Lessons Learned From a Year of Growth + Exit: Highlights for Business Owners

Intro 0:06

Welcome to the Growth + Exit podcast where owners of privately held middle market companies talk about founding, scaling and exiting their businesses successfully. Learn how to maximize and monetize your business on your own terms. Let’s get started.

Susan Kearney  0:30

Hi, I’m Susan Kearney. I’m here with my colleague Heather Bennett, and we are a co host for the Growth + Exit podcast where middle market owners and experts talk about founding, growing, scaling and often exiting their businesses on their own terms. This episode as usual is brought to by Newport LLC. We’re a team of seasoned C suite executives who help CEOs of middle market privately held companies grow de risk and as to their businesses. We in 2026 are happy to announce that we are winners of the prestigious Inc. Magazine Power Partner Award for 2025 and we thank our customers for the wonderful things they said about our work with them that allowed us to win that award. You can see that list of award winners at ink comm slash power dash partner, dash awards. You can learn more about us at Newportllc.com. So Heather, it’s been a while since you and I were on the podcast together, about a year. It’s our one year anniversary. So happy birthday to us and to our podcast. It’s been so exciting.

Heather Bennett  1:41

We’ve had close to 40 yes already on the podcast, and the year went really fast. So many good stories, so many impressive entrepreneurs and founders that have really shared the ups and the downs of what it’s like to build a business. So, so what? What were some of the moments you enjoyed the most?

Susan Kearney  2:08

So I have to admit that I when we started the podcast, I had a little trepidation, because I had done nothing like this, and there’s a certain element of stress in finding business owners to be guests, be on our podcast, but I have to tell you, it’s just been great. I have so enjoyed maybe one of the things I’ve enjoyed the most is that by the time I am introduced to a business owner and we do the podcast, I feel like I’ve made a new friend. The people I’ve met have been smart. They’ve been growth minded and action oriented. They’re lifelong learners, and they share some of the toughest things that they’ve been through in their professional careers, and I really respect that, so that’s been a great thing for me. How about you?

Heather Bennett  2:57

I absolutely agree. I love the conversation. There are so many, so many like, expected consistencies across the successful business owners that you would expect, you know, financial, like you said, They’re smart, they’re intelligent, always learning. I think one of the things I’ve found really interesting is they’re the importance that they put on the people they work with and developing a great team to get the job done. So something like that, another, another thing that I’ve noticed is quite a few of them are authors. So you know, just a few that come to mind. Davis Anderson is the founder of Manufacturers’ Collective. He authored Sustaining a Family Jewel, which is really a wonderful cautionary tale on how to run a family business, or how not to run it into the ground. And, you know, it was really a great, great guest talking about that. John Fairclough just released Embrace for Impact, which is a really inspiring, like leadership book that kind of goes against the expected societal norms of self help books. And he’s the founder of Resicom Group which is won multiple entrepreneurial awards. So Jody Jankovsky, founder and CEO of Blackline, you know, which has been listed twice in the Inc, you know, fastest growing companies. So, you know, he knows what he’s talking about. And he authored technology intelligence, which, I think right now with everything that’s going on with AI and digital integration, you know, really something that leaders need to be thinking about. And then, of course, our founder of Newport and our chairman, Doug Tatum, you know, like his, his book, No Man’s Land. So I know you, you interviewed Doug, and you know, what do you think his book tells business owners now?

Susan Kearney  4:52

Yeah, I’ve actually been lucky to interview Doug twice on this podcast. He’s the only guest I think we’ve had twice. Nice, and I guess in a Saturday Night Live kind of way, he’s working toward his own green jacket. But we did have quite a conversation about No Man’s Land, no man’s land. And he wrote as a result of his experience as an entrepreneur, you know, founding, scaling and and selling his business. And the book is about common themes, and there’s a stage in the development of all businesses where they’re too small to have the resources and need to do what big firms do, but they’re too big to act like startups too big to be small. And so his book is about some common themes there, about communication, understanding your value, building and aligning leadership teams, all the things that our guests have told us about on the podcast this year, really, one of the things that he has talks about a little bit in his book that I have talked with, the people I’ve interviewed about, which to me, has been fascinating, is, you know, when you’re a private company owner, it’s not if you’ll Have a near death experience. It’s when and how many near death experiences you’ll have. It’s a very, very common theme, and I think for business owners that I’ve talked to listen to our podcast, that’s one of the things that they take away is it’s not just me. It’s not just me feeling like I really messed something up. It’s just a part of the learning and a part of the evolution and the growing. And so I’m wondering if you, if you’ve heard the same thing from the guests that you’ve interviewed about that,

Heather Bennett  6:29

yeah, it said first five to seven years that they talk about. Because I always ask, I said, When, when, at what point did you feel that you had something, you had a solid Running Company and and it really, it’s not right away. It takes time. So they, they all have shared that there’s a specific, like time point when they were like, wow, our cash flow was finally on the right side of the page. I was able to hire more people. Like, you know, there was, like, a certain point where, but before that, like you said, there was a lot of ups and downs and and I like, like the description near death experiences, businesses should be alive and thriving. So to talk about, you know, what happens at that point, and the reserves they draw upon, or the resources or the people, because it’s different for every founder, like, what helped them get through that process? And I think that’s what’s important about having many guests on the show, is being able to show the different ways they got through those really rough times.

Susan Kearney  7:35

Yeah, I agree with you. I agree with you. And of course, some don’t. We’ve had some guests where that was not a near death experience, but rather a death experience. But so many don’t take that no for an answer and get right back in it. You know, a thing that’s been interesting to me, you know, because we ask about how they came to start a business. How did you become an entrepreneur? Is how many accidental entrepreneurs there are, you know, one of the early folks I interviewed was Dan Lawrence, who’s a co founder and CEO of OBM, which is a software company. And, you know, Dan graduated from school and he was a software engineer working for the federal government on top secret kinds of things. And he and a colleague, kind of, I want to say, stumbled, I’m sure it was a little bit more intentional than that, but kind of stumbled on Bitcoin mining, and as a result, have built a wonderful business that helps Bitcoin miners and other industries manage the operations of high compute kind of applications. Think Bitcoin mining AI and the like. He’s kind of surprised sometimes to find himself in that role, because he didn’t intend it. But yet he’s he’s really found a niche there and built a very, very valuable and an interesting business.

Heather Bennett  8:54

Yeah, I would say the one that comes to mind for me is Craig Snyder, who founded VIKOR and the founding story is one of his bosses, I think, died and left him with, like, literally, it was him, two guys in a truck, and he built a multi, multi million dollar business from it, and, and the idea is, like, he didn’t plan on that. He had other plans, but it was one of the, it was the moments when they were starting to build all of the cell towers, and how important it was to get that infrastructure up and get it up fast, and get it up well, and then to have support for that in terms of, you know, we all think mobile, everything’s wireless, whatever, but there, there is a physical component to it. So having him talk about, he’s like, this is not what I planned. This is what wasn’t what I was thinking of doing, but it was an opportunity, yeah, and, and I find entrepreneurs understand that combination of hustle and luck. The idea is you’re always hustling and working so that when that right opportunity comes by, or when that offer of capital to sell, you know, and I think. At the exit. I’d love to hear your thoughts on exiting and what what you’ve heard in terms of when that right moment, or what you know what happened during that exit strategy that made it successful for the founders?

Susan Kearney  10:12

Yeah, that’s a great question, because we’re going to be seeing more and more and more of that exit as middle market business owners age out. I’m happy to say that none of the folks that I’ve interviewed have exited because of health reasons, you know, or family problems or things of that, which does absolutely happen, but mostly because that business hadn’t reached a level of maturity that they felt like they could then, you know, move along. One of the folks that I talked to, Jim Fitzgerald, who’s now the CEO of Paycile, he’s on to his next entrepreneurial venture, had an experience where a very positive experience exiting, you know, his company. He built it. He built his leadership team. They were on a roll. Their clients were extremely happy. They were able to sell the business, and it was great for the clients. It was great for the team. It was great for the owner. Really opened his eyes, because it was the first time he had dealt with PE firms and capital markets and, you know, those kinds of things. You know, the one lesson he learned when he talked to me was, boy, make sure you have great advisors and experts around you when you begin the process of preparing to exit and exiting, because you may only do it once in your life, and it’s really, really important, not just to the owner, you know, but to everybody else. So that was one that I took away. And of course, I wish him well in his new venture. We’ll see if it’s easier the second time around. I wonder. You know, sometimes in interviewing people, you ask a question and you get an answer that you don’t expect, that might be surprising or funny or heartbreaking. I guess I had one of these experiences when I was talking to the founder and CEO of a local delivery company and and I asked him what his first job was as an entrepreneur, and he’d explain that his father was an entrepreneur, and so on and so forth. And I was wondering why he got into it. And he said, Well, you know, the first business I ever started was I would steal cigarettes from my father and resell them to my friends in middle school. I was like, I didn’t expect that when I asked that question of what was your first entrepreneurial venture, but okay, I got it. Appreciate that, Eric and so you just never know when you ask a question, you know what the answer is going to be, right? Slowly, no,

Heather Bennett  12:41

I had not quite the same situation, but talking to Jeff Janicik of Innoflight and realizing, you know, literally, we were talking about throwing things into outer space, and the importance, like all of the work he was doing. And again, same thing he was, he was just part of a team working for the US government, working on Lisa. And all of a sudden that turned into, you know, this wonderfully successful multi X, you know, he’s exited multiple times from it successfully. And that’s, it’s amazing. But not, you know, something they play, he’s like, I’m just an engineer. I’m just, I’m working, you know, as part of the armed services like this is not what I expected so but, but a great story to see that you know through that there’s a consistency of passion, a passion to create a business, to do something entrepreneurial, which is great.

Susan Kearney  13:34

Yeah, I agree. And sometimes, sometimes our guests have found themselves doing work as a CEO that they didn’t ever anticipate or understand. For example, you know, Kyle Marinkovich is a CEO at, kind of, your way Northern Diversified Solutions. And he started a business, he’s in the CBD business with consumer products. And he found that after a few years, and, you know, success, and the thing was building that there were some federal regulation problems for his industry. And so suddenly he’s not only the spokesman for the company. He’s not only the, you know, day to day Overseer and the growth engine and the visionary. Suddenly here he is, and he’s spending his time in Washington working with the federal government to try to take care of the policy issue that literally can be life or death for his industry. And he he that was nothing he ever set out to do. He didn’t expect to do it, but he’s kind of strapped those boots on, and he’s figured it out, and he’s leading that effort in his industry for the benefit of, you know, himself and his company, but the entire industry. And so that I really respected that, maybe that’s because I’m a DC gal, but really respected, you know, his openness to figuring out that kind of national policy process, which can be really complex and awful.

Heather Bennett  14:54

And I find that that’s another trait that I or situation I’m finding consistent with a. Lot of our guests, is that they not only are growing their companies and doing right things that way, but they also feel compelled to have, we’ll say, a larger voice. And they’ve recognized that using their success to support, you know, a bigger goal. You know, for example, Matt Vuckov and I you know, obviously he’s created this incredible company,TalentCraft, and what they do is amazing. But what he enjoyed talking about the most was what we need to do in this country to develop our workforce going forward. And he’s interacting with, you know, government groups, policy groups, with universities. He’s he’s got actively working on these task forces throughout the United States to try and figure out what we needed to do to develop our workforce going forward. And then Tom Parker, similar thing created elevate. And Tom Parker’s CEO, founder of Alined, and his his push was he wanted to find a financial organization to support executives and have a place where they could get together. So he created it, why not? Right? Which I think is amazing.

Susan Kearney  16:08

Yeah, that’s what entrepreneurs do, right? They don’t join a thing, they start a thing, right? And that’s one of the differences, and it’s hard to do, but boy, is it gratifying. At the end of the day, I’ve had a chance to talk to a few folks who are founders or CEOs, or both of folks who have the government as their client. The federal government is their client. And that’s been interesting, you know, for me, because, you know, my dad was a government employee for a number of years on Capitol Hill, so I have heart for that particular group. But I had a chance to interview Mohammad Elias of Reli Group Yeah, it was a great one. Isn’t he terrific? I mean, he’s an immigrant to United States and was a consultant in a large consulting organization serving the federal government. Thought there was a better way to do it, and set off on his own. And he’s very mission focused for our country, for the way our government operates, for his team, and the jobs that he builds and so on. And has started a foundation he and his wife operate. And I just really was heartwarming. You know, sometimes in business it feels like it’s a little cold, and I felt like he, he, you know, as an immigrant to our nation, had it has such a love for our country and what we’re trying to do, and has really spent his professional life trying to advance, you know, our nation. And it was just a great, great conversation that I loved.

Heather Bennett  17:37

Yeah, that was, that was a great that was a great episode. Another one I think of is Anisa luthana, who, again, was, and her story is great because she got right up to the day they were going to announce selling the company, and then changed her mind and went on to do great things with two companies that her family that she became the CEO and owner of. So that’s, that’s an episode. I would encourage anyone who’s going through the exit process to listen to what her thought process was behind that. And same thing, it really focused on the people, but that hunger to grow the company in a new direction, and they, they’ve just started going into a new market. I’m so excited for her and her team. I got to go visit her manufacturing floor and get a lot of people work for her and and with her, and really getting to understand where they were going, right? Well, we’re almost to the end of this episode. This has gone quickly. I think it’s such a pleasure to talk about this podcast and all the amazing guests we’ve had, you know, so Susan, what do you think for for year two?

Susan Kearney  18:49

I was gonna ask you that cash. I was gonna ask you that exact same thing. You know, it’s nice to have a birthday or an anniversary and celebrate our first year, but I look forward to many years of doing this podcast, and I have to say, you know, based on the feedback from listeners, I don’t think there’s a ton to pivot in this podcast. I think the you know, the recipe of finding successful and sometimes not so successful, business owners who are open to share their experiences is really a winner for our audience. They just love to hear from their peers. I think we’ll, you know, continue to that would sure love to hear from audience members if they want to reach out to us and suggest topics we talk about, or business owners they’d like to hear from, or, you know, things they’d like to hear us talk about. But I think it’s really more of the same, more honest conversation, more insightful questions, more surprising answers, you know, and more learning about how entrepreneurs think, the sense of urgency they have, the dedication they have to their business and their teams, and the difference that they make. For all of us, even if we’re only tangentially aware of their existence.

Heather Bennett  20:04

Absolutely, yeah, I think continuing on with meeting even more great business founders so important. I think the keys to to year two are going to be, you know, extending what those patterns have been showing us, like, where are those those key moments where decision making, and I think you you really hit the nail on the head. The ones I’ve seen who are most successful had a core group of people and advisors around them that they were able to lean on during those rough times. So maybe I’d like to explore that more, like, what helped them during those difficult decision making moments.

Susan Kearney  20:45

That sounds excellent. That sounds excellent. So last question, what’s your favorite lesson? What’s the best thing that you learned this year from those folks?

Heather Bennett  20:56

Oh, gosh, get creative with funding. I There are, there’s no one way to fund a growing company, and I I look forward to learning even more ways. Every time I talk to somebody, I’m like, wow, you can do that with real estate to fund your business. Did not know that great. So I found that to be one of those surprising moments. How about you?

Susan Kearney  21:25

You know, I think not surprising, but relearning, which is just open mindedness, is so important. Whether it’s the kind of business you start, the way you build it, the people you hire, the clients. You know, when you’re building a company, you zig and you zag, and your first idea may not be the one that hums in the marketplace. You may make bad hires and have to replace them. A lot of things change on the path, but as long as you’re open minded and keep the end point in mind and zig and zig and zag and zag, you’ll get there with persistence and and it’s so gratifying, you know, when you hear the stories of these. So I think that’s a thing for me. So you want to wrap us up, Heather,

Heather Bennett  22:09

yeah, yeah. So this is Heather Bennett with Susan Kearney, your host for the Growth + Exit podcast, thanking you for listening and hoping you will join us for year two, and of course, any introductions to new guests. We’re always interested in hearing more of these amazing founder stories. Thank you.

Susan Kearney  22:31

Thank you, Heather.

Outro 22:37

Thank you for listening to the Growth + Exit podcast sponsored by Newport, a unique national business advisory firm. If you enjoy this show, be sure to share, like and subscribe for future episodes.