Show Summary

The Kings Texas Smokehouse has a new owner,  Steven King.  Business is off to a start, but definitely not profitable.  Steven joins the show to be coached by Ryan Lee, Kelsey Ayres and Mike Michalowicz to get him quickly down the road towards profitability.

Our Guest 

Steven has worked in summer camping for the past 23 years at the Texas Lions Camp, a camp for children with physical disabilities, Cancer and Diabetes. He functioned as the Director of Operations running the summer programs, dining and medical services. He’s always told his wife when he retires he wanted to open a burger joint. One day a friend who owns Texas Business Buyers posted a burger joint for sale and that sparked his interest. He mentioned it to his wife in passing and she said “why wait until you are too old to enjoy it?” Those words pulled him from a rut and dared him to dream. He had a great run in camping and had a record for great staff development, recruitment, budgeting and management. He’d spoken on the national level about motivating staff, gamification systems for staff motivation and keys to turning average employees into fierce loyalists to your program. He went all in on the burger joint, pulled money, went over the books and spent a ton of cash…and the deal went bust on closing day. We were leveled. His former job provided housing, a great salary and benefits and they had left it all. He was left with a decision. Pursue the entrepreneur’s dream and make it happen or go crawling back to his boss and get his job back.

He went for it. Contacted the business broker and said “What else is out there?” He had this very cool place located about an hour and a half away. It was a meat market that sold bbq, Burgers and well as processed wild game. Now, you have to know Steven is a meat fanatic. Every new city he visits he goes into the meat markets just to cruise the counter. He worked his way through college cutting and packaging meat, he had become known for making great sausages and jerky and his culinary skills in the pit had people planning parties at his house. He went for it and purchased the business, opening doors on March 1st. During the process of buying the business Clint Fiore of Texas Business Buyers turned him on to Mike’s books and said “You have to read Profit First”. He read Profit First, Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, and Pumpkin Plan and thought he had a great plan in place. He took all the numbers he had from the prior owner and figured it all out. He had the perfect plan and then…got dropped into the reality of owning his own business.

Show Links

Website: www.kingstexassmokehouse.com

Website: texasbusinessbuyers.com

Corporate Partners

Receipt-Bank – Software and service to make the gathering, storage & processing of bills, receipts and invoices as easy and as cost-effective as possible for businesses.

Nextiva – VOIP phone providers for small businesses.

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