milestones are set that yeah, you can earn into this effectively as we get to point A, B and C, you can end up, you know, really forking out, you know, a lot of extra money that you didn't want to. I mean, a famous example of it is, is, is Facebook right?
00:35:53:20 - 00:36:12:17
Terence Channon
Mark Zuckerberg commonly was you know, would start this business. Yeah. I'll cut you in on half of it. Yeah, I'll do this. Oh, yeah. We're partners. I'll give you some stock and then, you know, you always say that at first because it's not worth anything, right? Also that's worth something. And he tried to renege on his deal and it's not even an opinion about what happened.
00:36:12:17 - 00:36:32:02
Terence Channon
He went to court and he lost and he had to the Winklevoss twins. And there is the other guy. What is the majority of sorry. And I think he but he ended up with billions of stock because he said, look, I he promised me this. Here's the proof. I will you know, he won in court. And it's just like, you know, Facebook can afford it.
00:36:32:02 - 00:36:55:14
Terence Channon
You know, you know, you don't need how much money do you really need? All that stuff. But you know, wait a second. You know, there was a lot to go around, but you sometimes there's not a lot to go around. And if you kind of promise things to people that that you really didn't have any intention of of honoring if something really succeeded, you need to rethink the deal.
00:36:55:14 - 00:37:13:23
Terence Channon
But it is you know, you want to be fair to people. You want to give them a chance to succeed. When you're structuring these deals, you also want to make it so easy. You know, nobody is is walking out with something. You know, maybe the best illustration is of a friend and I, we go out and we watch games sometimes have a couple of beers and we just split.
00:37:14:01 - 00:37:31:16
Terence Channon
We just share the check like one day out one time. I get it. The next time he gets it right, vice versa. Someone's probably ahead by a few dollars, right? Someone you know. You know what I mean? It's like yeah. If you took up the hundreds of receipts we've kind of, you know, shared through the through the years.
00:37:31:20 - 00:37:36:14
Terence Channon
Yeah. He tallied them up. Someone's probably ahead by a few dollars, but it's not monumental.
00:37:37:04 - 00:37:39:09
Lee Murray
As long as it's not monumental, that works.
00:37:40:01 - 00:38:01:16
Terence Channon
The way it could be because it's kind of like it's a fair tinder. Hey, you pay this time, I'll pay next. That's right. I can. That's right. Right. And, and yeah, but but also, you know, if we were to go calculate it and said, oh, well, jeez, you've got $17 on me, you wouldn't, you wouldn't feel like, you know, I would feel kind of violated about that.
00:38:01:16 - 00:38:20:11
Terence Channon
You kind of laugh about it where. Yeah, right. If if it came out where if you found out the person was in that scenario, if what I was doing would say that, I'd say, well, hey man, every time we go out, I pay, we're going to go to McDonald's. And every time you pay, we're going to go to, you know, Capital Grille.
00:38:21:07 - 00:38:34:00
Terence Channon
You know, that's kind of a fancy steakhouse, restaurants and we're just kind of just, you know, trying to weigh that to my side. Well, that's probably not a good deal. And that's what you have to kind of look out for if that story makes sense.
00:38:35:02 - 00:39:00:24
Lee Murray
Totally. Totally. So I had one more thing that I wanted to talk with you about before we head out. And I think it kind of kind of real naturally to this conversation of you're trying to grow. You know, maybe you take on some debt for expansion, maybe you are looking for a partner, but then you know, through this introspective, you know, vision, casting new self of yours as a business owner, you're trying to say, OK, where am I headed?
00:39:00:24 - 00:39:20:07
Lee Murray
Right. And what do I need to help me get there? We've talked about a lot of different solutions. One solution that could be very much on the table if partners or not, because there's not any in your influence or you can't find anybody that really, you know, aligns with your values or vision is hiring strategic key people, right?
00:39:20:14 - 00:39:46:20
Lee Murray
So if we talked about a company hiring someone strategically or just the next new key person that is going to fill that role, you know, like I talked about a consultant feeling for a period of time, you know what what are some key hires that you've seen companies take on that have filled you know, notable roles? And what did that timing look like for?
00:39:46:20 - 00:39:48:08
Lee Murray
Again, that's kind of second stage.
00:39:49:06 - 00:40:07:24
Terence Channon
Very you know, I've got some you know, some, you know, kind of personal opinions. And I'll share some some of others. Some people find work appeals to me. So, you know, it varies based on your business. There's a there's a very successful entrepreneur, David Cummings out of Atlanta out there, very famous. He bootstrapped his company, sold to Salesforce, founder of the Atlanta Tech Village.
00:40:08:18 - 00:40:31:08
Terence Channon
He is a big fan especially in the it gets more geared towards software, the service companies. But he's a big fan of what he calls a sales assistant. And this is a, you know, a junior person it should be the founders first hire. Right. And this is this is someone that can it's not necessarily an entry level. It's not a low skill job.
00:40:31:08 - 00:40:47:14
Terence Channon
It's it's someone to kind of help fill the pipeline of sales because originally he says I initially the founders doing all the sales it gets. And he's saying it's very tempting to go on. You're growing. But to hire a vice president of sales and, you know, big strategic sales leader, sales manager, it's certainly, you know, very capable, very knowledgeable.
00:40:48:00 - 00:41:06:16
Terence Channon
It just may be too early sometimes. So he says hire a sales assistant, you know, 20 bucks an hour or 25 an hour, maybe a little more, a little less, maybe some incentive. But that person's job is to kind of fill up the pipeline right. Keeping, you know, because the founder should be at that point doesn't need to be chasing deals left and right.
00:41:06:16 - 00:41:29:11
Terence Channon
You know, the founders should be just closing the deals if even that. So that's a great example of kind of a first hire. You know, some people say, hey, you know, you really need to bring in a, you know, someone that's that will, you know, be really great at helping you, you know, monitor the books. You know, a controller to some of his outsource you know, where's the money going?
00:41:29:11 - 00:41:44:16
Terence Channon
You know, it sounds like you have a lot of coming in, but, you know, a common theme among entrepreneurs that raise a million bucks. You know, they say, oh, this will last forever. It's gone in six months. Right. It's, you know, but someone to kind of help with, you know, financial reporting to kind of put that in perspective, depending on your size.
00:41:45:00 - 00:42:00:24
Terence Channon
I mean, there's lots of possibilities. And it may be you can hire a, you know, kind of a you know, and, you know, kind of goes on the sales assistant, kind of an executive assistant, you know, kind of an early stage chief of staff, Harvard. Sure. He's got a good article on the three levels of the chief of staff.
00:42:00:24 - 00:42:20:16
Terence Channon
Three, being super strategic expert, one being kind of blocking and tackling. But those are all maybe make a lot of sense to to look at. Some people would argue nowadays that you need someone that's, you know, human resources, even if it's just kind of part time or contract to help you know, shape up the hiring strategy for growth.
00:42:21:03 - 00:42:46:23
Terence Channon
I know one startup and they've done very well. They raise some money and they actually have like a, you know, a pretty senior human resources vice president of people that was that was a hire they did before, you know, vice president of marketing before or vice president of sales before or vice president of product development. You know, the founders definitely had some, you know, had a lot of expertize, but they said we need we need we're gifted.
00:42:47:06 - 00:43:03:14
Terence Channon
That's what are big challenges people. Right? So I think what you want to do is you want to look at your business. And again, going back to being honest of where you want it to be, you know, you want to grow and raise a lot of money. Do you want to have the lifestyle business where you're working 3 hours a day and the rest of the time you're doing what you want to do?
00:43:04:18 - 00:43:25:10
Terence Channon
You know, what are the important levers and pieces that can really make a difference and and that will determine who to best hire. But again, all those people should also have, you know, shared values. They can have different perspectives on things. They can have different opinions. You may not even agree or even kind of like these people, if that makes sense.
00:43:25:10 - 00:43:52:23
Terence Channon
But as long as the values and commitment to the purpose is there, you can, you know, usually find find good people. But it does vary from place to place and again, it depends on the business. But again, you know, look at your personal goals and then look at the levers of of the business. What are the things that that make make the business move and what are going to be the businesses big challenges in terms of horsepower or more importantly, maybe easier to think about if you're the founder, the business owner.
00:43:53:07 - 00:44:28:06
Terence Channon
And, you know, if you found yourself, you know, running it, you know, 10,000 RPMs, you know, 12 hours a day, apart from the risk of burning out, you're not going to have any time whatsoever to capitalize on new opportunities so you might look at that and say, OK, I'm real busy right now. We're all busy. If the dream opportunity came around today, whether that be the big investor we were chasing the big customer, the big partnership deal, the new product development we have to do, and I need to be involved in that and I don't have the time to be involved in that.
00:44:29:00 - 00:44:54:16
Terence Channon
What do I need to get off my plate to allow me to pursue that opportunity and that might be some inspiration to find the right role for the first hire. And you know, maybe an anecdotal example, if you know your team's growing and you know, you got say, a big call center or warehouse and you're the one that's looking at resumes all day, you know, that might make sense to, you know, to, you know, to bring on someone in h.R.
00:44:54:16 - 00:45:12:16
Terence Channon
Or write to say, why don't you kind of start taking that? Because I spend half my day reading resumes and doing interviews. Right? Meanwhile, I can't get to the meeting with their next big customer. So I'm doing interviews all day if the if the thing is, well, geez, I'm spending all day handling customer service requests or the clients are coming in.
00:45:12:16 - 00:45:33:11
Terence Channon
Hey, this is buggy. This is I'm working and then, you know, you might need an operation. Special operations manager. Right? Otherwise, you say, look, i can't get to you today, Mr. miss new opportunity because my heads in the sand respond to emails so I think, you know, try to do that exercise. And I think that's, that's a way to make some traction in determining who you should hire functionally.
00:45:34:13 - 00:45:59:19
Lee Murray
I agree. And I love that that idea of VP of people because every company is built with a great team right and I think some some businesses more than others need that emphasis or focus. You know, and as you're talking, I'm sort of nodding my head to all of these things. And I agree mostly, you know, the fact that every business is different, the way you're approaching building it is different.
00:46:00:14 - 00:46:33:14
Lee Murray
So there's not one size fits all kind of thing. Some companies, like a SAS company, may be really heavily focused on product and people, but, you know, for your typical small growing company, there's a lot of operational components I see at that second stage the large systems that need to be put in place so that you're if you're looking to be bought let's say you want to see your company in five years, three years, you know, it's going to increase the value of what you're worth to an investor or to to an investment group because they're looking at several years of that.
00:46:33:16 - 00:47:06:00
Lee Murray
They have all their ducks in a row. It looks like they know how to make money. They know how to, you know, serve their their customer. They know how to market their product and tell a good story. They have all these these factors in place. And to me, what it screams is SEO, you know, from a system, from a systematic standpoint, that initial, maybe uncomfortable hire or maybe someone with a track record of putting installing systems from an operational standpoint so you operate more efficiently, can keep the customers you currently have.
00:47:06:08 - 00:47:35:06
Lee Murray
So now you you can go off and start bringing in new customers while that person is overseeing the more sort of president operations role. But yeah, I know. I mean, I think it is it is unique to the to the owner and the business that they're in. But the key thing that's coming out to me is is being in tune with what you're driving towards and then hiring around even if it's maybe an uncomfortable hire around those weaknesses.
00:47:35:19 - 00:47:55:08
Terence Channon
That's exactly right. And your goals and I'll just add one story, kind of just a memory that came back. You know, I was up back in my early days. I was doing, you know, go back 20 years. You know, again, a lot of the technology services our business does is, you know, websites and commerce development and programing. And when we first started, I was doing the work I was doing the graphic design, I was doing the programing, I was writing the code and you know, why not, right?
00:47:55:08 - 00:48:10:18
Terence Channon
You know, hey, pay extra dollars to build me a website or design me a brochure. You know, why wouldn't I do that myself? Charge good price, get it done. You know, a gentleman that I was working with, he kind of observed that and he's like, you know, do you want to be a coder? You want to be a businessman?
00:48:10:18 - 00:48:29:18
Terence Channon
And I said, well, you know, I think I want to be a businessman. Right? But he's like, you're going to have to you have to stop writing all the code yourself, right? Because and you see it in a lot of firms. Right. I kind of realize, like, you know, if I was busy because I knew something was a take me 40 hours of code to write part from other sorts of, you know, business ownership responsibilities.
00:48:29:22 - 00:48:46:10
Terence Channon
If someone called me Monday and said, hey, you know, can you do some work for me? Well, you know, I'm kind of busy the next three weeks, so why don't we talk in like a month? Oh, well, you know, wait a second, right? Like, OK, that's fine. You know, we're all busy. You all get backed up, right? The, you know, so be it.
00:48:46:10 - 00:49:07:11
Terence Channon
But you know, you know, you might be missing opportunities. So but I had to make a conscious decision to say, all right, I'm going to move away from the hands on technology work, focus on the business side of things, you know, building relationships with clients you know, carrying the message. You know, I could still get my hands dirty a little bit with coding, but you don't want me coding your graphic, designing anything today, especially with all the talent on there.
00:49:07:11 - 00:49:08:09
Terence Channon
Right. So but.
00:49:09:05 - 00:49:09:07
Lee Murray
You.
00:49:09:24 - 00:49:10:05
Terence Channon
Know.
00:49:10:23 - 00:49:32:03
Lee Murray
We're at the you're at the ground floor and you can manage more effectively. That's right. But I think at some point you got to know the decisions you're going to make moving forward. Are predicated on where you're headed. That's right. So where are you headed? All right. So I've got one final question for you. But first, I wanted to ask, and that's a short one, but I wanted to ask you about resources.
00:49:32:03 - 00:49:42:14
Lee Murray
So in your world, where do you go to learn, you know, what are some maybe books for podcasts or people you follow that would be valuable to a small company?
00:49:42:21 - 00:50:12:24
Terence Channon
I, you know, I, I don't I read a lot you know, so you know, and again, it varies kind of on your, on your personality and kind of what you kind of you're struggling with. But I'm a I'm a big fan of at least for me. Right. So here's what's been good for me. You know, the Robert Greene's books about the laws of power and the, you know, the laws of war and the artist deduction, those are really, really, you know, they're great stories.
00:50:13:04 - 00:50:31:02
Terence Channon
They appealed to me because there's like like little history bits in there, but really great, great lessons of things that I didn't have a lot of instruction in about, you know, how to, you know, best effect to build relationships with people. Right. It's something I've worked really hard on. It's something that that, you know, I wasn't born with this natural ability.
00:50:32:01 - 00:50:46:21
Terence Channon
You know, maybe people say there is no natural ability. I don't know. I've got a friend who's my best friend since preschool. And, man, this guy this guy lights up a room when he walks in. Does matter where it is. I just don't have that impact. You know, people like me, I think, you know, I get a lot of surprises.
00:50:46:21 - 00:51:01:08
Terence Channon
These guys surprises. Guys just it's just incredible, you know? But I've said, you know, I don't have to necessarily, you know, quote a lot of room that way, but you need to build relationships. So those books are really helpful, at least for me. I think, you know, I'm a you know, I like reading Barron's, The Wall Street Journal.
00:51:01:08 - 00:51:21:17
Terence Channon
I mean, those are, you know, really have great insights, especially the back pages of it. It's rarely the cover story. Right. Always little kind of insights. About where things are going. I definitely recommend, you know, whatever industry you're in you're getting, you know, finding some of the industry journals and and kind of reading those. There's some stuff in there.
00:51:21:17 - 00:51:45:16
Terence Channon
It gets a little academic, but you find a lot of kind of useful trends about where things are going and, you know, I certainly didn't call the COVID crisis by any means. Right. But if you would have read certain sort of journals, this the whole story of COVID and how things would unfold if something like this happened or were all described.
00:51:45:16 - 00:52:06:12
Terence Channon
And and certainly the you know, they're kind of the end of the article. They said, well, how likely is this to happen? Well, it's pretty likely to happen in the next ten or 15 years. They were off by like five years. You know, so I think, you know, I kind of like reading stuff to see where things are going to be, you know, in the future, you know, three to five years from now.
00:52:06:18 - 00:52:23:13
Terence Channon
That's, you know, you know, page from Jeff Bezos book, you know, build the Business to serve what might be there five or ten years from now versus today. Right. You know, there's a I think you said I probably maybe I should have a reading list that I can share with people, but I've just found everyone is so different.
00:52:23:13 - 00:52:48:16
Terence Channon
Some people love podcast, people love magazines, people love big books. People of fiction, nonfiction. So I think but those are a few places that that I kind of you know, keep my eyes on to, you know, consume, be knowledgeable, stay informed, look for new trends and then provide you know, hopefully, you know, provide valuable insights to those I work with colleagues, clients and so forth.
00:52:50:01 - 00:53:10:00
Lee Murray
And I and I know you're on LinkedIn a lot, so I'm going to tell people to go find you there, Terrance Chan and on again and follow you there because you have a lot of really good insights into articles that have been written you know, mostly in the startup world, financial world. But you kind of run the gamut.
00:53:10:00 - 00:53:14:15
Lee Murray
You, you comments on a lot of different things, which is really cool. Where else can they find you?
00:53:14:22 - 00:53:35:03
Terence Channon
Because, I mean, you know, I would say LinkedIn's good if you go to Salt Mines Advisors dot com. That's the website for the investment advisory business that's a brand new launch. So I mean, if anyone's listening to this and feels inclined to give some feedback or observations on on how we're trying to position this message out to the world, I certainly would welcome that.
00:53:36:18 - 00:53:54:00
Terence Channon
But that's yeah, you could if you could find me there, you know LinkedIn's good. Yeah. I think, I think that's such a good start, right. I would be. Yeah, that's I think that's if you if you're not looking in those two places and, you know, you may not be that maybe maybe I'm not that interesting. Right. That's OK.
00:53:54:15 - 00:53:55:07
Lee Murray
You're on tick.
00:53:55:17 - 00:54:15:18
Terence Channon
No, no. But you know, you know, I you know, it's funny, I talked to someone the other day and I don't want to get off topic too much, but I think it's a story worth sharing. I was I was at a little kind of small little social event and they brought in a couple of speakers just to kind of add some value to the small group to say look, to come have a good time, meet some people, have a drink, but also learn something.
00:54:15:21 - 00:54:38:01
Terence Channon
They brought in a gentleman who is this guy is an expert in fashion and personal branding and imaging. And he was he really got me thinking about, you know, how is that you don't have to do anything you want to do. Like, I don't have an Instagram, I don't have a tick tock. And he's like, yeah, but everyone else does, right?
00:54:38:10 - 00:54:57:24
Terence Channon
You. Yeah. But he was an expert on kind of how to position yourself. And my goodness, you talk about an area that at least me I can use a lot of help in is I mean, geez, this guy was so knowledgeable on everything, you know, even thinking about what you you should really be intentional about, you know, how you look even if you're working at home when you're on a video conference.
00:54:57:24 - 00:55:16:13
Terence Channon
Right. You know, not just taking a shower, but, you know, you know, you can put together an outfit as an example that can really speak to who you are and and being authentic. But he kind of opened my mind to say, like, hey, you know, maybe you do need to consider these places to engage and find these human touch on new customers.
00:55:16:13 - 00:55:22:11
Terence Channon
So maybe I'll have an Instagram or a tick talk in the near future and give those a whirl.
00:55:23:08 - 00:55:51:11
Lee Murray
Yeah. You know, actually, just today I was thinking about tick tock for myself and what I was thinking about doing is doing like a tactical tick tock is what I call it. So, you know, marketing or sales tactics and just one tactic per post, right? I think a lot of people, that's what they want is they want that easy to consume, quick bite size, you know, knowledge about how do I how do I use this platform in this way.
00:55:51:11 - 00:55:59:02
Lee Murray
Right? Just very simple stuff that they can practically implement. So, yeah, I mean, you should look into it and maybe maybe even start dancing. I don't.
00:55:59:02 - 00:56:25:08
Terence Channon
Know. You know, I think yeah, there's maybe I know, you know, other day there's there's a woman her name's what, Miss Excel. I think I do sells courses about Excel, you know? You know you do. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, you pay 100 bucks or I think her courses are more actually. But you learn how to use Excel, have introduction and beginners advanced and I think she does exorbitantly well.
00:56:25:08 - 00:56:42:04
Terence Channon
I mean she's got a seven figure if not bigger business selling these courses and you know apparently she generated a lot of interest from Tick Tock and it was weird because even though they said that I just didn't feel compelled to go look at her tick tock, but I actually was like, you know, maybe I should look at this.
00:56:42:18 - 00:57:08:04
Terence Channon
I mean yeah. And I went and looked at it and I was like, well, that's cool because I didn't really know what to expect. I kind of I just wasn't sure what what to expect. And these tick those. How could you sell Excel classes through tick talked at least to this significant scale. And her videos were, you know, there is nothing, nothing super fancy about them, but she would have a little like song or reading of it.
00:57:08:04 - 00:57:26:18
Terence Channon
Then she would kind of populate the tick tock with like little icons from Excel, like the colors, the shading. So she would have a little kind of small like little little poem or a little story or song about that and then populate the elements from Excel. And it actually kind of made it seem these things kind of fun.
00:57:27:03 - 00:57:42:15
Terence Channon
And then I was like, well, that's really cool, right? So yeah, for yeah. So I think that may be worth, you know, I don't know, it's just like I got to go check that out. And I was like, So how do you think that's a good lesson to learn? How do you, you know, whatever is your marketing selling.
00:57:42:18 - 00:57:47:20
Lee Murray
How do you translate what you're doing to a platform? Like that or any platform? Right. That's the question, right?
00:57:47:22 - 00:58:10:15
Terence Channon
So anyway, she, she did that. OK, so yeah, I think there's, there's a lot to learn there. You know, I think you know, I think that goes you know, you don't have to you can't be everything to everyone, of course. But I don't know, I kind of go back to a little less than one time. Someone called me, you know, selling products and someone called me, you know, to take your order.
00:58:10:17 - 00:58:34:06
Terence Channon
It was a good size order. And I'm like, yeah, Visa, MasterCard, American Express, because you take Diners Club Diners Club, I don't even a thing. And yeah, and I'm like, hold on. So I got on the phone and called you know, a guy did a merchant accounts, and I go, Can I take Diners Club? And he said, Why?
00:58:34:10 - 00:58:53:12
Terence Channon
And he go, I got a customer on the phone right now. And he goes, You want to take Diners Club? I'm like, Yeah, it's the only Diners Club transaction I've ever processed. But, you know, but it was interesting because, you know, you said to me, I always use that as a lesson to myself to say, hey, how do you pay check, credit card, bank transfer?
00:58:53:12 - 00:59:12:02
Terence Channon
PayPal is make it easy, real easy for you. The same way with my customers. How can I send you information, you know, email, fax, mail, phone, video conference, FedEx, whatever it is you want, whatever's easiest for you, I can give you suggestions. I'm not sure why I haven't been applying that the same way for like, you know, where you can find it.
00:59:12:03 - 00:59:29:02
Terence Channon
Why aren't you on Instagram? Why aren't you on tick tock? Why aren't you in all of these social networking? Because you got it. You know, somebody will say, look, I only Instagram, I only Snapchat. You know, you can't be hearing everyone, but, you know, being more accessible to everyone is not a bad idea. So I learned that today from our session here.
00:59:29:02 - 00:59:29:15
Terence Channon
Thank you.
00:59:33:05 - 00:59:45:03
Lee Murray
We both learned it. Right. OK, one more question for you. If you could change the mind of a of a small business owner about anything, what would that be? And it doesn't have to be financial related.
00:59:47:19 - 01:00:17:20
Terence Channon
So I've got 22 kind of stories on that. One of them is I remember in my graduate school class and entrepreneurship class and and the professor said, I give everyone a Post-it and and said, and she goes, I want everyone to put, you know, write an answer, you know, are you an entrepreneur? Right. And, you know, I think, you know, the professor's goal was to have, you know, yes or nos and the kind of know, you know, so I answered involuntarily.
01:00:19:06 - 01:00:45:02
Terence Channon
It was my answer. So she sat and it was like, and what? And I'm like, that's mine. Right? And and, you know, also a lot of people that that I know that, you know, have great jobs, good salaries, good benefits. And I want to go out on my own. And my first question was why write? So I'm almost kind of a little bit, you know, not I don't want to deter people from accomplishing and going with them to do, you know, a little bit contrarian by nature.
01:00:45:17 - 01:01:15:19
Terence Channon
But I think, you know, again, this just goes back to being honest with yourself. It goes back to saying you know, you know, the grass is greener on the other side kind of applies. It rarely is. I actually saw that in real life one time driving through Okeechobee and there was a cow eating grass with his head through the barbed wire when he got out of the car and the grass was green on both sides.
01:01:15:19 - 01:01:40:09
Terence Channon
And I am actually like, that's where that phrase comes from. And I'm like, you're not going to stop fooling around. The grass is completely fine there. It was like, what are you doing? So I think it just comes down to if it's something that, you know, really feel purposeful about, it accomplishes your personal goals. If that's the way to make it happen, I think that's where it has to start.
01:01:40:09 - 01:01:57:15
Terence Channon
I guess, you know, I credit some of my success to, you know, being a business owner out of necessity where, you know, going back to college where it's like, look, you can't come in and, you know, we can't have your ten to 12 and three to five on Mondays and then, you know, eight to 11 and, you know, six to nine on Tuesdays.
01:01:57:15 - 01:02:14:16
Terence Channon
And then when we can't do that, we have to we need, you know, well, that's my classes are on the way and they're like, I can't, I can't do that. Maybe now it is a little different, this world, right? But with, you know, remote work and whatnot. But, but I really had to out of necessity kind of find a path.
01:02:14:16 - 01:02:34:16
Terence Channon
So I think if you feel purposeful about something connected to that, that's where you start. And again, my purpose for me at that time especially, it's still rings true to me today was, you know, providing for a family and being there while finishing school, which I felt was important. So I think if you kind of assess, you know, I think a lot of people go into business, I'm going to make money.
01:02:34:16 - 01:02:57:00
Terence Channon
I want to be important. I'm tired of my boss. Right. You know, a lot of these reasons come out or, you know, I'm you know, I'm so sick of being there. I'm sick of the traffic. Those are all real. And those can be considered. But if you just go into business to try to, you know, get away from a problem that you have that, you know, maybe it can work, you know?
01:02:57:01 - 01:03:16:13
Terence Channon
But I think the successful business owners say, you know, how does this align with my vision for me? How does it serve my purpose? And I think a lot of business owners fail to think of it that way. They see an opportunity, make money, they see an opportunity oh, my God. People get rich. They see an opportunity to me, you know, be my own boss.
01:03:16:21 - 01:03:49:21
Terence Channon
And those can be some of your drivers and values for sure. But I think a lot of business owners fail to kind of look at their their values, their personal goals. What's important to them and then how those, you know, what's the best way to achieve that? Right. And and maybe owning a business is if it is I think you've you know, you've despite the risk involved in the the turmoil and the hardships and, you know, you know, high failure rates, then, hey, that's your move.
01:03:51:00 - 01:04:10:14
Terence Channon
So I think that's what you have to look at. If not, then you say, I might need to find my, you know, example. If you got a great job at a big salary, big company that you're not going anywhere. You know, you want to get rich to be a business owner, you know, you might be better suited taking your your your high earnings and, you know, maybe with some assistance maybe not.
01:04:10:14 - 01:04:15:23
Terence Channon
But, you know, you know, investing in the right types of businesses yeah.
01:04:16:05 - 01:04:31:02
Lee Murray
And I think just to recap all that, I would say it's got to whatever your vision is, it's got to be, you know, good enough to get you through the hard times. And you don't even know what those hard times are going to look like yet. So think ten times worse than what you can think of.
01:04:31:02 - 01:04:35:14
Terence Channon
Yeah, well well said. 100% well said. Absolutely. No, it's absolutely.
01:04:37:05 - 01:04:44:04
Lee Murray
Terrance, this has been great. You're my longest interview yet. So and and longest meaning. Most value.
01:04:44:04 - 01:04:44:16
Terence Channon
Maybe.
01:04:45:15 - 01:04:46:10
Lee Murray
What we talk about.
01:04:46:20 - 01:05:02:03
Terence Channon
That's the we'll let the listeners decide. But but hopefully the you know, brevity is not one of the skills I'm blessed with. But if but it has served me well in other ways. But it fits hopefully was great for you. I enjoyed it. And, you know, I hope your listeners enjoy it, too.
01:05:03:18 - 01:05:07:11
Lee Murray
Thank you very much. And if you made it this far, please go leave a review.
01:05:08:20 - 01:05:24:20
Terence Channon
But hopefully that will be a good maybe you should have segments. You know, you have to do the minutes and say here from five to ten, we talk about this. I've done that with podcast. I've talked to a lot. I said some we say, you got this. This podcast talks about the real estate market. It's an hour and a half and I like getting it.
01:05:24:20 - 01:05:30:15
Terence Channon
I don't know, an hour and a half listeners. They said, Well, the part about this, OK, OK, minutes, 17 to 31. I can do that very quick. Yeah.
01:05:30:23 - 01:05:33:13
Lee Murray
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's it. That's how we do it.
01:05:34:15 - 01:05:35:02
Terence Channon
Thank you.
01:05:35:18 - 01:06:04:07
Lee Murray
Hey, I really appreciate you tuning in to this episode of Exploring Growth. I'm trying to get this in the hands of as many growing businesses as possible so they can take this practical wisdom and deployed in their companies or with their teams. If you're getting some value out of this show and know someone who should listen as well, would you consider sharing with them or leave a positive review on the platform in which you're listening or watching YouTube audience leave a comment below something you liked or your perspective on what we discussed I'm grateful for everyone that tunes in every week.
01:06:04:11 - 01:06:05:10
Lee Murray
Let's keep exploring