Mike Birdsall is the Director of Business Development at DOXA Talent, a company dedicated to helping businesses build skilled nearshore and offshore teams. For over 30 years, he has partnered with business leaders to develop practical solutions that drive sustainable growth and long-term success. Previously, Mike co-founded Birdsell Interactive, an award-winning design and consulting firm, and launched DateBox Club, a subscription service that gained significant traction.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- [2:37] Mike Birdsall’s childhood sales hustle selling candy and car washes
- [6:24] The drive behind making 100 sales calls a day for three months
- [9:41] How Mike got his first website project with Silicon Graphics
- [13:38] Developing a fan engagement app for the San Francisco Giants
- [15:47] The challenges of working with Major League Baseball
- [17:13] The impact of 9/11 and the dot-com crash on Mike’s business
- [26:59] The difficult decision to sell or shut down a struggling business
- [31:34] Why Mike joined DOXA Talent and how he believes in its mission
- [33:50] Why remote work and global talent are transforming businesses
In this episode…
What do you do when your business is no longer thriving? Do you double down, pivot, or walk away? For many entrepreneurs, knowing when to sell or shut down can be one of the hardest decisions, filled with emotional and financial complexities.
Mike Birdsall, a seasoned entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience, shares his insights on making tough business decisions. Mike reflects on his journey of founding and scaling multiple companies, including a subscription box service that soared during COVID-19 but later faced cash flow challenges. He highlights the importance of knowing your skill set, being transparent with your finances, and leveraging peer networks for honest feedback. Mike also emphasizes the need for business owners to recognize when their venture no longer aligns with their strengths or brings them fulfillment.
Tune in to this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast as John Corcoran interviews Mike Birdsall, Director of Business Development at DOXA Talent, about navigating business exits and strategic pivots. Mike shares how he transitioned from B2B to D2C, scaled his subscription box company to 5,000 monthly orders, and ultimately made the tough decision to sell. Mike also delves into his early days in sales, the impact of 9/11 on his business, and the power of strong entrepreneurial networks.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Special Mention(s)
- Maureen Birdsall on LinkedIn
- David Nilssen on LinkedIn
- Michael Gonzalez Ross on LinkedIn
- Michael Givvin on LinkedIn
Quotable Moments:
- “Have I given 100%? If not, I need to do 100 sales calls a day for three months to know it’s not me.”
- “We literally designed the first website we ever did with no internet connection.”
- “Hope plus ego equals entrepreneurs. We thought we were finally doing it as our numbers rose to 5,000 boxes a month.”
- “The hardest part was deciding to sell. Once I understood and made the decision, it was fine.”
- “Finding 1% gems who help you without judgment is eye-opening and a gift we need to hold on to.”
Action Steps:
- Know when to walk away from your business: Recognizing when a business no longer aligns with your strengths or financial goals is crucial. It allows you to make strategic decisions before burning out or depleting resources.
- Leverage peer networks for honest feedback: Sharing financials and challenges with trusted peers can provide objective insights. Their perspective can help you identify blind spots and make more informed decisions.
- Be transparent with your finances: Regularly reviewing and understanding your numbers helps you make smarter business decisions. Clear financial insights reveal whether your business is truly viable or needs a major pivot.
- Align your business with your skill set: Focusing on ventures that leverage your core strengths increases your chances of success. It also ensures you remain motivated and effective in your role.
- Prioritize adaptability during growth phases: Scaling too quickly without proper infrastructure can create cash flow issues. Staying flexible allows you to adjust strategies and avoid overcommitting to unsustainable expansion.
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Episode Transcript
Intro: 00:00
Today, we’re talking about how to decide when it’s time to walk away from your business. Maybe to close up shop, maybe to sell. My guest today is Mike Birdsall. I’ll tell you about him in a second, so stay tuned.
John Corcoran: 00:16
Welcome to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where we feature top entrepreneurs, business leaders, and thought leaders and ask them how they built key relationships to get where they are today. Now let’s get started with the show.
John Corcoran: 00:33
All right. Welcome, everyone. John Corcoran here. I’m the host of the show. And, you know, every week we talk to smart CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs from all kinds of companies. You can check out our archives. We’ve got Netflix, Grubhub, Redfin, gusto, Kinkos, lots of great episodes for you there. And of course, before we get into this, this episode is brought to you by Rise25, our company where we help businesses to give to and connect to their dream relationships and partners. How do we do that? We do that by helping you to run your podcast. We are the easy button for your company to launch and run a podcast. We do the strategy, the accountability, and full execution. In fact, we invented what some are calling the Wix of B2B podcasting. It’s our platform called podcast Copilot.
And you know, I’m going to be talking to Mike here today. And Mike, I know that you put a premium on the importance of relationships, especially peers, contemporaries, you know, forum mates, whatever it is. And I like to, you know, think that, you know, this what we’re doing here today has brought such value to my life. You know, just having people like you and being able to share your story. And that’s why I do it, because I love to hear people’s stories. That’s the most important thing for me. So anyone out there who’s listening and wants to learn more, you can learn about Podcast Copilot at Rise25.com or email us at [email protected].
All right. My guest here today is Mike Birdsall. He is a business development and revenue strategist, currently director of business development at Doxa Talent, and he is also the co-founder of Birdsell Interactive, which is an award winning Bay area based interactive design, development and consulting firm, and he also was the co-founder of Date Box Club, a monthly subscription box that delivered a great date night experience to your door once a month. And he’s also been very actively involved in entrepreneurs organization, which is how we know each other. And so we’re going to get into that story. But, Mike, I want to start with hearing about your background as a kid. And you grew up going door to door, selling candy for fundraisers. You sold shoes, you sold car washes. Tell me, tell me a little bit about young Mike Birdsall, what he was like.
Mike Birdsall: 02:37
Yeah. Appreciate it. Thanks, John. Oh, I know, I was a kid that always had to be active. I was a kid that always had to be moving. And so I think my parents got me out of the house by having me sell candy door to door. So I wasn’t bugging them. And let me go out and sell and walk around the neighborhood. So I grew up in Walnut Creek with the high school locally there and, you know. Yeah, it was I was salesman of the year at the car wash.
John Corcoran: 03:02
Nice.
Mike Birdsall: 03:03
You’re like, what the heck are you selling? But I was selling polishes and all sorts.
John Corcoran: 03:06
Yeah, I have a question about that, because by the time you’re doing the sale, they’ve already pulled into the driveway. They’ve made the decision to buy. It’s very rare.
Mike Birdsall: 03:15
It’s a.
John Corcoran: 03:15
War. Lanes are configured. So you really can’t turn around and leave at that point.
Mike Birdsall: 03:20
Leads are leads. You know, some people came in just for it.
John Corcoran: 03:22
Gas.
Mike Birdsall: 03:23
But you know, we would upsell them and I was good at upselling people. So.
John Corcoran: 03:28
Okay. Cool.
Mike Birdsall: 03:28
Cool. Hustling. So yeah I always like to do that.
John Corcoran: 03:30
But we do notice a difference. You know, there’s some car washes where you come in and some personable guy is standing out there with a clipboard and with, like, a list of things. And, you know, maybe you buy the wax, maybe you don’t.
Mike Birdsall: 03:41
Yeah, definitely a hustle hustle there. I work. I’m going to date myself here, but I worked during the odd even times of the Carter administration when you could only get gas at a certain amount of, you know, certain days.
John Corcoran: 03:52
That’s right. During that period, there was a period of time where there was little, there’s gas rationing and people had to go every other day or something like that.
Mike Birdsall: 03:58
Yeah, every other day I was in charge of telling those that waited in line for four hours that they were on the wrong day. So. Oh, wow. It was a big life lesson.
John Corcoran: 04:06
Oh, man. Jeez. But would you like some wax?
Mike Birdsall: 04:10
Yeah, I can sell you wax tomorrow.
John Corcoran: 04:11
It’s funny to me, though, that after this background, having been car wash, car wash, salesperson of the year or whatever it was at one point swore you’d never go into sales.
Mike Birdsall: 04:23
Yeah, I got a degree in marketing from Chico, and I said, I’m not doing this because I want to sell. I’m doing this because I like marketing. And so went and worked for a local company that did marketing for them for a while, and then got some harebrained idea that, hey, I really need to understand the business better, and the only way to understand the business is to go out in the field and sell and sell. I got this idea that I needed to go out and really understand the business better and sell it as an area director for them. So I took on five offices in the Bay area. And that I didn’t really understand what a recession was until I got out in the field and was told that I had to close three of the offices and let everybody go.
John Corcoran: 05:07
Oh, brutal.
Mike Birdsall: 05:08
And when I did that.
John Corcoran: 05:10
It just was really bad timing.
Mike Birdsall: 05:11
Oh, just. Well, I think I was kind of a pain in the neck at the office always going, hey, what’s next? What’s next? What can I do now? What can I do now? And they’re like, okay, great. You want to go out and sell. Go ahead. Kind of like my parents sending me to sell candy door to door. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ahead, go out and sell.
John Corcoran: 05:29
But your first assignment was closing offices.
Mike Birdsall: 05:31
Yeah. And then I closed offices, and then they’re like, well, your business is going down. I’m like, well, I don’t have any salespeople. And they’re like, well, what are you doing all day? I’m like, well, okay, now I need to sell.
John Corcoran: 05:41
So you basically had to switch from a managing manager of salespeople to, to, to trying to generate gin up sales yourself.
Mike Birdsall: 05:50
Yeah, there was nobody to manage. So they’re like, well, you’re you’re, you know, go ahead and start selling. So I did a hundred calls a day for three months. That’s calling. That’s going to buildings, that’s going door to door. I learned a lot about how to sell.
John Corcoran: 06:07
What were some things you learned about that? I’ve actually interviewed a few people that, you know, did like door to door sales for years. I don’t know how they did it. And I’m a bit fascinated by people that have the stamina to do that. But what were a few lessons you learned? Any tips or tricks of the trade?
Mike Birdsall: 06:24
Well, I think it might be a little different for me. I don’t call it stamina. I looked at it and I said, this is really not working. This is really hard. There’s no business. Have I given 100%? Have I done 100% of everything I could do? And my answer would be no. I, I maybe have at 90%, maybe I’m at 60, maybe I’m at 98%, but I haven’t given 100%. So then I’m like, okay, I need to give 100%. What would that look like? I’m like, well, I need to do 100 sales calls a day for three months, and at the end of three months, if nothing has changed, I know it’s not me. I know I gave 100%. So for me, it would be literally the tick marks on an index card of how many calls I made. And I would not stop until I did 100 calls in a day for three months. Literally on day 91, I said I here’s my notice. I quit because I changed. But I knew in my mind. And so to me, it’s just that that drive was 100. I’m going to do 100. And then I know it’s not me.
John Corcoran: 07:28
And at that. So you found that it was like the economy or something. It was just the economy.
Mike Birdsall: 07:34
Nothing you could do, nothing. Nothing to do about it, that kind of stuff.
John Corcoran: 07:38
And so you end up going into doing sales for a printing company. This is in the early 90s. This is actually kind of like a period of time when the internet was starting to bubble up and the World Wide Web was becoming known. I don’t I don’t know if it did affect printing at that point in time or was that much later?
Mike Birdsall: 07:58
Well, so I got the job at the printer. I had a lot to prove. And I took it as a sales job where I had just not been successful. And I’m like, I have a lot to prove. And so I worked super hard to try to get that chip off my shoulders. Became their number one salesman, 30% of their revenue. But I was working all in the valley, so I was down where the tech was. And I remember walking.
John Corcoran: 08:22
Silicon Valley.
Mike Birdsall: 08:23
Silicon Valley. One of my customers was Silicon Graphics down in Mountain View, and I was walking around trying to sell printing, and I looked over and I said, what’s on your computer? And they’re like, well, that’s a website. I’m like, well, what’s that? And it’s one of those light bulb moments where you’re like, I want to do that. And so our first web project ever was for Silicon Graphics.
John Corcoran: 08:46
So all right. So this is so Silicon Graphics was I forget exactly what they did. But they were an early Silicon Valley.
Mike Birdsall: 08:55
That’s where Marc Andreessen came from where Netscape came from. They came out of Silicon Graphics, Jim Clark, all those guys from that were in the private equity group.
John Corcoran: 09:05
All right. So, Marc Andreessen invented the web browser Netscape Navigator. You sold a website to the guy, to the company that the guy?
Mike Birdsall: 09:15
Yeah.
John Corcoran: 09:16
That invented the web.
Mike Birdsall: 09:17
Browser to him specifically. But yeah. Yeah.
John Corcoran: 09:19
So that’s pretty cool, though.
Mike Birdsall: 09:21
They were the ones that really started, you know, the path. And so that was our calling card. We could say, hey, we’ve done a project for Silicon Graphics.
John Corcoran: 09:29
Yeah, yeah, yeah for sure. But also I’m kind of curious, like you saw they had a website, you didn’t know what a website was, and then you turned around and you sold them the thing that you just discovered on their computer.
Mike Birdsall: 09:41
Correct. And they paid me $50,000.
John Corcoran: 09:45
I mean, really, that’s pretty. That’s pretty phenomenal.
Mike Birdsall: 09:48
Yeah, they paid me 30,000 cash. 30,000 in a computer, which I had no idea what it was. I remember them saying, yes, you can do a website for us and yes, we agree to the number. And I came home and told my wife because we were a husband wife team, we started the business together and she was like, what’s the website? I’m like, well, let me tell you about it. And I have these printouts because we didn’t have an internet connection.
John Corcoran: 10:15
Wow.