Buying an Existing Business

Sarah Banowetz: Well welcome back to the Banowetz Marketing podcast. Today I have June Schmidt with me and I’m Sara Banowetz. The Banowetz podcast. And then our guest today is Brett Walters with Computer Heaven and Cedar Rapids. And you just purchased Computer Heaven, is that correct?

Brett Walters: That’s correct, June 1st.

Sarah Banowetz: Awesome, well congratulations [crosstalk 00:00:20], congratulations.

Brett Walters: Oh, thank you. Thank you very much.

Sarah Banowetz: And then you’re the third owner, right?

Brett Walters: That is correct.

Sarah Banowetz: Okay, perfect. So-

Brett Walters: A list of customers, but we’re the longest surviving, excuse me, surviving computer business in Cedar Rapids.

Sarah Banowetz: Very nice.

Brett Walters: So that’s kind of cool, too, in itself.

Sarah Banowetz: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well, I was excited to have you on because my husband worked for Computer Heaven with the first owner back in like the 1999, 2000, [crosstalk 00:00:46]. Yeah-

Brett Walters: That’s really cool.

Sarah Banowetz: He really liked working there and-

Brett Walters: That’s cool.

Sarah Banowetz: Yeah-

Brett Walters: Well, I’m glad, I’m glad. Well, we’re going to carry on the traditions, so.

Sarah Banowetz: Very nice. Well, I love seeing local businesses continuing and thriving, so-

Brett Walters: Me, too. Me, too.

Sarah Banowetz: So what’s your background, Brett?

Brett Walters: My background is really varied. I have a Master’s degree in business. I’ve also got an art degree. I got a robotics and automation degree. I did, as my friend said, what happened? I did a lot of stuff, enjoyed all of it. And this has got me here 35 years in the computer world. So got a little bit of experience doing that. That started because now I’ll put out how old I am. Back when I was 16 in the 70s my dad brought home a computer from Collins and I fell in love. And I sometimes wonder if it was a curse, but I’ve enjoyed it. It’s been a lot of fun. Good learning experience.

Sarah Banowetz: Very nice [crosstalk 00:01:45]-

Speaker 3: So as a person who lives in Cedar Rapids and would be a potential customer of yours, what are some things that you do at Computer Heaven?

Brett Walters: We do your basic computer repair. We do laptops, we do phones, tablets, basically any of your digital items that you may have. We also will come to your house and do onsite so you don’t have to drag everything in to see us anymore-

Speaker 3: Oh, great, great.

Brett Walters: We’re trying to open that up a lot more. We’re starting to work with small businesses, helping them out, because a lot of times they don’t have the money for a whole IP crew. They only may be a few people and none of them are experienced doing computers. So we come in and help them out. We’re also opening remote, where we can just log into your computer now even in, kind of cool. As long as it doesn’t require us to touch the computer, we can do that now. So it’s kind of cool. We’re just-

Sarah Banowetz: Excellent. That sounds like a great, that’s a great service, as a small business owner [crosstalk 00:02:47]-

Brett Walters: So we’re just trying to open everything up. A lot of people have been concerned that we’re going to lose something in the changing. We’re just trying to get better for everybody, and also at the same time educate and help people. We’re starting to do classes for some of our older customers that it’s getting tougher for them to use a computer. It’s not that they never have seen a computer before, it just gets a little tougher as you get a little bit older. So we’re starting to work with them guys a little bit-

Speaker 3: That’s interesting. Before we move on to another topic, so tell us, elaborate on that just a little bit more, Brett. What are the classes? What are, name a few things that you teach?

Brett Walters: Well, some of the classes we’re putting up is basically just a Windows 10 101 class because a lot of them have problems. A lot of them are coming from Windows 7, because that ends support in January, so they’re being forced to go to it. And they’re pretty set in their ways, and it’s surprising, a lot of them had worked with computers 30, 40 years, but things get tougher. I am not an expert. I’ve watched my dad, smartest guy I ever met, but computers are tough for him now and it’s something I’m trying to just help. I get tired of seeing the elderly people come in having all these problems and their only help out there is people trying to steal money from them, and a lot of them get a lot of money stolen. So we’re trying to help them be educated that way, but also come into the classes and just trying to do, I don’t know, the right thing, I guess.

Sarah Banowetz: And when you say stealing money are you talking about like the-

Brett Walters: The hackers and stuff that call them up or they’ll see malware on their computer. Windows says call us, you’re having a problem. So they call, $800 later, they have no money. Or they call us, we all get these robocalls every day. And you know, they’ll say things like, “This is Microsoft calling. We noticed your computers infected. We can clean it up”. All they clean up is your bank account and we’re trying to teach people that this isn’t what you do. And we even help them with, one lady came in and she was ripped off by somebody that said it was Amazon, and took 12 grand out of her account [crosstalk 00:05:11].

Speaker 3: Oh my-

Sarah Banowetz: Wow!

Brett Walters: So I’m warning, every time an elderly person comes in, no matter who it is, don’t give anybody any money. Call the company, do this. I’m just trying to prevent other losses from people. Because it’s sad. It’s sad that people take advantage of the elderly. We’re all going to be there and I don’t want to be taken advantage. So I figured better help and make karma good.

Sarah Banowetz: I didn’t even realize that Computer Heaven had that service for people, so that’s amazing.

Brett Walters: Yeah, it’s just something we try to do and help and the classes are just another way to help. And those that don’t know how to use it right, we try to show them, you might as well take advantage of what you’ve got. That’s what I keep telling my dad, since he’s like, “Oh, I don’t want to go be an old person”. Well take advantage of it, you worked all your life. And I’d rather have the older people happy using their equipment, right? And not getting ripped off and trying to just be as good of a person as I can.

Sarah Banowetz: Okay. So then the younger demographic who is very tech savvy, how does Computer Heaven help serve them?

Brett Walters: Well, I’m finding they know stuff, but sometimes they feel uncomfortable doing their own work or there’s something wrong with it and they don’t quite know. So we help them out with that. A lot of their information comes from YouTube. YouTube always doesn’t have the right answers. So I sometimes see the results of that. Sometimes building their own computer, they watched the wrong YouTube video and their computer ended up overheating or something because the guy that was doing it just forgot about you need fans in your computers. So lots of things like that. But we do get a lot of younger people.

It’s kind of weird but I’ve been told that we’re a gaming community, at Computer Heaven, which I didn’t know anything about. But we were starting to get a lot of gamers in so I’m starting to get more stuff in for them because they like to buy stuff, so.

And it’s just a lot of it just talking back and forth. I talked to a young guy and, “Wow, this guy is pretty smart”. They’ll come back in and I have a couple younger people that I got hired in there. So it helps that I don’t know everything. So it’s kind of nice, too, to have a younger person around that knows some of the stuff that I just forgot.

Sarah Banowetz: Well I know Matt loved working, one reason he loved working at Computer Heaven was because it’s not the big box store. And so he actually did, in high school, build his own computer. And then he was into gaming and LAN parties and everything like that and stuff.

Brett Walters: Yeah. So that’s kind of how we’re dealing with a lot of young people. But they come in with their phones because we all drop our phones. And just yesterday, we had a guy come in and he tried to fix it himself, didn’t have the results that he wanted and said, “Hey, can you guys redo this for me?” And no problem. We’re here to help her. Everybody’s an expert at something, and there’s things I won’t do, I’ll go hire an expert. So that’s the way we want to be. No matter what, we’re always there for whoever. And no matter how smart you are, because not everybody knows everything. And I don’t either, I have people I go to if it’s something above my head, I have lots of people out there I can go to. So yeah.

Sarah Banowetz: Well, it’s very nice that the Cedar Rapids community has Computer Heaven.

Brett Walters: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I’m glad because it’s needed here. There’s a few, but like I was saying before, a lot of it is more for the bigger companies, the computer people out there and there’s just this big niche that there’s no one to help them. If we were gone, they’d have to go to Best Buy. You don’t always get the best there. Not that there’s anything wrong, but sometimes they just don’t do as good of a job as somebody that personally can go in, that you can go back in, see the same person that worked on it before. You build a little rapport with them.

Sarah Banowetz: Yeah, no, that makes sense. Okay, so switching gears a little bit, I hear that you have a pretty extensive background in marketing-

Brett Walters: Ah, just a little bit-

Sarah Banowetz: Which is going to be helpful with Computer Heaven.

Brett Walters: Exactly. And it’s, I first went to school way back and got an arts degree, but I learned a little bit about marketing from there. Once the internet came, I became fascinated because I could use graphic design, and could be on the internet and do things. It was like, wow. So I just started from there, learning marketing, how to do things. And it was very educational. I learned quite a bit. I did conferences and had to put on shows in towns I’d never been in, and had to figure out how to get advertisement around there and everything else to get people to come, because it’s not very fun if you go to have an event and no one shows up. So learned a lot of stuff and it just got progressively more and more in 20 years, doing SEO and that kind of stuff. Helping people out. Selling products. So just a little bit of a background in it. Probably not as much as you.

Sarah Banowetz: Well for me, I’m like a marketing director, so I put a bunch of people around the table who are experts. So we do have, Sarah Lysinger is our SEO specialist, she has Whose Lands Digital Media. But yeah, I know just enough to be dangerous. What I like to do is put a ton of people around the table.

Brett Walters: That’s kind of what I do, too, because the people I’ve got hired there, I think some of them are awesome for their, you know, one guy I have Gavin, he’s 19, he’s going to school Monday, still going to work for me, he’s going to be an electrical engineer and he’s a little wizard with this stuff. So I can say, “Hey I’m looking for this ID,” and 10 seconds later he’s found an app or something we can use. And I kind of like that because I’m not into the apps every day and doing stuff and here he is, because he’s 19 and got all the time in the world, and all of the sudden, “Here’s this app, here’s that”, so it’s good to surround yourself by people who are smart and know how to [crosstalk 00:11:24]-

Sarah Banowetz: Well, and things change so fast. I mean even like the Facebook and Instagram algorithms, I mean, they just change so fast that Facebook is rolling out new restrictions right now with mortgage and and financial lenders that take effect in just actually three days [crosstalk 00:00:11:41], on the 26th, so-

Brett Walters: Like Google, when Google went to secured, that really changed a lot and they change their algorithms all the time, and sometimes it wasn’t a good thing when you’re trying to market businesses and that kind of stuff because you’d spent so much time doing it one way which they required and then, “Nope, we don’t want that anymore”.

Sarah Banowetz: Which is kind of a reason to hire a company to help with that kind of thing because where there’s so many changes, you would have to be spending so much time just keeping up on all the changes-

Brett Walters: Yep, yep-

Sarah Banowetz: That, I mean, it’s hard to do your business while also marketing your business, unless you have full-time staff that are dedicated to that exact point, so.

Brett Walters: Even with my background, I have problems marketing myself now because I’m running the business doing all this and it’s like, “I don’t have any time”. So sometimes I’m up till two, three in the morning trying to also do some market means. So it’s just one of those things I knew when I took this business I would have to do that. But it’s fun. It keeps me excited and-

Sarah Banowetz: There’s a lot of hustle that goes into being an entrepreneur.

Brett Walters: Yep, sure is. Sure is. Sometimes I wonder if I’m insane or what for taking this on.

Sarah Banowetz: I actually am, I am of the opinion after the, so I started Banowetz Marketing a year and a half ago. It’s my third company. But I’m of the opinion now that if you start a company, you probably are pretty, there’s probably some level of insanity to start your own company. You have to be a little bit crazy because otherwise why would you do this?

Brett Walters: Yes, exactly. I would totally agree. It’s pretty crazy sometimes, it’s like, “What did I do this for? I could go places before and”-

Sarah Banowetz: I know. There’s a book that, I haven’t read the whole thing yet but I’ve flipped through it, because then again you don’t have much time. Like I’ve got a ton, I have wanted, with starting a business, my book list, my one like wanting to read these books have just, it’s grown a lot, but then yet you don’t have time to read them either, though. But The E Myth, have you heard of that?

Brett Walters: No, no.

Sarah Banowetz: So I don’t remember who the author is. I do know the cover is blue, but it’s called The E Myth. And essentially it talks about how people go into small business because they love what they’re doing. So they love to be a practitioner. So if you love baking pies, you’re like, oh everyone tells you, “Go open a pie store”. If you love building computers, go open a computer store. And really what it comes down to is when you’re actually pushing a successful business forward, you have to do so much of the business part of the business that you have to let other people do the practitioning part and you run the business. And if you try to do both, you’ll burn out.

Brett Walters: Kind of sounds like a book I read years ago, it was called Small Time Operator, and the first paragraph basically was, they basically said every person should have their own small business and that was it. Because everybody’s got a passion in something. So why not turn that into a small business? And I always thought that’s so cool, but you know, jumping on it sometimes. And I’d fiddled around with, “Ooh, I’ve got a business, for real, I’m tired of it, man”. So there’s probably been a half dozen businesses I’ve tried to do. It’s around but then sometimes it’s like, “Oh, I don’t have the money”, “Oh I don’t have the”, and a lot of times you just talk yourself out of it because you freak out. “Oh no, if I do this,” and this time I grabbed the ball and-

Sarah Banowetz: Well, and when you do it, when you do something, when you are like, “Okay, this is the business that I can see succeeding and this is what I want to do”. There’s a level of pressure there that you’re like, “No, I’m going to make this work”. Yeah. Which I’m sure that you-

Brett Walters: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. The past week it’s been kind of slow, and I look at it as schools going to be starting, the only ones making really big money now is clothing and school supplies. That’s what’s on the mind. But you know, I’m sitting there, I need some business and it can eat you up or you just relax and know it’ll change next week. It’s always changing, you’ll have slow times-

Sarah Banowetz: There’s, it ebbs and flows. It ebbs and flows.

Brett Walters: Yep, yep. So I just don’t try to worry about it, you know? Otherwise I’ll have an ulcer and I’ll feel bad.

Sarah Banowetz: Yeah.

Brett Walters: And I don’t like that.

Sarah Banowetz: Yeah. No, my dad owns a car dealership. I didn’t mention that earlier, but yeah, my dad owns Warehouse Auto Company [crosstalk 00:16:00] and growing up in the business, because he started warehouse auto like 20 some years ago, growing up in the business, that’s totally what it is. I mean there were times when it was like, “Oh no, no one,” we couldn’t get drinks while we’d go out. I mean, we still were fine. We’d go out to eat, but we couldn’t get drinks and oh you know, the sky is falling. And then two weeks later it’s like, “What do you guys want?”

Brett Walters: “What do you want? You can have anything.”

Sarah Banowetz: I know. And it’s like whoa. Yeah.

Brett Walters: It’s the-

Sarah Banowetz: It’s just the life of an entrepreneur-

Brett Walters: Yeah. Yep, exactly.

Speaker 3: So I’m going to take you back to the marketing aspect again, Brett, because having listened to you talk, there’s a lot you not only know about marketing but also things that you’ve incorporated into your businesses. But one of the things that we like to do here at Banowetz Marketing is in a multifaceted way, do things for you, help you. So since you’re sitting in front of the marketing guru in our office here, what kind of question would you have for her that she could help you?

Brett Walters: Oh, it was probably the biggest one. How do you do it all?

Sarah Banowetz: Isn’t that the truth?

Brett Walters: It’s both a serious and a funny question at the same time. Because I know no one can do it all, but it’s hard, like myself with the background, it’s hard for me to do it all. But at the same time, since I am a small business, it’s hard to go out and get some, because I know some of the places around here, I can’t even walk in the door because I don’t have the checkbook big enough to write a check for, have them to come in and do anything for me because I know what marketing costs to do.

So it’s one of those things, and I wish I had more time so I could do my stuff, but I’m trying, I’m doing the best I can and I know that I’ll be looking for someone down the road to be doing my stuff, because I know I can’t do it all. It’d be nice if I could, but I don’t have enough hours in the day and I’m at an age now that I don’t want to spend all my hours in the day to do it. I try to do my stuff that I do for the business during the day time, when I go home, I’m no longer at work, so I’m home now. And [crosstalk 00:18:22]-

Sarah Banowetz: Excuse me. I was going to say before Sara answers a question for you, I guess the biggest thing is, so what really is your biggest pain point right now? If you could narrow it down to one or two things, what would they be, Brett?

Brett Walters: Time. Time and money. But I know the money will be coming before long because it’s just, you know, hey, it’s new. Some people aren’t happy that it’s new. I’ve had people walk out when they find out I’m the new owner. That’s okay, they’ll come back hopefully. It’s just I don’t seem to have enough time. But I know in a few more months it’ll settle down a little bit because it’s all new-

Sarah Banowetz: Yeah. You’re getting new systems and processes, and learning the current ones-

Brett Walters: Yep and basically took the old way and completely threw it out and re-did everything else. Still the basic way it was. But it’s, but no, like what you asked my two major things would be, time and money.

Sarah Banowetz: And I think that’s very common for small business owners, is the balance of time and money. And because really, to grow a business, you need a whole marketing department. You need a whole marketing team. It’s not just one person because one person, you can’t expect one person to know SEO, Google ad words, Facebook ads, Instagram, billboards, because I still, I grew up in old media, too. My grandma was vice president of an ad agency. My dad had an ad agency before Warehouse Auto. So I’m not, there’s a balance between, like we had said earlier on before the camera started rolling, was that you sometimes use those, just the basic tenants of marketing in new ways that even before the internet started we’re using some of this similar relationship building. It’s about communication [crosstalk 00:20:12]-

Brett Walters: That’s exactly right-

Sarah Banowetz: It’s just communication. So no, I do think that time is huge. I mean even for us, we are a marketing company. So what have I done as a marketing company, which would be what a small business needs to do, in general, is build an entire team of people. So you have your graphic artists, your video editor, your audio editor, your social media experts, your AdWords experts. You build that whole team around you, websites, you build that team around you. And that’s what small businesses need to do, too. The problem is the cost of that is a lot. What I have found, and this is why I’ve built, because I grew up in business. What I did is I’ve built an agency that’s different than a normal agency. And the reason I got to that point was because of working in marketing for my parents’ company and realizing that that’s what they needed, was this entrepreneurial hustle that you did not find in the traditional agency world, which is just project base.

Brett Walters: Right.

Sarah Banowetz: So you might hire an agency to do just these big projects that you want done, but where is the entrepreneurial hustle? Where’s the oversight in what a marketing director provides a company? So a marketing director provides that oversight of, “Let’s throw this out because there’s so much that’s thrown at us”. I mean, that’s one of the questions people asked me today is, “Well, I’m getting calls from an emails from X, Y, Z companies. What do I do about this? Which are legit, which are not? Should I spend hundreds of dollars a month on Yelp and nothing on Facebook ads?” That type of thing. Which is a conversation that I’ve recently had with a business owner and I would say that was backwards. It needs to be flipped around and that’s what a marketing director provides.

Brett Walters: Right.

Sarah Banowetz: So what we’ve done at Banowetz Marketing is build that team, that in-house marketing department, but out of house on a contractor basis that you can just purchase a section of the time of that team for at the price point that you can afford and then scale up as you go.

So that’s what Banowetz Marketing is, is essentially for small business owners that need the extra time. And especially in our economy with unemployment being so low and it’s so expensive and hard to find quality talent that I’ve been working to build this team around that you can then hire on. Okay, so we only have a $2,000 a month budget. Well, you can’t hire a full time person at that, right? But you can hire a piece of a team at that price and then sit down and talk with the business owner, “Okay, here’s what we’re going to tackle first. What is the most important, here’s our plan for this,” and then scale and grow as as needed.

Brett Walters: No, that’s cool [crosstalk 00:22:46].

Speaker 3: So I’ll add to that, as well, Brett, because my area, my expertise area has been in leadership and my background comes from my husband was the owner operator of the Chick-Fil-A store over here. And so they know a little bit about marketing, they know a little bit, a lot about branding. And one of the things my husband used to say was marketing to me is like watching water boil, slowly boil and you watch it, you watch it, you watch it. And then finally it really does come to fruition. And so I’m working with a particular client right now because not only do we believe in the concept of marketing, Brett, but we also believe in OEE, operational excellence and a company can market you. But if things are not in place, your people come in to ask you to do a service for them. And if you don’t have those operations in place, well then there’s a concern isn’t there?

So one of the things that we’ve been working on with a client now is going through some materials and a particular book and talking about service leadership. And I’m in the process of another conversation. I know someone who is beginning to build her team in another business. And that was my suggestion to her, was to take a look at some of the materials we’ve been using with this other client. And it was really great yesterday, the client that I’ve been working on these materials with initially turning to them and saying, “Okay, now what’s worked for you? What’s made a difference for you? What would be your suggestions for this person who’s going to go through the new practices?” And also it’s been really cool because I’m in the transition of beginning to turn that leadership, those leadership strategies over to the owner of the business.

Because isn’t that who that leadership team should be able to look to, for that operational excellence? So it’s been cool to begin to see them turn a page into, “Okay, now I’ve been here with you this many months, now I want to become the Ameritas. I want to be calm. I’ve been that the teacher”, and that’s what I did for 34 years. I was an educator. “I want to begin to change what I do and become more of the advisor. So now that the owner of the business is taking the initiative to work with his team.”

Brett Walters: No, that’s good. That’s good. There’s a lot to say on that and I, myself, believe a lot of that stuff. If you train the people it’s better than showing, “Here, everyday, here”. It’s the fish parable, you know, teach a man to fish, you know?

Sarah Banowetz: Or give him a fish. Well, and it’s unusual that a marketing agency would have that kind of service offering, but it’s needed because if you just, marketing can just be like the wrapping paper on the gift and if you don’t have a solid [crosstalk 00:00:25:47]-

Brett Walters: You take it too. Yeah, no, I think marketing is very important. Yeah, I wish I could have a whole team of people on there, but that’s where you guys come into play. Because like I said, I’m going to probably, because I like you guys, you guys sound like you know what you’re talking about. So I’m your guy. I’m going to be looking at you because like I said, I can’t do everything and it just seems to be a mess with Google calling every day, “Stop, don’t hang up the phone”.

Sarah Banowetz: It’s nice, too, to be able to say, “Hey, I have someone to call because you can transfer those, you can send the calls to us, essentially, and we can screen them for you, because that’s what your marketing department would be doing. You wouldn’t be answering those phone calls? You’d be like, “Oh, go talk to so-and-so at my, hey they’re my marketing director,” or whatever. And so essentially that’s what you’d be having, too-

Brett Walters: Oh yeah, because even when I was brought in to companies for their marketing, I was still working with all the other people that still worked there. So it wasn’t, I am the guy that does everything now. No, no, no, no. I’m working with each individual in their department saying, “Let’s do this. Let’s try this. Let’s”, and also find out what have you guys been doing? I can see what I can see, but show me some other stuff that I’m not seeing that’s out there to kind of know where they’re heading for and what they’re trying to do. So even in that, I still needed that whole team. It wasn’t just, “I’m the cool guy,” and you know that’s what I learned in that [crosstalk 00:27:21]-

Sarah Banowetz: Bring that team together so that they’re cohesive and they have-

Brett Walters: That they’re working together-

Sarah Banowetz: Yes. And they know where they’re going, which helps with the business lead-

Speaker 3: One of my realizations has been that that strategy, that concept, was 20th century. We’re now almost 20 years into the 21st century and that high-performance leadership team, whatever that looks like, number wise, personnel wise, is crucial to continue to grow your business.

Brett Walters: Yep, yep, yep.

Sarah Banowetz: So Brett, how do people find Computer Heaven? So the website?

Brett Walters: We have a website, it’s at of course www.computerheavencr.com, we had to go with the C-R, there’s a Computer Heaven in Louisiana and they were open a couple months after we did, but they got the computer heaven name. So it’s computerheavencr.com, we’re located at 600 Blairs Ferry Road, Suite A, right across from Rockwell.

Sarah Banowetz: The main branch-

Brett Walters: Yep. And we’re just right up the road from C Street, people understand where that’s at.

Sarah Banowetz: You are in the same strip mall as, there’s a brewery right there.

Brett Walters: Yeah, Third Base, I think-

Sarah Banowetz: Third Base, okay-

Brett Walters: Quiznos is in there. So we’re right in there. Easy to get to. We’re open 9 to 5:30 every day. Saturday’s 9 to 12, so we try to be there when people need us.

Sarah Banowetz: Thanks for being on the podcast, Brett-

Brett Walters: Oh, thanks for having me. It was a lot of fun. And I think this is a cool thing.

Sarah Banowetz: Yeah. Well, and this helps with SEO, too, because we’ll have this transcribed also. So you have the video of it and then use for SEO.

Brett Walters: And if I’m on the video, I don’t always look this way. It’s Friday-

Speaker 3: It’s Friday. It’s casual Friday. It’s business casual Friday.

Sarah Banowetz: If you found this information valuable, please contact us at banowetzmarketing.com. We specialize in marketing direction and implementation, and we hope to see you soon. Thank you. Bye.