From The Ground Up with Leo Kelly

What if you could create a thriving business and then seamlessly transition into a life of philanthropy? Join us as we uncover the remarkable journey of Rick Bastinelli, the founder and former president and CEO of Centric Business Systems. Growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Rick learned the ropes of management from his father and navigated the challenges of a declining garment industry. A chance meeting with Xerox employees marked the beginning of his successful career in the copier business. Learn how these early experiences shaped his entrepreneurial vision and led him to build a thriving business in Baltimore.

Rick shares the pivotal moments and strategic decisions that defined Centric's culture of success. From moving his family to Baltimore to focus on growth, to implementing unique employee programs like the CIA program and the Delta team, Rick’s story is a masterclass in creating a winning company culture. He emphasizes the importance of confidence, strategic planning, and investing in both customer and employee experiences. Discover the secrets behind his outcome-focused approach and how it contributed to Centric's impressive rise in the competitive office products industry.

The episode also covers the emotional and strategic aspects of succession planning and transitioning to retirement. Rick opens up about embracing change, navigating technological advancements, and ensuring the well-being of his team during his exit. Hear his insights on the importance of relationships and realistic expectations in maintaining business stability. Rick’s journey from entrepreneur to philanthropist is filled with valuable lessons on leadership, innovation, and the power of people in achieving business success. Don’t miss this inspiring conversation with a business leader who truly understands the heart of entrepreneurship.

Hello everybody, welcome to From the Ground Up. My name is Leo Kelly, I'm the CEO of Verdence Capital Advisors, and From the Ground Up is a podcast conversation we have with business owners and entrepreneurs to talk about their journey, talk about their successes, talk about their challenges, how they overcame those challenges and built the wonderfully successful businesses that eventually grew out of that journey. And I am very excited today to have with us Rick Bastinelli. Rick, welcome to From the Ground Up. Thank you, Leo. It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah Well, I've been looking forward to this one. I've known Rick for some time and this one's exciting because we have some shared background. As a matter of fact, and we're going to talk about that a little bit today, Rick is the founder and former president and CEO of Centric Business Systems, an office equipment solutions company.

Back in the day, it was the copier business. That's correct and what's interesting is so for those who've listened to From the Ground Up, my background is I started in the copier business actually before I went to college. I sold copiers as a senior in high school. I went to school for half a day and then sold copiers for half a day, and I did that for the first four years out of high school before I decided to go to college and eventually go into finance. So, interestingly, Rick and I were actually competing in the New Jersey area, not knowing each other, back in the 80s, while I was selling copiers and Rick was running a successful business in that area. He obviously figured out how to be massively successful in the business and I had to go and take a different direction. So he well done on that, Rick.

So Rick recently exited the business and is in retirement and enjoying that. We're going to talk about not only the journey of how he got to Centric and how he built Centric, but talk about the exit process and talk about what life looks like on the other side of the exit. Rick is also heavily involved in philanthropic endeavors. He's on the board of Johns Hopkins Bayview where he has a significant responsibility. He is heavily involved in living classrooms as well as other endeavors. Wow, Rick, you got a lot going on. It's been exciting and a lot of fun.

Good, excellent, well, so, Rick, let's take a step back and talk about your journey to Centric Business Systems. So you grew up. I know your background. You grew up in the Bethlehem, pennsylvania area. Your dad was in the garment business and not a lot of people may know this, but so New York is where they sold the garments, as Rick told me. New York's where they sold them, but Bethlehem's where they made them, and it was a big garment industry and you grew up in that environment, northeast Pennsylvania. Talk to me a little bit about that, what that was like growing up in that environment.

It was a terrific experience, Leo, I grew up in a very loving, caring family. I was one of five and family of seven and my father was a manager in the garment business. You know we were lower middle class, we struggled financially but you know, they always found a way and it was just a great experience growing up. They always found a way and it was just a great experience growing up. And, of course, as you mentioned, he was a manager in a garment business and at the age of 12, me and my brothers, we all worked in the factory and back in the 60s and early 70s all the manufacturing was done up in the Northeast. Of course, today it's all overseas, but we walked into factories. We had an opportunity to observe my father managing factories with 300 plus employees and it just had a major impact on my life decisions and a major impact on my management philosophy.

That's amazing. So you're in this environment. It's boom time right Up in the Northeast with the garment industry and slowly over time that starts to move out away from the Northeast and goes down south and eventually overseas. And your family saw this happening right. It was happening right when you were in that area. What was that like? What was it like to see a whole industry go from just boom to slowly dissipating away?

It happens in so many other industries. It happened to the steel industry, it happened to the auto industry, certainly to the garment industry. It had minimal impact on our family because at that point my father had moved up into senior management and was more involved on the design side and, you know, designing the garments and all that was done in the United States, despite the fact that the manufacturing was done elsewhere. So it had minimal impact on us and by that time my brothers and I were off to college and going in different directions. But it certainly had an impact on the workforce in that particular area and it took years to rebound from them exiting that area.

Yeah, I'm going to come back to that. I'm going to come back to the whole world changing in an industry, because I think that's an important point when we get the centric business system. So we'll mark that one. So you went to college. You went to a small school, Pennsylvania.

Bloomsburg University, central Pennsylvania, very good, excellent.

And so you come out of school and you had an interesting first job to start your career. Could you tell us about that?

Much to my father's disappointment. My first job was a ski instructor out of college and it turned out to be a tremendous experience, and the reason why was not only was it a lot of fun, but every week we had a new group of people coming in for ski lessons and I had the opportunity to, you know, develop friendships with these people and find out what their career was, what they were doing. I knew my direction was to go into sales, but obviously it's a very ambiguous term and there's a lot of different directions you could go, and one week there was this group that came in from Xerox and we spent a lot of time. You know, you become friendly acquaintances during that period of time and they said you'd be great in our industry and when you're done playing on the ski slopes, you got to interview with Xerox and that helped to focus me on a direction that I wanted to pursue once I got serious about looking for a job.

One of the topics we talk about a lot here is luck, right, and luck for so many is this magical thing that happens and everything works out beautifully. But what luck really is, as we talk about all the time, is an opportunity that presents itself, that is recognized, which most of the time doesn't happen. I'm sure there were ski instructors not thinking about career. They're thinking about maybe chasing some girls and going to a party. It's recognizing it, it's understanding it, it's pursuing it and then working really, really hard at executing it. So your eyes were open, your ears were open and you were listening, which I doubt a lot of people in that position may have been in the same state of mind. So I think that's a great.

And again going back to our, I think I, for me, I was delivering newspapers to a guy who owned a copier place and then he saw me pumping gas in New Jersey and he said what are you doing? Come work for me. As a kid, those moments are really pivotal, so that's great. So then you decide to go to Xerox. No, you decided not to.

Interestingly enough, I interviewed with them when I started getting serious about looking for a job, and I also interviewed with a lot of regional companies. I was certainly focused on what was the office products industry. At that particular point in time, and as I was progressing through this interviewing process and sharing it with my father, he recommended that I talk to his boss, who was one of my mentors and a businessman that I highly respected, and so I met with Sonny Waldman, I told him what I was doing and he said here's my recommendation to you If you go to work for Xerox, you'll be one of 3,000 sales reps in America and you'll be funneled into a particular role. If you go to work for one of these smaller companies, you have the opportunity to become a big fish in a small pond and get more exposure to the business of the business. And that's the advice that I took, and it turned out to be the most profound advice that I ever received from a career perspective point of view.

It really is, Because for those who remember the copier business back in that day, that was a fertile training ground for sales right, and it's a hard business. It was difficult, you know. The reality is my first boss in the copier business which was a small place like you decided he used to say look, we're all peddling the same stuff, so you better make sure they like you. And so a lot of the Xerox salespeople did that as a stepping stone to move off into other industries. And had you done that and gone to Xerox, that would totally change the course, because that really was the path, whereas you were able to get deep into the business and learn the business. That was a pretty profound decision.

Yeah, I joined that small office products company in southeastern Pennsylvania as an entry-level sales rep. Through the course of my career there, which was 15 years, I progressed to be vice president of sales, became part of the leadership of the company, bought a minority interest in the business. So I got very intensely involved with the business of the business and saw things that I would never have seen had I been, you know, with a larger corporation. And during my time there, you know I always had this burning desire to want to build my own business, have my own company.

The industry at that time was going through a lot of transition and you know there were some differences as to what direction we should go to build the business. And you know I just recognized that. You know, if I was passionate about some of the things that I believed in, now is the time to take the leap. And you know I notified ownership of that company. I gave them six months notification that I was going to be seeking other opportunities and moving on. I decided I was not going to stay in the Southeastern Pennsylvania area because I did not want to compete with them, and I started looking at other areas, you know, in their peripheral marketplaces and ended up with an opportunity to buy a very small company in Baltimore, maryland.

I think what's great about that? There's a lot to unpack in that story. So you're young, you're in this business, you're successful, and that was the nice thing about that business when you were successful, you were successful. So many people came in and flamed out quickly that if you could get over the hump of that early phase of building a base of customers and you can be successful, you're successful, you're doing well, you're probably making more money than you thought you would ever make. You're not on ski instructor pay anymore, and so life's going well.

And there's two really important points here, one which is this is the moment I love the moment the entrepreneurial bug bites Something inside of you saying wait, everything's going fine.

So let me take this perfectly acceptable and successful situation and let me just upend it and try to do something that has a lot of risk, which also includes and this is a character issue, which is what I love about the story it would have been much easier for you to just open a shop in the area that you knew, with the customers you had, and compete with all the contacts you had. But you didn't. You showed your character. You said these folks have been great to me and so I'm going to do the right thing and I'm going to. I want to do this and I'm going to do this, but I'm not going to do it in direct competition. So you made that hard decision. I love that part of the story. So you come down to Baltimore you don't really know a whole lot of people, you buy this little business, you take this risk. Did you even think about the risk at that moment, or were you just running on that entrepreneurial fuel?

You know, first of all it was a very interesting conversation with the family. You know we had a lovely home on a 10th fairway of a golf course. We were well-established in the community, doing well financially, and it's like well, gang, guess what? We're going to move to Baltimore, I'm going to buy a little company, we're going to start up a business and we're going to kind of start all over again. And they were tremendously supportive, a little reluctant at first but tremendously supportive.

I actually finalized the transaction to buy the business in August. So we decided to let them finish the school year and not move them at that point in time. So I commuted back and forth for a year and in the meantime we built a home in Maryland and just made the move and established a new life down here. I was very confident of my abilities. I had spent 15 years in this industry. I knew it well, I was successful in it. It wasn't like I was buying an engineering company or a totally different business. I was buying a business I knew, I loved, I was good at and I was extremely confident, given time, that we would build this into a great company, right and so there's the common thread we hear from entrepreneurs and that when you make that leap, that confidence, that's part of it.

Because if you go into these endeavors being risk-focused instead of outcome-focused, then you don't make it. And when we talk to folks who have different outcomes than what you've had, that's probably one. Well, I'll do it, but I want to make sure I cover this and the hedge that, as opposed to no finished school year, we're moving to Maryland, I'm putting capital up, we're buying a company and I know it's going to be okay. Why do I know it's going to be okay? Because I know I can do it. I think that's a characteristic that I think is so important. It's so important for entrepreneurs. Yeah, so now you're here, you're in Baltimore and you start the business. So talk to me about those early days, about the business, and what was your drivers, what were you trying to focus on and what was your vision in the early days?

Fortunately, when I purchased the business, I was fairly well capitalized. I always believe that to generate wealth you have to spend less than you made I was doing well. Over the 15 years that I had spent with the company, I saved a lot of money, built equity in the company, built equity in the company. So I had that equity and my savings to go down there and allow myself to build the business without taking any money out of it. So it was critical that I invested all the profits into establishing the business, branding the business and growing the business in that particular marketplace. And the two principles that drove me right from the very beginning and drew me through my whole career was that my most important roles were to make sure that we were delivering a very strong customer experience and also delivering an employee experience, because you can't have satisfied customers unless you have happy employees. And I really focused on those two areas. And, from a strategy point of view, I worked on creating recruiting, hiring, training machine to grow the business organically at that particular point in time.

Oh, that's great. And so from the very beginning you were culture focused, and I love that, right, because what we know is great companies have great cultures. You don't see many great companies with bad cultures. If they may go bad, you may have had a great company where the culture turned, but to build a great company you have to build it with great culture. So you said you were employee focused. Tell me what that meant. Can you get a little deeper on the employee focused culture?

There were several things that we did to reinforce that. First of all, we created a lot of employee programs. One of my favorite programs were it was called the CIA program. It was caught in action, where we had team members recognize other team members for going above and beyond to support either a customer or another member of the team. We also created a customer first program and that program was where managers would present to senior management stories about their team members that did exceptional things for customers and we would recognize that with bonuses and we would recognize that with trips and other incentives. We had a wall in our office from the very beginning where every employee in the company had a photo on that wall their date of hire, their job within the organization, the office that they worked in, so that everybody in the corporate office felt connected to everybody in the field. We had great tenure awards for recognizing milestones in their tenure.

And one of the other things that we did, Leo, is that culture is a very intangible thing. That's right. It's a set of standards that really are values and behavior that exist within your organization. But if you walk into most companies and you say, is your culture good, they probably would say yes. If you ask them what are your culture attributes, they probably would say yes. If you ask them what are your culture attributes, they would probably stumble and pause.

So what we did is we formed a team of employees. We called them the Delta team no managers, just employees and we asked them to interview take three months and interview all the employees in the company and try to determine what are the attributes that represent the culture in our organization. And after three months they presented this culture document to senior management and it blew us away. They were right on target. They did a phenomenal job. We took those attributes, we called it the centric way, we published it into a little booklet and gave it to every employee and we used it for training, we used it for coaching existing employees and we used it for performance reviews and measuring the intangibles that they brought to the job day in and day out.

That's powerful, that is very powerful. It's powerful because it shows how culture focused your senior management was, but also that you put it in the hands of those people and they delivered right. You went with confidence and they awarded that confidence by executing. I think that's such a great story and so that's what fuels this ongoing growth, right, this culture, this consistency, because, let's face it, the copier slash office product and I'm going to call it the copier business because I was there, used to be, used to be. I was there back in the day. So now it's this office solutions business.

You know, especially as in the earlier years, not the most reliable equipment at all times. I mean, there was good, there was bad, but so these are not airplanes, right, these are. They need a lot of repair. You get aggravated customers. So keeping customers happy and having them have confidence in you and your team, not the easiest business in the world, and yet you have this culture where everybody is driving towards that outcome. So talk to me about your client-centric piece of the business, not to the pun of using centric, but talk to me about that, how, your attitude towards the client, because obviously that really drove your success, especially in this business.

Yeah, as I said I said earlier on.

Well, first of all, to your point, the industry has come a long way from the 1970s, so the reliability and technology has enhanced considerably since then, but it is still a very service-centric business, service-focused business, and response time is critical.

Uptime is critical and, as I stated earlier, from the very beginning we were focused on what are the things that we need to do to deliver a very strong customer experience. Because, at the end of the day, you know how hard it is to get customers in this industry. Once you go through that effort, you want to make sure they become customers for life and you retain them as long as you possibly can. And to do that, you know we created a lot of programs within the organization. You know the customer first program that I talked about rewarding people who are responsive, going above and beyond to take care of that customer, recognizing them, publishing that in a monthly newsletter where we tell that story and share it with, at one time, 250 other employees really helped to reinforce that culture that the customer is first and we need to do everything we possibly can to satisfy their needs, to keep them happy and to keep them a customer for life.

Yeah, and your business is such a core partner in a big business or even smaller business You're really an essential partner in those businesses, right? They need these systems to keep the business kind of moving. And that all changed a lot. I'm going to go back to seeing the garment industry move away and this massive change that you witnessed, that happened in this business, and there was these moments I will never forget. I was in the business.

We went up to Sharp Electronics and back in the day it was just copiers and fax machines were just coming out and that the big change of the world thing. And I remember sitting in a presentation and these, these, these folks from sharp said look, this is the future. Now, this is back in the 19, late eighties, early nineties. The future is going to be you won't even need paper documents, that this will all be put around through machines and on these, on these computers, and this will all be passed around and you'll and you'll only print what you need at a given time. And we're listening to this futuristic view and we're like that'll never happen, like this is nuts. But the industry did change. It became very sophisticated, it became very integrated in the business model. You saw that, though. You saw that early and you embraced change. That's a huge part of being a great, successful entrepreneur is embracing change and wanting change and getting out in front of change. Talk to me about that transition. I mean, you saw that coming. We talked about this.

You know, in the office products industry, the only thing that's constant is change. It's been very exciting. When I started in this business, you know, we both know a computer that didn't have the power of our cell phone, took about 4,000 square feet of office space, had a raised floor. It had to be climate controlled. The technology that's evolved in our industry has been nothing short of amazing, and now this next evolution with AI is going to make it even much more significant. Next evolution with AI is going to make it even much more significant. So you know, one of the challenges of growing a business in our industry is not only understanding all the technological changes, but being good enough at it that you could sell it and support it.

And you know that was a big differentiator for Centric, because, as we got size and scale, we were able to offer a full range of solutions. Yes, we handled the traditional hardware to copy, print, fax and scan, but we were able to migrate also to managing digital workflow. We were helping companies migrate to digital workflow and manage their documents electronically. We were providing cloud services so that their team members could have access to any document any time from anywhere, and our competitors that were our size or smaller just couldn't match that product line offering. The large guys could. You know the major manufacturers could, but you know when you're working with them they outsource a lot of their customer service overseas. The responsiveness just isn't there. The ability to solve problems quickly was our strategic advantage and it was part of our value proposition and it worked very well.

Yeah, so the takeaway. And so here we are, takeaway one Michelle.

Writing it down. The takeaway, which we do from the ground up, is don't be afraid to change, stay in front. The word we use is break things that work, break things that don't need to be fixed because it can be better. And so in your industries, there's massive change going on. The competitors of your size are not changing. They're holding on tightly to what was the manufacturers. Are the manufacturers right? That's a different model. And there you are. You're changing, you're staying in front of it, and I call that just. You're just customer focused, you're outcome oriented, and that's what builds the success. And you saw tremendous growth. You saw tremendous growth.

We did. You know our growth was fueled primarily by two strategies. Number one we were very focused on growing organically. So we were recruiting, hiring, training Hard to do and we created a machine and we added a tremendous number of people to our staff, reinvesting profits back in the business and growing the team that we had in the organization. And it all starts with the hiring practices. We were not looking for a lot of experience.

We were very comfortable hiring entry-level people and you know we trained our managers to use the ask triangle in the interviewing process and what they really focused on was can they do the job? Does the person have the personality dynamics for the job that we are interviewing them for? Will they do the job? Is the drive, the determination, the ambition, the passion there to execute on the job day in and day out? And then the third side of the triangle is are they a team fit? Can we conceptualize them, visualize them working in our environment? Are they going to fit into our culture?

And one out of three, two out of three, you do not get a job at Centric. You had to have all three sides of the triangle to get that job. And when people came on board I would tell them look, key to success at Centric is very simple you got to care about what you're doing. You got to care about your job, care about your coworkers. You got to care about what you're doing. You got to care about your job, care about your coworkers. You got to care about, most importantly, the customer. And every day you have to do the right things and do them to the best of your ability. And if you do those three things, you're going to be successful with our training program in this organization.

Yeah, the S triangle. Everybody Takeaway two. That was quick. We got to the second one already the S triangle. I love that. Yeah, I feel like we have a front row seat to a master class right now. This is really awesome. This is great.

No, I love the S triangle. I don't think we called that. We're very similar, because I think the mistake that we see often is hire someone for the role, not hire the person. So can they do the job Doesn't mean that they're specific to a role. It means they can do the role right. They are going to be a part of a team. They are going to have the energy. We try to do the exact same thing. It's hard. It's hard, it's easier. It takes time. It's easier to go just buy companies and roll them up and buy EBITDA Okay, but what's enduring is culture. What's enduring is the harder work that creates the organic growth and the great culture that you did. So what do you think from a leadership, because I hear people all over you people, people, people, people as a leader. How would you describe yourself as a leader?

You know I'm a big fan of Jack Walsh and Jack talked about leadership being people who create the vision, who articulate the vision, who passionately own the vision and relentlessly drive it to perfection. And that's really what I felt my role was in that organization Plus leadership leaders are people who are passionate about the human potential. They're passionate about wanting to develop people and train them and watch them grow and develop. And managing is a whole different style. Managing is more of that step-by-step process to set the goals and develop. And you know, managing is a whole different style. Managing is more that step-by-step process to set the goals and develop the strategy to implement those goals and achieve those goals and then measure, you know, the activity versus the performance and success. So I've always enjoyed the leadership part of it very much.

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's evident by your success and by how you built the company. It's clear that you've enjoyed that part. So you're building this company, you start with this one small office and you buy the company and you have your vision and years later you're a lucky overnight success Very lucky, of course, right, that's one of our themes here. It's not luck, it's a lot of deliberate activity and hard work and execution. But years later you have this enormous success and we'll talk about that in one second. But when did you know? What was the moment where you took a step back and you said, oh my goodness, look at this, this is really taking off. And I'm at that pivot point right now where I'm about to really this thing's really getting ready to run. Do you remember that?

moment.

Well, there are several phases that a startup company goes through.

You start out in the entrepreneurial phase where, as the owner of the business, you're doing everything and I mean everything, including unloading a truck, if the truck needs to be unloaded and then you get a little bit larger and you progress to what I call more of a personal phase, where now you're starting to hire some managers, maybe putting some systems in place and having a little bit more structure in the organization, but essentially you're still making all the decisions, you're still the boss, everybody's coming to you for everything.

And then you get to that next phase, which is more the organizational phase. Now you have a management team that you're empowering to make the decisions and you are now operating as a CEO, more in a strategic role, and we hit that organizational phase probably around 2010. You know, at that point we were maybe about a $20 million organization and we had the resources to put that kind of structure in place. And then, as a CEO, I was able to work more on vision, more on mission, more on culture, more on accountability and be less into weeds on a day-to-day basis. And that's the point where I felt we arrived.

Oh, that's great. It's good to have that point, it's good that you have that off the top of your head and you know, wow, we built something here, right, something with meaning. What a wonderful story. And so you're building it and it continues to grow and it gets bigger and bigger. And there's a point where you start to look at this and the big decision comes right what am I going to do with this? As this gets bigger? I'm, you know, you're still a young man, but you've been in the business a long time. You have endeavors, you want to go and chase. You have three daughters. One's in the business and doing incredibly well while you still are at the helm incredibly well, while you still are at the helm Interestingly, by the way, your other two daughters tracing the roots back to the garment days.

One has a connection to Nike, one has a connection to Under Armour. That's right, and we'll leave that battle aside. I won't ask you what you're wearing. Peter Ballard, right, stay out of that one. But it is interesting. This is something that our entrepreneurs go through. We're in a world now where the businesses are so sophisticated and the multiples earnings or handing over your kids and taking a salary or a little piece for a while. Those days are kind of past us now, especially with businesses, the size you built. So you had this big decision and you built a success. You're at the moment vision and you've built a success. You're at the moment. Can you talk to me about the evolution of your thought process leading into what turned out to be a very successful, wonderful exit for you from your business?

Well, thank you, thank you, you know, most of our growth was organic, but in the process of doing that we also made some very strategic and synergistic acquisitions. In a 10-year period of time we made about six acquisitions and we really got good at developing a financial model to help us value businesses. So so it was, you know, fair to the seller and also gave us an opportunity for a good ROI. And we also developed a good process to integrate those businesses you, those businesses into our culture and into our company. So all of a sudden we're in Richmond, we're in Philadelphia, we're in Western Maryland, we're in Salisbury on the Eastern Shore, we're in Washington DC, we're in Northern Virginia.

And it got big, it got complicated. I loved running it day in and day out, but it was at a size and scale where it just didn't make sense for me to turn it over to my children. Two of them had no interest in the business and the third was primarily interested in marketing and very focused on that and not in the day-to-day running of the business. So in meetings with my advisory board in recent years we discussed my age, a succession plan, the future of the company, where are you going, what are you doing? You know, et cetera, et cetera, and I guess my biggest problem was I didn't feel my age.

But you know, we approach our mid seventies and obviously we got to be realistic. I'm the sole owner of, you know, of a, of a large corporation with over 250 families and, you know, if, god forbid, something ever happened to me, you know what happens to the organization. So we knew the ultimate plan was to be acquired and I wanted to make sure that that acquisition happened while I was still actively engaged, energized in the business, still passionate about it, because I wanted to control the transition and manage the acquisition process. And so we made the decision to go to market in 2021, which was dumb luck because interest rates increased dramatically after December of 2021. So I'd like to take credit for that, but it was just pure timing and lucky on my part. But in any event, we went to market, we engaged a consultant who helped us prepare our financials, develop realistic expectations, we prepared a prospectus and we went to market and we had several private equity firms very interested in acquiring the company.

So there's a couple of pieces here. One going back you made six acquisitions, you didn't make 50.

You made six.

And so you were strategic. It was, I heard, culture. We feel the same way when we go out and we're looking for someone to bring into our business. Do they fit the culture first? And it sounds like correct me if I'm wrong what we're always thinking and it sounds like what you did. This is an inorganic acquisition that should lead to organic growth, organically grow. An inorganic acquisition, and that's what you did with, by integrating them and putting them in the culture.

And then you. Then you go to market and I there's a couple of things you said there that I think are important. Sure, timing is everything, but I mean, they're still buying businesses for handsome multiples and, secondly, have realistic expectations. So you thought this through. You spoke to advisors, you wanted to do the right thing, and I love that. You said 250 families. You didn't say our employees For 250 families that you're responsible for. You're going to go through a process. You want to manage the process. You have realistic expectations. You go to market. I think that's wonderful. And so then you go to market. I think that's wonderful. And so then you go to market. You have these offers, and how was it dealing with a private equity acquirer?

Interesting, you know. I will say that. You know, my primary focus throughout the whole process was the sustainability of the company and, more importantly, the stability and security of our employees and our customers. And it was absolutely critical for me that anyone that we were seriously talking to would allow Centric to remain Centric no name change, no culture change, that every employee in the organization would remain in the same role at the same level of compensation. We were a well-run, profitable organization and we were looking for an acquirer that would task us to make sure we had a good top line and bottom line but would leave us alone and let the company remain, because we all heard the horror stories about private equity firms and you know some of the things that happen once they get control of the organization. And our decision came down to the best partner meeting that particular criteria and I will tell you that almost three years into the process, they have stayed true to every promise that they've made and they've been a terrific partner to have in the organization.

So there is a consistency and you're right the reputation of private equity buying businesses and the relationship between the founder and the private equity buyer.

The reputation is terrible right Six months and gone and frankly, we've seen a lot of that. Where I find success with that relationship is the same people that built the business the way you built it, because they go into the acquisition the same way you said realistic. You said you left clear instruction on what type of buyer you wanted, made sure you had a good relationship, and what happens, I think too often and sometimes it's the investment bankers, sometimes it's just need people get into a fever and when they get in a fever in the bid process they start to lose some of those core issues that are important to them and go to a price some of those core issues that are important to them and go to a price. Right, they run to a valuation and then on the other side of that, it's not surprising that the relationship isn't the same. It sounds like you did a lot of due diligence and if both sides are honest and expectations are realistic, then it can work. It sounds like you made it work because of that.

No, I definitely feel confident that I accomplished the objectives that I was trying to achieve.

Yeah, that's great, that's wonderful, and your daughter's still in the business.

She's in the business. Most of my team, my management team, has been promoted. We are the headquarters for the private equity firm. They own about 35 dealerships across the country. Seven of them are in the East region. My facility has become the corporate headquarters for the East region and my team have pretty much been elevated into leadership teams where, for example, my daughter was our marketing manager, is now the marketing manager for seven companies in the East region. So it's created great opportunities for our team members and you know they asked me at the time of the acquisition to stay on for five years. I said I'll agree to two and reevaluate afterwards. You know the company was doing well, it was profitable, it was debt-free. I have a lot of confidence in the direction of our industry. My decision to sell was just all about my age and the sustainability of the business and making sure that the team members and the customers were stable, secure and had a good future ahead of them and I leave knowing that those goals were accomplished.

I love the smile at the end of that statement. I love the smile at the end of the statement so, okay, so now? What? So now you're here and you've successfully built an incredible business. You stayed ahead of the industry, you were on the forefront of all the innovation. You grew, you made smart acquisition. I mean really, Rick, just a wonderful story of execution. But you're an entrepreneur, you're an executor, right, you don't wake up one day and suddenly you know you can just sleep in till 12 noon and play one round of golf a day and be happy. I know you love golf, but what now? What's driving you? What's filling that void and fueling the fire today?

Well, I think that anyone who is going through this process, I think you have to plan for it.

I think the first step is having a really good succession plan in place and making sure that the people who are going to be leading the company are going to maintain the culture they're going to continue the growth and success of the organization. I think that there's some emotional planning that you need to make, because you go from having a schedule that is packed and, quite frankly, you lose control of oftentimes to having a lot of freedom and flexibility with the schedule. But I will tell you that for the first four months my life was so intertwined personally with the business that it took me about four months just to unwind everything and kind of really break away from it. But, as you mentioned earlier, I'm involved with a couple organizations very heavily. There's a lot of meetings that go on there. I could tell you. I wake up the same time every day, I work out the same time every morning and my days are busy. Sometimes they're busy with fun, and Sometimes they're busy with fun and sometimes they're busy with work, but busy nonetheless, but busy nonetheless.

Yeah, and I love that you kept the same schedule right Absolutely. That probably helped that transition. Yeah, that's good advice. Everyone Be ready.

What also helped the transition was my last day was Friday, December 29th, January 1,. I was in Naples, Florida.

Which is a great place to be on January 1,. That's for sure the fruits of labor. So I love that. I love the be emotionally ready, be psychologically. So.

Obviously one of our biggest services for entrepreneurs is we do business, exit planning and we talk about there's financial readiness and then there's emotional readiness and if you put those in quadrants, if you're emotionally ready and you're financially ready, you're going to have a great exit. Right, Because you're patient. You, you're going to have a great exit right Because you're patient. You don't have to take any offer. If you can be emotionally ready and not financially ready, you're in trouble. But really it's the folks that are not emotionally ready that really can struggle.

And I also find, by the way, the fact that you're emotionally and psychologically ready helps with that transition in dealing with the private equity firm Right, Because if you're not actually ready to let it go, that's when you get to the table and you know what do you mean? We're signing with a red pen, the deal's off, because you're trying to find that way to get out of it. But that's also where, on the other side the relationship, you want everybody to do it your way and somebody just acquired your company and spent a lot of money and I feel like that. So it sounds like you hit that sweet spot, so congratulations. Not an easy place to be.

Thank you. Thank you. I think it's just being realistic and having a good shared understanding of what they need to accomplish to be successful, what you need to accomplish to be successful and what works for the team and the organization. And there's great acquirers out there. There's a lot of horror stories, but there's great acquirers out there and if they buy a great company, they don't want to screw it up, so they're going to do what they need to do to make sure that the team members that built that company into a successful organization are going to be there. They're going to stay, and that's not going to happen unless you treat them well.

Yeah, I 100% agree. Well, Rick, this is an absolutely wonderful conversation. Congratulations on your amazing success. You've built a tremendous business literally from the ground up, right From Bethlehem, starting in the copier business, making that decision and then growing to just a tremendous organization and a successful exit and successful family, and I'm confident in all your new endeavors you're going to put the same effort and have the same success. I think my greatest takeaway, though, Michele, it's people, people, people. Right, centric's that.

Yeah, absolutely, that's core. That's what makes it tick right.

Absolutely.

Sure.

Well, I hope everybody enjoyed this conversation with Rick Bastinelli about Centric Business Systems and his journey. I thought it was wonderful. As I said, I think it's all about the people his people and his customer base and their families, one of the points I loved in the conversation. So you can find us on YouTube, you can find us on Apple, you can find us on our website, spotify we're in all the areas you find podcasts. So please join us again for future conversations and again, like subscribe and share. We would really appreciate it. Thank you very much and, Rick, great to have you here.

Thank you.