Brittney orlano welcome to acquiring minds thank you Brittney you started your journey to buying a business as a zero to1 small business entrepreneur you and your husband had founded a property management business and built it to a million dollars in annual revenue over 10 hard years deciding where to take your careers and business after that was proving to be a challenge until you discovered that you could buy other existing businesses so today you're just over a year into your first acquisition and that's what we're here to talk about start us off with a little bit more background on you please Britney yes that's exactly right um we uh started the property management company at the very end of 2013 um and just like you described uh kind of scratched and clawed our way through um definitely through the first few years um we had three little ones and uh not a lot of funding to get started and so it was kind of the quintessential boot strapped um every dollar we make is going back into the business and then we try to pay ourselves when we can type of deal um so that was really the first five years of business ownership of um we wish we knew another way because this is grueling and difficult and uh hard um but then I would say that's when we kind of the tide started to shift um we had grown a port folio got a better understanding of business ownership uh in and of itself and kind of uh learned more about organization and process and uh really just forced us to become better business owners um because we were doing so much ourselves so um and then I would say then uh the next big shift for us was around that eight-year Mark um that's when we really had built our business to being um as self-operating as we felt was possible with its current size um and so we really were debating about next steps um we had consider considered bringing on like a oh like a director of operations or some type of of something just to kind of completely fully remove ourselves and and someone to push us toward uh Higher Goals uh but we ultimately decided um that you know whatever it was we just were looking for something else to pursue okay well you were looking for a director of operations BEC so you could step further out of the business I mean to what degree had you and had you and your husband been able to if at all step out of the business yeah so we were both working probably less than five hours a week um maybe five hours a week combined at that point um so the director of operations was less about taking things off of our plate although it would do that um it was more about someone who could see what it took to go to the next level and could kind of drive us there without us having to be heavily involved to be the drivers oh oh okay and as I recall you were also Fielding calls from potential acquirers of your business yes yeah that's exactly right so that's when we kind of started learning about acquisition um was we uh they're in the industry there was kind of like a massive uh conglomerate like uh consolidation happening with rollups and um really big firms were kind of eating up gobbling up all the Mom and Pops that they could uh nationally so at that time it was kind of the height of getting those phone calls um and people who were either trying to enter the market or expand their presence into a market um our experience was uh you know we really I felt that I knew what a business buyer was at that point um and so what I had seen was just really well-funded um you know kind of these massive funds kind of it felt like Limitless Capital to pursue this uh goal of of growing out property management and so in my mind that's kind of what I categorize is like those are the people that built buy businesses um they don't they're not us so it wasn't until I heard a podcast um with it was actually a personal finance podcast um but Cody Sanchez was on there um and she was just awesome and got my attention immediately and was really talking about Main Street not Wall Street um and everything I was picking up everything that she was putting down um really lit a fire in me and kind of expanded my mind of like yes this is what we have been looking for and we too um can get in the game there's all different levels fantastic now a couple follow-up questions so I well you you did not sell the property management business I take it correct um why not I initially had wanted to um but my husband uh you know I came home from that I was at the gym when I heard the podcast I came home from that um nearly kicked the door down and was like I got it like I know what our thing's going to be um I know what we should do we've got to buy a business um and so it was really a dramatic like I'm doing it with or without you but I'm gonna do this thing type of deal um because that's just how I am when I get motivated about anything is like I can only see that direction um so I was like all right it let's sell the business we're get people who want to buy it like reset you know this is stage two of life this is what we're doing and uh my husband wisely was like let's pump the brakes um you know let's make more of a like calculated decision here than just like doing it by sure grit which is how we've done everything in our lives to this point so um so he said you know let's use the income from that business that we're getting because we're so lightly involved to kind of help fund um this new Venture essentially I see but selling the business would have given you even more Capital to go out and buy another business yes but his Viewpoint was we were so lightly involved and we were making you know what we felt was good enough income that there was no why for him like no big driver Beyond you know like you said more liquid Capital but it kind of felt like a a safety net of if this whole thing doesn't go as planned we still got this this paycheck coming in yeah well I I think it really gets to something that you now here talked about um more commonly although it's taken a while to get there which is the appeal of cash flow so many entrepreneurs particularly with a tech bias are building building building toward some big liquidity event toward an exit and cash flow has never been something that's been that prioritized um at least in in that world uh now it is in that world and of course people like Cody Sanchez this podcast others are talking about and and just kind of the return to blueco collar businesses the the the The increased interest in small business and those are cash flowing assets and and and so the appeal of having something that is enduringly profitable and throws off cash uh versus selling it and just looking for that exit um I think you guys felt and you were right on Trend because that that seems to be where where people are these days not that that's why you were doing it little did we know it probably comes from our real estate background because cash flows All In anyone ever talks about um in in investment so um I don't know if that's what's attributed to you but that's probably that's what we're always looking at is you know this is Cash flowing it's a self-managing almost investment um so I feel like that was just kind of second nature to us to to think that way and why not invest your new found time uh and now that you actually have uh this cash flow in back into that business and grow it from one million to two five and Beyond that's a great question we had um there's actually a podcast for property managers called um like 300 to 3,000 um that I had listened to and there were other people in the industry who were double triple quadruple our size who I kind of uh walked through that process with of what would it mean to do this right now it's a business that we can kind of wrap our arms around it's definitely a lifestyle business we're con we're happy uh we're content with the income that we're making um you know what would the path look like to try to double this um and we felt like overwhelming the feedback was it would require um a considerable more amount of time of ours and that we would have to really dive back in and be passionate about um the business itself and doing what it took to get to the next level by kind of rolling our sleeves up and getting back into roles that we really hadn't participated in for a few years um and for us I don't know if it's the entrepreneurial I don't know what what it is but just the thought of doing more of the same um it just didn't like spark anything in us we just couldn't get excited about it uh we felt like we we had gotten this gift of having so much time that we wanted to use that time to kind of invest in other things we're both naturally kind of like Builders creators that's what excites us that's what gets us jazzed up and so the thought of building and creating kind of in the same structure I think just kind of felt like just doesn't it's not that exciting for the amount of work it would take and I also you had also mentioned to me Offline that there was a period between before hearing about hearing Cody's message Cody Sanchez's message buying boring businesses and after deciding that you guys were looking for your next thing there was a period in there where you were looking for your next thing casting about trying to figure out what that was going to be and I guess that's why when you heard Cody part of the reason probably you were so receptive to it was because you were actively looking for a path yeah what else had you considered or tried um pretty much anything uh we have yeah we we were just I think we're both open to a lot we both have a off the charts risk tolerance and we both like the challenge um and so and I think we believe in ourselves enough that we feel like with um enough gumption or believing in what we're doing we're we're capable uh maybe not to the level that everyone else is but you know we feel like if we're excited about something we trust our our ability to figure it out and so um my husband has his garage he's turned into what is lovingly called raised Lounge um which literally has a bar in it and I mean it's like moth to a flame when the lights go on all the neighbor guys come and Pile in there normally on like a Thursday night so it's been that way for years um so a lot of it was just talking to neighbors like what are you getting into what are you doing or you know I mean we would have probably um gotten excited about just about anything but we found that very few people are like us where it's like the idea and then like steam steamrolling toward the idea a lot of people will talk about it or kind of think about it what they have going on is too good too risk um so it was hard for us to kind of really get anything going we looked at an app development software um I think we both kind of quickly realized we are not those people um just not our gifting at all um so yeah I mean we were pretty open mhm okay and this of course the story here is not about the property management business but just a little bit to understand you and your husband's what what what makes you all the way you are the thing that you just said uh plowing forward actually executing rather than just fantasizing about new businesses the starting so it sounds like given that you've been in the business for 10 years you've been growing in property management for 10 years you're in your late 30s so you would have started it in your late 20s so you guys were destined to be entrepreneurs because you started pretty early this wasn't something where halfway through your career corporate career you decided you needed to try something else you started early no I think um I mean I can speak for myself it has run through my veins for as long as I can remember um and even when we were dating my husband and I we uh we lived in Naples Florida which had just gone gotten crushed by uh a recession that's where we met and there were kind of the halves and the Have Nots it was like the server uh level of people and um you know the people who were just rolling in the dough and so I think I sees an opportunity there to I kind of started like a little Nanny business of working for all these different moms and I just never ever could um place myself in like a nine-to-five corporate job I just from a young I mean I used to make a newspaper when I was a kid and sell it I just have always been like why aren't more people doing this like there's so ways to get out and try to make money um you know so I think it just to answer your question yeah I never have never sought a corporate career there have been times where I'm like why can't we be normal why aren't we like the people who now that we're seeing in their 40s who have worked their way up the corporate ladder and that seems like a really comfy cozy life so I mean there are times where I'm like I wish one of us was was what I would consider more normal um and then for my husband I think he's just like I said off the charts risk tolerance and so he's kind of just down for whatever so it'd be more like I have the idea and he's like yeah let's go for it let's try it what why not so great uh I love how abnormal you are how weird uh okay maybe not to your listeners to to other people that I yeah in the in the midwest I I'm an anomaly I guess yeah to the property management business so it was doing a million dollars a year is can you tell us what that meant you and husband were taking home we earning uh we were taking about 350 oh okay 350 and that had gone on for some years so I so really the question is what did your balance sheet look like when you decided to buy business and we're going to go right back to that in a second roughly how much cash had you saved or did you have available to you to put toward your business acquisition so you're you're bringing it you're bringing home 350 a year but given I don't know how long you've been doing that so how much money did you have to put toward your business acquisition probably like 75 to 100 okay all right yeah well 350 year is a lot but 75 to 100 is is not a huge amount to devote to an acquisition no yeah okay okay great and then Property Management let's just dwell here one more quick minute that is a category that Not only was interesting to these this big roll up that you were getting interest from from but also down here in search land individual Searchers uh are interested in this as a that as a industry in in category well it's got It's got recurring Revenue it's often B2B not always um and it's it's a it's a needed service it's ubiquitous it's very fragmented do you think it's a good place to for a Searcher to explore buying a business as far as advice to people who are looking to get into it um this is probably obvious but I would say get a consultant get someone who has done it because it is not something um that I would dive into without someone who is in the know um so I would say definitely speak to an industry veteran which you know one year in Property Management they say is like you know dog gear because it just especially if you're doing a lot yourself it's just uh a lot to a balancing act um I think it worked well for us because uh my husband been is very much like the art of the deal he brokering um unhappy people to kind of get aligned on the same path is something that is a gift of his um he has a lot of good soft skills so I would say don't get into it if you are um exclusively like me who I'm like this is the process I'm very regimented like down the line you have to have a little finesse you have to have um excellent soft skills because a lot of times you're in a situation where maybe a vendor a resident and an owner is not happy um and none of them like a a win-win solution um they all want to win independently and so getting them to get aligned is it's an art in and of itself so um and then I would just say about the subscriptions about the fees um there's it's such an amazing business and there's so much to be done um and there's a lot of really cool stuff that people are still rolling out that's exciting um but I don't think it's something and this is coming from a lady who did it that I would just dive into without a ton of uh guidance okay great thank you for that Britney all right now let's return to your story of buying the business that you did you come home and kick down the door after hearing Cody Sanchez and uh and decide to go after it what do you think it was that resonated so hard with you about this having explored other paths and talk to all your neighbors about what they were up to why why buying boring businesses i l Cody s why was that the thing that turned you on because I think especially like I said after trying an app a software and realizing that is not us I'm like this is us like service industry I mean in Property Management you are um everything from maintenance to Plumbing to uh you know garage doors the therapists like you're everything and so I felt like this really tied into our knowhow as far as this you know a diagnosing how significant um a problem is and uh you know I don't know I guess to me it just felt like we can do this we got this like we we should be capable with the experience that we have okay tell me what it looked like when you when you turned your attention to this project how did you start searching you've already told us that you basically had 75 to $100,000 in cash to put toward this uh kind of fill out uh the picture of what your search looked like um it was aggressive um I I just was so excited about it so being in the real estate industry and the property management industry we fortunately have access to just a lot of really um cool people who are a lot of different types of business owners so a lot of it started just kind of um speaking to vendors we use which was kind of an awkward dance um but being like if you ever consider selling um you know if it was maybe a plumber in HVAC just you know like I'm your girl I would love to talk to you about it so really just worked our existing Network um and lawyer that we were in relationship with if you know of anyone buying or selling let us know accountants um pretty much just anyone that would listen we were like let us know um so and then I found out about bis by sell so then I started looking on there uh which is where we ultimately found our deal okay uh were there any before you tell us about the deal that you found were there any misses or ones that you went after and decided you didn't like or you didn't get or what have you I would say through those um kind of channels that I was reaching out to I did have a few presented to me of um like a CPA who said this uh person does shortterm Property Management that could be a nice little sister business to you guys uh for a minute when we heard about rollups we were all in on that because we're like you may not have to put anything down and you know it could double the size of our business and we know how to do this thing um so we really considered that but yeah I would say that we just kind of got hit with reality that a lot of service businesses don't have um like I think I went into it expecting to find our profit margins and and kind of how our business was um and I kind of got hit with reality of there's not a ton of businesses um that had those same margins and what what are your margins in your property management business well as property Management's not fair because now I'm learning about a business with cogs and everything else so like our our gross profits like you know over 80% high 80s and our you know take home what we're making is obviously in the 3540 plus so oh right yeah you said you're taking home $350 on a million dollar so call it 35% yeah those are amazing the bank yeah and leaving some in the bank and that's all a testament to how dialed in you had built this machine I guess yeah yeah yeah well on the one hand when you find out there that you had maybe you hadn't realized just what a high quality business you and your husband had built um on the other hand you say to yourself well maybe we know the game of property management but also really really what we've learned over these last 10 years is how to take a messy small business and operationalize it and and make it and do automation where we can and while that process is painful and messy there's so much value to be unlocked by doing that so I wonder if you were almost encouraged to find that so many of the businesses out there for sale were were you know your business Circa year four year five in terms of how sophisticated they were or not as the case may be absolutely no I I definitely was encourage operations is my favorite thing and so um seeing kind of disjointed operations gets me very excited because I'm like there's so much work to be done here there's so many things that I actually really enjoy um cleaning up and and systematizing so that was definitely a draw for us mhm and what about size so you guys your property management business again to to Anchor was a million bucks in Revenue $350,000 in earnings callit what were what were you seeing what were you looking to buy in terms of size for the acquisition I think initially we were looking for like kind of a copycat like lookalike business so initially we were like let's just get something around our size or you know hopefully a little bit bigger um was kind of our initial indication we obviously had cash limitations so we tried to be realistic about that about um getting into a business that would be over our heads as far as what we felt we could comfortably manage financially so um I would say we were looking for in the one to two or less than two less than two million dollar in Revenue yes okay all right were you bringing the intensity did your intensity and excitement for this project sustain itself after that first night of hearing Cody I mean were you just were you just going after this yes yes yeah I it's just well because that's just how I am I'm very driven so you know when I get on to something it's hard to shake me off of it um you know besides people I trust or or Council of people who I know you know will be honest with me but once I have my mindset on something it's like it's go time um and I think it's evidenced by how quickly so I heard that podcast in November um and we were under contract by January um so it was a very quick search process and tell me more just about the search was it just B by sell was it proprietary what do the mechanics of it look like and and where are you by the way what Market is this Kansas City and so obviously with three kids I'm and a property management business now we have four and now you have four oh yeah yes I'm gonna I'm gonna assume it was geographically constrained you're not moving right yeah no that's correct yeah okay we knew we wanted to be within um you know and again this is where I do think I probably rained it in is like at first it was just like I would have moved because that's just how I I moved every year growing up that's not uh alarmy that doesn't concern me um but again it's good to have a good partner who will be honest and he was just like that you know I don't think that's the right thing to do to the kids and and all that so I reain I rained it in I took his counsel and so then it became like okay where do we actually want to work uh we're going to be driving to the office every day so we're where would be a good radius so then we kind of really did it within really like a 20 20 mile radius okay so 20 mile radius in Kansas City I mean you go you look on bis by sell you're you're going to get through the availabil the available listings pretty quickly I mean yes so then then what well like I said we had worked our personal network but this one was on bis by cell I think it's a blessing that um it was originally listed for I think twice the price if not more um and the listing wasn't super clear because it was actually uh we didn't purchase the land but um there was land with it um that really ruined the numbers um that once you broke it apart it was like okay you know this was making a little more sense now so um it ended up being on bis by sell I had seen it hanging out there and then once I saw the price come into more of our wheelhouse um is when we reached out okay well so tell us about this business um it's a garage door in Gate business um so we do servicing and installation of garage doors as well as Gates um our sweet spot are like what makes us unique is that we do highly customized projects um so we work with a lot of high-end luxury home builders um or just uh higher income uh clients that live in our area who want a very customized door so it could be a solid wood door um or those full view glass doors which are really cool that are modern looking um but we can completely customize it so if you have a certain like trim theme going on with your house we we do Custom Trim uh on the doors or Windows or what really anything you want um and likewise with the gates uh we don't touch fencing at all but with the gates we can customize it to uh really do anything from sliding to swing to uh you know having your family's emblem on it or initials um you know pretty much any material so that's that's what I would say would be unique about us but other than that just a standard you know service repair maintenance okay and what got you so excited about this particular business other than the fact that the price was cut yeah um I would say that like I we like I said um property management is such a wide net where you're doing so much so I actually loved how honed in this business was on um even though it's garage doors and Gates it just felt so much easier to conceptualize than like looking at an HVAC company or looking at Plumbing where it's like reading Greek it's like I don't know if I'll ever be able to understand this it just felt like a lot a lot of inventory um this is a low inventory business because it's there's Custom Fabrication happening um so I just felt like okay this is something that I think uh my husband and I are not handy at all uh we joke like we couldn't screw in a light bulb it just doesn't come natural to us so but we felt like we could understand the basic mechanics of a garage door and a gate easier than we could some of these other businesses that we were looking at and what about numbers and the nature this is essentially a construction or Project based business which is something that we're of course we learn is something to be careful of very cyclical you're only as good as your last sale Etc um so how did you think so first share the numbers if you would and then second how you addressed that risk factor yes that's a great question so uh some of it was by accident um we were told that the uh developers and the new home builders were a marginalized part of the income um which while it's true they're almost exclusively all of the install jobs um so they're not really any service jobs so it's true in that sense but as far as installations go um that's an area we're looking to develop is like a remove and replace is what we will call it where it's an existing homeowner who's wanting new to update the garage Stores um so numbers of purchase price was just under a million uh we put 5% down 5% seller carry then we did uh SBA financing for 50 and seller financing for 40 and what was when you say fi you said seller seller financing for 40% but you also said seller carry for 5% what's the difference between the 40% and the seller carry of 5% basically that he has to agree it was our down payment and basically he has to agree to not be paid on that until the other loans are paid so it was like a s standby kind of note yes yeah yeah yeah okay and it was the purchase price was a million dollars and what can you tell us about the business how much revenue was it generating how much how many how much ear in earnings was it generating uh so it generates just under two million um the sde was closer to I want to say in the 300 okay so a bigger business in terms of sales than your existing business but in terms of earnings it is quite close to your property management business so it was it kind of really was what you were looking for then yes okay um you had said to me that it was it was something of a unicorn because going back again to how profitable your property management business was and how you were looking for a same same sort of small business out there and could find it that this was starting to get in that direction that it was that it was more profitable was it that than many of the other businesses you saw why why was this one so distinct that it got you excited I would say that I would say also the seller himself um he just felt like a person who had a lot of integrity and was a genuinely good kind person um and so that was nice going into it um he also his strengths are were our exact opposite weaknesses um so we felt like um there was a lot we could learn from him and he seemed open to teaching us so I think the seller was a big part of it for us um and we just and his team the way he described his team and the people he had collected we just I guess the people ultimately sold us on it we just felt really good about who we would be kind of going into this adventure with how many people were in the business um seven okay how does that compare to your property management business there are now four four in the property management business and seven in this business okay and how old was the business and was the seller the founder of the business that's the other thing that we loved about it the business is 60 years old um so it's been a part of the community for a really long time um and what's really cool about the garage door business is I don't know if you've ever noticed I had not but you have a sticker um on your garage door typically that if it breaks that's who you're going to call so we're just in a lot of homes on a lot of stickers um and so that was really exciting for us too I would say also I had recognized that they weren't really taking advantage of any type of subscription model in any way and I felt um like coming from Property Management that that's something I had really learned how to do and so I felt that was something I could bring that would kind of immediately bump up uh the top line and what would a subscription look like exactly in this in this world just an annual check or a biannual or excuse me semiannual check yeah it could be anything from plann maintenance to the wood doors that we do require annual maintenance um to either stain or touch up because they're real wood inside and out um so it could be something like that um there's cool new smarttech that's come out like my Q on uh garage door openers and keypads um that you can kind of package in their subscription with some that we might offer um so ideas for days and the fact that it was a project business complete opposite from Property Management where there there as you just said there's I mean in your case you called it subscription but we might also just call it recurring revenue and this business didn't have it at all and it and it's going to be kind of like a construction business although of course you have the maintenance as well um that was something that you didn't take as you weren't weren't you didn't run away from that you were fine with that if it hadn't had the service arm of it I probably would but they do a considerable amount of service calls and repairs and so I think that helped it felt a lot like our current business where we have a real estate brokerage which is like your onetime sales that you're chasing kind of um and then we have the property management which is more frequent so granted it's not a contract it's not anything like that um but it felt to me very similar to something I could I could wrap my head around of you know you have these kind of big projects and then you have this this other maintenance type income yeah and how did that split in terms of the revenue um percentages in the business how much was was Project versus this Maintenance and Service I can't recall now but I want to say that it was probably 6040 with the installs being 60 okay and the service and maintenance that you all will do is anybody's garage door so not just the fancy ones your installs are kind of fancy high-end custom but your service anybody with any garage door that has a problem in Kansas City can give you a call and you can fix it exactly um and and even with the installs we can do it for anybody but that's just kind of the market that they had been segmented into the not our previous owner but two owners ago had just developed a lot of good relationships with excellent local home builders um and so he kind of fell into that but yeah we would do anybody's garage door also install okay two owners ago lovely to be lovely to find a business that has transacted and liveed through multiple owners yeah Tommy melow does that name mean anything to you yes I immediately learned about him as soon as we close on the business yes tell the audience Who Tommy mow is okay well he's like a god to definitely garage door guys but really any service industry person um because he took his business to I want to say around 2030 million and then got um private Equity involved and has grown it I think to over 200 300 million but what makes him so substantial is that he's a very giving uh person so he gives back to his community of like Small Business Service uh based business people he gives back a lot so he's he's a hero to the community and he's very online so he's got what a YouTube channel I he's an influencer absolutely yeah and the fact that he where he made his hay was in your business the garage door business that must have been an exciting an eye opening cuz it's there's always the question of like what how big a business could this become I mean how many garage how how how can I how rich can I get in the garage door business well it looks like pretty rich at least Tommy Tommy has take his bath yes no it's super exciting because I'm an informational holic I I you know binge podcast and anything I can ever get my hands on when I'm trying to do something new and so discovering him and that podcast it was a yeah it was great it was I I wish it for anybody purchasing a business that they could find someone who has a podcast in the business they're trying to run and what is his playbook for getting to I guess nine figures in revenue is it he must have gone National obviously that's not just in in a region that's got to be all over the country yes I mean sales sales inside the garage having techs who are upselling in the home um and up selling gets a bad rep but it really just is kind of the do you want us to fix this now and you may have to call us back or should we replace the whole thing so you're not calling us for 10 years so um definitely sales is a really heavy component um and then I would say the subscription the the plan maintenance and garage doors is another really heavy component of it um and he's right now I believe he's still strictly residential I think he's going to start doing commercial um but he's very heavily focused on acquisition I currently oh well I hope you've raised your hand to introduce yourself to him not yet I need I need a minute to to get ready Brittney you you started to say how quickly this happened so November 22 you hear Cody Sanchez and kick down the door you're under Loi by January 2023 you close when in May May or end of April so call that a 4ish month fiveish fiveish start start to finish before discovering from discovering ETA entrepreneurship through acquisition to buying a business and you had and you had said to me also in the preall that one of the reasons that you got so intent and serious and committed uh to your search was not just because of your enthusiasm but because you kept hearing on podcasts like this one that it takes a long time to search and you were like well so elaborate on that please yeah every podcast I heard I heard that it was taking some times years or months um which was super discouraging to hear which I get why um I would definitely do if we do another acquisition I would you know take a little more time probably um but yeah so I just felt like if this is something we want to happen in a year um best case scenario then we've got to really go hard and be planting the seeds so that hopefully something Sprouts you know sooner than later a prediction now that you are in the game and have bought a business and already were part of the community with your other small business the property management business and the fact that you were putting out feelers and letting your attorneys and CPAs there in Kansas City know um You probably will be approach I wouldn't be surprised if you will be approach for deals because you've demonstrated you now own two local businesses and you've demonstrated your ability to buy a business that you're going to do this um so I I could see deal flow coming your way um okay you know take it okay all right so tell us about uh in fact what what this business is like on the inside what was the transition uh of ownership like um the transition was rough um it I definitely went in with rosecolor glasses um and you know just like I don't know pixie dust and like this is going to be wonderful and this uh seller so great like what what could go wrong essentially um I felt like I was prepared for what could go wrong um but I just don't think you understand until you're in it um also a couple things didn't really go um according to plan at closing um the owner was renovating a sixplex to turn into what is now our office um but that wasn't ready when we closed and so we ended up our first day going into um a rental house and like not a great area was what he was officing out of um and then just immediately like you know here I am talking about how much I love messy operations um but I think getting hit with it and everyone's kind of looking to you um to be like all right tough guy what's next you know like you gave us this because we tried to let the guys know our our history when we first started and and you know what we were excited about doing in the business and so then it's just kind of all eyes on you to to prove it to kind of put your money where your mouth is and so I think I underestimated the difference of growing a business with a team where we're attracting people who are like-minded who are we're Vision casting what's important to us and they're on board for that um to employees that someone else had recruited for maybe their Vision or how they like to do things and so I think I underestimated that um you know the team buyin of what that would look like um and then also just the amount of capital that was going to be needed almost immediately well let's take those two in turn So when you say you you um overestimated how quickly you could kind of get in there and start making changes and and the team Buy in what did that actually look like the friction that you experienced there um well first it was just kind of trying to retain them because like I said my husband and I are not we couldn't go in a garage door no I mean we we there's nothing we would be able to do so if everyone left we wouldn't have a plan be as far as you know we'd figure it out but that was definitely something we were trying to avoid um so team retention was just really important to us and they were uh very close with the previous owner and so I think they felt blindsided and hurt and you know kind of like so for a couple of the employees this was now the second owner uh switch over that they had gone through and they were just kind of over it um so I think that I kind of immediately recognized that uh it was going to be much more important to nurture those relationships and to be more of a student um then to come in and be like all right here's all the awesome stuff that you know I've been chopping out the bit to roll out so um I think it just forced me to kind of push pause and to work work at a much slower Pace than I'm I'm accustomed to which is actually not uncommon at all and we hear that a lot uh on from guests on on this podcast that um in fact there's always the debate like how how to approach transition do you are you a student for six months and do nothing or do you go in there and just take advantage of this window of opportunity as new owner to quickly make a lot of changes a flurry of changes or somewhere in between um but but I guess so so you perceived from the team that they were disillusioned uh with this news and so that gave you pause about just being too aggressive yeah initially yeah I just think they felt blindsided and hurt um due to their personal relationships with the previous owner um but I will say my husband is I feel like the most likeable guy on the planet um and he's wonderful with people and he's disarming because it's authentic he really really genuinely cares about people um and so I feel that he was able to win them over fairly quickly by just being himself um and then it was important to us that when they V voed something to us that we took action on it um and so I think that helped our cause a lot is that they would say oh you know we haven't gotten new shirts since you know the previous owner owned or new gear and we're like let's get you guys new gear you know so we we tried to take the things we could do as wins um to to kind of help I don't know build that trust with them that we're here to we're here we have your back we're on the same team we we want you to win just as much as we want the business to win and and that worked and how long did it start to feel like it was working and that you were building rapport with your new team I would say not that because then it kind of shifted to well here's all the cred the old guy said he was going to do that never happened so now that you guys are doing stuff then it became almost like a pylon of here's all the things that should be fixed um and then kind of an expectation with it because we were taking so much action of like you know things that were important to them that they wanted to see immediate changes with so I would say pretty quickly they got on board but it was almost like then an overcorrection of how it had been initially always threading a needle uh with people okay um and then the other piece that you had said was that you underestimated I think what did you say that the need for Capital yeah yeah for so elaborate what was why did the business need more money into it well I think two things that crushed us were the interest rates I think that was unexpected because it kind of went up during during the purchase um so that kind of when I say crush us it just wasn't what we had projected initially when we were evaluating the business um and then we hadn't planned on taking any income out of the business and we didn't take any income for the first year so we kind of felt like well even if we just have what he was making to put back into it and our little bit of cash reserves you know we should be okay um and I just think that we really that was you know such an underestimate of what was really needed because there was just so much uh investment needed as far as trucks gear tools um um software there wasn't any software in place um so it just felt like At the beginning we were just writing checks left and right for things that yeah what are you gonna say only that even expecting to not pay yourselves you and plowing all the dollars back in it it still didn't feel like enough not even close no and they weren't like exciting purchases it wasn't like we were doing things that got our gears going of like this is awesome and something we want to do it was like the guys can't go to a job because the truck broke down um or you know a safety concern or things that you know weren't necessarily like glitzy glammy like this is fun to invest it was painful well it was it sounds like it was stuff that was just to get the business back to kind of healthy condition as opposed to grow the business that's exactly right yeah and was it was it your sense that the previous owner had been underinvestigated oh okay so pretty much anything that might have Arisen either he didn't see the value or he would take care of it himself um so it was kind of good night and day as far as that we're very much like invest into the solution and I think he just had a different mindset about it and he was able to fix a truck so he was technical yes he's an engineer so yeah okay he enjoyed it okay um were you familiar with the concept of the J curve before you bought the business or are you now no I me lightly yes but I you know I'm ready to get out of the bottom of the day that's for sure okay uh okay so uh interest rates shoot up start going up uh right as you buy the business um all of this maintenance needs to occur a lot of the fixing that had been happening the maintenance that had been happening to date he was doing himself so there was no that was a hidden expense is that where you are right now still a year plus later or have you pulled out of it yes so we learned really quickly about shoulder season uh which was something else that we were not prepared for which is essentially um in a lot of service businesses not nearly as dramatic as like LA Care in a seasonal place like us but we have busy seasons and slow Seasons um and so when we first took over the business we were like um having a hard time keeping up with jobs and it was all referral he didn't have a Google page or you know Google my business or anything like that so it was all just people calling from stickers so we were feeling pretty good about stuff as far as like if this is how good it's going when we haven't done any marketing just imagine um and then somewhere around I want to say Thanksgiving it was just like uh you know fall a drop off a cliff like the phone just quit ringing um and we weren't prepared for that we had hired around grow um again just being overly ambitious and thinking once we started marketing and all that and so we kind of got again faced with expectation vers reality of now we have these guys sitting around and we've never been in that situation before of not enough jobs for Tech so what did you how did you handle it we ended up letting a couple people go um which was awful because again with still trying to keep team morale it just felt like um you know we didn't want to lose our core people with that decision of thinking like okay maybe they don't know what they're doing and this is actually it is a problem so um so we let a couple people go and then we try to just continue pushing hard toward marketing um and just being creative with jobs and tackled some projects in the warehouse that needed to be done as far as organization and labeling um but we kind of just like you sheer weled our way through it essentially um and so that's something that we're trying to be more prepared for um for when that comes again and so this is of course is a working capital issue uh yes and working capital is something that is of course a theme on this podcast a lot and learning it and how it's one of these that is easy to think you understand intellectually but only once you're kind of man truly in it in managing working capital do you really learn the art of doing so um you guys with your 10 years of property management experience you feel like did that property management business teach you anything about working capital or was this a steep learning curve I mean that the I had the seasonality it was the first time you were dealing with that but overall working capital were you more Adept at that do you think than the than the average person listening to this no no I don't think so I think just because we don't have inventory we don't have if we have a slow day at the office that's a score for the team um so we never felt that pain before of if things were to slow down you know because of I guess the the recurring Revenue um we were sheltered from perhaps like a slower sales season um so I think I we just kind of were fat and happy and had the luxury of this recurring Revenue that you know if you we never sold again we'd be okay with that you know supporting the business so no I don't think I I don't feel that we were better prepared and to the point now also about experiencing the similar to what I said about working capital where we all know intellectually that recurring revenue is preferable to every other type of Revenue particularly project Revenue um you only really feel that uh when you are in a situation when when you experience it so now that you've owned a business that has recurring revenue and owned a business that is Project Revenue are you um more of a believer in recurring revenue or are you are you basically fine with project Revenue you just realize that it's trickier to manage no I think I've always understood that recurring Revenue because that was what changed our business I mean we we truly our property management business the Top Line doubled um I mean we grew an insane amount year-over-year without adding a ton of new clients because I I we cracked the code on that um so I think recurring revenue is something that's very important to me and um having gone through the first five years of a startup where if we're not getting a sale we're kind of looking at each other like oh my gosh what are we going to do if someone doesn't want to buy buy or sell a house I you know I have lived that so I think having gone through that and and getting that cushion of the recurring Revenue um you know I'm I'm a big fan okay so where are you so so okay so so we're going through the winter so let's see you buy it in May 2023 let's kind of fast forward to December January uh of this year you have been sinking cash back into the cash back into it not to grow the business business but just to maintain and repairs and kind of get it healthy again um the new project spigot has turned off and there's not a lot of Revenue coming in um then what happens and and by the way at this point how are you and your employees are you used to each other have you have you reached stasis where they're asking for things but just the right amount not too much not too little yeah and again I just have to Ed that all to my husband cuz I am working from home now um I wasn't at that time but he's really car shouldered that portion of it is just making sure his guys are are getting taken care of and that they're happy and and being there if they're not to hear it um so yeah that everything with the guys is good um and then uh we started a promotion so we learned about these kind of well local service ads was new to us that's not something we do in Property Management so uh we started running like promotions for you know $49 tuneups what is local service ads please uh it's a Google product um that you can basically put under your Google my business page or on the front page um at some type of special or promo or something that a call to action um so it's another form of advertising on Google so people in Home Services will may have seen this LSA it's of referred to it's a big it's a big product so go ahead so we kicked that off uh so we uh were doing promotional uh specials now one thing to know is that most people who are doing promos are doing it with the intention of kind of what we talked about earlier once I'm there uh you know and I do a checklist and I kind of flag to you other concerns the idea being that we kind of start there but then you'll want to but our guys do not sell at all it's a pain point for us um and so our promo tickets were our promo price and so that was a different kind of painful like I don't know what's worse them kind of twiddling their thumbs at the warehouse or that they're driving and doing truly a job at $49 um but it got us through so um you know just again Lessons Learned uh so that got us through until really the phone started ringing again which was around May um so kind of that full year cycle um is when all of a sudden it was just like glorious and you know we'll never take a phone call for granted again because everyone just started calling again um so we joke I don't know if you're a Game of Thrones fan but we're always like Winter's coming so like we have to prepare because winter is coming um but as of right now it just like gave us some Breathing Room of like okay at least that is not our concern is is what to do with the guys and through all of this did you have to come out of pocket with any new capital to put into the business or was the the the the earnings from the business enough to sustain it even though you weren't taking any salary for yourselves yes we did come out of pocket um we either took from our property management business would you know do ourselves a favor or a lot of times it would just come from us but it was probably around 30,000 another 30,000 into the business okay all right um well that doesn't change the true purchase price of the business that you paid that much um okay well I'm exhausted um How do you feel so so that was May when the phone started ringing again um that's was just three months ago uh or really two months ago so how do you feel about the adventure after this first hard year Britney I think um I think one thing I have now that I didn't have then is is Clarity um having the gift of just time to learn more about the business learn more about what's important to our tags uh learn more about people like Tommy melow who are doing big things that I can learn from um it's just been learning learning learning um so I would say in that aspect I have never felt clearer about like a path forward like I see where we need to go and what we need to start doing to kind of turn the ship for us um but I do will say that the capital restraints are our biggest issue is that we just don't have the liquid reserves to to take immediate action on the things that I feel need to be done to kind of turn it around so that's kind of the gridlock that we're in like what would that be if you had the capital marketing obviously sales um investing into sales training for the guys getting the guys selling um rolling out a maintenance uh you know a recurring Revenue type of situation um hiring more administrative help to remove uh myself and my husband from a lot of the stuff that we're now doing especially after letting somebody go um bringing in more of that like support staff so that we can be doing more of like BISD I guess and so do you feel like this was not the the right business to have purchased I think that'd be too painful to feel I don't think that I just think that we are in like step one of what's going to be you know a multi-year step process so um I would say that I don't have regrets about the business because hearing other people's stories at the end of the day um no one pulled the wool over our eyes there was nothing Shady happening there wasn't there's a great local reputation we have that history um I don't know what we would be doing if it weren't for referral customers um you know just organic repeat customers so um I'm very happy the team that we thought we were going to love we truly loved them so all of those things uh I feel great about so I think what we're experiencing just knowing he and I and how we learn and I think we probably would have experienced in any business that we purchase ah is there anything though that you would have done differently like is there any takeaway from your first 14 months in the business uh or or the selection of this business that you um would do differently or or could tell you know the audience can learn something from your pain definitely just focusing on Capital I probably sound like a broken record but that really is to me what's holding us back is that I wish I would have maybe considered a partnership or some type of um you know we had never done that before so I had never considered it or maybe some type of Capital Partner strategic partner or someone like a Tomy melow who um you know has this background who could help get us to the next level because I just know the amount of time that it takes to grow by bootstrapping um and so the Hope had been a 60-year business we would have cut the line a little bit which I think we have um but I just think that I did not realize how much of a constraint that was going to be to us so I would say whatever you think you should have double that that's what I wish I would have told myself before well having more Capital you can achieve that in a number of ways including taking on a partner who invests into the business and invest you know put dumps a lot of working capital into the business and then of course takes equity for that um there's also the idea of buying a bigger business where there's just more cash flow coming in and more Capital to play with that way m is that would do do either of those strike jump out at you as a preference I mean I think we would have bought a 30 m million do business if we could have afforded it I just don't think that was a realistic goal for us to attain so I don't think that felt like an option um like I said I now I would be open to private capital for sure um just because I have a completely different perspective on it than when I did from kind of a starting a business from scrp I think where we're at right now is just not the people who we were 10 years ago starting a business um I think we recognize where not having that has held us back um and it didn't bother us so much because we were so comfortable with the other business but I think now is when we're feeling the pain of not having that so that would probably be the option i' would be more open to and what about people out there I mean how much of your 10 years building the property management business that experience do you think feeds into your management of this business do you I mean imagine having bought this business imagine the last 14 months without having had the the 10 years of property management experience I think a lot I think um perseverance is something that that we learned that we couldn't have learned any other way and just understanding that um like I tell my kids it's it's a hard day not a hard life it's like this is a tough time for us in this business but I don't think either of us is looking at it like um a life sentence and I think just having gone through a startup for 10 years you get a little more longevity a little more endurance uh for kind of the Hard Knocks that may come along so I think that's one thing and I think we proved to oursel that we can be Scrappy and and figure things out where we need to um so I think that I think the self assurance is something that I don't take for granted where if I had quit a corporate job and come into this I probably would have felt like I don't know if I'm built for you know you just don't know you don't know if you're built for it so um and I would just say people management um you know that's something that I think we had to learn and you know nuances of business ownership and yeah I for one think it would be a lot a lot more difficult if we didn't have that experience okay Brittney and is there a Grand Vision here or is there a larger goal that has crystallized or at this point is it basically just continuing to scratch and Claw your way out of the J curve and then grow this business to the extent that you can and then come up for air and see what you want to do or is it no we want to buy more businesses this is the path I mean and let me ask you another follow-up question to that are do you think this path is still the path are you as excited about this Prospect of buying small businesses as that first day you heard Cody talk about it I will say I think I'm I am excit I'm still excited about it I still believe in it h knowing us it's probably something we will do again and we'll forget that's kind of like having a newborn baby it's like was all great you know so I think we'll probably still have some of that in us for optimistic you know entrepreneurs um but I think I'd be more realistic about it now and just have a um less of a like gloss over of things that I would probably dive deeper into or or a better understanding of what it's going to mean for us after take over if something's not in place or or not currently existing so yeah I still believe in it wholeheartedly I'm still excited about it uh Grand Vision um I think like I said right now we are that's another thing you learn in business ownership is enjoying um your rests and so I feel like we because busy season has picked up we are just taking a minute to enjoy like a rest period of like just being grateful um for where we're at right now and then kind of recalibrating um seeing how this affects our Top Line our bottom line um but you know I would like to grow I think that I believe in this business business I I I care about this team and like it's there so I would say my Grand Vision would be to try to be you know use the Tommy melow Playbook of try to create you know even one tenth of one 100th of what he's done let's close Britney with um some of the the personal aspects of this and and or I should say things that were going on in your personal life while you were going through all of this so there was all this backdrop of stuff that was going on and your family and you said to me uh in the preall that that might um be something that resonates with women maybe a little bit more strongly so tie all that together doing this as a woman as a mom um maybe even I don't know if if Cody landed on you because she's a woman you're a woman um what was going on in your family life how what do you want to share with the audience about that yeah um you know I think going through hard things personally probably everyone can relate to that I think sometimes uh if it's you know things with your kids I do think sometimes it lands more squarely on the mom or Keeping home okay while while you're doing these big taking these big leaps of Faith uh professionally I think sometimes F Falls more on the mom um and I don't mean that my husband's inanely involved and a wonderful dad and and all of that but I just think that's kind of falls into the mom bucket more often um and so personally um we had only owned the business for um I think a month or so when my uh husband lost his mom um kind of suddenly and then a few months later he also lost his dad um pretty unexpectedly um and then we have just had um some addiction uh substance abuse uh stuff with close family members um unrelated to that um and then had a kid who was really struggling with mental health um and so these were all happening kind of simultaneously while we were taking this uh massive leap into uh you know entreprene entrepreneurship acquisition so it was just um felt very overwhelming at times because it's hard to be uh strong and present and emoting um a confidence about the future uh professionally when home things can you know can feel overwhelming or or kind of dismal so I just wanted to I guess speak to anyone who might be experiencing that where you're taking this big leap and seemingly everything that could go wrong it feels as though it's going wrong um personally and just you know if nothing else solidarity that that I get it and I understand it and I I I imagine that it was helpful that you and your husband bought this business together so that at least you can lean on each other about what's going on in the business the stressors of the business there something that you can commiserate on yeah I would say overwhelmingly it's positive um that we do it together um my husband likes to joke that you know sometimes occasionally we'll have fights at home and he's like we wouldn't even be fighting on this if we didn't own a business together like this sucks this isn't a marriage fight this is a work fight um so that happens where you know we're kind of head-to-head over something we both feel passionate about but by and large going through it together it means that we're struggling with the same things together um so there's not really a reprieve for either partner as far as you know things are hard in his home life it's hard in my home life too um but I do feel that it has bonded us together and I'm so grateful for that because I know that's not everyone's experience with their spouse um but I do feel that this year has pushed us to kind of prove who we are to ourselves but then prove who we will be to each other when hard things happen um and that kind of our our commitment to one another and our family thank you for that Britney if people want to reach out to you do you have a way that you prefer they do that uh email I'm not huge on social platforms so they could email me or I am on LinkedIn um but a lot of I feel LinkedIn messages can become spamm so I don't always open all of them uh so I would probably shoot for email that's a good one for me anything that I failed to ask Britney that you want to share about with your wanted to share regarding your experience I don't think so just you know high five to everyone out there who's doing it and you know you're still in the fight so there's something to say about that so awesome Britney thanks so much for coming on and sharing your experience thank you for having me 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