Saying No to CEO Roles, Yes to Ownership

I had about 50 people reporting to me, and it was distributed. So we had a big chunk in Hawaii. We had a lot of people on the mainland, and we had a team in the Philippines as well.

So, you know, a great amount of experience there with all kinds of challenges that come up with, you know, a very fast-growing business and a very... specific market, being Hawaii with a very complicated business model with the PEO. So yeah, just really learned a lot.

And he was so helpful in not only... eventually me buying, but also the sale process. And he's the one who actually gave me the HBR, how to buy a small business book.

But it was in the context of learning how to sell my business, selling Makai and just realizing that it's all the same steps. It doesn't matter if it's a $500 billion deal or if it's a $500,000 deal, like you're going to go through the same steps in the process. And so that's actually how I started to get the playbook of like, oh, okay.

It taught me how to understand what was happening when I was selling the business, but also it got me revved up of like, okay, I can really buy something now too. So I've had the money, the capital, the experience, and had some mentorship to help me to get there. And I felt like that gave me some serious unfair advantage, which I'm very grateful for.

Yeah. No, well, exactly. Well, you, but you, you jumped for it. You had all the alignment of the stars, but you jumped and a lot of people don't. So you took the initiative.

So that's wonderful. Just curious, where was it decided in your own mind that you would search? Was it sometime in your Makai tenure or was it afterwards you got the low seven figures in your bank account and you're like, Hmm, what to do now?

Oh, that search thing. Like what, when was it that it crystallized into the next thing?

It was after we sold Makai. I was very committed to Makai. I had no reason not to be.

There was a lot of opportunity there and we were doing some really great work. And like I said, I had just an incredible team. Once that door, that chapter was, you know, was written and closed, you know, that's when it opened up and I was like, okay, I'm doing it now.

I'm going to take, and I gave myself two years to search. And I'm going to be pretty serious about this. And that meant, you know, that I was going to have to move from Hawaii.