Matt Bower Chris Hartman welcome to acquiring minds hey well good to be here thanks you guys bought a scale servicing business as self-funded Searchers owned and grew it for five years then last year sold to a strategic acquirer so you really did the full life cycle of buy then build then sell whether or not that was your intention when you started we're going to find out we're going to hear the entire story Matt start us off with a little background on you please then Chris we'll go to you sure so I'm uh I'm from a a small farm town uh in Illinois uh it's about a half hour outside of Poria Illinois um grew up there my parents actually owned a small business uh they owned a grain elevator and feed mill and you know I started working there from say 10 12 years old on Wards um ended up going to University of Illinois uh studied mechanical engineering and you know before I went to college my dad told me that I had to pay for school uh to learn the value of the dollar and so I got to uvi and I learned about the Army Roc program uh ended up joining Roc didn't have this Burning Desire necessarily to serve but joined RC and commissioned uh active duty Army in 2007 uh and then spent about 6 and a half years on active duty uh a couple of deployments it's actually where I met Chris uh we deployed to Kandahar Afghanistan together um fast forward got out of the Army in 2013 uh decided to go to grad school I moved to London uh went to London business school did a couple of uh interesting internships while I was there uh spent seven or eight months working for SCH slumber in the Middle East uh primarily on Upstream oil and gas production projects and then uh worked on a Netflix movie uh where I advised Brad Pit a couple of just interesting opportunities uh but anyways decided that I you know wanted to stay in the UK uh and work post grad school so I got a ended up with a job at a private Equity advisory firm uh did that for a couple of years and I was at a bit of a Crossroads uh both of my career and then also you know moving um had been in the UK for you know almost 5 years uh met my fiance my wife now and we were looking at um coming back to the States um and as a part of that I had been working you know 15 16 hour days uh PE putting in the hours just I started to learn about uh search funds search this is probably 2015 time frame uh Chris and I had reconnected and you know we started talking about working together and setting something up and long story short that's that's what we ended up doing so great some follow-ups there Matt sure Brad Pit advising you're not GNA let that one slide by say more what movie uh the movie is called War Machine uh it's on Netflix came out I think it was 2016 um Network friend of a friend was looking for a military adviser for the film uh buddy of mine from grad school he was a British Army he couldn't do uh the job he had to to start you know his his real work immediately after reg graduated and I had lined up the job at the the private Equity advisory firm and my boss when I told him you know hey I've got this unique opportunity uh he said hey pause you've got to go do that you know absolutely go do that and come back to us and so I spent probably six to eight weeks uh in the summer of 2015 uh working with Brad Pit we we filmed primarily in London uh and then we went back to the UAE where ID spent you know like I said seven months of my grad school time so uh it was it was fun I don't know War Machine Matt is this because I've been living under a rock what what H it's probably not the best film I mean it's okay it's a parody about uh General mccristal the war in Afghanistan uh isaf yeah it was actually kind of a nice bookend to my for me for my military career because I had to do quite a bit of research um I had already gotten out of active duty I was already a couple of years out of the the military but I had to do just tons and tons of research uh both reading reaching out to contacts friends uh different armies you know I reconnected with some guys from the the emirati military as a part of the project uh so it was it was really fun I worked with Brad Pit um you know unique experience fortunate to have gotten it so what's he like he's as normal as can be really yeah I mean as as normal as could be yeah I think this was pre uh brangelina divorce she was actually on set once or twice um but yeah cool that that's um really that is quite a unique experience so and then your and then your your boss or Future boss at PE advisory PE advisory what is that versus we we basically uh a placement agent so we primarily focused on fundraising uh but we would help some of the GPS position portfolio companies or or think about creating momentum in their portfolio to almost always driven around fundraising and fundraising tactics uh my specific role there did some project management and distri distribution uh but I covered the lp relationships uh in the Middle East and so I would meet you know private Equity General partner the investment manager maybe in London or say in Abu Dhabi uh and then I would take them you know to the Abu Dhabi investment Authority uh mu mubadala capital a variety of institutional investors and the general Partners would you know pitch the pitch book and look for potential investment in their fund sounds like pretty um highflying experience I mean it was it was definitely at the institutional in of the market and and to be honest I you know had an engineering degree was in the Army uh didn't have this uh deep Finance experience if you will and so the a couple of different mandates I worked on um I was in the UK so I was working with primarily um European B General Partners we raised I think 250 or 300 million euro for a finish GP and then honestly the one that I spent the majority of my time on a firm called Nordic Capital uh it was fund nine I think it was 4 billion Euro um and so you know numbers sort of lose a bit of meaning I guess when you know certain investors are writing three $400 million checks uh you dissociate the actual at least I did the the fact that it was like a currency associated with that it was just sort of numbers at that point and then you bought a bluecollar business and every penny mattered yeah um okay and then last qu followup for you question the search fund path why did it appeal to you were you somebody who' done entrepreneurial things before because your family small business experience what it it definitely was the entrepreneurial thing it was a combination of that and then risk reward um you know I was reflecting when I was working at uh it's called M Vision uh M Vision the private Equity uh advisory I was working there I was you know putting in the hours and I was just reflecting like I I was going to work that hard no matter where I was or what I was doing and so you know I sort of started to accept the fact that I shouldn't really be compensated more because I wasn't risking anything you know the only way that would earn more is to to put in more hours and I was already up against that hourly limit to a certain extent so I started thinking about risk reward um and then my like I said my my parents owned a business uh I saw what it took both my grandfathers owned small businesses uh in college the freshman and sophomore Summers I had a a painting company you know we did about $100,000 worth of painting 33 homes in the Poria area so just really had the entrepreneurial itch have been around that community and and wanted to get back to it and this risk reward approach that you take you are at the private Equity advisory firm working really hard you really don't have any more hours in the day to give them if you wanted to be earning more money sure so it was just going to be getting promotions or something was the only way you're going to be able to lever up your your income or you figured take somehow taking on more risk so if you take took on more risk in whatever it was you were doing you were gonna that was going to be the way to generate more income I mean it's just kind of a it's an interesting kind of abstract way to think about making more money most people are just like well I guess I gotta buy a business to make more money but you have this almost academic I mean I to be honest I actually no I mean I even took it a bit further I mean I I sort of my looked at looked at my income is like a Government Bond I mean short of me doing something negligent and deserving to be fired or some catastrophic event like a covid um you know as a W2 employee It's relatively risk-free uh to a certain extent if you're going to continue to work and you know maybe that specific job wouldn't be there but you know I knew that I could go find another job um but at the end of the day uh I had to you know I was billing hours ultimately uh the way that I looked at it and you know combine that with you know the desire to move back to the US uh the desire to honestly have more responsibility similar to what Chris and I had in the Army you know we didn't we had a lot of responsibility as Junior officers in the military you get out you you lose a lot of that um and then you know opportunity to earn more uh all of those things were were part of the calculus and deciding to to do it Chris get in here tell us a little about your a little bit about yourself well I don't have any uh Brad Pit encounters to talk about but we should have started with you it's a hard one to follow that's all good um I grew up in Chattanooga uh Tennessee similar to Matt um ended up going to undergrad and and joining army RC so did that and went right on to on active duty and spent seven years um you know across the US and the world and as met mentioned uh that's where we connected and and ultimately um became friends and started discussing even even way back while we were deployed how we would potentially buy a business together we we talked about buying a franchise these were very early ideations but um it sort of planted the seed I think yeah um ended up getting out of the military in 2013 and sort of went the corporate America route and and ended up working um in banking up in Philadelphia for uh about five years doing everything from uh product development and National kind of marketing efforts which was it was a really great stepping stone and great organization um but I just knew it wasn't my career very similar to when I joined the military I knew I wasn't going to be a career officer I knew when I joined Corporate America there was a lot to gain but it wasn't my my career and so went back to business school during that time and and reconnected with Matt and sort of heard about search and we got got into researching it and before we know it we decided to pick up and move our families to Charlotte North Carolina and launch our partnered self-funded search in 2017 and Chris what what was it that resonated so strongly with you about search that's similar to Matt um but I think for me it was really just betting on myself um I just felt strongly that if I was going to place a bet on anybody it was going to be on myself and I figured um I came from an entrepreneur kind of background you know having small business growing up I wanted to get back to that and I figured I'd place the chips on the table with you know myself and if it didn't go well there was no one to blame about myself and if it went well then then great and um figured I'd do it with somebody that had a similar mindset and I think that's why Matt and I were were good partners from an alignment perspective early on well good for you guys you you took a risk on yourselves and here you sit handsomely rewarded so you you metion mention moving to North moving your families to North Carolina so tell us elaborate on that and tell us what this what your search your partnered search now how it takes shape uh I was living in Philadelphia so I moved my wife uh down to Charlotte and and Matt moved uh his fiance at the time and now wife from from London and uh we set up in Charlotte and kind of Drew a a circle around Charlotte and said we wanted to stay in the Southeast which was a pretty big arena so from Florida to Texas to Virginia is sort of what we said so we were we were pretty open geographically um Charlotte we had some good connections here so we figured it was a good place to start um in terms of the parameters just like everybody is still looking for B2B service companies is what we were really targeting I think our little bit different uh flavor we focused on was was industrial and dirty kind of flavored ones of the service side um we had good backgrounds to kind of resonate with the owners in that space and so we were able to connect our military time our time before even growing up to some of these owners um and I think that led us get into some of the doors and have some great conversations with owners so um B2B Services Industrials somewhere in the Southeast um we wanted a million dollars or more in eada and um that that was kind of the high parameters that we started with but we were also pretty pretty opportunistic we were two or three weeks away from closing on a a billboard company um and so we were we kind of had our box we were trying to acquire in but as other opportunities presented themselves we were taking a look at those as well when you say that it was a one detail that might be different about your search was that kind of the gritty dirty um C ategory was something you were looking at and thought resonated with your experience people might scratch their heads at that CU that actually is quite common a quite common Target of business these days was it not at the time no I mean everybody in 2016 2017 I wouldn't say not completely but most of the folks we were talking with were looking for software companies Healthcare just different much more I would say the the the targets have changed in the last 5 years um we were not super unique by any means but we were in the minority whereas I think now we would be in the majority if that makes sense just a good reminder that these the businesses that are hot even for kind of Searchers not private Equity but even down here uh kind of the lower end of private equity which is what search is um there are Trends and HVAC now is of course the avatar for search Target it's super hot super popular and um and I've always just assumed it it was the th but it wasn't back in when my partner Nicholas James uh bought his first HB business in whatever it was 1718 they were plentiful and nobody wanted them so just goes to show that there's Trends here like anything okay and but just to be clear your move to charlet was strategic you guys I mean you knew people there you wanted to Target the southeast but you guys just popped yourselves down in town really pretty much cool and million dollars in iata so that's going to if you can find it that's going to trade for three and a half four million assuming 10% or 20% let's call it 4 million assuming 10 or 20% down that's going to be4 to $800,000 uh that you're going to have to bring to the table was that money that you guys had or were you planning on raising it from investors we plan to raise it for investors I mean we we put a good chunk of the capital into our own deal but we ended up bringing outside investors in can I ask what your balance sheet looks like just so um I don't often ask this I should ask it more but just so people who are listening and wondering how much money a couple of guys who want to go buy a million dollar ebit that business actually themselves had brought to this adventure I mean I think we probably had you know couple hundred thousand dollar uh Chris and I put in 100,000 each into 12 South to to fund it um you know as we mentioned we were self funded so I mean we weren't paying ourselves a salary that was just to cover software tools um subscriptions things like that and and deal fees um so we we put in you know 100,000 each I think that's how much it was you put so basically that and that's really where the self-funded that's to be clear we throw that term around but that's why it means that you guys actually put in money to fund the expenses of your search the deal costs and so on so each of you contribute $100,000 and you're not paying yourselves you're then living off of whatever other savings remain correct okay and then when you find a Target you're going to raise the equity correct yep okay the only Cav out there is we were talking to potential investors in parallel with looking for uh potential you know companies to buy so we were trying to find investors we were trying to find investors that you know thought similar to us or that we had some high level of confidence was going to going to invest in us when we found the business we didn't want to find the business submit the lii and then have to go try to find investors you know with 90 days or something like that so we were building relationships in parallel with searching for a company Chris did you want to add something well the one thing I would say is is um the the investor Marketplace six seven years ago was was wasn't quite as mature and so nowadays you can kind of get your deal out in front of thousands of investors through some email lists and a few things we had to do a little bit more boots on ground it was much more um this guy will introduce you to this person um a little more organic and so it just took us longer and we spent time upfront whereas now I think you can probably wait a little bit longer um the investment space is just a little more sophisticated and familiar with the Search terms and structures whereas I think we were educating a lot of folks even in 2017 and search has been around for decades at that point but it was still um pretty small well and to be clear self-funded search in particular was the redheaded stepchild traditional search at this time was is still the the one to the extent investors even knew what it was it was probably a traditional search fund traditional search fund economics that they were familiar with self-funded was uh in its pre-adolescence uh even though of course as we all know self-funded really all that means is you just buy your own business it is the the original the actual way of just uh buying a business the point though that you guys cultivated relationships with investors before having a deal I think is important for the audience because that's a question that'll come up to us at mines capital and I've investor panels uh should Searchers reach out to you Mr Mrs investor before having a deal to cultivate a relationship with you so that when they do have a deal you already know who you're dealing with and Chris I think you just kind of encapsulated how that's changed because generally today the answer is no probably don't do that because investors just don't have time to just have an open-ended pick your brain get to know you get into know you coffee clatch conversation um they kind of only want to hear from you they wantan to they want to get to know you and see your deal at once and then and they'll evaluate both at once just because the just because of time and resource constraints Fair because you're doing inv now is that how you feel as investors yeah I would totally agree with that okay um anything to say about the mechanics or the process of your search we didn't do anything say about that billboard company that's that's old school I would love company it um it's a very it it billboard companies are much more like real estate um there's not a lot of employees it's it's just a little bit different business model and so getting the financing lined up for something like that was was a little bit more Challenge and we had a a third partner that was going to come in on it it just didn't end up working out we still both really loved the billboard industry and would like like to find an investment in that space um but it just didn't quite work out at the time and what what else anything else was it were you finding lots of targets was the were the picking slim how long did your search last I think it lasted it was about a year it was less than a year um there were there were targets I I felt like we were always reviewing wi um we spent a lot of our time trying to prove to a broker and explain what a self-funded search was that that was really the we spent more time trying to get through those Gatekeepers because they didn't understand what we were doing and so once we kind of honed in that messaging we started to kind of break through um but we didn't do anything special in terms of email or direct mail we just did everything and just stayed at it and stayed aggressive and ultimately I think you got to stay in the game and then you got to be a little lucky but when you get the deal that you know is the one you you have to find a way to get it closed and and not let somebody talk you out of it whether it's yourself or a lawyer you got to trust your I think your instincts a bit that's sort of my opinion on that so what I'm hearing is the business that you bought grabbed you guys it did for me I mean I I liked it from the beginning we had actually I had stumbled across a similar weighing business three or four months earlier just randomly and said this is a really cool industry the business wasn't for sale um and we reached out and it didn't go anywhere but then fast forward 90 days later and there was one for sale in Charlotte and kind of Full Circle Matt how did you feel about the business when you first saw it yeah I I would agree I think it did kind of grab us um I I I also agree with Chris like I think in your gut sometimes you'll know that it's a right deal and uh each one is very unique um and so you know there were three owners uh two of the three were former military uh we connected there um you know these guys had been in the industry their entire career um they were very downto Earth uh I think that they sort of Saw themselves in us a little bit um so and then it hit all the different you know criteria both uh just you know financial and then Geographic and things like that um I'd say we were pretty exced tell us what the business does tell us what the business does and then I I want to hear sure what you're about to say uh American Scale company uh is a service provider installer and distributor of industrial weighing equipment and so we we say we can weigh anything from grains uh to trains and so literally I mean we sold scales that you would weigh in micrograms or even further uh refined wayment in like analytical chemistry labs and then a railroad you know train uh overhead weighing each car weighing you know 400 to 600,000 pounds um we've got some other services as well but yeah it's an incredible business it's it serves every or just most different in markets all different production uh producers and so we would find ourselves inside of you know uh manufacturing facilities food and beverage facilities uh asphalt Aggregates uh building materials and so just cut a really broad cross-section of the economy and across North Carolina South Carolina and Virginia so super cool business I called it in the intro a scale servicing business because I was imag more services but I think you just said the sale and the and the distribution of the equipment as well was a big part of it yeah I mean honestly we want to sell a new scale and then service it calibrate it for the lifetime and ideally sell the replacement scale whether that's again a truck scale that you know you're driving 80,000 pound you know 100,000 pound trucks on every day or some small little $250 you know dollar scale that you're weighing a chicken nugget on so MH mhm and is it like in HVAC to go back to that industry you sell the an air conditioning unit for I don't know 105,000 and then you you try to have a relationship with that customer and you're having visits twice annually for the remainer absolutely and and but the the ratio of those visits to the to the sale of the equipment is quite small what does it look like in this case I mean are you know how big is the sale versus those those service calls and how frequent are the service calls guess another way of asking is like in terms of contributing to your overall to your net profit which which do you like better service or sale what do you think Chris uh from a revenue perspective we did usually like between 50 and 60% was our service whether that was recurring scheduled maintenance or break fix service calls um typically that's the higher margin work um because it's emergency work and it's hourly cost time and materials um that being said we also sold the end equipment and the end equipment allowed us to do the service work so there's a symbiotic relationship between the two um but I think you really need both to be effective as a scale service and distributor you know in our industry currently yeah I think too if you sort of further um divide service I mean we had what we'll call like recurring calibration agreements those you're not necessarily making a lot of money on uh in fact we probably losing a lot on a lot of them initially um you literally show up you just check whether or not the scale is calibrated and if not it's a simple calibration whereas service is is you know that's unscheduled maintenance something breaks and they're calling us and that's you know really just tnm well the rub as we're going to hear later in the interview about this business is that that great profitable work is also what causes the business to be so difficult operationally and from a lifestyle perspective great okay and so get tell us more about just kind of the bullet points of the business I think Matt you were going there age employees and then Revenue in e so when we bought the business it was 20 years old um the there was about 20 to 25 employees uh relatively young average age of the the employee base um I'd say 30 or younger um couple of outliers uh it was doing about five million in Topline uh and roughly 20 to 25% eida margins the only other sort of tiny caveat here is that it was we actually bought two Industrial Service businesses uh the main you know the elephant in the room is the scale company uh but we you know we had a a an industrial welding it's called American Welding service and so you know when we talk about you know the business we kind of look at you know the two companies as one but we had American Scale company and then American Welding and what's the story there why did you buy them as one first of alled well what happened is that the owners when they started American Scale company uh you you would actually manufacturer weld the the scales build them on site back in the day whereas now they you know send them pre-fabricated and you just put them together uh so anyways you need that welding capability uh but it's not something that you need all the time and so the I think the rationale when they when the the founders did it is hey we're going to need welding a good bit of time but when we don't need them we don't want them to have American scale on their doors and so they can go and sort of build their own customer base and and provide different services to different customers and so those teams were completely independent sort of okay they're all Under One Roof and all the same back so okay okay in some ways they one transaction no it was two transaction it was one transaction yes they were owned by the same owners the both companies were owned by the same ownership groups so they wanted when they sold they wanted to sell both of them together um and it made sense so sure sure in that $5 million in Revenue was that the aggregate revenue or just American scale aggregate okay well we're g to and and the percentage relative size scale versus welding was what probably about 85% scale 15% welding okay all right well we'll carry on talking about the story mostly with a focus on the scale business the young average age now that's interesting that's definitely the opposite of what you hear about these kind of skilled Blue Collar tradesy businesses what's up with that you know the the founders they were in their late 50s when they sold uh so they were actually still pretty active in the field uh and you know they were from the community so they had their kids were in high School their kids knew you know kids four or five years older and so I think they just recruited you know folks that from their local community that they had known and ended up it was it was a relatively young Workforce so I think that resonated well and worked out for us in the long run too yeah well but would you say that that is characteristic of the entire industry or just this business just was a fluke I'd say this was a fluke ah okay yeah well certainly certainly an appealing fluke uh obviously because you weren't going to have to scramble to find replacements for an entire crew that's in there you know approaching retirement sort of thing which is so often the case in in bluecollar businesses now is this so the calib we're hearing calibration kind of inspection but it's really this is really the weighing industry so one other industry speaking of Hot or Not industries that we hear about these days is testing inspection and certification tick um which feels similar but that's actually a totally different Beast of an industry depending on who the weighing might be included in that or it might not be um it's sort of a gray area but that there are some characteristics I think that overlap particularly the recurring calibration piece and some of that and then there's components that that probably aren't including selling end products and doing large scale construction projects which definitely aren't kind of in that realm of tick yeah well I guess the the the question for you guys is did the multiple that you were able to get when you sold did it benefit from any of from any kind of association with tick or not really was was your business treated as something apart from the tick industry I I think it was kind of separate um in my in my opinion there are very specific groups that do high-end calibration and testing and measurement that are really good at that and we're just at the other end of the spectrum and there's lots of benefits to being where we're at and there's benefits to being to the other end but I don't think we we might have seen some of those um Tailwinds to a certain extent but I I don't think we fit in that box well enough to get the like crazy multiple you could get okay and anything else to say about the industry well I here here's the detail that you shared in the preall that I recall this is one of those Industries where if you don't know it you don't realize it exists at least I didn't realize it exists and then as you as you pointed out Matt in fact not only does it exist so many Industries have some sort of weighing needs uh and and now it seems abundantly obvious that this would be an industry and that there would be a lot of service to provide here that there would be a market here um the in and in fact you had said that inth Carolina it's actually a quite it's a quite competitive market so you're not just a little obscure business that there are a lot of wearing companies out there say say more about what this industry feels like how competitive it is or not it's a competitive industry and there there are a number of really strong um weighing and scale companies in the Carolina some of which have grown to be kind of nationally known companies and their Roots really started in in North Carolina and so they continue to be strong um the good part about North Car in and the Carolinas in general is that it's a very Diversified economy that is a ton of Tailwinds there's tons of Green Field uh development new factories coming in here and so it allowed us even though we were kind of new to the industry to really lean into all this new development and so we focused a lot of our efforts on when these big multinationals would come in and set up a new Factory and they didn't have a scale company because there was never a factory there before and we would really try to penetrate that quickly and go in and win that customer um so the industry was great and that it was hard to take customers um so defensively you were always you weren't worried about people taking your customers but from an offensive perspective it was very difficult to win new customers and so for growth we had to kind of find that other lever which was to go to these large Green Field projects uh new companies coming into to the geography and lean on that really for our growth um so interesting Dynamics um within the industry and then within the geography that that we operated in well you're not the first guest who's in North Carolina uh and that has also said called out the the benefit that they could really feel and see to being in a high growth state or metropolitan area but and it also just sounds like this the scale business would be a really difficult industry to be in well not I mean they're just if you were in it in a market it wasn't growing it you'd just be duking it out to try to steal customers from each other which is in fact the the the Dynamics of a lot of my guests who buy kind of Trades businesses and mature Industries but better to have it the way you guys had it than than have to fight for every customer well and that is the case for a number of weighing companies you know we talk to lots of them across the country and there's some in the midwest where there's not a lot of growth organically kind of in the state and so it is a you know race to the bottom on hourly rates between the competitors trying to keep customers and they didn't understand or you know we didn't appreciate that because we were we looked around and uh there was always new customers coming into the the geography and so I think that's just an important aspect when you're buying a business to look at the geography that you're operating in because if it's just naturally organically growing like it's just a huge opportunity um regardless of the competitive dynamic in that geography so yeah yeah such an important Point such a such a good point well I want to hear more about what it was like to operate this business and and what you guys did to grow it you've already just touched on it sounds like you were very proactive in in your selling but before that can we hear uh about how you how you bought it what the terms of the deal were what can you share there Matt uh we bought I think the multiple was like three and a half times so pretty good multiple um underwrote it uh around one and a half million in iida uh I think it was actually a little bit lower but we it was about 75% levered uh the rest was you know the equity down payment and of that Chris and I put the majority well not the majority but the the most uh Capital down for for you know the investment so we were the biggest investor of the investor group and then the 75% came from SBA yep correct okay anything more to say about the transaction itself or pretty interesting broker and got it done um you know worked with the SBA and the loan closers from you know a small Community Bank um again got it done um you know but we I think we you know we almost completed the transaction Within you know 90-day timeline which sort of a miracle uh given both sides of the transaction and working with the sellers and uh some of the service providers so so the service providers quote quote unquote interesting service providers from the broker to the lender not great you push in fact in fact did it pretty quick that and I mean maybe some of the advisers on for the sellers just you know they maybe were were finding folks that weren't as sophisticated it was just um it was a big handholding process I would say the entire way through where did you find the business uh we found it uh online I think Biz byell actually uh it had been put on bis by cell and Chris was like the first person to reply to the listing I think had it been sitting for a while no I I mean it went up on Friday night and I was the first one that got in there she picked the first three people that responded that seemed legitimate and we met I think that Monday or Tuesday and those are the only three groups that got to look at it and we you kind of were selected out of that group so once again luck and then just when you see something you just got to move quickly on it and uh we had to put an offer in I think that week and there wasn't time to do a whole bunch of L you know DD it was very regimented process um but we liked it and just kind of felt a good had a good feeling about it well it sounds like the broker was actually trying to run a process a pretty tight process to her I'm saying to her credit despite maybe the broker she she she wasn't bad she just had a very prescriptive process that she wanted to follow through and we didn't some of the things we were doing with the self-funded search didn't fit into those wickets quite as well and so it just made what would normally be probably in her her process you know very simple we of introduced a little complexity to it and so there was a little bit of a learning process on both sides but everybody throughout the process was was uh all moving towards the the same end goal we never got contentious um so ultimately we got the deal done and in 90 days and got it closed and everybody at the closing was still friends and and happy Chris You' said something a few minutes ago about when you kind of your reflexive reaction to seeing this business feeling like okay this is this is a good one this is the one and and clearly you just told us how quickly you acted so your actions uh speak loudly but you did say something about like you gota if you feel good about it you you go with go with how you you know your conviction and don't kind of let doubters or naysayers um aode that conviction maybe I'm reading too much into it but were were there other around you maybe your investor group who didn't like the business I don't think anybody didn't like it I think they all liked it the qve came back and there were some there wasn't anything egregiously wrong they're just their accounting was very rudimentary and so trying to do a real thorough qov on it led to some well this is off here and this is off here and so when you have more sophisticated investors that they start to get a little antsy with stuff like that and so we just had to say look like this is a rudimentary business bu with basic accounting and so don't dig into this too deep at the end of the day it's within these two ranges we feel comfortable that we're going to make this work and so we started to have some people you know question a lot of that and we just stuck to our guns and kind of just pounded through it great yeah well another example how things have probably changed because self-funded search investors today would understand wouldn't be as as spooked by totally totally to be expected they were looking for audited financial statements for the last five years and yeah the fact they're asking that sort of showed a uh you know not an understanding this this space quite yet so great and how did how did the transition go how did the day one speech go anything to share there uh somebody told us that he wasn't making two more rich I think that was probably the Highlight from day one okay and did that person in fact quit eventually unfortunately it's pretty pretty good dude so um he was a good dude yeah he was a a good good employee you know very competent very technically sound um just didn't see eye to eye and what did what did he what did you say in response to that having an honest call you an to your face yeah I I don't know wor things so absolutely yeah well we're going to get into the high maintenance nature uh of certain uh certain kind of I'll tell you I think the other thing that I remember sorry to interrupt you will that was just kind of funny uh well two things one the old owners uh they told us before we we showed up uh because we were both driving cars and we still are both driving the same cars the old owners were like they're going to make fun of you guys if you show up in cars you better go buy a truck um so nobody made fun of us but we were both wearing I think uh we had Army issued belts like these white belts I pretty much worn mine the entire five years uh but I was ridiculed by the team you know every now and then about it so but they white yeah they made some comments about the belt on day one they're like know what you guys were wearing but you look pretty funny so Chris how did it go for you yeah about the way Matt described it it wasn't bad there a few people were Shell Shocked um but all in all um business kept moving on and um folks stayed for the most part um okay well I hope you at least weren't driving Priuses no no okay all right well actually this might be a perfect segue to what the operations of this business were like you you you really liked it from the outside but in fact this is a really hard business uh you you made no bones about it on our preall so and and it's just such an important and we're so let's spend some time here it's such an important point that maybe it's that understanding the lifestyle of a business um do that as much as you can because this was a this was kind of a a grueling one um but on paper looked like a phenomenal business all the things that we've already talked about so why don't you just kind of tell us what the day-to-day looked like first I mean So like operationally um when we sort of started just to find out what the day-to-day was what it was you know we mentioned there were three owners two of them uh three owners two different offices so there's an office in Charlotte and then we've got an office about three three and a half hours away uh east of Charlotte east of Raleigh off 95 uh two there was an owner in Charlotte handling day-to-day for the Charlotte office and there was an owner uh in eastern North Carolina handling the dayto day there they I mean generally would either call the individual technicians like the night before or they would come in and in the morning and sit down and sort of get the daily plan together um but I mean generally the dayto day I mean what it is is you'll schedule a day for the technicians either office and you'll have calibration agreements to go do uh and you may have a service call from the day prior that we weren't able to get done and and wasn't you know critical didn't have to be completed in after hours but you've got like a daily schedule sort of identified for for each technician and then you know then the phone start ringing um and which it's a great thing I mean you obviously we want the phones to ring but uh we'll you know we'll get a service call and then it becomes a a matter of rerouting you know the the technician that has the appropriate skill set to handle the service call has the equipment has the the right parts you know the inventory on his truck um so I mean just on a day-to-day BAS bis it's it's continually moving sort of Controlled Chaos to be honest I think would be a good way to put it operationally much Logistics like a ton of logistics yeah definitely okay I mean again like a you know we fell in on on these calibration agreements and we had them for each month and I just remember um the owner handing me you know the next month it must have been the month of September he handed me the calibration agreement and it was an Excel sheet and it was the name of the town and then you know the name of the customers I didn't even know North Carolina and so I didn't know any of the towns I didn't know like where the technicians would be going and so I mean one thing we did you know early on just to help sort of visualize operations is we took like our calibration agreements these scheduled maintenance if you will uh and we started plotting them in Google Maps um you know we used like the the Google suite for for almost everything communication and team sharing and things like that uh and we started you know using maps and it was just as simple as like a color code to you know it's red not done yellow hey we're there and green you know the job is complete um but again sort of the daily a day in the life of a technician looks like you get your schedule nowadays they get it the day in advance at like 600 p.m. it comes out they get it in advance they you know generally know what they're going to do but then you might not even start your day you might get a call at midnight and and have to go to a service call you know so it's very fluid I mean the day changes five times throughout but this is not a good thing this is does not make it exciting and dynamic it makes it it's exciting and dynamic for a while grindy yeah for sure U it's exciting and and dynamic but that doesn't stop I mean it doesn't stop on a holiday it doesn't stop after hours it doesn't stop after a year or two it just it hasn't stopped now I mean it just it keeps going which great business but it it is operationally you know challenging and takes a lot and what about delegating delegating that hard stuff so your technicians are the one who are going to go do the service call uh and why not a middle manager who's absorbing all of the all of that kind of inbound as opposed to you guys and and maybe more maybe it's because the answer is the size a small business you don't yet have that but the ideal would be is you in fact do grow into that if you can I I think we we did grow into that over time you know as a part of sort of the founders you know they told us that they had second line management um the reality is they didn't um so I mean they had identified an individual for the Charlotte office that you know wanted to be a service manager um sadly that that guy ended up passing away uh he he didn't work out uh we had a an individual at the other location who you know we grew uh and worked with him and he did a really good job but he went from a technician to you know a service manager to like a general manager uh running his Branch over the five years so I mean I think another thing that we did is the folks that did stay uh we really grew professional ion personally you know I'd like to think so but we got um about six months in we hired a service manager for our Charlotte office and he he is awesome he was that layer in between and did an incredible job uh when he joined us so I mean he was a huge huge part of the story well so does the business if like talking about this employee that you ultimately put in place does it become a more appealing business if you can get it there I mean and you get to have the the benefits of uh of a great business model and but not so demanding work uh and be the you know the owners who are just getting rich and not having to work that hard or does is there is there something intrinsic to this business that like not really I mean I think you could build the team and get there but your team is going to they're going to be burnt just as much uh it's it not really I mean I think it's just a grind Chris we talked to enough other Scale Company owners across the country and they all feel EX exactly the same um and so I think it's a large component of just how the industry operates um and a lot of our guys they they like the they like the unknown every day right they're going to go do something different every day it's not going clock in and do the same thing but because of that kind of unknown somebody's having to manage that unknown and and the chaos and um that just weighs on you mentally um day after day week after week and even if you do find some some layers of management in there ultimately as the owner you know Matt and I were still extremely close to it um and that may have been our own fault we probably should have stepped back at times um so some of it may be a little self-induced but I think there's a large component that is kind of industry driven just from the data points of lots of other scale uh company errors and when you talk about the inbound and the and the moving schedule and the you know five having to change routes five times a day that's because you get service calls you're basically somebody somebody's scale broke yeah so like last night we've had a bunch of thunderstorms here lately and so our phone just rings off the hook because the thunderstorms hit the scales and all of a sudden they call at 6:00 9:00 10:00 and they all want to be up and running by 6:00 a.m. in the morning well you're trying you had a whole schedule made you're trying to Route people and our customers can be four and five hours away from Charlotte so it's not as simple as go to this one and go to the next one it's trying to Route people all across the southeast um and different customers have different priorities like some we have some very high priority customers and you may have a technician driving the total opposite direction to somebody else this high priority customer calls and you turn them around and had them totally the opposite direction um and so that's just sort of the unknown and then you've got all these recurring maintenance calibration agreements that have to be done in that month so you've got this EB and flow of you know the collaboration agreement and that work load is kind of a known quantity what you don't know is the unscheduled break fix work for a month you can kind of project it but some of it is to my point weather dependent and I mean trying to predict the weather other than there will be thunderstorms in the Carolinas in the summer we didn't have any rain for almost four weeks here and there were no service calls very few we've had thunderstorms for about two weeks straight now and they're they're getting just hammered they can barely keep up with the work um so it it's hard to plan when when it when it rains at poor service calls and that could be a real challenge for the organization to absorb yeah I was just one other thing I think that is part of this story is that we were also trying to grow so I mean I think when you're trying to grow it just makes things more challenging in general whether the the business is operationally complex but I mean there's a lot of owners that have gotten you know their Scale company to a decent size and have just kind of Pumped the brakes and they said like we don't want to you know we don't want to grow more because it's we're going to have to add employees and you know additional risk and trucks and equipment and we're going to keep getting more phone calls and things like that and so you know not only is the industry just hard and demanding but then layering on top of that that Chris and Matt are you know pushing everybody to try to grow grow grow so it was just yeah it was exhausting well I heard you you the used the word burned there mat a minute ago so do you feel like you guys were burning out I think I probably was yeah Chris yeah I was definitely on the path for sure I was I was I wasn't maybe quite as far as as Matt but I was not far behind and you know you're a couple of former military guys uh and you had in fact looked for businesses like this Industrial Services so um I guess to people listening who who don't run toward these types of businesses who maybe don't have military training or excuse me military experience it would be that much more of a challenge um but did did it not was it not like what you were doing in some of your military work I mean so we actually tried to hire I think a general manager as well uh to again at another layer uh and for one reason or another we were unsuccessful sort of we we hired successfully we were unsuccessful at attaining uh and that was I think about two and a half years in when we hired that individual and then you know six months into the the training process the the GM decides to leave and then I think that you know a Learning lesson is like probably focus on building your team I mean I think that we could have done a better job of building our team uh investing in our team and that would have shielded us from some of the burnout one of the other go ahead Chris I was just gonna say I think to the point around the military I mean Matt and I were just willing to to grind I mean I think that's I mean if we if we hadn't sold the business we'd still be grinding in it right now and that would just be what was necessary and so there wasn't you know we sort of looked at it it was like a five-year deployment except you could go home at the end of the night instead of go back to your little you know you know metal container you were sleeping in and you could see your kids but you're mind was never off the business I mean I I ever it was always Forefront and that was a real challenge but it we also knew that we could mentally handle it it was just there was a cost involved and it was being born by our families and personal lives and health and other things and I think we both came to that realization that if there was an opportunity to you know exit maybe it would be the right time and it kind of came at the right time yeah well and we're going to get there in just a sec but to to be clear the point about you're never not thinking about your business a lot of entrepreneurs will say that but I think the difference here too is that your particular business kind of never sleeps sort of thing I mean it's it's always on C midd Thanksgiving Day you know two in the morning you I mean every s Every After Hours call from pretty much 400 PM till 7 a.m. for five years straight went to Matt and I cell phone no matter what day of the year and so I mean we had a service called this Fourth of July yeah wow well you know another important point for the audience here is that we all one of the classic criteria for search businesses is that they not be discretionary spend that they that they be critical spend but this is an extreme where you're truly mission mission critical to your to your clients to your customers so they're calling you in the middle of the night because if the scales don't work they can't whatever the factory comes to a screeching halt the next morning so as appealing as that is from revenue streng quality of Revenue I mean that revenue is desperate to go to you so that you can come fix their problem it's of course also the the flip side can be when it's so Mission critical that it's a business that never sleeps and you just gota you just got to scramble to Ser service your customers and that can be really unappealing for business we talk about you know lifestyle businesses but what kind of Lifestyle this is sort of a a bad lifestyle business um I'm I'm reminded of Nick haska who an early guest and who's now been on multiple times and is going to be on coming on again and one of the the very first business he that he bought was an indoor plant business so basically servicing the plants of offices so and he liked you know so so if if his Crews can't make it to the office that day the world's not going to end that the plants don't get watered and he really liked that about it the lack of mission criticality there so just taking something at the opposite end of the spectrum and you could now and and you can see the appeal of that as with in contrast to to the life that you guys just lived for five years now of course the flip side is though that Nick's services are therefore more discretionary so in a belt tightening environment you know the the plant guys are probably going to get cut pretty pretty quick so pick your poison sort of thing what about your anything more to say about the the cruise and um H how demanding your word that they they can be I mean we talk a lot on this podcast about white collar people coming in and buying bluecollar businesses um maybe maybe share a little bit more about what you what your experience was I mean I think it uh crew I mean good people I I think the great people I think that the another layer to the complexity is just how technical uh the actual scales the equipment that we work on are I mean sometimes still tie into like automation systems related to like an entire production line um and then also we have uh larger trucks that require you know Class B CDL to drive and so you can't just hire somebody off the street and put them in that vehicle um so and training an individual there's no training pipeline or program that you just send somebody to and they come back a scale technician so you know trained quality scale technicians that are good team members I mean they're worth their weight in gold um and you know I always felt very very very very vulnerable that we'd get a call at 2 am and and it happened where somebody didn't answer and then you go to the next one and then they don't answer and then you know in the early days I mean we didn't we didn't even have any idea what we were talking about really related to the scale we couldn't even tell the customer or anything um so it's just very technical very complex and that added an element and um when you introduce people uh into the equation you know communication and things like that it it gets messy and you know even harder so and were you all able in during your tenure to build some kind of training function we ended up yeah we ended up one of our manufacturers that produces scales and we would sell they had a kind of an in-house training program that we would send our technicians to um and that that was a solid program but you still got to continue to train folks just like in any industry and there's just not a you know HVAC and diesel mechanics there's literally schools that just produce these folks over and over and you kind of know the scale industry doesn't have that it's too small and so we ended up leaning on our manufacturers to kind of provide that training and it was fruitful um but it's just different and the selling that you guys touched on earlier um is that one of the big levers that you pulled going out and getting new business you also talked about how growth was really hard because you're just trying to keep the keep the trains running on time let alone add add more trains if you will so so what what did you build uh sales what did Revenue do over your five years we built a sales team um and you know Matt and I still were the primary sales folks from the beginning until the end we brought on full-time sales folks and trained them from folks that had experience in sales to folks that had none um and kind of got them up to where we wanted to go including we we trained one of our technicians who kind of as part of his development professionally went from a technician to a salesperson and has now actually become uh a branch manager so um that was that was one of the things we did well was kind of in the train in the sales uh area Matt and I were just very aggressive um going out and winning new business um like I said lots of Green Field new facilities being built and we just we just leaned into that um we would show up we would drive around we would cold call we did a lot of work on um digital marketing our space was just really behind in that area and so for us to just do what most people consider as a basic website with a little bit of SEO and paid search like paid huge dividends because your competition was doing nothing um so we were able to do that nowadays everybody's caught up to that um and so we just we leaned in on that and just went hard um that's part of the the grind and that pressure was we were trying to sell we had our sales hat on all the time plus we were trying to run the operations and everything else and so we were always stressing the organization because we were continuing to sell new product um bringing in new products we were bringing in new manufacturers um just anything to to drive new Revenue uh we would also expand our geographic area we went further than most scale companies would away from their home bases um if we could make it financially viable um and that's kind of what kind of led the growth and over time we went from five million in Top Line to well over 10 um and it was just a nice consistent 15% growth every year no big massive one year up down just we just kind of kept at it and uh this a little bit of a Snowball Effect I think and what had been the plan that you would Own It indefinitely Or that you would try to grow it and sell it or just create optionality for yourselves and decide decide whatever you wanted to do after you knew more I don't think we really knew I mean I could tell you what we thought we would run it and see where it went I I think we were both pretty open to the fact that if we liked it and it was a great business we could continue forever if there was a good option on the table to sell it we would consider that um but I don't think we had something etched in stone that we were going to you know hold this for 50 years come hell or high water um and that's sort of how it ended up playing out that well but circling back to your investors who you kind of had to get comfortable with self-funded surge one of the things investors need to get comfortable with is when when am I going to get my capital back not only you know what is the opportunity here but when am I just going to get my money back please so what did you so usually they like to see Clarity that like you're gonna have a you have a that you have a plan not that well we'll see what did you tell them I think we we went with the standard look we're looking for a five to seven year hold just just like most folks but of course we told them look if this business is doing really well it's cash flowing well we're enjoying it you're getting your return you've gotten your pref back you've gotten your Capital that you put in back and you're going to get residual checks for the next 20 years they were all fine with that too um so we kind of gave them here's the here's the model with the five to seven-year exit that everybody uses we'll use that but just know we'll see how this goes in two three four years and we'll all kind of discuss and and see what makes sense and they were always very supportive along the way let's hear about how the exit came to pass we actually were buying a competitor um and so we exited in July of 23 uh I think in February or March of 2012 we had given a competitor an Loi uh that was accepted uh that would have been you know fairly transformational uh that we worked on um we we the ultimate buyer the Strategic the gentleman that sold uh you know it's a it's a larger platform business he sold to financial sponsor Chris and I had met him uh before he sold the larger you know the platform if you will um so we knew that they were on the market and that they were you know looking for uh some type of financial sponsor um we I I stayed in touch with him I talked to him you know every three to six months and so we're moving forward trying to buy the one business and then the platform gets acquired the owner calls us and he said hey you know we've been acquired we want you guys to come join us are you interested and we thought about it for a little bit um this would have been in you know the second half of 2022 and we decided you know no we're going to focus on trying to to acquire this business um you know that we that we had already gotten the LOI had been accepted we kept working on that um long story short that deal died a month from the Finish Line uh and that was in March of 23 um and you know I think we had we bought the business at an inflection point a bit of a plateau uh we grew through you know the inflection point and got to a bit of another Plateau um we wanted to do something transformational and you know the the acquisition opportunity died and you know we the business had been performing really well and so we we decided to go back and talk to the to the folks that ultimately acquired us and see if they were still interested and and they were and it just sort of went from there and so to be clear you were trying to buy one of your competitors in the meantime you had you were talking to this other sponsor who was who had bought a platform in your industry correct and was interested in buying you all you guys as well as a as a second for third acquisition Bolton although you were big enough that you might call it something more than a Bolton um and we told them I mean we were transparent we said like look we're we're actually working on this other opportunity you know we we we'll entertain the you know the idea but we you know we're going to focus on buying this and then you know maybe we can revisit the conversation in a few years yeah when that deal died then we went back to them and and again we were transparent we said look we'd be willing to hear you guys out you know if you're still interested so okay and the inflection point was what was because buying that doing your own acquisition buying that second business was really going to Vault you into the next level and so not getting that felt like you know oh you know kind of fork in the road or because of your own burn out or because what there was something magic about 10 or approaching $ 11 million of Revenue that you felt like getting further than that was going to require I think it was deep investment or what probably more so uh the just some of the error uh let out just let down as a result of that that transaction dying and then probably some of the burnout um you know so an emotional inflection point potentially I don't know is that how you felt Chris yeah I think there was definitely a component to the emotion but I think the business was also sort of at an inflection point like we were going to have to invest probably a significant amount of more money into the business to kind of go to the $25 million Revenue level um we had done the double to do the next big step function was going to require a good chunk of change and I think we would have been willing to do it but it just we knew we were at a point where either if if we were going to decide to exit this was like a natural break point uh we didn't want to be in the middle of trying to do this big growth thing that was spending a lot of money um we wanted to go ahead and you know make that decision and go one way or the other you had mentioned that the there was a toll that was taken on you guys burning out but also kind of even taking your work home with you and on your family a little bit your family life was that is there anything to say there I mean was this something that you're you felt like your families were really experiencing the brunt of your ownership of this business my wife would probably say so yeah yeah definitely I mean but I mean I I'd say that somewhat jokingly I mean although it's it is true I mean we literally I you know probably actually worked every day for the first two years uh like actually had to do something because I mean again when we bought it everything was analog so I mean we were handwriting invoy you know well hand processing work orders um but yeah I think they definitely I know my wife she she heard about it all the time we both have young kids and I think we both probably came to the realization that like continuing to work the hours we were working and missing out on on kind of those experiences with our children probably in the in the 50 years from now or 40 years from now we'd probably look back and make a different decision so um you know my wife was very supportive you know having been through a number of deployments I think she was still happy that I was home versus you know not being home um but it it it was hard um but I I wouldn't change anything I think it was a huge learning experience that I would do over for in a minute but um it it was just a realization of where we were in the business and and kind of being honest about it and making what we thought and I still think was the best decision a year ago well and to be clear this this is a great the this is a success a story of success I mean I'm I'm kind of I'm kind of pressing you guys on the the down bits here or like really just trying to understand the motivations of wanting to sell which which are about this kind of burnout and how how grueling this industry or this business is but fundamentally well maybe maybe the let's have you answer in a concrete way you sell to the Strategic acquire from from a good position what can you share about the terms of that of that sale um it was a you know eight figure uh exit and um Matt and I made um you know a good amount of money um commens it with the amount of risk we took um our investors had a great return um and I think just as importantly was that we were able to bring in a partner company that we aligned with and has has treated our employees and team and customers really well and we've haven't had any employees that were on the payroll when we left uh leave only one I say that one um and they've gotten better benefits a lot lot of other pros and so I think for me A lot of it was and I know Matt too was making sure that there's a lot of folks that would have bought the business but making sure we picked the right group and I feel confident now that we picked a good group that's done what they said they were going to do and and that these days is not always easy to find um there's been some you know new bureaucracy involved with a little bit larger company but I think by and large the pros have have far outweighed the the small cons that have with the ownership change well and and just to to put a bow on it so you guys buy this business that did 5 million was doing 5 million you grow it to North of you more than double it grow it to North of 10 million and you you know digitize an analog business you put in I guess key managers you professionalize I assume you do a lot of professionalization I think you double eitaa I mean are the earnings also doubling as well so obviously that's going to you're going to get some uh multiple benefit there some multiple Arbitrage um so sounds like you can't say specifics but we can all understand that it was a it was a a great run and a so very solid exit anything more to say about the whole the whole Adventure I want to leave just we have a couple minutes here to hear about your investing activities but anything more to say about American scale anything I didn't ask no I think my my one point is that I think it's uh the industry and the employees are really like the the heartbeat of of this country and I think for me personally like getting back and spending time with folks that work with their hands and get to actually physically do something that provides value um that's tangible and you can see and feel was was just a really good feeling um having worked kind of in Corporate America where you don't get that feeling um even in the military at times you don't depending on your role and so for me like I had a lot of Pride and still do like when I see our trucks driving around or I see one of our technicians fixing something for a customer and you get these incredible notes from customers um you know talking about how great the employee was and how they saved them you know I'm team thousands of dollars by getting their scale up and running under a ton of pressure and they performed really well and I think that was something that I valued a lot more and retrospect than maybe when I stepped into the business you know six years ago it's awesome and and to be clear about the hardship of this business it wasn't because it was a blue collar trades business it was because it was a mission you were servicing Mission critical providing a mission critical service I think it's Mission critical and the technical nature and you combine those two things it can be a challenge to to kind of to manage so so so the to the extent this is a cautionary tale for The Listener it's not that you guys bought a trade business it is that you bought a highly technical Mission critical business that never slept that you wanted to grow and double be very aware of the nature of such a beast listen I think Chris sort of hit the nail on the head I mean I think at the end of the day one of the things I'm most proud of is you know those team members that did stick with us um I hope you know I think they've all grown professionally and personally and like it's awesome to see sort of some of the the folks that you know were with us on day one you know where they're at now I mean so that's really cool great guys well what do you think the next chapter for you is you're investing in search we're going to get there in just a second uh with what little time we have left we're already over but do you think you'll buy another business do you think you'll how old are you each I'm 40 39 Chris okay so what what do you have in mind for yourselves looking at the investor life I think we're both enjoying doing the investing for sure it's a it's a great way to stay connected with to self-funded Searchers and kind of still be involved with with small business um whether we go buy another business I think is just function of what comes on the market timing and a number of other um considerations that we sort of just play out uh over time okay well let's hear a little bit about uh about your investing what's your position and what kind of deals do you look at so we've invested in uh six seven uh other businesses um six of the seven are you know self-funded search deals um were you know minority uh investors uh but you know one thing that Chris and I want to do is try to add value where we can and to the extent that the Searcher you know wants it um or our input and so um you know we we like the southeast uh geographically love the southeast uh like you know Business Services B2B you know some of the trades uh for a lot of the reasons we talked about um you know you mentioned nick uh We've invested with Nick haska um some other probably well-known names in search ETA community that we've co-invested with and so uh I think just really looking forward to you know continuing to meet uh you know entrepreneur operators that that want to you know get in the saddle and you know help them and back them and see them you know achieve what they're looking to do so and so you you have a uh an orientation toward um trades kind of industrial B2B style Services uh and and Southeast geography not strictly not those aren't strict criteria but those are kind of your eyes light up for th those types of opportunities because that's where you can add value that's right and then I mean one just a little bit different than a a self-funded uh search deal we're investing in a a portapotty startup uh here in the Charlotte market so um if you're in Charlotte within the next year you better be in one of our porta potties you got to go outside I'm just kidding is the is it is there any kind of Technology angle or is this a blue collar business just a bluecollar Port-A-Potty rental business just not ETA it's zero to one it's it's it's that but it's uh The Operators are highly motivated you know entrepreneurs that um you know have proven themselves before and have been studying this for a while and and want to get after it and so um it's exciting well I should interview them because portapotty businesses are are uh the darling of the ETA world I mean we we all want to buy a port body business uh so why they chose in fact that 0o to one was was better than buy buying an existing one would be an interesting conversation um so maybe I'll ask you for a connection for sure Chris anything more to say about your investing activities no I mean I think we're we're excited to partner with folks and like Matt said like we're operators that's our we're not super Finance guys but what we can do is really help you like on the like day-to-day Ops if you're you know on your first go of a search acquired business um like we can we can get in the the weeds with you and kind of provide value um so that's sort of our selling point vers you know some other folks and I just tell all the Searchers nowadays with the abundance of investors out there is I would be picky about who you choose I think you can actually select your investor group now vers it used to be much more you kind of took the money you could get um and so I would be very cognizant about who you select and and what they bring to the table um because you can get a lot of folks that can bring to the table the check but they could bring together potentially new customers um tactical experience industry knowledge and so I would lean on doing that uh diligence on your investors to make sure they're the right fit um because 's enough investors out there these days so I it's great for the Searchers um so well it's it's a great Point Chris and and with my group Minds Capital what really got us excited was when we could articulate what differentiated us from other Capital so it's also you know having for the investor knowing where they can add value where and why they can add value and being able to articulate that um also just Dem demonstrates the inability to add value because they they've thought it through and they've really understood where they differentiate and can add value um and have positioned themselves accordingly and and are going after a a particular a particular kind of Niche within broader search um so well well put okay Chris and Matt I uh want to invite you guys to share contact information or how you like to be contacted but I'm reminding myself to give a PSA to the audience uh going forward we'll see if I remember to do so I'm remembering now if you do reach out to uh an acquiring minds guest um please have done your homework have you know the mastered the basics listened to a bunch of the pods this or others read the books uh because there are people who are really you know guests are generally really generous with their time but I do hear from time to time that people just they get so much inbound to just get on the phone and talk about their search if you reach out to Chris and Matt treat their time uh as the precious resource that it is and and come with some real dialed in questions and have done your homework and with that gentlemen how how can people how could people reach out to you I think we're both on LinkedIn um that's always a good one and then um our website is 12 South Capital partners.com our emails and phone numbers are on there 12 South Capital partners correct okay Matt and Chris thank you guys very much for coming on congratulations on a successful Journey it was hard but here you sit uh Victorious and with a lot of value now to pour back into the community so congratulations appreciate it well thanks for having us well I hope you enjoyed 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