How EOS and EO Benefit Your Business Exit Strategy With Chris Carey

Chris Carey is the Co-founder of Modern Automotive Performance (MAP), a high-growth e-commerce manufacturing company serving the automotive industry. In 2006, Chris launched the company using a bedroom closet to store inventory, and by 2011, MAP ranked #403 on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing privately held companies in the US. He sold MAP to Enthusiast Enterprises in 2020, generating $44 million in revenue.

His thoughts regarding entrepreneurship, e-commerce, and leadership development have been published in the Wall Street Journal, Inc. magazine, and Minnesota Business. Chris is a General Partner at Traction Capital, where he adds value to portfolio companies, assists with acquisition initiatives, and furthers his knowledge of venture capital and private equity.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

Chris Carey shares MAP’s origin story
What was Chris’ motivation behind creating a brand?
Attracting new clientele with exceptional customer service
Advice for entrepreneurs struggling to overcome a business plateau
How entrepreneurs benefit from entrepreneurial operating system (EOS) and peer groups
The struggles Chris experienced as a new CEO — and how he restructured his priorities
How Chris prepared for his exit from MAP
The importance of aligning your energy with your phase of life
What are Chris’ current ventures?

In this episode…

The process of building and launching a business takes such an emotional, physical, and mental toll that most early-stage entrepreneurs wouldn’t dream of selling their company. As the years go by, it’s inevitable for business owners to consider the next phase for themselves and their organization. If selling your business is in your best interest, how can you prepare for a seamless transition?

Entrepreneurs are advised to begin the exit process well in advance to ensure the company is prepared and ready to hand off to the succeeding owner. Chris Carey, a post-exit entrepreneur, didn’t hesitate to begin his due diligence upon recognizing his company’s valuation had peaked and he was ready for a new challenge. In doing so, he gave himself adequate time to increase revenue and reduce overhead before burning out. Chris attributes his graceful business exit to a structured EOS and a supportive peer group through EO — and he recommends fellow entrepreneurs take advantage of these resources.

On this episode of the Up Arrow Podcast, William Harris welcomes Chris Carey, the former Co-founder of Modern Automotive Performance (MAP), to discuss the resources that helped him prepare for his exit from MAP. Chris delves into MAP’s origin story, the motivation behind creating a product line, and how his role as an executive affected his physical health. He also explains why establishing an EOS and joining EO is beneficial for entrepreneurial success.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Sponsor for this episode...

This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is a performance driven e-commerce marketing agency focused on finding the best opportunities for you to grow and scale your business.

Our paid search, social, and programmatic services have proven to increase traffic and ROAS, allowing you to make more money efficiently.

To learn more, visit www.elumynt.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:03

Welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris, featuring top business leaders sharing strategies and resources to get to the next level. Now, let's get started with the show.

William Harris 0:15

Hey everybody, William Harris here Founder and CEO of Elumynt. And the host of this podcast where I feature experts of the D2C industry sharing strategies on how to scale your business and achieve your goals. So real quick, before we get into the meat of the topic, I do want to announce our sponsorship, this is sponsored by Elumynt. Elumynt is our advertising agency and we help e-commerce stores optimized around profit instead of just top line revenue. We've actually helped 13 of our customers get acquired the largest one sold for about 800 million, and Adweek recently ranked us as the 12th fastest growing agency in the world. That's Elumynt spelled E-L-U-M-Y-N-T.com. If you want to check it out. That said onto the good stuff. I'm really excited about the guests that I have here today. I have Chris Carey, He is the former founder and CEO of Modern Automotive Performance, he spent 15 years building and growing that had a successful exit. Now you're an angel, investor, General Manager at Traction Capital, which is a hybrid PE VC firm. So much that I've been able to learn from Chris, actually have worked with Chris now for a number of years. And so consider him a personal friend. Beyond that, Chris, I'm excited to have you here.

Chris Carey 1:24

Yeah, thanks for having me excited to be here.

William Harris 1:27

I was thinking about who introduced us in and more recently, it was Shane Erickson. So I want to give him a shout out as well. But I think if we go back for further than that, it was Andrew, you Darien over in Chicago after an IRC event, maybe back in like 2018 or something like that. Does that sound familiar?

Chris Carey 1:44

Yeah, it does. I, the internet retailer conference was a great resource for us. And I remember a little happy hour mingle session afterwards. I don't know if you and I really connected, but I think you connected more so with my brother Dan, who was my VP of Marketing at my previous business. So

William Harris 1:59

yeah, yep. And ran into Dan, you know, it's funny, I ran into him a number of times, I think one of our customers was your next door neighbor there, as well. We were doing a lot of stuff with resorts and lodges. And I remember coming home, eating them and seeing your sign. And I was like, Oh my gosh, like you guys are everywhere. It was just really funny. Like all the connections that led to things over the years before we finally started working together. But I am excited to dig into a few things with you. I almost kind of want to go from like start to finish, because I think that there's a really fun introduction to building the company. But then also the exit, which I feel like is something that doesn't get talked about enough. Let's start at the beginning, though. What made you decide that you were going to start? You know, a lot of times we call MAP, like What made you start Modern Automotive Performance.

Chris Carey 2:47

I guess the the main premise, to be honest with you, I don't know exactly what it what it is there wasn't a an individual or a catalyst, so to speak, that made me go down this path. But it was something along the lines of not wanting to work for the man anymore. My previous experience was in, in consumer electronics, and I worked at Circuit City and then a third party wireless retailer within BestBuy locations and eventually made the leap to Verizon Wireless selling wireless phones. And one of the things that I remember from that experience were these 6am disciplinary meetings, where if we didn't hit our sales numbers for the week, or the month, or whatever it was, the management would have us come in at 6am and and kind of do a rally I guess, right to rally the troops and get us to hit our numbers. But for me, it had the complete opposite of fact that I'm not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination. So I would have to drive a half hour to the Verizon Wireless store at 6am. Stay there for an hour meeting come home, get a few more hours of sleep and and then go work by 12pm a pm shift there. So basically took up my entire day. And it really just got me thinking, you know, there's got to be there has to be something better than this that I can do. And I guess it was going to school for Business at the University of Minnesota at the time. And again, I can't really pinpoint exactly what made me think, Hey, you should start your own business. But I just really liked the idea of being my own boss and be able to set my own hours. Not fully understanding that I would then end up working 60 7080 hour weeks, but at least it was on my own volition. And I could get sleep in a little bit longer. So yeah, that was kind of the the catalyst for it.

William Harris 4:26

I love where you're going with that. Because I feel like a lot of times, you know, I'm obviously entrepreneur as well. And there is this idea where you're just like, Hey, I can't wait to like be my own boss big my own rule set my own hours and it's very quick in a business in starting your own company that you realize you're like, you know, I think I've heard people say you trade in your nine to five for nine to nine, seven days a week kind of thing. And that's very true for a lot of us.

Chris Carey 4:50

Yep. Yeah, fortunate it feels it feels different. You know, you don't feel like you have to and you want to go in and that's a much better feeling. So

William Harris 4:58

yeah, so now okay, it's So that's why you started a business in general, why this one? What attracted you to, you know, car parts where you're a car guy in the first place?

Chris Carey 5:08

Yeah, this was my my hobby, my passion at the time. So I guess I had there was two things in mind that was gonna go either one direction or the other, the first being a third party wireless phone retailers that was that what I knew and where I was working. And then the other my hobby, my passion, again, was in the automotive aftermarket, I had a 1995 Mitsubishi Eclipse, and this was right around that time, and a little little hat tip to the Fast and the Furious movie franchise. But I had a 1995 Mitsubishi Eclipse that I was modifying a friend of mine had a 1995 Ford Mustang, and it was kind of a, a game a competition, who could modify their car who's was faster. And that one just had simply had a lower barrier of entry. I had a friend at the time that was doing some website design, and I, you know, it's very low cost for me to have him spin up a website for me actually bought some inventory on my personal credit card, put it in my closet in my townhouse at the time. And, yeah, so I guess ultimately, it was it was that it was the barrier of entry. In order to do a third party wireless retailer, I would have had to have rented a retail space, got licensing agreements with the specific carriers, just more of a headache. So this, this was the easier route and it aligned with my passion at the time. And fortunately, it worked out.

William Harris 6:21

There's something to be said for just figuring out like, where, where do your passions already align, and what is the door, whether it's open or closed, to be able to move through things, because to a point, whenever you start a business, you know, there's a lot of work that goes into it. And if you can find something that you already enjoy a passion of yours anyways, that at least makes enduring some of the long hours or weekends or whatever, that might be a little bit easier. I know you talked about, you know, putting this on your personal credit card at first too. And I know some guys who did that, too, they started a business. And I want to say for the longest time, you know, maybe maybe a decade later, they still had everything running through their personal credit cards, you know, e-commerce store, maybe doing 10 figures a year and the you know, the amount of amount of stuff that was going on in their personal cards was was wild. Did that ever make you nervous at all?

Chris Carey 7:10

Certainly, and I guess the the thing that made me more nervous. So I started it, that bit of inventory was with my personal credit card, when we actually decided to excuse me lease a physical space, we were at a start to a friend of mine was working on. His name's Kyle, he was a co-founder was working on vehicles out of his garage had some history in the automotive aftermarket, we just started joking around, how about you work on the cars, I will sell the parts. And we'll kind of see if we can make something to this. And so we ended up leasing, I want to say it was like a 2500 or 3000 square foot warehouse space. So at that point in time, I had to sign on the dotted line, you know, and there was a personal guarantee to that. I really had no idea. I was very naive to what could have gone wrong, you know, if we weren't able to fulfill that obligation, it would have all been hung on me at the time. But also, my mom had a credit card with a $30,000 line of credit. And that's how we furnished the space. That's how we bought our first lifts, our first desks, our first computers, things along those lines. So that was more stressful, you know, the regrets to paying off my own credit card. That's one thing but paying off my mom's credit card isn't her down, I think was certainly, you know, a motivating factor. And I still feel very fortunate to have been in the position where my parents were able to support me in that matter. Yeah, you know, starting a business. So

William Harris 8:28

it helps to have somebody in your corner a little bit, doesn't it?

Chris Carey 8:31

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, it was it was served as a motivating force. Like you know, you don't want I want to let my mom down here, I gotta make this thing work. So yeah, you still

William Harris 8:39

Yeah, it's, you know, bad business deal with a bad partner. It's like you kind of go your separate ways, but you have a bad business deal with your mom. And it's like, you still got to see her at Christmas and Easter and whatever else. Right? So

Chris Carey 8:49

Exactly, yep.

William Harris 8:50

Um, so okay, you guys eventually, you know, continue to grow, though. And I think that you went beyond just third party selling but you you actually started developing and producing your own parts as well, right? Like, what was the motivation behind creating your own line and brand.

Chris Carey 9:09

We just kind of stumbled into it to be honest with you, like we would so at one point we we started drop shipping, and there was a lot of the initial orders volume that we had, where we wouldn't see the product at all, it would go straight to the customer shop. And then we got to the point where, for various reasons, we start to bring product into whether we were ordering or for a car that we were working on in our facility, or we were trying to compile in order to ship internationally, we started to see a lot of things come through our facility, and my co founder Kyle at the time you don't even pay would vary. I mean, he just eats sleeps and breathes cars. That's his whole life. And so he would be interested in every part that came through and you'd be looking at him, you'd be like, You know what, I could make this and I'm like, What do you mean, you could make like if I had, I've got a welder. We just see this, you know, pipe cutter bandsaw whatever else I could I could make something like this if we ever wanted to do that. And I think you know The the catalyst for us making a lot of products were when we ran into a manufacturer that was kind of smallish, and was unable to meet the demand of the market. So we would be trying to buy 1020 30 of this piece. And they're like, No, we can't do that it's or it's gonna be three months, six months, well, you know, whatever it is. And so the the demand from the market, it outpaced what their ability was to supply it. And we're like, we can make this, why don't we just make our, you know, a version of it? And so we would look to, you know, how can we add value as well? How can we make this thing better when we're making our variation of it, or higher quality or, you know, what have you heard of, we see opportunities to reduce costs, but so that was really the catalyst would see things come through the door, he's like, I know that I can make that we have the equipment to do it. And then all of a sudden, we ran into a situation, we had a ton of demand from our customers, they weren't able to fill the demand. And we looked at that as an opportunity to start your own product way.

William Harris 10:57

That's brilliant. Because I guarantee when you first started the e-commerce business here, you didn't think, hey, one day, I'm going to make my own products, right? You're just like, Alright, I'm going to sell these other products. But you have to at least the flexibility of saying, what's happening and how can I use what's happening to my advantage?

Chris Carey 11:14

Yeah, certainly we didn't go into I mean, it's funny to look back, I never would have imagined it had grown to the scale that it did. But before I sold it, or where it even is today. But yeah, we certainly didn't go into think you were going to manufacture products either. And I think one of our best traits or competitive advantages was just excuse me, consolidation of the supply chain. So we would look at these opportunities, you know, hey, we can make that in house, cut out this, we were the middleman I guess. But we could reduce one step in the supply chain, or are one cog in the wheel and read, you know, improve margins for ourselves lower cost for the consumer. So something that that became natural for us. And then same thing, as we went down the line, we would still outsource some pieces of manufacturing, for instance, like CNC machining, or lathes, and mills and things like that. And at over time, as we got more comfortable with manufacturing, we started to bring that equipment in house and just consolidate that supply chain into our own facility that, again, allowed us to improve margins, reduce costs, better control the quality of the final product. So I would say that was really a big part of our success was that supply chain consolidation, and how we're able to bring a lot of things in house over time, and again, control the quality throughout the whole process.

William Harris 12:34

Yeah, I like that. Something that I've heard from a lot of VCs, and maybe even it may have been Shane Erickson at one point in time, too, but don't quote me on for sure if he's the one who told me this. But one of the biggest things that investors oftentimes are looking for in earlier stage businesses, not for from an acquisition standpoint, but is a founder who has that ability to pivot Because oftentimes, whatever you start doing, you're going to need to find ways that you're going to change from what your original, you know, go to market plan was when you set it out from, you know, month one, or whatever that was, it sounds like you had that ability to be able to say, Great, we see this opportunity, let's, let's move on to this as well.

Chris Carey 13:13

And I think we just got very lucky in that regard. We didn't, so we didn't have and I know we're gonna talk about EOS at some point and setting up, you know, a longer term vision. But we didn't have any idea what we were doing. I mean, we were just riding the wave, the way we got traction in the early days. So we grew pretty rapidly between 2007 and 2010. We grew from 968,000 to almost 9.8 million. That landed us at number 403 on the Inc 500 list of fastest growing privately held companies in America. But it was all just by providing what today is like the standard of customer service, like in 2007 through 2010. Like you just people wouldn't answer the phone. People wouldn't respond to emails, you couldn't get tracking numbers. I mean, this thing sounds silly today. But that's all we did. We just picked up the phone. We were kind we were knowledgeable, we provided the information that the customer was looking for. And then they went and told all of their friends. And so we didn't do any paid marketing. I think for the first 5678 years we were in business we didn't have to the word of mouth was so tremendous that that all of that growth came from just word of mouth and providing what we call the exceptional customer service, which obviously changed throughout the years. But yeah, that's kind of how we rode that growth stream. So

William Harris 14:30

I think there's something that's still true for that today though in being able to listen and be aware of what is the market looking for in terms of customer service because that is that is a really good way for people to stand out. Example here Sweetwater and I'll throw them out here. I'm a musician. I ordered a whole lot of music equipment and things like that. I mean, even right, you know, I've got my mic here, you know, I've got the Shure 55 sh series two I've got my road caster Pro two here and I've got I am MiniPro. And like I've got all kinds of gear and hardware, but I need to make sure that it all fits and works together. And what's interesting about Sweetwater is the way that they go about this is, you know, if you if you have a question about it, this is obviously complex stuff, you could jump right on a phone call with somebody like pre sales and help walk through this. And then as soon as you buy it, like, I get a text from like the same guy every time, it's like, it's like my guy there, right? And he's like, hey, just checking to make sure you've got everything that you need, you need to help setting it up, it's like, walk you through some of the setup and troubleshoot anything. And it's like, that's next level customer service, and a lot of people don't provide, and a lot of businesses can't provide it right. This is a higher expensive, you know, higher touch type product. But I think that they continue to set the standard above and beyond what I see a lot of other websites doing. So there's ways that businesses can still focus on doing a better job with customer service right now to

Chris Carey 15:52

absolutely, and that that was another, I talked about having knowledgeable people on the other end of the phone. That was how we staved off. Amazon and the other types of competitors, like, sure, if you knew exactly what you wanted, you'd have any question at all, and the only thing you cared about was price, maybe Amazon's a good fit for you. But for our higher ticket products, our average order value was idling somewhere in the $400 range. And there was a lot of concern as to what will this part work for with this part? Well, is this the right part for my sub model of car? And so it's very important to have someone that our customers could reach out to that knew the answer those questions, or could go find it. And so yeah, having that high touch, knowledgeable individual that can answer the questions that Amazon customer service is never going to be able to answer. It was really one of our main differentiators, especially when you talk about a lot of the product lines in our industry had a Minimum Advertised Price, when the prices when or when the playing field is level in terms of price. And now all we're competing on is customer service or website ease of use, you know, things like shipping speed, etc. That's where we felt like we had an advantage over most people because we had gotten to a point in our scale, we had some economies of scale in terms of our inventory availability. We had a really well run warehouse operation, we were able to ship very quickly. Yeah, that became an advantage for us. We loved it when the playing field was level in regards to price. So

William Harris 17:21

yeah, well in Okay, so let's, let's fast forward here a little bit. So you're you're doing these things, and it's helping the business grow. And, you know, I want to say it's eight years in you guys on the Inc 5000. And like you said, you're in like Neil 400 spot or whatever. But then things stalled out a little bit. And you you ran into a little bit of stalled growth, kind of getting frustrated. How did you break through that plateau? Because I feel like a lot of businesses get there, they get to maybe whatever that plateau is the 1 million mark the 10 million mark, and they can't break free. How did you? How did you fix that?

Chris Carey 17:55

Yeah, for us, it was at 10 million. So right after that year that landed us on the Inc 500 We celebrate, we're happy. We hit a pretty significant period, where we hit the ceiling, so to speak. So that was, I think three years of trying to get through the 10 million revenue barrier. And this is basically where I believe our inexperience in regards to business operations really caught up with us. I mean, for you know, except for those first several years, we're able to just ride the wave. If the phone's ringing, you answer it, if an email comes in, you respond, if there's a fire over here, you put it out, if there's a fire over there, you put it out. And it didn't matter who did it. And there were no assigned roles or accountability, it just everybody did everything. And we just made it work. And he just kept throwing people at it. And that as we kind of alluded to here at about 10 million, I think we're at maybe 30 People at that point somewhere in that range. It really that did not work any any longer in regards to allow us to continue to scale the business so I got very frustrated. And this is the point where I didn't know any other business owners I mentioned earlier I didn't know any when I started the business I hadn't really met anyone throughout the the first several years of my journey here. I just had my head down and I was grinding and you know, doing my thing. First some reason as I as we installed it about 10 million in sales, I decided I was going to reach out to the other Minnesota companies that were on the Inc 502,011 So there wasn't eight of them. I didn't know what the purpose of it was or what I was going to get out of it. Nor why I even decided to reach out but so I reached out just via email to the the eight founders that were on that list to responded I believe and only one ever actually met with me and we formed kind of a relationship. And that gentleman was Andrew Donovan who I think you know now from bulk resupply, which is another that was a company he previously owned and sold and in the e-commerce space as well. So so we got along we He attended IRC ie a couple of times and cross paths there. We had lunch a few times. And I reached out to him finally, after I was just banging my head against the wall with this this challenge at 10 million. I'm like, because I had known he had grown past that. And I'm like, what do you attribute your continued success to. And so he brought me up to his office, we had lunch. And he's like, I think it's these two things. And the two things he shared with me was one, a local entrepreneurial group called Entrepreneurs Organization, and then to a something called the Entrepreneurial Operating System, or EOS, based on the book Traction by Gino Whitman. So it was a, you know, in any way down to espouse the values of having a peer group, networking with other entrepreneurs that have been there, done that, and learning from their experience, rather than trial and error, which is what I was doing, if I had an idea to try it, I would spend time I would spend money. If it didn't work, go back to the drawing board start all over again, that took a lot of time to go through each iteration. So you know, sharing the value of an entrepreneur group that can can not give advice, but help guide me from their experience on where I should go and potentially save me time and money. And then EOS the Entrepreneur Operating System is something that I share with almost any entrepreneur that I come across. It's just a simple set of tools and processes to run a business. And I can't imagine running a business without them now. And I think most people that are running successful businesses, even if they don't know of EOS are probably have some semblance of these tools or processes within their business, whether it's a scorecard, and they're tracking 510 KPIs over here, or they've got goals, are they annual goals? Are they operating in a 90 day world and have a quarterly goals or rocks an accountability chart? Sure, most most large organizations probably have an org chart or they're going so far to to identify what the accountability is for each member on there. But these it just gave me a playbook, you know, a set of tools and on how to run a business. And so when after I met with Andrew, I decided, you know, if these things worked for him, there's at least chance they would work for us. So I joined EO, I've been a member of that for everything going on nine years now. And we engaged with an EOS implementer and it took probably about 18 months for us to get traction so to speak Sure, with with the tools and with the the peer group. But then we started that growth engine all over again, it went from 1010 10 to 1115 2127 33. And we were right back riding that wave so it was pretty another pretty exciting period of time for the business. So

William Harris 22:37

yeah, I love that if you are going to pinpoint you know there's a lot of pieces within let's start on traction first. A lot of lot of pieces within there like you said the scorecards, RPS right right person right seat, and there's a lot of pieces to it. If you're gonna pinpoint the ones that you felt made the biggest difference to unlocking that growth? What was it?

Chris Carey 22:59

Within the US framework?

William Harris 23:01

Yeah, within the EOS framework,

Chris Carey 23:03

I would say I mean, it's, it's hard to say which ones specifically, I guess I can tell you that. The process component documented processes was probably further on down the road. The they're the big one. So there's tools within the VTO the vision traction Organizer, where you set a 10 year Big Hairy Audacious Goal, you've got a three year picture where you want to give just enough detail. So someone can like envision it in their mind's eye, you get down to one year goals, you get down to 90 day rocks. We had not ever set goals before. I mean, everyone's just putting out fires. That was all that we did every day like, Oh, I think I should do that, I think should do that. We didn't have any meeting cadence. I didn't mention that. So having a fixed weekly cadence for meetings and structure to a meeting which EOS calls a level 10 meeting than having a fixed structure for a quarterly meeting to reassess our performance from the previous quarter set goals for the next quarter. Determine rocks and highest priorities for our team. I would say that that was it. So it's probably between the rocks in the goal setting the l 10. Meeting cadence which allowed us to you know keep track of where we're at and adjust on the fly, as you were talking about earlier. And then also the scorecard. I mean, before we implemented EOS, I think we were looking at like daily revenue was like the one KPI that we were looking at. We never looked at margin, we rarely looked at overhead. We never we didn't have anything on the manufacturing side of things. So being able to create a scorecard of 510 15 of the most important KPIs that we then reviewed in that weekly meeting. And if they went off track, we would then move over to the issues list and discuss I think was just an it seems so obvious that whatever what I'm saying it now it seems so obvious, but we just had no idea that this is how a business should be run or could be run. And yeah, that made I mean, just added so much value to the enterprise.

William Harris 24:57

Well, and I can I can relate to that in some way too. Do you know we've implemented EOS at Elumynt. And one of the biggest game changers for me in implementing that is to your point, the, the the vision side of this, being able to actually even articulate what the vision is in a very clear way, allows everybody on the team to get on the same page to know what to do from there, they know how they fit within that vision, how they can help execute, how they can roll in the boat towards the same goal. And it does make everything that much more efficient. I, it just it, it shocked me how much of a different setting that meant, because I would say that I actually felt like, you know, oh, this stuff is just you don't need to set that obviously, like, our goal is to just like be the number one agency like duh, this is an easy thing to do just like go do it. Like just, you know, what's the model, you know, just get it done kind of thing. But it makes a difference to have that you know, articulated and clearly visible for people,

Chris Carey 25:58

for sure. And I love that analogy about everyone rowing in the same direction. Because if you flip it on its head, and you envision everyone rowing in opposite directions. That's where I think we were at when we got stuck at the 10 million point, I think everybody had their idea of what they should be doing and where we should be going. And they weren't necessarily aligned. And so one person would be moving over here, the other would be moving in the opposite direction. And these things were at odds, and there wasn't any alignment on where we wanted to go. And I think that was a huge reason for our kind of stagnation.

William Harris 26:27

Yeah, so Okay, so let's shift over to EO for a minute, then, what about EO set it apart as the thing that really helped you to unlock that growth? Like, the meetings are like, obviously talking about things, but they're not giving you exact advice? So so how did that help?

Chris Carey 26:43

Well, I mean, so certainly there are within Entrepreneurs Organization, the chapter itself and in the region in global due learning events. So I mean, the caliber of some of the speakers that have been brought in throughout my nine years have been exceptional. So there's absolutely learning opportunities that I've taken advantage of, and so much value that I've taken away from those. But the core of EO is something called the forum experience, which is where you're generally between six and 10 individuals in your forum, you meet monthly for approximately four hours. And there's a specific structure where you share from your experience as an entrepreneur, it goes beyond business as well, it's also personal and family, but sharing from your experience and being able to have a sounding board. So I mean, you can ask for advice. And certainly I've done that on several occasions, you know, here's the challenge that I'm encountering. And there's not much experienced this feature, but I just want to hear what you guys have to say, because I think you're pretty smart. But most of the time, it is something you know, one of the reasons I didn't have a network beforehand was like, no one's gonna know, the world of automotive aftermarket car parts, like, who's gonna be able to help me with that. And what I didn't realize is, everyone has finance and cash, and everyone has human resources and employees, and everyone has operations and the need to document processes and all of these things. And, you know, marketing sales are within every business. And so I didn't realize is like, Sure, the 10% of my niche, maybe they're not gonna be able to speak to, but if I have a finance problem, or an HR problem, I need to hire someone, fire someone, whatever it is, they have all been there, done that. And so, you know, someone either had a tremendous resource for me to look into whether it was a book, or an individual, you know, an agency, a contractor, they can help you with whatever that challenge was at the time. And these are all things that again, if it was just me, in my little bubble, I would have had to like go Google search, maybe I found something, maybe I didn't, and then try something. And if it failed, again, time and money wasted, come back to the drawing board, do it all over again. So I really it's hard to put a value on that experience. But I mean, it hat it has to have saved me. It's got to be into the hundreds of 1000s of dollars at this point, and just hours upon hours of time, you know, not having to go through my previously the only thing that I knew which was just trial and error, make my best guess go and come back to the drawing board if it didn't work. So the value of learning from the experience of other entrepreneurs that have been on their own journey, but have experienced things that are relevant to what I'm, you know, potentially struggling with has been invaluable.

William Harris 29:29

In to your point, there's a lot that can come from, like the practical advice. That's going to be a part of this. But there's also like the the intangible aspect of like, the emotional camaraderie that exists with this as well because as CEOs, it can be very tough. I had Robert Gilbreath. He was the former CMO over at ShipStation had him on a podcast and his podcast turned into mostly about why being the CEO is the loneliest job in the world. And I think a lot of people can relate to this who've been in that position where, you know, it's tough. And if you don't have people that you can go to with this, where let's just say like mom and dad, well, if they weren't entrepreneurs, if they weren't building a business, they can't relate in the same way or, you know, even though she's, you're using your credit card, in brothers and sisters and whoever, right. And so it's like having a group of people that you can talk to about, like, the emotional struggles? Is that something that you had, that you found value of was? Was there anything that like you struggled with as a CEO?

Chris Carey 30:30

Oh, absolutely. And that's the thing is, you know, I think when people are on the outside looking in, and like, oh, you own your own business, it appears to be successful. Look at all the people that you have, look at our building, that you have this amount of inventory. Sure, have you seen my our financials and all the debt, you know, and, personally, it's personally guaranteed. And just last week, I was up all night worried about how he's gonna make payroll, because I over invested inventory here, or we're over on expenses, in terms of payroll, things are softening, and we've got too much staff, whatever it might be. Yeah, it's very hard to share those things, you know, with people in the corporate world that aren't, I guess, privy to the the inner workings of, of our business or a business in general. I mean, it's not all sunshine and rainbows, for sure. You know, ultimately, I was able to get to the point where I sold the business. And that was a great outcome. And I'm very grateful to be in that position. But I mean, yeah, there are so many ups and downs, throughout the journey, and to have other people to share that with that know what that's like, or have been in that same situation, or can at least envision that type of situation, I think was very validating, to know that you're not, you know, going through it alone, and that you have other people that are, are with you to support you and, you know, genuinely care about your success as well, which was pretty cool. So,

William Harris 31:54

yeah, in maybe I'm gonna pry too much on this. So you tell me if it's not a topic that we want to talk about, but like, I think you you struggled a little bit even, let's just say being an entrepreneur from a physical standpoint as well. Right?

Chris Carey 32:08

Yeah. And that's, it's something that snuck up on me over about a 10 year period. I mean, you know, I think it's the maybe the frog in boiling water analogy, like, if it had happened right away, I would have been so obvious, but over time, I mean, what I did was sales and marketing. I mean, I sat in front of a computer, I picked up phones, that was my, my role. And that's where I needed to be to ensure the business was successful. So I'd go into work, sit in front of a desk for eight 910 hours, come home, and I left very little time to take care of myself physically, I mean, the time that I did have I wanted to spend with my wife and daughters, you know, outside of the workplace. So I just completely dropped the ball in terms of my physical fitness, I was not well versed in terms of food and nutrition, and what I should be eating and what was good for me bad for me, etc. And it really just took a toll over time. So my, my 20s, I think I started out in a pretty good spot. And then throughout my 20s, into my early 30s, it just really deteriorated I got up to about 270 pounds, I think, at the peak. And if you look at some of my wedding photos, or some some photos from from towards the end of that journey, I mean, it's it's night and day difference between then and now. But there was, yeah, I definitely lost sight of what was important in regards to my physical health. As I was just kind of, you know, they said, had my head down grinding and trying to make the business work.

William Harris 33:37

So I feel like this is something that's all too true to most CEOs, we can all relate to that I've got my own version of that as well. Do you I actually tell people that there's almost it's almost a rite of passage. I'm not saying that you, you have to do that in order to be successful. But I would say that it's almost going to be inevitable if you're too balanced too early on to get to the point where you can be great at this one other thing and even just going back to let's just say Olympians, right? It's like if you're going to be the absolute number one or the best at something in whatever it is your respective field, you're likely going to be unbalanced in some other area of life. It's almost a necessity to a point. But then there needs to be a point where you have like this, you know, awakening and you say, Okay, I gotta get things back in order. What was the awakening moment for you where you said, Okay, wow, like, Here I am, and I need to change something. And how did you change that?

Chris Carey 34:36

Yeah, I guess I it really hit me one day. So I have two daughters. They're now 15 and 11. And I was my oldest at the time, I want to say was maybe five because I'm thinking this was about 10 years ago. So she was five or six and I was carrying her up. We have two very small flights of stairs up to the to her bedroom. And at the top of the stairs. I was like sweating profusely I was wind Did I had to take a break? And I'm like, This isn't right. Like I should not be at, you know, 30 years old at the time, I should not be, you know, this exhausted from just carrying her up the stairs. And I guess a little more backstory, my father has had several heart issues. So he had a triple bypass, he had a heart attack prior to that, and so it's been kind of top of mind for me. But you know, one of the things I guess I realized at that point in time is I want to be around for my daughter to grow up and to graduate high school and get her first job and get married, buy a house, maybe I have grandchildren someday, and I was on, it just kind of hit me at that point that I was on a bad path. And that that isn't, you know, a guarantee, and I'm going to need to work for it. And this was actually all around the same time. So I joined do we engage with an EOS implementer, I started to open myself up to reading and absorbing knowledge through, you know, whether physical books or audiobooks, and that was something I had never done, either. And I don't know what the catalyst was for that, where I'm like, Oh, maybe I can learn something from, you know, these people that took their time to put all of their thoughts into, you know, book form for me to consume 10 100 years later, whatever it might be. But I call this kind of my Enlightenment period, like, whatever it was, I was, I was opened up to a peer group, I was opened up to an operating system for businesses, I started to read books and consume content, and grow as an individual. And for whatever reason, you know, at that point, when I experienced this kind of physical, you know, awakening, carrying my daughter up the stairs, I decided it was time for me to do something about that as well and began about an 18 month weight weight loss journey where I was able to shave about 70 pounds off and, and get closer to the 200 pound mark was much more comfortable and feel feels a lot better now.

William Harris 37:01

Yeah, good for you. I had to laugh when you're talking about like, you know, reading a book finally. And, you know, it's like, reminds me of levar Burton's Reading Rainbow, write it up. Take a look at it, it just reminds me of just the importance of there are so many of the answers to the things that we're looking for have maybe already been discovered. And sometimes as entrepreneurs, we are answer, answer, figure outers, or whatever, I want to call that, right. We like to figure out the answers to problems versus just hear from somebody else what the answer was to a problem. And we almost find joy out of trying to figure it out ourselves. And so but rather than reinventing the wheel and saying, Well, okay, hey, circles been used for a really long time. Let's start there and iterate from there. But let's, let's call upon some of this knowledge that existed before, what book or books did you find particularly helpful for you and that early stage?

Chris Carey 37:58

Well, traction is the big one, obviously. Right? So as soon as as soon as Andrew shared that with me, I read traction, but that's more of a you know, it's just outlining the tools and the systems within EOS. I'm trying to think what I mean, so one that comes to mind right away, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie, you know, these are things as I'm reading it. And then another is the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. That these are things that in my opinion, should have been taught in high school like why did I say this book, I don't understand, like everyone can benefit from you know, learning some of these concepts and how to interact with people how to influence people how to, you know, just just be a successful, productive human being. You know, those were those were two of the big ones. Beyond that. Trying to think what else is top I've got on my website, I actually have a list of my my top 22 books, and I'm trying to think there are other business specific ones over time. Multipliers was a really good one then that I really enjoyed and that's Liz Wiseman, potentially. What else is up there? I got into stoicism. So you have what is it the daily? Where is it? Oh,

William Harris 39:11

yeah. What is this? Ryan?

Chris Carey 39:14

It's Ryan Holiday. Yeah, daily, stoic, maybe. So every day for 365 days, I'd read a stoic passage. So I got into Marcus Aurelius never could get into meditations directly, but I always loved you know, Ryan's interpretation of it. So yeah, I think those are a couple of the big ones. Oh, and then if you want to get tactical, so getting things done by David Allen, like just how to, you know, I have an in tray now in shirts, electronic versus paper, but just how to how to get things done, how to keep yourself organized, and that's I guess I'm a I'm a bit of an organization and productivity nerds, life hacks, if you want to call it so. I'll delve into that stuff and just eat it up. But yeah, those are some that come to mind. Right to the top of it. I have my list. So

William Harris 40:01

those are all excellent. I think I've read up just about every one that you mentioned there as well, there's a couple of me that I need to, I need to actually go look at the list that you have of all 22. So, you know, you found EO, you found EOS, you started reading and all of these things start moving you towards this growth, let's move forward into the exit, then that's a whole new level, I imagine you didn't plan on when you started the business, you didn't say, Hey, I'm going to build this in one day sell it, right? Because a lot of people don't they just start the business because they're interested in it. but correct me if I'm wrong, were you when you found the business, you didn't plan on selling it at that time?

Chris Carey 40:39

Much like we didn't plan on manufacturing, much like I never planned on, you know, buying my own building and building an expansion on it. I mean, so many things that were planned, like, it just never crossed my mind, I guess, for me to have thought about selling the business, I would have had had to have thought that it was going to get to the size or scale was where someone would actually want to buy it. You know, and they said, so it was several years into the journey before that had even crossed my mind. And then, you know, somewhere, I don't know where I heard it. But you know, it basically I was made aware that everyone, every entrepreneur is going to exit their business? And are you going to be standing up or lying down? And so that really resonated with me now, is this something that I'm gonna take to my grave? Do my kids want to have it? Or do I want to be proactive and sell this, you know, potentially at its peak in terms of valuation? Is this what I want to continue to do with the next chapter in my life? Or do I want to move on to something else? So yeah, I mean, there's a lot of, you know, it's kind of existential questions that I was struggling with, and ultimately decided that the time was right to start to explore sales.

William Harris 41:43

Yeah. So what did you do to prepare the business for being a sellable asset? Were there things that you ran into, and you're like, Oh, we got to do this or change this or, you know, things that you realize this is necessary for us to really make sure that we sell the business? Well,

Chris Carey 41:58

so I actually engaged with an investment banker. I don't know if you know, Jake Fishman from Madera partners here locally, but he was an EO sponsor at the time. And we just ran into each other, I think, an event and started talking, and I think he may be asked me the question, have you ever thought of selling your business? What's it look like your idea of an exit, and that's where he kind of started the conversation. So it piqued my interest. So I sent over, you know, some financials to him a couple of their data points. And we kind of realized at that point in time that the numbers weren't going to work out in terms of what I thought would be, you know, a valuation that I could get comfortable with and say, okay, yes, instead of just continuing to run this business, and, you know, try and make it more profitable, harvest some of those profits, maybe we look at selling, and then I can move into, you know, another chapter in my life. But we realized that we were a ways off from that. And so that was very informational to me. So I was able to just kind of say, Okay, we're, we're this far apart, I need to put my head back down, keep grinding, increase revenue, increase margin, reduce overhead, you know, improve the that add income to get to this target dollar, that's going to lead to potentially this multiple, and that's going to lead to, you know, ultimately the number that I wanted to get to to make exiting the business seem, you know, plausible. So

William Harris 43:13

what else did you do to help like the book or anything?

Chris Carey 43:17

Well, so there was a, there was a couple of books. And before I said that, I want to just really touch on the fact how helpful EOS was in this whole process. And when we were actually courting potential acquirers having a scorecard with historical data of performance of all these key performance indicators, having a VTO where we've, they know what our 10 year goal is, where a three year picture looks like, what our annual goals are, a 90 day rocks, have any accountability charge, Billy, here's every person on our team, what they're accountable for, I mean, just, we really, from the perspective of the buyers had things in order to a degree that they had not seen in other organizations that they evaluated. So I think that gave us a really strong competitive advantage in regards to finding and acquiring and making them comfortable that what we were saying about the business was truthful. And they knew exactly what they were buying. So huge, another huge upside of EOS there, two resources that I found a tremendous amount of value. And so as I decided, I decided I was going to sell the business. Then I reached out to people in my network that I had known to sell, and talk to everybody that I could, that had sold shares, trying to learn as much as I could, knowing that, you know, this may be something I'm only ever going to do once. And maybe most most answers probably only go through at once. And so it's there's not a huge abundance of knowledge or experience here out there on this but where it is I wanted to seek it out and learn from as many people as I could. Beyond that. I think this is probably another one on my book list Finish Big by Bo Burlingham. It was a huge, hugely beneficial to me and just a great guide in leading up to your thinking about selling your business, what should you do in preparation for selling your business. And then once you get there and you sell, then what and there's things you need to consider as an entrepreneur that's had your, your identity, your meaning your structure, you know, in one way for the last 15 years, and now all of a sudden, a switch flips, and it's all all different. So and to build on those three things, I think the structure meaning and identity, bullet points kind of come from a white paper from the Yale School of Management. And I think it's called, what was it? The entrepreneurs, it's something about post exit entrepreneurs and, and the dilemma that they face after exiting their business, maybe we'll have to find it for your, your show notes and get the exact name of that white paper. But yeah, yeah, yeah, that was hugely beneficial as well. And that was really focused primarily on, okay, now you've sold your business? What is it going to be like, after you sell your business? Why is even that scenario that, you know, most people will look at as, as a huge win? And, you know, a very positive situation? What are some of the potential pitfalls? What are some of the things that you're not thinking about, as you're, as you're navigating this new chapter of your life, without that business that you built and potentially, was your identity? You know, for the last for me, it was 15 years. So and you know, it structure as well, you're not getting up and going into the office anymore, you don't have your fixed weekly meeting with your leadership team, you're not seeing the people that I had seen every day for a decade or more. So it was, it was quite a big change. And so having, again, insight from people that had been there, done that some of the things that they struggled with, and how they ultimately overcame it, both through that white paper, and then the book Finish Big, was hugely valuable.

William Harris 46:50

I've heard that from a number of people, I don't even know if you and I've talked about this, we've helped 13 of our customers get acquired now. And so there's a lot of opportunity that I've had to speak to people about their own feelings of this. And And to your point, I would say that most of them, the struggle to actually get acquired, you know, whatever, you know, data that needed to happen in structuring it and all the legal stuff pales in comparison to the emotional wear and tear that you have of like, what's next now? That's, that's tough. So for you, what was next? Well, like, what, like, what have you done or what is next?

Chris Carey 47:25

Well, one thing I want to touch on, is you mentioned going through this journey, the due diligence period. So I as you're going, you know, we've signed the loi, we're going through all of the financials, all the data, you know, crossing the t's dotting the i's, I actually had towards the end of it. So we signed the loi, I think in mid October, and we were trying to close by December 31. And as the end of December approached, I started to get, I guess what they call premature ventricular contractions or PVCs. Like I had heart palpitations, where like, my heart would just skip a BS. And so I was really concerned, it's I go into the doctor, they do like an echocardiogram and couldn't find anything wrong. And then all of a sudden that one of them goes, would you happen to be under any stress? At the moment, I had to think to myself like well, I, I guess I am, yeah, I'm going through this, you know, sale by business, everything is falling on me in terms of having to provide them with information or data as it's needed. I didn't realize, you know, we go back to the frog in boiling water types there, I didn't realize how much was being asked of me, and how much work and stress was on my shoulders at that point in time, until, you know, it started to have actual negative repercussions on my physical health, because of how much how much stress I was under. So that was something that was, you know, another thing we talked about taking care of yourself physically before, this is another situation if you are selling your business, if you are going through deal with due diligence, it can be a lot and just kind of, you know, maybe take a step back and take toll of you know, how much stress you might be under and for me, I love playing ice hockey, love get out on the golf course. You know, what can you do to reduce stress during that time? I mean, it's certainly something to be conscious of so

William Harris 49:07

well, okay, so let's just chat about playing hockey real quick then and in the physicality of what you're doing there. One of the things that I have often speculated is that sometimes we need a real battle we need a real war and let's just say hockey or something like that a competitive sport gives you something to fight instead of fighting against you know, numbers or number crunchers or whatever else might be there because we are warriors there's something that is in our blood in our bones that we want we want a little bit of a fight a little something and if we don't have that, that competitive outlet that sometimes we can we can turn that competition into let's just say you know, things within business or you know, things within our spouses or whatever that might be, but there's an importance of just yet like you said, get out there play some hockey find that that competitive outlet.

Chris Carey 49:56

Yeah, and that's what so you alluded to it earlier, there is no Perfect balance, there's going to be a, there's phases in life. And, you know, one, one phase might require you to be predominantly focused on your business. And then there would be another phase where you're dealing with some family issues or what have you, and you need to lean into to your family. And that's at the expense of, of business or physical areas, and yourself personally. And then there's other times where, you know, after I had had gone down a path for 10 years where I needed to take care of myself, physically, I would specifically block off time in the middle of the day to go to the gym to get a workout in, because it was so important that I got that back in line. I think that if you can, I now see the value of physical exercise, and how much of an impact that makes on my work product. And had I realized that at the time, I probably would have blocked off more time to get some physical exercise or movement of some sort, because it made me that much more productive when I was, you know, in front of the desk in front of the monitor, so

William Harris 50:56

well making it a rock. And so going to like the EOS metaphor, and it's one of my favorite metaphors. And I don't know if they started it, but the idea of rocks, right, which is what they we talked about a lot in the US, but you've got your rocks, and then you know, the idea was like a vase, and it's like, okay, well, if you put in the water, and then the sand, and then the pebbles, like there's no room for the rocks, the things that are the most important. But if you put the rocks in first, then the pebbles can sift down through there, the sand can sift down through there, the water can sift out through there, same amount of material, but it all fits now, and to your point, you know, not just in business, setting up your rocks, but setting up your own personal rocks, as well as like an individual and human saying, I need this creative outlet, I need this physical outlet, I need my date nights with my wife, I need this time with my kids, whatever those things, I need time to you know, volunteer within my community or my church or whatever that might be, but saying, These are the things that are important to me to fill my soul. So I have that energy, emotional energy to continue moving forward, I think is something that we sometimes forget about as entrepreneurs do.

Chris Carey 51:57

Absolutely. And I'd have to look it up. And again, maybe we can find this other resource. But Darren Hardy, I'm a big fan of his, he does a the Darren daily video. He's a success coach, I think he started Success Magazine, but one of his tools is kind of a life assessment. And it's like rank yourself on how you're doing in terms of business and family, personal, spiritual, you know, myriad of other things and just knowing where you're at, and is this where you want to be. And sure it's not going to be a third, a third, a third, but do you want to be at 80% temperature and temperature? Or would you prefer it to be 6020 20? You know, and what do you need to do to make those adjustments? Just just so just an awareness of where you're allocating your time? Is this where you want to be in this phase, your life? Or do you need to make some changes? So some sort of a tool or system to keep track of? Hugely? Well? Yeah,

William Harris 52:50

we need to we need to link to that then because I think that would be a really great assessment for people to go through. Okay, so jumping back into what is next for you. And the things that I know are one, you're doing something new, but you also have a an e-commerce side hustle right now with your wife. And so I think it's just a really fun one. I want to bring that up as well.

Chris Carey 53:09

Yeah, so what's next for me, I guess, recently, so I signed on for two years post transaction to work with the organization that lasted about 16 months before we both decided that it was a mutually beneficial for us to part ways. So that was April of 22, at which point, I decided to join Shane Erickson's firm Traction Capital, which is a hybrid venture capital private equity fund. And I guess really the premise there was I wanted to learn more about the space. I guess, prior to selling my business, it seemed like an obvious thing that I was just going to start another business, whether I started from scratch, or I bought one. And then as I was kind of going through the whole process, I'll tell you, man, I love so many of the people that I met throughout my journey, but it was really nice to not have any employees for a while there. And I didn't know that I wanted to dive back into running organization where I would have to hire people and and, you know, have a team of people again, so I wanted to, I had done a little bit of angel investing in 2019. And I wanted to just learn more about the venture capital space. And this looks like a great opportunity for me to join an established fund, who had some really high level individuals, and go in and get to learn a little bit more about it. And that's what I've been doing for the past just over a year now is helping with traction. I believe my title is entrepreneur in residence, and that's kind of shifted around a little bit. But I've got three of their portfolio companies under my purview. And I'm just finding that I'm getting a ton of energy out of coaching and mentoring these early stage entrepreneurs that just have a ton of horsepower. And you know, they are they're where I was, you know, maybe 17 1617 years ago now. And it's so cool to just go back and kind of help them navigate some of the challenges that they're encountering. At this point in time. So that's been a great experience. And then beyond that, I think within the last year here, my wife actually decided to buy an e-commerce business. And I guess I would have to go super far down the rabbit hole. But I live in a household of Equine fanatic. So we love horses here. And my oldest daughter rides competitively. My youngest is getting into it, and actually, my wife, Heather is as well. And we, she started to look for a business that was in that industry. And so she ended up buying a business that makes halters and lead ropes for miniature horses and miniature donkeys. So it's almost like a niche within a niche. But it's something that she is super excited about. And we don't have any miniature horses or miniature donkeys as of yet, but I think it's only a matter of time at this point before before we're gonna have a new a new member of the family within that species so but she's it took her a little while to get her her feet underneath her. But she's got a really good handle on on the business now. And she's very excited to get into full size horses. And that was kind of the idea from the start was, you know, if we can we have a supplier relationship with someone that can make these for the miniature versions, we can certainly make them for the full size as well. And she's got some some pretty big aspirations for that business. So excited to support her on that journey.

William Harris 56:24

I love it when I loved when you first told me about it, you know, the idea was like you went from like one type of horsepower to another type of horsepower, which is what I kind of just shaded in the miniature horses, very tangential has nothing to do with e-commerce at all. I have really bad eyesight. It's like negative nine is my prescription. And it's like I can't see very well at all. Not quite legally blind. But my wife was asking me one day she was like, well, and we've got so we've got just about an acre of property right in town here, which is kind of a rare thing. It's like four city lots. And so she was like, well, we've got this fence up there and she's really cute. We've got chickens, we had ducks a little bit. She really wanted to buy a horse too and can't have a horse in the city. Like it's not enough forever. She was like, Well, what about a mini horse? So she was looking around for the one time she was like, well, you can get a seeing eye horse apparently, if you're blind enough she was like how much more blind do you need to get baby in order for us to get a seeing eye horse and she found one that was like an old retired horse named tater tots. So we may end up who knows buying a miniature horse? For my Seeing Eye horse and we'll we'll be buying some leads and stuff from you guys.

Chris Carey 57:24

That sounds great. Yeah, maybe we can set up like a modeling photoshoot or something get you a little reimburse you a little bit.

William Harris 57:30

Yeah, right. Right. That'd be great. Um, I want to transition real quick into the just like, who is Chris? A little bit as well. We talked about hockey, we talked about golf. But some of the other things that we didn't touch too much on. But you kind of hinted at here a little bit is, you know, your family is really important to you and your kids. And you told me one of the most important things that you're looking at for from a parenting perspective for your kids, is exercise and reading and obviously you hinted at reading. Tell me more about like, what that's like from a parenting perspective.

Chris Carey 58:04

Yeah, for the past, I guess a couple of years now, there's been something in the back of my mind. And maybe it came down to that, you know, whole revelation, you know, when I went on my kind of weight loss journey is that I'm not going to be here forever. And I want to do whatever I can to try and extend my time, you know, on this planet and be there for my daughters when they need me. But anything can happen. And so this goes back to stoicism as well. And memento mori. I mean, we could leave this earth at any time. And so if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, what is it that I would want to convey to my children and make sure that they, you know, because at 15 and 11, they're not ready to hear some of this, you know, deep philosophical stuff right now, but at some point, they may want to hear that, and I hope I'm around to to, you know, speak with them one on one, but if I'm not, you know, some sort of a repository of the things that I've learned in my, you know, 39 odd years on the planet. So that's been really top of mind. For me, it was gonna, it seemed obvious that it was going to be a book. But I just absolutely hate the process of writing. I go back through edit again, and edit again. And I tried to get it to perfect and so even a blog post takes me forever. So I was kind of Yeah, trying to find some other solution then then the, the written word and go in the book route. And that's what's led me to consider doing a podcast on my own at some point, which hopefully will be kicking off later this week. But yeah, as you mentioned, there really when I think about what I want to convey to my daughters, there's really two big themes and you know, I'm sure this will expand as I kind of go down my rabbit hole with the podcast, but reading and the value of that because I think I got so much out of that, which is just impossible to put a tangible value on and then exercise and the value of those two things and incorporating those into your life and making them habitual. And because I mean, you only get one one body, and you know, they need to take, I need to take care of myself and neglected it for too long. I would love for my daughters take care of their bodies, and, you know, to be healthy and happy for a long time. So we talk a lot about nutrition, and we talk a lot about exercise, but again, you know, at their ages, they're not necessarily super excited to have those conversations. So, so documenting the value of exercise, and then again, you know, my I have actually incentivized them to go through my reading list. And there's some books that would make sense now. And there's other ones that aren't going to make sense at all, because they're very business specific. But, you know, I'd love for them to read some of the same things that I did. And hopefully it resonates with them in the way that it did with me. And, you know, whether it's, I think there's a teenager version of The Seven Habits. So I've been sharing that was my 15 year old, and then How To Win Friends and Influence People when they're ready to, you know, absorb something along those lines, these are things that that I'm going to continue to try and hammer home and I think could be extremely beneficial to them leaving a you know, long joyfilled fulfilling life. So,

William Harris 1:01:14

yeah, and you said, you incentivize them how?

Chris Carey 1:01:17

So that I think I was, I think it was 100 bucks for each book that they read on my reading list. I mean, I tried to make it lucrative. And so far, she's only read one, which was the teenage version of the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. But, you know, at some point, she's, I think she's gonna want to buy something, and the the lower of $100 might make it worth it. So, so we'll see if I deviate from that. But that's the plan for now. So

William Harris 1:01:42

totally. If people wanted to, oh, I have one more thing for you. At the end, I like to do some kind of like a silly game. And so the one that I have for you is called What's that mean? And I'm just gonna give you a word. It is a word that you very likely have not heard of, because I haven't heard much either. It's very weird English word. If you've ever played like Balderdash, where you just you've got to make up a definition. Just want you to make a definition that you think sounds believable for this. So the word is Earth, which is E R, F, earth, what is the obvious definition of earth that you're going to convince us all of? Earth pi? E, R F,

Chris Carey 1:02:25

for whatever reason? It seems like an animal to me. And it's like a platypus platypus looking creature. In that, that that same genus or species? So it's a it is a variation of a platypus called Earth?

William Harris 1:02:45

Obviously, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, maybe that was you guys are gonna use you guys are gonna sell for horses and Earth's next.

Chris Carey 1:02:53

Yeah. Yeah. Get a little halter like, like, a leash. lead rope. Yeah, we can little platter for somebody.

William Harris 1:03:02

Okay, if people wanted to follow you, if they wanted to connect, if they wanted to work with you at Traction Capital, if they want to follow your podcast, what's the best way for them to stay in touch.

Chris Carey 1:03:14

So I have a personal website, it's chriscarey.vision. And that actually has a link to that yellow white paper we mentioned earlier. And then also my favorite books list that we talked about as well. And then tractioncapital.com If you're interested at all in venture investment, or following the fund in the Twin Cities here, and then the podcast is called Leading To Legacy. And that is on all of the social So Twitter, Instagram, etc. And then also leadingtolegacy.com is going to have all of our podcasts episodes as they're released. So

William Harris 1:03:50

awesome. I love it. Yes, check it out. Chris has got a lot of wisdom to share. I'm excited to be part of that. I think I got to hear just a little snippet of it the other day, so it's gonna be brutal. Pretty good one. Chris, thank you for jumping on here sharing your knowledge with us.

Chris Carey 1:04:05

Yeah, thank you, man. It was it was a pleasure. I always love connecting with you.

William Harris 1:04:09

Likewise, everybody else. Thanks for tuning in and have a great rest your day.

Outro 1:04:15

Thanks for listening to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris. We'll see you again next time and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.

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