From Submarine to Shared Services: Building a Portfolio of Brands with Joe Kingland

Brent Peterson (00:01.986)
Welcome to this episode of Uncharted Entrepreneurship. Today I have Joe Kingland. He is the, he is a serial entrepreneur and has a number of businesses. I'm gonna let Joe do an introduction for himself. Joe, us a little bit about yourself, your day-to-day role, and one of your passions in life.

Joe Kingland (00:19.382)
Yeah, well, thanks for having me on, Really appreciate this opportunity to sit down and talk with you about what we're doing and what you're doing and get this going. So yeah, I'm Joe Kingland. I'm the CEO of a company called Manage Infinity. We are a small business growth accelerator. We focus in the tech space and in the digital space. And so I have several different companies ranging from cybersecurity brands to digital.

marketing. Let's see, okay, my day-to-day role mostly is really finding resources for folks, know, finding staff members, finding money, finding other, you know, business coaches, advisors, board members, those kinds of things. That's generally where I spend all of my time. You know, I collect

collect the shopping list, the collective shopping list from everybody around the portfolio brands and then I go and find what they need. And one of my passions in life, you'll see I have a tee it up for the troops shirt on, is working with veterans. So I'm a veteran myself and so something that I am really passionate about love doing is helping veterans any way I can so whenever I find a new way to...

to help out a veteran or a bunch of veterans, I'm usually all for it. So, anybody needs volunteers, look me up.

Brent Peterson (01:55.694)
And that's, that's awesome. Thanks for that. I did. I did volunteer for my own my shoes for about geez, eight years, five, six years. 2018. Anyway, it doesn't matter how long, but they have a new veteran group that runs from no comas. So it's a great. Yeah, it's a great organization that just brings people together.

Joe Kingland (02:15.475)
cool.

Joe Kingland (02:20.94)
Yeah.

Brent Peterson (02:21.934)
All right, so Joe, but before we start talking about a little bit about your business and things like that, you have volunteered for the Free Joke Project. I'm gonna tell you a joke and all you have to do is give me a rating eight through 13. So here we go. If there were a pill for, I'm sorry, I'm gonna start over. If there was a pill to cure procrastination, I would probably take it tomorrow.

Joe Kingland (02:47.721)
I'll give it an 11. I saw where it was going. I saw where it was going, but I love it. Yes. And honestly, I'm just a sucker for dad jokes. Like literally have a dad joke calendar right here, Rip one off every day.

Brent Peterson (02:51.074)
All right, thanks.

Brent Peterson (03:00.414)
awesome. Yeah, my daughter one year gave me, my daughter gave me that one year as well. So perfect. All right. So tell us a little bit about your, so you were a veteran, how long were you in the military for?

Joe Kingland (03:13.838)
I was in for six years, yeah, from 2001 to 2006, so...

Brent Peterson (03:19.296)
Okay, and so then did you always know you wanted to be an entrepreneur? Tell us a journey from government work to entrepreneur.

Joe Kingland (03:28.078)
Yeah, yeah, it was pretty wild. So when I got out of the Navy, I was a submariner, and so I was stationed in Washington State, and I ended up having to do a cross-country journey, so I had a job lined up in Rhode Island.

I had just built an old 1949 Ford pickup truck, rebuilt the whole thing, and I loaded it up and I calculated how much money I needed for gas and everything. And I started driving. I loaded, put a trailer on it, and I started driving and drove that thing over the Rockies and everything.

But I had a slight issue with my calculation in that I didn't calculate the appropriate amount of money for gas and it got about half the mileage that I thought it was going to get because I was towing a trailer. And so I made it about halfway across the country and I kind of landed in Minnesota.

Couldn't get relocation assistance from the new job so I was like, well, I guess I'm staying here. Ended up in a consulting role actually for a local small IT company here called Escape Key way back in the day. They got, you know, they got bought a couple of times and after the second one...

I had moved up enough in the organization. was doing some inside sales and project management and along with engineering. So I said, you know, I think I'm going to...

Joe Kingland (05:09.622)
I think I'm going go ahead and roll on to my next thing instead of going through another acquisition. so I ended up going over to Anytime Fitness, which was an amazing decision, honestly. So I started there as a director of IT. And they were...

relatively relatively early I think they had around 700 locations in one brand and a couple of companies that were kind of supported it so I stayed there for

seven years and we grew that franchise to the point where it was taking in investment and buying other franchise businesses and we were rolling all of those into a shared services model and I think we set up another three or four companies while I was there all kind of inside of their portfolio and I was like, man, this is the way to do it. So in 2017 when

exited self-esteem brands I came to manage infinity and I Had built I had kind of built this company back in 2012 because I had all these customers that kind of wanted out of the Acquisition rat race that they were in with the previous company too. And so after my non-compete was up I took them on hired some staff and and then set up started setting up the shared services model and

2017 and 2018 and then I was able to I've been able to use people that I know and and and Connections that I have to be able to kind of start up, you know several different brands and bootstrap them You know bootstrap them and just kind of get them rolling. So It's been Yeah, that was 2018 mostly to start the new ones. So so it's been it's been a journey, but it's been a lot of it's been a lot of fun it's been you know, you

Joe Kingland (07:12.58)
It's a roller coaster ride the highs are real high and the lows are real low But but in the end when you get off young man, let's do that again. That was awesome

Brent Peterson (07:22.83)
Yeah, that's fascinating. I admit I'm one of those entrepreneurs who loves that zero to 60 phase, the beginning, the startup, and then that sort of, I'm not going to say, well, it could be a grind after a while. Tell us about, I suppose this is the best of all worlds where you get to kind of build a business up and you manage it for a while. Tell us how that works, how your organization works in the shared services model and tell us a little bit about that.

Joe Kingland (07:31.32)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Kingland (07:50.092)
Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, really, look, you know, these days I'm looking for folks that...

that really have a strong concept, a great idea, but really don't know how to build a business and support it. That's kind of where I'm finding success is being able to build a business and support a new business or very young business and give them the resources that they're needing and looking for at a good

rate and also to get them kind set up to go into the future. So really, you know, that's really what we're looking for because a lot of people have really good ideas and the concepts might be really, really strong, but actually building the business is a skill set in and of itself as you all know. You got to find the right mixture of resources and people and, you know, and the timing's got to be right and all that good stuff. So, and of course,

banking relationships, it took me years just to find a good bank that actually understood what I was doing and would partner with me. that, you know, just that one thing alone unlocked a ton of stuff. You know, a lot of growth for the different organizations. that, you know, that was ended up being just a critical partnership that I, that I, you know, took me years to find. I probably would have grown this a lot faster.

earlier but but you know it's just trying to lend things like that to you know to other entrepreneurs and help support them and help them grow and build their dreams too.

Brent Peterson (09:41.538)
Yeah, that's a I mean, that's such an interesting observation. I know that we we have we pivoted to a small bank during the pandemic because we found that they're really the big banks couldn't offer us anything other than a place to store our money. What other things have you learned that have helped you in in, you know, sort of breakthrough before you got into EO? Tell us maybe some one more little nugget that you were able to pull out of your hat.

Joe Kingland (09:53.036)
Yeah.

Yeah

Brent Peterson (10:11.425)
in that.

Joe Kingland (10:12.544)
Yeah, I would say, you know, the banking relationship really was critical during the pandemic. We were at a different bank and ended up switching because they wouldn't really do the, what was that, the PPP program. And we needed it, to be frank.

So we ended up switching banks then and then then since that we kind of outgrown them too, but But yeah, I would say the other the other thing the other nugget and and you always hear this like your network is your net worth, right? So the other thing that I'll say that's been it that's been a key for me is Getting and finding the right advisors Finding you know for me as well You know and finding people in the in the location

where you're at that are well connected that can get you to the right folks too, right? And they're usually very natural problem solvers and have very good networks as well. So that was huge. I was doing everything myself just in the grind, like you mentioned, for years. stuff really started unlocking when I was able to...

to leveraging, good advisors and leveraging them and their networks and having them understand what we were doing and why it was good for everyone.

Brent Peterson (11:41.55)
You've just joined Entrepreneurs' Organization. So tell us, how did you stumble upon Entrepreneurs' Organization? since you don't have a... Well, tell us, then talk about your expectations, what you'd like to see out of it.

Joe Kingland (11:54.156)
Yeah, absolutely. So I learned about EO. I was just talking about advisors, right? So one of my, somebody I've been watching, know, he's now the CMO for one of my companies, but I've been watching him for a long, time. And

and he was working with another gentleman that I saw basically grow one of my competitors very rapidly. So these two guys grew one of my competitors very quickly. They were very successful. And so I was able to bring this CMO person on and he was able to help me get more attention.

from that advisor, from the person I ended up getting to come and be an advisor for me. And then between the two of them, they had a mutual connection over at Traction Capital, Shane Erickson. So I had some meetings with Shane. He picked my brain a little bit about the Shared Services model, and I'm still picking his brain about fundraising and those kinds of things. He's a brilliant guy. And he told me about EO.

sitting and contemplating it for a little while and having a couple of conversations. I was like, alright, this is cool, let's do it. Good to meet a bunch of new folks and also, you know, focus on taking care of not only the businesses but also a little bit more of myself too.

Brent Peterson (13:31.906)
Yeah, talk about your thoughts before you sort of got introduced and now you've been through forum training. What are your thoughts about going into your first meeting?

Joe Kingland (13:42.124)
Yeah, I mean for me it'll be very interesting. I've done a... I did forum training and I did a mashup with Blair, Blair ran it, muddling from the chapter. And I guess from my standpoint going into it, it'll... I want to be prepared, you know, like I really want to make sure that I...

I sit down and I think about, you know, think about things and I know I'm gonna, I'm not, I'm gonna break rules and it's probably gonna be sloppy and ugly and all that good stuff but, but you know, the forum that I joined, named Sunshine, they said, now that's okay, you know, we'll help you out. So, so I think for me it's just a matter of making sure that I have my thoughts collected and I do, you know, I take the time to do the

reflection that I need to do before I walk in the door. Which is, know, when you're constantly on the move, you guys, everybody knows this, right? When you're constantly on the move, it's very difficult to actually force yourself to stop and reflect. And that's probably what I'm looking forward to the most, is being able to stop, collect my thoughts, reflect, and then be able to do the experience sharing.

Brent Peterson (15:05.826)
Yeah, that's great. I'm going to make an analogy right now that just stopping to reflect if you're running down a trail, you don't see the surroundings around you often. You only see what that little bit of trail in front of you. And it's such a great analogy to say, I mean, any business person should take that one bit of advice and slow down, look around, observe and see where you are, where you've been, where you're going. That's super. Joe,

Joe Kingland (15:15.202)
Yeah.

Joe Kingland (15:19.843)
Yeah.

Brent Peterson (15:34.58)
know, switching a little bit, how do you see the outlook this year for the economy and especially for the Twin Cities? What is your outlook now?

Joe Kingland (15:46.028)
Yeah, I still think there's going to be a fair amount of uncertainty and people just hesitating. There's a lot of hesitation. When I'm talking to other entrepreneurs right now, a lot of them are saying they've got stuff on hold. They've gotten calls for projects that they had that maybe weren't in flight yet, but were about to be. they've gotten the call. They're not going to do those at the moment.

There's still little bit of uncertainty and just seeing how things shake out. You know, the jobs market still looks pretty good. The jobs reports, you know, are still pretty solid. you know, I think there's just kind of a mix of information right now. And I think people are trying to prepare as best they can or best they know how to, which I think is causing a little bit of...

delay in actually pulling the trigger on deals or moving things forward. They're more concerned if they can be able to tread water and hold the line right now. That's at least what I'm seeing and hearing from other entrepreneurs. It's a matter of if we've actually seen the true fallout of the tariff.

uh... you know business yet or not and you know my gut tells me this is probably still the eye before the storm but uh... that's just that's just my opinion i'm i'm certainly no economist

Brent Peterson (17:16.999)
That's awesome. Joe, we have a few minutes left as I close out the podcast to give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug about anything they'd like. What would you like to plug today?

Joe Kingland (17:25.728)
Awesome. Well, I guess our latest venture is a company called Clock Labs, that is a return on investment based digital marketing agency. So the whole premise of this, and I'm sure entrepreneurs everywhere can relate to me when I say this.

Generally speaking, marketing has been a boat for me. I just pitch a lot of money into it and then it's very difficult to find how I get that money back, let alone more money than what I gave them. And so we really launched.

Clock Labs to fix that. What my companies, all of them, pretty much need are leads. They need good, qualified leads that they can give to their salespeople to boost the salesperson's efforts, go and get those. And that's really what Clock Labs is about. And the payment structure is also based on what they actually deliver. they're aligned with the company and they want to get leads, as many leads, as qualified of leads as

as quickly as possible. So that's my shameless plug. If you need leads, give me a shout. That's my personal experience with the company since we founded it and I use them for our brands, but my personal experience is about a 7 to 1 return.

Brent Peterson (18:39.49)
That's awesome.

Brent Peterson (18:55.342)
Wow, that's awesome. And tell us how people can get a hold of you.

Joe Kingland (18:59.63)
Yeah, you can give me a shout. I'm at joe at manageinfinity.com. You can also just hit me up on my cell phone, 612-564-2150. Don't be shy, I'm not.

Brent Peterson (19:15.778)
That's awesome. That's great, Joe. Joe Kingland is the the founder of Infinity Management Group and a number of other businesses. Thank you so much for being here. And he is in Entrepreneurs Organization Minnesota. This podcast is sponsored by Minnesota. Thank you so much, Joe.

Joe Kingland (19:25.134)
you

Joe Kingland (19:34.892)
Thank you.