At 47, Justin Tennant is only two years removed from selling the medical supply company he bootstrapped from nothing, and he's already found something he didn't expect: it's harder to walk away from a business than it was to build one.

Justin Tennant grew up in a second-generation steel mill family in Weirton, West Virginia, where he learned that nothing is given, it's earned. After working full-time since age 16 and putting himself through the University of Pittsburgh, he spent five years inside the post-merger chaos of Bank of New York Mellon before deciding he was done grinding for someone else's paycheck. In 2009, he co-founded Surgical Product Solutions, an independent distributor that gave hospitals a smarter way to offload surplus, still-sterile medical devices before their shelf life expired. Fifteen years, 80 employees, and $40 million in annual revenue later, Justin exited through a sale to a Chicago private equity firm, and is now figuring out life on the other side of entrepreneurship.

Key Takeaways:

• Why understanding what your customer actually values (not what you assume they want) is the real foundation of trust-based selling
• How investing early in high-quality people created a "winning culture" that has outlasted ownership changes
• The hidden challenge of competing against giants like Johnson & Johnson without becoming a target
• Why timidity, not risk, is the biggest threat to a startup's early decision-making
• What it really feels like to transition out of a business you built from your kitchen table

About Justin Tennant:

Justin Tennant is an entrepreneur, investor and business advisor who specializes in helping founders navigate the entire business lifecycle, from boot-strapped launch to institutional exit. Drawing from his own journey as a start-up entrepreneur…building and selling his company, Surgical Product Solutions, to private equity in 2024, Justin now focuses on capital redeployment, asset consolidation, and teaching entrepreneurs how to build scalable systems that maximize enterprise value.

Connect:

Website www.tennantent.com
LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/justintennant

Marc Bernstein's Founders' Forum is brought to you by March Forward, LLC, and this episode is sponsored by The Satell Institute; the leading CEO organization dedicated to Corporate Social Responsibility. Go to satellinstitute.org to learn more.

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