ETA Unicorn: $1 Billion in Revenue in 5 Years

We got the family here, and I was still working crazy hours. And luckily my wife was super patient. She. She had just been on her own for six months.

And so it was, it was almost just nice to see me around a little more often on the weekends. But family was here, business was okay, but we were starting to realize all of the many issues they were, they were starting to really come to light. Six months or so, seven months or so after we had closed on the business.

I'm. I can barely. We don't have a management layer here that can run this business.

Well, let's. Let's hear how you got out of this, Steve. Cause this is probably something that current searchers who've already bought their business and are in their businesses are feeling would be searchers who, you know, would be owners will feel. How did you solve that?

Yeah, that is the question.

That is the question in a small business. How do you get out from being the one who's carrying the whole thing 100 hours a week.

It is, it is. And it's actually the secret sauce that I, that I believe has allowed us to scale at the rate. We have this part right here that we're talking about. So. We needed to buy other companies, we needed to grow, we needed to do something.

Buying companies made the most sense. That was part of our strategy. So we started looking at deals.

And I'm flying to Texas amidst running this company that's a madhouse. As hard as, you know, very hard thing to do. But I'm flying to Texas, I'm flying to California, I'm flying, flying to Utah, I'm flying to other parts of California.

We're flying all over the place, nights and weekends. During the day, I'm on the phone, I'm on my computer, I'm estimating projects, I'm dealing with customer issues. I'm trying to keep employees from quitting.

I'm doing all that still. And we would go meet these companies for sale and they would say, yeah, we want to sell our business and this. How much? And we would say, well, here's our offer.