John Corcoran: 12:29
So you’re really I mean, this is real visionary stuff because if, if, if in 94, 95, whenever this is, you’re thinking like everyone’s going to have a website, that was not a foregone conclusion for many people at that point in time, they’re like, oh, the web is a fad or something like that.
Steve Zehngut: 12:43
I cannot tell you how many times I heard what you just said. The web is a fad. I probably heard it for a decade.
John Corcoran: 12:52
Wow. So how did you get your early clients then?
Steve Zehngut: 12:56
Yeah. Great question. So like I said, I was just a hustler and so I, I, I took meetings with anybody who would listen. And so the meetings weren’t just I wasn’t just selling my services. I actually had to educate them as to what this event was at the time because nobody, nobody understood what, what this meant.
They, they sort of heard things, they kind of got the concept. But I was educating and selling at the same time. And it took probably a year and a half, two years before I got my first paying client. Wow. Wow.
I was doing a little bit of freelance. I was teaching at a local college. I was teaching multimedia multimedia development at a local college to kind of pay the bills and finally got my first paying client. Here’s how it worked : I led a user group at the Los Angeles Macintosh Group. So LA had them. I think they called them user groups. They were actually not called meetups yet. They were called sigs, special interest groups. Right.
John Corcoran: 14:00
So that didn’t stick. Yeah.
Steve Zehngut: 14:03
So I led and I led the Macromedia Director sig, which was basically the multimedia sig or the CD-ROM SIG or whatever you wanted to call it. That’s what we were producing at the time. And I was doing this for free. It was on a voluntary basis. I was doing it to network and to and to just meet people in the community.
And the LMG held an annual show in Burbank. They had a conference. And because I had, you know, built this sign and volunteered my time, they gave me a booth for free at the conference. And so what I decided to do was rather than build a booth, I just took this space and we built a lounge. You know, right within the middle of the conference.
And we called it the Shockwave Lounge. I don’t know if you remember the technology shockwave. This is kind of pre pre-flash. Okay. Shockwave was an early way to put multimedia within a web browser. It was a mac product. So there was a shockwave and then there was a flash. So this was pre pre-flash. We called it the Shockwave Lounge. We had a used couch and a used coffee table.
John Corcoran: 15:10
Okay.
Steve Zehngut: 15:11
We had a coffee maker and I set up a sign. And I put a computer in the middle of the coffee table, and I just invited people to come and sit down, and I would show them what we were doing. And at the very last hour of the conference, this woman sat down and I showed her what we’re doing, and she said, oh, I’m so and so. I, you know, I forget her title, but she was at an ad agency and she said, I’m, I’m actually looking for this for a movie that we’re promoting right now. So I’d love for you to come in and, and, and present what you’re doing.
John Corcoran: 15:44
To promote the movie like a movie promotion.
Steve Zehngut: 15:47
This was a movie promotional website.
John Corcoran: 15:50
Okay. Lots of lots of movie film studios around there. Around that area. Yeah.
Steve Zehngut: 15:54
Yeah. She wanted an arcade built for this movie website. So the movie was multiplicity, the Michael Keaton movie.
John Corcoran: 16:02
Okay. Okay.
Steve Zehngut: 16:03
Called me in on that next Monday. And we were working. She hired us on the spot. And so we built a five game arcade for the movie multiplicity. And that was our first big paying job.
John Corcoran: 16:14
Wow. That sounds like a complex website. It’s not easy.
Steve Zehngut: 16:18
At the time it was revolutionary. As you know, the site won a bunch of awards. We got an accidental nickname out of the site. I can keep geeking out on this.
John Corcoran: 16:33
What was the accidental nickname?
Steve Zehngut: 16:35
So it was a five game arcade and we built these four games that they had given us Documentation for, and they left the last one open to our interpretation. And frankly, we had forgotten all about it until the very last week of the contract. And they said, oh, you owe us a fifth game. And so.
John Corcoran: 16:53
You’re like.
Steve Zehngut: 16:54
Yeah, I went to my business partner at the time and we. And do you remember the inflatable clown toys?
John Corcoran: 17:01
Yeah. You punch them and. Yes. Yeah.
Steve Zehngut: 17:04
Punch them and they’d rock back.
John Corcoran: 17:05
Did one of those. I said, “Did you?”
Steve Zehngut: 17:07
I said and on a conference call with the client, I said, how about Punch the Clown? And they went, loving it. Right. And I literally made and programmed Punch the Clown in 24 hours.
John Corcoran: 17:19
I’m sure it looked very hyper realistic.
Steve Zehngut: 17:21
It was awful. But it became the one thing on that website that everybody went to like, it was.
John Corcoran: 17:31
Like viral, right?
Steve Zehngut: 17:32
It’s fun. Simple. It was so stupid. Simple. And it became the shockwave game of the week and then the game of the month or whatever.
They gave all these awards. And so Zeek punched the clown guys. And so when we were introduced in meetings, literally, people would say, oh, you’re the clown guys. So it stuck and it worked.
John Corcoran: 17:53
So that this doesn’t sound like a small website to program. Did you have to, you know, hire people and everything to build this thing?
Steve Zehngut: 18:01
No, it was all I, it was me. I was just so I was, I was selling during the day and I was programming at night and I was getting about two hours of sleep and I was just grinding.
John Corcoran: 18:10
And then did that lead to creating other movie websites as well after that?
Steve Zehngut: 18:14
Yeah. So throughout the 90s we did a ton of advergames like that’s what they were called at the time. And so we weren’t really a website agency yet. And so up until about 2000, Advergaming was what we did. And so we built about 100 different advergames. That was our bread and butter. We were building websites as a kind of a line item. And then we formed ourselves into a full service web shop around 2000.
John Corcoran: 18:41
Got it. And so of course, something else big happened around 2000. That was around the time of the.com meltdown. Now you’re not near Silicon Valley, you’re in the entertainment industry. But you know the shockwaves were felt everywhere. But what was that like for you?
Steve Zehngut: 18:55
Oh we were right in the middle of the.com boom. Like, you know, we were right down the street from etoys Pets.com. I mean, they were right up. They were literally up the street on people.
John Corcoran: 19:03
I knew people that worked for Etoys at the time. That was a big.com failure. Yeah.
Steve Zehngut: 19:08
My buddy, my buddy, my buddy left a high paying job at one of the big agencies to go work at Etoys. Yeah. And so yeah, I lived right through that crash. That was March 2001. Was that.com.
the.com bubble crash. And literally overnight, you know all I couldn’t get a client on the phone. So we were about ten people the size of the agency at the time, and that was my worst day I’ve ever had in business. I had to literally within 24 hours, lay everybody off.
John Corcoran: 19:47
24 hours after this crash or.
Steve Zehngut: 19:50
Crashed, it crashed. I couldn’t get a single client on the phone, and the ones that were reaching out to us basically said, stop. All work halted, all work is halted.
John Corcoran: 19:59
So we’re looking back on it now because you mentioned it sounds like it was a big studio that was your first client, but were you over concentrated in startups? Was that what was.
Steve Zehngut: 20:11
Actually, we avoided all startups. We had no there were no dot coms that we were working with. It was all very large entertainment clients and some corporate clients, even them, they were I mean, it sent a rippling effect through the entire industry. So all digital work was just halted.
John Corcoran: 20:29
Yeah. Well, I guess a big part of it was also just there was kind of backlash against the whole.com boom, and people thought everything with the web was bad at that period of time, and.
Steve Zehngut: 20:39
In March 2001, the web was dead. Like those were the headlines. The web was dead. And I’m right in the middle of it. Right. So. Right, right. So yeah, I had to, I had to unfortunately lay everybody off and I moved. I moved out of the office and moved into my garage.
John Corcoran: 20:56
Wow. What was that like for you? I mean, that’s like setting you back six years from where you started.
Steve Zehngut: 21:02
It was hard. It was hard financially. It was hard emotionally. It was just rough. But what kept me going through all of it was I had this.
Belief that this was not a fad. It was not going away. This was the future. And that’s really what I, you know, founded the company on. And it was just my belief throughout that entire period.
And after about a year and a half, I was still around. I was still working. Even though it was smaller. I was still working. But once the dust settled and, you know, it was starting to rise back up again, I was the only surviving agency left in, you know, left in the area. All the Big five had gone out of business, and now people were looking to do work again. My phone started ringing and from there on, it never stopped.
John Corcoran: 22:04
So you kind of build back up again. What did you go through that experience, how did that affect you during later meltdowns and downturns?
Steve Zehngut: 22:15
Yeah, I mean, looking back on it now, even though it was a rough experience, that was probably the best lesson I ever got in business. Right. It was a, it taught me firsthand how to be prepared for that in the future, because I wasn’t prepared for that in 2001. So I was well prepared in 2008. When we hit a recession.
I was very prepared. You know, when Covid hits in 2020, right. Those recessions actually didn’t affect the agency at all. As a matter of fact, we thrived. But what I really learned was how to because I lived through it, I learned. I learned what the proper narrative was in any economy. Right.
John Corcoran: 22:55
And so the narrative externally or narrative to your team or both.
Steve Zehngut: 22:59
A little bit of both. But really what I was referring to was externally. So my, my, my when I was talking to prospects or existing business. Right. The way, the way an agency worked in a down economy or when we were facing a down economy was this: listen, you know, we call my clients and say, listen, I know we’re you know, we may be entering a rough patch, right?
That’s, that’s or something happened that is causing a rough patch. Right. You may be laying people off or you may be, you know, slimming down your internal departments, but the work still needs to get done right. Our agency is a great alternative for you, right? Let me tell you what that looks like.
And I’m not here to replace anybody. If you hire everybody back, you know we have a great transition plan for you. But let me tell you why. We’re a fraction of the cost of your internal team. And that was really where you get where this is going. That was sort of.
John Corcoran: 23:54
You have to change the way that you sell when to be responsive to the situation on the ground.
Steve Zehngut: 24:00
Yeah. And ultimately what it meant was in any economy or any conversation I was having with a client Zeek was set up as a partner. Right. That was the big message from 2000 to 2001. Before that happened, we really acted as a vendor.
Right. And I didn’t know it, but it was just natural because I was sort of young and inexperienced. It was a client vendor relationship after 2001, you know, the clients that stuck with me and the new clients that I was getting out of that period, my conversation was just different. It was just naturally different, right? Because they stuck with me.
They were loyal. I was loyal to them. We were having more partnership types of conversations. Right. And so on, throughout any economy or whatever, whatever the environment looked like from that point forward, I always treated my clients as partners.
And that was the conversation we’d have. Meaning we’re in it with you for the long haul, right? Good or bad? Right. Lean or not, we’re here to make it. To help you, you know, just to help you get through this. We’re here to make you a hero. We’re acting as your partner. Right? And that’s the conversation that really shifted for us.
John Corcoran: 25:11
Okay. So if I’m listening to this and I’m an agency owner and I’m thinking, well, that’s all well, well and good. I want that too. I want to be a partner with my clients. What are some specific things you would say to them that they need to do in order to make that transition from being a vendor to being a partner with their clients?
Steve Zehngut: 25:28
So first things first. You know, you have to choose your clients Wisely, right? And so I think where a lot of agencies miss the mark, is there not is there not just not choosing. Right. So they’re just taking any work that comes their way.
Right. And again, I was there as a new agency. That’s what we did. Whatever work came our way. My philosophy is all work is good work, right?
If it’s paying, it’s good work, right? That’s not true, right? All work is not great. Work is not good work. When you’re an agency, you have to find the partners that fit your values right. And so really for me, all goes back to values. Right. So we defined our values really early. And we sought out partners’ rights to work with that matched our values. Right.
Because again one of the things I just realized after being in business for three decades was that no matter what the size of the contract was, if a partner didn’t match our values, it wasn’t worth taking. There’s so many things that cost you as an agency. When you take on a client, that doesn’t match your values. So the choosing part is sort of the first part if you choose. Right. That solves a lot of the problems down the road, right? So most things can be you can if things go wrong, you kind of look back to, well, did I, did I enter into a relationship that was a bad fit?
John Corcoran: 26:49
Yeah, that’s a great way of putting it. I want to ask you about technology, because you are here at the king of the bleeding edge of all these different technologies. Technologies have changed dramatically over the last 30 years. A big development was WordPress, which now runs, I don’t know, something like a third or 43% higher internet. Wow. I think it came out in 2002, 2003.
Steve Zehngut: 27:11
Yeah, it’s yeah, it’s a little over 20 years old.
John Corcoran: 27:13
Okay. What was that like for you when you kind of discovered this technology coming on the scene? And at what point did you decide I’m going all in on this because you really became a foremost expert on it.
Steve Zehngut: 27:26
Yeah. I mean, listen, I’m, I’m I’m definitely in, you know, I’m in the In the WordPress community. Right. We definitely used WordPress as our primary CMS when we were building websites. It wasn’t our only tool in our toolbox.
Right. But I was big into the WordPress community. And so let me just backtrack a moment to, to explain that, you know, one of the things that we did with WordPress around 2010, my business partner, actually, so I mentioned Jeff Turner was my mentor back in the day for a while. He actually was my business partner. So, from about 2005 to 2010, he was my business partner.
And so Jeff and I were sitting in the office one time. We had a lot of work. We had some overflow that we couldn’t handle. And we said, okay. I said to him, how are we going to manage this?
He said, what I want to do is start a meetup, right? We’re going to find the local talent here in Orange County, and then we’ll just refer the work to them or bring them in on subcontractors. So we founded a WordPress meetup in order to give work out to other people, right? And just based on that, it accidentally became a community that really just wanted to pay it forward. The whole community was about giving.
So it was a WordPress community, but it was really very much about paying it forward, helping, helping each other out. And it was a very collaborative, great community. And so that was so that WordPress meetup was built in 2010, grew that to about 2500 members. Even the local meetup that’s, you know, it’s pretty pretty.
John Corcoran: 29:03
Yeah. It’s huge.
Steve Zehngut: 29:05
Couple of guys that were in our meetup created the local WordCamp, Orange County WordCamp. I was on their committee for that. I led that work.
John Corcoran: 29:12
Which is the conference, the conference for people interested in WordPress.
Steve Zehngut: 29:16
Yeah, yeah. So WordCamp is the what, what was and is the WordPress conference that is in every major city. I was the lead organizer for that for two years. I was on the US WordCamp team for a couple of years. Specifically on the sponsorship team. So helping them raise money. And so that’s those that’s my involvement in the, you know, in the WordPress space.
John Corcoran: 29:39
Yeah.
Steve Zehngut: 29:40
But back to your original question. How did I choose it? Right. I’d love to say there were some smart answers. It was completely by accident. Right. So a buddy of mine was a poker blogger at the time. That was a thing around the time that Chris Moneymaker won the World Series of Poker. Poker blogging was a thing. My buddy.
Made most of his income just blogging about poker. Wow. And I got a client at the time that needed a. Blog built and I was considering Movable Type, which was the WordPress competitor at the time. And I called my buddy Bill, and I said, I just texted him, I said Movable Type or WordPress.
That was it. And he said, WordPress. And I went, okay, done. If Bill, if Bill, if it’s good enough for Bill, it’s good enough for me. That was it. It was. It was sheer luck.
John Corcoran: 30:34
Yeah. Good choice. Yeah, I remember I first discovered it around 2009. I was working as a practicing attorney at the time for a law firm that had a horrible website, and this contractor came in and showed it to me and showed how we could use it. And it was such a revelation.
It’s just so much better. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting. You know, you’ve mentioned a couple of times here, there’s kind of an intersection for you between education, training, community networking and then all of that kind of leading into business. And I’m just kind of curious, you know, did you realize at some point that that’s kind of a superpower for you? Because I see it as a repeating theme. It’s led to good things for you.
Steve Zehngut: 31:15
Yeah. And again, it was purely accidental. Again, like most of my career, frankly, I just tried a bunch of stuff. And so I was always a big believer, you know, early on in the tech space that, you know. My, my philosophy has always been there’s no reason to hold on to knowledge, right?
There’s no reason to hoard knowledge. And frankly, what I saw was, and I hope I’m not gonna insult anybody. Right. But I saw in the IT community that there was this belief that that knowledge was power or really job security. Yeah.
John Corcoran: 31:57
Yeah.
Steve Zehngut: 31:58
So, so I, I actually didn’t like that. And so I said, hey, listen, anything I, anything I learn, I’m going to share. Right. So it’s what I do with my special interest groups. It’s what I did with my meetup.
I was just an open book. Right. So if I, if I knew something, I just was willing to share it with the world. Right. What that did as a byproduct is it, you know, made me into a thought leader.
You know, within my community. Made me. Made me into a thought leader, you know, in the WordPress space. And, yeah, I was just able to help, help people while also building my business at the same time. So it served a couple of different purposes. But yes, the short answer to your question is, I’ve I’ve always had a belief that, you know, I want to pay it forward, help people.
John Corcoran: 32:52
It’s interesting because that approach is kind of similar to the trajectory with WordPress. Like, you hooked, you hooked your wagon to the right, you know, technology and kind of what you said about this approach to open knowledge. Well, now it’s even more accessible than it was ten years ago. And now knowledge is everywhere, right? And so, you know, those who took the approach of I’m not going to share my knowledge like, I’m sorry, but people can get knowledge everywhere. So you’re going to be losing out.
Steve Zehngut: 33:22
That’s right. And frankly, those people have become obsolete.
John Corcoran: 33:27
Yeah, yeah.
Steve Zehngut: 33:28
And, you know, I think that’s also and I hope I’m not stepping on a Segway here, but that’s also really what attracted me to EO, right. EO is an extension of all of this. It’s , you know, very much about entrepreneurs, you know, pushing it, paying it forward and pushing other entrepreneurs and helping, you know, helping them grow their businesses.
John Corcoran: 33:53
Yeah. And obviously we connected through EO. But how did you discover it? When did you it sounded like you’d built a fairly large business by that point. It was a different experience.
I was struggling to build a big business, and the EO accelerator program helped me to get over that hurdle. But for you, like, how did you discover it?
Steve Zehngut: 34:11
So my best friend Neal Thornhill is in the EO LA chapter. And he was telling me about EO for probably 15 years. I think he’s been. I think he’s been an EO for about 15 years. And he was telling me about it from day one, how great it was. He was building his business at the same time I was building it.
And my response was, you know, I don’t have time for something like that, right? There’s no there’s no there’s no way that I have time to do a monthly meeting and go on an annual retreat and go on all these trips. I’m busy building my business. So I sounded like every other EO prospect.
John Corcoran: 34:50
Right? Yeah. The funny thing is, you and I both do membership now, right? And every single person we talk to says I don’t have the time for it.
Steve Zehngut: 34:57
Right, right. I, looking back on it. Right. So I joined about four years ago but looking back on it, I wish I had joined when Neil first started bugging me about it because I would have grown my business even sooner.
John Corcoran: 35:12
Yeah. And I want to get to what you did in order to replace yourself in that business. You okay on time? If I ask you a question about project management? Okay, good.
Yeah. So I know project management and account management are two concepts that come up a lot in the agency world. And you have some thoughts on how to approach those. Let’s talk about that.
Steve Zehngut: 35:34
Yeah. So. As you know, I’ve advised a lot of agencies on, on how to, on how to grow. And the role I usually see that’s neglected is account management or misunderstood. Is account management.
Here’s how we broke it out at Zeek. Right. There’s project management. And a project manager is really in my mind responsible for tactical things, budget schedule resourcing that they’re there to make sure that the project gets done right. That’s their whole job is to move the project forward at the pace that makes sense and deliver what we promised to the client. Right. That’s a project manager role. It is very tactical. It’s sometimes a little. Gruff.
Right. It can be very linear. And so, you know, what I was seeing was clients calling me, right? And they’d say, you know, I, I’m not getting a lot of warm fuzzies from your project manager. And I’d say. Right. It’s by design. Right. That’s that’s that’s that’s on purpose. Their job is to get your project done right. And so what when I once I started seeing that I started replacing the me part of it.
John Corcoran: 36:56
Because you were effectively the account manager. If they’re complaining to you then you’re effectively the account manager.
Steve Zehngut: 37:01
And so what I did is I put an account manager in place. Their whole job, they were on the project management calls, but their job was to call or be in touch with the client outside of the production meetings of the project management meetings. Right. Their whole job was to give the client a hug.
John Corcoran: 37:19
Yeah.
Steve Zehngut: 37:19
And that’s that’s literally that’s how I define their job description. Was I just you’re the warm, fuzzy person, right? You’re there to call the client, make sure that they’re happy. Everything’s on track. If something’s wrong, I want you to discover that.
But more importantly, as an agency owner, the account manager’s secondary job is to uncover new business. Right? So by. By making those calls. Right, they’re naturally going to start to uncover new business.
Because one of the follow up questions I’d give them is, hey, you know, why don’t you tell me about your business, right? Tell me about where you want to go. Tell me about your growth. What other initiatives are you working on that we’re not aware of? Right?
Those are just natural conversations that an account manager can have. So they served a couple of different purposes. But once we split out those roles, clients were really, you know, way, way happier. Yeah. Just because they had somebody to vent to.
John Corcoran: 38:10
Yeah. Yeah. And probably you too because it gave back a little bit more of your time. You didn’t have to be the person that was performing that function.
Steve Zehngut: 38:18
At one point I at one point I think I was spending 100% of my time doing account management. Wow.
John Corcoran: 38:22
That’s exhausting. That’s exhausting. Before we get to the end of this, I want to be sure to ask about you’ve got some real marquee clients Amazon, Sony, Disney, Honda, which I don’t know what you did for all these different clients, but tell a little bit about like, any, any crazy stories about working with any of these marquee clients.
Steve Zehngut: 38:43
Oh, I’ve, I’ve got a ton of them. I think one of my favorite Disney stories is, if we worked on them. So I did the website for The Water Boy. We did a lot of Adam Sandler.
John Corcoran: 38:58
Adam Sandler okay, good.
Steve Zehngut: 39:00
A lot of Adam Sandler work. I did the sites for Go With It, Jack and Jill, but the Water Boy was a fun one. But it was a very rushed project. And then, you know, our point of contact at Disney was pulled in multiple different directions. At times she had lots of movies that were coming out at the same time that she had to work on.
And so the website was very, let’s say, neglected, right? And I’m not blaming her. I’m like, she was doing just fine. She just had a lot on her plate. And so I remember about all we got for the water boy was we got called in to see a rough cut of the movie The WaterBoy.
No music. The dialogue was not was not polished. It was a very rough cut and honestly didn’t know what to make of the movie. Right? Right.
And just like every, you know, every time I went in to screen a movie or went in to meet with a, you know, to meet with an executive, you know, in Hollywood, they, you know, they were very excited about the movie. And, and so I also needed to be very excited about the movie. I wasn’t. Yeah. Yeah.
I just wasn’t so I just, I don’t know what I don’t know what I, you know, what came out of my mouth right when they asked me. So what do you think? Right. It was one of those things where I went. That’s great.
John Corcoran: 40:18
Yeah.
Steve Zehngut: 40:21
So I’m sure, I’m sure, I’m sure. It didn’t leave a great impression. We did. You know, we did a great job. It was a rush job. But, you know, that was fun. And there were lots of them like that.
John Corcoran: 40:30
Yeah. Yeah. It’s a that’s a hard thing when you see a movie early on before it’s in its finished product because it’s, it’s, you know, and actually getting back to that John Williams documentary, they showed a clip from jaws with the music and without the music and without the music, it was like, this is not a movie at all, you know, but the music just completely made it. Yeah.
Steve Zehngut: 40:51
And listen, I mean, The WaterBoy is an iconic Adam Sandler movie. It’s quotable. Everybody knows it, right? Yeah. It’s one of those moments where it’s like, yeah.
John Corcoran: 41:01
Yeah, yeah. Any stories around Amazon? Which of course that was one of the early websites out there.
Steve Zehngut: 41:07
Yeah, actually Amazon was a recent one. That was my last project that I worked on at Zeek.
John Corcoran: 41:11
And wow, even more impressive because I mean that’s incredible to believe that they are hiring outside agencies at the size that they’re at now.
Steve Zehngut: 41:19
So I’ll tell you how we got that one. And so we did a payment plugin for WordPress for Amazon that was done about a year ago. And so they have a new system that they built called Amazon Pay for services. I think that I think it’s called something else now. But that was what it was called at the time.
And I literally got a random email that I thought I actually was going to just trash it. I thought it was junk. It looked like a junk email. And it said, hey, you know, you know, we’re you know, we’re Amazon and we’re looking for this. We’re looking for somebody to possibly build a WordPress plugin, right?
Luckily, as you know, I responded. They wrote me back and said, you know, you know, we you know, we, you know, we got your name, you were referred. And, you know, we’d love to talk to you about this. And there were lots of competitors that were bidding on this, on this project. And so what I did is looked at their statement of work, you know, looked at, looked at what they wanted and sort of went back into 1995 Zeek mode.
I, I, I pulled a few all nighters and put together a prototype. And so rather than telling them what we’re going to do because this was Amazon, right. I wanted to show them what we could do. And so a week later, we had an introductory phone call. And I said, and you know, got to meet them.
And I said, hey, you know, rather than tell you what we’re going to do, let me just say why don’t I just show you what we’ve already done? And I pulled up WordPress and I showed them the plug in, and I said, I said, you know, some of these things are placeholder for now, but, you know, I’ve I’ve already got what you want working within WordPress. Here it is. And I was able to show them the plug in functioning. And at that point, I don’t think I don’t think they were considering anybody else. And so, you know, I just got scrappy because it’s a project I wanted and it worked.
John Corcoran: 43:21
So you’ve been running the company for about 28, 29 years here at this point. And you decide to replace yourself, you actually hire a COO. And this woman eventually becomes president and eventually buys the company. But what led first to replacing yourself? And how hard was that process of replacing yourself in the company?
Steve Zehngut: 43:42
Yeah. So that’s it. So here’s actually how it went. So right before I joined EO, you know, I was getting a little burned out. Frankly, you know, it was I you know, I was 25 years into this business and I was still working 70 hour weeks. My wife recommended that I read Rocket Fuel. You know, she she’s.
John Corcoran: 44:08
One of the EOS business books in the. Yeah. Canon.
Steve Zehngut: 44:12
Yep. So she practices EOS in her business and knew about this. And frankly, she told me, you know, you need an integrator, right? And I think my response was, what are you talking about? I’m a great integrator, right? Nobody integrates better than Steve right now.
John Corcoran: 44:29
Let me tell you about this new idea I have. Right.
Steve Zehngut: 44:33
I read the book and I, I, I came back to her with my tail between my legs and said, I’m a visionary. And she said, yeah, I know. I said, I said, I now understand the difference. And I said, so I need to hire an integrator. And so that’s what I did.
I hired an integrator and once I did so that was one journey that was going on for me. And I joined EO at the same time. So I was hearing other people’s experience about how they separated those things out and that just, you know, freed up all my time and more importantly, my head space.
John Corcoran: 45:07
Was it hard to Acknowledge? Accept the fact that you were you could be replaced in your business and you weren’t as needed at that point.
Steve Zehngut: 45:16
John, it was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done. If you know, I’d love to say it was easy, but if Elizabeth was here, who is who we’re talking about? She would. She would tell you. No, I was, she had to basically pull the integration stuff away from me kicking and screaming. I was, I was throwing tantrums constantly.
John Corcoran: 45:36
Not easy for her to like. You’re stepping in as a new person in this company to perform that role and say to the guy who’s been running it for 28 years like, no, don’t touch, don’t touch.
Steve Zehngut: 45:46
Yeah. Pardon my French, but yeah, I was a little bitch. And so and again she would tell you the same story. But once, once we got over that hurdle and I started trusting the process and again it took me 9 to 12 months. Once I started trusting the process and trusting her and letting go of things, I.
Once that happened, I let go of everything. It was, you know, once, once, once. I flipped the switch, it was. It was easier. But no, getting there was difficult. It was rough.
John Corcoran: 46:18
And then who brought up the topic of you eventually selling it to her?
Steve Zehngut: 46:23
So I actually did. So what happened was I actually started exploring this without her knowledge. And so kind of kind of went down the road of, you know what, what an exit would look like. I think she knew I eventually wanted to exit, but I was accelerating the process. And then once I brought her into the loop, she threw her hat into the ring and she ended up buying it.
John Corcoran: 46:50
That’s great. And then that’s nice because it creates greater stability for the company. You knew it was a known entity.
Steve Zehngut: 46:56
I gotta tell you, John, the whole process was seamless, right? The staff was retained by them. It was, you know, it was business as usual. We came up with a great transition plan for, you know, for how I, I exited and, you know, the company is still really going strong. So it was my biggest thing was I, you know, I didn’t want any disruption to my team. You know, my team. Excuse me. My team has been with the company for a long time. And, you know, I just wanted to make sure that everything was consistent for them.
John Corcoran: 47:29
And he was selling the company as hard, harder, not as hard as stepping out of the role of being CEO.
Steve Zehngut: 47:37
Selling the company was a piece of cake again, because Elizabeth was essentially running the company already. She there really wasn’t any due diligence. And so the narrative to the bank was really easy. Everybody that was involved in the process got it. And, you know, Elizabeth and I were aligned on everything.
So there really wasn’t any due diligence or any negotiation. We were just aligned and just made it happen. The wholesaler started to finish when she threw her hat in the ring for about a month and a half. It really was.
John Corcoran: 48:19
Wow. That is true. That is really fast. You know, sometimes the challenge then for founders who sell their business is figuring out what they’re going to do next. I know you’re doing some fractional CTO work consulting, helping companies with SaaS products, software projects, that sort of thing. Did it take a while for you to figure out what you would end up doing after Zeek?
Steve Zehngut: 48:46
I’m still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. But, you know, I took a very short period of time off, probably about 15, 20 minutes. It was a little bit longer than that. I mean, my wife wanted me to take a lot longer off, but I just. This is what I know I like.
I like working right. So working for me is enjoyable. And so, you know, I jumped right back into consulting, you know, just helping people, you know, wherever I can, mostly helping people with technical strategy. I, you know, I, I like helping, especially when software projects have gone off the rails, helping them kind of get back on track and right the ship. And so I’ve been doing some of that.
I jumped back into code and so, you know, sort of dusted off my coding skills. And, you know, I spend some parts of my day writing code, especially writing SAS, I see some opportunities for, for some SAS products. So that’s where my head’s at right now.
John Corcoran: 49:51
Cool. All right. I want to wrap up with my last question, which is a gratitude question. This has been great so far, Steve. Thank you so much for your time.
But I’d love to hear from people you know, who they would want to thank in their journey. And he peers, contemporaries, mentors, friends, people who’ve been there helping support them in the highs and the lows of entrepreneurship.
Steve Zehngut: 50:13
Yeah, I think the two that come to mind, I’m going to miss a bunch. I mean, when you put me on the spot, I’m going to miss a bunch. But two that come to mind first. First of all, my wife. And so I really wouldn’t be at this point.
Without my wife’s input and support. Right. She was able to spot the burnout. You know, spot spot the. She was able to help me uncover a lot of my blind spots.
She’s the one who pushed me to join EO eventually. Right. And so I really wouldn’t be here without it. Without Sam. And then second is my dad, right? My dad was my hero. He was my idol. And so we passed away about seven years ago. And so, you know, that was hard. But
You know, I, I just look back at, you know, you know, what my dad accomplished and who he was. And, and, you know, there’s a lot, a lot of really good lessons there. So, yeah, those are the two that come to mind immediately.
John Corcoran: 51:14
Steve, this has been great. Where can people go to learn more about you, connect with you and ask you any questions? If they haven’t.
Steve Zehngut: 51:20
Probably LinkedIn is where I’m most active. That’s probably the best place to find me. Couple people have asked me recently, you know, where’s your website? I haven’t built it yet. So LinkedIn is probably.
John Corcoran: 51:35
They give the man some grace. He’s built a lot of websites in his time.
Steve Zehngut: 51:38
You know, I always say the cobbler’s son has no shoes in this case. So yeah, LinkedIn’s probably the best place to get me.
John Corcoran: 51:44
Okay, cool. All right, Steve, thanks so much for your time.
Steve Zehngut: 51:47
My pleasure. John, thanks for having me.
Outro: 51:51
Thanks for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast. We’ll see you again next time, and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.