Join us on The Casey Cease Show as Chris Seegers, a dynamic entrepreneur and capitalist missionary, shares how integrating faith with business can lead to impactful and enriched lives. 

Discover the strategies behind successful business acquisitions and the profound value of serving others through commerce. 

Whether you're a business owner or an aspiring entrepreneur, Chris’s insights will inspire and equip you to lead a more fulfilling and integrated life. 

Tune in to transform your entrepreneurial endeavors into missions.

Ready to elevate your entrepreneurial journey? Let's dive in.

Casey Cease: Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Casey Cease show today. I have a friend of mine named Chris Seegers here on the show. Chris is an amazing entrepreneur, investor, a business guy and follower of Jesus. And so I was thrilled when we were chatting a couple of a month or so ago in Chicago, him and his wife, Tara, and she's been on the show as well and really wanted to bring him on here because I know a lot of people who watch the show are interested in entrepreneurship, are business owners or curious about that whole industry.

Chris Seegers: Thanks man, I really appreciate being here. thank you for having me on, for giving me your time and also your audience's time. Yeah, man, we're, we're kind of a unique beast. We call ourselves capitalist missionaries, so we pursue Christ through the marketplace. Our goal and our dream is to help activate and equip people to live exceptional lives.

We do that through a bunch of different ways, We've got a family office and we buy businesses, oil and gas assets and real estate. And then we've really stepped into the space of helping other folks understand how to sell their business and also acquisition entrepreneurs on how to buy their businesses.

Casey Cease: That's awesome. And so. You grew up in business. Like how did this all come to be? Tell us a little bit about your upbringing and your journey to this point.

Chris Seegers: Yeah, for sure. So, we had chatted a little bit before the show but I came from two totally different worlds. So, I am the son of a missionary Doctor, I spent 7 years of my young life in Chihuahua, Mexico, way down south about 10 hours South of the border. And we lived in a house that rarely had running water rarely had electricity, kind of in and out, no insulation, wood burning stove.

We slept in sleeping bags. It was just kind of a bizarre upbringing, although a wonderful upbringing. And then my other side Of the equation was my grandpa was a very successful entrepreneur and I spent every summer with him in Southern Colorado, ranching and just kind of learning about life and business and ranching.

So it's been a weird journey, man. Like, you know, on one side, you've got missionaries who is purely like, Hey, doing God's work. And the church is yeah, pastors and missionaries are, you know, they're kind of the A listers, and then us business guys were kind of like the B team. And they're like, Hey just, kind of check and help us.

And so, we really said, no, we want to do both things. It's all one. We think about the integrated life all the time. Like it's all one thing, serving your family and your community, doing business well, that's all kind of how you impact. So, we've been just learning about that and building curriculum about it to help other folks that are interested in it.

Casey Cease: That's amazing. Yeah. I always love hearing stories where people landed where, they are today. And so, worked well in oil and gas, is that correct? Like early in your career.

I said, we will never move to Texas. That was one of the first things I said, being married. And of course, God has a way of saying, well, okay, you know, like I'm going to work on you a little bit, Chris. So. Very quickly after we got out of business school, we were both very driven type A folks. And we said, Hey, where's the best opportunity?

And we said, you know, Texas, really, the marketplace is incredible out there. And we didn't have kids. We didn't really have any obligations. We said, Hey, what if we just moved out there? And she's like, well, I thought you said we'd never move to Texas. And I said, well, okay, but I'm going to move you to the best part of Texas, way West Texas in the desert.

Like, it's an incredible place to live and do business. But anyway, so she moved out there and we, both built kind of a series of different businesses out of that 1 in the oil and gas space. And I still am a partner and strategic advisor to oil company based out of Austin. That's doing really well.

And so we still own it and we've run it. We have events and corporate retreats and different things that we host out there. So anyways, that was like, The infancy stage where we started just kind of throwing different things at the table and understanding how to run teams and processes. And so yeah, man, it's been a wild ride.

Casey Cease: You bought a town. I mean, literally you own a town.

So, yeah.

Chris Seegers: Yeah, for sure. So has our family office, which is called exceptional companies started exploring how do we buy assets and businesses through every cycle, right? So like oil and gas is so cyclical. and we, got crushed in multiple cycles where our timing just wasn't right. We had a great assets, great teams.

And so Tara and I just said, Hey, we've got to build out a systematic approach to where no matter what cycle it is, whether it be oil and gas or real estate or whatever, that we can continue to invest in things. And we had already kind of built some businesses. We started buying businesses and then we really realized like, Hey, all of the skills that you learn, if you can apply them to business acquisition, that's a platform that you can buy no matter what.

And oil and gas and real estate are that way to some degree, right? You can go into different industries and different markets and different, you know, classes and say, Hey, we're going to switch from here. And we're going to go buy over in Philly, or we're going to go buy over here. But we really said we wanted to be able to buy in our markets.

And they were only focused on the transaction piece, whereas we had always been focused on the whole piece. So what do you want to do after you sell your business? You know, how do you set up your life and your state? How do you continue to do your, service and your impact piece? And then the transaction piece, and then really helping coach those folks that may be in their 60 to 70s and saying, Hey, this might be your highest impact age.

Don't retire. We always say don't retire, inspire, like go find another way to serve. So anyway, so that, that was the premise of the book as we continue to coach. And we started a A and D company, exceptional business advisors that steps into that space. And I was getting a lot of questions. I said, I'm going to write a book for those sellers.

And then we'll build a course around that. That's a little bit more in depth. And then the goal is that you would start engaging us as an advisor, a business transition expert, and we would help you do that really well. And then coach you on, not just, Hey, you've sold your business. That's it. Life's over.

But really like, Hey, next kind of quarter of your life or half of your life. What do you want to do with that? And we've built a lot of tools and curriculum around that. So yeah, anyways, that's a ton, but.

Casey Cease: No, that's super helpful. I know for me owning a few companies myself, you know, you don't really think much about it. selling, especially when you're younger. And so you're not really planning, but what I found for friends of mine who have bought businesses or sold their business is that it's not just, you wake up one morning, like, I think I'm going to go sell it, right?

Chris Seegers: Yep, absolutely. So our advisory company is kind of two phases. One is more kind of the transition transactional. The second is the advisory, which is how to optimize your business for sale. We prefer, and this is like the worst advice to give.

If you are trying to get clients, we prefer that you keep your business like we would love it if more people just kept their businesses and grew them and sold them through a ESOP or, you know, converted them to a donor advised fund, which if you don't know that, I don't know that much about it. You could talk to my wife or somebody else. But really, the goal is like, Hey, if you could keep your business scale it and continue on to perpetuity and kind of get yourself out of the business, that's option one.

So we've been buyers, we continue to be buyers. We know exactly what a buyer is looking for in a business and how to build that out. We also have used EOS and a bunch of other systems in our businesses and built our own curriculum around how to really like systemize your business to get a higher multiple to, you know, build out the people and the processes to where when you go to sell it, you can hand something to a buyer that is so beautiful.

They're like, man, I'm willing to pay you your price because this is set up for a future growth and you can show me exactly how that is, as opposed to just saying, Hey, this is what we've done. We hope you do well in the future. Okay.

And so he ended up buying a business that had a lot more structure in place. And it didn't have a ton of SOP's. We actually went in and did an SOP project with them. And if you're listening, you're like what are all these words are running around the standard operating procedures, but basically for blue collar workers, you know, having them sit down and write out their process is one thing.

And so we utilize technology and did a lot of interviews and had different writers help us write up from the interviews and develop SOP's and then work with their general manager to develop the SOP's, and now they have a massive documentation and their business is growing, but the owner who acquired the business, there were pockets he didn't really know how it went.

I mean, it's a multiple million dollars a year business. And so we went in there and helped them establish it because he just didn't even realize that, Hey, having SOP's that are documents an operating manual for the company adds immense value to the organization as it is already.

When I learned that, Hey, view your business as an asset that you should care for, nurture, grow and if you're going to sell it, make sure it's in a position where it's really going to be a blessing and a help to the next person who acquires it, because that will also add immense value to it. And so at what stage, you know, what type of businesses are you best able to help?

I know you've mentioned oil and gas, you mentioned some real estate, things like that, but specifically with businesses, what type of businesses do you feel like you can offer the most value to, even if they're a few years out from wanting to exit?

So it could be your HVAC, your plumbing, your electrical contracting, your drywall, your flooring, and then white collar service companies. So that could be your payroll companies, your accounting firms, insurance agencies, financial advisory firms. Those are two just pockets of it, but manufacturing, we really look for businesses that are kind of sub 3 million at EBITDA.

We'll go down to kind of, you know, half a million dollars of profits is probably the smallest that we would want to represent to sell, but even smaller clients, if they're like, Hey man, I want to get here and I'm willing to put in the effort. If you can show me how to process, you know, what the processes look like to get to that level.

If you have good people, And you, love on him, you'll be successful. But if you have good people and good processes, you're unstoppable in any industry. So that's where we, love to step into that play. And we've done things too, where we'll say, hey, we're willing to take a minority stake into your company.

And we'd love to just scale and help you scale. And we'll have some skin in the game. So, you know, we're engaged. So we've done a lot of different things, but yeah, that's the area we step into. We really don't like to get into kind of the investment bank size or the private equity size. We really like the Main Street businesses, and I think they're underserved and they need folks that have done it.

We've done it and we continue to do it. So that's where we think we've got a big advantage. So yeah, I'm not sure if that answered your question, but that's

Casey Cease: No that, that was extremely helpful. And, just, you know, as people are listening in wanting to, you know, learn more about that, I know your book will be coming out and I'm sure we'll be sharing that with them.

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Casey Cease: So let's turn shift gears a little bit, because you have a very interesting perspective. Having grown up as a son of a missionary doctor, your early years, having a grandfather who was a successful entrepreneur. You know, kind of reconciling those two worlds of the meek you know, sleeping bag life to the ranch in southern Colorado, your view of business is beyond just a moneymaking endeavor and you're sharing that.

So share with me a little bit your idea. You say that you're, what is it, capitalist missionaries, or how do you phrase that?

I don't want to go home and feel like, Hey, my family life is not part of the mission, or my marriage is not part of the mission. We believe our job is stewardship. Like it's stewardship of our time, our talents, our treasures, and then your unique ability. So God has allowed my wife and I to have some tremendous talents on the business acquisition, optimization growth.

And we want to really just pour those out onto other people. We didn't want, we'd never felt comfortable just like growing these businesses and feeling like it's siloed and then, Hey, let's write a great check to our church or to these other great causes. And then we go back to making money and we kind of turn off the piece.

So how that relates is we coach our team, we coach our clients, and like I said, we really want to activate and equip people to live exceptional lives. We teach a lot about the architecture of life. So I believe that God has created an architecture in life. Even if you don't believe in God, you still live in that architecture.

And then as we can create value for people, we can point them towards Jesus and say, Hey, there's an architect to all of this and He's for you. Like He loves you. He's for you. He didn't create these laws to be against you. He didn't create the 10 commandments to be against you. He created it because he knew if you followed that framework, it would give you the richest and fullest life.

And so if we can do that in business with our clients, with our team, and we don't push it, we're not like, we don't have a Jesus fish on our trucks or anything like that. We just want to really like exemplify good stewardship. Yep. And then if they say, Hey, why are you doing this? We can say, well, this is why we're doing it.

And I said, well, I feel like I'm as much in ministry, if not more in ministry doing what I do now than even when I was pastoring and not to downplay the role of pastors, the pastors that have been in my life have been extremely impactful and I'm prayerful and hopeful that, you know, I was able to make an impact during my season as a lead pastor, but I didn't graduate out of ministry.

Ministry is a way of life for people who follow Jesus. But I found that my gifts and skillset in the public sector as well, has been able to open up more doors for conversations. And if you think about it, you and I both coach business owners and leaders. And the impact we're able to have on that life that then impacts their family, but also their employees, their vendors even their competitors, the way they do business is extremely important.

But it's a real challenge, I mean, in commerce and people look at you like you have three heads when you say it's not just about the money, it's about people. And they're like, that's so disorienting at times. But for me, that's been such a big opportunity. To open up conversations about spiritual things that they might blow you off at first, but you're the first person they're going to want to go speak with if they're having problems with their kids or in their marriage or something like that.

It's all about passive income, it's all about stacking cash, it's all about this and that, it's all about really, which is selfish. And I've pushed back a lot to say, Hey guys, for us, at least for me and my household, for us and our family office, the only way we can have an impact in this life is to serve others in some form or fashion.

And a great mentor of me told me, he's like, Chris, you have one simple decision. He's like, you only need to make one decision in your life. This is it, are you going to serve yourself your entire life? Or are you going to serve others? That's the only decision you have ever have to make. If you serve yourself only, you're going to have a miserable existence.

That's why God commanded us the two greatest commands are love God and love others. So it's like, Hey, serve God who loves you and is for you. And then go serve others. But do it in the way that God has gifted you, right? If you're gifted to be in the entrepreneurial space and you're trying to be a pastor, which is kind of what I was struggling with, that's not where God has you.

Now, maybe he does. I don't know. I'm never going to speak for somebody. If you're called to be a pastor, if you're called to work in the home, right? Like that's the greatest calling I think ever, like, but that's your passion and serve your kids and serve your husband and serve your community and serve the other folks like wherever you're called to be, serve others.

And that's the only decision we have. So I've been pushing back a lot on just main street media because believe that what they're encouraging you to do is going to lead you to be a very rich, miserable human being, which is not what I want.

Who, let's say I come across a lot of people who are looking to buy businesses, want to look into that. Who's your ideal client or partner to work with in that regard? Who do you look forward to? Help them, like what kind of capital deployment are they needing to look for working with you?

Chris Seegers: Yeah, for sure. So I think we'll coach almost anybody that's serious. I've kind of said, there's a lot of entrepreneurs that are like, you know, I don't really, I guard my time and I don't give my time to people. And I'm the exact opposite. I'll always take meetings with folks if I can think I can serve them, but I usually give them some criteria Yeah. to see if they're serious or not. Right?

Like. This is not easy. I believe it's the greatest source of wealth generation in the world, but it's not an easy job and you're going to have to learn a lot. It's going to be sleepless nights. It's going to be outworking other people, which I think most people have kind of said is not a real thing anymore, but it totally is.

But I think it's folks that are serious, that are willing to prove that they're serious by going through the resources and the courses, going through the vetting process. And then we try to partner up with, you know, acquisition, family officer, acquisition, entrepreneurs, and say, Hey, let us go target. If you say, Hey, Casey, I want to buy, you know, small manufacturing companies that have 3 million in revenue.

And this is why this, that, and the other will help you build a buyer's profile. And then we'll go actually target those manufacturing companies and try to bring a really good quality company that is going to help you grow your wealth and your legacy and your impact for a long time.

I always think it's like, you should have people 10 years behind you, people in your age group, 10 years, 15 years ahead of you and your group, because they, you know, provide so much insight, but the folks that I've been involved in have done, you know, high level oil and gas companies, drilling companies, plugging companies, fat countertop fabrication companies.

Like we've been like the whole gambit of where we focused and how we've helped. But yeah, I'd love to be in touch with any entrepreneurs that are interested in this. And just say, Hey, I need some counsel on how to do that. We've been through the process a bunch ourselves. And so that's kind of, we bring that owner's advantage to that space as well.

Casey Cease: That's excellent. When are you hoping to release your book?

So on the sell side, we're representing all these amazing owners that are like, I would love nothing better than to have a young person to carry on my legacy. And we're like, well, we need to build that funnel of young, you know, capable entrepreneurs that we're coaching that are capable of doing this.

And then really find that buyer sellers fit. I think that's the magic that we're really good at. We never encourage a seller to sell if they're like, and this person just seems like they're in it for the money. They don't care about my team. They don't care about my clients. We're like, that probably isn't a good fit for you.

And then when we can marry the two, we don't have this huge like gap in the U S economy where it's like, Oh my gosh, all these businesses are just shutting their doors, at least we can be a part of that transition. So.

Casey Cease: No I think that's an amazing strategy and something I, definitely am going to be talking with you more about it as, as I want to diversify more portfolio. And the more I learned about business, the more I love the people and the processes and the teams and being able to empower. And, you know, I mean, there are ways to invest passively and build wealth that way, but I don't think we're meant to just sit here and be passive but to be proactive and to be salt and light into the world and commerce and to really invest in people and in communities and enrich lives and.

Chris Seegers: Man, we, I don't do a lot of social media intentionally and maybe this is you need to help me with this, but we've been almost anti social media to some degree. We use it a little on the business, but I'm old school, man. Chris at exceptional cos. com. Shoot me an email or check out Xcoadvisors. com. That's our advisory business or exceptional cos. com. That's kind of our family office, high level website.

We're going to be putting out a lot more content. We really like with technology, we just had a huge conversation about technology. We want to make sure that everything we do is helpful. We don't want to just put out things to get people to read more, to get people to do more, to get like, we really want to put out very intentional tools and curriculum. So we love to engage with people on a much deeper authentic level than just put out a TikTok video that, you know, it doesn't really do that much.

Like we're really kind of old school in our philosophy there, but who knows, maybe you can change my mind on that.

Casey Cease: No,

Casey Cease: don't know. I mean, I don't know if that needs to be, and we can have this little conversation right here. Live is like. I was talking to somebody yesterday. He's like, man, I hate social media. I'm like, then don't worry about being there. And he's like, but I need to be, I said, why? He's like, for my clients, I said, is your target avatar active on social media?

And he said, well, they're on LinkedIn. I said, well, can you tolerate posting once a week on LinkedIn and then connecting with a few people you like? Well, I could tolerate that. And then I have an app that he can use it. He doesn't have to get on LinkedIn. He can just engage from this platform, not even worry about it.

So I don't think you have to now, some of my marketing peers would disagree, but I want to encourage you that, Hey, there are strategic ways to reach who you want to reach. Or you go to people like me that navigate that space and say, Hey, can you help me get the word out? And be glad to do that. You were about to ask something, so I'm going to let you if you remember what you're going to say, you're still young enough to have that memory.

So.

So we coach all of our team through a bunch of different things. We use financial literacy, Dave Ramsey. We do atomic habits. We do mindset catching, like all kinds of curriculum, including our tools. So So if we want to help, you know, activate and equip somebody to live an exceptional life, we dang well better be able to show them the path and give them tools.

And one of our young men in one of our businesses came to me and I was just like, man, I'm just so impressed with your progress. And he's like, Chris, no one ever in my life has mentored me. And I'm thinking some of the stuff that we're talking about is pretty basic, right? We've been in this space for a long time, 15 years.

They're having conversations about their son and education and how they should, you know, the habits of the house and, you know, limiting video gaming and different things like that. All of that came out of probably three or four sessions. And this is, you know, if you have a business, you might be able to impact hundreds, thousands more people.

And that's why we really want to put out more content to really get people activated and equipped for that. So that's just my encouragement when people start, if they're faith led folks and they have an entrepreneurial bent, I'm like, your church is the marketplace. That's our church is the marketplace.

We still, you know, continue to go to church and are actively involved in our church. But when I go to work every day, I'm like, Hey, church is still going. It's Monday morning and this is church. This is church for me. We're two or more gathered, man. We're just trying to do God's work. So anyways, I wanted to tag onto that because I've been really like trying to change that frame with a lot of believers to say, Hey guys, like it's all one thing.

Like mission work is mission work, whether it's in your family or in the, you know, in church or in the entrepreneurial space.

Chris Seegers: Thanks, Casey.

That wraps up this episode of the Casey Cease Show. Make sure to visit our website, thecaseyceaseshow.com, where you can subscribe to the show on iTunes, Spotify, or via RSS, so you'll never miss a show. While you're at it, if you found value in this show, we'd appreciate a rating on iTunes, or if you'd simply tell a friend about the show that would help us out too.

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