Quick WINs: Andrew McIntosh WINs by focusing on giving back to Entrepreneurs!

By Ian Richardson, Managing Partner, Richardson & Richardson Consulting

Podcast Season 1, Episode 18 Guest: Andrew McIntosh, Founder, 1stgen.biz

Andrew is a life-long tech enthusiast turned entrepreneur. For over 20 years he has been helping people overcome their business challenges through the effective use of technology. In 2006 he founded an IT company as a one-man show, built it up over a period of 15 years, and ultimately sold it in 2021. This journey brought him a wealth knowledge and experience that can’t be taught in schools.

His mission now is to help other entrepreneurs (especially 1st Gen’s, like himself) avoid many of the common mistakes that would set them back or put them at a disadvantage. He’s doing that by building a community that connects likeminded people, where they can all help each other overcome challenges and accelerate growth. You can learn more about it by visiting 1stGen.biz

Our conversation was awesome and engaging, and focused around the topics of developing new businesses and service offerings, selling a business, and building communities. As always, I took notes on the conversations, and I have those notes here for your reference and use as you see fit.

1. New businesses, new services: Andrew has started up a new business, which hit home effectively for me, and has been developing new service lines to support that business, which also hit close to home in my world. He and I dove into the “chicken and the egg” conversation that occurs during this process – How can you land those first clients without success stories around the offering that you have just developed? The conversation was heavily valuable, and the concept of being able to articulate the process you will utilize to ensure a successful outcome showed through the conversation and was adopted at R&R for some of our own offerings that are newly developed.
2. Selling a business: Andrew was a previous owned of a Managed IT Services company, much like myself, and sold that business in July of 2021, 5 months before my own transaction. Our conversation around selling a business and the emotional rollercoaster you go on up to, during, and after transaction was helpful for me – hearing that my experience was not unique in business ownership and that we all go through a similar bout of mental gymnastics was amazingly freeing. Andrew had great insights on what it felt like to be at the “formal end” of the process of transitioning out of his old business.
3. Building communities: Andrew’s new business is a community focused on helping 1^st generation entrepreneurs not only succeed, but to provide resources and experiences that can help them avoid some of the pitfalls and setbacks that those who have moved ahead of them experienced. The concept of a “pay it forward” community resonated with me, the impact of such a community is wide and deep in the entrepreneurial journey. The concept of making sure to create a space where those lessons that have been learned by a series of podcasts, webinars, and other mediums is an awesome impact on entrepreneurs, and I know Andrew will succeed.

I gain so much value from meeting with fellow entrepreneurs and leaders. Each and every person I speak with brings their own experiences, knowledge, and viewpoints to the table, and without fail, I walk away with a head full of ideas and motivation to do better in my own business. I so greatly appreciate Andrew’s willingness to come onto W.I.N. and share his story.

If you’re interested in joining me on an episode of W.I.N., it would be my privilege to host you. You can book your spot by visiting https://randr.consulting/connect and selecting the Podcast Booking option from the services menu. You can find previous episodes of W.I.N. on our website and subscribe to it on whatever your platform of choice is.

Always Forward,

Ian