Product-Market Fit in the Trades: 4x in 2.5 Years

Okay. Okay.

I'll let you know in the future if that's actually true or not.

To provide some. Some context. We all know that PE has gobbled up the trades, particularly H Vac, Although. Although, again, as I said earlier, we think about it mostly residential H Vac, but probably commercial H Vac as well. And that what that has done is just made it more competitive to get business.

I mean, pe, what it does is try to professionalize the businesses that it acquires, make them better. And so it would. It would seem that all of this, all this PE money would make the. Would make the market less hospitable to a small guy like you, to a new guy like you, more.

More competitive. What are you finding?

I do think from what I've seen today and the people I've talked to and just what I've seen on the street, private equity definitely started in the residential space and is definitely expanding into the commercial space. You make an interesting point that it could on paper look like it'd be harder for somebody like me, But I don't want to put anyone down or anything like that, but I feel like it's…

People, like, when you're in such a relationship business like we are in, you know, people want to have that relationship and they want to be able to meet in person and to have to know that they have somebody that they're going to be able to call or a group that they're going to be able to call that has their back.

And while yes, private equity has gotten into the commercial space, I do, I have seen that the operations for some of those private equity health companies seem to get clunky. Their pricing seems to go up and then their technician experience, so their customer experience seems to start declining and then their technician experience also declines quite a bit because they don't have that like…

Like I've heard a lot in interviews, you know, I just feel like a number, you know, they don't care about me and I kind of view all those things again as an advantage for us because we don't, we don't have that same approach. So we are super relationship focused when it comes to the technicians that work here, everyone that works here for that matter and also all of our customers.

And from what I've seen on the street is customers not being happy with some of those private equity owned companies and them coming to us because we are representative of providing that high quality work that used to be before private equity came to the scene. If that makes sense.

Yeah, it makes sense. And you're not the first person I've heard say that. I guess a few weeks ago Hickory we the interview was with the co founders of Hickory Residential H Vac and they have been at it for longer than you and they have acquired.