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Welcome to Episode 72 of Ultimate Guide to Partnering. My guest for this episode of the podcast is a former CEO and Entrepreneur who successfully grew and sold technology businesses in the Microsoft Partner Ecosystem, Linda Rose.
I met Linda about three years ago when we both had a chance to present during the Executive Roundtable at the Extreme 365 event hosted by our mutual friend Christy Spokely, which was November of 2017, and quite a bit has happened since then.
Linda’s book “Get Acquired for Million’s – A Roadmap for Technology Service Providers to Maximize Company Value” is the definitive book for technology organizations looking to be acquired. In the book, she provides strong guidance to business owners and operators on maximizing their organizations’ value, and it’s a how-to guide to getting your company acquired.
As an entrepreneur, Linda’s story is fascinating, and we discuss her journey and the lessons she learned along the way.
I find the advice and guidance to be so valuable to the owners and operators of the hundreds of thousands of technology companies in our sector, most of which are small and privately owned. Our mutual friend Jay McBain’s quote that 40% of technology service providers will be exiting and retiring by 2024 makes her insights and lessons compelling and timely. I also find her work essential to the thousands of Partner Development Managers working with these partners to coach better and advise their channel partners.
We will provide links for the book and our discussion in our show notes, and we will also provide a link to a free Audible sample of the book.
I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I enjoyed spending time with Linda Rose.
LINKS & RESOURCES
- Find Linda on LinkedIn and Twitter
- Sample the first chapter of Get Acquired for Millions
- Find out what your company is worth with the Value Maximizer Assessment (the code is PC2020).
- Linda’s book “Get Acquired for Million’s – A Roadmap for Technology Service Providers to Maximize Company Value”
- Book she recommends – Finish Big: How Great Entrepreneurs Exit Their Companies on Top, Bo Burlingham.
- The Transcript of the Interview is below.
As with each of my episodes, I appreciate your support. Please tell your friends about Ultimate Guide to Partnering™ and where they can find us. I’d love your feedback. Please like the podcast and provide comments or reach out to me at @vincemenzione on Linked In, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. You can also like and follow Ultimate Guide to Partnering Facebook page or drop me a line at vincem@cloudwavepartners.com.
Ultimate Guide to Partnering™ is a rich compendium of what makes successful partnerships and is available on iTunes, Spotify, Google SoundCloud, Stitcher, Google Play, Player FM, almost anywhere you get your podcasts!
Transcribed by https://otter.ai Please excuse any typos.
Vince Menzione 0:38
Linda, welcome to the podcast.
Linda Rose – Vince its so great to be here.
Vince Finally. I know we’ve been talking about this for quite some time. And I am so excited to finally have you as a guest on Ultimate Guide to partnering. And you know, we’ve known each other we’ve been in the partner ecosystem for some time we both spoke at Christie’s spoke Lee’s extreme 365 event, what three years ago? Yes. Yeah, and keys, I can’t believe that’s been three years. And so much has happened now since then. And so I’m excited to have you as a guest, you know, you’ve been a successful partner, CEO, and now an author. So welcome.
Linda Rose – Thank you, thank you so
much
Vince Menzione 2:26
Your book, getting acquired for millions, it truly is a roadmap for technology service providers to maximize company value, and I so enjoyed reading this book. It’s sort of out of character for me to read a book on finance or tips and tricks for what you do with your company, but I learned so much from the book and I want to dig in here in a few moments. But first, for our listeners who don’t know, Lynda rose, can you tell us a little bit about your path or your journey to get here?
Linda Rose 2:54
Absolutely. So I most recently spent if you want to call it recently, 25 years as a Microsoft partner in the channel, I started to partner organizations, one back in 9192, CRM, ear p partner. And then in 1999 2000, I started a cloud infrastructure business, which is actually really called hosting back then. And then somewhere along the way there, I started a staffing firm as well. So it was pretty busy past wasn’t a planned event. I’m not a technologist, I’m actually a CPA, I worked in public accounting, I was on the tax side of the CPA firm I planned on, you know, when I graduated from college, becoming a partner and I met my husband there and they had bills back then you couldn’t date let alone get married. And given the fact that I’m still with the same man for 33 years, I think it was probably a good decision. I left the firm and he went on to be a manager and it was up for partner and I just kind of moved on and did my own thing. But I you know, I realized that bureaucracy wasn’t my thing, either. I wasn’t really super thrilled about working with a large firm, I was too much of an entrepreneur at heart didn’t know it at the time. But I tell you, if somebody told me that I’d be where I am today, I would say You’re crazy. You know, the universe opens up and you just kind of step in.
Vince Menzione 4:11
Yeah. Well, you know, you tell the story about what accidentally happened, right? Do you feel these years later in your journey that this was inform you say, you know, maybe were an entrepreneur at heart and didn’t realize it at the time, but was that were there things that opened up for you? Were there pivot points or things that you realized about your experiences or motivations that drove you?
Linda Rose 4:32
Yes. Well, of course, that accidental thing was me becoming pregnant and unexpectedly and then not being able to get a job I got laid off because it was the recession and I got laid off and I couldn’t find a job because I was already showing and I wanted four months off, you know, the typical things as a new mom, and so it really forced me to go out do some gig work, as we call it. Now. We didn’t call it that before and you know, just it was really about putting food on the table initially and I just enjoyed learning things and one thing tax work led to accounting work, which led to eirp work. And so, you know, for me is I just kind of said earlier, you know, the universe just opens up and you just kind of need to step in and, and you know, just go with what you think is right. And that’s kind of always been my motto, there’s kind of an old German expression, but it translates in English to kind of like self as a man. And to me, that means Never be afraid to go out and do something on your own, because you can’t wait around for somebody to give it to you. You just got to just got to do it. As Nike says,
Vince Menzione 5:32
I love that advice. And, and so you became a CEO of a technology company, and what was at the time, and in many ways, still is a male dominated world, what was that like for you,
Linda Rose 5:45
you know, honestly, dance, I, I never viewed it that way, I just viewed it as I was always pretty confident in my skill sets, I’ve always made it a point to continuously learn to always be a few steps ahead of everybody else. And the fact that I just knew my trade, I, you know, I learned how to use the Microsoft products, I spent lots of time learning that and I was confident my skill set. And that’s kind of really all I needed. You know, there were a few occasions were, you know, some of the guy CEOs that were my clients, you know, I get, you know, a couple passes made at me, I was younger than Of course, but you know, you just kind of, I hate to say learn to live with it, but you you just kind of have to in a way, but deal with it in a constructive way. And, and I did have to have a sit down from time to time with the CEO, but, you know, all ended well. And, you know, to me, it was about growing a business. And I didn’t really think of myself as a man or a woman, I just thought of myself as this is what I know, I’m going to go do it.
Vince Menzione 6:44
Were there any role models that you looked up to at the time I had Tiffany boeve on the podcast recently, and she said, You can’t be what you can’t see, Was there anybody that you saw in the future, or maybe another version of you that you looked up to at that point to say this is, this is the person I want to grow into,
Linda Rose 7:01
you’re not really I mean, certainly weren’t any women back then I did have a group of guys that I actually worked for initially, they were commercial developers out of all things, and they built sky rises, skyscrapers in San Diego, and they were an interesting eclectic group of guys. And they were my client, I did a lot of tax work for them initially, a lot of limited partnerships. And they always invite me down to the bar downstairs in their building, afterwards for a drink. And I was like, almost the only girl they ever invited down. And I think part of it was because I wasn’t offended by some of the language that they use, I would laugh at their jokes. They were all good, actually. But, you know, that’s when all the good conversations happen, right? Just like at a conference, good conversations typically happened at the bar. And I learned so much from these guys. And they were great. They took me under their wing. And whenever I had questions, or afraid to do something, because trust me, I was afraid to do a lot of stuff back then they would just give me the confidence to do it. And when one of one individual in particular became a board member for a couple of my companies, and they’re instrumental, and I and I still think him to this day for for his guidance for sure.
Vince Menzione 8:07
So I love that you wrote this book. Can you take our listeners through the genesis of how you got to write the book, like what happened with your businesses? And how did you get to this spot?
Linda Rose 8:16
Yeah. So as I said, Before, I had the three companies I sold all three of those companies over time when in 2008, one and 2013 and the last one in 2017. And I learned a lot during that process, made a ton of mistakes, left a lot of money on the table. And I really wanted to share that knowledge because I read a quote that Jay McBain wrote, I know he’s been a guest on your podcast that he wrote back in October of 2017. And that quote was 40% of the channel will age out by 2024. And that article, just so hit me. I mean, it was really what prompted me to write the book because I realized, oh my gosh, there’s gonna be so many partners in the same position that I just went through, that don’t have any idea how to prepare their company for sale. And I have so much to share. And so I did a lot of research, I did a lot of interviewing of private equity firms of buyers, brokers and decided to come up with this book written from a CEOs perspective, that talks about m&a but not like an m&a book, right? We don’t like I’m a numbers person, and I’ve read trust me 2030 m&a books, and there’s parts of this where I my eyes glaze over glaze over, and I just wanted this to be just down in the trenches, here’s how it is, you know, this is the resources that you can use to get better. That’s the kind of book I wanted to write. And it
Vince Menzione 9:40
took me two months to do it. You know, it’s amazing. I advise technology organizations, myself, and many of them struggle with the advice you provide here. Why do you suppose so many of these technology companies struggle here with this move or the movement to sell the organization?
Linda Rose 9:55
No, I think that’s the reason is because you have one mindset when you’re building a company, and you’re growing revenue, that mindset is different than when you’re building a company to sell. And, you know, you hear about people saying, Oh, you should never go into a business without an exit plan. And you know, I heard that too, back in the early days. And I’m like, well, that’s not fun. Who wants to think about an exit, I want to think about growing my company, I want to dominate the West Coast, you know, I had all these plans of growth. And that’s more exciting, it’s more fun to think about that. But the reality is, if you really are planning for an exit, first of all, you can get to from point A to point B so much quicker. And B, you focus on different things. And I use an example of a $5 million company and a lot of my webinars where I say, this is one $5 million company, this is another $5 million company. And guess what this one’s worth, like three times more than this one is. And the reason is, because this company focused on reoccurring revenue, this company focused on cloud, this company focused on a management team. And, you know, if you just really focus on the right things, and prepare, it’s amazing what you can do in a short period of time. And I see it over and over again, Vince, because once the CEO starts working with me, so I’ve taken multiple people out and sold them. And I, it’s so fun to watch, because once they have that mindset, okay, now I’m gonna sell my company, I’m usually working with them for anywhere from nine months to this last company year and a half. And you see them create revenue, and hit all of their growth patterns that they’ve been like they’ve never done in the past. And it’s like, you know, it’s because they’re focused, because they’re really focused on what is important. And it’s just amazing. And that’s really where I see I see people miss the mark, they just focus on top line revenue, growth and bottom line. And there’s more to it than that.
Vince Menzione 11:49
Yeah, I would agree with you there. And you know, they don’t apply, you know, I almost consider you and your discuss your, your what you do for these organizations, you’re almost like the financial fitness coach, like you’re coming in. And, you know, somebody knows that they need to go on the program, but they’re not doing the things they need to do. And you break it out into what you call the eight key value maximizers. And I look at this as like, Oh, these are the things I knew the steps I need to take. Can you take our listeners a little bit through that I love the fact that you got highly tactical here and with these eight,
Linda Rose 12:17
yes. So really, how I came up with the eight to begin with, was really talking to people who had sold their companies and said, You know, when the buyer came in, what did they look like? What did they look at? And then of course, I spoke to buyers and as well as private equity firms and said, you know, what are you looking for, beyond the top line revenue growth and beyond the EBITDA numbers, what’s important to you? And that’s how these eight came up, and they’re not all valued. Same way. So I wrote an entire assessment around it, by the way, cuz, you know, that would be the numbers accountant, me, right? It’s one thing to write a book, which is a bunch of words, but I needed an assessment to go along with it. And so if you take the value Maximizer assessment, it will give you your potential market value based upon these eight value maximizers, but more importantly, Vince, it’ll tell you the money that you’re leaving on the table. And if you change certain things, you could actually, you know, grow the value of your company, not the revenue, but the value. And that’s really where that mind shift is. And so, you know, I would say, three that, that stand out constantly. And the first one I talked about is financial fitness. Because, you know, even though you may be running your books on accrual basis, I can’t tell you how many people’s p&l to look at. and cost of goods sold is wrong. And you’re going well, why is that really important than that? Because it all shakes out in the bottom line? Yes, it does. But when somebody comes in, especially a strategic buyer and looks at your financials, they look at your gross profit margin, that is probably the most important number to them, other than your over year growth, because everything below that could potentially go away, right? Because they’re integrating you into their organization. And so all the GMA and sales and marketing, you know, the sales, maybe not so much, but a lot of the marketing that just goes away, that’s where the economies of scale come. And so not having the right gross profit margin has retreated more deals than I can possibly tell you. And what I mean by retraining is like somebody gives you an lmia and says, okay, Linda, I’m gonna pay this much money for your company. But when they go in to do the deal, due diligence and realize, Oh, your gross profit margin isn’t 60% it’s only 40. Well, oops, let me take that offer and move it down. And that’s why that is so key people just, you know, they go Okay, well, you know, above the line below the line, that’s fine. But it’s so important when it comes to actually offers and ello eyes and which will ultimately get for your company. So that’s just one. The other one that I think people don’t realize is just the value of their revenue. And really not just having one or two revenue lines, but being able to take your revenue and bucketed it out into different ways. And that means maintenance. It means managed services. It means consulting, it means product and understanding what the gross profit margin is on each one of those revenue lines. because trust me, somebody We’ll ask you about that. And when I ask business owners, I’m like, Okay, I see multiple different lines of revenue on your p&l, what’s the gross profit margin by each line? And then I get this really quiet, you know, we’re all this is the overall Well, how, you know, if you’re not losing money and whatever, lots of gut thing, you know, well, I think you should go out and figure it out, because a buyers gonna want to know that, and I can bet you one of them is doing a heck of a lot better than others. So those are, you know, those are just a couple of things. One of the easiest fixes I think people need to do is really look at their unique value proposition and where is it on your site, it should be up in your hero image. I can’t tell you how many partners, I would say like 80% of partner websites, their unique value proposition is a been in the channel for 25 years, and they have, you know, X amount of years of expertise on staff, and they cover this geography with these products. That’s not unique value proposition. No, it’s
Vince Menzione 15:56
not. Right, right. I’m just gonna say something here, I, you know, I coach organizations on this as well, because a lot of them struggle with how to present themselves to their alliance partnerships, like Microsoft, or Sage or whoever, and saying, this is the one thing that you should know about us. And this is why you should bring us into your customers. Exactly. So would you stack rank, these I mean, are they stack rank,
Linda Rose 16:19
they’re not necessarily ranked in that order. But there are some that are super important. And I would say the financial fitness is up there, if you can present a good set of financial statements that are gap aligned, that have things allocated correctly, you, you lose a lot of credibility early in the game. So that, you know, that’s mostly like a given, you have to do that. And I sometimes spend months working with my clients and helping them restate their financials and get ready for that. And that’s partially the CPA and the and I don’t know, too many Business Brokers that do that. But I do spend a lot of time in it, and it makes up for it in the end. And then I would say that, you know, really the revenue, understanding that and intellectual property, here’s the other thing, everybody has intellectual property, you do not have to be an ISV to have intellectual property. And, you know, yes, they’re their patents with nobody has their copyrights, which everybody has their trademarks, which everybody has, but what people forget about is their secret sauce. And your green us is your own internal IP on how you stand up something on Azure, or how you, you know, whatever it is that you do, every partner has their own secret sauce, that makes them unique. And what partners don’t realize is they need to package that and give it a name. Instead of building this stuff out by the hour, they need to step back and look at what is it that they do constantly, give it a name, give it three options, and that becomes you know, your secret sauce. And that becomes IP and most partners don’t even think along those lines. And it’s so important to be able to actually articulate that
Vince Menzione 18:02
and give it a name and give it a value. You know, I so agree with you. And you know, you wrote this book before COVID. So, you know, we’ve talked about this time, like no other, what are you seeing now that you didn’t see then when you wrote it?
Linda Rose 18:13
Well, you know, people, it’s interesting, you know, this whole concept of vertical ization, right, you know, verticalized along in industry, and and, you know, some people are feeling being in the wrong industry right now. Right. I mean, there are definitely partners that because they verticalized, specifically in an industry are, are feeling it. And so, you know, I think vertical ization is important. But I think having a solution that can possibly cross multiple verticals is probably the better answer. And you know, I always joke, because I got the same thing for Microsoft verticalized, broke verticalized verticalized. And, you know, I always come up with Well, yeah, you know, we’re heavily into life science and all this. But, you know, did I have a solution for life science? No, but but what I did have is a solution that cross multiple verticals. And when I talk about that, I mean, that more of my cloud infrastructure practice, were really focused on companies that were that needed, you know, lots of that were highly regulated. So they were either socks or you know, they’re publicly traded. So they had socks regulations, or they were FDA, and they had CFR Part 11 compliance issues, or that HIPAA, and I was able to provide with my services, a level of security that went above and beyond even Azure at the time, and that incense was my vertical, but it was very horizontal. So you know, it was like, and because of that, because I got known for that level of security. I attracted people who were in the financial services space, who were in the healthcare space, who were in the life sciences space. And so the verticals came to me in a way. It’s kind of worked its way around a different way. But, you know, when you sit down, you look at your customer base, you got to look at Yes, the verticals that you’re serve, but what is it that you’re doing that could ask Price verticals. And that’s unique. And I think that’s what I would probably look at a little bit differently in this COVID time period. Because if you’re just focused on retail, you know, that could that could have been a problem for you. I mean, think that’s coming back. But yeah, I think that’s what I would do differently.
Vince Menzione 20:16
Yeah, we’ve been talking about the fact that there are going to be winners and losers in this, you know, this new net new or new economy or new normal that we call it into your point, some, some took it a little bit harder than others, some markets are expanding, and we’re going to see new solution sets and new capabilities that we never saw before, because we have to think differently in terms of how business is conducted. Absolutely. So you know, what struck me when I was reading the book, I just recently had Brent combust who leads the local and national partners at Microsoft, and we were talking about his partner development managers, and how he coaches them to be advisors and adjunct board members to their partners that they manage. What struck me about the book is like, wow, this would be a great guide, to help those partner development managers, to better be better equipped to support their partners. And we didn’t have that capability when I was at Microsoft, now that I think through it, have you ever thought about pulling together a workshop or bootcamp here to help the tech giants be more successful with their partners?
Linda Rose 21:15
Yes, you know, I, I have, and I’ve actually done a few things for Microsoft in the past, I’m really, you know, what resonates with people with the way I position this is I come at it from a CEO and not necessarily what Microsoft wants you to do, right? I mean, we align in so many different ways. If you think about it, I mean, we talk about recurring revenue, we talk about cloud, we talk about packaged solutions, but I talk about it from a, let’s make some money perspective, let’s look at the gross profit margin perspective, I think about it always, first and foremost, as a business owner, and you know, we all drink the Microsoft kool aid, and some of it’s better than others. And, you know, there have been products, or I can think of over the 25 years that I’ve implemented that are not here anymore. And they weren’t a good solution. But always I made the decision based upon what’s good for my company and my bottom line and not necessarily satisfied my PDM. And so, you know, but yet, again, we align, we align around value proposition, we align around revenue, we align around sales and marketing, we align around intellectual property, but I just look at it a different way. And you know, one of the things that I really want to do and I’m working on right now is creating a course that I’m going to launch probably here in the first couple months of 2021. And that is how partners prepare their company to be sold, because it’s not something that they can do overnight, when I sold my last company to a national CPA firm, I had about a three or four year window in which I was preparing Rosie’s pee to be sold. And I was very busy. During those three years, I had some guidance from a private equity firm and said, you know, you get you need to get your numbers to look like this. And your management team can look like that, and your customer, you know, concentration to look like this. And it took me really three years, I already had a lot of recurring revenue. But it took me three years to get that right. And if people pick up the book, and they go, or they don’t buy the book and say, Well, I don’t I’m not ready to sell yet. Well, I got news for you, it takes a long time to prepare this takes years potentially. And that’s what I want to teach is how people start thinking and acting now about something they want to do down the road. Because, you know, when I talk to partners, a lot of them say, yeah, I’m going to sell it’s probably something I’m going to do five years down the road. I love that. I talked about this a little bit in the book, too. It’s like five years down the road right then. So you’ve heard that all minute. years. And then you talk to him two more years later, you see him again into the conference. Oh, yeah, it’s gonna be about five years down the road. And the reason the number is five is because a, they’re thinking about it, they know they need to do this one day. And five is a long enough period of time where they’re not freaking out their employees, because as soon as you tell your employees, you’re going to sell your company and everybody like goes What? And there’s a lot of fear and doubt and uncertainty that goes around that. So you don’t tell your employees you’re going to sell and if you are transparent and say yeah, I’m thinking about doing this five years down the road. Well, that doesn’t freak anybody out cuz it’s, you know, locked in happen in five years. But I don’t see that anybody’s doing the preparation. Very few people, let’s put it that way are doing that preparation during that time period. So I am going to create a class and I am going to launch it this first quarter of 2021 that’s I
Vince Menzione 24:26
do that. Oh, you know, it strikes me when you say five years. It’s almost like well, I can kick it down the kick it down the road a little bit further putting out five years. Do you think there’s a mental game going on about selling the company that’s happening with these entrepreneurs?
Linda Rose 24:39
Oh, there’s absolutely a mental game going on. You know, one of the books that I wish I had bred very early on which I actually didn’t read until after I sold my company but man it was still a good read. It’s a book by bo burlingham called finished big, how great I think it’s called how a great entrepreneurs exit their companies on top It’s really about, you know, mentally preparing yourself for that, that next journey in your life, and I so wasn’t mentally prepared for that. And if you think about it, you know, pretty much all of us are, you know, true entrepreneurs, that’s why we’re doing what we’re doing. And, you know, once you’re an entrepreneur, you just don’t sell your company and not be an entrepreneur anymore. I mean, that still lives within you, right? And so you still need to do something meaningful. And typically, if you’re an entrepreneur, you need to do for compensation, whether you need the money or not, right, like, my big thing now is, is I work for toys, right? Like, you know, as the book says, I got acquired for millions, right? So I don’t need to get up every day work, but I am an entrepreneur, and I like to make money. And so you know, I will get me up is what am I gonna buy with my new toy? Right? And so I think a lot of people are scared, because they know, they’re entrepreneurs. They know, this is what gets them up in the morning. Yeah, you know, you go out and play tennis, and have the golf games and do all that. But that gets old pretty quick. And people realize they have nothing else to move on to and they hold their company for that reason. And Vince, that was me in the 12, you know, 12 hour, I said to my husband, like, what am I going to do, Glenn, I just don’t know anything else. And I, for certain can’t work for anybody else. Nobody would want me part of their organization. I’m just way too, you know, too much of an entrepreneur and see it my own way. And so I think you really have to look internally, this book is a great read on how you do that, and figure out what it is that you’re going to do next. And here I am helping other people. And I’ve written this book, but it was the book that took the was writing the book that took me through that process and made me realize I have something to give in this next phase of my life. So how did you get there? Well, you know, it’s kind of funny how that happened. So I sold my company in April, I hung around till July, and they can only wanted me for 45 days after I sold the company because it was really a 98% recurring business now like Linda, you know what, we don’t need you anymore. Off you go, that you have a great team, they can run it so I so I left but I had to hang around till July because I had some speaking engagements, still uninspiring I want it to finish those up. And then like three days later, I decided, well, I had decided this earlier, but three days later, I donned my backpack and started hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, and I wanted to hike all 2650 miles but I was starting to trail too late in the season, there’s no way I could do that. So I decided Alright, I’m just going to hike 500 miles because that’s all you can do without a permit. And so I started in Oregon, I started in Southern Oregon, Crater Lake, and then I just started hiking north. And I needed that time, Vince to just let go of being a CEO, I needed that time to be out in the forest to just give my mind an opportunity to wander. And just to figure out what I wanted to do next in my life. Well, I’m like, I don’t know, 150 miles into the trail, which I did by myself. And I ended up running into this guy who was there from the Czech Republic, there’s a lot of Europeans that hike this trail, because it’s it’s one of the very few trails that is this long. And anyway, Vladimir was from the Czech Republic. And he was an IT guy. He was a network engineer and did a lot of coding did a lot of bi and stuff like that. And we were like three years age difference. And so we kind of hiked the same hike, so to speak, right, we did the same amount of miles per day. And, and so we have a lot in common and so I was you know, just he was like my psychiatrist 20 miles a day and you’re, you know, you 1015 hours, you know, hitting the dirt. You got a lot to talk about, right? He told me about my story. And I’m done. He’s like Lindy, you need to put all this in a book because I told my radomir there’s so much I can’t do I’ve this non compete. My, my hands are tied for the next five years. Because Linda, you have to write a book. And it just dawned on me. It’s like he’s absolutely right. And so when I left the trail, and I went back home, I started writing the book. And that’s how it all began.
Vince Menzione 28:55
It’s amazing. I love I love the fact, by the way, that the hiking piece, I’ve never been a hiker before. So I really kind of vicariously live through that in your discussion. And in the book. Was there an opening up in your mind that happened? No, not being unplugged, not being on the cell phone for you know, countless hours, social media, all the things that we deal with? Like, what was that experience like for you?
Linda Rose 29:16
There were so many things. I mean, the unplugging was very important. And when you did have cellular connection, you know, it was to send that the few messages out to your family member saying, Yeah, I’m still alive. So most of the trail is without cellular connection. I mean, you do have GPS, so you know where you’re going. But other than that, no, but I tell you, there were a few times on the trail where there were sort of life or death moments in it. Yeah, of course you don’t plan for that. You don’t want that to happen. But there. There were a couple of times for me and I remember one specifically in Washington where I was going, I was in a goat rocks area and I was getting ready to do the knife’s edge, which sounds ominous to begin with, and it’s okay it’s not so bad. As long as the winds not blowing because you’re basically got the top of this Ridgeline it’s just a sheer drop down both sides and the trail is not more than a foot wide. And it’s you know, if you have height issues definitely a challenge. I don’t have height issues, but I was just getting to that point and I had to traverse some snow on the side of this mountain, which was also very steep. And I didn’t have clamp ons and I didn’t have a nice pick because there shouldn’t have been any snow at this time of year is August but I was up in I know five 6000 foot altitude and so I somebody had gone before me several people gone before me and they kind of post hold through it. So I just kind of planted my feet in that area, but the trail kind of divvy down to the left. And when it got to the bottom of the postholing I noticed that the trail was kind of up five or six feet up to the right. And so I had to scramble up the side of this mountain to get back on the trail. Well, I don’t know it was a 45 degree incline or something like that. I looked down and there’s like nothing between me and the lake. That’s like 1000 feet down. I kid you not, it was a straight note, no rocks to hold on to no boulders, no roots, no trees, no nothing. It’s just straight down shale. That’s it. And as I’m starting to scramble up the side of this hill, I’m losing Dirt, dirt coming out from underneath me and I’m not getting anywhere. And I and I have a full pack I’ve got like 30 pounds on my back because you know, I had like three or four more days before I was going to do the next resupply and water and all that good stuff. And I realized I’m on the side of this mountain. There’s nobody else there and I realized, you know what, I could die like right here. Like this is like a one wrong step Linda and you’re done. And I’m I’m there and you know, it’s all the emotions you could possibly have and now crying and I’m like, you know, cussing myself out going with the F possess you’d like you know, that’s when that’s when everything in you kicks in all the adrenaline comes about and you sitting there and I’m talking to myself, Linda, I’m like okay, Linda, we have a choice here we can die or we can live Take your pick which one’s going to be but just get on with it right and so I just every second and fiber in my body just crawled up this hill and I got to the trail and I cried some more because I made it and then for the next two hours as as going through this knife edge I was still on scheduler but you know when I went to bed that night in my tent, I thank God that I was still alive but when I finally got to my resupply place because I think it took like three days for me to get past all that something happened in me events. And it’s like my my own interior glass ceiling broke in many ways realize I wow be so much stronger, be so much more. I don’t know, it was like my own personal glass ceiling had been lifted. And I shattered through it and things that seemed like insurmountable that I was thinking in my head all of a sudden were insurmountable anymore. They were like small issues like I just climbed at the side of this mountain. That is nothing. That was something right and then it just this I came back and like things that were difficult were no longer difficult for me it was just in my mind. And you know I talked about it in the book is you know, breaking your own glass ceiling and just going out and challenge yourself and, you know, go jump out of an airplane or do something you just would be scared to death to do because I guarantee you at the end you come back a stronger person.
Vince Menzione 33:29
I love that. I love that boy, what a great story. And what great advice for our listeners. I think we all you know my last guest Tiffani Bova said Be bold, right? Why are Why do we hold ourselves back sometimes. And now you’re offering like you’ve done this three companies, you know, you went through this experience of successfully selling the last one. And there’s so much value for others that you’re providing through both the book but now, your workshops, the process, you know, I put in the work you do individually with organizations or owners I should say. And so I just love that you’re doing that. It just it’s inspiring to me. Thank you. It’s been fun. It’s been a great journey. So Linda, you know, you wrote this book, and I’m so fascinated by how people do that, like I you know, I have this book in my head that I want to get out and I keep kicking it down the down the road a bit. What was that process like for you?
Linda Rose 34:18
It’s interesting, because you know, Vince, I don’t consider myself a writer. I’m an accountant. And so the world speaks to me in numbers and not in words, right. So my partner for a very long time, Rebecca, you know, I would write a press release, and I’d hand it to her, and she could just glance at it from afar and go Can you fix this, this, this and this? And then she would hand me a list of numbers. I’m like, No, that doesn’t add up. You know, I mean, we you know, I was a numbers person. She She was a words person. And so for me to sit down every day in right. There were days where it was a challenge. It wasn’t it just wasn’t coming down to it and I would I have to actually carve out days and sit there and go Okay, today I’m gonna write and you Usually the morning was started out with Mimosa, because that’s kind of what got me to that side of the brain working, I needed a little help there. But I found as I, as I got through, you know, as time went on, the writing became easier. It took a long time to really get the outline together. And here’s the one thing I didn’t want to do, Vince, I didn’t just want to write another MMA book, I wanted to write something that was meaningful, that people would get a lot out of, I didn’t want to write a fluff piece. It was just, it had to be a resource that people could pick up from time and time again and go, Oh, let me reread that chapter or let me think about this, or let me see what she said about that. And because I’ve read so many books where you know, there’s just paragraph and page and page after fluff, it’s like, okay, When are they going to get to the point here, and that is not who I am people who know me know, I’m really direct to the point, because there’s just not a lot of patients here, right. And I just needed to write a book that way. And so when I was researching, like, you know, how many words I need to have in my book, people said, Oh, you need to have between 60 and 80,000 words to have a decent, you know, spine, I’m like, Oh my gosh, that’s like a lot of words, right. And then at the end, it turned out being, like 100,000 words, almost 300 pages, but there’s a lot of graphs and pictures in there. And examples. And, and, and I don’t feel like any of it is fluff. Like, I feel like all of it is really useful information. And being a CEO myself, no one’s got time to read something that just doesn’t get to the point. And that was what was so important for me. So at the day, that’s what I did. And I also wanted to be able to explain all the conversations I have with all these other partners. So I came up with my fictitious character, Robert, who we live through Robert and his experiences throughout the book, because I didn’t want to just talk about me and my experiences, I want to talk about all the stories that all the other partners told me about and said, okay, Linda, you can’t say it was me. Like this is off the record. You can’t say it was me and my company. I’m like, no problem. I’ve got this character’s name is Robert and, and so a lot of those stories come through Robert. And it’s, it’s great, because he pops up throughout the book. And it’s, it’s a fun read. I think there’s a lot of content in there. But then you hear about Robert, he really brings it home. So yeah, it was a long process. But you know, I think it’s, it’s a good book for people who really want to do this. And it’s very nice. There’s no other book about this for technology service providers just doesn’t exist. And
Vince Menzione 37:26
that’s what I love so much about it, because it spoke to our or, you know, and there’s what 300 400 500,000 of these organizations out there, and nobody’s written a book specifically for them. I love the way you organize the book into three sections. And to your point, you can go deep you can skim around, you can find the area that you want to focus in on or you can come back to it many times. So I love that it’s a tome that can sit on your on your shelf and be available to you at any point in time during this process. So I commend you on that. You know, I’m also for our listeners, we’re going to provide a free audible sample to our listeners, and you tell us tell our listeners a little bit about that sample.
Linda Rose 38:03
Yes. So actually, the sample is the first chapter in the book. And this is this is about Robert, and he’s getting ready to sign the agreement to sell his company. And we we started out with what’s going through his head and the journey that he’s taken to get there. So the first chapter, we start with Robert, and what he’s been through and the you know how many years it took him to get to this point, and now he’s signing over his entire company. So it starts out in a really fun point, and it grabs everybody’s attention. And then, you know, we kind of get into the nuts and bolts of it. But yeah, so it’s on my website, I think we’ll have have a link to it. And I want to shout out to you know, we, I know you’re all about partnering and that has not ended for me. And I think I was at summit a couple of years ago. And I ended up talking to Rick McCutcheon out of Canada and Mark Smith at un New Zealand, you know, so we’ve got an international group of partners here. And we were sitting out in between two sessions and having a break. And we were talking about the book a little bit. And I think it was mark that said, You know what, I don’t read books anymore. It’s all audible. And I’m like, you know what, I thought about putting books on Audible, but there’s so many graphs and charts in here. I don’t know how that would work. And so I left that conference, and I went home and I started looking at some other people had books on Audible that had lots of graphs and charts and I realized it can be done. And so I went into a studio and recorded the book on Audible and that was probably another good thing because I realized that you know, that’s how I picked my books. I have my audible subscription and you know sometimes I see a book that looks good, but I’ll go out and start listening to an audible first and if I really like it then I’ll go get the hardcopy cuz I’m still a hardcopy kind of gal and I found that partners are enjoying that as well. So the whole book is on Audible if that’s your jam, but that first chapter is out there available to everybody.
Vince Menzione 39:53
And what was that experience like recording like, you know, playing back or speaking out your book on a What was that experience like for you?
Unknown Speaker 40:02
You know what you think reading your book own book is easy. It’s not.
Linda Rose 40:09
Not I was an entire I was in a recording studio professional recording studio here in San Diego for a week. And they were fabulous people. And you know, there’s somebody in your in one booth and they’re in the other sound booth. And they’re like, okay, that’s not what you wrote in the book. Like, okay, let’s go back. And so you’re not really well, and the gentleman that reads all of the john Grisham books, you know, of course, we’ve all heard of john Gretchen, that the narrator for all the books, he was there as well. And I met him at a break. And he was so kind to actually read my intro and my author page, and he’s just an amazing voice. So it was it was fun to meet other authors, they’re recording their books as well. So it’s a great experience, and so glad it did it.
Vince Menzione 40:49
What a great experience. And so we’re gonna shift gears a little bit here. And you know, we have a condensed schedule today. So, you know, we’ve both been around this world of partnering in the channel ecosystem, what attributes Do you see that make the most successful partnerships? Or what what are the best experiences you’ve had working with partners?
Linda Rose 41:08
Yeah, that’s, that’s a really good question. And, you know, partnering is important now as it as it was before, and I think, really, because a lot of times you partner with somebody that’s new, and you’re testing the waters. And then there are other times we have people that you’re trying to partners that you go to time and time again, but sometimes you really have to go outside your comfort zone and, and connect with somebody that can really supplement something that you’re not doing for a client. And I think it’s so important that you set the boundaries you that you communicate, that you both know, you know, who’s doing what, and that you come together and look out for one another as partners, you know, many times and I, as I partner today with people, you know, I, if I hear something is not going well, because it’s, you know, something that the other partner should be working on, I tried to be proactive and go to that partner, and say, Look, you know, here’s what I’m hearing, you know, maybe you want to be proactive on this and get back to them. And of course, you know, it’s coming, it’s coming from a place of love, and it’s coming from a place of success, not of ego. And I think if you can get to that place and have that kind of communication with the people that you’re partnering with. That’s where the successes, that’s also where the failure is, right? If you are not communicating partner, that’s where those partnerships fall apart. And I think that’s the biggest key It really is. It’s just defining very early on who’s doing what, and then communicating outside of just, you know, working with that customer, but from partner to partner.
Vince Menzione 42:33
Yeah, so a level of intimacy and transparency with the partner.
Linda Rose 42:37
Absolutely. Yeah.
Vince Menzione 42:39
So Let’s peel back on your life and career a little bit more here. You know, we talked a little bit about your journey, but entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart. Did you ever suffer from imposter syndrome, when you got started?
Linda Rose 42:51
Many times, actually, you know, writing the book, I suffered from imposter syndrome. Getting into the whole m&a space. Initially, I felt a little bit as an as imposter even though I had three of my own deals under my belt. So I think I don’t care how old you get, I think as you grow, and as you take on new challenges, there’s always a little bit of that imposter syndrome. But if you have somebody if you have a good mentor mentor that you can reach out to that can help you pass that. And even in this last go around with the book and my current career as an m&a advisor. You know, I people that sort of helped me see that too. And so, you know, those mentors are so important. And they’re typically not the people you pay money to, right. I mean, you can have advisors that you pay money for you can be in a CEO Roundtable, I’ve always found that the best mentors are the people that typically are a little bit older than you, they’ve gone through it and done it themselves. There’s no ego around, you know, their success there. They’re willing to tell you, you know, how they succeeded, but more importantly, their failures, I think you learn so much from people’s failures and what not to do as you do from, from people’s successes. And sometimes it takes a certain type of person to to acknowledge their failures and and acknowledge it publicly to you so you can learn from it. And so, you know, having those mentors is so important. And a lot of times, it is your client, right? I have to look back and say you most of my mentors were clients along the way, people that I’ve that believed in me could see what I was doing that believed in my success, and were willing to share their knowledge with me.
Vince Menzione 44:28
That’s great. That’s great advice. What about now You and I are both active in diversity and women in the cloud and some of these organizations and events. What advice do you give to female leaders in your talks, roundtables and those that you mentor?
Linda Rose 44:44
Well, especially women, because there still are so few women in this space? And like I mentioned earlier in our in our discussion, my role models were there were no women. there really weren’t It would have been nice to have some but there there were none So all of my mentors were men, which for me actually worked out quite well. So I don’t feel like if you’re a woman, all your mentors should be women. I don’t believe that at all. And I actually talked about that a little bit in my, in my book where I was, I don’t know complaining whining about something to one of the guys, one of the developer guys and, and, you know, he came back with something rather crass, you know, something to do with balls and broke a girl pair, you know, just do it. And you know, you could never say that as a woman, right? But somehow that crassness and the realness of that and the fact that I was just whining and complaining, and just not just acknowledging that I just needed to do it, put it in his words just hit home for me, right. And I don’t know how else to say that. But sometimes, you know, you that and I find that men are a little bit more open to saying it like it is sometimes and and women want to nurture more. And sometimes it’s somebody just slap in the face and tell you how it is how raw that might be that but you you know yourself and you know what kind of nurturing and what kind of mentoring you you need. I’m not saying that’s everybody’s thing. But it was for me, I’m a direct person, I like to hear it direct. And so I found that for me, men were more direct than than then women were. But I have women that I talked to today, I have an accountability partner, as I’m writing my course, or her and I she’s a very strong woman, she’s you know, she’s authored a couple of books. And you know, I went to her when I was writing my book, and she gave me a lot of insightful information. And so you know, you pick your mentors, but they’re typically not people you pay for, interestingly enough, though, those are not your best mentors, sometimes.
Vince Menzione 46:41
Was there a best piece of advice you received, when you got started?
Linda Rose 46:44
You know, I’m going to go back to that Nike expression, just do it. But I’m going to, I’m going to put something in front of that is his plan, plan, prepare. And for me, that was around numbers, I ran numbers on everything before I really made the big decisions. But in the end, just do it. Plan, prepare,
Vince Menzione 47:01
just do it.
Linda Rose 47:03
alter course, no one says you can’t alter course and change the decision. But you have to do it. You can’t have success without at least trying it and doing it. Yes, there will be mistakes along the way. There has to be mistakes. Otherwise, you’re you’re not stretching yourself. But you got to start the process and just do it. Yeah. Great advice.
Vince Menzione 47:23
So is there a personal mission statement or vision statement that kind of prompted you along the way or that you had focused in on and said, this is where I want to be 10 years or 20 years from now that was there something like that, that informed your your journey,
Linda Rose 47:39
you know, events, I never was able to think that far in advance. I mean, the only thing I really plan for my life was a career in accounting, and to get an undergraduate Ukranian master’s degree in tax, and then to work in a public accounting firm. And that’s where it stopped. Because I felt like the firm was going to take me and I was going to become a partner and all that never, and not one of these companies that I’ve ever started actually had a fourth company that I, I started as well, that had a short life period, because of the project that it was, but never did. I had these long grandiose plans, you know, 510 years down the road. To me, it was really about, you know, how do I be a good mom? How do I be a good wife? How do I be a good leader for my team? How do I give them a journey, not just a place to work? So that was so important for me that, you know, all the people that have ever worked for me can look back fondly and say, you know, that was a journey with Linda, that was an experience, you know, and I took my people places and things like that. But, you know, back to your question, you know, what’s their personal mission statement there, there was something really early on that I found in college and it was I had to read the Wall Street Journal back then, like, I don’t know, some class in my MBA program, or my master’s program set, I had to read the Wall Street Journal, which absolutely detested because I just wasn’t into it. But there was one day where the entire page of The Wall Street Journal was blank, except for this one saying, and it was we are what we pretend to be. And it was written by somebody anonymous, right? Like they didn’t even know who wrote it. And I don’t know, it was an ad for something. But that was the only thing that was on this piece of paper. And that just resonated with me so much. And it’s different than that fake it until you make it because to me fake it means you’re, you’re faking it really like you’re not it, you’re not owning it, right? That’s different than we are what we pretend to be To me, it’s like, I always knew that I wanted, you know, a big house and lots of cars. And you know, I was very materialistic in my early years because I had none as a kid. I grew up very poor. And so those were all important to me. So that was my dream. And, you know, the companies I started to get there wasn’t important, but I just had a bigger, better vision for myself and so that we are what we pretend to be, was what I live by now, more recently. I would say my current mission, or my current state would be dream out loud. Right? And that is, you know, people say, hey, I want to do this, then put it out in the universe, put it out on the LinkedIn post new what kept me from from not, you know, finishing the book was the fact that I designed the cover, I came up with the title, and I threw it out on LinkedIn, Vince, and there was just no going back the day I hit press, and hit send on LinkedIn on that post was a day I knew I could never go back. Because I would love that I would lose things, and I can’t lose face, right. And so I was months away from finishing this book. But I knew that second I hit send. And I did the same thing with my class, I put it out in the universe. And it’s amazing. Vince, what happens if you put your dreams out in the universe, the universe answers back,
Vince Menzione 50:51
it really does dream out loud, Dream out loud. I love that. We’re gonna post that in our show notes.
Linda Rose 50:57
Shout out to the women in technology for giving me that bracelet, the bracelet with the inscription, Dream out loud is on my wrist every day, it never gets to love
Vince Menzione 51:06
that. I love that. I love that I’m gonna get a bracelet. I just love that thing. It’s really terrific. So we’re getting close to the end. And I do appreciate your time and your compressed schedule. I have one more question for you, Linda, if you had the opportunity, what three people would you wish to have dinner with
Linda Rose 51:26
you? I think first and foremost, probably Oprah Winfrey. Because I think she’s an incredibly astute businesswoman. But she’s got a level of compassion about her that I can truly learn from, I think I’m just blown away by this woman and what she’s accomplished. And her ability to give back also to the universe. So I would love to sit with Oprah, Margaret Thatcher, I think she was a very interesting woman. She is, you know, the early pioneer of, you know, talking about women in tech, how about how about women in politics in a government that, you know, didn’t care for women in politics, and what she had to go through to just train her voice to be more authoritative. If you if you read about Margaret Thatcher, she has very high pitched voice that you could just like chop, you know, like grinding, chalkboard kind of voice and she, she had to change the way she was perceived by the outside world. So I think she’d be a fascinating person to talk to you. And then I would say the person the other person who I’ve just been, has been my mentor from the first day I met him who’s still the governor of North Dakota, which is Doug burgum, who started a great plane software. You know, there’s never a time that I’ve not listened to that man and have learned something, have gotten some value out of that. And many of the values that he had in his company I I’ve carried on I carried on in my company in my life. And I just think he’s an amazing person. And just so well read, and yeah, great guy.
Vince Menzione 52:50
Love to Doug, if you’re out. And a great company, a Great Plains was a terrific organization. Very partner friendly, too. He got partner, right. So that’s terrific. So Oprah Winfrey, Margaret Thatcher, and Doug burgum. I love that what it what a dinner conversation wonder what you’re gonna have for dinner that night?
Unknown Speaker 53:09
Not eating, I’ll be talking. You’re listening most of time?
Vince Menzione 53:12
Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I just want to thank you, Linda, this has been terrific. I so enjoyed having you as a guest on Ultimate Guide to partner and your amazing guests. Any closing comments or words for our listeners?
Linda Rose 53:24
You know, I would say, Vince, we’re in an incredible time right now with this pandemic. And it’s, you know, it’s an opportunity, I think, for partners to sit back and look at their business and look at what they’ve accomplished, and look to see which customers are providing the most revenue and what is it that they’re doing? You know, I talked about 20, you know, 2007, through 2009, being my character building years, because it really required me to look back because I had to cut half my staff and half my people, but I came out of that so much stronger. And I think this is another time where we can take this opportunity, if you’re a little bit slower, and sit back and look at what’s working and what’s not. And alter your plan going forward, I think you’ll be so much stronger. In the end, I’m convinced of it. So make the most of this very, very important time that we’re in.
Vince Menzione 54:17
That’s great advice for our listeners. And I agree with you so much. I think this is an opportunity for all of us. I’ve talked about this and I’m a little bit bold to say this, but I almost believe like we’re in a point. That’s like a renaissance that we have an opportunity to come out of this time so much better as a people as business leaders, and as a society
Linda Rose 54:38
hundred percent dense group you hundred percent on that.
Vince Menzione 54:40
Linda, thank you so much for joining the Ultimate Guide to partnering. I truly appreciate your time today. Thank you so much. It
Linda Rose 54:46
was a great pleasure to be here. Thank you so
Transcribed by https://otter.ai