welcome to acquiring minds nice to be here sajama you acquired and are now the CEO of an environmental compliance Services business but it wasn't inevitable that you'd end up as an entrepreneur in fact you started your career by getting a PhD in data science So today we're going to hear about your journey from that to acquisition entrepreneur so start us off please sajama with some background on you I'm an engineer by training and as as you noted I um at one point I wanted to be a professor in a university so that's why the PHD so I at the end of that I was trying to decide what I want to do you know one of the things I guess about me you know I I find many different things interesting I enjoy uh and most of all learning uh and uh so many different things so I did after my PhD I did investing for about 15 years and uh I worked in many small and big companies and and the general theme was that we would uh you know we would invest on behalf of uh Pension funds like campers cansters cppib other um uh Norwegian pension fund Etc and um it was perfect because you know people always people sometimes asked me when I was in that part of my career how is it um you know you you are a engineer you are you're a researcher what are you doing here and I found that actually it was not any different because there were interesting problems to solve new things to learn and apply and and improve systems and so uh I found almost um I found that they were both equally interesting and then the same thing here now you know when I as I'm doing this I find um it's a different set of problems you know I'm not writing code all day long and not reading papers or by economists but um you know it's more the Practical side of Economics I guess so well we're gonna We Are Gonna return to that and have you kind of um talk about what the problems are what your day-to-day looks like and and how that stimulates you um but just to just to understand a little bit more of your background yes you so 15 years at investing um but you just mentioned writing code so so dealing with so you were writing code as as part of this career in investing to be clear yes so uh there are there are this this whole uh said quantitative investors where people who write code are the people who are doing the investing because uh it's the code that does the trading um does that does the investing yeah so so a person who's a who's a quantitative investor is uh needs to know about the markets about code and about you know the stocks and you know all of the all the different aspects of things yeah and I heard you mention the Norwegian Sovereign fund or Norwegian pension fund Calpers I feel like these are some of the big Pension funds that I I've heard of I'm I'm not fluent in that world but um are those are some of the some some of the biggest pots of money around aren't they yes they are I realize I'm going further back rather than in the right direction here uh uh Saginaw but I think it's interesting so I'm also just looking at your LinkedIn and seeing Indian Institute of Technology that's i i t that those are that's of the the the very prestigious family of of universities in India correct is that that's right I went to IIT Bombay it's a great school so you came to the states to get a master's degree to or to continue your education and two yeah as far as PhD yeah okay great so you have uh what I perceive by looking at your LinkedIn and and hearing you speak a a very successful career um as a quantitative investor um deploying capital or making Capital allocation decisions for some of the biggest funds in the world and you do that for a decade and a half and it's stimulating and then what starts to happen that causes you know that starts pointing in the direction where you now are you know so a couple of different things one is um you know I was at I I happened to be at a turning point um you know I I worked for a small um investment company that used to focus on Asian uh in the Asian markets and covet happened and we had a lot of volatility in our books and uh I uh it was so and it was time to move on you know the the the the company this closed down we were one of the largest investors in Asia and uh we closed down uh in uh right soon after covet and so I spoke to other companies which do quantitative investment I had a few offers and I was trying to decide okay what what what do I want to do long term and I had heard of um you know ETA before that a few years before that and um uh and over the years as you work in a company regardless of um you know what kind of company it is you you see decisions being made and uh the future of employees and the company depending on the decisions right and and um and then you start to think so sometimes you may start thinking look I think this we should maybe we should be doing it in this other way you know maybe this decision should have been this Personnel decision or uh this direction you know or things like that right so uh and and ETA gives me an opportunity to actually you know do that and and say and see we can see whether I was right or not you know I've had uh these thoughts for a while and uh so so it so it's a it was great so it was a great Breaking Point um in my career so um and I said okay let's let me do it now you know what I'm kind of hearing there is you know in in um at least in developers which is a world I'm familiar with software developers yes there's kind of the two types of software developer those that want to just be software developers and and remain technical for the duration of their careers and then those that want to become managers and move into managers and there's a there's a pretty St strict bifurcation there because a lot of the kind of technical folks really just they don't want to deal with management and uh are being managers and what I'm hearing from you is that in fact after 15 years of being a pretty quantitative person I don't know if you had if you were managing people or not but you actually felt yourself drawn to making management decisions and and trying your hand at management making decisions that could really impact an organization versus just kind of being in the in the code and in the numbers uh for yeah for the next stage of your career you know I think uh I think it's not just management because uh so when you're a middle manager somewhere let's say you really don't get to you you you manage people but you're not managing the direction of you know the whole thing uh in a way and also even if you're a technical person at least in the space where I was it's very different from software programming you know the person who founded the fund I used to work for used to write code all day long you know so it's not about um it's not that you don't uh it's not that when you write code you're not making decisions you know what I mean is uh it's not just managing people but also you know basically determining the direction of how things you know evolve it's strategic decisions that's right um You were drawn to seeing if you could if you could um try your hand at yeah and you'd have heard about ETA just do you recall did you have friends who had had done it um do you recall where you first how it first came on your radar I think it might have been a part I start a blog you know I I read a lot I uh about topics topic or not my profession not related to my profession in any way so it was one of the things that I discovered at that time you know so that that there is the CTA I had I remember many many years ago looking at the Stanford search page but not paying that much attention to it and thinking oh that's an you know that because they have a paper and they show data so I I'm always reading papers uh that that have some data and some conclusions you know and one of my favorite things about how data can be used to say anything right so data and and there is a lot of replication failure in in the industry in statistics industry and but anyway so I was just reading that paper from that perspective of you know um oh this is another interesting business related paper and things like that um but yeah I think uh so I I remember in one of your podcasts you had talked about buying a Port-A-Potty business and I remember um a long time ago hearing about that and then mentioning it to a colleague and the call he was laughing with me and saying oh yeah and then you could do that and then you could go to Port-A-Potty conferences and uh and meet other people and discuss the techniques and I thought well that's that's an interesting thing you know um uh interesting perspective there should be a porta potty business filter those of us there are two types of people in the world those of us who love the idea of a porta potted porta potty business and those of us who don't and and and the the probably everybody listening to this uh is in the is in the first camp aign so so now is the moment in your career to to to you know put yourself in a position where you could make strategic decisions I've been doing so by buying a business yeah did you um get any did you get any pushback or did you get any you know head scratching responses from your network when you told them you were going to embark on this path because if you don't have people in your network who have bought businesses this is classically kind of like a decision that people respond with what are you talking about buy a business oh um no uh well I just uh I just did it and then one day when I bought the business I told my friends and family that I bought a it's one company here in California um okay yeah so people probably people in your network something tells me they they respect your judgment uh so so you probably didn't whatever you do they probably like she knows what she's doing you know honestly I didn't ask for I didn't ask for advice from people on whether I should do it of course my family my husband I uh uh you know it's uh he's on board and fully supportive but uh I did uh I did do all the usual you know I spoke to uh in the first few months I I wrote to 100 you know literally I spoke to a hundred close to 100 people either Searchers or business owners um who uh who were running businesses as small businesses throughout the US I just did cold cold calling cold emailing um you know is there are those statistics in the search literature about um you know things people what percentage failed there is some control there's some uncertainty about whether the percentages reflected there are correct or not you know because there is survivorship bias and especially on the scent fronted side right and so a lot of people yes I met spoke to lots of people and no in the lord well in these conversations other than enjoying yourself were you trying to decide or learn what if how what your chances of success were or if you were to embark on his path what the day-to-day would look like and was that a professional lifestyle you wanted what what were you trying to learn or just kind of as much as you could absorb and then you were going to distill that into your own conclusions yeah it's a little bit like you know let's say you're going on a new backpacking trip right so you don't know so you get a map of the place right you obtain a map and you kind of read it beforehand and so you know that you're so you so you're not going to take a tangent and end up you know in the middle of nowhere or you're not going to you know reach you want to make sure that you reach the trailhead by by the by Sunset Etc you know those kinds of things so it was not so much to make a decision about whether to do it because surely you know having worked in the industry for a long time I was pretty sure that there is a role out there there is a company out there that would fit fit my background you know where I would be useful so most important thing is that am I useful to that that organization right and if I am then uh then I will enjoy it and and the organization will benefit from it so so and I know that there will there are organizations out there that where I would be useful um it was just that I wanted to know uh common mistakes I want to know what it is that I don't know basically you know what is it that I might change something and then um things may um things may go bad or something like you know I so I just wanted to know what is it that I don't know what are the things that people found um that they made the mistakes they made or the things that they found really really valuable you know sometimes you hear people say simple things that they just leaned in on that one thing and it it took them very very far you know so yeah just wanted to hear from people about their learning so I don't have to do it myself basically through my own experience sure sure well it sounds like you had a clear um understanding that business buyer fit was uh an important Criterion that you were going to look for a business where you could really uh lean on your expertise and and that that would that that would be a the puzzle piece that fits the the puzzle the other puzzle piece being the business and that together there would be um really a lot of value created um what were some of your other criteria that you landed on in in your search it had to be somewhere close to where I am so Geographic uh industry I was agnostic size um you know I wanted it to be in the standard uh self-funded range um because so under 2 million ebitda and the reason for that was that in the first step so I I I'm pretty agnostic about whether you should raise you know whether you should take investor capital or not I think it you know at the right point in time investor Capital can really is the right ingredient to add to what whatever it is that you're trying to achieve but and right at the beginning I wanted um space and time for me to really understand the industry well and figure out some of the things that I don't know about because I'm new to operating a small business you know like operating a small company is very different from uh working for the kind of companies that I've worked for before so so it was important for me to be independent right right in the beginning even though I'm that's not how I'm thinking about it in the long term uh right in the beginning I wanted to just do it myself you know and and make the mistakes learn um and and and then you know prepared the right plan for the long term so so initially you didn't want to take investor Capital you you wanted um you didn't want to have to basically be responsible for other people's capital and have them kind of um breathing down your neck for certain performance expectations you wanted to have the space and the time to really learn at your own pace or you know as you felt comfortable um and then but you were open to investor Capital longer term but you recognize that um how you'd use that Capital would be much better informed once you actually Acquired and had been operating a business for some time that's right so you were self-funded and you were gonna you you were gonna bring all of your own Capital to um the equity for and I assume it was kind of an SBA you're expecting to do it an SBA yeah Finance deal yeah right and you said you wanted it to be it was geographically constrained so you wanted to be in your your area you're in the Bay Area so tell us about um the actual search once you had this criteria these criteria how did you go out and conduct your search I um I mainly did broker brokered search and I spoke to lots of people I I uh I didn't have any interns I had interns for a little bit didn't work out as well as I had expected uh hopefully I'll do a better alliteration of it sometime in the future um I I just uh I just looked at a lot of deals uh that came through and so I had like I told you I spoke to a lot of people who were my mentor you know I consider them peer mentors um and uh I got an advice uh from um from someone I respect a lot who said write write an Loi you know the very first thing he said after the first two months he's like write an Loi and um and uh so I think that was very very useful you know to to just get started right okay so if you see a deal what are the terms at which you will take take this you know what what are the terms at which you you are willing to take over this responsibility for the next five years you think through that and write up a structure that works for you and see if it works for the person who's looking to sell or retire right so and um so there there are these um yeah so so I mainly did a brokered search I went and spoke to lots of people um did phone calls you know whenever I looked at a particular industry and I went deep into it and I was in the LOI stage and things like that then I would write cold emails to P other other people in the industry across the country and I would talk to them um things like that basically to uh to learn more about the industry and see if it's the right fit um you know so ultimately like I said you know about the the trail map uh an analogy right uh so yeah you see the map but when you are there it feels different when you're actually there it feels different and I I found uh so one of the surprising things so uh people say oh you should look for uh recurring revenue or blah blah you know like the a seller who's uh cares about the company for the long term and these kinds of things and I found it interesting how they actually show up in real life you know compared to when I heard about them in in the you know from other people or in the papers things like that but can you elaborate on that what was different based compared to what you were had been expecting or had read I think uh so so you know when you the strength of an ongoing a going concern right so when you when you read about when you value companies like I did before I I was doing this there is going concern value and then the liquidation value there are two values for for a business right so then the going concern value is based on um current financials so the momentum the ongoing momentum of a company that has been running for a while uh that was quite surprising to me you know and um so it does it's very real you know so when when a company is moving in One Direction it does keep moving in that direction so so it's good and bad right so everything is um so yeah so so that you you so I I guess you know sometimes you might be uh when you're talking about uh doing the transaction um maybe there is some discussion about oh this is what the historicals have been and this is what it'll be in the future I I gained a lot of respect for how you know what has been in the history will continue for for the long term so um you know any changes to it will be hard one and take a long time if you have a company with a with a certain culture and you you are looking to change the culture it's going to take a long time for you to change that culture you can say the word you can say the word change the culture but actually to actually change the culture it takes a long time uh at the same time you know if customers like that company they're going to continue to like that company for for a long while so you have plenty of time so there's no need for it as a Searcher when you're taking over the business that's not you don't have to worry that much it will continue you know what I'm saying so yeah well well that that's actually so um as you pointed out this this Insight that you had that there's a stickiness to an ongoing concern um works there's both a pro and a con to that yes the pro meaning that there it's it's probably not going to go to zero at least not immediately I mean it's got some staying power um which is part of the reason that we're we're attracted to this category this opportunity um but then the con is that any change you want to do is probably going to be slower grow slower going than you might hope or you might expect so how can did you can you net that out was it was it net positive news or negative news like did you did it make you like the opportunity more perhaps yeah I think like the opportunity more because um because then you get to choose what it is that you want you want to get into and when you get into that that thing that you've chosen continues and then you get to choose the things that you are able to make a change in the directions that you are the things that you are able to bring to the table so so in fact it's it it is good news it's good news whenever you understand the the behavior of a system that you're working in regardless of what it is says the data scientist um now speaking speaking of your data scientist background um I'm hearing you refer back to your um years of of valuing businesses um and you're just breaking out you know what did you put it uh the the ongoing concern value for parts value are they yes liquidation right the liquidation value um which you know is is actually not a framework I've even heard after 150 interviews so that's um news to me but but uh are you how much were you leaning on all of this steep expertise that you spent 15 years building in your search uh are is it really helping you kind of uh understand the the valuations that you're looking at or not so much because there's it's just so different sometimes it's difficult to say whether you know so I was not explicitly using any of those things but uh you know things like qual you know things like when when you are an investor in a company you know in companies and stocks you're you're valuing them based on quality right valuation quality the quality of the business um and the trend so that's uh if you look uh those are the three main categories and then how do you come to the numbers around that um is a different you know there are many 100 different inputs that go into each of those buckets typically as as a coordinative investor and uh so I think the same same framework pretty much is used in search from what I can see you know people look at the trend people look at the quality of the business which is recurring Revenue things like that and people talk look at the valuation you know a simple cool way to do that is multiples like the standard multiple so um so I think pretty much the same broad framework is yours maybe not the same language and not as and the inputs are different um you know the you you assess the quality by actually meeting the owner and um also by looking at the financials so you can see you know so when people talk about um a lifetime value or the churn rate for example those are those are quality metrics they talk about the quality of the business um yeah so because they don't talk about so you could have the same recurring Revenue but you can have a different churn rate for example so so the same amount of recurring Revenue will imply if you just did based on going concerned value you would have some multiple that you would come up with but then based on the churn rate that will modify the multiple that you should apply because the quality is different I'm just saying an example absolutely for an illustration yeah but I didn't explicitly use that sure and I find that it's not explicit so for example right now I do some sales I do uh customer relationship and sales for my company right now and when I go and talk to people um I find that um you know even though I have never done sales before I find that being having a couple decades of experience working in different places is useful informs my behavior in an underlying way and in the same way I would guess maybe evaluation you know it's not that I explicitly used any of that but it's sort of foundational experience and knowledge that you have that you're that you're standing upon to do your now job so tell us about the how you found the business that you did and tell us about said business please yeah I found it uh with the uh there were two uh owners of the business uh two primary owners the a father and daughter the father had been one of the original Founders and the daughter had joined pretty soon after the company was founded this was almost 35 years ago and um they had been running it ever since you know there were other Founders and people involved intermittently but these two were the common thread from the beginning to now and they had been looking to retire for a couple of years and uh finally they had they had tried to do something on their own and finally reached out to a broker and um and had listed their business and uh I I yeah I just found it on online you know and um and then I was introduced to them through the broker and then I went and met them uh had lots of discussions all of the standard stuff well 35 year old business that's uh great age so so tell us about tell us about the business it's a Professional Services business it's an environmental health and safety consulting company and uh it's slightly different from um so typically when you think of a consulting company it's not doesn't have much going concern value because all the value is in uh is in the principles who are providing the services but in this particular case it had been aged it had aged for a long time and um it was the right Niche so we Pro uh so cdms provides um ongoing you know so when when a company when there is an industrial facility of any kind let's say manufacturing or distribution uh there are uh federal state and local regulations that apply on the environmental side and the safety side of things so uh typically if you are a business that is uh if you're a manufacturing company which makes anywhere say from a revenue from uh even let's say two three million dollars all the way up to 100 million dollars or more you know or even if or even 500 million dollars so in that range um you're not you don't have a large hns staff you don't have a large environmental health and safety stuff you and uh you don't definitely even if you have one person say working for you who's dedicated to environmental health and safety they are not experts in all the regulations that could apply to your facility d and so what the company does is uh it does several different things so initially if you wanted us to come in and do an audit and tell you uh go through all possible regulations that could apply to your facility what documentation you have on site and how your site is laid out and things like that we would review everything and give you like a 300 Page document that would tell you what what is uh what you do have and what what you're missing things like that so if you could do an audit uh or we could um you know if you wanted any one vertical let's say air quality you know the air quality district is you're having some communication the air quality district and they want you to do something we would evaluate that for you um sometimes we um you know speak with The Regulators on behalf of our clients and tell them no this regulation does not apply to this facility they don't need to do that for example we do things like that for our clients but a large part of our business is uh is taking off the ongoing maintenance from this their shoulders you know our clients have and they have their Core Business to deal with it's not easy to run a business these days you know they they are trying to uh manufacture heart stents or um you know do plating for cases that you know go into cars so whatever it is you know they and and and if they have to also be experts in all these different regulations that apply to them you know there'll be too much of a burden for them so we take that over we do uh you know we do ongoing subscription service for them so when they uh so we would visit their site every month or every two months we conduct audits when we visit their site and we uh gather data conduct interviews and uh and but most of the work we do for our clients we do from our office where we write reports and talk to all these agencies and um and and yeah do it take care of all their reporting and compliance burden and so what you're doing is is auditing and assessing the their compliance with with regulation are but you are not implementing let's say attack the Arduino has this waste treatment and that tank is leaking we don't fix the leak but we do Implement their compliance in California uh the number of there are air quality districts that regulate what uh chemicals you use and uh how they escape into the air and affect air quality then there is a Sanitation District and each sanitation district has its own regulations although they have something common so there is waste water you know when you run a manufacturing facility you watch some parts and that water has to go somewhere it goes into the sewer line and the sanitation district wants to make sure you're not sending something down the sewer line then there is a rain water you know let's say you're dragging pollutants out into the road outside your facility and that could go into and how fish so there is rainwater regulation storm water regulation then there is the fire department regulation which says you know when our firefighters come into your facility we want to know if there is some hazardous chemical there you know then um and then there's other regulations associated with toxic substances you know how hazardous waste is disposed often so each facility has a lot of Regulation so so that even just to prepare a plan keep it updated on how you're going to make sure that you are doing things properly in each of these aspects of your business and um you know preparing the inspection logs are you know maybe the client side does the inspections but preparing the right inspection logs and maintaining them what they should check for when they go and do their inspections and um you know what should be reported we do the reporting for to to all the different government agencies ourselves the client doesn't do that we gather information from them but we are kind of like tax preparers we uh we gather information from them we do the analysis and then we do the submittals for them so the nature of this is of course ongoing as you've said recurring so you're there's obviously an ongoing need to comply with regulations and so so uh you know X Factory is going to need you to come back year after year or depending on how however whatever the the kind of the the frequency of demonstration of compliances maybe it's every two years every five years I don't know and and they'll just keep coming back to you for that so so do you have like established contracts uh with your customers or do they just call you every time you know every 23 months and say hey can you con guys come back in no for most of our clients we have established contracts and we uh so we visit them every periodically and we gather information we do things for them periodically whenever they are needed money you said you'd said about how many Consulting businesses like there's not a lot of inherent value to them because the you know it's all in the principles um you know brains and deeds how is this business not that why wasn't in this founder who the founder and his daughter who'd been involved for for so long how is this business not just all about the principles I think the that so I think it happened because one of the one of the founders was an electrical engineer who had worked in GE for a long time I you know and he has he had this engineering mindset you know which was like oh you know complying with this regulation takes this you know these are the things you need to gather from the you know client these are this is the information you need to gather and these are the steps you need to take in order to comply so he had thought through for each regulation uh you know the process to follow and also um you know how to change the process over time so there is uh there was a there was an infrastructure to do both both the first layer you know and and also the overseeing layer and um and and I think it happened because the company had been around for a long time so I I bet you initially when they started off they were just doing these things uh and and all the value you know and uh and over time they evolved to um to have to have these things broken down so and and it that that's very useful to have to be able to you know how do we deliver and a service level to our clients and level a high level of service to our clients and the only way we can do that is if all of us followed in the same process over time there had been um process that had been put into place Sops the practice had grown large enough that there was also just other people doing the work it wasn't it wasn't just the founders of the principals uh out of the field doing the work and so it had just reached a level of maturation that it wasn't all about the principles that's right okay yeah I want to get to what your life has been like now that you are the one making strategic decisions and and what your life has been like as an operator but a couple more questions just on the the business opportunity in this business itself what is this industry look like of of environmental health and safety compliance is this uh a fragmented industry are there a lot of such businesses is the Tam big like give us a picture of of what it looks like and and and you know what you would you saw as growth opportunities if you were to put yourself into this industry yeah so I I saw um you know I saw and Def it's definitely fragmented right and and I said it came into being in the 80s and then a lot of regulations that were passed it is um in California and at the federal level and uh it is highly fragmented there are people who are single person Consultants um there are large companies uh you know which do hundreds of millions of dollars of Revenue um and um and the reason it's fragmented there is a lot of fragment small companies with small companies with five employees let's say and there is several with just one employee and there's several with 15 employees and so on and the reason it's like that is because uh like every other Professional Services come business industry even at a small scale the principles make plenty of money you know so it's financially uh comfortable at a pretty small scale you don't have to have an odd scale for you to have a good life and the problems are interesting you know you're you're think about a person you know I really relate to many of the founders because you know coming from a scientific engineering background right so these are people uh like the person uh who uh ran the the people who ran this business before I took over they really enjoy the technical details of the things and it had grown to a size that was comfortable for them and uh day in and day out they would talk about oh this tank uh there is this customer that does this hazardous waste treatment system they are trying to put it up to set it up and um you know are they going to use a flocculent you know or whatever it is you know those those are the kind of discussions they would have and I didn't even know what a flocculent was I had to look it up online so um so for that reason it stays fragmented and so did you see therefore that um there was an opportunity to that that spelled opportunity to to grow nicely because for uh an owner to have an appetite to get bigger than that there there was a lot of opportunity to do so is that the kind of conclusion to that so actually when I was um a long time ago when I was growing in my career people I remember reading something that you know um when you're a woman right uh you go and negotiate so there's this all this literature about negotiation and do men do it matter women do it better and things like that and they found that if if uh when a woman is negotiating if she thinks about it as be doing on behalf of some other people who are you know our family it could be her family or her team or something like that then she would do better at that negotiation there are some there are some studies that show that and I find that uh that that's a that's the lens that I'm most comfortable with you know I find it very useful so if I think about growing the company now that I've been here a year and a half so I'm may have had different thoughts yeah a couple years ago before I started running this business but um I find what what really motivates me what I find most comfortable is to think about my team and to think about you know all these small teams all over California you know and what are their an employee who joins any environmental health and safety consulting company what are their long-term goals and Prospects you know and if we can build a company where all of these employees have have a bright future you know they have several years of growth career growth lots of learning uh increase in compensation and um interesting problems to solve you know then if if a company is able to provide that then um all the other pieces will fall into place you know so the the compensation for shareholders taking care of clients uh you know making sure that the vendors are doing well all of those things will take will be taken care of um and so that's my analysis of the of the industry once I've been there for a while is is that um that there is there is a lot of good talent uh both at the managerial level and at the at the you know entry level in these companies throughout California highly fragmented and um if we could and there is an opportunity to build a company that would provide a much um a really good experience for for these employees who are you know many of the employees who who come and many of the people who want to join the team they are looking uh for many you know they are they are attracted the environmental science people with Environmental Science Background or chemist chemical engineering background they took uh so so you know and and um when they are looking to join a company such as ours or any of our competitors they are looking for um they took they took the engineering degree or environmental science degree in college for a reason right they are looking to have a career where they make an impact and also have a career where they are solving interesting problems these are these are people who have a certain ambition um and um yeah so so and I've worked in lots of big companies where there's a there are lots of career opportunities you know growth opportunities and things like that and and it's really motivating for me to think that uh the kind of mindset that I have seen in Academia and uh in the industry that I've been in that can be translated uh to form a company culture that really um really empowers the the team members who join basically these professional team members who join us the sajama all of that um plus some some um of our conversation on our pre-call um about your team and about um how how really motivating that's become for you and how a big part of your story is um is empowering your team in the ways that you just described um reminds me of a theme now that seems to come up a lot where many uh folks who buy businesses I guess often in Blue Collar they acquired Blue Collar businesses which is not the case here but maybe it doesn't have to be blue collar specific that acquiring they set out to acquire business for a number of reasons but top of the list was not necessarily uh benefiting their employees in a positive way I'm sure they want it to be good bosses and good in in good leaders but it wasn't like you know I'm setting out to have a positive impact on a group of employees and buying a business is the way to do that but they learn after a year or two in the seat that that actually has been the most gratifying part of their Journey we're still got a ways to go still got a bunch of questions for you so we're just returning to the business that you bought by the way cdms if if people miss that is what is is what it goes by um which stands for what chemical data management systems give us a picture of the business you the 35 year old business but if any numbers around how big it is any dollar numbers if you can or can't employee numbers just so people have a sense number of locations yeah there are 15 employees and two locations um and we serve hundreds of clients throughout California and that state keeps coming up um over and over again uh my one my one-time home and uh still beloved California uh of course California is is um famous or or inFAMOUS depending on where you fall on the political Spectrum for its regulation is this is this type of business one that that California is particularly fertile for it it must be um but but do you do you see an opportunity to expand in into different states or is this somehow like a a California particular industry or or business no I think um well believe it or not I found out um a few months into running cdms that there are many uh areas in which uh say the state of Washington is more stringent than California uh for example but uh but yes California it's possible that California so there is this aspect of in when you're talking about environmental regulation or safety regulation we do safety as well so when you do uh there is the aspect of uh the Congress or state or federal Congress passing a law and then there is the aspect of enforcement so I don't have a good read for what enforcement is like in other states I have a very good read for what enforcement light is in California so uh any regulation or any law has only as much teeth as enforced as the enforcement you know caused it to do so and uh so so I think it's not in fact there are there are many regulations that we help that are real are at the federal level you know and um we help with uh there's something called toxic report inventory tax toxic you know it's there are many regulations that are at the federal level that we deal with and uh there are some regulations that are California specific but I've researched other states and they have something similar um if not identical so I yeah there is I think uh but from a business perspective you know again thinking about it from that holistic thing that I was saying you know cdms needs to grow in California for a long time before it expands out outside California man I figured I mean it's not like there isn't regulation around the country but um I just I couldn't resist uh calling it out because California and regulation in in in the same uh the same sentence it has to be it has to be noted I think is I'm guessing that the enforcement your criteria uh and business buyer fit and you having a clear a clear sense that like you wanted to acquire business where you thought your skill set would plug in nicely and and and provide some unlock what did you what did you see here um that played to your strengths and you and you thought was so it was such a nice fit with you the infrastructure that we are currently working on you know definitely um we use databases uh and uh we connect data we we write we have scripts and this existed before I joined cdms and um so I think uh for an invite it's it's not common for an environmental consulting company to do that but it exists in cdms because it one of the founders was an engineer and um I think um that so but but my ability to help that has not materialized yet it will hopefully there so when when you buy a company that's 35 years old there is a lot of tech there's a lot of debt of various kinds in you know in software industry you'll hear this word called technology debt um and uh so cdms had a few things that needed to be taken care of and I've been working on them systematically and the database systems uh the databases and scripts that we use were not the highest priority but they have now become so possibly in the next six to 12 months we'll work on that so I think there my my background comes into place but then also I think most importantly where my background you know so I've worked like I said you know always worked in places where there were a group of technical people who worked collaboratively uh without much supervision and uh always delivering direct practical results for our clients and you know how do you build a culture like that how do you build a team like that that's um uh independent and yet accountable and empowered you know so that's uh it's something that comes very naturally to me um that I think uh that I think would benefit cdms very much um and uh and other than that I would say that the the skill like I said you know uh there was no reason I should have done investing after doing a PhD in data science right so that it's not uh so it's a new it's a whole new set of problems here but I really enjoy looking at new problems and solving them for example figuring out what is the highest Roi investment in us in a small company um and thinking through that and you know yeah so and the other thing is being able to think about many different things at the same time uh I don't know if it's a skill or an opportunity but I I enjoy that and hopefully you know in a few years we'll find out that I did a good job of it um you know there are HRS things to be taken care of there is um there are systems there is marketing there is sales there is technical development for um environmental Specialists there is a whole range of things that you think about every single day so so I think uh I so I think more than anything this there is a skill of you know thinking big picture and also delivering the small details right so that's what one of the things I think unique about it you know running a small company is that you have to do both at the same time you can't be just a big picture Vision person you have to but you can't be just a detailed person you have to be able to do both um yeah I think so spending many years doing both very useful are you scratching the itch to make strategic decisions that you had hoped you would by owning a small business yes you know so for example some of the things you know we uh we used to do a little bit of Revenue on one-off projects that were um Network arise once in a while when a facility closed down or when a facility uh things like that uh that were more uh related to remediation or hazardous material cleanup there is a whole separate industry and I know in the search space there's a lot of interest in that industry as well so that's something we used to do occasionally but that was not our strength so we got out of that you know we don't do that anymore uh to and what we've done is we've grown we've grown 15 percent um since I took over but the but also we have changed the quality of um of the work that we are doing you know so that so that's uh that's a change that we've made um the quality of of work or the quality of of Revenue uh the quality of Revenue you're doing more projects where you can add value and presumably they're kind of more recurring recurring in nature is that what you mean yes more occurring in nature and more value to the client for the same dollar that we take from them can you quantify that how how that shift has been the the quality of Revenue do you have any many numbers off the top of your head so I think for the first year you know for the first year we didn't grow at all but um you know so there was about 10 15 10 of Revenue that was from this um work but it would the amount of headache was more like 25 so that has been removed and it was replaced with um just the regular Revenue the things that we are good at and then uh and then this year we've made a big push to uh to grow but grow very much um for in the direction that we like so you know it's in the subscription Revenue basically and sahaja but when you talk about growth and now that you've been in in the seat um what type of growth are we talking about are you are you talking about uh organic sales based growth I mean I imagine this is kind of a heavy sales uh very much heavy to grow is very much kind of direct sales to grow organically um but then of course you mentioned the industry fragmentation so so what about inorganic growth talk to us about how you're planning your growth both I'm thinking and I want to do both um I think I I you know so one of the important things uh that people will talk about when you talk to Searchers you know having a sense of urgency right to to make a change so uh I would like to grow significantly in the next three to five years uh I have one of the so you know the Strategic decisions you were asking about you know like that is now I communicate uh directly with my team every month about what our goals are long uh you know one three five year goals and how what are we doing to it achieve them and what how have we done so far things like that so that's a big change that has happened and uh I I think uh to hit our goals we'll have to do both organic and in organic growth and uh and I'm working on both and I'm speaking to um I'm speaking to other people who run businesses such as um such as cdms um and there are many who are looking to retire at this time and I would love to provide an opportunity for them to um you know to do so so for example I and I always like to show you know okay what have we achieved at cdms in the last two years right so all the employees who wanted to stay have stayed um they uh they they're all doing well they're happy here and they're taking care of um they have better systems um and we've improved benefits that we provide for our employees and um uh so so and all the clients are taken care of you know um really well they're all happy and we we recently received an email from a client which said thank you we have had six months of no accidents in our Indus in our facility and cdms you played a critical role in making that happen something like that so so I think if people are looking to retire and they want to see okay what um what is it that they are picturing for for for their company going forward you know making keeping their brand alive making sure that their employees are taken care of and making sure that their clients are taken care of so I think uh that in the last two years we've we've delivered that right and and the services that we are not doing anymore we are referring them out to other reliable people who will take care of the clients for that so um so in that sense I think that would be the value proposition for uh for inorganic growth and for organic growth um you know we are dialing in our systems uh improving improving the quality of service and and I you know I had a recent experience with a uh website I wanted somebody to help me build rebuild our website and uh happy to work with them and they took two months terrible service and uh if they had worked out for me I would have referred them to 10 of my friends and they would have had so much business but you know they didn't they didn't deliver for me so they're not going to grow so I think cdms um the cdms organic growth will happen in that way is that we improve our service and and we grow organically through through Word of Mouth that's the best in this industry that's the best way to do I don't think it's just your industry an interview that aired a week ago James Bloom who acquired a very small mechanical HVAC business and has 8X Revenue over the last four years and and really the core thing um that that has been the engine of growth is just delivering quite high quality service higher than the competition and that alone has just pulled uh pulled Revenue out of his business um I heard I heard that interview and it was so inspiring so cool yeah I thought so too sajama I have just two more questions for you first oh first is uh one a business question and then one a personal question um the business question is so this is a very technical business you are a technical person um but you don't have technical expertise in uh environmental and health compliance yes um how much did first of all did you perceive that as a challenge as a con or did you how did you approach that in your in your own mind and and how how well versed in the technical nature of this business have you become I love learning new things so I didn't think of it as a challenge and also uh the principles of the business who were exiting were not delivering the service themselves so from that perspective I was comfortable and um and uh and yeah I have I've learned a lot you know I'm sure the environmental Specialists Who deliver who actually delivered the services to DMS will say I don't know that much but um I know um I would say I have a good big picture sense for all the different regulations that apply at different facilities when I walk through a client side I can point out what they need to do and what they don't need to do um so I I you know I I can figure out what they need what they don't need so I have plenty of depth in that way uh you know and one of the things I've been here for two years you know I've been going to client sites all the time and um so and I've seen what is delivered to all of our clients so I have had an ability to learn I've had an opportunity to learn much quickly much more quickly than I would if I were servicing one client for example so my last question for you so we talked we touched on at the beginning that um you uh got your undergraduate at a very prestigious University in India so you are Indian and um and so this is also a story you know your story is one of uh being an immigrant and having a very successful career and then buying a business as an immigrant is there anything that you would tell others who are earlier on in their Journey than you are but might also be be similarly situated about the path of buying a business as somebody who is who has come here from um from another country well in my case I've I've lived in this country for 25 years so um most of my adult life has been spent in this country so I don't um I don't know how to conduct business in India I've never done so never even worked in India so I uh so I don't know how I would say so except that you know one of the great things about I would say maybe this is a common sentiment among immigrants but the great thing about this country is the number of opportunities that that you have you know and uh yeah if I found uh I found you know and and the other thing is you know there to address the matter of diversity in general so 50 of more than 50 percent of uh small companies are run by women I don't know if you know this fact I remember reading something like that I did not connect me fabric like so um in the U.S or maybe it was a California state I should look it up but um anyway I think that I found um there is a right fit for you whoever whoever you know whatever your background is or uncommittedly people are you know when people let's say you're a Searcher and people are looking to retire they want somebody to take care you know they want to be fairly compensated for the value they've built they want their employees and their vendors and their clients to be taken care of and if you provide that to them and if you come across as competent enough and good natured enough to be able to do that then they've been you know they'll choose you to to do the the transition but it makes no difference I believe about whether you are you're an immigrant or any of the other factors sajama how can people uh get in touch if uh they have a question what's your preferred way is it uh an email is great email is uh I'll maybe I'll send you an email and you could put it in your show notes and sajamat cdms.com uh yeah right we would love to talk to people in fact you know I'd love to talk to people who are in Professional Services running Professional Services companies and also I'd love to talk to people who are civil engineers in California you know that's that's the the so if I'm targeting some people to talk to right now it's those two people well well why don't we plug that uh I know I believe that you're I believe that are you hiring I saw a post on search funders that is that for a role within cdms yeah no we're not directly hiring but we want somebody who will work with us part-time to develop one side of our business okay civil engineers in California yeah reach out yes please thank you so much for coming on acquiring minds great to talk to you so good to talk to you bye then 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