"Life is Just Brighter" in a $1.2m Distribution Business

So that probably led me to the end of 2023 when I really started my ETA journey.

Great. And so to be clear on your enthusiasm for sewer and water, it was the tailwinds, the fundamentals of the industry, the, the, the, the demand and growing, what was perceived to be growing demand because it's basically a subcategory of infrastructure. Broadly, infrastructure in this country needs a lot of help. There's real dollars being allocated by the government toward, toward rebuilding…

Exactly. In 2021 there was a, a $3 trillion act called the Infrastructure Investment Jobs Act. And I remember when we were talking to the infrastructure distributors, it was a lot of referencing that as industry tailwind. So it was just embedded in my head about the dollars coming in.

So that, that really started it. But yes, also I was trying to find a business and an industry that has been around for a long time and will be around forever. Right. The way I position it to people that I, you know, I'm trying to say, why did I even get in this space?

You know, everybody goes to the bathroom, everybody drinks water, and it's going to be around forever. And yeah. As to your point. Yeah. Chicago is one of the oldest infrastructure cities in the nation. Just to put in Context, there's about 400,000 lead lines in Chicago and they're doing a lead to copper conversion.

That's going to be about 50 years of work. So my business is going to directly benefit from them replacing the lead to copper. And, and in that time, they're also looking at the manhole.

They're looking at the different pipes. They're going to be doing upgrading. So there's, there's.

That's enough. That was enough for me to really understand the, the benefit of the industry and then go down the, the, the, you know, the hole.

Down the pipe.

Yeah, down the pipe. Down the pipe. Exactly.

Okay. And so. But things are going well at fifth, third, you said eight years you were there. It sounds like you liked your work, sounds like you were thriving. So why the pivot to ETA?