This is a podcast about the successes and achievements of those that have risen to the top in their field and want to make a positive impact on their communities. In our fourth episode of Everything is Up, host Tammera Hollerich welcomes Sunny Lowe, founder of cybersecurity firm Blue Jean Network. Sunny is an experienced serial entrepreneur who has been married for 38 years. Sunny shares that the biggest mistake he sees is owners not getting out of their own way and he talks about cyber hygiene, like unified threat management firewalls and EDR/MDR as ways to prevent cyber threats. He believes that small companies are limited due to the owner's inexperience and that these owners have an inner battle between the manager, technician, and themselves. To connect with Sunny, search for "Sunny Low" on LinkedIn, including the "u" in Sunny for his account.
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Topics Discussed and Key Points:
●When is it time to sell your business?
●The impact long hours from running a business have on a marriage
●Sunny’s Cybersecurity work
●The Importance of Cyber Hygiene
●The Challenges of Running a Small Business
Timestamps
[00:00:47] Sunny Introduces Himself and His Business
[00:04:04] Selling your Business
[00:11:06] The Benefits of Changing Careers in the Same Company
[00:14:40] Cyber Hygiene and how to protect yourself online.
[00:22:15] Sales Strategies for Finite and Infinite Games
[00:30:10] Balancing the Inner Struggle: Managing Change, being a Technician, and Accepting Yourself
Notable Quotes
"I think most entrepreneurs wait too long to sell their companies. Most of them don't really step back and say, I'm going to have a change of ownership event. The question is whether it's going to be when I die, or is it going to be on my schedule? And so, the question is, are you going to control that or not?"
"I had friends that really basically asked me to come up with several numbers. They wanted to know what my personal wealth goal was, and I had to think about that, and I had to come up with that. And then they wanted to know what my business value target was, And I really hadn't thought about that. And I had to find out what a business value target is. I mean, how much is your business worth? How much will somebody pay for it. And then the question was, does your business value target meet your personal wealth goal? And once they meet each other, it's probably time to sell."
"If you're married and working more than 40 hours a week in my book, you're either at a very strange stage of your business or you're an unsuccessful entrepreneur. Anybody that's working more than 40 hours a week is not prioritizing what they're doing. They're just doing whatever's in front of them."
"Your job is to get rid of your job continuously. Your job is to train other people to do your job."
"It's not really easy. It's technicians that start businesses. They're doing something they've been doing for their boss, and they want that money that the boss is getting and they're mad at him about something or they get fired. That's what happened to me. I got fired and I had to go on to do it myself."
"There's really 2 different kinds of games in the world. There are finite games like football that at the end of the 60 minutes it's over. And there's infinite games like baseball, which is if you're still tied, you keep playing. Sales is not 1 client winning and losing. It's getting the next client and having your funnel filled.",
"The biggest mistake I see over and over and over and over is the owners won't get out of their own way. Right. Yeah, they become the bottleneck in their own company because they do hire really capable, really smart people because We're all taught right out from the shoot, hire people smarter than you to do the job. Right? But then they bottleneck them. Like you said, put them on the brake and they accelerate at the same time. Nothing loses good employees faster than to do that."
"Small companies are not small because of the length of time they've been in business. All companies are small because the owner is not yet mature enough to run a big business."
Resources
● The Everything is Up Podcast
Connect with Tammera Hollerich
Connect with Sunny Lowe
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