Chandler Reed welcome to acquiring minds Will Smith thanks for having me man Chandler a single tweet by a then stranger changed the course of your professional life yep put you on a path to buy business and got you heavily involved in this world that we call search it has been a roller coaster for you humbling but but it also seems like your excitement about the possibilities here is undiminished so let's get into it start us off with some background on you please Chandler yeah so uh me uh like you said to your point uh I kind of had the backwards entrance into this whole Space where typically you know you learn about searching you learn ETA you learn about smbs and what a wonderful opportunity this is and a growing opportunity that this is and then you go search for a business and then you buy it where in my case uh I've found to your point a tweet online from my now business partner and I guess you want to call them OG uh SMB Twitter uh Samurai's Audi about an opportunity uh that he had he needed an operator here in Tampa Florida uh that's where I was currently living and basically long story short from three months from when I saw that first tweet uh we closed on the business and then all of a sudden I bought a business I was running it from the day to day and then I kind of stumbled into this whole space I didn't even realize I didn't even know what eta stood for what SMB stood for and all of a sudden you know I think it was actually my first it didn't really hit me how big and great this community was until the first SM bash I attended which I know you recorded a live podcast there in Orlando Florida um and I was just completely blown away I had no idea that there was such a thriving Community around this whole Space cool yeah uh well I was also pleasantly surprised when I got into it to find all these great people um but Chandler rewind us a little bit what were you doing before why were you so receptive to a tweet about buying a business whereas the next guy or gal wasn't what were you doing before give us a little professional background on you sure yep so I went to school for finance and real estate um first job out of school was asset management for a multi-family private Equity Firm which is one of the biggest reasons why I was so jived about the opportunity um but in between there so flashback to January 2021 I'm working for a prominent commercial real estate developer here in Tampa Florida actually helped develop the building that I'm sitting in right now and that I currently live in which is pretty cool um so January 2021 you know covet is still in full swing we'd have been working from home for almost a year at that point um I'm getting a little bored to be honest with you like quote unquote this is my or this was my dream job quote unquote but you know I was still getting a little bit bored and you know I see the tweet from Sam he was basically looking for an operator to pursue a multi-family lighting business so right when I saw that back up a little bit too another prerequisite was I was based here in Tampa Florida and you either had to move here immediately or already be here that's why Sam's tweet said this this opportunity is for somebody who has to be come live in Tampa if they're not already there correct correct and you have to know about multi-family and you have to be willing to you know hustle it was a turnaround which we can get into later so I'm just sitting there and I'm like all right that literally checks all my boxes let me shoot this guy a DM shoot at the end shoot him a DM uh you know we hop on a 20 minute phone call we realize that we knew a lot of the same people both born and raised in Tampa both went to the University of Florida I was like how don't I know you already because Tampa I know Reno they have it on the plaque the the world's uh smallest Big Town their biggest small town I forget which one it is but that's like Tampa to me everyone knows each other down here especially if you're born and raised here and we just hit it off and yeah like I said it was about three months after we ended up closing on the business together but to your point why I got comfortable about it was the industry that this business serviced was an industry that I'd previously worked in I knew how to speak the jargon I knew how to um knew how to get you know in front of the people I had a Rolodex myself in this industry and after that you know the rest is kind of History and Chandler but what about the the whole kind of X Factor of wanting to be an entrepreneur or wanting being willing to buy a business because there are other people in Tampa who are in real estate you know in multi-fan no multi-family and they didn't respond to Sam so there's this there's still something very entrepreneurial about you that this opportunity even appealed to you and tie that into what you said a minute ago about getting a window into like some private Equity experience kind of wet your appetite for for what what did you see there that brings all this together in terms of like being a person who would chase this opportunity yeah so I guess you know you kind of get your first taste and I've heard the story a lot from other people that work in private Equity or kind of in investment sales Etc um you know you're working on the deal you might get a little bonus from it and then you look and see at the uh the p l who's really making all the money and it's the owners right it's entrepreneurs so I'm sitting there I'm like all right cool I got a nice little bonus check here but this guy AI on a deal I just worked on just made 10 million bucks so I'm like okay there's something uh interesting there maybe I need the dabble in that and even beforehand I kind of always knew I wanted to do something I had no idea what it would materialize in maybe I thought it was going to be in smaller scale commercial real estate development um but I you know up until that point I tried starting an e-commerce brand I tried selling fantasy football projections that was one of my my passions at the time you know just hustling and nothing would work but you know that's kind of how it goes you get to 100 no's or 100 failures until one finally clicks and kind of the stars align for you cool cool okay well so you you do have kind of a hustler uh Hustler mentality or Hustler background you've done stuff before and kind of had an entrepreneurial streak correct cool yeah it's so funny about what you said about the the private Equity experience so many of my guests that have come from a private Equity background had that moment where they're like there's a lot of money flying around here and it it seems to be disproportionately going to one person in this room yeah it's not me yeah even though of course everybody everybody at the table is making more money than your average Joe for sure for sure exactly all right cool and so so wasn't the language in Sam's tweet something like by the way quick aside Sam Rosati that is definitely a name most many people will recognize who are listening same was on the Pod actually just a couple months ago I've never had him on to tell his his own full story uh but I I need to do that um because I've heard him telling elsewhere it's a good one yeah yeah the dumpster business um but he said he said something to the effect of more hustle than money or more hustle than bankroll or something what was it correct yes more hustle than Capital than Capital that was one of the boxes that I certainly uh was checked at that point in my life all right well so so you don't as you said you don't know what eta stands for you've ever heard of ETA or SMB or quote-unquote search so you don't do a search you basically respond to this one opportunity that you see on Twitter you talk to Sam what does Sam tell you about this business tell us about the business in this opportunity yeah so the business was a commercial or it is a commercial lighting contractor that primarily worked within the multi-family space um why you need a little bit more household in capital was uh you know people joke all the time in this space like you never want to buy a job um but Sam told me hey man you're probably gonna be buying like 10 jobs here so I'm like hey you know my first foray into this that's fine with me I want to get my hands as dirty as possible so I get some more context on the business it was probably the biggest turnaround uh you may have hear about so the seller long story short had started any other business uh another multi-family vendor based business that had kind of taken off he raised a series a for it he kind of gutted his time attention and resources away from this lighting business the lighting business at the time only had one employee it was doing about 900 000 bucks in Revenue basically no net income and I know another name in the space um Bruce marks SBA lender at first Lake of the banks he has a punch line that goes congratulations uh you've brought me a deal that doesn't work so this was by no imagination going to get approved for SVA financing which kind of ties back into the more household and capital it was great because we got in at a pretty attractive basis and at pretty attractive terms so the more hustle than Capital part we longed to store Short the business ended up we ended up taking it down at a 25 cash down in a 75 percent uh earn out basically which got me very comfortable at as it aligns you know the previous seller to with us you know the better we did the faster he got paid back and incentivized him to connect us with his old contacts show us the ropes all that good stuff great got a lot of follow-up questions here Chandler so Commercial Lighting so tell us exactly what the service is that the business provided or provides correct yep so it's primarily a lighting like a retrofit so imagine you know right down the middle of Fairway project for us is like a 300 unit Garden style you know typically older vintage vintage apartment uh the lighting all across the community that you can think of like every single light bulb on the community is something that we would come in and replace or lighting fixture uh typically so there's two good things on for that for owners to do is one the newest lighting has um you know it's much more efficient so immediately on day one you're gonna get receive um Energy savings from you know your power bill is going down and then two um you know if you are trying if you're buying a community you know you have a value-add business plan you want to spruce up the place you know if the lights across the apartment community in the hallways you know have yellowed lenses bugs in it all that stuff you know if you're trying to raise rents and get some more tenants in the door uh they're probably not going to be willing to pay that higher rent you know if you got crappy lights across the community so that is the business in the in a nutshell um basically we're effectively a project manager so we have no in-house labor we sub out all the labor which you know it basically depends on what kind of business you want to run for me it's great I have less overhead I have a very lean team we can move fast and quick and it allows us to work Nationwide and on multiple projects at one time however the sacrifice with that is you know the margins are a little bit lower if you had your own and now slaver but that was a trade-off that I was willing to make just for me personally in my own lifestyle fantastic and the so let's get a little bit more context about the business so how old was it the business was founded in 2014. um and so I would say the the business was doing great I think it's best year did six million Top Line in about 2017 and that was a right around the point where the the seller had started this new business that all of a sudden that was taken off he basically you know had a faster horse hitched hitched his reins to that one and then literally between like literally some of the employees that were at the lighting business he started transferring over to this new smart home apartment business and all that was left at the end of the day was a couple contracts that were just coming in inbound and then basically one employee that was doing all the Fulfillment himself so when you look at a business that is you know unfinanceable and essentially wasn't used I think you said wasn't profitable on 900 when you when you and Sam were looking at it it was doing nine hundred thousand dollars in revenue and not profitable did you say well you know the seller was running you know his wife's Porsche and his like Tampa Bay Lightning tickets through it so there's certainly a little bit of meat on the bone with some add backs but yeah by no stretch of the imagination something that you know would have got you excited to get out of bed for most investors I would say and but so but the the promise here or the opportunity is that a a few short years ago it had been doing six million and now I was doing 900 so it's a a shadow of its former self but only because the founder diverted his attention to his new thing so that's kind of the narrative in and so as long as somebody starts paying attention to it in theory you can you know whether or not you get back to six million you can get it to two or three or four like that seems pretty realistic exactly so where most people would have said oh my gosh you know I wouldn't touch this business with a 30-foot pole I kind of saw it as an opportunity to put some TLC back into it and try to in a Playbook you know to try and return it to its former glory and do you know what the margins were what it was doing 6 million like and it's when and it's fully realized itself how profitable is this business yeah it was doing about 15 uh bottom line I would say truly you know when you account for all the ad backs um it was doing about 15 you okay and you just said uh use the word Playbook so were you going to fashion a new playbook or were you or basically like all of the stories on acquiring minds that you know you're stepping into an existing business so there already are processes and all that you know all that stuff kind of waiting for you were you expecting the same here that you were basically just gonna apply energy to what was already being done or were you gonna reinvent internally a lot of the stuff a lot of the processes and everything or you didn't know you were just gonna look under the covers and see what you saw and figure it out from there I would say primarily look under the covers um and just say you know broad eye bushy-tailed young guy coming in running it we'll see where it goes um but the game plan was to take what the the lighting I guess vertical or there's pretty much all that business was doing was just lighting and grow that back up but then my experience in my previous work lives was especially with the commercial real estate developer uh we were developing the first uh well certified community in the whole United States every building was the pop Platinum lead certified so I'd kind of seen where the market was trending as far as like ESG green energy every big kind of commercial real estate firm is now building out sustainability departments so I saw it as an opportunity to one build the lighting side back up to its former glory and then two we already have customers who are already buying potential other products from other people so I saw it as a great way to start integrating some new project lines into the business and then one get it back to its warmer glory and then two take it to a completely new level where you become kind of a One-Stop shop for all kind of green related retrofitting not just lighting correct it sure seems like a really attractive opportunity what it was doing the just the lighting what it was doing before this you know your grand vision of what it could become was that was it unique in the space or is is this something that's uh that's a a proven business model outside of just this business where there are you have competition that also do Lighting retrofits in in multi-family for sure well I would say right when um the the seller started it it was very like nascent business model if you will but since then it had been you know a little commoditized uh you know LED lights are not something new everyone's heard about it now but it's more of the where I thought we could get a competitive Advantage was like having the kind of core lighting business and then a value add of these other business lines and then as you know some of our clients like to say why they like working with us is because you know they only have uh one neck to strangle yeah so we can take all these business or we can take all these projects you have one source that you're getting the jobs done from we do a completely turn key and that was going to be our Competitive Edge hey why go try to do if you're going to do all four of the projects that we're offering why go to four different people or you could just come to one One Stop Shop and get it all done at one time sure and the reason for the sale was that the founder finally recognized that he should be selling because he wasn't giving in an attempt any attention and revenue was collapsing correct yep so he kind of you know he had his pinky toe still in the business I would say and you know some of his investors in the newer business were like dude if you want to grow your new business you got to completely cut ties with this one you got to turn all of your time and attention fully 100 get that pinky toe out of the water and get it back into this new business that we're throwing a lot of money behind you to to go grow what is the name of the business uh the business that we acquired was called Onyx energy um and another interesting Nuance of the transaction was the seller was contractually obligated to change the name by October 2021 and so we ended up changing the name to get green noi to truly reflect kazonix energy you know I didn't really know what the heck it meant I kind of sounded like a utility company or something like that but yeah we're kind of brainstorming on some potential names and you know a lot of our clients are Construction Blue Collar project manager types so I'm like all right what's something that kind of strikes a chord with them and it's simple enough for them to get and so we settled on uh get green noi and for the non-real multi-family uh real estate Savvy folks in the audience what is noi yep noi is basically real estate's term for bottom line profit so you know you take the get green we're gonna get your commercial assets green um while improving your noi on it listen noi is fair to say that it's kind of Roi but on kind of on on a building by building basis or project by project basis correct net operating income yep great great and this lone individual who stayed in the business you know a lot of granted it's already turned around granted it there's pitfalls everywhere but you you know you know so so there's a lot of risk all over the place of course you got this these great terms which we're going to return to in a second um so so you know but one more risk is that there's this loan individual in the business so um you know I guess when you're looking at a business that's got so much risk does that make you more or less careful about like every additional risk are you just like man screw it there's so much risk here I'm just gonna dive in or are you extra careful about every additional risk because there's all there's already so much of it like you're just trying to minimize minimize minimize the risk anyway this one individual what how did you kind of diligence whether or not this person would stay whether you like this person whether they were competent so on yeah so to to answer your first question now I just viewed it as hey if we're already taking a decent amount of risk and I know key man risk is one of the probably most important ones to pay attention to and any due diligence phase and any business you're trying to acquire but I kind of viewed it as you know screw it um what's another what's a little bit more risk right uh this is already pretty risky in itself uh but to your point yeah so before the transaction finalized we went out to launch Sam uh my other business partner Bert um in the business uh the seller and then Richard the solo employee we went all went out to lunch just kind of introduce ourselves get to learn a little bit more about him um what I really liked about Richard was he started as an intern with this company like in the first couple months of its you know Genesis and since worked his way up from literally entry level ground floor all the way up to basically you know running the business at least the Fulfillment side of our projects um all by himself so I'm sitting here I got to know him he's a great guy um you could tell he's sharp he knows these projects like the back of his hand he knows his whole business he knows the whole business model like the back of his hand and you know we kind of sold him on our vision like I said hey we're going to get the lighting business back to its warmer Glory but then we also want to build this business around you the new project lines and then also to um as part of the transaction the seller gave him a stay bonus that was paid quarterly for the first year of our acquisition and then we also instituted a new to him bonus structure that was basically tied to the success of the company so we wanted Tim to be incentivized to one stick around and then two give it his all and kind of give him some quasi ownership type uh incentive structure yeah and so the the dynamic between the two of you if you buy the business and become its owner is that will he be the operator or you no I mean with a turnaround you're definitely going to be operating too but he's going to be the project manager to uh of all existing in new projects until you can hire more people absolutely correct yeah okay now return return is Chandler to just the these terms um 25 down 75 earn out go through it uh slowly for us again yeah so the total you want me to go like just detail by detail like total purchase all that stuff yep so uh we the the seller was asked he was asking a million bucks for the business um we kind of knew we kind of heard through the grapevine that we were kind of the buyer Last Resort kind of some strategics turned it down um so we ended up negotiating down that purchase price to 625 000 25 of which would be funded at closing by myself and my two partners in the other 75 percent um you know basically a seller note in the form of an earn out um that earn out was structured as uh a minimum payment per quarter or 33 percent of gross profit so I kind of like that you know the minimum payment 25k a quarter I got you know pretty comfortable hey you know with our current kind of just default alive mode inbound projects I think we can certainly cover that that service but you know hopefully we're growing it where we're not having to pay the minimum and we're paying this guy down as fast as possible listen so 25 Grand a quarter or 33 percent of gross profit you said correct and and you could choose the the lesser of the two I assume the the greater of the two oh the greater if the 33 of gross profit was 15K for that quarter we'd have to pay 25 or like our last payment we can get into this too we actually just paid him off completely about two and a half years ahead of schedule uh a couple weeks ago and that final check was uh 104k so that was uh I didn't like seeing that go out of her bank account but uh you know it got the job done yeah yeah well the 625 000 with these really great terms but it's still that you got to pay them for a business that's that's not generating much and now it needs to also pay Chandler Chandler's you know living expenses salary what have you can I ask what you what you thought you'd pay yourself Yeah so basically um I had a salary you know I think typically some people in the the right down the middle of the Fairway deals paying themselves like 150k salary plus you know distributions um obviously I knew cash was tight so I even took a little bit of a pay cut from my previous job just to get in the door you know I had some money saved up um prepared to you know float myself if I needed to I was just you know I kind of viewed the opportunity as you know obviously want a huge learning experience for me kind of like a about as good as a MBA you could get to the call option of making some more money on the upside so um that was really my thought processor well one one thing uh that we haven't clarified is that you're pretty young so this is also you know age factors into people's risk profiles and and the value of experience the younger you are kind of the more valuable experience can be the older you are the more you want to Leverage The Experience you already have so how old were you yeah so when we closed I was 25 years old and kind of going back to it too how I got comfortable with it I was kind of running through the absolute worst case scenarios so like let's say we go buy this business and it just you know it fails um so option one you know I was like I could always just go back and get another job option two let's say it was so bad you know I had to end my apartment lease you know tow my car whatever um like you said the business was so based here in Tampa I have a lot of friends and family here so I was you know prepared to uh eat ramen and couch or uh if you know it hit the fan that badly um which kind of got me comfortable taking this risk and Chandler when you said that 75 of the purchase price was an earn out is does that mean a seller note yes correct so we're contractually obligated to pay him let's see I'm trying to do this math in my head I believe it was 475 000 bucks I think that was I think that math checks out it sounds about right yep and yeah so it was basically hey you know you're on the hook for either 25k a quarter or 33 of gross profit until that nut is paid back down okay and was your this loan personally guaranteed uh no that was another thing we got attractive to about with as well so worst case scenario you're not gonna he's not gonna come after whatever other assets you have correct yep worst case scenario not coming after anything and you know maybe I'm maybe I'm on a buddy's couch for a couple weeks until I can find another job or you know maybe I'd bartend at night something like that um yeah but even frankly even if it had been personally guaranteed another advantage of being young when is that you don't have a ton of assets that would would have been at risk it's not like you have a mortgage well correct me if I'm wrong you're right no I didn't really did not have a mortgage well since we're since we're so in the weeds of your personal finances here uh can I can I ask the 25 to closing that was from you Bert and Sam Rosati did you put actual cash in or was it all for you all Sweat Equity yes no I put in 10 of the cash down and then I had a kicker of Sweat Equity on top of that once kind of the principal um plus of craft was returned to our investors Sam and Bert and myself great thank you for all of that detail and transparency Chandler yeah all right so you get the deal done take us into to what it looks like to actually operate get green in oi yeah so oh my gosh it's like you know taking Prime my Tyson's biggest punch in the face right on day one um you know not only learning a new industry uh but learning new kind of business operations so uh day one you know I was the CEO basically CEO CFO half the accounting department HR um you know helping out with the Fulfillment side project management invoicing pretty much every single little thing that you can think about in a business I was fulfilling outside of actually managing the projects um so you know a lot of you know I was running most nights like five six hours of sleep waking up trying to put out fires trying to put in processes but I think the most important thing that I learned in that whole process was um just really documenting everything that you're doing because I kind of knew hey if we're gonna end up scaling this business and growing I can't day doing all the stuff myself so it was literally you know I'm running all the invoices signing all the contracts setting up health insurance setting up our accounting software um setting up our project management software like pretty much anything that you can think of I had to do and get my hands dirty on doing and obviously you know you only have so much time in the day so I would say my social life took a big hit like people were wondering I kind of disappeared fell off the face of the Earth for a good eight months or so which was you know not great you know I had to you know I grew distance distant with some friends you know obviously prioritizing family if anything outside of business um and yeah it was um it and apart from learning you know just business operations also learning a completely new industry to me like I know I said I knew multi-family so I knew the benefits of our projects because I was the client a couple years beforehand but I certainly didn't know squat about light bulbs or at the process of installing light bulbs or sourcing the materials signing contracts payment terms accounts receivables whole nine yards so it was uh you know drinking from a fire hose times 10 I would say and all of this that you're doing that not learning the industry all the other stuff the operations who was doing it before Richard wasn't doing it but but the business I mean yeah because typically you know like a lot of the stuff that you just said you were doing the story would be that the seller had been doing that and then her business buyer comes in and steps in to do what the seller is doing but nobody presumably was doing that before so so yeah how does that so the seller certainly wasn't so Richard was basically focused on the actual fulfillment side of the projects and then it was kind of like a shared service model with his new um the seller's new company like the CFO was doing the books for Onyx you know with a couple spare hours of her time um some of the the new companies salesmen would like help pitch in and try to you know do on sales calls so but the seller was not really doing anything it was just some shared services with the new business kind of I would be taking on all of that at one time gotcha so so this was this is the pinky toe this is like is it the stuff in in the new business where some of the resources are being diverted and distracted by continuing to keep the lights on yeah at Onyx that's one of my my favorite jokes you know it was going to come off at some point yeah meet me to the punch so okay and so through all this learning learning how how to business and learning how to operate and then learning a new industry what do you look back on is the hardest part to learn what was the steepest learning curve uh the steepest learning curve 100 uh the people not only the one employee that we transferred over but you know as we started growing you know I had to hire uh I'd never hired anyone in my life before I've never managed anyone in my life before outside of I wouldn't even call it management but you know I've done been in leadership roles in the past whether it was you know in college you know High School sports you know High School clubs stuff like that which granted you know is nothing compared to running a business um but yeah the biggest thing probably the my biggest takeaway from it is you know you can't model people in Excel um and that was literally all I was doing in my commercial real estate world was you know running Financial models um in Excel and the people component is and I would say for any small business is truly the Crux of the whole organization and something you gotta nail and be prepared for so the people piece is something that we hear uh over and over and over again that is the the most challenging part uh even if you do have some management management experience so can you give us any more detail about maybe a story or a particular aspect of of the people piece that was so challenging yeah so I think I was trying to make a small amount of changes to the way that we were or a couple small different changes and one you know I kind of was going in there saying like oh I'm the boss I know best let me go do this let's do that without failing to consider like hey how is this impacting you know the people how is this decision impacting the people and also failing to consider like hey Richard has been literally doing this been in this business for six years now at this point he knows how it is so when he's pushing back on me instead of getting frustrated and saying like he doesn't know what he's talking about I need to do it my way first taking a step back and saying okay why does he want to do it this way he must have seen some problems that have arised in the past that led them to ultimately keep doing it this way because it's probably better than some of my ideas um so I think the biggest thing was some of the ways that we were presenting our proposals or our bids I wanted to change it up a little bit and he's like hey I hear you on this but this is why we've been doing it this way and this is how it's worked in the past and how we've had the most success whereas you know maybe it was a little bit egotistical saying like oh I know better than this guy or hey I know a better way to do this um and kind of just checking I had to learn to check my ego at the door um and just really you know put my best foot forward and taking his considerations in all decisions at that point and and so then it crystallized what you would have what you would tell your yourself on day one just just listen more less action more listening sort of uh you're you're not the smartest guy in the room never pretend you are especially for a new business um in a new industry especially when you're working with people who've been doing this basically their whole career um take their input you need to be able to hold two kind of sometimes potentially conflicting ideas in your head the old way of doing it the new way that you want to do it and then try to meet in the middle somewhere so what does life look like after these eight months of transition I think you said eight months you kind of disappeared under a rock from from your your social networks uh perspective yeah so what when you re-emerged what did life look like yeah so life looked like uh we made our first two hires of one of which was a virtual assistant from the Philippines who was primarily you know uh operations coordinator so basically any computer-based task that you can think of that I was doing to keep the business running so invoicing kind of data entry um some lower level email responses stuff like that uh you know made a loom video did an sop for it and kind of pass it off and check progress making sure the ship was still taking its due course and then the next piece was a project engineer who at this point we I had drummed up kind of more revenue and so I was helping Richard out on the Fulfillment side traveling you know across the country to the apartment complexes that we were working on to create the Scopes that we would go make our bid based off of and so if you can imagine every day that I wasn't in the office kind of working on the business or trying to drive Revenue was basically days that we were losing out on potential Revenue so I needed to make the hires to take me out of the kind of the more in the weeds day-to-day operation Smooth Up smoothness of it so I could just focus strictly on driving more Revenue into the business so what life actually looked like was I finally got to the point we made these hires I was able to take like my first true vacation where I even like I deleted Gmail off my phone I'm like hey I need a true check check out here deleted slack and Gmail with my phone I didn't want to get tempted um and took a vacation I believe it was with my my family too which was great um and then slowly started you know the tax you get from the Buddies hey what are you doing this weekend what's going on instead of telling them sorry dude I'm working it was like oh yeah hey I can come meet you out for a couple hours you know nothing crazy but um you know I was starting to gain my social life back which was good it's good for my mental health great for sure yeah that that's sort of uh just heads down hardcore uh can be really valuable in spurts but of course it's not sustainable and and what about the business so aside from your learning curve of the industry your learning curve how to be an operator and run a business what about what did you find in terms of the potential of this business was it was it looking like it was your thesis was gonna was gonna carry through yes it was um so the I think the biggest thing was one like we had the lighting business back kind of on a good trajectory but then also too um some of our clients were asking us even like it was on a roadmap hey we want to do water efficiency projects we want to do EV charging stations we want to do solar energy at some point an interesting thing was that timeline kind of got dragged into the future for one day when one of our clients asked us if we did EV charging stations and I just said yeah we do and I go back to the team I'm like okay guys uh we're now doing EV charging stations I know we've been talking about it for a few months but we have a live deal uh we got three weeks to figure it out and kind of just hit the ground running so you got the two hires the so what year are we in now what year is this this is like basically uh the first tire was early February 2022 so not even to a year from Full acquisition yet we had the the project engineer uh start one week and then the week after the virtual assistant started so I was like all right hey you know if we're going to be I guess of all the the headache that comes with hiring a new person especially for someone that's never hired anyone before I've always say hey let's just Bunch up all the stuff together and just knock it all out at one time versus shredding it out is it and you said that this was less than a year into your tenure so you bought in in what what month 2021 uh we bought basically may but we closed on April 30th 2021 um and this was early February 2022. and what is revenue looking like has it materially changed from that 900 number that from when you bought the business yeah I think so and you're like kind of from the stub month if you will so for May 2021 to December 2021 we did 900k so if you annualize that I guess if you will probably like I think it was around like 1.1 um and then it kind of started getting crazy um with you know interest rates were so basically zero we're coming out of covid people are you know have all this dry powder to deploy in the multi-family space and things just kind of started taking off um people are buying an apartment so kind of a bigger drive a big driver of our revenue is value-add apartment transaction so someone goes to buy a dilapidated or you know apartment that has some work that needs to get done on it and our projects are kind of on that docket so next thing you know like we almost can't keep up with the demand that we're getting uh which is a good thing right so yeah Flash Forward from February 2022 to June 2022 uh we make our next hire on the Fulfillment side uh a project manager so kind of like a hybrid between what Richard was doing and then a hybrid of what the project engineer was doing uh we're getting all these inbound requests to come hey we need a lighting project Las Vegas we have one in Texas we have one here in Florida we have one up in New York City um when can you get out here so it was it was going well so I think kind of flashing forward so in 2022 so I told you in 2021 we did 900 about 900k of Revenue in that you know accounting for some stub months annualized probably 1.2 in 2022 Top Line was uh just North I think by pick maybe a couple hundred bucks of three million dollars so a big a big jump um everything all happened at once um and we're kind of like growth at all means and you are feeling like a genius I think you know oh my gosh I'm the next Elon Musk look at me I'm a genius everything I touch turns to gold um all my hard work those eight months where I kind of went monk mode like I was telling you about oh my gosh it paid off I'm a genius I'm the best SMB acquirer of all time and the just to be clear when you say people are buying Apartments what you mean is um real estate groups or or investors are buying apartment projects like actual projects are transacting and so some investor developer will buy a project and then need to retrofit the lighting so correct that's what we're talking about yeah so that was a big spur of our jump there and then we can kind of Flash Forward to September 2022 which we so luckily we signed a bunch of projects during the summer uh that are in in Q3 before September that kind of trickled out um through the remainder of 2022 uh but September 2022 was really when the FED started jacking up interest rates and all of a sudden all the people that were you know that didn't even know about apartments that were trying to get in to buy Apartments um disappeared our clients stopped basically fell off a cliff overnight the multi-family transaction Market um which that might be a good segue into kind of September 2022 to March 2023 time frame where all of a sudden I wasn't uh Elon Musk anymore and you dropped 50 IQ points yeah exactly probably even 100. um so yeah so I thought like I said I thought I was you know the greatest operator out there lo and behold uh a lot of that had to do with the market not just my hard work and dedication into the business and strategy if you will um so kind of from that September 22 time frame to about March of 2023 um the new opportunities that we were getting kind of fell off a cliff like I said luckily we had some previous transactions or previous projects from mid to Q3 before September uh 2022 that kind of carried us through the remainder of the year but kind of Flash Forward to March of 2023 going from a 3 million Top Line year in 2022 to I think the exact number was ten thousand two hundred and sixty two dollars in all of q1 of 2023 wow like damn uh oh boy they get turning off yeah incredible so okay so keep keep going so what what what's that look like and what's your head headspace look like her headspace is not good um I'm you know like a madman calling up all our clients hey what's going on what do you guys seeing in the market and everyone said hey we're pencils down right now and then all the money that we're planning I know we told you hey we're gonna have a bunch of projects for you in 2023 so kind of the two ways we get projects are new acquisitions so customer already has a big capital budget to go invest into this apartment that they just bought or two hey they bought the apartment a couple years ago or they've held on to it for a long time they're planning for to spend some money on capital projects in the next year so in September even though the transactions had fallen off a cliff our clients are saying hey you know we have all this money um budgeted to spend on these lighting projects and EV charging projects we were telling you about uh it'll have it'll all happen in queue on 2023 and then lo and behold with the interest rates most of the people that are buying these value out Apartments uh use floating rate debt so all of a sudden they're you know interest basically goes from zero to you know five percent or so which is sizable you know when you're taking down 100 million dollar you know loans to buy these projects all the money that was previously going to be used for Capital expenditures AKA our projects all of a sudden is now going to pay off the interests on their Debt Service so yeah just from both angles all around uh not good yeah okay uh and so I guess at some point you're you're wondering if the business is even viable I mean if you go if you drop to ten thousand dollars a quarter yeah I mean obviously that you know if even if that were profit that wouldn't be enough to pay somebody for a for a year I mean that's correct half a salary yep so obviously you know I told you we made these higher so I made my first four hires in 2022 um yeah first four hires in 2022 and made my first five buyers in 2022 and then you know I'm like I said I'm still our CFO or I still am or CFO so I'm doing some cash forecasting and I look at it and it spells uh very bad news so I go back to Bert and Sam and I say hey guys here's where we're at um if we don't do something soon we're you know going under or we're gonna have to put a bunch of money back into the business to keep us afloat and we came to the conclusion that you know we had the trim up operations and get into a default survive mode so in March 2023 after doing just 10 that 10K um you know I had to let go basically all the one of the va's that we hired and then the three kind of in-office hires that we had made in 2022 which was a big gut punch to me um yeah going from at the top of the world to literally the slowest of flows um especially too just selling them on you know part of the reason all the people that we hired you know had other offers elsewhere but you know they bought in to me the vision for the company and the growth projections that we had at the time but obviously you know I didn't have a crystal ball I had no idea this was going to happen um and so I had to let people go so now even today as we stand here on September 15th yep um it's now just we're back to it's me um it's Richard and then the first VA that we hired um are still holding down the fort here listen well that's a lot of experience in in a year and a half Chandler yeah I feel like I uh it was the uh I don't I don't mean to laugh at it because obviously it was very sad um for me but just laughing at like yeah I feel like I've lived a Whole Decade in the past two and a half years which is good like I said I viewed this as you know like I said a learning opportunity more so than hey you know with a call option on the upside to make some money and I have uh let's just say I certainly got my money's worth as far as education yeah it goes experience yeah yeah man okay and so so are that is that where things stand today ten thousand dollars a quarter three and a half thousand dollars a month of Revenue or yeah no so I don't know what if what it was but not two weeks after uh you know we had to make the head count changes uh we got rid of our office we went fully remote like literally all the the nice to haves that you know we're paying for all of a sudden became hey we're only paying for the mission critical items um but yeah to your point as we said today I'm not sure what was in the water but come April 2023 uh we have the best month that the company's ever seen we do 800k of of country sign contracts in April wow as we sit yeah so I don't know if you know the SMB gods were smiling upon me and and get green um so as we said today from from call it three or four thousand dollars a month to eight hundred thousand dollars in one month yeah so that's uh the the blessing and the curse of these project-based businesses is yeah I don't you know it comes in waves you know we have huge months we have you know three thousand dollar a month um but yeah so in April we timed about 800k I think it was just north of 800k in projects and then as we sit today here in September uh we're right at 1.2 million bucks of Top Line so probably you're annualizing that or that's what you've already no that's signed contracts in 2023 to date so and that was strictly between basically May and September um if you keep that up you you could get to 1.5 or 1.6 by the end of the year yes so our goal is I'm trying to hit 2 million bucks um this year so we have some promising projects in the pipeline right now but again you know it's certainly not as fast and furious as it was in 2022 we're having the scratch and Claw for every single dollar that we're bringing to the door these days well you seem to be scratching and clawing pretty effectively the the Chandler but I'm a little confused that the spigot turned off and then turned right back on because interest rates I've only kept going up yeah so so only so so what do you think it was that caused the absolute freeze up of any spend and then another kind of gushing of spend yeah so the freeze up was just like uncertainty no one knew what the heck was going to go on our interest rate is going to go up even higher are they going to get is the economy going to get really bad and get cut again basically everyone was playing their money super close to their chest and then come you know one quarter of operating under this new Financial environment they're like okay I think we're here to stay in this higher interest rate environment for the foreseeable future let's reallocate some capital and then try to move forward with some of our you know uh Community level business plans as stated the Acquisitions still haven't come around there's only you know the deals that are getting done right now are there's a story to it you know one of our biggest clients you know who bought I believe 40 apartment communities which is a huge huge for anyone that's not familiar with the industry buying 40 you know 100 million dollar projects in one year is a Monumental run to going from September to basically March of not buying a single apartment complex so a huge drop off they like so some of the deals that they're getting done are like you know buying six portfolios from a distressed buyer at one time so like basically long story short all the deals transactions that are getting done have a story they're a little bit funky they're not true like right down the middle of the Fairway deals but luckily you know we laid that groundwork we developed those client relations um all throughout you know since we acquired the business and then lo and behold you know some deals are starting to get done and then the people who are playing the kind of same store owners um who were previously playing their money close to their chest we're like hey this is a new environment that we're in let's start getting back to work and luckily that all happened culminated in April a month after I thought we were going under so you're at 1.2 now you may be conservatively 1.5 or 6 by the end of the year but you're gunning for two um are you gonna continue in the business now what's what are you up to yeah so these days um like I said it's certainly been slower um one of my actually it was funny my old boss at uh the previous company I kind of caught up with him told him everything that was going on and one of the things that he told me it's like hey you know obviously the economy goes in Cycles one of the best things that you can do and kind of down markets is you know if you're not that busy that's a good time for you to improve some other areas of your life whether that's Fitness relationships family so this summer you know obviously I've been working been traveling trying to meet some clients but also taking some time to kind of re-prioritize and look forward like hey what's you know my next five years two years three years gonna look like um so at this point right now like I'm still very much working in the business um but to your point or going back to it also with that big 800k and that big swell uh kind of in the middle of this year it got us to the point where we were able to pay the seller back so now every dollar of a profit that we are getting is now going back to pay myself and our partners back and then hopefully to be reinvested in the business so kind of what I'm doing right now is I'm really focusing on going back to the documenting Point like all right what am I currently actually doing in the business what do I need to do and then also what are kind of the things that I was doing in growth mode making sure I'm documenting those so once the market picks back up which obviously I don't have a crystal ball if I would I'd be recording this podcast from my Island estate somewhere um so yeah so we're kind of doing a game plan of like hey what am I currently doing right now can we get softwares to do that uh can we get va's to do that do we need to make a kind of onshore hire for that button that up and then what's the game plan for when we start getting those calls hey we're buying Apartments again um so I'm kind of just in kind of like a pre-planning phase of hopefully trying to remove myself out of the day-to-day operations and this becomes kind of like a five to ten hour if that um lift for me weekly um so so not to work on the business rather than in the business but to actually do a different something else or a different project or maybe buy another business or something like that yes correct so what I'm kind of doing now is going back to Sam um Sam has been running a in-person boot camp in Tampa just basically hey go from you know someone like me that didn't know what eta stood for or anything like that can kind of take you from from Square zero to after the three-day boot camp um hey I I not only have the knowledge but I'm also equipped with a deal team and A playbook people to call how to do it to go out and search for my own business so even so Sam's been doing that for now for like two years so I went to the first boot camp and I spoke at it kind of the third day in these boot camps is kind of like the case study days Sam Wheels us out there like hey you know these are operators I've backed and invested behind you can actually do it kind of it brings it all together for these people and I was talking to Sam I'm like dude why aren't you doing this you know why aren't you scaling this up like it's great it's successful you've had probably like 25 people that have come to your boot camps buy businesses we know it works why don't we try to bring this online or make it bigger and Sam was like you know man I really don't know why I'm like all right well this is something going back to that first SM bash as well I kind of fell in love with the space so I'm learning more about the space I'm operating the business and I'm kind of sitting there thinking like this is a space that I want to play and operate in for at least the next decade and I kind of cozied up sand the idea of bringing this online and making it bigger and so that's kind of what I've been feeling with my spare time trying to get myself out of get green and then helping Sam bring his in-person boot camp one online and then two just doing more of them in person so that's kind of where we're sitting right now actually super cool I know I was telling you before we started recording like this week has been incredible for us um or just Tuesday we went down to Fort Lauderdale to teach SMB ETA to um a group called professional athlete Community which is primarily focused on the NFL which is awesome so Sam's sitting there hey we got connected with the pack professional athlete Community they want us to come teach SMB to a bunch of former NFL players you in I'm like of course man so we went down there and I'm literally talking about smbs to guys that I've looked up to idolized like played played with them in Madden like I was very Starstruck um that's amazing and yeah so we have all sorts of angles going on right now to kind of spread the gospel of ETA um and I think Sam and ipac are great one-two punch obviously you know this stuff is like riding a bike to him he knows it in and out all facets knows everyone in the space and then me kind of the more internet Savvy um internet business minded type and also hey living breathing proof that you can do this and so I think we we pack a great one-two punch in that regard great so so the picture for Chandler for the next few years is getting get green to be somewhat um running on its own uh with some attention from fuel yep yeah yeah make sure the ship is pointed in the right direction but hey you know I'm not Fielding sales calls anymore I'm not I'm certainly not trying to go out to any Apartments to uh create our Scopes and uh just making sure that everyone that on our team is Happy knows exactly what they want to do knows what they should be doing and making sure that we're all moving forward in the right direction kind of the orchestrator if you will well it you're doing what a lot of people aspire to do with the smbs that they buy which is some people want to operate indefinitely but often it's I want to operate as long as I need to or it makes sense for me to and then uh if if maybe the growth opportunities aren't huge be able to step out and then do do something else maybe buy another business what have you but that all always requires of course having a great GM or a great operator which is another theme that comes up time and again on this podcast so what is you what is your picture for that is Richard gonna be your operator are you going to hire an operator or are you thinking that you're 10 to 15 hours a week will be the kind of CEO uh the necessary CEO in within the business yeah So the plan is to keep empowering Richard um he's he's great you know like I said he knows his business like the back of his hand um and even to the big the big test will really be at the end of this month I'm going to Europe for two weeks um and so we're we're gonna see where some some crack surface and the operations standpoint um and then try to button those up after to just truly keep you know making the business more resilient and truly getting ready for me to pull out so yeah so Richard is going to be kind of run of the show signing the contracts making the kind of tactical decisions on the project and within the business you know obviously me helping with guidance and stuff like that um but even going back to it like you said um with or like I said with the EV projects right like an opportunity presented itself I didn't have a choice or I had a choice but the choice was to move quickly on it and so same thing here with Sam and SM boot camp and the stuff that we're working on here this opportunity kind of presented itself to me and so now I'm it was always kind of in my plan down the road to kind of pull myself out of operations at some point whether I didn't know what it was going to be for but this opportunity presented itself so I'm like all right hey it's time to um it's time to go and we'll we'll see how it goes well actually but to Chandler to tie it back to that that episode where you get the lead for the for the EV installations and you say Let's go Team let's do this this is this is the window the that was really showing a lot of leadership that that maybe somebody who you know didn't see themselves as the leader owner of the business might not have gone after so so aggressively so enthusiastically is if you're not going to be in the business full-time do you think somebody else will will jump at those opportunities and I guess the the kind of implied question there is is the there's still a vision to become an all-in-one solution for any kind of green retrofitting or you guys kind of going to keep your scope narrow on just lighting yeah that's a great Point um so yeah so right now Elise we are solely focused on just being the best lighting and EV installer as possible um I kind of learned you know I I spun the wheels so so much on trying to get some other project lines in it and luckily we you know we had a bone throat thrown to us on the EV side um that one certainly had some more legs but yeah so right now um at least until kind of the commercial real estate market starts ripping again uh we're just going to be kind of at a scaled down version of The grander Vision um and just you know truly focusing on being the best lighting and EV install group out there yeah and you know so the business when it was peaking under the previous ownership it got to six million dollars in Revenue then you know in your first year there you have this great uh coveted bump or you know post coveted bump where all this Capital comes rushing in and then you have this Capital freeze where things collapse momentarily and then and then now things have started coming back where is you know so you've never seen you've never seen this business in a normal environment in a stabilized environment what do you think this business looks like stable like in terms of Revenue and size stable I think the The Six Million Bucks is certainly uh attainable uh okay but you know like I said I'm hoping that we can get the two this year and what otherwise is a pretty down year I think this is hopefully going to be the bottom um but then yeah so I'm hoping at on all that this business does you know without me even you know getting on any sales calls obviously you know we probably need some sales folks to get up to that 6 million because that's you know the previous seller had some sales guys and girls that were helping get to that 6 million bucks previously but I think that's kind of we're just basically trying to recreate that business in 2017 that Six Million Dollar business that is probably what we're trying to recreate okay okay well Six Million Dollar business uh 15 margins uh that that's a pretty great that's a great pretty great business yeah not a not a bad day at the office yeah Before I Let You Go Chandler I I um I'm getting in the back of the weeds a little bit but I think it's important because I heard you express some emotion around um actually I think the emotion was in our pre-call but so but you you touched on in this conversation it being a project-based business yeah and and kind of or constructiony product you know it is a construction business technically um and everybody listening to this probably knows but for those who don't you know project-based businesses are less appealing than recurring uh recurring Revenue businesses where you can really project out what your uh what your revenue is going to look like for the in in the coming months and this you're basically just waiting for the phone to ring or trying to make the phone ring and your revenue is only as good as those projects are active and are coming in uh so that's less appealing how do you and yet and yet plenty of buyers buy businesses that are Project based and there's actually this kind of interesting intellectual debate around this because we'd all love recurring Revenue businesses we all understand why that's more appealing why the quality of that revenue is higher but you can't always get it most businesses are are projecty uh and so so a lot of people buy a project-based business and and they do very well with it thank you very much and you're on your way to doing well with this one so uh but I know that I know that emotionally you feel how yeah um Searchers out there unless I would say unless you have some sort of edge like unless for example for me unless like I was a lighting industry expert or a commercial property vendor expert and I brought some Edge to this project-based business where I could out-compete some in a relatively commoditized industry if you will try to avoid it at all costs um there's a lot easier ways to make money um than project-based construction businesses however like I said if you're the right girl or guy for the job and you find an opportunity like I found go ahead and get into it but then that kind of ties it back to me buying a business first and learning about searching an ETA you know most people learn about search and ETA and learn about the types of businesses that are more attractive than others and they say okay I don't want to do this project-based business whereas I was hey I bought a project-based business and I learned oh there's a lot easier ways to make money um or a lot I would say more attractive to the majority of people to make money um so yeah so that being said I'm not sure going back I would do what I did a hundred percent but if you're asking me hey would I go buy another commercial like a construction project-based business probably not unless it was super compelling and I thought that I could bring an edge to it that other people couldn't and but so let me understand is it is it is do you have a diversion to it going forward because the quality of Revenue is is so much less in your you know you're kind of having to bid and fight for every every dollar or is it is it something else is it the nature of the work itself that you don't like what is it that you now dislike so much yeah I would say all the above well I think really it's like all the above um but it's it's funny because like you know I have friends that kind of run internet-based businesses where you know people click buttons and all of a sudden they get income in their stripe account and they don't have to do anything they charge my card whereas we you know our sales Cycles are like three to six to nine months long at some points uh people pay us by check in the mail as much as I've tried to push towards ACH and instant payments um you know we work a lot of dinosaur clients um things can go wrong you know a big construction project like for example you know in in my probably like month three of operating the business Richard took a week-long vacation and so I was a de facto project manager I get a call from a client that says hey your cherry picker just cracked a bunch of our sidewalk on site what are we gonna do about this I'm like I don't know um I'll get an answer for you there's just a lot of things that can go wrong in construction based businesses the pain and going back to the payments and all that stuff just I've learned that there's a lot easier ways to make money so but like I said you know if you're the right person for a job like this you have an edge or you enjoy it like by all means go for it because you can make solid money in this face um it's just you know it comes with some some headache for sure yeah and even though because one aspect of the business that we should also touch on a little bit here is the fact that you were using subcontractors to to fulfill all the jobs right and but it's still your throat that is choked when there's a problem so the subs are on site they break something and you get the call and then and then you have to call the sub and be like WTF how does that look yeah call them say hey dude what's going on here a lot of times they're like you know sorry like we'll go through Insurance we'll go through something and then a lot of times it's just like because especially in a commercial construction-based business like relationships or everything like the project managers that we are getting projects from you know overseas sometimes like 20 to 50 apartment communities so they're gonna have more projects for you down the road so I guess our business is reoccurring not recurring in that regards like the same guy that's giving you one project or girl giving you one project you know it probably will have 20 others for you you know in the next few years so it's almost like you know preserving that relationship at all costs sometimes that looks like splitting the cost of the damage that the sub did between us in the sub s the sub is going to pay for all of it um there's a lot of moving Parts there yeah yeah and the sub using so if you're going to get into a construction business and you know either use subs or not use Subs this is going to show my naivete because I'm sure people who have worked in construction project-based businesses have strong opinions here or the is or the answer is obvious uh if you have Subs versus your own your own teams doing it what what are the pros and cons there yeah so primarily having your own kind of um it saw a crew is one your mark your margins on your projects are going to be a lot better um because obviously if you use a subcontractor you know they're going to get you a markup versus you know you're paying your own guys an hourly rate no matter you know how many projects you have going on or not like they're getting paid that amount they're doing the work um but on the the negative side of that is let's say we were go flashback to q1 2023 I have this you know huge overhead install crew which was great when the projects were coming in all of a sudden we don't have any projects coming in you're still having to pay them you know their salary even though they're not working on anything right now um so it just really depends on you know and I recommend this to everyone that's searching for a business it's like what do you want your life to look like um post close and for me keeping a lean team with shoving out all the labor was something that I was attractive to me you know at the expense of you know some points on your margin I was willing to live with that because you know life was going to be easier for me yeah you know Chandler wait you you've already said that you know take your your perspective here with a grain of salt because for other people they might be perfectly at home in a construction-based business exactly um but just to kind of to emphasize that what is clear about you is that you are um you kind of like digital businesses I mean and and how can you not you know press a few buttons and make a million dollars right that's what they're all about at least no but but but you know you had you cited your friends or colleagues that have businesses like that and how appealing that is and what you're bringing to Sam's boot camp is is is taking it online so it does seem like your orientation is just kind of digital businesses so audience be keeping that in mind when when listening to the types of businesses that Chandler does or does not like um but I but I I hear you digital businesses if you can get them they're they're uh hard to beat from an operational perspective yeah and that like that's the most important thing like everyone that I talk to at Sam's Boot Camp or even the NFL guys right this is earlier this week it was instead of like you know you can go find you know a great Plumbing business and but it might be located in North Dakota so okay do you want to go uproot your whole life just because he returns on paper in your Excel model look good do you want to go move to North Dakota and let's say all of your technicians call out sick on a weekend are you gonna go have to go plunge toilets or or clog and snake a drain on the weekend um yeah you might you know whatever your irr might be 50 on that but how does your life look um yep so really important I think that when you're going and searching to buy a business figure out what you want your life to look like post close whether that is you know emphasis on family you want to spend the weekends with your family you want to take your kids to school you want to be able to go do stuff you know take a trip um figure out what you want that life to look like and then go find and search for a business that fits it not perfectly obviously nothing's perfect but go find a business that fits the best for the life that you want versus structuring your whole life around the business that you fund yep wise words why don't we leave it there Chandler the best piece of advice I can give to anyone yeah great anything that that we didn't touch on um I don't think we didn't touch about how much I love your podcast and how great I think it is for the community so perhaps you keep keep spreading the word and and uh doing great for this community um I think it's a huge thing you know when people talk about you know the ETA SMB podcast obviously this one's front of mind and I think you do a lot of great work for this community and like I said you know and I'm sure you probably know this too I think that we are you know people talk about the silver tsunami and all that stuff which you know if it's fully true I'm not 100 sure but based on what I'm seeing I think it's certainly true I think we're in the really early Innings uh in this industry and I think that ETA while you know obviously it got started a long time ago Stanford search funds traditional searches all that good stuff um the self-funded search is now I think more promising than ever with the internet with Twitter all the resources are at your disposal if you don't have a lot of money don't worry about that they're literally people that are dying to stick money into these self-funded Searchers um in these businesses obviously from a financial perspective and then also to you know just this business model is is really never been bigger and it's only going to get bigger so I would encourage anyone this is a great space to play in I would say at least for the next decade um and if you have any questions listen to acquiring minds um I'm happy to help out however I can and um you won't be disappointed because I truly love this space and I kind of fell into it and I'm incredibly blessed that I did ah that was great Chandler uh and not just the nice thing that you said no that was that was uh such a a great endorsement for uh this this space that was really inspiring uh So speaking of getting in touch with you and and Sam's in your boot camp you want to uh plug that plug that plug the boot camp and then tell it folks how you prefer to be um reached out to a people of questions yeah so bootcamp um so if you want to sign up for the in-person boot camps just head over to the pursuant capital.com website you'll see a button in the top right corner that goes uh apply for the boot camp that'll give you all the details on it um we have one next week that we are at Max Capacity for we're super jazzed about that one we have one coming up the week after Thanksgiving that we still have some spots for so if you're interested in it I encourage you to apply um SM bootcamp is pending launch here soon we're making sure that it's the most valuable thing uh out there we still have a couple more some polishing to do but if you go to SM boot camp is the is the virtual version of the interperson boot camp SM boot camp SM bootcamp go ahead dot Co we'll will be how you can sign up and join the waitlist you'll sign up join the waitlist you'll get an email basically outlining everything that SM bootcamp is going to offer and then the best way to get in touch with me is on Twitter and you can find me at Chandler Reed SMB uh all strung together great and all that'll be in the show notes for people to just click through to and uh SM Bash Too I'm now involved with SM bash I forgot about that I got my uh weekly call with Sam Kevin and David uh from the SMB Law Group um that is coming up April 18th through 20th 2024 Salt Lake City uh you can sign up for that look for that anywhere online just has some bash and uh it's gonna be the best one yet and will I hope that you'll be there too to get another live podcast recording then maybe some skiing beforehand if you're into that I'm going to be hitting the Park City two days before then so um it's gonna be awesome and I look forward to it and maybe you already answered my my question but so year one the inaugural year was in Orlando as you said this past year was in Austin how did you guys choose Salt Lake City for year three I guess we're just going by time zone right um Central Salt Lake is in Mountain so maybe next year it'll be West Coast maybe we'll bring it back home East but I think the just on the smash note one of the coolest things is so year one was kind of the operator it was kind of operator Focus heavy year two in Austin was Searcher heavy and then this year year three we're actually doing two tracks so we'll have some joint sessions with everyone but there will be a Searcher track with Searcher speakers and then an operator track with operator speakers all in the hopes of making this the biggest and best SM Bash to date and uh I think it'll be awesome that's that's great challenge that was actually one of the um pieces of feedback that I heard from somebody at SM bash that that uh this idea of tracks which of course you know is bigger conferences have to have that because there's just you can't all of the content doesn't apply to every person so I also just think it's a sign of of a show that's maturing and getting bigger that you you eventually got to kind of slice and dice the content a little bit and Target it at different segments of the of the crowd so that's really a sign of uh SM bash's growth I think yeah so attendees we heard your feedback and we're here to make this you know in my opinion the most valuable SMB conference out there so that'll be great good hope to see good stuff Chandler this was a lot of fun thanks for coming on man yeah well thanks for having me man this has been a blast and um looking forward to what's next out there 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