Loren O’Brien is a 2010 winner of the Upsize Growth Challenge—our annual contest to help business owners reach an ambitious growth goal, with nominations open now—and he’s the kind of entrepreneur for whom the contest, our how-to workshops and the magazine itself is tailor-made.
The CEO of B&F Fastener Supply, he drew up a several-year plan back in 2009, vowing to achieve double-digit revenue growth each year.
“You guys helped me stick with that,” he says, referring to the experts who advise the winners of each year’s contest.
“When I put it in writing that we were working on a five- to seven-year plan, we’ve never deviated from that.” From $19 million in sales then, the company last year reached $30 million last year, and O’Brien doesn’t see signs of slowing as long as acquisitions begin to play a role (but more on that later.)
A couple of years ago, “nearing the big 5-0,” as he puts it, he began creating a succession plan for his company, and used among other resources articles in Upsize about exit strategies. He and his wife, Barb, talked with their four children and learned three of them are interested in taking over one day.
He’s put them on a several-year plan to gain the right types of management experience. He’s transferred 90 percent of the shares to them, but retained the majority of voting rights—no King Lear future for him, for those who know their Shakespeare.
And he’s enlisted his current management team, in some cases 20 years his children’s senior, to endorse the plan, which they vastly prefer to a sale to outsiders.
“It’s a good deal because the management team has taken them under their wing,” he says about his children.
Most recently he’s become interested in M&A, and so attended the Upsize- and Club E-sponsored workshop in March on the topic, which is covered in this issue. There he confirmed what he’s been experiencing—there are a lot of investors out there looking for companies to buy.
He receives a couple of calls a week, easy, including from his largest competitors, but he’s not tempted. “No, not anymore, now that I know the kids are willing to take the torch,” he says about the offers. Rather, he wants to look into acquisitions of his own, to continue a double-digit growth rate as the company gets too large to make that happen organically.
He’s asked Rick Brimacomb, of Brimacomb + Associates and Club E and the moderator of that workshop, to visit his company soon and consult with him on how to do acquisitions.
As for the Upsize Growth Challenge, he counts the banking relationship he forged with Western Bank, at the time one of the contest experts and sponsors, as one of the biggest benefits of participating .
In short, he’s a sponge, and like so many others the exact type of entrepreneur Upsize seeks to serve. Every business owner we connect with the resources needed to succeed makes us proud. Thank you to all of our sources, workshop panelists, article writers, advertisers and sponsors who allow us to make that happen.
Beth Ewen
Editor and co-founder
Upsize Minnesota
bewen@upsizemag.com
