Noob School - Bullish on Business: Chuck Crumpton Shares His Journey

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

Get ready for an inspiring conversation on Noob School as I sit down with Chuck Crumpton—an entrepreneur who truly knows the ups and downs of business. Chuck shares how his determination helped him score a pivotal deal with Johnson & Johnson, even when the odds were stacked against him. We dive into his experiences founding Medpoint, selling successful companies, and now leading Bull Street Mergers. Along the way, Chuck offers practical advice for entrepreneurs—from boosting business value to nailing a successful sale. You’ll leave with real insights and plenty of inspiration from a seasoned dealmaker. Get your sales in rhythm with The Sterling Method: https://SterlingSales.co I'm going to be sharing my secrets on all my social channels, but if you want them all at your fingertips, start with my book, Sales for Noobs: https://amzn.to/3tiaxsL Subscribe to our newsletter today: https://bit.ly/3Ned5kL #SalesTraining #B2BSales #SalesExcellence #SalesStrategy #BusinessGrowth #SalesLeadership #SalesSuccess #SalesCoaching #SalesSkills #SalesInnovation #SalesTips #SalesPerformance #SalesTransformation #SalesTeamDevelopment #SalesMotivation #SalesEnablement #SalesGoals #SalesExpertise #SalesInsights #SalesTrends#salestrends

News School. Welcome back to Noob School. Episode 142. Can you believe it? 142. Still on the air. Today I've got, I think, an old friend and a new friend. I don't know what Chuck is. Chuck Crumpton is the founder and owner of the Bull Street

Forum down in Charleston. And y'all do M&A, fundraising, all that kind of stuff down there, right? Exactly. Okay. Yes. Okay. Yeah, Bull Street Forum and Chuck and I really have recently only recently met, but when we

started playing the name game, it's like we've been friends for 30 years. We have the same kind of friends in Greenville and Charleston, so it's nice to finally sit down with you. John, it's an honor to be here and I feel like I know you right after all these years and all of our friends that we know together. I know. Well, it's nice of you to drive up here. here from Charleston today. What we normally do at the beginning is just kind of back up and

understand kind of where you're from and your path to get to this point. And then we'll talk, you know, sales and other stuff. So tell us where you grew up. I grew up on a tobacco farm in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. So my blood is light blue. Yeah. But was raised. My parents are still alive. My dad raised me on the farm. I think we started, I started at five years old. My dad is still old school. taught me how to work. Yeah. Gave me the gift of work ethic. Right. But grew up, I grew up on the farm. He always said, you know, Chuck, when you, when you're able to, I want you to go to college and get off the farm and make a good living. although my dad's made a great living as a tobacco farmer. Right.

And probably even a better living as someone that manages his own stock portfolio since he retired about 20 years ago. Good. But grew up in Chapel Hill, came to Greenville in 19. Let me ask. Was Phil Ford your favorite player? Oh, my gosh. Phil Ford. For Rocky Mount?

Yes. Yeah. Actually met Phil Ford when I was in high school. my buddy and I skipped school, rode with the preacher's wife to Chapel Hill on campus, and Rich Yoniker, one of the players. Lefty, I remember Rich. Yep, he would hold the ball like a grapefruit. Yeah, yeah.

He and Phil were very close, and Rich just befriended these two little 14-year-old punks. My buddy and I and actually took me in the locker room. We broke into Phil Ford's locker, and he offered me sweatbands, tennis shoes and, you know, we didn't take anything. But through that day of, you know, being a derelict, actually met Phil Ford and it was a great honor because, you know, as a kid, you played basketball in the backyard and you pretend to be Phil Ford. You know, five seconds to go down by one, you get the ball and, you know, tongue out, you know, taking that last shot. So yes, one of my heroes for sure. I know. I just, that guy was so good. He had such poise.

he just somehow controlled his body and everything where he was always going to get open and get that shot or make that steel or run that four corners. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Didn't they beat South Carolina three to two one time or something? Oh, that was great. Those were great years of basketball.

Oh, my gosh. I think the, I don't know, John, maybe the classic era of college basketball. Macadoo. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. I ran into, I was leaving a concert in Greenville at the Peace Center. And like two people away from me was just just good-looking black dude, just, you know, shoulders back, good-looking guy, just maybe an inch taller than me.

I was like, I got to meet this guy, you know. And I said, hey, I'm John Sterling, and what's your name? He goes, I'm Alex English. I'm like, holy shit. You're English. And so I thought, you know, as a sales guy, I'm like, well, I got to go for it, you know, I might as well make a connection. So I said, well, listen, Alex, big fan of yours.

Love to connect sometime. Maybe I can help you with something in Columbia. I don't know. So I gave me a card. Well, that's it. You know, it's a throw away of gesture. Like 15 minutes later I get a text from Alex. Great to meet you.

Call me when you're coming to Columbia. Let's get together. No way. Yeah. Wow. And we've gotten together. Wow. You know, he's a normal person.

Now, he's no longer, you know, the leader and scoring in the NBA for all those years. Wow. Wow. That's cool. Good for you for doing that. Yeah, I mean, that's one of the things I practice is the three-foot rule where, you know, just say hello. Yeah. That's awesome.

You never know. Yeah. Could be Alex English. Yeah. Who my other favorite Tar Hills? I remember when Joyce outjumped Lee Deadman. Wow. That's a long time ago.

Gosh, John, that's probably, well, I was, you know, they say raised to Tar Hill, I was jerked up as Targill. But those things are probably before my time. Wow. Okay. All right. Well, I was an avid Gamecock fan, and they had some great teams through there, too. And it was a shame, only one of them could go to the tournament, right? Right, right.

Because they're both so good. Yep. Yeah. Wow. I had my moment with Dean Smith playing a basketball camp and I literally had had a really good game

our team had just won the camp tournament I made the last shot so I'm in line and he's going down the line giving everyone a certificate and he says something to be whatever so I'm thinking this is it he's going to say I need you to step to stay a little later so he gets to me

and he goes work on your shot selection. That was this thing. He went to the next guy. I'm like, oh. That's it. Okay. Oh, man.

So no tar hills. But yeah, okay, so we can talk about tar hills all day. So you went, though, when you left the farm, Bob Jones. Went to Bob Jones. Is that right? Okay. 1981. Right.

And why did you choose Bob Jones? I think they probably chose me. They would maybe regret that today. I don't know, but of course I looked at UNC and some of the state schools in North Carolina. Being an 18-year-old helion at the time, probably good that I didn't go to UNC. At the time, it was the largest beer consuming per capita town in America. And at 18, I was just wide open and very much a helion. So I probably would have been dead or in jail had I gone to UNC. So Bob Jones made, was a good fit.

I met some nice people there over the years. Not super connected, you know, anymore, although it remains a good school. Got a good education. I think it was a, for me and my personality, probably a safe landing spot, you know, coming out of high school. coming off the farm. But it was good. And, you know, one of the things that, one of the gifts I think that Bob Jones gave me was my introduction to Greenville. I'd never been to Greenville before.

And, you know, came down and toured the campus, fell in love with the city. And, you know, spent over 25 years after I graduated in Greenville. And, of course, some of those friends we referenced are, our lives. lifelong friends today. Right. And I probably would not have met them had I not gone to Bob Jones. Right, right. Yeah, we have a wonderful contingent of Bob Jones grads at State in Greenville.

Sure, yeah. So that's good. I always tell people, we hire a lot of Bob Jones folks and a lot of Citadel folks. And I think they're very similar schools. Because I went to the Citadel kind of for the same reason you went to Bob Jones. It's a safe landing place. You learn some discipline. And yours is more religious discipline.

Right. Ours was more military, but, you know, everything else is about the same. I agree. You know, we're walled in. We have rules, you know. And so I think that's why we've enjoyed the Bob Jones people as well. Yeah, that's a good point, actually. Never really thought of comparing the two, but I think it's a strong comparison.

Yeah, I do. Not too far off. We had a Citadel grad recently as the head of Bob Jones. Oh, is that right? Yeah. Oh, wow. Steve. Steve, I can't remember his last name right now.

but he was a theologian, I suppose, after he graduated from the Citadel, and got hired by Bob Joseph, and ran that place for many, several years at least, and he gave me the tour. I'm out there and saw him, and couldn't have been nicer. Couldn't have been nicer.

Well, the Citadel folks, obviously, I'm in Charleston now, have been for 11 years, but the Citadel folks that I can engage with are just wonderful people. My stepson actually went there for a couple of years before transferring to school in Chicago. But it's a great school, great campus. Some of the nicest folks that we socialize with are part of the Citadel family, which has been really cool. Yeah, that's good. That's good. And it's interesting with, you know, the Citadel being predominantly male, of course. And then my stepdaughter went to college of Charleston, which is largely

female. You would think that it's sort of a match made in heaven. And there are probably some commingling at some point. I believe so. The ratios are good. Yeah, they are. That's interesting. You said it about the city of people. I wonder about that too. I'm down there a pretty good bet we still do some recruiting down there with the city on the citadel campus for salespeople work with their sales um they have a sales club that I work with some and they're just they're great um I like the fact that they now have you not only have to have a certain GPA to graduate but you have it to have a certain physical fitness level right and I think that's pretty cool yeah you know we're putting out people that are able to

make the grade, able to stay out of trouble and able to stay kind of physically fit. And I remember the attitude when I was there, not for everyone, but for miscreants like me, was like, oh, this is stupid. Oh, I'm sick of this. You know, I wish I was in Georgia, you know, those kind of negative thought patterns. And for the most part, the people I'm talking to there now are like, I'm doing this for a reason. Yeah. I'm going to be ready when I graduate.

I'm going to get a good job. I'm going to have a nice life. And I've learned from talking to them that, you know, I had the, I had the stinking thinking when I was there. It's like, ugh, you know, versus like, this is going to take me where I want to go. And anyway, it's, it's, I guess you learn all the time somehow. That's right. Hopefully we are, right? We're trying to.

We're trying. It's funny, though. Sometimes it just floats on by. Yeah. Yep. You have to have your ears on. Oh, my gosh. You know, I think it's safe to say.

You probably feel the same way, John. If I knew then what I know now. Right. Right. And I will say what I've made better choices, different, of course, right? But, you know, I've been incredibly fortunate in my life. Incredibly blessed in my life, right, to have been around good people, great, great family, good people that care about me. that look beyond, you know, my obvious faults and just love me for who I am.

But, you know, at 60, you look back and you say, you know, I would have tweaked a couple things here and there. But it's been wonderful this journey, you know, both in business and in life. Yeah. I'm thankful too. I will say this in terms of a lesson. And I've said this before to sales groups is, you know, when I got to the Citadel, decided I wanted to be a salesperson in tech, and I went to California, I went to Silicon Valley, I was knocking on doors. So I had no advantage. I was just like knocking on doors.

And I ended up getting some sales jobs, and I learned some stuff, and whatever. Subsequently find out there was a guy six years older than me from the Citadel, who was the first VPS sales for Apple. Oh, wow. Yeah. Is that right? Yeah. And I was just too busy knocking on doors to think, like, are there any citadel people out here in Silicon Valley that give me a reason to come talk to them?

Wow. You know, so, again, it worked out fine, but that might have been a different path. Yeah. Wow. Interesting. Yeah. You know, I don't think, I'm not to be overly philosophical, but I think what changes us, what makes us better. and again not to be I'm not a philosopher right but it's the it's the people that we meet

along our journey it's the books that we read right you know those those those forces you know those you know people that just come into our life and the books that come into our life right yeah they help mold and make us better yes and help shape us or work Or worse. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely.

I heard someone the other day, some lady, they said, you know, however you're feeling today, whoever you are today, it's just what's gotten loaded on your hard drive. You know, whatever we've allowed in our brain for the last 10 years is kind of who we've become. If we're hanging around drug dealers and watching bad stuff on TV, and eating bad food, all that stuff we're putting bad in, we're going to be bad. Right, right. I think that's why they, like in prison, what do you call it?

I forget. But people get out and come back in. There's a word for it. I can't remember. But if someone's in prison, in a bad prison, and they're around bad people for six years, when they get out, they're going to be a lot worse than they were when they went in. Right, right. This is a quick, maybe anecdotal story, but one of the first people that I met right before moving to Charleston was a Citadel grad.

And I met him in a restaurant, which turned out to be one of my favorite restaurants in the world, downtown San Francisco, a vegan restaurant. and I'm probably the antithesis of a vegan guy but this guy was, you know, Tuesday night, I'm traveling on business. You know, the restaurant was not super busy, but this guy was sitting at the bar reading a book, which you don't see a lot of guys sitting at the bar reading a book. And he was reading a book, and we struck up,

he was probably two seats away, we just struck up a conversation. And I said, tell me what you're reading. reading. And he opened the book coverback. And the book, which is my favorite book of my life, was called Unbroken. Oh, yeah. And Phil was reading this book sitting at the bar. And I said, tell me about the book. He said, read the book. It will change your life. And I said, great. Appreciate that recommendation. Ultimately, I bought the book and read it. And it did change my life. But Phil was a citadel guy living in Charleston and not only did turn me onto a great book,

but he also turned me into a great restaurant in Charleston, Bowens Island. And, you know, Phil and I became fairly good friends and, you know, Phil's connection to some other folks, you know, you're just building a friend network, right? Yeah, yeah. Not having known a lot of folks in Charleston of it, Phil was so kind and so generous. with that recommendation and turned out to be just a heck of a nice copy. Now, who wrote the Unbroken Book? Who is that?

It's a story about Louis Zamperini. Oh, okay. And the author is Laura Hildenbrand, I believe. I was thinking it was something else. I have not read that book. I'll read it if it's your favorite book. Oh, my gosh. John, it's incredible.

Okay. You really don't want to put it down. Okay. And I think a movie was made by it with Angelina Jolie. Maybe in 2014. Definitely watched the movie, but I'll try to read the book. That's good. It's great.

And just one footnote to that, not to get off track, but I reached out, my son transferred from college of Charleston, San Diego, and we went out and spent two months, and I had just read the book. One thing led to another. I reached out to Mr. Zamperini. And at the time he was 98 or 99. And we were trying to set up a meeting because I wanted my son to be able to meet this war hero. Which he has an incredible story.

And I wanted my son, Charles, to meet Mr. Zamperini. And we were trying to work things out, logistics and his handler. and, you know, he was up in the Los Angeles area. And sort of at the very end of that endeavor, we could not work it out. And he unfortunately passed away a month later. And I have a little bit of regret because I would have driven to L.A. in a heartbeat from San Diego just to sit down and to meet the man, to honor the man. to have some conduit between his incredible life, resilient life, and my son as a college kid,

that would have been a really good connection and a meaningful connection. It wasn't meant to be, but it's a phenomenal book and I highly recommend it. I'll read it and then we can talk about it in Charleston. It'll be fun. It would be great. So after Bob Jones, what happened?

After Bob Jones, I came out of school, I believed I had the cells DNA, which is hard to ascertain when you're picking tobacco leaves, you know, when it's 98 degrees and 100% of humidity. And you've got nicotine in your pores from the tobacco leaf. But, you know, I felt like I had the, you know, cells DNA. I was drawn to sales and people and interviewed, you know, several companies out of college and a young, fairly young startup telecommunications company called Tailman. I interviewed with them, Layton Cubbich, Judy Slaughter, all that whole team of people interviewed me. I went to work for Laiton. Laten was my first boss. What a great first job.

Oh, my gosh. Unbelievable. Yeah. David Hudson. I don't know if you knew David. David was my first manager. And first David reported to Laden. He was like a year older than you, right?

I mean. Right out of the Citadel. Yeah. He was, I think he was one year younger than me. And he was in the company next to me. Yeah. That's a good manager too. Was my brother there yet?

I don't think so. This would have been 1985. Yeah. No, no, he's younger. Yes. It would have been later. Yep, I think so. So maybe you missed him.

You there with Dan? Dan came. I met Dan in the CTG days. I was not an official part of CTG. We had gone our separate ways. You know, Leighton had left. Tell Man and he and Charlie started in a CTG. That's where I met Dan.

Yeah, okay. It was in the CT. Just being a friend and sort of on the periphery. You know, Dan, when he got out of school, he wanted to work there so bad because all of his friends were there. Yeah. And Layton was like, I love you, man, but we don't have anything right now. And Dan was like, that's all right. I'll be here tomorrow.

And he goes, we don't have anything right now. You can't pay you. And Dan goes, I didn't ask you to pay me. Oh, no. He goes, I'm just coming to work here. And then when I provide some value, you can start paying me. He just, he did that routine for like a week. And then started showing up.

And Layton's like, give him a spot. Give him a desk. That's awesome. But that's, you know, that's Dan. Yeah, that's awesome. That's Dan style. Dan's a good man. Yeah, he is.

I don't see him near as often as I'd like to anymore. Well, I'll have to change that. So you got your sales wheels. with Layton and that crew, did you go from there to Medpoint or was there something in between? Yes, so when I left Tellman, I was there with Layton for four years

and he went to start CTG with Charlie Hauser. I got my first management job and I had a little bit of management experience with Layton in one of the markets, but company competitor to Tellman recruited me away as a regional guy and I took that role my first true management job with people and it was it was really interesting John because basically I took all of that data and and style you know from

Layton and the group and simply transported it over to this new company that had recruited me And if you were to walk into my office, this first management job in, you know, the late 80s, if you were to 1989, if you were to walk into my office management job, it would look just like a tailman office, cultural, even decor, certainly how we ran the business, how we ran the branch. Because that model that, you know, that Layton and the whole team, what they create, created was transportable, right? It was doing the right things, doing it with integrity, you know, all the tenets of success. So I just basically took that model and took it over, you know, to another company. And that was my first management job. It was a great experience.

Good experience turning around a couple regions for that for that company. The fellow I worked for was Pete Lofton, who went on to be a real character sold his company to delta com for over 100 million and end up buying the Versace mansion down in South Beach. Wow. Crazy story. Wow. But, you know, Pete gave me a chance to manage and to lead.

Yeah. And again, it was, it was just transferring those, you know, those skills and everything that I'd learned, you know, to now leading people and managing people. Yeah. And the teams that I managed were phenomenally successful, not because of me, but because the pattern, the paradigm had been set. I just took it across the street. You figure out how to do it.

Yeah. I mean, I tell people all the time, I mean, if you take someone like yourself with a good background, work ethic, sales bones, you know, you have a lot of things going for you, and then you add actual knowledge. what to do. Now you're really dangerous. Right. And, you know, that's wonderful.

I mean, that little model moved all over the place. In fact, it moved all the way to California. You know, those guys that, I can't remember the name of it, but two guys from California came to Layton, became distributors in California. And then they went back and pretty much copied the model and eventually started their own... deal out there and that he sold it back to scan source a few years ago like a hundred million

bucks wow so you know that that model has moved everywhere but uh leighton latean is a he's a he's a sales genius he's been on the podcast oh that's awesome early on yeah well i can't to this day i of course we probably all call him cub yeah right um to this day he is my you know you know he is my you You know, he's my mentor. Yeah. You know, he sits on my board, chairs my board. He's a great guy. And he's the same guy today as it wasn't, you know,

when I interviewed with him in early 1986, right out of school. But he's, he, what Layton did, which I think is so critical for leaders, servant leaders, is he took what was probably some just God-given skills and gifts. And one of those gifts was my dad taught me how to work. My dad gave me the gift of work ethic. And I worked my tail off. And I worked my tail off for Layton. But what Layton did in that whole team, Layton gets a lot of the credit,

but the team also gets a lot of credit, is they gave me a vehicle, right? They gave me a jar to pour the juice into, you know. So it was not that hard if you were willing to work, right? And I was, you know, I didn't know any different than to work. I worked. I worked my tail off. And I just simply took that methodology, that structure,

that Layton and the team developed. I just put hard work to the recipe, and the soup came out damn good, right? I mean, it turned out to be a great mix between the work ethic and the attitude and activity and the active listening. It made for a great formula for success. And what's really cool about that is you can,

you know, most, you can take a lot of folks a lot more talented than I am in the sales arena or business development or, you know, leadership development, whatever, and you employ all of those characteristics, hard work, you know, attitude, activity. You put all that together. Success is really inevitable. It is. Right?

It absolutely is. It takes the guesswork out of it. It does. And now success, some people say, well, I want to be like Bill Gates or, okay, maybe not that. maybe not that. But obviously all the success you can handle. Yeah. Right.

And what most people, I mean, what most people seem to do is they, you know, work really hard and they get to where they're kind of comfortable and then they back off a little bit. Maybe they enjoy their life more. I don't know. But anyone that we would identify, let's say David Hudson, for example, good guy, good family, went to the Citadel, good sales bones. If he just follows this process, he's going to be successful and he's done it over and over. He did it here, did it here, did it here, did it here?

Right. Every time. Right, right. Now, did he create, you know, Apple? No, but I mean, all these companies have been successful following in your company, too. So let's lead that into, you had a great initial career. Right. Tellman, and then you went to, got pulled away to something like them and ran a bigger region.

How did you morph that into your own company? So I stayed in the telecommunications technology, up until the late 90s. I felt like that ultimately ended up in a Fortune 15 company. What we used to know is MCI, now part of the Verizon family, on the national account side. And I wanted, I had an itch to do my own thing, actually started a recruiting company coming out of MCI.

And then we were headed barreling toward the dot-com blow up. And I had six recruiters. Yeah. And we were crushing it. We had some, you know, phenomenal clients. Yeah. Dan being one, actually. Yeah.

And doing well. And then everything just blew up in the late 90s. No one's hiring. No one's hiring. People are laying off. I mean, it was insane. Oh, my God. And, you know, I had mouse to feed.

You know, not only my, you know, my family, right, and my two little kids and stay-at-home mom, but, you know, these other families. Yeah. And so we maneuvered, we shifted, we pivoted, all those words that are synonymous, I guess. And I knew it was going to take a while, probably five or more years for, you know, telecommunications or technology to sort of rebound. I didn't have that because I didn't have that much cash in the bank. I had to feed the kids.

For some reason, they were hungry every day. They don't know what's going on at the office. They don't know, don't care. Yeah, don't care. In Duke Power, they don't live on love. So I had a mortgage. You know, typical situation where I think I was making $72,000 at the time. and it took 71,000 to live.

So I couldn't have a bleep on the radar. Long story, I did research in the healthcare space and really found out that there were some gaps, particularly in pharmacy, which is interesting because there's really no direct line between telecommunications and pharmacy work. But I started a pharmacy company, and I had about 40 pharmacists

working for me and I would dispatch them on a PRN basis to retail pharmacies and hospital green greenville hospital system was a client and we did we did well uh to the point that I knew I was probably going to grow the business and the business was going to change um I was a little concerned about scaling at that point it was hard enough managing 40 pharmacists had a few of those people that it worked for me helped me out from an infrastructure standpoint. So I sold that business in the late 90s, but that model gave me the clarity and the inspiration and really the were-with-all to start MedPoint in 2001. And the model was real similar. You know, you'd have your clients that you served and then you would connect the technical resources.

sources, whether in their prior life, the pharmacist, in the MedPoint life, it was FDA people. There were FDA experts, a lot of scientists, some doctors, but folks that knew FDA, and we hired senior people. So MedPoint was really a connection, a conduit between the medical device and pharmaceutical clients of the world and the people that did all the technical subject matter experts. So we just took that model from the pharmacy company, and we, it's kind of similar to what we were talking about earlier, transferred it over to MedPoint. And, you know, our clients were the pharmaceutical medical device companies. And, you know, we did, we did well. You must have. We did okay. What did the company looked like when you sold it? We had a

Almost 250 folks when I sold out in the height of COVID, July 1st of 2020 to private equity out of the Midwest. But it was an amazing journey for me, almost 20 years from the tool shed of my garage right off of Wade Hampton. I could show you pictures of that little tool shed. And we didn't have a lot of money. starting the business. But we had an idea. I felt like we had a really good model. We were very fortunate, John, to have, in the early days, clients that just gave me an

opportunity. I think they liked me. I think they trusted me. Maybe a couple of them felt sorry for me. Whatever. Whatever. But they gave me a shot. They gave me a shot.

And we were also very fortunate to be introduced to some key consulting folks, subject matter experts that knew what they were doing, all senior level people. And, you know, so we started this business. It was wobbly. I got to where I could spell FDA, and it was probably the extent of my technical ability. but, you know, I sort of focused on the relationship.

And I saw that there was a gap, there was a disconnect between the need and the technical resources. And then the technical resources I saw where the delta was, they were really good at, you know, FDA, CFR 820 part 11. You know, the regulatory Bible of the health care industry. They were really good at that, but they were not so good with the relationships. They didn't want to go out and do sales or business development or marketing. I mean, yeah. They wanted to do regular. What could be worse for them?

Oh, it was anathema for them, right? It was not going to happen. Yeah. They don't want to pick up the phone and talk to somebody they've never talked to. But they were damn good at understanding the regulation. Yeah. So MedPoint really served as a, we were just the conduit. Yeah.

Between the need. What a niche. It was a great niche. Wow. So you figure out how to do that with the pharmacists, sold that business, and then did the same thing with the FDA experts. Exactly. Wow. That's so cool.

And I'll tell you an early story really quick. Yeah. That illustrates just the power of, you. of that model, John. And this is way beyond Chuck Crumpton's ability, right? I was driving way beyond my headlights. But I knew what these two parties needed, right? They needed each other.

They had a hard time finding each other. But in the early, early days, two years after we started and we were barely keeping the lights on, but we were out telling the story and knocking on doors. And I had this opportunity to knock on the door, a live audience with the head of regulatory for Johnson and Johnson. And honest to goodness truth, I set an appointment in February of 2004. I remember it like it was yesterday.

flew to New York, New Jersey, got a rental car, drove through the snow to building number 10 at the J&J headquarters, parked in the snow, I think 10 or 12 inches of snow in the ground. Parked the car. Now, I'm a redneck from North Carolina, and we don't do good in the snow. We were just talking about Charleston. parked the car and it was probably 200 feet or so from the visitor parking to the front door of the corporate office. As I'm walking across the snow, my phone rings and it's the assistant to the lady, the VP, that I'm scheduled to meet with. And the assistant said, I'm so sorry to tell you, but, and she mentioned the person's name. she's not going to be able to see you today and it took me $1,000 to get there I think I had $1,500 in the bank

true story and I call the assistant by name and I said I'm sorry complete respect I don't have a choice I have to meet with her

I have to and after a couple minutes of silence she goes okay sit in the lobby and I'll try to work it out. Two and a half hours later, I got a five-minute audience. And the VP at J&J said,

who are you? What can you do for us? Why should I give you a chance? And I said, if you'll just give me an opportunity, I promise I will work hard for you. I'll work with integrity. And I'll help you meet this need, again, this need.

of connection to the subject matter expert. Just give me a shot. She goes, you got one shot. Okay. It took six months to negotiate the contract with J&J legal because it's a big deal. But we had a first couple folks come on the team. We began to serve J&J. And now over 20 years later, we've done well over $100 million with Johnson and Johnson.

That's wonderful. But it started with that trek. in the snow on that cold February day. Yeah, I would say, you know, showing up big thing and then not taking no for an answer, but doing it politely. Right. You want to be a jerk about it. That's right.

That's right. You know, it's our fault. We have to see her. We'll wait all day. We'll wait until tomorrow. Whatever. That's wonderful. What a great story.

You saved the company. Oh, my gosh. In those days, John. It was, I mean, slim pickings. Again, we were wobbly at best. And we had picked up some good clients in the first two years, Kimberly Clark and Fuji Medical, some of the good companies. But J&J was our largest healthcare company in the world, right?

That was our launch. And we doubled, I think, year over year with them for probably, six or seven years and again the relationship is still very healthy today and so when I sold the business in 2020 that was one of the big value components for the private equity farm because they were buying a 18 year you know your relationship with Johnson and Johnson and they might have other stuff they want to sell in there right other companies and absolutely yeah yeah interesting did it help you sell other pharmaceutical companies to say we're working with J&J and yeah instant credibility you know as a preferred

partner for Johnson and Johnson their logo on our material like well we'll have to check you guys when you're good yeah if they have vetted you we're good yeah you know it's like wonderful yeah it's funny and it does these these deals people talk about getting big deals and selling Fortune 500 companies you know you just kind of find a way in somewhere maybe it's just some small plant Aiken or something, but it's Johnson & Johnson. Right. And you're working there, and now you can call the next plant.

I mean, very rarely do you start like you did with the VP of the whole thing, you know? Again, if you look at my 61 years of life, it's really characterized by, you know, yes, a lot of hard work, but also being fortunate to have. have met incredible people, right? And to have been connected to people that are connected to people, right? It's kind of life. But I think if we do our business, we do our relationships, we do our families with integrity, and we try to look out for the other person, right? We try to esteem them higher and build them up and encourage them.

People want to help people that help people. Yeah. You know? Absolutely. People helped me. People gave me a shot. They gave me a chance. Right.

Because I do think they could see, I wasn't the smartest guy in the room or the best-looking guy in the room, but I was honest, you know, and I was straightforward. And, you know, we tried to conduct ourselves with integrity every step of the way. and even in the J&J world, not to beat that horse to glue, but we became over the years of trusted, we became their largest compliance partner in the world, and we were trusted because we did it the right way.

Where are you guys located again? Yeah, well, this is funny, you know, 10 years into the relationship, right? I was in New Jersey with their head of procurement. Yeah. They had invited me up to speak at the corporate office, and we were a good little success story. And the head of procurement looked at me. Over lunch, he scratched his head, and he said, how in the hell did you get in the building? That was his question.

And I said, you know, I just kept knocking on the door. You know, just kept knocking on the door. And, you know, you guys gave us a shot. and then it's incumbent upon us. What do we do? You've given me the ball. Yeah. Right?

You've put the ball in Phil Ford's hand. Yeah. Now, it's up to him to score. Right. You know, and it was up to me and our team. And let me just be real clear, John, the secret sauce to Metpoint that became a very nice target for acquisition. The secret sauce was our people. You know, we had phenomenal people.

employees and consultants and it's because of our people we're able to grow that thing to a multi-million dollar success with 250. I think the company now has over 300 people around the world. But it's our people.

The people get all the credit, right? Yeah, well, you should get a lot of credit too, my friend, you made it happen. And people all the time look at you today and like, I want to be like Chuck. I'm like, well, let's go back to one of the was in his garage and he didn't have enough money to get back from New York. True.

Very true. I couldn't come home empty-handed. I know. It happens all the time, though. People only see this person. Yeah. And that's one of the things we do here is we unwind, you know, and tell the whole story so people understand it.

And very, I mean, you have such a, I would call it a stair step or a ladder, up the ladder kind of thing. You learned at a good place, went to another place, did well, tried a few things. You really ran into a bus saw with a dot-com thing, but we all did. Right, right. And then you adjust it from that and learned, and then you had this phenomenal 20-year run and a great exit. But then, after that great exit, you go and start another company. So tell us about Bull Street, why you started it, what it does, and what people should. should know about it. Well, John, thank you for asking.

When I sold MedPoint 2020, you know, which is almost five years ago, it's hard to believe. Time flies, but I still felt like I had some juice in the tank. I had gone through two exits, you know, both successful, one very successful. And I felt like with the heart of a teacher, which I have a heart of a teacher, I wanted to take some of those experiences, some of those nuggets, along with all the mistakes I made. I made a million mistakes along the way. But to take both the mistakes and the wisdom and bring it to business owners, a lot of business ownership, business ownership is tough, right?

The life of an entrepreneur or founder, it can be very lonely. It can be very isolated. A lot of dark days. I can't tell you how many times I drove home from my first office out of the garage. I paid $75 a month for. And, you know, driving home saying, how are we going to make it? You know, and pulling up, seeing the dog, you know, barking at me in and my kids hungry. And, you know, my wife that really wanted to pay the more, you know, those days,

formed a burning desire inside of me to help other business owners and founders and entrepreneurs to have that same dream. And it's difficult. Business is tough. You know that. It's tough. And I wanted to take all those mistakes and all those wins and all those losses and package it and be able to communicate a value proposition to our business owner.

folks that have a desire to build their business, whether they're in plumbing or HVAC or roofing or software or health care, it doesn't matter, but for them to take their dream and their hard work and their sacrifice and to be able to one day, whether they sell it or keep it or give it away, is to envision and encourage these business owners to build something that is valuable. They can exit if they want to. They can give it to their children, sell it to their employees. But they have something of value. That's a tangible value that they can sell.

That is a marketable enterprise. And I felt like I could bring that to the table. and I had a desire to help all those folks that may have been still stuck in the tool shed. Yeah. And to give them a vision and a journey to an exit success. So we started Bull Street with that mission is to help business owners and business leaders build and sell remarkable companies. And to do it with the same. the same stuff that was on the tobacco farm and in Layton Cubbage's office, you know,

and all the other chapters that came in my life, to take all of that stuff and transport it to all these business owners who needed inspiration, they needed a track to run on, they needed expertise and operations or sales or marketing. They just, because we don't know what we don't know, right? Right. And when we are in business, in those lonely days of business, if we have comrades around us that get it, they understand our plight, then they can grow and learn and develop

and build a business that they can sell. And that's frankly been my passion now for five years, and I love doing it. Yeah. I'm learning every single day, which is phenomenal. So you work mostly with business owners. I think about it this way, because I sometimes buy these software companies, and, of course, we had one that we sold.

But I've seen more business owners, including us at one point, whose attitude was, hammer down, focus on our business. If it gets sold one day, gets sold one day. you know, kind of blinders on. Right. And I think it's a big mistake. You know, I think you're just much better off, you know, one of the great guys in Greenville, Clarence Bocke Knight's business,

he used to pay someone like yourself to come once a year and do a valuation. Right. And then explained to everyone why it was evaluated and what levers we could pull this year to make it go up. Right. Might not be what you're working on. Right. And, you know, they end up selling it for a pile of money,

but I love the idea of paying someone like you, not just to sell the business one day, but along the way I pay you to advise me on what this business needs to do to get top value. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.

You pay your tax guy. Right. Your taxes, you pay your insurance guy. You pay your lawyer. Right. It should be someone to help you with something far more important. Absolutely. Which is how you're going to sell your business for.

For most of us, it's our business. biggest asset in life. Yes. Right? Yeah. It's what we build. It's where we spend 10 hours a day and half the weekends focusing on, right? Yeah.

I'll give you a quick example. And this is my true story. 2018, two years before we sold, I was approached, unsolicited, small little private equity firm, boys that had just graduated, you know, with their MBAs, they had a little cash, and they approached. and, you know, we went through the process. I turned down the deal, you know, as we got into some due diligence. Didn't like the terms.

Price was good. Terms were not good. So I pulled out of the deal. And I went to our senior management team at MedPoint. And we sat down and these were five of the best people I've known in my life. And these people loved me. And they had my back. because I was going through a very difficult time in my life through a divorce.

And these five people, some of the best human beings I'd ever been around in my life. And they said, Chuck, we've got you. And I went through this process and I reconvened my posse. And I sat down and I said, I've got good news and bad news. The good news is we are attractive. people want to date us. The bad news is we're not ready to get married. And I said, let's spend the next two years

turning over every rock in the company. And we did very diligently. We spent two years. We looked behind every rock under every plank, behind every plant, from operations, sales, marketing, financial, customer service, SAT score, everything, we peeled it apart. And we made every part of our business better and stronger.

And then when we went to market two years later as a robust and healthy healthcare compliance company firm, we got five LOIs and they were, they started at 30% more than where we were in 2018. So we had five LOIs on the table, end up selecting one of those partners, and it was a great partner to have. And we did the business, the deal on July 1st. But that's a true story of how we took all of these overlays, right, from every sphere of our business. Now we just take it at Bull Street, we just take that overlay, that paradigm to the small and medium-sized companies. companies, you know, 50 million or less. And we just unpack every area of their business with the intention of making it better.

So that the business owner who has put their blood, sweat, and tears into this gets a payday. I'll give you one quick example. We sold a $42 million roofing company in October. and we did our congratulatory dinner, good food and good wine. And we had our team, right? Our team sitting at the table with our client. My client who had spent 40 years of his life building this business was sitting to my left. And this is a roofer.

We're talking a man's man. Right. Yeah. A man's man. Not a software guy. Yeah. Not a consulting like a consultant like me, but a man's man, tough. And he looked over at me.

He put his arm on my shoulder. And he leaned over, John. And he said, look at this team. And we were all laughing and talking, having steak and wine at halls and Charleston sitting there in the corner. And he started crying. And he said, Chuck, what you guys have done, you've changed my life,

my children's life, and my grandchildren's lives. You guys have changed our family. And he cried, and I hugged him, and I said, you get all this. credit bro it's your 40 years of hard work you and your wife yeah building this business we just we were able to join you on the last part of the journey yeah but the reward don't get me wrong

the fees are very nice but the reward of seeing that older gentleman just break down with emotion right because he got the payday that he worked for and deserved. Yeah. And now it's going to change his family tree. Yep. Yep. That feels good. Oh, my gosh.

Yeah. And I'll forget about the dollars that came with that deal. Yeah. I'll never forget about the tears that came with that moment. Yeah. That's awesome. Well, you should feel good about that. You do feel good about it.

And again, I think people can run a business for a long time. And when they sell it, they're either selling it on the offense or on the defense. You put them on the offense. Yeah. Right. Get the numbers just right. And we're going to present ourselves and get five LOIs versus two guys who just got out of Duke. Yeah.

Well, let's say you're one of those people that want your kind of help. tell us the best way to get in touch with you Bull Street Forum Forum.com Okay, dot com Yep Our M&A division of our business Bull Street mergers

The two work in tandem In parallel The forum is the building part 80% of companies that raise their hands Saying we want to sell Are not ready They've got something broken in the business

That's where the forum just comes in, we come alongside that business owner, and then we just, similar to a home, we get it ready to go to market. And that's what I love. That's where my heart is, honestly. The preparation. Preparation, getting it ready.

We think like a buyer with all of our clients. And if we can think like a buyer, then we're always two steps ahead of the game, right? We know the questions they're going to ask, the potential buyer. So we anticipate those questions. We turn over every rock like we did at MedPoint in 2018. And we just work with those business owners to get ready to go to market.

Some of them, you know, a year, two years later, some of them say, I don't think I'm going to sell this business. It's true out cash, right? You know, we're three times more profitable than we used to be, whatever, you know, or I've got my life back because we built infrastructure. structure, whatever. I call that the entrepreneur's dilemma, which is when things are like in the tank, you can't sell it. You're stuck. Right.

Right. forever. Right, right. So a couple of quick questions. Favorite book? What's your favorite book? Oh, unbroken. We already did that, right?

Definitely unbroken. And then favorite band? I would say Zach Brown. Zach Brown. Very nice. Tight, tight competition between Zach Brown and Elton John. Elton. He's hard to beat.

Saw him in person, Ten Rose back, and made a lasting memory. man. Where'd you see him? Vegas. Caesars, yeah. Phenomenal. And favorite word?

Forgiveness. Forgiveness. We all need some of that. Oh, my gosh. Okay, well, thank you. It was great. I expected it to be great, and it was great. And it was great.

I really enjoyed it, and I learned more about you. And I think it's a great message for all the people watching. You can do everything. You should try to do everything right and prepare yourself, but realize there's going to be a dot-com bust and there's going to be maybe a divorce. I mean, it's going to be things. You've just got to persevere. That's right.

That's right. Right. So anyway, thanks for being here. I appreciate it. Thank you, John. All right. A real honor.