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- [00:00]
Will Smith
In the late 90s, a woman quit her job to bake and sell funnel cakes at fairs and farmers markets. She and other vendors needed to be able to regularly wash her hands at these markets, and many would solve this problem by bringing along buckets. This woman's husband, an engineer, sensed an opportunity. He built her a portable sink, one that allowed her to wash her hands and pass health inspections handling food at these outdoor events. Other vendors saw this and wanted a portable sink for themselves. A company was born and an American dream was realized. The couple were immigrants from Egypt. 26 years later, today's guests also a couple, bought the 2 million dollar company to pursue their own dreams with it. Ray and Dana Cherry were working in successful tech careers, but but feeling the time was right for a change. They were bound to pursue an entrepreneurial path eventually, and buying a business was the answer. When the listing for Mansam Portable Sinks hit the market, it was only 20 minutes away, and Ray jumped at the opportunity to meet the seller the very next day. Both Ray and Dana also come from immigrant families, so there was kinship with the Egyptian owner. Today, Ray and Dana have quit their tech jobs and are working full time in the business, one that they believe has a ton of room to grow under their family's ownership. Here are Ray and Dana Cherry, owners of Monsam Portable Sinks Announcements Upcoming Webinars this Thursday, Everything legal you need to start your search. Attorneys Bill Barlow and James David Williams return for a legal office hours to cover how to set up your search from a legal perspective, including preparing your LOI template to be able to submit offers. They'll actually be handing out an LOI template for you to use in your deals. That's this Thursday, January 30th at noon Eastern. Register at the link in today's show notes or on the Acquiring Minds homepage. Acquiring Minds Co. Then next week, Heather Anderson will host an SBA and Lending Office Hours. Heather is a prolific SBA loan broker, a name many of you will recognize, and she's going to lay out the process of getting an SBA loan step by step, stage by stage. There are so many moving pieces, so many stakeholders in an acquisition, and Heather will show you how to fit them all together to successfully close your deal. That's next Thursday, February 6th at noon Eastern. Register at the link in today's show Notes or on the Acquiring Minds homepage. Acquiringminds Co. Welcome to Acquiring Minds, a podcast about buying businesses. My name is Will Smith. Acquiring an existing business is an awesome opportunity for many entrepreneurs, and on this.
- [03:13]
Ray Cherry
Podcast I talk to the people who do it.
- [03:16]
Will Smith
An SBA loan broker, as opposed to a direct lender, doesn't work for a particular bank. Instead, the broker pairs you with the right SBA lender for your deal based on industry terms, risk thresholds, then helps you navigate the process better than many lenders themselves do. Matthias Smith of Pioneer Capital Advisory is just such a broker. Matthias worked at two of the country's top 10 SBA lenders. So he's been on the inside of the SBA process and knows well the pitfalls and hurdles and how to avoid them. He struck out on his own to laser focus on the ETA and search space. Our niche is his niche. You'll see Matthias at all the ETA conferences. He's closed over 30 search deals since starting Pioneer in May of 2022, including some acquiring Minds guests. To learn more and get in touch, go to PioneerCapitalAdvisory.com or click the link in the notes. Ray and Dana Cherry, welcome to Acquiring Minds.
- [04:23]
Dana Cherry
Great to be here.
- [04:25]
Ray Cherry
The two of you are partners in life and now in business. You bought a manufacturer in the Bay Area earlier this year. And so are a few months into the new adventure. Let's get right into it, guys. Ray to you first, please. Some background, and then, Dana, we'll go to you.
- [04:43]
Dana Cherry
Yeah. But before getting into it, I'd be remiss if I didn't just say thank you. This is a full circle moment for me. It's not too long ago that I was on the couch binging episodes. And your platform and your guests have been really helpful for us in showing us what was possible and inspiring us to take this step and realize our dreams. So thank you very much for your platform, for the work you do, and for being part of our story.
- [05:12]
Ray Cherry
Man, Ray, that was. I'm touched. You're welcome. Thank you for saying that. And, you know, that's for, you know, all the other guests as well, to hear who come on here, just like you're doing right now, and sharing their stories. So thank you, guests.
- [05:25]
Dana Cherry
Yeah.
- [05:26]
Ray Cherry
Appreciate it.
- [05:26]
Dana Cherry
Yeah, for sure. To kick off, I grew up just outside of Boston. My family's from Haiti. So, you know, things like humility, hard work, education were instilled in me from a very early age. Entrepreneurship was, was around the family. I had aunts and uncles that owned, you know, bakeries and stores. And to me, that was always just really cool. It was like a slice of the American pie, so to speak. So it was always in the back of my mind. I, I gravitated toward finance and, and business. In college. And we. I went to Tufts, which is where I met Dana. We studied economics and then I went into financial services. Started on the corporate banking side, making loans to businesses in and around the Boston area. Went to get my MBA from the University of Chicago, where I studied finance and accounting, and then went into a career in investment banking, where I spent over a decade advising companies on sale processes, mergers, acquisitions, capital raises. Opted to join the operating side and joined a former client of mine in the cybersecurity software space to help them prepare for an ipo. Change in strategy sort of led us to part ways mutually and I was faced with the first real break in my professional career. So it took some time to get introspective and we started thinking about how this could potentially be a path for us. And so we were conscious of eta. We had friends in and around the space, searchers, operators, investors, and spend time, you know, speaking to them, reading the books and digging into your podcast, which is how we. How we fell into this world.
- [07:16]
Ray Cherry
And that would have been 2023 last year, right?
- [07:19]
Dana Cherry
Correct.
- [07:20]
Ray Cherry
Great.
- [07:21]
Will Smith
Super, Dana, Sure.
- [07:23]
Matthias Smith
And I want to echo Ray's sentiments. Thank you so much for having us. You've been a true inspiration over the last day. Even longer than 2023, like two years. So background on myself. I grew up in Westchester County, New York, so just outside of New York City, and grew up in a Jamaican family in a Jamaican household. Both my parents were educators before they made a big career switch. And so education, getting a great education, gaining financial independence was a big theme of my upbringing, both with my parents as well as my broader family. And I went to Tufts, which is where Ray and I met, as you mentioned, they are also majored in economics. I minored in media studies and mass communications and always had an interest in business, always had an interest in just the financial markets and entrepreneurship as well. And after Tufts, went on to ge, General Electric, and was in a development program there, leadership program there for a couple years, then worked at NBC, which at the time was owned by ge. Had a great experience there. I mean, GE is kind of the quintessential corporate America experience. And so had a great foundation and built a great foundation there for entering into corporate America in the corporate world. And at the time I always sort of knew that I was going to go on to pursue my master's. Both my parents had their Masters and knowing that I had this interest in business, went on to pursue my MBA at Kellogg School of Management. While there, leaned into my focus on marketing, but also strategy and Took a bunch of entrepreneurship classes, as many as I could fit into my schedule, which looking back on it now probably took 10 years too early, but it worked out seemingly well. I'll take, I'd say after Kellogg went on to spend most of my career at in tech and specifically spent most of my career at Salesforce, was a product marketing leader for a number of years. There was getting an itch to do something different. Had really liked certain aspects of my role, including the sort of emanating aspects. I'd worked on a few M and A deals and strategic partnerships. Really love that aspect of the role and so wanted to pivot, go to a smaller company. Ended up at a late stage startup that was in its pre IPO phase and this was a startup that had an incredible mission, was providing hardware and software to organizations that had large fleets of trucks and just helping to improve their safety and efficiency. Helped support that ipo. Worked there for a couple years in a number of marketing roles as well as in a communications role and again was just itching to do something different, was itching to take on more. And Ray was at this career sort of pivot at the time and I was also entering sort of this career crossroads of what do we, what do we step into for this next chapter? What's the lifestyle we want to live and lead? And this is where we fell into eta. And as Ray mentioned, we knew a couple friends that had entered into the space and the more we looked at it, the more it felt like a really viable option and opportunity for us to dive into entrepreneurship.
- [10:31]
Ray Cherry
So it was a coincidence that you were both found yourselves at kind of career crossroads at the same time or was there an echo chamber in the Cherry household where you're both influencing each other like time for a change, time for a change sort of thing. Probably all. All of the above.
- [10:48]
Dana Cherry
Yeah, I would say it's, I would say it's all of the above. We, at this point, we've known each other for longer than we haven't. We've been together a long time. We've sort of grown up into adulthood together. And so each step of the way we've been sort of stepping in lockstep with each other through, you know, our early careers to business school to, you know, becoming parents, to yeah. Elevating in our respective roles, finance and marketing. And you know, we just got to a point where we were looking at where the, you know, the next step would be for each of our respective careers and it wasn't what we wanted. So you know, I Had this inflection point and you know, we had the opportunity to really step back and be reflective and, and, and strategic and, and that's, that's how it came about.
- [11:40]
Ray Cherry
Well, you were both attracted to business from students or earlier? Just the business in general. Was it inevitable that one or both of you would end up as entrepreneurs?
- [11:51]
Matthias Smith
Yes.
- [11:51]
Ray Cherry
Or not necessarily? Yes. Okay.
- [11:53]
Matthias Smith
Yes, I would say it was inevitable. And I've always had an interest in just building things and puzzles and just pursuing my own path. And like I mentioned financial independence before and I've written about entrepreneurship in my business school essays around the pandemic time and kind of started to noodle on more ideas for startups in particular and things that we wanted to build and launch together. So I think this was inevitable or I don't think this was certainly inevitable. It was just a matter of how and what the timing would be.
- [12:27]
Ray Cherry
And I'm not sure if you said it, but I, I know that you're both, that you're based in the Bay Area, so, so you, you, you both ended your, the chapter of your careers that is now coming to an end was in tech. And, and I just heard you say noodling on startup ideas there, Dana. So you guys also considered zero to one entrepreneurship. You're of course in the, in the hotbed of that. What was the, what was the decision point there between buying a business versus some of those, those brainstorms you had? None of them were good ideas.
- [13:01]
Dana Cherry
Yeah, I mean, those months that I had to reflect, I started interviewing for corporate roles. Didn't find anything that was that appealing or attractive to me. Then I started thinking, okay, well, what if we were to start our own business that we, we came up with a couple ideas, but we have, we've got two young kids, seven year old and a soon to be five year old, and it just, it just felt too risky. And so as we were moving down this path, there was a lot that appealed to us in that, you know, we could, we could acquire a business that's already been successful, that's already has a historical track record and, and that ideally would benefit from our specific skill set that we've spent, you know, two decades kind of cultivating. And when you start to get into it and run numbers, it's, it just makes a lot more sense. And so that's kind of how we, that's how we ended up going for it.
- [14:10]
Ray Cherry
Sure.
- [14:11]
Matthias Smith
I still have those ideas and they're great, by the way. Never say never.
- [14:16]
Dana Cherry
Speaking for mine. Yeah. Yes. Mine weren't Too great.
- [14:20]
Ray Cherry
Well, and then the other question is, was it inevitable that you would go into business together? Of course, that's a big theme of today's interview, that you are a couple doing this.
- [14:29]
Matthias Smith
No, I wouldn't say it was inevitable on that front for me. I was at my last company and just evaluating what was next in my career and evaluating new roles that were both inside the company and outside the company. I was getting tapped for like CMO roles. And I kept telling myself, before I become the CMO of any other company, I'd like to be in the C suite for myself first. And wanted to take a pause and sort of help Ray with this search and sort of understand more about how this search would take place while also having the opportunity to do my own kind of career evaluation and introspection. And then we started to come across a lot of companies that were being run by husband and wife teams and we were learning more about how they were making it work. And we thought to ourselves, like, could we make this work and sort of explore that further? Did the modeling and it seemed to make a lot of sense given our complementary skill sets. So it wasn't always inevitable, but it was one of those things that we sort of realized along the way.
- [15:38]
Ray Cherry
Well, because it is such a big feature of your story, why don't we just dwell on it now before we return to the plot? The big question, of course would be how did you evaluate the risk, if any, to the relationship itself when you go into business with each other, as you, as you put rather poetically, Ray, you've now known each other longer than you haven't, so you've been together for more than half your respective lives, so that it's probably pretty unbreakable. But still we're told that, that there's in, in fact more risk. Maybe not, not more risk in, in going into business with friends and family, but sure, there's different risk. How do you think about that? Or you didn't. You. You guys are just so solid that it wasn't even a consideration sort of thing.
- [16:22]
Matthias Smith
We certainly had.
- [16:23]
Ray Cherry
You already have two kids, right? You should maybe say that.
- [16:25]
Dana Cherry
Yeah.
- [16:26]
Matthias Smith
To me that was the. That was the kind of crux of the storyline for us going into business together is that for the last seven plus years, we've probably done the hardest job imaginable together really well, which is being parents and welcome to fatherhood, Will thank you can attest. And so that was sort of one way that we approached it of, hey, we've been great partners in parenting. Together we've been able to communicate really well and through throughout our whole relationship. That's one thing that we've really stressed is just the importance of strong communication. This was a relationship that was built on friendship. We were friends for a long time and school, school mates for a long time before becoming partners. And so for us it was just thinking about, okay, this is our work life and this is our school life and we've done a great job of separating the two to some degree. Of course it blends a little bit when we're, we're at home but separate our communication at work from our communication at home. And again we have complimentary skill sets. Ray has his corners of the business, I have my corners of the business and we get to bounce ideas off of each other and make decisions quicker than I think we have in the past, our past roles. So that's been a huge benefit.
- [17:42]
Will Smith
If you ask owners in the ETA and search community which insurance broker provides highest quality work, great outcomes and has a practice dedicated to searchers and acquisition entrepreneurs, one name comes up again and again. Oberle. Oberle Risk Strategies has worked with hundreds of searchers over nearly a decade and is in fact led by a two time successful searcher, August Felker, which makes Oberly a specialty insurance brokerage for searchers by a former searcher. And if you've got a business under loi, Oberle will provide complimentary due diligence on that business's insurance and benefits program. An easy no risk way to get to know August and the team at Oberle. To take advantage. Check out oberle-risk.com that's O B E R L E- risk.com, link in the notes.
- [18:43]
Ray Cherry
When you decide to do this together it as a family essentially it almost starts to raise the question of not just, you know, this is what, what one of you is doing for the next chapter of your careers but are you does the sort of Cherry family holding company vision start to emerge where, you know, it's almost like you can dream a little bit bigger when you're doing this as a couple than some individual doing it?
- [19:10]
Dana Cherry
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean it's been really great to be doing this in front of our young kids. They're seeing this and they're going to the shop and the office and they understand that this is what ownership looks like and it's been really, really special.
- [19:29]
Matthias Smith
That's been a major highlight and even beyond our kids being able to inspire others has been a dream come true and we are excited to Speak to anyone who's really interested in this path, genuinely interested in this path, because if we can serve as an inspiration for, hey, don't just look at these career paths that have been laid out in front of you that you only know of. There's this other path too, which is also tremendous to explore. The more that we can do that, the better. We've benefited from programs like Inroads and Management Leadership for Tomorrow mlt, both of which help high achieving minorities just advance more in their careers and in business. And to the extent that we can be an inspiration to others, the better. Just knowing that there's. The world is bigger, the job market's bigger, the economy is bigger than the sort of finite options that might be put in front of you when you initially start out.
- [20:21]
Ray Cherry
Yeah, so well put. And I agree with you. You know, acquiring hosting, acquiring Minds has been my own education in, in that, that, that just the, not just the path of buying a business, but really small business broadly. You know, just the, the small. You know, it's funny about Acquiring Minds because I have positioned it and think about it as a podcast about buying a business, but I. More recently, it's kind of, I've kind of evolved to thinking about it more as showing the power of small business. It's almost more a celebration of small business than it is about buying a business.
- [21:00]
Dana Cherry
Absolutely. Anyway, yeah, I know, I mean we talked a little bit about this on the pre call, but just that's something that really resonates with us too. I mean, we're coming from, you know, the finance world and the software world and in our former lives we, we were sort of in our own bubbles. And this, the last six months here has really opened our eyes to just how, how big the economy is, how big the world is. And just it's, it's really been a, a big perspective shift for, for me and I just have so much more appreciation for it all.
- [21:34]
Ray Cherry
Isn't it funny to be a coastal elite and be told that you're the sophisticated one and have, and have all this worldly perspective and then come to find that you were actually living in a bubble the whole time?
- [21:46]
Dana Cherry
For sure. For sure. Absolutely true.
- [21:49]
Ray Cherry
This is great, guys. Great warmup to the story itself. So we understand why you went down the path. Now let's hear about the search itself. What was your criteria? What were you looking for in the business to buy?
- [22:04]
Matthias Smith
So when we started out, or when Ray particularly was leading the search, we were looking at a vast number of companies and just sort of getting comfortable with the idea of buying a business and what were the options that were out there? And we saw a plethora of options. But starting out, our initial like go no go criteria was that the owners would be retiring and that it wasn't sort of a distress situation or fire sale, that it be consistently profitable, that It'd be within 30 minutes of where we lived. We wanted to be able to go into the office or and be with our employees on a regular basis and that that'd be a situation where we saw an opportunity for growth and just a lot of upside. So those are sort of like the baseline criteria. We weren't super industry focused at the time. We were fairly industry agnostic. And as we saw more businesses, we just started to get comfortable with the. With certain industries, particularly manufacturing and services. We also knew that we wanted it to be a B2B business. That's sort of a space that we were familiar with. You're interested in retail or. Or like strictly B2C. Very much keeping our focus on B2B, which is where our skill sets were aligned. And there were some other things that we were definitely considering. Oh, also licensing. Like, we didn't want to enter into a business that required stringent licensing or credentials. An area where we can just ramp up easily and be able to understand the product or the service easily was in a wheelhouse.
- [23:38]
Dana Cherry
Yeah, those are the big ones. And then on the profitability piece, it was really important that the business historically, looking back three, four years, would have been able to support the debt that we were going to be looking to put on the business. So for us, if we could find a situation where that was the case and the business also had tremendous growth potential, to us, that was the perfect scenario because we could then, you know, capitalize on some of that upside.
- [24:07]
Ray Cherry
Sure. Well, speaking of the money piece here, I just heard you say, Ray, that you. It needed to pay for the debt, which is. That's what you said, right? Basically, yeah.
- [24:22]
Will Smith
Sure.
- [24:23]
Ray Cherry
But also, you're living in the Bay Area. Expensive. Well, you've got two kids. Even more expensive. You're both quitting, right? Both of you are going to go full time into this.
- [24:34]
Dana Cherry
That's right.
- [24:35]
Ray Cherry
So you're foregoing your salaries, which both of you being successful probably was. Was a substantial amount of yearly income. So what did you think about what were your financial criteria aside from just making sure that it paid for the debt?
- [24:49]
Dana Cherry
Yeah, so we. We wanted it to get to a point where on the profitability side, we. We had enough to sort of account for our salaries previously. And so as we were going through the modeling and we modeled various cases to see, okay, well, with X amount of growth rate, what would we need to maintain profitability at to get us to our goals and sustain our lifestyle and our way of life here? Fortunately, we live pretty frugally, so we, we've been able to, you know, save quite a bit from our, our previous careers. And then in addition to that, we've, we've had some investments that have, that have panned out. So we had a bit of a nest egg to, to, to sort of rely on here.
- [25:41]
Ray Cherry
And was that nest egg money that you were going to use for income as owners of the business or just equity that you could put toward acquiring the business or both?
- [25:51]
Dana Cherry
I would say both. We would use some of that capital to consummate the transaction, but we would also use some of that to fund our lives while we were stabilizing the business and incorporating things, making some investments into the business. So all of the above, really.
- [26:12]
Ray Cherry
Okay, so you had a little bit of breathing room financially to mean you have the capital to do a transaction, but then also to fund a search to, to live while doing a self funded search and then also invest into the business. Correct, correct.
- [26:28]
Dana Cherry
And it was, and it was very important for us that this be self funded, that we own that we own all of it. And so that's, that's why we, we took that approach.
- [26:35]
Ray Cherry
Why was that so important to you?
- [26:38]
Dana Cherry
Just the autonomy, ownership of our, our, our time and our energy. We've, you know, we've, we've been part of boards of investors and boards of directors and it, at this point, if, if we could have avoided that and, and just sort of own the, the entire piece. That's what we, that's what we wanted to, that was our intent.
- [27:01]
Ray Cherry
You're speaking so carefully right now, Ray.
- [27:06]
Matthias Smith
We wanted to just own the decision making as well. Through and through, like. Yeah, and at the end of the day we want to be able to reflect that this is our company.
- [27:15]
Dana Cherry
Yeah.
- [27:16]
Ray Cherry
Fantastic. So can you put a number on the financial criteria? Just like an SDE floor or ceiling or band?
- [27:23]
Dana Cherry
Yeah, so we had said the, the floor was 250,000 on SDE and then we were looking upwards of a million. So is a, is a pretty wide range, but just given the, the strictness of the rest of our criteria, it provided a bunch of options. I think we reviewed probably three to 400 books in the six to seven months we were going through it.
- [27:52]
Ray Cherry
You reviewed how many?
- [27:53]
Dana Cherry
I think it was between 300 and 400. This was my full time gig. I would drop the kids off and then plop down on the couch and look listen to you and call brokers and speak to. Speak to business buyers over. Over a big pot of coffee. So it was, it was my, it was my day to day. I was kind of living, breathing it every day.
- [28:15]
Matthias Smith
Yeah, he told me that number two. And I was like, whoa, that's a lot. But read it.
- [28:20]
Ray Cherry
I'm surprised for two reasons. First, that's a lot for you to, to ingest, Ray, but also that there is that much deal flow in the Bay Area. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [28:31]
Dana Cherry
I mean some, yeah, some of them are more quicker nos than others, but yeah, there, there is a lot of. I was, I was surprised at how much activity there is.
- [28:40]
Ray Cherry
And you guys are in the East Bay, Correct?
- [28:43]
Matthias Smith
Correct.
- [28:44]
Ray Cherry
And so 30 minutes. You said your radius was 30 minutes. That includes, that takes you out to like the deep East Bay. Does that get you all the way back to San Francisco proper? Were you looking in San Francisco and Oakland proper or like Marin? Not that far.
- [28:58]
Dana Cherry
We were, but not seriously. So I, I spoke to businesses in, in San Francisco, South. San Francisco a little bit further south. But yeah, not nothing. Nothing super Seriously.
- [29:11]
Ray Cherry
So mostly East Bay. The, the kind of. The broader East Bay. Okay.
- [29:17]
Matthias Smith
For the sake of commutes and convenience. Yeah, yeah, that was our sweet pot.
- [29:22]
Ray Cherry
Don't want to have to go across the Bay Bridge every day or ever.
- [29:24]
Dana Cherry
No, preferably not.
- [29:26]
Matthias Smith
We've had to do that before and yeah, not the most pleasant thing.
- [29:30]
Ray Cherry
Great. Okay, so how did you find what you found?
- [29:34]
Dana Cherry
Yeah, so like I said, was spending a lot of time. I think I had cultivated a list of upwards of 50 business brokers in the area that I was in contact with pretty frequently, pretty regularly, week to week. And it was, you know, since it was self funded, it was very clear to me that it was important that we establish ourselves as credible buyers. And so spent a lot of time speaking to lenders, brokers of sort of all varieties, shapes and sizes, and spent a lot of time on the business marketplaces, registering for everything, getting all the emails and, and you know, from then was just having conversation after conversation after conversation and fell into, or came across, I should say this one on one of those business marketplaces and reached out to the broker and come to find out we were the first ones to meet with the seller. And I think proximity helped with that because the broker said, hey, he's available tomorrow night if you guys are able to pop over. And you know, it's 20 minutes away. So I was able to do that and I went in there and I, you know, I spoke to him and we sort of hit it off. He again, they, they founded this business. It was a husband and wife pair. The husband was, or I guess both of them, they were around our age when they founded this business. The husband was sort of frustrated by where the corporate experience had been taking him and so he decided to take a shot. And, and that's, that's sort of how we, we started talking to them.
- [31:18]
Matthias Smith
And this was probably early last year. So around January, late January or February of last year.
- [31:24]
Ray Cherry
Last year. Meeting this year.
- [31:26]
Matthias Smith
This year.
- [31:26]
Dana Cherry
February of this year.
- [31:27]
Matthias Smith
Yeah, this was around early January or late January, early February of last year.
- [31:32]
Ray Cherry
Or this year, 2024. Tell us about the business. And then I want to hear more about the founding story, which is fun, right? What is the business? What does the business do? How big is it? How old is it? When did they found it?
- [31:43]
Matthias Smith
So Monsant designs and manufactures customizable portable sinks. So not the portable, portable sink that you see outside of Porta Potties. Truly commercial grade, self contained portable hand washing and hair washing stations. And we typically sell into schools and restaurants, hotels, spas, salons. The use cases run the gamut. And one of the things that's very unique about our business is that we sell customizable sinks. So customers are able to build these to their specifications or design these to their specifications. And they come in a variety of models. They are either self contained where they contain water tank or the water can be pumped in and pumped out right to a drain. So these can be moved anywhere, they can be located anywhere. And that's the beauty of the products that we sell.
- [32:39]
Ray Cherry
I recall Ray saying that there was like 60 or something, 60 SKUs. But, but then beyond that, like you, like you've now said, Dana, that, that customers can also really customize these products to their heart's content. So it's kind of whatever they need, you can, you can accommodate.
- [32:58]
Matthias Smith
Exactly.
- [32:59]
Ray Cherry
And revenue.
- [33:00]
Dana Cherry
Yeah. So it was low. LTM revenue was low seven figures. So just around 2 million at time of acquisition.
- [33:12]
Matthias Smith
And really good year of 2020. Covid was really good year for them as well.
- [33:17]
Ray Cherry
For the medical use case, I assume.
- [33:20]
Dana Cherry
As you might expect.
- [33:20]
Matthias Smith
Yeah. For just the general hygiene use case.
- [33:22]
Dana Cherry
Yeah. Also, you know, outdoor food service. Yeah, it was, it was a record year for them. One of the, one of the strongest.
- [33:31]
Ray Cherry
And so we'll get into more about the SKUs and I know there's a lot of variety but just the, the kind of, the hero product, if there is one, would be kind of what looks like kind of like a vanity on wheels sort of thing. Like it's a tall, you know, sink level, sink height, sink.
- [33:50]
Dana Cherry
Correct.
- [33:50]
Ray Cherry
It's on caster kind of caster wheels. And, and it can, so you can put it wherever. And, and how, what's the water source? Do, do you have to attach a hose or does it have a water tank in it? No. How does that work?
- [34:03]
Dana Cherry
You can, it's all self contained. The base models, it's all self contained. It's all fully portable. There's a fresh tank and a waste tank. It's pretty cool engineering. The founder is an engineer by trade, so he's just a big problem solver and always thinks he can do anything that's asked of him. So that's how they ended up with all these models.
- [34:26]
Matthias Smith
And the beauty of our product line is that they're customizable. So they're customizable, portable sinks. And you ask, you know, is it coming from a water line or is it, you know, water tank? It's both. It can be both depending on the customer specifications. But largely we sell these, they're self contained. And so as Ray mentioned, they have, there's a freshwater tank and a wastewater tank and they can be placed anywhere. And that's the beauty of it. Just being able to put this access to water or anywhere in any corner of the room and being able to provide people with access, easy access to water.
- [34:59]
Dana Cherry
Yeah. But it's, it's frequently where we'll hear from a customer where they, they want to attach a garden hose as the fresh source and then they want it to drain out into a waste drain. And so we can, we can do that pretty easily as well.
- [35:13]
Ray Cherry
Well, this would be the moment to share the origin story of the business.
- [35:18]
Dana Cherry
Yeah, you wanna do this?
- [35:21]
Matthias Smith
Yeah, happy to do so. So as Ray alluded to before the prior, prior founder, the husband, he was an executive at a, at a company in the Bay Area, had sort of grown tired and kind of hit a career ceiling. And one wanted to do something on his own, really own his own business. His wife was also working, she was in a government job. And she, she, she shared the story with us toward their last day there and she was ready to leave and do her own thing as well. And so she moved on from her job with the government to bake cakes. Now, in order to bake and sell cakes or bake and sell any product, food, products, she needed to have access to Hand washing and other vendors that were around her, they were using just sort of water buckets and, and bowls.
- [36:09]
Dana Cherry
To do that hand washing, whatever they could find.
- [36:11]
Ray Cherry
And she would sell it like farmer's markets or something. This is it. Like.
- [36:14]
Matthias Smith
Exactly. That's the, Exactly. And the, the husband saw this and said, I see an opportunity here.
- [36:21]
Dana Cherry
Yeah.
- [36:22]
Matthias Smith
And built her at the first sink, the first portable sink, so, so that she would have access to hand washing and be able to bake these cakes outside and outdoors and be able to sell them and pass health inspections. And that's been a huge use case for us as well, is that a lot of these are required for a lot of companies that need to pass health inspections or meet health regulations. And other vendors that were around her saw this and wanted one for themselves. And he saw this as an opportunity and said, we're going to do this. And they, they together started this company and have, and have done incredibly well with it.
- [37:00]
Ray Cherry
Well, and this was in the. You said 27 years ago, so late 90s.
- [37:03]
Dana Cherry
Yeah, late 90s.
- [37:04]
Matthias Smith
Correct. And then the name, this is the late 90s, so 1998. More specifically, the origins of the name of the company, it's a, it's a portmanteau of their kids names and the LLC that we created to buy the company is also a portmanteau of our kids names. And this was, we established that LLC well before we, we founded or we found this company. So that sort of was kismet for us.
- [37:30]
Ray Cherry
Yeah, absolutely. And by portmanteau we mean combination of.
- [37:35]
Dana Cherry
Combination of their kids names.
- [37:36]
Ray Cherry
Yeah.
- [37:37]
Dana Cherry
But yeah, that's how, that's how they ended up with so many models is people would reach out to him and say, hey, we saw you did this. This is really cool. What if, could you do this or could you do that or could we add a base in here? And the answer was always yes.
- [37:51]
Ray Cherry
And so I guess there wasn't another product out there like this because I assume when she had the initial problem, she went looking for it. Of course, the Internet was main, was not quite mainstream then. Amazon at the time. Yeah, shouldn't fight anything. So he, he was creating a product in the market because none existed.
- [38:12]
Dana Cherry
Correct, correct.
- [38:13]
Ray Cherry
And what does the market look like today?
- [38:16]
Dana Cherry
So it's, it's, it's hard to get at a specific number, but from what I've found in my research is that it's a $200 million space. Now, portable hand washing has a lot of different definitions, but that's sort of what I've found and growing about 3, 4%. But there aren't a lot of players in the space. And so that really drew us to this business too. Just the niche aspect of it. There are a handful of other providers and maybe some will focus on education or some will focus on the beauty industry, but no one that's really doing everything. And so that's, that's really what the differentiator is for us in. In addition to the, just the, the ability to customize these, these models and.
- [39:05]
Ray Cherry
Units and, and how is it sold? Is this, is this D2C? But I know it's businesses D2B. I mean are people coming to the website to buy. And do they buy single units or do they buy 20 for a salon or, or what?
- [39:21]
Matthias Smith
It's a mix. We, we sell direct as well as through distributors. I'd say the, the distribution There is about 60% direct and 40% through dealers, distributors. And yes, largely on the website we find that customers largely buy one unit at a time. The price point is fairly high. It's a couple thousand. Our highest model or our most expensive model is probably 5000 plus and our lowest price model is probably around 1200. And we have some customers who will buy multiples at a time largely to outfit food trucks or to outfit stadiums or arenas. That's when we'll have customers buy multiple at a time. But largely one off.
- [40:10]
Ray Cherry
Yeah. What did the quality of revenue look like in this business since these are. Yes, it's a, it's a, it's a business to business business. But, but it's also. It's not project based.
- [40:25]
Dana Cherry
It's.
- [40:25]
Ray Cherry
But it's order based. So anyway, you're not seeing recurring or even necessarily really reoccurring. I'm sure you have some repeat customers, but that's not really what we mean by regular reoccurring revenue.
- [40:34]
Dana Cherry
Yeah.
- [40:35]
Ray Cherry
So it's always like, you know, is next year going to be. What is next year going to look like? Hard to predict. How do you think about that?
- [40:41]
Dana Cherry
Yeah, it's, it's a really good point. And like almost everyone else on your podcast, recurring revenue was something that was. It almost felt like a dream of to me because. Or a mythical sort of creature. There were very few opportunities that I actually came across that had true recurring revenue. All our syncs are in fact made to order. So that does add a couple wrinkles. Like you said to me, we were, we were comforted by the fact that most of their most important relationships are have been customers for the last several years. And yeah, we're in constant dialogue with them to understand what demands might be. For example, Dana was referencing a couple providers who outfit food trucks for food truck parks or food and beverage kiosks for use at stadiums or arenas or outdoor festivals or what have you. So it's making sure that we're in constant dialogue with those customers as well as some of our key distributors to the individual end markets to see what they're seeing in their markets and then just trying to be more thoughtful around how we target marketing around these different end markets to ultimately understand what demand might be for the different units.
- [42:07]
Matthias Smith
Yeah, and same goes for schools like schools and school districts will might purchase three or four more of these at a time to outfit their classrooms. In the case of a science lab or just hand washing sink for small children, this is where we see customers.
- [42:24]
Will Smith
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- [43:39]
Ray Cherry
This is not a porta potty sink, but I imagine that would be a good use case. Outside porta potties, I know that there are, there are the kind of porta potty sinks that always seem terrible and grubby for one thing, but also not very functional. It's always like a trickle of water but, but. So anyway, is that a, is that a market? I guess you wouldn't categorize it as the porta potty market. You just categorize it as wherever the porta potties are, whatever venue that is.
- [44:08]
Matthias Smith
General hand washing in that case. Yeah, it's not a target for us.
- [44:12]
Dana Cherry
Yeah, what we found too is that we don't even really compete with those providers. They, they tend to be package deals. The porta potties with those, those porta sinks is kind of what I call them. So, you know, they're, they're doing really well with their sort of business and I sort of view them as a little bit maybe adjacent, but very different from what we're. What we're doing and trying to do.
- [44:35]
Ray Cherry
Great and then just going back to quality of revenue. And so of course the other way to consider it is just looking at historical revenue, but you have the challenge there that you were coming off these great Covid years. Um, so, so I assume you kind of tried to subtract out that artificial Covid demand and understand what growth looked like normalized. What did growth look like normalized? Was it, was it pretty linear over the years or, or it was, it.
- [45:04]
Dana Cherry
Was pretty, it was pretty linear. What, what made us comfortable was that they, you know, the prior owners, the. Had built a business that was. Had a really strong product with really strong demand. They had funded their lives through this business and it almost became more of a lifestyle business for them where they weren't as aggressive on some of the sales and marketing techniques as they could have been. And they were sort of prior to the COVID era. So know, we had been looking even further back to say, okay, well, when you were doing some of these things on the marketing side, when you were, you know, attending trade shows regularly and, and you know, being more sort of forthcoming with the, the name in the marketplace, what was, what was success like and how was the company growing and, and, and if anything, we, we were sort of encouraged by the bump, so to speak, because it showed that, you know, even though demand and revenue was, you know, one and a half times or almost double, they did all of it with the current staff in place. And so for us that was encouraging to say, okay, well this business can scale even with the team that's already in place. So this is before we even think about really implementing some of our know, things that we want to do on the marketing side or the branding side or the sales outreach side and, and before, you know, even hiring anybody else. So, you know, all, all of those sort of came into account to, to help us feel pretty, pretty comfortable.
- [46:46]
Ray Cherry
I'm reminded of a, of a guest of a few months ago, Will, who bought food manufacturing business. And so, so the ingredients that go into the end food product and they, they'd lost a big customer just before he bought it, which there's a whole conversation and an analysis there. But one of the actual positives of that was that the, that he knew that there was a lot of capacity in the business he was buying because they, they had just lost this big customer and so, so what they were producing had gone down a lot. But he knew that with what he was buying and inheriting he could grow capacity another back up to X and not have to reinvest anything into the business that had already been tested.
- [47:28]
Will Smith
Same sort of thing here.
- [47:29]
Ray Cherry
You guys know that you kind of have double the capacity without having to reinvest in the business if you can just make those sales. It's pretty right, pretty great, you know, great insight to have about the business. Cool deal terms. What can you say about what you bought this business for?
- [47:46]
Dana Cherry
Yeah, yeah. SDE was in the, you know, several hundred thousand dollar range and we paid 4x as a purchase price. It was you know, pretty close to what they listed it for. One one thing about the process, I was able to sort of leverage my, my banking experience to you know, do a lot of the upfront diligence. Very comfortable with, you know, financial modeling, stress testing, you know, general due diligence, pushing you know, documents back and forth, request lists and the like. And so ultimately felt, felt pretty comfortable around the financials before even we did go with the QOV before bringing in the QOV team.
- [48:36]
Ray Cherry
So you feel that your banking experience was pretty valuable here. As you know Ray, because we talked in the pre call that that there are a lot of former finance people who come on the pod. Those who are not former finance people are intimidated by this. Do I says the listener need to have a finance background to do this? And you are saying look, yes, it was helpful, it was good.
- [48:59]
Dana Cherry
Yeah.
- [48:59]
Ray Cherry
Actually, you know, maybe the person to ask here is Dana. Do you think you could have done this transaction if Ray weren't doing all the finance stuff?
- [49:05]
Matthias Smith
I do. I would have a much steeper learning curve. I mean it was certainly beneficial, beyond beneficial that Ray had a, has a background in finance and banking and has looked through deals before. And I think that was part of the inspiration here was he said to himself and he said to me like I've done this before, I've looked through, you know, this was core to my career and so that made it, you know, much, much smoother. But I do have confidence in myself that I could have done it. Just the have to climb a steeper learning curve.
- [49:40]
Ray Cherry
Yeah. And, and Ray, the, the specific part of your experience, banking experience that you could apply was the models doing modeling or just the, the, just the kind of, the blocking and tackling of a managing transaction was the most valuable.
- [49:57]
Dana Cherry
I would say all of it. I mean the organization around communication, you know, as A senior banker, you're, you're managing deal flow, you're prospecting, you're talking to business owners, you're talking to investors, it's, you're talking to lenders. It's a lot of the same process, just on a larger or I guess a bigger scale a little bit. So there was the, there was the deal management of it and that was sort of what I had done for over a decade. Yeah, financial modeling is just sort of one part of it. It's also just, you know, understanding how to communicate with different counterparties, understanding the cadence of that communication. Candidly, I learned a lot of, just in terms of project management. And in banking you have to work through a lot to. People like to focus on the number of hours that you work, but it's really just the, the number of different problems that you're solving day to day to, to work through, to make it home. Which is why, which is what we used to say. So yeah, all that was helpful.
- [51:14]
Ray Cherry
I didn't follow, sorry.
- [51:15]
Dana Cherry
So, yeah, so in, in banking people always talk about a hundred hour weeks and you're working really hard, but what it really boils down to is your day to day putting out a hundred buyers a day. And so you're working on a bunch of different projects for a bunch of different people with a bunch of different personalities. And a lot of times you have to figure it out on the fly in order to make it back home at 3am or 4am or whenever you make it out of there. And you're doing a lot of different things. You're building presentations, you're building financial models, you're synthesizing and analyzing information to communicate it to different counterparties, prospective buyers, sellers, investors, boards of directors, your managing director. There's just a bunch of different aspects. And so to me what it cultivated was a temperance and an ability to kind of be calm under fire. And that was pretty helpful throughout this process. And it is day to day still.
- [52:20]
Ray Cherry
Yeah.
- [52:20]
Matthias Smith
A huge part of this too is the relationship with the seller in building that and cultivating that, that over the duration of doing the deal.
- [52:28]
Ray Cherry
Well, I want to hear about that in just a sec, but I just want to punctuate what you said there, Ray, because so often on this point about non former finance people feeling like, do I, you know, am I equipped for this? Can I do this? And there's often a focus on the very strict technical skills of doing a model from example and, and feeling like you don't know how to do that. What sounds like what was Especially valuable was something kind of a little squishier and softer, which is, yeah, this muscle of jumping from thing to thing to thing to thing to thing, managing all these different personalities. It's kind of, it's kind of really project management, but at a high high stakes, big personality, high velocity project management. That's almost really the, the more, the most important muscle you brought to this.
- [53:19]
Dana Cherry
No, absolutely. You said it really well. I would say, you know, modeling gets a lot of the air time, but it's, it's relatively low on the list of, you know, qualities that you make it out of there with.
- [53:33]
Ray Cherry
Great. Dana, what about this relationship with the sellers? What were you going to say? What do you want to say there?
- [53:38]
Matthias Smith
One of the things that shine through as being incredibly important in this transaction, in doing this deal was that relationship. And the seller was approached by, I think 50 or 60 different buyers for this business, I believe narrowed that down to eight. Were seriously considering. Yeah, there were a lot of interested parties. But one of the things that we did a great job and huge credit to Ray on this is just forging a really strong bond with the, the, with the seller. The similarities in our upbringings and in our stories certainly helped. This was a family that immigrated to the US Decades ago and worked in, you know, they had their own careers and had kids and decided they wanted to follow a path of their own and sort of leave a legacy. And we, we had very similar storylines and so we were able to really lean into that with them and really build genuine trust throughout the whole deal process.
- [54:44]
Ray Cherry
It's one of these sort of. They saw themselves a new kind of phenomenon.
- [54:49]
Dana Cherry
Yeah, 100%. I mean, they were a young family around our age now when they decided to do this. And their children, they just had their first grandchildren born just ahead of this deal closing, actually. So they, as they were meeting with us, it was several times that they've told us that they, they see themselves in us. And I think that was important to them in terms of how they were handing over this, this business. And even, I mean, it's, we've, we've certainly felt it. Yes, it's a financial transaction, but we feel the sort of importance of, you know, carrying on their legacy and, you know, and moving this thing forward as, as they were wrapping up, they would always tell us, look, you know, we, we built this business. And specifically the, the husband, he would say, you know, I have the, the, the, the mind and vision of a technician. But, you know, you, you two are strong business minds and you're the right pair to take this into the next, you know, the next generation or the next era of mods. I'm sorry. Yeah, it was very pertinent for this.
- [56:01]
Ray Cherry
Story and I assume that went the other way that you also felt an affinity for their story. It wasn't just them.
- [56:09]
Dana Cherry
Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. I wasn't prepared for just how emotional that part of it was, but it was pretty cool.
- [56:18]
Ray Cherry
Yeah, that is super cool. And not the point you were making, but one to pick up on. So the seller husband was also kind of communicating that as a. He's a technical guy and maybe hadn't been that there was more growth to be had for somebody who was kind of business growth oriented.
- [56:38]
Dana Cherry
Sure.
- [56:40]
Ray Cherry
His, his wife, what was her role in the business? You said she stopped selling cakes and went into business with him. What did she. Was she kind of back office? Sort of?
- [56:48]
Matthias Smith
Yeah, she was instrumental. She was, she was supporting. Yeah, very much back office. Back office operations, very much supporting the sales marketing efforts. Did all the finance and accounting. Was incredible at just keeping track of records. So she really led the charge in the. From a back office perspective.
- [57:10]
Ray Cherry
Great. And so what are you guys thinking about in terms of, of growth? Where, where are the growth levers? Where are the levers for improvement? How big do you think this could, could be?
- [57:24]
Dana Cherry
Yeah, you know, we're really just scratching the surface. The, the portable sync market on its own is probably a 3, 4% grower annually. So there is a lot of opportunity for, for us just capturing share from other providers. You know, as we think about core end markets, one of the core end markets is education. We sell to schools and school districts. So it's. How do we hone in on our messaging and marketing strategy to these different end markets? There's a hundred or I think there's a thousand school districts, just public school districts in California alone. So that's just one segment of one state in the country. And so when we really start to understand what this means for the broader education space or the broader food service space, the broader beauty and wellness space, and we really start to build our dealer network, we start to expand into different product sets. We're already thinking about different product adjacencies expanding further into Canada. I mean there's just a lot of opportunity here once we can get our arms around everything and really start ticking things off.
- [58:43]
Matthias Smith
So to add to what Ray said, we're. We're looking to, you know, reach eight figures in the next, within the next five or so years. And one of the things that in addition to what he mentioned about schools, we, there's so many use cases we've sold to tattoo parlors, we've, we've sold to luxury hotels, we have dog washing stations and that's a market that we haven't penetrated nearly as much as I think we have the opportunity to so selling it to dog groomers, we sell into salons. And so there's for me as a marketer, like the segmentation opportunities here are tremendous and really exciting and we have so much rich data to go after and to, to really, to really dig into, to sell into a lot of these spaces.
- [59:27]
Ray Cherry
Well, speaking of marketing, Dana, how were the cosmetics of the business, the, the, the brand, the website? I, I, I, I know the answer to the website question. It was one of these, these beautiful 90s kind of designs that you just want to sink your teeth into actually perfect opportunity to tell us the URL and, and what just happened here.
- [59:47]
Matthias Smith
Yeah. So portablesync.com is our URL and when.
- [59:53]
Ray Cherry
We, in the name of the business. What's the name of the business?
- [59:55]
Matthias Smith
The name of the business is Monsam.
- [59:57]
Ray Cherry
Monsam.
- [59:58]
Matthias Smith
Monsam M O N S A M Monsam Woodwell Syncs and as I mentioned before, we make customizable portable sinks, portable hand washing stations, hair washing stations. When we came into the business and when we were evaluating the business, frankly looking at the marketing efforts that were put forth, the prior owners did a really good job of doing what they could to promote the business. And I saw a huge opportunity for just improvements overall in the web experience and the brand. And that was one of the most exciting things for, for me as we were evaluating this company and looking at this company, it was just wow, this company has done incredibly well with what it's done so far from a sales and marketing perspective. Imagine what it can do if we invest a bit more in our marketing efforts and, and the look in the field brand and just making it a little more polished and just up leveling that a ton. So we've redone the website, redid the website.
- [61:03]
Ray Cherry
Just launched.
- [61:05]
Matthias Smith
Website just launched. We revamped that, we revamped the logo. Wanted to honor the past but also reflect the, or just show the future where we want to go with the, with the company and so brought all that into our updated brand creative.
- [61:23]
Ray Cherry
I hope you saved an old version of the website for.
- [61:25]
Matthias Smith
Oh, I sure did, of course, yes.
- [61:28]
Ray Cherry
And speaking of, of artifacts of the business, Ray, didn't you mention to me that the original portable sink that the very first one he built for his wife was still kicking around somewhere.
- [61:40]
Dana Cherry
Yeah, it's still in his garage.
- [61:41]
Ray Cherry
His garage. So it didn't, it didn't confer.
- [61:45]
Dana Cherry
It hasn't transfer. Transfer with the business. He lives really close to the business though, so I, I still need to take a go. Take a look at that one.
- [61:52]
Ray Cherry
That's a, that's a bit of. Yeah, a bit of company lore that maybe you want to hold on to. Although, yeah, probably has a lot of sentimental attachment to it. We'll start wrapping up here, guys. Let's, let's do that. By just hearing the transition about, kind of transition and now your new lives as operators. Any thing to say about the transition? How hard was it? Fetal position moments. How did the new staff react to you, et cetera? What do you want to say there?
- [62:19]
Matthias Smith
I can start with the, the staff because we love our staff. We love our employees. They're absolutely incredible. They were very excited to see some fresh faces coming in to take over the company. And we've spent the last six plus months working side by side with them. So working both in the business and on the business. And the mutual appreciation can't be understated. They've appreciated the perspective that we've been and sort of the vision that we've brought forth for the company for where we're looking grow. We've really appreciated their depth of knowledge. Our employees have been there for four more years and so they've taught us a ton over the last six months. And we've also just gained a huge appreciation for this side of the workforce. Like we've been in tech and finance for, you know, decade plus now coming into being in a manufacturing company, just having a great appreciation for the work ethic that, that those employees bring. The transition has been incredible, not without its challenges. It's been a roller coaster of just finding new things that pop up as you run a company or run a small business that's been around for over 25 years. And so just being appreciative of this time where we're learning and uncovering new things and uncovering new challenges, it's been a tremendous learning experience. So I've, I've loved every moment of it.
- [63:48]
Dana Cherry
Yeah, we, we said we've learned more in the last six months than we had in probably the prior decade of, of working. So yeah, it's, it's been, it's been intense. It's been fulfilling. It's been, you know, fun and stressful and all, you know, all of the things, but it's, it's been really. I don't know, it's been really cool getting to, getting to understand every nook and cranny of the business. Really spending time in the workshop, putting units together, cutting the materials, putting, you know, you know, using my hands and helping the team just understand that we're really here side by side with them. And we're here to try to make, you know, make things better for all of us. Just trying to do more. We're not trying to change anything you guys have done. We're here because of what you built and what this company has become, which is in large part because of you guys. So we're just trying to do more of it. We're here lockstep with you and that's sort of just how it's been. It's been really cool.
- [64:49]
Matthias Smith
What else I'll add is that as someone coming from the software world, this is a classic case study of digital transformation. And so that's been a very exciting piece too is just while we're not trying to change a lot of the underlying culture and sort of approaches to how we build the models, just being able to make things easier and more efficient through digitizing certain processes has been very, very cool.
- [65:15]
Ray Cherry
Give me an example or two, if you would.
- [65:18]
Matthias Smith
So with this website, for instance, making that user experience a lot more seamless, not only for our end customers or customers that come up to the website, but for, for our employees or for me and for our employees who are managing that experience. Being able to make connections between software, whether it's QuickBooks, integrating it with other systems, whether it's integrating our shipping of software with other systems as well, being able to like digitize even just our credit card authorization process. Like simple, simple things that were more tedious to do in the past. Being able to digitize a lot of those experiences now, looking to CRMs or bringing in an email marketing software, being able to just track abandoned carts. Like these are sort of baseline digital transformations that we can bring forth that will make our lives so much easier.
- [66:18]
Ray Cherry
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [66:19]
Dana Cherry
So, and just to reiterate. Yeah. Everything in terms of order management, order fulfillment, workflows is paper based. So that's what we're working off here. And so tier number one for me is demand gen and making sure that customers know us. We're reintroducing ourselves into the space. Here's who we are and what we do. But right after that is automating workflows, implementing software. There's a lot of time and energy, Ms. Spent right now of, you know, making sure, you know, did you see this? Did you get this off the printer? Did you see this piece of paper? And who has this? And where does this go? And the more we can sort of clean some of that stuff up, everyone will just be a little bit more efficient. It'll free everyone up to, to do more. To do more better, I guess is.
- [67:14]
Ray Cherry
How I'd put it. You guys have said that it was. There have been challenges. Do, are there any particular challenges you want to call out? What do you think the biggest challenge has been?
- [67:26]
Dana Cherry
For me, it's been prioritization. I mean every. This really doesn't feel like work, so to speak, because we own the product and the outcome. But during the day it's really hard to work on the business, so to speak. So Dana likes to say, like during the day we work in the business and at night we work on the business. So we, when you're, when you're there, there's just so much that is going on, whether it's production, inventory, bills, vendors, shipping, and it's, it's really just us managing it all day to day. So in terms of the more strategic aspects of things, what should we be doing about pricing, you know, what, what are we, how should we be framing the website, that kind of stuff. That, that's what happens. Updating pictures, product images, that kind of thing. That's what happens later at, later at night. So it is. And it's sort of like around the clock operation just at our own, you know, at our own pace. Right.
- [68:28]
Matthias Smith
I'd say in addition to what Ray just shared about prioritization, because that's been very challenging with just the two of us and knowing how much we need to do and how much there is do and how much there is to do and how much we want to do. Just being able to figure out the balance of all that. But also initially it was just the adjustment to this being in a manufacturing environment, being in a blue collar environment, and just sort of shifting our mentality from where we were before to embracing this new way of life. And I, Ray likes to say, like we got to a point where the luxuries became necessities and that's not all at all the case anymore. Like we have this appreciation for the life that we go into every day in this company and it's, you know, we're not getting free lunches every day or you know, you don't have all the technology around you. IT desk is not there readily available. And so making that shift to just embracing a new way of life has Been awesome and just took some getting used to it.
- [69:28]
Ray Cherry
All the luxuries have become necessities. So all the perks of your corporate lives, you just become accustomed to, took for granted. Yeah.
- [69:39]
Matthias Smith
Yeah.
- [69:41]
Ray Cherry
Well Ray, in our pre call I want to jump off of what you just said. Dana, in our pre call you said that this, this coming to small business manufacturing has been very. Grounding, I think was the word. Just great, great word. So you've just started touching on it. Dana, maybe say more. Why, why is it so grounding? What, what, what is it that's so appealing about this side of things?
- [70:08]
Dana Cherry
I just, I just feel like we're. Like I was saying earlier, the. When you're in the world of high finance, everything is around this billion dollar transaction or this $100 million raise and you can start to think that that world is all that matters. The pitchbooks and Forbes and that kind of stuff. When the interactions that we're having now with our employees and our vendors and the drivers, it's just more, it's a more blue collar existence. We're privy day to day to their challenges and their stresses and so we feel that and we're helpful as much as we can. We're, you know, make making calls to healthcare providers to help, you know, our employees and you know where I had to help an employee of mine with DMV registration recently. It's, it's, it's just things like that but it's, it's humbling and it's grounding just to, just to understand the impact that you can have on, you know, real lives day to day. I don't know if.
- [71:25]
Matthias Smith
Yeah, and they appreciate it. They are so, so appreciative. Our team is absolutely wonderful and they, we've tried to just bring in a strong culture into the company and I've decorated around the office and we all bring in treats to like exchange and just experience our, not just the culture of the office but our own, our own cultures. We've always been pretty down to earth people, pretty low maintenance and so this has just been a good way for us to bring forth that, that part of our lives and in an environment and with employees who are, who are there to do great work and help us grow.
- [72:08]
Ray Cherry
It's awesome. Guys, one last thing that you said I want to circle back to and then I'll ask for anything else you want to add. Early in the conversation you said one of the highlights has been your, your kids seeing you say more about that. That. What do you mean? And then why is it Such a highlight.
- [72:28]
Matthias Smith
So our kids have been to our, our previous workplaces and it's, they'll always talk about, oh, do you remember the time we went to mommy's office and, or we went to daddy's office and for us, stepping into entrepreneurship was a great way for them, for us to show them what it means to truly own something and to, to have this path into generational wealth and to have them step into a space and know that, oh, this is mommy and daddy's company. This is our company. That has been truly meaningful. And probably the biggest highlight of all this is I have so much deep appreciation for my past corporate experiences and all the lessons that it has taught me. And being able to bring that forth into our own company to show our kids like this is ours has meaning beyond what I think I could have ever imagined.
- [73:27]
Ray Cherry
Fantastic. That was great. Thank you. Dana. Anything we didn't get to, that you.
- [73:32]
Dana Cherry
Wanted to share, I would just recommend the time that I was able to spend on the, on the front end of this process, you know, really being introspective and sort of reconnecting with our priorities. And it was really helpful for me as I was going into the process and speaking to brokers and speaking to business owners, it, it helped me connect with them and it helped me understand this path as more viable. And once you're able to do that, at least for me, I was able to be more strategic and more efficient with my energy and how I was interacting with, with the different counterparties. So, you know, for anyone that is going down this path, I would just encourage them to really take the time on the front end, really think about what you're looking for, you know what your strengths are, you know where you're best positioned and go for it.
- [74:35]
Ray Cherry
And was there an example of where you were kind of went in the wrong direction, Ray, and then, and then corrected for that. Like, was it a type of business you were looking at and you realized, oh, this is just not going to be a fit sort of thing.
- [74:49]
Dana Cherry
There were, there were a couple on the more, I guess, industrial side. Some of them had varying levels of certifications and licensing requirements that I felt were a little bit above my pay grade, so to speak. But yeah, beyond that, it's manufacturing versus services and who are the customers? Are you going to feel comfortable in that seat? Really try to envision yourself doing this day to day and, and see how that would, how that would feel.
- [75:25]
Ray Cherry
Great. Ray and Dana, if people want to reach out to you, how do you want them to do that? You've given the URL of the business. Plug that one more time and then if people want to reach out with any questions, how should they do that URL again?
- [75:38]
Matthias Smith
Yes URL portable sync.com portable sync.com Monsignor.
- [75:44]
Ray Cherry
Monsam is the business M O n s a correct.
- [75:46]
Matthias Smith
You can also get there via monsam.com that's right. Portablesync.com is the direct URL.
- [75:51]
Ray Cherry
Great.
- [75:52]
Matthias Smith
And we can reach you guys. Yeah, to reach us, LinkedIn is preferred.
- [75:57]
Dana Cherry
Yeah, LinkedIn's best for me as well.
- [75:58]
Ray Cherry
Dana Ray, thank you guys for coming on and sharing your story. Awesome that Acquiring Minds played a small part of it as you can imagine. That's incredibly gratifying. Really cool business. Really cool that you're doing this together. Really cool how much kind of values alignment there is between the two of you then with your sellers. Just a lot to love about this story. So thanks very much for for coming on and sharing.
- [76:18]
Dana Cherry
Thank you. Absolutely.
- [76:19]
Matthias Smith
Our pleasure.