40% Growth in Year 1 of a Paving Business

I recall that a buddy of yours, I guess a fellow vet who, who found himself at Microsoft.

Right.

Right.

He was shocked to find that people at Microsoft. Yeah. Lied comfortably in a way that he never saw while he was in the seals.

Right. Yeah.

Yeah. Interesting. You had some turnover. Speaking of difficult people and people issues overall, what did that look like?

Yeah, so when I, you know, met the guys and bought the company beginning January of 2025, you know, I said hey. I said hey guys. For the six first six months, I'm not making any changes, right? So I wanted them to know that, you know, there wasn't going to be some, you know, big change in the way things were done.

But I also figured that they were all going to ask for raises like right away. So I said very, very firmly, hey, I'm not making any changes for the first six months. What ended up happening was, you know, as we, you know, became a little bit more efficient, a little bit more accountability, you know, a little bit more structure, the guys that didn't like that kind of found their way out on their…

And the guys that did like that were more engaged and more, you know, happy to be here. So it ended up working out well overall. But there were definitely times partway through the year I was like, oh my gosh, if we lose one or two more people, we're going to be really, really stretched thin.

It's just a timing piece. You got to give it time. And eventually we're at a spot now where we actually have people, employees referring people to us.

And I've got a little bit of a backlog of employees I keep track of or non employees, potential candidates. I should say that, you know, once we get busier, I can call and, you know, hire them if I need to.