Hello and welcome to the exit presented by flippa.com the number one platform to buy and sell online businesses flippa manages over a billion in deal value annually and combines expert buy and sell side advisory with its market leading valuation tool deal room off market offering market insights and AI based deal by deal matching engine now for the exit the exit is a 30 minute podcast featuring amazing entrepreneurs who have been there and they have done it.

The exit talks to operators who have bought and sold businesses of all different sizes you learn how they did it why they did it and get exposure to the world of exits.

It's a world occupied by a small few but accessible to many now on this episode I get to sit down with Don McLaughlin is a really awesome entrepreneur based out of Colorado and we talk through his exit and the sort of up and coming to a crash.

Of in 2012 he really just had this rock bottom moment and beginning as a trial lawyer he wanted to solve an inefficiency in his company quest that he was part of as a litigation lawyer there and he really did a great job of describing what it was like having.

This legal discovery process and records management just be inefficient and what it was like to see that and then take his company falcon that he started and really just focus fully on that and scale it up now a benefit of this conversation is he talks through what it was like to.

Turn down multiple offers and this really captures entrepreneurship I think in a beautiful way where he turns down an offer for 2.5 million a couple years in.

And then he turns down an offer for 5 million and then as he realizes that he has all of this pressure building finally comes to an head and he is you know in this breakdown mode at rock bottom.

He resurfaces and says all right I am going to get back I'm going to solve this business issue and he goes to the 5 million dollar offer and they say yeah we're pulling this offer back and that clicked for him to the point where he took this and ran with it the business grew tremendously and then he went through an acquisition.

After that and he talks about what it was like scaling and getting into that company and where it is today a big part of this conversation that I want to leave you with before we jump in.

Is the product survived it has 10x where it was when he left and it is just a really cool concept if you're listening to this and you're thinking about going through an acquisition or you have in the past.

You know that it is a big deal to go through an acquisition and have the actual company survive and scale continuously it's a testament to what you built and without further ado let's sit down with Don McLaughlin and talk through his exit here on the exit.

All right I am here with Don McLaughlin and he is the founder of the dream exit collective how's it going Don great Steve looking forward to our conversation.

Yeah it's going to be fun it's going to be fun so before we get into the nitty gritty of your exit let's talk about your background what got you into business and entrepreneurship.

You know I think a lifelong dream to be an entrepreneur from a very young age but for practical purposes stems from my experience as a in house where a corporate where.

Inside fortune 500 train practice as a lawyer and found myself in a unique position in in the question locations in Denver Colorado in the midst of the Iran author Anderson legal fiasco which quest was very much wrapped up and.

And you know this is circa 2002 sort of when these cases got going but then ran for 10 years and it it necessitated these companies because the Department of Justice and the SEC they started to focus on electronic data so my job inside the legal department was to oversee discovery of that electronic data and that led to an opportunity to create a solution for.

Legal departments to better manage their electronic data when it comes to investigations lawsuits and compliance and so you know I created a business falcon discovery that was the result of my own pains as an in house where tasks by the general counsel to help address a very costly and very very high risk.

Area because companies at that time were you know ending up on the front page of the New York Times law for general because they didn't adequately preserve electronic data and and that's referred to a solution and so.

There was a lot of heightened sensitivity around both legal risk and in cost got it yeah those are the best kinds where you identify a problem when you're in a company and you say hey guys i'll see you later maybe you'll be my customer and then you.

So when you start up well that's exactly how it turned out for me i'm so grateful for that opportunity because yes Quest became my first customer and set up a really a model that we called inside out premise on the idea that organizations are best able to manage their data from inside the organization out rather than what had traditionally been happening and often does today where legal matter arises and the outside welfare or consultancy comes in and takes all the data out of the

organization and thereby losing a lot of business intelligence and increased risk and cost and so that inside out model i really it it it was innovative in the industry for sure because we were looking at multi-year managed service engagements contracts with these corporate legal departments it was really on for real than the legal space right you know EDS IBM did it in the IT space long ago as sort of an outsourced business function.

And we now started to do the same thing for legal departments acting as a bit of a hybrid between a law firm and a tech services firm cool very cool and as a fun side note as an attorney may appreciate the story around Silicon Valley where part of the reason it grew so quickly was abolishing the non compete in that area in California where people could.

...