The Secret to Simplifying Your Scale with Michael Ritsema

Mike Ritsema is the CEO and Principal at i3 Business Solutions, a technology firm that delivers comprehensive business roadmaps and support to over 125 companies across Michigan. His career in the tech industry began in 1990, where he served as both an IBM Business Partner and an employee specializing in midrange servers and Enterprise Resource Planning. Unlike many in the field, Mike identifies as a gregarious, sales-oriented entrepreneur rather than a traditional technologist.

Since 2001, Mike has led i3 Business Solutions through several strategic transformations, including the acquisition of 21st Century Computer Specialists and a significant merger with SilverLake Resources. He further expanded the firm’s reach in 2020 by acquiring Computer Alliance, Inc., followed by the 2024 acquisition of CompuCraft Technology Solutions. These moves have established i3 as a regional leader in Managed Services, particularly in supporting Apple Mac environments and IBM midrange servers.

Mike is deeply involved in the security sector, holding multiple cybersecurity certifications and serving as an FBI-vetted member of the national InfraGard critical infrastructure team. This public-private partnership allows him to collaborate directly with the FBI to strengthen national security and help local businesses mitigate technology risks. His leadership has been the driving force behind the company’s ability to support over 4,500 users and 400 servers throughout the state.

Outside of his executive duties, Mike is a dedicated husband, father, and grandfather who maintains a highly competitive spirit in all aspects of life. He is an avid athlete who enjoys running, biking, and golfing, famously stating he will compete with anyone from a game of ping-pong to high-stakes business strategy. He credits his continued growth to a rigorous personal planning process and the insights gained from his involvement in various peer groups.

Michael Ritsema Episode Transcript

 I was fully 100% into my personal line of credit and had gone three months without taking a paycheck. We had moved out of the class triple A office space to save $4,000 a month. We’re hanging on by our fingernails. I watched the Twin Towers go down and I thought, “It’s over.” Most business owners fear that doubling their revenue will also double their stress.

But our guest today found that the exact opposite can be true. After navigating the tech recession of 2001 and surviving a partner buyout, he found his firm stuck at a revenue ceiling that felt impossible to break through without burning out. By shifting his entire philosophy on growth and making a single high-stakes move involving a nearby rival, he transformed a boring lifestyle business into a $10 million powerhouse where employees actually focus on fewer tasks while delivering better results.

Welcome to today’s episode of Your Business Growth Podcast. I’m your host, Jeremy Shapiro, author of Your Business Growth Playbook, and my guest today is Mike Ritsema. Mike, welcome to the show. Glad to be here, Jeremy. Well said, a boring business. We’ll get into that later. Fantastic. So Mike, bring us back to sort of earlier in your career.

You were an IBM business partner in the ’90s. How did that set the stage for your move career-wise into this tech sector? Well, I think a theme of today’s show could be know thyself, and, uh, I think Socrates, you know, attributed to Socrates. But, uh, you know, I understand myself. I’m a competitive person. I love a challenge.

Somebody give me a challenge, I would call that risk. And so through the ’90s… And I’m, I’m a sales type, unlike a lot of techs. I’m like, “Let’s go out and sell.” I need a fix. So, uh, through the ’90s, I did that after, uh, selling food to restaurants. A, talk about networking, a church group, uh, friend said, “You ever think about selling computers?”

I’m like Yeah, absolutely. Next thing you know, I’m an IBM business partner selling IBM, big expensive IBM computers in the ’90s, and then worked for IBM for a year. That was on my bucket list, a goal back then. Work for maybe the biggest and most respected tech company in the world, uh, back then. Uh, and so that challenge in the ’90s led me to, uh, the next challenge.

“Hey, this is easy. Let’s buy a business and do it ourselves.” So instead of starting your business, you initially started out with a business purchase. Exactly, and knew some IBM business partners. This one happened to be a mainframe company with some older guys who, uh, you know, I’d bump into them and say, “Hey, you ever think about selling your company?

I’m interested.” Sure enough, one day, as we approached the, uh, millennium, the turn of the millennium, uh, you know, “Yeah, we’re interested in selling,” and we put together, uh, I had some investors. I put in a lot of money myself, and we bought the company in 2001. Yeah, I think that’s a really interesting approach.

Oftentimes, when we think about being an entrepreneur or business owner, people feel they have to come up with an idea, right? The next greatest, best mousetrap, and go out there and start a company from nothing, and you took this different but also successful approach of buying something that was working and stepping into a business.

Talk to us about what led you to do that versus starting your own thing from scratch. Good question. Good question. Yeah, maybe, maybe it’s, uh, risk management. Maybe it’s, uh, intelligence. But certainly I’m a networker, and like I said, in the church group, networking, uh, and then just in the community, networking.

And, uh, it’d be easier to buy an ongoing business than start one from scratch, which I had done actually with IBM as a business partner. Uh, territory came up, and I was an independent rep for IBM for one year with my partner. So in that respect, okay, did that, but looked around and said, “Yeah, let’s, let’s…

If there’s something available, let’s buy that.” I, I would submit to anybody listening right now, the opportunity abounds all around you. And if you’re listening right now and you know a baby boomer, if you know a baby boomer and they’re running a business, a service business, a lawn sprinkling business, HVAC, a plumbing business, et cetera, they’re all moving on in the next five years.

Opportunity abounds to buy a business. Yeah, I think the, the key theme there is that whether you’re starting something and filling a gap in the marketplace or buying an existing business, it’s about there being opportunity. And as business owners, entrepreneurs, we see the opportunity, and we do something with that.

Um, and when we talk about sort of the long-term plan for businesses, they can only go one of three directions, right? Like, either you pass it on to your kids, which never really happens You run the business to the ground and close up shop, which is unfortunately what often happens, or you sell it. And so exactly to your point there, this, this idea of looking at which boomers have businesses that may not wanna just close up shop and don’t have kids who want it, there is an exit strategy, which is you buying that business, and that’s just what you did.

So Michael, tell us more about that momentum, like when you first started, you know, bringing different resources to create i3 business, uh, i3 Business Solutions. What was that process like? Oh, man. I mean, that was a three-year process. So in 2001, I bought a IBM business partner firm, which was right in the same class Triple A office space on the same floor as IBM in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Very expensive r- rent for a place like that, and a pretty good size office space that was barely occupied. So in 2001, we buy this business, me, a, uh, cocky sales rep who had a good run through the ’90s, and came in and looked at this company and said, “They just need sales, and that’s what I’ll do.” And I went 0 for the first nine months selling.

Nothing. So I did what I called reverse selling. We need to lay people off. We need to cut costs. Now, understand, in 2001 when I bought this business, I remortgaged my house, put a home equity loan on the house. The company had a line of credit, and by the summer of 2001, I was fully 100% into my personal line of credit, fully into the business line of credit, and had gone three months without taking a paycheck.

We had Moved out of the class triple A, uh, office space around the corner to save $4,000 a month. We’re in a lower level space with glass. It was mus- musty. It was just a terrible space, but saved a bunch of money every month, and we’re hanging on by our fingernails. And do you remember, Jeremy, what happened on September 11, 2001?

Yeah, the planes hit the Twin Towers in New York. I was driving down 44th Street. I was about a mile from my mom’s house. I pulled in, sat on the couch, and watched the Twin Towers go down and I thought, “It’s over. Close the company. The US economy is collapsing right in front of us here.” And that was the low point.

I mean, nine months into buying a business, I couldn’t sell anything, and I’m hanging on by my fingernails. What did I do? Well, I was networking. I was connecting with other business partners. My former employer, “Hey,” because, you know, plan B or C was go back to them and say, “Hey, do you wanna buy a business?

I’ve got one for sale. In fact, I’ll give you the business. Just let me come and work for you.” So kinda had a plan B and C, uh, to move forward. But the next month, October of 2001, two substantial orders came in from public entities that started turning the company around, and, uh, we were on the road again.

Nice. So you had a pretty rough start, I think, from a number of factors there, um, but then did see some of that growth, and it seems like a fair amount of that came from the network you’d built up, right? Like, we, we often talk about how there’s financial capital, there– its intellectual property, but there’s also that, that social capital, the connections, the people you know.

It’s the who you know, not just the what you know or what you have. Um, and that was a powerful seed there. Now, you grew the business. You got to the point where you guys were about five, $6 million in revenue, and Bam. Like there was, there was like this imaginary wall there. Tell us about what happened, what got you to that wall, and why you guys couldn’t get past that.

Yeah, so th- there’s a lot of variables, and I think in business… Yeah, I read a lot of business books. I read books, and I’m reading a book by Housel right now about just stories and so on. And stuff happens, and we think they’re, you know, unusual events, but no, stuff happen… There’s eight billion people in the world, and news is instantaneous, so can you believe this happened?

And, and his point is, yeah, things happen. So we merged the companies in 2001 and created i3 Business Solutions. And, and we were doing, at that time, about $7 million in sales. But that’s complicated, pulling two companies together. And then what was happening was back, uh, back in the ear- early millennium, uh, the price of hardware was going down, and we ran straight into the Great Recession.

The Great Recession of ’07, ’08, ’09. I didn’t realize it was happening, but we had a tech at a company, a public company, for 10 years. They sent him home. It’s like, what is going on here? So, so the Great Recession, I mean the tech recession of 2001, eight years later you’ve got the Great Recession, uh, that really 18% unemployment in the state of Michigan.

Hardware is not selling. And we are in the services and hardware business, and, uh, we had to pivot the company. That’s a great bu- buzzword, word. But we looked around and, you know- Where we sold real technology, IBM mid-range and mainframe servers, we looked at this networking division and said, “Maybe we should build this Windows Microsoft thing,” and we started bus- building that part of the business.

I mean, that’s it. Eight, eight, nine years of just taking blows. You think you find your way through it, they keep coming. It’s not unusual that there’s the factors we do control, but oftentimes these plateaus and these walls come from factors outside of our control that it’s not about, you know, did we cause it or not?

It’s about what do we do with that situation and how do we get around that? So now, you got to a point, Michael, where you guys had a team of 30, but even with that, everyone’s wearing different hats, doing all kinds of different roles within the company. W- what was that like operationally? We use, uh, m- many of your listeners I’m sure are familiar with Traction EOS, Enterprise Operating System, and so we kind of run the business on that.

Well, we have, uh, there’s so many business books, including yours, uh, you know, Rockefeller Habits, uh, Scaling Up, all these great business books and methodologies, uh, to run the business. And certainly wearing multiple hats, right? And so the challenge of a small business, whether you’re 5 to 10, and there’s plateaus, right?

5 to 10 employees, maybe 15, and we had two partners, so we could handle 15 to 20 employees, but ran into that plateau of 20 to 30 employees And when you’re a small business, whether 5 to 10 or 20 to 30, you’re wearing multiple hats. And, uh, that’s a challenge because i- if you have a quarterly rock or an annual rock, but you’re wearing three, four hats, there’s always an excuse not to get that task done, and it’s understandable.

Drama happened at a client. I had to drop everything, j- jump in. So many excuses. And so yeah, when, uh, you know, eventually when we grew past 35, 40, 45 employees, you get down to one hat. Things are cooking a lot cleaner. You can better hold accountable when an individual has less responsibility. Yeah. It’s certainly easier to keep your eye on one target, one KPI, one rock than be juggling between a dozen.

Now, uh, Michael, I think it’s great you’ve had a, a business that stood the test of time here, and you’ve touched on 9/11, the tech recession, the Great Recession, and we also got the pandemic. So around that time, um, you mentioned some business partners. Tell us more about, like, the buyout that happened around that time and, and what all was involved with that.

Yeah. So pretty interesting that when we, uh, combined the companies in 2004, we had four business partners, and one of them was my best friend from college. We raised our families together. And, uh, he was the first to go. I mean, we ran into drama with four partners, and, uh, we hired a very expensive consultant to help us communicate and find our way through it.

We couldn’t, and he said, “Buy me out.” So we bought him out. That was back in ’06, ’07. As the Great Recession hit, one partner came to us and said, “Buy me out.” This guy, I think he looked at the value of the company and what was happening in the economy and the company. He’s like, “This thing’s going down. Any amount of money, give it to me, I’m out.”

And I’m left with one other partner We ran that company and grew that company. The recurring revenue, we shifted to a model rather than selling stuff one time, projects one time. Let’s figure out how to get– have us give– people give us money like Planet Fitness or your cellphone company or your internet provider.

Let’s have them give us money every month. We built that business, built that business. Me, the networking, gregarious, out there guy. My partner, the service execution woman who got it done. “Figure out how to get it done, please. I’ll go get more.” And so, so we built that business together. Very fulfilling to, to take a, you know, a company that’s flat on its back and rotate it and dig it out of the Great Recession and build something big.

And in 2018, she came to me and said, “You know, I’m ready to slow down here. Buy me out.” I bought her out in 2018, borrowed a pile of money. And, uh, of course, COVID hit, so that was dramatic. That is risk, and I’m built for risk. I’m built for the challenge, yes, I am. But that was… That just came out of left field and, and it’s another part of business, right?

You, you go through the Great Recession, you plow through the early 2010s and, uh, you run straight into a pandemic. Un-unbelievable. So I, I’m hearing something interesting here, which is that you borrowed money to buy companies and roll them up, and that got you new business partners. And so with each acquisition, you’ve got additional partners in the business, but then you gotta borrow money to buy them out to more wholly own that.

Talk to us a bit more about that concept of buying a business but keeping them on as a partner versus just buying a business for the assets, clients, team, and so on. Buying a business for the assets and so on. Yeah, well, that happened two years ago. So I’m just submitting to you again, Jeremy, that know thyself, that I am built for the challenge, I’m built for risk.

And so when buying my partner out, that was risk. Uh, the COVID was risk. Uh, we found our way through COVID and then two years ago, 2023, 2024, uh, you know, a peer up the road was selling his business. I’m getting a little bit older, I’m like, “I don’t need more risk.” And, and I had bought out my partner, paid her off- For the first time in 20 years, all this money’s going in my pocket.

It’s like, that’s kinda nice. Let’s just, let’s just enjoy life. Uh, but after six months of that, I got bored to tears. It’s like, this is too easy. And I knew that my peer, friend, competitor literally two blocks down the road, can walk there, a guy that I got together with a couple times a year and we just commiserated and shared business stories.

And I knew he was looking to sell it, but I wasn’t interested. And one day I said, “Yeah, I’m interested,” because I was bored to tears. I, I, I didn’t owe anybody money. I didn’t have any risk in life, any challenge. And, uh, we bought that company, and that’s, that proved last year, 2025, it proved very productive for what you already mentioned, right?

Wearing one hat was a revelation to me. It’s like, wow, you can run a business this way. Are you enjoying this episode? Make sure you hit that subscribe button right now. That’ll help you get more episodes automatically as soon as they come out. So hit that subscribe button right now. And if you have a minute, leave a quick rating and review.

That helps support the show. You know, I think a lot of business owners have this idea of they’ll get to a certain point that the business runs itself or they sell it, and then they’re, like, on a desert island drinking a fancy drink with an umbrella, and the reality is not many people like that or enjoy that.

And if you were built for business and entrepreneurship, what you just shared is so true. It’s not that exciting to be doing nothing suddenly. Um, and you often find yourself brought back in or wanting to get back to growth, to building, to running, to doing something. It’s just, like, in our nature. So given that, you know, you, you end up rolling in this company just down the road.

Of all the different ways you could’ve gotten back into growth mode and done more, like, why did the acquisition feel like the right strategy to get back to growth and, and scaling? I think regardless w- what type of individual you are- And I am a sales type. I’m built for growth, and I recognize not everybody’s built that way, right?

Some people just wanna run a steady business, get it to a point, and just make a fair living, do that. That’s okay. Nothing wrong with that. But for me, I’m built for growth, and I am a sales type, so I like, I like selling. And for me, again, I’m built for gr- uh, for the challenge, for risk. What would be the next challenge for me?

And for me, it would be to create a s- Let’s just say, Jeremy, I’m not a great coach or teacher, right? I don’t even have the patience for it. I’m great at doing stuff. So that mentor and develop an or- organization that would run itself would be a huge accomplishment for me, and that’s what I’m pursuing. So, uh, to keep selling or build that sales team, absolutely in the value of a business and in the execution of a business has to be part of week-to-week and month-to-month business.

But you know, you can jumpstart that by buying a business. So it’s not either/or, it’s both/and. So you know, I’ll keep my ear to the ground. We’ll talk to people. I’m looking to buy. Meanwhile, we have to be selling on a month-to-month basis. Well said. Um, and I think one of the interesting things you discovered may sound counterintuitive to our listeners, and that’s like this ability to have less stress and more focus with scale, right?

I think sometimes people think about as you grow in scale, it’s more stressful and there’s more to do, and you sort of saw the op- opposite. Tell us more about how this idea and reality of scale changed your life as a CEO, and what that meant day-to-day, stress-wise, accountability-wise, and so forth. How do you, uh, state it in your books, in, in your framework, Jeremy, is, you know, in EOS or traction, you’ve got the visionary and the integrator.

How do you convey that message? Yeah. Similar concept that, um, ideas are great, but ideas are worthless until you actually implement and take action. Yeah, exactly. Implementing and executing. So part of my journey of life is, you know, I was raised to believe in absolutes, right, wrong, good, bad, either/or, and my journey of life is to both/and.

A lot of stuff is both/and. So while I’m a visionary who wants to go to the mountaintop, I’ve got a whole lot of integrator in me. And if you’re gonna run a business, you have to build process. And if you’re gonna have process, you have to document it somewhere, be able to reference it, right? Not just a blast email, but go reference your documentation of your process, which you repeat and hold accountable to.

And so that’s a big part of what I’ve done. But when you’re ebbing and flowing a business up, uh, you’re bouncing back and forth, right? Let’s go there. Let’s do this. And then you have to come back and make sure the process is in place, the execution’s in place. And I just submit that the, uh, you know, I’ve done a lot of that over my career.

Now, my partner, my former partner was great at that. She did the service execution stuff. But relative to sales, I need to jump in and build that. Relative to marketing, I’m gonna jump in and build that. So that, those multiple hap- hats happen. And so yes, when we, um, bought the next company that catapulted us to 50 employees, 49, 50 employees, then depends on your, how you define an employee, right?

We have some subcontractors that do very specific narrow things at the company. They’re virtually full-time. Uh, so how do you define a full-time employee? But we came together and had that many people and assigned responsibilities, and guess what? I was left with almost nothing. You know, I am the CEO. Can you believe that?

I woke up one day, I’m a CEO. And, um, and I barely had anything to do, so I could really focus on where the company’s going. Secondly, I get to do what I want, right? Guess what I enjoy doing? Selling, seeing, connecting with people. So that’s what happened. I mean, uh, the hats fell off, and people that were wearing three, four hats were able to come down to only one or two, or one and one and a half hats.

That was a shock to me. Last year really came together nicely. I mean, the company executed, the profitability heated up, and I was completely unprepared for that. I am, like I say, uh, you know, I’m not a spreadsheet guy. Boy, let’s spend nine hours building a spreadsheet and pro forma and so on. I knew that what I was doing was the right thing, but the full impact of it, I did not fully comprehend.

Yeah, that’s, um… It, it’s interesting, one of the exercises I often do with clients that are looking towards that growth is sitting down and laying out the org chart of what the business is and where it’s going and all, and the boxes of different roles in the company. And in the box you put the name of the person who has that role.

And if you’re a solopreneur, you might have, you know, 30 boxes and your name’s on all of them, right? And as you grow, different people have a lot of hats, but at a certain point you get to exactly what you’re talking about, that the org chart roles have stayed the same, but now you’re down to people having specialization and they’re only in one box, and sometimes that leaves you as the business owner in that CEO role and not other boxes, which is a wonderful thing So speaking organizationally, um, there’s a tool that, you know, I write about in the book and I love and that, you know, you and I have chatted about, the, the Eisenhower Matrix, right?

How did you use tools like the Eisenhower Matrix to move yourself towards these higher level value tasks and so forth during that transition? I mean, Stephen Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and I think, uh, uh, I’ll hold this back here, but I think we all manage our lives in different ways.

And I say that The, you know, between texting, personal email, personal calendar, business calendar, email, Teams, various, uh, collaboration sites, how do you keep tr-track of your priorities? And, and I still use the old FranklinCovey method. I use it in the form of just a note- a piece of paper, right? And so each week, each day, I ponder that.

What are my highest priority? What does, uh, Covey call it? The tyranny of the urgent over the priority of the important, something like that. And so that’s something I personally do, and we have to do that throughout the company. Uh, and each individual has to do that. Course, we do it through our weekly, uh, and again, in an EOS traction concept, L10 meeting, except we do not have L10 meetings.

We have L11 meetings. One better. And so, uh, th- keeping each individual’s priorities in place. Secondly, I submit to you that, you know, I regularly say to the company and to my CTO, “This, this business isn’t that complicated.” In fact, no business is that complicated. If you deliver the value and the service in an excellent way, everything else works, right?

Oh, you got problems in HR, you got f- problems in finance. We’re trying to sell more. We’re having a challenge with that. Marketing’s a little bumpy. Who cares? As long as we’re taking care of our clients and doing an excellent job there, we’re gonna be fine. So organizing those priorities, I think, well, part of the success of life and business, which ironically comes back to me in that in the first four months of this year, I’ve been able to network.

I’ve been freed to network. In fact, the team gave me a task. Like, what’s going on here? You know, who’s telling me what to do? And that is go find another company to buy. So I’ve been networking in the community, and I’ve got a couple of, hmm, opportunities I’m working on. But, uh, why? Because the priority for me has changed, and I have the ability to focus on those priorities.

Nice. I, I love that you’ve figured out one of your growth models of acquisition, and you’ve done it again and again and rinsed and repeated, and now you’ve got your acquisition model down, and you’ve have your internal playbook on how to do that. So I love talking sort of the, the tactics and implementation and some of the real-world challenges that come up.

And I think oftentimes when business owners think about acquiring another company, one of the challenges that can come with that is having multiple company cultures and values and leadership and all this Talk to b- talk to us about some of the hurdles that you faced in merging multiple company cultures while still maintaining that focus on, like, your business roadmap.

Yeah, it is a challenge. And although our companies were two blocks apart, the cultures… the culture was different. Number one, uh, 80% of their company showed up at the office every day, uh, and we were more hybrid. So that was, uh, a little bit of a change in reality that we’re, we’re still working through. And there’s other cultural differences also, even though we’re two blocks apart and right in the same community here in Michigan.

I know of a, a, a company that merged an, a Canadian East Coast company, a central Michigan company, and a Washington State company. The cultural drama there was dramatic. So while there’s bumps in the road, the clarity, part of what I do is convey to this company my values. And by the way, in a right, wrong, either/or world, is it wrong in a both/and, in my both/and world, will I be very clear about my personal values?

These are my personal values, and I’m not apologizing for it And I would expect the company to look a lot like this, but as we come together and maybe restate our values. Do they have to be identical? No, they don’t. So I think clarity of one’s personal values, mission statement, vision or purpose or why for the company.

Clarity about that, I’ve been clear monthly with the company and annually about exactly what I believe, what my values are, what this company is, and where we’re going. And then the, uh, individuals will filter themselves out. Nice. So you, you’ve found that by maintaining that clarity and focus that the right folks for the team stick with, and the ones that don’t just end up getting filtered out on their own?

Wow. Nice. So speaking of team, as you’ve grown through acquisitions and, you know, increased sales and so forth, your team, much like yourself, has also moved to wearing a single hat. What have been some of the other surprising results of folks being able to have one rock, one role, one, one priority? I’ll give you an example in the marketing area is, you know, where I’m a sales type, I always said, “Marketing, shmarketing.

Give me a break. Would somebody go talk to a human, build a relationship and ask for an order?” And that light bulb went on about six, seven years ago where I listened to a consultant, a guru, while running YouTube videos listening to it. It’s like, “Oh, I get it.” Telemarketing, which I did a lot in my life, is marketing.

And so the ability to do marketing, well, I drove that for over five years. I personally said, “We’re gonna send out physical letters. We are gonna do more webinars.” And so had to coordinate all that. And I had team members helping me, but I had to coordinate all that. And that framework is in place, and it’s off my plate now.

So we have an individual responsible for that, owns that, and makes sure that that marketing calendar happens. That’s an example of a business owner, uh, maybe a sales type saying, “We need to build this and do it.” Uh, but it’s now completely off my s- plate, and it’s executing. It’s measured. Our goal this year is to double the number of new prospects coming in Uh, and guess what?

I’m freed up, not to do that stuff, but to go see the people, which I enjoy. Yeah, that’s great. I think one of the, uh, really fun things that happens as you grow as a business owner is new ideas and new things you wanna get done and new initiatives don’t entirely fall on your shoulders. You have a team, and you can start offloading them.

Um, I’ll never forget, I was in a mastermind group, and there was this very successful, much older businessperson across the table from me, and, you know, I was just, uh, a- amazed and humbled to be in the same room as this guy. And he’s taking down notes on his notepad just like everybody else. But the difference was, while everyone else went home with a thick notepad full of ideas, at each one of our breaks, he would step out of the room, tear off that sheet of paper, hand it to somebody else, and come back in with a clean sheet.

And while we then went into our next session, his team was off and running and delegating and assigning and better defining and fleshing out, and may have a few follow-up questions, but for the most part, things just started moving. And that was off his mind, off his plate, off his shoulders, and I learned so much from, from that.

Um, and when you have that team like you’re talking about there, you can delegate stuff. You can hand things off, and it can still get done and not, not be blocking on you. I’ll give you one more example, is we are a recurring service company in technology, right? We do a lot of things repeatable on a monthly basis.

And projects were not our strong suit. And we would have a part-time project manager, right? Because we couldn’t afford a full-time project manager, and today we have a full-time project manager, and Renee is fricking unbelievable and phenomenal at it. You know, an example of execution going up a level because of the size we are.

Nice. I, I love that. And especially as you go from, like, part-time folks who have some hours here and there to that full-time, um, is just such a big difference as well. So all right. Speaking of scale, um, you guys hit this $10 million mark, and you’re now managing thousands and thousands of users. How does that kind of scale better service your end users?

The answer’s in the previous conversation, and, and that is specialization, right? Uh, we have s- you know, we now have an individual that’s managing over 100 firewalls. We can afford that, and therefore, we can up our game on that management. Uh, our cybersecurity practice is growing substantially because we have specialization.

We have more certifications. We have more bandwidth to work on it very s- specifically. Have a meeting this afternoon about just that subject. We didn’t have the time or bandwidth to do that three to five years ago, be that narrow and specialized. So yeah, I mean, the special- the ability to specialize just goes up Logarithmically, uh, and therefore the execution goes up substantially.

In any business like ours, in any service business, I don’t care if it’s, you know, HVAC, plumbing, what it is, we’re a technology company, that repeatable, uh, process execution is a lot of work. And when you get more specialized with skills and repeatable processes, you can elevate the quality of your game.

I’ll tell you one more bonus item here is for any business owner, entrepreneur, person running a business is as you become more specialized, you can, you can target that measurement specifically to that area, right? Then you can measure that execution. So as we grow, we can get more narrow in our measurement to assure quality, and that’s what we’re selling.

The last thing, Jeremy, is that we can say no to more business. It’s, it’s always the challenge of business, right? Save– Raise your price. Look, I’m a business owner and a sales type. During COVID, we took on a new account we never should have. But we hadn’t had a new account for like nine months. Like, just sell it, take it, please.

I don’t care what the price is. Uh, bad idea. So as we execute more consistently and strongly, we go in and say, “Look, we can deliver. We are delivering, and this is the price.” Somebody says, “Huh? You know, I wanna negotiate that down.” “No, thank you. We’re not gonna give up the quality for that.” Well, and what’s great about that too is because you have that deep expertise within the team in all these different verticals and areas, you can command that higher price because the level and the quality and the expertise and the work that you deliver now is so much different than a generalist who can do all the things.

You have specialists who can do all this, so that commands a much higher price and value as well. So kudos. Absolutely, Jeremy. Um, we just brought on an account that 12 years ago I lost. I was in there. And, uh, this individual, this company is paying three times more, three times more than they’re currently paying.

I was so shocked when we won the deal that I, I called up the owner, uh, two, three weeks afterwards. I drove down there. I said, “Why? Why’d you buy from us?” He said, “Yeah, I, I actually believe you’re gonna do what you say.” And, and we are ’cause we can afford to do it There’s a lot of value, um, and hidden benefit that most folks don’t realize in being able to specialize, right?

Either as a company or as individuals in the company, as well as then in turn increase the pricing. So all right. Speaking of advice, Mike, you know, if you’re talking to a founder who might be afraid that growing their business might only make it more complicated, like, what advice would you have for them about why and how they can and should scale?

In the category of know thyself is, you know, understand your risk, uh, tolerance. You know, I’m a person that has to work on enjoying the journey because I just wanna go to the next mountaintop. That’s fulfilling to me. So I work on enjoying the journey. Uh, but certainly that risk, that willingness to take more risk is gonna be number one, that you’ve built your business to this point Take that measured risk to go to the next level.

Secondly, I’m gonna say continuous education and improvement. You’re listening to this podcast right now, and so you are learning. You’re reading Jeremy’s books. You are learning. And so, uh, the, you know, I read books. Why do I read books? Because I want a fully formed idea. I wanna gather it all in, not a 30 or 45-minute podcast, boom, got it.

No. And so that, that webinar series that goes 10 hours, you know, continuous education and learning. I’m gonna, I’m gonna go to my number one advice to any individual entrepreneur or any business owner. Number one advice, find a mentor. A young person listening to this, find a mentor. And it doesn’t have to be, “Will you be my mentor?”

No. Take an experienced person out for coffee and say, “What piece of advice would you give me?” Then when you’re done, say, “Hey, can I connect in another three or six months?” And take ’em out for coffee again and say, “You know, that was good advice. I’m doing this. Can you give me more advice?” Second advice to any business owner, join a peer group.

And, uh, my son is in Chicago right now with 10 business owners just like us. I would be there, except I have a, a conflict. And find a peer group. Meet with entrepreneurs, owners just like yourself and learn, learn, learn. We sit in the room. It’s punishing for two days straight. Punishing. Why? Because you just listen, listen, listen, and learn from people just like you.

Find a peer group. That’s what I would say. Know thyself. And, you know, if you’re gonna settle in at five or 10 employees, that’s fine. Uh, if you’re gonna take the risk and go to the next, uh, level, measure that and do it. But certainly, continuous education and improvement, and then find a peer group. Mike, I, I love how, like, on the same wavelength you and I are in so many ways in business.

Um, you know, I identify so strongly with much of what you just said, but I also look at, like, my most successful clients and most successful business owners out there All are lifelong learners, all believe in this concept of Kaizen, this continuous never-ending improvement, all see the value in books, conferences, courses, mentors, consultants, and so forth, as well as we all surround ourselves with like-minded individuals who are on that journey.

That’s so fascinating what, what you say about consultants, ’cause I worked for a company a number of years ago. This guy hired these individuals and consultants rotated through, and we would talk about him and say, “What’s going on here? He brings in a new person like every year. This is crazy.” Guess what I did for the last decades?

I brought in a parade of consultants and people that I could learn from. It’s how we grow. It’s, it leveraging the wisdom of others who’ve been there before, who’ve done it, and who can see the blind spots that we ourselves can’t see. So speaking of that, I wanna touch on that peer group piece, just, you know, one more question on that.

Um, I am a huge believer in mastermind groups and peer groups and so forth. I’ve been parts of them for near three decades, facilitating them for almost as long, and there’s so, so, so much value in that room. How much of your success do you attribute to these planning processes that you get to do with fellow business owners?

I would put that number at 86 to 95%. And the first peer group, tech peer group that we joined, led by Arlin Sorensen, who I found out 10 years ago, guess what? Arlin Sorensen, that built a tech peer group now with over 500 companies with it, guess what peer group he’s in? He’s in peer group leader peer group.

That’s, that’s kind of entertaining to me. But yeah, I’m, I’m, I’m currently in a family business alliance peer group. I’m also in a small business peer group, a leadership council, and we’re in the technology peer group. I will tell you that 15 years ago when we t- joined the peer group, uh, my partner w- uh, went to Arlin and said we doubled our net profit percentage.

Thank you very much. ‘Cause they gave us benchmarks to compare ourselves to the industry. I had no idea that the net profit we were de- delivering was so far below average. It was embarrassing. And we doubled that net profit percentage. He put us up in front of hundreds of peers and congratulated my partner and, uh, but guess what?

We were still below average. So, so that’s the power of peers is just to understand, get perspective, I call it commiseration and perspective. Commiserate, I thought I was the only one. And perspective, oh, that’s the way and where we can go. The power of peer groups, uh, just immeasurable. It transformed our business.

I feel like we could do an episode entirely on that. But you, you touched on sort of these, these metrics and benchmarks. Now, you know, one last question before we move on to wrap and, uh, lessons learned. The, um, KPIs that you look at in your business that you measure by, like The beauty of the team is everyone else can have their own, their own numbers and their rocks and their KPIs and so forth.

What are the KPIs that matter to you as the business owner to ensure you’re remaining in that high-growth engine mode rather than just the lifestyle business that you’d moved away from? It is recurring revenue growth, and that’s why I’m fixated on bringing in new accounts. And I think, I think a challenge of business, and for somebody like me, business ownership, is so much opportunity everywhere, right?

So which KPI to focus on in order to drive the company forward? And some could say, “Why don’t you just give up a whole bunch of revenue and improve your, your gross margin? Let’s just focus right there, drive up gross margin, which will drive up net margin.” So, but for me, I’m a growth guy. I want this thing growing even as we’re managing levers in the business to drive more net profit.

So for me, it is increasing the top line in the right way, that is recurring revenue, monthly recurring revenue, and then managing the metrics internally to drive the net profit Nice. Yeah, a, a big strategy we talk about in the book is this adding on recurring revenue, um, component. And in, in another life, I had a IT consulting and servicing company, and one of the best things we did was adding on that recurring revenue and looking at how we can grow that.

So it’s huge in this space. So all right, before we wrap, a few quick rapid-fire questions for you, Mike. If you had to start all over again from scratch, what one lead source would you go all in on? Referrals, COI, centers of influence. We know that one-third of our opportunities come from referrals, and we are building a very specific marketing effort around that.

And we also close more of those referrals and center of influence. Yeah, the cool thing with referrals is, like, if you grade them on how hot to cold they are, right? A hot referral comes in and is ready to write a check and, and engage. There’s not even much of a sales process. Um, so creating a business around the referrals can be huge.

Nicely done. All right. You’ve already mentioned probably about a dozen books that you and I both have on our bookshelves here. But, uh, you know, aside from, of course, your Business Growth Playbook, what are some of your other top favorite business books? Certainly I mentioned it, Stephen Covey. That book’s over 25 years, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Read that book. You know, I’m gonna go to Traction and say, uh, that for all the great books, and I’ve read them all, Small Giants, The Breakthrough Company, uh, Good to Great, Scaling Up, Rockefeller Habits. My peers recommended Traction. I’m like, “I do not need another business book.” But certainly a simple way to run the business with a cadence, much like your book or something like Traction, is that execution model.

So much value. Love it. Traction was, uh, was one of the first books I read, um, within the topic of, like, core values, mission, vision, purpose and all that, that wasn’t just a rah-rah book about why you could and should have it, but actually explained how to go about sorting it out. Um, and that was a fantastic read.

Uh, and every other book you just mentioned there is right behind me on, on my bookshelf. So love it. Our, our, our library together would be wonderful, Mike. All right. You’ve touched on mentors a few times, uh, in our conversation, and I’m always curious, like, who was one of your unlikeliest mentors? Unlikely.

I’m gonna go back to the, the church fellowship group And it was an IBM-er by the name of Bernie who, you know, who would think… And, and I’m still submitting to your, to the young people today who live in their phones, and texting, and various media, find a way to get out with people. And, you know, networking and connecting with people.

Who would have thought that the transformative moment in my life would be in a church fellowship group where I got to know a crazy guy that worked for IBM, and at some point said, “Hey, have you ever thought about selling computers?” And when I went in for that interview, wore the only suit I have, sat down.

Within 20 minutes I realized they’re not interviewing me, I’m interviewing them, ’cause I have this job already ’cause Bernie Schmidt said, “Hire that guy.” I’m telling you, he would be the one in for the last, you know, decades I still call Bernie and say, “What do you think of this? What do you, what do you think of that?”

An unlikely source, but if you’re out there connecting with people in any group. I’ve been, I’m in running groups, biking groups, church groups, business groups. Connecting with people, good things happen. It’s amazing the number of great life, business, you know, bigger picture conversations I have while out for a bike ride with friends, you know, or out for a run.

It is, uh… You know, or in these different, you know, groups we’re involved in. Um, it is so, so valuable, uh, the people you meet there, so that’s great. All right, so to recap for our listeners, you moved from a plateaued firm where everyone was spread too thin to a successful strategy of acquisition and delegation that simplified your operations and took you past that $10 million mark.

Correct. Correct. It’s- So Mike, for people who want to learn more or connect with you, where should they go right now? Well, they can find them all over social media. I’m out there. So I’m on Facebook, Michael Ritsema. I’m in the Grand Rapids, Michigan area. Uh, I’m on Twitter. I am on LinkedIn, and our website, i3businesssolutions.com, letter I, number three, bus.com.

Letter I, number three, B-U-S.com. Track me down. Let’s talk. Love it. Michael, thank you so much for sharing with us, uh, s- so much of your journey and what got you to where you are today. Um, I’ve learned a ton, as I do from every one of these conversations. I know our listeners have as well, and I really appreciate you sharing so much with us.

You bet. Thanks, Jeremy. Thanks so much for listening. Quick reminder, hit that subscribe button right now so you can get more episodes when they come out automatically, and remember to leave that rating and review right now.