Eric Hayes welcome to acquiring minds thank you glad to be here Eric a few weeks ago someone posted on search funder asking about moving quote to the middle of nowhere to buy a business you responded I just did it six months ago you moved from the DC Metro area where I am to Laramie a town of according to Wikipedia 32 000 in Wyoming now I love Wyoming spend time there growing up so this is not to ridicule Laramie Wyoming but it is decidedly not a bustling Metropolis let's say so we'll want to hear about that move Eric um among a lot of other interesting aspects to your story let's begin with some background on you please well thank you will yeah I'm Eric Hayes you know for this conversation it's important to start at the beginning I'm a farm boy from Southern Illinois uh but then went into the went into the heavy construction heavy civil business Mega projects is where I lived for several years um so I would go from Project to project big city to big city um take a few key people with me build a team there and finish the project then redo move relocate take a few people build a whole another team build a whole nother project and just keep doing that process over and over again last ended on the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge Project in Washington DC which is a it's a it's a good one to talk about right I mean it's one that you can show your you show your kids you you know it's right outside and that's ballpark it's on the news all the time I tell people that are fans of like say Blacklist or Madam Secretary or some of those shows currently when those shows were being made they were doing fly-ins from commercial break or you could tell it was commercial break we don't have to watch commercials anymore but uh and then always fly in over the um the Arlington Memorial Bridge and I I'd always tell our team I said once our job's done those fly-ins are now going to be over our Bridge the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge so it's cool I get people sending me text and Instagram DMS all the time hey just saw your Bridge blah blah blah Eric let me let me um ask so when you say your Bridge so were you really kind of on the contractor side of that project kind of the buck stopped with you yeah yeah so we were I'll just say who I worked for I worked for Walsh Construction because they're they're a great company and um I was a project executive for them so yeah the buck stopped with me on that job I had the number one slot on the job we had joint venture Partners uh then we had design partners and then we delivered that project for um DC Dot and uh yeah five five years 500 million dollars later the city's got a great new conduit or Gateway um to to the Anacostia side of the river which is really needing some economic development in creating that Crossing there will definitely help with that yeah absolutely east of the river for sure yeah and I and I I like your other people in your network uh know the bridge well uh drove across it just a couple weeks ago so that's it's really neat to have you here so yeah carry on yeah so so um how we got to buying a business named Rocky Mountain Reclamation in Laramie Wyoming was it was a little bit of a windy road um we my wife and I have a wonderful wife Carrie five kids and so making the decision to relocate was not easy we had done it many times before Wyoming's my eighth State my wife's ninth we thought it was just going to be another move because we had done it so many times before but now our kids are ones in college and three or four other teenagers and um you know it's it was much much more difficult move than anticipated but we were looking for things when we decided we wanted to acquire a business we were looking for um no state income tax states conservatively run States so our I Loosely call it a search I was by no means a full-time Searcher I was still full-time on running that project for for the Walsh company and and um but we were looking in Tennessee Florida South Dakota Wyoming those were kind of some into Texas those were our states where we were really focusing there's not very many businesses that come up for sale in Wyoming um so it was kind of like well well whatever maybe but this one in Laramie did arise let's um hear a little bit Eric on your own uh decision making Journey yeah so how was it that that a guy who's clearly so successful in his corporate role that he's basically the the Top Dog on a 500 million dollar five year project decides to buy small business where did all that come from yeah yeah so I had some family capital I needed to manage and I just started figuring out what's what is the wise way how can I be a good Steward of this family capital and um you know just started looking at side hustles I mean small things where putting a guy in the seat of a van buying bread routes I mean it's talking really small passive side hustles um to being invent to being investors investor in small businesses you know I've been involved in a a couple other private offerings you know that it's since uh exited and as an investor and so I really just started Gathering Intel consuming content um because I I wasn't sure what I wanted to do I wanted to make an impact for long term for my family um you know you're in Corporate America you put money into your 401k you know uh most your wealth ends up or a lot of times it ends up all in that 401k or a lot of it does and okay so you retire you spend it maybe you have when you when you leave this world you'll end up with a couple million dollars left there to give to your kids and you know you got five kids I'm like well two million divided by five four hundred thousand dollars 40 years from now that's not going to mean much to my kids then and so I you know I needed to do better for for them and um also the the construction business on those Mega projects it's it's a rough go I knew that I mean I had I had uh pride of ownership in that position and I worked my tail off there and I knew I was not going to have to work any harder on my own business than I was currently um I grew up in a family business so I knew what knew what that was like I very much enjoyed that with my parents um I also that aspect I talked about building a team moving rebuilding team uh we'd get up and go and have a successful team then the project was done and you do that again and I was like man so jealous of these businesses that have employees that where you can stay together for a decade or more instead of where I was changing employees and employees were getting a new leader in me every few years you know and that just made it a lot a lot of work and so so actually Eric let me stop you there the five year a five-year project to a lot of years that will sound like a pretty long time I mean you know work 10 years these days especially in an industry like tech people stick around for two or three years and so so five years feels like a pretty a pretty good run to to to be working together with others on a team but that felt short to you and you were thinking more like you want to stay with the teams that you assemble for longer 10 and 15 years yeah yeah exactly and and yeah and again I got to take several key people with me on jobs where I'd have four or five people that would go around with me but then I'd also get the phone call hey such and such jobs needing somebody and I'd I'd send my best my best employee to that other job to give them an opportunity you know and so I was really looking for building long-term relationships also most listeners know in a big city you all commute in from different places um you may see someone at work every day but in reality you could live up to three hours apart if you wanted to go to one another's residence so I was wanting to be able to really build community with with employees and that that's a very important aspect to me so those things drove my decision making and I I also just you know how does some so this ended up being a pretty big deal so how did I go to put together an independent sponsor deal uh coming from without a finance background but being you know an executive in the construction business and so I just like scratched down I went back I looked through my podcast records I looked through my books and you know I I read like six different books I was a regular consumer of like eight or nine different podcasts so I had long commutes in the morning long commutes in the evening I would purposely push mow my very large yard so that would take me like two and a half hours that way I could consume more content and I'll push mowing in my yard all my neighbors were like who's this guy one that mows his own yard and two who push mows it um and then you know I took up running because you can burn up an hour running pretty easy and and I just consumed all this content it was it was varied across from real estate investing to setting up funds to acquiring businesses to operating businesses and listening to podcasts that were specifically directed to investors but that helped me learn what investors were looking for in my pitch deck that helped me learn also how to better evaluate a good business and so I don't know hundreds and hundreds of hours of podcasts and books over a couple years finally turned into this deal getting done and and Eric so let me just understand your headspace so you're really kind of in a in an exploratory mode consuming these hours and hours of podcasts you know that you you want to grow the nest egg into something more substantial than what a 401k is going to do for you but at this point you don't know how to do that and so you're looking at all you know all the kind of ways to make money uh sort of entrepreneurial ways to make money double click a little bit on your Evolution from looking at doing something very passive you start you talked about like buying a bread route where you wouldn't even really be very involved all the way to of course what you what you've now done you kind of did you you know you're operating own and operated business when did it when did this project of like I gotta grow my Nest Egg evolve into I'm gonna pivot my whole career buy a business and become the owner operator of it what was that Evolution I I think a key point and that is my my wife and I very much enjoy charitable giving also and that's an aspect that I should have brought up more and and uh you know there's some great groups out there doing great things and it was actually at a session where um it's a dc-based or Northern virginia-based group called Alliance defending Freedom was giving a presentation and we support them and like man they're doing such great work it'd really be good if we could give more to groups like that then there's all the talk of oh all the Baby Boomers are retiring there's going to be this huge transition of small businesses to the Next Generation or probably in reality it's skipping a generation it's transferring two generations down and um and so my wife like okay why shouldn't we do this somebody is going to buy and operate those successful businesses we think our intentions are good most people's are some aren't but why shouldn't we go and do that and try and make a bigger impact uh in a positive way for the world with charitable giving and we're Christians and we believe in giving to those organizations that that support the calling and support the the people that they love and so that's when it went from I'll say kind of a I don't know if we should do this maybe we're being selfish obviously it's uprooting our whole family I have a great career I'm very loyal to the company I was working for and to where it became okay let's let's do this and then it was actually per a sense of purpose that yeah that got you over the top there yes yeah for sure and then just you know coming up in the construction business I always worked for heavy civil contractors so we self-perform a lot of our work if you look at more Congress Marshall guys you hear about oh this general contractor just subcontracts everything out well that's not who we were we did that work that that made me uh nuts and bolts details operator guy so uh I saw the opportunity in that you know there's um many people are looking for don't be the operator be more passive or be the CEO make sure there's a general manager in place I began I had confidence in my operating abilities where maybe those businesses that are at a little lower valuation because they have that key man risk because the operator of the company is done the day you buy it well I had confidence in my operating skills so I saw that that created some momentum there or potentially would allow me to get into some businesses that you know I was definitely looking in the space where private Equity was starting to dabble it's you know big enough that where I was at the lower end of the big private Equity Firm belt and but they weren't interested in the type of business I decided I was interested in because they they wouldn't take that key man risk that I was willing to take because I had the years of operating experience well it's it's a great kind of illustration of how you know a lot of buying a business is kind of picking your poison because there's there's no perfect business uh and but if you if if you can find a poison that for you you actually not only not only is it kind of the least of all possible poisons but you actually like it yeah you know you really like you really like keeping keeping the trains running on time in the Deep gritty operational details then that becomes this huge Advantage because yeah there's all these opportunities that a lot of people wouldn't look twice at that you're you know you're it's your Briar Patch um so that's really that's a really um great aspect of your story Eric just to go back for a second to um the evolution of your thought process here when you said you had some family Capital I'm going back a few minutes now does is that essentially like your 401k or whatever whatever nest egg that you had saved up over the course of your corporate career was there some sort of inheritance or something else where you were looking to deploy some generational something generational like that yeah yeah so I think uh one thing you know there's lots of conversations about your spouse's needs in the search process and you know um my spouse one thing that's important to her and I think that's important to a lot of wives is security yeah and so it's a big risk but the 401K dipping into it borrowing against it was never a conversation because that's the security that you know we were not willing to give up um we sold our we we sold our home uh we um I did have some I did have some uh inheritance or some family business um Capital to run not exactly inheritance but managing capital for my mother after my father had passed away and um yeah wanting to be a good Steward of that Capital as well so you had when you say the capital that you wanted to be a good Steward of and grow and you're not referring to retirement money because that was Untouchable agreed as agreed by you and your wife um but it was kind of your own savings from your career separate from the retirement fund and then this and then this bit of capital from your from for your on your Mom's behalf yes that's correct yeah great and and and let's talk more about risk because yeah you were really successful in this in this corporate career you know if you're working if you are the guy in charge of a 500 million dollar five-year project at a leading contractor you know doing one of the one of these Mega projects for a big city DC the nation's capital uh and and again you're living in the DC area an expensive place to live I imagine you're doing quite well I imagine that that W-2 check looks looks pretty hefty you got five kids so that yeah that this was going to be a lot a lot of risk Eric um is there anything more to say about that I mean we've we've lingered on this this question now for a couple minutes but is there anything anything more to say about that I mean I applaud your your your appetite for risk yeah the risk is the risk is real um I think the uh um burden of leadership burden of success the anxiety after closing was greater than I had anticipated that was something that I had never dealt with in my life um I was I was a pretty even keeled guy um but uh yeah yeah that that that's real after the fact um and you know I would also say that all those things you just said when I went to get outside capital they're like this guy's crazy there's no way he's gonna take this risk and let it flop and so that actually made in that was very attractive to investors now we all know that in an individual like myself I'm not in control of all things but they are correct that I took a bit of risk and I'm gonna do what I can do to make this business successful yeah talk about skin in the game man yeah you uh you put a lot here on Capital you walked away from a a fantastic career um well on that question of anxiety we're gonna we're gonna return to that but there are a couple of things from our pre-call in uh that I know about your search that I want to make sure we get to as well how did the the um outline of your search take shape so you you just characterized yourself as an independent sponsor um and and why not a self-funded Searcher how did you kind of what did your search look like and how did you end up kind of slotting yourself in that bucket hmm I think um I listened to a podcast a lot called investment funds secrets and it was about establishing funds and um I had first started out maybe down the line of oh okay that sounds interesting to me and you know they do the 80 20 with the carry and and um but then when I decided I wanted to be an operator well that's not that's not how funds work and so it just it just started evolving I decided that I wanted to make sure I was in um the control position from a cap from a ownership perspective and just basically what model I needed to do to to maintain control I knew what level of capital I was bringing to the game and and then what uh how much outside capital I was going to be able to raise and and maintain that that's that's really how it evolved into me getting into this this slot that we decided was the right slot for us in the whole acquisition and funding space I don't feel like I gave a real great answer there well that's okay I just wanna I just want to make sure we're clear because I suspect most of the audience is going to hear independent sponsor and think that you're um not the operator the lead operator but indeed you are very that's a whole point as we just touched on a few minutes ago is that you very much are operational you are the owner operator of this of this business um and and we'll get in a little bit more into the uh in into the terms of your acquisition here in a minute um you from the the meant that you have this notion that you needed to to grow fit the family capital and you considered bread routes all the way to when you re like really started getting serious about your search how long was that these these these hours of mowing the lawn yeah and and going for jogs starting a new hobby just so you could listen to podcasts yeah how many was it years yeah well so I'm very bad with with anniversaries um and so I was actually thinking about well like what what date did we actually even close on the business and I I just remember it it was the same day that Elon Musk closed on Twitter or now X and I'm like well okay that's how that's how I'll remember that for the rest of my life because you know we're the same me and Elon uh and uh but but so if I I think back I think it was you know I think it was actually coming home on a Valentine's Day uh getaway in 2020 before the world shut down uh that I told my wife about these aspirations of which very atypically from her for her she just broke down in tears like no we said we were gonna hopefully establish ourselves where we were and we had a 15-year plan to stop this moving every five years inside of corporate America there and um she was against so what she what she was upset about was that this this um suggested you were going to move again and the constant moving was what you guys had agreed between each other to not do you wanted to stay in Northern Virginia for 15 years yeah and it had been only how long at this point um probably only three years at that point so I yeah I wasn't but it was it wasn't it wasn't the financial stuff it wasn't the risk necessarily that she was upset about it was just the prospect of uprooting the family yeah yeah and um so then so then that led me more probably down the passive route so maybe I even started with the acquisition route and then her response led me down the more passive route and then I discovered no passives not for me and so it was probably then like in um October November of 21 when I had said okay this is bounced around in my mind long enough and I had lots of conversations with her um it's either uh whatever you want to say fish or cut bait you know it's time to either it's either time to do it or for it to get out of my head because I wasn't and and she said well let's let's start praying about it more be be diligent in our prayer and it was just like so I you know made a search funder profile and stuff just started happening it was like just a couple weeks and all of a sudden private Equity firms were contacted me about operating businesses for them for a small portion of ownership and um on search funder because of this new search funnel profile yeah yeah I guess I guess there's there's some firms out there that are looking to skim good operators off the top and short-circuit the difficult search process so they say oh hey this this is not maybe your maybe you're not your typical Searcher this is someone that's got more mid-career a lot more operating experience we're looking at purchasing much bigger businesses than your typical search business will say so they were um yeah yeah trying to I'll say skim some good operators off the top for their benefit and for the and for shortening that process for the Searcher too and so then that just kind of built my confidence more than anything you know I really wasn't interested in that path and uh you know it was just you know so say that was October November 21 went on a mission trip to Jamaica in say February March 22 where we have a friend that's a missionary there and he said you know from the good time God told me to go be a missionary full-time in Jamaica it took 10 years till I moved down here for things to happen I was like all right that's that's his wisdom telling me hey just be content keep doing your job you have very well because I was still very much needed where I was and I'll just be patient and I think I got back from Jamaica on a Tuesday with that attitude and on Thursday I found Rocky Mountain Reclamation for sale in Laramie Wyoming and so I had had this attitude a commitment long term we'll just see how it plays out and then you know I looked at the financials and by like Saturday I told my wife I was like hmm this one's this one's for real and it was a non-broker deal I had immediate contact with the owner asked them a series of questions um over a few days and said you know after about four or five days I said hey I don't need to ask you any more questions I need to come see you so the next weekend my wife and I got on a plane came to Laramie got stuck in a snowstorm all the hotel rooms were full full ended up having to stay at the at that time the current owner's home with he and his wife because there was nowhere else to stay and nowhere to go so we built a relationship very very quickly and um sentinelo I gathered up my gathered up my legal and accounting teams and and we were Off to the Races so this was this was the first Loi I ever wrote The One and Only and uh let's rewind to Jamaica you come back from Jamaica and you are resolved to be patient um yeah because you see in your in your friend that uh it took him for his vision to become reality took 10 years um so you're prepared to be patient but I guess you're still checking Biz by cell every day that's because it's two days later that you see that you see this business on Biz by cell and remind me you were looking in six particular States right what were they Tennessee Florida South Dakota Wyoming and then also North Carolina and Texas so yeah so we'll say six four to six six so you have these filter filters set up for for Biz Buy sell um and you come back prepare to be patient but up Pops or you're going to bizbycell.com and searching either way two days later you see this business in one of your target States in Laramie Wyoming um back in it's not even broker but which is kind of I guess unusual for particularly for a business of this size which we I'm sure you told us yet but we're gonna hear um and you're back and forth with the owner things move quickly uh you say you hop on a plane with your wife to go meet them and snow hits no hotel rooms you're staying with them how does that go how does yeah what is it like when you well you know I think you're oh yeah yeah yeah I think there's a few few things there one um my wife and I went out I knew that his wife or the couple owned it um they were both integrals she had been the essentially frog for all purposes the CFO for several years and it just retired so she was heavily involved in the business I think it was important that my wife and I came this was also not a decision I was willing to make on my own uh you know my wife had to be involved and so then there was that immediate like this the previous owners they had four kids this was their this was their life's work right and so to see that my wife and I came together we had five kids we had a vision to run this business we weren't private Equity that might uh try and flip it in a few years you know so there was this this and this is another reason I was so attracted to the business there's been there's several employees that work for us that we graciously inherited been with the company over 20 years you know 9 10 15 years on employees you're talking about a company that's got 15 to 18 employees and eight of them have been here nine years or longer you know so that was something that was very attractive to us the owners saw that you know hey these that they they too recognized the things that we were quote giving up or the risk we were taking to do this and that's it also gave them confidence in us because we didn't have the capital sitting there I had not done and gone all done to Capital racing yet so you know if they would have said well prove to me you have x million sitting committed to for the down payment of this business before we proceed any further I couldn't have done it um so yeah it was really a true blessing and helped developed our relationship which is so important during the due diligence process that that uh in laramie's small world that things shut down for that day and we ended up at their house that night yeah and obviously you closed on the business and here you sit as owner operator of it but would you say that that particular experience of of spending the night under their roof went well or was it awkward or was it what were those particular 18 hours like yeah it it went well I mean it was a little awkward because they weren't planning on having anybody come stay in their house we stayed in the you know we stayed in one of their uh now adult kids bedrooms who had never like cleaned out their stuff right I mean there were still all the sports trophies on the walls and you know it was just like staying the night at a friend's house is what it was really like and uh yeah yeah but of course there was some awkwardness because yeah I just met him like you know the morning before yeah yeah exactly Wild and Eric give us some I don't think you gave any of the criteria the financial criteria that you that bounded your search what did that look like what size of business were you looking for yeah well that you know that's something that evolved as I learned more and more you talk about on this podcast a lot about the the don't buy too small conversation that goes on um but because of of my career that I had it had to be a significant enough business to replace you know a very good executive level income so the business had to be able to support our family and then had to be able to obviously make uh the debt payments and and so um definitely above 1 million ebitda was was required and the closer to two the the better and then I then once it got above to I that that's where I found my sweet spot say say the 1.5 I decided was my sweet side above that I didn't have enough personal Capital to bring to the game to maintain control you know it wasn't going to be realistic to ask investors at that time for me to maintain control if the business was three million in ebitda or something because I didn't have enough personal capital to bring to the table to be clear you expected to raise capital from investors regardless but if the business becomes so large that your relative Capital contribution to the equity becomes smaller than the investors then you on the other side of the transaction you find yourself owning less than half the business yeah yeah so you don't you don't control it so you wanted to you wanted to buy a business of size big enough that you know it it met your financial criteria which was substantial um but still small enough that you by even by raising money from investors you'd still own north of 50 of it yes correct there's a premium on my operating experience also it wasn't just you know there's okay what capital am I bringing to the table and then I'm doing the deal I'm operating the business there's that premium that I self-assigned after getting lots of advice and consuming content on what I thought was a reasonable premium for that you know to be able to maintain that control position I see so when you by premium you mean when you're kind of negotiating with investors you're saying look I'm this isn't just you know let's not just look at the numbers of this deal I'm also the guy who's going to be bringing not only Sweat Equity putting my Sweat Equity into this but really high caliber Sweat Equity because I I I'm a really good fit to be the operator of this business so that's worth extra in terms of the equity that I retain right if I if if I brought ten dollars and they brought ten dollars we were not gonna be 50 50. there was a premium for me with for all these things that maybe it was 67 33 or whatever because because of the premium for my but then but then again I realized once we got up that only goes so far and to be fair to investors and to be able to attract investors that only goes so far so that's why I decided you know really can't get over that 2 million ebitda number and uh and be able to meet those goals that I had self-assigned well a business of the size that you're looking for that you were looking for Eric I mean those are um even though you had decided to be patient was it still just going to be a kind of a Biz Buy sell strategy or were you going to do any proactive Outreach or or broker networking um at all or were you just kind of going to keep your eye on this by sell um it was no no broker Outreach no like email campaigns it was going to be is by sale but also I was talking to a lot of other people in my network telling them my aspirations successful business owners you know you got your eye on anything you look into partner with anybody that was one huge advantage of having lived all over the U.S I got to meet you know lots oftentimes they were subcontractors or suppliers that I had developed long-term relationships where I knew these business owners and you know so I was really able to develop a big network of of successful business owners to bounce ideas off of and and ask them hey do you know of anybody that's retiring and so that that was really the only other Outreach I had planned on doing and I had done a little of that but it didn't really matter because this business came up on Biz by so are you able to share with us what amount of capital you had that you could bring the actual dollar amount that you could bring to your deal yes our family Capital was six hundred thousand dollars we were willing to put into the deal thank you for sharing that all right Eric well so tell us about the this is Laramie business we haven't yeah addressed directly what it does yeah so Rocky Mountain Reclamation is the name of the business it was started in 1979 also happens to be the same year I was born like I said I'm not good with anniversary so I'm glad that those line up with each other that way I can remember that um and uh I have been owned and operated by one family the whole time they had grown it from starting doing uh plant and weed surveys off the back of a of a motorcycle the husband would drive and and call out things and the wife would sit on the back with a notebook and scratch things down and then they'd file these reports and that's where they that's where they they started and that motorcycle I saw it it still exists and it's um well I don't know how two people fit on it let alone riding around on the Prairies of Wyoming doing weed surveys but anyway so Rocky Mountain Reclamation now we specialize in seating work re-vegetation work ocean control Wetlands we do some uh Freight hauling as well and servicing the mining industry the dot Highway industry our biggest customers clients projects are on the wind and solar Farms that are so prevalent in the windy areas of the Mountain West we work border to border Mexico to Canada up the belt of the Mountain West States so Arizona New Mexico Colorado Utah Wyoming Montana Idaho those are our main states Wyoming is where we do our most work for whatever reason just because long-term client relationships New Mexico is the area we do our second most work and so our specialty is coming in and restoring native plants to areas that have been Disturbed all those Industries I talked about they make a lot of disturbances when they're done with their project those disturbances need cleaned up and restored to Native and that is not a few if you live east of will this do north-south line through Kansas City Missouri if you live east of there you know you don't have to do anything to get grass to grow you don't do anything to get weeds to grow in the very arid Western U.S that is not the case and uh and especially with Native species um and so that's our specialty is restoring these native ecosystems um and and we do it all over the place for many many clients 60 to 100 projects a year projects that are a couple thousand bucks or projects where our mobilization to do them is far more than the value of the work itself to projects well over a million dollars so very varied and that's that's uh and what we do let's hear Let to get a to get a visual here so you said mining the uh wind industry are large industries that you serve so you'll for example go to a mine site where the mine is being retired I guess would be the word and you'll you'll kind of re-vegetate resurface try to try to restore that land to what it looked like pre-mind existing yeah and and elaborate yeah yeah and it's not only retired Minds that are totally being reclaimed we do do several of those um and there's some good technology out there now where you've probably all seen these giant just straight slopes they have grass growing on them you must be like oh yeah it looks like something used to be there it doesn't look natural now there's computer programs that model what the natural slopes undulations look like and so then these large Reclamation dirt contractors come in and you actually build the site to look back like native terrain then we come in and put the native vegetation on it and in five years unless you are local to the area or having a very very trained eye you can never even tell there was some line there anymore but we also do a lot of work in the active Minds just because um Powder River Basin here in Wyoming it's mainly strip mines so they're constantly stripping topsoil off of one area stockpiling it we have to stabilize those topsoil stockpiles for maybe a period of four or five years while then then they'll take other topsoil spread it back over areas they are no longer working in then we come in and permanently re-vegetate it so there's this constant movement of dirt in these big mines we do a lot of work for the copper mines as well and um you know copper demand is just absolutely through the roof right now and is only expected to Trend upward so there's some like kind of the business momentum we saw was that hey we do a lot of work in the copper mines we do a lot of work in the renewable energy space those both are growing very much we do a lot of work in the dot space we know the funding that's been happening there over the last few years we do a lot of work at National Parks same thing with them they got way behind on their funding than Congress committed several billion dollars a year to do this national parks work so those were the momentum we saw and basically it's just anywhere that there's disturbance we come in and put it back to Native and you're not the dirt guys you're the you're the green guys that's right yeah yeah construction lingo is dirt guys have a lot of yellow iron well we run all John Deere tractors so we have a lot of Green Iron but we don't have yellow iron ah gotcha cool and and and you had said like sometimes the mobile the cost of just mobilizing is larger than the cost of the actual work when you get there so what is like say you got a job down in in um New Mexico which is what 15 hours away uh what so how what is that you know what is that a mobilization look like I mean a lot of moving Parts there a lot of moving bodies what give us a yeah well or there's you know it's uh Wyoming's a big state you know we do a lot of work in in Yellowstone and around that area Park County Teton County and you know it's it's 400 miles plus to that part of the state from from Laramie so it doesn't just have to be in another state but you know there's all these you know there's so much federally owned land and so many projects that go across federal land um they may be very small disturbances a pipeline had a they ran their Telemetry Pig and they have a problem and they have to go in and dig up a section of pipeline that's in the National Forest somewhere it's tough to get to but they have to restore it and they're like well we know Rocky Mountain Reclamation they pick up the phone every time we call and the Grass Grows when they leave and so it is sometimes they're literally just you know a 100 by 300 foot scar on the side of a mountain that we have to crawl our way up into and restore it it may be five six seven hundred miles from the office so yeah we'll have a uh we'll have a four or five thousand dollar mobilization demobilization for for twenty five hundred dollars worth of work but they've counted on us for years and and they know that the federal Regulators trust us and you know there's just that peace of mind and nobody wants trouble with their environmental permitting agencies anywhere right so um you call us to button stuff up what well this is just absolute I mean what a niche I mean really really uh uh one of these businesses maybe people in construction know something like this exists uh I sure didn't so one of the other things that we talked about on the pre-call about this business in in you in particular Eric is this is this business buyer fit and how great it was we've already talked about how you want it to be an operator uh and how that's that was this great Advantage for you but also you come from heavy construction and this has elements of construction uh and you grew up in a small business farm and this is you know your your re-vegetating your and you said something like three or five years might go by before the fruits of a particular project are actually seen or or things are totally back to normal and so you're I mean that you're you're in a sense farming here as well respond to all that yeah absolutely um we operate as a contractor as a construction business but our business is agronomy related you know we we are in the business of putting seeds in the ground and helping them to grow and so those are my two past lives if you want to say you know that business buyer fit this was right for me our our employees have a high level in the previous owner has a high level of technical expertise you talked about this as a niche business that maybe the construction people know there's a ton of general contractors that really don't know about the revegetation work that has to happen at the end of their job but it is very critical for them to be able to close out their job but they know that those employees that I talked about before that have been here so long they know when those guys come to site they answer all the questions that an inspector might have or that the permitting agencies might have and that we're gonna like I said we're gonna button the site up for them and um yeah so that that but I had to have in my opinion being an operator I needed to have some level of confidence in my abilities in the business and so where that the AG part of this business combined with the construction part of the business I was very comfortable in most of those spaces yeah yeah although and we're going to get to this in a second but there were still a big learning curve for you here I mean there's this is kind of this the environment feels Vaguely Familiar to you but there's still a whole lot for you to learn especially since you're going to be the guy bidding the projects doing the estimating we're going to get to that um and how competitive is this industry when I hear you say that even even contractors who need your services don't even really understand when they start the project that eventually they will need your services uh it just it it suggests that it's um a really overlooked uh need and therefore maybe there aren't that many players and and given you know that your Geographic footprint and how people from all over the mountain West are calling you to come down um that would suggest that you're kind of like there really aren't that many players who can offer what you offer I think in the large Metro areas so um Colorado Front Range Salt Lake City there's there's a lot of competitors there it's um it's more in these remote places it's um and we definitely have plenty of plenty of competitors but um we have these long-term relationships with folks and they know that again we'll pick up the phone and we'll go to these remote places and we'll help them get their get their contract closed get their permit closed and so while we still compete in the hard bid market for sure in the dot space you know most of our wind farm work it is it's hard bid to us a lot of times the you know the contractor is proposing but they're going uh you know they have competitors and so everybody wants the lowest number from their sub but we are seeing a lot more we're owners of these projects are contacting us not just the general contractor where the owner's saying okay we want Rocky out in Reclamation to do this work for us Mr contractor go get them to do the work and that's just a testament to the previous owner and to the employees that we have but there's lots of other you know if you're bidding on a a state or federal project it's going to be hard Bid And there's going to be lots of competition because everybody knows about it so we try and Def we try to differentiate ourselves through relationships and and the ability to get up and go be nimble yeah and it sounds like it's very much a project business that yes you have these you have a lot of repeat business repeat customers but that there isn't a recurring element to the business about 20 25 of our revenue is recurring from these long-term clients mainly in the mining space um but it is very much Project based I mean we'll burn 60 to 100 projects a year um and you know we do seven say seven million dollars in revenue and eighty percent of that revenue is um awarded bid awarded and complete in that calendar year and so the long-term Revenue projections aren't there I mean they're just projections uh you have to go with the uh the past performance in this case hopefully is an indicator of future success because again we bid award perform eighty percent of our Revenue all with inside the same calendar year sometimes I did a job last week that it was two days this owner is like it's a owner we have a relationship with we got a problem with XYZ place I got another crew coming in there after that and I'm really concerned about they had they had some serious weed problems and and they're like can you go in there and get the weeds not sprayed but mowed and taken care of before this other crew comes in there and just and spreads them all over spreads the seed all over the place and like we need you there tomorrow so we made it happen that was an aspect of our business I didn't talk about that is also very uh very important is noxious weed control across the West um cheat probably most people have heard of cheatgrass it's an invasive species leads to lots of fires lots of accelerated Wildland fires and so we do a lot of work in that space as well well uh I we're gonna return to talking about the the business itself uh in in your experiences operator at the end but I want to there was a lot to say about how you put the deal together Merrick so let's tell that story you've decided after Laramie after your um snowy night together that you're going to buy this business you put in an Loi it's your first Loi and you make it happen but in fact um it it wasn't it wasn't that straightforward it was a hard Equity raise for you let's start with you said the business is a seven million dollar business and what do margins look like give us a sense of of what this project cost was going to be yeah margins were 20 or so a little better than 20 percent uh ebitda margins were 20 and you know we had agreed to a purchase price of uh a multiple little little below a four and um one thing that I had done yeah you know again this is my first deal so I made lots looking back I made lots of mistakes or missteps or things I could have done better but I um the owners and I agreed to a reduced somewhat reduced purchase price um and I was not going to ask them for a seller's note um I later learned that that was very much and rightfully so a requirement of many investors that that was very important to them so I was having trouble raising Equity a few months into it and just went back to the owner who we had developed this great relationship with and said look I'm not going to be able to get this deal done if you don't take on a seller's note and um they graciously said with they had some counsel uh that yeah that's right and so they agreed to do that so after a few months of beating my head against the wall I found out that that seller's note was very very important also that this was not um my investors were not going to come from the search world we had too much Project based revenue for most of them and um um and there their terms didn't meet my terms you know many of them are wanting or all or most were wanting preferred returns found that that that group of search investors is is pretty tight where they've all kind of developed their own criteria or it's a criteria they all pretty much Implement I don't know if if they have gotten together on that or if that's just what the course of business is but you know it's it's it's pretty vanilla you talk to two of them then you talk to eight more and they all have the same criteria preferred returns you know so much recurring Revenue not too much project revenue and it just became evident that that's not where my investors were going to come from started doing Eric as you're as you're getting discouraging signals from the search in in from search investors are you yourself feeling like is that giving you doubt that that about the business itself like well if these if these Savvy investors don't like this business maybe I shouldn't either yeah absolutely absolutely um and so that that's a good thing right to have that doubt and to be more cautious I had cane Crossing as my due diligence team they were accounting due diligence they were they were excellent provided a lot of help a lot of insight um they helped me through a you know a working capital issue that where what maybe in my early stages what I thought was needed working capital was actually only 40 maybe or so of what I actually needed so that was another negotiating point with with the owner Mr owner you told me working capital was was 400k so that's what we said we were going to go with but financials say it's actually quite a bit more than that and so that was another negotiating point in in um you know again just learning so you needed to push your seller for an extra six hundred thousand dollars effectively yeah of a purchase price or pull them down on that because you needed that to remain in the business or accounts receivable Left Behind is how it ended up shaking out yeah okay yeah and um so just on the investor front learning who my target audience or Target investors were going to be I talked to uh quite a few institutional folks that that ran in the smaller space and also um environmental environmentally focused funds agriculturally focused funds because our business fit into both of those and they were they essentially were not willing to give me the premium that we spoke about earlier that I thought my operating experience brought they were just straight dollar for dollar if you're bringing if you're bringing 600 and you need 2.4 then you get 25 is this a straight dollar for dollar relationship there on the ownership size side and so you know I had talked to several of them many of them were you know encouraging what one guy just said to me he's like hey just keep smiling and dialing and I thought well that's a pretty good pretty good phrase for when you just keep getting running up against the wall all the time um but so so Eric the other one of the things I'm struck by is that you are doing this for the first time there's there's all these risk aspects that we've talked about you're leaving this great career um and yet and and and but you are really firm on the on whatever percentage of the business you wanted to retain and that this premium that you attributed to to your ability to operate this business and and to be the one in there doing a great job operating this business and that that was really worth something you really stuck to that even in the face of investors pushing hard on it that's that's pretty confident well and I I you know honestly I think probably probably more people in my position need to be more firm I mean you're we are the ones taking out the personal guarantee and so okay you want 33 of business but you have 100 risk you know that didn't that's one of the reasons why also I pushed I pushed on it yeah I'm taking on a lot of risk already and I have to put a personal guarantee on it um but then you're saying well I could then I can't control the company necessarily now hopefully you have a good group of investors that would still let you run the company the way you see fit but that's just where I saw that you know there was some misalignment I thought in my eyes on what inspect investors expectations were no that's very well put that's great yeah okay Carry On so you're smiling and dialing smiling and dialing and uh uh you know lots of referrals hey no I don't quite do that but call XYZ and there were so many phone calls and I can't even remember all the paths it took but um essentially it became a lot of referrals friends and family referrals of other successful you know people that were financially successful that were looking for some Diversified Investments I very much also um portrayed this and accurately that you know this was a little bit of uh bringing private Equity to the masses and how that relationship if you go and invest with a fund what return you're going to get yet you're willing to trust those people and they're going to take they're going to keep at least 20 percent of the returns but here I am sitting in front of you telling you about myself you already know a lot more about me than you will any fund manager you ever send an email to and your returns are going to be you know better as far as you know there's nobody skimming 20 off the top of of of your returns there and so it was definitely a democratization of private Equity uh is is one thing I was is telling investors and ended up with um I did end up with one institutional fund that specializes in agricultural deals and so they have a pool of clients with committed capital and they maybe push out they're they've been pretty successful they do probably one fundraise a month so you tell them what your minimum fundraise is through them what's your maximum fundraises through them they you do webinars q a sessions with all their clients and so that was one Institutional Investor that came on board the rest of them are all individual investors and ended up uh by the grace of God gaining a lot of momentum at the end I actually ended up over raising what our goal was and uh actually even turned a few investors away because of the amount of ownership that I wanted to maintain as more money came in my level of ownership decreased and so ended up actually turning some folks away at the end and what was your target how much money did you need to raise uh 2.2 and you had said that the business is about 7 million in Revenue with about 20 margins so that feels like it feels like that falls right in The Sweet Spot of what you were targeting um and you paid a little below 4X so people can do do the math on that and you're looking to raise 2.2 and you are going to bring your own 600k yeah to the table so all in that's 2.8 um and so this is the the valuation is so what was the rest going to be SBA yeah SBA SBA and seller note the seller note that we negotiated and my six hundred thousand was actually part of the 2.2 okay well uh by my quick math here you're definitely the SBA was going to be a lot less than 80 so this is not your typical 10 1080 deal correct uh we're 80 is SBA loan yeah I wasn't comfortable I was not comfortable with that model you know I know there's there's that's probably the most popular model out there I'll say for a lot of folks based on one very very popular book um I was not comfortable with that level of risk that's what it all came down to there and just to be clear one of the things Eric you said on our on our pre-call was that you bootstrapped to your investors and I just want to be clear I understood what you meant there just how you basically smiled and dialed your way to to these relationships you didn't have any kind of you know you tried to kind of go the trodden path of the search Community but got a lot of closed doors and so from there you were just really anywhere you could find the capital and it was just a lot and and in fact you said at the end it gained momentum which is to say that for a lot of it it was really discouraging and it was a lot of dead ends and disappointing calls correct yeah absolutely and yeah it was just being persistent um telling people where you were at in the fundraise you know hey I got I got 1.4 of 2.2 this is the gap I'm looking to close these are the terms you know just so that and and of course having 600 of my own money up front you know that that definitely um in this this wasn't a pipe dream or far-flung idea that this is a well put together plan and you know did did spent a lot of time on a pitch deck you know had the data room all these things that I knew next to nothing about before I started this process but you know I attribute a lot of that just to you know my previous line of work where you you bomb into a new city you build a new team you build a new project and you know my engineering and construction background very much like okay here's something on paper that you have to have a real vision for to know how it's going to come out at the end of the day but you have to start planning with the end in mind and that's just where I started I knew where I wanted to get knew where I was what do I have to do in the middle to get there and you know don't be afraid to ask people questions never be afraid to steal somebody else's idea that they're willing to give you you know don't be too proud prideful to do that I love that Eric that's this is awesome and when you say as you just said as with so many of my so many of the people listening right now you didn't know any about how to do any of this beforehand and you were learning as you were going um including putting together a pitch deck and also one of the things you said to me was modeling like Financial modeling you had some Excel skills from working on 500 million dollar projects but you felt like you needed to really bone up on your modeling what did you use to bone up on your on your financial modeling skills and then also where'd you get the pitch deck did you do something from scratch or is there a template out there that you'd recommend people use um it was pretty much from scratch yeah pretty much from scratch of course being in an executive leadership role I was no stranger to public presentations that you happen to do so the monthly PowerPoint for the bosses you know was it was no stranger to how to put together a good looking PowerPoint um and I'm sorry what was some of yours the modeling the financial modeling yeah what would you recommend to people who who also feel like that their financial modeling skills are a little below where they need to be yeah there's there's some um folks on LinkedIn that that have some businesses around modeling they give lots of tips um I also read um a few of I believe they were produced by Harvard some shorter books they were essentially directed toward operators that were now in the c-suite but didn't have the finance background and knew since what their current role is they needed to Bone up on that and so they had some very good books uh very good guides that you know but how does the balance sheet relate to the income statement and and you know what are things that the CFO should be looking for and how does that impact you as a CEO and and you know I was very familiar with you know in construction business cash is everything and getting your invoices in and getting paid and and so I wasn't naive to finances but I did know that I needed to to become stronger in them and so I used that those those Harvard guides were very helpful and did you find that the modeling and kind of uh Financial skills that you gained by reading that stuff they did you then use that stuff was it was it actually important to getting your deal done I I did today is an honor yeah and you know they they have some good ratios some quick ratios to pull off the balance sheet or the income statement and and and you know aging AR aging reports and and things like that that they tell you are important which really benefited me the most in my initial evaluations of business yes Rocky Mountain Reclamation was the first Loi sent out but it was not the first business that I had pulled financials on and I was able to quickly you know in a few hours say do it do I really want to pursue this anymore or not um but then also it made me knowledgeable enough to know what I didn't know that's why I brought on Kane Crossing as my accounting due diligence team it definitely helped me in understanding the data they were giving me asking questions and also being able to answer questions from them or when they ask me questions being knowledgeable enough to be able to put it in terms for the current owner that was not um finally you know they're very very successful but it's that typical founder mentality you know they weren't super Savvy on the financial side of things so yeah having that ability to be the middleman between my due diligence folks and the existing owner you know just smoothed out that communication line and helped us get to the needed answers quicker so I think it was important at the end of the day it was important for me to gain that knowledge well congratulations on on putting that that deal together and of course buying your business so let's close with a bit a little bit of a conversation around some of the things you've already teased about your experience now owning and operating the business um this is we've already talked about how the business buyer fit here it was it was really great you um are comfortable in construction and agricultural environments and this business is something of a hybrid of the two um but at the same time you don't know everything about you know how to make grass grow west of the west of Kansas City or whatever it was what has the learning curve been like and in fact from your previous years of experience how much of that are you able to bring to bear or could I get in there and and run this business somebody with no Agriculture and no construction experience I'm very thankful for the experience I have had I think it would be very hard to come into this business cold I think it'd be very hard to come into any construction business cold if you were managing a bunch of subcontractors maybe not as not as much but where you are actually a contractor performing the work um I think the experiences is very needed and I'm still definitely learning every day um you know coming up in the large construction business primarily the large Bridge World um making my way up through the ranks uh I definitely had lots and lots of uh people that worked on my teams that were much better doing their job than I could be at their job but I had done their job before I was definitely a industry expert well here I am not an industry expert and my employees all know a lot more than I know about it and so that that takes some getting used to and leading people that um leading a group of blue-collar employees that know that you don't know as much about that specific thing as they do is harder than leading a group of people where they're pretty confident that hey you're you're technically on top of it and you're my leader too we're here it's okay you're my leader but yeah I'm not sure about your technical abilities here um you know and and so you know again not being too prideful ask questions the the previous owner has been a great resource uh gracious with his knowledge sharing willing to do so willing to help and um you know and that's that's important because he he was definitely known across the whole West as a technical expert and so there's lots of these long-term clients that have known him for 20 30 years now he's gone sure we do an introduction from him to me but they they too know that oh well doesn't sound like you've done this before no I haven't done this exactly before but um used to all these components so that's a big that's a big transition yeah and two follow-ups there first of all this this thing about your cruise seeing that you don't know as much as they do but still kind of being expected to follow your lead as leader is there any technique uh or um approach that you could recommend to the audience who find themselves in a similar situation because that is um earning earning the respect of a new team when you don't know the industry is what makes this process very difficult in a lot of acquisitions well I think I am not perfect at it um but uh you know when I'm preparing a bid I will call those guys and say hey this is what I'm seeing this looks a little different than our normal work that I'm very very comfortable with pricing and understand and you know what's your experience been before or hey this soil type in this area it doesn't look like that the client has picked the correct species that are going to be successful there and so just asking them questions um you know yeah we had our first so we're very seasonal um so when it came go time this spring there was some rub in that I would just call and check in on my foreman every day that are scattered Across the Nation because that's totally normal to me I'm used to running very big operations I'm a guy that was always on site you know I'd have you know I'd meet with eight or ten superintendents every day at one o'clock and they would meet with all their Foreman at whatever in the morning and I I could tell you if if um if George on crew number seven was out sick today I could tell you that on on jobs that would have hundreds of employees well here this is a much smaller group of employees that were used to operating pretty autonomously and they're like why are you calling me why are you busy but why are you bothering me I'm busy I'm doing my job and they thought I was kind of trying to micromanage them when in reality I care about them I care about our business and I was just calling to check in and so one dude like who he just had the Frank conversation he's like don't call me I'll call you and I'm like all right I understand who you are just understand when I do call you you know I'm not necessarily calling to tell you how to do your job I'm just wanting to see how things are going and keep in contact with you so there's there's definitely learning curves there and just having those Frank conversations because it became apparent to me whoa these guys expectations and my expectations are very different from each other and just say hey it's okay if we don't necessarily um like the way each other operates but to know that neither of us are doing it out of ill intentions I'm not trying to micromanage you I don't think you're totally blowing me off so we'll just keep open lines of communication and we'll work through this knowing that we're coming from two very different backgrounds and how is it shaken out do you continue calling at the rate that you prefer or have you had to adjust kind of Foreman by Foreman yeah definitely adjusted Forman by foreman and and right I mean I'm I'm a I'm a new business owner I was a little nervous you know I wanted we had come through again seasonal business we come through the down times when cash is just going out the door every day right keeping the business open and then when it's go time when we're in the field I wanted to make sure we were being successful because if we're not successful in go time then it makes the slow time no good right and so yeah um and just and the guys are performing great I mean yeah the crews are performing great um when they know what they're doing they go out and execute and they they knock it out Eric you said that about this business their um your construction background like for somebody without a construction background it would frankly be very hard to get into this business and operate it what specifically uh is is the hard part about construction businesses for people without the experience it's it's the pricing it's all the contracts um the bidding of of the work not only do you I'm very thankful for my time as a general contractor where I can understand that relationship in between the general contractor and the owner and the flow down impact that can have on us as a subcontractor and um and knowing those questions asked the general contractor okay this is you know without getting too jargon heavy on you this is a design build contractor this is a construction manager at risk contractor this is a hard big contract that all impacts how I bid the work how I price the work understanding that okay no having to be able to look at plans and drawings and specs and say this is what the schedule is this is how far out we're going to be this work that they're calling me about today and need a price on tomorrow well in reality I'm not going to do that work for two and a half years and I need to have my proper escalation Clauses in there and and things and things like that and and just knowing the background of how to price work you know what's the value of that piece of equipment what's how much fuel how much maintenance what its replacement cost is you know all all those things that if you're not in the construction industry or not in you know an equipment intensive industry it would be you know knowing what I've learned I would think it'd be very very hard because it took me 20 years to learn it all and still don't know it all for sure yeah yeah well my head is swimming after listening to that so point taken um Eric I wanna I wanna close out with a couple of just the kind of the uh questions about the emotional journey of this so the first on the financial piece so early you were taught earlier you were talking about how you guys do 60 to 100 projects a year and um and and you know those are short-term projects so you uh you know are hoping the phone keeps ringing but you don't have any guaranteed income for next year or the next year after that uh and in fact that's not uncommon that's how most businesses are that you don't know what your revenue is going to be next year other than like you said you can project but that's all very uh uh not certain you come from a world where it's a 500 million dollar five-year project so it's a mind shift for you you're used to long-term contracts and that you know what you know money is going to be coming in four years from now so it's just kind of um it's it in fact what you come from is is the exception not the rule what you're experiencing now I think is the is the reality for most businesses where you can only see a couple months into the future uh talk about what that feels like uh and how it's different yeah yeah so it's been a very big adjustment for me very large Faith exercise for me I I joined a Christian CEO group called convene and when our meeting with them last week I I said I have Revenue in security complex but it very much fits how I feel um and so yeah it's just it's just getting used to that and actually in in our pre-call when you were talking about things some stuff definitely resonated with me I mean home services are in Vogue in the acquiring space and acquisition space right now and the guy that's doing garage doors he doesn't have any idea what he's going to be doing two months from now and I'm more I'm much farther I'm trying to figure out what I'm gonna be doing two years from now um you know if there's lots of things that play into that capex and debt payments and all and all and all those things so it's definitely been a big a big shift for me um you know cash flow management is huge um when you're in Corporate America you definitely manage your cash you know where your cash is at for your respected project but there's always somebody behind you that's got more cash right from from corporate um but on a small business that's not that's not the case and so just um you know really staying on top of your billing really staying on top of your cash flow trusting that the business cycle that has been will continue to be there are people that pick up the phone that have gotten to a large of to the end of a large project and do not have a plan for reclamation and re-vegetation and they're like hey can you come look at this job that's you know 10 of your yearly Revenue that I'm telling you about today and if your pricing is good I need you out here in two weeks and so it's just very and I even have more extreme examples I mean I'm talking like a 15 or 20 percent Revenue job that you get the subcontract 12 days before they want you on site you know I'm very grateful and thankful for that but man it's hard on the planning part yeah sure what about the other kind of anxiety this is related to that but you just refer to the anxiety of uh earlier you referred to the anxiety of just buying the business having you know the risk that you took having loans or a big loan having investors um you're also be you're also a kind of Lonely at the Top CEO for the first time versus a corporate environment where you had said it on pre-call that you had all kinds of really capable people all around you above you to the side of you below you talk talk about just kind of the emotional shift that uh it has been to to become a small business owner yeah yeah I think that's you know that what you said that that I had said in the pre-call you know in my previous job I had I had a great boss I had great peers very talented employees below me that we're still wearing a manager hat in in here I have I have great employees um and but none of them wear our manager hat with me and so that's just a that's a transition and trying to develop managers out of those employees that are that have the capability but have never been given the opportunity and um because I don't want to be the end-all be-all of decision making and planning and vision at Rocky Mountain Reclamation I very much want that team that long that long-term team that I talked about before that you know one thing that attracted me to this business so much and so it's been it's been very much an adjustment um it's been tough on the employee front right now just the blue collar spray space Across America is is tough right now the demand um actually this week Wyoming Wyoming's at its uh historical record low for unemployment and there's like 61 applicants for every 100 vacancies so there's nowhere close to in neighboring states North Dakota is at its historical low so Wyoming's like right at three percent unemployment North Dakota's at two percent all the surrounding states are at very low unemployment rates and of course the in the blue collar space it's probably even more extreme and so um keeping the team intact adding new members to the team um you know that's very important and hard to do right now last question for you Eric the let's Circle back to where I opened uh the move moving into quote the middle of nowhere I don't I don't like that expression because it sounds disrespectful and I don't mean it like that but it's you know moving from some big metropolitan area to some more remote and small town feel uh you said the move was actually it was difficult in uh more difficult than you thought it would be especially for a couple like you and your wife who are very experienced at moving into new places what well how's it been give us more detail please yeah well first I'd say yeah I kind of agree with your statement middle of nowhere that don't want it to sound negative I think Wyoming is a is a great place to live the people here have been great um it's that I I lived in Loudoun County Virginia uh the wealthiest County in the in the U.S and I used to tell people like this isn't real this isn't what the rest of the country is like you know I grew up in a in a small town in a county that you know I don't know there may not be two or three houses over a million dollars and every one of my neighbors had houses well over a million dollars in Loudoun County right so it's just not what the rest of America reflects I say the same thing about Wyoming Wyoming is not like the rest of America it's it's great people pick up the phone when you call them they want to help you they you know they're still customer service there's just uh friendliness but you you get used to all the conveniences of living in a large metropolitan area you get used to you know um your kids have a very large friend groups your your churches large and well developed and everything here is just a little smaller and um you know it's it's been a little tougher for my kids to get connected um I think that's all improving um you know my my daughter is going to the University of Wyoming uh just just a little shout out to Wyoming here it's it's every student has the exact same opportunity uh here's your GPA here's your act or SAT score here's the scholarship you get that simple every single single student walking into the door and just to have again that's not real in most of the rest of America but that's an example my you know my my son being able to who's 16 being able to work in the business he's out driving tractors with us he's doing whatever you know where I was working in Corporate America very large job sites that wasn't a reality for him so it it has been hard it's been a big adjustment but then we're really seeing you know the the benefits of it coming to our family now as we kind of get out of this transition space and get into get into the more longer term of of being here and it's so it's so particular to one's own situation your situation your family where you were in life having five kids Etc is there any is there any generalizable something generalizable to take away from your experience like when you responded on search funder and the person was asking I'm you know should I move to quote the middle of nowhere to buy a business do and you set and you raise your hand and said well I I just did it let's talk over DM what is it just kind of like a yes do it is that your response or were you just going to kind of share what your experience has been or how how do you generalize your one experience well I think or can you maybe yeah not not real well but I would say one thing about small towns in general is relationships are slower to make but they're deeper once they're made there's you know when when you're in an area that has uh is transient a lot of people moving out whether you know whether you're you know if you're in an area like DC I mean people are moving in and out of there all the time because just the churn with the military and and everything so people are seeking out relationships because they don't know anybody either you go into a small town most people have lived there longer they're more comfortable inside their friend groups they're not really looking to make connections necessarily because they're content where they are so it takes longer to make those relationships and um you know and the business environment is going to be um grossly different in a big City versus um a smaller City and and or smaller areas there's still lots of handshake agreements lots of email confirmations for contracts that you never see a real subcontract on but you you trust those people and they trust you that's how you're expected to operate where obviously if I'm on a 500 million dollar job I'm not doing handshake agreements off to the side with somebody and so there's um it's just different and it's a good different but it it takes a little bit of getting used to you know thanks for that Eric is there anything I haven't asked you that that uh you want the audience to hear you know I think it's um you know we we have really enjoyed being able to take what was a family operated business and hopefully do that with our family and you know we hope we get to do that you know we could see ourselves doing it again in the future because there's it's important the existing employees were very important to the previous owner and to be able to come in and do our best to keep all those employees and not have some grandiose plan to get rid of all those employees and shake things completely up I mean I think that's uh I think that's a noble cause for people to pursue and and we're glad glad we did it so just keep your eyes out for those opportunities excellent Eric if people want to get in touch with you how do you prefer they do that LinkedIn email search funder LinkedIn is the best yeah and Eric Hayes e-r-i-c h-a-y-e-s great Eric thanks very much for coming on and sharing your very interesting story and for being so transparent about at the ups and the Downs really appreciate your time sir well thank you for the opportunity I hope it's encouraging others 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