#103 Robert Hassold, CEO CIMQUEST - Would you sell 50% of your Company's Revenue and Take a New Line On?

Amazing Execs Show

Hello, and welcome to the amazing exec show. I'm your host David Rosen. And this is episode 1 0 3.

We're talking today with the Rob household, CEO of CIMQUEST, a high tech software and systems reseller. I think what you're going to find interesting today is that Rob is an entrepreneurial hero and CEO being involved in fast paced, high tech and internet-based companies throughout my career.

I'm rarely surprised about how businesses survive and what they need to do to decide on sustaining their business. I hope you find interesting today hearing from Rob about how he has actually made decisions in his business proactively where he affected 20, 30, 50% of his revenue and traded off acquiring new product lines that he would sell, that he knew would sustain and grow his business over time.

What would you do? Here is what Rob said:

Robert Hassold: Talking about some of the major pivots we went through, we were in the early days of additive manufacturing or 3d printing, and even back then, it wasn't even called 3d printing. It was called rapid prototyping. We Tried unsuccessfully twice to enter into that space, really picking the wrong vendors, the wrong partnerships, the wrong technology, and got beat up a little bit with two trials and picking up the technology.”

But eventually we got it right just about four and a half years ago, we pivoted from a single vendor, which was Stratasys to several different vendors. And at the time we did that, Stratasys was over 50% of our business. So imagine flicking a switch and losing 50% of your business overnight and the recurring revenue stream that goes along with that.

So it was quite a risky maneuver, but we wanted to address some of the positive changes occurring in the market and being able to address that. More high level production, manufacturing capability that was hitting the streets through other technology providers, such as HP, desktop metal and others.

David A Rosen:

I hope you found that Interesting. There's a lot more where that came from in this discussion with Rob. I hope you enjoy the program and let us know what you. Let's get to it.

00:03:00 CIMQUEST has many “Firsts” and developed being the #1 or #2 Global Reseller in Different Software and Hardware Markets

00:09:00 People are critical to success and that led to ensure that his teams and organizations were able, interested and committed to numerous changes they made to succeed and grow

00:17:00 Pivots… Lots of them

• Rob has proactively pivoted his business several times and picked up new products and product lines while flicking the switch and getting rid of others…
• Rob discusses his thinking, expectations, time to recover and more

00:20:46 Embrace Partners and Good Relationships. They are few and far between

00:24:58 Challenges in the 3D Printing, Additive Manufacturing Space Today

00:28:46 High Growth 3D Printing Marketplace is booming…

00:32:39 3DPrinting works great for Prototyping, but not a first choice for medium to large scale manufacturing.

0035:27 An Analogy on Market Adoption: 3D Printing and Autonomous Trucks

00:36:26 Dealing with Inflection Points

00:36:50 Keeping Up with Market Trends is Critical as a Business Leader

00:38:00 Rapid Shift from On-Premise Software to the Cloud was a big Inflection Point

00:40:12 Rob Share his Leadership Dynamics and Values for Success as a CEO

00:41:51 Speaking of Heroes. Jack Welch from GE and Elon Musk (Rob was one of the first Tesla Buyers in his town)

00:45:43 Private Company Governance and Value Thoughts

00:50:06 Post Pandemic Business Leadership