ETA Unicorn: $1 Billion in Revenue in 5 Years

It's part of it and it's, it's evolved as well as we've gotten more specific on the needs for what we're trying to do in increasing the value of Kelso. We have well over a hundred shareholders now that believe in, have to believe in me and Steve Nicholson that what we're doing is going to increase our share price.

It's in some ways more important that we increase the share price because we have to be good partners to them and treat the employees and the staff in the right way so that there's not too much disruption in the business and for them, for the customers too. So integration. Fun topic. Private equity loves this topic. Everybody wants to talk about integration.

And we don't force a playbook down anybody's throat. They buy into it because they're excited about being a partner. And we've solved a lot of the headaches.

There's still plenty of headaches, though, selling your business and partnering with another group. It's not a, it's not a flip of the switch. And so we've refined our integration strategy.

We have divisions and regions. We have all the support functions for each element of our divisions and regions. We have hr, legal, finance, accounting, you know, all these different elements that make it so a company now that joins Kelso, speaking in today's terms, become a part of Kelso through many different facets.

And it doesn't mean that we're going in to change much. We're actually coming in to just partner with your team. And my team in different elements is partnering with somebody inside their business.

So the person that does payroll has some people inside of Kelso that they work with who also do payroll and is overseeing payroll. Same thing with hr. Same thing with operations, finance, contracts, legal, service, safety, even estimating and being able to work with other teams and start to do this Kelso flywheel and the vision of working together and cross selling the operations.

Teams get more involved with groups in Kelso that can add value to a customer. So integration to us has been a journey. Early on, it was light.

Not going to deny it, it was light. It was just me and that other group in Idaho and my partner, and we were working together to achieve our goals. But over time, we've added more partners in and we've realized, oh, man, I can't pick up my phone fast enough.

This group over here needs help with a truck. This one had a wreck. This one needs to fill out a form for a customer.

This one has bonding issues. I mean, with the list is it goes deep quickly if you bring on more partners. And so the integration need, as you grow, evolves and the idea or the understanding what creates value and it increases the value of our shares in Kelso has evolved as well.