EW 011 – How To Grow Your Business To A National Level With The Right Acquisition – How CEO Mike Schoenberger And His Team Got A Win For Sunco

Gordon Sheppard (00:01.243)
Mike, welcome to the show.

Michael Schoenberger (00:04.44)
Thank you. Happy to be here.

Gordon Sheppard (00:06.437)
Well, it's really good to have you here because we've got, know, CEO I think I saw since 2020 with the pedigree in behind your family business. And so many people are gonna be able to learn from you here today. You know, not only with your leadership experience, but you'll be talking, I know, about sort of one of the biggest wins you've got in the work that you do. But before we get to it, a lot of people here don't know you. So if you had to describe yourself at a party, what would you say?

Michael Schoenberger (00:30.638)
Depends on the type of party, but if we're talking about a business party, then you know, Mike Schoenberger, I'm the CEO and founder of Sunco Communications. We've been in business 25 years. I'm a lover of nature, love to go outside, curious human. I love learning, whether it be through podcasts, books, and entrepreneurship is a huge passion of mine. So anything to do with systems, processes, learning, coaching, mentoring, that's who I am.

Gordon Sheppard (00:59.037)
I know in our pre-interview, think, I don't know how many book titles flew out and possible education opportunities. Where does this passion for, I'm gonna say leadership or entrepreneurial learning come from?

Michael Schoenberger (01:12.046)
That's a really good question. I would say, you know, I've always been curious ever since I, you know, I remember my dad telling me as a kid growing up, but you know, I would always ask why, why, why, why, why. And he would always answer my questions and the patience. So I've always had that curiosity. And then I think when we started EOS probably in 2017,

book called Traction and the Entrepreneurial Operating System, it really started to see the quest of learning and what it could do and the power and then started reading you know from the fiction, the fun books to more the business, business books, self-help books and then you you just you learn by growing and the more you grow the more you want to learn because what else don't I know and so that's that's kind of where it came to.

Gordon Sheppard (02:03.036)
Well, and I have to say it's infectious. remember getting off our call and just sort of getting a chance to know you for just a few minutes there and then learning about this passion that simply I can see for you. And again, this is so great for the people that are listening to the show is that it just never gonna stop. It sounds like an ongoing process for you. And again, whether it's in your business setting, it sounds like we could go talk all day long about some of the things that are happening in your life as well. But the reason that we're here,

is the first question that we always ask here. If you had to describe one of your biggest wins in business in the last couple of years, what would it be and how would you describe it?

Michael Schoenberger (02:36.556)
Yeah, I love this question and in order to give you the appropriate answer, I need to take you on a bit of a time machine back a little bit. And so when Sunco started, originally bought the business from my dad in September 1st of 2000, my wife and I did, and it was a truck, the materials in it, and a contract to a company at the time that was called Tye Communications. And they were a national telecommunications company, right?

Existed right across Canada had offices in every major center and we were Edmonton's primary contractor We did cabling we did installations and it was you know My cousin Sean myself and my wife did all the books and marketing and all that kind of stuff And we had that contract for a long long time and fast forward to September of 2025 so it'd be 2023 and we got a request

from one of the leaders from that same organization that was now Zale. So they got bought out a bunch of times with that company that we started in business contracting to approach us to buy their on-premise PBX business and about 650 active contracts.

And this was really serendipitous because that's how we got started in the industry becoming a contractor to actually selling equipment and doing all the things that we've done through our exponential growth over these last 25 years. And so was a really cool process to actually buy the remnants of the business that we started with. And it enabled us at the same time. had another huge win around the same time where we won.

the largest contract we'd ever won with 10,000 phones in Ontario for a government organization. So there's two really big wins that help support each other at the same time. But I think really the significance of the story is that beginning of where it came from and how things came full circle. And we got 16 amazing employees with long tenure that are now part of our Sunco family.

Gordon Sheppard (04:46.106)
Isn't that remarkable? So you know what the origin story is. There's your dad and there's a sort of a few people and you're sort of doing your thing 25 years ago ish. And then, you you have this long-term contract, but that contract, the company that owned it, bought out, bought out, bought out, grew, grew, grew. And then whatever that entity was came back to you in 2023 and asked you to buy out this bigger part. And that was sort of a really coming full circle in a sense for the expertise that you had obviously demonstrated over that long period of time, which is.

obviously would be a great business case in and of itself, because that's a pretty big confidence, you know, to build up with these people to be the ones that get asked to do that very thing. Is that fair?

Michael Schoenberger (05:25.74)
Yeah, and it was a bit of a bidding process and then we got shortlisted and yeah, to have that whole process and go through that was exceptional. And you know, the thing about timing is really cool is we closed the deal on March 31st, 2024. So literally a week from now. you know, timing is kind of everything and even the timing of this conversation is really cool. it's, know, they, ZEO is a billion dollar company and this is one little division.

that they sold to us because it really wasn't in their core business anymore and it well into ours.

Gordon Sheppard (05:59.847)
Fantastic. And so if you had to describe your win kind of, you know, with that setup now, if you had to describe your win in one sentence or a couple sentences, what would the win be? How would you describe it?

Michael Schoenberger (06:12.13)
The win, purchasing of the ZEOS PBX division transformed Sunco into a national telecommunications company. So we're no longer an Alberta based business, we're now a national based business with exceptionally large customers right across Canada.

Gordon Sheppard (06:29.702)
That's a very different type of organization to lead, to go from single sort of jurisdiction footprint to multi-jurisdiction. What was that transition like for you?

Michael Schoenberger (06:40.106)
Yeah, it was actually really easy because we've been doing little pockets. We service customers right across Canada for many years. It wasn't permanent in the hospitality industry. But this is now having bodies and having people and staff and knowledgeable and experienced staff right across the country was transformational. We've got the largest expertise in Mitel in Canada. And it's opened up some doors to...

to really continue our growth. We've been 20 to 30 % growth year over year for the last 10 years.

Gordon Sheppard (07:17.82)
That is a rocket ship and no wonder you're reading as many books as you have, because scaling obviously as a leader, you know, takes a lot of inputs from so many different places and you're obviously putting those things in place. We know what the win is. And what I love to do now is bring in what I call the anatomy of a win, which is to examine the strategy, the work plan, the people, the operations and the results behind that win. So it's an acquisition and you're in the bidding process. What was the strategy? When we look at your sort of your or your leadership team's vision, values, mission in a sense, goals.

strategy in a sense. mean, you didn't, I'm gonna guess maybe you didn't have to do this. Maybe you did or you didn't. What was the strategy though to pull the trigger and get this done?

Michael Schoenberger (07:58.092)
Yeah, that's a really complicated question and there's lots of different pieces to that. So happy to dig into it. So I heard you mentioned vision values. We're all about that in our business. It's all about, know, our vision is to make business communications easier for our clients by there being their trusted systems integrator. So it had to align with that. Our values are we bring out the best in each other. We embrace change. We do what it takes. We do the right thing and we're accountable to the outcome. So all of their people had to align with that.

Right? And we have three uniques that make us unique in this industry, our commitment to personal touch, commitment to delivering quality, and using our knowledge and experience, really to do the above, which is make business communications easier for our clients. So this acquisition had to align with that. And the most complex part of this, if we didn't have that history that I explained from, you know,

buying the business for my dad and knowing the type of business and the people that were in it, this would have been a very difficult acquisition because we didn't know the names of the 25 year plus employees we were getting until the week of the acquisition was done, the pricing negotiated. We didn't know the names of the customers that were going to become our customers until the week of closing. We knew how much revenue, we knew approximate, you know, tenure skill set training.

but we did not know the actual individuals. So it was a pretty big leap of faith that we had to take based on our trust in our culture and our values and our vision, knowing what we knew from working with the companies for so long that it was gonna be a values alignment.

Gordon Sheppard (09:39.623)
Thank you for the masterclass in having your values and your three takeaways roll off so easily. You said it so effortlessly. I can tell you 90 % of leaders do not have a handle on, you know the discipline that it takes. You you mentioned you got into the traction zone and you know the discipline that it takes to get it to be that clear. And my guess is if it's that clear, it was resonating that those values resonate for your entire staff. And then

Maybe just a question in there because you said these other people had to align. How long did it take sort of the culture shift or the culture absorption in a sense for them to come into alignment with you knew your must haves?

Michael Schoenberger (10:21.773)
Yeah, I'm super proud of our company and who we are and our culture because it didn't take very long. And there's a couple of reasons why. One, a lot of them were familiar with us once they found out who we were. So they've been familiar with us because of that long-term relationship. So they were excited. And they were in a division in their previous business that really was a second thought. And they didn't get a lot of attention. And their thought was the division was going to be wound down. And they were going to get packages and be done.

And a lot of them have gone, their life has been revitalized, they're having fun at work again. And they're feeling important and needed and recognized. And how we did that is one, we have really clear systems and processes on our onboarding where we, you they meet every leader, all the different leaders in business. We talk about our values, we talk about what all the different business units do.

And then the second and the most important and crucial piece is we have, I hold a weekly call with all staff. It's a video call over teams like this for 30 minutes. And it's our own internal podcast. And we call it 30 minutes with Mike. And the intent is, is we do an interview, like 15 fun facts where we kind of get, just get to know one-on-one interviews side by side of each employee. So they all have an opportunity to learn about.

SENTENCO staff and then even some of the people that they'd worked side by side with for 20 years learned some things that they didn't do. And then every other week I bring in guest speakers for an informative on how to get 1 % improvement. So we have a really strong focus on culture and connection here. My whole thing is really human connection can change your life and that's why I believe in personal development and business development. So I think that comes through in this transition and that's helped with the adoption of our culture.

Gordon Sheppard (12:13.062)
Isn't that remarkable? How lucky that we have in you a leader that is sort of walking the talk. That investment in communication, you know the value of it because you're doing it. But that takes time, right? That's not something that you sort of show up with in one week and kind of get that to occur. That is a multi-year process. You can hear that you're layering things on. You can hear the confidence. So nice to hear you on this end of what you're describing as your systems processes, your onboarding. The confidence is really very clear in your voice. And so I'll just back up.

There's so many strands here to talk about, but so lovely that you had this strategy. You understood the numbers, but you didn't understand the people till the week before. But then thankfully, again, that alignment came along and it came along relatively quickly and people got a new lease on life. They were sort of carved out of a multinational into a smaller operation, but one that would embrace them and give them the opportunity to really.

be excited about what they're doing and, you know, get into what you're doing. In the meantime, you've got this communication opportunity that you're doing. And so no wonder you said it was a complex sort of scenario, but we got off on the strategy piece. So thank you for explaining all the details. The second step is if we have a strategy, we need a work plan. I mean, we've got, there's some, at some moment there's like, you know, will you kick the tires and buying our company? They're like, put the timeline out here. There's a date where that sort of starts to think. And then you got to think about things and then you got to whatever, go back and forth, get some terms going. Maybe there's things to look into. Take me through maybe some of the highlights.

in this acquisition that would help us kind of understand the big moments.

Michael Schoenberger (13:38.498)
Yeah, so we hired, this is our second acquisition, the first time we didn't hire an &A company. And we had some challenges with it, and let's just say that we got some amazing people from it, and we got a whole bunch of opportunities for learning through pain, but sometimes those are the best opportunities for learning, and that's a conversation for another time. So we learned from that, and we hired &A right from the beginning.

So we hired a third party independent consultant that helped us from even the letter of intent. So when we got, we got a pitch deck that gave us a small amount of information, but we filled it in with the gaps that we knew. So we created a letter of intent with an offer. And then we were chosen for exclusive negotiations based on our letter of intent and our offer. And they helped us negotiate. They created the numbers, they created forecasting.

We had our CFO involved. We had our director of sales involved. How are we going to talk? We had our marketing person involved. So really, it's a multifaceted with all of our key leaders involved in the process. Weekly meetings, team meetings to make sure that we're all on the same page. And then it's a matter of there's a leading up to to say, OK, this deal is going to happen. Then you have to negotiate with the bank. And there's all the fun stuff to do when you're

dealing with this and should we do earn-outs or what does the deal structure look like? But then you move into the next stage which is, you know, holy crap, the deal's done, now what do we do? So I'll pause there and let you pull on any strings that you choose to pull on.

Gordon Sheppard (15:11.676)
That's fantastic. you're thankfully at a warmup sort of acquisition in a sense to get sort of get to this one and get it right. And isn't that really an entrepreneurial thing to go through those different peaks and valleys as we sort of get to what we kind of need to do. There's this thing of you've got this good sort of guide outside guidance in a sense with your &A hire that you did to bring you along the way. Plus really enjoyed, it wasn't just you sort of ego driven, you really involved your leadership team.

I was fascinated with that. remember in our pre-interview, you're like, why was that so important to get your key leaders involved at every step of the way?

Michael Schoenberger (15:46.414)
Yeah, you know, it's essential in any business, you know, as an entrepreneur. My cousin Sean that I, you know, said started when he was 14, we started, he's our president today, I'm the CEO and visionary. And we work side by side and we've worked side by side for 25 years. So one, it's important that we're on the same page and we're aligned and he's kind of in charge with operations and the running of the business. But it's...

We only know what we know and so when we got to you know one million dollar company, three million, five million, eight million, twelve million, fifteen and now we're over twenty. Our knowledge and expertise is different so you need to bring in experts and you need to bring in people that have different perspectives and you know sometimes our leadership team has changed over the years because as you grow it changes but knowing when that time is and it's it's always worked very well but it's

The number one thing we've done through this whole journey is involve other people because what do you see that I'm missing? And so you help fill in the gaps for each other so you get a much clearer picture of what the net or end result could be.

Gordon Sheppard (16:53.372)
That sounds like profitable humility to me in terms of bringing in those right people at the right moment. I love it. I hope that people take that one nugget away just to make sure they get those right people involved no matter what stage they're at and avoid some of maybe some of your earlier pain that is for another podcast. So we've got a strategy, we've got a work plan, we've signed some highlights along the way. We sort of got to that acquisition point and then there's the post acquisition obviously. The third step I like to talk about in the anatomy of Winni is the people.

And you've already shed so much light on the people. If we had to talk about, again, the key people, their roles, but maybe we don't need to dwell on that too much because we've heard quite a bit about it, but how would you say everybody's attitude was? Like, was it sunshine and roses from the beginning? Was there ups and downs? Or was there a cheerleader in there? Who were sort of the key people and what were their attitudes? How would you describe them?

Michael Schoenberger (17:41.646)
Yeah, so key people and attitudes. First of all, the attitudes was pretty positive, but apprehensive because they had come from, you know, winding down, maybe I'm going to get a package and retire to now I'm expected full steam ahead and I'm a lot busier than I used to be. And, you know, so we had brand new laptops that had to ship up. So it was a bit of a coordinating nightmare. The transition day, it was like,

March 31st was their last day with their old company. April 1st, funny enough, was their first day with Sunco. And so had to ship them new laptops with new logins to be able to configure. that's, know, our operations are, Jeff Wilson, our director of operations for Canada. He was really good in RIT. Our IT manager was there making sure the technology was set up, the laptops were all working. So they just had to pop them open, log in and all their tools they needed to do their...

to do their job were there. We had a completely different ticketing system than they were used to, right? So now you not only have to solve customer problems, but you have to learn new systems. So onboarding was crucial. So our HR department was key. Really, every single department had a part to play in it. Marketing communications was super important. That very first week we had marketing communication that went out to all 650 customers, letting them know of the...

Transaction and this is what you can expect. This is her to contact us. Setting up the emails and phone numbers. There was lots of moving pieces because this was a big acquisition. But I know we nailed it and it just wasn't one person. It was everybody working together.

Gordon Sheppard (19:19.484)
Well, that's, and again, it's from start to finish. How many months was the total process? 12 months, 24 months?

Michael Schoenberger (19:25.962)
No, was, we started in September of 2023 and the deal closed in the end of March, April 1st, right? March 31st was a close in 2020.

Gordon Sheppard (19:36.412)
Pretty quick turnaround for that type of thing. I mean, you had to put your head to the pillow somewhere over Christmas time and getting into the new year and whatever. What was it like for you personally during those months?

Michael Schoenberger (19:46.744)
Yeah, luckily, you know, it was a little bit stressful, but surprisingly not because, you know, we had just a belief in what we were doing. And even though there was lots of unknowns, we were just following the process and trusting the numbers and trusting like the &I guys and trusting our CFO and trusting our ability to be able to deliver, you know, and knowing that

that we would be able to make it through the other side. I don't know, a belief, you know, from Ted Lasso, that belief sign there. I don't know if it's, I think it's innate in our culture to believe. So, you know, even though there was, you know, last minute calls at Christmas week and changing the structure and a couple of conference calls, because the deal, they originally wanted it done by the end of December. So, you know, it stretched on a little bit longer, but, you know, you just kind of go with the process. And if you put...

You know, the thing I've learned through business and all these years, if you put definitive boxes around things, you can set yourself up to fail. So you gotta be able to flex and move depending on the situation and adapt, right? That's how you can really succeed and win. And that's one of the things we learned from the first time around.

Gordon Sheppard (21:00.252)
Must be nice for the folks around you. You're bringing a calm, certainly to the description of the process. And I know when you're in it, it wouldn't be as easy to have this kind of ease. I know you've got retrospection and you're lucky to be able to look back right now. But that belief, so are you the Ted Lasso of your gang? Is that what it is?

Michael Schoenberger (21:18.51)
Yeah, probably I'm a bit of a culture person. I don't get too fussed. You don't see me get angry very often. You know, it's kind of what I do. The more that you can trust and believe in yourself and be happy and, you know, kind of, I like to say you have to love yourself. And if you do that, then everything else comes along for the ride. know, so much time you have negative self-talk and I should have done this, I should have done that. And knowing that...

Trusting yourself to always know you make the best decision you can in the moment with the information you have. And so that goes surrounding yourself with really strong people to help you make sure that you're making the best decision with all the information you have.

Gordon Sheppard (22:00.646)
Boy, you can hear that resonating all the way through and earned all the way through all the people along with your communication that you're doing on a weekly basis. What a great investment. Again, another best practice that people listening can take away from your great story. We talked about the strategy, we talked about the work plan, got into the people. We heard operationally, there's things in place here. You said it, we had to set up the deal, we had to do our due diligence, we had to get laptops moving at the breakneck speed to turn the lights on like in a short.

period of time. Are those some of the major operational highlights, any that we've missed?

Michael Schoenberger (22:33.154)
Yeah, those are all the biggest ones because we didn't know the names of the people or the address of where they lived. So you have to coordinate purchasing the laptops before the deals finalized and then get them to release the names and the addresses a week early, but make sure they don't ship up ship and arrive too early because it's anyway, it was it was a bit interesting, but we managed to pull it all off. And then, you know, the communication of the customers and because some of the customers were large government entities.

going through that you don't realize the sign off it takes. They have to approve the transition. They have to approve us as a company that's willing to, that they'll allow to take over the contract. And large, like some really, really large hospitals that we now look after, large, you know, government institutions and government buildings. So there's security and there's all sorts of those things that you have to deal with.

Gordon Sheppard (23:27.132)
had to really ramp up on many different areas. again, there's the &A details, there's these client requirements that you had to kind of jump through. I remember doing work with the Canadian military one time and there was a lot of hoops to jump through just to even get in the room to do the work. And it wasn't certainly the most complicated part of what they were doing, but I had to go through all those things too, not at the scale that you're talking about. the, I love, so operationally you got through it and again, that laptop one alone is like its own sort of.

whatever Walmart distribution miracle or whatever it is that you've got kind of going in the background, along with that person that you mentioned on your team who was able, it sounds like to handle it quite well. So we got through the strategy, the work plan, the people, the operations. Finally, there's the results. So if you had to measure, I'm gonna say the qualitative and the quantitative results, what are the results that you like to talk about from having pulled off this acquisition?

Michael Schoenberger (24:18.176)
Yeah, so a ton. One, we got an amazing compliment of people with lots of skills. So it upped our game to be the number one partner for MyTel in Canada. It gave us access and credibility, really. So when you look at Sunco, it's been a small Alberta based company that when we started, Sean and I and my wife in a truck and a material and a contract, right?

And we used to get when we were responding to RFPs what's the biggest deal that you'd work for. And even when we responded and we won that large RFP, it was about five times the biggest RFP we'd ever won up to that point. But the credibility that it now gives us that we're a national company, we're getting more national contracts, we're getting more visibility to say, yeah, they can do that. We've always believed we could do that, but now the market believes and now the proof is in there. So it gives us...

legitimizes us as a national entity and a national communications company because people ask me all the time, who's your biggest competitors? And our biggest competitors is TELUS, Bell, Rogers, RingCentral, all the big telcos, And they've, you know, we're this little $20 million company that has like 63, 65 employees and, you know, a billion dollar organizations, right? How do you possibly complete with that? We do.

and we do very well.

Gordon Sheppard (25:43.165)
There's something secret sauce in there, right? You just said, we swim with the whales or whatever it is, if you wanna call it that way. And there's something that you're doing unique, but you can hear the uniqueness all the way through our conversation. I'm so, I just, if you don't mind, can you humor me and just, cause your values roll off your tongue. Can you just say your values again, if you can just recall them so that I know what they are, the company values? The company values?

Michael Schoenberger (26:05.922)
We bring out the best in each other. Yeah. Yeah. So we bring out the best in each other. We embrace change. We do what it takes. We do the right thing. And lastly, we're accountable to the outcome.

Gordon Sheppard (26:19.854)
I think it's there, the foundational work that you've done. You can hear that you as a leader have done your own foundational work, which then emanates out to the people that you work with. You've got those long internal leadership partnerships where you would know each other well and obviously compliment each other well for having built out that leadership team. You've taken on the systems and the processes. You now are able to onboard. I'm guessing this may not be your last acquisition somehow or whatever in terms of how things are going for.

for the future. If you had to sort of put a bow on this win and sort of give a summary of how you would want to convey it to somebody, what's the sort of the last sort of comment that you'd like to make about it before we get out of here?

Michael Schoenberger (26:47.317)
not

Michael Schoenberger (27:00.616)
Never assume anything about what's put in front of you. Because if you were to look at this deal just by what was given in the SIM, right, the deal structure, most businesses would have said no. So it's asking questions, being curious, and digging into things, and sometimes we had the ability of having that experience and the knowledge and the road that we got up until the acquisition.

So we knew a bunch of things about the company we were buying that weren't in the information package that was given to us. And so there was lots of good out of it. There was a little bit of bad. We lost a couple of the really big contracts and there was a few things that didn't quite work out. But, you know, being curious and not assuming that you know everything is the best way to go into any situation or wins. And then really ultimately...

really dig into and learn from your failures and what didn't work and then also celebrate the wins and look back and see how far you know we're just about a year into the transaction and we've actually hired three people that they had laid off prior so three other of their employees on top of the 16 that are incredibly great employees that have come to us and approached us because they heard how great we were to work for and we've hired them.

So, you know, if you're a great company and you care about your people and you invest in your people and you invest in, you know, your customers to deliver quality and value, it will always work.

Gordon Sheppard (28:37.545)
say it any better. Thank you so much for being on the show. really appreciate it.

Michael Schoenberger (28:43.17)
Yeah, my pleasure. And I'm really grateful for the opportunity. was an awesome conversation. I truly enjoyed it.

Thank you so much.