Burke Adams thank you for joining me today on acquiring minds thanks will glad to be here Burke you bought a business in your 40s you had a family a sizable family a wife and three kids and a job that was kind of killing you and buying a business turned it all around for you I was really struck on our pre-call by How Deeply enthusiastic you are for acquisition entrepreneurship and for good reason based on how sort of wonderful your story is so let us get into that story Burke start us off wherever you think is the best place to do so okay great well thanks for having me will this is this is really fun for me um yeah you know uh I guess I'm 54 years old um I have a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering and I started my career in a Consulting engineering firm and I worked there for five years during that time I went back at night and got an MBA um I think what the MBA did for me was helped me to understand that the company that I was working in was not that great and I should leave so they paid for it and I left but yeah so um um I kind of chose a different path I chose to go It Alone as an engineering consultant so that's usually a path that somebody would take if they were approaching retirement and Engineering um kind of the gray hair kind of person so my situation was pretty unique um and we could go into that and it's I don't think it's super germane to what we're going to talk about but I did that for 17 years so I was self-employed but I was also working for major corporations so I was Consulting to the shells and the exons of the world to some smaller startup companies as well so I had a unique experience where I you know I I think if I counted up I had worked inside of 30 or 40 different companies during my career and so I got to see a lot of cultures a lot of large company culture small company culture startup cultures so a lot of different stuff so I guess getting back to what you alluded to was if you kind of fast forward um in my timeline around 2014 . so I I guess I was successful at what I was doing I mean it was fine I was making good money um and you know I was able to you know have a pretty good lifestyle for my family um the cost of that of being a consultant was I was on the road a lot um and so this time period that I'm referring to 2014 my kids were you know I have three boys and so they were ranging in age from like eight uh 12 to 18 um and that's a really time when you need to be with your family and I was on the road a lot so I was it was classic midlife crisis so I was um feeling I don't know if it's age but just feeling tired you know I'm on the road constantly um as a consultant you have to be at your top game you don't get to settle into an office somewhere you you know you kind of have a Target on you all the time because you might be the highest paid guy in the room and they want to get rid of you as soon as they can but that's a good thing you know it's not a bad thing but you like you have to maintain a fairly high level when you play that game and so I was yeah I mean you said it right I mean I was burning out big time I just I was having this moment where I was I was projecting the next 15 years of my career and just saying I I just don't think I can do this so you know then what do you do right I mean I I I I don't know if it was deep depression but I was depressed I mean I was like where do I go from here because in a career Moment Like if I said well I'm just going to go back and get a corporate job to me right that was like a major pay cut first of all and then nobody wanted me because I had been a consultant all these years they I wasn't fitting anywhere to go back and try to you know calm my life down and go back in and you know sail into a spot that path for me was just not obvious how I was going to get there so you're looking at your options getting a corporate gig is is not one and and what about the other obvious option um which is is kind of germane to small business ownership um it was there any way is there any way in a Consulting thing like this where you can hire under you or are you really not you're not really a business you're you're a Loan Consultant so there's no way to kind of to kind of build a little business around yourself so that you can breathe I had done that actually so I had kind of um never in the idea that it was going to be a permanent thing but I would get onto projects I would hire some some subcontractors underneath me um I had some guys at the local Refinery working for me for a couple of years um so I kind of did that but I never it was never anything that made any sense to me to pursue it to try to build it I would expand as needed and then I would contract as needed and so I just never saw that path okay and so okay so you but you around this time I guess discover or at least start taking seriously the idea of buying a business so how did you happen upon ETA well it wasn't ETA so my you know as my kids are playing hockey and I'm hanging out with some of the hockey dads and one of the guys he owns three gas stations and so I'm looking at his life saying that's the life I want because he's out rock climbing and skiing all the time and of course you know that's not real but that's all I saw and I'm totally burned out so I'm like hey I'm gonna buy a gas station so I start talking to him and he was super nice and he's like yeah sure and so I go to Biz by cell this was probably back in 2014 and I'm looking for gas stations to buy that's where I started and of course the story is gas stations are really tough once I find out his real story you know his family was in the grocery business all growing up he his first corporate job he worked for a large um gas station company and he ran their convenience stores for 10 years and the way he got his first store was the bank came to his family and said we've got this problem are you guys interested in taking this over and they got a screaming deal so my idea of getting into the gas station business went nowhere but the cool thing was I got on Biz by cell and I had no idea that this even existed and so I started diving in and get this this kind of consumed me for a while was wow check this out this is really cool and I was I don't know I looked at some stone quarry to buy like some really weird stuff right so and as an engineer I was kind of drawn to some of that stuff so anyway that's kind of how I started um my big problem at the time was I just didn't have any cash um I didn't have maybe family support that I could have gone to for somebody to give me or loan me money or so it was really uh going it alone I didn't have a lot of cash and so I that was my major barrier so every time I would sit down to do this I'd be like this would be really cool but how do I do it and I think you've probably come across these so there was a broker maybe it was on Biz by cell or maybe it was on one of one of the broker sites I come across the advertisement says hey you can use your 401k to buy a business and I went click what's that you know because I have a little bit of money or I had a little bit of money in my 401k and I'm like oh maybe this is how I do it and so you go ahead yeah well just a couple things um first of all I just want to give a nod to Biz Buy sell um because I I do think it it um it gives people an aha moment if they're if they're unaware if there's this whole world of businesses to buy scrolling through through Biz by cell for the first time can can be can can give them that moment and it really is magical I I think it's a really really neat site yeah um the other thing I'll just say about Biz by cell connecting to what you're about to talk about on the 401K thing is um you may not recall and or maybe they didn't have it at the time but anytime you request additional information on a listing on Biz by cell there's a little check box um to so you're filling out your name and contact information and the checkbox says do you want more additional information on buying a business with your 401k so they've actually tightly integrated a kind of lead generation tool for some of the robs providers into their request information flow um so so presumably it's a big part of you know there's just enough people who are in your shoes or who are going to need to use their 401 okay in some way shape or form to buy a business that it's basically on every single business that you request information about there's a box to check for anyway interesting detail if not but continue so so and when they're going with this folks is Rob's of course yeah yeah so and it hooked me in because that was where I was stuck I think in my case it was a broker site so but exactly the same thing you're talking about okay so I I had looked at some stuff but the first thing I did was call that broker and say can you walk me through this I think part of it is I've listened to a lot of um I like I've listened to a lot of your stuff recently I think things are very different now than they were back in 2014 2015. because I called the broker and he was like sure I'll help you and he walked me all through this I mean spent time with me and I don't know that you get that today right maybe maybe not but so at that time maybe it was what the market was like it just he took time and he walked me through it so that's where we started and then um I got comfortable and we can talk about all that but I got comfortable around all that and then I said okay let's start looking and you know we can talk about that also but you know it I I will say when I I'm trying to key into what the market is like today versus back then and I I just got super lucky I mean you know what I what I found and I found it pretty quick and I know it's just gonna piss somebody off who hears the story but you know it just I don't know like I mean that part that part wasn't I I got super lucky I'm just gonna say that well well before we piss everybody off with your with your actual acquisition let me jump in with a couple other points um uh did you but did you know even about an S the SBA possibility because when you're you know when you're looking at the the the uh sale price of these businesses on Biz buy sell you are you thinking whoa I need to have a million dollars or two million dollars in cash which we know you did you've already told us you didn't although you had something in your 401k or did you know that you were going to be able to do an SBA loan and put five ten twenty percent down so you needed to cut so the number in your head that you needed to come up with was the 20 not a hundred percent of the purchase price yeah well it was eight years ago so the sequence I'm not quite sure okay I'm pretty sure that the broker walked me through it all because okay that's that was my structure I did an SBA loan I did a seller note and I used a robs and some personal money so somewhere in that sequence I figured that all out but yeah you know when I was looking at gas stations I had no idea right so I had to go through that process and have somebody educate me through how it all worked I didn't have Walker's book it wasn't in existence right you know so I I had to kind of figure this I had to piece this all together and the broker was really helpful to me you know that so yeah well I will say that despite the fact that you you know you've got a great outcome in a shorter amount of time than Searchers get today and how that might piss people off on the flip side you had to do all your own figuring it out so for those of us who are much more recent to this world you know we there are play books for us and podcasts like this one and books to read so we have in terms of the viability of this and the way to do it it's much easier for us than it was for you so something's got easier some things have gotten harder um but going back to eight years ago so I'm going to ask you another question about your your uh mentality at the time to see if you remember you know one of the things I remember before I got into this space very seriously thinking about buying businesses and even being on Biz by sell which I've been familiar with uh aware of for years is the who does anybody really buy these businesses these gas stations these Plumbing businesses these whatevers you know um because whatever you know they're they're messy they're not you know they don't scale all the stuff and I was I'll also have kind of a Silicon Valley orientation where everything is always growth worth growth scale scale scale um but anyway for you you know you had been a small business owner sort you know quasi small business owner consultant and you knew you you knew painfully in fact this is what drove you you to Biz by cell into wanting to buy gas stations that a lot of small businesses are are glorified self our owner operator or self-employment um and so I I just wonder if your radar for that might have been more um more sensitive than other people um who aren't who are more naive when they go on Biz by cell and they think oh I can buy this and that and you know put an operator in there and just run it and you know collect checks um the truth is actually somewhere in the middle you know I it's not that easy but it's also maybe not as hard as some of us including me thought it was anyway any any thoughts on yeah that are in memory of that yeah for sure well so you know I kind of tried to go back to my what I three things I learned in business school which you know so one of those might have been that hey I should work to my core competence I should do what I'm good at I'm an engineer so maybe I should start looking at engineering companies so I had the broker go get me a couple of engineering companies Bearing Company that's you know say one to two million sales price is I already owned it it was a central engineer or two partners and they were the key man of their thing they were either on their own they had a couple people in India working for them they might have had a couple employees but I kept looking so I looked at two of those in Fair detail and I just was like no I don't want to retrain myself to be an automation engineer that's going to take a lot of time and then I'm going to work 70 hours a week because that's what this guy's doing and I already own that company so that I went down that road and I basically told after the second one I just said this isn't going to work because the engineering companies that I would have been interested in buying they were like 20 million so they were completely out of out of uh touch or reach for me um so then I kind of cooled off and you know he came to me back to me and said would you consider manufacturing because you know that seems to be a fairly decent fit for an engineer and I was like yeah I'm an oil and gas engineer but sure bring me something I think he brought me the first thing he brought me was a furniture company and I was I can't remember the details that was too long ago so whatever it was about that didn't get me going and then the second company brought me was PC enclosures and it's really interesting to me because at the time you know I didn't have a lot of detail criteria of what I was looking for like a really unsophisticated compared to a lot of people that you've had on us guess I mean you know my criteria was I want to replace my salary and I want to be able to have a lifestyle like it was really simple it wasn't and when you look at growth and all those other things like even the deeper I got into it I didn't look at it from the perspective of how can I grow this company I was like hey this would be really cool if I ran this for 10 years it paid me similar salary to what I had been making in this really difficult environment and at the end of it I paid off my SBA loan like that was my criteria in the whole thing you know yeah no we could talk about seven years later but yeah yeah in some ways you know I I might be heresy for me to say this uh but I I don't think that that's wrong-headed um you know if you if you're coming out of HBS and you know you've raised money to do a traditional search fund that's the last thing they want to hear you say but I think a lot of acquisition entrepreneurs um I think it's totally legit to to feel that way because by the way you know if even if if that was your only outcome you're still an entrepreneur you're still an owner operator you're still Your Own Boss you're still building equity in something that is that has a lot of value so in addition to earning two or three hundred thousand dollars a year you're also building equity in something that you're going to own outright after you pay pay down your SBA loan after 10 years so um I I you know I I just don't I just don't want people to think that if they're thinking the way you were back in 2014 that there's something you know flawed in that it's it's not um you know it's not it's not what a private Equity investor is going to give you money to go do but um right you know but it it's the path and it totally legit path for a lot of people so but I digress well and it was it was the coolest thing ever for me because I was able we can talk about the company but I was able to replace my salary I I accomplished that but every month that that you know SBA payment comes out and the seller payment comes out like to me you know like if you're used to your home mortgage like now my new mortgage was 27 000 a month you know like that's shocking when you pay that yeah but it reminds you every month that you're earning equity in the company and so it's it was even though I replaced my salary I doubled my salary because every year I was going to earn my salary plus I was going to earn an equivalent amount back in as equity and it was just like that was a that was a beautiful thing for me to think about yeah it's well put that's a great Point um Bert can you tell us what you what the salary was that you were earning in 2014 that you needed to replace well I I laugh because my oldest son is in med school he's in third year med school so I was earning the equivalent of an ER doctor because that's what he wants to be okay so it's in the 300s yeah in the 300s somewhere yeah okay and um okay okay so so let's now let's talk directly about your search so you'd Cruise Biz by cell you talk to a broker um this broker walked kind of walked you through how things work was probably more patient with you than um than they would be today although maybe you know you were well you all at the same time maybe he just you were a guy in your 40s you had a family you had a 17-year career as a successful consultant behind you he probably also saw you as a more viable buyer than some you know 25 year old Searcher so there might have also been maybe yeah anyway so this is is this the guy so is it this broker that kind of is is now going to start sending you deals or are you I mean were you were you doing a lot of Outreach to a bunch of Brokers are you just kind of talking to this one guy that happened to be the first guy you got on the phone with and that's what I'm telling you it's going to piss everyone off my story because like I call this guy up I cold call him teach me about the 401K he does and then he starts showing me deals and like the fourth one I looked at is the one I bought so yeah and then you and then you became Rich that easy no no okay so tell us so tell us so he didn't like the engineering company um there was another company you mentioned that you didn't like uh furniture furniture and so and then he sends you PC enclosures so which is the business that you ultimately bought in are now CEO of so tell us about PC enclosures um do you want to know about it today or back then back then okay well it's interesting so PC enclosures was formed um in 2006 um by the owner and his brother um the company we we make metal enclosures for TVs and computers so they're waterproof dust proof Vandal Proof so it's really a business it's very business to business focused so if you can picture like let's say a food manufacturing environment where they have a monitor out on the manufacturing floor that shows the operator's information but that has to be protected from a wash down environment so that enclosure is what we make another example would be in say like a psychiatric ward in a hospital so there may be a need to have a TV but it has to be it has to meet very strict regulations so that the person can't do something with that TV to cause self-harm so anyway who knew this was a thing I had no idea and exactly um okay right so it so anyway so that's what the company is completely business to business um and so when the broker brought me the information I I looked at the SIM um I went okay that looks cool and then we just started walking down the path and it was it was a it was a weird experience in the sense of I never got super excited like I wasn't like wow this is the most amazing thing in the world but I also could find no flaw so I just kept walking you know the Brokers walking me down the path and I go okay and okay and okay he's like let's make an offer I'm like ah why would I do that right now and he's like well to get more information you got to make an offer anyway so you know okay I'll make an offer you know I mean you're gonna ask me did I negotiate and I was like will the bank give me a loan for that amount of money and you know that was my criteria was it a good deal or not because I I was in no position to to negotiate per se because I was so at the mercy of what the bank was going to give me and the process that I was going to go through and you're going to say what was the multiple and all those other things I was sophisticated enough back then I could run I could do an irr calculation I could do Net Present Value like I wasn't I knew how to read a p l i knew how to read a balance sheet I had no idea what a multiple was per se but I you know like I could get myself through all the numbers and so yeah it's just a surreal experience in the sense of I kept going I kept going and I have that moment like am I really doing this and I was like yes I'm really gonna do this let's go you know so then it was however long it takes with the go ahead well just I was just gonna say you know for those who have gone through it then it was five months of hell with the SBA loan but other than that you know it was awesome so the the point about not feeling super excited about the business itself um any any thoughts on that now that you've been in it so so this is are we into 2015 yet or this is all still happening in calendar year yeah 2015. yeah so this would have been so would have been Mar or yeah like early summer 2015. yeah so seven years later um any thoughts on the question of this question of like how interested somebody needs to be in the business this comes up from time to time and you never were passionate about PC enclosures no offense to I'm sure they're great products it offers a lot of utility but it seems like a hard product for anybody to be passionate about but so what are your thoughts on right yeah I know I've thought a lot about this I will maybe talk about this at the end but you know a big part of my why I've been so re-engaged in this whole process is I've started to consider looking for another business to buy with my kids and so obviously that's very thought-provoking to me of what do we buy next if we do buy something and yeah I have a lot different opinion now because I've done a lot of different things and I wouldn't say that it has to like get my engine going but it has to get it going enough in the sense of I can picture myself doing this you know so it doesn't have to be glamorous I probably have a more defined picture of what it would be today but yeah I think the common theme that I hear you know kind of it with your guests is a lot of people talk about don't get too narrow in their search yeah that's probably it but I don't know how else to say it but you'll know it when you see it and you'll know that it's not it you can feel it this one wasn't like a definite you're gonna do it but I never got that negative like no way I would never do this so maybe for me that was the confirmation it was it just was like yeah I got no negatives so I'll keep going maybe that's it so so as long as you don't recoil at the prospect right yes that's the part yeah I guess so yeah yeah and so you um numbers what what can you tell us about numbers of PC enclosures at the time I'm just looking on my computer here so it's uh it was 2.3 million sales price plus we rolled into the deal 200k and working capital and 100K in closing and some other fees so it was 2.6 million um two million SBA loan 300K sellers note and 300K of my own money which that 300K that I brought to the table 200 of that was from my um 401k and then like a HELOC and some other money that I pulled together to get there so yeah so you um if you don't mind I'd like to get into your cash position a little bit at that time um because this is the story of wealth creation and so while you were earning a great salary let's call it in the 300s um you also had a sizable family so that'll eat up a great salary um and anything I mean anything else I mean did you feel like some people who who here are 300 plus salary are going to think well he must have had a lot in savings but in fact you had not a lot in savings you had some in your foreign okay can you elaborate well I mean you know I don't know what that makes yeah when you say it that way I look back and I was like I was an idiot but you know I didn't have any debt I guess that was good I you know I owned a home I maybe had one car payment so I I wasn't living on the Other Extreme of life um but I wasn't a Super Saver either you know we went on vacation and we went I had a ski pass every year and you know we enjoyed our life and I wouldn't say you know like I think those who know me wouldn't say he's an extravagant guy to me it felt like we were living a normal life um and I know maybe that sounds you know I got to be sensitive in that sense of that might sound unrealistic but yeah I mean I didn't have a lot of savings and I mean if you wanted to say what was my net worth that was it was six figures something you know it wasn't much yeah that's great thank you for for sharing that book um okay so you so so therefore if you didn't if you weren't you know sitting on a pile of cash you had you know you took some money out of your home you took kind of all your money out of your 401k um this was a huge uh bet don't like that word because it sounds Reckless but this was this was a huge investment I mean you kind of all in yeah right no my kid my kids would call it they would say it was a full send well said this was this was a full Cent so um how did you get how did you get your wife on board and and all of that let's let's hear the emotions of this decision for a sec well so if you go back to what we were talking about before so I was I was in a pretty you know I don't want to over paint it but it was to me it was a pretty dark place I like I really saw I was you know I was I was having a hard time seeing the future in this whole thing when I got at some point down this road and you say a bet and to me that's exactly what it was it was a bet and I my the way I looked at it was hey look if it all crashes and burns if it goes to the ground what am I going to do and I my answer was I'm gonna go consult by the hour for the next 15 to 20 years and the answer is if I didn't do it what was I going to do I was going to go consult by the hour for the next 15 to 20 years so yeah I know that that would have been more devastating financially if that would have happened but the risk wasn't I I guess it was just an emotional thing I didn't feel like I had that much to lose yeah and you would say oh you're crazy you got a lot to lose but the answer was I just I was like it's now or never I gotta do something and I'm gonna go big when I do it well and but I do think it's an important point you had this 17 years of Goodwill built up and this client this client base this roster of clients you could if everything went to hell you could you could pick up the phone and probably drum up some some new contracts for yourself within a few months and and kind of be miserable again but at least earning money I would have been back on an airplane and I would have had a job yeah for sure yeah for sure okay okay cool um I don't think now quite is when we want to get into the into the Rob stuff but pretty soon but let's hear so you bought you acquired The Company You Do It um so talk to us about those first six months what you know did it did it did it pull you out of depression and what was it like to go from being a consultant flying crisscrossing the country to you know being a small business owner and a manufacturer you know talk us through that giant transition in your life yeah so this is the part that won't piss everybody off because the first three months was really shocking in the sense of um I think well I know the third month that I owned the company we had the third lowest month of sales of the history of the company so I mean from the time I took over for about the first four months it was nose diving and I was in an absolute Panic to try to figure out what was going on I was like the seller screwed me over you know I'm trying to dig into everything um so the good news is that his brother I mentioned him that so it was the owner and his brother his brother stayed with me and so part of it was like well I don't think that they would have really done that to me if he was going to stay so and I was watching that'll unfold closely and it was all hands on deck to try to figure out what was going on I really think it in hindsight it was just that the owner had probably a year previously took in his taken his hand off the wheel and it was just starting to come around when I oh when I took over that things were suffering so I always say now it's easy to go back and look and say that was the best thing that could have happened to me I mean I didn't sleep much it was awful but I did a deep dive into every aspect of the company during those first four months to try to figure out what was going on and we did some things and you say how'd you turn it around and I'd say I don't know we just worked hard I think part of it was just getting the hand back on the steering wheel um just paying attention and it kind of righted itself just from not doing anything but we I was you know I was trying things to try to fix things I don't know that they made any difference but we were working hard I was fully engaged I was focused and I don't think I would have gotten that kind of focus without having that experience so past that it got better and better and better as it went so and I wouldn't say it like we didn't grow a lot for the first three years that I owned it but it stabilized and it was slow steady growth and it was happy and I was making the money I wanted to and I was yeah I was just I was happy I was I wasn't I didn't get on an airplane for three years unless I went on vacation I was super happy about that I lost all my Medallion status at Delta and I was just great with that idea you know it's just like Let Me Ride coach and I don't care this is awesome so yeah yeah so you turn it around in about six months did you say six six to nine months I mean if you talk to my wife she'd tell you that about six months in I became a normal person again and I was approachable so yeah probably six months so yeah and uh for those first six months you've already said you were panicking um but I mean it must have been like uh I mean did it feel worse than the the reality that you had been trying to escape I guess Panic is worse what's worse Panic or depression right yeah right I don't know and I mean I don't want to overpain it I mean you know look I I mean obviously I had to have a lot of confidence myself to do this in the first place yeah yeah like I had confidence in myself in my abilities to manage at some level um to figure things out you know I I'm you know I'm a pretty analytical person so it wasn't that I was like it was but there are things that you can't change you know you there's levers that you can pull but you know whether it's actually going to move anything or not you know and it's slow to move it doesn't like I can't go pull levers and everything just jumps back on the track that day and off where you know you're like did that do anything I don't know all I can do is keep working and keep trying and keep doing stuff so yeah I mean that was uh you know like again that was a long time ago yes so I don't you know I I have memories but I can't tell you exactly the emotions I know it was rough yeah yeah yeah yeah um and is are PC enclosures is there a recurring aspect to it I mean do you have do you have customers that come back again and again or is it mostly kind of one-off deliver deliveries of these of these of these PC enclosures yeah so when I first bought the company I would just well I pulled the numbers it would have been about 25 recurring um and now we're probably more in the 30 to 40 percent recurring so it's a momentum machine that takes years to build momentum so yeah but the other thing that like you know the scary factor that is let's say 75 of it is a one and done so you got to fill that bucket every month you know and you're like how are we going to fill the bucket again and again and again yeah you know and somehow it well actually let's press on that Burke because that is that is um you know in in in our world and you know we're all kind of evaluating the quality of businesses and you know probably top of list is recurring um that's what everybody wants that's what you know if you have investors that's what they're almost gonna demand um but not every business is recurring in fact more businesses are not recurring than recurring so many acquisition entrepreneurs just have to get comfortable with the fact that like hey look my the business I'm going to buy is not recurring but it's still the customers do appear to keep showing up month after month but um I don't know yeah talk to people about what you just said that you know you just you got you hope those 75 come back next month and they and they just do like what what would you tell somebody who's like oh I have to have a recurring business have to have a recurring business well I think you know so one of the things that I got really interested when I was looking at the company was that they built it during the financial crisis so that tells you something about the I guess the potential health of a company that grows albeit fairly slowly but they grew it I mean to something sizable from nothing and it really was you know they started in 06 I didn't really get going until 08 and they grew it right through until I bought it and so I I mean I don't know if that exactly answers the question but the first thing I got comfortable around was well if you can grow a business during that time frame it's got to be okay you know so that was my first thought yeah and then I think about the recurring thing is that bothered me a lot especially in the maybe the first year or two of owning the company just that anxiety of every month are we going to fill the bucket again are we going to fill the bucket again and I think what happens over time is you're like we keep filling the bucket so I'm going to move on from that worry because it just keeps filling up every month and I we can talk about my other company too but we sell uh my other company is we sell a uh a residential um uh TV cover a plastic TV cover that we sell on Amazon and that one's one and done every single time and that bucket just keeps filling up every month you know so it's I've gotten my mind around that idea yeah great I well I think that that's probably um healthy just because yes recurring is preferable but um most businesses aren't recurring and if you just let yourself look at those recurring opportunities you're just the the pool of opportunities that you're going to Avail yourself of is going to be way way thinner so can can I tell you just one quick uh one question one can one story so I yeah early on I went out to a Dairy out by Denver because I was trying to take some pictures for our website and stuff and so I went on a road trip and just went to see a bunch of people and so we had pulled we had put in some enclosures into this Dairy within the last six or seven months and so I set up a you know they were kind enough to let me come in and take some video and pictures and when I showed up he asked me which ones I wanted to look at and I said well I see you have five of them just show me what you got and he's like well we got 13 of these things and I was like oh show me that well he had other enclosures that we had sold them from like you know eight or ten years before this and they were still in service and they looked exactly the same as the other ones so you know part of the problem is you have a very high quality product it doesn't wear out like we're never gonna be that that's not part of our business to replace what weren't we're out yeah but I guess that when it came time to buy another one they looked at the tag on the side of it and called the phone number and said yeah we just want some more so that's what we get out of that that type of that's what we get for recurring but no replacement yeah yeah that's in you know that's an interesting that's an interesting thing that I'm sure every business that produces a product um has to get or service really has to consider it's like the higher quality this is the longer it's going to last and the less likely but less like they are going to come back and have to replace it but you know they'll they'll see our brand as a as a as a quality product and maybe tell others about it because it's such a high quality product and that's you know and it also just probably makes you feel better as the producer of that product that you're producing something of quality you know oh yeah for sure for sure Burke I wanna I wanna we still have a long way to go but I I do want to get just um I guess you said the first you know six to 12 months where this Panic terrible time um but I I just I want to start asking my guests more about like what small business ownership is like because um I've I've heard from one or three people uh that you know we let's not glamorize getting in the seat and being a CEO of a small business it's it's it's hard day to day and it's very very different than you know a corporate gig uh or or Tech gig or whatever what have you so um just if you can separate out that Panic piece that Panic that hard first six 12 months and just comparing um you know being a small business owner to what you were doing before what would you tell people about that well yeah so those things that say it's really hard and all that that's all true but I was doing a pretty hard job you know when I was selling myself every day to new clients and trying to stay on top of my game all the time you know I'm not going to say this was easy but it was never any harder than that so that part of it I mean this the stresses are more personal than they were when I was working for somebody else I mean I was you know I I was working on multi-billion dollar projects for large oil companies you know so those are real numbers I felt those numbers personally at some level but not like I did when I had a hundred thousand dollar deal going north or going south of my own money then it got super real um yeah but I think because of my experiences through having managed and having worked in a lot of different environments I think for me I was more prepared so I never went through that um oh my gosh this is so hard I mean yeah I mean I said the first six months were difficult but that wasn't I never felt like that was something that I was incapable of handling it was just hard you know and I guess in my career I had done lots of hard things so it was in a way normal but completely different in the sense of it was my money now you know so I felt it very keenly instead of somebody else's money it was mine yeah yeah sure uh and how many employees were at at PC enclosures when you acquired it uh were small I think at the time it was probably five or six people and we're eight now so yeah okay it's still small yeah okay okay well tell us about um so a little bit about more about the numbers and about the growth because I know it has grown you said for those first two or three years the growth was kind of incremental and then things sped up or or what can you tell us there yeah so I think um like I mentioned before you know my focus wasn't necessarily growth but I did you know I certainly understood the idea that I have to feed the beast you know I can't just suck money out of this thing I need to incrementally put money into it allow it to grow you know from the most important thing that we focused on was the ability to grow inventory um you know when when we have a customer come to us and ask you know let's say that they it was a hospital and they were looking for 50 units um our ability to close that sale is fairly highly dependent on the fact you know can we deliver in a reasonable time so when I took over the company a lot of those types of things were built to order and so that would go to an outside fabricator or to China and so those lead times were very long so but inventory is expensive and I couldn't just you know we had several skus and I couldn't just walk out and I didn't have the money to just build inventory I had to build it slowly over time and so that was one of my focuses um you know things have been so to answer your question yeah it was slow growth for about the first four years I don't know I mean I was taking good money out of the company I was putting you know a decent amount of money back in um book profit was very low from a tax point of view it was very low just because I was you know kind of keeping Pace um I will mention that you know one of the things that helps you on on taxes is your amortization of your SBA loan as well as the interest I mean that was offsetting about 300K a year off of my p l for you know calculating taxes so when it all comes down to it I mean it felt to me like we were just kind of moving along not doing much and then we saw a real inflection of the curve in 2019. um you're going to ask me what caused that and I'm going to tell you all the great and wonderful things I did and I have no idea what caused it I can I can point to several things that yeah I mean you know like how do you know like I can tell you we built inventory that that made some major differences we held our prices I think we made a price drop we held our prices down I think all through covid and through the supply chain issues we've held our prices steady I think that's been a major frustration for some of our competitors and we've been able to take market share so I don't know it you know how do you get perfect information all I know is that the things that we implemented they were working and I think that they were working early on it just takes time to see that inflection of the curve I I know a lot of your you know I listen to a lot of your guests and they see immediate reaction to certain things that they do you know we doubled in six months and I'm like yeah that's awesome but I don't know how to do that for me it's we doubled in seven years but we doubled yeah you know so yeah yeah and and was it kind of a kind of a a step up where you kind of doubled in a short amount of time and then it's back to it's back to kind of the same growth line of of kind of more incremental or is it or is is this kind of accelerated growth continuing it's continuing and I keep waiting for the curve to bend over you know it it seems to me like that it has to at some point but we're still in an accelerating phase I think we probably are slowing down a little bit right now like again I you know when people talk about like in the last four years I've experienced 20 year over year and people talk about that like that's what you want and I'm telling you it's awesome but you better hang on when you have 20 year over year because it it shakes up every system you have in your company we're just going through a major retooling right now and it's kind of nerve-wracking when you go through that because in the back of your mind you're like well what if we go back to 2019 what if you know this this really crazy growth that we've seen what if it goes back down yeah you know because and you're asking was this a covid thing was it you know what what was it that caused all this massive growth and then at some point you have to say we've got to adjust because I can't I can't keep living in the old reality I have to adjust to the new reality and it's awesome and it's kind of nerve-wracking because you're buying bigger warehouses you're about you're you know getting more space you're buying more equipment you're hiring more people and it feels amazing and yet in the back of your mind you're still saying but what if it all goes away this is going to be super painful people to downsize again if we have to do that so yeah yeah you know I don't I don't we celebrate it's awesome I guess part of being in the terror is maybe you just never quit worrying it's it's in success that you worry and down times that you worry it's still worry right yeah yeah well you know um your mental health notwithstanding that worry is probably healthy for the business uh oh yeah you're you're sophisticated enough to know that like you know maybe a younger business person would say oh look at uh you know look at all this growth after three months of growth and then promptly hire people and and you know get the bigger Warehouse or whatever but you're you know you have enough you know gray hairs figuratively not literally uh literally yeah literally for sure to uh to know that um you know you got to be a little more circumspect about that growth and make sure that it's secular growth and not and not some not some fluke or short-lived growth so right um but I will say too you know despite the fact that you're grow that you've seen these sales numbers and I want to actually hear the numbers numbers again uh an update on those in a sec but um your employee account hasn't increased too much so what did you say from six to eight or six to nine yeah yeah so so well so I mentioned that I had you know the original one of the original founders with me and um so one of the things that I could tell and I just knew this intuitively is that over the last two years I can see this growth going on and I can see everybody's still doing their same job with twice the amount of work um and I keep checking in with everyone to say are you okay are you okay and I finally realized that that's the wrong question to ask because very rarely is anybody going to say I'm not okay so you have to kind of intuitively feel that this is happening and if you ask them to tell you when it's not okay you're going to be too late to make the decisions so I I started to make some decisions about a year ago to say we're going to have to restructure you know because you know this is a bootstrap company and my general manager had I mean he was the I.T guy and he was the operations guy and he was the he managed the websites like he did everything um and so growth is growth is really difficult in the sense of you know I started looking how how would we restructure we need to bring some more people in to do that um I think that was really tough for him because he had been with the company from the beginning he had always done it a certain way I trusted him he did an amazing job but he actually just gave me his notice about four weeks ago because I I he got I think he got a really good uh opportunities so and I wish him all the best in what he does but I think that growth was difficult for him to kind of as I said hey I'm going to have somebody come in and I'm going to take over the I.T portion from some do this and we're going to split out marketing and do this and just I think he could just feel all his baby being kind of well that's a bad analogy what is what's the good analogy it was it was his thing getting torn apart and I just don't know that that was very it was just tough and I I empathize with him it was tough on me but I was like we have to grow we have to change here and so yeah we're right in the middle of that so yeah we're retooling right now yeah yeah yeah Burke um we um here's how I want the rest of our interview to go because we still have a bunch of bunch of things to get to uh I want to hear numbers and then I want to talk about robs which is you know kind of a big feature of your acquisition uh a lot to talk about there and then I want to hear about these other Ventures that you've that you've gotten into um uh at the end so on numbers I don't think I asked you you told us you acquired it for 2.3 million plus 200 plus another 300 for working capital and deal costs so that's 2.6 all in what was the site what was the business doing in terms of Revenue and sde back in 2015 when you acquired it and what's it doing today uh Revenue would have been around 1.5 to 1.7 it kind of you know if you want to look at different years but if you're trying to get a balance of the three previous three years I would say it was about 1.6 million in sales highly profitable I mean it was like six to seven hundred sde which you know when I looked at it yeah when I looked at it I kept trying to pull that apart to see if that was real and the financials were really messy when I looked at them because there was a lot of personal stuff intertwined um so you know there I knew going into it there were some risks but you know it turned out to be even better than what I thought so yeah so those were those were the numbers back then um today I think you know trailing 12 months right now we're at about 3.5 million in sales and probably about 1.2 million sde right now so yeah yeah and so you're seven months into your SBA loan seven years yeah sorry seven years sorry seven years into your SBA line yeah and I'm I I don't know believe me well yeah yeah and another three years that that million dollars is you know all of that's going to go to you uh and not and yeah to your loan so that's gonna be yeah exactly exactly remarkable and so just um remind us again uh how impactful this was to your life and and what does your family say about it today do they do they understand that the full send was a total slam dunk they too understand I mean they don't understand to the level that I do because you know obviously as you know if if you're providing in whatever fashion for your family you Shield them from a lot of that stuff I think my kids had a great childhood and we worked really hard to make that happen I think that I was burning candle at both ends to make that happen um no I can't I mean I think I told you in the pre-call I mean it it's absolutely the most impactful thing I've ever done in my life um it's changed my life um somebody listening might say that part of that was luck and I don't say that it wasn't but I it was a lot of hard work and it was a full send I mean that was it was not easy decision and I did it um you know looking forward you know to doing the next one do I think it'll be that easy again no I think I'm pretty realistic about how difficult it is but nor does it stop me from wanting to do it again I know how difficult it is today I know that finding the right deal will be much more difficult but it doesn't stop me I mean I'm definitely you know I I I see what it's done for me in my life I I'm a big believer I think I told you off in the pre-call I mean you know I got my oldest son is in med school we can't do anything about him he's made his decisions but my next two we're doing acquisition entrepreneurship that's where we're going you know my my one of my focuses in life is to teach them to Tool them up so that they can go do things in their own life I see this as a major pathway for them um I you know I'm not going to force them down that road my my middle son he's very on board my youngest is still in college so let him do his thing um and we'll see where he goes but you know if I if if I'm choosing ways to help them I'm going to teach them how to do this that's what I'm going to teach him how to do wow wow what an endorsement really cool yeah um and you're you're in Utah you're in the Salt Lake area uh-huh Salt Lake yep yeah yeah great um well that's that's just uh what what uh what a testimonial for acquisition entrepreneurship very cool Burke um I one more thing I want to ask you about before we talk about Rob's just manufacturing so um I don't know anything about manufacturing I tend to just completely disregard uh manufacturing deals um and um maybe I shouldn't I mean I actually myself have an NGO or a computer computer science background so I I have the capability of being technical I haven't been technical for years but um anything you might say high level to acquisition entrepreneurs out there considering manufacturing um yeah well so it's funny the first thing is it took me until about six months ago so six and a half years into owning my company to realize that I owned an e-commerce business not a manufacturing business because we don't manufacture anything I Outsource all my manufacturing to other people yeah I mean we control we controlled the design so we definitely have an engineering aspect to what we do I would say we own the intellectual property of what we do but we don't nobody strikes an ark to weld anything here we warehouse and we ship so that would be my first thought is are you really going to manufacture something or are you going to control the intellectual property of what you have and let other people do the manufacturing that's the route we've Chosen and I think that if I was going to go forward again I've looked at vertically integrating you know maybe getting into some things where we could do some of the building ourselves and it just I just run I run away every time I mean the complexity of owning say a welding shop a machine shop something like that it's such a different animal from what we do um we're going to add value by marketing we're going to add value by um it's really that it's marketing and e-commerce that's where we add value so yeah I don't know that I would go into uh nuts and bolts go build something business it's not that I'm afraid of doing it it's just that I'm able to do three and a half million in sales with eight people you know what I mean like yeah I don't have to have 30 30 people and that's a totally different organization I'm not saying I wouldn't that that's a bad business it's just not the one that I want to do if that makes sense yes yeah it does it does Burke okay let's hear about Rob's um and and how and kind of your decision to do it and then pros and cons and the process and and all of it um so just as a reminder to people Top Line robs allows you to tap into your 401k to invest in and that includes a choir a small business a business um and so this can be kind of um I'm sure Rob's people uh um providers won't like this phrasing but it can kind of be a A workaround or kind of a loophole um to kind of the the conventional thought of a 401k that you do not touch it and you're penalized for touching it so um with that context can you can you give us more well you know I first of all I mean obviously you can tell I'm not a I'm not a Rob's expert so I'm not going to try to give Rob's advice obviously yeah um I went through it and I think what I can share is my experience of going through it so and it was probably looking back I mean again fairly unsophisticated I let the broker kind of hold me by the hand say who do I talk to and he's like you know and I got it I got together with Guidance Financial I mean if you Google Rob's 401K they will come up their ad will come up number one on Google um you know there's other very capable providers I chose to go with guidance um so I guess the idea of if you think about my structure so a couple things one is under the Rob structure you're required to form a C corporation and that really chases a lot of people away um so that's one thing you have to maintain your 401k or a 401k in in the business in the new business which that didn't seem to be too big of a deal for me and there's other um there's other restrictions that you should definitely like again if you're interested you should go do an hour of Googling and look at going through the guidance website going through some of the other third-party providers there's some really good information out there you should become very familiar with what the limitations of the robs are and what you know what you can and can't do yeah um you know again for me my you know where I'm coming from it was like oh hey I can do it with this I'll do whatever it takes so I was never in the mindset of oh I want to do an LLC I'll never do a C corporation I mean sure I took it to my accountant and he said don't do this and I said why not and he's like well you want to be an LLC and I said well okay I can't do that right so um anyway that anyway okay so let's talk about Rob so in my situation so I personally own uh say it's about 35 percent of the stock of my C corporation my 401k owns 65 of the stock so I act in two different uh I have two different hats that I wear in the company one is I'm personally a stockholder and the other one is I act as the fiduciary for my 401k so I am the manager of the company in to act on behalf of the 401K and you know if you kind of read through what that means is I'm going to act as a manager of my company for the you know the financial benefit of the 401K um you know for me you kind of start to look at those two things and you say well are they at odds from each other and for me they never are because I I think the type of people that are you know that you have on as your listeners we're all in the same boat of we're not here to Rob that's a bad word we're not here to we're not here to trash the company and take money out of it we're here to build businesses that make sense and and that's exactly what you should do as the fiduciary of your company you should you know you should manage cash flow you should reinvest to the benefit of the growth of the company you should you know do all the things that a prudent managers would do now as a stockholder can I take money out um I can take money out in in you know as salary and bonuses you know as long as all those things are commensurate to what I'm doing to manage the company it all jives so those are the two hats that I wear I've never had a problem with those two I've never felt like those two things were at odds with each other um go ahead yeah just the fact that you're um your 401k owns 65 percent of the business and not you personally that does that mean are there any implications of that in terms of like control or if you went to sell the business like what if I came to you and I said I want to buy you your business for 20 million dollars uh you say yes does that mean you can't touch 65 of the 20 million dollars until retirement age or any anything like that any yeah what about that yeah so uh uh you know so it does have a significant impact to you at exit so if you think about it like let's let's say in my company we did a six million dollar deal so 4 million would go to my 401k and and 2 million would come to me personally um if you think about my situation that's beautiful right because I'm 54 I'm 59 and a half I can get to it so you know if I was 30 that would be a different scenario but for me that's great the other thing is why it's beautiful for me is it Shields it from that you know significant tax event that would happen right then so it it literally that four million would go back under the umbrella the 401K and it would sit you know tax deferred until it was actually pulled back out you know like you would do in retirement so I guess it depends on how you look at that if you're you know if you were younger and you're like I need to get to that money um yeah the only way you can do it is in a liquidity event is turn back around and use it in another robs you could do that but you know here's the argument I would use is in my own personal situation is I had a hundred thousand bucks in cash not counting my 401k and if I have a liquidity event that only gets Me 2 million in my 401k gets 4 million like that's awesome but it's just how you look at it right I mean yeah you could be frustrated with that whole situation but to me that's awesome so I you know 100 000 into two million cash in your hands right right I mean and I'm not preaching that everyone should do a robs I mean obviously you know I I mean if you can do an LLC and that works you know like of course you should do the best situation for you but I guess the only to the naysayers or the robs I would just say to me it enabled my life you know so I I yeah there's downsides for sure there's downsides but um you know if you talk about what's my compliance you know how much time do I spend to manage this whole thing I mean I use guidance I use American Funds to manage my 401k I I mean maybe I spend 20 minutes every two weeks when I do my payroll to you know connect that stuff up and I probably spend four to six hours a year doing my annual compliance and that's it like I really it's not that onerous the amount of work that I have to do to comply so yeah I mean we could talk about downsides they're they're definitely some um you know obviously when I formed on my next business it was an LLC I didn't go back and reuse the same structure I didn't choose a C corporation as my structure but I'm okay to live under a sea star C corporation structure as well it you know we could talk about tax and you know the thing about a C Corp if you think about it is like I told you the first three or four years of owning PC enclosures um we didn't go through a lot of massive growth so when I looked at amortization expenses and interest expenses as well as the money that I was taking out I paid little if any corporate tax for the first three or four years um you know the last couple years I have and and to be clear what your what you're addressing is the double taxation criticism of of of of a C Corp and so if the C Corp entity doesn't have any profit then you're not paying any and you're not paying any double taxes because there is no tax come on there is no profit for the entity yeah and of course I mean you know like I want to make sure that when I say I'm not paying tax it's not like I'm evading tax I mean that's the structure of the C corporation of course I mean it's completely ethical to run your C corporation at you know very little profit I mean I'm I'm taking out a significant salary for myself the company is functioning growing it's doing its thing now fast forward the last couple years with such extreme growth I've been reinvesting in inventory and my AR has been growing and so I can't keep that number at zero anymore I have core corporate profit and but again you know like if you kind of look at and say well okay you're getting double taxed but not on the whole thing I mean I can still take significant amounts of money out through my payroll you know my personal payroll as well as bonuses and when you look at the amount of corporate tax that I pay it's like as a percentage it's not 20 or 21 percent it's it's much lower that than that when you look at the entire package so I only comment on that is you know before you just throw the whole idea out with double taxation the growth that it's been able to it's enabled for me is just so outweighs what the penalty is like I just don't see it as I would never choose not to do it because of that one reason yeah great well um there is a lot of nuance to this and a lot more to learn so let's leave Rob's there but that was a great personal um to hear your personal history with it and just as as you said people should go out and and read up on it um but uh you're actually my second guest to do second or third guest to do Rob so it's it's definitely something for um and and there there's clearly like a a trend that the people who do tap into it are you know a little older probably in their 40s maybe 50s um and that's probably because you know those folks have more money in there right 1K to even play with and also because at the point you made earlier which which you you um turned me on to that like if some some potential exit or a significant amount of of equity is going to sit in the 401K and kind of for lack of a better word be kind of be captured there and um until retirement the closer you are to retirement the less that absolutely um cool well Burke let's hear about your other two businesses before we wrap up the yeah okay so um so PC enclosures so I you know we sell these metal enclosures for TVs and the the whole purpose of that product is like I said you know it's a it's a it's an industrial or heavy commercial type of product um for the first year of my own and the company I hear my sales guy on the phone half of the day talking to homeowners that want to hang a TV on their back patio and he's talking to them and then price comes up and he's like yeah it's 1600 bucks and they just hang up the phone but I hear this over and over again and so I start to say I start to look into the world and they say okay what's out there for you know the consumer you know residential and it's really interesting there was to me a very big gap in the product because there were these cloth cover um these cloth covers that you could buy on Amazon for like 39.95 to put over your outdoor TV there are outdoor TVs per se but there was no you know say really high-end uh something that was going to protect your TV out on the back porch um so I I approached a really good friend of mine we've been friends since you know our younger days so we're actually went to high school together we've stayed in touch all these years he um has done several businesses but as current businesses he owns a infrared heater company and he does major business as FBA and also on the major online platforms uh Walmart Wayfarer Home Depot Lowe's it's a very well connected in that world and so I approached him and said hey do you want to do this together I think this could fly but I don't want to spend the effort to try to understand how to do all this stuff and so he was very amenable to that it worked out really well we both were Manufacturing in China he so we went together so we designed it we got the patents we did the trademarks we went to China set up the manufacturing got it all set up and that's you know again kind of full send because you don't even know if you can sell one right like how do you test something like that if you can sell it yeah um it worked I guess I mean I you don't know how you measure these things we our first year uh was 2018 we just we got rolling in 2018 we sold about 800k worth of product in 2018 2019 we sold 2.3 million 20 20 we sold oh sorry well let's see 2021 we sold 3.5 so 2020 we sold 2.3 and then this year we're on track to sell about 4.5 million so it's just growing like crazy you know now that's a what I call I call it it's also a perfect it's also a perfect covet business oh I had no idea I was so freaked out when covet came and I was like oh you know all this stuff and I had no idea I was sitting on an outdoor patio product during covet you can imagine like we just couldn't stay in stock so that was the problem like how do you keep stock so so yeah but you know we probably grew we probably had a next year extra Year's worth of growth just from covid you know pushing traffic our way so so yeah I mean you know and it's it's been an interesting ride because he has an established company I have an established company neither of us need to draw a salary so I mean for the last three years just every dollar has been going back in just buying more inventory and trying to grow it's only this year that we've actually been able to start taking some money out but so you know I I know maybe you're going to ask me this but you know would you start up a company rather than buy a company and I would just say in my experience it's been really cool I call it a bolt-on startup because it's not really a startup right we both had infrastructure um my product idea came from my other company so it was all intertwined with all these things but man the growth to go through that like if we would have been on our own to try to fund that I don't you know it would have been horrendous to try to make a living while we were doing that but it was super fun when we didn't have to take money out because we could just grow it you know we could just fund it and grow it as we went so so yeah that one's been awesome wow that that's really that's really remarkable yeah totally awesome so it's a four and a half million dollar business um any sense of where it where it of where the ceiling is for this so you I mean Not only was it a coveted friendly business but it's but but it's um totally Green Field there was no other product out there so you're the only game in town so even even when all these Chinese you know these Chinese knockoffs come along you're gonna have your you know your review moat right sure you're going to be the the one that has all the selling history and Amazon is going to favor you know your listing above all the all the copycats so you're you know there there's a first mover advantage to this other than just simply selling more units in those early years um so yeah any thoughts on that and and how big this can get yeah again I have no idea I mean a lot of people I mean TVs are TVs are cheap right I mean they're I mean they're not super cheap but you can go buy a 55-inch TV at uh Walmart or Costco for you know five to eight hundred bucks um maybe cheaper than that and so you know part of what's Driven this whole thing is the ability for people to go have multiple TVs at their house and it's not a deal killer for them to afford that so people have gotten interested in putting something outside on the porch and um you can imagine the community that we you know we have a big Pinterest following and you know it's just kind of fun to watch this whole thing evolve and people show you all their their bar their outdoor bars that they build and you know just some really cool stuff that people build and you're like that's my thing in the middle of that and that's just so cool to watch right so so where does it go no I don't know it's still growing I mean um you know I'm not going to say it's easy I mean with supply chain stuff like Amazon did some weird stuff last year like they they really loaded up in the fall on product we falsely thought that that was sales growth but they were just because the supply chain they were just loading just in case the supply chain cut everything off and so then we bought more and they didn't buy any more in the spring because they were already loaded so you know yeah we're still we're still messing up but you know it hasn't killed us and we keep you know they kept buying again once they caught up with inventory and so that was all fine so yeah I I think it'll keep going do I think it's a 25 million dollar business probably not like you know this thing's gonna the curve's gonna turn over the top there's a limit on who will buy this type of thing but yeah I don't know where it goes uh the other cool thing for me that's really amazing with this is where I'm very well I'm very tightly integrated with my partner's company so we operate under his roof and you know he's he's built this heater company up to 25 to 30 million in sales in what he's doing and they're looking at an exit probably in the next two to three years and we're just going to roll this up with him so it's just it's just really fortuitous for me and that situation is we're going to get multiple Arbitrage on our little piece out of that whole thing because we're going to go along with him when he sells it so we may get we may get seven we may get 7x on our stuff on that so that I never had that stuff in mind when we did it at the beginning but then as we get into it I'm like oh wow it's multiple Arbitrage this is really cool stuff right so yeah that is super cool so yeah we'll see I mean you know I mean I obviously we're in a we're in a decelerating market you know so with what's going on with the economy and inflation and other things so I mean our sales are still increasing but you know are people going to still have the same multiple appetites over the next couple of years sure to be determined but neither of us are in any hurry to get out either so if we need to ride it out for a few years that's fine too you know that's no problem exactly yeah yeah so yeah tell me about your your other business this one I think you're doing with one of your sons yeah well this is yeah so my son my second son so he's in it this is by the way a hard act to follow yeah because you're outdoor TV he's gonna make this one seem small bike well it is it's totally small and it has a totally different purpose so my my middle son he was in college um so back in 20 uh probably 2017 2018 he's in college you know my older son I've mentioned him he's you know med school kind of kid so College was somehow easy for him so I got it in my mind that college would be easy for all of my kids my second son comes along he's just a born engineer like I know it I could see it in him when he was 10 years old he'd be out fixing stuff for hours on his own we get to college and he just struggles in college and I mean struggle in the sense of he's a you know he's a b student instead of an a student and I won't get too into that but I just think that the universities are really structured around an a student that's who they reward and a b student in some way is kind of thrown to the curb um and he was struggling I maybe just maybe just some self-esteem issues and things like that and I'm looking at the kid going you're awesome and you have so much potential and he's feeling kind of not like that and I said well let's go build a company together and my whole purpose in that was to help him see that there's this whole other world out there that isn't grades in school that's you know like at the end of the day it's like if you can go do these things you can be amazing and not have somebody tell you you're not and so we undertook this yeah we undertook this thing he and I well my all of my kids we had had this um we make snow in the backyard we've done this for you know probably 10 or 15 years um so we just have this little home snow maker and being a nerdy engineer you know like we built this thing and so we just use garden garden hose an air compressor and a pressure washer and with a you know series of designed engineered nozzles you can make this thing that makes snow obviously it has to be freezing temperatures but so anyway we did this we went out we you know had my suppliers in China we did the design we built them we started selling them I had all these aspirations that we just sell a Gob of them and this is a true start from zero startup and that is hard like that was super hard we the first year how do you get presents on Google when you have no presence well in this little tiny company we had to spend ten thousand dollars in Google AdWords to get people to come into our site right so so of course he doesn't have any money I'm funding all this thing as we go but fast forward you know he's I think this is his fifth year of of having that company um he graduated this last year so you know in his senior year in college he made six figures from running his sick his snow company you know the snow machine company that is and so I created an absolute monster right because I'm like I'm like okay that was that was your training wheels come do some stuff with me and he's like oh no I'm running this thing because this thing's awesome you know so yeah what am I going to say you know like he's having fun he loves the company he's so invested in it um and it's just awesome because he runs the whole thing he does you know he does the website he does you know he orders all the equipment from China he organizes some summer students you know some kids to to help him assemble stuff in the summer and then he sells it he just do does the whole thing so it's a beautiful training wheels kind of business for him to get into so yeah well that's been super fun how's this so how's his self-esteem awesome like yeah oh yeah no this was the best thing ever I mean I'm not saying that it was well yeah and from one father to it right and I don't mean that in the sense of look what I did but I really do mean that in the sense of there's more to life than you know we are all gonna go on to our careers and how we were judged and you know school's important he graduated he did it he stuck with it but when it came out the other end he didn't feel like well I couldn't do mechanical engineering because they wouldn't let me in I couldn't do the accounting program because they wouldn't let me in he did manufacturing engineering very you know a very applicable thing and when he came out the other end he had no question that he couldn't go do something in life right he could do it he knew he could do it so yeah I'm just that part just super awesome for me yeah yeah that's that's a great story yeah no that's fun that one's fun Burke we we've covered a lot is there anything that we didn't cover that that needs to be said uh no maybe I just wanted to share you know like I've been going through this growth thing so I've been reading a lot um some books that have impacted me recently probably a lot of people have read these but you know I went back and read the e-myth that was really helpful to me to read I've been reading genome Wickman stuff so we're looking at EOS type of stuff so traction and get a grip that's been really helpful to me um the 80 20 principle by Richard Coke so I've been just kind of flooding myself recently with that kind of stuff and it's just is really kind of helpful for me as well as hanging out with you every week on acquiring minds I appreciate it I I yeah yeah yeah so anyway yeah good stuff well Burke thank you very much for the time and for sharing so much uh both not only just the numbers which I always love to have my guests share but you're the kind of the personal Journey that this represents and it really is uh quite a quite a journey so congratulations on finding your way out of that midlife morass uh and now you know you are I know it's not but you're making it look easy so uh I'm sure it's gonna inspire people yep go ahead well I was just going to say yeah I mean you know like if I can I mean that that was kind of my point in reaching out to you in the beginning is I it changed my life and I hope it can change somebody else's like you said it's not easy everybody knows that who listens I mean nobody's nobody's drinking from that you know colored Kool-Aid that says this is just super easy I think everybody understands it's not but what's at you know at least for me what came out of that is just you know it's just it's amazing and it's awesome and I want to help right so yeah and how can how can the audience get in touch with you what's the best way well I'm not super connected I mean that's maybe my lack so certainly reach out to me on LinkedIn um Burke Adams um you know if you ask me questions deep questions about robs or if you want to buy my company I probably won't respond but if you want to just talk about business and life I'll absolutely respond so yeah there you go Burke thank you very much sir yep great thanks a lot