The First Step Starts With Us
We can help you decide what’s next for you. And your company.
Leave A Legacy
SELLING YOUR BUSINESS
Selling your business isn’t easy. We know how hard you’ve worked, how much of your life you’ve invested in it. Now you’re thinking about options and what’s next. There’s excitement, stress and maybe even some guilt. We get it. We can help. It starts with a relationship built on trust, integrity and experience.
Make An Impact
JOIN OUR TEAM
Running a business is challenging. If you’ve always wanted to lead a company, why not earn the opportunity to lead one of ours? We’re always looking for dedicated, passionate people who believe they have what it takes.
What Our People Say
There was so much trust and confidence in dealing with Chenmark. Selling to them was the right decision for me.
Rarely in business do you get an opportunity to have such an impact with each and every project.
For any owner who’s looking to sell but wants to keep their dream alive while ensuring the well-being of their staff, talk to Chenmark.
Chenmark is a family business and we were a family business, so for us it was a great fit.
Weekly Thoughts
First Follower
When we started Chenmark, many thought we were a “lone nut” by quitting lucrative Wall Street jobs to “become landscapers in Maine”. As we have built out our company over the last five years, however, we have been lucky enough to attract a couple of first followers. These are the core team members who believe enough in what we are doing that they are willing to do something a bit different and join us in our pursuit of becoming the acquirer of choice for North American small businesses.
Nevermind Success
A couple of weeks ago, we wrote the about the lessons we learned from Sub Pop Records’ signing of Nirvana. This week, we wanted to highlight a related story, which has more to do with Nirvana than Sub Pop. Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman, Sub Pop’s founders, saw talent in Nirvana and figured out a way to sign the band and release their first album – Bleach – in 1989.
Still Eating Broccoli
We have been thinking a lot recently about silver bullets. Entrepreneurial culture tends to concentrate, for good reason, on examples of massive efficiency-creating technology or truly exceptional leadership. Uber represents a one-stop solution for local transportation just as Steve Jobs is credited with being a singular driving force behind the success of Apple.
Socks and Shoes
It’s no secret that we strongly emphasize financial and operational data internally. In fact, when we first purchase a company, the majority of our focus goes toward putting in place systems that allow us to gather accurate and timely performance information. We care not just about the results themselves but also that there is a degree of precision to the production of the reporting itself.
Signing Nirvana
This week we listened to a How I Built This podcast with Bruce Pavit and Jonathan Poneman, founders of Seattle based Sub Pop Records, the music label credited with popularizing the grunge music movement of the 1990s (you might recognize some of their bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden, Mudhoney, The Postal Service, The Shins).
The Quiet Eye
This week we learned about a phenomenon known as the “quiet eye”. Discovered by kinesiologist Joan Vickers, the quiet eye is an “enhanced visual perception that allows the athlete to eliminate any distractions as they plan their next move.” Basically, athletes with a quiet eye have a strikingly similar gaze pattern in key moments.
Just Say No
Unfortunately, one of the byproducts of managing through a crisis, or even a busy part of the season, is that forward visibility gets reduced and schedules get monopolized by urgent and important tasks. Put simply, it’s difficult to allocate a lot of time towards moving the business forward if you have to spend most of your available hours making sure everyone is healthy and able to show up for work
Recovery
As athletes, we are familiar with the notion that appropriate rest and recovery is a key factor in achieving our performance goals, and we structure our training accordingly. That said, we are not particularly good at striking that same balance in our professional lives.
Cats Meow, Dogs Bark
One of the largest challenges we face in building our team of small businesses is talent acquisition. Finding high integrity, effective people to lead our businesses is a tricky endeavor. We need people who can think long-term while maintaining a daily sense of urgency; push the big picture but understand the devil is in the details; delegate when necessary but jump into the weeds to get things done; revel in being small but think big.
Purposeful Stupidity
This week we stumbled upon a few articles which highlighted the potential benefits of stupidity. While most people (ourselves included) intuitively grasp the concept that understanding and effectiveness in any field are strongly correlated with the amount of knowledge one is able to acquire on the topic, there are exceptions to this rule, particularly when considering innovative and creative processes.