Profit Hiker: 11 Trails To Gain Lasting Elevation In Your Business

By Simon Trask

Do you wish your business had more breathing room?

Small businesses are constantly pressured by corporate competition, changing technologies, political regulations, global affairs, and the Wall Street machine. It is a challenging time to own a business.

Profit Hiker is a program to help business owners discove

• Language: English
• Publisher: Profit Hiker
• Release date: Apr 15, 2024
• ISBN: 9798990572317

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Profit Hiker

11 Trails To Gain Lasting Elevation in Your Business

By Simon Trask

PROFIT HIKER. Copyright © 2024 by Profit Hiker LLC.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book maybe reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, by information storage, or by scanning without the express written permission from the Author/Publisher.

ProfitHiker.com

ISBN: 979-8-9905723-0-0

E-Book ISBN: 979-8-9905723-1-7

Audio Book ISBN: 979-8-9905723-2-4

Scripture references are from: THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Edited by Courtney Cohen

Cover design and layout by Simon Trask

Acknowledgements

Thank You first to the Creator of the universe, who gave me the idea for this book, and kept the words flowing.

Thanks to my loving and ever-supportive wife Cindy who has been supportive of every wild and seemingly impossible idea I have brought to our family. If everyone had a Cindy Trask in their life, this world would truly be a different place.

Also, thanks to Steve and Courtney Cohen of Now Found Publishing who really helped to bring this book to life.

This book was written for small business owners everywhere, the true heart and soul of every community.

Introduction

I had it all, and I wasn’t happy.

It all started in November of 2016. Fall is unequivocally my favorite time of year. The seasons are changing, the mornings are crisp, and there is a certain contentment in the air. Everyone looks forward to the fun outdoor events in our area: football season, music festivals, harvest celebrations, and, of course, the State Fair of Texas. Fall is also peak hunting season; so there is an added excitement and anticipation for what lies ahead. The holidays are on the horizon, and I look forward to having fun with our children. While I do appreciate each season with its own personality, and I do especially long for the changing of the seasons, Fall is special.

But this year was different.

Our third child had just been born, and I was now a Girl Dad. We had two boys and a girl, all under the age of four. Other dads had shared all throughout my wife’s pregnancy that raising daughters is different, and you’ll never be the same. I didn’t understand what they meant, because not long after her birth I jumped right back into work, back into the business that needed me.

On paper, my business partner and I had built a successful business. We had tripled the revenue of our advertising agency in our first five years together and had assembled a fantastic team of very talented people doing work that we were all proud of. We were at the top of the field in our town and growing the business in new ways. Starting as a web design firm, we had scaled to full-service advertising campaigns. This meant that we were spending six-figure advertising budgets on behalf of our clients and producing high quality television commercials for local businesses. I was at the center of some challenging and creative work, which is what puts wind in my sails. I was also making the best money I had ever made. This was all more than I ever thought I would have when I first became a graphic designer.

And I was not happy.

When the clocks changed from Daylight Savings to Standard Time as it does that first full weekend in November, it became more and more difficult. Every morning I would leave for work in the dark while all of my kids slept and come home in the dark with my new baby girl already asleep again. I would have dinner with my wife and two boys, spend a little time with them, and then put them to bed. I knew we had a baby in the house because I would see the case of diapers empty itself more and more each day. And, of course, there were the weekends with her – but I felt like my life was backwards. I had been telling myself that I was building this business for them. This would level up our family and give my kids a better kicking-off point for their lives, like my father did for us, and his father did for them. This mentality began to lose its footing as I allowed myself to ask the question, What does it really mean to be a good dad?

Over the coming months, I became very disenchanted with work. I tried to keep my spirits up, but all I could think about was that my baby girl, who we thought would be our youngest child for good, was going to grow up with even less of her father present than our boys got to experience. I chalked it up to the Baby Blues for the first few months, but I knew what was really happening in my heart: familiarity had bred contempt. It’s funny how humanity can change so much from one century or millennium to the next, but some essential qualities like this remain that make us so very human. I had grown to resent the very house that I had helped build, the house that I now felt was keeping me from what I deeply wanted. When my partner and I first merged our independent businesses, I did not have any children. If there was a big pitch due, I could pull an all-nighter without much consequence. My wife is a medical professional and was often working third shift anyhow during that season of life. But kids change everything.

Fast forward to springtime, when I walked into my partner’s office and handed him an offer to buy me out at ten cents on the dollar. After weeks and weeks of discussions with my loving wife, sleepless nights filled with endless questions, and a constant low-level anxiety I couldn’t shake, I decided that we needed a big change. My partner asked for three weeks to consider the offer. In the end, he decided that he too was ready for a big change in life, and that we should try to sell the business together.

That was both unexpected and a major relief for me. I knew that it would be some time before we got any serious offers to consider, and I expected quite a bit of work in preparation for selling, but there was an end in sight.

Selling a business isn’t necessarily a good thing or a bad thing in itself. These transactions happen every day for a variety of reasons, but often a major life event triggers the decision. Ideally the business is so good to you, why would you sell it? A business requires battling so much inertia to grow, and a business owner pours their heart and soul into that process. It can be like selling a child. In fact, when we got serious about selling, our accountant gave us a pep talk. He was a mentor figure for me during that process and in the years after. He asked us if giving up and selling was the story we wanted to tell. It was a very moving conversation,