At the end of 2010, I began to look at a number of things with respect to eMonarch. I began to ask myself, how far can I take this company and what will it take to get it there. Well I quickly came to realize I had three choices:
1) Run eMonarch at a steady pace and attempt to grow organically with the skills I had and the team I had. We would add 1 or 2 clients every now and then and continue to serve our customers. This would provide a nice living for my family as well as those team members that were at eMonarch. But this is what I refer to as being a "Lifestyle Entrepreneur". This is a business owner that has a good business and it provides him/her with the lifestyle he/she wants to live. There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with being a lifestyle entrepreneur unless your name is Sean Fullerton! I did not want that as I am a very Type A person and like to push the envelope, so that leads us to option 2.
2) Aggressively hire staff with a special focus on sales team members. All small businesses need to become selling organizations to succeed. If you are not growing, you are dying. It really is that simple. But there was a number of problems with this scenario:
a) I am not a sales manager! Sure I could hire a sales manager but not all good sales managers are good sales people and vice versa. And in a small company, you need to have sales people!
b) I do not understand sales people and therefore I am not good at hiring them. I have had some good sales people in the past but as they can probably attest, I did not provide them with the tools for success. I simply stuck them in an office with a phone and email and said "Go sell something!". Not really a good sales support structure for sure!
c) Time. To begin to grow aggressively in a small company you have to commit a lot of time outside of normal hours. Well that is difficult for me as I have three small children and if success came at the price of my family then success is not worth it.
A number of years ago, I did an exercise with a group of fellow business owners where I ask them to write their "I AM" statement. This is a statement about who you are as a person and it really has nothing to do with business. Many of the folks came up with statements that had something to do with their work or business in it. But I told them "Nope, can not be about the business". Many of them shot back that it did! So I asked a very simple question, "If I could guarantee you business success as you define it, but it would mean you had to divorce your spouse and lose your kids, would you do it?" No one went for it. So the "I AM" statement really has nothing to do with business.
So that long winded statement to say that the Time commitment it would take to get eMonarch to the next level was a cost I was not comfortable making.
And there are a number of other reasons for option 2 really being difficult. Every business owner has a threshold. This threshold is just how far the owner can take the company. Some owners are able to grow beyond their threshold because they quickly realize their threshold and they go out and find that "one person" that can add enough to the business to help the owner get past their current threshold. But then that person has a threshold and the cycle continues.
I believe I had reached my threshold as an owner. I have a lot of talents and had grown eMonarch into a wildly successful business that made a good amount of money and provided good jobs,etc. But the next level was going to be tough for me by myself. And that led to Option 3.
3) Sell eMonarch to a firm that wanted to grow Managed Services and had strong leadership that I could learn from and help grow the business with. The key there was really strong leadership that I would feel comfortable working with. You see I am convinced that I would make a horrible employee. But as I thought about selling, I came to realize that most of the companies that I had looked at as potential partners did not have the leadership that I would feel comfortable working under. It takes someone that has been there and been through the paces before I am willing to sit under them to learn from. I had to have confidence that the leadership could take me to the next level.
I found those things in Peak UpTime. I knew Gordon Martin from working with him on the Strategic Planning Committee at our church and had gotten to know him over about 1.5 years or so. It is funny as to me when I found out that Gordon was the President of Peak, I was like "he is the enemy, I cannot talk about what is going on with eMonarch or else he will get some valuable intel on us!" But nothing was farther from the truth. Gordon was a genuine guy that loves Jesus and has an amazing brain for business. Two very critical components for me.
So as I was walking through this in my mind, I spoke with Gordon briefly one day after a committee meeting and the process began. Peak has some great talent and I really saw how eMonarch and myself could fit into the business as well as bring some of our skills with regard to managed services. And it would be a GREAT win for our customers. We would not be as resource constrained as we had in the past and would be able to really do it even better than we had. Our values matched and I knew that I could trust Gordon.
So why did I sell eMonarch?
I want to provide a stable future for my family.
I want to grow as a leader.
I want to grow as a business leader.
I want to take Managed Services to a much broader market.
I want to give eMonarch customers the best service.
I want to learn.
I want to not do sales management (yet)!
But ultimately, because I felt God place Gordon and the Peak group in my path for a very distinct purpose.
So here is to a new future and even bigger things. It has been a remarkable ride and thank you to ALL the customers, employees and friends that have made eMonarch the success it grew to be.
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