Ryan Doyle welcome back to acquiring minds thanks will thanks for having me Ryan you came on the podcast for an episode last June 20122 so about a year and a half ago you were a Searcher at the time and we discussed eight bad signs or eight signs of a bad business that you had kind of compiled and identified over the course of your search which was ongoing but since then you found a business to buy and have graduated from to owner operator and we're going to hear that story today but Ryan please start us off with some background on you sure thanks will thanks for having me on by the way this is uh it was great being on before and excited to see you grow and um but yeah in terms of background for me um little bit of a finance journeyman bouncing around in few different roles on on kind of the typical Wall Street Finance track but I think within common vein is I I focus on Banks and then essentially when I ultimately got to my dream job I after about three years I decided to blow up for search and why did you uh why did you just give us a little bit more that phrasing is interesting why did you blow it up why were you so drawn to search especially given as you quickly learned that it was damn hard I think ultimately it was really the desire to control my own destiny so um you know I think when you're in the corporate world career track you're always expecting the best in in the next opportunity that comes along and then you know i' kind of been fortunate enough to reach what was you know beyond what I thought I could do in the space and then I realized that you know you're still ultimately going to be a cog in a much larger machine great and had you had any entrepreneurial dalliances or interests before feeling before this recognition that doing W2 for the rest of your days might not be the way out um nothing meaningful I mean I had some friends in in business in school we bounced ideas off each other and you know even try to start some things here and there but nothing that ever really nothing serious all right and so what year is it that you start your search uh it's 2021 so when you decide to search are you what does that look like how much how much knowledge do you already have if any do you hit the books listen to the pods sort of program what's that look like yeah so I think it uh the initial idea had come across my mind when I was I was traveling back in New York to and from New York still working um pretty regularly in the office during covid and um you know stumbled upon you know the buy then build everyone talks about and it just uh a little bit of a bell went off in my head and then I realized that that I knew some more people in my background that actually had done this before I just didn't know what it was it was still kind of early stages um self-funded search uh was very early not many people were talking about it back then and so I just started doing a lot of research on that talking to a lot of people that have done it um spending time basically just absorbing as much information out there and since then it's actually there's a lot more out there but um and then you know going through year end and my wife and I making like larger decisions of where we're going to live and ultimately decided that it was really you know the best time for me to go and try to try to do something like this okay and where does that leave you in terms of this decision to to of where you're going to live where were you living do you now live or did you move how did what did that look like um yeah so we we're down in Savannah Georgia um we escaped New York during covid uh on a part-time bases down here renting houses you know started as two weeks roll to months and then we eventually at least one up in New York we put our stuff in storage and then we were pretty open-minded so like my search was actually focused um Coastal Southeast there was really anywhere we would be happy living then after spending some time in Savannah we really fell in love with it started planting rots and um you know without more than halfway through my search like really for the last deal uh last deal I looked at the one I executed on um we really focused on Savannah because we wanted to make that happen wow so that's a geographically constrained search not so uncommon but Savannah is not an enormous metropolitan area so that that really meant that you were going to have to probably loosen some of your other criteria if you were determined to to buy in Savannah right yeah well actually that's what brought me um down to where I'm actually my headquarters is in Brunswick we have another location down in St Mar's but um you know I basically exhausted the market in Savannah in a short period of time um you know I felt like I'd reached out to everybody and then I just was starting to look for the next you know biggest city by demographics and Brunswick popped up and started reaching out down there and then I learned about this whole other Market which is incredible which which is our primary Market the golden nles which is kind of incredible that not as well known up in the Northeast as it is down here but um you know I kind of stumbled into that but so I'm splitting time between Savannah Brunswick and then you know also going down to same maras which is you know the southern border of Georgia and so the Golden Isles for for people ignorant what is that uh there's these three barrier islands off the coast of Georgia Sea Island jeo is in St Simon's Island and they're known for for golf a lot of the professional golfers live there and um it's just a it's a beautiful place to live but um very attractive demographics very affluent and well known in the state of Georgia and throughout the probably larger Southeast oh yeah yeah but I mean it was it was unknown to me when I started when I engaged my conversations with the the company that I'm now running ah even though you were you you had settled in Savannah yeah I didn't even know about it when I was living in Savannah yeah I mean I'd heard occasionally but I just didn't I didn't fully appreciate you the market here as I teased at the top you came on and we did eight signs of a bad business so you were in a search and you were learning what that what you didn't want and probably going down following a lot of threads only to to come up short on a business you were considering uh because you uncovered a red flag uh so I know that you have one broken deal experience where you you came really close and I think that there's a story there so why don't you tell that one before we get into the the story that ended up being the acquisition you did close yeah so I think I was certainly challenged during my SE search process I I had budgeted originally a year draw on to two years large in part because of this deal which just could never die and and essentially was a nine-month process and um in terms of red flags there there were multiple and you know just when you seem to have resolved one then another would come up and then you know as we approached the end uh it became clear that you know we were we were just not going to get to it was basically the day before closing um and ultimately walked walked away and that was at year end um of 2022 what kind of business was this and tell us more about why you were able to get so far was an appealing enough business that you came this close to closing and then what killed it yeah so it was also in a residential services pools pools um and you know I liked everything about it long operating history um you know obviously very bullish on the pool space and and these this company was a you know had a pretty strong market share um and they were very good at what they did they've been doing it for a long time um you know we initially it hited off pretty pretty well with the sellers and um as we progressed along um you know the more I learned about I was very excited you know obviously for for me to continue on that path but um you know they were of the good size perfect size um I'd say the business mix was not exactly what I wanted they a little bit heavier in construction uh I'm really highly focused in more recurring based maintenance uh and service repair um I mean there that decent Siz re retail but it really fit the mold of what I thought was interesting we were able to get to fair price after a long negotiation period I mean it took us I just looking back through my notes it took us like four months to get an executed Loi and then I thought that you know since we had spent so much time on that the deal process would have would have been quicker but um you know we just encountered issue after issue um I guess first you know it was one the first mistakes ID made was I went with a bank that didn't really do this type of thing um and you know it based it on a just a good relationship with the the the loone salesperson came down um you know met with the credit team felt like they understood what I was trying to do supportive um and that process like the whole approval everything like that was was pretty smooth but they I think you know not to speculate but you know it was also During the period where rates had kind of really shifted and I had locked in a pretty good rate so maybe had something to do with it but they started introducing all these little like challenges which would take weeks um to solve so for example um you know I think initially one of them was you know and I've learned this now as I gone through the my real the deal that I've closed on but you know SBA requires uh I believe it's vehicle that are over there like a threshold like $110,000 of value before you have to get titled so this this company had you know 20 plus vehicles and so this Bank wanted to have titles on all of them and none of them were over that value they were all you know beaters which is very common in the space and um you know these titles for what you know basically everything all the names on them had one minor issue with it you know that and instead of ersan um since you know when there shouldn't have been an S there for plural and so we had spent like days in literally two days in the DMV retitling all these titles this was when we're supposed to close the first time and then you know then they had to get shipped to Georgia and come back that took another two weeks so we delayed the close the first time because of that um and then meanwhile another issue sprung up where um you know they had a exclusive agreement with their primary supplier which the bank and Banks Council had uh thought that that kind of fell into the franchise category um which we immediately kind of debunked but we had gone through that whole process everything we had said you know they took basically three weeks to agree to um but again that delayed the clues and then meanwhile you know this is really the the underlying issue that really started to come to surface which is the financials kept on getting better and better um almost to like a scary unreasonable level where gross margins were just like exploding out and you know it just I couldn't I wasn't getting I was getting less and less comfortable with it you know ironically well it's funny that because from our first episode one of the eight red flags that you identify as stupid margins or stupid good margins or something like it should be if a small business's margins are too good that's not a positive in fact it's a negative sign and so you were seeing you were seeing actually this this play out uh what was going on yeah so and it's funny now because during the time I was very frustrated I was like how how can they not understand this like they must be obscuring it and now like as being a small business owner I could kind of see how this could happen um but essentially what was going on is their gross margins were were growing pretty rapidly and you know initially it was a little bit of red herring that my this was another thing that we kind of ran to ground with the bank and something I wanted to get comfortable with but you know part of that Construction Division had uh you know the way that they took their deposits you know that was obviously they were you know recognizing a cash Revenue so it's inflating the revenue side of things but we ultimately got comfortable with that given that the growth had kind of stabilized over the last couple years and you know we rent some numbers on that haircut the margin it it it's we got comfortable with that part part of it then on the cost of good sold side what they were doing um again I don't think it's that uncommon is essentially it was a formula total purchases um minus changes in inventory so um inventory was growing um which was also not you know it was reasonable that inventory was gr a lot of pool companies were stocking up you know post shortage and there's you know retails exploding all over the industry and um so inventory was growing um so there was a negative adjustment to cost of good sold and then what had happened was um you know I had hired uh somebody to help with the diligence side of things and you know one of the things which I definitely would suggest all the Searchers to do um this is a big lesson learned for me was was just get a good Q of I know I'm sure you guys have you I know you've covered this well on your show uh but essentially like I had felt conf I had high level of confidence in what I could do on the finance side of things and accounting and whatnot but having an objective third party there that's like you know I was able to do that in my next deal and it it just saves you so much stress and time but in in this case instead of hiring a qov provider I hired somebody that was more focused on inventory audit because there was a big portion of inventory here and so part of that was um and this is a simple thing that all Searchers should do but um you'd send uh ask the seller to send a email to your suppliers basically saying you're reconciling your accounts payable and want to know what their AR is our accounts receivable and so they they respond back and the response we got back from that big supplier was exactly what they had on their balance sheet but I'd remembered from a meeting you know weeks before that there was at the very bottom of the sheet there was a small dollar amount but it was basically labeled unbuild inventory and so I was like what's unu inventory and you know how come that's not reflected in what the supplier says you owe them and then it just it was like pulling a thread um because ultimately we found out that the supplier had some serious issues with invoice in and then the company's policy in terms of accounting was they weren't going to book the expense or the payable until they received the invoice so they were booking the inventory and so you're you had that negative adjustment on cost of goods sold but there was really no Associated expense with it or even attracting or understanding of what the debt was outstanding and then the other fatal flaw I made I think with you know a few exceptions is it was it was structured as a stock deal for you know that was part of that 3mon negotiation for the sellers they were basically doing a QPS um so was highly tax advantageous for them to do a stock deal and to get to the value that they wanted and um you know for a lot of other negotiation points um basically conceded on doing a stock deal structured as a an asset deal in terms of like indentification claims and whatnot so um anyway the point was I was assuming those those liabilities unknown um and they didn't even know what it was and then uh also there's a big component of working capital another big lesson learned here you felt pretty confident that you could scrutinize the books yourself but in fact you're advocating that the audience use uh get a q of professionally done so do you feel like a q of would have caught this earlier than you then did then catch it I can't tell if you're blaming yourself in a way that in a QV provider would have caught this sooner or or what what what what's the takeaway um I would it's more from the perspective of uh I definitely spent way too much time and stress on it um I don't even know if like a your run-of-the-mill qov provider would have found it um but you know having that objective third party to bounce ideas off of would save would have saved me so much time trying to run this down because you know you could raise it and they will give you kind of a clear answer on it whereas like you know you can go to your very smart friends or investors family and you know it's very hard to get an objective answer certainly one that would like you know make you feel either you know more comfortable with the situation so um going into it was almost like having you know um the therapist for me on the financials where you know I think it's because you know my ability to go in deep into Financial you know numbers and spend hours in it um you know was better to have someone where I was like okay I'll just focus on really some of the other important issues on the second deal okay and did you choose not to do it on your first deal just because you were trying to save the money or you you just wanted to own it because you thought you could do it so you kind of wanted to own it you wanted to have your hands in that particular I know better to cut corners on professional I think it was also I think it was also a function of like I couldn't find one that I really thought I was going to get the value out of it I was like okay it's just a proof of cash and you know quality of earning is like I could do that in the weekend but um and then I just wasn't impressed with the people I met at that point um so yeah I just decided to go on my own and then my my other thought too rationalizing was like I'll spend it elsewhere like I'll spend the money on you know making sure we get the right attorney get the right inventory audit going and all that sort of stuff okay and then you mentioned that they wanted to do a stock deal it was going to be tax advantageous for the sellers to do a stock deal uh which is not uncommon but and that even though this deal didn't come didn't close you were able to structure something where it was a stock deal formally a stock deal giving them the advantage that they wanted but actually protected you because of course the reason that buyers don't like stock deals is because then you're buying the whole entity and all the LI liabilities typically follow that entity stick to that entity when you become the owner of it but you put understandings or or legal Clauses in place to protect you from those liabilities and if so tell us more and and if you were able to just do that why isn't that what what we all do what everybody does yeah and I think it's one of those things where people could be quick to tweet or make a thre about and how it's you know a great workaround but I think the reality is when you're about to get down sit down at the closing table and you know that you're going to have to make an Indemnity claim or you know some type of offset to an escrow or you know a seller note escros are not really SBA friendly uh you know there's going to be litigation right like there it's just and so you know like I I I I felt confident with the you know the our you know our dra you know our purchase agreement draft I felt like we were well protected it's just you know whether or not you want to go into a small business acquisition when the businesses are so small fragile and then have to deal with you know litigation um and you know it's just a huge distraction and um so I think it like in theory it works but I think in practice when you get to that point um you know you have to be kind of real with what how that the mechanics of how you're are you truly protected from you know being pulled away from your business in the first three months for you know days you know days of every you know get weeks at a time right it's it's the one of things are the most fragile so um that's ultimately I walked away it wasn't that I didn't think that we had the structure in place um and the and the evaluation still worked the bank was still on board it just was like a new knew that the you know I knew inventory was off I knew the liability wasn't fully defined so I knew there was going to be some dispute down the road and to me I just didn't want to take that risk and so when you talk about having Protections in place with respect to H buying buying a stock sale versus an asset sale it still means that the protections are in place but you're going to have to litigate them versus if it's a pure asset sale like most of my guests it's cleaner and you're protected without having to be litigious right kind of protected by default yeah like I mean I've already so for example like I mean I've already had a you know like very like a minor you know the business that I bought currently I mean and I couldn't imagine in construction but I've already had like a claim tried to be made on me for you know like a a minor relatively minor construction project that was done and and just as simple as like look this is not than my entity like you're barking up the wrong tree whereas in a stock sale you know you'd have to potentially art you know fight it and then you know take it out of the seller note and then the seller would have to sue you for that if they don't believe it and then you would have to you know you're paying a lot of lawyers at that point gotcha okay great clarification thank you okay all right well then so so yeah despite despite putting these limitations in place you you you game it out like you just kind of just did with with us right now and you conclude that I'm not going to buy a business where I basically know I'm going to have to I'm going to have to litigate in 3 to six months after I after I buy it and so you walk yeah essentially made it was a very tough decision but yeah walk yeah is there anything there to be said in terms of this tough decision about kind of the discipline or the like the emotional wherewithal to do that because sunt cost fallacy sort of thing like the closer you get to to to closing day the harder it is to extract yourself from the deal anything kind of emotional psychological you can share with the audience about that about finding the discipline self-discipline to walk yeah I wish I could could could give some concise advice on that I know like essentially you go through all these different mental gymnastics of okay well if I just get the deal closed I have confidence in myself to make it work um you know there's the you know come the fact that I coming up on two years you know there's uh you know self-doubt on the whole search process at that point you know you're beginning to think whether or not you're gonna and then the the concept of going back to search is also daun thing because search is miserable um and so you know you're really at this point where um there's all these other you know just unpleasant you know things that you know are you're going to have to face once you kill a deal um and so part of that is you know you have to try to think objectively about it but you know that said like I did have the discipline to walk away but at the same time you know it probably should have died when I first discovered it like in September versus year end when I did yeah and in retrospect do you basically feel like you made the right decision any any anything else that you've learned or anything since then that you reflect back on and and is yet another lens to see that whole experience through 100% it was and I think I've mentioned it yeah I mean there were tremendous amount of deal broken deal costs on it probably higher than anyone would have expected um and you know you see I've see talked to Searchers that have you know had that you know disappointment and I think it's the best money that was ever spent I walked away from that I was able to close basically get my re from Reach Out point to when I first did a cold Outreach to my seller to close it was you know four months and you know we i' know had all my lessons learned um I I knowing what I know now as an operator in my current my current business uh I know that that deal would have put put us in a really bad spot Financial you it would have been financially disastrous for me I think um and and so without having walked away from that obviously you know I wouldn't have been able to go back out dust myself off and then you know I I I love the market we're in I love I love the business we're running the people there it it every sing almost every single characteristic about the business I have right now um is better than the one I was looking at before and you know it's a little bit of luck but you know had I not if I try to force that then you know I would have never found what I'm what I'm at right now well great right I'm happy for you so you do kill the deal you find that self-discipline and you park yourself back in front of your Compu computer to start back up your engine of search uh what you tell us how you found the business that you did bye um yes so I mentioned I I was basically running out of rural Leeds in in Savannah and so I just thought I would check the next city going north was a little bit picked over private equities all in kind of that South South Carolina coast area um and so I was just like well let's go south and and so I it was actually and I I made my promise to myself and to my wife I was like this will be the last batch and uh so I sent out I sent out a bunch of letters and and then I did a like an email campaign and then this one this this seller hit so um it was really in and around that area um probably all the way down to Jacksonville if I remember correctly but um you know it's just it was a little bit of a fishing Expedition um but numbers game looked out and and how many months into your search were you at this point uh full full two years so essentially full two years yeah and so you were going to call it a day stop your search go get a W2 if this last batch didn't work out you'd agreed as much with yourself and with your wife yes and I mean me meanwhile too I mentioned that you know i' focused on this you know the bank space financial institutions and then there was a little bit I know if you remember but there was a little bit of a a banking crisis going on there so there was some opportunity there for me to you know and I and I was pass I'm passionate about that space so I was like maybe I do go back like this you know and so it was pulling me there and then and um you know again if this deal didn't if this deal didn't happen or if that batch of emails didn't yield this one lead then um yeah i' probably be back where I was and to be clear the banking crisis that you're referring to meant good work for you meant perspective good perspect potentially good work for you because it's your area of expertise so what you receive a you you send out letters and you get a call what what does it look like when you got the fish on the hook uh we started immediately you know iners meetings um term sheet uh you know he wanted to close uh May 1 which you our interests are align there and so you know fortunately I had you know the Playbook and was able to really just progress things pretty quickly so we went pretty quickly under Loi um you know had already lined up relationships with lenders and started that whole process and and then um yeah so May 1 close MH May 1st of this year so you're 7 months in at this point yep and what can you tell us about the business you've already said that it's uh in the pool space but tell us more please uh about what this business does where it Services you've teased that also size Etc yeah so I'm I'm a little biased but I think we're the best of what we do in our markets which are I mentioned they're they're pretty pretty high affle and high demand or you know demanding customers in that market but we you know it's kind of similar to the Goldman thesis we we we Pro we price that a premium because we provide premium service and because of that um you know we're able to to pay our people better and um but yeah we're we're focused mostly in Maintenance and Service and we do do retail um and it's I'd say on the retail side is primarily shift Focus or mixes towards uh commer commercial so we're we're pretty big in in both chlorine sales um and Delivery for a lot of the resorts and and some of the um you know local power washers things of that so um for me like what I found when you say retail what does that mean just selling chlorine but literally from a brick-and-mortar location yes so we have two brick and mortar locations that we that we sell it's mostly chemicals like so you know it's a little bit different than most of your pool supply stores where there's a little bit more of a mix with spa and other recreational grills and things like that we're you know heavily weighted towards um what which I like is like the non-discretionary goods of of chemicals um that you know the pool requires no matter what and and so you said that you're servicing commercial clients from those brick and mortar but also consumers yes yeah it's but you know the in terms of mix it's and also because of the volume but yeah it's heavily weighted towards more commercial um you know again power washers coming and buying liquid chlorine we're probably one of the biggest liquid chlorine sellers in the area um and then the resorts they can't really store chemicals on premise so we we do delivery bulk delivery um and um yeah and then a lot of them will come in you know in a pinch in emergency and then they'll buy from the store on account with us well you may have just answered my next question but it it seem seems a little unusual that you would service commercial clients through a retail operation I would just imagine there's kind of a more of a distribution or delivery you did just say that you do some delivery relationship there or they just pick up the phone and call you wherever you might be and say we need this and swing by the warehouse or something I'm just I'm not imagining commercial clients walking into a resil establishment to buy stuff maybe I'm just wrong about that but I think of retail as targeting and consumers homeowners in your case yeah I mean I I understand your yeah your your confusion on me because it was a little bit surprising to me as well but essentially it's I think it kind of stems from the history there where um you know we were at one point um you know big on on making sure we have all the right parts so we have a lot of like a lot of pool contractors a lot of our smaller which I think is going to be an interesting uh acquisition funnel for me but a lot of the smaller like single pole single pole operations single truck operations come and byy liquid claring for us um and since we deal in so much volume you know we're able to pretty much offer the best pricing on that so um yeah it's you'd be surprised it's it's it's a lot of the smaller operations Mom and Pop um and then yeah the resorts is more deliveries but they do come in you know again when there's an emergency um and then it's usually when there's people you know when they have a a facilities manager that actually knows their way around equipment then they'll come in and buy parts um they'll actually will buy like equipment that they can install but generally speaking um yeah that that is all mostly done on site um including the delivery and the I guess an analogy might be like a paint store there's there's one in my family and like a lot of paint stores often serve not just home homeowners who want to paint their living room but actual professional painters and uh and paint Crews so a lot of their business is actually just commercial as in your case uh okay I sidetracked us a little bit can was there more to say about the business could you give us a sense of size and history sure um so I'd say it is it was call it low single digit million Revenue um uh we had pretty attractive IA margins so but still kind of sub one million iida uh 20 employees 20 trucks um two locations um so yeah I gives you a little bit of side and so did you consider that kind of right in The Sweet Spot of what you were looking for size-wise or a little low a little high like how did this how close to the Bulls high was this um actually it was a little bit on the low side for me but it kind of met the bottom band bottom range bottom you know band of the bottom range part of my size threshold um but yeah everyone that you know after searching for two years I mean you this just everyone and I agree with it it's you know you want to be really above a million e uh it's just there's a lot of advantages to that um terms of you know stability ability to to offset cost scale you're you know it's a little bit subscale and that's you know where I'm at right now um which I think is really what I'm most excited about I definitely want to return to that the question of size of course is always an interesting one and and as you said you're living it um was there before we get into your ownership and your operations and and scale versus subscale is there anything more to say about the transaction any any takeaways from that experience you you were making it sound pretty pretty easy pretty smooth I should say yeah I'm trying to even think if there were any issues that had come up I'd say it was of all the deals that i' looked at or gotten close on um I think it was also benefited by uh the seller was just very Pro you know he was very um he EXP and everything along every request I'd gotten was flipped right back to me um I think there's two different types of sellers where you send diligence requests in batches it may overwhelm them so you might break it up into bite-sized chunks he was on the other end of the spum where he wanted everything right away and he would turn it quickly so that that kind of really helped facilitate the process yeah and so this that sounds great to be clear this was a proprietarily sourced deal yep yeah so interest interesting that he was so he was so responsive and because part of the lack of responsiveness that owners sellers are often known for is that they're busy operating their businesses uh and so if you do get a seller who's pretty responsive often that can be because they've already done a lot of preparation in advance they prepare their business for sale basically maybe a broker their broker's leaned on them to do that maybe they've just had the foresight to do it themselves so interesting that you were able to proprietarily Source a deal and that the person was organized enough and responsive enough to just be flipping you back information just an observation yeah no on that point um and actually this is a little bit of unique Advantage I had on this um he he had done he had run a process in the past um so he didn't know what to expect and because he was still under some type of draconian agreement with the broker um he did not want to re engaged with that buyer uh and so he'd ra you know basically came in competitive with price but then you know not having to pay whatever the ridiculous broker fees are nowadays like double digit percentage fees um you know I decided to move forward with me ah okay all right so this his he had his own broken deal uh but for which he had prepared for and was pretty organized and that had been sounds like relatively recent uh about two years prior I believe and anything to say about the terms of the deal was it pretty much in line with Market anything to to say about that it sounds like a really attractive business maintenance recurring high-end clients so I would imagine and and sizable like you said not maybe not at the the million dooll SD level that everybody wants but maybe approaching that so I would imagine that it could uh command a slightly higher multiple than than what we typically hear I'd say it was like right down the Fairway way of what You' you know what you hear like are reasonable multiples for this size so I mean it was um and it was pretty vanilla in terms of asset purchase agreement um really no unique circumstances there were like a few assets that were clearly a kind of personal that you know we carved out but other than that it was pretty straightforward well as you said the fact that the seller was not going to use a broker this time meant that he maybe didn't feel like he needed to squeeze the mult MP le as high as he could get it uh well great so let's shift into your ownership of the business and and what that's been like uh I know there have been a couple of challenges why don't you tell us about one or two of them um okay yeah well I guess the biggest one um is so about so post close uh so part of the uh seller's ability to turn these this this information so quickly was he had a very diligent bookkeeper um who you know would be employee of the business going forward and um you know which I was excited about and then post close quickly discovered you know day one that effectively she was really the general manager uh and not only that but like everything went through her so the seller actually was more taking more of a strategic you know he step away from the business that was another you know consideration for his sale he was for health reason you know over a year ago and so she was running everything and so initially I was like this is fantastic like I'm going to go in here and get to you know just get to know the employees get to know the customers redesign the logo you know it was just like okay look this is great like I'm gonna actually have a a GM day one and then trying to line her interests and just really blow this thing up and look for Acquisitions immediately and then um I guess when did things really start to get a little I guess so what happened was about three four weeks in um so another thing too was they were very good uh initially at U they they had started the whole transition process uh about like a week leading into close so transferring all the books all the accounts she was opening all these accounts you know for me during you know right leading into clones while we were finalizing all the the you know the documents and closing the loan Etc and so you know that was seems like it was too good to be true and then so about 3 weeks in um you know I started pressing for some you know data some information I was I I wanted to see some financials you know rough Cuts like trying to see where we were tracking post close and um you know I was kind of always getting the run around I was like okay you know you know we're on QuickBooks desktop which was disaster and that you I couldn't even get into my books and then um you know then I finally got that first cut of financials and I was like this that was like my heart dropped because it basically showed that we were down like 70% which I was like you know the bank Remy was like this is wrong wrong so I didn't Panic too much but I was like this is wrong I just need to understand why and so I started pressing her for the login EV you know and basically she was going on vacation for a couple days and I said okay like before you leave I just need all the login information um and then so she left and then never came back um and wow so about two days you know after a day you know things had she had things had gotten a little bit you know tense but I thought that might have just been like you fatigue from the deal um and you know I think it was I kind of chunked up a little bit of personality but um so when she had left I was like you know after a day I was like I don't think she's coming back and she wasn't answering calls or answering texts and then you know after three days our policy is like effectively resignation and so I was like okay I got to figure all this out and so I walk into her office which is now my office and it's just stacks of papers everywhere you know I'm logging into all these accounts for the first time and um I have no idea how like all because they like they have they had a very they have a very you know well-defined machine uh you know of of processings but they're all they've been developed over 20 years and they're all like paper driven you know there's a reason why they do everything but there it's not as as as you'd expect and so like simple things like you think like a business like a invoicing right the way that we price we do for example not flat rate you know we charge our maintenance maintenance customers visits plus chems it so the invoices are complex um also since we changed over a lot of the systems they weren't talking to each other um and so a lot of the in this you know specifically invoices were getting like stuck and and I knew she was getting frustrated with it but I didn't even know where it was or what the extent was and so that was kind of my first attention was like okay I got to get these invoices out because we basically had a month of invoices piled up and um they were weren't even seeking to our QuickBooks to send out those invoices and then meanwhile I didn't have any real terms with my suppliers it was all like practically cash on delivery because you know I just just had closed and you now we've developed a little better terms but the time it was like this is really running towards a liquidity crunch um and then just as I thought I was starting to get the hang of of invoicing and QuickBooks this is like you know a few days in a week in of me sitting in that chair um I get locked out uh there like a two-step verification that goes to a phone that is hers that was not answering and um and so basically that was at that point it was a little bit of a panic mode because I I hadn't gotten any invoices out um like I said there's hundreds uh and hundreds of thousands of dollars that are just stuck and then meanwhile too you know as you know like War on getting invoices out it's harder to collect and so um I really had this like moment of of p and the meanwhile I still had no idea how any of the systems are working I was just like my only goal was getting out invoices at this point so um and and and Ryan the people at the business at this point so she was kind of a defacto GM under her or aside from her is everybody just crew are you is it just basically you in the office and remaining you in the office and just Cruise do you have any support is what I'm asking now I have you know I'd call like three key employees that are fantastic and they they were they well two of them were there during that time but it was so early and you know they were very anxious about the deal you know they didn't you know they didn't know me or you know they they didn't know that they didn't have the like level of confidence in me and you know and so um I couldn't go to them necessarily and by the way they were so shielded because again everything was going through her that they didn't even know how to do these things so no one knew how to do it regardless she was like yeah so um in the meanwhile too I wanted I certainly wanted to kind of keep a a you know confident uh face on every all this throughout this process um so yeah it was at that point I was like okay this this is the the nightmare that all the you know hear the horror stories you hear of the Searchers um and so yeah so how do you hack into your own accounts uh I did hack I basically I had to file like all these forms uh with everyone from you know the QuickBooks into it to you know our point of sale quick point of sale to our 401K uh so I basically had filed these like ownership proof of ownership paperwork uh I mean I probably spent like four days on just the like in the Perpetual like support hotline of into it it got to the point where I was like I was ready to like I was going to call like like an old boss to try to get an intro to like Senior Management into it to try to get this thing unlocked because they would just send you in an endless loop and then um even when you sub can only imagine oh man it was and then even then when you submit all your paperwork it's like oh yeah they they default to they think you're like trying to commit fraud and so I understand a little bit of you know the security around it but at the same time you know I had everything that I needed to prove that it was my business and you know you still got to go through like all the red tape to get it done so it probably took probably like seven to 10 days to get that open and then meanwhile I had immediately hired yeah immediately hired an external bookkeeper to help um and this didn't really help the situation this particular sit I do like like working with them but you know they were like okay you got to get off QuickBook desktop we can't help you until you get off online so we had to we were trying to basically migrate from desktop which had just been migrated over into online and the meanwhile like you know that was this whole migration process and you know we were having that issue with those invoices not sinking well that got like multiplied because when we went to online you know our our CRM system effectively didn't connect with that and so you know there was a basically like you know I was kind of dual tracking like getting access to QuickBooks at the same time like you know I knew it wasn't even going to work when I finally started when I was able to get in to the online version so we basically like we had an online version that had like nothing populated in it that I started invoicing out of to just try to get some cash flow but um you know it was it was a it was scary well SE in seven to 10 days of lost basically income not lost income but deferred income uh when you're the whole reason the whole you know precipitation of of you looking into it was because you're you're starting to notice your working capital dwindle anyway and then it kind of the dwindling accelerates right as you try to fix it um that must have just been terrifying uh and and so this kind of just stop gap of of just trying to issue some invoices out of your new QuickBooks instance did that bring in a little money yeah so yeah so actually what I I think my Saving Grace well two things one I was to say like the only only way I was able to sleep at night was that I had a decent sized line the credit so um I knew and the business was still going strong and we're in the busy season too you know maybe if it was during the slow season it would also been scary but you know the business was booming it was heat of the summer um and I had the line to fall back on which fortunately I never had to tap but um you know what was saing Grace was I I I was calling all my friends anyone that was in between jobs or you know just come down and help me like help me because again I didn't know any of the processes either was like help me figure out what this stack of papers mean what this stack of paper means and you know everyone's got their own lives and my age like you know kids and everything like that so actually called I hir an intern when I first started searching uh yeah this the summer 2021 and I and I didn't even know I was doing at that point searching because I was so fresh and that involved into me just coaching him on his career we kept in touch and so I reached out to him was like a total F I was like what what are you doing this summer and he's like I'm working in the kitchen and I was like you gota help me and he was like he drove down that that weekend h a little choked up about it it was drove down that weekend uh only expecting to stay there the weekend and then he got like so invested in it that he like saay for the whole summer and we just we just like war roomed war roomed it out um that's amazing man yeah well also probably a testament to how much he appreciated the kind of the kind of intern evolving into internship of evolving into career counseling that you had you know given him uh two years earlier yeah it was awesome because then and yeah and he's still he's still in FA role he's helping out uh remotely um but yeah it was a lifesaver because we and then also just having someone there that you could uh kind of again sounding board therapist like object to third party um to to help you think through like yeah as you're staring in the abyss uh how we're going to get through this by the way if he was the the reason you guys met is because you had hired him as an intern for your search he must have had an interest in search he sees into into your acquisition two years later and he probably never will want to search again right no he's he's he's genu well the reason I hired him too like he he he actually read all you know all the search books like as a sophomore um which is really impressive he's really genuinely curious in it but you know I'd always been I've been mentoring him to get into this Investment Banking path and I've been supportive of him making that next jump so so you know now that he's got a full-time offer there you know we'll see like he's going to probably help me out the summer and maybe it comes back in a couple years after uh after you know two years of pain and misery the banking is what's his name uh Carter Carter cool well thank you Carter and so you and Carter spend weeks and longer basically P piece of paper by piece of paper uh working down these Stacks in the office and and kind of revers engineering the whole back office of this business and do you succeed by the end of it do you feel like you got your arms around the thing yeah yeah we we we got things kind of under control um I'd say by like end of J end of J by mid July we had like basically full access we were still learning like processes um but you know we we basically had unlocked everything had gotten all those invoic caught up and you know we beginning to start like okay thinking about where we can improve some of the processes and what of the bookkeeper just any any uh closing of the the loop there or did she just truly ghost and remains a ghost truly ghost wow I mean I haven't be honest haven't followed up uh yeah but yeah and I assume when you're when it was really hitting the fan you're calling your seller and saying why is so and so not being responsive like what did did your seller at all give you any kind of throw you a line or anything do anything helpful here you'd think that they would be able to do something helpful yeah I mean I think well so from his perspective he he relied on her so much he again he didn't really understand what she was doing in there so like from like practical sense like you could help me with some of the stuff we're trying to go through not very you know self-described not very Tech techsavvy um but you know apparently she ghosted him as well so uh you know I okay yeah it's in the meanwhile too you know obviously as you're going through this you can't help but speculate like is there like fraud going on right or whatever you know and so you're in the me you like have to kind of fight that because there's you know immediate crisis that you're dealing with in terms of just getting access to your your books and getting invoiced out but you know there's that always in the back of your mind and then you know how how big is it yada ya y but um yeah I think it's safe to say that if there was anything it wasn't material I don't you know I'm still kind of digging into things but going through that whole process too obviously like I I did get had to get in the weeds and haven't really discovered anything there but yeah that that of course would be conclusion number one that the second you asked to really look at the books the person in charge of the books skips town a bit of a tell exactly uh all right well let's talk about the pool business a little bit here Ryan um well actually let me ask a bigger picture Home Services question so you have said now a couple times you've made clear that your target market um is uh basically higher-end homes you're in the Golden Isles area which is this really fancy famous golfer area uh of Georgia off the coast of Georgia um and so that allows you to charge pre premium prices which allows you to pay your people more which allows you to have uh higher quality people um it allows you to provide better service there's just all these happy KnockOn effects when you have when you when you charge pre more premium prices so that's a kind of um an example from the world of pools do you think that that's it's fair to extrapolate that pattern to anything in home services so for the Searcher out there who might be considering any of the 10 home services that are that there that exist um that they should think about that as a as kind of a strategic uh strategically appealing to go higher end I'm answering my own question of course higher end is always better in everything yeah I mean yeah I think it's always helpful to have a strong and growing Market um I think you're the customer base that we have it's it's I guess I could describe it like there's a high percentage of checks that we get that are just from like family trusts or you know the third generation homes you know they all have like you know their own off everything like they almost have their own corporate function so it's almost like a B2B in a way for a lot of these customers W um and then so that's great and you obviously don't have and they care about the quality right so they're not going to they're not going to beat you up on a equipment install you know saying they bought it on internet for whatever price like they just want it done right they want it done before their grandkids are in for the holiday and you know that's why we're there and so they're not you know you again you don't have to deal with that you don't have to deal with any sort of um you know accounts receivable issues now that said like we are B Toc so there is you know we do deal with like lot what other Residential Services businesses challenges on that side of things you know difficult customers uh difficult to please difficult uh difficult to collect but I'd say I have that than most and then I'd say residential services are not all like created equal um even within the same industry it really boils down to you know what level is recurring reoccurring um and Project based uh I don't recommend really any Searcher that doesn't have like direct Project based experience in that industry going too heavy into that I've just seen it um from other search I've seen deals um that have pass unfortunately that are having issues there um but yeah I mean the end of the day you really want like I love my maintenance I love all my departments but I love my maintenance division because I know exactly what it's going to be every month um service it's it can be lumpy but it is non-discretionary by nature so it on average it kind of usually around the same place and then retail uh you know it can back retail in general in pool industry is struggling but again since we've focused most non-discretionary Goods um you know it's probably a little bit more stable than than most but um you know that's how I think about so like and then when you know there's no no secret that private Equity has been all over Residential Services space um I think they are starting to go into pools for that reason I think it's the one place you know or one of the least focused areas for the last 15 years relative to like Pest Control Landscaping Etc so like yeah I think Pest Control is a great business if you can find a a good one at a reasonable price problem is is a lot of them are picked over and then you might have to go subscale or you know there's a reason why you know they they haven't sold to you know the big the big players in the space or platform private Equity back platform couple things there um just to be clear with the way you broke down your business uh maintenance service and Retail so maintenance would be pool routes so you one guys in your crew show up to houses on a reg basis whatever once a week once every two weeks I don't know what it is to clean the pool and and and make sure the equipment whatever pour the chlorine just maintain uh and that's pure that's pure true recurring Revenue uh and then Services something breaks you get a call one of your crew goes out and fixes it so that's less predictable um lumpier although pools are breaking regularly uh so so it's not maybe it's it's not lumpy like Project based I mean there's kind of a a steady stream of calls coming in and then retail is is what we discussed um already earlier and so the pie chart of of those three buckets of your business what does that look like uh it's about Revenue wise 40 4020 of uh maintenance service and Retail and so you've already you just said it but let's let's hear a little bit more on um recurring versus project maintenance versus project first of all in the pool World a project-based business would be what building pools pool construction yeah exactly that's how I would find find it I mean yeah exactly it's funny I mean isn't that doesn't Brent bore have a a pool building business like there are uh cases of pool building businesses being widely successful um but anyway is also class of his own for the record I I don't I love the concept of pool construction I just think from a business side things there's a reason why you know maintenance businesses at scale trade High single digit double digit evida and construction you could have you know 20 million evida business traded like two to three times it's because you know I could stop marketing actually I haven't even spent money in marketing yet but I could stop marketing tomorrow and my maintenance business will continue you stop marketing construction you know you work through your pipeline that's it um also there's challenges just huge amounts of headaches it always looks great on paper projects always get delayed there's always issues there's all these like you know un see liabilities that come up you know three years later someone could try to sue you for a crack concrete you know it's it's a headache um but yeah I mean I also believe I have close friend um who I want to introduce it to by the way that owns a pool business that's you know closer 50% construction highend and the thesis there is you build the pools and then you you know maintain them so it's a little bit of a funnel into the maintenance business um and I did think about that for landscaping when I was focused on that space for a bit but um so there there are merits too don't get me wrong wrong but um you know I'm happy that I don't do any real construction we do some renovation work uh which we Sub sub out but um you know we've been really focusing on trying to dial in Maintenance and Service going into the next season before we take any big projects like that on and going zooming out regardless of just pool or whatever particular industry but project vers project Revenue lumpy project Revenue versus recurring Revenue maintenance Revenue did you feel in your cash flow crunch Terror when the bookkeeper ghosted you like that must have been such a moment where you were like oh my God I love recurring Revenue because you it was I mean well I guess I should ask like the recur the recurring Revenue do you also have to invoice for that or is it on set on credit card yeah so like one of the things that I'm working on right now um is I think one of the reasons why our margins are so good so it's a little bit of a double-edged sword but we're we're unique in how we price and offer our services so we offer our customers the option of doing weekly service bi-weekly twice a month or monthly um and and then we do plus chemicals so for example our weekly service you know might be might change so don't quote me on this but $55 per visit plus chemicals um so it allows us to you know always protect our mark on the chemical side of things um and then typically those do average to like what you would be a higher higher all-in cost for the consumer than like your flat rate where flat rate though argument against that is you know the quality is not always there they're putting in just what's needed um and so but the Challenge from the business side of things is we have more seasonality in our business um so whereas a flat rate provider uh will have their margins squeezed in the summer because they're putting more chem in the pool um you know we're protected on that but what happens is you know our both our consumable sales the chemical sales and then also the frequency you know we people that will downgrade from weekly to bi-weekly in the winter and so you know we have a little bit more seasonality um and then also because of all those changes and really more of the processes that were in placed when I took over uh there was never really a focus on uh auto pay and getting payment information um and so you know like we had like a large percentage of our customers were still getting mailed invoices um so yes it would I was the comforted by the fact that I knew you know approximately what we're going to get in maintenance um but at the same time too like it made the invoicing out of things like that much more daunting because it was like all these different service offerings and all these different line items for chemicals and Etc Great Ryan thank you for that well I uh we're going to start wrapping up here but I want to give you a little bit more uh space to talk talk about the size of business that you bought we've we you touched on it earlier and I feel like everything that we've heard about your ownership is kind of like uh prove the point demonstrated the point but um you didn't buy a tiny business you didn't buy small let's say you but you also didn't buy quite at that million dooll SD number that is really the ideal uh so talk to me about how now being inside such a business you really appreciate like how how in fact appealing it it would have been to be able to find a business with a million dollars of SD was it basically just because like you just million dollars of SD suggests more people more management layer there would have been somebody other than a loan bookkeeper who could completely sabotage your business that sort of thing or are there other things uh yeah I that's one of the the main factors of it I mean yeah you have more of a management structure in place where um you know the roles are uh you know you lose somebody it's not the entire department um and conversely when you hire um you know you could absorb those costs more easily whereas you know it takes a bigger percentage of your of your margin away when just maybe one or two higher I there's a there's a great example too within the pool space where um I'm sure you get this in other residential services but you know our crews for example like if we're running just say 10 guys right and they're each doing about 10 pools a day one calls out you know those other that those 10 pools get equally distributed amongst the remaining techs um and what happened you know this happened in the summer too which is another reason another thing that you know is a challenge but we're going to try to correct it next year but um you know as that as that number of guys start to become less reliable or at risk or Flight Risk you know those pools that need to get distributed across the team gets more burdensome and and so like when you go from you have seven guys all of a sudden and then one calls out then all of a sudden two people are getting two more pools on top of you know busy season so like you my friend that has a much larger business you know they don't feel when people call out um you know they have it just maybe May one guy might pick up a pool or you know maybe one pool here or there you know but it it gets magnified by that t yeah going back a couple steps here but I wanted to call out something that I was reminded of about P the pool business in particular because it it does feel like I mean I guess you could say this about all Home Services but it does feel like pool routes are something where margin would be competed away uh the barriers to entry are very low you don't there's there's a lot less training in this particular home service business than there would be required of plumbers or HVAC uh or electrical certainly um and they're appealing businesses uh to accumulate routes so I heard you refer to a one a one poar uh which was a term that uh Ben Ben bortner had also talked about in his episode Ben bought a a pool maintenance business in Key West um and actually Ben talks about the fact that be in Key West he had something of kind of a geographic moat there because it's Key West is is so inaccessible so hard to get to and had he been on the mainland just 3 hours North in Miami the business would have been totally unappealing it would have been the margins would have been razor thin it would have been the competition would have been very stiff but on Key West he was able to basically have some some pricing power because it's a it's kind of just a a much smaller Market that's harder for anybody to just crowd into and spin up a pool service business yours is it doesn't have that same Geographic mode but I feel like there's kind of a a similar um a similar appeal to your business just because of the way you POS the way that your business is happily positioned which is kind of the the luxury option or the premium option um do you feel like Pool Service businesses yours and Benz are both were are both seem to be exceptions to the rule do you think the category is appealing overall if you're not one of these exceptional businesses where you can where you have some pricing power um well I you me unpack that a little bit first thing I would say and this is also what drew me to away from Landscaping into pools um I don't want to Discount you don't underestimate the my guys are you know the there is a science to pull chemistry um yes it's not you know the level of HVAC maybe at least in terms of certifications and things like that but on the our service guys I'll you know their their knowledge is very impressive relative to your typical HVAC professional and then the maintenance side you know there is um you know a level a standard you know you can't just have uh you people have to be genuinely curious of of chemistry to be you know to be good at what they're doing um so that you know and that's also kind of what drew me a little bit away from Landscaping where you know may have just been don't think it's the wrong way may over generalizing but a little bit more labor intens and focus and less um you know expertise driven but uh I would also say great clarification thank you yeah and then I'd also say yeah I do think we do have a pretty good mode in our Market um but you know to Just Dub tail to point on um you know as it relates to S the competition side of things uh I mean we like I see it every day you know there are some single pollers that are that are content with their their book of business they've been doing it for a long time and they're good at what they're doing but most part and I can't give you any stats on this a lot of single pollers they come out of companies like mine where they're like you know they start think about the revenue side of things and they think okay well you know I service about 100 Grand of pools like I can go out and make six figures and then they don't realize like all of the other costs and you know operational headaches behind it and they might go out and they might be able to get you know a full book of business for themselves but it's very difficult for them to retain I mean without having the back office support of dealing with customer complaints billing as we talked about extensively um and uh so I mean i' I've had you know unfortunately during like very busy times this past summer but like I've had single pollers just approach me like just you know we buy my route just you know pay me my salary that you know I I was expecting to get here um and let me kind of you know get part of a bigger ship here so um and then meanwhile too like you know it's also without those levels of support and operations in the back end you know especially in a market like mine you know customers don't have a lot of patience for that so you know we get a lot of customers that you know may leave for cheaper options um but they're they Boomerang you know they come right back because y all those things I mentioned to close out uh let's just kind of talk let's just kind of like reflect on your journey here because you were a Searcher who was at the end of his search two years you had one last you know um kind of run at this and happily you found a business that that met your criteria you bought it and here you sit how do you feel how do you feel about where you've landed I feel I mean you've also caught me an interesting time I mean I feel great about where we are right now uh and it's exciting because you know we're we're just so we you know as I mentioned the we we worked through that issue then we had to deal with like busy season which um we were basically over Capac you know at capacity um turning practically turning business away so it was just hectic constant fires I mean we didn't even talk about like trucks being down my roof's getting ripped off in the storm like all these issues and now where phone finally settled down made some key hires that have made things a little bit easier and now we're kind of addressing all the thing all the things that we found were broken um or the reasons why like the business you know I think that you know frankly I think that's why the seller sold it like he had basically maxed out the capacity of this business um and had been really kind of Getting By every Sumer by the skin of his teeth and now we can kind of the manager team and me we are just like one by one trying to fix all the little things that had slowed us down all the little bottom necks like up upgrading our phone systems you know making sure we're tracking leaves off of paper and you know have like a more CRM process um some targeted sales it's so I'm and now that we have we have now sta so my first Focus was really making sure we're the right people um that was another problem we had fa over the summer where you know we only get paid when we actually clean the pools that's another that's a you know one of the downsides of of going against the flat rate but um so we didn't have enough people to to beat the demand this summer so we're Staffing up um we also want to train them properly we also want to make sure that people have the right attitudes um and now I feel like we're in a good spot there um had a big key hire in the management role that's um you know he's really really geared up and excited for um upcoming season and then yeah we've been working on the tech side of things and um yeah so anyway I'm just with you know we've had a little bit of a chance to lick our wounds from the summer and now we're you know everything that we've laid out is starting to come together for what you know our busy season kicks off really the first warm day of March and then you know I'm sure there'll be a whole host of other broken you know things that we'll discover issues that we'll solve next um slow season but yeah so this is like the perfect like and I'm looking forward to next season like I'm looking I you know during my search you you know Searchers would say you want to shy away from season seasonal businesses um and you know I don't think we're that seasonal but I do like this concept of having some time to reflect and um and to build um because you know during the business season it's just you know non-stop Red Line yeah Jesse sunquist said the the exact same thing Jesse who bought a pet Pest Control business actually um he was looking forward to the winter to to be able to uh to just have some downtime to reflect I mean it's kind of like in these in a seasonal business or seasonal is business like pools like Pest Control uh maybe it's kind of like the the the framework is like you work in the business uh when it's busy season you work on the business when it's slow season sort of thing yeah love oh yeah great oh yeah right you guys are of course in the the WhatsApp group together yes yeah Chad as well and uh and Chad Chad Hilder not knocking you down one by one I think I got two or three more to go in this group those guys super help get me through that uh that summer oh good that's great well by the way why don't why don't you just share a minute on being part of kind of a pod kind of WhatsApp group uh you just said that it was really helpful getting you through that summer anything more to add to that to the value of that do you recommend that to other people oh yeah I can't recommend that enough I think if you're really GNA go all in on search full-time and and and commit to it like you need to have a support group of of people that are in the boat with you because you know I fortunate enough to have a great network of friends that have a lot of great deal experience private Equity experience and they're all very smart people but it's a different animal search and all the challenges you face and uh we kind of stumbled into this group together um and um you know we were fortunate enough to see everyone you know co- from search to buying businesses uh to you know trying to scale them and um you know everyone's everyone's by sharing all these challenges you face you realize okay well I'm not Al like this is not a unique or crazy situation um and then everyone's you know then you could provide support for others objectively and uh it's just been I I can't I can't recommend if you're going to go through search make sure that you're trying to build that Network I would focus probably your first few months on that even before you start start going out um trying to find people that are and we're complet we're perfect strangers before we all met so you know it's it's funny I wonder Ryan if it should be like you know when somebody's organizing their search I mean it's what you just said there's kind of the typical ways that one might organize their search get their CRM going get their list of Brokers that they want to reach out to whatever kind of like you know get everything situated on the desk and then start well maybe one of those one of those things should really that people should think about uh is POD like finding a pod finding a group of people that are are doing this that you can that you can be in a WhatsApp group with or whatever and uh that that's a big box you need to check before before you launch your search um easier said than done but it's a nice concept Ryan the to so last question for you here so uh you use the Expression Scar Tissue on our preall uh referring to you know pre and post going through that going through your your summer and being locked out of your own books uh as well as whatever other Misadventures you had how do you think about being an SMB owner and the ups and downs and surviving that and fetal position moments anything to say about uh about that everpresent theme yes um yes uh so I would say um and Chad said it better than I'll ever say it because he's way more eloquent than I am articulate but um you know when you're early stages of small business you have all these issues that come up and they're seemingly and actually in probably reality they're as as exential um you know I I'd fa that and you know a few others to be honest um but you know as you start to get that feed under you get the traction understand how things are actually working and people start hopefully buying in on what you're trying to do all those issues that come up down the road it's you know it it doesn't get your blood pressure nearly up you're you know you kind of just move through it but yeah those first few months especially um you know every issue is as exential and sometimes when you do have as as exential issues that are material like you know you may not be as lucky as I was to get through it but um you know after that like I mean nothing's gonna phas me I mean we basically careful careful Ryan you sound a little over confident not going would no but I mean um and also too is it it was a great blessing in disguise to talk about this with my wife a lot because um you know at the time it was like oh no like I needed this person now the other big lesson learned like you when you first buy a business you need those people desperately especially in a smaller business and when you lose one you think it's over you're like oh no this is going to be it and this was such a blessing for me because I immediately had to dive in and learn everything like gr like Bottoms Up like in the weeds and learn the business uh deep understanding of kind of how all the system worked you know meanwhile like making mental notes of all the things that need to be fixed and then also earning I think the respect of my employees that see this and um yeah I mean um yes so but point is is when you go through you have to go through a little bit of those trials for you now to be a little bit more confident going forward and a lot of those issues that you face are you know a lot of blessings in Disguise uh I mean had for example in this case bookkeeper you know still working together contentious you know and something happened like that now it could have been way more detrimental whereas like we kind of ripped the bandaid off you know it's an interesting and good point that you just made about how blessing and disguise or maybe one of the positive byproducts of going through that particular crisis was that like it or not when that happens you have espe if you're just just transitioning in you have an audience and and the audience is is the the employees that you've inherited and they're probably watching very closely they maybe they're not as aware of How Deep The Crisis is or exact is exactly what's going on but point is it's an opport if you handle it well and you survive it's an opportunity to kind of earn your stripes and and earn in an accelerated way of maybe earning the respect of your team that this guy um is competent and can work through crises yeah and well back to your other point on that support group that's why that's so critical as well because to your point like you have an audience and you you can't you is you're it's lonely you know it's very lonely yeah when you're in that situation and then that group being there to support you it could be the difference you know here's a final question what what's the what's the grand plan it to or is there a grand plan are you going to be the private Equity acquirer here in a few minutes rolling up this industry um I I'd be lying if I didn't say that was my intent going in um but I mean my near-term goals is to to own the Georgia coast I think we have um you know a little bit of honey hole in our market and we're already all the way down to Jacksonville so and then already have some inroads in Savannah so just moving north um and yeah basically I think we we could ma we could do there's a lot more meat on the bone that we left this past summer in market so I kind of want to get through another busy season but if something opportunity comes up on the acquisition side you know route here and there I'll definitely definitely pursue it um but yeah the goal is is to grow um you know if we're I'd like to get it you know three or four times the size in the next three years which I think is very achievable just on the on the Georgia coast um so and you know the other thing about that too is uh you know as I mentioned earlier in the call like what my my motivation for going out on search was to control my own destiny now it's been a little bit of a I I want to like uh change the lives of the guys that work for me that that bought into me and in order for us to do that it's like we gotta take it to another level and so I don't know to give them opportunity yeah exact I mean everyone opportunity but yes like it's uh you know I think there's I I definitely see the appeal of okay just owning and operating a business steady state like yeah like we I could we could make more than a great living doing what we're doing right now and you know I feel great about it but um now it's I'm even more incentivized to grow just because you know the people that were you that kind of had my back you know you know um Ryan that reminds me in the 200th episode where I reflected on some things that I've observed patterns that I've observed from so many episodes I think you're I think you're hitting one squarely tell me if I'm wrong that you know people don't many Searchers don't get into this necessarily because they because they're seeking to have an impact on a group of employees that's not maybe they're aware that that could happen or whatever but it's not goal number one or even goal number eight uh And yet when they then to their surprise they find that that actually is incredibly motivating uh once they've once they've been in their business for a year uh really doing right by not just doing right by their team but having a really positive impact on on on their people is that an accur accurate characterization of your kind of trajectory yeah I'd say so too because I mean you start to you know you you the ups and downs of that uh I'd say my biggest disappointments uh are people related you know it's predacious customers and then employees that um in self-sabotage but you you kind of wear those ups and downs so you know when an employee gets stoked on a sale that they've done um you know or truly bought in really wants to kind of strategize on things I don't that just gets you going and you want to Fe all of it you want you want to kind of I don't know deliver all the promise that that that that you think is like you achievable so I it's awesome great Ryan how can uh people reach out how do you prefer they do that if they have questions for you um I guess we could just uh you hit my I guess you do me on Twitter I guess SMB quest uh or um yeah I have a I guess I sell my search fund website up that I still use the email for and that's Turner Point Capital so um you love love to talk to Searchers or other people in the pool industry I I've been trying to call I have a group of uh you know say it's very informal of uh a Pool Experts uh so anyone that's in the pool space that wants to try to compare notes on best practices I'd love to talk Ryan Doyle thank you very much for coming back on and congratulations on sticking through your search and getting something across the finish line and surviving uh being locked out of your own books and uh a sketchy bookkeeper and a very busy uh summer season and what looks like an optimistic 2024 ahead thank you will yeah I'm looking forward to it keep you posted sounds good 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