Ep28: Grit It Done! Reid Tileston and His Journey From Corporate Finance To Fitness Ownership and Acquisitions

[00:00:00] We are back for another episode on the Published Impact Podcast. Today I'm joined with a special guest, Reid Tyleston. Reid's an author, a keynote speaker, and an expert in entrepreneurial business ownership. He's also a professor at Case Western University. And with the release of his upcoming book, Grit It Done, Reid has over 15 years of successful business ownership.

[00:00:24] So Reid, how are you? Yeah, good, Blake. Good. Thank you so much for having me on. It's all about having impact and one way to do that is certainly through writing books. So excited to be here. And thanks for joining me and you're in Salt Lake, I take it? Beautiful Salt Lake, Utah. Very nice. So today I want to talk about your book and really how you work through that process of getting your book written.

[00:00:50] And if it's okay with you, able to share with us what Grit It Done is, what's the story behind it. And first of all, how you started thinking about writing that book. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, my journey started when I was 23 years old. I was at the second oldest pub at Happy Hour in San Francisco, a place called the Old Ship Saloon.

[00:01:12] It's actually based in a, there's a mast at the bar of a ship that sunk in 1851 during the gold rush. I was working in finance, had a good gig, also had about 100, 000 in the bank, but I was feeling empty, not quite sure what the right next step was going to be for me in my career. I was out with two private equity professionals that were doing deal sourcing for franchisors.

[00:01:34] And they were looking at you know, a couple of concepts, one of which was anytime fitness, which is very big in Australia and New Zealand. Now I actually know the I know the master franchisees. I've known them for a long time. They've done very well over the years of that. It was back in 2007 and I knew I didn't want to stay in finance.

[00:01:51] I knew that I didn't want to be a spreadsheet jockey, but I also. You know, I don't have a degree in computer science. I didn't think I was going to go out and start the next Google. Long story short, I got into the world of fitness franchising and that kicked off for me 16 years of you know, successful entrepreneurial business ownership, opening franchising of franchises, buying and selling companies.

[00:02:13] Done well with it over the years. And after my last exit, I decided, you know what? This is a great wealth generation opportunity, both for Americans, both for Australians, people in the UK, whole nine yards, because there's a lot of business succession going on right now. And I want to take the things that I've learned over 16 years of doing this and and teaching it as well and investing in people to do it and just provide my unique spin on it.

[00:02:38] So I think that the West is better. With more business owners and to be a better citizen is to be an Austrian rural business owner. So I'm intrinsically motivated to educate as many people as I can about the path to going there. And let's be clear, Blake, it's not easy. It's risky and failure can come such as a personal guarantee with significant consequences, but it's the best way that I know of to enjoy freedom, create relationships and get a view of what good government can look like.

[00:03:14] That's great. And when you said you're intrinsically motivated, did that, the idea from that book, did it come a lot easier to you in terms of starting to write it? Well, for me, this is my life. I've been doing this for 16 years and it's just a critical part of my identity and I've achieved. So many fulfilling things out of it.

[00:03:34] I mean, the money's been great, but the more important part of it is a relationship. So that developed with you know, mainly with the key people that have worked for me over the years. And, and I'm still very close with so many of them that you know, that I'm not, I'm not their boss anymore. And one example is, which I mentioned in the book, which by the way, you can get at grit it done.

[00:03:55] com it is available for 99 cents through the end of May. Then it goes up to a, to a market price is that one of my best team members. Someone who went on to run a business for me, essentially absentee for the better part of 12 years. I was in a coffee shop doing diligence in a small town. I like to hang out in coffee shops and in, in markets that I want to open up businesses in, at least for the fitness business, because I get a vibe of what the town's like.

[00:04:22] I get to hear the gossip. I just, I get integrated. Like I'm almost a citizen, like I'm almost a resident there. So I was there. At my laptop running some projections about, you know, startup costs and tenant improvement costs and everything. When Blake out of nowhere, someone grabbed my arm kind of awkwardly.

[00:04:39] I looked up and she said, Hey are you that guy that's looking at opening the fitness center in town? And I said, yeah, yeah, I am. She introduced herself and said, I'm so excited for you to be opening. I want to be your first member. So let me know when you start selling memberships. And Blake is really this, that this, this lady went on to be one of the best team members that I've ever had.

[00:05:04] And it all started just with happenstance. So critical part of opening, owning, acquiring businesses, you know, being a business owner is the relationships. And I think a lot of people get into it for the freedom, the autonomy, own the upside, make a lot of money. And those things certainly exist at the end of the day.

[00:05:22] And the most fulfilling part for me has always been those relationships. Yeah, I love that. And I think, yeah, relationships are such a key value and importance in, in any, in any area of life really as well. And your title, I love the title for your book. How did you come up with that? Again, I came up with it by a different team member.

[00:05:45] Her name was Marilyn. Marilyn, this was an industrial services business. And I talk about the story in the book as well. Marilyn, She's tenacious. She's awesome. She gets after it. But part of her job is to do this really annoying task of managing accounts receivable with field service management software, which sounds like it's not that big a deal.

[00:06:06] It is actually insanely hard and it's equivalent to walking through a minefield because you have to get everything balanced. You're talking about You know, minimum hundreds of invoices. It is a quagmire and a half. One night, Marilyn was going to, and Marilyn is great at a lot of things, but she's not terribly quantitatively or technology minded.

[00:06:24] So this is really a challenge for her. However, one night, it's already been a terrible day. I mean, the worst kind of day, the next day is not looking to be a good day either. And she has to balance these books before she leaves. She goes through it. It's not balancing. Turns out it wasn't even her fault, it was actually the fault of one of the service providers.

[00:06:44] It's getting super late at night. We are just ready to quit and go and, but Marilyn wouldn't quit. She eventually got it done. And I was like, Marilyn, you really have this gritted done kind of attitude, just kind of set it naturally. And then I was at a small business owner forum a couple of days later, telling that story about all Maryland.

[00:07:04] She's awesome. She's great. She really grits it done. And one of my buddies who runs a fitness company, fitness manufacturing company was like, well, that's a really cool term, Reed. And that term really aligns to like you, because you know, he's known me for years and we've become very close. So he goes and looks it up on the U.

[00:07:23] S. You know, patent and trademark office. He's like, Hey, that, that, that trademark's available. So that's, that's where it was born. It was born from one of my team members, just just naturally. So I go into the details of the story in the book, again, gridded done. com 99 cents to the end of May. Because again, so much of this stuff.

[00:07:40] And like you said, Blake, all arenas of life, it's about relationships. It's about people. It is the key factor that drives fulfillment. And I've been able to experience that with entrepreneurial business ownership. Yeah. Love that. What are some of the common misconceptions about owning a business about entrepreneurship that you've encountered and how did you address those in your book or in your teachings?

[00:08:07] I think one misconception about it is that one way to de risk it is to align to, you know, high growth, sexy, you know, futuristic industries. I would tell you that the best way to de risk it is a couple things. One, and this is a critical dictum that I go through in the book, that is that the best way to de risk is to be all in.

[00:08:33] If you're not all in, you're in the way. If you have one foot in, you have one foot out. Go all in this path. Can be fulfilling monetarily, personally, whole 90 yards. It's hard though. And it's not for everybody. So I give high fives to people that decide not to do this. And then they just go and be like to their business owner, neighbor, and, you know, Sydney and say, Hey, you know, you're awesome.

[00:08:58] You're a business owner. That's definitely not the life for me, you know, but do that assessment part of it and understand what your, what your avatar is. And to answer your question, Blake, there's four avatars. One. is you're an employee. Employees are awesome. They're the backbone of companies, backbone of the economy, whole nine yards.

[00:09:14] The good ones get promoted, the bad ones tend to find the door. Then you have what I'll call equity employees. Equity employees are CEOs. They own some of the upside of what they do. Yet they are ultimately at the peril of a board or a boss. They don't control their destiny. Third avatar is a business owner.

[00:09:35] I've been a business owner for a long time. I love business owners ultimate because you own the upside you're in control. Ultimately though, the business can own the individual more than the individual owns the business, and it can turn into a, into a job. Now, with that said, there's nothing wrong with that.

[00:09:52] I spent a lot of years in that, in that space. And I think it's a great space to be. But there's a better option, and that's being an entrepreneurial business owner. And that is where you work on the business, not in the business. And then you can achieve a high level of freedom and autonomy that I think a lot of Westerners, a lot of Australians really strive for.

[00:10:13] So the critical part is understand which of those four avatars that you want to be. And you don't have to be an entrepreneur. You don't have to be a business owner. You can definitely be an employee and that's awesome. But take the time to do that assessment before you go forward. What I see a lot of people do in this space, because I've just been in it for a long time, as I see a lot of time, money and resources expended for people that kick tires down this path without actually knowing if it's the right fit.

[00:10:44] So key takeaway, take the time to do the assessment. So that you feel all in and you feel focused and you feel congruent with the path that you take. I love that. I think that's a great segue to this next question, because you've worked with some pretty cool brands, I would say, Milwaukee Bucks, isn't it one of them as well?

[00:11:04] What strategies Would you say have helped you to maintain relationships with high profile partnerships and brands as such?

[00:11:16] Ultimately, I think that when the bottom line is, how do you maintain relationships with high profile brands, high profile people, high profile, anything, simply understand what the need of the customer is. And secondly, ha offer a product and service that is in demand. And that's a critical part that I go through in the book.

[00:11:43] You know, there is, there is a lot of unsexy under the radar businesses out there that are fantastic services because their needs based. One example of that is the industrial services business that I bought that ended up being over a 10 X return on the money I put into it. And for me it was life generating wealth, right?

[00:12:05] That worked. I will work the rest of my life because the West does not need more people not working, but you know, working is optional for me. Is that you know, 1 thing the business did was grease trap pumping, right? Restaurants have grease traps and oftentimes municipalities or local governments require that the grease traps are pumped.

[00:12:22] But even if they don't, if a grease trap overflows on Valentine's Day at 7 o'clock at night or on Christmas Eve, right? And the restaurant smells like grease. The company, the restaurant is going to pay enormous amounts of money to get it cleaned up. And then they're going to pay to make sure it preventively doesn't happen again.

[00:12:40] Demand for businesses like that is essentially guaranteed. So, two key takeaways. One, treat your customers well. Stay close to them. Secondly, is provide something that is a needs based service that is in demand. And then, that's how you can maintain relationships with customers. Customers like Harley Davidson, the Milwaukee Bucks, Master Lock, John Deere, you name it.

[00:13:03] Yeah. Yeah. And throughout your journey up until now, how have you stayed intrinsically motivated? It's a fantastic it's a fantastic question. What ultimately drives me What ultimately motivates me, what ultimately allows me to get up in the morning when I really drill down onto the root cause of it, it's all about the people.

[00:13:26] I'll give you an example of that. So I'm an adjunct professor. I teach entrepreneurship through acquisition to MBAs, to executives. That have money and think about leaving their jobs and to undergrads, right? The reason i'm an adjunct professor is that when I was at business school at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in 2015 Booth launched a course on entrepreneurship through acquisition It was a first time course taught by two awesome adjuncts that are about actually the age that I am right now Which is which is kind of cool Being the teaching assistant blake for this class Well, the transformational experience, it was 40 hours a week of designing curriculum and doing class logistics.

[00:14:07] It was a ton of work, but I grew very close to these professors. And over the years, I've seen the impact that this class has had on people. And they wrote a case about me about some, about one of my acquisitions. I go back and I get to lecture on it from time to time. So I saw the impact this class had, and it really inspired me to want to go out and be an adjunct professor.

[00:14:29] When I'd attained a certain level of success. Which I obviously have. So it's the relationship with those two professors. That make it so that I will go through whatever I need to, I will get it done, overcome whatever obstacles are in my way to be an adjunct professor, because those two individuals motivated me to do so.

[00:14:48] So the intrinsic motivation for essentially everything that I do in life is based on some form of personal relationship. That's just one example of being being a professor. There's other ones of any other cool things you want to talk about, whether it be the competitive stair climbing, you know, Ironman stuff, we will get to that, all that, all that good stuff.

[00:15:09] It is, it is all about, all about the people. Yeah. Yeah. And can you share any specific strategies or techniques that you've used inside your book that entrepreneurs can implement to really enhance their career? Yeah, I absolutely, the critical part of it is to, it's habit creation, very big on habits for those that haven't read it, Atomic Habits by James Clear, absolute no brainer, right?

[00:15:36] Read that book, read it five times, it's fantastic. At this point, you know, my grid it done framework is really simple. I do exactly what I don't want to do, precisely when I don't want to do it. And that leads to great things. When I, when I follow that mentality, elation always awaits and I enjoy the journey doing it.

[00:15:55] At this point, I'm blessed. It's basically a habit that I've created. So I just, I do it naturally. I always get a little bit upset. Oh, I don't want to do that. I don't want to do it. I make an effort to smile when I'm in the moment doing exactly what I don't want to do as a positive behavioral reinforcement.

[00:16:11] And that's how I'm able to be effective. And, you know, I talked to a lot of individuals that have had, you know, reasonably high levels of success. And a very common theme is simply doing hard things doing what we don't want to do when we don't want to do it. Different people will use different ways to describe it.

[00:16:30] But that is it. And for me, the way that I'm able to do it is again, 2 fold. Right? 1, I just condition myself over the years to be able to do that. Secondly, is that what drives that deep. Inspiration, it's the relationships that I have. So if you want my model for being successful, that's outlined in the book.

[00:16:50] And also we're talking about it here. Do exactly what you don't want to do precisely when you don't want to do it. And the fuel for that, right? The fuel for that will come from the relationships that you have in your life. So just be thoughtful about who you surround yourself with. Love it. Love it. And let's go now back to what we just, what you mentioned before about the staircase in Switzerland.

[00:17:15] I thought the longest staircase I climbed was at an, at an Airbnb in Amsterdam, but Switzerland, how did that come up? It's amazing. One of my one of my ex romantic partners, her mom told her about this event in Switzerland some time ago, but she didn't tell me about it because she knew that when I found out about it, I was going to have to do it no matter what.

[00:17:37] And she was correct. But in 1915, the Swiss built a funicular up the side of about an 8, 000 foot peak in the Swiss Alps between Interlaken and Bern. This funicular has a maintenance staircase on the side of it that spans 11, 674 stairs. To put this in Yankee terms, it's seven times the number of stairs in the Empire State Building.

[00:18:02] It's the world's longest staircase. It took the Swiss 85 years, 1915 to 2000. Then they had the genius idea to do a race up this staircase. Trump in law been going on for since the year 2000, I found out about it and I had to do it. So I, it was sold out. Waitlist was overbooked, but through a little bit of persistence and creativity, mainly just brute force.

[00:18:26] I managed to get myself into it. And the timing worked out well, about two weeks after I sold the industrial services business, I went and I celebrated by climbing the world's tallest staircase. So it's an absolutely fantastic event for all the endurance junkies out there. Highly recommend it. Best kind of, best kind of pleasure and pain.

[00:18:48] That's awesome. And looking ahead, so we'll close off with a couple more questions, but looking ahead, what do you envision for the future of entrepreneurship and how do you see your role in shaping that future and your book helping those? Yeah, I mean, my role in entrepreneurship is just the idea that it's easier, not easier.

[00:19:09] I shouldn't say that it's lower risk. To buy an existing business, especially with the demographic trends around the silver tsunami It's lower risk to buy An existing business or buy into a franchise concept than it is to start something from scratch Simple as that there's good data on this from the u.

[00:19:28] s. So forgive me for not having any data on australia But new ventures 65 fail after 10 years in the u. s You could buy a business doing 400, 000 of EBITDA, and, you know, say you use some, some government backed high leverage. You can make more money than the median U. S. wages during the years that you operate it.

[00:19:51] And after 10 years, when the debt's paid off, you're gonna have a seven figure exit. So there is just great opportunities out there to buy existing businesses and to buy into existing franchise systems. Then there is from starting up. So that's my role in the space of entrepreneurship and business ownership is to encourage people to think through that route in the same way that I've been lucky enough to do, as opposed to starting businesses.

[00:20:16] And it's great because in my perspective, the more people that are aware of this route, just benefits the ecosystem overall, because there's more people buying small businesses will inspire more people to start small businesses. And there's pretty clear academic research out there. Which if you want to go to details, it's fun to talk about kind of where it comes from that individuals that are that work for themselves have obviously higher senses of autonomy and they're generally happier than people that do not work for themselves.

[00:20:46] So, to me, it's a no brainer, but I always caveat that Blake by saying that it's not for everybody. There's people that are certainly better fit for other roles. And the critical part is do the assessment and in the first chapter of the book, I have some rudimentary tools that allow individuals to go through and assess, you know, where they're at in the process and to see if, you know, further steps, further steps make sense.

[00:21:08] So that's my role there. Other thing I'd mention is that I've been giving back mode right now. I think that there's not a ton of academic research on small business in the West. So I currently, in addition to being a adjunct professor, I'm also working towards a PhD on entrepreneurship, new acquisition, where I study issues, do doctoral research on things such as seller sentiments, what separates finance, what separates people that are already highly financially successful.

[00:21:38] So I think the 1 percent of the U S what differentiates satisfied sellers versus unsatisfied sellers, what drives effectiveness for business owners, in addition to What factors differentiate people that successfully acquire businesses versus those that don't. So I'm very focused on exploring the academic side of this.

[00:21:57] And then after that, we'll probably transition into some form of a public service because being a business owner for so long, I got a view of what good government can look like. And I'm excited to pursue all that stuff. So that's kind of what the path is right now. But ultimately, at this very moment, Reason I wrote this book, grid at done, available@gridatdone.com, 99 cents to the end of May is that you know, you don't need an MBA to learn this stuff.

[00:22:21] You don't need to work in private equity. You get all the lessons that I've learned from doing this over 16 years, nine steps as a way to understand if it's the if it's a viable path for you. That's incredible. And what, what's the biggest takeaway? If you had to choose one takeaway that you want your readers or your audience to take away from this book, what would that be?

[00:22:43] When it comes to the world of entrepreneurial business ownership, to repeat something that I said earlier, if you're not all in, you are in the way. So discover if you can get all into this, right. And if you're asking yourself, am I all into it? The answer is probably no, but don't do yourself that disservice.

[00:23:04] Don't do your loved ones that disservice. Don't do the great country of Australia that disservice, right? If you're not all in, you're in the way, but if you are all in, oh Blake, the sky can be the limit. You're clearly all into the ventures that you're doing right now. I can get that sense by, you know, looking you up online and talking to you and understanding where your concurrency and your vision is at.

[00:23:26] So you're leading by example. If you're not all in, you're in the way. Brilliant. Brilliant. So thank you very much Reed for joining me today. Is there any last words you have? No, thank you. Well, thank you so much for having me on. Yeah. Just a grid at done. com. 99 cents through the end of May. And I'm a just thankful for you having me on the podcast today, Blake.

[00:23:47] Thank you for coming on. I will put the link in the show notes for grid at. com as well. Grid at done. com. So you can go and get reads a book, which will be available. What date? May 13th. So seven days from now. Yeah. We're sorry. As of time of recording it will be available in May. So once this episode is loaded up, you will be able to access it, it will be available in the show notes, but for now, thanks very much for joining me, Reid.

[00:24:15] And we'll catch you guys on the next one.