Acquisition Stories – Eric Willin, EZFacility

by | Nov 30, 2021 | North American Operations, Vertical - Fitness, Leisure & Sports, Why Sell To Jonas?

Eric Willing EZFacility

We caught up with Eric Willin, the former President of EZFacility, and current Portfolio Manager at Jonas Software, to talk about the acquisition process for EZFacility and what life looks like post-acquisition.

 

 

George:

Eric, thank you for taking the time to meet with us today. Really appreciate it.

Eric:

Glad to do so.

George:

Could you tell us a little bit of background on EZFacility?

Eric:

EZFacility is a complete business management software. It’s primarily in the sports and fitness market. It serves thousands of clients from multisport facilities to sports training businesses, personal training businesses and gyms from large to small.

Their main features are membership management, field, league, and court scheduling. They also do registrations, point of sale, and more.

George:

How is the idea for EZFacility conceived?

Eric:

My business partner and I had a background in conference room scheduling for businesses that use video conferencing. It would automatically launch the video calls and schedule the conference rooms.

We took that knowledge and we had a friend who ran an indoor sports facility, one of those indoor sports domes, and they had no way to schedule their fields and courts. We took that and we came up with a scheduling solution for them. Eventually, that led into getting into the sports industry pretty big. We had a great relationship with U.S. Indoor Soccer at the time, and from there, it really took off.

One of our sports clients actually had a need to schedule personal trainers, which we didn’t do at the time. We added some features around that, and that eventually became our gym management software.

George:

Can you walk us through any of the early days of the company? Do you have any interesting stories to share?

Eric:

We started out in my one-bedroom, tiny one-bedroom apartment in Long Beach, New York. I had a very patient wife. We had two tiny desks and two small laptops.

It took nearly two years to get the company off the ground and running. That relationship with U.S. Indoor Soccer was really the key to us expanding in that market and eventually getting out of that apartment into an actual office space.

George:

Let’s shift focus now to some more M&A-specific questions. How did you discover Jonas Software?

Eric:

We had met Jonas at various times at different trade shows and events. They came up to our booth and we talked about everything Jonas had to offer what they do.

At the time, we weren’t quite ready to look to being acquired, but they were always an interest to us.

George:

How did Jonas compare to some of the other acquirers that you were approached by?

Eric:

It came down to the Jonas strategy. The buy and hold promise, keeping businesses autonomous, their best practices, those are all big factors when comparing them to others who were looking to come in and flip the business for a profit.

You spend all this time building your baby and you really care about the future and what’s going to happen to it. That’s what always stuck out to us with Jonas.

George:

A material part of the purchase price for EZFacility was through an earn-out based on post-acquisition performance. Can you elaborate on this point and how it worked out for the company?

Eric:

We actually had two targets based off of net revenue for our earn-out. We had a two-stage earn-out and we successfully hit both of those. We actually hit them early.

George:

How has the acquisition affected the company as a whole?

Eric:

I believe we were about 10 employees at the time of acquisition, and I’d say approximately four years later we are up to 40. We also quadrupled our revenue.

It definitely opened up more career opportunities not only for myself but for the rest of the company. Any time any sort of challenge would arise, there is always someone at a fellow Jonas company who has been through it or has either made a certain mistake before that we could learn from or has successfully overcome that challenge and we could learn from that.

George:

At Jonas, as we often talk about our ABCs model that you’ve touched on as differentiators.

We have autonomy, our decentralized operating model, our buy and hold forever, which allows us to invest for the long term, and a culture of sharing best practices, which is learning from the Jonas or CSI family of software companies.

How is your experience aligned with these three differentiators?

Eric:

I’d say it aligned perfectly, and it really is a true story.

As I mentioned before, the autonomous model and decentralized model was great and led to a less stressful environment, especially with the stresses going into an acquisition.

Life really didn’t change much for the employees. The opportunities for career advancement…a great example of it is the current president of EZFacility, as I’ve now moved on to other positions, started as a product trainer within the company seven years prior. So he worked his way up to actually running the company over a fairly short course of time.

George:

Your career has grown tremendously since EZ Facility was acquired by Jonas.

Can you describe or go into detail a little bit about the progression of your role since the acquisition to date?

Eric:

I maintained myself as the president of EZFacility for a few years, and eventually, we acquired a great company that manages hockey arenas, named Frontline Solutions. Then we also acquired MiGym, which is a fitness-based app.

Both of those were rolled underneath EZFacility to become the EZ Group. Then I was a manager of the EZ Group. As of two years ago, I have become a portfolio manager here at Jonas and I have 10 different brands under me.

It’s really been a great experience. I look forward to what’s next.

George:

What tips and advice would you give to a business owner looking for a potential exit with Jonas?

Eric:

Definitely have to say it’s not all about the number.

You’ve likely spent years and countless late nights building up this business and you want to make sure it’s going to continue to thrive. Not only that, I’m sure you want to consider what the future holds for your employees.

I’ve not only seen EZFacility but other companies in my group, where that’s exactly what has happened. The companies have grown, the staff has grown, and the opportunities presented to our employees have just been fantastic.

Thank you Eric Willin for sharing your experiences. If you own a software business, we would love to learn more about your company. Feel free to reach out to learn more.

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