We built an Arby's together and it was also just really nice to work with some like level headed guys and they were in a town over for me, about an hour away. But I'd probably go see them, you know, every other week. And maybe it wasn't that much, but we'd see each other on job sites and do stuff together.
Acquiring Minds
Buying Then Losing a $2.1m HVAC Business
Excerpts · 550 segments · ~1:53:01 long
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So that was, that was really nice and that was part of me trying to get into the community. When I like look back at what that contributed economically to the business. It accounted for about a third of my revenue the second year between those two relationships.
And so, and Dan, can we extrapolate from that, that that's a technique others, other people listening should, should explore figuring out kind of referral. I mean it's not, it's kind of an. I don't mean to belittle it, but it's kind of an obvious thing to develop kind of referral relationships.
But I actually don't hear many people talk about pursuing it aggressively and, and it was so fruitful for you. Do you think it's, do you think it's a technique listeners should pursue themselves in their own trades businesses?
100%. You know, if I, if there had been more opportunity to build with them, I would have switched entirely to like building. And like I think anyone who acquires an H Vac business, it is, it is more work to figure out how to do Commercial. Commercial is a lot harder, but it's, it's better work.
And if there was enough demand, I probably would have done that with other GCs. The thing was, this was the only like legitimate GC in the area. He did all the jobs that were state funded.
If they didn't go with some contractor from Denver, it was all this guy. And so, you know, we like built some mental hospital housing together. We built hospital. I actually designed a hospital AC system which probably should have been a mechanical engineer doing that, but school, I figured it out and did it. Did a bunch of really good stuff with him.
Dan, hold your thought. Because you keep almost saying something and then I interrupt with a question. So they're probably good things you were going to say, but I don't want to get beyond this point, which is you designed it yourself.
What?
So, so talk to us about the fact that you were completely new to H Vac and what it was like to actually have to learn the trade, which it sounds like you learned enough to be not only dangerous, but actually to do some jobs. So talk to that.
So there's an interesting nuance that like I specifically wanted to buy somewhere where I could get away without having to rely on a key man for licensing. Turned out that didn't matter anyways because I was relying on these two key men I already mentioned. But so Colorado, it's done by municipality instead of by state.
There's only like I think two states that do that. Colorado is one of the two. The other 48 states in the US it's a state licensing board.
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