EP136: Building and Exiting Construction Businesses: A Conversation with Brian Gottlieb

Yeah, well, I got into the industry when I was young, like a lot of people, you know, that's what's so cool about this industry. It doesn't matter what kind of car you drive. It doesn't matter what kind of house you live in. It doesn't matter what kind of education you have. If you have the right attitude and willingness and focus and discipline, you can build the career of your dreams. So I started off as a sales rep and doing construction work. But then in 2009, I started my own business called Tundra Land Home Improvements. I started in the back of a friend's warehouse. on a plastic folding table with $3,000 in cash. And then after that, it really took off.

Yeah, when I started the business, we were primarily a sunroom company. And while sunrooms are, it ran through my blood because it's all I've known for so many years. But as I started to grow the business, once I got to like 10,15,20 employees, I found it just wasn't as scalable because of the complexity. And look, in business, I think it's super easy to add complexity to an organization. It's really hard to focus on simplicity. And I wanted to focus a business. I wanted to create a business that could be replicated. You know, when you have a complex business, all of a sudden you need a bunch of unicorns to run it because everything is different every day. So we pivoted to selling one-day showers. and then replacement windows. And that's when the business really, really exploded.

Well, look, you know, when you look at some of the most, you know, we look at like Ford when they came out with their Model T, you know, they didn't come out with 27 different colors. They came out with one color. I mean, there are plenty of examples of how simplicity scales. And I was a living example of how complexity does not scale. But look, and I think every business owner should think about what are the things you do, but the list of the things you don't do should be a lot longer. Because when you start to... be everything to everyone. It's really, look, it's hard to create a marketing message. It's hard to create a point of differentiation. It's hard to teach a sales rep. It's hard to teach an installer and stripping out complexity into an organization will help companies beyond their wildest imagination. And as an example, so again, in 2011 or 12, I was probably doing four or $5 million in revenue. By 2021, I had in 2019, I should say, I started a business in Arizona, another one day bath business. When I say one day bath, if somebody even wanted a toilet, we would walk away from the job. The only thing we focused on was a tub or shower area. You know, it's about fanatic discipline when focusing on simplicity. So I opened another business in Arizona and then in 2019, I also started a renewal by Anderson window company. The three companies combined in 2021, I had 600 employees and we were doing $150 million in revenue. And the entire business is much more scalable when people understand exactly what they have to do. And you can really replicate and grow.

Yeah, it might be true that if you look at the single job, yeah, you could increase your revenue on that one single job by adding a toilet, by adding a vanity. But I think... And maybe you can make your margin and you can celebrate your margins, but margins in business is only half the story. What you want to look at is you want to look at something known as your dollars per crew day. Because if a one-day bath, and I can charge, call it $10,000 or $11,000 for a shower system, and then all of a sudden I add a toilet and vanity onto it, now it turns into a two-day job. It's really hard to charge another $11,000 for a toilet and vanity. I can celebrate all day long that I made a great margin, but my dollars per crew day suffers. So when you think about every time you send a truck out in the field, how much money do you want that truck to bring back? And that's dollars per crew day. And to me, the most scalable business are things that can be done in a day and replicate, replicate, replicate. So that was, it's always been our focus and it's worked out really well for us.

Yeah. I think, you know, look, the consumer needs to be able to make a decision in all of this too. Right. So if you go to the consumer's home and you're presenting a full bathroom model and you have. any vanity they ever want to choose and any toilet they ever want to choose and any type of floor, all you're doing is you make it even more difficult for the customer to make a decision. If you want to do full bathrooms because that's just who you are, great. But you might want to think about limited selections in that. Maybe these are the six vanities you offer. These are the eight types of floors that you offer. And what it'll do is not only will it make you more productive in the field and you're... team understanding what it is they do every day, but it'll also make the consumer, it'll make it a lot easier for them to make a decision. They don't have to make 150 decisions, they have to make six. You also, when you offer the same thing over and over again, you're very familiar with the cost, you're very familiar with the installation cost, and therefore you're able to protect your margins because as you know in this industry, margin shrinkage happens everywhere and often that comes from complexity.

Well, you know, and also what you're doing is you're becoming more efficient for the consumer when you do that. And what that does, when you're more efficient as an organization, you're actually driving up their willingness to pay. And I'll give you an example. Look at Nokia, the phone company. I mean, they're still in business and they make like 10,000 different types of telephones. And then you look at Apple, right? You look at an Apple phone and they make like one type of phone, maybe different. This one has more capacity than the other, but they're not making 15,000 different phones and people are willing to pay a lot more for it because you can really specialize and get really excellent at something. And the consumer loves that.

Yeah, that's right.

My advice would be if you're doing it, that's also a problem, right? If you really want to, it depends on what you're trying to accomplish, right? If you want a job, you know, if you want a job and your business is your job and you're doing. And you're the one carrying the tools and swinging the hammer and it's all about the hammer. You know, that's fine. But I will share with you when you have a business that's doing that, that's simplified, you're building a business and you're rolling shifts. You're not the one doing the shower. You're the one developing people. You're the one that that's growing a business. And that is never boring, by the way, because that offers a whole nother degree of challenges and opportunities, though. But, you know, and along with that, it's, you know, when you. go from the hammer and go beyond the hammer. It's about building teams, right? And it's about getting, and look, to me, you know, leadership, first of all, it isn't about you, but it begins with you. You know, leadership can be measured by how your team performs, both in your presence and in your absence. And I think, you know, if you are thinking about growing a business, you have to really think about, can I tell you a story for a second?

So. I spent half the year in Wisconsin and the other half of the year in Arizona. But since I'm in Wisconsin, like everybody, you have to have a Harley Davidson. And I love getting on my Harley. And I love just by myself, just driving down some country road. The one I've never been on is the best. I might go halfway down a road. I don't like it anymore. I'll turn around, pull over. I might smoke a cigar and then keep on going. That's just kind of what I do. And that's fine when it's just me. But in business, imagine if I had... 20 other motorcycles trying to follow me, right? And they're like, okay, where are we going? Why are we going down this road? Why are we stopping? Oh, now we're going to smoke a cigar. Now where are we going? And I think what happens with business is that if you really want to grow business, you know, people need to know purpose and direction. Why are we going on this trip? And where are we going? And that really comes down to your mission and vision statement. And I think, you know, fundamentally, it's at the core. of every single business because it defines how people should think and how they think affects how they behave, which affects how they perform both in your presence and in your absence.

So I remember having a conversation in the back of the warehouse with with this production manager and I said, you know, there's no like $10 million company in this market and, and doggone it, we could be a $10 million company. That's what I thought was aspirational. Once we blew past that, I realized, you know what we are is we're limitless is what we really are. So let's not put a cap, but also let's have a reason to grow. When I talk to companies in the, in this industry and they say, yeah, I want to go to $5 million. My first question is why, you know, what are the reasons? And because. because it's more than just top line revenue. How do we ensure that we're growing a healthy business, that we're putting in the right systems and processes? And to really, but I think the real pivot point for me personally, you know, if you would have asked me in 2009, what kind of company we were, I would have said, well, you know, we're a construction company. If you'd have asked me probably eight years ago when we were, when we had several hundred employees, I would have said, well, you know, we're a sales and marketing company that happens to be in home improvements. But if you ask me today, what we really were, we were a training organization. You know, we, and if you think about it, you teach your installers how to build, you teach people how to answer the phone, you teach marketers how to set an appointment, you teach sales reps, how to close, you teach homeowners why they should do business with you. You know, you're a training organization. And when, I think when you make that mindset shift, that's when, that's when the organization truly becomes limitless.

Correct. We could take somebody right out of high school and in four weeks, they're installing showers in one day. And that, again, becomes a much more scalable business. You're not held hostage based on labor shortage. But along that way, look, I think the key is, look, if somebody wants a job, I'm happy to pay them. If somebody wants a career, I'm happy to advance them. But what I really want to do is I want to teach them a skill, a craft that's full of purpose and meaning so that. Their time inside of my organization becomes much more than a job or a career path. It actually becomes a pivot point in their life, a time when they're pushed out of their comfort zone, where they've realized their full potential and they're doing meaningful work and raising a family and able to buy a home and all of those things that are so cool. That's the opportunity for a business owner.

Yeah. Yeah. We tied everything back to our mission statement, which was to do well and do good. And what that means is we said, okay, what is the purpose of business? Why do we exist? And we decided we exist to make a decent profit decently. And that was, and what does that mean? How do we have to behave both? And how does the team need to behave? both in my presence and in my absence.

Right. So a mission statement. answers the question, why do you exist? What is your purpose? And your vision statement is something that's aspirational. A vision statement talks about what do you want your business to be five years from now? So you want to think about the future. And by the way, it's okay to change your vision statement every couple of years as your business grows. But a vision statement is aspirational. It's, you know, to become a world-class organization committed to improving homes, lives, and communities. You know, we win by attracting talent and developing people. A vision statement is very aspirational. A mission statement is very personal. It's why do you exist? Is it to make homes better? What's the real reason that your company exists? And when you do that, you then start to attract people. And it's not just some poster on the wall, by the way. You want to really weave your mission and vision. deep into the fabric of your business so that everybody knows it and owns it and believes it. Because again, how people think affects how they act and how people act is how they behave and how they behave ultimately defines the success or failure of a business.

I mean, so one way, and over my, over my shoulder here is a Guinness world record right there. There's, so we said just one example, if our, if our mission statement is to do well and do good, well, we know how to do well, that's to be a profitable company, but we also know how to do good. And one example is we put in windows in people's homes. And when you put a new window in somebody's home, you normally take the old windows out, you throw them in the trash. That's kind of how it goes. Well, we decided instead, to work to give these old window sashes to local artists and community members and people in our community and business owners and we would have them turn windows into beautiful art pieces and then once a year we would display all the art pieces and we would do a giant public auction. And all the money raised would go to make a positive impact in the life of another human being in our community. The first year we did it was this guy named John Green, who was stuck in a wheelchair for 40 years. I mean, just imagine that. We raised enough money to get him a custom wheelchair that stands up. So John Green, who's, by the way, a Vietnam-era war veteran, can stand up for the first time in 40 years off of windows that would normally go in the trash that were painted by people in their community. So do well, do good. And then one year we just, we set up so many windows. We actually set a Guinness world record for it. So it's kind of cool.

Yeah, we had to have, the record was 1,651 displayed windows. And some guy from Guinness came out and he was called an adjudicator. And yeah, he counted the windows. We became a Guinness world record holder. It's kind of crazy. But again, that's just one example of how do you weave your mission and vision deep into the business.

Yeah, again, it's if business is just about how many showers can we install or how many windows we can sell, it becomes very transactional. And I think that that to me. There are plenty of organizations that are successful just doing that. But for me, for me, our mission was different. So, you know, we want people on our team that appreciate those things and it is meaningful to them. Another example is something called Bass for the Brave that I created. And there are veterans that have served our country proudly, but because of mobility issues and lack of money, there's... petrified of taking a shower in their own home because they have some bathtub that's hard to step over. So we started surprising veterans with free bath projects on Veterans Day. This then caught fire and now it's a national program. It's called Baths for the Brave. You're welcome to Google it. And last year, we surprised veterans in 31 states all at the same time with free bath projects. done by other companies that had a similar mission and vision. And so the people that do the work, that see how this veteran's life has changed based on what they just did for this person, look, it becomes more than just a paycheck. You know, it becomes purpose. And when it's purpose, your culture... then becomes very, your business becomes hard to replicate because if you want to copy somebody's performance, you first have to copy what goes on inside of their people's heads.

The year before I sold all my businesses and I sold my Arizona business to, to Jacuzzi and I sold my Tundra land business to leave home enhancements. And I sold my renewal by Anderson business to, to, uh, my leadership team. But the, the year before I sold it, we received 9,000 job applications in one year,9,000 job applications. But you're right because people said, wow, that's the place I really want to be part of. But again, when you weave your brand into the fabric of the community and you weave your mission vision into the fabric of your organization, look, I mean, we're in small communities. Word gets around. People know where they want to work. And, yeah, it's just, you know, it's. It's pretty powerful. You know, I just want to make one more point. The other reason that, you know, this is because we're in the service industry. Look, it's not always about getting things right the first time with the homeowner. We all know that you have service issues. You have service issues. You have service issues. And we want to, our mindset needs to really be revolved around what's called service recovery. And I'll give you an example of service recovery. Brad, you and I go out to a steakhouse, right? And you order a steak medium rare and so do I. And they... they bring out a piece of salmon to you and you're like, I ordered a steak and they go back and they bring up the steak medium rare and you're fine. It was a mistake. But if you order a steak and they bring out a piece of salmon, you send that back and then they bring out a pork chop and then they bring that back and then they bring out a steak that's well done. You're going to be like, this restaurant sucks. Get me out of here. I'm done. Service recovery is about getting it right the second time. You can screw up in this industry with a homeowner, but you better get it right the second time. It's when you don't get it right the second time is when you have a really, really tough customer on your hand. And I understand why. Because service recovery in this industry is so important, the mindset of the people that are on your team have to think that way too. They have to realize that, wow, this customer spent a lot of money on a project. It's my role and my responsibility to make sure they have a fantastic experience. And that's a mindset thing. And that comes from mission and vision.

I mean, again, it goes back to what kind of business you're trying to build, right? If you, if you want a job and your business is your job and that's all you want to do, that's, that's great. But you know, the problem is most, you're probably trying to. do proposals in the middle of the night and you're probably not sleeping at night and one o 'clock in the morning, your head is spinning with stuff. And again, it's hard to go on vacation with your family. It's hard to do all of those things and you become almost like a prisoner to your job. And I don't think it's a choice of, I have to deliver great quality or I can grow a business. I think you can deliver great quality and grow a business. But again, it goes back to... what is the business you're really in, right? To me, if you can train and develop people to be craftspeople and understand why that they do a great job and have people believe that they should treat your homeowner's home just like it's their own, and then focus on training and development and empowering because otherwise the owner will always be a bottleneck. I mean, that's really the choice, right? Your business is either going to be built around policies and bottlenecks. or it's going to be built around empowerment and training and development. And that's just fundamentally the choice to make. Not always an easy choice because when you're the owner of the business and you got whatever, $10,000 in your checking account and you've got to spend some money from marketing. And if you have a marketing manager, do you really want them spending that money or do you want to micromanage it? Well, you know, the micromanaging of it, it just simply isn't scalable. To me, you know, I had an epiphany that when business is better off, And the community is better off. I'm better off. And the business is better off. For me to realize my full potential, the business had to first realize its. And for that, the people inside of the business had to realize their potential, which meant my daily focus every single day is how do I help somebody else realize their potential? And how do I never become the bottleneck? Because there was a time in my business where there was a line outside of my door for people waiting for an answer so they can go and do their job. So I remodeled my office and my desk had no drawers in it. I said, if there's a piece of paper on my desk, it's in the wrong place. And I'm just going to at least start there. And that was my personal journey towards empowering others.

Yeah. And it's a process, right? Because it's hard. You don't get there overnight. It's, it's a process training and development and empowering and, and, and, and people believing in themselves and, and creating a limitless mindset. It's a process, you know, it's, it's, and part of that, I think if I say, what is the, what is the driver behind that, right? What happens is people come into this business and, and they've never done some of this stuff before. So they're not even sure they're good at it. And it's kind of like when you have a kid. on training wheels and you want to take the training wheels off of the bicycle and teach them how to ride on two wheels. You take the training wheels off, you hold onto that seat really tight and you run behind them and you say, you can do it, you can do it, you can do it. And then you let go and they're like, look at me, daddy, I can do it. I can pedal, I can pedal. In business and in life, belief is transferable. You needed to believe in your child and you need to constantly tell them that so that they could believe in themselves. The same is true with employees in your business. People are unsure they're capable of doing what you ask of them. Letting them know why you believe in them, why you appreciate them. Belief is transferable and it's a key fundamental to empowerment.

Yeah. And along that line, by the way, when you think about as you start growing your business, maybe you have a manager, maybe you have two managers, maybe you have three or four managers. Empowerment without any levers of control becomes chaos. You know, I've got, we've got six kids. And if we have a... a party over our home and when they were little and there were a bunch of neighborhood kids coming over and we have 50 kids in our backyard, we better have a fence around the backyard so they don't go running off into the street. That's a lever of control. But if I just have a fence without them to do anything, well, that's like a prison. So I also need a playground for them to play in. So I need, so your managers need both levers of influence and levers of control. And there are certain practices to a good manager. So you can sleep at night, you know, that I think a lot of organizations, what they do. And I've been guilty of it too. You need a manager. So you grab the person with the most experience and you put them in that role, even if they're not a good coach or mentor, even if they're not good at talking to people, but because you sleep better at night. But in reality, if you want to build a big business, you know, there are certain practices to high performing managers that in fact, I'm going into it in detail in my new book that I'm writing. But the first and foremost is if they're not a great coach and mentor, they're not going to make a great manager long-term. Just make sure that we're making the right choices so that you have the right levers of influence and levers of control in your business so you don't have anarchy.

Correct. Do well and do good. And the better we do as an organization, the more difference we can make in somebody's life. And I think, look, if it's, if it's, whether it's a discount or a, or a free project that you do for somebody along the way, or look, it's, it's, it's not always a big thing. It could be the smallest things. When we would do our music festivals that we would set up our bath displays in, we would. uh, set up music instruments inside of the showers and music instruments and microphones and speakers. And we'd get people coming by singing in the shower at the music festival with the goal that once we got to a certain amount of people singing in the shower, we'd send the kid to music school for a year. And we've done it year after year after year. But, and it costs you a thousand dollars to send the kid to music school at a local music place. But, but the impact and the community involvement and all of that, the brand recognition and the, you know, the do well, do good. I think there are all kinds of ways that. you can give back without it costing you a lot of money. And, and look, in many ways, you can think of it almost as a marketing expense, you know, look, and I, and I think there's, if you're doing something good for the community, I've had a lot of debates with, with people over this. People do stuff and they don't like to talk about it. And I get that. It's none of my business to tell you what to do. I'll share with you. We have no problem talking about it because I want to change the conversation in the industry. I want more and more companies to be, to be inspired to make an impact in any way. And if you're doing so in your community and you put together a press release on it or a media alert on it or put it on your website or something like that, look, it's part of the heart and soul of your business. It's part of your purpose. And I think your customer should know about you. And I think as long as you're doing it for the right reasons, I think it's fine to talk about.

when a customer understands that we're not going to throw their old windows in the trash, that actually those windows can help make a difference in somebody's life. It's not always about the price. Right. And if you think about the consumer. Right. Every business has a cost to produce something and a price you can charge. And the difference between your cost and your price is where an organization captures value. The wider that spread, the more value a business captures. The consumer, on the other hand, they capture value between what they paid and what they were willing to pay. And things you do, the heart and soul of your business, how you treat your customer, how you treat your teammates, how you treat your community. Those are the things that really drive up a customer's willingness to pay because they want to work with businesses that make a difference in this world. So again, I think it's one plus one equals 10 when you do it right.

Look, you're tearing up somebody's home. Okay. You're tearing up somebody's home and their home is their, their, their probably their single largest investment, right. Is their home. And people want to know that they have good people coming in and that's more than just, Oh, people are really good. Our people do quality. Okay. Everybody's saying that. Right. So I think you want to, you want to show that too. And, and again, as to your point, If you're doing a picnic, all that kind of stuff, be public with it. I

qualify that a little bit. So again,600 employees with my combined businesses doing 150 million in revenue. I was very fortunate to be able to sell all three businesses for just under a hundred million dollars. So that's the kind of exit you can have if you do it right. I just want to, I just want to put that out there, but it's about doing it right. So you say, first of all, what are buyers really buying? Right. The first thing we have to understand is the buyer, right? What are buyers buying in our industry? We have no guarantee of work tomorrow. There's no guarantee of it. It's not like you have in manufacturing where you have 17 customers that are constantly reordering things from you. In this business, we're always hunting for our next job. Sure, you might have some referrals, you might have some repeat customers, but the vast majority of stuff, it's a new customer every time. So what buyers are buying is they're buying systems, they're buying processes, and they're buying leadership. They're buying... they're buying an org chart they're buying a brand they're buying the idea that if we can throw fuel on this business we could really grow it beyond what it's already doing now because they have the right systems and processes part of being a training organization and by the way at any size organization the rule is this the first rule of a training organization is that if it's not written down it doesn't exist if it's not written down it doesn't exist so What buyers buy is they buy documented systems and processes. And if you think about you, the owner, that's trying to sell your business, the biggest fear that a buyer has is if the owner gets hit by a bus, I don't have a business anymore. So you really want to make sure that you're focusing on a clear leadership team, clear management structure that's delineated, that this person is handling marketing, this person is handling sales, this person is handling production. This is our sales model. This is how we market. This is how we install. This is the customer journey. As you document these things, what will be interesting, the process of documenting it will make your business a lot more sellable. And then at some point, you'll be ready to go to market. The other thing, by the way, they buy is profitable businesses. If you don't have a profitable business, it's really difficult to sell. And it's not so much about... The size of top line revenue you're doing, it's what sort of bottom line growth. And by the way, also, when you talk about complexity, there's not a huge market for a complicated business because, again, it's hard to scale.

And to get you in the weeds on how you actually take your business to market, the worst thing you would ever do, because people might say, hey, I want to buy your business. Let me see your financials. And you send them your financials. That is not the way to do it. Don't send people your financials. What you want to do is you want to build what's called a pitch deck. about your business. This is how we started. This is our journey. This is how we treat our customers. This is the kind of work we do. These are some scalable ideas that we could do. These are some markets we cover, but these are some markets we could cover. And you send out your pitch deck first. And by the way, this is our EBITDA. This is how much money the business is making. Off of that, you start to negotiate. with your potential buyer. And if they like what they see and you can come up with a general structure, you'll get something called a letter of intent. And the letter of intent will outline what goes on with the owner after the business is bought, what goes on with the leadership team, how much money are we going to pay for this thing? How are we going to... agree on a price? What are we doing? What's called due diligence against, financial due diligence. So you work out the whole structure of the deal in a letter of intent. So this way, the actual contract of buying the business, it just becomes much easier to get through the agreement because you've negotiated everything in a letter of intent. And don't use a regular attorney. You want to use a special mergers and acquisitions attorney. It's not your normal attorney that you use to sell a business. By the way, Rob Macklin, M-A-C-K-L-I-N, is a great mergers and acquisitions attorney in the home improvement space.

Yeah. But look, it's an emotional roller coaster when you do this, though. I knew how to run a business. I had no idea how to sell a business until I saw the first one, and I learned a lot from that, which helped me on other businesses.

Just slipped my mind. Well, look, it's something that, you know, every business owner has to think about what does exit look like? Is it passing it down to your child? Is it. Is it maybe, you know, going from a job to a business, maybe it's to hang on to it forever and it's passive income for you, which means you still need a leadership team. Or it's to sell it, which means you still need a leadership team. Or it's to pass it on to your kid, which means you probably still need a leadership team. And so I think that it's a great way to start is to start empowering people around you and start to delineate the different roles inside of the business. and empower them and teach them and train them on, on, on how to be great leaders.

How to build teams.

Yeah. EBITDA is I'm going to write it down. E B I T D A. Okay. So it's earnings before interest tax depreciation and amortization. You have your net profit of your business. But if you're not sticking around in the business, that means your salary would be added back to EBITDA. EBITDA is a number that is bigger than net profit. It accounts for maybe your salary. Maybe you did a Christmas party for your team and you spent $20,000 on a Christmas party or interest you've paid for something or... taxes or anything that's in your financials that might not continue if you sell the business is an EBITDA ad back. And a buyer will negotiate some multiple on that EBITDA number. So when you think about it this way, let's say you're an owner, but you have a leadership team and you're not sticking around after the sale. And maybe as an owner, you're making whatever, $100,000 a year. That $100,000 is an EBITDA ad back. So when you take a multiple on that, when you sell the business, if you're selling it five, six, seven, ten times EBITDA, whatever that number is, that salary, if it's five times EBITDA that you're selling it for, that earns you an additional $500,000 because it's an EBITDA ad back. So you really want to categorize things on your financials to make sure you can really think about what expenses wouldn't be here if I sell the business and I'm not sticking around. Maybe it's your vehicle. your vehicle, whatever.

Yeah. And look, your buyer might challenge you on some of that stuff. Yeah. Well, that Christmas party, that isn't really an ad back. Okay. It's a part of the negotiation process. Yeah.

Yeah. If you have your ducks in a row. Even if you think you have your ducks in a row, they might not be in a row because you have to set up what's called a data room. So every single, if you're renting a space at the mall for lead generation, that agreement should be in your data room. If you have a compensation agreement for your salespeople, it needs to be in the data room. So when your data room is built out and you can build it out through the process, but look, if you have a sellable business and you want to take it to market, and again, it doesn't have to be it. $20 million business for it to be sellable. I just want to be clear on that. If it's a well-run business, even if you don't have your data room built out, you know, you could take it to market and in a couple of months, you could have a couple of letters of intent and then call it a 60 to 90 day due diligence process and you're closed. So, you know, it can take you five, six months from the time you think about doing it if you're ready to the time you actually get a deal done. But, you know, it's... You know, a lot of it is thinking about what do you want to do as the owner? Do you want to stick around? A lot of private equity companies, what they do is they buy these businesses and they want the owner to stick around. And if let's say they buy the business for X dollars, they might want you to take some of that money and roll it up into the private equity fund, stick around and work with them. So when they eventually sell, you get even what's called the second bite of the apple, which could be as big as what you got paid for the business. private equity companies are, I mean, private equity is very active in the home improvement space. They're very active buying businesses everywhere. Their goal is not to hang on to them forever. Private equity's goal is to grab a bunch of businesses, package them up, grow them up, and then sell them, call it five years later. Usually private equity groups hold things for five years. So if you have the appetite for it, it could be a great journey for you. And again, you can have a second bite of the apple. when, when the private equity group flips.

Yep. And there was probably some private equity money behind them. It was probably some, you know, private equity money comes in all shapes and sizes. Right. So,

Yeah, it's been quite the process, by the way, writing a book. It's been a year in the works. It's just about done. In fact, it's in its final editing right now. I was fortunate enough to have Forbes publishing it for me. So that's really exciting. And it's a book about culture, leadership. and people development, and it'll be ready this fall. So it's called Beyond the Hammer. So I look forward to you picking up a copy. Hopefully it'll help you think about new ways to grow your business and to grow the people inside of your business because that's how you get there. It's all about building teams.

Yes, it'll be released on Audible as well. Yes, me too.

Yeah, I mean, Facebook is probably the best place to find me. I talk to everybody all the time and I'm always doing some speaking engagement. I just got back from a pro remodelers event and a Yoho event. I'm heading to Nari on doing their keynote on Monday for Nari. And then I'm speaking at the top 500. out in Vegas, the qualified remodeled top 500. So I try to do a lot of speaking engagements throughout the year. And if you're in one and you see me come up and say, hi, we'll grab a cup of coffee or a glass of wine. It doesn't matter. I'm good with anything.

You do great stuff, Brad. You know, the people that get a chance to listen to you, you know, you too are approachable and you offer common sense information for people that's digestible too. And companies would do quite well to heed your advice and plug your teachings into their business. They'll be a better business because of it. So I thank you for allowing me to be part of it.

There are a lot of great books on how to grow a business and how to become a leader. I happen to love the book, Why the Mighty Fall. And what's interesting about it is it was by the same author that wrote Good to Great and Great by Choice. It was the follow-up to those businesses as to why the mighty fall. And they talk about the different warning signs inside of the business as to what causes businesses to really go backwards. And I just think it's a great read and it's something that should be on every CEO's desk.