Greg Bruns welcome to acquiring minds Will Smith happy to be here thank you Greg you brought a hydromulching business we're going to learn what that is you're only a couple months shy of three months into this adventure so you are in the thick of your transition we want to hear how it's going and to learn about your business and why you liked it start us off Greg with some background on you please yeah and and again thanks for having me um I'm as I mentioned you ear I'm a longtime listener so this is uh I guess you call it dream come true I don't know pretty fun being here wow I appreciate that one dreams can come true right um yeah so a little bit about me um born and raised in Texas never left have lived kind of all over the state but um I'm here in Houston um great Southeast Texas and um yeah came from a very kind of I'd call it upper middle class background um neither one of my parents were entrepreneurs um they had corporate jobs my dad was in banking for a really long time which is kind of what I did after college um my mom was in the medical field for a long time I will say and I'd be remiss without saying this because it really did shape who I was as an adult my dad did pass away unexpectedly at 16 and so that really did and as we kind of go through this I think that'll make a lot of sense as to why I ended up where I am now um partially because of that um so that happened hardly gives you a normal childhood Greg that's a pretty noral that point an intense age yeah exactly and with two younger sisters um at the time it really it really shaped who I was as a you know then teenager going into young adulthood um and so and like I said we we'll kind of probably get into that a little bit um but that really grew me up very very quickly uh more so than a lot of my peers at the age of 16 so it it was like kind of focused on oh I like girls and sports and fast cars and that's it right to all of a sudden oh my man I I gotta grow up fast not that I needed to get a job to support my my mom and my two younger sisters or anything like that but it just it really focused me at a very young age um to where I was like well I guess I'm going to go to college and get a degree and get a good job and that's just what I'm going to do that's what my dad did that's what I'm supposed to do um so finished up high school um ended up going to college right out of high school like many many of us do many of your listeners do and I said yeah I'm I'm gonna study Finance um that's what you're supposed to do to be successful and make money and you know my dad was kind of in upper middle management at the time at JP Morgan Chase um was then yeah it was JP Morgan Chase at that point um so I said just GNA be a banker just like my dad um what I'm supposed to do so did the four years um in college up at TCU in Fort Worth had a great time you've had a couple TCU guests on here um loved every minute of it um graduated in four years um but graduated it um in the spring of 2009 um as you probably remember um and I'm sure a lot of your guests remember that that was not a fun time to be graduating college especially with a finance degree to get in the financial services space uh um so looking around had good grades had a good degree but couldn't get a job well fast forward a year and I ended up getting a job in banking and um pretty quickly I started moving my way up within the banking industry and when I say banking um I want to be clear to the listeners that um there's lots of different ways to to get into banking whether it's Investment Banking private Equity um Commercial Banking retail banking um I went to the commercial route um started off as a credit analyst at a large Regional Bank here in Texas and really was exposed to a lot of um small businesses um small and medium-sized midcap businesses and uh we'd always joke me and my co-workers like man it must be nice to have a parent or a family member who started a business and to be able to work in the family business we're just the schlubs over here banking them right um never really understanding that you know because we we'd get into the financials we look at the financials we'd see how much profit a lot of these companies were spending off and it was like man I wish wish I could do that you know but I'm just the banker and um started doing that and um worked my way up um was carrying a portfolio by the time I was in my mid to late 20s and I was looking around the room kind of having a quarter life crisis right it's like this was 10 years ago and I'm looking around and there's guys literally double in almost three times my age in the same room as me doing the exact same job as me and I said I can't do this for another 40 years if I'm doing the exact same job you're doing as a 27y old I I I can't do this um so I quit as a banker and I I didn't know what I was going to do didn't have a family didn't have any any prospects like that and uh I said you know what I think I'm gonna start craft not Brewery but a craft Cider Company so I uh quit my job and um tried to raise money to start a craft Cider Company well I realized very very quickly that when you have no money coming in and a lot of money coming out that it goes away very quickly and I had no clue what I was doing no clue I never raised money I wasn't an entrepreneur I didn't have plan I I hind sight it set my career back quite a bit even though I was really only unemployed for five or six months while I was trying to raise money and decided hey I got to get back and get a job um it set me back a long time but what financially but what what it did do is it showed me that I don't have to have that security of being a banker having a a cushy W2 job um in order to have a fulfilled life now was I making money no but I was having a lot of fun um just trying to figure things out then I realized quickly like okay this isn't going to work for me long term at least at the moment um so I got back into Corporate America and that kind of set me on what I would call a 10-year journey to entrepreneurship um bounced around went to a couple different banks some consulting firms selling portfolio management um just kind of figuring out what I wanted to do really just kind of honing my skills as a as a business person and really just being exposed to so many different things um and then you know looking on LinkedIn I saw some connections that had bought businesses in fact a former guest of yours I saw he had bought a business a former College buddy of mine and I said who was that it was Shane or uh phenomenal guy really cool business he bought and a great podcast guest and um I saw on LinkedIn that he bought a business and I knew what he was doing before that I said Shane can buy a business I think I can buy a business he's a smart guy um but I think I'm kind of smart too but he didn't you but you had that thought because Shane didn't come from a background in corre buying businesses or private Equity or something like that ex exactly like he didn't have the resume that necessarily led to the where the obvious outcome would be buying a business so if he didn't have the resume and did it and you don't have the resume maybe you could do it too that's exactly what it was and it's funny you know I knew about the SBA um I done I shoot I had done SBA Loans as a banker I had plenty of clients that had gotten them I didn't have CL I I even had had clients that had bought businesses with them but I never for whatever reason even though I was around it I never occurred to myself that I could use the SBA product to buy a business so I did what everybody else did is I picked up a book buy then build and just read it read the Harvard Business Review how to buy a small business and it just it just clicked it was kind of day one of reading that book it's was like Yep this is what I want to do I don't know what I'm gonna buy I don't know necessarily how I'm going to raise the capital for it if I want to buy big um which I did not end up doing um but um I said I'm I'm going to do this so I told my wife and she said you're bleeping crazy she said this is one of your hairbrained ideas and I said no babe trust me like this is what we're g to do this is what I'm G to do she says well I'm not going to do it I'm going to keep my job but if this is something you really want to do like let's talk through it so why now was it really just seeing Shane's LinkedIn post uh yeah why why this particular moment when it sounds like years before you'd have the realization that you didn't want to do what you were already doing so this is now years later and so what is the precipitating event Shane it Shane's post was I think the match that Lit the fire um but really it was that combined with kind of just this postco environment and then honestly just kind of maturing growing up having kids um I I really realiz realized once my kids were born like I want to expose my kids to entrepreneurship not meaning that they would necessarily take over the business I don't know if I'll still have this business when they're you know of working age but I didn't want to be the guy that when people ask their ask my kids what their dad did for a living oh I don't know he takes a briefcase and he goes to an office not that there's anything wrong with that um it's what my did my dad did for a long time um and provided a good living for us um it's just I wanted something different to expose my kids too and to be able to control that um and so it was just it was that that LinkedIn post and then just it was maybe right time right place and where I was at my you know where I was in my career it was just I kind of felt a little flat um I was making fine money it just it wasn't something I wanted to do for the rest of my life uh and how old were you Greg uh 37 years old you were 37 when when you saw when this journey started 30 yeah 37 and and the other thing that I wanted to follow up with Greg was you you talked about returning to Banking and you being exposed to a lot of different areas and industries I guess and how how that taught you what you like that that gave you a sense of some some more concrete sense that I wasn't clear on what on on direction or on industries that you wanted to be in did I did I get that right you you did yeah um and when I say it exposed me to a lot it exposed me to kind of that whole chain of business ownership from $500 million close to publicly traded or publicly traded Middle Market companies all the way down to you know one1 to2 million dollar a year in Revenue you know couple hundred thousand dollars in eBid SD if you will and to see that lifestyle of the business owners and to see the job creation ability that they had um industry agnostic I mean I literally have seen it all um as a commercial Banker um and it just it just exposed me to what that life could be like and the stresses and the risks that they take but also the the rewarding aspect of it you know people hear a couple million dollars in revenue and it's like oh well that's a tiny little company well yeah it is but if one person owns it then you know they could be doing pretty well for themselves and they could be you know doing well for their employees too um so it just exposed me to to that that that true because I didn't come from an entrepreneurship household um it exposed me to entrepreneurs in a pretty intimate way when you're their Banker you know it's a very intimate relationship you have unique vendor relationship so yeah and was this one of these where you were seeing a lot of the business owners were actually blue collar guys and gals who had just started rather humbly and had grown their businesses over decades and were now multimillionaire sort of sort of picture that we hear about a lot absolutely nailed it everything that we hear I mean I I witnessed that firstand for close to 10 years it it's guys that started off as an HVAC technician or a you know master plumber and he bought the company or he started his own and just kind of grew it and most of them would tell you hey I'm not necessarily the smartest guy in the world um yet here they are with you know two houses three boats sent their kids to private school which is funny that the guys that didn't go to college end up sending their kids to private school and the kids don't want to work in the business which always that's what goes back to my point to me my co-workers you they we would see all these ungrateful kids of business owners were like you guys realize how good you have it yeah totally so yes a lot of that a lot of that before you kind of tell us what your search looked like can you tell us what the parameters of it were if you were industry agnostic and you were kind of financially agnostic figuring if you found the right company no matter the size you could take it down um assume you wanted to stay in Houston what else great question um so really the only thing I needed to do was stay in the Houston Metro Area um because my wife the whole plan was my wife has a very good job stable employment um and we weren't going to leave that and you know starting to have Roots here other than that right or wrong pretty agnostic I knew you know kind of like what a lot of Searchers say I I didn't necessarily want retail space I didn't want something where I was going to have to be tied to a specific location and people came to me um but other than that I was I was wide open right or wrong you know I I always read that and heard obviously you go against your gut instinct and bigger is actually safer and I knew that and I known that see I had known that seeing financials of larger companies versus smaller companies um but yeah we had the ability at the time if we were going to be 100% owners I probably could have flexed up to about a you know 750 eida company maybe a little bit more um that would would have drained a lot of of the savings um but I was willing to do that now I would probably had to get my wife a little more on board um with that um and and with 750 eat assuming that the Enterprise Value there the purchase price is going to be in the 4 million range correct okay correct yep yep exactly and and I don't even know I never even brought any of those to my to my SBA Banker I know a lot of times you still have to have cash reserves I mean that that would have been draining everything um that would have been all chips on the table Yeah but I did look at even some bigger companies um with the intention of potential potentially bringing on investors but I never really fully had sold myself to that idea I said if I want to do this I really I want the juice of being the 100% owner my wife and I being the 100% owner um and I know there's advantages and disadvantages to both there's nothing wrong with bringing on investors a lot of times they can be another voice in the room and good way but I I didn't want that if I was going to do this to me the true Spirit of it was to own and operate it myself quit my W2 job I wasn't going to quit I was not going to keep my job there's anything wrong with that I just didn't want to do that um and operate it myself and be the 100% owner um so that's really what I settled on after a couple of months of looking um so if 750 was kind of the ceiling IA it was it was it was likely to fall somewhere beneath that probably so half a million was probably of SD was probably more your sweet spot more where you were feeling comfortable and like like that was going to be the path exactly fully knowing that that eida number cut it in half if not more you know your first couple of years fully understanding that and fully comfortable with that um you know I I need to to have some money to live on and but again I wasn't looking to walk into a million dollars a year in SD it would be nice but that's not frankly I think I was a little uncomfortable like I had managed sales teams before I had had people underneath me I had managed cash flows of business units but I you know I think I had a little I think I was a little afraid if we were being honest to come in and and manage a 40ers company or bigger that had you know much bigger pnls that I was that maybe comfortable looking at but it's much different managing that and I frankly I think I was a little intimidated by that right or wrong um maybe I should have just Dove right in um but I just I like a lot of people I just kind of fell into this like well I'm a little more comfortable with the smaller SD and even though I you know I have a higher risk tolerance than some people I still have a banking background and a banker's job is to mitigate risk right that's your number one job is to mitigate risk and that was always kind of in the back of my head and to me mitigating risk was not bringing as much Capital to the table I will leverage the heck out of this if I have to um um and well hold on Greg so but so less of your own Capital means of course putting your less Capital to work of your own Capital to at risk but it means more leverage on the business so it makes the business more fragile and therefore more risky so so I've actually never I've never distilled it like that but it's like you could argue less personal RI less of your own personal Capital At Risk but more risk in the business which indirectly is your personal Capital true so so so I feel like we could get philosophical quickly on that one but but anyway in your mind it was the less capital I can put here the less skin in the game as we call it um the less risk I'm actually taking even though I'm burdening the business with more a bigger loan payment every month exactly and fully aware of the personal guarantee right I was not naive to that like some people might be at least initially um but to me I just said I'm I'm willing to take on more leverage with less personal assets at least up front even knowing that it's going to be there on the back end and kind of weighing over my head for at least 10 years um that that's that's a risk I was comfortable taking um having a little bit higher debt service assuming a bank would be comfortable with it and um and a little bit lower of cash up front from from our Nest Egg so well Greg the thing about feeling intimidated by a larger business as you say very common and spoiler you bought a smaller SD business smaller than half a million we're about to get there um so we're definitely going to want to return to now how if you still feel the way you did now that you're you're running a quite small business and so let put a pin in that but I'm eager to hear okay so what do give us a kind of a sampling of quickly of what you looked at um as you were cruising bis by sell in Houston sure so one of the very first companies I looked at was the company that I bought Allied hydromulch but caveat they were not quite ready to to to put pencil to paper even though it was for sale so I said okay this is interesting I like this company good margins Etc um but they're not ready so I'm going to keep looking um I actually had an Loi out I submitted two different Lois one to a um a steel a steel company kind of a steel distributor I'm sorry Steel distri bution company they sell like railroad frogs um which are this kind of the switch deals um here in Houston they're big um you know they're eight or n millionar a year in Revenue you know1 and a half million dollar in SD um was GNA have to bring on investors for that one um they ended up selling to a competitor instead that could just pay a lot more money than I was you know willing to um I looked at a very very much even smaller than what I'm looking at now um or what I bought um just a regular Landscaping Company just kind of pushing mowers that had been around for a long time realized yeah there's some advantages to that but also that's just so fragmented nothing I I enjoy Landscaping I think it's interesting business I think it I think there's a lot of low hanging fruit but just too fragmented for me that the owner was very very much in the day-to- day you know he was going out with the cruise every day it's hot in Texas hot in the summer I mean it's hard to explain until you live it every year in July and August I said I'm not GNA do that I'm I don't want to do that um so those are some of the companies I looked at looked at a a feed store um here in Houston um that had been around for 20 30 years really cool business um you know retail but different kind of specialty retail um yeah what else did I look at um those were kind of the big ones and again I was not a full-time Searcher um I still had my very much you know nine to-5 job 8 to five job with a long commute at the time um two young kids you know two kids under three wifeu Works um so this was very much like weekends nights you know at the office on Bisby cell.com hopefully it's not blocked um you I was doing some Outreach you know I some of my customers I'm kind of calling hey would you sell your business so it was it was some of that yeah um don't tell anybody did any of those go anywhere that's interesting they they didn't no um they didn't most of them kind of like hey that's pretty cool you're doing that U keep me updated but no nobody was you know a lot of times a lot of a lot of times these guys you know they do have family members that they want to you know give it to the kids or um so some of that um but yeah it was in the back on my mind though I always had this this little hydromulching company that I had seen on my first or second day on bis by cell um it was always just kind of in the back of my mind and I this was call it July of last year so a little over a year ago that I had found all hydromulch and I basically had six months where I was just kicking tires poking around um um so well tell us about Allied hydr mulch why you liked it why it stuck stuck around with you for so long what was it that was appealing about it um what does it do first what what is hydromulching you had to explain that to me I suspect other people might not know either sure yeah I frankly I didn't know either um I'll never forget the ad on bis by cell it just said hydromulching and Wildflower seeding company for sale and I said hydromulching and Wildflower seeding well I like hours and hydromulching sounds interesting um so what hydromulching is is um it is a hold on how do I distill this down it's a a highly efficient and effective way to get turf grass onto large areas that need turf grass and erosion control um so think about any large construction site where most people see it is going to be driving down the highway on a new Department of Transportation project where they've seen the highway has been built and they see what looks like bright green spray paint on the side of the road um not on the on the actual ground um and what that is is that's hydr multra Hydro seed kind of one and the same um there a little there's some differences um but what it is is it's just um frankly fertilizer seed Mulch and water and it sticks on the ground and then Within 10 to 30 days grass germinates so um it's just an and it's got a bright green color this this this material that what is sprayed out or what has put down the ground The Mulch is what has the color and the mulch is simply just a tack a fire um it's you know we mix them in these big tanks see that you haul behind trucks or they're attack attached to big trucks and um yeah the mulch is the tackifier and that's what makes it bright green um I think it's just dyed honestly um just to make it look nicer than Brown and then the seed the fertilizer and the water and it's mixed up and then you just spray it um I'm oversimplifying it there's definitely more of an arch to it um but that's what it is and then wildf flower seeding um where you go in and you just drop wild flowers behind a drill Cedar and a tractor plants the seeds same thing right you're just trying to here in Texas wild flowers are really big I should say um especially in the spring and so Department of Transportation um neighborhoods they all pay for this stuff to get done every single fall you plant them in the fall so you have wild flowers in the spring so it's just another form of erosion control and frankly the whole industry and it's actually a pretty big industry it's called it's just erosion control which is massive now with the EPA um that's everything from silt fencing to erosion control blanketing to the Hydra seating um and it's and so this is this Greg erosion control sounds like there's actually a utility to this you're contr you're preventing erosion as opposed to what I assumed was that it was basically beautification you put in a new road and you want grass to grow on either side so it doesn't look like gravel or asphalt forever same with wild flowers that it's an aesthetic thing but in fact there's there's there's real utility here as well 100% and in fact it is not only is there utility is it is required now with most building codes and State Highway projects you have to have it um which is what kind of Drew me to this it's if we're doing a residential project then yeah technically it's um beautification I'm still going to call it erosion control um for lots of reasons um yeah better better marketing than just making it seem like you're making it pretty yeah and for sales tax reasonings and things like that y exactly um so we every invoice I send it's Hydra mulch or Hydra seed for this amount of acres for specifically for erosion control um but yes that that's it's really Dual Purpose to make it beautiful and to prevent erosion erosion is a problem I mean we've had I mean we've seen it all over the country where roads are falling out all over the place because of improper erosion control like I said the EPA is very much involved with a lot of these projects now and they can't a lot of times these construction projects large construction projects which we do some of um they can't get final approval from Engineers until that Hydra seed passes inspection um that hydr mulch um and sorry I interchange Hydro seed hydromulch um so so this is this is a a space with Tailwinds this is a this is a growing industry or growing a trend there's a trend here a positive trend absolutely um it's it's probably this process has been around for about 40 years which the guy I bought the company from has been doing it for at 40 years um before that there was no way to do this um they invented hydr multes I think the first hydr multure was invent in invented in the 60s or 70s so 50 60 years ago and then it didn't really become commercially available until the 70s to be able to do this and so as as we've grown as a country as we've grown from you know with a lot more regulation like it or not I'm not a big regulation guy which we can get into but fact does kind of help my business so I guess I talk out of both sides of my mouth there um it um yeah to to answer your question lots of Tailwinds that's why I liked the business it's not going anywhere in fact um because there really is not a ton of competition and it really is kind of a low barrier to entry um which I'm probably now there's going to be five people that listen to this that are going to start a hydromulching company and the margins are so good which we can get into I don't know why there AR I think I have a sense of why there aren't more people doing it why I don't have more competitors um but it's um there's honestly will there is more work and more business than we know what to do with and then more than my what my competitors know what to do with we are not going to be hurting well that that was going to be the Greg the question Greg is that it like it seems while it's growing and there are Tailwinds it seems so nichy that might just be my ignorance that I didn't even know what it was until I met you um and maybe it's all over the place and it's actually a large Market but typically when you see a very specific kind of Niche service that like a GC would sub out those Market you know I'm reminded of let's say duct cleaning in in residential like there's an industry there but it ain't nearly the size of like broader HVAC um and so so those those businesses and I because a couple of them been one's been on the pot and I know another guy here locally those businesses have struggled to get that big or eventually they hit the ceiling in their local market so uh respond to that that was a big question I had during my due diligence was why has this company been around for 34 years and why has it struggled to get over a million dollars a year in Revenue in 34 years um maybe in the 90s they might have had a couple bigger years doing lower margin jobs um so that was a big question for me and I'm still I still don't exactly have the answer to that right I've only been doing this for two and a half months almost three months um and I guess you could say I'm still in the honeymoon phase though July has been a terrible month for us which we can talk about June was great July was terrible um I I think the answer is I mean it's a bit nuanced but there's enough work for everybody to do however it's it's easier said than done to grow it you know I'm looking at this from a numbers guy and I'm like okay um all I need to do is I need to spend another $100,000 on some equipment and hire a couple more people um well um when you're a small company $100,000 is a lot of money I could leverage I could go buy some more and then finding guys that want to make $5 to $20 an hour working out in the heat all day every day that are you know legal that can pass drug tests um it's hard to do it's hard to scale these types of companies not because the lack of work but just because of the there's no licenses required but there's some technicality to it so there's a learning curve um we'll get guys that are here for you know a week or two and then it rains for two weeks like what's happened in July and they're not making steady income and I'm I can't afford to pay them a base salary and they're on to the next job because they can't they can't provide for their family which understand I'm not mad at um so it's all these factors and you know we're subcontractors and being a subcontractor it's hard to grow cash flow management is real I thought I let me let me pause you there because we're getting into some themes that I definitely to spend time on all good so before we keep going so you've said that it maybe there were a couple years that it broke a million bucks but this is a subm million doll business what was the revenue and what was the SD please yep so Revenue when I for 2023 was one right over $1 million call it $1 1,50,000 and the SD on that depending on how you look at SD right um the broker would have told you it was 400,000 I think it was closer to about 350,000 SD still pretty great margins for for uh you know Blue Collar gritty project-based business which I would have not have bought it because it checks a lot I should say it does not check a lot of boxes it checks a lot of the boxes to avoid exactly small um Project based um weather dependent um however I just kept coming back to those margins so you're talking 35% net profit margins in a you know and that's they ran some stuff through it's small business right it they ran some stuff through the company um the gross profit margins are phenomenal in this I mean you're talking 90% gross profit margins maybe higher really so cheap material um and not a lot of competitors for whatever reason and I think I know I I think I know why there aren't a lot of competitors um but that that is that's really what drew me to this was were those margins plain and simple now is that right I don't I don't know talk to me again in a couple of years but I just saw there was so much meat on the bone and I saw that the previous owners had really just run it as a lifestyle business for them you know they were in their early 70s they paid for their Astro season tickets and they had a paid off house and their kids were grown they had grandkids and I said you know what this is a lifestyle business for them and they had long-term employees and it just it just checked all the boxes for me specifically it didn't have office I had to go to every day I didn't want to go to an office every day right I'd rather go to job sites and work from home um so it just checked all these boxes for me um and hopefully I can grow it so yeah and and we should just be clear on the margins that does not include any I should be clear about this in general when talking about SD but that doesn't include that SD number paying you or somebody managing the business so if you wanted to truly have a understand net margins it would add another hundred or take out another $100,000 for somebody who to run the business so that then it's more of like 250 on a million still for a business like this great margins and and that you know if you could find somebody like that then you're really just cutting yourself a $250,000 check after you pay down your debt so um exactly and we can kind of talk about working on the business versus in the business and even though this is small why I did feel comfortable this was more me working on the business we can talk about that too great um well and and I and I want to get that to that the um but tell us about the terms of the deal if you would and also just I know the Project based thing was something that you talked to live o which is going to be a very familiar name to the listeners and live o didn't like the business for that reason correct there was a couple of banks that didn't like it for that reason and and so what did they were just like Project based businesses too risky and and so you had to find a lender who just was that was okay with them sort of thing or yeah you know in every Bank yeah so looking at this high level this bank it it qualified for an SBA loan right however as you know and many your guests know and I knew as a banker every Bank looks at credit very differently and everybody has different buckets for different types of Industries and different cash flow um requirements and I think for them the cash flow was maybe a little bit tight um they didn't agree with some of the ADB backs that I thought were um that I thought were legitimate ADB backs um which I get it I mean you you got to go off the tax return um and um yeah I think it was industry specific they just didn't like that it was Project based um there let me go back um even though this a 34 year old business I should I should say postco was really really bad for these guys um 21 and 21 specifically was a terrible year for him 2022 they bounced back a little better 2023 was great so if you looked at pre2 2020 was okay but if you looked at pre-2020 numbers great fine checked all the boxes 21 22 not so good 23 good again so a lot of these Banks want to go back they'll go back three years right and right fully so I've underwritten plenty of loan packages in my life and they looked at 21 and 22 and said no this doesn't support the loan if you look at those numbers yeah fair enough um so I found a bank that said we believe in this business we believe in you you still qualify for the SBA we'll take a chance um so that's what that's how I ended up doing that I'm happy to talk about the specific structure and numbers around that too so H yeah I would like to hear that but who' you use because I remember you were happy with him sure uh we used uh first internet Bank um Sam cralis was my banker um he's he's a pretty big name in the SBA World um I don't think he's as active on LinkedIn as some of the guys are um but he he's good I mean I just saw he posted yesterday he did did $12 million in fundings in in just in um in July alone so he's a big time producer and my the broker not my broker but the broker of the company introduced me to him and he had already looked at the deal it wasn't SBA pre-qualified but he had looked at it before and said if 2023 numbers are good we can lend on this um so that's who I used and he was great the loan closures were great um the process was it took longer than I expected it always they they warn you it's going to take a lot longer and sure enough it takes it's not your fault but it's always somebody's fault right just it took way longer than expected we went under we went under Loi in December of 2023 and we didn't close until May so it just it took and it just a small Deal million dollars um so it it yeah that was a pain in the butt but not the back's fault so and Greg the thing about the it being hammered by Co my recollection is that like Construction in kind of infrastructure construction that a lot of the a lot of projects in that kind of vein people took advantage of doing them because it was not it was like you know we we have capacity now because the world has stopped let's do some of these projects so I'm surprised it was actually so covid vulnerable it was covid vulnerable in the sense of they didn't the jobs didn't really decrease they stayed busy if you ask my employees they're like we were fine during covid they don't have insight into the financials what happens specifically with us I don't know if you have a a yard a front yard or a backyard that you have to fertilize fertilizer prices quadrupled during Co so our gross margins or their gross margins I should say got hammered U during Co they were too they were too slow to adjust pricing you know they they had been the the previous owners phenomenal operators John Hughes has a he was the previous owner he has more information downloaded into his brain about hydromulching and erosion control than I will ever hope to have um I don't think he was the most Savvy savest businessman and that's okay right I think that's the story with a lot of these guys that were operators turned owners um so it was that um you know we did a we do a lot of industrial sites so um Plastics refineries um liquid natural gas plants uh oil and gas Terminals and those guys yes there was work but it was very much like somebody test positive for covid or they're running a fever can't work for two weeks right um and we're a small business and a lot of it you know they'd show up and one of the guys or two of the guys were running a slightly high fever and they'd get sent home for a week or two um so it was a lot of that um once that loosened up and really I say 21 and 22 were bad it was really two to three quarters that bled into the years making both years look and that's why I was pretty comfortable with it because then once 2023 came back on the spigot was turned back on raw materials went back down we adjusted prices a little bit and the margins were back to that you know that normal price um or that normal kind of normal feeling and I think the bank was very comfortable with that too at least the bank I used well this is one of those like the story behind the story so you you see that it doesn't do so well on the from a financial perspective but if you poke at that a little bit and you know in investigate a little bit you you realize or you learn that in fact demand for the service that you offer maintained throughout and so so there was these other kind of details that caused SD to decline but you can rest assured that the the business is the the demand is robust that even through covid jobs continued on that this is something that even in a pretty pretty dark moment um there's going to be an appetite for the service is going to be needed so so in some ways you you emerg from that investigation almost reassured uh about the business that it is kind of a pretty resistant pretty pretty um pretty um resilient thank you pretty resilient business yeah and and frankly the the really the downside risk here is you know we're tied to the construction industry and sure you if 2008 happens again yeah we would be in trouble a lot of people would be however I felt very insulated being in Texas we are still very much you high growth you know the building is not stopping here we're very Pro business um so I I was comfortable with that even though I didn't have a construction background which we can get into too which has been difficult um uh so yeah all that being said I felt comfortable with the deal and maybe I do have a higher risk tolerance than I admit because I showed this deal to some of my banker friends and they're like oh I wouldn't do that but here we here we are so well Greg I think one of the other things that maybe uh kept it in the back of your mind and kept drawing you back to it is that you kind of like you said you you kind of like Landscaping in fact and flowers and and working with kind of beautification like that's something that so so there was almost a a junqua to Quality to it where you were just drawn to the the service itself kind of got you going a little bit The The J sequa that's a perfect way of saying it and I've never thought about it in that sense but yeah going back to you know I've always liked being that guy that dork if you will that has the greenest yard on the Block if my neighbor's yard starts looking greener than mine I'm throwing more nitrogen on mine to Green it up even better uh maybe it's the competitive nature in me I don't know but I've always liked that I grew up listening to the farm and ranch radio here in Houston um with my dad on the weekends even though we weren't ranchers at all you know we lived in Suburbia and my dad was a banker but I just I always liked that um and to this day I still listen to The Garden line radio show every Saturday and Sunday mornings um they have a new host now but it's um yeah it's just something I've always liked for whatever reason I'm not necessarily A gardener per se I just yeah I I like that I like green spaces I like trees we live in the middle of the forest now so it's just yeah the jqu something about it it's stuck in my mind so great Greg and so what do what were the terms of the deal please and then let's get into hearing what the transition and operations has actually been like absolutely so it was and I wrote this down um because I knew you were going to ask um so the listing price was $925,000 um and that's what I paid for it was $925,000 um tried to negotiate that down um but we ended up coming to a a compromise on some other things which I'll get to here um so of that 925,000 um 225,000 of that was um seller note um so a healthy seller note there yeah um and the kicker on that was is I wanted it to be fully standby for two years because then the SBA could count it as Equity um so I did 200 $925,000 purchase price uh 225,000 of that was a seller note um that was eight years or full standby for two years amortising over eight um with a 8% nice amortization there also spreads it out some okay that showed me too that the seller it the seller was even though you know he's in his early 70s you know he was he's still very much invested in My Success this was his baby you know he started this in his late 30s he was about my age when he started it and it's all he'd ever known and you know he's very proud even though was a small company very very proud of this company and and what he was able to do over a 34 year period And I think that showed me that he still had some skin in the game right now I guess he could sue me if I didn't pay him or something but um and I just still sign a personal um or promisory note for that but showed me he was very much still invested and involved which made made a big difference to me to see him do that have some skin in the game and then um so we're at $700,000 there um because we the 225 and then $100,000 in permanent working capital was very important for me from the bank because we did do an asset sale um so they were taking all the cash all the accounts receivable and I knew with the way this business Works being in the construction industry you know we're on Net 30 Terms and you know I'm not getting paid for 30 to 45 sometimes 60 days after we do a job and I've had to make payroll rent SBA payment pay my vendors um so managing cash flows is a big deal and um that $100,000 working capital was very important to me so that was super helpful um and then I ended up putting down we only put down $60,000 of our own money to fund this for the SBA for the um the equity injection there so my total financed amount was 740,000 with the SBA do you feel the that that sense of risk mitigation where you didn't have to put very you want to put it as little as as in as possible as little skin in the game as possible do on the other side of this do you feel like that's how you feel 60 Grand into a business that you bought isn't very much no you you pulled it off yeah for essentially for a million dollars we only put down 6% right exactly yeah uh hindsight and it's only been a couple of months but hindsight I would do it this way again yes um having the cash in the bank personally um makes a big difference to me now on the flip side when I get that that statement in the mail every month showing my SBA balance oh that's pretty I did a leverag buy out of this company you know there's a lot of debt on this company um but you know I look at it this way we're maybe maybe I oversimplify things too much I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing but I look it this way my SBA loan payment is call it with the rates the way they are today call it $10,000 a month right and if we're doing $100,000 a month in Revenue which is $1.2 million a year which is a little higher but I think we can do that and we've done bigger months than that even since I've owned it um I'm easily covering my debt I'm easily paying my employees I'm easily paying my insurance and I can also pay myself a little bit um so that's how I look at it um yeah there's some debt on the company but I've got plenty of cash in the bank if something happens if I need to inject more cash God forbid I can do that um so I just yeah I looked at it like even at 10% interest or a little bit higher um I'm okay with that I really am and there's so much margin in this business that I felt like there were enough levers I could pull that I would be okay to make that Debt Service payment every month for 10 years when I say it that way that sounds a little scary but and how much were you pay or are you paying yourself Greg out of the business you said you said a little bit we know your wife works uh and know you have you've held on to some savings so you're you're liquid um but still uh how how much are you allowing yourself to take out of the business to pay yourself oh you're getting real specific but I'll answer I'm not I'm not afraid of the questions um we I know we joked about that before um yeah so I'm not a W2 employee of the company it's a LLC and um we're a disregarded entity so just pay ourselves distributions so in the two and a half months of owning it I think we've paid ourselves like 10,000 bucks um so enough to pay some of the mortgage and my kids are in daycare right yeah so yeah basically that um so yeah we I plan on when it's all said and done I probably over a rolling 12 months and I I to be clear I also want to I'm retaining my earnings right like I want to be able to buy some more equipment here in the next couple of months um by the end of the year I want to be able to hire some more people um so we can tackle some bigger jobs so I'll probably pay myself $100,000 over the next 12 months give or take um which is fine yeah it's a pay cut um but you know what your your entire life becomes a tax right off when you own a business that's something they don't tell you in business school must maybe major in entrepreneurship like your entire life becomes a tax write off say say more what are you able to right off now I mean is my CPA listening or is my is the IRS listening um you know it's it's everything I can my my truck right like my my truck is now owned by the business and they pay for it that's a write off um I'm not a CPA but it was funny listening to your interview I think from Monday uh that just posted this Monday he kind of did a deep dive on the U the bonus depreciation and whatnot when you do an asset sale just your entire life you can run so much through the company and I'd seen that as a banker but your tax liability we were both High earning W2 employees me and my wife and we paid a lot of money in taxes and we don't even have state income tax in Texas and now it's like okay the business can pay for my truck it can pay for um you know business meals it can pay for travel it can pay for you know assuming you're doing it legitimately for business um I'm trying to think what else um yeah you're just your your life becomes a tax write off all the um yeah yeah the when you go to sell this Greg these are going to be adbs that you tussle with your buyer over I well exactly well in that thing is if I ever I don't plan on selling this anytime soon um somebody makes me an offer we'll see but I understand like yeah you kind of have to pump up the balance sheet a little bit if you're gonna um you know not pump it up that's the wrong word but you have to make it a little seller friendly and I think that's what or buyer friendly I think that's what the previous owners didn't understand um and I saw that as just meat on the bone for me okay Greg and by the way how many employees or how many people are working at the company I don't think we got that number good question uh so because I do have hourly employees it can kind of flex um I have four full-time employees so payroll is not a huge number for me um my main guy Ry has been with us for 33 years um and he's 53 years old so do the math right he started when he was 20 um and I couldn't do the job without him and then we have my um my kind of shift supervisor he's been with us for 10 years um he's hourly but I guarantee him hours and then we have anywhere from two to five hourly guys depending on the projects we're doing um we have enough equipment that we could Flex up to um some more employees and be kind of split with our projects um and the demand is there however and we can get into this if you want but the equipment wasn't working and we didn't find that out until like the day before closing so now I'm kind of not fighting with but negotiating with the seller on who's going to get that fixed um so pretty quickly I I plan to goow on to at least 10 employees so that's what we're at right now though oh great okay uh so how would you say it's gone we've heard you talk about the weather we've heard you talk about um you just mentioned the machine issues but start wherever you want what what does it now feel like to be in this business for two and a half almost three months it has been a it's definitely a roller coaster po you know people say it every day is is very very different um and you you kind of people ask me how's it going do you love it and I said well depends on the hour you know ask me tomorrow it it's it's gone well um you know we started off in May and we were just Gang Busters um busy as could be for those first six weeks may all the way into June you know we did almost $200,000 in revenues in June which wasn't a record for us but you know you annual aniz that out and that's a phenomenal month for us phenomenal year if you can annualize that out even though it's only half of that um and then July 1 hit and this little thing called hurricane Barrel hit Houston half the C no three quarters of the city didn't have power for a week everybody's trying to dig themselves out of that then you know it's raining the ground's too wet we can't do any work construction projects have stopped so that was through mid July and then this week and a half ago we had had literally another week where it rained I mean I think we got another 10 Ines of rain in the Houston Metro area in a week I mean we've gotten more rain this month than a lot of places get in an entire year um so we've just been very very weather dependent and then we've got all these jobs that are backed up but they're not ready for us and it's everybody's oh next week next week next week so I'm sure they're all going to hit it once right um but it's been it's been a learning curve will um you know when I bought it from the employer or the the previous owners um his husband and wife she handled all the books kind of standard he was kind of the general manager did a lot of the bidding never went on the job sites or anything like that he's not out there on the sprayer um but there's all this stuff I just didn't even realize was involved you know from from safety procedures to just dealing with all these different types of customers from tiny little construction companies up to massive multi-billion dollar Construction companies and you're just a little sub and the Cog of all of this and it's it's a lot you know I'm just I'm one guy I don't I've never run a business before here I am doing payroll here I am trying to learn how to hydromulch and what goes involved with it you know figuring out I didn't even know what a Certificate of Insurance was I mean I knew what it was but I didn't realize that all these people needed it and bonding with these projects it's just it's been it's been a learning curve um as I like to tell my that don't have not bought businesses but are kind of interested in it I always say you know buy a business they said it's uh it's it's uh it's it's it's been it's been really really interesting um and it's been this education and cash flow management um I was very talk to us more about that Greg sure um because you having your banking experience you saw that time and time and time again you knew to ask for another 100 th000 get another 100,000 of working capital yourself so this is the the this is the almost a cliche on acquiring minds now that everybody knows how important it is intellectually but only once you get in your business and really feel it experience do you really then kind of get your stripes in working capital understanding cash flows is one thing um living it and doing it on a daily basis in a especially in a business where I'm not paid right after the day I do the work um is an entirely different ball game um you feel like you're constantly robbing Peter to pay Paul which anybody that's run a small like a very small business understands that um it's it's very much it's what you do um so I knew I kind of did back of the map map I'm sorry back of the napkin calculations and that's kind of for right or wrong even though I'm a quote unquote Finance guy I was never you know I I've kind of always flown by the seat of my pants which is good which is good and bad um I hope my wife doesn't listen to this no I'm playing but uh but but really though I I I had I had realized that okay if I didn't do if I didn't have any revenues come in um my fixed expenses are about $30,000 a month give or take um so I need about $100,000 for three months of working capital well that is true between my debt service between my payroll between but guess what you know we start doing jobs and then I've got um terms with my vendor that are only 30 days versus 60 days because we did an asset sale we can get into that um I'm having to pay my vendors off I'm having to make payroll I'm having to pay for Upfront for bonds you know uh assurity bonds that that my customer is going to pay for but they're not going to pay me for 30 days um I'm having to pay rent I'm having to pay for machines that break down I'm having to pay for new tires on trucks I've got employees asking me for5 00 loans you know um it's uh it just it hits you in the face and you can you can kind of stress it out and and and model it all you want but until you're actually running the business it you know there's very little left over to pay yourself sometimes and when you're sitting there at the end of July and I'm looking at my bank account kind of just dwindling and I've got people that have not paid me yet I've got $150,000 in accounts receivable that's great but none of that's in the bank right accounts receivable is out the window when I don't have cash in the bank um now they all end up paying and then it builds back up but then it's just going to shrink back down you know the old adage is you talk to a lot of subcontractors and on Tuesday they got 100 Grand in the bank and by Friday they're broke again right and that's just the nature of it and and how do we I think that's a broader conversation within the subcontractor world is how did we become the banks of these General Contractors I mean we're banking these guys a lot of times and I get it um they can't pay necessarily until they've been paid but one of the advantages and one of the things that I was comfortable with and it's proven to be true with my business specifically in erosion control and Hydro Seating is that at least I'm usually the final thing that's done on a project to get final approval so a lot of times the general contractor has their pants on fire for me to do the work so then they can get final approval and then they can pay all the other subs including myself so that has been a good thing for my business specifically within the subcontracting World however it also creates this problem where you talk to these your your customers and they're like I'm not ready I'm not ready I'm not ready and then all of a sudden eight of them have their hair on fire to get you out there yesterday um so it's this business specifically is not for somebody that likes structure how you have no idea when the guy is going to call you and say yep that $100,000 job that I need you to do that's going to take you three days I need you out there tomorrow at 6: a.m. when you've got three other guys that need you out there tomorrow at 6: a.m um so roundabout way of saying the cash flows have just been it's just been a learning curve on how to manage those and just knowing that like I might not be able to pay myself next month or I might be able to pay myself $20,000 next month just depends yeah um so and is this you had mentioned earlier your lack of construction experience and how that's contributed to the learning curve is that what we're talking about here how how cash moves around a construction project uh or something else it's that it's that but it's even more so people in the construction industry and they'll tell you this um they're a very different breed um I came from White Collar America where yeah I've got no problem being confrontational or having tough conversations or tough negotiations but it's still White Collar America right the construction industry and I'm not even saying Blue Collar versus white collar for whatever those terms are worth I'm saying specifically in the construction industry these guys got no problem mfnu to Kingdom Come um it's just a totally different you've got to be very comfortable being punched in the face and rolling in the mud and I kind of knew that um but until you experience it it's just you got to put on a totally different hat than you do as a banker where it's all prim and proper and you're a little boy scout right um or corporate finance where you're dealing with a treasurer of a Fortune 500 company yeah it can be contentious and tough and they're very intelligent people but this construction industry it's a whole different ball game I was telling a buddy of mine that's been a longtime project manager and I said you know what man I realize why you guys are always so grumpy all the time he goes yeah now you get it you know it's just everybody's just grumpy um but it's fun you know it's at the end of the day you're all creating something and you're all kind of all working to a common goal and it's a bunch of good old boys it's a good thing it's just it's tough and I I'm an outsider right like my my employees call me they're like oh he's a numbers guy I'm like I'm not really a numbers guy I'm just another guy just like you but you're very much looked at as an outsider um oh he's this Fancy Pants former Banker coming in here even though I'm not that so it's just totally cultur actually on that point Greg do you feel like there has been any friction there in terms of them you not having the credibility where the sell was the founder of the business and he'd be out there spraying himself and um he was he was of them and you're not and this is of course this is a classic thing that we see with with people who buy blueco collar businesses do do you despite the fact is there more than what you just said where you feel at times a little excluded do you feel like it actually impacts your ability to to lead and to get them to do what you want them to do I I think it does to an extent um I think at the end of the day though they recogn well it's kind of that answer is kind of twofold because my employees are different than like my customers my employees they realize like I'm the one signing the paycheck at the end of the day and maybe this is just my experience so they have up to this point at least been very loyal and have done what I've asked them to do there's been very little push back um now I've also taken kind of the the thought process of don't make any changes for the first six months or make very very minimal changes which which is hard for me to do a lot of us to do because we're people of action otherwise we wouldn't have bought companies but I feel like that's really smoothed out the transa transition and the fact that I'm willing to go out onto a job site now I don't go to every single one but I'll help them load up those bales of mulch which are heavy you know I'll get on the truck and spray with them if I have to I'll get my boots dirty if I have to now I don't typically have to but I will and I think they recognize that um and I think they like my communication style um I think they like that I've involved them in some decisions that maybe the previous owner had kind of kept them out of um so I feel like they have accepted me from the sense of that I Empower them a little bit more perhaps um but at the same time I still think they look at me as a white collar Fancy Pants boy you know um which is okay um I'm not really concerned about that because they've done up to this point what I've asked them to do now on the flip side my customers I think there is some of that like who's this guy who are you where's JN at you know who you know Jon's the one that quotes me he he knows what he you don't even know what uh you know what this product is or what it does so there's there's some of I feel like it's been less so the transition on with my employees more so with my customers um which a lot of them are longtime customers so there's well that's actually that's actually a higher Stakes vulnerability there obviously because if you start I mean that's what that's one of the first things that we that we consider in a business is the quality of Revenue and how relationship is that Revenue relationship based and how how you know the nature of those relationships and so it sounds like you're experiencing firsthand transitioning a business where a lot of those relationships were very personal and the customers really liked the fact that Jon was their guy that Jon built this business that John knew this stuff I mean he was like he was you know a former guy out spraying him s yep so um I don't know if there's anything more to say there and or if you could you know it kind of is what it is but I guess yeah I guess I I would ask like has it other than them just being like who's this new guy has it actually led to any lost Revenue lost business or just lost sleep not that I can tell yet um and Jon is still very much involved with the business um he we negotiated for him to stay on for 9 months which is longer than most business owners and already stated that after the N9 months he'd like to potentially stay on for longer if if I'll have him um which has been good and bad sometimes he makes me want to pull my hair out I don't think he's going to listen to this um but other times he has been a very very valuable asset to me um but sometimes I feel like you know he'll be like oh I got a call from so and so and we're going to do this job and I'm like well that guy needs to be calling me John like he doesn't need to be calling you but at the same time it's still a very delicate relationship because he's got these relationships and yeah I mean so no to this point I have not I I don't think I've lost any Revenue because of it and he's he tells them like oh I've sold the company to Greg but he's still has these relationships and so that does keep me up at night and you know John 74 I don't know he's not going to be around forever so I do have to be able to take the Reigns and if that means having a tough conversation with John but I also need to be careful because you know who John told me one time he he coaches adult league softball older guys and he said he he said this to me he said Greg the only people more sensitive than 12-year-old girls are 65y old men and he laughed really hard and I said I didn't I laughed with them and I thought to myself do you know you're talking about yourself right um so it's a sensitive relationship but at the same time he he very much wants me to succeed and he wants this company to succeed and he's called his employees you know like he said these guys are like he didn't have John didn't have sons he only had daughters he said these guys are kind of like Sons to me um the sons I never had so he he very much is wants the business to do well but he's still just he's so old school and he just he's very inefficient sometimes so I have to be able to as the leader of this company to be able to manage that delicate relationship for the both of us and for the what's best for the company so great Greg thank you for that uh we're going to start wrapping up here but one thing that you felt strongly about was asset sale versus stock sale this was an asset sale um which is the typical in a self-funded search like this but what are the strong feelings that you have about that so yes I did an asset sale and it was I understood the difference um and I know there has been some talk on your podcast and you can read about assets sales versus stock sales um and when I first started having the conversations with the broker and then the owners it was like no we're going to do an asset sale you know kind of he kept calling it an all cash no debt deal or no cash no debt deal I'm sorry no cash no Deb um and they had a little bit of Leverage on the company mainly just equipment and trucks it wasn't a ton um but they had some good accounts receivable they had some cash in the bank um so I said you know what I didn't love the way the previous owner the way she had done the accounting um I didn't love any of that so I was like all right we'll just we'll just start fresh um it makes sense sure well you start realizing really quickly like and a couple of your guests have talked about this but I'm a brand new entity brand new so I've got to get new credit lines with my vendors right they had 60 to 90day credit lines with their um Mulch and seed suppliers right I didn't get that I got 30-day credit lines um I tried to get 90 days and they'll say we'll get you 90 days eventually um but I'm not there yet so that affects my cash flow um Insurance all new insurance had to be completely underwritten um again and we've got expensive Insurance that's our second biggest line item um behind payroll um it's a big number for us every single month to pay insurance and my price went up because I'm a new entity and I don't have any you know Insurance risk history there um what else um yeah just with banks like I couldn't go get a line of credit right now if I wanted to and lines of credit are very important in this business thank God I have permanent working capital um but I couldn't go to a bank I mean I have a good relation ship with my bank and they would laugh at me if I said I wanted to get a line of credit right now talk to us in a year um so it's those little things you don't think about oh another big thing uh which I can talk about briefly here is so we did not have a much at all contract Revenue very very little contract Revenue however some of these big projects do have contracts associated with them um and the previous owner John was in talks with a very large engineering company out of Houston for almost a half a million dollar deal for us um when the when it closed and he him and I both said no you keep negotiating it let's not tell them we sold it yet right we don't want to muddy up the waters because I'm a new entity and John's like oh it'll be fine it'll be fine it'll be fine well we close on the business and we tell them hey there's a new entity nothing's changing just a new entity um in this big engineering firm said no the contract is with the previous owner we don't know who this new company is he was Allied hydromulch I'm Allied hydromulch TX LLC um we don't know who that is um we don't have a contract with him um we have a contract with you um so that has been a big learning curve we're end up he's gonna have to keep his LLC going I'm gonna have to be a sub of him he has to keep his insurance I have to have my own insurance so it's just been that kind of stuff has just been the point I want to make around asset sale versus stock sale is make sure you 100% want to do an asset sale before you actually do that I'm not saying I regret it there are some advantages to this of doing an asset sale and there's tax advantages as well but and if I had to do it again I would still probably do an SSL just be very very careful ask all the right questions just know that you are in the eyes of banks in the eyes of vendors you are a brand new company you are not the same company um doesn't matter if you have a DBA doesn't matter if it's the same employees you're a new company and that until I actually lived it I it didn't make I didn't compute with me so well it's also such a good and important point you make that this isn't just um a paperwork headache it actually affects your cash flow because you're getting worse terms with some of your vendors 60 to from 60 down to 30 days that is for somebody who's you know robbing Peter to pay Paul every dollar counts and all of a sudden now you've got much tighter you know money that needs to go out the door faster than it did under the the previous entity exactly well and I remember you had a guest one time talking about he had he did an asset sale and he had a vendor that like doubled the price or something like that or his lease went way up so that's just stuff you just got to be very yes that's just something you have to be very very careful about um and I just I wasn't you kind of just you don't know what you don't no I'd never bought a business before and so it just I I urge guests because it's so easy be like oh it's an asset sale that's what 80% of sales are it's what you do and that's not always the case so well and what we typically hear about the pain of it is that it's just transferring all those accounts and how you know day one you're just there basically navigating red tape and you know calling 800 numbers to move move accounts and that's a pain and and unpleasant and takes away from you know precious hours in days um but it's basically you just kind of power through it but here it feels like there's actually a real material effect on the business and also even even though Nick haska recently pointed out that moving the Bills moving the accounts all that stuff also actually shouldn't be underestimated it's not merely a pain in the butt he had done asset asset purchases before and recently did a uh stock sale and like the ability to do the stock acquisition and just walk in and just the bus just keeps rolling seamlessly the next day as as you as new owner was actually a thing of beauty compare compared to extreme friction of of transferring everything over on 1800 you know comcast.com trying to get the the internet bill and then and then and then you talk to half the people we've got all these vendors on the safety side and whatnot and half the people say transfer it over half the people say no you're a new entity you got to create an entire entirely new account and even for a small business there's all sorts of this stuff um and it's just Google ads like that kind of like it just it's the the uh the website domain right and it's just stuff that yeah it takes away I feel like the last two and a half months half of my time has been dedicated to that and I'm still not done and we're a small little business yeah um and so it's yeah that it's just to not underestimate that and it's it maybe doesn't get talked about enough for right or wrong or maybe I don't know maybe I'm just outlier and it's been more of a pain in the butt than I thought it was going to be but it's um to your point it it would have been nice to roll into just operations day one however I still think there are some advantages to an asset it is nice knowing that I did start with a clean slate so there's pros and cons if you will so yeah Greg anything that we didn't get to anything I didn't ask that you wanted to make sure the audience heard no I think that again you know I'm still very much in the honeymoon phase in the sense of like I'm really glad did this um no you know no sleepless nights so well it's been some sleepless no um what's the term you use the the the um uh fetal position fetal position moments no no fetal position moments yet um they could be coming or maybe they won't come um but a lot of I have to say Greg if you're this far into the transition two and a half months not so far but it's not day one here you're you know your employees you know your customers you have a feel of your arms run the business and you've just gotten through we're on August 1st today so you've just gotten through a brutal month it does feel like if you haven't had a fetal position moment yet hate to jinx it but maybe you won't not to say that it's easy but maybe you maybe you've escaped the fetal possibilities here I hope so um I certainly hope so um and and I think there's enough meat on this bone that you know I've got big goals for this um and I do think it's easier said than done but you know I'd love to be able to open up a second location in Houston um we've got enough work to keep us busy I just need to hire the right people I need to be smart with my my cap X investments in buying new equipment because as Ry my superintendent says all the time he goes man Greg I've seen this and now I've seen it now just in July of where you buy all this equipment and you hire up and then all of a sudden guys aren't working for two or three weeks um because of the nature of what we do but how do I diversify the revenue you know do I open up a sad yard where I'm selling sad to people as well like there's all sorts of different Avenues we can look at and you know as I Empower my employees to help me with new ideas and I get more acclimated to this industry which I was a total newbie to um I think those ideas will come and hopefully good Revenue will come from that um because even if I just double this thing which easier said than done you know you're looking at a really nice cash flowing business um and it could be e as easy as just get more jobs hiring more people and buying more equipment um one thing I did want to mention and it think it goes without saying but I want to say it again because a lot of people do is it's not for everybody um it's not rocket science buying a business but it's um there is something to be said I remember that first week that I didn't get a paycheck it was like oh okay I don't have payroll you know I don't have I don't have a W2 income coming in um that's scary right um that that Blanket's gone and you have to be very comfortable especially if you buy small which I did um you have to be very comfortable knowing that like not every month is going to look the same and you have to be comfortable in yourself your own skin and your own personal finances um to be able to to weather some of that and the SBA process is hard it's not like you just wake up one day and you're like I'm going to get an SBA loan it's like a mortgage times 30 it's difficult um that being said you get the right people and all your listeners are intelligent go-getters you can do it um you just got to really make sure you want to do it um because it's not it's not waking up going to a job even even if you manage people even if you manage a p&l it's not the same as having five 10 100 employees looking up at you every single day saying all right like we need to support our families let's go um you're a leader that's tough and it's um I welcome it and you reminded me I wanted to make sure we got back to so final question Big versus is small uh you're kind of feeling intimidated about buying a bigger business is something that everybody can really relate to because that is People's First reflex let me buy something smaller you know this is first business I'm buying feels more comfortable um now that you've done it now that you're on the other side do you do you feel that that sentiment was correct for you to feel or would you tell your your self of nine months ago no go for a bigger business it seems intimidating but it's still going to be worth it maybe it is in maybe maybe it is more of a challenging but ultimately it's going to be worth it what do you think or not B right right size yeah I think the answer is if I'm really being honest with myself and we're going to be honest with ourselves here will um I would say I would lean towards at least today on August 1st 2024 I would lean into say buying a bigger business if you're if you have the cash flow or if you have the the assets to do that I would say this would be my caveat me personally BU as large of a business as you can comfortably own um and put money down without investors that's what I would say doesn't say that's the right answer for everybody but that's me because I want that control but I also would like a little more cushion on the SD standpoint um that being said everything that people say about small business is also true true it's it's a little easier to scale I think at least um you know you can start rolling off profits and you can pay that um pay that SBA down the SBA loan down faster and have less leverage um so if if something were to happen with this company I think my wife and I I don't think we would have to file for bankruptcy um you know I just listened to your your one today and from this morning and that was a a sobering story right um I I don't think would have to do that now it would be terrible it it would suck but um I don't think we would have to file for bankruptcy so I do have that um I do have that that kind of that blanket on top of me but if I had to do it again I wish I could buy this company that was a little bit bigger right if I had to do it again because I really like this business uh but yeah it's well and it probably also means that whenever it is couple years since maybe when you go out to buy another business unless it's just kind of a bolt-on to this one uh you will very likely buy something bigger you'll know what you're doing more you'll feel more confident and so all of the all of the appeal of buying something a little smaller will kind of be gone and it'll just be go time on a bigger business I suspect exactly and I I I have that feeling as well and to your point about Bolton um I think rollup is a phenomenal um kind of growth plan for me it's like do I buy more equipment and hire more employees or do I go buy a similar size competitor to me in the Houston area because there's a couple of them out there um and to any Searchers out there in Houston um don't be buying my competitors I want to buy them first I'm just playing we need more Searchers in this industry um so um yeah I to answer your question I you're right I think if anything I wanted to get in the game right and and I did and um and I've done it and it's been fun and I I don't regret a single second of it um it's uh it's just it's different it's just it's different man it's I'm laughing because I don't even know like what else to say it's just it's what you expect but it's also not what you expect at all so yeah yeah like having kids you probably you know you you can you can read all the books and hear from countless of your friends who've had kids and um but until you actually experience it it's just hard to um feel it so many things in life Perfect Analogy it's just like I have not thought about it in that term it's just like having kids you can have an opinion on it you can think you know what you're doing you can read the books and then until you do it you and then and then your experience is going to be totally different than the guy that also has kids or owns a business be totally different experience than his or hers um so but that being said it's been it's super fun and and also to you know you're a huge credit to this to me um and I'm sure to others like I I've probably listened to I don't know 60 or 70 if not more so that's what I mean hundred or not hundreds but a hundred hours of of listening to you and a lot of the questions I I accredit a lot of my due diligence whether I did it right or wrong I I credit a lot of that um to you you and your guests um to be able to ask questions that maybe I wouldn't have thought of or maybe avoid something that I maybe wouldn't have thought of so hopefully my interview can help other people that are also searching to kind of think about things from a different um and challenge yourself from a different mindset um so well that's phenomenal to hear Greg very very gratifying as you might expect and it's it's what we're here for and it's and and I so appreciate all my guests who come on they're so transparent just as you've done uh with us today Greg so you really you shared a lot with us and I really appreciate it as I'm sure the listeners will how can they reach out if they want to get you on a zoom or on a call to ask some questions about a deal they might be looking at or otherwise of course um so my email it's pretty easy it's Greg Jerry gallied hydr mulch. um email is really good or I'm I'm pretty active on LinkedIn um I don't post a ton but I'm active on there I'd like to post more um and um yeah those are the two best places to find me or LinkedIn and uh my email address happy to talk to anybody especially thinking about the erosion control um industry because it is different um so and I'm not an expert but we're getting there so good deal Greg thank you very much for coming on Sir Greg Bruns congratulations almost three months in uh long way to go but I love that uh despite the challenges you you said I don't I don't regret a single second of it so very very encouraging absolutely thanks will appreciate it 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 in interviews and stories to come stories that will help you along your own path to acquiring a business