E227: Connor Pera Discusses Journey to Acquisition Entrepreneurship and Growing The Print Authority

[00:00:00] Ronald Skelton: Hello and welcome to the How2Exit podcast. Today I'm here with Connor Pera. You're an acquisition entrepreneur and you've acquired your, your first business.

You've got a couple of, I guess, little side project things too. Or you're, we were talking about one of them. I love acquisition entrepreneurs. I want to learn your story, kind of what got you into this. Kind of give us your origin. Where did you start? What got you, what made the move to be in the entrepreneur?

What, when did you realize you were an entrepreneur? 

[00:00:25] Connor Pera: Um, that's a great question. It wasn't until pretty recent. I mean, I wasn't one of those people who grew up like knowing that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I've always had a lot of respect for entrepreneurs and sort of like the business tycoons, if you will. But,yeah, I never really kind of thought of that as my path until more recently in my, um, career.

But, I grew up in Northeast, Ohio, in a suburban part of Cleveland. Went to college in Penn State. Worked in financial services for a few years after college in the Philly area. And then,went to business school in Chicago. Um, and then a job opportunity coming out of business school brought me down here to, to Nashville. But it was really in business school when I started to, that was when I first got exposed to the idea of acquisition entrepreneurship and thought, huh, that's really cool.

I, prior to that, my, my sort of, I did kind of always want to run a business, run my own, my own thing someday. And I, but I just sort of thought, unless you were, Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk or,one of those type of guys, the best way to do that was to, work your way up the corporate ladder in a really traditional sense.

So that was sort of the template that I had in, in mind, in business school, but acquisition entrepreneurship kind of like shattered that idea for me. It was like, Oh, well, yeah, smaller company, but you know, you can actually go out and run your own thing earlier in your career and you don't, have to come up with some groundbreaking technology to be your own boss and run a decent sized business and make a great living hopefully, and have a great life.

So I, I kind of thought, wow, that's, um, that's really cool. I think I'd like to do that someday, but I just didn't, I don't think I was ready at the time to take the leap into, into acquisition entrepreneurship straight out of, out of business school. So came down here to Nashville for a job. Working in CPG marketing.

But it was sort of, you know, during COVID I was working from home 90 plus percent of the time. And I kind of had, you know, some time to think about like other projects I wanted to get into to, to sort of scratch that entrepreneurial itch. And, started a, a vending business back in 2021.

And just got really excited by that. I mean, it's, I still run that business and it's really, really tiny business that I do everything for. But I think just like we were talking earlier, like it just very tangibly introduced me to the concept of,being able to go out into the marketplace, create value, and then sort of have like your, your income or a source of income that was relatively untethered from your time. Or certainly from a traditionally structured way to, to spend your time.

So vending is, a little less. It's definitely less passive than, I think a lot of people portray it on, on social media. But it is pretty flexible in the sense that, you don't have to be at the machine collecting money and credit cards from people to be able to make money. So, so anyway, so that, that whole notion of being able to deploy capital and deploy assets that generate cashflow, into marketplace and not needing permission from someone who was a senior corporate executive to go do that was a really empowering experience for me.

And so that, that sort of started to really I would say shift things in my mind from,this was the whole acquisition entrepreneurship path being something that I was interested in, but maybe I'll look into it later to like, I think I definitely want to do this next.

And then at that point, it was just a matter of, and I'm trying to figure out how to make it, how to make it happen. And for me, a lot of that was done through, just through networking, through talking to people, kind of hearing their journeys and their stories, consuming a lot of content.

Like I was all over the place on like podcasts like this and, following all the, all the influencers in this space and on Twitter and stuff. So I, I think I started to really just you know, make that, that whole world kind of, uh, a separate part of my existence of my identity and got super into it.

And then, honestly, like what I decided to do is self funded part time search while I was working full time. And, it really just kind of snowballed pretty organically from me, like being interested in the space to, like there was a lot of steps in between. So I don't want to say like it was, it was not by any means easy. But because of like, it just was something I was always really interested in and it just always sort of felt like play to me to go like, look at business acquisition entrepreneur. Or opportunities, like, look at deals and talk to brokers and lawyers and bankers.

Like that, that was all like very fun for me. So, it kind of very organically snowballed from something I was interested in to being at the closing table. And then really starting to freak out, like, okay, what am I doing?But here we are. So,

[00:05:55] Ronald Skelton: The dog that chases the car and when you finally caught one, right?

[00:05:58] Connor Pera: Yeah, exactly, exactly. Exactly. It was exactly that experience for me. Like the week before closing it was like, Oh man, I've been like trying to do this for a while now. And here it is. And like, no, I don't know what to do.

[00:06:10] Ronald Skelton: Now you're the CEO. It's interesting that I would have saved so much time and so much money had somebody even uttered the word, acquisition entrepreneurship out of college. Like I have an MBA and they didn't talk about it. I did it later in life, so it wasn't like I did my, I'm 52, but it's not like I went to got my, I think I got my bachelor's in like 1997, right? 

I didn't go straight into college. I didn't get my master's degree until I think 2007.But they didn't talk about it then and then. You know I had an MBA in marketing and they didn't bring it up. I would have saved a lot of money and a lot of time because if you look at all the business I had that were successful, I often forget about how many I started that we shut down within six months because it's just, it just didn't work, right?

People weren't interested. Or we thought something would be cool and the market didn't want it, or, well, this is way more regulated than we thought it was going to be.Everything from e commerce platforms, I actually spent probably close to a million dollars, trying to launch an online dating service at one point in my life.

[00:07:07] Connor Pera: Well, you might have been just a little too early on that. 

[00:07:11] Ronald Skelton: Anyway. So I love that you got, you got to go the path you did, right. I grew up in an entrepreneur family. My father was a workaholic and always had side gigs. From wood shops to refurbish. When I was little, I think he rebuilt,Mustangs in our garage, like Mustang cars.

And when I, when I got old enough to work with him, he owned a painting business on the side. He worked a 40 hour a week. But, I always learned if you wanted something, just go work a side gig and mix a mix of cash and go get it. But like I said, starting so many different things and like failing at them gave me some resilience and some lessons learned.

But, nobody said, Hey, why don't you just go buy something that's already working, already profitable, already has market share, people like it.

[00:07:48] Connor Pera: Well, I do think there's something though to the whole notion of, and I've certainly experienced this over the last year and a half or so. Being a full time entrepreneur likes some lessons you just have to learn in the marketplace and you just like have to take your beatings. so, I don't, I think in, in a lot of ways like there aren't really any shortcuts to learning some of the, the lessons that running a business, that you need to learn to be successful at running a business.

And I'm certainly, no expert on, on doing that. But, but I do think, like, you can intellectually understand a business situation or problem or strategy as well as you want. Until you're like in it, experiencing it firsthand. It's it's totally, totally different. 

So, I think that, yeah, that the, the whole notion of having to just sort of pay your dues. However, you know that unfolds is, is, it's just it's part of the process for everyone I think. So, yeah

[00:08:50] Ronald Skelton: People ask me like, what I'm looking for now on the acquisition. And I always tell them one of the criteria is it has to have a pretty healthy profit margin. And a lot of industries just don't. And so I don't look at those industries and they're like, well, if the company has been running well and it's profitable, why does it need to have, 15, 20, 25 percent profit margin?

And I always say, well, I don't think that my ego is what it used to be. I don't think I'm going to step in and run a company as well in the first few months as somebody that just sold it and has been running for 30 years. To say, you know, most of these young entrepreneur guys, they go in and it's like, I'm going to improve this and this and this.

And yeah, it's only making 10 percent profit margin within this first six months. I'm going to be at 20 percent profit margin. I kind of let that go a while back thinking, there's going to be things about any business. If somebody's been running for 20, 30 years and they hand it over to you, there's gonna be things you just don't know, right?

Just saying, and so I always want a little room to mess up. That's why, you know,show me something that's got a 15, 20 or better percent profit margin. So that if I make a mistake that hits the company by five or 10%, it's not, okay, now I got to pump cash in this thing because it's dying. 

[00:09:55] Connor Pera: Yeah, no, I mean, I, I could have used that advice. I mean, thankfully I bought a profitable business and we're growing. But yeah, I mean, it never hurts to have more profit margin. It's kind of the game we're always, we're all playing, but you're exactly right. I mean, that's, you know, been, uh, a challenge and certainly I've, I've been sort of like, in the middle of it right now, but experiencing that, sort of J curve phenomenon of, of, you take a business over and it, you know, immediately becomes less profitable because there's things, you want Invest in or change or do differently.

And, you know, it's funny, some things I've changed, like, I would have saved myself a lot of time by just like listening to the seller about whether or not certain. For me, it's been mostly like marketing and sales efforts, but like certain sort of channels or approaches where he was always just really good at like, sussing out whether or not something was going to be a waste of time or not.

And 30 years of experience, I'll, I'll give you that sort of six cents. And for me, I was kind of like, ah, but I think it'll work. And then I just had to do it for like, six months and be like, you know what? He was right. I should just listen. But yeah, so I'm kind of in the middle of that, super fortunate that, that from a top line standpoint, things are going really well. But, yeah, definitely experiencing the, um, lower than previous ownership profitability.

Some of that has to do with debt service and, and just some of the structural sort of changes. But some of it is just lack of experience and efficiency in, in deploying capital. And so that, that's the kind of thing that I need to continue to work on and continue to improve. So,

[00:11:36] Ronald Skelton: So I don't think we ever said what you want. So tell me about the company and the problem, tell us, tell me, tell us what you acquired, what you're running now. And then we'll get into kind of what is it, what did the process look like? And then we'll get into the story of it.

[00:11:49] Connor Pera: Yeah, sure. Yeah. So, I run a commercial printing business called The Print authority, here in Brentwood, Tennessee, which is just outside Nashville. We are a full service commercial printing, B2B, commercial printing business. So we do everything from ink on paper, business cards, marketing materials, brochures, flyers, books, booklets, to banners and signs.

2D primarily, we don't really do any 3D signage. And promo and apparel andall kinds of stuff. But we primarily special in, specialize in, multi location outsource printing services. So what that means is we work with multi location businesses, oftentimes franchises. Typically like small to medium sized franchisors, and we're the recommended print vendor for franchisees.

And so we, uh, provide, their franchisees with a portal that they can go in and log in and orderall their branded merchandise and, and necessary print materials that they go through just as a, as a franchisee or general manager of a store or territory. So that's what we specialize in.

I, I really like that from, as a sort of, investor prior to having any experience in the industry. I really like that model because the, the revenues much more reoccurring in nature through those relationships. The downside is those relationships take time to develop and build and the sales cycle is longer.

So, but once once you get in with one of those relationships that, typically, provided that you do a good job, it is, it's a bit stickier. So really, really like that. And definitely super bullish on, on web to print in general. But we also do a lot of local B2B work. I would say our web to print business is probably a little over half of our business is, is web to print work.

And we work with customers that are all over the country. So west of the Rockies is, is challenging just from a ship timing standpoint. So our end customers are primarily concentrated in the Southeast. But we can go anywhere with a multi location fulfillment model, which issomething else that I always, that I also like about the business. 

So, yeah. And it was a broker deal, so I got it through a business broker. 

[00:14:14] Ronald Skelton: You gotta have been through a business broker. Okay. You guys do like direct mail pieces and stuff like that for them too, or?

[00:14:20] Connor Pera: We do. Yeah, well, we don't, those are more of a, yeah, like those would be more of like a one off project type of thing, but we don't have like necessarily a pre packaged direct mail offering that somebody could like buy on their print authority portal. But we do, do direct mail. 

[00:14:38] Ronald Skelton: I was thinking of like, um, multi location,you know, franchises. I came, one of my previous business is a real estate investment firm. And a couple of buddies of mine or people I know, the family I know, they own one of the home investors franchises, and they're probably one of the higher producing ones. And they spent a ton of marketing, but to this day, I still get, uh, home investor postcards on my real estate properties.

Like, cause they're, they, they mail to all high equity, uh, absentee owners. So if you don't owe much on your property, you'd have a low mortgage on it and you have, and you're not living in your tax rate, you know, your tax bill goes to something other than the property itself. That's how they identify it.

They mail me a postcard probably every six months. Would you want, would you, would you consider selling the property? And I thought whoever's got that account, because that's a nationwide franchise, right? They're sitting in hundreds. 

[00:15:29] Connor Pera: Yeah. And I mean, look, I came from a marketing background doing primarily digital, digital marketing. But,of course I'm, extremely biased given I'm in the, I'm in the print industry, but direct mail works. I mean, like it,I think one of the challenges as a, as a marketer in any industry or trying to sell products is cutting through the noise.

And like,digital is so noisy. So I mean, like everyone is producing, creating content for their brand and driving digital copy and media online. So it's extremely noisy and it's not free. I mean, I think there's like this perception that it's free to like, just throw something online and yeah, the cost of placement, if it's organic, if you're just creating a Instagram account at the cost of placing it is, it's free.

But you know, you still need to create the content. It has to be compelling content. So you either are doing that yourself or you're paying an agency. And then if you're doing paid, of course, you're, uh, you're paying for the media placement. And a lot of these platforms now, if you want to get noticed at all, like you got to put paid media behind your digital copy.

So, you know, I think like, I think it's, not to say that digital is not important. I mean, I think it's, it's obvious that the world has changed dramatically and it's key. But I think, yeah, I mean, look like I think print in general, like one of the things I'm struck by is just how, how large the, the total addressable market is in the commercial printing space. And then from a marketing standpoint too, I think, print marketing, direct mail and even like print media.

While it's diminished in its significance and the role it plays, like it's still an effective way to, to reach consumers. And a piece of direct mail, it may sit on your kitchen counter or on your fridge or whatever for like weeks or months in some cases, or you just stick it in a drawer or whatever.

If you're scrolling on your phone, you scroll and if you don't, engage with a piece of media, then you'll never see it again. 

[00:17:37] Ronald Skelton: I built my real estate firm based off of direct mail.We bought, foreclosed homes, people who are in financial distress and distressedlandlords. So basically people who are, we would track things like, evictions and all kinds of stuff. And we would just market to those people. Like they're having problems with their real estate of some sort.

And two years after I sold that to my business partner, I still got calls. Going, Hey, I still have your postcard on my refrigerator. Are you still interested in buying my house? 

Right. So it worked and we weren't high volume. I'd say our budget was probably 2, 500 a month to 3000 a month. And we, so we did, we sent a lot of mail. You figure probably about a buck, a buck and a quarter,a letter, after you pay for research and stamp and print and stuff.

[00:18:22] Connor Pera: And of course, postage is getting more and more expensive too, which is unfortunately just a fixed cost for both the printer and the consumer. So, But yeah, I mean, it's affordable. It's not, you know, crazy.

[00:18:35] Ronald Skelton: So how do you grow a print company? I mean, if you looked at your company right now, when you look at, one of the things I always want to look at,partners with a group of people were buying manufacturing. And they bought one that was running at 80%. They bring a new sales guy in and all of a sudden they're at a hundred percent and they have to make some changes pretty quick because they're already at a hundred percent manufacturing.

They can't make no more, right. So now they're outsourcing some of the cutting and some of the other stuff. When you bought it, did you look at what is the capacity that the facility is running at? So do you,do you have the capacity to grow?

[00:19:06] Connor Pera: I did. Yeah. And I think like one of the biggest ways that we have capacity is, is through shifts. I mean, we're running, our presses are running normal business hours,pretty, solidly utilized during the workday. 40 hours a week, give or take.Big jobs going on more than that.

But, but I think 1 of the biggest opportunities we have without investing a single incremental dollar, except for the cost of producing material is to have, and labor is to have, is to have another, like, a night shift. Or, like, go to a 24, 7, sort of model or 24, 6. So some printers do that.

obviously you gotta have the work to do it. But, yeah, I mean, I think sales,I spent, uh, quite a bit of timeearly on after closing and still do arguably, but, just kind of brute forcing, sales growth on my own and kind of, doing it, taking on a lot of that work myself, which, obviously, like I said, I learned a lot.

But also I think like, one of the things I'm coming to realizea little, a little longer into my, to my journey here is, the best way to grow is through organizational development. To put systems and processes in place and to put the right people in the right positions and empower them to go drive the performance metric that you're, um, going after.

And that's just a much more scalable way to, to grow any business I would argue. But yeah, I mean, I think, in any sort of manufacturing context, which I would, I would argue, print is at its core, sort of like a manufacturing operation. You're sort of inherently limited by, space, people, and equipment.

But, uh,I think it's probably one of the main reasons that people love software businesses. But you know, I think, in the software space, that those businesses have their own sets of challenges and risks. So, I think another thing that I've learned, since becoming an entrepreneur full time and honestly, like entrepreneurship has been such a great way to learn this lesson is that like, everything in life is just a series of trade offs. And whether or not you know what trade offs you're making in any particular situation in a decision you're making is, you could or could not be aware. But you are making trade offs inherently in everything that you do and in every activity that you pursue.

So I think that like being an entrepreneur and being the sole owner of a business, it makes it very apparent and front and center. Like who's responsible for bearing the consequences of the decisions that get made with the business's money. So it's,it's just a very like tangible way to learn.

The fact that, that you're always making trade offs. And for me personally, like I've gotten better at seeing it in like my personal life too. Like I have a, you know, a wife and a 20 month old daughter and,a son due in August. So we're, busy, young family and yeah, I'm always making trade offs there too, right?

Like, you know, and social life and all those sorts of things. So I think I've just gotten better at viewing every decision I make in life through this lens of what's the opportunity costs here. And I think entrepreneurship has been a really good way to learn that. So,

[00:22:28] Ronald Skelton: I laugh when you said that because you got a 20 month old girl and I have an eight year old girl and I just I know what's ahead of you. So my son's 13. He's super cool. I love hanging out with him. But my little girl has me wrapped around her pinky like a puppet on a string. She can just look at me and go, daddy, I want to go to the beach.

And I'm like, okay, I don't have anything else on my calendar today. There's lots of stuff I could be doing as a business owner, right. But she's like the day she's off. And I'm like, I bribed her. It's like, look, you're really good. Let me do the record, this recording without coming out and interrupting me.

And then when we're done, we'll go to the beach. But it's just because she gave me the pouty eyes. So, uh, 

[00:23:05] Connor Pera: Yeah, well, going back into, heading back into the newborn stage later this year, my wife and I were actually just talking about this earlier today. It's both exciting because you're like, Oh, wow, like that, you know,we'll be able to appreciate like that they're only a newborn for so long. But it's also like terrifying because you're like, Oh my God, like I know what I'm in for this time around. 

So it's going to be rough.

[00:23:31] Ronald Skelton: I don't know how many adults I've coached or business, business relationships with where if they just had a little more tenacity, a little more fairness for, fearlessness, they would succeed so much better in life. And that's the real thing. As a parent, I know we're off topic here, but as an entrepreneur, you need that fire.

You need that tenacity that I, I don't like being told no, and I'm going to figure this out. So, 

[00:23:54] Connor Pera: Yeah, I, actually to bring it back to the topic, I talked to acquisition entrepreneurs all the time and people who are searching and I love those conversations. And so I'm always happy to, to jump on the phone with, with someone. And,I would say the biggest thing that I see holding people back is almost always like themselves and their willingness to pull the trigger and take a pretty significant risk and sort of take a, take a gamble.

It's almost never like somebody's intelligence or technical ability or work ethic. Like, I mean, I would say 99. 9 percent of the searchers certainly that I've talked to have those things in space. And they don't, you know, they've got plenty of skills and intelligence and all those things. It's just a matter of like, when push comes to shove,are you willing to go all in?

And, you know, I think not everyone is, and that's like totally fine and a valuable thing to learn about one self too. So I think like one of the things I always talk to people about too, is I think like just the process of searching for a business kind of forces you to confront a lot of those questions about what your risk tolerance is and kind of what you're, what you're comfortable with. Otherwise, you know,for a lot of those questions, there's really only one way to, to find out you got to explore it.

[00:25:19] Ronald Skelton: I've often thought, so I have a couple, full time assistants and I've often thought like I should put them on going out and finding me businesses to acquire, because if nothing else, I think every employee ought to have to go through the realm of, evaluating them. It teaches you some really cool things that would help you be a great employee too. Not only for the company you're working for, but for yourself and picking the right company to work for. The ability to read a balance sheet and an income statement and look at cash flows of a business that you're thinking about to go into work for, would be incredibly important.

I don't know how many times, especially in the dot com area where I went to work for something and turns out the business was in a lot of trouble. I went to work for Excite, but you know, a year and a half, almost two years before it went bust. If I'd have got to keep my stock, I'd have had millions in stock, but unfortunately, right before my stock busted, they, they, declared bankruptcy and, you know, I was,blocked from trading.

So, that said,I think every, if anybody, if everybody just took the time to learn how to read a balance statement, how to read the income statement, how to understand cash flows, now not all businesses are going to give you that, but all public businesses, you can just go get it right? And they truly understand who they're going to work, who they're going to work for and how well that business is going.

You could make better choices and actually, run businesses, you know, work for better businesses and potentially helping businesses improve better. So, there is a skill to this that would benefit a broader spectrum than just acquisition entrepreneurs.

[00:26:52] Connor Pera: Yeah, no, I absolutely. And it's funny, I'm like kind of find myself, reflecting on some of the things that I've learned that would have made me a much better employee. I mean, I'm glad I'm on the path that I'm on, but I think like it, one of the things is just like communication, and the importance of like, effectively communicating your ideas and doing so, like, you know, repetitive manner. That sort of, just continues to, I guess, like the context I think about it now as a business owner is like, it's like getting people on board with, changes or the growth strategy or the vision for the business and the importance of communicating that frequently, often. Like having objective metrics that people can control and be held accountable for. Like those kinds of things that, that I'm seeking as a business owner.

Because I want that like clarity between me and my team about what's driving performance here. And like, how can we continue to move these metrics in the right direction and like, how can I help you get there? And I feel like for a lot of my corporate jobs, like I never really spent enough time, like getting super crystal clear about, okay, like what's the, what does success look like for this project that you're assigning to me. And then get like really super clear with, your boss aboutwhat they want from an output standpoint, and then just like, go make that happen and continue to like, keep them in the loop about how it's tracking and like what you think. And ask for their kind of input to continue to redirect you in the right way. Like I, I kinda, I didn't spend enough time like level setting and having those conversations with managers.

I kind of just assumed like, oh, they'll, they'll see that I'm, like, doing a really good job on this, and I'm working really hard. And, you know, for the most part I was doing fine. But I do think those are the kinds of things that take you to the next level in any context, in the business world.

And, it's taken me like being responsible for the P and L to sort of learn that. But certainly, extremely valuable like skills,to have, have gained.

[00:29:11] Ronald Skelton: There's a phrase I like to use. I use it internally. I don't, I don't think I've ever brought it up to the employees, but, it's called enrollment. So I refer to it as enrollment. So when you have a vision or a goal or something you want somebody to do, it's one thing to really communicate with them and to have them understand what you're looking for.

But what I'm looking for when I say enrollment is, they take it on as their own. They're enrolled in the, they got your vision. They know where you're trying to go and they're on board. They understand why and they come up with ideas and other stuff. They bring stuff to you and go, Hey, I know you're trying to hit this. We're doing X, Y, Z, but what if we, twisted this, you know, this ,this widget this way. And drive, you know, I know it's a, you know, a X percent, 5 percent performance increase, right? But you, if you can really enroll people into the concept of where you're trying to go and basically, I guess another word would be they're bought in, they buy the, they buy into your vision.

It's different than understand. There's a huge difference. You can understand something and not be on board. Yeah. There are a lot of people that, that you know, you've heard quiet quitting and all this stuff. There's a lot of people that quiet work. They come in and do exactly what there's but they're they think is expected of them. So part of that enrollment is changing that expectation is like I expect us to grow. I expect you to improve upon your job.

I expect you to get promoted, right? So and the way you do that is, here's our goals and here's how, here's my vision. Here's where I want to see us end up. Your job is to help me figure out a way to get there. 

[00:30:44] Connor Pera: Yeah, no, totally. And, the other thing I'm reflecting on as you're sharing that is like, how much. And it sort of dovetails with another key lesson I've learned as an acquisition entrepreneur. Like running a small business is this, this sort of illusion of work life balance that I think, I talked to a lot of people are certainly read a lot online of folks who are interested in buying a small business because they'll, they'll be the owner and CEO of the business and they can take off whenever they want and you know kind of have the flexibility around their calendar. I think at the end of the day like that is true, right?

Like you do kind of get to make the final call, but as it relates to like leadership getting buy in for the vision and then also like for me, what I've observed in terms of work life balance is like, you got to also recognize that like everything you do and say is sending a very clear signal to the team and the organization about the standard that you hold yourself to. And you therefore, you know, hopefully expect of others.

So yeah, I mean, can I like go blow off the rest of the afternoon and go play golf? Like, yes, but what message does that send to the team? Right? Like, we're, you know, we're busy and everyone's hustling in the back. Like getting orders out the door and I'm like, all right, I'm out. I'm gonna go play golf.

Now, you know, sometimes like everyone needs time off and, I'm all about providing flexibility, but again,it's sort of funny, like I, again, I do observe a lot of people who are thinking like, oh, I'll be, I'll just be the owner of the company and then I can just kind of coast on Easy Street and do whatever I want.

It's like, you can, but like A, if you do that, you're probably, the business is not probably not going to perform that well. So you may not have that company for too long. And then B like, you're not going to be able to effectively lead an organization where, you know, your actions aren't setting the example for the organization, right. 

And so like, I, as you were talking about, like getting enrollment, like the best way to get people to buy into your vision is to, for them to see clearly that you're bought in. And that you, that takes time and it takes consistent action over time for people to be like, okay, he's clearly serious about what he's telling us.

So, then maybe I'll be serious about it. But until, if it doesn't start with you,it's pointless anyway.

[00:33:16] Ronald Skelton: I always tell people like when, I get that a lot.I host meetings and hangouts for acquisition entrepreneurs. We just had one yesterday and about 20 of them showed up. People, you're always invited. Every, all my guests are invited. I kind of spotlight you guys when you come on, in the hangouts because you've already done what a lot of the people are trying to do.

But, uh, we have, lawyers and,acquisition entrepreneurs, people have had massive exits. They show up to these things and hang out with the new guys. And we just exchange ideas, figure out where people are stuck. Form joint partnerships and that type of stuff. But, what people, when they talk about buying something that for a passive income type of situation, my thing is, you better really consider going above what you can do with an SBA loan, right?

Because you need, if you really want to do that, it's possible. I've seen it done, but you have to be big enough that, if you're not going to be the guy in there pulling as the most hours and be there when everybody shows up and be there when everybody goes home, you need to install that guy and you need to be able to pay him correctly and incentivize himself. Whether it's a general manager or CEO.

But my rule of thumb is if you're not going to be the true leader that that company needs to do that, you better be able to hire one. And then I just would say, don't show up. You manage that leader and you manage him throughpersonal meetings with him and you manage him, but don't show up on a regular basis and be this lackadaisical owner because it will spread, right. I'm a big believer in what you just said. If I'm looking for something, we're looking, we're buying up manufacturing companiesall over the world. And, uh, we're not the operators, right? I can't be. My team has operators in some of these facilities, but right now we're looking at Florida and Michigan.

I'm not going to Florida or Michigan for more than a week or 2 at a time. So there has to be a GM on, on the ground. But, they're big enough, right? The things we're looking at are big enough that they can afford those people. And, the employees, if they ever know me, they'll know me as an investor.

And the guy that does M&A stuff. They won't know me as the guy that's in there running day to day operations. I have no business running day to day operations for the manufacturing. I could learn it. Just like you learned the printing business. You probably hadn't had much experience running a printing business before you jumped in feet first.

[00:35:23] Connor Pera: Yeah, no, I mean, it's funny. I, I definitely like, I mean, I love having the investor mindset and I love like the idea of being an investor and looking at deals with people and like kicking around, like thoughts about how to make a deal structure work. But I am like at my core and operator and I, I, so anyway, so I think like, as it relates to my search journey, I was able to get comfortable with the business I bought.

I mean, first of all, I would say like, it was the relationship I had with the seller was great. I could tell he was a really high integrity individual. So I just felt like this is a really good business run by a really good person. And so that was like the biggest thing that I felt like the deal had going for it.

But, like, cause people ask me like pretty frequently. Like, how did you know? Like, how did you know this was the business you wanted to buy? And, um, the answer is like, I didn't. I don't think you ever fully can. But,I saw this and I actually had a lot of fun putting the deal together, but I saw the search and deal structure part as like a necessary evil and I wanted to skip to the operating part.

So, and I still kind of like, again, like in my heart of hearts feel that way. Like I definitely I'm opportunistically open to pursuing a roll up and, you know, thinking about kind of,making other acquisitions in the print space. And, kind of trying to, trying to scale up that way as well.

But at the end of the day, like I love operating. And so, uh, kind of, I gotta lean into that too. So,

[00:37:06] Ronald Skelton: The world needs the operators, man. Like I'm 52. I don't necessarily want to be the operator for the next thing, right? I have a little pest control company I own. I'm not the operator for. I have a guy. I've got, even this little thing I was showing you that we're starting with the, my wife and my son, I'm the advisor too, but I'm not the operator, they are.

So I just kind of got to know your roles. Like know where your sweet spot is and, and know what you're really good at. And I, there's part of me that says, I wish I was a great operator because every great business I've ever seen, you had a visionary and a guy who solves problems and he's always partnered that's, it's doing really well with somebody who's really good at operations. 

Fine tuning the machine. And the ones that are struggling, usually they're missing one of those two components. To either have two visionaries or two operators, right? If you look at like, who's leading the organization.

But I want to respect your time. And I know that we've got a hard cut off. Give people like two or three, first of all, give people two or three takeaways. If they could just, they don't know anything else from the show, they can only remember one or two things from it. What would you want them to walk away as far as what you learned in lessons learned in this journey?

[00:38:12] Connor Pera: Yeah. I would say for me, the value of, and you kind of hear competing pieces of wisdom on this and the, in the search space, but, oftentimes it's framed as like buying big versus buying small. And the company was doing about 2 million in revenue when I bought it. We'll do, just north of 2. 3, hopefully this, this year.

But, I am sort of in the camp of,not buying like really, really tiny necessarily, but I definitely have gotten tremendous value out of getting in the game. So, I do think there's a ton of wisdom in, you know, not waiting for the, the SaaS business that's throwing off 1. 5 million in free cash flow every year.

That has contract recurring revenue and that, you know, look, we all want to find that, that business,that you can sit back and hire an operator and kind of, kind of, sit back and, and watch your money grow. But, I think there's a lot of people that are kind of like waiting for perfection, as they're thinking about making an acquisition.

So my advice on that is, is always to people like get in the game. Like it is really important to get experience operating. Like if you want to run small businesses, like the best way to learn how to run small businesses is not search for the perfect small business to buy. It's run a small business.

So I, I think that, that, is definitely like probably the biggest piece of unsolicited advice I would share. And then I think again, just like the importance of knowing your strengths and what you're good at, and leaning into those.I saw a huge opportunity with this business in the sense that the previous owner was, it was kind of like the classic search scenario.

Where previous owner was, you know, looking to move on to the next, the next chapter in, in life and, get out of running the business full time. And so hadn't invested a lot of time and energy and money into sales and marketing efforts.

And that's what I had spent my career doing. So, I was like, I think I can add that to this, to this business. And if I can learn all the other stuff, then I may have, have something here. So that, that's another reason I kind of like locked in on this one as a really good opportunity for me specifically, right?

Like it wouldn't necessarily be the right opportunity for someone whose main growth lever is, some sort of financial engineering, sort of opportunity that they see. I certainly knew that coming into the search world, I wasn't that guy. I'm not, like, a private equity investor or a deal maker guy.

I'm a marketing guy. So like for me, the right business is one that would benefit from a marketing guy owner. And so I think that, so that the other, like sort of the overarching, I guess, like takeaway or piece of advice is just like to know yourself and to lean into that. Don't try to be, don't try to do the same thing everyone else is doing because your advantage is in your advantage. Not in the other searchers advantages. So,

[00:41:08] Ronald Skelton: Awesome. It's a great advice. How do people reach out to you if they want to work with you? What's the best way to get ahold of you?

[00:41:13] Connor Pera: Yeah, so you can find me on Twitter, X, at Connor Pera. And then you can just look me up on LinkedIn or you can shoot me an email, Connor, C O N N O R, at theprintauthority. com.

[00:41:25] Ronald Skelton: Cool. We'll put that stuff in the show notes and we'll call that a show. Hang out for just a second afterwards.