The Hard Truths of Entrepreneurship

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  0:22

Hi, I’m Susan Kearney, and this is the Growth + Exit podcast brought to you by Newport LLC. We’re a group of experienced C suite executives who help private company business owners with issues related to scaling and exiting their businesses. Today, I’m talking with Tim Hohman. Tim is a serial entrepreneur, CEO and a board advisor. Tim founded Triad Technologies and also BoxBoat Technologies, which was recently acquired by IBM. So congratulations Tim on that that’s I know reflects a lot of work on your part in your team’s part. Tim’s currently working on a new venture, and I hope that at some point during the podcast today, we’ll get to ask him a little bit about that new venture and hear what he’s got coming up next. Welcome Tim.

Tim Hohman  1:18

Thank you. Susan, appreciate glad to be here.

Susan Kearney  1:20

Yeah, it’s great to have you. Tim, let’s start off first talking a little bit about you professionally. Tell us a little bit about your background. Is there a common thread that runs through your career?

Tim Hohman  1:33

For sure, for sure, I would say the common threads are the software industry and sales. I started with Oracle corporations. Specifically Oracle government focused on selling software to the government. And it was really interesting. I was selling to company organizations like the Department of Labor, EPA, the Postal Service. You know, at one point, I was the account manager for the Postal Service, and really got to understand, kind of everything they did. And you know how deeply they went after their mission. It was really fascinating. The other part about Oracle that was neat. It’s got a rigorous sales culture, yes, so it’s known for the discipline of their sales culture. So things like, you know, quarterly forecast, and you know, if you make a commit, you better bring it in. I kind of learned all of that early.

Susan Kearney  2:26

Yeah, you know, I sold a business once to Oracle, and I experienced it just as you did. It was an exciting place to be, super high growth, but you better know your business if you’re going to be there and execute on it. So I can, I’m envisioning you there in Oracle, federal.

Tim Hohman  2:41

Well, then from there, I went on to other software companies, yeah, so Ariba, kind of during the comm era, BMC Software, and then IBM. And at those companies, I was more leading software sales teams. I kind of got some management experience, some leadership experience, that was really neat. And then Ariba was actually a very interesting part, because that was really kind of my first taste of being an entrepreneur. I was tasked to be to kind of open up the federal government business for Ariba, you know. But they were a California based software company, so they didn’t really understand the federal government. They just knew was a big market, so they gave me, kind of the resources of a sales rep, but expected me to act like a business leader. And so that whole thing about kind of doing more with less, and scraping every little resource, I learned a lot of that at Arena,

Susan Kearney  3:40

for sure. You know, it’s interesting. It seems like some of the things that you’ve already told me about that you learn are great lessons that I’m hoping you’ll be able to share with other entrepreneurs. Because a lot of business owners have a really hard time understanding grasping sales, hiring the right sales talent, and building a sales team and culture if they don’t from that and and you did. And so I’m going to ask you in a second to tell me about that success, but also doing a lot with a little, and being flexible,

Tim Hohman  4:12

for sure, for sure, the flexibility is a big piece of it. And then, you know, finding creative solutions is another piece, right? And again, kind of, I’ll go back to the Ariba story. But, you know, one of the things I had at Oracle was this huge group of resources around me. Yeah, right. So, you know, every contract vehicle I needed, which is an important way to sell software to the government, you need to be able to have a contract, was available to me. And they were just kind of there already. You know where at Ariba, I had none and so all of a sudden I couldn’t go to market. I needed a contract vehicle, yet they were expensive to kind of go get your own GSA schedule or go do something. So that’s where it was a very early on. But that’s where I got connected with a company called MX group that you. Know, they were a reseller, and they would put you on their GSA schedule. Oh, yeah. The benefit of that for a company like Ariba was that there was no upfront cost. They took their fees out of the transactions, and we’ll come back to that later in my career, but that was kind of an aha moment for me. Number one, it got done when I needed to at that time, was to at that time was to be able to sell Ariba to the government. But I kind of got this light bulb about, hey, that’s a that’s a business model that that

Susan Kearney  5:27

could work. Yeah, that’s great. What how lucky for you to be able to have that early learning. So how long were you in a Reba? And what came next?

Tim Hohman  5:36

I was at Ariba just a few years Brandon actually had cancer in there at the end of my Ariba stay, so had to overcome that. And then that’s when I moved on to BMC Software. Led a team there, you know, selling to the government, and then from there, ended up at IBM, and that was really my largest team, probably, you know, 60 plus people cover, you know, federal government, state and local, kind of all the sales engineers, the services people. That was a lot of fun, but had its own challenges of kind of being kind of a two tier manager, you know, manager of managers, where, when you’re someone that likes to get hands on and do things, it’s learn a new skill set.

Susan Kearney  6:26

So how’d you come to start your own business? What made you decide to take that leap? What was your big idea?

Tim Hohman  6:34

So yeah, I’d always had this idea. I wanted to be an entrepreneur, but my thought was always I needed to be an expert in something, okay? And you know that that, you know you can’t start a business if you’re not an expert in something. And by the time I finished, I was at IBM in 2009 I had been, you know, working in the software industry for 15 years. I had learned about this thing at Ariva and MX group about this kind of new model, which in essence, would be helping software companies get into the federal government. And, you know, the business model is then taking money during those transactions. I said, I think I’m ready, you know, I’ve identified the business model. I know a lot of people in the industry. I feel comfortable about the space so that and the software world in general was just getting bigger and bigger. When I entered software, the bigger deals were around hardware, you know, kind of the infrastructure to run the software. And software was this little player. And over time, you know, Mark Andreessen would say Software is eating the world, right? Yeah, more and more software became much more important to businesses, and so it was a bigger pie, and I felt I could get into the market and earn my piece.

Susan Kearney  7:47

Yeah, so how did it feel making a leap from a place like IBM to starting your own business? Scary.

Tim Hohman  7:58

You know, you had to do a little bit of saving to make sure you had a, you know, something to fall back on. You kind of work, maybe both, both jobs for a while. No, you’re not, you’re not necessarily working the new job, because you wouldn’t want to do that, but you were kind of doing the planning and the ideas and everything that would make that new on, you know, new endeavor, successful those it was scary to do that, and then when you finally cut the cord and you don’t have a paycheck, you know, that’s the, that’s the scariest part. And the question there, there’s the clock, which is, you know, how quickly can I get to the point where I can pay

Susan Kearney  8:39

myself? Yeah, yeah, that’s when you learn if you really are entrepreneurial, and if you really do have a sense of urgency, right?

Tim Hohman  8:46

For sure, for sure. And the way I the way I tackled that was, while I had this idea of bringing net new software companies into the federal government and going after, you know, emerging software companies, I started also as an IBM reseller and and service provider. So and because I had this large team of people working for me, I was able to immediately go back and work with them to help them get their deals done and help them implement their software deals. So it was kind of some immediate revenue in that manner. Yeah, it also made it a little easier to leave. IBM to say, Hey, I’m leaving, but I’m going to be a partner,

Susan Kearney  9:29

right, right? I’m not going to compete with you. I’m going to make it easier for you to be successful. Exactly. Yeah. So talk to me about some of the lessons that you learned as a first time entrepreneur while you were building and leading Triad Technologies.

Tim Hohman  9:46

Sure, I’ve got a couple. First one is going to pick your business partners carefully. Ah, part of my success at Triad was that I brought a business partner. Partner, along with me, also from IBM, that was one of our top sales reps, and so had been working in this space a long time, and knew a lot of people, and so that helped us kind of generate pipeline, you know, from the start. But you know, when you’re picking a partner, you really need to pick somebody that kind of has your same ethics, you know, understands open communication, and, you know, as we were, you know, four, so years in, we kind of ran into some trouble there. Okay, and so it got to the point where it just didn’t make sense for us to work together. And so I’m not sure that could have been foreseen. It is something that if you were starting a new business and you were picking partners, you should make it’s kind of like a marriage, you know, you better be you better really feel comfortable. That’s number one. Number two, I would say, is kind of the importance of cash and credit. You know, no cash in the bank means you can’t pay your employees. And you know, we never missed payroll, you know, but we did get close a few times, and that’s a that’s a sinking feeling when something like that happens. So that’s critical. And then also credit. Credit is like an incredible weapon in your toolbox, and so having access to good credit can allow you to take opportunities you might otherwise not take. And so kind of the whole idea of having a banking relationship, and you know, managing that relationship really well is something I really didn’t understand. But that’s very important, you know, in a business. And then the last one, I would say, is truly understand how the market sees your company. And this is one I learned over time, but like, you know, Triad was kind of, first, a reseller, and secondly, a services company, meaning implementing the software. And while the reseller brought in a lot of good cash flow, it really wasn’t valued in the outside market. But service is part of the company, so we were a service now services partner that was highly valued. And so when you’re saying, Where am I going to spend my energy in the business, should I spend my energy on the reseller side of the business or the services side of the business, where the services side of the business is kind of, if I could grow that it really has some external value, that’s where I should have been spending more time. Yeah, it took me a while to figure that out.

Susan Kearney  12:46

So this is a challenge, I think, for a lot of folks in your shoes, or even experienced entrepreneurs, because you have an idea and you take it to market, and you think it’s great, and sometimes you forget to be an outside in company, to be constantly in communication with the market. How did you go about doing that at Triad, getting that consistent market input that would help you focus in the right places?

Tim Hohman  13:13

I would say I failed at that at Triad. You know, I did that at BoxBoat. And that’s that’s why BoxBoat was a better, better, better ending and a better story, you know, but I we really did not do a good job of that at Triad. We were very focused on the inside of the business, and what we’re doing to drive that less focused on, you know, how we were being perceived. Yeah, hard way. Yes. Learned it the hard way for sure.

Susan Kearney  13:44

Okay, so what happened in the end with Triad Technologies?

Tim Hohman  13:49

So, so we agreed to kind of separate, right? And and my partner bought me out of the company, okay? And then as part of that, we are already in the midst of selling our service now, services business to KPMG, okay, which, again, we kind of sold that jewel of an asset, yeah. So that was kind of all, part of it, part of that exit. So it was a good exit, and the company’s still running, you know, they’re, they’re just really now focused on being a reseller into the federal government, specifically the intelligence space,

Susan Kearney  14:30

yeah, sounds like you learned your lessons and took that treasure and went off to bigger and better things. Exactly, exactly. Yeah. So how about BoxBoat? Tell me about that.

Tim Hohman  14:43

So BoxBoat One, you know, when we kind of separated from Triad, I had some time on my hands because I really couldn’t come back into the market. So I went and worked for two years with kind of a series, a Silicon Valley startup. Yeah, a lot of ex Googlers there. And it was, you know, right out of the the series, the Silicon Valley TV series, if you’ve ever seen that, you know, we’re all in one big room, you know, I was, you know, I shared a room with the developers and the marketing people and the CEO and everything. It was fascinating. And I actually would spend a week out in California, and then a week here in DC. And then as we grew and got customers, they got a little onerous, because some of our customers were in Europe. So I was spending a week in Europe, a week in DC, a week in California, kind of on repeat, and that was kind of tough for me in the family for a couple of years there, but the good news is is right around two years we sold the company to Google, and I’d call that a base hit. That wasn’t really a home run. The company was called Urban engines, but what I learned out there was that all the software developers who I was speaking to on a regular basis were using this new tool called Docker, and it was a brand new way on building software. And if you used Docker, and what’s kind of more generically called container technologies, you could rapidly speed up, you know how you develop software and deploy that software, you know, into production environments. But it was being used by folks in Silicon Valley and Amazon and Apple and people like that. But it was not being used anywhere in the government, you know, anywhere in the Fortune 2000 and so the idea behind BoxBoat was, hey, I think I can build a software, I mean, a services company. Again, no more reseller. We’re just going to start with mostly services. And if we can enable the fortune 2000 and big government organizations with this Docker technology, you know, we can make a good business. Yeah. So that was the idea of the business. We were probably still a little early on that. I mean, the first kind of nine months of that was a lot of education, educating folks about it, on how it was going to transform their operations. But they didn’t want to believe it. And then we really got rocking. And again, Docker actually was more than just a technology. Was a company called Docker Inc, and they were venture funded, and so they were kind of a rocket ship. And the goal was, let’s get in there early. That part was good. Let’s be their number one services partner. Okay, we can ride this rocket ship with them, very similar to kind of what we did with service now that Triad as that went up, but we were kind of two years late because we were government, so the government market was behind everybody. So I’m like, if, hey, if I can get in commercially, drive this rocket, be one of the first that’s really going to create this great company. And it did, and we got the right engineers, we grew really quickly. We were really kind of off and running. But then we hit a speed bump. Oh, and this kind of goes to to, you know, the speed bump was, all of a sudden, Docker missed a quarter. And while their business was growing big enough for, you know, little BoxBoat to always have a ton of business. It wasn’t meeting the needs of their investors, right? And I think, if I look back now the I think the investors over corrected. They fire the CEO, they fired the head of sales, they fired a bunch of the sales people, and all of a sudden Docker wasn’t selling a lot of software. Dockers not selling a lot of software, then BoxBoats not doing a lot of services. And so this whole idea of being a Docker pure play was starting to look like a single point of failure, right? And the whole idea of the pure, the whole idea of the pure play, was like, we had to convince the sales reps we’re not going to work with your competitors. We’re only going to work with you, right? If you get their trust right, and you build relationships with them, then they’ll bring into the accounts, right? So they brought us into, you know, Duke Energy, Motley Fool, you know, Coca Cola. I mean, we were, we were in some, really, you know, great account, you know, but all that’s all of a sudden that dried up. So, what did you do? So this is when we do, what’s with, I guess, called. Pivot, Pete, pivot, right? Yeah. And, and, you know, it was a, it was, it was, it was a drastic moment for us, you know, because all the success had been kind of riding along with this partner, Docker. And, you know, there were still people at that company that, you know, thought BoxBoat was the best and we were the number one partner, and please don’t go anywhere, because we need you, and we’re going to make things great for you. And it started like month after month. It started to feel like kind of empty promises because but it was out of their control. They didn’t have the business to even bring us right. And so the pivot was, you know what? We gotta we’re not going to stop with Docker, but we’re going to open up the aperture, and we’re going to start partnering with other companies, one of their competitors, this company called rancher, we started a partnership with Microsoft, because Microsoft Azure, as a cloud, was becoming more and more prevalent. And a lot of people were using kind of these container technologies in the cloud, and so that became a bigger market. And the crazy thing about it is that’s when our business really hyper, hyper exploded by finally, kind of opening up the aperture to the ecosystem out there, there was a greater demand for what we were doing in the big ecosystem than just Docker, right? And we didn’t know that, you know, we thought, oh, you know, we thought our pure play strategy was, like, so brilliant. But in reality, you know, once we got out to more, you know, more storefronts in essence, right? That’s when, really, we started getting, you know, all the demand. Yeah,

Susan Kearney  21:47

so it sounds like you wouldn’t take that hyper focus strategy again.

Tim Hohman  21:53

I don’t know. I was thinking about that as I was preparing for this. You know, it did help us get from zero to one. So you need something to get you bringing in revenue, bringing in that first dollar, those first customers. And I don’t know if we went to market completely open that that would have been as achievable as it was, right,

Susan Kearney  22:19

right? So maybe that’s the necessary risk to get the different reward, and then it’s just the even. The question then is, how do you know when to widen that aperture? Exactly, exactly. Yeah. So tell me about some of your proudest moments there.

Tim Hohman  22:38

So yeah, for sure. So I would say, kind of the I would say, one of my proudest moments was in covid. You know, as I was saying, we were kind of humming along. We had a big pipeline. You know, we were starting to hire ahead, meaning that we would kind of hire consultants based upon the pipeline, not when they were already contracted, yep. And that was important, because we were really doing cutting edge stuff. And so a lot of these people we would hire for their their experience, but then we would have to teach them, you know, how to work with Docker and container technologies and Kubernetes and all these things that we were doing. Yeah. So that would take 30 to 60 days. So we had won a contract, and we didn’t have people then now we’re delaying the client, right? So we were hiring ahead, then all of a sudden, covid hits, and, you know, our existing customers that would normally kind of roll from a six month contract to another six month contract said, you know, Hey, Tim, you know, we’re not really sure we’re gonna do that next six month contract, you know, and the pipeline with a new prospect said, You know what, we’re just gonna put that project on hold. You know, we’re not gonna do that. And we go back and look like we had just put out the offer letter for two people like right before it hit. So not only my existing people, we have two new people coming, right and so the decision was our management team said, you know, we’re all going to take a 30% pay cut and we’re going to keep the cash available so that we can pay our people and not have to fire any of existing people and actually keep these offer letters out. You know, we don’t know how long this is going to last, but we’d like to give it a try, and the best way we can make it happen is to, you know, kind of max out our line of credit and and also have management take a cup, yeah, and cross our fingers as that was a proud moment for me, particularly in retrospect, because it was the, you know, the team agreed. To do it, yeah, and, and in the end, it worked out fine. We were able, you know, we got through that hard moment, we’re able to get our customers back, get new customers, and eventually we were able to, kind of, over time, pay everybody back, you know, the salary they gave up. Yeah, that was a really proud moment for me.

Susan Kearney  25:21

I bet I really respect that. That’s a wonderful story, and your team must really be loyal to you. For you having taken that action when you could quite easily have simply cut to the bone like most people would have done.

Tim Hohman  25:38

We had, we had a really good culture at BoxBoat, really good. We, we, it’s just a really good group of people that cared for each other. I do say, I go back. I always think about, I do think of it more as a team versus a family, yeah, because when you think about a professional team, you know, you can be really close, you know, but there’s still accountability, right? And we did hold people accountable, but yeah, so it was, that was kind of one of my, my proud moments at BoxBoat,

Susan Kearney  26:13

love it, absolutely love it. And so that culture probably didn’t happen accidentally. It had to do with the people that you hired and the way you manage them and your intentional development of

Tim Hohman  26:23

it well, for sure, for sure, you know, but we try, we did something that was interesting is we didn’t codify it upfront, okay? We didn’t say this is our culture, right? Because that kind of felt like you’re putting it on people, you know, we, we, we hired for, you know, what we consider good people, right? And we hired for what we tried. Their number one talent was kind of figuring it out so, like you’d be given a problem or a task. You know, the sort of person that wouldn’t say, I don’t know how to do this. They would just take the task and figure it out, right, right? And then, you know, one of our other interview scenarios that we tell people is that, you know, you’re going to be hired for this role, but you know, there’s always one extra bullet in every job description, which is kind of other duties as required, right? Meaning, like, we may ask you to do anything, and you know, you need to be up for that. And it could be, you know, we’re going to a tech show, and somebody needs to drag all these boxes across 10 blocks to get it there, and the day before, and we’re just going to ask you to do it. Yeah, so everyone raised their hand, you know, to come into the company that way. But then just to finish the story about two and a half years in, should have been better at that. Just to finish the story about two and a half years in, we did put together, like a working group to codify our culture. And that was a neat that was a neat kind of task, and they presented it at one of our, one of our all hands meetings. So it was really neat. All came together really nicely.

Susan Kearney  28:17

Yeah, very good. So how did you come to sell that business to IBM? So

Tim Hohman  28:27

this is where I think there’s some big lessons learned. Is I, I started, I was recommended by one of our sales reps that he had a friend that was in an advisory business, and he said, Hey, I think we should get together about selling the business. And I’m like, well, we’re not, we’re not selling the business, you know? We’re just getting going here, right? And what I learned from that meeting was that, was that you don’t need to be ready to sell a business that minute to have those sorts of meetings, right? And a lot of it is about education. Is making yourself smarter about the process. And, you know, one big thing I learned at that meeting is, many times it’s timing’s important, and, you know, and kind of how you present the business. And so, you know, after that initial meeting, I kind of got a light bulb, and I said, I really need to learn more. And so I talked to investment bankers, I talked to friends of mine that had sold companies, I talked to friends of mine that were private equity companies, and I really just learned a lot more about the process. And I would suggest anybody do that, and particularly, you know, talking to advisors, because there’s so much you could be doing, number one, just to educate yourself on on how that all works. But number two, things you can be improving in your company today, that’ll be tremendously better. Beneficial in the future, whether that future is nine months from now or three years from now, right? Five years from now, there’s things you learn when you learn how other folks evaluate a company and about how the process works that you would immediately want to change, right, right? What were some of those things? Yeah, the big ones were, well number one that when you’re selling your company, kind of the whole PowerPoint deck is very different from the PowerPoint deck that you would do to sell your services. You get you get so used to selling, what you’re selling, or what your company can do and your value prop, it was really hard to kind of change the perspective, you know, selling the company on the things to do, a big a lot of it was involved in kind of our CRM system. So, like, you know, when we would get an order, you know, how do you track that order? I mean, what are the data elements that you capture, right? So we would capture, well, you know, we got this order from our Microsoft partnership or our Docker partnership. But what we, you know, other important things they wanted to know was, you know, is it a big company or a small company? You know, you know, what geographic area is it from? From the US or Europe? You know, maybe one layer down, you know, is it Kubernetes business, you know? Is it cloud business? Is it, you know, developer specific business, right? There’s all sorts of different things, but having the systems of that so you can literally push a button and have all that flow out. It’s incredibly beneficial versus having to do a big data science project, you know, after the fact, yeah, and then the other one that I would say just is understanding your contract and having kind of a contract repository, right? So every contract that you have, the paper and the signatures and all of that, and just being able to have a system so that all of that is tracked and organized and not all over the place, and then it’s not just customer contracts, but legal contracts, supplier contracts, all of that again, that would be a huge time savings if you did that all along, versus, you know, in a swirl at the end,

Susan Kearney  32:29

right? Makes due diligence something you can live through without having to slit your wrists, right? Yes, yes, right. So let’s, um, let’s turn a little bit to you personally for just a few minutes, tell me a little bit about where you were raised. What was it like when you were growing up?

Tim Hohman  32:48

For sure, I was raised in Rockville, Maryland, so I’m not too far away here in Bethesda now. And you know, I would say I had some of the burgeoning of an entrepreneur in me at that time, my brother and I kind of shared a paper route the Washington Post. I had a landscaping business was kind of in my early teens, which used to be called cutting yards. And I like that. And I was always kind of conscious of trying to make kind of outsized money for my effort, like in the yards, if I wanted to do something, I could, I could have a friend cut a yard for me, right? So it wasn’t like an hourly, hourly wage thing. And then in my college summers, I was a swim coach. And the benefit of being a swim coach was that you could spend all day actually doing swim lessons. In swim lessons, you were making $20 you know, a half hour, you know, versus, you know, minimum wage at that time was 335, an hour, you know? So I could make 40 bucks in an hour versus 335 in an hour. And so I just always tried to think of ways that I could make money in a more productive and efficient way. And some of it was the way my parents raised me. They they said, Hey, we’re going to get you to college, but we’re not going to give you any money when you when you’re there, you know, we had to pay for our own car insurance, you know, that sort of stuff. So kind of along the way, we were always contributing.

Susan Kearney  34:34

So how did those lessons show up in your professional life, particularly as an entrepreneur and a CEO?

Tim Hohman  34:43

You know what I would I’d say my got two lessons from my dad that I would use is, is one, he always said, you know, if you’re doing something, it’s worth doing it all the way, right, or finish the job, you know? And to be honest, that was. Many scenarios where, you know, we had a yard there, there’s a front yard on the backyard, right? And lots of times I would like to just cut the front yard and say, I’m going to do the backyard tomorrow, right? Maybe, like, you know, just get out there. Just, you know, Finish, finish it up. You know, same thing with probably, you know, shoveling the driveway. But that’s something that in life, you know, getting the job done, not ending at 80% not ending at 90% you know, is a critical thing in any career. So I’ve always looked back to that and and many times in my life, even today, when I’m sweeping the patio, or whatever it is, and I’m about to give up. I’m like, yeah, just, just get it done, you know. And the other one, my dad told me, and this is when I was at Oracle. He was a long time, you know, executive at Xerox, which was also kind of known as kind of a sales driven culture, and his big thing was, you know, people buy from people, you know. And what that really means is that, you know, yes, they’re buying your product, but they’re also buying that product because they trust the person that’s that’s part of that transaction, that you have to have the integrity in that transaction. And, and, you know, it comes down to a people, people thing. And so that’s something that I always put forward when I led sales teams for people you know. Number one, get out there and be with the people you know. Be with your customers you know, understand them, who they are as people have meals with them and just in general, networking is important. Because I think people like to believe that, you know, it’s always a big equation and, you know, the most optimal product is going to get to the top. But lots of times it just comes down to people, yeah,

Susan Kearney  36:57

that’s right. I think that’s right. You know, entrepreneurs are busy. They have a lot on their plate. I’m wondering for you, are there any kind of daily rituals or life hacks you’ve discovered that have contributed to your success and allowed you to keep all the plates turning on the sticks? That’s

Tim Hohman  37:20

an interesting analogy. So I would say, number one, I’m a big exercise guy. I find that I I work better if I’ve gotten up in the morning and gotten some exercise, got my blood moving. So that’s kind of always kind of helped me stay sane. I’m a big to do list person. I have a to do list that kind of every day I go through and figure out, what are the most important things I need to get done today. You’ve ever seen kind of that quadrant of like, important, not important, urgent and not urgent, right? I’m always thinking, you know, what are the things that are important that need to be done. And then I call it juggling balls. You call it spinning plates. But my lesson there, that I say to people all the time is, don’t be afraid to have some plates fall. Yeah, right. Maybe it’s going to fall for a reason, right? You got to prioritize your stuff. You got to do the most important things. And if some plates fall, you know, it’s not that big of a deal, right? And what I would tell people that work for me is that, if it ends up being an issue and it comes up, you know, we’ll work it. We’ll work on it together and get it solved, but you need to focus on your most important

Susan Kearney  38:34

things. Yeah, great, great. One last question. You grew up in sales a lot of times. Entrepreneurs have a hard time building their sales organization. As I mentioned up top, what advice would you give to a business owner, a CEO their first rodeo when they have to start to build a sales organization? Because you’ve been on both sides of that table. Yeah,

Tim Hohman  39:06

that’s a tough one, because it’s not easy, right? It’s not easy. And you know, the they’re hiring a very experienced salesperson can be helpful, but you also might be hiring someone stuck in their ways, you know. So I think a big thing to look for, I always liked is, was what I would call, I would hire up and comers, which is people that have some good experience, but are also willing to be coachable, right, right? And that willing to be coachable part was really, for me, the most important, because every business is unique in its own way. So you know, just because someone has relevant experience right from the industry may not mean they’re a great fit for you. You know, if they’re going to be rigid in their approach, right? So hire folks that are willing to be flexible, that are coachable, right? And that you can look into their resume and see, yeah, they’ve had some success. They don’t need to have tons of success, right? They can have a little bit of success, and then you’ve got to be willing to put in the time to mentor them and bring them along. But in the end, you’re going to get a phenomenal, you know, partner in your business. Yeah, I say one more thing to listen to listen for, is listening that for, for sales reps. A common flaw is the idea to be on transmit versus listening, and so that’s another thing in an interview that I always look for, is somebody that’s willing to listen, think and then respond, because that’s what customers need. Is someone, not someone that’s just going to portray the data.

Susan Kearney  41:03

Yep, some of the best sales people I’ve ever come across are actually a little bit introverted, right? So they have their ears on instead of their mouth. Yes, exactly, that’s right. So Tim, what’s next for you? You’ve sold the business to IBM, and you’ve had a chance to catch up on your sleep, maybe, and get reconnecting with some people. What’s next?

Tim Hohman  41:26

Well, I’m now CEO of CodeCargo, and CodeCargo is a software company in a very similar space to BoxBoat, helping large companies accelerate their software development, but we’re right in the heart of the AI world. So we’re building an AI platform that’s going to help software developers and big software development teams be more efficient

Susan Kearney  41:50

nice. And where are you on your journey with CodeCargo,

Speaker 1  41:54

we are about one month away of releasing our product in beta to our design partners, and then we’ll have our design partners work with us over the summer, and then we’re going to kind of do general release in October.

Susan Kearney  42:09

I wish you all the best with that. That’s an exciting time and a nerve wracking time, all wrapped up in one thing, right?

Speaker 1  42:17

For sure, I just want to get to the go to market, and we have more time to spend building the product.

Susan Kearney  42:22

Yeah, yeah. That’s right. That’s right. So any last thoughts you want to share, Tim, anything you think is important to for other folks to know that I haven’t asked you

Speaker 1  42:32

about the last piece I’d mention is I read a book by Ben Horowitz. He’s from Andreessen Horowitz. It’s called the hard thing about hard things. And in it, he has a concept of working kind of on the business, versus in the business. And this was, there was an insight with me on this, which is, when you’re in the business, you’re working on the operational stuff, you know, trying to make the business successful. But when you’re working on the business, you’re thinking of it more of an asset. What do we need to do in this company to make it a more valuable asset going forward? And I think that mentality kind of goes along with getting the right advice around. You know, selling your company and your company as an asset, those two things together are going to help you better operate your company today and do the right things so that you have success in the future.

Susan Kearney  43:27

Yeah, yeah. Sometimes it’s hard in the moment to find time to work on your business, just like it’s hard to have a child at right, just the right moment, right? Something that you have to do for sure. Tim, where can people find out about your new venture?

Speaker 1  43:45

So our website’s up. It’s codecargo.com

Susan Kearney  43:49

Codecargo.com you’re not in stealth mode any longer.

Tim Hohman  43:53

It’s, yeah, the website will get better. I’ll tell people that.

Susan Kearney  43:59

All right, that’s great. Tim Holman, accomplished serial entrepreneur and CEO, off on his next rocket ship. I wish you all the best. Thanks

Tim Hohman  44:08

so much. Susan, thanks for your time today.

Outro 44:16

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