Nick haska Dylan Ferguson welcome to acquiring minds hello thanks for having us you two have set out to do a regional rollup of generator dealers and servicers in California you've got the first acquisition done so we'll hear about that one uh as well as the whole thesis here uh what has you guys so excited about generators Nick let's start with you you've been on the podcast a few times including episode number six uh so I'm going to direct people there uh to get your full backstory but do give us the abbreviated version of your background and what led you here yeah so uh grew up in Minnesota went to school at MIT followed the trotten path of corporate uh management consulting startups corporate kind of did a Meandering path there got into small business in 2016 after a fa startup attempt and uh never looked back U bought a plant Service Company um got into um buying add-ons and then eventually got into doing some investing and then uh a few years ago decided it was time to do another try to do another platform after we exited our landscaping company and uh that has what has led us here to building on point generators and to be clear when you say exiting the landscaping business that's not the Plant Services business so Plant Services you acquired did some bolt-ons there then kind of and divested from the Commercial Landscaping division of our of our what was mostly a plantscaping business and that was I had you know spent time trying to build that outdoor Division and it worked okay but it was not um wasn't what I it wasn't the business I had hoped it would be and uh it was a very crowded market and so we just made the decision to sell that part the business and and sold that to a private Equity backed Commercial Landscaping company and that left me free to find something new and your partner in that Venture continues to be the operator president uh CEO of the Plant Services business the right Gardener it's called yep an new and I we set off together we were at the startup that failed together and we were available together and and so we've done this whole ride pretty much hand inand um every step of the way and he's uh and we're involved in everything that each other does cool thanks Nick Dylan tell us a little bit about yourself well um went to school mechanical engineering uh ran out of school jumped into uh the corporate world with eggs on mobile kind of came up in their systems learned how some of these bigger organizations operates uh mechanical engineering slowly kind of migrated towards operations and management and things like that uh continue my career I always thought i' i' continue to climb that kind of corporate America ladder and uh stick with that and it wasn't only until a few years ago I even really found out about you know ETA and the SMB Community um and really dove in you know with both Feats on Twitter reading all the books like most people do and uh about a year and a half ago my wife and I maybe even a little bit more kind of made the conscious decision that we were going to maybe take a shot at this thing and right around that same time just you know through mutual contacts on on Twitter somebody reposted one of Nick's tweets and I ended up following him and and reaching out um and the Tweet was about his thesis on this this generator company and so I decided to reach out to him and I said hey you know I might be a good candidate to come in on this thing with you and uh one thing led to another and like most Millennials you know what started on the internet uh evolved into what's now a partnership I guess and Dylan just in terms of your own kind of motivations trajectory since you were somebody who saw yourself going through a corporate career basically for the duration what was it that derailed you yes you hear about ETA but why do you think it resonates so much if if you were comfortable in corporate basically probably anyone who came up like I did you know once they get to a certain level in their career um they start to realize that hey you know I could probably go out and and do this on my own you know what I mean like what what's stopping me from going out and trying and it was really just a lack of understanding you know coming up in that corporate world you know I didn't even know this this whole Community existed and you know Twitter really opened up my eyes to what was out there and and what was available and uh that was really what led to us jumping in and giving this thing a shot great and what are your respective titles what does it look like I guess my title is coo um Nick and I you know we've been talking for nine months to a year before we landed this uh this first company and so we were pretty clear on what our roles would be um my role at the company is is everything operations so day-to-day people implementing processes and procedures that you know would directly affect operations and and Nick basically handles everything else and in the growth side of things great okay Nick what was the contents of this tweet so I had done this before uh and I did it with uh saddled with debt uh and financially personally guaranteed completely strung out uh and I was like I'm not doing that again uh and I didn't do it that way with Landscaping either um I realized that yeah I wanted to h i I didn't want to do it alone like I've never wanted to do this alone and I knew the moment that Anu and I divided our responsibilities I was going to feel pretty alone in the seat um and I wanted to find somebody appear uh and recruit somebody who would be a good compliment to my skill set um and do it in in a true like partnership uh Arrangement um and you know I talked to a lot of people I and I used Twitter as a as one of the recruiting vehicles um and um and just seemed like working with Dylan was going to be like really the perfect fit of what I was looking for in a in a partner um to wrestle this thing to ground um and uh and so yeah here we are working together and to to be clear this tweet was just a recruiting tweet or you were also laying out your vision your thesis for generators I actually don't remember I think I had posted as like I'm looking for an operator of sorts um but it can be for the right person the right person is going to be a person who is more than an operator they're a a partner in the venture and so that's really what I set out to find was another operating partner who would be mostly focused on this you know at least for a while Focus 100% on this this person would be my successor My Chosen successor as CEO should that ever you know I want somebody who want who wants to grow into my job well I want to um take a self-serving uh digression here for a minute because to tie this into Smith list list which is the job board that we recently launched for Nick people like you to find Dyan people like you and to make these pairings happen um and so so it's it's basically a job board for operators uh and GMS and presidents but really really kind of more entrepreneurially minded uh GMS um and operators in my own thesis with Smith list there's a subtlety there that um because it's not just GM it's a GM an entrepreneurial GM I've started kind of calling it now that word entrepreneurial gets thrown around every job has you know we want you every job description says we want somebody entrepreneurial no but really this needs to be that so um Dylan for you if you were enter if you were entertaining buying your own business um what about working with Nick uh instead scratched whatever entrepr purely entrepreneurial itch you had yeah you know for anybody out there considering this I mean finding a partner is difficult but I think buying a business by yourself is even more difficult than that you know coming from somebody from you know the corporate world like I said you know I thought I had what it took to buy a business on my own but there was just so much I didn't know you know what I mean and I'd read the books and the podcast and all these different things you know what I mean my skill set is in operations and coming into this as a partner with Nick and being able just to focus on the operations and not have to worry about all the things that Nick does you know I think is allowed us to grow a lot quicker than than most people would and be a lot more successful than most people would so if you can find a partner that you can trust and that you work well with and that you know complimentary skill sets I think it's the way to go I think it's it's really the way to go and Dylan is this also one of these where it's just a matter of breaking breaking out what your skills are versus ni so you said like your skills are really in operations does that mean that the idea like of of the financial piece of of doing a deal the searching and and actually closing a deal was something that was didn't appeal to you or am I maybe stretching there no that that's exactly right you know it was one of those things that I knew I was going to have to do if I was going to go down that road but it was not something that I was interested in probably not something that I'm even that great at um you know I can get by like most people but uh like I said just being able to focus on what I'm good at and let Nick handle everything else has been you know real Saving Grace for me well thank you for that digression guys um okay now let's go Circle back to the thesis uh Nick what is what what is the thesis please yeah so our thesis is that basically we're betting against the incumbent utilities uh ability to solve the fundamental issues surfacing in the electric infrastructure structure systems um and that's for a variety of reasons um you've got climate change you've got endof life issues you've got electrification you've got migration and movement patterns of where where load and where where people are going and where pockets of electrical demand are going um everything is straining this system in a way that it's never been strained before um and what's that how that's manifesting is eight continuous years of worse reliability performance on the electric grid Nationwide um and it's been particularly acute in California over the last two to three years and the result of that is people have no choice if they want consistent reliable power which they want more than ever before because they are constantly switching over from liquid fuels to electrified appliances devices Etc uh if they want to continue to live their electrified lives or go more electrified they are more and more depend than ever before and backup power is the only way to solve that problem in our opinion and what that's going to create is this step change in demand uh for a service that has been around for a long time I mean there's generator companies all over um and there's lots of little mom and pop generator companies but the almost all of them are extremely busy and and like could be way busier if they had the ability to recruit recruit systematize Drive productivity drive performance and many of them aren't set up that way because they grew up in a different time uh and so our thesis was could we build a fundamentally more scalable higher performing platform than anybody's ever built before and start starting here in California um by assembling a set of incumbents and and standing on the shoulders of the very good businesses that came before us that were just in a different time M and modernizing them and growing them and putting them together into an integrated ho um with the full range of of installation and kind of full life cycle services around the the generator or really more broadly the backup power system not just the generator tell us more about what a a quote generator company is and does give us a picture so um I split it into four quadrants you got commercial and Industrial which are business consultant Nick that's right you can take them out of Consulting but you can't take the consultant out of them uh can't take the 2 by two out of the consultant that's right yeah uh I even presented the 2 by two to the team this morning uh so there's the commercial industrial side and there's the residential side the commercial industrial side is driven by basically business necessity and regulation um those are really the two fundamental Planks on the regulation side you got uh you know mandates for every Telco tower has got to have a backup generator every Skilled Nursing Facility has got to have a backup generator all broadcast media radio towers TV towers um so there's all this basically class of of critical infrastructure that uh is deemed a necessity uh and it you know rightfully is a necessity to have backup power in place um that drives a whole business around installation service and maintenance the full life cycle of a generator um increasingly batteries as well um to provide an uninterruptible power supply or shortterm um short-term needs the residential side is mostly weather driven it can also be a little bit Health driven you've got people with um you know sensitive equipment or um or basically needs for continuous always on power uh living in places where the power can go out for six days uh in the winter or in I mean here in the winter or in the summer um and you've got increasingly those folks uh dependent on backup power companies and so yeah we full life cycle of service you can call us and we can put together a project for you um design the project permit the project come and install the generator and then we'll come back on on a maintenance cycle that is appropriate for your the system you have and the needs that you have in terms of how how critical um and so really that's it you got the the install side and the service side and then you've kind of got the two segments the business side and the residential side feels like that's how so many of these small businesses break down yep installation service commercial residential and uh what what part of the business what percentage of the business is residential in terms of Revenue or generally I guess it depends on the business but it varies a lot so and I think it varies a lot by region so um the first business we acquired is contis generator and it was a mostly residential Focus because it's more of a residential Community there's not a lot of heavy industry you know if you go into the heavy industrial Pockets like most of the generators business is going to be is going to be heavy industrial if you're in Texas or you're in the midwest or the South or the southeast um but you know the the residential side was pretty much invented by gener um they were the ones to commercialize in Mass Market the residential backup generator um and they've had um these moments of of Glory in terms of uh filling a really really important Market need around major major weather events when people get power knocked out for for weeks at a time Hurricane Sandy hurricane Irma Harvey um and California was actually these last two years these last two Winters have been have been Monumental in terms of driving demand for on the residential side whereas the commercial side it's more uh driven by the facilities need as well as the regulation around specific facilities uh and what their backup requirements are and so your thesis doesn't have you picking commercial industrial versus residential you're going after both because typically I feel like there's one it's one or the other when when there's a thesis at play but not in your case no I think we're we're trying to do both and residential is a good on-ramp and a good training ground and for the technicians it provides a good career path um to grow their skills and um and I mean generally the business and Industrial you as the generator goes bigger the complexity goes up the criticality goes up the stakes go up uh and so it creates actually a really nice kind of built-in pathway for your for your technicians uh to grow their skills they can start on the residential side and and and um and gain skills and um and as they gain skills earn more and uh do more critical work the and just to give people a picture for the residential side what does one of these cost and then what does it cost to service and what's the life cycle like is it basically kind of like your HVAC unit sort of thing yeah you want to hit it down you know we we benefit a lot from the area that we're located in being being the Bay Area um and we cater to high-end uh luxury homes uh where we're located here so you know on the very low end you know your typical gener unit or your typical Coler unit whatever it may be um you might be looking at $20,000 for full installation and that can go up to you know a few hundred, you know we'll see even on the residential side side here uh here in the Bay Area so from the very very small to a unit the size of a you know of a of a chest uh up to you know a couple hundred kilowatts in size for some you know Monumental kind of building slome um but it's it's quite the range and you know with that comes you know project scope and and all these different things that we have to deal with and the generator what it looks like is basically a box a big box attached to the ground yeah yeah exactly you know um a lot of people are familiar with the generx that you see sold at Costco or or Home Depot um yeah we don't do a lot of that like I said uh typically our units are the larger liquid cooled units so they're going to be you know the size of a a small car typically something like that um and so with that like I said comes a lot of project scope you know we're talking about you know a lot of underground utilities you know how we're going to mount these things where we're going to put them you know working with PG the local utility things like that they're quite in-depth projects so this is um I hear permitting and I hear complexity of project so there's a little a little bit of a kind of construction GC aspect to this yeah absolutely absolutely um it's quite a bit to manage um you know and and so one of the first things that we did actually when we acquired cont generator was we split our team up into installation and into service side of the business prior to that it would kind of handled by the team but uh you know within the first 3 months I think we doubled the size of our team from you know a handful of people to we're at 13 or 14 people now in that one location um we've got a team dedicated just to the installation process and then we've got another team dedicated to servicing all these different units that we have and like I said you know with with the installations and working on these projects you know we're working on putting a project manager in place we've got uh three guys who all they do is is install these units and right now we're averaging about two units a week great um I have more questions about the thesis but before we get too far away uh from some follow-ups I have for you Nick let me get those out two things first of all I hear the word I heard the word criticality a second ago and I'm reminded of something from episode number six our our very first interview Nick that really stayed with me although I don't ask it now as kind of one of my criteria I should one of the things that you liked about the plant business was how uncritical the service was so if you didn't deliver on getting you know your some office's plants watered one day it wasn't going to be the end of the world and this really appealed to you understandably totally now you've chosen something that is Mission critical where you know I mean there people I mean you're not only in the business of keeping things up you you are the backup plan you guys are the backup plan for when when it hits the fan so it's almost like the the criticality behind the criticality so um what's up with jumping from one end of the spectrum to the other um you know it's a yeah it's an astute point I mean a couple of things about that uh this is an incredibly serious responsibility uh we are taking we are the backup systems for data centers for hospitals for surgery centers to give you a flavor for that you know if the if the light ain't green at the surgery center there's no surgeries today it is which means no Revenue right we got to get our butts over there and make it happen um this is a much more serious uh well resourced well thought through Venture uh than my first one for sure um the thir first one was just me basically and a new I guess fully bootstrapped lever to the nines uh this is not that we knew that this was going to this was like a serious Venture and a serious opportunity and we needed to go and make sure that it was uh approached in that way and that's and that's what we've done um so uh I'm not doing this just for like a fun lifestyle business like this is a this is a serious Venture this is the for me hopefully will be like kind of the ride of a career well that that's interesting that you characterize what I'm hearing the first Venture as a nice lifestyle business because I also heard you say just a minute ago that you don't want to be strung out with the PG you know and the SBA that so there was an aspect of that Adventure I guess the leverage that was also quite stressful even though it was a quote lifestyle business and maybe didn't have the same potential to unlock as this one did it sounds like it was stressful in a different way for sure it's always more stressful when you're dealing with your own money um and you know we've resourced this in such a way we've encountered all the same problems you expect to have but we've resourced it in such a way that we don't have to feel stressed out about it and we don't have to no like no problem we've faced is ex is existential um and there's not personal BK on the line losing your house losing your in-laws house and all that um so it feels a lot more rational and it feels a lot more straightforward and it allowed us has allowed us and will continue to allow us to focus on doing what the things we know to be the right things for the business for the long term even if even amid you know some some near-term pain um and the pain somehow doesn't feel that painful because it's not like uh it lacks the kind of personal emotional uh tie into you know your personal piggy bank and everything you've ever worked for cumulatively from the moment you began your career till today we don't have that at stake here um and it's allowed us I think to go faster and do more and be a bit swing a swing a little bit harder and Nick you you said this this is kind of maybe going to be career making or you know one of the big things that you do in your career over the next however many years it is were you looking for that or did you see this opportunity in generators that was so compelling you had to run at it or were you itching to do something and this was the best thing from among a menu of options um probably more of the uh I wanted to do something again you know after we sold off the Landscaping Company my job became fairly uninteresting I spent some time dabbling in a bunch of different things but really it was all in in in the interest of finding the the next thing that was worth it you know worth the sacrifice because make no mistake like there's been real sacrifice associated with with doing this not a lot of sleep has been had in the last call it nine months um and I've been away from family more than I had been for the prior six years and and so there have been some real sacrifices associated with taking the sleep but I wanted to do one that I thought would be worth it both because I liked it and I would and I'm proud of it and um and because of the opportunity as well well not to keep calling you out Nick but that also reminds me of one of your other criteria from one of our early conversations where you said you never wanted to wake up in a hotel room uh away from your family so I guess you had to loosen that one up a little bit yeah the kids little older now it's easier for sure you know you go through you go through pH through phases sure yeah and the circumstances change constraints change um and so I I haven't woke up woken up in a hotel yet I know Dylan has just a few nights yeah um but I'm sure I will probably this week maybe next week okay uh and then just on kind of financial opportunity I know there's more to this than just that Nick but you you had the have with a new the right Gardener it's doing well it's kicking off cash um but you also have Cub investment so you're you're an investor in the ecosystem um I've seen deals come across from you and I and I know some of the folks whose deals you're in is that not something that could have become your full-time thing oh it definitely could have I mean I see a fair amount of stuff right now it's all forward uh to other people who I know are interested and sorry I'm too busy to do anything other than this right now um so it could have I just I wanted to BU I'm I think at my heart I'm a builder and I'm happier you know building and versus investing and doing more um steuding and passive work it's it's fun to do at times but um ultimately I think we're because of our experience and um the opportunities we're focused on I feel like it's a it's probably a better use of our experience and skills to focus on the operating side well thank you for indulging me Nick you're the the evolution because it's just interesting to to have tracked and see what you're doing now versus what you were doing before so back to the thesis a couple more follow-ups I just mentioned Nick that you're in um some deals of of people um Mutual connections um and that also there's a couple deals in particular that you've seen and you're investing that gave you further strength in your argument for uh for for the generator this generator play what did you see just to a couple more data points about this opportunity yeah so we've got two friends LPS investors um in the ecosystem who we've either invested alongside or followed from the beginning um David Fischer uh in Northwest Indiana um had a nice run with a a generator company he's exited recently um but is still kind of working in the space um we didn't invest in him because we had just finished another investment at the time when he was raising his his Capital um or doing his first deal um and then we are investors in uh Washington generators in Seattle um which is now Washington generators and Oregon generators um and that's been uh a great ride as well and gives us a front row seat and and actually um we've got a great relationship with Corey and help each other and he's been incredibly helpful to us um both Corey and Dave have just been a great sounding board and resource and um you know Dylan can speak to this too he's actually headed up to Seattle this afternoon to go kick the tires at wash Jen for a few days so oh funny yeah cor and Corey is in your is in this you're in Corey and Cory's in this correct right yes were were you gonna add to that Dylan no no I just yeah it's funny that right after this meeting I'll be heading up there to go check out their operation and see what I can learn from them and hopefully share something we learned as well well at the risk of making the audience think that I'm just interviewing you guys to plug Smith list cor Corey uh Corey you as you said Nick just now he's going from Washington generators to organ generators standing up a branch in Portland Oregon and he's looking for somebody to come run and build that and he and the listing for that opportunity is is now on Smith list as of a few days ago so check that out people right um lastly the regional aspect of this rollup so you're in California basically this doesn't work everywhere you you told me from the preall but um California seems ripe for it we we just heard that in I guess the Pacific Northwest is ripe for it um Dave fiser and Indiana did well apparently so that's some variety where talk to us more about the regional of this play really wherever the power goes out um and that's going to be affected by weather patterns it's going to be affected by the lcy utility situation the extent to which electrification is a big deal the extent to which on the business side the extent to which uh regulation um does Drive some in terms of the regulation driving necessity um but I mean really I I think this business can this business will be everywhere um it's just a function of where it gets big first um it got actually much bigger on the East Coast around 10 years ago um so the business is much more evolved um and there's been more consolidation in m&a type of activity on the East Coast U than there has been out west uh our issues here with the grid and with backup power necessity um has really Amplified over the last two three years so it comes and I think fits and spurts especially the residential side is pretty much storm event SL maor major outage driven whereas the business side is is not so much it's more um driven by the install base and the the nature of the facilities so where there are a lot of data centers being built there will be a lot of demand for Backup backup electricity yeah precisely yeah and you guys had said that your current residential focus is pretty I don't I don't know if I should call it up Market because maybe there is no down Market maybe there is no down market market for generators is this something that eventually comes down to the masses or that only big H big wealthy houses are going to have on the residential side um I think there's an option for it to come down Market at least some you know what I mean that there is a baseline for for a generator installation you know what I mean if you know at the bare minimum you know we're talking tens of thousands of dollars for for a generator but as power outages and and thesis play out you know that's going to become more and more dire for a lot of people and and people are going to start finding ways to have generators or or some sort of backup power installed at their house you know we've seen batteries explode in popularity recently as well backup batteries um so people are going to find a way to have power at the residences one way or another and we just want to be prepared to provide that to them in whichever way we can and what happens here we're going to hear actually a direct story from your experience what happens here is that there will be a storm event a weather event where power goes out in a geography and then that drives a tremendous amount of demand but that that's kind of the the pattern which pretty logical much okay okay well we're going to hear about yours in just just a sec here um but why don't you tell us first about this first acquisition what can you tell us about the business that you bought how you found it Etc yep um so I had started pursuing the generator business and was starting to look for targets um and it was a listed business and um I couldn't get the seller to respond I I'd gone I I couldn't get to the seller uh the broker was doing his job um of of staying in between uh and yeah got blown off a handful of times but just kept at it every couple of weeks would lob in another call an email and eventually I think I got I got Frank on the phone um and uh we started talking and he was winding down his broker or maybe he had even taken it off the market at one point um and um and then I think once he was no longer listed I I kept trying and uh and and actually I had a handful of conversations going on in the generator business so we were kind of working multiple deals at once and that's where the the thesis came about uh and then went and raised money against the thesis and simultaneously was negotiating Lois um and got Frank interested in selling to us and um was able to put put in place a lot of the core infrastructure needed to acquire a generator company because in California you need a electrical contractor's license and um fortunately had some of the prerequisites uh already in place and went when basically we marched ahead on faith that we would find something eventually and and really like did all that that pre-work um which made us a much more credible buyer um and it made the deal much more viable um and so the business was cones generator in montere California uh been around for 40 plus years um seller was a staple in the community kind of everybody knows Frank um and if you need a generator Frank's the guy you call not a real crowded Market um and was doing a mix of residential and Commercial um but Frank T kept a really tight rain on the business and he wore a lot of hats and you know even through the course of our due diligence and talking to other people um and and actually some after the fact too I talked to other people who assessed this business as way too seller dependent to ever acquire um and we sort of did as well but we did it anyway because we were hellbent on making this thing work and we knew that you know no amount of short-term pain was going to interrupt the the long-term uh convic that we had and so just to be clear there Nick you you were looking at listings you saw a generator business I didn't follow if it was this one or another one that you liked and I guess had already had conversations with Corey and daveid Indiana uh and and so and so then it was really like where this kind of a l a broader thesis crystallized and like oh wait let me not buy just a single generator business let me make this a let me do a platform here let me do a roll up yeah and we had almost acquired another one of our competitors um who's still around and actually has changed hands since um about four in 2019 and so we had due diligence this business and we invested and then after that one fell apart we ended up um investing with Corey we almost invested with Dave but instead just became friends um and and kind of kept our pulse on that and then we've been really cultivating opportunities in this space really since TW since that first didn't work out in 2019 and knew that eventually we're going to want to do something here we just it it needs to be the right thing it needs to be the right strategy it needs to be the right team um and then eventually once we sold the Landscaping Company there was like that was the the I guess the impetus for for us to feel emboldened to like make this like figure out how to make this thing work because we know there's something here but it's going to require us fully like driving at it pretty hard and and putting full attention um into the structure and the arrangement and all of that you know it's interesting Nick that that your first opportunity that you looked at in in generators was fully five years ago and I would think that in for for a lot of kind of markets rip for a roll up if you wait a half decade you you miss the window and it doesn't feel like you have here is is there any to glean from that fact uh it's a good question I we weren't thinking about it like that then I guess okay I think we were early I think we were just really early then yeah I mean I just as an example like I since I've been doing acquiring mines HVAC has been hot right so everybody and we all know that HVAC multiples are crazy and everybody wants the HVAC business or whatever well I come to find out that that wasn't the case when my partner in mind's Capital Nicholas James bought his first HVAC business in I think 2017 you I mean the the multiples were really low these were very undesirable business which was news to me so it's like oh I get it now so the these industries do become hot kind of you know PE discovers them researchers discover them or sponsors who whomever discovers them and then there's a crowd effect and everybody goes after them and that can happen that phenomenon can happen in the span of three and five years which I guess is what has happened with HVAC so that that's kind of um I don't know I don't know if that that's what I was thinking of when when we talk about the gener it could happen here um we're not depending on it but it could happen can you share what it looks like to raise money for something like this like what the structure is I mean that's you know just at least clarify a little bit the veness of that to help educate people of like you know what yeah what is that are did you raise $5 million $50 million you know just what does it look like yeah so uh we raised preferred Equity um total cap on the raise was 7 million we brought in about 6 and a half um it allowed us to go all Equity into the first two deals um or almost all Equity um a little bit of seller debt as well um didn't have to raise senior debt um and the second one is the part you're raising the equity in particular for the second one because the capital is available the debt capital is available for the first one but it's really hard to get leverage on the second one and we knew that the it would be likely that the first business we would buy would not be a like instit was not be there yet in terms of like institutional quality to go get commercial debt and so you're stuck in SBA and then what can happen is you can get stuck in seasoning requirements where you couldn't go get more debt um which means how do you finance the second acquisition and so what we did is we went out and did uh a preferred Equity round it's a unique instrument and it's an instrument I've spent honestly kind of like five years plus thinking about how to structure uh in in terms of what would be a good arrangement that is a fair allocation of risk and upside between sponsors and Equity investors and what we came up with was a waterfall structure not to similar to how a lot of real estate um invest like cash flow oriented real estate Investments work where the sponsor is kind of getting escalating carry with actual performance delivered so not return on paper but actual return of cash and so each time we return C multiples on cash cash our carry goes up okay couple follow-ups there so I want to understand better about the deal one deal two thing that you said so you said for deal one you could probably get debt for that pretty easily namely the SBA yep y so you could go so to do your first deal you'd go out you'd raise you'd Finance it with an SBA loan and then have some Equity but then deal two would be hard to finance with further SBA debt because why because just wouldn't have enough you if you want to do it fast especially because they're going to they're not going to give you more money until you can show performance for two years and if you know about the J curve it's not going to be two years it's going to be four uh before you're actually in a position where you can say on a backward-looking basis like here's what I did over the last two years and here are the earnings and look I'm paying back my debt and I can I can do this so it it takes a long time before you can go back to the well um and especially we anticipated this business is going to be tough this transition is going to be tough I am not likely to have the perform like if I just fast forward two years and I look back there's going to be a lot of pain and that pain is going to be reflected in the financials and a bank won't believe that I'm through it yet until they've seen two full Cy you know say two full years of actual performance translated into numeric you know into the p&l into the balance sheet I could say that I'm there but that doesn't mean they're not going to believe me even if I'm even if I'm correct and wait so to be clear if I buy business number one and then I want to buy business number two in two years or less for all my guests who have done that they must have had really really really great performance in their first two years to go do that never quite UND yeah um but it is not it's not an easy loan to get an expansion loan for especially if you if you've done if you put the investments in and you know your earnings are are dragging like let's say you you think you bought 800k of SD or earnings and chances are in that year one you did not do 800k you did zero so going back to buy business number two using more SBA debt your lender is going to say your first acquisition going in the wrong direction right prove to me that you can do this yeah okay interesting well then I I guess I'll have to be much more on the lookout for people who've done one two or three Acquisitions using SBA debt in a much shorter amount of time this is this is news to me okay all right so you calculate that you're not g the acquisition first acquisition is going to have J curve it's going to be it's going to be bad at least on paper you're prepared for that so you'll be comfortable when you're in it um but your lender won't be so you're not going to be able to get debt to finance acquisition number two therefore you need cash Equity um and so that dictated that kind of started to dictate how much you wanted to raise from investors for this project yeah so we over raised we basically raised enough to do two full Acquisitions and get to a scale that would be institutionally financeable um which is call it one and a half million of IA so you raised 6 and a half million and which allowed you to buy two businesses basically in cash with a little bit of seller note and both uh that gets you to what did you say just now one plus uh in yeah I mean you probably need to be at least one and a half um and really it's you know for us it's uh how much can you get out of that right because we we did one raise it's not a super flexible instrument to be able to be taking more Equity we pretty much need to live within our means from here on out uh but we rais enough equity to get to a point where we're like at some pretty significant a fairly significant scale one1 and a half million dollars of eitaa so that allows you to not have to raise Equity anymore give it give away any more ownership now that's a big enough business with enough e that you can raise debt non SBA institutional I think you said or conventional debt yeah but the conventional debt at $15 million of ebit aren't you still in the J curve for both of these businesses so even though your ebit number is Big it's probably pulled back from where it was before you got in there yeah um but the underwriting is going to be on add-ons um which makes it a little bit easier um okay and if you've got some experience in the business at that point that makes it a bit easier um you can kind of show them a track record of acquisition success um so there's there's just a lot more there to underwrite against for going into number three and four Etc and you're still you know ideally have a pretty strong balance sheet at that point as well like you're um for funding the third and the fourth one you're not it's you're not going to be 90% levered you might be 90% levered on the incremental deal but the Enterprise as a whole it's not very much you're not adding very much leverage to it and then your your point about carry so this is um maybe a term that can trip people up if they're not used to it because Searchers tend to think in terms of ownership or Equity but carry Define carry for us Nick in this context yeah so in our in our construct it's um it's the profit split um because this is a cash flow oriented Venture so we're looking to generate free cash flow from operations um and so we we basically escalate you could call it carry but it's really the your your entitlement to what split of the of the distributed profits we have in our structure we have the right but not the obligation to distribute profits um it's a C Corp so we don't have to handle like pass through taxation or anything like that um and we're also qualified for small business stock uh treatment which is another discussion entirely but um basically as we per as we uh as we distribute profit so investors get all fully entitled to all distributable profits until they get their money back um so if I want to get as a sponsor if I want to get money out of the company the only way for me to do that is to give the investors all of their money back first then once they get all their money back plus the preferred rate of return then we start earning um entitlement to profit split so it first goes to uh 40% and then once they've returned a few more turns on their money then it goes to 60 and then at the highest end the 80 so the investors are entitled if we knock it out of the park and we give all the investors five times their money back um plus their preferred return then incrementally on top of that they're entitled to 20% in perpetuity um and uh 80% comes to goes to the sponsor and so we've basically just escalated the hurdles um so and and it creates a really good alignment between us and the investors to do two things one get as much Mage out of that Equity as we can like go as big as far as we can um to put ourselves into the position to be on that 5x plus side of the waterfall which is really in everybody's best interest and and to be clear when you say waterfall the waterfall refers to that structure of investors get all their money back then they get a percentage the the the preferred return on that money and only then is the split or the carry do you then have a right to any profits that's your carry yep and then how much we and then how much we have a right to is actually a function of how much I have returned to the investors cumulatively right so as we return cash I earn a right to a better split which gives me a strong incentive to figure out how to either generate more cash next year to split that or you know do what do I do with the cash that I have right do I try to make it bigger or do I distribute it and and earn and so that's kind of the calculation that we're forced to make as a capital allocator of uh if I don't have anything good to do with the money then maybe just return it and and start earning a higher percentage of the pie um but if I've got something good to do with the money I should go do that because I'll get a higher percentage of the pie later and when we say carry how does carry map onto actual ownership or maybe does it not matter it's it's kind of two separate classes of stock so there's preferred and there's common um and the preferred is there in perpetuity and the preferred kind of governs how that split works um and the common is just the is really just the sponsor Equity okay but fundamentally the question to about your Arrangement is not to ask well how much of the business do you own it's really what the carry is going to be at these various escalating levels yeah it's I mean it's Pro it's how what profits are you what percentage of the profit split are you entitled to and that's a that's a bit of a it's a moving Target um depending on where you are thank you for that Nick so give us uh a little bit of what it's been like to be in the business so now let's let's put away all this intellectual stuff and give us some stories about being operators in a generator business is it uh is it easier or harder than you thought it would be let's start there till you go it's challenging you know what I mean you know right off the bat for anyone who's considering this you know if you're coming from a position at a large company and you're in management or you're a leader or something like that being a leader is very different than being an employer I can tell you that right now you know I thought I had it all figured out but my decisions now or the decisions that Nick and I make now carry a lot more weight you know both personally and with the employees than they ever did at a large corporation you know when you're at a large corporation it's easy just to say these are the rules these are the regulations here's how it's going to go and you can move on with life whereas here at on points you know every decision that we make is is is really personal um it's been a wild ride you know I know we want to talk about the storm that that that came up um yeah three to four weeks into this thing you know Nick and I are are just barely you know managing to kind of get by um this was an asset purchase so we had to kind of redo all of our systems you know basically from scratch and uh this business typically was getting maybe 10 15 calls a day um inquiries and we had the the California atmospheric River I think they called that's uh come early July of this year and knocked out power to all 1500 of our customers and we went from you know about 10 calls a day to 200 calls a day or something along those lines like it was it it was a wild ride you know what I mean so it was all hands- on Deck wow um and we were just you know we were in there Nick and I both 14 hour days just just trying to get by you know what I mean keep our customers happy keep the power on where we could and and we learned a ton about the business in that in that one week that we we had lost power there so yeah everything was broken at this point yeah literally everything Accounting in the back office yeah the back office was entirely like just broken everything was broken except the phone number that worked coming in we had migrated to VoIP uh what 48 hours into the storm we had a planned migration to Dialpad from a Hardline AT&T number um so that we had a new phone system we didn't really even know how to use uh it did give us eyes on more calls um because in the on the copper line no visibility into what calls are coming in who's calling you got to be really diligent we but we didn't have a system for writing the calls down and managing and making sure everybody get a call back and when you get 300 calls and you're used to getting 10 like good luck with that no matter how good your system is forgive me but what is everybody calling about isn't the generator that's already on their property supposed to be giving them power so yeah yeah right great question um so we're not the only game in town um you know we're primarily a ker cumins dealer um there is another gener player in town um but T typically what you'll see is you know over time customers will stop paying for an annual service or you know you'll get uh Tailgators coming in and installing generators you know to a subpar standard and uh people won't know that the generators aren't even working until the storms come right and then all of a sudden their power goes out and backup power com doesn't come on and so you know during these storms I mean we're doing our best to help out you know all these different customers and whatnot but uh you know we learned a lot about where we need to put Priority and and that needs to be on kind of some of our critical customers you know as Nick explained we've got a large customer commercial or Industrial and Commercial base so you know our guys are putting priority on the hospitals they're putting priority on the police stations and the fire stations and all these different communication towers and at the same time we're doing our best to try and get uh all these other people back up and running as well um you know I'll back up there a little bit you know when we came into this business the seller was wearing all these different hats Nick had mentioned that you know a lot of people had passed up on this business because of how difficult that transition was going to be and you know we probably underestimated just how many hats the seller was wearing and uh his role in the day-to-day because you know he was our primary electrician um he was our primary technician going out there and repairing these machines he was doing all of our sales and then at the same time he was doing all the things that owners do you know managing people and and payroll all these different things and so when we came into this business you know our transition plan you know probably wasn't where it needed to be and on day one he basically handed us the keys and said you know good luck it's your show now and so right off the bat you know we were trying to hire you know we needed to get an electrician in the door right away we were trying to backfill some of these roles and uh yeah when that storm hit 3 weeks into this thing mant I tell you we were we were struggling to kind of you know keep people up and running and get people where they needed to be but it comes with the territory right um transition how many people are at the business how many employees did you inherit uh we inherited six employees both six employees um all te no uh we had one office staff we had I guess three technicians and a Gentleman who worked in uh kind of our warehouse uh mostly great people uh we ended up letting one gentleman go but other than that I mean the team was fantastic uh a lot of credit due to the seller he had built a really uh sturdy team here um but at that point we just we we had had any time yet to to hire to backfill some of these roles and so we were just kind of stuck with what we had and you had 300 calls coming in in three technicians to service 300 calls yeah at least Y yeah and he was getting a lot of calls directly too I mean he we we don't even can't even begin to understand like to what extent he helped us out I know he was helping us and he was probably 247 as well but he was out there triaging and he almost kind of had his own book of service work that he was doing as well that we didn't even have that much visibility into um and so it was uh uh yeah it was challenging times you know the another thing to say or call out about the generator businesses is that they're basically electrician businesses or I should say electrical Plus+ businesses um but your technicians are electricians first plus skills on top of that no nick you're shaking your head I mean for example Corey when I talked to Corey Washington generators he kind of talks about his business as an electrical service business it's it's kind of both it it's kind of both you know hiring for generated technicians it's it's quite a unique industry you know you really either got to be a great electrician with mechanical aptitude or you got to be a phenomenal mechanic with the ability to pick up on the electrical side of things so we've had a lot of success actually hiring um uh mechanics from say BMW and Mercedes uh mechanics who are used to working on you know a lot of electrical systems they're they're familiar with troubleshooting and Diagnostics uh we've had a lot of success hiring people from that background at the same time yeah electricians do make make greater technicians but you really got to be able to have the ability to learn both sides of the business if you're going to make a make a good generator technician well through that atmospheric River Adventure what did you what was the takeaway or the of the learning anything I mean I felt like you probably got you know six months of Education about your industry in you know 72 hours yeah you nailed it there I mean Nick's been doing a phenomenal job and maybe you can talk a little bit Nick about some of the software you've developed for the company there um we always knew where we needed to take this business and and what systems and processes we needed to implement the that event just maybe expedited some of the changes that we had made there like ni said we we had just transitioned from you know our old copper phone line to to uh internet-based phone uh that gave us visibility into all the calls that were coming in so Nick's done a lot of work on the back end um developing the software that we're using to run this company and really just everything on the it side and at the same time that's helped me to implement the systems that I need to implement to make sure people know you know what they're supposed to be doing where they're supposed to be going all these different things that you come in and you do as an operator yeah you want to add to that sorry yeah we spent I mean and we're still deep in it um just building the data architecture of the company and then mapping the old whatever information we have and can couble together um into the new data architecture of the company that and then building a scalable um both the scalable architecture as well as like the system and the user interfaces to that system um that allow you to run and keep track of everything um at a much higher volume so that we're not inhibited by the memory of any indiv individual team member or um you know everything needs to live in a database at some point um and there needs to be a system and a process for capturing that information organizing that information relating that information to the other information that you have um so it's been um it's been an evolu but yeah we made the decision to let's go figure out that data architecture first and start building those uh Information Systems first and what we've built ourselves our own system to um to run that our own software um and we realize that I think that was going to be the fastest path to get us what we need versus trying to implement an out-of- thebox system where we literally have no data to populate it with um because we had a lot to work with what is it Nick is it you know air table and zappier and Salesforce or what is it we're on app sheet um it's a low code environment by Google um oh sure you and I talked about that years ago running it for years yeah um and so yeah we've been building everything in app sheet and who knows someday we might land on something else we're actually taking steps to professionalize some of the database side into Google Cloud um SQL um and um so but you have built this kind of uh very custom CRM slash effectively CRM plus service Titan yeah thing in app sheet yourself so sometimes what working on the business is for you Nick is doing this custom low code no code stuff yep exactly okay yeah you know as an operator to be able to tell Nick you know one evening after to work hey you know by the way the the install backlog you know could use a little tweak here and then the next morning it's it's updated and it's it's exactly how we want it you know as an operation I mean it just it creates so much efficiency for us to change and tweak everything exactly how we want it to suit our business business perfectly you know what I mean so I can't understate how much you know the work that Nick has done has helped this business grow totally although I got to ask because because as a as a one-time developer myself I know how fun it can be to code coding is kind of fun um and Nick I feel like if you find a guy just get your get your app sheet guy on upwork and you can just give him all of that uh and just whenever there's you know whenever Dylan has an idea for some tweak he needs at 9:00 P p.m. at night you just send it across upw work and this it'll be waiting for you in the morning and nck caska didn't have to do it no we we will probably get there at some point right now what the work we're doing is so formative and so foundational to the invention of the process as it should be that you need somebody with as much of a mind on how the business works or how the business should work uh as you do on the ability to execute simple code like Dylan asked me for a feature I don't know a couple days ago and I started coding it and then I realized oh this is going to create a whole load of problems and then I think it went late into the night and it would have been an easy feature to build it's just that that's not what should have been built and then what we landed on was something what I think is way better and puts us on a much better trajectory and that only happens because I know the details yeah um and put another way some of this coding work is really strategic actually because it's foundational to how the process should work how the data should be stored how it should be structured how it moves from one table to the next um there's a lot of strategy going on just in the process of trying to build the business in the software and make it so that there's only only one correct way to do the process um and it all works together great guys well um we got a hard stop here in just a few minutes so and and still got a couple things to get to so let's um return to kind of numbers Money numbers so the first business cones did you tell us what revenue and SD uh were when you bought it and if not could you yeah a couple million shy three and Top Line um honestly the bottom line was somewhat Irrelevant in that it was not it was we were just going to run it so differently um so you know SD advertised you know mid mid uh six digits um and but we to run it at that a lot a lot had to change um which is why we went from you know kind of six seven people to 13 14 yeah in the first months um we had to really amplify the volume um even just to get the um basically to Pro form of the earnings mid six figures soall it half a million bucks it was reported SD was that yeah a little bit more than that but yeah less than million yeah well Nick you you you know some listeners might remember you as the buy small guy so even when you're doing an ambitious rollup for your platform acquisition you buy something that's pretty small pretty small no yeah no that's it you got to start small because you will learn so much more you can get into every crevice and figure out where those where the opportunities are and um and I think we are building and we've made like pretty big strides at building a foundation that can be really really big um but doing it on a kind of a small on a small stage first okay and so in employees you said Dylan you said there were six employees three Tech no what was it five technicians one office one Warehouse yeah give her give or take about six employees maybe four technicians uh we had a lady in the in the office and a gentleman in the warehouse when we started and today you have how many we have about 13 employees at this location um we're at about six technicians uh we've got an installed team of three people we've got a gentleman in the warehouse and office staff uh we just hired our first salesman who's been going out there and you know making our sales and we have a general manager in place wow we've got some offshore support as well offshore as well so you more than doubl headcount yep in six months you bought it in January did you say or was it December January January in jary so six month month five yep sorry yeah no months five months yeah wow okay what does the revenue look like we're run rating around 5 now a little over five um and then I think we're we're pretty much tracking to trying to track to seven for for this year now how do I interpret that is that because of house on an ongoing basis how how much demand is up or is that all that additional huge bump in Revenue all concentrated around the atmospheric River and so if I took that Revenue away you'd be where the previous owner was how does it look yeah I can answer that um you know Nick always likes to say this this business always wanted to be bigger and it was always just held back by by the seller for his own personal reasons you know he he had a fantastic business here again a lot of credit goes to him um he built a great business but you know he liked getting out there and he liked doing the work himself um he didn't like to see anybody else kind of you know get out there um you know his expectations were incredibly high so he just he limited the business to a size that he was comfortable with um but it always wanted to be bigger you know a lot of people like to say you know we don't do any advertising and and the phone doesn't stop ringing and that was absolutely the case for us you know we had you know a ton of uh Runway ahead of us in order to expand this business and we're only limited by you know how many people we could throw at it and so we we took advantage of that and we got out there and we hired some fantastic people that have been out there um helping us build this business up to you know where we think it could be and are you to to do all this hiring is that all from the earnings of the business are you bringing in some of the fund money to infusing the business with more of the fund money to afford some of this stuff no no greaty yeah living within our means now very exciting so you feeling good I mean it seems like it's going well it it's starting to feel good we'll put it that way we're getting there we're getting to a point where you know we're sleeping well at night for sure and just as we started just before I hit record you told me some some big news what was that yeah so over the weekend we just closed on uh another acquisition that basically doubles us uh again um so 12 more staff um a business um it's about 2 hours from here headquartered um great assets um great team much more concentrated on the B2B side um and it's called Power gen and um and we've got a seller who wants to keep working with us um which is going to be immensely helpful he is comfortable continuing on in his day-to-day role um and so I actually haven't we closed the business on Friday I haven't been there yet um we haven't told the team uh it's in Tracy so uh where's Tracy California East Central Valley yeah it's basically just kind of on your way to Stockton uh if you're going over to Stockton um and so yeah we'll be doing the meetings tomorrow with the team and um and we're going to run it in place for a little bit and just really get our arms around exactly how they do everything was a stock purchase so we didn't have to break everything on the first day um which is a tremendous luxury and um he carried say more what what do you mean you didn't have to break everything and why did you have to break everything when the asset purchase keep keep the entity in place there's one box check that has to change on the W9 but other than that um we had to do a switch over and insurance which was really easy because we have an existing policy in place and it was just basically we put our policy over the top of the new holy owned subsidiary um but all every thing basically transfers automatically we inspected all the contracts there just wasn't a lot there's almost nothing to change uh and so the fact that the ownership change didn't really impact anything or anybody um and so it was we executed agreement and sent the money and that was kind of the full extent of the transition day um whereas with this one it was like oh we need accounting to work we need payroll to work we need insurance we need this we need that and every I mean the laundry list of everything com that comprises a corporate infrastructure is brand new oh the vendor you know the each of the vendors wants a new vendor credit agreement and that's going to take days to process which means you can't order anything until you have that done and just bottleneck after bottleneck after bottleneck is is your first you know M several weeks of an asset purchase whereas this one there's just none of that and then an atmospheric River hits and then an atmosphere while everything's still broken yeah no but that but that's a good reminder it's not something that we we just kind of take or I take it for granted I don't I don't uh spend a lot of time talking to my guests about it but it's a good reminder that all of that red tape if you will um is really a heavy tax during the transition um it it's kind of it feels like it feels like urgent but not important stuff you got to get it done but it's it's not really it's just to get stuff get it out of the way so you can carry on okay um but but what and what of of course the reason not to do a stock purchase is that there is you're carrying all the risk uh of the existing entity how did you get comfortable in this case yeah um I mean honestly in an asset purchase you are still carrying a fair bit of risk even if you are technically not ultimately you know this is America and anybody can sue anybody for anything at any time and uh if they think that your you know predecessor wronged them and they want to sue you over it they will um and so you and while they don't have a great case ultimately what it comes down to is what's a jury what's a jury going to think uh what what are the legal Bills versus just settling bills yeah so um and then you know environmental liabilities sales tax liabilities there are actually a fair bit of uh liabilities that transfer to the successor regardless of the structure of the arrangement um and so for us it was just like the transition is so much less risky that it was just worth it and practically speaking and pragmatically like it would be it would have been a this would have been a really hard deal we weren't ready we wouldn't have been ready to do yeah this deal if we had had to transfer all the assets on the first day it would have been a much bigger lift whereas now we can go learn another business inside and out understand how they operate and we'll gain more from that um and not be stressed out by it um by being able to operate it in place as a holy owned subsidiary and so we'll do that for a little bit until we're ready and then we'll we'll you know set a date for an integration and then we'll March to the integration date um but not be forced to do it not be forced to do it on a business that we literally know nothing about um wouldn't you know even know where to begin in terms of how to operate it um so and Nick are you a are you a a stock purchase guy now like I what I heard you just say about asset purchases felt very general like maybe in maybe generally you feel like it's really overstated and you'd probably be pretty comfortable stock purchases going forward and might might even advise that to The Listener uh now that I've done it both ways and I've done a lot of asset purchases and man I've been doing it the hard way but you know I guess it's one of those Nick where it's it's kind of like it it it's all good until it's not so you know it it feels the stock purchase feels easier is easier in every way until one of these liabilities bites you in the butt and then you're like oh that's why asset purchases are better so maybe you're you're in that zone right now fair enough and I but and I do think I don't know that you'll ever really know how it would have unfolded if you had gone the other way and that also presumes that like you have a choice there's not always a choice yeah um and there certain deals you know given certain back patterns it it may it's never going to be totally clearcut and sometimes it will be clearcut and if you if you want to do the deal like we we actually couldn't have done KES in the stock purchase he he wouldn't have sold it that way so it was not a it wasn't it was straight up not an option okay okay guys well let's uh close out here with just talking about what where you know snapshot of things are so I'll put words in your mouth the thesis is looking pretty good 5 months in no great yes great so so you're tired you're it's been it hasn't been easy but in terms of the the thesis the the observation about the Tailwinds here and the potential here that is on track if not you're not even if you're not even more bullish perhaps yeah absolutely cool cool and and then goals how do you think about kpis in terms of the overall project like are you trying to get to X Revenue in y year or Z number of Acquisitions or or does it all really just come back down to like Capital allocation decisions Nick based on your waterfall and carry that you put together and it's more kind of driven by Capital allocation decision by Capital allocation decision and there's and and and it's it's kind of that so you're kind of deciding on an ongoing basis H how how to think about how are you thinking about like you know your fiveyear plan honestly I don't know that we think too much about it I mean there was a model that was shared with investors and I do look at it and compare how we're doing to how we said we were going to do um but at the same time you know I've also shared with them like I've got two speeds I can go zero or I can go 100 and right now I'm going 100 and it's going to be 100 until it's not uh and so we're what did the model say Nick what did the model say just out of curiosity just give us some Benchmark this might look like in five years say I think five years boy uh I want to say like 50 60 million over five year to five two year five 50 60 million in five years top of top top line and should convert a call it 18% ebit down margin 18% ebit D margin okay so 10 10 and I and I actually I'm recalling now from the preall Nick that you said that um getting to $10 million in ebit is kind of a threshold for being a business that will generate interest from institutional buyers absolutely so is that is that the Finish Line not you know you'll you'll make the decision when but is that sort of like when you cont when you seriously evaluate should we sell should we keep going yeah I'd say we're not selling for five years at least uh and want to build a business that we wouldn't want to sell 5 years from now and that tons of other people will want to buy the goal is to build it so that it is it does yeah I mean really that's you want to build the business that they want that you don't want to sell well it's the old it's the buil to sell if the audience has read build to sell it's like build a always be building a business to sell it so that it's desirable to a buyer and then oh gee you might find that when you've built such a business you don't want to sell itre because it's such a great business exactly y if people want to reach out uh what do you like email LinkedIn we met on Twitter I'd say reach out on Twitter you know Twitter yeah seems fitting okay okay well um and you're you're there on Twitter Dylan Nick's an old Twitter SMB Twitter guy but you're there too I'm there too I'm going to try and get more active that's one of my resolutions here so I want to get more active I thought I'd be posting a lot more about my day-to-day life of uh operations but it's just been busy so far but I'm going to try that's the way it should be Dylan that's the way it should don't let social media distract you from the more important things of building A50 a $50 million business I'll try to keep ding off Twitter yeah yeah you can also just consume I got there there's no shame in just consuming just being a lurker Dylan there really isn't that's kind of where I play on on Twitter at least anyway guys fascinating and congratulations on such strong early progress uh people are really going to be intrigued by what you're building so thanks for for sharing thanks for your time thanks for the transparency and look forward to watching your progress thank you thank you I hope you enjoy that interview make sure you subscribe to the acquiring minds Channel below we are now publishing twice a week so tons of new interviews and stories to come stories that will help you along your own path to acquiring a business