SBA Acquisition to $9m Cash Exit in 5 Years

Because there would have been a big value to our customer set to actually having a national provider. Same thing for vertically integrating the two. Our two biggest, you know, our sources of cost were keypads.

These guys were sort of transitioning over to a SaaS business and for them, it would have been great for them to have acquired us and have a built in installation, installation house or for the other way around. So there's stuff that you, you get too stuck in the weeds and you're sort of executing on your playbook.

And, and then you didn't see it because you were just trying to run lean and mean.

Yeah. And you were saying if we grow one market a year, that's going to be pretty awesome. But also every, you know, operation, everything operationally is, is sort of tearing, tearing itself at the seams every single year.

Just saying do to make that sort of sort of big step up in terms of growth, you have to accept more risk and you know, again, when you pg the debt like you know, all your SBA 7A listeners do your sort of risk appetite, especially after you've run the business for a couple years, you actually have something that's worth some value is a little different.

Yeah, sure. Well I take your point on that Andy. But I'm also hearing a story of a guy who is just turning on new markets, new remote markets and standing them up and getting them to you know, mid six figures in a year or two. It's pretty impressive and it's pretty counterintuitive, especially in kind of a blue, not kind of in a blue collar business.

It's hard enough to just get in and successfully buy and run a blue collar business, let alone stand up a new market that's a plain flight away. Do you think that the model that you did there could be replicated in other blue collar industries that are common among searchers?

Yeah, of course. And I think the, the question always is, is can you get a GM that you trust in that market. So for me, you know, using military veterans I thought was a big help because those were people who were used to operating with relatively light guidance and I could trust to sort of focus on being servant leaders.

But like we had turnover in our California market where I made the wrong hire for the first guy and then needed to transition him because it got to the point where I couldn't trust the reports I was getting in terms of progress and you know, customer value prop. So it's something where you have to get to the point where you can trust the GMs you're putting in. And if you do, I think you can grow…

Although I think one other happy feature of your business is that the, the time to learn the trade is short. It's a few months. I mean somebody can be, you said operable and what did you say? A month and a half of right seating for four months of right seating. And they can, they're dangerous, basically.

Well, they're, they're dangerous. Well before then, like a month and a half, they're pretty dangerous. Four months they were someone.