Andrew hitchings welcome to acquiring minds thank you sir I appreciate the opportunity to be here Andrew we have a lot of ground to cover today by way of brief introduction you and your wife Marcella acquired a home services business it was quite small and only a month into covet April 2020 you closed I believe but things have gone well you have grown it a lot and you all are on your way to more Acquisitions and developing into yes a holtco so I see our conversation today as talking to somebody who's really early on the hold Co path but with a lot of momentum I'm catching you right as you guys look to kind of graduate from acquisition entrepreneurs to holdco entrepreneurs so really um kind of pivotal Moment In Time that's the context let's do some let's do some history on you and your partners if you would uh tell us a little bit about you Marcella and Max please Andrew cool thank you for the intro I I want to pause first and just say I'm absolutely honored to be here I started listening to your podcast not too long ago but all of your guests are incredibly thoughtful um and very genuine in the podcast I think you're able to expose some of the true challenges that people don't generally like to talk about um but the breadth of your guests I think is phenomenal Max and I discovered your podcast before we flew to Kansas City to pick up a hybrid vehicle because you can't find hybrids in Colorado you have to go to Missouri to get one and uh we drove it back and we listened to acquiring minds the entire time and it was awesome because we just we would listen to something about whole codes and find it really interesting then we'd listen to something about you know an HVAC business find it really interesting we listen to your private Equity guests uh and so it's just been really awesome to be first it's awesome to be on the on the podcast but I I really just genuinely think this podcast is super helpful um that is extremely uh humbling and flattering I think somebody telling me they they binged my my content on a car trip is about you know the highest praise there is so that's awesome yeah there was a little bit of Foo Fighters mixed in there somewhere but uh but mostly it was acquiring minds um so so our background so uh my wife and I started a search back in the win winter of 2019 and 2020 and bought this business by way of introduction Marcela my wife she's Mexican she had a very entrepreneurial background she started uh one of the most successful cideries uh to date in Mexico before she uh this was after um you know a corporate job and then she sold out and went on to GSB and after GSB she went to McKinsey where we met and then uh later eventually got married Marcel was awesome she is uh she kind of handles our a lot of our Finance and Accounting elements she's really great from a customer experience perspective and so she brings that to the table Max Williams is our other partner here at Olive Ridge Partners Max is uh UT undergrad he's a chemical engineer who spent three years at McKinsey and we met a long time ago whenever I was interviewing UT undergrads and we really hit it off as friends and then eventually he came and joined our team and so max handles all the data he handles all the platforms he also is running the search for the most part for us and just a brilliant guy as far as you know technical skills and then I'm the I'm the operator of the bunch uh so I grew up in Missouri I went to West Point for undergrad um spent uh spent a bunch of time in the Army leading infantry and tank units and then went to business school and then McKenzie for six years uh thoroughly enjoyed all of those experiences but I'm just really kind of the roll up your sleeves get deep in the Ops type thing and so that's kind of what my my role in the in the trio okay great and so how did you and Marcella decide to search you're both you're at both at McKinsey at the time when you make this decision uh we were we were at McKenzie we both left the firm at the same time we got married went on a seven month motorcycle honeymoon through Europe uh Africa and some other places I I think part of our decision to jump into search was because uh we spent we literally spent seven months living on motorcycle with very little uh you know as far as belongings go and we went through some hard times and we became a really awesome team um and this was shortly after we got this was right after we got married uh we came back from the honeymoon I was looking for private Equity jobs uh she was you know still trying to figure out exactly what she wanted and uh you know I I talked to a few PE firms who just told me hey you know you seem really good but we probably won't put you in charge of a business for two or three years until you prove yourself out that wasn't something I wanted to settle for um I only knew one Searcher to be honest I in business school I never went to any of the courses uh you know the Rick and Royce book was completely foreign to me uh so I called up Greg Ambrosia who was one of my friends from the Army and from HBS and he was like man just it's easy just buy a business just uh you know just just buy one make it better and sell it it's it's pretty easy and he's like just just read this book just read this book it's you know Rick and Royce wrote it it's really just read the book and buy a business and I was like all right cool well I didn't know that he was in the book I think he just wanted me to read about him I think he kind of sucked me into it um and I tell people who Greg Ambrosia is oh so so Greg um Greg did a traditional search right after business school he grew city-wide um it was a window washing business in Dallas us and had a very successful exit um and I just remember in business school he's like yeah man people people will invest in you to run a business and I thought man we're military guys like we don't know the first thing about how to run a business and he had the he had the confidence to go out and do it and he did it incredibly well um I was not interested in making that leap you know McKenzie is a safe way to go um and so um you know I I took his lead read the book somehow got a call with Jim Sharp um called up Trish Higgins at chinmark who was a good friend of mine from uh from business school as well and it all just seemed pretty easy you know you know uh but I mentioned it to Marcella and because she's very entrepreneurial uh we just kind of decided cool let's let's um let's spend some time doing that before we decide to jump back into a corporate world so great okay and so yeah at that point you probably started really immersing yourself having more conversations reading maybe the other books um so so tell me kind of how the search unfolded and what did your search look like where are you living kind of give us a picture of the search yep so um we knew pretty early that we wanted to do a self-funded search uh we were fortunate enough to have some funds left over from our Consulting time we'd already paid off all of our student debt we didn't have kids uh so we had a lot of flexibility there and enough to invest in a business we thought we could wrap our arms around pretty quickly so if there was one thing from the beginning that was very clear it was a self-funded search versus anything traditional um the search started with a super wide geography it's like well we could live anywhere right we just came back from a motorcycle trip we have no nowhere to live so we were living with my parents for you know six weeks her parents for four weeks we stayed in a family home for a little bit and um we just kind of bounced around while we were looking and our search started with a really wide geography and wide industry scope I think as we got you know two weeks into it we realized that's not helping at all narrowed it down to a handful of States so then we went down to like six states and then when we moved out to Colorado um because it was the only like her parents have a place out here what's the last place we could stay for free uh we just decided we'd rather settle here in Colorado so it quickly within probably six weeks narrowed down to the Denver metro area um and Colorado and then we kind of kept our eyes open and had some flexibility on industry right so we we primarily looked for something that was fairly Ops focused just because of my background and what I enjoy but it took us a little bit of time to to narrow down to that well and so you were committed to a single geography to to to the Denver Denver Metro so that's that's pretty that's pretty limiting although it's not unusual a lot of Searchers don't intend to move when they find that business um you know it's funny uh that you had just said that the McKinsey was the safe option Andrew because I'm hearing a lot of adventurousness in you and Marcel's relationship I mean obviously the you know biking across two continents uh over seven months broke and then deciding to search and kind of like uh you know what's the um Couchsurfing the two of you kind of Couchsurfing around and not really having a plan so um I don't know which you are are you actual are you are you conservative or are you Adventure Seekers or depends uh definitely Adventure Seekers okay without a doubt we we have a very strong biased action I would say in a lot of things we do I I do I think she she helps to counter that a lot but in general um we're we're just we're very aligned and I think I think we're fortunate I mean we didn't come back from the the motorcycle trip broke we had some good savings right that we wanted to put together yeah um but you know we I think both of us just could not picture ourselves working for anyone ever we can and that drove a lot of that decision okay all right so you are settling in Denver and you are starting your search it's self-funded um you want something operations focused it's what you enjoy tell us how you find what you found um we only knew we only knew brokerage at that point we do brokerages and we saw you know it's as easy as buying real estate right the way it works now my mind was blown at that um and so we really just built a lot of strong relationships with brokers I think we really only searched in the Denver metro area for probably two months until we were under contract uh to purchase Colorado Home cooling which was an 18 year old business that specialized in whole house fans attic fans attic ventilation and had had a very Pro like I would say super profitable but steadily profitable uh history um we we kind of landed on it I would say probably fairly quickly because again we weren't sitting around waiting for a unicorn I'd had friends that were doing traditional searches who'd been looking for two years and had brought pretty decent deals to their investment investors and and couldn't get it through whereas we like the freedom to say hey this one looks good it looks good enough to where we're going to grow it and so let's just pull the trigger on it and uh so so that's that's kind of what it looked like it was super short and I think because kovid was kovid was starting to kick in when we were under contract and we had a closing date there was some Echoes through the banker that uh you know that is possible that funding might dry up given the uncertainty in the market so it's better to just squeeze it across the Finish Line before covid really gets um gets disastrous and so we had a pretty fast timeline and in general it was like well do we just buy this one grow it through the pandemic um learn a ton because we already had a feeling that if there was going to be economic impacts then most likely the deals on the market were probably going to reduce for a while interest rates might go up and it might be harder to get a deal through in a year but rather let's just buy something grow it and go from there wow how right you were I hope so um so two months a two-month search that's pretty incredible uh pretty short and but just so we understand kind of how educated you guys are at this point you have business school friends Greg you've already mentioned uh are you having lots of conversations I mean how are you able to educate yourself so quickly I is it is it are you educating yourself that much are you basically you had a few calls and you were just kind of improvising figuring it out as you went I think there was a lot of there's a lot of improv going on to be to be totally honest um that bias toward action there yeah yeah and and we we chose to have a lot of conversations with Brokers we we would we would index more on talking to Sellers as quickly as we could to try to understand the bit of the Minefield that we might be walking we actually got under contract super quickly right off the bat just to because you know the business was great but also we knew the likelihood of it falling through was pretty high let's have a few at bats right and so we found ourselves you know writing offers quite often um the other thing uh is we do have a good network of friends and family and advisors that we can tap on at any moment um to give us advice and and we did reach out to a handful of other people Beyond Greg that had been through this experience Marcella has some family members that invest in small businesses quite often and we would reach out to them and specifically like her dad give so it gives a lot of advice to us and so we we um we gleaned a lot of of uh guidance from them as well pretty early and we still do all the time that's great the so you you talked about that how the business Colorado Home cooling uh was nicely profitable an 18 year old business but very small tell us about kind of the size of it and how you reacted to that didn't seem to be a stopper go ahead um yeah so they were doing about 250k of sde um you know once you put all the ad backs back into it it had been steady it had been right at that level for 10 years um and we bought it for a 2.6 x multiple and we saw a lot of Promise in the product um a few things we really liked about it was the seller was incredibly genuine I I think it's really hard to parse out what the seller is like when you're looking at some sort of sim that may have a bunch of um you know exaggerated forecasts and things like that what was really interesting is that this broker rather than having to make graphs he would just do a 30 minute video interview unedited with a seller and and you watch this thing and and it just really this okay so this is the person I'm going to be dealing with all right that's awesome I would really like to purchase that person's business and the seller was very genuine he was tired he'd been um you know the the main main uh technician of this business for almost 20 years and he was ready to go um the deal was also attractive because um there was a lot of transparency the broker basically connected us and then stepped out of the way and which was really nice and so we could ask questions very directly the diligence had you know open books from the start and so we appreciated that transparency which was really nice and there was a bit of a red flag that was raised fairly early which was once the seller leaves this has one employee and of course you know there's the old adage you know buy a business don't buy a job right yeah something to that effect and it got to the point pretty quickly that we realized we were buying a job yeah um but we looked at the industry we looked at the product which is a it's a green solution that is an alternative for air conditioning we saw this as something that would help with you know the climate change movement and all of these things um there wasn't a huge you know sophisticated competitor landscape and uh it was something we could do we could wrap our minds around pretty quickly and so I think as we got deeper into the diligence these elements of trust in the seller uh the transparency and the diligence uh the our ability to probably grow the business fairly quickly outweighed the drawbacks of the size the small employee base and any of those other things that might scare people off let's pick at those a little bit well actually first Andrew more on what the business does so what what is this product and what's the the pricing model is it a product or is it a service so people understand more specifically so um so when we just the business the primary product is called a Whole House Fan some people call an attic fan it's really great in drier climates such as Colorado you mount this fan in the ceiling and the homeowner will open windows turn the fan on it pulls cool air through the windows pressurizes the attic and pushes the hot air out of the attic they've been using these for a very long time because it it refreshes the house but it also consumes a tenth as much energy as air conditioning the products actually required in California now by law for track homes and so we saw that this could be something that Colorado would be doing eventually and so it seemed like a really good investment we're also right on the verge of covid and this is a product that freshens your house and the first thing that the CDC was saying is like prevent viral spread open your windows and so boom right right from the get-go demand skyrocketed um and so if we could harness you know jump on this horse and ride the horse through the covid bump that'd be awesome so that's what it focused on initially two and a half years ago uh now we've grown it to also install skylights we also a licensed electrical contractor with uh where we were originally a handyman with a very limited scope we now have licensed electricians on staff and we offer full Services of electrical contracting so we have solar companies that Outsource work to US general contractors that are building homes municipalities um so we have like a a good electrician base with a larger barrier to entry and that's given us more of a platform to grow from great well I want to connect figure out how you got from point A to point B but I still want to spend some time on point a here so this product the whole home fan that's you know essentially you were in version one of the business you were a reseller of this product obviously not the manufacturer so a reseller of a particular product and then you would mark up the product some and then have fees for installation those were kind of the two Revenue sources okay correct and and just just getting comfortable with this business you know in the this you've talked about why these risks were overcome in your mind but I do wanna there were still some significant risks so I think we should um just address them so the key man risk I mean you had a single employee what you know what did you and Marcella say to each other when it's like well what if he what if this guy quits day one or or he you know he demands twice the amount of salary you know 100 raise on day one what what how did you how did you get comfortable with that um well this I think part of it was the Simplicity of the product and the installation um I figured I could figure it out in a few weeks if I needed to do a lot of the work um that was probably you yourself would fill in if that right quit or whatever we also had the seller under a contracts for four months uh to to support and to train new employees and so we were entering the busy season and so under the purchase agreement he would at least stick around through the duration of the peak season so we at least had him to help the business through the hard times but also to recruit more people if he needed to another thing we did was in the negotiations of the price we in order to um reduce the purchase price a little bit we agreed to or actually we would meet the seller's asking price but a portion of that asking price would be a um a retention bonus so the actual seller price the the sales price went down a bit but the Delta there was going to be given over to our key employee as a retention bonus and it would come from the seller as a thank you for letting me successfully transition my business and it was kind of a little nuanced thing that we developed after after a handful of back and forth and knowing what his intention was that again the seller was super genuine he wanted to make sure that his employee was taken care of and we wanted to make sure he stuck around as well so that kind of helped um and so I think there were a few things that came into play that gave us a bit of confidence that we'd at least make it through the first four months without any significant issues so great that's great that's helpful and on the point about you and Marcelo were pretty confident that you could grow this obviously it's it's frankly a quite a small business so it's not interesting unless you can grow it but you also said that he that it basically had been steady at a quarter million dollars in sde for 10 years he hadn't grown it I anticipate your answer is going to be he just wasn't kind of growth oriented maybe he was more of a technician or whatever but still you know it would give me great pause if a business hadn't grown in in 10 years because you you would hope that demand alone would just pull a business along and pull pull some growth out of a business even if the the leader of that business isn't very growth oriented themselves um did that bother you guys or was it just a matter of like no we're gonna we're really growth oriented and the seller is not and and it's as simple as that um we knew that the reason why it was not growing is was seasonality so the the seller was one of the key technicians he would hire people in the spring try to train them and you know hire enough talent that he would stick he would keep around year round but he'd basically hire a handful of people in March over you know overcome this the busy season and then unfortunately he would have to let him go in like September and so it was very clear that that was the problem to solve and I think we underestimated the challenge of that but it was not a demand issue it's just that he he could not hire and retain and keep people long enough uh to help the business grow and so he had the key employee who'd been there forever who'd been on this for 15 years with him and beyond that there was just not a whole lot of retention right there was Zero retention actually um and so we saw a lot of other levers that we could pull to grow the business um but we kind of figured well if you can make enough if you can grow it enough to earn enough to pay somebody and keep them around year round and say you just plan to keep one or two employees on salary as opposed to making them seasonal then you should be able to break through the clouds on it right um and so we saw that as the challenge we knew it was the challenge and we were ready to take it on great and so so did you just answer the question and of how you dealt with seasonality you you would grow you would kind of put your own elbow grease into it enough to grow the business to a point where it could afford having hiring two full-time people is is was that the answer or was or was there more at that at that time yeah because it was like just make more money this is just making more money but I think at the beginning that was it let's just have enough earnings to reinvest into the business keep more technicians around um and and go from that that was the original thesis and that was part of the solution I think and then last thing on on the risks or the acquisition itself before we move on to how you've grown so 258 sde is you know one of the reasons that we're told not to buy small is because at that point you're barely replacing a salary and yet you're taking on all this risk so it's like why not just you know W2 it at that point um it but further in your case because it's a pair of you so you need you know in in theory if you're thinking about salary replacement you need to replace two McKinsey salaries uh to at least on paper look like this this decision makes sense now you're an entrepreneur and so you know you have you have bigger a bigger vision and bigger bigger plans but still like the argument about like needing to have some sde to at least replace the salary is even more extreme in your case because you had two salaries to replace because it's two of you searching how did you think about it just make more money no I mean we we honestly haven't paid ourselves much uh we knew I mean again to go back to the setup here we had just lived on a motorcycle for seven months like we've got like four pairs of clothes right we don't have kids we don't have a we don't have a mortgage um our fixed costs are incredibly low and it's like sure we could between the two of us we can live on a hundred thousand dollars pretty easily right we're just living in a small apartment uh and to us you know if you if your personal accounting is is that type of picture then it doesn't seem that bad with the intention of a longer term payoff I'll kind of go back to as well that I think something that uh Trish from chenmark said was that they are extremely Del delayed gratification type of people right and that is us 100 as well like we we leave a ton of money as as much money as we can in the business for future Investments uh we know that it's going to take a long time to do that and so as a result we can take that pay cut uh and be perfectly fine with it um we also I mean we're generally very blessed in that again no student loan debt we've saved up a bunch of money working for consultant Consulting and uh and so we were okay with tightening the belt for a while until we could could get the business up and running great excellent well the um yeah the superpower that is being Frugal and and having a low kind of Lifestyle nut to cover it's it's powerful um not having kids too helps uh um and and where did Max enter the picture so yeah so max um Max I had known from the firm I actually reached back out to McKinsey and said hey you got any summer uh mbas that are looking for an entrepreneurial entrepreneurial experience and um max saw a job listing where I you know because a lot the consulting firms people will take some time off go to get an MBA and then in the middle in their summer in between they don't have to go back to work for the firm they can go do something else and I was hoping to land one of those folks but Max who I knew from the business from from The Firm he um he came out on secondment so he got a full year to test drive our lifestyle our business our pay scale our mentality and uh he just fell in love with it and he's been crucial to the business growth and and he's now a partner in the business yes yes and was that always part of the vision or did it just kind of evolve that way your vision of bringing him on bringing him on initially I mean he fills the biggest Gap that we have that we had um and so you know from when I recruit you know I was like man I can't pay you much you're going to take a massive pay cut to come work for us but you know there will be equity opportunities down the road you know you will be able to invest in future businesses once we get to that point and and he liked it he liked it he liked the business model and he enjoyed working with us and we love working for him it's funny I I kind of pride myself on six years at McKinsey and I never opened Excel uh he is the he is the uh the counterbalance to that and so he was he was exactly what we needed at the time and exactly what we'll continue to need as we start to buy more stuff so let me let me um double click on that so a lot of um what you hear in this world is that is that the kind of excel jockeys need to understand that when they do find that small business to buy and get in the seat it's not going to be moving numbers around Excel all day it's going to be a very different experience um and you keep talking about how you like you're not in Excel jockey and you really like operations and you're in fact you're really drawn to it it's what you wanted what about it is it that you that you like so much what is your day-to-day look like like what diff What makes you different than than Max and and kind of what message would you have for the people out there who are more like Max looking to buy a business and less like you Ah that's a tough one uh what to tell them I I don't know let me see if I can answer that in a roundabout way um I was going to mention at the beginning it seems like a majority of your guests have an investment banking or a private Equity background and have seen deals and like purchasing a business feels comfortable to them because they've seen deals go through both from a purchase and a sale perspective am I off base on that no no I wouldn't say a majority but certainly there's a large contingent of people like that for sure yeah and and so um to me it was more like I know I can run this business I just have to build the muscle of learning how to buy one and so that was the uncomfortable element of this whole experience was understanding how to purchase a business and so once we got past that we're okay um I I think Max is interesting in that is he not not only is he brilliant on the keys but he also uh he has a good intuition for people I think there are there are individuals out there that have some overlap about how to run a business and are really good to it intuition Max has that as well and I think that anyone who is has spent the greater portion of their professional life purely managing spreadsheets and being on the bench should really consider you know when they have to go and fire somebody how's that going to feel right um when when someone quits their job and you have to go fill in their shoes what will that can you do that right and so I think maybe then to answer your question is for someone who wants to get into this you know maybe you need to find a partner that can fill that Gap you can you can have an immense impact on the business both from a search and an operations perspective if that's not your skill set but if that is unquestionably uncomfortable to you to be in the pocket as the manager of people then it you should consider your path right um so so does that does that kind of answer that yeah that's great that's great and just a little bit on you Andrew so were you kind of always naturally drawn to kind of leadership roles or is this military training or yeah it's both back from high school I mean it's just always it's always been a thing so okay okay great and I mean military just reinforces it right you just build confidence and and and you put more Tools in your toolkit over time but yeah yeah excellent okay let's get into um how much you've grown this business and and how you've grown it so so actually fast forward to the end it was a 250 K sde when you bought it what is it today 750 um 750. now when you think about when you think about it like that is what the business is earning and then we take a lot of that cash and you know that is going to fund the next business acquisition right and then also I'm paying we're paying Max a salary so he can live and he's almost purely looking at businesses to buy you know Marcella we've had two kids since then and so you know she kind of helps to buffer so I think our SD is a little bit uh it's a it's a little bit uh muddy because of that element yeah but if you were to strip out the cost of the search that's where it would be right now great so that's uh essentially you've tripled it in whatever less than three years so let's let's let's hear more about how you how you've done that you you overcame the the seasonality uh did we did we finish on how you did that or was there more on overcoming the seasonality um I think I mean you had a you had a guest on who bought a seasonal business I think it was an awning business yeah Andrew Harmon yeah and I thought it was super interesting and he purchased another business to be counter seasonal which I thought was awesome um it's really interesting and yeah that was one of that was one of the first ones we listened to on the way back from uh from Kansas City but I think we dug our way out of it by taking a lot of steps to make the the business not only less seasonal but um have more of a moat around it um we still see seasonal business it's kind of funny we still see very seasonal businesses be it Landscaping here in Colorado there's a lot of hospitality and like skiing and recreational related businesses that come across our radar and it's funny because every time we're like ooh that would be a lot of fun we could it turns cash we could figure it out pretty quickly but then then we just say nope it's seasonal never mind I mean it's not something where we want to keep doing that it's just that um you know we managed to um a few things that have really helped we've looked at products that help to be counter seasonal so as I mentioned we had a purely a cooling element um you know HVAC is your perfect combination you've got Heating and Cooling so it's not a seasonal business we didn't have an HVAC license and so we couldn't do that um so we looked at other products such as skylights Sun tunnels other things like that that helped move the needle a little bit um we we kind of gave way to some elements of it where we said cool we know this is going to be seasonal and so let's just recruit from like seasonal uh sources and that might help us buffer that that Peak but unfortunately that just exacerbates the peak um and so we learned that maybe that's not going to solve the problem um I think our the two biggest things that have helped the business to grow the time of year when it's profitable is one um you know actually become a licensed electrician service right before there's there's tons in small business World there are tons of people operating out there that don't have a license that shouldn't shouldn't be doing what they're doing um I mean this is your your your your your handyman Joe who's actually doing things electrically that he shouldn't be doing um this is people who are um you know not purchasing proper Insurance to work on a residence's home to make sure that both parties are protected there's a lot of that out there we saw that but we wanted to take it a step forward and hire a master electrician hire Journeyman Electrician so we were doing everything above the board and we did that pretty quickly and that helped that opens us up to a whole world of things we can do so you know to the original discussion of we need enough people that we can you know keep someone on staff sure we could keep adding handyman but instead it was like we realized no we need to hire electricians licensed capable people that will do the job right and that is going to help open the aperture of the business but also reduce the seasonality um and then the third thing I think we did to overcome seasonality was um as opposed to reducing your sales staff in the off season we re-pivoted them to Business Development so it's not just are we looking for someone that could do phone sales it's like hey when the season starts to wane how comfortable would you be going out and digging up business and so we it took us a couple of winters to figure that out but now our q1 while snow is on the ground is going to turn more Revenue than the previous owner had in a year and that is from standing up a business development capability um and so again a bit more of that delayed gratification element of let's invest what time and energy in the off season to to help to help the you know create work in the off season uh I think those were the big ways that we overcame seasonality and we're not totally in the clear yet but the the future's looking pretty bright yeah and let me just make sure I understood here two things first on the q1 snow on the ground sales being larger than a full year of business under the previous owner so that's selling cooling Services now for delivery in springtime yep delivery in February in March wow great and um okay I'll tell you I'll tell you how but I don't want to no I'm just joking no we actually we found a pretty good pocket in the market that we that we um have really approached Full Steam and it's paying off so like I think I think a lot of times you know a seasonal business relies purely Upon A Certain customer base as well right and we look beyond that normal customer base to hey who else can we sell to who are the decision makers for larger purchases how can we find those rather than let's just bang our heads against the wall trying to sell to the same individual okay and that's that's kind of been our approach okay okay so there's some kind of Secret Sauce there in terms of the target market you identified yeah who's willing to say yes to a sale in January okay but this is all still consumer business right yes okay okay and then and then the other thing about the hiring electricians properly licensed uh electrical um folks are you then kind of evolving into an electrician business I mean why electrical it's always a need I mean they're people you know the United States is having a well globally we're moving to a much larger electrification Focus over time right you're talking solar panels we're talking heat pumps batteries EV Chargers there will always be demand and if there's one place where we can really Thrive it is providing electrical services to residences um and and so it just it feels strategically very good uh with a lot of Tailwinds but also it was kind of what we were doing already and once you have licensed folks and you can apply for permits and you can apply for you know Municipal contracts and stuff like that it just really opens it up uh quite a bit but hiring that first electrician or a master electrician is very expensive and so you have to get past that threshold of earnings in order to afford that investment um you know knowing that it will provide opportunities in the future I think it's probably the same way in in a handful of other uh Industries but you know um in in residential services you know you've got your plumbing licenses your HVAC licenses and your um and your electrical licenses and once you get one of those then there's there's a huge Market out there yeah well but right but finding that that master electrician that's that's what people listening are going to be so envious that you were able to do and it sounds like the answer is delayed gratification reinvesting in the business willing to invest a lot of money in an expensive that first expensive proper electrician higher um and then just yeah just paying market rate Which is higher now than it's probably ever been for an electrician that's really what it comes down to right right there's there's some ways there's some ways to find the right person as well um but yeah you're right those are the key elements to kind of breaking out of that rut if you will and and so is the cooling the installation of the the home sorry what's the term again home fan home fans close I mean the the industry would call it a Whole House Fan Whole House Fan the Whole House Fan um is that becoming less and less of the business and it's more evolving into just a just an electrical electrician business it's still it's still our core because we spent so much time focusing on it and growing it um and so there is still a lot of momentum and and it's a you know because it is a bit of a niche offering it it's pretty profitable it's our most profitable elements but uh I think the elect I imagine in three years our electrical side just general electrical services or um you know like remodels New home builds stuff like that that'll probably overtake it I would imagine so and Andrew why is it that um I should probably already know the answer to this but you'll tell me why is it that in this world of search you in the trades that we talk about so often the the three big ones HVAC plumbing and electrical I hear a lot about HVAC and plumbing and I hear a lot less search activity and electrical why is that is that safety stuff or what um it's probably yes I would think so I think the industry and the trade of electrical services is so vast it's so big and a master electrician has a lifetime of experience and so I think it it might be a little bit more daunting potentially well there's also the fact that and we've looked we've looked at businesses as well where there's a master electrician involved and from a lending perspective it's a big deal right this someone else holds the license and you're gonna buy this well what happens if that person leaves and it can be a deal breaker and rightfully so because you can't operate without that person and so I think that that's probably a pretty big part of it um a master electrician can do anything from uh you know just manage a small business like ours or they might be designing power plants right and and so I think you know finding that master electrician license holder who enjoys doing this type of search focused business is a little bit more rare the other thing about the comparison with HVAC is I think HVAC has more opportunities for recurring Revenue yeah you know you can sell packages and all of that stuff and as as well as repairs which I think is great um electric the electrical services business doesn't is that from a residential perspective doesn't have as much of an opportunity to do that yeah yeah so I do think I do think it's it's probably it's probably a harder trade to break into and manage but then also it does lack a few elements that HVAC could be appealing yeah yeah great thank you for that okay back to the growth story here uh it's happening in less than three years so um we had we had communicated a little bit offline about this overcoming seasonality was a big part of it also data how you deal with data I assume this is this is Max's uh contribution again but uh can you elaborate on that um yeah I mean given time there's all kinds of things Max could talk about maybe in another episode but um you know small businesses don't keep good data it just doesn't exist right I mean um they'll say they have a CRM Zoho or something and they just basically a big Rolodex right and the data's everywhere it's not organized um I think when we look at businesses now we understand the the value of unlocking data um we originally one of our big learnings was we started trying to reinvent the wheel using Google Sheets and all these other things and then we realized that maybe we don't need to build a platform we need to find the platform that will enable operations and sales uh the next layer of learning was use the platform that makes the data usable and Max could get super technical on this but there are major platforms out there that you can pay a lot of money for but what it can give you is not usable data and so finding those right platforms is really important in order to enable that so now the the live dashboards that we have that show a sales reps performance or an operator's performance and how much they're getting in their commissions because of quality work versus how much they're losing it's all super live and we have originally built it from scratch now we're Reliant upon some some SAS uh programs that give us the data and then Max mixes and matches the data how he wants um are there any particular tools that you remember offhand that you might pluck that these dashboarding tools um I mean dashboarding is his dashboarding capability is now all in Google looker and you basically have to figure out in studio how to manipulate the data and put it into the right format and then after that the world is your oyster I believe I don't I don't know I'm not technical enough to do it I just know that like there's certain things that that are are fundamental to figuring out uh Max could probably go on and on for hours about it but okay um okay that's his Lane again I've never opened Excel I hear it's a really great tool you and Brent be sure I just actually heard yeah I heard them on a podcast talking about how Brent doesn't doesn't work and Excel I assume they were joking but maybe not um we had also talked a little bit offline about full-time versus part-time or fractional hires uh expound on that please yeah I think this is super interesting one of our biggest learnings was the value of a good marketing person and um you know as a searcher if you don't have a marketing background you don't know what you don't know right and a broker will tell you oh there's all these marketing opportunities and you really just don't know what that means um and we took the leap after a few months of hiring a full-time marketing director who was experienced was expensive and was fantastic and while there was the option to pay a third as much for someone that's a consultant that can come in I think that in general because we were all Consultants before we wanted someone that we could problem solve with someone we could you know poke in the eye if we needed to and get the most out of them and so I think while expensive that was a huge benefit to us now at this point it's either you know once a marketing person does a 12-month Sprint on revamping your entire marketing strategy they kind of run out of things to do and it's either well you bump down to something fractional or you've acquired another business to leverage that type of thing right um so I think I think marketing is super interesting um the next one would be accounting you know when you buy the business their books end and your big books begin and if they had bad uh accounting practices before you don't necessarily adopt those but you don't necessarily know if you're searching you're not an accountant you don't necessarily know the right way to do it and so Marcella spent a lot of her time in the first months setting up the books the way we wanted and then because she was in the business all the time she could adjust the way we're doing accounting to make sure that it was all according to Gap but also just makes sense from a common sense perspective this has been a bit of an evolution for us like accounting and so um we went from Marcelo running it to an outsourced third party and then at that time Max and I are saying why are you looking at the books and and giving us an up uh Refresh on the p l every month we want to see this every day and you talk to an accountant and they're like what is that going to help you why do you want to look at the books every day it's because we can um but but in reality it's it's like you want enough real-time data this was another thing that I learned early on from from Trish was she she talked a lot about how important it is to have a financial look all the time and um you know looking at your cash flows and all that and then she was spot on and so um we started out internally with accounting went fractional now we have a full-time accountant um because she makes sure the books it alleviates a lot of it from Marcella naturally but also she manages the books we can look at the piano more routinely it helps us make better decisions in this case because we're growing job costing and understanding on larger electrical scope where the true cost overruns are happening is incredibly valuable that not many small businesses can do and so it gives us it really gives us those those eyes and ears on the financials um so you know the last one would be HR I mean hiring some hiring is really tough right you've got a you've got a general manager who's trying to grow the business you've got sales people who are trying to grow the business and then suddenly you need to hire somebody it is it's kind of almost a distraction in a lot of ways if you're trying to grow the business um I I think our next level from an Olive Ridge Central Services of like full-time we might look at something HR related so you've got a marketing person that kind of provides value throughout the year accounting helps and then HR to kind of hire for growth we learned a lot about hiring and what to look for internally enough to where we could help to drive a hiring process but it's not something we want to do because it's just we don't have time right anyway so it's been a bit of a journey but if there's three functions that I would think that uh that a grow a Searcher intending to grow the business should focus on it's going to be your marketing your accounting and then your hiring to some to some extent and if you can afford it full-time is is better than fractional um if you can afford it yeah and going back up to the marketing person um do you you guys I know one of the things that she must have done was the brand change because you are no longer Colorado Home cooling right what's the name of the business now Colorado Home Services we have we have three business lines we still have Colorado Home cooling Colorado skylights and Colorado electricians so it all kind of those three service lines fall within the larger brand and do you I know this is her Lane but do you know of other things that she did any of the other marketing stuff that she did that really moved the needle for you I mean was she kind of you know your Google my business page sort of thing like a lot of online PPC related stuff or or what um so our marketing guy was a he um for some reason no that's fine he took he took a little sabbatical this winter which is which is um great because you know he had had so much impact and he probably bring him back on board this spring or find you know someone else of equal capability we hope but I would say so what's interesting about this is he came from a print background so newspapers right and in this day and age of digital you have there's enough ways to pay for views out there on Tick Tock and Facebook and all of that that in in my opinion uh using words is just as valuable and so SEO is a huge unlock you know customers will customers will View and value a an organic search ranking much higher than a paid search ranking and so if you can really beef up SEO and you hire a smart person um then then it's a really high payoff investment great okay yep it's good to know I mean I I recognize the value of SEO but that you that it could be such a needle mover for you guys and and I I always also just would have thought it was extremely competitive already um it is and strategies are always kind of like easier said than done yep exactly that was the next thing I was going to say it's not super I mean it was it was a you know three-year investment of his time and just seeing you know how and and for him like from a home cooling perspective like the Whole House Fan perspective it was pretty easy to to take over that market from an electrician perspective it's much harder right because of just the breadth of the competition and how much spend is going into it right um so you know you got to pick your wins right but but um you know if you hire a full-time marketing person they're not just doing SEO right they're building email campaigns they're doing visuals for you they're making videos they're putting stuff on social media they're handling the uh home shows or you know they're supporting Business Development there's a million things they can be doing uh it doesn't just have to be one Focus area and all those things in aggregate can really help the business all well certainly if you weren't doing kind of any of that before because if you were it was just a two-person business before I imagine the the seller was doing very little in the way of marketing yep um that's that's generally the way it is with a business that's small almost always so yeah Andrew we are um we're almost an hour in and there's still so many things I want to cover um just on the operations a little bit more before we move on to other things and we're I know people are going to be eager to hear about uh the holdsco vision um but just again on on the growth of uh Colorado Home Services you told me that you focused a lot on on three other elements that we haven't touched on customer Journey streamlining sales and operations Performance Management I assume the operations operations Performance Management is the data or is that something else again um it's it's a bit of of data and Reporting um and and having performance discussions with your operators which are not always easy discussions to have okay can you tell us more I mean I I think in a lot of times um so for instance when we bought the business the seller would super nice guy but the way he managed operations was he he take notes of things that he uh noticed his operators weren't doing well and he'd put him on a piece of paper and then once a month he'd tape that piece of paper on the wall and have the guys sign their names that they read and acknowledged these operational changes my style of leadership is every morning we have a discussion we look at pictures from yesterday we talk about what customers have called back with some sort of issue we drive to the root cause of that and we figure out how we never make that mistake again and I think you know my operators are patient but they get a poke in the eye every other day but they take it well because they know that our operational culture is to constantly improve and you know if you're not managing your operations to that element then it's just going to backslide right and so Ops Performance Management and and if you and you can you can tie performance back to compensation um then it you know all incentives are aligned right and so managing Ops in that way is it's hard to do if you're a small business owner and you don't have help right if you're too busy answering phones at the same time but fortunately with our Trio here it's given me the opportunity to drive some of those things home so daily every morning you talk to your Ops people people who your technicians and you and you kind of debrief the previous day and talk about things that they could have done better sort of yeah I mean it's something back in McKinsey like the first thing we do when we go into an operating environment is we'd stand up at a whiteboard and we'd call it gray today and so let's talk about yesterday what went well yesterday what could we have done better how do we grade the day yesterday and that's what we do every day and so we talk about yesterday's jobs we look at photos if something looks off somebody says hey we should have done that differently which is pretty rare at this point because we're pretty smooth but having that opportunity to have an honest exchange is is absolutely crucial and then we look at the next this day's jobs and say hey did you know sales team did you gather like let's look how much information you gathered are there still questions hey sales team next time you talk to a customer like this ask them these three questions that's going to make my operations smoother and help me perform better um and so there's always a backward looking discussion and a forward-looking discussion all all focused on continuous Improvement wow that sounds so powerful that's great Andrew and then on streamlining sales and customer Journey um realistically there's a lot of great tools out there that can help you automate things um that really you know flow uh a quote through an invoice through uh yeah you know through through payment um I think you know a lot of these I think there's more and more adoption of these types of tools all the time from a small business owner's perspective but um there's certain other elements you can layer on top of it to really help the customer Journey make sure it's good we we um we really uh care a ton about our reputation and so we've got you know more five star reviews a higher rating across all kinds of platforms and because we we really care about that um you know Marcella has owned customer Journey for the duration and she has a very personal vested interest in it and and so that's been a big Focus um streamlining sales naturally it's just like especially in a seasonal business re training someone to understand your product sell your product is very tough uh instead Max just built an app for it uh which is kind of nice so we can kind of put somebody in the hot seat and within a week there almost as good as someone who's been around for a year especially in a seasonal business when you may have some turnover having those sort of programs in space in place as opposed to um you know just a big fat training manual is pretty nice um but but what is this magical app that Max built what is it like a series of videos or no it no it's it's in Excel it's uh it's a it's a sales Journey built in Google Sheets wow okay okay with a series of a series of clicks and and inputs and outputs that basically you know with a with a bit of a script and uh and it works pretty darn well okay okay and so that that kind of guides the sales person through like objection handling and and the flow of a conversation interesting okay tech specs all at their fingertips and all that good stuff okay okay so it's kind of like a native kind of app built on Google Sheets for the sales people to to Really streamline their their process like you said great really cool um wow it really does sound like you guys uh really all the three of you compliment each other so well um okay the any where do you want to go next well yeah we have a whole list of other things we're supposed to talk about I know or we're about halfway through it well we did this this last bullet point was a big one so things are going to move a little faster but yeah we might go a little longer Andrew so I hope you're ready for it and I hope the audience is too um so how about some mistakes let's hear any any any bad memories that you're like in retrospect you're like ah man boy did we screw that up um first first one I would say is we we learned to hire for character not experience so hiring someone is less about do they have phone sales experience or do they have um you know X Y do they do they know what a our product is it's more about is this person thorough is this person reliable do they have a power of persuasion and so if you hire for somebody for character traits as opposed to experiences it will create uh much better results from day one so I think that was a pretty big learning through mistakes um I think another one is when you're running a small business you are constantly assessing where your time is best spent and I spent the first 18 months in attics installing with my guys climbing on roofs cutting holes in roofs installing ventilation putting wires together Making Home Depot runs when we needed stuff this was a byproduct of the nature of a small business it's also exacerbated by my military upbringing where it's like you would never send a soldier through a door if you wouldn't go through that door yourself right and you don't criticize a soldier on how he's cleaning his weapon if you can't clean it better and so I think some of it's ingrained but then some of it was the nature of a small business and um so there comes a point in which I just have to start thinking hey my but my time is better off thinking about the Strategic stuff and the growth stuff as opposed to being in the trenches with my guys yeah and and and you know part of it's driven by you got to make money in the peak season um part of it's driven by my tendency to just jump right in um that was a pretty big that was a pretty big lesson I would say um and then I I would think that the third one is going to be around um just Reinventing stuff I mean like we spent a lot of time in in Google Suites and just all kinds of things saying well if we just make it perfect like we need the perfect amount of flexibility if we want the customer journey to look like this we have to build it ourselves we can hire somebody in the Philippines that can code this and we can do it or it's just like meh the 80 solution is still going to be twice as good as what our competitors are offering so let's just go with the 80 solution and so I think our third learning was a little bit around like you know making certain trade-offs uh to various elements of the business uh that would that would give us the the returns that we need without over complicating things because because when you put three McKenzie people in charge of a small business like this it can get very complicated very fast yeah by the way I wanted I wanted to uh call out the fact that when you guys were talking about your your fractional hires or keeping them full time and you said you know three McKinsey people we didn't want Consultants um because we and you implied like we'd been Consultants so I mean it's a pretty that's a it's a pretty uh funny thing for McKinsey Consultants to be like yeah we'll skip the Consultants I mean you guys are supposed to be the the biggest Believers it is what it is I mean yeah once you've seen how the sausage is made you know you don't always eat the sausage but um we we we still respect the industry 100 I I we all absolutely loved our experiences there it's just that we we have a different view on on things now so now yeah uh uh and also kind of funny Andrew that you you know many people again if they're coming from a comfortable you know Excel kind of background or any sort of you know corporate white-collary background which is going to be most people listening um they're you know they're going to be very hesitant to get in the trenches with the team they'll they'll do it but they certainly won't dive in like you did so anyway it's just it's the opposite of what I usually hear that you actually had to decide to do that less rather than more you had to decide to go into the field less rather than more because you were really drawn to it and comfortable there yeah I mean Marcella kind of liked it though because like every summer I'd lose 20 pounds and like come off of a roof or out of an attic it'd be super ripped and it was like awesome and and now I'm too far away from it I might just get back on that weight less weight loss plan of Marcella so anything you want to say about doing this with your with your wife um you know you know I think it it can really I could imagine it ending really poorly um we're fortunate I think as I mentioned the honeymoon we went through some you know hard hot sweaty days in Namibia and just like learn to work through that and I think we had a pretty good similar Baseline of pain tolerance if you will and discomfort and I think that helped a ton um some of the pros about this type of lifestyle of searching with a spouse is that she understands the business and so if I come home and have had a bad day she gets it she understands you know there's no question about it and I I don't even have to talk about it I can just tell her this is bothering me and she gets it right because she's been here yeah um I think the other advantage that we have is she really enjoys it I mean she likes running a small business she likes looking for more she likes that range of experiences and needs and so we really understand one another in that case the drawbacks of both searching and operating in business is me personally I think about business all the time I mean like all the time man like you wouldn't believe and when the business is your baby you know I wouldn't even think about this but like whenever she got pregnant for the first time she said you take care of your baby I'm gonna take care of the r baby and and we kind of bifurcated roles at that point and which was really helpful I think because having the kids gave us a lot more balance um and so uh I I think we you know while she's still very much involved um I think that's kind of been a good good way to kind of break break Lanes temporarily uh and now she's starting to get more and more involved um I think about business all the time it can definitely like consume a marriage if you're searching with your spouse it's like what do you talk about at dinner the same thing that you talk about at work and it's just kind of like can be all-consuming so there's some some drawbacks there um yeah some corrections that we've made you had asked me about that we we now have like dedicated family vacations I think the first time we tried it I was still on the phone all the time and taking sales calls and now it's to the point with a good general manager I can I can unplug which has really helped um and then you know um at one point I don't know when it was but at some point when we'd have a discussion or a disagreement about work she would just say well you're the CEO what do you want to do and and I think her taking that step and saying Andrew you're going to do what you want and you're there more often so while I have an opinion you're gonna make the decision kind of helped to alleviate any of those tensions about whose role is it but then on the on the flip side you know as she and Max are looking for businesses a lot of times it's like you guys make the decision on if you want to continue with this I'm just here to help run the business whenever you buy it you know and um so I think that we've kind of really found our own lanes and and what we really enjoy and where we want to spend our time um so it's been a journey I think that we we're really fortunate to find one another and have a lot of the same values and the same perspectives and um and by owning and running a business together it's really helped a ton but there has been a little bit of you know repositioning and and refiguring out roles and things like that which has has helped us keep it sustainable at this point so and you have one child now or two two and a half year old and a newborn and um you know and and more like it's just I can't I can't come back to like in our partnership each of us really have significantly different strengths and we really balance each other out and um you know it's good to always have that you know even as a spouse or a business partner when when you've got a certain opinion to to be able to bounce it off your your team and get a good honest response it's invaluable you know so totally anyway you know Andrew um this is not to take away from the growth that you've seen uh it's it's tremendous growth um in in these last less than three years but I I don't want to I don't want to understate how much Blood Sweat and Tears you put into it I mean I'm hearing you you know there's all this evidence all over the place of how I mean you you've you've sacrificed financially because you guys keep reinvesting into the business with making these these more expensive hires than somebody else might opt to do you were taking sales calls on family vacations you were out in the trenches with your guys working in the field hard um so you know this isn't like oh you know pull pulled the right levers I'm so clever like grow 3x in three years it was like yeah there's Blood Sweat and Tears here is that a fair characterization do you see it the same way 100 percent yeah I'm tired it's a tiring role and doesn't mean we'll keep going with the same amount of energy and vigor but yeah it's hard it's it's been it's been a journey so um on on that you we talked about um on our pre-call about how hard this is how hard running a business is and I'm recalling what Greg Ambrosia told you like uh you know just go buy business you know grow it sell it you know it's straightforward it's easy practically it sounds like was the was the tenor of his message to you um it sure doesn't sound like it's easy and you just said how tired you are but you also say that like what it's straightforward you like it what just kind of talk to me about kind of the emotions and and this path and how hard or not it is like you respond to everyone um cool I love questions that go like that no um I I had to think about this in a little bit more because um I I think I think that when you purchase a business of this size that has been profitable for a long period of time the bones are there you just got to put meat on the bones I mean so running a business from that perspective continuing profitability is not that hard barring some sort of weird you know externality that was completely unforeseen I don't I don't think it's that hard you know you can make small changes that have a big impact you implement a new CRM you know you tweak the SEO you rebuild the incentive structure you can change some vendors it's all those typical layers right when you're in a small businesses are even profitable it's not that hard to do those things um what could be hard and is you know if you have investors that are telling you to do it one way and you're on the you know in the trenches and you see it some other way then I think that could create some friction and challenges which we don't have um I think it's also hard in that you're wearing all hats I mean there's a tremendous amount of growth that has to occur when a business is this small to understand all kinds of elements and functions and so that that is hard to to learn that fast but in general if you buy a business that's been profitable you know I think most Searchers out there are quite qualified that they're not going to break it right and and so in in that sense it's not that bad which is why we're going back to the well and continuing to look for other good opportunities perfect segue so so let's talk about that let's talk about um you know building a hold Co is is going to be sexier to people than than the day-to-day grind of operations of course where the the real magic happens is is the operations but talk to us now about what this vision is and yeah yeah what's so I mean we've we've kind of got some great we've got some great um capabilities for Central Services um I've listened to a lot of your podcasts probably not all of them I hear of opportunities where there's and you know and you'll meet groups that will invest and help you fund a deal there's groups that will help you get the deal done you know if you just want to you know help with mentorship through that um I've not heard as many that will help support post close but it's more of like an investment to them and the Searcher will figure it out um our whole co-model is you know we we will own and operate ourselves and if if um if we can find a good deal that is you know cash flow positive and has a great Outlook we will purchase and continue to operate that for the long term um there's some tax benefits to holding businesses for a long term uh there is stability in that you know long-term wealth creation for holding businesses for a long time is is definitely attractive to us but our whole co-model is don't look for something sexy you know kind of similar to Chin mark look for cash flow positive plan to own it for a very long time hold as much of the equity if not all of it all the time make the decisions as you see fit for the good of the business the customers and the employees and then um you know just kind of manage them all in in tandem uh we uh we're pretty confident that we've got a you know potentially a couple deals that are on the table right now that could close within the next few months um you know we're actually staggered in different in different timelines but Max is keeping the pipeline fresh and uh you know we'll see where it goes so and one of the questions that I always ask a hold cooperator um is why a hold Co model where you're acquiring disparate businesses rather than investing all of your energy and and if if you're drawn to acquisition investing all of your acquisition energy in buying more of the same type of business and building a single Enterprise that's just larger but in Home Services um you know I think that if you do if if you've got a niche product it's better to just earn market share as opposed to buy market share um you know delayed gratification right it's a nice fight and we're just gonna bleed them out and uh it's cheaper that way in my opinion and um there's a lot of learnings along the way to make the business better you know you could purchase something and inherit a bunch of issues right there's risk involved in that whereas if you've built a culture in your core business you know you can grow for this is for like you know for grow versus acquire something in the same space um so I think I think that's why we would probably not directly look at bolting on uh something just like this uh the other reason why is I know I think diversification is good I think you've had a guest on that's mentioned that you know your portfolio earnings are going to be better with diversification by by nature and so we view it that way but I think we're also to the point where we like new challenges um you know we could rinse and repeat in a very similar business which might bring us you know some earnings but maybe we'd enjoy running another business it's not quite going to have as high earnings but you know um you know Marcel I always tell Marcelo we should just start up a bunch of FroYo restaurants or whatever I was joking but um but but like something totally different could create can create a new a new and reinvigorate us for for a new challenge right and so I think we we also approach it that way yeah and I I think that's a really important point because sometimes we um are always so focused on kind of the financially what's the most prudent decision or prudent path and you gotta just also pay attention to what interests you you know because you know this is your life after all and you're meant to enjoy it 100 I I you're spot on it's like you could make X and hate your life you could make one point you know you can make point eight X and still be just fine and really love what you're doing yeah right and and we look for opportunities that have cash flow that we would love to run um and really grow and enjoy being part of a that type of business and that's just way more rewarding than you know overthinking the the exit value in five years right um and that that's that drives a lot of our decision making I love that that really resonates with me okay uh one more question unless you're gonna tell me I've forgotten to mention um something from our our long our long list and obviously uh one of the biggest bottlenecks in building a hold Co other than deal flow itself is the operators who are going to run these these businesses so you have how do you how do you address that issue but what's the situation in Colorado Home Services now and how do you you know what's your formula for looking forward um we're short on time but yeah I might take a little bit on this one so so Colorado Home Services we needed to find somebody that replaces me as a general manager and that's a little bit hard to do and I think we kind of looked back and thought okay what is at a core what are all the capabilities that this person needs and what was really interesting when I think about hiring for character versus experience is we found someone from the Fitness industry someone who had managed 19 gyms and I at first was like ah what does this guy know about electrical systems nothing but when you run 19 gyms in the fitness industry like you have to learn how to hire and fire people and take ownership of that like if someone calls in sick and they're supposed to teach a fitness class who's doing it the general manager right and so that person has an incredible amount of ownership and accountability to themselves and the business but also is like in the trenches every day and so we found somebody who can do that and Max Marcella and I are purely enablers for that guy to manage the growth and so you know we strapped him onto this bull and he's riding it just fine and it's it's it's been awesome and so having a good general manager has been really great and I think that um that is the challenge for the next one and it and you know depending upon the situation at the next one maybe they don't need a general manager maybe they just have you know some elements that you know some certain unlocks if Max Marcella or I stood in for six months to give the business some uh better growth we're happy to do that um or maybe we promote someone internally um I I think I think we would play that all by ear but we also think that there's probably a population of Searchers out there that maybe are really motivated to buy a business but they don't want to do it alone I actually talked to a guy the other day who gave up a search and he said I realized at one point I could buy a business with 18 technicians and uh who am I going to talk to for like you know you know who's who's going to be you know who's going to be my problem solver with me yeah and I was like dude that's what we do I couldn't have done this without Max and Marcella if I didn't have a someone that I thought as a 100 intellectual um um peer I'd be super lonely right and so it's been it's been really nice and so I think there's a population of maybe your listeners but people who aren't quite ready to take that dive maybe they're a little bit worried about um support post close on various functions and and various you know gross growth methodologies and so we will probably look to that pool of people um if and when we should need someone like that to really own and grow a p l and so um I think there's probably some amazing people listening to your podcast right now who uh have tons of potential and we're gonna we're gonna keep an eye out for them so well I'm sure you're well aware of chenmarks um program internal yeah yeah the internal program yeah um so they have they have a lot more scale for us I mean they're what like nine businesses now and so their ability to to move and reposition people is is much better than ours um I would love to have be that established as they are um but at this point we're we don't have that Liberty um but I'm sure that I'm sure that program is awesome and very well run um maybe we'll get there someday so well the loneliness thing it's not that person looking forward into a potential CEO uh role for themselves uh and seeing loneliness they weren't wrong uh that's that's a theme that comes up time and again including Andrew Harbin the the awning business guy that you mentioned earlier um that was one of his big call outs for his experiences as CEO now Andrew did I did I forget anything uh I I think there's a couple things in there but to be honest we covered a lot of ground and uh I apologize for my ramblings on occasion but hopefully no it's uh this is great this is really great um well uh I foresee having an excuse to have you back on later this year uh I'll bring my I'll bring my I'll bring my buddies with me with maximum every time maybe they can do more of the talking cool cool and and we'll and we'll probably talk even more hold Co at the time so we'll see how that uh unfolds but thank you very much for coming on this has been a really fun conversation Andrew and really exciting to see you kind of just at this uh you're already successful with one acquisition but just about to to move into holdco land is really cool so it'll be really fun to to revisit this um later this year so sounds great we'll talk then thanks a lot Andrew thanks will 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