Adrian Pinto welcome back to acquiring minds yeah thank you for having me good to be back Adrian you were a guest back in February of last year 2022 having bought a landscaping business in the Atlanta area so I wanted to have you back on to share with us how it's going to get started Adrian please just remind people a little bit about your backstory and about George escapes the business that you bought yeah sure so my background was really Financial in nature so I did a couple years of investment banking out of college that created Suites and then I went to private equity and worked at two different private Equity forms for about four years the bulk of that time spending in the kind of mid-market buyout space specifically looking at industrial companies at a place called Greenbrier Equity Group um and after that second firm then is when I decided to make the shift into kind of ETA and move forward with George escapes and so Georgia skates were a commercial landscaping business broken up between commercial maintenance at apartments shopping centers businesses HOAs things like that then we have a an enhancement Group which focuses on kind of upsell projects at those maintenance customers and then we have a third division which is what we describe as our Builder group they do the high volume installations for track home builders we work with some of the big U.S home builders doing this odd plant and tree installs when they do a neighborhood so we'll sign a contract for the life of the neighborhood and install kind of behind them every time they're completing a home great and do those customers then become recurring customers in some way or is that really just a one and done big but one and done yeah so they there definitely is an opportunity for that and um something I probably didn't appreciate when I took over um because the prior owner never pursued it he wasn't really a big fan of Maintenance in general which we can kind of talk about why but um that is definitely something that we have started to pursue a lot more and so I would say at most of our install customers we will do some form of Maintenance whether it's the whole Community it could be you know the model home and the spec homes that they're building um but yeah that's something we've definitely been pursuing more and um you know has been received pretty well from the builders because I think they like to work with just one party ultimately cool and Adrian give us a sense of the some numbers around Georgia Scapes if you can um and if there's been a change hopefully a positive change what it was today and what it was when you bought it started start us off with what was it when you bought it yeah so when I had entered into the LOI it was a bit under 3 million of Revenue um today we're on an LTM basis we're a bit under 6 million of Revenue which is you know pretty exciting for about 18 months yeah margins um you know I would say they were higher you know candidly before I took over in large part because the prior owner kind of wore several hats himself um which classic story I was something like you know I think I probably you know under appreciated and frankly under diligence just how involved he was and what might be needed you know rehiring you know wanting to replace him and so um you know adjusting for that and and um or factoring that and then kind of adjusting for some one-time stuff you know our margins are um you know probably low low teens I would say is probably pretty accurate great thank you doubling Revenue essentially uh even if even if your margins are a bit less uh sure sounds positive give me just a high level um how you feeling and if you want to grade it on on one to ten uh go ahead and do that um you this was a big life decision and um you know you got off traditional Finance path and into the small business ownership path uh reflecting back uh was it a good move yeah I mean you know it's interesting because I think at times it's hard to take that step back and like look at it holistically and say like okay like you know look how the organization has changed look how we've you know developed our customers you know we've grown our you know grown the business financially you know and when I do that I think it it helps me like you know frame what's got gone on and I think I feel frankly more positive about the situation I think it's easy or at least for me you know to get caught up in any one um you know thing that might be going on that you're kind of trying to solve a problem and then you know that causes stress or whatever and then you know that you know that frustration that kind of builds through that so I think when I look at it you know overall um it's definitely been a positive experience both because of the just overall outcome to the business but also I think like personally I I cannot I guess over over say how much you learn you know just do it you know ultimately doing this relative to being like an investment role right like I I think when you're in an investment role you look look at things very theoretically and you you know you learn to calculate things the way that you know essentially the books tell you to calculate them and then I think when you're in this seat you learn like how it actually works in practice and how different that is um and so you know one thing that I've realized at times as I've reviewed like other businesses or given advice to other people or talked to some of my friends still in PE it's like um I think my perspective on just like business value or evaluation has developed like dramatically for the positive you know what I mean and it's probably made me I think a lot better um you know investor or just you know General kind of you know viewer of businesses which is I think kind of like an anecdotal positive of this whole situation but um you know something that I didn't necessarily anticipate occurring as much as it has that's fascinating well Adrian part of your back story was that you in your role roles in PE saw there's just kind of this great kind of anecdote where you saw these blue-collar guys who'd built enormous businesses and sold out you know we're selling them for I think like nine figures and yeah and and you said to yourself um you know they and they and they hadn't there hadn't been some master stroke some genius at work they just kind of been kind of um growth oriented and been at it for a long time and uh and there they were multi multi-millionaires and you said to yourself well that looks fun and I feel like I could do that um do you feel that that observation of yours was accurate or do you do you feel like you you were maybe oversimplifying it now that you're in it you're like wow it's even more impressive what they built or is it basically all intact like yeah that's still that's still the plan yeah it's a good question I mean I think probably both I mean I I think I probably under appreciated some of the difficulties certainly with doing it um both in terms of just like uh you know the pros you know the process of you know going out finding these businesses buying them you know like it you know takes a lot of work certainly I think I've also probably underappreciated like the dedication it takes to stay in the same business for 30 years and do that you know like in all of those instances for the most part they were people that had been doing it for a really really long time and so I think what I probably underappreciated was just how um import you know how like important it was to have that you know long presence in a business like I think viewing it as something that could be done in two years in getting anywhere near those scale you know I think I probably way overestimated um but I do I definitely think the opportunity still exists certainly um especially if you know you have kind of the right you know financing structure in place or Partners or whatever that is um I think the yeah I think the opportunities that's 100 real I think I probably just you know the speed of all of it um at least the speed doing it yourself I think is probably where I you know under you know underestimated things but you through acquisition you probably still feel that you can if if you choose to pursue that path do it faster than the three or four decades that it took some of these people that you were seeing yeah I think so I mean and that's probably in part because of risk appetite and um you know just how aggressive people are you know on m a um you know I think like I would have an ability to be more aggressive than you know some of these individuals that I had met in the past um um so yeah I definitely think that that is probably true but um yeah I mean the the whole notion of like going about it yourself and trying to execute all that M A at the same speed that we're talking about but without you know any Partners or you know financing Partners whether it's internet or Equity I think that part is definitely more difficult right like if you're going to try to organically grow a cash base that you're going to then deploy for Acquisitions that's going to take a really long time okay and that's in part because I think the especially let's say you know in landscaping right like it's a moderately Capital intensive industry the margins are you know somewhat thin right it's not software and so the idea that you're going to be able to um effectively grow your own business right and and make investments into it both equipment people all of that while also building you know the cash needed to go then acquire a bunch of other businesses I think is difficult unless you just didn't really have much appetite to grow your business right and um I mean that's certainly something I've thought about at different times which is like juxtaposing what's gone on for us right like kind of doubling the size of the business with what if we didn't try to do any of that and just focused on you know maximizing cash flow and using that to deploy into Acquisitions and like what would that look like basically you mean sorry um building up your own cash flow enough that you would not you would not need a lender partner to go out and do Acquisitions yeah right well I think yeah I think instead basically instead of us trying to maximize our organic growth right which is obviously taking money um to do that you know the alternative would be like let's just try to be flat right but we'll you know try to maximize our margin so we'll operate as thinly as possible with as few people as possible with you know as old of equipment as possible um but in turn will generate much higher free cash flow which then we may be able to go out and you you know deploy into Acquisitions um you know and that that's like you know it's just an alternative route which I've thought about but ultimately I think for a couple different reasons have like you know shied away from mm-hmm since we're on the topic of Acquisitions one of the things in our first conversation that we talked about was just the opportunity I mean it's a landscaping is a uh known to be quite a fragmented industry you know Suburban neighborhoods of America are crawling with Landscaping businesses and I remember you observing you know Landscaping trucks once you were in Georgia escapes it's like you'd never notice them before and now you see them everywhere sort of phenomenon um do you still feel like aside from the point you just made about how you allocate your own Capital do you still feel like there are a lot of acquisition um opportunities like how has that view of yours developed yeah I mean I think the answer is yes but I have I'd say like um I would say that I have tightened my scope around what those those companies would need to look like you know both financially Revenue profile in order to be attractive so I think when you and I initially had that discussion it was probably like right when I was starting to kind of dive into the you know Target Universe and what these businesses look like and I've had subsequent you know discussions with owners um people that I've kind of proactively reached out to who've said yeah I'd be open to a discussion and I think as I've gotten under the hood and learned a little bit more about their businesses I've seen that um you know the their revenue mix doesn't necessarily align very well with what ours looks like and so you know if you just purely care about scale and you know you don't really care about you know being a pure play in any you know by any sense of the word like I think you could go out and you could buy a bunch of stuff um but I think I've been more hesitant for one in one for one reason just because the businesses that I have thus far had those interactions with have not you know had the same um kind of makeup that we want or that we'd kind of desire to be and so by buying them it would kind of take us further away from our goals which obviously you don't want to do the other thing is like obviously over the last year has been still kind of a pretty crazy time in terms of like valuations and stuff like that and so I think in all of the instances where I've had detailed discussions with owners right and there's been multiple instances of Lois put out um really I mean valuation has just been a real big Challenge and I I mean I would say that like for businesses of the size that I've spoken with I think the expectations have been somewhat unrealistic um even by the standards of certain business brokers you know I'll have discussions with someone they're representing or like a third party I'll say hey I'm talking to this guy I'm just curious your perspective like this is what he's asking for and I think generally you know the the wants of a lot of these individuals for the size of businesses that they have have just not you know been tenable so those two kind of factors have led me to sit on the sidelines thus far with the Acquisitions but I mean I I still think that that's a super important and viable you know growth path for sure well I I assume the other Factor here is the fact that you are growing quite nicely on your own thank you very much so you know you've doubled Revenue so if your own organic growth is looks so nice um that you know removes one of the other reasons to acquire and but Adrian just to have people um uh anchor the time here so when did you buy what was what month did you buy July and or like beginning of August 2021. uh okay so basically um it's been about a little over a year and a half to double Revenue yeah you were saying yeah I was just gonna say to your point on the or you know comparing versus organic growth that's completely right and so as an example like there was one small business I was looking at it was quite small right I think it was it was like four or five hundred thousand of Revenue two Crews um maybe a little more than half of it was maintenance and it was all commercial so in that sense it was somewhat interesting um but only interesting if you could literally just like have your those Crews just start reporting out of your you know your office like just as you know kind of basically an aqua higher uh yeah and the issue though was Val you know from a valuation perspective like what the owner wanted still was a lot of money and when you start thinking about what that is actually providing you right so it's bringing in so let's say 300 000 of Maintenance Revenue maybe some kind of reoccurring install Revenue but you you know you think about okay what am I gonna have to pay for that and what is the my opportunity to just go get that organically and I think what we've seen over the last 18 months is like would that gentleman wanted for his business I think we could have deployed organically into you know a new crew or two and you know all the other resources basically needed to go get that growth and it would have been easier and cheaper to do so than just buying it from him basically so I just haven't you know in those instances it's like it's hard to justify you know even a super simple deal like that when we've been able to pretty easily easily get you know um you know the revenue growth the revenue growth that we want yeah well I want to get into how you have done this organic growth but first an observation it's just so interesting how people can arrive at such different strategies so listening to you now I'm I'm reminded I mean it's almost like plucked from the interview with um Logan and Bradley and Austin who bought a landscaping business and struggled with it for a while and then eventually it was a phenomenal uh growth in exit um but you know they were Finance oriented guys and when they got into it they had this plan to like buy a million dollars of ebitda a year every year for five years so very very um uh inorganic m a uh uh M A approach to Growing their business and once they got in it they realized that frankly dollar just simply dollar for dollar it was cheaper to grow organically than inorganically it's just it's just a better use of of your Capital uh and so that's all they did um maybe they did one time any acquisition or maybe they looked at one but I but little to no acquisition all organic growth and very nice organic growth um meanwhile you have like a Mike Bodkin uh who has been on the podcast a few times and Mike is very acquisitive um and and so you know uh and and appears to be doing it doing it well and and um doing it more so so just totally just interesting but and sorry and Mike Bodkin is also in landscaping so so two uh young sets of of acquisition entrepreneurs both in landscaping both uh but but taking very different paths just an observation yeah Adrian let's hear um about your your organic growth so how you know in brief how have you doubled Revenue in 18 months yeah I mean I would say it's been a combination of things right so you know candidly there's been growth with our existing customers which obviously like I have little to do with that um I think that you could argue like our team's ability to serve them properly helps you know kind of support those relationships and continue to funnel work to us as they take on new Properties or whatever that may be um so you know the customer service side of things certainly but I would credit obviously the team with that more than than me I think for me that you know like what my big Focus has been is like when we when I took over the business was identifying kind of what I felt like were areas of weakness in terms of our Revenue profiles so you know we were very light on maintenance when I took over we had some customer concentration on the on you know other sides of our business and so for me I wanted to kind of look at each one of those individually and come up with a strategy for how do we tackle that so if you take the customer concentration part first right so the biggest thing there was identifying who would be other customers that would fit that division um and then figuring out who are the kind of decision makers at those customers you know getting contact information and just you know outrage and in that instance it was somewhat easier because there was only you know we knew kind of who that Universe of customers were right if you think about like the big builders in the US there's you know there's let's say 40 of them or something um and so we were able to kind of figure you know pretty easily kind of scope out those customers and figure out who we should be you know in contact with and devise a plan to kind of go after them and then on the maintenance side you know that that side is more of kind of just a land grab because it's the universe is enormous and so there it was more the strategy was more around um who are the types of properties that we would want and then who are the you know the companies that either manage or own those types of properties and then who at that company again would be the decision maker so an example on the maintenance side was Apartments have been something that we've always been really strong at for me for in terms of our customers and so um what we did was we joined the Atlanta Apartment Association which sends out a booklet of all of the apartment owners and their buildings in Georgia um and so from there you know and now I have a list of I forget I mean it was you know hundreds and hundreds of buildings um with you know dozens if not a hundred apartment owners and so I could take that information I could use some of these online resources to look up those companies and get a list of their employees which I think they aggregate from like uh LinkedIn and whatnot um and they even have emails for those employees so once I was able to do that all I had to really figure out was like who at these places is actually going to make the decision which as they came to find out with Apartments it's almost always the community manager and so I would then send mass Outreach to these Community managers you're basically saying who we are what we do um you know and ask for either a call or an introduction meeting um and once we had that it would give me a chance to kind of talk about who we're currently serving you know and so they could see like hey we serve some of your competitors um we do a good job there here's some examples um and uh then though you know if they were interested basically they would be you know they'd say come give us a quote you know we'd like to see you know some pricing for our Landscaping basically and basically what I found was that you know for every 100 emails I would send I would get about four or five responses asking for you know quotes to be given um and then our close rate would be maybe 20 or 25 so if I send 100 emails I would get you know we'd get one new win out of that and certainly there's no telling like there you know there are no guarantee the size of that win right so sometimes it would be a huge property and sometimes it would be a tiny property um but what I found is that you know I can send 100 emails really easily with this whole kind of strategy and so we would send or I would send you know 1000 and emails you know maybe once a month um and um that would you know that thousand emails would give us I don't know maybe 10 or 15 or 20 different you know meetings for proposals and whatnot and and you know we'd close a you know a handful of them um and so just kind of staying on top of that and just recycling that process has been pretty successful for us um and it's not even just been on the apartment that's where we started on the apartment side but then we've shifted it to being in the HOAs and we've won HOAs through that which generally I would say in landscaping are kind of the the gold um you know the gold standard of customers we've won some businesses you know shopping centers all sorts of different properties and I feel like every time I redo that strategy there's you know hundreds of new contacts that you know we could reach out to because obviously those types of positions are shut you know they're shuffling and in and out people all the time so it it's pretty you know endless I would say in terms of the opportunities two quick reactions I mean when you say a thousand and then you say endless I mean they're they're aren't of course there aren't literally endless of course so you know I mean are there really more than 10 000 apartment buildings in in Georgia probably why but more than twenty thousand yeah so if you just looked at apartments agreed right I think once you start bringing in all the HOA property managers all the commercial office property managers you know the shopping center property managers Banks you know doctor's offices almost right I mean yeah there are tens of thousands I would say um and but I agreed right like there is a finite number I think the one of the things that I've realized though is as I was mentioning is like they really those positions change pretty frequently like every you know if I if I go look at one apartment today and then I go look four months from now it's pretty common that they will have a different Community manager at that point in time which doesn't mean that there you have any more likely chance of of winning the contract but it does give you another opportunity to reach out the other thing is you know uh for at least in my opinion like more Outreach is better than less and so even if it's the same person I'm probably going to reach out more than once a year um so you know I can kind of do this whole process and reach out to the thousands of people but then recycle that whole process all over again in June the same list yeah yeah exactly um but I mean I do think it is true to say that like it's a law of diminishing return right like the more you do this the less you're going to get ultimately but I think what I've also seen is that by doing this in and initially getting some of these relationships and winning some contracts then you start getting that like organic um you know growth from the from the existing customers right where they're like hey you're doing a good job for me with us at this one place I'm now in charge of another one can you come quote that right and so you start you start developing like your own um you know kind of internal growth Engine with your existing customers so the combination of those two factors I think is what has you know driven a lot of our um our growth thus far on the maintenance side well Adrian what you're describing is is basically a pretty traditional B2B sales process certainly anybody who's worked in you know B2B software will be painfully familiar with it because this is I'm sure yeah um but but maybe a lot of listeners kind of aren't and um but but uh the question would be like at what point or like do you hire somebody to do that if there's such a clear Roi and there are people B2B sales people who who do nothing but this all day long when when does it make sense for you to invest in in a human a full-time human to do this for you yeah I mean I think that that's that's definitely something I think that's in the cards probably for this year um especially just because obviously you know there's a lead time required before you know you start releasing any success from you know a new sales person I think the reason we haven't done it thus far is just that one it hasn't been that um you know it hasn't been that much of my time as I was mentioning and two we've just allocated kind of our you know our spend on hires elsewhere that have felt like bigger needs and so if this means I have to spend a little bit more time on this each month you know so far it's I think that has made sense but I agree I mean I think as you get bigger and in order to keep any you know any similar level of growth right like you're going to need that much more you know proposal opportunities and and quote you know all of that so I think at some point in the semi-nere future it'll probably need to be kind of a full-time um position um and uh yeah I completely agree like I think this is another example of something that someone in this industry or someone in sales would look at what has occurred and say like yeah that's pretty obvious I think for me coming from you know my background and you know I had never done anything like this before and so this was all kind of trial and error um that you know led to us kind of putting in putting in plant in place this approach yeah well you know I'll Pat you on the back Adrian for for essentially inventing a B2B sales process it was already out there in the world but you discovered it all on your own um and you know just because you didn't know about it and then figured it out um a lot of your competition not Searchers but you know 50 and 60 year olds whose businesses uh who you're competing with probably really don't know about this um so it's a it's a way for you to pull ahead as well right yeah I mean 100 I mean I think that like the mom-and-pop owned businesses are absolutely not doing this you know I think the ones that are the ones that are big enough that they have some form of sales you know in place um and then you know we were competing against them um but even there I mean I think like I think that there are things that we can use to our advantage whether that's um maybe being a little bit more creative in our approach or um you know I think I'm pretty I'm a pretty like communicative person and so if we get an opportunity to do something I'm gonna respond right away I'm gonna meet them right away I'm gonna follow up right away um and I think you know for the feedback that at least that I've gotten I think is that um people have appreciated you know this kind of Middle Ground we play in where it's like we seem to have the resources that support a larger organization or at least make us come off as an larger organization but like with the nimbleness of kind of a smaller team um and I think that's something that you know you're not going to find if you're at Brightview or something like that right so um and I think that you know me being involved in the process a little bit I know and I've been told by some of the customers we've we've learned um we've landed I think is is appreciative um of by them because they kind of see like oh I get to deal with the owner that seems like that you know probably means that I'm going to be taken care of a little bit more um so anyway I think you know us kind of flexing how we're perceived by the customers whether it's as a big team or a small lean Nimble team um I think can um you know be used to our advantage also yeah yeah and and to the point about hiring somebody for a BD like a full-time BD person like their conversion probably will be a little bit less than yours because people do love to work directly with owners um so you're you're probably going to convert customers just a little bit better than than the person you're hired to do it but who knows yeah but on the flip side you know like there's a lot of things that I don't do you know which I think a traditional sales person would be doing right like I don't attend industry you know industry meetings and I'm not go you know where they might have a lot of like Apartments they're you know there's there's a lot of I think stuff that like a dedicated sales person would be doing whether it's just you know drop-ins at apartments or you know places you know all of that stuff right like I'm not doing that I mean truly I'm kind of doing I would say the Bare Bones and just kind of focusing on like that back office high volume Outreach just because it's something that I can kind of easily do without a lot of you know um you know a lot of uh hours spent on it so I think that that's where having a dedicated salesperson will be a big asset for us because it'll allow us to I think have a little bit more kind of comprehensive sales approach Adrian um we've been talking about Landscaping indirectly a lot now um just give us a two-minute lay of the land of landscaping um you mentioned you know that it's kind of there there's this bottomless pool of customers that's that's good but of course the barriers to entry and Landscaping are are also extremely low it's hard to build a moat uh very competitive so kind of address those two things um and then also the the commercial well why don't you address that and then I'll have some follow-up questions because I got about three of them here so that one first please yeah um so I mean I do think it is a largely a bottomless pool of customers especially when you're in a larger city um you know the the like I said the way I mean I think if you were there's obviously rankings of customers right and so if you're going to be super selective and you're gonna say I only want the highest quality you know World of Coca-Cola right which would be like one of the kind of talk properties in all of Atlanta if that's all you're focusing on then like you know you may have a difficult time you know winning new business I think if you're willing to kind of cast a wider net and say anything that's commercial where there's kind of a centralized property manager I'm open to then I think yeah I mean I think it's it feels endless to be honest um and again if we were doing this for 10 years and had been you know we were 10 times the size maybe at that point I wouldn't feel the same way but like where we are right now it feels endless um and in terms of the competition component of it I mean I think that that is true but it's not necessarily the case on commercial stuff as much um and that's not necessarily because um you know all of the long tail of Mom and Pops wouldn't do commercial stuff I think the barrier to entry really is that a lot of commercial things especially as they get worn more reputable they want some form of um credibility with their landscaper right so if you're a pretty high-end department or if you're an HOA or if you're a you know a decent sized shopping center they're not going to take you know Adrian into land keeping with his one truck just because the price might be a favorable right they're going to say well what else do you do oh you just do a handful of homes you know that's not interesting to us um I think where we're like one of the things that's been really helpful for us and was even more helpful in the beginning was going to these meetings and being able to list a couple of our key customers who the prior owner had established relationships with like if we didn't have those initial relationships I don't think we would have been able to build off of that but since we did and we were able to build off of it now it's that much easier because now our you know our list of customers is is quite large um and it spans a lot of different management companies and whatnot so I think the the barrier to entry on the commercial side is that kind of initial reputation and kind of resume of of properties um and once you're beyond that you know I think at our size like for your average property we can compete just as well with right you or Russell who's a huge person here at Yellowstone um because your average property doesn't really need all of this extra kind of sophistication that those guys might offer now again if it's World of Coke I mean I would be you know candid to say that like I think we would be it would be difficult for us to win that versus one of those guys because there is a lot of you know process and systems and stuff that they have in place that I think if you're a huge customer that's paying a million dollar contract like they're going to want which we you know aren't quite there yet but I think for our you know our kind of sweet spot of customers like we can just as easily compete and in some ways I think better because um as we were talking about you know me being involved a little bit or some of the kind of the the nimbleness of our organization um I think can help us in those instances well and let me just make a shout out here for for acquiring a business as if I need to on this podcast but what you described about the value of the resume of the roster of businesses of clients that you already had and how that got your foot in the door um you know a lot of times the question in this world can be like well what are you buying really in a business in in landscaping in particular because in theory despite you just kind of showed how it's not true but in theory the barriers to entry are low and somebody can you know hop in a truck and have you know go to pick up you know a thousand dollars worth of equipment at a Home Depot and be in business um but what you're buying is reputation your existing customers and of course cash flow and you know the resources to to to do stuff immediately and to pay yourself immediately but that that you know client roster should not be understated I mean that's that's extremely valuable that that just repeating what you said back to you um that's kind of the engine that's allowed you to to one of the engines that's allowed you to really kind of get in get get some more clients so yeah I mean 100 and I I that's definitely not something I thought about when I got into this to be honest like I think if I would have seen the initial maintenance book and it would have been just let's say all random Banks right like you know something where you're just going in you're mowing you're blowing you're getting out of there I don't think I would have given it a whole lot of thought versus what I bought you know what I mean I would have been like oh cool it's still commercial it's more properties but they seem to make it work profitable profitability wise so like great I think in reality if that would have happened it would have made it that much harder when we initially started kind of getting some quoting opportunities because they would have said what do you do now and we would have had to have told this apartment oh we do you know four you know 200 Banks and that you know they're like okay well that's not that applicable um so I think the the book that we had definitely helped me quite a bit in those initial meetings um just because we were able to kind of point to this and you know give them pictures or tell them to drive by those places or introduce them to some of the you know our customers as references and and that was um you know it was really helpful um great more on Landscaping commercial versus residential so is it fair to just say commercials better I feel like everybody that I've talked to in landscaping is like we can you know we can we can talk this to death but like let me just boil it down for you commercial is better your thoughts I think yeah I think that that is somewhat changing like I mean there has now been a couple examples of some residential businesses at the PE level that have done really really well and solve it huge multiples um I think my biggest view on it is that the ratio of customer service effort or like account management effort to revenue or profit for a given customer is much worse on the residential side so if you know if you are it's your home right like and you're paying us let's say 750 bucks a month so maybe it's a you know a nice size yard I could totally understand you as a homeowner wanting to speak with someone once a month or once every other month and ask a couple questions and maybe have someone swing out and take a look but the reality is we have commercial customers that want less account management than that and they're you know four or five times the size and so I think if you were to have a you know a neighborhood of 200 individual homeowners where you actually service the homes um but you're also your your customer contact was the home not like an HOA you open yourself up to 200 of those discussions any every you know month recorder or whatever it is for a relatively not huge amount of of revenue for any one of those customers so for me that's where I struggle with the most um and one of the reasons we kind of shy away from it is just I don't think that our processes are necessarily set up to handle that level of account management yeah well and I think that would be kind of the con one of the many conventional reasons that people like commercial rather than residential because the I don't think the work is is that different yes I mean essentially I mean the skill set for a landscaper the guy actually doing the work is probably pretty similar right he could go to somebody's home or he could go to an office building correct me if I'm wrong I would say yeah I think maybe a little you know on residential they might you know sometimes homeowners want to speak to the landscapers a little bit more and so they might you know you might need someone's a little bit more commercial um in the in that they can have that kind of interaction um but yes work wise I think it's largely the same and residential has some you know some positives right like the ratio I think of upsells so them spending money on extra stuff should be better relative to their you know their monthly maintenance bill because most homeowners want to do something every year um you know I think your pricing power can be a little bit better even though there's a lot of competition if it's a higher end residential you know they're probably going to be a little bit more accepting of you know price increases and things like that um so I think there are positives certainly um but for us I mean the account management is why we've shot away from it because we have had some opportunities where people have come to us and said hey I'm retiring I have 100 000 of residential maintenance customers I'll sell it to you for you know one or two times and um monthly you know the monthly revenue and we just looked at it and said like it it's not about the customers it should or you know it's not about like the price it's just we can't service that like you know from an account management perspective yeah well an account Management's a very yeah it's a very real cost I'm just reminded of my days in in SAS working in SAS businesses where these uh you know software product and SAS would start targeting kind of consumers um or maybe even prosumers as they were called but eventually the evolution was like it's just a better customer to go to the what they would call Enterprise sales like bigger bigger companies buying your SAS product it's just a higher quality customer they need less hand-holding and they and they pay you more so you know you win twice um so cool then the third point on Landscaping is maintenance versus project or um there was another word that you used um design installation and the conventional wisdom certainly among my guests would be that like you know recurring Revenue so maintenance is where it's at like more maintenance the the Austin guys uh Logan Logan and Bradley um that's how they transform the business and and really like made it into the salable business that it was was they took a business that had just a little bit of Maintenance and a lot of um design installation construction um Project work and flip that you so tell me if you basically agree that that's that's the right strategy for you and then also answer why your previous owner didn't feel that way he didn't like maintenance what's not to love about maintenance yeah I think that um that is actually the conventional wisdom I think I've found amongst a lot of people that have kind of done this for you know 30 years and you know they may be a bit older and and um you know kind of focused on just cash flow and things like that like it's pretty common view I think that like uh maintenance it's a pain right um it's relative you know I'd say it can be it's generally thinner margins um the capital intensity is a little bit higher um and and part of that is because on the install side A lot of times you can use some contractors which means not having to you know put out as much of the equipment yourself um whereas on the maintenance side you know generally that's all in-house um and then the other thing is like the operating leverage and maintenance is pretty minimal so you know a crew if you have a let's say a three-person crew that works four days a week which is pretty standard in Georgia um you know they can only do so much revenue right and at some point they're you're gonna need to go out and get a new crew which means another truck trailer mower Etc and that amount of Revenue that they can do like it's not huge right like let's say it's twenty thousand dollars of monthly Revenue that one crew can do so 250 Grand a year um that could be two contracts it could be five or Twenty contracts but you know so somewhere in that range but what that means is you know you could go get a new crew um you know you fully you know uh equip them with everything they need you win a couple contracts you know they have a pretty full day and then all of a sudden you win one or two more things and all of a sudden they can't do that and so now you have to go do this process all over again and so I think for companies that are growing a lot maintenance the the negative view of maintenance is just that it's it's a pain to schedule um you know you're kind of constantly having to manipulate schedules with weather or every time you win new properties you kind of have to change things around um it's more people so it's uh you know just the labor issues in terms of finding people keeping people you know people somewhat two you know two people are out today uh what are we gonna do how are we going to change things to accommodate that um and then like I said the operating leverage side of things where um you know you're not getting a ton of incremental revenue for every dollar that you're spending on new equipment um which is a challenge but of course all of that is juxtaposed with the con you know the contractual recurring nature of it which is appealing to me um and I think it is a necessary balance to any business that has um you know project or installation work um I think the middle ground and we may have talked about this last time but so our business as I was saying in the beginning does a fair amount of what we described as this Builder work and so to me that the Builder work is pretty clearly kind of this Middle Ground of what I would describe as like reoccurring because we are signing contracts for the life of a neighborhood right so we went a neighborhood there's 300 homes in it that means for the next 300 homes we know exactly what we're going to make per home for you know as they're building those and generally these these neighborhoods are built let's say over you know six to 12 months let's say if it's 300 homes maybe it's longer um but you know you kind of know the speed that they're building at so maybe it's one a week or maybe it's two a week and so you you actually do have some visibility into what your weekly or monthly revenue is going to be on that community and you also have visibility in how long you're gonna maintain those levels um and so unlike you know a traditional kind of general contractor project where it's hey you know we bid on this we want it in six months it's going to start it's going to take us three weeks and then we're gonna finish and we have no idea what we're gonna do afterwards um this is definitely closer to the the maintenance side because there is an element of you know visibility and consistency and all of that with the work um and I found it to be a pretty appealing I mean there are challenges with it right because you're there's more material costs and all of that than there is with maintenance but um I found it to be a pretty attractive side of things and like I said a good middle ground where um it's not necessarily maintenance but there is a ton of opportunity there um and and that's you know been a driver of our Earth as well very interesting okay so maintenance maintenance has its has its problems other than our the low margins was was known to me but these other ones I hadn't hadn't considered or heard yeah the labor thing is huge I mean I would say almost every single person I've talked to that's you know been in it for 20 25 30 years they all grasp about the same thing which is like oh it's such a pain like you know having to you know handle you know people being out and how am I gonna have to move things and I gotta call customers and say I can't do it today because two people you know that side of things it really is um but a logistics but Adrian don't don't those things also occur in projects the same thing a guy doesn't show up for work and so then you got to talk to your your client it's a project-based contract as opposed to recurring sure if it's I mean if it's like a sure but if I think if it's a one month installation let's say on like the far other end right the GC side if it's a one month installation someone being out any one day probably not having a huge impact over on the overall skill of the project whereas if some you know if your crew leader is out on a day where you have to go to um you know an HOA and the other two people on the crew might not have driver's licenses um or maybe they just have less experience whatever it is that one person being out could screw up the whole schedule um and then all sudden you have to shift that back a day and tell his other two guys hey you can't work without them because you don't have enough experience whatever that is so I think that the the relative impact is higher in maintenance um the other thing is on the project side like I said if you're subcontracting any of that work you're not really taking that you know that risk or that you know you're not necessarily being burdened by the pain of one person being out on a crew because it's really up to the subcontractor to go fit for someone else um yeah yeah that's great uh just a couple more questions Adrian then we got a wrap um I think I have three more questions here one thing that I have it's only recently occurred to me to ask is under like when diligencing the quality of the work that that your Crews do so um what if you had when you got into the business did you find that your Crews do good work um because and and isn't there a chance that you find you get in and it's like oh we're actually like not we don't we do we yeah we do shoddy work and just to your point about how you were like you know the existing um the existing book of business allowed you to say to prospects you know go drive by this property that we do and see the good work that we do well you know there are landscaping companies that don't do good work and you might have bought one of those so is there a way to diligence the the quality especially as an outsider now you know Landscaping but when you were buying this business you didn't the actual quality of the end product or end service that that the business you're considering um delivers yeah no I mean it's a great question I did not look into that and um in hindsight I mean I think that that is certainly important um now I mean I think that there's ways that you can or there's data that you can use that kind of correlates to that right so like if you have let's say you have a high quality customer and you've had them for 15 years I think the chances are you must do pretty good work right um but nonetheless like I definitely think in hindsight it would be worth saying first you know obviously I want the maintenance list I'm going to drive by some of these properties and just see how they would look I also want some examples of some projects that you've done I want examples of stuff that's been in-house so I know like you know the in-house guys how they've done it not just you know stuff that maybe some contractors have done um and I you know I think you know spending a little bit of time and looking at those I think definitely would be important um I think for me when I got in I mean I I did you know drive around the properties and I would see um you know how our stuff looked and you know felt like even with a naive eye it seemed like okay this looks pretty good to me so um you know that gave me some I'd say some peace of mind but definitely I mean there's definitely been you know a couple instances early on where maybe we got a customer call about something and I didn't understand the Dynamics of like oh it's you know fall and there's obviously a lot of leaves but if we you know we get a customer call and they say something about you know a leaf issue and I all sudden I'm like wait a minute are we doing this wrong you know are we not doing what you know we're supposed to be doing but that's just because I didn't really understand what was going on right and so um I think as I've learned the industry a little bit more I've learned to understand like when if a customer ever says something like is it a normal thing is there a reason for it is it our fault is it someone else's and um you know that helps but um uh the good news overall is yeah I would say that our our team is pretty strong and and does really good work good when we talked in our pre-call I asked you would you buy the same size business before typically people are always like you know I bigger bigger would have been better bigger is always better in one and and you know we know that going into Acquisitions and then once you're on the other side of it you really know it but you actually had you agreed with that but basically you had a a slightly different take on that question and thought it focused on the wrong thing do you recall yeah I mean I think and correct me if I'm wrong I think my perspective on it was around um want like basically making sure that the business was of a size that had the necessary people to kind of um you know replace the prior owner and kind of be you know run on its own I guess guy going forward without the prior owners exact movement because I think what I found was like from a size perspective it was what I was looking for at the time um but then as I got under the hood you know post close I found oh well the prior owner was doing this and maybe he was a bit involved in that and those are things that I'm not necessarily capable of doing Without You Know committing 100 of my time to it and so we're gonna need to go hire someone to fill this void um and then as a result all of a sudden from a financial perspective like you know you have less earnings than you thought you were going to have so and that's precisely what happened to you right I mean you get in there and you're shadowing the owner you've already bought the business you're shadowing the owner after a couple days you're like what was it like I'm not sure I'm gonna be able to do all that so tell that story like yeah I mean I I mean I truly probably think Monday and Tuesday of that week were like the most stressed I'd ever been because it was appear Apparent from literally hour like two that the prior owner did ever like did everything for a part of the business um and you know I shadowed him went to some customers I saw him interacting with his customers and I was like I'm not sure that I'm gonna be able to replace it like it was in this kind of it was in our you know one of our more construction oriented groups and it was you know just something that I have no familiarity with um and um yeah I mean it was just apparent like you know I'm not gonna be able to replace him with this and so I had texted him basically the third day and I was like you know I'm not sure that I'm the you know the right person to kind of replace you in this part of the the business and he was basically like yeah you know I've kind of been thinking about that too I have someone that I think you should meet you know he's got a great background in that area and um I did I met him and he's great and we hired him and he's been a great hire um but it wasn't something I was anticipating and so then when you think about what the now kind of pro former earnings look like it's you know less a high level manager um and so um I think in hindsight for me when I you know if I was going to review a business to determine you know is it an appropriate size I think the really key thing would be to make sure you unpack like does it have every single hire that you're going to or employee that you're going to need in a you know post-close universe and if the answer is no then you know you should look at the earnings adjusted for that um despite how you figure out value evaluation everything like you you know you're going to need a certain you know size of earnings and you better make sure that this business will have that adjusted for you know the hires that you need to make I just fortunately got really lucky that in addition to or wow all this was going on our business also just started kind of taking off um and we were getting a lot of growth on kind of every side of the business and so financially we were able to support that new hire I think on the flip side like if things would have gone the opposite way and we would have had a kind of a struggling you know period of time post close financially would have been tough too because all of a sudden we were burdened by this extra head so um it worked out for me but that's definitely I think I told you I mean there's definitely some areas where I look back and I'm like wow that was a risk that I took that it maybe worked out okay but like I'm not sure I would take that risk again and this is probably one of the biggest areas where just you know not having a 100 clear point of view on what the owner did and whether I could do that um you know turned out to be a challenge although you know we figured it out do you recall any of these other high-risk um risks yeah I mean I think like not I mean you know doing an asset sale right like having meaning having to go to some of these customers post close without speaking to the customers pre-close in a business that has customer concentration is a huge risk um you know because you're basically just making a bet that they're gonna say okay no problem I'll keep the business with you and we did lose one customer and it was a pretty big one we unfortunately grew with enough other customers that it didn't matter um but it was I mean again if had we not grown those other customers it would have been a sizable impact and it was purely because they said well I was friends of the prior owner and I don't know you and I know other people in this space so I'm going to take my business to that it's like okay um and it could have been a lot worse frankly um so you know that I think that's one area again in hindsight where I look back and I'm like I understand why I took the risk but like I don't know if I would take that risk again I mean that's a huge risk um another smaller risk but another one is just like on asset quality I think I just kind of took the you know prior owner you know he said oh yeah everything's in working condition and and you know we you know obviously you could see in their financial they're spending a bunch of money on repairs and he was pretty candid about that like you know it's not new stuff but you know it works and you know I'm not I haven't been lying to you about what we spend in repairs or anything and so I again was like okay well you know I know what I'm getting into and then I think I got there and I was like I came to find out from talking to employees and stuff that like oh yeah like you know these three things have barely been working for years and you know so that's just another area where it's like I took a risk of just kind of going with it without having a mechanic go in evaluate things figure out what is that true cost going to be post-close to either fix stuff repair it um and you know it it worked out okay but like you know there were some of the costs that we incurred post close I think could have potentially either been avoided or been maybe adjusted in purchase price because the quality of the assets was maybe a bit under what I was anticipating and an owner seller would be open to that right while they might not be comfortable introducing you to some of their biggest customers or to the employees even um they they should let you audit the the assets right yeah and honestly he said he would it so it wasn't that he was hiding it it was just that like amongst all the other diligent streams I was doing at closing I just didn't honestly get around to having someone go there um I'm not sure how amenable he would have been to purchase price adjustments because you know one mechanic said these things need to be fixed or whatever um but I mean he definitely was open allowing you know me to go um but yeah the the customer thing you know I understand why his perspective is like that but he did not want that same with the employees and again I understand that but I do think that that's also a risk because you know if you're buying a business with one kind of key manager let's say aside from the prior owner um if that person leaves like you know you're in a tough spot now in my example he spoke with her and so she you know he verbally told me that she was comfortable with it um but I had no Assurance of that so all I could really do was you know kind of put on the charm post close and make her understand that like this is a great thing for everyone and you know she's gonna get you know it's there's going to be a pay increase and and I'm here to support the business and do everything I can and help her any way I can and fortunately we have a great relationship but like that also you know pretty big risk sure Adrian let's wrap with a final question earlier you had talked about how this process one the process of going down this path buying this business has made you better at really evaluating drivers in a business small business overall whereas um from your perch in PE it was you were now reflect back that it was kind of more academic um you really have a a a a Instinct for things now um overall in addition to that what muscles would you say you've developed and what muscles have atrophied yeah I mean certainly the sales thing for me right because that's never something I've had to do before that's not a component I mean there's relationship components of private equity and Investment Banking but there's not like you know Outreach and sales and things like that so that's completely new for me um and I think that components of the kind of financial analysis that I do on a daily or weekly basis is is different like truly getting getting in and understanding all components of cash flow and as you said like being able to kind of anticipate what the month or quarter might look like based off of kind of higher level higher level level factors that are occurring so customer demand is doing this what does that might mean what might that mean for you know cash flow over the next few weeks um I think I've done a much better fuel for that stuff now um I think on the flip side you know so things that have atrophied like I do a fair amount of you know Excel kind of financial analysis now I'm not doing you know true like modeling you know in you know that type of stuff as much anymore and certainly things are more related to like the debt side of things so you know private Equity type debt you know bigger company issues that you know we're not they just don't affect us and so I have not been involved in you know kind of debt modeling or anything like that um for quite some time which I'm sure if I was trying to get back into like I'd have to you know kind of relearn components of um but I'd actually say you know and this may just be my personality but I I've been surprised how much you know Excel stuff I still end up doing um you know because I maybe I'm like I said forecasting cash or trying to um you know review different numbers or whatnot and then I end up kind of you know getting into Excel and spending a lot of time there so I would say that I haven't quite lost those skills yet do you feel like you've earned your stripes as an operator a true operator yeah I think I think so it's yeah I mean so we've had a couple instances one of our key managers was out um sick for a month in November and that was an example or a time where I was like I basically just was a divisional manager of a landscaping company for a month right where like all day I'm just taking customer calls directing Crews helping with ordering um and I think that that was something where because we had such a stronger that he's still with us he's everything's good now but because we had such a strong manager in that division I you know didn't really have to be that involved right and and I probably took that for granted at times and maybe was too uninvolved to the point where like I didn't you know I didn't have my stripes as you would say like you know what I mean like if he was out it would have been difficult for me to replace and then all sudden I was forced to replace and I think the first week was like drinking from a fire hose you know learning all the Dynamics understanding customer issues all this stuff um but then by the end of the month I think in looking back on it I think it was you know a good thing for me personally just because it allowed me to understand so much more of that division it allowed me to um I think I appreciate things a lot more you know that he deals with now also I think it allowed us to have an outside perspective on how we were doing things and we've actually like made some changes to our processes and stuff coming out of that where like you know he was sewing the weeds for so long that he you know didn't take the time maybe to think like hey how could we improve certain things I Olson was thrown in for a month and by the end of the month I was like I don't not know why we're doing you know this like that or like how we're scheduling certain things like we gotta improve some things there and he was you know when he came back he was totally on board he's like no you're right like I hadn't thought about it but it makes total sense so um I think it's been good for all parties involved but you know that's an example of a time where like I you know definitely would say that I I earned my stripes um you know in this business so Adrian if people have questions what's the best your preferred way that people reach out LinkedIn Twitter email what do you what do you like yeah I mean I'd say you know I'm pretty responsive to BMS on Twitter LinkedIn messages um people can send me an email directly um I'm always happy to chat I think honestly one of the coolest things coming out of our last discussion will was just the network of individuals that I've been able to build um both people that have just reached out to me proactive they're like hey I heard you on this podcast people that you know I know you've introduced me to has been great for me I mean so um I think that that's like a pretty awesome you know kind of side element of everything you have going on with this podcast which is just like it cultivates a huge network of people um I was talking to a guy the other day who just closed on an acquisition in Nevada and he was you know he was asking me things about our business and his is not in landscaping but I was telling him I was like listen I would find someone even if they're only four months further down the road than you like find someone that has done an acquisition in your space because like it's like dog years where you know four months if someone's being down further down the road is like three years and so what you could learn from that that person is incredibly high and I've been able to pick up on you know from people like Mike or you know others that you've introduced me to who are you know a few months or years past me it's like I think that I mean that's a huge resource for people so I mean I'm a big advocate of of that so anyone that I can be helpful with whether it's landscaping or just you know SMB in general I'm more than happy to talk to you but I definitely suggest people find other people to speak with for sure yeah the the concept of a peer group I just I feel like it's in the air I mean it's all it's always been valuable and always been well known for people who have had them how valuable they are but I just feel like in the last month I I've just been hearing this uh this Mantra peer groups peer group peer groups so um an important point and I think it's partially because it's like people you know especially with like the actual like closing of the deal and stuff it's so similar you know what everyone goes through and so like in that you know it those discussions like what I've gone through I can have that discussion with someone in my experience is so applicable to them because it's such a similar process so yeah I mean I feel like this is an industry um SMB in general it's just something that is like really uh it makes sense you know completely to have that peer group Adrian thanks very much for coming back on Sir this has uh been an education as always uh when talking to you uh so thanks very much for your time we're about 35 minutes over our 30 minute Mark but uh it was every minute of it was worth it so I appreciate all the time you've given me all right well I appreciate it thanks for having me on 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