Clearing Up Misconceptions: How Mergers Can Benefit Clients
Especially when a lot of clients might have a cynical expectation that when a company that’s going just fine merges with another company, it’s out of greed or some like business reasons that doesn’t necessarily benefit them. That might be they may be prone to thinking that, so you definitely want to go even above and beyond to make sure that they’re still feeling taken care of and understanding that this is in their interest to have better coverage and more standard offerings and better support in general. So that’s great that you’re checking in regularly. I’m curious if you’ve, if you know this meme, how it started versus how it’s going, how did you envision this process happening with, I’m sure you, it threw that.
Long due diligence process discovered that you’re operating under different kind of practices. How did you envision everything coalescing versus how it’s going now?
Yeah, so I think one thing that I just wanna say outright cuz it’s, it touches on where we left off on the last topic, but I didn’t decide to sell the business because I was looking for a large payday.
I was looking to continue the work of creating a large nationwide Apple focused MSP and I realized after trying pitching VCs, looking at alternate growth strategies, looking at ways that I could keep the business going without going in tremendous amount of debt, just seemed like the least path of friction was to partner with a company that was already backed by a venture capital firm. So that was the main reason for the merge. It was like, how can I continue to work towards my ultimate goal of building this nationwide company? So there, there was a financial upside in the initial sale, but the message that we’re telling our clients is, this is gonna benefit you in the long run because as we grow and scale, we’re gonna continue to improve upon our service, et cetera.
In terms of like, How I envisioned it, that was very much how I was envisioning it, right? And I’m gonna come in to this really amazing team, and I am going to start getting a lot of amazing support, and I am going to start providing some real value to my clients. I think when I first came in, I was expecting that to happen very rapidly.
And I also was expecting to go through the stages of change, right? So I think that the stages of change are very similar to like the stages of grief, where you’re like very excited at the beginning. Then reality is starting to set in a little bit. You’re going through stages where you’re like, man, I’m getting frustrated, regretting the decision that I made.
And I’m going through the mini grieving process, and then there’s like a reconciliation. So I knew that I was gonna go through those stages because as I was merging, I had to start letting go of the various different roles and responsibilities and things that I was doing. What I thought would happen was that I would be very excited to let go of those things and really embrace what I enjoyed doing.
What I learned was that it was difficult for me to let go of the things that I’ve been doing. For the last seven years, a lot more difficult than I thought I was gonna be. So there was a lot of personal reflection and conversations internally. Luck. Luckily for me, we were merger number two, so I was able to find comfort and partners.
On the Three 18 side who had been going through the process a little bit longer and earlier than me that were, they were able to guide me through those different stages. But where we are today took a lot longer than I had an anticipated. I feel like every decision and choice that we had made to get where we are today was a good, thoughtful, strategic choice.
But there was a lot of frustration. There was a lot of, did I make the right choice along the way? Hindsight though, remembering, right? I think that’s the thing about the change is you always think back and you remember the good and what you gave up, but you don’t remember all the bad that you were going through in the struggles that you had.
And so from a nuts and bolts perspective, I’m definitely better off now than I was when I started, and I’m definitely still happy with the decision that I made. Yeah, I would say you’ve hit every point that I was thinking about as you start the initial piece of making that conversation all the way up to where you are now and you hit those different stages that I was wondering about.
Yeah. Was there relation, was there, grief was there and Yeah. And it’s funny, even before I got to ask it, it was like, that’s exactly what I wanted to know. Yeah, no, it was a lot and there was a lot of. What I consider to be a business and emotional intelligence on the leadership team at the Interlaced HQ, when we were going through just the initial diligence phase, they were warning me like, Hey, before you put pen to paper, be a hundred percent sure that you are ready for what’s next because.
Business owner operators who sell their business, they will go through a stage where they ultimately regret the purchase, and it’s our job to make sure that. We’re guiding you through this process as much as just as much as letting you go through it so that because we care about you, we care about your clients and we care about the merger, and knowing that, and that was another reason why It was like, okay, it’s pretty clear that they care about me, they care about the clients, they care about the business.
It just made it that much easier to make the decision. I just didn’t think that it would. Be as impactful as it was. I, as I was going through those stages, I think I was. I was aware of it and I acknowledged it and I said I was ready for it. One day you wake up and you had a really hard day. When you’re the business owner operator, at the end of that day, you can say, I worked really hard and I struggled for something that was mine that I owned.
And when you’re working as an employee of a company, even though you founded it and you started it and you’re continuing to grow it, you’re starting to wonder. It at times. Where is your place at this company? Even though it’s very clear and delineated, you start to have second thoughts and it’s a very real thing.