Three SMB Job Shadows Recap
October 13, 2021 | Issue #46
Big Deal Small Business: Three SMB Job Shadows Recap
October 13, 2021 | Issue #46
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I’m back in New York City after a whirlwind tour of Salt Lake City & Austin.
First & foremost, I was blown away by the hospitality & welcome I received from the SMB community.
From folks I’ve gotten to know well over Zoom calls these past few months to those I’d never met save for occasional Twitter reactions — every interaction was overwhelmingly positive.
Except for Justin Vogt (who has had the misfortune of knowing me for many years), every single person along the way I’ve met in the past 12 months or so.
So first, a big thank you to the SMB Twitter (and off-Twitter) communities in both SLC and Austin.
Second, three friends generously opened their doors for me to get a peek behind the curtain of their respective businesses. I job shadowed them each for ~2 days as I got a front seat to what they do all day.
Today’s post provides a recap of those experiences.
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The Businesses
In SLC, I job shadowed Chase, who was recently on Think Like an Owner in case you want to hear the full rundown on Decada Group, his holding company. He and his business partner Adam own a custom clothier and a fine arts workshop. They have also recently made their first foray into construction/home services.
In Austin, I spent time with two landscaping owners:
Bradley & Logan, who acquired a commercial landscaping business in 2017, grew recurring revenue at a 100% CAGR for ~3-4 years, and then sold it to Brightview, the largest and only publicly traded landscaping company. They guest wrote an article for this newsletter a few weeks ago in case you want to get in their head (I wish I could just download their brains into mine before I close on a deal).
Graham & Hannah, who acquired a commercial landscaping business in 2020, followed by a pool maintenance & lifeguard staffing business in 2021.
Suffice to say, spending a couple days with each of these entrepreneurs was an absolute treat for me, so I can’t say thank you enough for how generous they were with their time.
Before I Get to Takeaways
It’s tempting to summarize it all down to a few pithy takeaways that are digestible in newsletter format.
The reality is that the experience of being on-site & with the guys for 8+ hours each was really the “takeaway” for me.
Folks coming from finance/private equity ascribe an almost mystical quality to “operators” — the reality is that there is no silver bullet in operations. There’s no moment where it all clicks and now you understand how to operate a business.
The real reason I did these job shadows was exposure therapy — the less foreign & scary it seems to be in a small business, the more likely it is that I’ll make the leap and submit an offer on a business.
I came away energized to close on a deal and get started (and even more antsy to be done with the search process).
That said, there were a few items that stuck out to me after spending several days inside three different businesses.
Takeaway 1: People & Culture
People & culture are the #1 challenge and #1 launching pad for any business. Great employees are hard to find, hard to retain, hard to grow. Great managers that can be culture champions are hard to find, hard to retain, and hard to grow.
The difference between a business with strong people & culture and one without is the difference between being “good at operations” and being “bad” at it.
Each of the operators I spent time with stressed the importance of being an enabler for their staff. If you’ve hired well, you aren’t overseeing their work — you’re enabling their work. You help remove roadblocks, eliminate bottlenecks, provide resources, or streamline decisions. And then you stay out of their way as they do what you hired them to do.
This takeaway wasn’t a surprise to me or likely anyone reading this. But even though I knew it was the #1 priority, I had underestimated how much more important it is than the #2 or #3 priorities. In reality, people & culture are probably your top 5 to 10 priorities, and everything else follows.
In other words, don’t be Ron Swanson:
Takeaway 2: All-Rounded > Expert
The best operators I’ve interacted with (both prior to this trip plus these three friends) have a few commonalities: they are hard-working, they have high IQ & EQ, and they are problem-solvers/doers by nature.
They are not necessarily subject matter experts in their given field. They have a sincere interest & willingness to learn about their sector, even if they are not born as prodigies in landscaping. They ask good questions and are constantly testing the boundaries of why things are done the way they are.
Importantly, they are pliable — they adapt as new information presents itself. There is limited ego around ideas or plans.
Being an all-rounded person & genuinely curious seems to win the day. It’s not enough to be solely the “finance” person or the “culture” person or whatever. You have to do a bit of everything, with people management at the forefront. You have to admit you’re wrong and pivot when new information shows you wrong.
In other words, do be Ross:
Takeaway 3: Don’t Succumb to the Little Problems
Each day in SMB ownership seems to start with a light sense of what the day will look like. Maybe you have a few meetings scheduled and a couple long-term ideas you’re working on.
By 8 am, that’s probably gone out the window. Tiny fires pop up constantly and you’re putting them out all day.
The difficulty is not succumbing to them — you may be best equipped to handle certain problems, but it’s okay to let someone on your team handle them, even if they do it 80% as well. That last 20% of execution isn’t worth losing all your time to the day-to-day firefighting.
Trusting your leadership team and employees to deal with problems seems crucial to carving out time & space for you to work “on the business” — on a long enough timescale, you can’t afford to do it any other way, but when you’re in the middle of it, it may be difficult to see the forest for the trees.
In practice, you probably do succumb to the little problems on most or at least many days. But if you can slowly win on more days than you lose, you start to have the time to push the business forward.
In related news, live feed of an SMB owner:
Conclusions
The #1 conclusion is that I’ve learned how to embed GIFs into newsletters, so expect a lot more of those in future posts.
Anyway, as I cautioned before, the point of these job shadows was not to generate three bite-sized takeaways. It was a more personal experience of exposing myself to a lifestyle & job that looks very different than Midtown Manhattan private equity.
That said, I hope my takeaways resonate with business owners on this mailing list.
For searchers, I’d recommend reaching out to good friends who are business owners and trying to do something similar (shout out to Aizik for suggesting it to me in the first place). The experience is hard to replicate through reading or studying or whatever else.
If you’ve got any thoughts or feedback, I’m always all ears. Just hit reply to this email or find me on Twitter.
Thanks,
Guesswork Investing
P.S. I’d always appreciate introductions to potential acquisition targets or brokers (primarily targeting $750K-$1.5M+ of SDE or EBITDA, located in Seattle or the Bay Area).
Thats awesome and super beneficial. How did you get guys to meet up with? Dropped them a note directly on twitter or announced you were traveling and to get in touch?