Founder Lessons From Scaling, Going Public, and Rebuilding | Rick Jordan
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What lessons did Rick Jordan learn from taking his company public?
Let me tell you the biggest lesson that I learned is that if you have that thought cross your mind, oh, I could just go out and get this cash that puts the liability on me to put it in the company to keep it going. That's not the thing that needs to change in that moment. The cash flow into the company is not the thing that needs to change. It's the company itself, something within the company and how you got to that place to begin with is where the change needs to happen first.
you don't win by following the playbook you win by rewriting it 700 episodes deep with the people who actually built something real no theory no fluff no shortcuts this is right about now with ryan alford
What's up, guys? Welcome to Right About Now. On today's episode, we talk to Rick Jordan. He's back on Right About Now, and this time we're getting into what happens after the big climb. Rick took his company public. They scaled fast. They fell harder. Acquisitions can be tough. You got to rebuild. You got to live through the pressure. Today, we're talking failure, ego, resilience, and what it really takes to get back up when you run out of that rocket fuel and you got to get up and give it your own. Rick, welcome to Right About Now. What's shaking? dude it's good to be here again man you had already done a lot and taken off but you're about to go towards this climb and you've had it whatever stage of that there is you know i want you to share that we all see and hear people talk think that they won't be subject to things that others have the failures the wins the highs and the lows i even put people sometimes in that it's always highs for them never lows it's always yeah no joke they're always crushing it yeah
And then it's like, well, why can't I be like them? Right. Exactly. We all have that a little bit. I try to live in my own lane. I do that pretty well. But at the same time, we all go through it. I'm excited for you to share a little bit of that. And I know we'll get into some rosier things. Just share what that journey has been like the last few years. I started an I.T. business 16 years ago now, and I got it to the point where it was doing a few million per year. And then I had gotten it to a few, meaning like four million per year. four million a year is a lot to a lot of people truly i thought it was a lot to me 15 years ago then in a matter of two year time period i took it from four million to 15 in just two years it was right about that time that we went public and that was through some m&a through some acquisitions because i had built this thing you know the movie the founder with michael keaton one of my favorites ever right and michael keaton is playing the role of ray crock from
And now he does the deal with the McDonald's brothers, a scene in there where he was on a tennis court. He was taping out masking tape on the tennis court where the different stations were going to go for the kitchen at the McDonald's. The McDonald's brothers had the speedy system and he was like, I think we can do it better. And he had people like bumping into each other and then he would rearrange where things were supposed to go. It was really cool to watch that, especially because I worked at McDonald's. I was a shift manager when I was 16. Some of the best sales training to this day. Do you want fries with that? The best upsell line in the world. Seriously, that's celebrity upsell, dude. The McDonald's brothers and Ray Kroc made this thing scalable to where they could deploy tens of thousands of restaurants across the world because it was the same thing everywhere.
And that's another thing I learned. And that's what I did is I made this IT company scalable where I could take a rubber stamp and put it into other IT companies and clone it that way. Well, why would I want to start it from scratch in all these different places when I can accelerate super fast with some capital backing? And I could just use that stamp and clone this thing. And that's what I started to do. It was going really, really well.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What lessons did Rick Jordan learn from taking his company public?
0:00–4:00
2
How did acquisitions impact Rick's company's growth and challenges?
4:00–8:19
3
What hidden problems can arise from acquired businesses?
8:19–11:10
4
How can founders effectively handle the emotional burden of failure?
11:10–14:14
5
What strategies did Rick use to rebuild after setbacks?
14:14–17:34
6
How can entrepreneurs avoid the pitfalls of rushing growth?
17:34–20:56
7
What are the differences between stock purchases and asset purchases?
20:56–24:29
8
How can business owners implement scalable systems for long-term success?
24:29–38:59
Speakers
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