Eddie zakes welcome to acquiring minds thank you for having me excited to be here will Eddie you're about two and a half years into ownership of a business that you acquired using a traditional search fund the business model of your business is not one that I've come across uh it Blends brokerage with landscaping and snow removal landscaping and snow removal being two Services we do hear a lot about in the search world but this kind of combination of the two was new to me so we're going to hear about that and whether people listening should themselves look for a business with this model but to get us started Eddie let's hear some backstory please what is what led you to eventually want to go out and buy a business fantastic uh great question I think it's a strange path for every single search fund entrepreneur entrepreneurship their acquisition uh journey is unique and should be unique uh and so for me um I grew up in a solidly middle class class home not from a Titan of Wall Street uh had never heard of the idea of search funds before didn't come from a MBA type background uh and after a good 10 years in the nonprofit sector decided I was going to go down the MBA path and like many people at at iese uh business school in Barcelona Spain I discovered search funds and at the time I was on a very different path and it was like this is interesting this is weird uh but it's not for me right now and after graduation I had spent a little bit of time in and around the world Adventure capital and I came and asked if I would become the director of their entrepreneurship and Innovation Center and Lead their entrepreneurial programming for students for executive uh you know MBA Global MBA Etc uh and kind of run that program and as part of that maybe 10% of that job was running the international search fund Center and so suddenly I was in charge of the international search fund Center and had barely scratched the surface of what a what a search fund even was and as I got deeper and deeper into uh the questions that I would get over the phone uh over email Etc I started to really really like this idea and when the time came I was living in Barcelona with my wife and three children at some point we wanted to return to the United States and when that came it was okay what are we going to do when we go back to the United States and uh entrepreneurship was the path that I wanted to pursue and so it was what type of what form of Entrepreneurship should that take should that be early stage investing Venture Capital accelerators or incubators corporate entrepreneurship uh doing some sort of Technology startup or a boring uh non-te you know startup and my heart had fallen Head Over Heals in love with the idea of of search funds and so that's the way that I went uh and raised a search fund and here a couple of years later uh I'm privileged to be leading a company called Earth development awesome well I have some follow-ups there uh Eddie that was great though um first on our preall you had told me that you had motivation to get an MBA that you thought might be a little different than a lot of people who kind of put themselves on a track in the NBA is is kind of one of the natural stages of that track how are you different for me uh like I said grew up in this uh kind of lower middle class home uh and was the first generation of my family to go to college and when I was in college you have academic professors and you have practitioners the lecturers ETC and looking at them as a 18 19 20-year-old I was studying business and I I thought even then like if I could grow up to be one of them that would be so cool to be this uh maybe an early retiree that was giving back to the next generation of businessmen and women uh how how how can I do this and so you know to teach at the at the college level typically you need to have an advanced degree higher than what your students are pursuing and so in business this would could be an MBA how do we pronounce IE in in Barcelona it's IE in English and in Spanish typically they say Esa Esa and Esa is kind of known around Europe for having the kind of being kind of the the epicenter of search fund um education kind of a kind of a Nexus right in the same way Stanford and Harvard would be considered in the US or Booth absolutely absolutely great so when you run the entrepreneurship Center having graduated with your MBA and now you're working in the University at The Entrepreneur Center running it um you're also happen to be in kind of the mecca of search funds for kind of outside the US at least at least in this Hemisphere and it's crazy because you know I've never done a search fund uh I I you know we were just talking before we started recording about you know those who who can't teach uh and um whether uh you know it's very strange I would get calls and I I can remember you know the search fund concept is very attractive from a return standpoint and I remember getting a call from uh an international uh executive who said I am interested in investing in search funds I've heard about this mythical uh return profile and I have a $ hundred million that I want to deploy into search funds um what should I do and little Eddie on the other end of that phone call is thinking like I have absolutely no idea uh I've never done this before uh I am not a search fund investor myself I I am a recent MBA graduate uh with with no money uh because I've just forgone an income for the last two years and so uh through through tons of conversations with search fund investors and search fund entrepreneurs both searching as well as operating uh you start to figure out kind of how to answer those questions and direct those calls and taking phone calls from search fund entrepreneurs who were rejoicing as they pop the champ cign after a large exit and they weren't sure who to call because they still weren't publicly announcing it and getting that phone call where it's like hey I can't believe that i' like made the round trip and I've I've I've exited my search fund to entrepreneurs calling um literally in tears uh and doing a zoom call uh with somebody on the other end in tears going I just I don't know who else to call what do I do um this isn't like we're this isn't working and I I need to figure out how to pull the plug uh it painted a very real picture of the breadth and depth of of search fund activity and when you said Eddie that you fell in love with it and you when you went back to the States you were considering all the various flavors of Entrepreneurship but realized you really in love with search funds what is it that you like about it sure I think you'll hear everybody talk and whether it's traditional search funds or or any other form uh about the community and the strength of the community uh the collaboration that takes place I I think as an entrepreneur you know the company that I started prior to the MBA uh was a construction company it wasn't sexy it wasn't cool uh it was bricks and mortar's physical Goods it was a service that I thought that I could do as well as anybody else or even a little bit better um and you know I probably am not going to be the guy who starts the next autonomous vehicle company or artificial intelligence uh or augmented reality you know startup that that's not me I don't have those technology skills um I I like the commity aspect of it I like the alignment of incentives it's not perfect but by and large since the early 1980s the model has has worked really well I love that you have this sort of captive set of advisers and coaches uh that you're you're you're tied at the hip and they're they're helping you succeed uh and you're not going it alone um whereas yeah there are many other collaborative environments um but to me of of the ones that I explored this was one that that really stood out to me where the prevalence of search fund operators who have successfully exited then sticking around to return the favor uh for a financial reward to be clear but uh return the favor because they believe so heavily so hardily in the model uh you know they're they're drinking the the Kool-Aid uh that they're that they're pouring into the cup for you as well yeah talk to us about the decision to do a traditional search fund versus self-funded and and just to make sure we're clear um at Esa especially I guess due to the linkages with Stanford the focus there was very much on traditional search funds so it's kind of like what you knew but so so talk us through the decision to pursue so I think I think that's that is first to to recognize is that you're the you know you're the composite of your four or five closest friends uh in your life or whatever and you uh study a version or your friends have pursued a version of Entrepreneurship through acquisition that's the one that you know the best you know the pros and cons of it but it's it still is the one that maybe is the most natural fit for you because you're the most expert in it and so for me yes that that is absolutely worth acknowledging uh additionally though being uh in my mid-30s and having three kids and having uh you know done this International adventure for about five years uh having student debt you know I didn't uh I wasn't a sponsored student uh in my MBA I I was a debt-funded student uh in my MBA and so the idea of doing a self-funded search financially wasn't terribly realistic for me I didn't have the same depth of a network in the self-funded space I had an incredible Network in the traditionally funded space both of investors as well as you know entrepreneurs and so uh that was it and then like I said I think having the sort of dedicated uh set of investors mentors advisers was a sort of security blanket where you knew that you know when push came to shove these people uh should have your back um and in my case they they consistently did have my back uh and there was so much other upheaval going on in my life there's uh I think what often gets ignored in the sort of selection of should I be a search fund entrepreneur or not is how well you handle ambiguity uh and uncertainty uh where you know you don't know I didn't do a a geographically constrained search uh I have convinced my wife and my children are young so they're along for the journey but you know we could find a company in 6 months or in one year or in two years or not at all uh and depending on all of those outcomes we could end up living in San Diego or in you know uh Portland Maine uh we could end up in the middle of the country I live in Green Bay Wisconsin now uh and you could end up anywhere and so having that stability that even comes from uh a shared ownership of Success Through the investor group um and through other search fund entrepreneurs I think that was really attractive to me so you get back to the US you decide to do a traditional search fund you're you land in Minneapolis where you're from correct you start your search tell tell us some about your well first I guess raising the traditional search fund uh I hope was a little bit easier for you than than others given your connections that you must have had at this point um anything to say there just on raising the fund yeah absolutely it was I will recognize that you know uh at times I felt almost bad by how easy it was and at the same time not bad because I had worked very hard to earn those relationships and build that network uh and so yes when uh inevitably you get tons of phone calls from prospective Searchers asking questions and one of them is tell me about your fundraising journey and I usually lead off that call with my path to this would be very very difficult for you to replicate uh for me uh I only thing maybe that I would comment on was you know I looked at it from three different buckets of investors that I wanted to have in in my case I did not um profitize and add any non uh unexperienced search fund investors all of my search fund investors uh in the search phase were were Mainline traditional search fund investors uh and I looked at three buckets I wanted to have a little bit that were institutional a little bit that were uh OG uh investors that have been around the space for a long time and then I wanted what what I refer to as the Young Guns and I wanted about a third of each of these and an Institutional bucket can fall into both OG or Young Guns um and so but I wanted about onethird that were let's say uh more professional uh corporate style investors that had a a larger team um and resources that would would come from that environment and then the sort of OG I wanted the maturity that comes from having been here for a very long time that I have been through economic ups and downs I have already been achieved a level of financial success that hopefully makes them unflappable uh I don't need to speak in order for my voice to be heard um because I'm you know that that sort of mentality from the OG collection and then the Young Guns I wanted people that maybe were willing to be a little bit more ambitious and swing for the fences that had something to prove that we're going to step up and uh maybe contribute in a different way and then the fourth bucket That Was Then applied to all three of those the institutional the OG and the Young Guns was uh an element of diversity and not to say that uh I was the perfect Exemplar of this or anything like that but feeling like because of my relationships I had some degree of choice in who I partnered with uh I wanted to where possible uh prioritize a female representation in investing teams uh or other minority or underrepresented uh groups and for sure we have a long long ways to go but I think uh for those that have the opportunity to to push and promote that I think that's a that was something that was important to me and that I took advantage of as best I could again very imperfectly uh and there's a lot of work still to do there but it was it was on my mind and going back to bucket a the institutional Capital would that be like a Pacific Lake what what is is that kind of a yeah Pacific Lake relay you know these sorts of these sorts of uh funds that are you know in both of those cases they've been around for quite a while you know Andro uh it you know at relay is Falls very well in that OG bucket uh as a former you know search fund entrepreneur himself who's been there and done it but today you know investing with a team that includes you know analysts and vice presidents and principles and and so on and so forth uh it it's a it's a slightly different perspective than you know say a a single uh OG investor who works more independently that was mentality on Pacific Lake it's a name that you hear a lot particularly when talking about traditional search funds what exactly is Pacific Lake just just tell people you know you you kind of just gave gave some details about it but give people a picture of what it is and why this name is so closely associated with traditional search funds sure they're not they're not an investor in in my search so I uh so I have had very little interaction with them as I was Raising uh my search I I had conversations with them and um Pacific Lake as an example uh of others within this you know they're they they are a search fund investment you know firm uh that has outside Capital uh as well as obviously capital from their Partners Etc uh within the firm um that invests as far as I'm aware exclusively in the search fund space uh and um you know as you're looking for sort of a lead investor somebody that's going to have a lot of clout they have a lot of capital that they can access relatively easily and uh in in some cases that enables them to support larger deals and I think we've seen the emergence in the search fund space of bigger and bigger deals uh and so you know the these what what I refer to is my nickname for them I don't know that they would be defined as institutional from some you know investing industrial standard I don't know because I don't come from that world but in my head they are the institutional type investors of our of our space uh you know they they operate you know with a with a firm mentality they uh in terms of they have different funds that are named and numbered um you know and they would uh have typically some sort of a life cycle or a term to that to that fund uh that they are thinking about uh because they have those LPS on the outside uh limited partners on the outside that they need to return Capital to that's great that's great thank you for that so it sounds like Pacific lake is essentially kind of the leading name in as a private Equity they're a private Equity shop whose funds the funds that they raise they're basically laser focused on the asset class of traditional search funds that I think that would be fair again I don't I don't work with Pacific Lake directly so I mean that would be the reputation uh you know of of them as well as several others that are that are in the space great thanks Eddie okay so you you raise you've raised your money you have talked to your wife uh kids are along for the ride that about the fact that you may end up you really are truly geographically agnostic and it sounds like you mean it you know one of the one of the dirty secrets for lack of a a better phrase among kind of being geographically agnostic and and the expectation of geographic agnosticism among traditional search fund investors is that in fact many traditional search fund entrepreneurs tend to buy a business close to where where they're based um they don't actually go anywhere absolutely Ely true the other piece of it though is um your your access to the owner and your ability through that access to build a tighter relationship and and build a stronger Bridge so um I looked at about 200 companies around the United States at varying levels and I looked at companies from coast to coast north to south uh but ended up acquiring a company from Minneapolis in Green Bay and part of that is is if I were to fly to San Diego to meet with the owner one of the things you're trying to do is establish Rapport as quickly as possible and say okay I'm going to oh will fantastic I'd love to to fly out to meet you automatically that relationship that that initial meeting takes on a different level of importance now uh I am you know booking a hotel and a flight and they are hosting me and they're going to give me a tour of their facility and take me out to lunch or dinner and the whole dynamic changes to a level of formality versus uh if you're searching within a short driving distance of where you are you can just just stop by for a cup of coffee let's just grab lunch it's grabbing lunch or grabbing a cup of coffee or let's sit down and have a beer or whatever it might be versus let me are you free next Thursday for me to fly out to see you and so I think naturally uh search fund entrepreneurs find success within a driving distance uh like a half day driving distance and I think the statistics on where Searchers search from and then where they acquire bear that out yeah that's a really interesting Insight I I never thought about how just the Rapport building has more kind of casualness and informality to it if you are within driving distance versus if you have to hop on a plane and and and it becomes this whole kind of production to visit ye yes and it also changes I think the dynamic of like your professionalism in terms of like somebody from another city it changes it to a more private Equity flavor uh where you know it's uh this is a jet setting young ambitious person who's going to fly out here and size up my company uh it it it takes a a different tone I think uh as well just from a a sort of industry or professional thing and I don't think all of that's bad I think certainly you would like to present yourself as professional uh credible all the rest of those things but I think many owners have their guards up because they are receiving inquiries on a nearly daily basis uh and many of them are from private equity and many owners have a sort of uh defensiveness yeah defense that's a good defensiveness yeah suspicion uh of of anybody not just you know and and certainly now increasingly of search fund entrepreneurs as well yeah no that another another great Point not necessarily a bad thing but it does position you a certain way in the seller from the seller's perspective if you're if you're jet setting in on you know on a flight versus if hey let's let's meet at the bar uh halfway between us you know you know half an hour from me half an hour from you and we we'll talk and we'll talk yeah you share the same sports team or you have the same local news you know it's just different it's so much easier okay so and how far is Green Bay from Minneapolis driving about four hours four hours okay so um give a give us a quick snapshot of the the search process itself those early days uh it was it was what have I done I have absolutely no idea what to do uh in terms of how do you actually start and you don't have a good elevator pitch and somebody says well tell me about my my search fund was called crosswalk Capital tell me you know what's crosswalk capital and the first couple of calls you're uh trying to figure out how to explain it and you know how do I divide up my day uh is it am I going to do prospecting from this time to this time and uh you've never held this exact in my case I've never come from this sort of investor background and so I've never done this job before and there's no one that's there to actually train you and so the first week uh I I probably stumbled around uh like a crazy person in the dark uh bumping into walls trying to find my way uh until I found a light switch and and it gradually and it was a dimmer switch it gradually got brighter and brighter in the room um uh I think you know another interesting sort of story from that era uh for me was in traditional search funds you'll hear that you know commonly one or two of your investors are five how many ever of your investors you'll naturally have a closer relationship to during different phases of your journey M and uh this was exactly the case in mine and and I've told the story enough times that I don't mind naming names because uh the the they know this and they're they actually are on my board today aspect investors uh they they wanted to have a monthly meeting with me and there is there has been a push and I don't know if it's maybe the pendulum has swung back a little bit more toward towards the center but there was a a stage where uh the role of Automation in search fund prospecting was enormous and uh I had peers that were using you know scrapers to pull all of this data down and that was just the absolute opposite of my Approach and my call metrics and my Outreach metrics were just a minute portion and I would get on this call with aspect and uh with one of their with one of their team members ba and he would say well how many calls did you make this month and how many of this and how many of that and I was mortified thinking I wasn't doing enough and that I uh you know we're most of the people in the space in the traditional funded space are mbas we're competitive by nature in order to be competitive you have to have a degree of comparison there has to be a scoreboard and you're used to uh comparing yourselves to others and my journey was my journey and and trying to compare my approach to anyone else's approach uh mentally got me into a bit of trouble and it came to this sort of realization of like it I'm not trying to call the most people that's not a contest that I need to win I need to buy one company uh and if I call 10,000 companies and buy one company or I call 500 companies and buy one company uh at the end of the day the ultimate scoreboard is is identifying and buying one great company for most traditionally funded search funds and so uh very quickly what they were trying to do is they they they had a they're just trying to make a conversation they're checking in to make sure I'm doing okay uh they they weren't trying to they weren't their questions were completely benign uh they were just how are you doing and the easiest way for them to ask that at the time where like tell me about the calls that you're making and who have you talked to and how's it going uh are you making you know good progress because those metrics that activity input absolutely matters if you're Faithfully taking the steps day in and day out generally good things will happen and they just wanted to make sure that that was happening and as I started to share uh great conversations that I was having with owners those conversations changed very quickly to like how many calls are you making to let's talk about this specific company and uh initially sort of my fear my anxiety about trying to match what others were doing that that was really hard for me uh and and I was a solo Searcher so I didn't have anybody to talk about this with and am I doing this the right way whatever the right way is am I doing this the right way and I don't think today yeah we have these methodologies that are being taught at schools but we're talking about the search fund model and then how we actually executed on a day-to-day basis uh I think needs to be customized to every single search fun entrepreneur because just like you should be coming into search funds or getting your MBA for a very unique and personal reason the style of your search also should be uniquely tailored to what you want to the the professionalism the reputation the style that you want the brand that you want to have uh as an entrepreneur but you you persisted with your model and so and so what was your model of Outreach if it wasn't you know scraping and super high volume what did yours look like so it was a highly personalized Outreach uh it was industry specific it was a lot of networking and reaching out to people and asking them for advice I'm thinking about buying buying a company in this space what do you think and so for me having spent uh about 8 to 10 years in the nonprofit sector both as a philanthropic fundraiser as well as uh an executive running a large Private School uh and as part of an executive team I was not the executive running that school um you know I had this sort of specialty in uh edte as well as uh technology that would serve the nonprofit sector and those were two uh sort of Industry thesis that I went down early on and so I would just call or email and reach out very very authentically and highly personalized not necessarily this short email uh that's this like break down the door with this quick intro that's only three lines long I'd write a small book and I'd say hey I'm interested in this space for these reasons you know what would you say to you know your 30-year-old self if you were exploring this space is there anybody that you feel like I should talk to who is that can you introduce me to them can I get on the phone with you Etc obviously not all of that in the first email but that sort of methodology uh and that led to some great results uh early on uh I had an opportunity with a with a uh SAS solution for the uh for fundraising that was being used in mega churches uh and it was a text to give platform that had a subscription fee uh to use the technology but then they were taking a transaction fee on every single dollar that was donated and so uh when you see a hurricane strikes and then the Red Cross says you know text 1 2 3 4 5 to make a $25 donation this was the sort of technology that was underpinning that that gift um and so the cost of switching for these churches and other nonprofits was super high uh where they wouldn't they didn't necessarily they were concerned that maybe there was a better technology solution out there but if if there's any sort of automated giving a recurring gift being made uh as a churchgoer making a tithe or whatever uh that this would that that you know if we switch it we've got to go back to our our parishioner to our congregation uh and ask them to resubscribe their giving and they didn't want to do this and so there was a tremendous pipeline of recurring giving that was going through that platform super cool um but yeah early successes in that sort of space uh and then maybe we'll go from there I don't know you're you're asking the questions but I think the next question to me would be uh talked about the maybe the the pipeline of deals that were coming in so this was proprietary Outreach this was me having an industry thesis uh you have uh your sort of network where you're telling all of your friends and neighbors and aunts and uncles at Thanksgiving and all the rest I'm trying to do this if you know anybody trying to sell their business very rare that something would come out of that like sort of personal Network and then the third one is opportunistic or uh broker uh broker deals or or intermediated deals of some sort and and ultimately that's where Earth development came from was that intermediated space okay tell tell us how you found Earth development yes so that would be a slightly there's I think two different versions of the story uh depending on on who you ask so one of my investors uh was a Cambria group um led by Lou Davies and L's a fantastic uh friend and Mentor um and Lou early on in my search I think was trying to give me a bit of an attaboy this is my version of the story and maybe not L's version of the story but I I think he wanted to check in on me make sure I was doing okay he knows that uh search F entrepreneurship is lonely difficult Road and he he he didn't want to reach out just to ask that question so he attached a one-page teaser for a broker deal and was like hey how you doing saw this and thought of you uh and um wanted to wanted to to you know see if you this might be of interest if it's not of Interest no need to even write me back um you know so to me it felt very much like a like a a very soft uh suggestion and so I I you know kind of glanced at it and it was for a landscaping company uh snow removal company and uh Lou has portfolio companies and the intermediary had reached out to Lou thinking that this was maybe a good a good add-on acquisition for one of those portfolio companies it wasn't at all and so Lou the way that I heard it originally from Lou was that Lou kind of looked at the map and said who is geographically the closest Searcher to where this deal is from I don't love the deal but it's kind of interesting so I want to pass it on to someone and so I was geographically the closest one uh and so I get this from him and look at it and think this is kind of strange that traditionally funded Searchers often don't buy landscaping companies is you know often is not a great fit um and so kind of slid it back onto the credenza behind me and said n like that's okay thanks U but I left it there and I kind of kept kept you know glancing at it every once in a while and um through a couple of phone calls I don't know that it was readily apparent on the teaser but through a couple of phone calls uh came to realize that Earth development was operating primarily with a outsourc business model where we were brokering those Services we didn't own or operate the equipment directly and suddenly that changed uh the attraction to it um and as they say the rest is history great well let's let's hear now more about this business model why would somebody looking to hire landscaping services need call a broker and need a broker and not just go online or use Word of Mouth to find a local landscaping business great question uh and it's it is one of our challenges uh constantly um so traditional Landscaping is route based density driven super super fragmented and especially in multilocation uh organizations one of their big challenges is uh consistency and just the number of vendors that they're working with and so if you can imagine you know Walmart or some other large company needing to employ you know potentially thousands of landscaping companies uh because landscaping companies don't tend to travel well uh you know I I won't drive 100 miles to mow your lawn um as a result there is a space for the sort of aggregator like Earth development to sit in there that you know when you go to McDonald's or Starbucks whether you go to Starbucks in Paris France or in New York City or in Green Bay Wisconsin you're going to get the same caramel macchiato or or the same Big Mac more or less uh the this is about risk management uh it's about operational and reputation risks uh even more so during the winter and Earth development offers a one throat to choke sort of concept where you're receiving one invoice one contract one Certificate of Insurance one point of contact with an account manager who knows what's going on at all of your sites and we essentially are vendor procurement for your team and we are using our expertise that maybe your purchasers don't have to vet identify vet and manage uh the the contractor that are on your site M that that's great and and so your target market is going to be multi-site businesses that's where that's where this really becomes an acute need so yes and no so uh that sounds fantastic but this model works just as well for a single location and so you know Earth development was started in 1999 as a self-performing company uh in Green Bay and we cut grass and plowed snow using our own equipment and our own laborers for many many years and companies still call us because they know that when they hire Earth development to do their snow removal or Landscaping regardless of who is on the site it's going to be done with the with the professionalism that they can they know is the earth development difference uh and so we we continue to have many many many customers who work with us that that multi-site sort of Advantage is not doesn't factor in for them I think what it changes though is the sort of access to resources so uh if you have someone who is uh plowing snow at your facility uh and it's just a traditional contractor that you know works in your region even maybe just your neighborhood of the city uh and his or her equipment breaks down or his or her oper equipment operator doesn't show up to work that day the resources that they have to fix that problem are very limited uh when Earth development works with hundreds of contractors we have an army of resources that we can plug in and so the conf idence that no matter what we can solve a problem uh is is much higher and I think that's that's very unique and whether you're multi- sight or a single location uh that's I think a very compelling value ad that we can have so in a large snow event where it is snowing you know unless you're a very very large site very rarely will a single site have dedicated equipment so if you're an Amazon distribution center there would be dedicated equipment that would be parked at the Amazon distribution center but if you're a dental Clinic we don't park uh a plow truck in your in your dental clinic uh and so in a heavy snow event that single plow truck is running a route and covering and trying to keep up with the snow as it falls uh inevitably in a very heavy snow event it can't keep up and every snow company including Earth development starts to have to think about how to prioritize uh you know we'll take care of the hospital we're going to take care of you know the school we're going to take care of this or that uh under some sort of scheme while at the same time trying to satisfy and Delight every customer uh and so one of the strengths of Earth development is because we're working across multiple geographies we can shift equipment from one region to another to make sure that we're able to meet the demands of that storm at a higher level uh than than a traditional snow plowing company or contractor could you have kind of overflow capacity when a local plower or Landscaping team shows up to a site of one of your customers they're wearing whose t-shirt their own theirs yeah theirs so we're running a two-sided Marketplace so we have you know one of our customers is the end consumer of of the services that we're rendering and then the other consumer of Earth developments you know model is the what we call Service Partners we very carefully call them Service Partners they're not service providers they're not subcontractors and sure it's a little bit of semantics but in our mind they are the key to our long-term success and so when we think about you know which side of the two-sided Marketplace you can't exist without either side and so it's not that one is necessarily more important than the other but uh for those for those Service Partners what we are doing is helping them to maximize their potential uh we see ourselves as in a symbiotic relationship where when when they do well it boosts our reputation in an area we are able to say hey look down the street we're taking care of XYZ property can we take care of yours as well but then when that happens our likelihood of continuing to subcontract that work to that great service partner uh is is very very high and we're typically signing three-year contracts with most of our customers and we're signing those Service Partners typically to three-year contracts as well and so it's not an Uber type model where there's some sort of uh capacity flux where you're going to have a different Uber driver picking you up every day uh in this industry it's too important the quality uh and and risk management is too important to be switching uh providers you know midwinter or whatever unless there's an extremely compelling reason to do that and again that's something that's an advantage of Earth development is the ability that if somebody was underperforming we have we have the resources to make changes uh where typically in in a in another setup that that wouldn't exist and so yeah we see we see ourselves as a a form of Outsource uh sales and marketing for our Service Partners where you know they maybe are at 75% of their capacity for the equipment that they have and we can help them fill that uh in their specific uh region and and boost their route density um and they're they're happy to do that because you know they're essentially getting access to what are hopefully juicy red premium uh Partnerships uh that maybe they wouldn't have the same path to themselves fascinating model and so you just called it a two-sided Marketplace which is a business model that you hear a lot about online uh an upwork or an Uber you know you're bringing together the drivers and the passengers or in Uber's case the the contractor Freelancers with the business person who needs them the services so one of the things certainly in digital marketplaces that you hear about is leakage where the the vendor and the and consumer and customer uh eventually take the relationship off the platform and the platform no longer gets its cut or its take or however you want to put it you probably have more diplomatic language for that uh it's fee whatever um is that is that a risk here especially in these long-term contracts where if I'm seeing a team of landscapers show up or yeah landscapers show up to my my facility every week and I get to know them personally because it's been weeks and months that they you know I've seen them around I've developed you know I I say hi to them or whatever it's some point maybe there's a Temptation among some customers to take that relationship direct and and cut you out of it absolutely it's a risk uh we deal with it regularly as in periodically uh it's not something we battle day in and day out it's not it's not a uh and again that goes back to that idea of partnership uh if we're identifying and selecting the right customers and identifying and selecting the right Service Partners um it surprisingly gets solved pretty well uh and if we're demonstrating the value that Earth development creates as the as the middleman as the broker in the relationship as long as we're demonstrating that value I think both of them want to continue to to partner with us so a service partner uh also contractually uh is under a a restrictive covenant that would include non-solicit non-competes uh related to the sites that they serve we obviously as with them being independent contractors we can't restrict their ability to grow their businesses out outside of Earth development um but poaching poaching I I don't know that I have very diplomatic terms uh for for this but I mean yeah poaching or stealing our our clients uh would be a big no no for you know our our Service Partners and amongst you know the vast vast vast majority of our Service Partners uh we don't we don't have that and part of that compelling thing is hey if you stick with us our ability to help you grow your business uh with together is greater than your ability to go with alone yeah you might get that relationship and your margin or your profitability might grow your Revenue might grow on that single customer but you lose access to the pipeline of work that Earth development can provide you a year in and year out and that's a that's a bigger deal hopefully uh for most of them so I think it's pretty shortsighted on their part to do that fantastic and illegal according to their contract to be very clear and at times we have we have had to chase that with you know uh legal remedy yeah okay and again about this model so are you guys kind of the only were was this an innovation of the earth development founder or are or is this a business model I just didn't realize it is there are there lots of Earth developments around the country and also if you'd answer that both in your space but in other services Services spaces so not 100% unique it's certainly would be considered rare uh it's not it's not it's not very prevalent um it has been attempted on several other on several other cases uh by other landscaping companies uh and in some cases they have earned terrible reputations for uh Earth developments type uh the contractor the the overarching broker winning a collection of sites and then looking to find a subcontractor to do that work at the lowest possible price in order for that for the contractor to uh keep as much of the money as possible and Earth development you know while we're a business and we're trying to make as much money as we can uh we can't do that at the cost of of you know our service Partners being able to make a respectable living uh and so yeah that sort of respect aspect um where we we have to make sure that we leave enough on the table for our Service Partners uh so it's very common that you either are 100% self-performing or pursuing a hybrid model almost all of the larger uh snow plowing or landscaping companies are pursuing some sort of a hybrid because inevitably what happens is you're taking care of a customer in your home geography and that customer is multi location and they ask you to even take care of a site that's 25 or 50 mil away well if it's snow plowing and it's snowing outside uh driving 50 Mi to clear even a fairly large site is not terribly realistic and so then you're having to ask should I buy another truck another trailer another lawn mower staff that up with three or four crew members to take care of one single site uh well if I hit a critical mass where I have enough sites in that location I can open another Branch there and pursue this like Hub and spoke Branch model uh that can be common in some of the larger companies but then there still are going to be those outliers where you say Okay I want to keep this customer and Delight them I want to be the holder of that relationship and so in that 25 mile or 100 mile or in some cases 500 miles away you're going to find a subcontractor who can take care of that site for you so the hybrid model is extremely common then the pure broker model that we currently use uh is is far more rare it it does exist in our space there are others who do it um we'd like to think that we're trying to do it better than them uh and yet it's a it is a very competitive space um it the model exists in other Industries as well so uh there are several company well I don't even want to say several there probably many uh companies who do this uh with facility management in general on on the broad on the broad side so um you know there's we have a competitor uh that does everything from uh doing turnarounds and uh dark store man management and um you know from painting to Plumbing to electrical to you know HVAC to whatever uh where and Landscaping and snow removal uh through a brokerage model um certainly in the custodial or janitorial space this model exists as a pure play within within custodial uh as well so it exists in various forms uh you know all over the place and and then again in that self-performing and hybrid model uh for a custodial company as well I clean offices in this city and then the property management group says well can you come to the one that's 25 M away and like h no I don't really want to uh unless it's worth my while thank you Eddie well let's uh let's hear some stats about the the business uh and then return to the plot of you buying it so you already mentioned that the business was founded as a what's the word self-d delivery self self-fulfilling self performing self self-performing traditional landscaping business in 1999 it evolved over the years so it's it's about 24 years old now um how big was was it what can you share about about size when I acquired the company it was around $8 million in Revenue uh in in the previous year um and from an Abida standpoint was you know I heard recently the idea of agreed upon Aida um as opposed to adjusted Aida or anything else uh I think that was very relevant in our deal um where maybe the true I in hindsight was lower than what was agreed upon um but you're in a negotiation and you're trying to get the deal done so uh that Aida that was agreed upon was right around $2 million um and there were some adjustments made because our business is impacted by weather and so uh you know how much it snows absolutely uh can change what our revenue is what our profitability is and so an adjustment was made on beh a positive adjustment to iida was made um that favored the seller that in hindsight was probably a bit higher than it maybe should have have been uh and and at the same time you know 2 and a half 3 years later uh it's sort of immaterial other than that maybe the Baseline when you're talking about the growth of the company if you accept that the that the Aida base was was lower than what you wrote on paper uh it maybe helps you sleep better at night by the growth or the trajectory of the company so um you know today uh Earth development's around 16 million in Revenue uh and you know our our is more or less flat um from where we where we came in uh in that time though we've gone from working in in five states uh when I arrived here it was me plus five employees or six employees and today we're working in 14 States uh have grown our Client List doubled our Revenue uh and are around uh uh 23 or 24 team members built a executive team um that is you know obviously expensive uh from a total payroll perspective and so you know that sort of classic jcurve story is alive and well at Earth development and you know this year uh we're we are expecting to see our to begin to rebound uh to you know the same sort of you know let's say maybe slightly lower margins um than the than the you know the the former owners had um but what we think is a healthy and sustainable uh aidita margin for our company we're in a space I think that margins are really interesting discussion uh around as a sort of paper contractor as the broker uh what sort of margin should you have um and how much should you be able to uh take in that spread between what the customer pays you and what you pay the service partner uh and that's something that you know we're we're still I would say trying to get to the right size um certainly we don't think that you know if it was uh $8 million and 2 million in AA at acquisition again adjust and agreed upon AA or whatever you know that's that's you know 25% Aid margins uh that would be that's that's an inflated that's an inflated number um that you know to for us to be in the upper teens is probably uh you know more realistic uh hopefully okay and the $8 million of Revenue when you bought the business for anybody who is a Marketplace nerd like me they they might be wondering or just want to confirm that that was true net revenue to you it wasn't all the money flowing through because because so so so if one of your customers um pays $100 for landscaping $100 flows through you you but you don't count all hundred as your Revenue you count your you count your take let's call it 20% we don't know what it is but let's call it those 20 the $20 your take as your gross revenue no we're talk we're talking gross revenue is pure dollars in the the door at the very top line for us and so $8 million in total in total gross uh was is how we we've always thought about it because of our former history in self-performing ETC and sort of the hybrid that we've gone through it has always been pure Topline uh gross gross revenue not net oh interesting okay so you've got you're selling $8 million of landscaping and snow removal services that was correct at that time yes yeah that right and when you acquired it H interesting and and your method is not is not uh is not uh I I I don't think that your your way of doing it is a bad way of doing it it's just not how we do it uh because I think what we're trying to do then is yeah our our cogs essentially are the cost of our of our Service Partners to us right uh and then our operating costs are what it costs for for us to run the business on it on the day-to-day basis with our with our own internal team but I guess I'm having a hard time Eddie if you if your margins let's call we're around 20 25% those are the margins of those would be good margins for just for a self-performing landscaping business so you guys have to pay for land third party Landscaping your service partner and and they have to be making their own margin internally and you've got your own operational overhead and you're still at 25 20 25% margins at that time yes and again there's some there was I mean again talking about adjusted and agreed upon uh and maybe different accounting methodologies Etc this is a story that is not before we started recording we talked about this is a story that's not finished being told um and uh there's a part of me that you know as I was you know thinking about you know what I wanted to share today or what questions you might ask uh a sort of hesitancy of like I don't know how you know I'm I'm two and a half almost three years into this and I don't know how this is going to end up uh uh and to presume that I have it figured out or that I'm doing it the right way uh I don't know I I don't know and I I don't know how this is going to be in five or seven or 10 or or or 25 or 30 years um and certainly uh you know those margins at that point um were a bit unrealistic um and probably even were you know whether I was naive you know entering or there there was you know accounting practices that we have since changed and and cleaned up and done differently uh you know there's a variety of different ways to kind of cast that story uh and and you know today we're we're we're not at 25% margin to be very to be very clear um and and at the same time you know the snow side of you know everybody not everybody many people are attracted to landscaping companies and snow removal um is a very different Financial game than than landscap aping snow removal is risk management as opposed to maintenance or beautification uh it's not just creating an attractive place it's making a safe place that can you know a a a storm can shut down uh your facility um and make it so you can no longer do business and so uh you know in landscaping technically let's say again using that hypothetical Walmart you you you know a kid with a single trailer and a Truck and a push mower I don't think this would be a good idea but a hypothetic that kid could mow an entire Walmart string trim backpack blow an entire entire Walmart and keep it looking good um by him or herself uh that's totally possible I don't think it's a good idea but it's possible and so you're competing on the Landscaping side against somebody who is willing to be a single soul operator a small it could be a small town operator it could be a very large company but with a very different overhead structure to that single single operator uh when you get into snow removal there's no way even if it's a very well equipped single operator that a single operator can take care of an entire uh Walmart when it's snowing an inch and a half or 2 Ines an hour uh on Black Friday with tons of cars in the parking lot keep the sidewalks looking good salt everything and everything else and so you know the switch from Light Equipment like a riding lawnmower uh and a Backpack Blower to you know a front end loader or a skid steer or you know uh you know 5 yard dump truck uh is a very different is a very different pricing Dynamic and so the revenue on the snow side is significantly higher uh than the revenue on the Landscaping side the other part that comes in there is different in terms of Revenue format is uh different contract Styles and so you know classically in search funds we're looking for heavily recur or repeating or recurring re true recurring revenue and so you know when we look at the contracts that we have and thinking about margin in different years uh and how one year you could have significant Better or Worse margin um you know one of our contracts is a seasonal contract where you pay me $100,000 for the year to plow your Walmart uh and I you know depending on how much it snows uh you know I I am keeping more or less of that money uh if it snows a lot then I'm obviously my expenses are uh can fluctuate uh even maybe above that $100,000 and so uh the timing you know we would never try to like time the stock market and we would also generally not try to time search fun Investments uh but in my case you know uh I acquired the company on a on a low on a year that had high Aida and relatively low Revenue uh and you know I I would say that you know the the structure of contracts a sort of hedging mechanism that again most owners in a c in a landscaping company wouldn't probably use hedging as the term that they would throw out there but effectively there's there's Hedges against different uh snow scenarios or Landscaping scenarios mhm tell us about actually buying the business what did the transaction look like yeah tricky uh is the first part so the the the uh I think all of them are difficult this one was uh was was tricky because first of all uh landscaping business not Mainline traditional search fund uh company um most most you know just having it be a snow removal or Landscaping Company there were some investors who were like what do you want to do and like why you don't you know that we don't typically do this and have to almost start from like well hold on a second this is not a normal Landscaping Company we're employing a different business model so that that uh that selling of the investment opportunity to investors uh was was an initial challenge working with the sellers um was a was a second challenge it was a husband and wife um and they uh were running this business very successfully I mean it was a a great entrepreneurial success story for them um and as they were thinking about selling the company um they worked with an intermediary with a broker to sell it and uh I participated in that initial sort of path and it was a very traditional indication of Interest set of management meetings the preparation of an Loi uh uh a pre-i uh uh data room and then a more detailed post Loi data room and in that first phase uh I submitted an Loi and it was a competitive process and they decided to go for with another with another buyer and I was absolutely devastated I had no idea you know they everyone would tell you like don't get too attached to your deal you know they can always fall through deals fall through all the time and you know this intellectually you know this but there's no way that if this is the right company for you that you shouldn't be getting at least partially you know emotionally attached to it like you should be starting to dream and think about if this is my company here's what I would do and naturally that's what happened to me as well and so uh in August of 2020 uh the deal fell through and we were negotiating the LOI post Loi it had not been counter signed but we were negotiating deal terms and it was feeling really good and then they decided to go with this other buyer and I'm left trying to figure out how to pick up the pieces and move on start you know and they tell you keep other deals warm while you're doing this and all that great advice great advice but as a solo Searcher I'm trying to juggle all of this uh and and I my pipeline was pretty dry uh and I I spent another week kind of crashing around in the dark trying to find my away uh and hung around the like metaphor of like hang around the rim and try to get the rebound cuz their their deal could fall through too um and so it kept kind of pinging you know every couple weeks I would ping the broker and ultimately the deal did fall through and one of the things that is tricky is to this day I don't know exactly why uh the other buyer walked away from the deal but uh that really damaged the confidence uh in the transaction process for the seller and so they were they were a bit paranoid about how I was going to walk through the transaction and I bore the consequences for the bad behavior of the previous buyer or the proposed buyer and so uh it was not an easy negotiation uh it was uh again there was a lot of like secrecy around like we don't want to share this with you because if ultimately uh it falls through we don't want you to have this information and at the same time I can't buy the company unless I have this information and there's a a long back and forth so from the time that I found the company through Lou forwarding me this teaser that was probably in May of 2020 and the deal was done in late March of 2021 uh I ended up searching for just about a year in the end um I submitted one Loi which was that original Loi that got rejected um and then uh edited that Loi after the first uh buyer fell through and acquired one company so this idea of like spray and prey and send out lots of Lois again that deep personalization and shooting your shot with a with an owner with a seller trying to find your way into these deals that was my methodology through and through and again it worked for me but doesn't mean it would work perfectly equally for everybody else and so uh yeah so you go through this process and you're trying to figure out you know these the sort of like what would be the deal Killers what information do I have to know in order to be confident that this is the right one and this one had a several strikes against it you know is highly seasonal you know uh at the time uh maybe 85 % of our Revenue comes from snow removal uh how much 85% wow and you know obviously that falls from you know this month to that month and you know all of your Revenue comes in during that phase the seller had deprioritize actively deprioritized Landscaping uh didn't really like Landscaping he enjoyed taking out his RV and uh enjoying and traveling during the summer and wanted to be sort of an autopilot with a skeleton crew during the summer and so unless the the customer essentially demanded that we need one supplier for our landscaping and snow removal uh we didn't chase we didn't really Chase Landscaping prior to my arrival here uh so wow uh highly seasonal um and I think from my perspective you know buying a a seasonal business that's highly predictable is okay so I could I would feel comfortable personally buying a Christmas tree stand or a fireworks store uh because uh you know that yes maybe all of your Revenue happens in November and December for the Christmas store but it's going to happen every year and you can feel pretty confident in that add to that not just seasonality but variability so when you add in how much is it going to snow Yeah and how does that impact your Revenue that got really tricky and it was a uh stumbling block it was a hurdle I don't know what you want to positively maybe it's a hurdle negatively it's a stumbling block uh for investors uh to to wrap their and and for me to wrap my head around and what's tricky is that uh the easiest measure of that would would be snowfall inches and so you know in Green Bay we get 40 to 65 Ines of snow every year averages about 54 Ines of snow and how much revenue do we get if we get 54 Ines of snow but um will remind me where you're based I'm in Arlington Virginia so we get we get a like one or two big snows a year generally but there's a really big difference in those snowstorms of whether it's wet and heavy or light and fluffy and so are we getting you know uh two 10-in storms for for 20 in or we getting 10 2in storms and so our revenue is not just going to be you can't just look at how many inches of snow you got but the composition of the snow the ground temperature the air temperature moisture content all the rest of these things and so you know trying to kind of map that out they're they're for me I reached a point where I saw it more like a farmer where we know that you know these acres are going to produce this many bushels of corn on a normal year in a year where there's drought or an abundance of rain that number is going to go up and down but we know that because sort of there's this Baseline expectation and therefore there's this Baseline expectation of Revenue um and while climate change is impacting us uh we think that it will continue to snow uh for you know the foreseeable future where we are uh in the states where we operate and uh if anything climate change uh is impacting us with not necessarily less snow but a broader range of storm scenarios and so uh for the well-prepared customer who values the service having the right you know vendor is is more important than ever because whether we just I'm in Green Bay and we we received snow on October 31st um and in Appleton just down the road they got four and a half inches of snow on October 31st smashing every pre-existing record um and uh you know last year we received snow all the way into April uh and so you know blending This Together uh there's a there's quite a need for what we do and so getting your head wrapped around the very variability attached to the seasonality was a was a big push mhm the transaction I want to Circle back to something you said where they were not wanting to share what they considered sensitive sensitive information with you because they are now scared they've had one buyer one transaction fall apart and I guess they have now trust issues with Buyers how did you convince them to indeed um share with you or did you just actually have to forego getting every single piece of information that you would have liked great question probably a little bit of both so uh you know I think that there was always some gaps where it was you know they were very hesitant to provide certain chunks of information um really nervous to show me actual contracts that were you know signed contracts with customers um they felt that you know their pricing methodology was proprietary uh and so they didn't want to share how they priced uh the services that they that they rendered uh until very very late in the process and um would give me sort of roundabout answers to these things that showed that there was a methodology that was that I should be confident in but not necessarily unveiling uh unveiling the information they were comfortable sharing their top 10 customers but customers 11 through you know whatever uh they wanted to keep them with the customer ID on them but were willing to give me multiple years of data that had the same customer ID so that I could track revenue and churn and the other you know sort of uh traditional recurring Revenue metrics over time expansion Etc uh and so uh while I didn't necessarily know who every customer was there also was a a point where it's like okay if these numbers are accurate and they have been you know through a QV and you know uh I worked with Boule for the QV and for tax stuff uh you know if the lawyers are comfortable with this then maybe I have there's that everybody's going to talk about the relationship with the seller and feeling like you know I'm going to discover the skeletons in the closet at some point if you can help me discover them faster uh this is going to go better and so I felt like there came a point where you know while they were blurring information uh I reached a point where at least I was comfortable enough to to keep proceeding and can you tell us anything about the acquisition price sure uh yeah uh acquired the company for $12 million uh which was just under it was like maybe A5.7 or 5.8x uh when when it was all said and done again talking about agreed upon iida um and uh yeah so right in that right in that range great I'm understanding that their margins before or pre-transaction were inflated or they were just destined to come down in one way or another it's still an impressive business I mean five or six employees generating around 2 mli million dollars a year of of profit yeah and on the other hand on the other hand you know I stepped into a company where you know the newest iPhone uh in the company this is 2021 the newest phone that they had on their desk was iPhone 5 the newest laptop was maybe or we had one laptop in the company all the rest were desktops uh in most cases with a single or in some cases dual monitors uh that were 20in or 21in monitors Etc there was a lack of investment I think the seller had reached a point of satisfaction uh in terms of the investment that he had made to get the company to where it was uh this entire trans another piece of the transaction puzzle was this entire transaction happened during coid and so the first time that I ever met the sellers face to face like in person live in person um was the night before the transaction was to be completed uh the signatures were already in escrow and uh I drove to Green Bay and uh we went out to dinner and we finished up dinner at maybe 8:30 9:00 at night and as we're walking to our cars to to go our separate ways uh the seller's wife said hey do you do do you want to see the office before tomorrow morning and I was like oh yeah that' probably be a good idea and I had seen a shakily you know filmed you know vertically filmed tour of the office I knew that it existed you know it's a essentially asset free sort of business and so you know the office actually didn't matter all that much whether it even was real or not per se uh you know and so uh I knew what the office was I knew the layout of it I had a blueprint of it but I I never actually went into the office until about 10:00 uh the night before the deal was supposed to be done uh at 9:00 the next morning was when I walked through and was like Ah that's where I'm going to be sitting and that's where so and so sits and that's where so and so sits uh and so yeah super small and and every single team member was beyond their maximum capacity uh many team members were you know one of one of the early stories uh was you know our the gentleman who is today our VP of operations his name is Matt um he came to me about two weeks into the the my ownership and and our investment team's ownership of the deal and I think it was Thursday night or a Friday night and everybody had gone home for the day and I was sitting in my new office corner office bright ey bushy tail young CEO uh and he comes in and he's shaking and his voice is you know quivering and he says I I I don't know how to tell you this Eddie but um I I I'm moving to Madison Wisconsin and that's I don't know two and a half three hours away from here um and I I'm sitting there and I I probably flabbergast his mouth down on my chest and you know uh close my mouth and okay um I've accepted I have another job opportunity there and um my one-on-one with the seller you the transaction was announced on a Monday morning and on Tuesday he was going to have his one-on-one with the sellers and in that meeting he was going to announce his resignation uh and that he was planning to move and so here I am two weeks into it and I've circled in my diligence process my key man risks and I particularly circled Matt and said if this guy leaves I'm I'm up the creek wow and Here Comes Here Comes Matt Marching In And he says I don't I don't know how to tell you this and he knows he's keyman he knows he has this thing and he is has been scared for about two weeks to tell me this this whole two weeks he's had his you know he's been he well can I could I get you to stay well I actually have already bought a house there like okay so it's not a negotiating tactic when are you when are you moving the end of this month uh well could I convince you to stay longer and um we ended up working it out so that he ended up staying for uh about 4 months before he moved there and today he still still he works fully remotely he comes to Green Bay on on at least a monthly basis and spends about a week with us here in the office as we've grown our team he's continued to be you just exceptionally faithful servant leader uh supporting you know uh our our growth um but you know these sort of early things and part of the reason that I believe he was moved to Madison was because you know he the amount of stress and strain he felt that we running this entire business with just five people and a lot of that weight was on his shoulders a lot of the processes and procedures that you would find in small business businesses or absent in small businesses uh that storyline is definitely an earth development story uh where you know we've we've grown our team to uh allow our team to have redundancy so that you know in an industry where we're working 247 during the winter time uh we we you know Matt was on 247 call uh all winter long with no with no backup and so you know if he got sick or if he did anything he was the only person uh who could do parts of his job and and that just wasn't healthy so yeah a lot of early stories a lot of Early Adventures uh that we had along the way but it it's amazing so you've retained him the whole time retained him the whole time and of that initial F five or six um one gentleman was kind of already on his I I terminated a gentleman pretty early on who kind of already had one foot out the door and we knew that uh and then another team member when I arrived was going to school to get her uh real estate realtor license um and so that was not an unexpected uh departure but of that original group uh I think four of the original six are still a part of our team and when you talk about acquiring a business um you know you're buying hopefully a healthy business and what are you really buying you're buying the team and the potential in my case uh that has been been extremely true where it's like that a bet was on the people we don't do anything that's there's not a secret sauce to cutting the grass we don't do have a technology that makes us wildly better we're not a pharmaceutical company with you know uh intellectual property or secret formula uh what makes Earth development better is is our team uh and making sure that you know they're delighted with the opportunity to work here see potential in their future uh Etc that's that's what I spend a lot of my time on today is uh just building the absolute best team uh for our future that we that we're going to need well I and and build a team you have because if you went from six five six people to over 20 you've quadrupled the team and if in fact you lost two people and it was down to four and four to 20 above I mean you you've quintupled it uh is that and is that all basically just to give the needed capacity I assume no you've also added in a layer of management tell us a little bit about what the team structurally looks like different uh now than it did before yeah absolutely so when I when I arrived we had uh I was serving as the president and CEO it had previously been the husband and wife kind of in a co- you know while the seller husband was named the CEO uh and the wife was you know vice president or whatever her title was they effectively in my opinion would be co-ceos mutually leading the company uh and then this gentleman Matt at one point was serving as a general manager of the company um and uh prior to my arrival they had uh part probably in part for uh hygiene and sellability um had hired a uh a head of sales um to probably create not necessarily the illusion that it wasn't seller that the uh owner was doing all of the selling that was he was not doing all of the selling but I think in order to increase the visual that he was not doing all of the sell selling they had hired uh a very ineffective um head of sales uh and so that was the gentleman that was let go very quickly after I got here uh and um and they had also hired a fin I think it's called accounting manager and so you know essentially there was uh one salesperson one head of sales uh why do you need a head of of sales when there's only one salesperson I don't really know um but head of sales uh and a salesperson um Matt as the head of operations a finance accounting person um one person whose title was account manager who did all of the customer support and customer service and then one person who was um worked with our Service Partners to coordinate our Service Partners again across five states at the time and 450 locations or whatever we were serving we were taking care of that with that team and so today you know we have um a VP of operations which is Matt he continues in that sort of capacity we've shifted his load to make it more accurately uh the role of a VP of operation so he's not doing all the things that he did when I first arrived here uh we have a a a team member who's our CFO we have a a head of sales and marketing and then myself and so a three-person uh executive team or four when you add me into that and then um yeah we have you know let's say three or four divisions and again small company but we have a sales uh organization that has sales people as well as account managers who uh manage the ongoing Revenue life cycle management uh post acquiring or or winning the sale uh we have an operations team that's basically split into three pieces one of them is customer support and serving you know meeting the needs of our customers um field operations supervisors who make sure that our Service Partners are doing what they are supposed to be doing and then uh service partner recruiting um all fall into our operations team and then uh accounting and our accounting team is you know made up of all the normal functions that you'd find in accounting and so yeah that's the core of it and then we have a gentleman who uh serves as a project manager and is helping with sort of the growth initiatives uh and making sure that we keep uh pushing the boundaries of what's of what's capable well speaking of what's possible here you have so you've you've built out your team you've doubled Revenue although e Jer but these Investments this Jer means that IA is about flat but you're primed in position to really push that IA now what this is a traditional search fund so you have investors investors who would like to get a their Capital back and B more capital on top of that original capital uh so so that is one of the features of traditional search funds where there's a bit of an expectation or maybe more than a bit of an expectation that there will be an exit event um although not a requirement uh these things are all very uh circumstantial so what does a great outcome look like for you on this adventure Eddie as a last question so I think for for me so first this like I said earlier the story isn't finished being told and so I I don't know how this is going to turn out and it's like like you just said like there's a lot of different permutations that can take place so certainly there's that expectation of return um but there's a lot of different ways to deliver it right now and I mean this With all sincerity I get asked this every once in a while by a team member by you know friends in the Green Bay Area Etc of like what what's the plan and for right now it's you know uh focus on building a great place that I would like to continue to work at for the rest of my professional career and by doing that it will be an attractive place for somebody else to come and work and join my team or uh for somebody to come in and ultimately acquire us or or you know however that what that would look like um I right now can't I don't know what I would do that would be more fun and more challenging more stimulating more re reing uh than what I do today so you know the idea that after 5 to S years uh you know you're going to have a you're going to have an exit and you're going to make a bunch of money and um sail off into the sunset like I I really like what I do uh and you know uh imagining that okay I'm going to go out and do this again or become an investor or you know maybe pursue that plan to become a a professor a lecturer at a business school or whatever or at a college uh those are those are all things that you know that that's possible but um you know I I the journey is like I I I can't it's hard to almost Invision some of that because uh you know to be a a young person um you know I'm 40 now and so uh you know to be 45 what are you going to do for the next 25 years um next 30 40 years uh you know and what what would be more fun and more rewarding than what I'm doing now I don't know and so for right now keep your head down focus on uh building the very best place to work that I like coming to work every day I like the people that we work around uh work with uh that we're achieving things together that's the you know and and build a killer team um and and that that's the dream right now uh and and keep pushing the boundaries every day Eddie if people want to reach out to you how do you prefer they do that I probably LinkedIn is easiest uh Eddie zakes uh Ed y z a KES you can find me there um and yeah I I I love talking search funds going back to those days at IE uh I I find the topic you know endlessly interesting uh and love seeing the growth of the model and thanks for the work that you're doing will to you know uh share these stories and um yeah my my story is only my story and so everybody's going to have their own and they don't need to do it the way that I did it uh you know I used to say like I need you to I would pretend and slide across a release waiver and say before we talk you know I need you to sign a release waiver that you know that my advice is often bad uh that my experience is only my own uh that you're going to talk to more people than just me and you're going to get you know ideas from a wide range of people and get a lot of perspectives and so happy to share my perspective but it is only my perspective it is only my experience and all of your listeners all of your audiences agreed to my release waiver uh by virtue of continuing to listen uh to this conversation was there anything Eddie you wanted to say or share that I didn't ask you I I would just say you know um a hearty thanks to all the people who have helped me to get to where I am uh I consider myself extraordinarily privileged and I don't know that in foresight I could ever have imagined being where I am uh and you know if you looked at the back of the tapestry you know the front of the tapestry you know uh went to a great business school you know had this stint in Venture Capital worked in the nonprofit sector did this entrepreneur thing before the MBA uh grew up in a family business environment that wasn't my family the story is looks beautiful and it makes perfect sense kind of uh from the front of the tapestry and if you flip the tapestry around those threads are just a jumble of chaos uh and there's so many people that you know took a chance uh on me and invested Above and Beyond in My Success um who said a kind word and offered a smile offered to kick in the pants uh when that was what was necessary and to all those people I would say a big thank you and then you know uh hopefully uh I've made you proud um and uh yeah thank you to all of those people that would be that would be very important to me great Eddie zakes thanks very much for coming on and sharing your story absolutely my pleasure thanks will I hope you enjoyed that interview make sure you subscribe to the acquiring minds Channel below we are now publishing twice a week so tons of new interviews and stories to come stories that will help you along your own path to acquiring a business