The real story behind the 75x exit
I paid $1 for my first company. One dollar. The business was broken, the team was demoralized, and everyone told me I was crazy. Twenty-six years later, I exited to Walmart. Here's what happened in between.
The company was in the staffing and workforce management space. It was struggling — operationally, financially, culturally. The previous owner was done. I saw something in it that others didn't: a model that worked, buried under bad execution.
I paid $1 because that's what it was worth at the time. But I also saw what it could be worth if you fixed the execution. That's the bet I made. Not on the business as it was — on the business as it could be.
The first thing I did was get honest about what was broken. Not what I wished was broken — what actually was. Bad processes, wrong people in wrong roles, no clear value proposition. I made a list and started working through it. That's not a glamorous strategy, but it's the one that works.
The first three years were about building the foundation. Fixing the operations. Building the team. Documenting the processes. Getting the financials clean. None of it was exciting. All of it was necessary.
I made every mistake. Hired the wrong people. Moved too fast on some things, too slow on others. Took on clients we weren't ready for. Lost clients we should have kept. But I kept moving forward — inches, not miles.
The 'inches, not miles' philosophy came from those early years. You don't build a great business in big leaps. You build it in small, consistent improvements — better systems, better people, better processes — compounded over time. That's what 75x looks like from the inside.
By year five, we had the foundation right. Clean operations, strong team, documented processes, predictable revenue. That's when we pushed the accelerator. And because the foundation was right, the growth held.
We expanded geographically. We added service lines. We built technology that multiplied our capacity without proportionally adding headcount. We developed leaders who could run regions independently. The business started to scale — not just grow.
The key to the scale phase was the leadership team we'd built. I wasn't running the business anymore — I was leading it. There's a difference. Running means you're in the details. Leading means you're setting direction and building capability. The transition from running to leading is when the real scale begins.
The acquisition conversation with Walmart didn't happen because we went looking for a buyer. It happened because we'd built something they needed. Our workforce management capabilities, our geographic footprint, our technology — it fit their strategic needs perfectly.
The due diligence process was intense. But because we'd been running the business like we'd sell it for years — clean books, documented systems, strong leadership team — we had nothing to hide and everything to show.
The lesson from the exit isn't that you should try to sell to Walmart. It's that you should build a business that someone like Walmart would want to buy. The discipline of building for transferability, predictability, and value is what creates options.
The 75x story isn't about luck or timing or connections. It's about building a business the right way — with the right systems, the right people, and the right discipline — and doing it consistently over time. That's a formula anyone can follow.
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