From Zero to $1.2 Million ARR Exit In 2 Years

Transcript

Disclaimer: Transcripts may contain a few typos. With most episodes lasting 60+ minutes, it can be difficult to catch some minor errors.

John Warrillow:

So, do you remember Sully, the guy who landed the plane on the Hudson River? He had done everything there is to do in an airplane. He was even a trainer of other pilots, yet he had never had the opportunity to land an airplane on the Hudson River. He had one shot at greasing that landing, and he nailed it. When it comes to selling your business, you’ve got one shot. One shot to make sure you punch above your weight when you go to sell your company, one shot to make sure you don’t make some of the most common mistakes that entrepreneurs make when they sell their business. That’s why I wrote the book The Art of Selling Your Business. It’s a field guide for anyone looking to sell their company. You can get it along with some gifts for my listeners at BuiltToSell.com/Selling.

Welcome to Built to Sell Radio, where we help you punch above your weight class when it comes to selling your business. My name is John Warrillow, and today I’ve got a special guest. His name is Paul Farrell, who has built a bunch of companies. So, I looked at his LinkedIn profile and it starts with the role of senior vice president AOL, back in the late 1990s. He went on to build five or six different companies, the latest of which is a business called Nehemiah, which was a cybersecurity business, which I’ll let him explain to you what they did.

What I want you to listen for is the valuation metrics these businesses tend to attract because they have low churn rates, and therefore that gave Paul the confidence to continue to bleed cash frankly because he knew there was a good exit on the horizon. Listen for some of the math around that. Also, the surprising role industry conferences can play in the exit of your company, where you might find potential acquirers, et cetera. Lots to learn from Paul J. Farrell. Here’s Paul.

Paul Farrell, welcome to Built to Sell Radio.

Paul Farrell:

Thank you, John. Thank you for having me today.

John Warrillow:

Nehemiah Security does what exactly? I mean, in layman’s terms because I’m not a techie. Explain what this company does.

Paul Farrell:

Well, that’s a perfect setup for what we do, John, that you’re not a techie. What we figured out is that a bunch of boards across the world didn’t understand the cyber speak that they were getting with their cyber reports. So, we decided to approach it more in like a MBA type style of this is your total amount of risk, $281 million of risk. Has a 61% chance of happening. These are the critical areas, and if you’d like to do something about it, here’s your capital asset pricing model. Capital asset pricing model is a financial term, that this says I’ve got 10 really good projects do to, but I can only do three or four of them. So, which one would you pick? And we actually gave our customers the return. So, how much it would reduce risk.

So, you can invest a million and reduce this by 10%, or you’re going to invest a million in this other project and reduce risk only 1%.

John Warrillow:

So, if I’m Procter & Gamble and I’ve got a bunch of computers that lace together my supply chain, you would tell me that hey, you’ve got some cyber risk. People could hack your backend, and if that were to happen this would be the financial impact.

Paul Farrell:

Correct. That’s the [crosstalk 00:03:58].

John Warrillow:

And you would make that pitch to Procter & Gamble and the IT guys at Procter & Gamble and they would say, “Okay, yeah. Help us monetize it.”

Paul Farrell:

Yeah. Basically they have thousands of important things, but you start with the top 30 business applications. So, one thing, John, that I would point out to you and your viewers is it’s not about the PC. You can go buy a new PC for what, a couple $1,000 now, I mean, they’re really cheap. It’s the information on the PC and it’s the systems, the critical business systems that the PCs are connected to. So, you could care maybe from a business term you should care very little about my employee timekeeping system because I can fix that really fast or I can replace it really fast, or we could just assume everybody worked 40 hours and just pay everybody. But if I’m an Amazon and they break my inventory system and people are ordering stock that’s not there and all that, then I have a much more different problem. So, in that particular scenario I would select the inventory system.

John Warrillow:

Got it.

Paul Farrell:

So in big orgs these people and the big companies, and small companies across where we were working about the world, they know what their top 30 business applications are, and even a small business does. I mean, by the way, you don’t immediately start selling enterprises, you start selling in a different category. We got our start in small credit bureaus who had sophistication and the need, but they didn’t have a lot of people to do all these things. So, we helped them out and that was a launching step for us to sell to bigger companies.

John Warrillow:

What is a small credit bureau? What is that? I don’t know what you mean by that.

Paul Farrell:

A credit bureau would be … Oh god, which one? Would be like a regional, they’re like small regional banks but they’re not really banks. It’s where people take money and they save it, and they borrow from it. Maybe it could be the Farmers Cooperative.

John Warrillow:

Okay, and these folks have customer information, they have financial information, and you would go in and go, “Hey guys, you’ve got some exposure here. If people hack you, this is the financial downside of that.”

Paul Farrell:

[crosstalk 00:06:03].

John Warrillow:

And you sold them a software to help them monitor or measure that over time. Is that right?

Paul Farrell:

Yeah, and by the way, they had all the financial regulations the banks and everybody else have, but they don’t have all the people, all the money and the size to do it. By the way, you’re not going to start a software firm and sell the biggest company out of the box, unless you know somebody and you’re very blessed. You’re going to have to find a niche and build on it, and then we kept on building up in what they call fintech, financial technologies, to bigger financial institutions.

Then that gave us, once we sold to some bigger mainstay accounts to the financial institutions, we were able to badge into consumer packaged goods and into healthcare.

John Warrillow:

What were you selling exactly? You mentioned it’s a SaaS product, so this is you billing them on an annual basis or a monthly basis?

Paul Farrell:

Well, monthly basis. So, they’re billed in a monthly basis. We sold them the platform where they could sign on and check the risk. Now, as we started until we sold the company years later, that frequency increased as the sophistication of the system increased. At first, people might check once a week, and then were checking twice a week, and then they increased over time as the sophistication of our software increased, and because every day your risk changes with the new cyber things that come out, like a new attack comes out against medium sized companies in the fintech area or the agriculture area or anything like that. Then we would know about them and you could respond to them.

So, over time the frequency of people checking these reports increased, and we were driving, in a strategy basis, we were driving more to make them daily applicable through a strategy that helped them decide what they’re fixing on a daily basis.

John Warrillow:

This sounds like a really capital intensive business to start. I get how it would be profitable and a nice moat around it over time, but in the first to build the algorithm and actually all the systems. I’d imagine that would cost a lot. How did you finance the creation of this company?

Paul Farrell:

Well, I was very fortunate to have a backer that we’ve been successful many times over with. So, once you’re successful one or two times, you’re playing with company money in the bank. We used that money that we had made in previous months to invest in this.

John Warrillow:

This is an individual, or like a private equity group, or VC?

Paul Farrell:

A family office.

John Warrillow:

A family office, okay.

Paul Farrell:

But you got to understand that they have the same return requirements as a VC or anybody else. I mean, they [crosstalk 00:08:37].

John Warrillow:

I’ve heard of family offices. What are their return expectations? What would they hope to get out of investing in your company on a return basis?

Paul Farrell:

Well, I think that they don’t have as much pressure as funds. They have to close out every five years and all that, and want to show a 20X or something like that, but to me I always thought that if I could get them a five to 10X on what they invested, it was pretty good. So, I’m not talking about for every family office. Some family offices I know now look for impact, like they’ll take less money if it’s an impact investing opportunity. I’ve always worked in pure commercial and have achieved the 10X or greater kind of hurdle.

John Warrillow:

How do you find a family office to invest in your company?

Paul Farrell:

Oh, there’s lots of them around. There’s people that know them. They’re all over the place. God bless America, and Canada and places like that because we’ve had the grounds where entrepreneurials were able to flourish, and there’s many of them. You can go on conferences to learn about them. Most of the things that I would say to every person out there is schedule two networking lunches every week. Two or three and get out there and talk to a fellow, maybe your accountant, your legal people, other people that you do business with and just have conversations with them, and you start hearing about things that are happening in your market or even in your region or in the country and you learn.

I think it’s really important that we get so focused on being successful though. I got to sit here at my desk in my company 12 hours a day, but for me a key component has always been go see people or just pick up the phone. I keep a list every week of two or three people that I haven’t talked to in three months or greater that I want to call, and you can text them now. You can call them. I just came from a meeting, right? I just came from a meeting to come to talk to you, which was 20 minutes away, and I texted a guy earlier and he called me about an opportunity that he wants me to look at with him on a new software firm that they think is going to be smashing. That just happened in 15 minutes. I said, “Great, we’ll get together next week.” So this guy does that and we’re done.

John Warrillow:

So, I got to ask, when you take investment from an outsider, what does that … Because I’ve seen your LinkedIn. I mean, you started off at AOL as a senior vice president and it had like a string of four or five successes, one after the other, after the other. So, I get you’ve got a incredible pedigree of running and building businesses. When you take out … I’m assuming that the family office you work with, you’re friendly with the people who fund the family office.

Paul Farrell:

Yeah, we’re talking about a now going on our 40 year relationship, right?

John Warrillow:

Yeah.

Paul Farrell:

I mean, it’s a trust. By the way, trust is so important. Trust is so important. My return is I treat it I like it’s my own money.

John Warrillow:

That’s what I was getting at. I wondered if it almost feels more pressure because now it’s not only the money that you stand a risk, but it’s also this longstanding relationship. I mean, do you feel additional pressure because it’s not your money?

Paul Farrell:

Of course. Right? I mean, of course. You have to. That’s having integrity and taking responsibility. Contracts are contacts, but when you shake a person’s hand and you look them in the eye, him or her, and you say yes, you let your yes be yes and your no be no, and then you do everything you can to deliver on your promises.

John Warrillow:

Are you ever tempted to just take the pressure off a little bit and just fund it yourself and not get involved in an outside? You know what I mean?

Paul Farrell:

Well, a lot of my ideas I can’t fund myself. I mean, one of the things we could maybe talk about at some other time, John, but my wife and I believe in putting back. So, 50% of everything we’ve ever made has gone back into charity.

John Warrillow:

Wow.

Paul Farrell:

We’re committed for that, and there’s a whole bunch of reasons for it. Not the reasons for this show, we’ll talk about other stuff, but maybe we could come back some other time and talk about that.

John Warrillow:

Yeah, that’d be great. That’d be great. So okay, so you’re aligned in this 40 year relationship with this family office. You’ve got some investment capital to build this business. I mean, I want to get to the exit, because I know it was a five year run and you had a great exit. As you look back over that five year journey, was there one or two things that you did to take it from a nascent idea to a valuable company? We’re all about building value, so were there one or two strategic moves you made to make it a valuable business that could be sold effectively?

Paul Farrell:

Yeah. It’s never about me. It’s always about the hires you make. Making those hires are so critical, the people. In the beginning we were building complex math models, right? To do the regressions on all the attacks and all the defenses and all that stuff. The people we hired in product management, people we hired in development were so critical because we thought we had a good idea. We’d build something and then we test it and it was good, but it wasn’t good enough. We ended up rebuilding it again the next month. It takes a certain psyche of person to do that. Then it’s all about the people. The support people, the sales people. I would say the most important thing is culture, right? I mean, getting that culture thing right and hiring the right people. You could have the best idea in the world and then it failed. You got to have a culture around it but also a product.

John Warrillow:

Would it be fair to say that some of the algorithms that you developed were … Again, I happen to know your background. You’ve got lots of experience in IT, so I say this with tremendous respect to your experience. Were some of the models that you were building beyond your ability to run them? Were the people you were hiring, kind of PhD mathematicians, people that were …

Paul Farrell:

Oh yeah. They were, yeah.

John Warrillow:

So, here’s my question, because I think this really relates to a lot of non-technical founders, right? Who get involved in a business, oftentimes maybe there’s some technology involved or maybe it’s a SaaS business but they feel vulnerable because they don’t have the technical chops to know when somebody says, “That’s going to take 10 hours.” To call them and say, “Actually, it doesn’t take 10 hours to do that, because I’ve done it myself and it only takes two hours.” What’s the question I’m asking? What’s the secret or what was your secret for managing people with such deep technical expertise that they could’ve pulled the wool over your eyes if they wanted to. Do you know what I’m getting at?

Paul Farrell:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think the lesson that I’ve learned, and I didn’t practice this early on, right? So it’s a lesson I’ve learned over the decades, is transparency and vulnerability. You’ll have a lot more people following you if you’re transparent and vulnerable. When you say, “Look, I don’t know if 10 is enough or not, but I trust you to do your best. If you can get it done in six, you will, and if it takes 12 to do a good job, you will.” Vulnerability is a key thing of like … When you’re running short on cash, they all know it. They’re working in your organization. Sometimes people want to not talk about the elephant in the room. What I’ve learned over time is the valuable lesson of transparency, and you talk about the elephant in the room, luck, or being short on cash. So, we’re going to do these things in the short run. We don’t want anybody to be worried. It’s a long run. Here’s the vision, and we’re doing this, we’re doing this. These are our ideas, and by the way, do you guys have any other ideas?

I think that came home to roost a lot in Nehemiah because of when COVID hit, all the things that were going on were just the perfect storm. The thing that I learned from that, and it took me about 30 years, John, right? Is vulnerability and transparency are key as an executive. Now, you’re not going to sit down and cry in front of everybody, right? Throw your hands up, but you’ve got to admit, look, this is what’s happening. I am concerned, we’re doing all we can. I want you guys to know this. You have families, you can make your decision if you want. We hope you all stay, but if you don’t, we understand. [crosstalk 00:17:40] left, by the way.

John Warrillow:

It sounds like this actually happened. Can you tell the story of what impact COVID had on your company? I’d love to know where you were going into COVID in terms of momentum, size of the company, et cetera, and then what happened when COVID hit.

Paul Farrell:

Okay. So, we were probably the size of your typical customer. 25 people, counting the 1099s that do part-time work for you, like different departments and stuff for you. That may be 21 FTEs paid in a payroll, having benefits. I’ll always believe in having good benefits. We were doing about $100,000 a month, and we had already started in the sales process.

John Warrillow:

To sell the company.

Paul Farrell:

To sell the company. So, the big cybersecurity event is the RSA Conference. We kind of used that to launch. We knew we wanted to find somebody to buy is. So, we were in the process of that, and of course it stops, right?

John Warrillow:

Let me just ask you before we go further into COVID. It sounds very early, 100K in recurring revenue per month. You can annualize that. What was it that made you want to sell so early in your life cycle?

Paul Farrell:

I think it was a perfect storm of a bunch of different things and that my family office had other priorities. They had told me that if I sold, we had sold a division together the previous year.

John Warrillow:

A division of … Do you mind?

Paul Farrell:

A division, so a company we acquired we had sold.

John Warrillow:

Okay.

Paul Farrell:

That company that I sold it to defaulted on the debt. So, if they had paid I would’ve never sold Nehemiah because they owed me $13 million.

John Warrillow:

Sorry, say that again. You lost me.

Paul Farrell:

The year before in our financial plan with the family office they said, “Look, we got some other priorities in the next little bit. Sell this company, take the proceeds and put it in Nehemiah because we know that Nehemiah is going to be a very valuable asset.” In that process we made the sale, but then that company I sold it to defaulted on the debt. So, therefore because other priorities were going on I was funding it myself.

John Warrillow:

Personally.

Paul Farrell:

Yeah, and here’s the story. I’m probably like a lot of the guys or ladies that are listening to this message, I’m risk kind of tolerant. I married a CPA who is not as risk tolerant. I mean, Myers-Briggs, we’re directly opposite. She’s up here, I’m down here, I’m up here, she’s down here. That’s what makes a beautiful marriage, right? Hopefully our children are a mix of both. But the bottom line was when I got up to significant digits, she’s like, “Honey, come on. You can’t fund this forever.” So, that was kind of like the perfect storm that pushed us towards there. Go ahead.

John Warrillow:

Yeah, no. Okay, so the family office you sell a division. The buyer defaults on the loan. So what happens in that case? You just don’t get your money or you get the company back?

Paul Farrell:

I mean, a whole nother show we could do, John, is on forbearance agreements and how to collect your money, which is a whole nother education I never had before in all my years of buying, acquiring and selling stuff. You have to set up a plan, and of course the repayment plan, because it’s the middle of COVID, is going to be slowed down dramatically and it’s not going to be enough for us to do what we needed to do.

But I will tell you this. During COVID I did a lot of panel discussions, and on one panel discussion I was with Adam Vincent, who is ThreatConnect’s CEO, and he heard me say we’re trying to sell it, because I knew Adam. As soon as the conference ended, like we did a whole bunch of Zoom meetings and conferences and panel discussions. As soon as that conference ended, Adam picked up the phone and called me and said, “I’ve been looking for a risk product. Would you be interested in selling to us?” And that was a blessing that we were on the panel together during COVID and then he called.

So, I mean, it was a detriment that COVID hit and our sales dropped off significantly. It was a blessing that we were able to get a PPP loan, right? And it was a blessing that Adam and I were on the call together. So, would have that all happened if the PPP loan I think was really, really critical in helping us making it through. [inaudible 00:22:30] calling me up.

John Warrillow:

Okay. So, let me see if I get this straight. So, the $13 million that you referenced earlier would have been cash that the family office would’ve freed up and invested in Nehemiah.

Paul Farrell:

Correct.

John Warrillow:

Is that correct?

Paul Farrell:

Yeah.

John Warrillow:

And because that didn’t come to fruition or it did but they defaulted, you were personally financing the burn rate of Nehemiah, you and your wife effectively.

Paul Farrell:

Yeah.

John Warrillow:

And your wife is like, “Time out, buddy. This is a big nut.” Because if I do the math, you got 25 people and a 100 grand in recurring revenue, you’re probably still burning at that point, right? Which is normal for an early stage company.

Paul Farrell:

Yeah, yeah. We were burning a little bit more than 100,000 a month.

John Warrillow:

Yeah.

Paul Farrell:

So you can just do the math yourself. That was a big check to write it. John, tell your wife tonight you’re going to start writing $100,000 checks for the next six, or seven, eight, nine months.

John Warrillow:

It doesn’t take long before a CPA calls a pause on things. Got it, okay. So that’s all helpful for context. So, one of the other questions I have though is some companies went to zero in the early parts of COVID, right? Service businesses, restaurants, et cetera. Other companies, Zoom comes to mind, skyrocketed because everybody was remote. I’m surprised in a way that COVID had such a negative effect. What was it about COVID that made your business slow down? Because I would’ve thought more apps, cybersecurity would’ve been a big deal.

Paul Farrell:

It was it slowed down our sales process, right? Because you’re building a SaaS firm, those sales have got to come in every quarter, so you make your plans, so you fund more developers because you’re doing more sophisticated things. Our recurring revenue base was strong. Our retention was strong, right? People were resigning up, they loved our software. In fact, became more relevant because people wanted to know what their overall risk was in the new posture of COVID, but it slowed down that pipeline of …

John Warrillow:

[inaudible 00:24:38].

Paul Farrell:

… new sales coming in.

John Warrillow:

What would a typical sales cycle, how long would a typical sales cycle have been?

Paul Farrell:

Nine months longer for multi international companies, right? You could spend two months in the contract process.

John Warrillow:

Sure.

Paul Farrell:

And that slowed it down. So, that was one of the other considerations.

John Warrillow:

Got it. You mentioned you were in a conference sharing that you were thinking of selling. Was that a calculated risk? Because there is some downside about being so public about the intention to sell. What were your thoughts around being kind of fairly public about the plans to sell?

Paul Farrell:

It’s not like we had a signup. We weren’t doing anything on the showroom floor. We had a suite in a hotel and we had a few select people in, we were showing our own product and talking about it. It was very beneficial because our business and every business is one-on-one. You talk to your other senior people on a one-on-one basis. They need to know you and trust you. In fact, we’re going to get to it probably later on, but I think it’s the number one key in buying and selling something for me, is the relationship with the lady or man on the other side of the table. Can you resolve something quickly? Because when you sell or buy, it’s going to hit the wall, right?

John Warrillow:

Sure.

Paul Farrell:

I mean, there’s going to be something. It always happens, even in the best of situations, a tenuous situation comes up and you’ve got to be able to call that person up, you’ve got to be able to resolve it in five minutes, and you’ve got to be able to move on with both of you keeping the long-term perspective. I want to buy that firm, they want to sell it, or I’m selling this and they want to buy it. If you don’t have that, then the whole thing falls apart because every time you hit one of these little bumps in the road it’s a big long negotiation and all that. You’ve got to have that personal relationship on the other side to help it go smoothly. At least at our level, right? I mean, it might be different for multi billion dollars or $100 million firms with thousands of employees, but at our level, 20 plus employees, sell it to another guy who might have, or in this I say guy because it was Adam, 100 some odd employees, whatever he had, I don’t know what it was, it’s still a personal relationship.

John Warrillow:

Sure. So, you’re at the RSA conference. RSA, is that the …

Paul Farrell:

Yeah, yeah.

John Warrillow:

Yeah. You’re getting your kind of prep stuff ready for that. What did you think it might be worth? Did you have a sense in terms of multiple range that you thought?

Paul Farrell:

Based upon in the industry you know what cybersecurity firms get. Eight to 10, maybe more if they were bigger. I mean, a $5 million firm gets a much bigger multiple than a $1.2 million firm, a $3 million firm. As you grow in size you get bigger multiples. So, you’re looking at probably eight to 10 at that size.

John Warrillow:

Times ARR.

Paul Farrell:

Times ARR.

John Warrillow:

Yeah, ARR for folks is recurring revenue.

Paul Farrell:

Maybe 10 to 12. It depends upon who your buyer is and if it’s strategic or not, or if it’s a bolt-on or whatever happens. But there’s always a lot of things that play into that equation. The guys and gals that are out there that are thinking about this, it’s never a binary yes or no. It’s 12 or 15 binaries put together of some yeses and some nos, and you sit down and in your mind you’re doing what they call a Ben Franklin, the pluses and the minuses. When you put those all together then you get the okay, is it ready to go or not? Then as you sell a company it’s also very fluid, right? Because what you thought was minuses becomes a plus, what you thought was a plus becomes a minus because somebody doesn’t like it. You just got to keep it going.

John Warrillow:

Okay. So, you go to the conference. You’re on the panel. Adam calls you up and hey, if you want to sell, you fit hand in glove with what we’re doing at ThreatConnect. Let’s talk. What was the next step? I mean, did he come to you with some sort of letter of intent or indication of interest, or did you meet or …

Paul Farrell:

Yeah. Well, first of all, I mean, typically a process is you sign an NDA. We had NDA-

John Warrillow:

Is that what you guys did?

Paul Farrell:

Yeah. We had already knew that we were selling, so we had a data room set up, right? So, we give them access to it and then we can start the process of demoing their key employees and walking down all the things that has to happen. There’s lots of things that have to happen. So, for the folks that are listening that want to sell something, there’s a whole process you got to go through. You got to get all your contracts in one place, you got to get all your employment agreements in one place. You got to make sure as best as you can they’re all consistent. You’ve got to know all your contracts. Did you have to give up something special for that first big multinational firm you sold? And you got to be able to talk about it. All of this has got to be in a logical sequence where somebody comes in. What I always like to say is you tell people about something in advance of what they’re happening, right? So, I would say, “We have all these contracts. They’re all going to be the same.” They have this particular clause in it that we like. This one we had to do something different to get it sold, so this one says this and this is what you’re going to want to know about it.

As you know more about your business and they go in there and they look at it and said, “Oh, Paul did say that in this particular contract that had this thing in it, or that he did say they were all consistent with these particular clauses, and they were.” That gives people reassurance.

John Warrillow:

Back to transparency.

Paul Farrell:

This was a lesson I learned early on, even when I was a sales manager for Starbucks. If everybody in the firm answers the objections the same way, people feel comfortable. When they walk in and they look at you, they’re going to buy software from you, what’s the feel of the organization? And if they go out of the meeting and they go to the restroom and come back, and they run into somebody and they talk to them, and they ask about something, that person answers the same way they’re in the room, they get comfortable with you, right? That builds this trust because you’re just being transparent and honest, and everybody knows the answers to the questions.

So, what I would always purport if I was advising anybody out there is consistency and transparency are keys.

John Warrillow:

It sounds like it. What was your communication to your 20 or so employees at this stage? You’re under NDA with ThreatConnect and Adam. Some might say boy, if my employees, some of which are very expensive data modelers and mathematicians and so forth, hard to recruit, know I’m thinking of selling, they’re going to get their LinkedIn profile brushed up and start shopping their résumé. Did you worry about the fact that they would maybe leave if [crosstalk 00:31:51]?

Paul Farrell:

Not at all. Not at all, because you have to connect what you’re doing to their future.

John Warrillow:

So how did you do that?

Paul Farrell:

Well, first of all, Adam was the perfect fit for us because he was already in Threat Intelligence. We relied a lot in Threat Intelligence. He had a workflow program, a SOAR, right? Is the technical name of the marketplace, but actually this workflow that we were looking at because we wanted to communicate going farther and farther down in the organization. So, his organization fit hand in glove with where were we going, and it got us there faster. As I know today, and I don’t think any of the employees that went over have left, none.

John Warrillow:

Got it. So, for you, you grafted this opportunity for them and showed them what it could mean for their careers.

Paul Farrell:

Yeah, and for the software. I mean, people start believing in the software and the software’s mission. Can the software’s mission be furthered by this combination or not? And are you selling to somebody who is going to take care of them in the same cultural ways you took care of them? And those were yes, yes because here we are, it was a year Friday. By the way, last Friday it was a year.

John Warrillow:

Congratulations.

Paul Farrell:

And nobody left.

John Warrillow:

That’s amazing. So, ThreatConnect is the ultimate acquirer. They have, as I understand it, a sort of full suite of cybersecurity solutions. Gosh, I sound like I’m doing a webinar for the company.

Paul Farrell:

Yeah. They’re going to call you up for a sales job, John.

John Warrillow:

Yeah, but effectively if I’m a bank or a big CPG company or whatever and I want to make sure that I don’t get hacked and I’m cyber secure, et cetera, I might hire this company and they’d have solutions. Your solution, this threat assessment, this financial assessment piece fit into that solution, so it would help them.

Paul Farrell:

Yeah.

John Warrillow:

So they were going to sell your product to their existing customers.

Paul Farrell:

Correct, and new customers, and that’s what makes us valuable to them.

John Warrillow:

And they would use your product to go as a thin edge in the wedge sort of idea to get into a new customer and then sell around the other products.

Paul Farrell:

Yeah, because we were risk management, and risk management was very popular. It was an emerging category. We were a Gartner Cool Vendor, which is a whole nother story of how we got that as a young company.

John Warrillow:

To be clear, I’m just going back to Threat for a second, ThreatConnect. I know both of those strategic reasons were probably appealing to them, the idea of selling your product to their customers and then winning new customers through you. Did you get a sense of which was a higher priority for them?

Paul Farrell:

I think that whenever … So, I don’t know what Adam and his team were thinking about, but I know when I’ve done this in the past the one thing is can I sell it to my existing base, because that’s the easier sale to make, right? Than a new sale.

John Warrillow:

Yeah.

Paul Farrell:

So, is it an easy upgrade is always a question you have to ask yourself.

John Warrillow:

So you’d be looking at it, is it an easy upgrade first of all, and then there’s gravy.

Paul Farrell:

Now this whole thing with risk management where it’s a burgeoning area, Gartner is tracking it, we’re a Gartner Cool Vendor. It brings all that other stuff to the sales process, because they were doing well by themselves before we were sold.

John Warrillow:

Sounds like it, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, you’re under NDA. You’re going through the demos. At what point did you reveal your numbers to Adam and the team?

Paul Farrell:

Well, I mean, once again, when Adam asked me upfront I told him exactly what my sales were, how many people I have. They’re going to find about some of this stuff anyways, and that’s almost public information, right? So, upfront I disclosed how big we were, what our revenue were. You can ask me what the burn rate was, and I wouldn’t know it exactly at that day. I kind of waved my hand at it recently because I don’t really remember specifically what it was, but you got to give him information to help them make an intelligent decision about what they’re doing. If you play your cards close to your chest, well, you’re losing in transparency and trust, right? I mean, there are some things you’re not going to divulge. Like until we had a NDA I wasn’t going to tell about our secret sauce about how we actually made all this work because there was challenges along the way. We had the hurdle like computational explosion because this thing we’re doing was so big we had to figure out a way not to have the programs bust because they were doing too much.

There were all kinds of stuff along the way we had to figure out, and that is trade secrets and patents kind of stuff. We hold that off for later on because they understand that, and those are really, really important meetings, but the bottom line is on what I would the surface stuff, just be honest. This is our sales, this is our employees, this is what we’re doing, this is what our pipeline looks like, that kind of stuff.

John Warrillow:

Years ago I did an interview for the show with a guy named James Murphy who created a product called Viviscal which was like hair, a balding solution for women who had the hair loss effectively, and it worked, unlike a lot of the quack stuff that they sold. It actually worked for women because the reason for women’s thinning hair tends to be for different reasons. Anyway, it worked, and it was a marine protein, and it was a very highly guarded secret because it was very, very proprietary, and he went through the entire sales process, he was selling to consumer packaged goods companies like Procter & Gamble and those folks. Ultimately he sold it to C&D. I think it was $165 million. It was a big, big, very spectacular sale. He never shared the marine protein formula until the $165 million had been wired to his bank account.

Paul Farrell:

Yeah.

John Warrillow:

So, even under NDA that little secret wasn’t going until the check cleared. But in your case, some of the kind of secret sauce you did feel comfortable sharing with Adam prior to the check clearing your account.

Paul Farrell:

Yeah. I think it was a requirement from the sale, but also I will tell you this. A recipe in one person’s hand and a recipe in another person’s hands don’t always turn out the same way, right?

John Warrillow:

Very good point, yeah.

Paul Farrell:

That’s one way to look at it, is that they’re also that, as the French would say, the je ne sais quoi to it, right?

John Warrillow:

Yeah, yeah. I’m reminded, my friend who went through the Cordon Bleu chef school, he says there’s a difference between … What does he say? A chef and a cook.

Paul Farrell:

Yeah. There you go.

John Warrillow:

And I’m like, what’s the difference? And he went on like the level of precision effectively is what the outcome would be.

Paul Farrell:

Yeah.

John Warrillow:

That’s really interesting. So, at what point does Adam present you with a letter of intent?

Paul Farrell:

I think it was, I mean, I would guess, well upfront they have an intent to purchase but when we finally found the number it was a couple weeks into the process. You got to get it out there really fast because you don’t want to waste a lot of their time or our time.

John Warrillow:

Did that come with … Most of these LOIs come with like a no shop clause, so you can’t sort of negotiate with anybody else. I’m assuming it had one of those.

Paul Farrell:

Yeah, absolutely. We expected that, and we were comfortable signing it with that in there.

John Warrillow:

Did you consider shopping the company to others at this stage, when you had the kind of bite from Adam? Did you think, “Okay, maybe I’ll go get two or three other [crosstalk 00:39:31].”

Paul Farrell:

We were running a process, and there was three other bidders at the time, and he was the bid we decided to take.

John Warrillow:

What was it about that bid that put it over the line for you?

Paul Farrell:

Well, relationship with Adam. Oh my god, I talked about that’s got to-

John Warrillow:

Yeah.

Paul Farrell:

I think it was the price was fair, based upon all the other variables, right? The timeline was fair. In other words, we’re not going to spend months in contracts. So, it aligned in a lot of those. When we said that there’s 20 or 30 binary things, it checked the yes in many of those boxes. That’s why we went for it.

John Warrillow:

I don’t know if you can share this, so please just tell me you can’t if you can’t, but was it in that sort of eight to 10 range?

Paul Farrell:

I can’t tell you.

John Warrillow:

You can’t get to that.

Paul Farrell:

That’s one thing that they’ll never publicize out there.

John Warrillow:

Yeah, totally get it.

Paul Farrell:

But everybody, everything happens in ranges, right? I mean, you know, but I can’t confirm what range it finally ended at.

John Warrillow:

Yeah. This maybe you could answer. Of the other offers that you received, was it sort of in the middle, a lot higher, a lot lower, or sort of in the range of what everybody else was sort of thinking? I guess what I’m trying to-

Paul Farrell:

I guess I would say that it was higher than some, but as I remember maybe not the highest.

John Warrillow:

Okay, okay.

Paul Farrell:

Not the highest.

John Warrillow:

So there were some intangible pieces like how fast he could close, his word, the relationship you had.

Paul Farrell:

The financing of the organization. Did they have the cash on hand or were they looking to go raise it? Those are-

John Warrillow:

Those were all things.

Paul Farrell:

… things you have to think about. Yeah.

John Warrillow:

And what about the terms? I know a lot of these deals they’re sort of backend waited, where you’ve got a long earn-out to deal with. What can you tell us about the terms?

Paul Farrell:

Well, the terms were very reasonable. It was probably the shortest time I was asked to stick around to help advice. Now that I’ve done it once, next time I’m going to do the same thing over and over again. I like the short-term, in and out. Your audience is going to find out that you don’t make all the rules anymore once you sell. Once this happened to me, as you said three or four times, and I go to an organization and I don’t make the rules, and you’re like, “Maybe we would’ve done something different or whatever.” That’s not the case anymore. You don’t have even the right to say, unless they ask you what your opinion is, and you can get frustrated, but it’s do it and move on, I think is really good.

John Warrillow:

Well, I think-

Paul Farrell:

Stick around long enough to make sure the transition is smooth, because whether you’re being paid or not that’s your duty to make sure they get the value out of what they spent, but move on fast. Go on to your next one.

John Warrillow:

Well, I think everybody would love to move on fast.

Paul Farrell:

Yeah, well.

John Warrillow:

But it’s not quite as easy. Most of our listeners would at least be asked to stay on for some sort of earn-out. Average length is three years, some as long as five.

Paul Farrell:

Yeah, if they’re services. If they’re a services firm, that’s going to happen. Software, we’re a little bit different, right? I’m not the main developer.

John Warrillow:

Yeah, but even with software, we hear sometimes there’s like a private equity company will come in, buy 60% and ask the founder, CEO to roll some equity and kind of stay on as CEO.

Paul Farrell:

Oh yeah, and that’s a completely different situation I was talking about, where here’s a new CEO coming in that knows what he’s doing. This was a seasoned professional.

John Warrillow:

In the case of Adam at ThreatConnect.

Paul Farrell:

Yeah. You don’t need two of us around, right?

John Warrillow:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he knew what he was doing. So, he had you come in as an advisor. Again, if I’m getting too nosy just say, “Can’t tell you.” But as an advisor, was that a role where you were on salary or more like as a consultant, or were you just a shareholder [crosstalk 00:43:23]?

Paul Farrell:

Well, whatever your arrangement is, it is. What you got to do is figure out what the cadence is. A lot of times it’s hey, this came up today, what do you think? Or what were you thinking when this happened? Give me the background.

John Warrillow:

So, you’re not leading a team at this stage, you’re not hitting sales numbers. You’re literally on call to advise.

Paul Farrell:

I’m an advisor. Helping some sales situations because I was a lot involved in the sales situations. That kind of stuff helped. Talk to the new sales leadership about why people buy this product and all that. It was purely advisor role for me. And I’ve been on here longer, as I said, times this was the shortest one and I think it was the best strategy.

John Warrillow:

How long did you stay on as an advisor for? How many months or years, whatever?

Paul Farrell:

A very short time. I don’t know if we can talk about that.

John Warrillow:

Okay.

Paul Farrell:

Let’s say less than a quarter.

John Warrillow:

Okay, okay. I was going to say less than a year, so that’s fine.

Paul Farrell:

No, no, less than a quarter.

John Warrillow:

Fairly short. Yeah.

Paul Farrell:

Very short.

John Warrillow:

Yeah, yeah. Tell me about the relationship with the family office. Again, I’m asking out of genuine curiosity. My understanding is that most family offices are relatively passive investors, they’re not like, “Paul, how’s it going today?” They’re not asking you for KPIs every day. They’re sort of a little bit more hands-off.

Paul Farrell:

Yeah, yeah. [crosstalk 00:44:51].

John Warrillow:

What was your experience? Are you keeping them abreast of the various offers that you’ve got and what you’re-

Paul Farrell:

No. They trusted me just to say this was the best offer and then here’s what we’re doing.

John Warrillow:

Okay.

Paul Farrell:

Remember, I’ve been working with them for a long time, since 2005 at the time, 2006. So, I was a known entity. They had seen successes from me before. I was building a relationship of trust and transparency. The whole thing is that I would recommend, whether it’s a VC, a family office, anybody, just transparency. Here’s what’s going on, right? We got a problem recently. We put out a release and it didn’t work as we thought it was going to work. We’re doing this to fix it, and this is what we’re doing so it doesn’t happen again. Those are things that you … Don’t try to just give them the rosy picture, because then when things aren’t rosy they’re like, “What?” You know?

John Warrillow:

Yeah, like I would’ve liked to have known.

Paul Farrell:

Yeah. [crosstalk 00:45:55].

John Warrillow:

Help me understand a family office. Again, we don’t have to talk specifically about the one you’re involved in, but I’d be curious just generally the structure. So as I understand it, it’s usually an entrepreneur who sold a company for a truckload of money or they’ve inherited a truckload of money in some capacity, but they’ve got a big pool of capital. They often hire a CPA or a CFO type of person to run their family office for them, and that person, in addition to other things, places capital. So, they’ll put some money into debt instruments, some money into the stock market, and oftentimes they’ll put some money into privately held businesses. When they do the latter, they are the custodian of that money effectively, and they’re a CFO and they’re basically going to say, “Okay, I’m going to take 10% of this portfolio, I’m going to put it into some more high risk high return things.”

So, the person running the family office is not the rich entrepreneur, it’s the kind of usually professional manager who is a CFO. Have I got that about right or …

Paul Farrell:

Yeah, for most of the family offices that I know the people who made the money and their siblings and/or children are involved.

John Warrillow:

They are involved.

Paul Farrell:

Yeah, they’re involved. I don’t have the … Maybe in other circumstances it’s a couple arm’s length removed, but no. In fact, the leader of this family office was probably one of the best people I know at running a software firm.

John Warrillow:

Okay.

Paul Farrell:

So, I jones for times I could get together and learn, right? And absorb the knowledge base. So, that was my case, maybe a little bit different, but I wanted to get input. I wanted to understand what was going on. It was one of the things I’ve learned too that I will say to your audience, is what made you successful 40 years ago, or 30 years ago, or 20 years ago, or 10 years ago probably is not going to make you successful today. So, you have to pray for transforming your mind, that we can get your mind around the new realities and be really truthful with yourself. I mean, the truthful is oh, what I did there doesn’t work, or this person is better at running that than I am. I think those are some realities that, especially after we … Clearly I’m blessed, I’ve been successful many times over, and a lot of the lessons I have learned still work for me today, but some don’t. Like I told you, like the new paradigm for me is a lot more transparent and a lot more vulnerable. I think that that aligns more with today’s world and where today’s world is going, and also the young people that are coming up in today’s world. They know that if you’re not, you’re hiding something, right?

John Warrillow:

Let’s take the last say 12 months as a lens. What have you changed your mind about in the last 12 months as it relates to entrepreneurship and building businesses?

Paul Farrell:

I think you got to be ready for anything, right? I mean, clearly COVID was one thing but also now Delta variant. I see small businesses all over making, I call them audibles. They happen every day. I love football, right? So, the quarterback gets up, a line of scrimmage, he looks around, looks at the defense. So we look at our competitors, look at our products. We understand okay, today’s audible is going to be this and we’re going to run it up the middle. Tomorrow we might be running around the end.

John Warrillow:

That hasn’t changed in 40 years, has it?

Paul Farrell:

No, that doesn’t change, but also I think that the defense has though, right?

John Warrillow:

Okay.

Paul Farrell:

The environment has.

John Warrillow:

Tell me more about that.

Paul Farrell:

The environment has never been as volatile as it is right now. So, how to think differently about it. I sit on the board of an anti-trafficking organization. They were going to have a completely online dinner this year. I said, “No, things are changed. Let’s do a small group of people and we’ll have it on location and then also have everybody join in from Zoom.” And I’m working with that with my local church as well, to be able to integrate the online and offline environments. Things are changing like that in the world. Hey, we don’t expect. I mean, people just started, I mean, the data shows that people aren’t going to church consistently every Sunday. What they’ll do now is they’ll go two Sundays a month and two Sundays a month they’ll attend online because that’s the way. You have a young family, you know things come up.

John Warrillow:

Sure, sure.

Paul Farrell:

So, you have new realities, and so you got to get your mind around these new realities. One of the things that COVID has helped with this. Listen, yesterday I spent an hour listening to a cybersecurity podcast, or actually a broadcast. They had four, five famous chief information security officers and they were talking about how they think about different things in cybersecurity. I’ve been attending those. It’s just like that. The launch stuff that I was talking about earlier that I was getting out, I think you have more opportunity now than ever to attend some of these free things and attend them. Even if you’re doing email because you have to multitask because you don’t have time, you pick something up. If you keep on picking things up, you keep on transforming your mind, and learning, and learning. Look, I’m 62 and I think I got a couple two or three more successes left in me.

John Warrillow:

What was the reaction of your contact at the family office when effectively the check cleared the bank. I don’t know how you want to describe that, but you handed the check over to them. I’m sure it wasn’t a physical check, but what was their reaction?

Paul Farrell:

It’s always positive. I mean, you got to celebrate with people. I mean, you mourn with people, you celebrate with people.

John Warrillow:

How did you do that? Was there a dinner? I’d like to know, seriously. When the deal closed, did they call you or you called them or what happened?

Paul Farrell:

I sent an email, because there was a health thing going on at the time. Somebody wasn’t feeling right, and so I didn’t have the chance. I mean, normally, like a month after we do something like go fishing or do something to talk about it.

John Warrillow:

To celebrate.

Paul Farrell:

And strategize on our next one, but in this particular case there were some health concerns, and so I wasn’t able to do it, but we have done it three or four times over. So, I’ll go back to the previous times.

John Warrillow:

Yeah.

Paul Farrell:

It’s always good to celebrate, right? It’s always good to say hey, this is a job well done. After a while too, and maybe it’s after you’ve been in the end zone a couple more times, it’s great, but then you get the desire to get in the end zone again. So, you immediately start the next morning thinking about okay, what’s going to be the next thing I’m going to do? And how am I going to do it and how am I going to get that ball in the end zone again? Because you get the emotion, the flavor for it, the zeal.

John Warrillow:

Sure. Super Bowl champions have the trophy. Do you have a physical trophy? I’m wondering if you have something physical that is a memento?

Paul Farrell:

Okay, so I have to make a confession to everybody out there. So you’ve asked the right question. Right before COVID Lena and I, my wife, we sold our home and we moved into a two bed, 1,800 square foot, two [crosstalk 00:53:40].

John Warrillow:

Bad timing.

Paul Farrell:

19 floors up, from five acres and a pool and everything else you could imagine, workout room, theater, all that stuff. I used to have all the tombstones. Your tombstones are like Moreover technology that I feel helped transform with a bunch of really, really great people, and sold to LexisNexis. LexisNexis had like 94 people in a DLT. We didn’t have maybe 70 in our whole organization.

John Warrillow:

Yeah.

Paul Farrell:

I used to have all those tombstones. I got rid of them all. My desk has nothing on it right now except I hold a lot of that stuff in my heart, right? And I know it. I don’t need something to remind me of it. I could still tell you stories of how the Moreover deal went down, and who was involved, and Tom, the guy from LexisNexis that was such a great acquirer for us. I think I’ve been transforming myself more into I don’t keep trinkets around because we love our new lifestyle, it’s unburdened. We really like it. If I buy a new T-shirt, a T-shirt has got to go out. I don’t have any grandchildren yet, and I’m not going to get a house with a pool and all that until I get grandchildren, so yeah, years away.

John Warrillow:

You’re the opposite of the trophy story. You’re jettisoning everything.

Paul Farrell:

Yeah. I don’t know, it’s more about the people. That’s why I write people’s names down. So I told you so. I’m due this afternoon to call a former employee that at the one year mark reached out to me and he’d always been a great person. He said, “Hey, I know it’s the one year mark. I just want to say thank you. Really happy here at ThreatConnect. Give me a call next week.” So, he’s on my list to call today.

John Warrillow:

Did your employees at Nehemiah participate financially in the acquisition by ThreatConnect?

Paul Farrell:

I would say yes. I took care of my employees. I’ve always took care of my employees, whether they’ve had a formal plan or not. I take some of the deal proceeds, and not everybody but key employees that had been there all along, I took care of them.

John Warrillow:

How did you decide … You sound like a very philanthropic person, mission-driven, 50% is incredible. I think a lot of people listening to this are conflicted when it comes to sharing deal proceeds with their employees, because I think they’re mindful that those employees brought them to the dance. They’d never be there without them. Having said that, those employees didn’t risk their capital. They weren’t the ones that worked all the weekends and did the things. I mean, you were burning $100,000 a month, to the point where your wife is like, “Hello.” So, you were seriously risking a lot. I guess a lot of people are conflicted about this issue of how much and with whom to share when it comes to the sale of their company. What guidance would you give them trying to figure out what is maybe morally right, if that makes any sense?

Paul Farrell:

Well, I mean, every situation is different. The way I look at it is there’s a double blessing in that you’re blessed with it and you can bless other people with that thing. Hey, they did spend weekends. I mean, they did a lot of my place work. When there was a problem they worked nights and weekends to get it fixed. They were there. They stuck by you, right? When you were transparent and said, “Hey, we’re going to be sold.” And as I said, I wasn’t able to do all employees, but the key ones certainly we’re able to do something for. [crosstalk 00:57:30].

John Warrillow:

Is that a hard conversation with the family office? Because the family offices that are [crosstalk 00:57:34].

Paul Farrell:

No, not really, because you know what? I can go [inaudible 00:57:39] if I wanted. I mean, let’s say hypothetically if I didn’t have contractual constraint I could go tomorrow, but a shingle out there and call a lot of those people and they would be back in about 10 seconds, right? So, the other stuff though John, it’s not just the money in the end, it’s are you concerned about them personally. I mean, I know their wives, their husbands, their children’s names. We celebrated every birthday, we would get whatever cake you wanted. Once a month, if we had three birthdays we’d have three cakes, an ice cream cake, a coconut cream and something else, whatever, but [crosstalk 00:58:21].

John Warrillow:

Went to work at Nehemiah, I came back 10 pounds heavier.

Paul Farrell:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Celebrating birthdays. If somebody died, even if it was a grandmother we’d send flowers, because you’re in the person, I mean, and more than ever you’re in a people business, you cannot get that product out the door, you cannot build software, you cannot provide those services without those people. I’m not saying you give everything you got away, but you have to recognize the ones that were there through the thick and thin and went over for you, and that’s what we choose to do. I’ve done it-

John Warrillow:

In other companies.

Paul Farrell:

… in all the sales where I’ve been CEO, where I’ve been able to control it. I put something in, it’s not just the Nehemiah one, it’s the one before that. I give something back to all the employees.

John Warrillow:

Is 10% the right number?

Paul Farrell:

I don’t know. It depends. You know what? That is a decision because you got to look at the end of the day, right? So, Kenny, what’s his name? Know when to pull them, know when to show them, [crosstalk 00:59:25].

John Warrillow:

Oh yeah. Kenny Rogers, was he?

Paul Farrell:

[crosstalk 00:59:27] till the end of the day, and you got to get to the end of the day and you got to see okay, here’s what I got, here’s what my cost was and what I got left over. Now I’d say at the end of the day make that decision, because you don’t know till the end of the day. That’s what happened with us. Now, I kind of project it. I had a spreadsheet where I knew, where I plugged in and I have percentages and all that based on what I thought. It’s not like it was a final guess in the end. I had planned that all along.

John Warrillow:

What was your favorite reaction that you received from a Nehemiah employee when you told them you had sold the company?

Paul Farrell:

I will go to one of my favorite reactions ever in Nehemiah, because remember it’s during COVID, so I’m not seeing them, right? So, they’re happy on the screen.

John Warrillow:

Yeah, it’s over Zoom or whatever, yeah.

Paul Farrell:

I remember recognizing a particular employee of mine, was going above and beyond and we needed to give her a raise. A very personable person. I remember out of the blue, unexpectedly I walked up and gave her a letter that said you have a raise. Out of the blue she gave me a hug, out of the blue. It wasn’t like I got hugged every day or anything like that, but I really appreciated that person and I really appreciated what she did. I’ve got letters that I’ve kept. There’s a couple that I have kept. Even from starting employees, just maybe they were an intern with us and they left and they said, “Thank you for showing me.”

That’s one other thing that I would encourage all your viewers, hire interns, pay them $20 an hour because they’re working for you and they deserve pay for it. Somebody gave me a hand up when I was in college to get internships and stuff like that or jobs to pay for college and then move on. I encourage you all to do it, but I’ve gotten some fantastic notes. I got a text message Christmas day from an employee, another person who said, “Merry Christmas and thank you so much.” And those are, man, I’ll keep them forever because they’re just that’s what it’s all about, right? It’s about people. It’s not about you being successful or the company being successful. All your employees, did you treat them right? And I’ve got some instances where people have affirmed that I have treated them right, and that’s what I treasure the most.

John Warrillow:

Let’s leave it there. Paul, where can people find you if they want to connect and reach out in any way? Do you accept LinkedIn connections or what’s-

Paul Farrell:

Yeah, LinkedIn is fine. I love LinkedIn. I accept all requests. I get a ton, because I’m open I get a ton of LinkedIn. I always I’ll connect you today but don’t try to sell me anything. I’m happy to mentor people. I mentor for free. You call up and ask for my advice, I’ll give it to you. There are some longer term relationships, but in my role I’m able to help people. That’s what I like to do.

John Warrillow:

Fantastic.

Paul Farrell:

Across the board.

John Warrillow:

We’ll put your LinkedIn profile in the show notes so that people connect to that, just go to BuiltToSell.com.

Paul Farrell:

Yeah, and I go there every couple of days and accept them. If there’s a longer note sometimes you have to wait a week or two till I get around on reading the whole note, but the short I saw you, want to connect you, or I have a question, I’ll give somebody an email to send me a calendar invite to something like that.

John Warrillow:

Great stuff. Well Paul, thanks for doing this.

Paul Farrell:

Thank you, John. It’s been great talking to you. Appreciate it. God bless you.

John Warrillow:

Hey, if you liked today’s episode, you’re going to love my new book, The Art of Selling Your Business. The book was inspired by the cohort of my guests over the years who have been able to negotiate an exit far better than the benchmark in their industry, sometimes two or three times more than I would’ve expected. I was curious to understand the tactics and strategies of these entrepreneurs, and what they do differently from average performers. The result is a playbook for punching above your weight when it comes to selling your business. To learn more go to BuiltToSell.com/Selling, where we put together a collection of gifts for listeners who order the book. Just go to BuiltToSell.com/Selling.

Built to Sell Radio is produced by Haley Parkhill. Our audio and video engineer is Denis Labattaglia. If you like what you’ve just heard, subscribe to get a new episode delivered to your inbox each week. Just go to BuiltToSell.com.

Outro:

Thanks for listening to Built to Sell Radio with John Warrillow. For complete show notes with links to additional resources, visit BuiltToSell.com/Blog. John is the founder of The Value Builder System™. To find out how to improve the value of your business by 71%, visit ValueBuilderSystem.com. John is also the author of Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You, and The Automatic Customer: Creating A Subscription Business In Any Industry. Connect with John at Facebook.com/BuiltToSell or on Twitter @JohnWarrillow, W-A-R-R-I-L-L-O-W. Thanks for listening.