Podcast: Mia Jackson & Vital Care Industries

From SMEVentures, it’s the Search Fund Podcast, a show about hungry entrepreneurs who, instead of starting a business, decide to buy one. These are their stories of success, failure, and the lessons they’ve learned.

In this episode, Mia recounts her unique transition, from engineer by training to management consultant to self-made entrepreneur. From running an African art exhibit as an undergrad to simultaneously launching both her consultancy practice and a beauty startup, Mia's certainly no stranger to the entrepreneurial world. One year into her acquisition of Vital Care Industries, Mia shares the challenges she's faced, especially at the helm of a healthcare business amidst a global pandemic, and how the wealth of operating experience she's gained over the years has helped her navigate them.

Mia Jackson

Jake: Mia, thank you so much for joining. I’m excited to talk to you. You’ve acquired about a year ago and you’ve had an exciting journey so far so I really appreciate you joining the podcast.

Mia: No, thank you, Jake. I appreciate it. Happy to be here, excited to share my story. Took me a little while to find a company and now I can’t believe it’s already been a year. So, happy to share my story.

Jake: Good. Mia, can we start from the beginning? Where did you grew up?

Mia: All the way, way beginning? Yes. Born and raised in Southern California. So, grew up in Inglewood and went to Catholic school all my life and then the first time I went to public school was at UCLA and did chemical engineering at UCLA, did kind of a biomedical option so I went to school thinking I wanted to be a doctor and kinda decided didn’t wanna do that but actually really enjoyed the coursework so I kinda stuck with it and so I have a chemical engineering degree with the biomedical option.

Jake: What were you like as a kid?

Mia: Bossy. Pretty independent. Yeah, I have vivid memories of like being in third grade and like negotiating with my mom that I didn’t wanna go to choir practice anymore because I couldn’t sing and I couldn’t like focus on my schoolwork so I also was a nerd and she agreed and that kinda started the whole domino effect of me being able to advocate for myself and negotiate different things in life. So, very independent child.

Jake: Your parents, sounds like they really valued education.

Mia: Yes, yeah, my parents really valued education. Both my sister and I went to Catholic school from kindergarten on. They really — both me and my sister went to college and it’s something that they instilled in us very early. For me, I am a natural learner. I love to learn and so school always came naturally to me. And kind of coupled with that independence, like I didn’t show my parents my report card or anything like that ironically, I was just self-managed so if I got a bad grade, they knew because I was like already so bad on myself so they had a hands on, hand off approach whenever they needed to. But, yeah, it was pretty self-managed. And I really enjoyed school.

Jake: So you say you’re a natural learner, you’re a nerd. Where did that come from? Were your parents also nerds? How did that happen?  

Mia: Yeah, my mom, she’s a nurse and so I think maybe the inclination for kind of the healthcare medical field came from there but my dad was good with his hands and he didn’t really enjoy school when he went to school so I don’t know where it came from. I’ve just always been curious. I mean, I was the kid that was watching National Geographic learning about random facts about animals at a small age, talking about that in conversation. I’m the youngest and so I think, as a result, I interact a lot more with older adults or older kids, maybe the desire to kinda wanna keep up, I guess, attributed to my curiosity to learn about other things. But, yeah, I’ve always kinda been this way, always been like the banker of my family. My sister is seven years older than me but I used to keep the money that, you know, if my mom sent me to the store and then I would just accumulate the money, all the change, and like loan it out to my siblings and stuff like that. It just came inate, really wired.

Jake: Did you charge interest?

Mia: I did. I did. At least I tried. It’s hard when she’s seven years older than you and she has a little bit more influence.

Early beginnings: From engineer to entrepreneur (5:57)

Jake: UCLA for chemical engineering, how did you choose that? 

Mia: So I had a really influential high school science teacher, Mr. Salahe, basically created an honors program for science for me which allowed me to be valedictorian of my class. And it was through his guidance, like I said, I thought I wanted to be a doctor but I wanted to have some versatility and we kinda just had a strategy session about what are the different disciplines and talked about engineering and what is the most flexibility and what gives me the option to go to medical school and chemical engineering with a biomedical option came into play and so I specifically looked at schools with chemical engineering with the biomedical option or bioengineering focus. I didn’t grow up with engineers. My parents weren’t engineers or anything like that. I barely knew lawyers and doctors. So it wasn’t like I had a lot of exposure to various different people with these science degrees or anything like that. It was really the exposure and really the collaboration with my science teacher and I still didn’t know what I was getting myself into but, hey, I was good at science and I was good at math and I tried it out.

Jake: So you finished UCLA, you actually don’t go straight to medical school. Was it something you were planning further down the line or did you change your mind?

Mia: I changed my mind probably about a year or two in. I decided that I didn’t wanna go to medical school, I explored doing research but I think, at that time, I was doing lab work and I didn’t really enjoy that very well. But I actually, throughout most of college, I actually worked, whether it be volunteering or working in the hospital so I really enjoyed it, it’s just that I wasn’t — the weight of having someone dying really weighted on me and I didn’t want to have like someone’s life in my hands. I can be very sensitive in time, even though I’m more of a science person, but, you know, I didn’t wanna have that. That was really hard for me. So, I looked to maybe apply in different other areas. So I actually decided out of school to do something totally different. I worked for a building materials manufacturer, Owens Corning, they make the pink building insulation so I did something totally different. But the engineering background, the problem solving skills, the ability to distill really complex, challenging issues, problems down to something simple are all the skills that I learned in undergrad. 

Jake: You did a couple of years at Owens Corning and a couple of years at Zep, both chemical manufacturing companies, correct? 

Mia: Yep.

Jake: What were you doing? Were you in the lab? What was your day to day like?

Mia: And this is not intentional at all, it kind of fell into place. I’ve always kind of — I’ve been a planner but never really planned out. Career is weird when I think about it, but I got certain opportunities. And so going out of undergrad, I joined an operational development program with Owens Corning and I really did more operations and management type work. I was a shift supervisor for almost a year and that was a very interesting experience being someone from California supervising individuals in the South. And I did that. I worked in the warehouse, did a rotation in the warehouse, a rotation in maintenance, and then that’s where I kind of developed my love for continuous improvement. I got my Lean Six Sigma certification at that time, a green belt, and I was able to take that and really hone those skills at Zep.

Jake: You would later become an entrepreneur. You started a couple companies and then, obviously, launched your search fund and acquired a company that you would then run. Did you see any hints during these early corporate years that might be what you would ultimately end up doing?

Mia: Not actually during that time but actually during college. So, I did a program called Semester at Sea where you go around the world, you circle the globe. I think we stopped in 12 different countries along the way. Pretty cool, unique experience. And one of those stops was in Tanzania. I went to Tanzania and Kenya during that stop. And as an African American, we have an appreciation for African art and I just got the — something — I wanted to take home a lot of stuff, maybe because I liked to shop but just a lot of things I wanted to take home for my family. And I got the idea, well, what about if I come back and do like an art expo in California. And so after it was done, part of the program is that they have what they call exchange students so the next port that you go to, the exchange student comes on before, like, let’s say, I think we went from India to Tanzania so the person that was — she was in Kenya, Gadwili, she came on the boat, she met us in India, and then she rode with us so we got to interact with her and learn about her culture and things of that nature and so we actually became good friends during that time. And so after it was over — so my dad was an airline mechanics supervisor and so I had free flight benefits and so I flew back to Kenya and with like three suitcases and I think I had like $300 or something like that and I basically bought massive amounts of art to fill my — I think it was like two suitcases full. That was probably somewhat illegal because it’s kind of importing, but a third of it broke, like I had statues and everything. So I actually superglued some of those back together, but I ended up having like a little art expo with my mom’s friends and I made flyers and everything and I turned my $300 into like $1,200. And that was kind of my first, besides loaning money to my siblings, kind of my first entrepreneurial venture, and I loved it and it didn’t really come back up until after business school, it reemerged with my startup.

Jake: Before we get to that, you spent the first four years of your career as an engineer and you decided to go to Northwestern to pursue a dual degree in business and engineering management. So you’re holding on to that engineering world but also stepping into the business management world and the two worlds of engineering and business are often depicted as attracting and producing different kinds of people. But I’ve seen some of the world’s best entrepreneurs come with that combination of an engineering background and business training. In your mind, where do those two worlds overlap and where do they diverge and do you ever fight a battle within yourself between the engineer and the business person?

Mia: Yeah, good question. Thank God, I took the latter first. Not really — I don’t think I have an internal battle. I think I’ve kind of always knew, even going into — at school that I wasn’t gonna be the engineer in the lab or I was gonna do engineering. Like I always knew that I was going to go to business school. I didn’t really understand what that meant, I don’t think, but I kinda always knew that I wanted to own my own business. It was kind of these lofty goals that I didn’t really know what they really meant or how I was gonna do it but I kinda always knew that I wasn’t gonna be crunching numbers and being in a lab. I enjoy data, as my employees know, but I knew that I wanted to find that intersection, right? Kinda like I mentioned before, I think the problem solving and being able to distill complex ideas down which really has been helpful of conveying things that are happening in a business to be able to convey that to employees, to convey that to the board and those are different types of audiences was also was very, very helpful in my consulting career. Additionally, I think the intersection is being able to utilize data to make decisions. That’s essentially what engineering is. You can apply it in different ways but how you apply it and you can take customer data, think about financials and figure out, hey, I’m gonna take this, how can I analyze it these seven different ways, could be really fancy and do these regressions and all that stuff, but how do I take this information and how do I make this company or make this process or whatever, insert, make this better? And I think that’s one of the great things that I’ve been able to learn through engineering is being able to take that but also think about it conceptually, not just in the numbers, right? And then you gotta figure out the people piece, because engineering does not that teach you which real world teaches you, but if you have that foundation, you don’t have to learn all the other things. 

Jake: I was gonna ask you if you find that your engineering background is limiting in any way in your role as a people manager or as an operator, and you mentioned that it doesn’t teach you the people piece, did you learn the people piece deliberately or sort of through trial and error?

Mia: More like trial by fire. I think I learned that people piece as a 22-, 23-year-old shift supervisor of 100 or 150 hourly workers in a fiberglass plant in south of Georgia so I think —

Jake: That’ll do it.

Mia: — a union facility and I learned a lot from that experience, right? I learned a lot being a female in business, being a female in manufacturing, the engineering side, the learning and like the manufacturing piece, I love making things and that process, that was very intriguing and attracted me to the company. My job, especially for that almost a year, was to manage the people and so I saw all types of things and had to be able to manage and had to fire people or discipline people and they were part of a union so, in a lot of cases, those things got overturned or they were able to come back, and having to deal with that and manage through that, right? That could be a really interesting dynamic when you discipline or fire someone and then they’re back the next day or two days later. Different things like that. I think I kind of learned or toughened up, so to speak, in my early years as a supervisor and just in the manufacturing space, in general, I think it has helped me become a better leader now.

Discovering the search fund model (16:29)

Jake: In 2009, you start your dual degree at Northwestern, MBA and Master of Science in Engineering Management. I assume it was during that two-year period that you discovered the search fund model. Is that correct?

Mia: Actually, it isn’t. So, I know in the search fund world, I feel like I’m ancient. Because, you know, I went to business school so long ago and search funds weren’t really a thing, especially at Kellogg. I think if I went to Stanford or Harvard, they would probably — self-funded searchers would probably be more prevalent, but it just wasn’t something we learned in the context. So I did — I went to a class that Steven Rogers taught called Entrepreneurial Finance, right? And it was basically search funds. But we never heard the word “search fund,” right? I didn’t really — conceptually, I was like, “Hey, this is really cool,” but didn’t really know what it was in full context. It wasn’t actually until after I graduated, a really good friend of mine, veteran in the search fund world, Michael Curry, he’s like family, and he shared about what he was about to do when he was graduating from Booth and like, “You should do it, you have more operations experience than I do,” and I was like, “No, you know, I need more experience,” and that was when I kinda first learned about it. It wasn’t until seven years later that I actually took the plunge and started down the path of doing my own search. But I had, you know, obviously stayed involved and heard about Mike’s journey and every, you know, year or two, he would connect me with different people and, eventually, I said, this is, you know, I think I’m ready now. I’m at the point where I definitely feel confident to do it and I took the plunge in 2018.

Jake: All right, let’s talk about what happened in between.

Mia: Right, right.

Keystone Group: The management consulting experience (18:26)

Jake: So you went into consulting, pretty common thing for MBAs to do post program. Forgive my ignorance but I haven’t heard of the Keystone Group before. Can you tell me how you chose them and why you decided to start with consulting?

Mia: Yeah. So, ironically, it’s kind of a déjà vu of undergrad again. So I did — I actually recruited for health care. I worked for Baxter over the summer. That was gonna be my time again to get back into health care. I think I had about four or five offers and four of them, a majority of them were from health care companies and I decided to go with Keystone, which is not health care focused at all. It’s ironic. I mean, everything happens for a reason. I’m really a strong believer of that. But one of the things I really was drawn to Keystone, a couple of things. One, I was able to use my manufacturing and operations background on day one and I was gonna be able to do that across a number of industries, including health care. Additionally, you know, Keystone is a boutique management consulting firm in Chicago and they also have offices in Atlanta and I believe another place as of now. I was able to also get turnaround experience working with them as well. And so that was attractive. But the main thing that was attractive is that they were working with middle market companies and they were working with CEOs and executives or second- and third-generation owners and founders and they were helping them improve their business and I thought that was so cool that majority of Americans work for small businesses or medium-sized businesses, they don’t work for the IBMs of the world or the Googles of the world, and to be kind of a part of helping maintain and grow the local economies by growing and developing low and middle market companies was pretty interesting to me. And those are the main drivers of why I decided to join Keystone.

Jake: There seems to be some foreshadowing here. Were you conscious in your thinking that you wanted to play in that small and middle market space and that you wanted to be a business owner? Was this on your mind that whole time as a consultant?

Mia: I don’t think I framed it as middle market but I framed it as being able to work with small enough companies where you’re interacting with senior leadership and you’re hearing these amazing stories of how these people started in their garage or had this really cool idea and now they had this huge company. So, that was really attractive to me to be able to hear the stories of these entrepreneurs because that’s what they were. And I knew that the work that I was doing, even when I was doing turnaround work, that I was going to be able to impact the people that were there in the communities. Sometimes we are making recommendations to let go 10, 100 people, 20 people, 100 people, but that was to save a thousand, right? Those are hard decisions to have to recommend and you try to find ways to not have to do that. But, sometimes, it was that main company that was the main driver of kind of the local economy. The type of work that we did was you’re getting in an airplane and then you’re driving two hours to the site so it’s not like it’s in the metro. It was middle America, you’re driving two and three hours, in some cases, to go to these companies. And so they were the main driver and so keeping those companies afloat was essential for those communities. And that’s the kind of thing they communicated to me during the interview process and that really resonated.

Stunning on Standby: Co-founding a beauty start-up (22:07)

Jake: Then in 2014, after a few years with Keystone, you have your UCLA degree, you have your Kellogg MBA and Masters in Engineering Management, you have your years of engineering experience and your years of consulting experience and you decide to, in some ways, leave all that behind and become one of those entrepreneurs to start a business that does what?

Mia: Yes, me and my best friend from high school, we started a beauty services company, it was called Stunning on Standby, and a totally original idea until we heard that Glam Squad existed but we basically had a similar concept of basically being able to have beauty artists, whether that be a makeup artist, a nail technician, or a hairstylist come to someone’s home and provide those services for them, whether it be for a gala or a prom or just a special event. This was way before all of this existed so it’s kinda interesting to kinda see how the market has grown. I had moved back to California at this time and so we decided that this is what we wanted to do and we built almost a business, we were basically ready to launch, we actually had hired some people and life happens in a lot of different ways and we weren’t able to fully launch. I still think it’s a great idea. I still think there is still a market for it, especially where we were thinking the niche market we were thinking about serving. It’s not dead. Maybe one day we’ll revive it. But I still think it was a great idea. But it was also a great experience. We basically went from an idea sitting on, you know, having drinks on the balcony — on the rooftop of some restaurant in LA. Two months later, having this full-fledged company that had this tech back office and I had gone to makeup school, there was just so many things that had happened and we had really taken this from nothing to something and it was a really cool experience.

Corporate life, startup space, search fund world (24:12)

Jake: I always enjoy talking with searchers and other entrepreneurs about this moment of transition from corporate life to the entrepreneurial life. And in the search world, we actually have quite a few startup refugees who have caught the bug of starting their own business but decided they don’t want to start from scratch again. Can you tell me about that moment? A lot of people listening right now are in their corporate jobs and are wondering when or how they’re ever going to take that leap to the entrepreneurial world. What went through your mind? How did you have the confidence and comfort to actually make the move? 

Mia: For me, I guess I had the space and opportunity to do that and I know that it can be hard when you’re working a corporate job to create the space to imagine and I had moved back to California and I hadn’t got a new job yet and so I had that time to kind of kick around different ideas and to kind of figure out how I wanted to reset. And it was carrying the resistance, like I was trying to resist the idea of just like getting another job, right? And taking the time to really explore what I wanted to do and that was, you know, reading books like What Color Is Your Parachute? and things of that nature. So I do encourage people, you may not be able to quit your job but make space any way that you can to really give yourself an opportunity to explore different options. I’m a firm believer that it doesn’t have to be one thing and there’s ways to explore those things while you’re still working. Weekends and it makes a little bit harder but it’s still ways to explore. Even how Jasmine and I developed Stunning on Standby, she was still working full time and I, in order to make money, I started consulting. And that’s kinda how my consulting business came about. But I was still working at some point in time, in the very beginning, I wasn’t, but I still had to work and we still had to grow this business. So I actually was still working a good portion of the latter half of the startup so that was just out of necessity. So I know how hard it can be. But it’s really — if something’s important, creating the space for it. I know it sounds really tongue in cheek but it’s really important. 

Jake: Yeah, I get it. So that was a real hustle. You’re trying to develop a consulting business, which just alone can be hard, when you’re starting from scratch and you’re trying to find clients and serve them and get referrals and generate income while starting a startup with a co-founder who was also working somewhere else and you were grinding that path for a couple of years. Did anything about that scare you and make you think ever, “Gosh, maybe I should just go back to my engineering corporate life or my consulting corporate life, that was a lot easier”?

Mia: There were definitely times I mean, when you’re in between projects and you’re working so much on this project that you didn’t have time to find leads for the next project so you kinda have a little bit of a dip and you’re still doing the startup and, in my case, my founder, I lived in Southern California, she lived in Northern California, it made it really challenging. And so there was definitely times where you’re like, “Is this really worth it?” And how I saw consulting at that time was just enough to get us through because we did feel that our idea and our business would be self-sustaining, that we wouldn’t need outside capital besides our own. And that once we can, you know, get it through the first six months, that it would be cash flow positive and we would be able to reinvest in the business. I do think that that was naive a little bit but I still think that it was one of those businesses that is self-generating and you don’t need, you know, outside capital for it, you’re able to, at that point, maybe at a later point to scale you may have needed outside capital. However, really, initially, the consulting was just to have money so I could live and really build the business. But, again, you know, eventually life happened and we decided that we weren’t gonna pursue the launching of the business and I just focused in — like I focused gears and built my consulting practice.

Jake: Right. So you continued that consulting for a couple years post Stunning on Standby before launching your search fund and at what point did the idea of a search fund resurface?

Mia: So I had talked with, you know, I would see Mike at Thanksgiving, we would do Thanksgiving together every now and then or he’s really good about just reaching out and catching up with people. So I would see him often or catch up. I really admire what him and Keith were doing and so I had a really intense consulting project in 2017. Looking back on it now, actually, as I’m talking to you, I created the space again where I just needed time to just decompress and it was during that time that I was thinking about, “Do I wanna still do consulting? Do I wanna do something else? Even the Stunning on Standby, do I wanna revive that?” I kinda came back actually, I think it was actually Thanksgiving, I remember in November, Mike and I spoke and I started the process of really thinking like, “Hey, what about the search thing is exactly what I’ve said I wanted to do, I wanna buy a company, I think I have the experience to do so,” and so I just kinda did — did the same path. You talk to as many people in the search process as you can, 20, 30 people, and I started my process talking to various recommendations from Mike. And then, at this time, Kellogg was definitely more in the search world and so I flew up to Chicago and talked to a number of people here at Kellogg, even at Booth, and I started to research the various different paths to search. At this time — or at that time, the accelerator model was just emerging. NextGen, think it had their first cohort, Broadtree had had their first cohort, and SFA I think was on one or two cohorts, one or two. And so the process of learning about search in general, I was learning about the accelerator model that was also pretty interesting.

Jake: I would say you definitely have the experience at this point to go search for and buy and run a company. Some might argue that you had that experience several years prior. Good that you that you came around to it. So you decided to hitch your wagon to Broadtree, one of the accelerators you mentioned. I know David, he and his team are fantastic.

Mia: Yes, yes.

Jake: I’m also about to do an interview with your fellow Broadtree searcher tomorrow, Manny Saxena, and looking forward to that.

Mia: Awesome. Yeah, his story is great.

The acquisition: Vital Care Industries (31:12)

Jake: Good. In any case, the process worked and you bought Vital Care Industries. What does your company do?

Mia: We manufacture and distribute medical surgical supplies. A good quick example is if you ever had a knee surgery or hip surgery or shoulder surgery, there is a C-arm in the operating room that’s taking continuous images of that area and so in order to maintain a sterile field, you have to cover the patient but you also have to cover the equipment in the operating room. So we manufacture and distribute equipment drapes and covers and probe covers for the equipment that’s in the room.

Jake: Got it.

Mia: In addition to that, we sell solidifier that — think about all the liquid that comes out of the body during that procedure that can’t be transported in its liquid state and so we sell treated and untreated, but our treated solidifier, Absolute Solidifier, allows the medical technician to dispose of that now solidified waste into the main — called white bag waste or the regular trash, which is pretty cost savings for the hospital. In addition to that, we sell sterilization packaging and dusting cart covers.

Jake: Got it. So primarily consumables which feeds into that recurring revenue feature that search funds so often look for. You mentioned in our email conversation that the company has minority business enterprise status, MBE status. What does that mean and what are the implications and is that something the business had before you acquired it? What’s the story there?

Mia: Right, so it’s actually a pretty interesting story and probably don’t — doesn’t get enough play but the original owners, the Johnsons, they had grown this amazing business starting in their basement in the 80s and growing the business, you know, an African American couple in the suburbs of Chicago, really this amazing family-owned business, and very rarely, especially in the search fund world, but just in business in general, that you have a transfer from one African American to another and that was a privilege and an honor for me to be able to purchase Vital Care and being able to transfer its ownership from the Johnsons to myself, an African American female. In addition to that, because it was wholly owned by majority owners, by the Johnsons, they had a minority business enterprise status or MBE status as a black-owned business and actually more, again, wasn’t a planned thing but our lead investor, Fifth Century Partners, is a black-owned private equity firm that was just seeded $120 million fund and they backed us and, as a result, with accumulative minority ownership in the business, we were able to maintain our MBE status, which is pretty amazing. 

Jake: For some benefits of the business? Sorry, I’m unfamiliar. 

Mia: No, no, it does. For us, none of our contracts are tied to our MBE status so it does not have a direct impact to the business. But I think it allows us to be able to share Vital Care with different people that would be interested in minority businesses and so it allows us to have additional, I would say reach. However, our revenue isn’t tied to it so we strike this interesting balance, but still very proud to be an MBE.

Jake: That’s pretty amazing that you were able to bring those three pieces together between the seller, you, and your source of capital, your lead investor. Well done. You also acquired during COVID. 

Mia: Yes.

Post-acquisition: Overcoming challenges (34:49)

Jake: To say the least, has been tough for many small businesses and I assume Vital Care Industries, it’s been tough for you too. Can you share a story or two of when the impact of COVID has been particularly tangible since launching your search or since buying Vital Care?

Mia: Yeah, all the above. During search, COVID was unknown and I actually, I think in February, I flew out to Chicago right before the world ended to visit and so, you know, I was very grateful that we were able to get that in and create that rapport with the Johnsons before it was gonna be harder to travel. Going through diligence, just making it difficult to — in a lot of cases, you’re able to go back and forth and fly or really be in person. There was some things, like Q of E usually is an on-site management meeting, we weren’t able to do that. And our business is pretty complex. We were almost bringing like three different companies together so we have a facility in Asia, in Southeast Asia, and we have a facility in Arizona and so it made it really difficult for our Q of E partners to really dig deep and understand because they’re having to do this remotely, which was new to them as well. So it probably would have taken us three, maybe five days, I’d say. It took almost three weeks to get all the data and coordinate with people and that’s because people were kind of doing this off the side of their desk versus us being in their face on the on-site meeting. And even it impacted the business, right? There was no elective surgeries and so no one was getting their knee replacement or hip replacement during that time and therefore it impacted the business and the revenue of the business and so we had to figure out how do we adjust for that and doing it in the unknown of thinking about now, we’re still talking about COVID, right? COVID is still a thing. And at that point, we thought it was gonna be just around for a season or a few months. So having to make those decisions of how we want to value the business as a result of that and different things. Definitely COVID had a lot of impact. And it’s also, you know, for us, you know, post close, has also driven, you know, the collapse or the crisis of the supply chain, the global supply chain. Again, mentioning we have a facility in Southeast Asia, having to be able to get product from there in a timely fashion has been a really big challenge for my first year as a CEO here. So COVID has impacted my search in my first year as a CEO and Vital Care as a company in so many different ways.

Jake: And as you’re encountering these obstacles in your first year as a CEO, you’ve been a co-founder of a startup before but being a CEO of a midsized company is very different. And as you encounter them, some of these obstacles are outside of the ordinary CEO job description. Are you put off? Do you regret any decisions? Do you look back and think you should have done something different? I suppose those aren’t really options right now. Or are you excited by these ridiculous challenges? How do you respond to these obstacles you’re facing?

Mia: I think I have a combination of like pure exhaustion and pure excitement at the same time, right? There’s always gonna be something, right? Every day is an adventure is my new tagline. Because it is. Every day, there’s something that — there’s some fire that you have to put out. Learning to manage that constant, you know, ability to manage, that’s gonna be a constant, right? It’s interesting, but understanding that that’s how it’s gonna be, whether it’s a huge decision or a huge fire or a small fire, it’s a fire nonetheless and approaching it the same way and not trying to give too much fuel to it, so to speak, has kind of keeping me sane almost a year or so, whether it’s having to deal with difficult employees or terminations or figuring out how I’m going to meet customer demand because what used to take 40 or 45 days is now taking 60, in some cases, 80 days for our product to get here, decisions to airfreight things that costs now two and three times that it did just a few months ago. So each decision is big in itself and really taking it one by one and resting on the skills that I’ve developed whenever I graduated from undergrad and kind of using that second nature, that engineering degree, that problem solving degree, to be able to take it one decision at a time, to utilize my team to give me insight because they’ve been here a lot longer than I have and they know the industry and the company. And so it’s a combination of all of those things.

Onto loftier goals: past, present and future (39:26)

Jake: You launched your search fund because you had presumably some goals in mind for yourself and your career. Do you feel you’re on your way to achieving those goals a year in or do you still have more things you wanna do in your career? Are you pretty satisfied? Where are you?

Mia: Yeah, I definitely think that there’s more that I wanna do. One of the things I do enjoy about being CEO is the professional development piece. I enjoy providing the insight and knowledge that I have and sharing that with my employees and how I think about things, how I think about problems and providing them with those tools in order to solve their own issues within their departments or areas. And I hope to be on multiple searcher boards in the future and be an investor so I do kind of see later on more kind of as an advisor/investor than operator.

Jake: So that was gonna be my next question is in 20 years, do you see yourself as still operating or moving to the investing side or doing a startup?

Mia: Yeah, definitely. Well, 20 years is so far.

Jake: It is.

Mia: So definitely, I probably hopefully will be retired in 20 years. I’m older than some of the other searchers. But definitely probably wouldn’t be still an operator at the level that I’m operating now as I think about being a chairman of the board or something like that and operating at a higher level 20 years from now, but it definitely will look a little different and probably serving as an advisor, that seasoned advisor across multiple companies of various different sizes.

On hindsight: Advice for aspiring entrepreneurs (41:04)

Jake: Fantastic. Searchers around the world are listening to your story and many of them are in countries that are brand new to search funds. What would you like to share with these aspiring entrepreneurs that you wish you had known when you were weighing the pros and cons of launching a search fund?

Mia: Yeah, good question. So I definitely — you have to strike the balance of being prepared and having the confidence to do this. Having the confidence to take the leap, because it is a big leap. In many cases, you’re going to make, as a searcher, less money than you’re making now at your corporate job and so you’re investing in yourself, but I think, especially as a CEO and someone that’s responsible for other people’s livelihoods, I am a proponent of making sure you do have operations experience before you do this, that you’ve managed people, that you have taken the time and not just for a summer but have done it, have some ownership that you have before doing this because it will make your life difficult and make your employees’ life difficult, makes your relationships difficult outside of work, because there is a level of preparation. It is something that you have to really want to do. It is not, just like startups are for everyone, ETA is not for everyone either. It’s more than just, “Hey, I just wanna be a CEO or wanna run a company.” There’s a lot that has to go into it. And so taking the time to prepare yourself for that I think is important. I don’t say that you take seven or eight years like I did post MBA but I think it is important to have that experience and that knowledge because it will give you the confidence that you’ll need in order to make those tough decisions. 

Jake: Brilliant, Mia. Thank you so much. Your energy is contagious and I really enjoyed talking to you and, whether it’s as CEO of Vital Care Industries selling medical equipment coverings or delivering on-demand hair and beauty services, I’m sure we’re gonna be seeing more great things from you over the next 20 years before you’re chairman of the board. Thank you so much and best of luck.

Mia: Well, thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity to share my story and I hope everyone enjoyed it.

(outro)

Jake: Now, after I ended this interview with Mia, I learned another little tidbit. In addition to her approximately 30 employees in the US, Vital Care Industries also employs another 80 people in Vietnam, adding additional challenge and excitement to her mandate as CEO. Now, Mia still has a long way to go in her post-acquisition journey as CEO and the first year has been undoubtedly tough, but with Mia’s experience, leadership skills, and infectious energy, I wouldn’t bet against her. I for one can’t wait to see what happens next.

(outro)

Thanks so much for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed it, you can find more at the searchfundblog.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. I’m Jake Nicholson of SMEVentures and you’re listening to The Search Fund Podcast.