From Basement Startup to Legacy : A Family CRM Succession | The Family Biz Show Ep. 122

Transcript

Michael (00:00.0)

Welcome everybody to the Family Biz Show. I am your host, Michael Palumbos, with Family Wealth and Legacy in Rochester, New York. And we've got a fantastic show for you today. We have Sarah and Ken Compter from SynAct, and we're so excited. Sarah and I met at a charity event, and she started telling me what she did and realized, wait a minute, you're a family business. Come on. And so she... 

 

Michael (00:29.134)

Begrudgingly, no, I brought her father along so that we get both sides of the story, so to say. Welcome Ken and welcome Sarah. We always start with, you know, the history. We want to find out what was your journey. Ken, if I understand correctly, you were the founder of the company. Yes. So walk us through, you know, how did you found it? You know, where did that come from? 

 

Sarah (00:38.21)

Thanks so much for having us. 

 

Ken (00:50.744)

original 

 

Ken (00:58.254)

Who's that in necessity? Got fired. Simple. As a corporate, well, I started teaching school and realized very quickly that wasn't going to make it supporting a family. So I went and took a job with Johnson & Johnson, moved to Syracuse. Six years in Syracuse, moved to Pittsburgh as a division manager. 17 years in total with J &J. 

 

Ken (01:28.044)

corporate buyouts, I left J &J, went with a startup in customer relationship management software, okay? And at the time, we were doing lot of what we called sales process modeling. And so I was like the sixth guy into the company because I had engaged this company in my corporate life. So I went to work with them. Six months later, we sold the company and were bought out by 

 

Ken (01:58.382)

some entrepreneurs that spent $100 million bought about six companies, including ours, and then went belly up. And at that point, it was a necessity to get out there and work. So I just started my own consulting firm, started doing some work with customer relationship management software, had a former associate who was a technical guy build 

 

Ken (02:27.84)

CRM in Outlook. And then we were starting to sell that on a model of monthly revenue before anybody else was doing that. 

 

Michael (02:40.942)

What year is this? Ish. Nineties. 

 

Ken (02:44.448)

Yesha! 

 

Sarah (02:46.99)

96 

 

Sarah (02:48.33)

Michael (02:49.976)

Crush. 

 

Ken (02:50.956)

Yeah. And then after about six years I was alone, Sarah was working for &T Bank, wanted a change, and I said, well, while you're looking, come to work for me. Which she did. And we were a two-man band for a number of years. The idea being that at some point I would pass the business along. Well, then Sarah came to me one day and she said, you know what? 

 

Ken (03:20.716)

I really don't think I want this business. Okay. Kurt Ball. I'm at the time maybe 65-ish and I'm ready for retirement, right? So I said, okay, it's a cash cow. I'll milk it. Go find what you want to do. She came back about four or five months later after having had the chance to talk to her mentors and such. And they all said, what are you crazy? Take it. And, 

 

Ken (03:50.382)

At that point, I said, okay, I'm going to milk this thing. She came back, she said, I'm going to take this, but you got to go. 

 

Ken (04:00.66)

I said, okay, well, this was a June timeframe. said, maybe we can get it done by the end of the year. No, September. And that was it. 

 

Michael (04:11.408)

So what was the genesis of that for you, Sarah? 

 

Sarah (04:15.106)

Yeah, good question. As he said, you know, we had I joined him in 2009 and I had spent five or six years in banking, did well, enjoyed myself, learned a lot about working with businesses, both small and more middle markets sized and had that had started to think, OK, maybe business ownership is an interesting path for me. And I and I in the back of my head kind of knew that he had started this this business. 

 

Sarah (04:44.576)

And so when I was ready to make that change and jump over, that seemed like a great plan. Well, flash forward seven years, we're working like dogs. We're still not, you know, it's not like I'm making bank at that point, right? And I said, you know, I think part of this is that I'm not putting my all into this thing I don't own. Right. There was a gut feeling I had that said, you know, it's until it's your name. 

 

Sarah (05:13.76)

on the bottom line until it's your, even though I will tell you we made a lot of decisions as partners. 

 

Sarah (05:23.436)

it still wasn't mine. And I just needed to know that when I was making a decision, it was my decision to make, it was gonna be my mistake or it was gonna be my win or whatever it was. And so I think, you know, I think I just said, I will do more for this. If I'm really gonna give it the effort it deserves, I need to be mine, right? 

 

Michael (05:25.43)

You needed to burn the bridges. 

 

Sarah (05:52.258)

The reality was that he was in his golden years of working at that point, which is a kinder way of saying he was headed down the other side of the mountain from a career standpoint. And so I think it may have come as a shock to him initially, but ultimately, he says that I said, September, it has to get done quickly. We were going to do this sort of slow transition. 

 

Sarah (06:20.062)

And two weeks later, after we decided this, he was on the golf course three, four days a week and was thinking he liked it pretty well. So I think in the long run, it all panned out. we've grown the business quite a bit since then. 

 

Michael (06:30.03)

Nice. 

 

Michael (06:37.142)

For you, Ken, when she said that, what was going through your head originally and how were you feeling about that? 

 

Ken (06:47.864)

Don't think I really thought about it, honestly. There was no question that I didn't want to continue working until I was 80. So it was the right time. She had all of the energy, the things you need to drive a company. As she said, I'm the tail end saying, is cash cow now for me. 

 

Michael (06:50.327)

No, that's fair. 

 

Ken (07:17.514)

milk it, because I don't need that much more to get to the end. She, on the other hand, was at the beginning, so she really needed to have the energy to drive it, and she's done exceptionally well. 

 

Sarah (07:28.994)

And we have the, mean, what's nice is that he's, he's used that term cash cow a couple of times. You know, he wanted a way to kind of fund at the tail end until he got to a real retirement age. And because, you know, we structured a buyout deal, he in a way got some of that, right? Like I bought him out of the business that he had built to that, to that point. And so, you know, I ended up paying him off faster than he anticipated. And I did a little dance when. 

 

Sarah (07:59.001)

Check for more reasons than one 

 

Michael (08:01.624)

When they're done that... 

 

Ken (08:02.51)

My wife went in the morning. 

 

Sarah (08:03.566)

She for about a year leading up to it was saying, you know, we only have 11 months left. We only have 10 months left. 

 

Michael (08:14.008)

That's funny. So a couple of things that I want to just point out for those listening, you you need to be looking for that from your successor. You want that fire in the belly. You want to be pushed out at some levels. You want them to take that ownership. It really makes a huge difference. Your success all these years later after buying him out came from your desire to do those things. 

 

Michael (08:42.517)

The other thing, Ken, I think it's important that people catch this is you were ready. My gut says, and this is just the story in my head, is that you started in corporate America. You didn't start the business from the day one kind of thing. This wasn't a 40-year-old baby of yours as you were doing it. This was out of necessity. probably still, the corporate America think for the most part is I'm going to work until 60, 65, and then I'm going to retire. 

 

Michael (09:11.394)

So was kind of natural for you to do that. I do love how you started the business. That is the story I hear again and again. It was out of necessity. The company I was working for went bankrupt. The company I was working for, the guy was retiring and said, take the keys or go find a job. So that's a pretty common story, nicely done. 

 

Ken (09:33.26)

You know, was a necessity in that I was in my basement with a telephone, and that was about it. And the first sale I made was in the state of Washington, and I sold them our system over the phone. Wow. Never saw them, never met them, until we went out. 

 

Michael (09:51.406)

There wasn't zoom at the time. 

 

Sarah (09:53.038)

1998 

 

Sarah (09:54.078)

or what have you 

 

Ken (09:55.618)

We did have zoom, but we had, you know, you could do connections, computer connections, say, view my screen, so we could do demonstrations and such. And so we customized a system for him and, you know, was our first customer. 

 

Michael (10:04.994)

Gotcha. 

 

Michael (10:12.312)

Very nice. 

 

Sarah (10:13.134)

And then what's really wild about that, right, is you flash forward. By the time I joined the business, we were doing all of that work for the most part in person. So everything from the sales process that we were going through to discovery and design work with the customers, all of that was happening in person. And so we were really building the business in our various locations in which we lived at that time. 2020 comes around. 

 

Sarah (10:42.102)

and we had already been doing a lot of video calls internally and that kind of thing. And just like everybody else's story, all of our customers, all of our partners, everybody started getting on board with Zoom, Microsoft Teams, whatever the case may be. And so for a few years, 

 

Sarah (11:01.558)

we went back to doing what he did the very first time, which was selling without having met anybody in person. Now, obviously a little bit different to have those video capabilities and the technology has improved, but it goes to show you that the value of what you're offering is more than sitting next to someone. It's more than playing golf or going out to dinner. I I don't pretend that what we do isn't relationship selling. It is, but... 

 

Sarah (11:32.106)

there has been a shift, at least in my mind, in sales that has occurred where we are looking for more than that relationship now. We're starting to ask better questions, frankly, about the impact of this business decision, about the ROI, about the cost, about the delivery program in a way that, you know, deals used to just get done with the guys you knew, right? And that has shifted a little bit. Not to say that's not still happening to some degree or that that relationship's not important, but 

 

Sarah (12:02.131)

anyway, my two cents on, what sort of has transpired with in the post COVID world. 

 

Michael (12:08.142)

fun. Talk to me about, so this is the product itself was a CRM product when you that you developed in the very beginning. What is it today? Well, and what's transpired? What else have you done, you know, between the point A and B? 

 

Ken (12:23.758)

Understand that I was not a technologist. I was a sales guy. So when I first opened the doors, the only way to get in the door was to sell companies on understanding their sales process and improving the sales process. And if they buy into that, then you need a simple system to help you do it and to execute, which is where the CRM part came in. 

 

Ken (12:53.438)

Nobody in those days wanted to pay for consulting, especially the size companies we were looking at. These weren't hundred million dollar companies. These weren't $200 million companies. Some of them were less than a million, certainly less than five or 10. So it was a smaller size market. So the only way to make money was to sell them on the system. Okay. So it was really all about improving sales results and marketing results. And that was my take into it. 

 

Ken (13:22.924)

And then since then it changed. I mean, there's so many more capabilities today that I can't even fathom having been out of it for eight years now. I mean, it's crazy. 

 

Sarah (13:33.558)

I joke that I'm now his tech support. This is a guy who owned a software company and I can't tell you how many times I get a call that's like, you know, this and that and it's just not working and I don't know the sync and everything. 

 

Sarah (13:46.666)

Yeah, what's kind of interesting too is that the product that he and Mark developed, he mentioned sat right inside of Outlook. It was called Synact Business Manager. At the time, Microsoft really wasn't in the game. And over the years as he was, as they were selling Synact Business Manager, Microsoft started investing in their CRM technology. And so eventually we got to the point, and this is before, before I joined the business, 

 

Sarah (14:16.152)

they got to the point where Microsoft had now sort of outpaced what they were doing in Synact Business Manager. And to try and compete with a gorilla like Microsoft really didn't make any sense, right? And so they decided to start offering the Microsoft product alongside Synact Business Manager. And they decide which was the best fit for the company and their needs, right? 

 

Ken (14:41.422)

Ken (14:41.742)

One of the things, because the Microsoft product wasn't fully developed, ours was actually a better product at the time. However, we had the risk that if Microsoft made one little change in the back end, all of a sudden my system would cease to work. And then where was I? So we ended up having to move towards the Microsoft model. Originally, their product wasn't very good, and it required SQL Server, Outlook, all these systems that 

 

Ken (15:10.83)

Smaller companies didn't have. So it was like, oh, this is Microsoft. This is a great product. Let's go with it. Oh, it's 10,000 for the SQL server and another 5,000 for this and or 50 bucks a month for Cinex business manager. Done. was an easy, they already had exchange server in place. Plop our model in and it was, it was a done deal. 

 

Sarah (15:31.992)

And so really, they were in that SaaS space before SaaS broadly in the marketplace, which was pretty cool. And then we were able to build on that later on. Once I joined the company, we actually decided to figure out a way to expand the recurring revenue model. So most companies who do what we do, they do an implementation as a project. They charge the customer based on time and materials. It's an hourly model. 

 

Ken (15:35.95)

Anybody? 

 

Sarah (16:01.89)

bit of a guessing game, if I'm being honest, right? And we really found that that was not suiting the customers because their business was changing, the technology was changing, their user base was changing, and it was near impossible to set it and forget it, right? They needed a partner to really build this platform with them as their needs would evolve. And so we said, you know, 

 

Sarah (16:31.766)

The other thing is, when we're working, we're not selling. When we're selling, we're not working. And so we wanted more recurring revenue. We wanted a way to change that way of doing business for ourselves. so we looked at the way in which, at the time, now we're in the late aughts, and SaaS had really exploded. And we said, is there a way for us to do this, to deliver the service in this SaaS model as well? 

 

Sarah (17:00.814)

we developed together an all-inclusive service and support model. So our customers, rather than paying for the software in a subscription and then paying for the service as a project or time and materials, they're paying for the software as a service and they're paying for the services as a service. And so it was a bundled rate that we were able to offer them. And to this day, we are still offering that and it is... 

 

Sarah (17:27.141)

unique in the space. We don't see any other partners, Microsoft or otherwise, really doing that today. It's really our best value proposition, honestly. 

 

Michael (17:37.965)

Love 

 

Michael (17:38.209)

 

 

Ken (17:38.446)

And the problem with the project model is that it creates a division between the supplier doing the services and the company that's buying them. Right. Because as a project, you do the project and they say, I need this other piece. Well, that's more money. Oh, no, no, because we dropped this other piece. Well, you don't understand the technology and the difference. This is easy to drop. This is hard to build. So it's more money. Right. 

 

Ken (18:08.59)

So we said, we're very smart. We'll do it fixed fee. So they don't have to worry about it. But it's the same thing. well, we'd like to do this. Well, that's not in the scope. That's an additional charge. And so you had that constant, we want this. We didn't know we needed it when we did the design. We now know we need it, but they don't want to pay for it. 

 

Sarah (18:31.712)

It becomes adversarial. And no one wants that in their relationship. 

 

Ken (18:37.186)

So being able to go in and say, look, you get everything, the full Monty, right? Don't worry about a thing, we're gonna take care of you. And people responded to that. 

 

Michael (18:47.362)

Yeah. One of the things that when we're teaching strategy work with clients is compete to be unique, which is what you've done. Do not compete to be the best. Because you can always make changes and if you're competing to be the best, eventually it's going to become commoditized and then it's just a spiral down to the lowest price. if you're unique and providing a service that nobody else is providing, here you just said, you know, even the 

 

Michael (19:15.214)

800 pound gorilla in the industry wasn't doing what you were doing. Kudos to you. Yeah, thanks. And two things, you you came up with, you know, the SaaS before SaaS was really there and looking for how do we get that recurring revenue? Because at the end of the day, that's all, you know, it's if you're constantly looking for, you know, the next dollar, you're always selling. Where when you have that SaaS model, especially with the service built in, you become way more 

 

Michael (19:45.228)

you know, of a service oriented business and clients just can feel that you're not selling anymore. You're in there trying to figure out how to make their business better. 

 

Ken (19:54.166)

Yeah. And that's the absolute key is making your business better. If you can demonstrate how you're making your business better via showing them the improvement in their sales model, where in that sales model. 

 

Ken (20:07.576)

they improved. Sure. And you can directly relate it to the work you've done for them and then the implementation. It's a winner. 

 

Michael (20:15.192)

That's awesome. And it is one of those areas where many, many companies, it's the marketing to sales process and sales to operations is where they get hung up is in that sales process. Let me flip the switch a little bit. Let's go back to the early days. You start working with dad. What's that like for you? What were the good parts about working with dad in the beginning? What were the tough parts? 

 

Ken (20:41.644)

No tough parts. 

 

Sarah (20:42.19)

Sarah (20:44.611)

Yeah. So it's interesting. I didn't have any, my only CRM experience was the CRM and I'll use air quotes on that, that we were using at the bank at the time. Right. So I was in a sales role at &T and we had a Salesforce automation tool that we use, but that was really my only exposure to this technology that I was now. 

 

Sarah (21:12.782)

being forced to sell and implement in my new role. And I can honestly say that my time at M &T was really valuable in giving me some broad exposure to how business works. Because one of the things that very quickly became evident was that I needed to know how to ask questions about how businesses work, how they make money. Being able to drill into not, we didn't. 

 

Sarah (21:40.578)

We didn't want to be order takers. We didn't want to look at the customer and say, hey, tell us what to build in this platform. We wanted to be consultants. We wanted to be a part of the team that was developing this platform for them. And earlier today, my dad mentioned this sales process modeling workshop that he would deliver. And he used to do that without CRM. He would go out and do this for clients. And the end result was, hey, here is your. 

 

Sarah (22:08.694)

documented sales process from end to end. Here are our desired stages. Here are the activities or behaviors that we expect in each one of those stages. Here's the black or white milestone events that we go through, our desired results or outcomes, and then the metrics by which we measure our success. That was the strategy. He really used that as a way to then build the platform. 

 

Sarah (22:38.112)

set aside the technology, understand what you're doing to make money, right? What are some of the ideal strategies and tactics we want to deploy? And I had never done that kind of work before, right? So, you very early on, it was a lot of watch and learn, right? We're gonna go out and see this customer, I'm gonna whiteboard the hell out of this, and you're just gonna sit there and occasionally ask a probing question. 

 

Sarah (23:07.572)

It's funny looking back on it, I don't really remember the learning process. just, frankly, like if you ask me, I've always been great at this. But that's not true, right? I didn't come to the table with this consulting experience. And now I'm in a position of teaching and coaching other folks on my team to do it. And I find myself using the same strategies that my dad did with me, you know, a decade and a half ago, which is kind of wild, right? 

 

Sarah (23:36.046)

But I remember having a lot of fun. We would travel to see clients, and we'd go meet these folks in person. And we had a lot of jokes. We have the same last name. So there were a lot of folks who assumed I was his wife, which was super, super delightful, let me tell you. it was just fun. Fun times get to spend together. would say everybody can relate to learning from a parent. Most people can't relate to. 

 

Sarah (24:06.414)

Sarah (24:06.714)

you know, like learning at that level with a parent. And then, you know, gradually over time, getting to a point where you're in less of a mentor-mentee relationship and more of a partnership. And that really is an irreplaceable experience for me, right? Having had that opportunity. I'll just give you a funny story. So one of the things I remember, we did not live in the same place. 

 

Sarah (24:35.958)

So when we first started, I was in the DC area and he was in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. And we'd be on the phone like, you all day every day. And we weren't on video calls at that point. I mean, it was not video. We were always on the phone though. mean, it could be like six hours a day that we're talking on the phone, right? And you know, we're both strong personalities. If you're familiar with disc, we are super high Ds, both of us. And that would 

 

Sarah (25:05.036)

that would create friction sometimes. And I can remember having these really intense conversations. I won't go as far as to say arguments, but intense conversations on the phone. And you'd kind of come to the end of that conversation and you'd still be hot under the collar about it. And then you'd say, well, I got to go. Okay. Love you, dad. And he'd say, love you, sweetie. And we'd hang up. We really did a remarkably good job of 

 

Sarah (25:35.17)

Compartmentalizing. Being able to understand that the disagreement or discord we were experiencing in the business had nothing to do with who we were to each other. And I think that's, I think we were really fortunate to have been able to figure that out because that is not always the case. 

 

Michael (25:54.222)

Yes. 

 

Michael (25:54.802)

You've been pioneers in a whole bunch of different ways. That's Patrick Lencioni 101. Because you had a very strong father-daughter relationship, familial relationship, you had the trust. At the back of your head, you knew that she had the best interest of the business and the family at heart, and you knew that he did. And that allowed you, and you took that conflict, I always tell people, healthy conflict. 

 

Michael (26:23.286)

is really good. It's even okay if you cross the line every once in a while as long as you pull back and apologize and say, whoa, that was, I just took that a little too far. And that's about the same as I gotta go now. Love you. 

 

Sarah (26:39.855)

Totally. I'm gonna just cut this off before it goes too far. 

 

Michael (26:43.468)

Yeah, and then my gut says you would sleep on it, think about it, and come back together, and then you'd commit on your path forward. Yeah. That's, you know, the five dysfunctions of the team. That's the first three right there that you were working through. God bless you for, you know, one, it's emotional awareness that must have been developed throughout the family right from the get-go. 

 

Michael (27:07.948)

families that don't go through this emotional intelligence training and don't have that awareness of self, they run into the traps and they'll hit those traps and just get sucked right into crossing the line and going further and not being able to pull themselves back sometimes. you know, if you find that, you know, and I'm talking to the listeners right now, if you find that I'm yelling, I'm crossing that line and we're having this conflict. 

 

Michael (27:36.086)

At the end of the day, as much as you don't want to hear it, it's self-awareness, typically. We always say, I've got that finger and pointing at you, but there's three pointing back at me, right? So, good on you for having good emotional awareness. Probably, thanks, Mom. My wife had to train me to get to that. it's me, it's not everybody else. 

 

Sarah (27:55.222)

Yeah. 

 

Michael (28:05.73)

Good for you. What was it like for you as dad? You know, your daughter joins the business. What was going through your head? What were the things that were happening for you as you were training her? She's brand new, going through this stuff. What were you thinking about? 

 

Ken (28:22.422)

It was the easiest tire I ever made. 

 

Michael (28:25.41)

Why? 

 

Ken (28:27.118)

She's extremely bright, intelligent, energetic, everything you look for in an employee. You know, to say nothing of your daughter. 

 

Michael (28:35.822)

And then you had the trust and you knew how to work together. 

 

Ken (28:39.286)

I knew that I didn't have to worry that she's in another city. I didn't have to worry about whether she was working or not, right? Which, unfortunately, when you have a virtual company, sometimes you got to worry about that. So that wasn't an issue, you know? And she basically, you know, soaked up everything I said, you know, mostly. 

 

Sarah (29:01.422)

Mostly. There were some things I rejected. No, I mean, it's very interesting right now, not to cut him off, but I've got this gal on my team now and she's in her mid-20s and this is her first job outside of early childhood development. So she decided to make a career change. Big change. Big change. And she went through a training program. And I joke around sometimes, I call her mini me because 

 

Sarah (29:29.844)

She does just that. just watches and listens and soaks up everything that I say and how I say it. So she's now in this consulting role, right? And what's fascinating is she'll ask questions using the exact same phrasing that I would use, right? Or the same language. Sometimes she'll put her own spin on it or what have you, but I hear myself in how she interacts with our customers. 

 

Sarah (30:00.332)

And if I reflect on that, I hear my dad when it's me, right? So it's this sort of fascinating process of, in a way, generational knowledge and style that occurs, even though the gal on my team isn't related to me, but she's still learning from me in the same way I got to learn from him. So it's just interesting to see how that plays out. 

 

Ken (30:29.198)

We can thank Bill Walsh. 

 

Ken (30:32.718)

San Francisco 49ers head coach. He was the first coach that listed the first 20 plays he was going to run in a ball game. And he ran them because regardless of what turned out or how the play turned out, it told him what the defense was doing in reaction. When I was teaching sales reps, the problem they have is they're asking questions. But instead of listening to the answer, 

 

Ken (31:00.792)

And they're ahead, they're saying, what's the next question? Okay? So as the sales trainer, when I was in corporate America, I trained people, write 20 questions down. The 20 questions you're going to ask. And if you go off sideways, you can come back to your list. Right? And don't be afraid to have that list in front of you because the customer will say, you prepared for this. Right? So you get a much 

 

Ken (31:29.314)

better understanding of what's really happening. And that's really what I always said. So I had the 20 questions and they're always the same. You know, the phraseology is the same. So therefore it carries through. gets into your mind and it also goes back to making product presentations. When I was with Jane Jay, you know, it was the same, you you practiced how you were presenting the product and the cadence you used and the pauses you had. And that just carried over into 

 

Michael (31:37.43)

Love it. 

 

Ken (31:59.118)

teaching other salespeople. 

 

Michael (32:00.748)

We always learned from, I spent a lot of time at Xerox before, know, absolutely. Yeah. And then the same thing, we had a script, we knew what we were going to say. And one of the things that, you know, my mentor always said was, you know, if you go to a play and they change the script every single time, how often are going to go see it? Nobody's doing Romeo and Juliet if, you know, Romeo's, you know, making stuff up on, you know, where they're going next. And if you're going to be a pro, 

 

Ken (32:05.582)

direct selling skills. 

 

Michael (32:29.806)

In sports, it's 20 plays. In sales, it's what are your 20 questions? So we're hitting a lot of great topics here. want to make sure that people get, you we talked about strategy and having a unique strategy within the business. You're talking about the sales cycle. And if you have a sales team, make sure that they've got their 20 questions. What is that? 

 

Michael (32:56.81)

Map out that process. Look at the flowchart. Look for the, I call them green light moments. You know, as you're going through that sales process, where are the natural stopping points? What are the questions? What are the agreements that you need to get as you're going through this? And that should be built into your 20 questions. If you're struggling, I'm a huge giant fan of the Camp Negotiation Method. I don't know if you know that one or Sandler Sales Method. I think they're very similar. 

 

Michael (33:25.934)

Or thinking about the hero's journey. Those are probably the three things that I you know would recommend to people but you guys Did this naturally now yours naturally came from years of working and you know at J &J and having a corporate structure for and learning those things and then just adopting it in your process Let's talk about the marketing side of things. What did you do to uncover those? You know the the sales leads that you were that you ended up closing 

 

Ken (33:53.952)

Well, in the original days when I was a one-man band in the basement, I went to my corporate friends. Fellas that had been at Jane Jay that I had worked with over the years and now were in different positions, powerful positions. So I think the most amazing one was my friend Jerry Messina, who had left Jane Jay and was with another company. 

 

Ken (34:22.35)

And I called him up on my first day that I opened the doors. And I said, hey, Jerry. He said, just letting you know, I'm out on my own. I'm starting a consulting gig and blah, blah, And if you ever need anything, give me a holler. He says, well, you do that sales process modeling stuff, right? Yes. Send me a contract. First day. I got a $50,000 contract. 

 

Michael (34:48.01)

Ow. 

 

Ken (34:52.246)

So that was a benefit. Fortunately, Jerry went to some other companies and first thing he did when he got there is he picked up the phone and called me. So relationships are important and he knew the value. I was able to give him value. So in the early days, that was the marketing program. So I was literally all over the country, California to Texas to Pennsylvania, was all over. And that was primarily before we even had an application. 

 

Ken (35:21.258)

Then it was, after that, was either going to shows, literally, I would go to medical device shows, okay, and walk to the booths and introduce myself to the VP of sales. Okay. The UCM, know, they're there to sell, so they don't want to be talking to you selling it to them. But if you just got their card and said, do you mind if I call you next week? 

 

Ken (35:49.79)

And so that was, that was the major part of the marketing program. 

 

Michael (35:53.464)

love it. What's different today, Sarah, for what you're doing marketing-wise? 

 

Sarah (35:58.648)

To some degree, it's still very much driven by relationships that I've developed. I will say that we have not invested tremendously in any kind of traditional marketing methodologies. A lot of folks are spending a lot of money on organic search and paid search and SEO and sending out email marketing. We've gone through some phases of doing some of that and none of it has yielded. 

 

Sarah (36:25.164)

the kind of referrals that we get from our partners and customers. And we are kind of that classic small business story of building a good network. As a Microsoft partner today, our best referral sources are other Microsoft partners who don't do what we do, right? So there are some very large Microsoft partners who do it all. 

 

Sarah (36:51.16)

But most of your small and mid-sized businesses are not looking to work with the avanads of the world. They're not looking to work with a multi-billion dollar entity. They want someone local, or they want someone who understands what a small business is and does, because they are a small business, right? And so we've been really focused on developing strong relationships with those partners who don't offer. 

 

Sarah (37:19.606)

everything but the kitchen sink, right? They offer maybe the CRM platform in the Microsoft space now is called Dynamics. And Dynamics is really their business suite of applications. CRM is one side of that. The other side of that is ERP or financial and accounting. We don't touch the financial or ERP side of Dynamics. So some of our best referral sources are those guys, right? And vice versa. 

 

Sarah (37:47.042)

We run into opportunities that we're able to send to our friends on the other side of the aisle, so to speak. I always say that there's a few stages of selling. our world, oftentimes you've got to sell a company on the idea of CRM. For folks who are using CRM already, they can't imagine that organizations wouldn't be leveraging the tool these days, especially with its 

 

Sarah (38:16.334)

with how ubiquitous it is. I mean, there's one, there's a thousand applications on the market that you can buy. But I'll tell you what, yesterday played golf with a guy, never met him before, works for a multi-billion dollar company selling glass, no CRM. No CRM. So it is... 

 

Michael (38:34.126)

Michael (38:34.73)

I couldn't even imagine. 

 

Sarah (38:36.16)

Not a saturated market, if you're, you it sounds surprising, but it really isn't. But there's these stages of selling. I got to sell them on the idea of CRM. Then I've got to sell them on Microsoft as the platform. And then finally, I have to sell them on Synact as the ideal partner to help them implement and support that application. When a partner sends a deal my way, that's done. Right? All three stages. 

 

Michael (39:02.349)

Yeah. 

 

Michael (39:05.142)

Yeah, all at once. 

 

Sarah (39:06.574)

Sarah (39:07.015)

It teed up for me. So it's really just been the most effective way for us to get new business. 

 

Michael (39:12.36)

One of the easiest things that we teach clients to do is what we call the market map. Where are my clients? Where are they coming from? Who are my partners in the field? What are the associations that I'm going to be finding these people, know, the pools that they're in? Who are my service providers? And when you start to map, who are my competitors? When you start to map all of that out and look at it, that picture is worth a thousand words. It's really neat because all of a sudden it's like, 

 

Michael (39:42.494)

wait a minute. These guys are, they're not competitors. You know, I might've thought they were competitors, but because I mapped this out and I'm thinking about it differently, all of sudden it's like, no, they don't do what we do. We should be talking them about that stuff. And now you've created another partner or a channel to sell through as you're doing things. So, nice. 

 

Ken (40:01.134)

One of the things that makes it easy to sell CRM is if you ask a VPS sales, where do most of your sales opportunities fall? Where are they? Just because they hang on forever. Because you ask a sales rep, what about that deal XYZ? yeah, yeah, that's it'll close next month. Next month you ask them, when's it going to close? it's going to close next month. And eventually it just drops off the table. Right. Well. 

 

Ken (40:28.93)

The only way to identify that is to say, what were the stages of the sales process you went through to get there? And where did it fail? Because within that stage, you can now take action to improve the results of that stage, which gets you to the next stage and keeps you from falling off the table. And if I can go through those stages and get them to fall off the table very quickly, it's very good. Because now I can move on to somebody that's going to work with me. 

 

Michael (40:56.334)

Love it. I'm going to change gears again. Now let's talk about Sarah says, I want to go back to Sarah's, you know, says, I need you out of here. You're already thinking about it. But one of the things that we, you mentioned earlier is, you know, I was milking the cash cow. What did you do for two things? One, to make sure that you felt all right. How did you make sure that your wife felt? 

 

Michael (41:24.118)

All right, what were the steps that you went through from a planning perspective to say, no longer have income coming in. We're going to turn that up. After Sarah makes her final payment, we're going to be done. How did you know you were going to be OK? 

 

Ken (41:41.998)

Ken (41:44.389)

Just look at my assets. 

 

Michael (41:45.838)

Okay, okay. So it wasn't working with a financial planner or a wealth advisor that somebody modeled that you just in your head. 

 

Ken (41:54.862)

I have a financial planner. 

 

Ken (41:58.042)

That goes without saying, but over the years, because I was at J &J for 17 years, there were opportunities that I made money on that I was careful with and I was fortunate. 

 

Sarah (42:14.766)

At the time we made the transaction happen, he knew he had X thousands of dollars a month coming in for the loan payment as well. So that kind of extended the income for a while. at least, mean, it was actually a 10 year note. I don't know how long it actually took me to pay it off, but it was not the full 10 years. But yeah, I mean, think there was a... 

 

Sarah (42:40.302)

I don't know that my mom was necessarily that concerned about it. 

 

Sarah (42:48.202)

She was still working at the time as well. Yes. Right. Which actually made a difference. Right. I think. And I don't know. She's never really gotten too involved in like the business decisions or what we've done in the business. She's kind of stayed at arm's length for the most part. But I think she was on some level glad for me to have this opportunity to make it my own. 

 

Michael (43:11.468)

Yeah. I ask, let me dive into why, is oftentimes without knowing those things, you you look at the planning pyramid, we call it, are we okay? And when I say we, it's my wife and I, my spouse and I, my husband and I, whatever that the case may be for you, but are we okay? And until we get that answered in our head, it's kind of like Maslow's, 

 

Michael (43:38.402)

pyramid of needs. If I don't have my needs met, how could I even think about selling this to the next generation? How could I even think about whatever those cases may be? 

 

Ken (43:48.556)

Well, for years and years and years, I I did all kinds of retirement projections and, I had, you know, spreadsheets galore that, you know, figured everything out, you know, as I went out. 

 

Michael (44:00.994)

I was waiting to hear that because I had this funny film. Of course I had a financial advisor, but the financial advisor, the wealth advisor did not do those spreadsheets. You had those spreadsheets. 

 

Ken (44:12.654)

You know, I had a certain amount of money that had with the financial dividers, and then I had a certain amount of money that I'll say I played with. Okay? And so, you know, between the two, I felt very comfortable that I always had control of my own destiny anyway. And if the financial planner wasn't working out right, I mean, I actually, after I retired and went to school and learned some trading tips and such, and they've 

 

Ken (44:43.342)

It was very expensive, but it paid off. 

 

Michael (44:45.23)

Nice, nice. So it wasn't so much a planner, but more of an investment manager. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's in this day and age, it's really helpful to make that distinction. My father-in-law sold his business when he was in his early 40s, lived until 92. All those years, no planner. It was just a guess that he was going to be okay. 

 

Michael (45:13.39)

And then every time the market did like 2000, 2001, 2002, scared the bejesus out of them. 2008, 2009, holy cow, are we going to make it through? Realistically, knowing what he spent, what he was doing, had that been modeled for him? he never, they were hands off, nobody's going to look at our stuff. And so he had no partner other than himself. 

 

Michael (45:40.238)

The fact that you were able to run those spreadsheets, he didn't even have the spreadsheets. It was really just you know, swag, right? 

 

Ken (45:49.654)

And then, you know, once I reviewing the spreadsheets with my wife, she certainly felt comfortable and then she started to glaze over because of the detail. And she says, that's enough. got it handled. I don't want to worry about it anymore. 

 

Michael (45:54.274)

She's very comfortable. 

 

Michael (46:02.754)

Yeah, good for you. 

 

Sarah (46:03.992)

Your point, Michael, though, I think not just at that retirement moment, but like at there are critical moments throughout the growth of your business, throughout like sort of your trajectory as a business owner that that modeling can be really helpful. I know for me, you know, I've started pretty recently starting to like put together kind of my 10 year vision personally and that 10 year business plan that that potentially, you know, 

 

Sarah (46:32.482)

fulfills that vision. And there are a lot of scenarios that I like to play out. For example, I know my business has value. I am confident that at some point in the future, should I decide to sell, I will sell it and I will make some amount of money on it. But I run a model that, with my wealth manager, I run a model that says, what if SynAct has no value? 

 

Sarah (47:00.716)

What does it look like then for us long term? What does it look like if it has X value? What does it look like if we make this decision or that decision? And for me, those modeling efforts provide a lot of comfort. On a much more granular level, I do the same thing in the business on a regular basis. So at the beginning of the year, end of the year, beginning of the year as I'm budgeting for next year, this may sound a little pessimistic, but I always do a worst case scenario. 

 

Sarah (47:29.742)

budget, right? Like what happens if I don't grow the way I think I'm going to grow? I lose customers. I still hire those people I was planning to hire. Like what happens then? And if at the end of the year, all those bad things happen and we're still afloat, I can feel pretty confident that we have a stable business, right? Not everybody works that way, but I really do like to see the 

 

Sarah (47:57.566)

see the different scenarios in print, right? That helps. 

 

Ken (48:00.718)

It's never happened. 

 

Michael (48:01.986)

Right, 

 

Michael (48:02.376)

right. But it's always, you know, be prepared for the worst and hope for the best. you know, a lot of times I see with the business owners, they're so into growing the business, they forget about, I taking enough money out for me? And or they're, they continue to keep investing back into the business. What if you have one of those years and you haven't done that balancing act to say, are we going to be okay? 

 

Sarah (48:29.678)

I you have a situation where you end up in a legal dispute or something along those lines. I one of the things I talk a lot about with my accountant and my wealth manager is how much money should stay in the business from a, you know, just from a protection perspective. you know, does it make more sense to pull it out and build our personal wealth? You know, you can always inject cash back in. 

 

Michael (48:56.27)

can to the business. 

 

Sarah (48:58.05)

There's a lot of ways to handle that, but again, it's a balancing act. You don't want to create a situation where you have a cashflow problem, but you also don't want to hoard money in the business that can then be at risk, right? Not to say that anyone would be in a legal dispute here, but just. 

 

Michael (49:15.788)

Of course, of course. And aside from that, it's not just are we okay, but what about the taxes? What are the, you know, what are all, what does the estate look like? And as you were doing this stuff, the estate tax issues were a lot different than they are today. Today, very few of us have an estate tax problem on the federal level. Right. You might on New York state, but, so it just, becomes interesting to make sure that we're dotting all our I's, crossing all our T's. One of the things 

 

Michael (49:44.216)

I like to push people to do is to make sure that your attorney and accountant and the wealth advisor, the business coach are all meeting to talk about where's the direction of this family going. And that's, know, when you think about what a family office is, that's what you've got is that there's a group of people sitting around saying, where's the family going? What do they need? And let's think about five years from now. And so I really push to make that, you know, that meeting happen. A lot of people like, 

 

Michael (50:13.122)

Why would I want to put all those people in the room? Think about what that bill's going to look like. what I've seen over and over again is if you do that every year, one out of three years is going to pay for all of those meetings plus. It's not going to happen every year. But the tax law is going to change here. We're sitting with the big, bill, right? The big, beautiful tax bill. how does that affect us? What's going on? How do we model these things going forward? 

 

Sarah (50:40.25)

I just had that meeting two weeks ago. the other thing you don't think about in terms of the cost of that is when those folks get in a room and can talk to each other, and I'm not this conduit that's trying to translate things that aren't necessarily my area of expertise, they come up with really good ideas that can save you money, ideas that can make you money. So it's worth spending a little bit to get those folks in the room on an occasional basis for sure. I always say like, 

 

Sarah (51:08.814)

When you're a small business, you may not have, say, a leadership team. We're small enough, I don't have this C-level team around me. So how do I build my tribe? How do I aggregate the people who know what they know about my business to help me make the best possible decisions? And again, building those relationships and making sure that those folks also are cross-pollinating when necessary can be huge. 

 

Michael (51:39.776)

So we've talked about your business. We've talked about wealth. Let's talk about the family What? What would you what is your number one favorite tradition can for your family? Do you guys have any traditions things that you do on a regular basis we play golf you play golf 

 

Sarah (52:00.718)

Sarah (52:01.378)

So my dad and I are in a league together, which is really nice. We play Monday nights at Eaglevale. the league is kind of funny. It's bankers and banker adjacent folks, is the best way to describe them. A lot of these folks I've just met networking over the years. And I think it's our fourth year in the league. I was the first woman in the league. 

 

Sarah (52:27.854)

and was fortunate enough, you the guys invited me to join the league and said, you who do you want to play with? And my dad, my mom and dad had just moved here. And so I thought, well, this will be a great way for me to make sure that I hang with my dad once a week during the nice weather. And it'll be a way for him to meet some other folks who enjoy playing golf, which is something he likes to do. And so, and it's been, it's been great fun. We're not having our, we're not having the best season. 

 

Sarah (52:55.278)

But we are enjoying ourselves. Last night, every once in while, we'll play one of those golf games as opposed to a real match. And last night was three clubs and a putter. So it was a little bit different. Yeah, we had fun. We don't have a lot of traditions in the way that holiday traditions or things like that. I there's some things that we all enjoy doing together. 

 

Michael (53:20.6)

But if I said this, we are compters and we. 

 

Michael (53:28.558)

How would you finish that sentence? 

 

Sarah (53:32.91)

That's a great question. Man, Michael, you should have prepped me with this. Sorry. 

 

Ken (53:37.804)

My response would be, love life. 

 

Sarah (53:39.758)

Yeah. 

 

Sarah (53:39.979)

Yeah. Yeah. 

 

Ken (53:42.158)

life. 

 

Michael (53:42.958)

I think that's evident in the conversations that we've had. I love that. 

 

Sarah (53:48.226)

Yeah, 

 

Sarah (53:48.726)

there's a little, when I, before I joined the business, my mom gave my dad this little desk tchotchke. And it says never, never spent so much time working on the business that you forget to build your life. I'm, I'm, I'm totally, you know, screwing up the actual language on the thing. the 

 

Sarah (54:14.35)

The theory is there, the notion is there, and I now have that in my office. so I think that for sure is something that we've both tried to... 

 

Michael (54:25.834)

Don't work so hard that you forget that you have family and life and friends and work life balance and putting those pieces together. 

 

Sarah (54:33.26)

Yeah, 

 

Sarah (54:33.751)

I like to call it work life harmony because balance implies that it's equal, right? It's never equal. it's never equal. And you know, my harmony, my ideal harmony might be different than somebody else's. Yeah. And that's okay, right? I might err on the higher side of work occasionally or what have you, but that might be my harmony. So I like to think about it that way. 

 

Michael (55:00.938)

1. If you're sitting in front of a group of family-owned businesses, 

 

Michael (55:08.664)

What are you telling them? What do you think are the two or three most important things for you, Ken, as you're working with your daughter and building it out as a family business? What would you share with other CEOs? 

 

Ken (55:23.61)

to the point you made earlier, there are family businesses where not everybody's in the business. Okay. My son was in the business very, very briefly, very briefly, for a couple of months. He's between jobs and, know, we put them to work. if it's a family business, the people that are passionate about it and want to be in the business should be in the business. If they're not. 

 

Ken (55:52.62)

Don't force them to be in the business. Don't say, got to carry on my legacy because it will fail. 

 

Michael (55:59.982)

Michael (56:00.762)

I want to expand on that a little bit because I think that might be the most important thing that we're talking about right now through this whole conversation. We hit on a lot of really important things. My mentor, Jay Hughes, says our job as patriarchs and matriarchs of the family, he calls them the elders of the family. He said, don't be an elder, not an older. 

 

Michael (56:28.194)

Olders get stuck in the mud and it's my way or the highway and this is just the way that it's going to be. We're an elder. You're looking to find out what does joy mean to you? What is your passion? And if it's not in the business, it's A-OK. I love that you identified that really early. What is your... Do mind if I ask what your son does today and does he love what he's doing today? 

 

Ken (56:51.884)

Yeah, he cooks and he does love it. 

 

Michael (56:55.566)

totally different. It's that art side of things. It's that right side of the brain as we're thinking about things, not a business owner mindset. if we don't have that in the world, if we don't have that within families, could you imagine if everybody in your family was a Heidi? 

 

Sarah (57:17.006)

It's hard enough with just the two of us. 

 

Michael (57:19.178)

Right, so go back to that piece and helping people to identify that. have two, you know, I have seven kids between Victoria and I, but you know, one of my sons is always, you know, still trying to figure it out. And I'm like, it's just a journey and you're so young, you're still in your twenties. Do not, you know, everybody thinks you have to have it all together and figure it out and you don't. And that's okay. 

 

Michael (57:45.058)

Thank you for sharing. I really want to make sure, you know, our job as parents, our job as the CEOs is to look for that passion and look for that fire in the belly. Double down on that. But the ones that don't have it within the family, help them find what is their fire and just, you know, celebrate it. be there. you, Sarah, what would you say talking to other family businesses? 

 

Ken (58:04.76)

take their own direction. 

 

Sarah (58:10.776)

I think that compartmentalization is really important, right? It's not to say that you shouldn't have conversations about the business outside of the office, so to speak. But you gotta know that the disagreements, the discord, the conversations you're having, they're about a business. They're not about the love you have for each other. They're not about the family. They may have an impact on the family, and that's important to recognize. 

 

Sarah (58:40.866)

But being able to set the family apart from the business is huge. It was very natural for us. I don't think we ever talked about it. We never said, hey, we got to be better about this. It was just relatively natural for us to say, hey, we know that this isn't about us. This is about the strategy. This is about the tactics. This is about whatever. 

 

Sarah (59:10.594)

that's a big part of being successful working with family. I think too, being able to kind of hone in on like personality wise, like what works really well in the business and what is perhaps better played out in your personal life is really helpful, right? Like to know that like interacting with dad on this level, this is reserved for the business where 

 

Sarah (59:38.646)

Interacting with dad on this level should be reserved for the fun times that we have together. Not that the business isn't fun, that kind of thing. 

 

Michael (59:46.936)

I get that. get that. for me, business is fun. I hope so. I don't watch sports at the level that a lot of people do. My business is the sport. 

 

Ken (01:00:00.846)

Ken (01:00:01.349)

If you love what you do, you never have to work a day in a life. 

 

Michael (01:00:04.14)

Yeah, and I mentioned that we're engaging in a new journey. My wife retired last month, and we sat down and said, we could retire. We could just call it and be like, let's do all this stuff. I'm at the top of my game now. And we've learned 25 years of doing it, 15 years of studying the family businesses at the level that I've been studying. And so it's like, 

 

Michael (01:00:31.426)

I'm just having fun. I don't want to stop yet. So I get that. Favorite book, business book. 

 

Ken (01:00:44.546)

Sarah (01:00:48.682)

That's a tough one because I've read so many at this point. I'm a huge fan of the detraction system. Huge fan of EOS is great. We're running our business on EOS. Finally hired a formal implementer. So very excited about that. But I think the most impactful books have actually fallen outside of that canon. One is called The E-Myth. Sure. 

 

Sarah (01:01:15.118)

It's a classic. For me, it was really interesting because part of that story is he kind of makes the point that entrepreneurs, there's two sides of it, right? There's the running of the business and then the work that the technician is doing, right? And for many founders in particular, they get into owning their own business because they loved doing what they were doing so much. They wanted to do it for themselves. 

 

Sarah (01:01:44.15)

Susie loved baking pies, so Susie opens a pie shop. the pies are delicious and she's super successful. And so she's making more pies and more pies and more pies. And then she's got to hire someone to help her make the pies because she can't keep up with it anymore. And now Susie's doing payroll and she's doing the ordering and she's doing a little marketing and advertising. And what's Susie not doing anymore? She's not making the pies anymore. And so there's this, 

 

Michael (01:02:08.142)

in the past. 

 

Sarah (01:02:12.248)

theory in this book that I think it's Michael Berger. Michael Gerber. He's kind of making the point that you got to decide who you are in the business. It was really impactful to me because I'm not Susie. I didn't get into this because CRM was this great passion that I had, right? 

 

Michael (01:02:33.975)

Right, where dad came in saying, I know sales, I know what can help them, I can put these pieces together. Very great distinction. 

 

Sarah (01:02:41.646)

So I didn't, I'm not worried about making the pies, right? I mean, we want to make really good pies at Sennac, don't get me wrong. But the idea is that I came in knowing that this was a path to business ownership. So for me, you know, I can kind of relate to that story on the alternate side. And it was just a very impactful, impactful book that kind of changed the way I thought about my own role in the business. So that one, that's probably one of my faves. So many though. 

 

Michael (01:03:11.48)

I'm up for you. 

 

Ken (01:03:13.006)

When I first started in sales, I read a book called Winning Through Intimidation. 

 

Ken (01:03:21.118)

and it had like two nuggets in it. And the first one was really, if I can remember correctly, this is part of the rambling part. I'm trying to recall exactly what it was. But Winning Through Intimidation was basically, it's just escaped my mind. It was something to do with the fact that, you know, 

 

Ken (01:03:47.458)

get through a sensual sales process kind of thing. it's like, get it over with. If you're not going to do business, move on. yeah. Kind of thing. That was part of it. But it was that one nugget. And then there were a number of strategies books that I got into later on as an extension to, and I can't remember what it was. 

 

Sarah (01:04:08.13)

Balance scorecards, strategy mapping. 

 

Ken (01:04:10.356)

Yeah, strategy mapping. Because that went up to the CEO level and said, look, the problem is you can't implement down here because you don't understand what you're doing up here. And that's what we found more than anything. So we started late before I retired, trying to do more of these strategy sessions, because the strategy session then would lead to the sales process modeling. And it was just trying to get more engaged at a higher level. So that was probably the most important. 

 

Michael (01:04:40.62)

I love it. Sarah and Ken Comter, SynAct, thank you for joining us. If people wanted to find SynAct, how would they find you? 

 

Sarah (01:04:54.254)

Our website is synact.net, so S-Y-N-A-C-T dot net. I'm also always happy to have people reach out to me directly. So I'm Sarah, S-A-R-A-H dot comter, C-O-M-P-T-E-R at synact.net. You know, I'm on the LinkedIn and all that as well, but yeah, honestly, happy to chat with anybody. 

 

Michael (01:05:14.232)

Perfect. Thank you for sharing your story. was lots and lots of great nuggets in here. Just really appreciate taking the time. Thanks for having us. Absolutely. Thanks everybody for listening. I'm Michael Palumbos from Family Wealth and Legacy in Rochester, New York, and you've been listening to the Family Biz Show. Love to have you join us on the next episode. Have a great day everybody. Take care. We're out. 

 

Sarah (01:05:42.872)

Cool.