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- [00:00]
Will Smith
Today's interview is a wild ride through.
- [00:03]
IO Phillips
A harrowing five year journey of acquisition entrepreneurship.
- [00:07]
Will Smith
IO Phillips bought a resurfacing and refinishing business in 2017.
- [00:13]
IO Phillips
Within weeks, the wheels started coming off.
- [00:17]
Will Smith
IO's wife suffers a traumatic delivery in a Chicago hospital, which keeps him there.
- [00:23]
IO Phillips
During the first crucial days of his transition to owner of the business, which.
- [00:26]
Will Smith
Is based in Houston. The first payroll checks don't clear Hurricane.
- [00:32]
IO Phillips
Harvey slams Houston sales slide fast.
- [00:37]
Will Smith
He loses people, many of whom launch competing services in an already viciously competitive market. And to his horror, he discovers that corruption is rife throughout his adopted industry. And all of that is just in year one. But this saga doesn't end in collapse. Gradually, desperately, IO is able to pivot into a better market, build a business there, and exit to a strategic doing right by his investors and walking away with a little money for himself. In terms of takeaways, there are countless and that's where we spend much of our time today. IO does a phenomenal job of crystallizing lessons both strategic and spiritual. You'll hear us talk about his 16 commandments of acquisition entrepreneurship. We only had time for a handful.
- [01:29]
IO Phillips
Of those, so make sure you click.
- [01:30]
Will Smith
The link in the Show Notes to.
- [01:32]
IO Phillips
See the full list.
- [01:33]
Will Smith
This is a long interview at almost two hours, but frankly, we could have gone for five. Please enjoy this conversation with the humble.
- [01:43]
IO Phillips
Self reflective and hardened operator I.O. phillips.
- [01:50]
Will Smith
Announcements webinars are back next Thursday, January 30th everything legal you need to start your search. Attorneys Bill Barlow and James David Williams return for a legal office hours to cover how to set up your search from a legal perspective, including preparing your LOI template to submit offers. And James, David and Bill will actually be handing out an LOI template for you to use in your deals. That is next Thursday, January 30th at noon Eastern. Register at the link in the show notes or on the Acquiring Minds homepage. Acquiringminds Cool. Welcome to Acquiring Minds, a podcast about buying businesses. My name is Will Smith. Acquiring an existing business is an awesome opportunity for many entrepreneurs, and on this podcast I talk to the people who do it. A PEO run by a searcher for searchers if you're running a company with less than 100 employees and providing health insurance to them, you may secure better benefit plans at a 15 to 30% discount through a professional employer organization or PEO. Aspen HR, run by search fund veteran Mark Sinatra, understands the needs of search operators and provides HR compliance, flawless payroll HR due diligence support for your acquisition and Fortune 500 caliber benefits, all for a fraction of the cost. And tis the season to evaluate your employee benefit plan. Most new clients reach out to Aspen 90 days before year end or their renewal date. So before they get slammed, check out aspenhr.com or contact Mark directly at markspenhr.com.
- [03:57]
IO Phillips
IO Phillips welcome to Acquiring Minds.
- [04:00]
James David Williams
Thanks, Will. Pleasure and an honor to be here.
- [04:03]
IO Phillips
Well, I finally got you here, IO. We've been talking for well over a year, maybe two, so, and I think it's going to be worth the wait. You'll be a familiar name to some listeners. IO you've been a member of the SMB Twitter community for years, but for.
- [04:21]
Will Smith
Most others, you won't be known.
- [04:22]
IO Phillips
And I'm excited to introduce you to them. Your story of buying a business is long tortured. It didn't turn out the way you would have liked. But you have done such a good job at remaining philosophical about the experience and reflecting on what you learned, how you grew. So in our interview today, I want to make sure that we leave plenty of time for these reflections of yours. So what we'll do is go through your story proper pretty quickly, condensing about, I think it's about a five year story into about 30 or so minutes and then we'll spend time digesting it. So let's get right into it. IO, your background, please. What led you to buy a business in the first place?
- [05:12]
James David Williams
Yeah, no thanks. Thanks for that, Will. So I think my journey started where I grew up. So I grew up in Nigeria and Africa, in West Africa and moved to the United States as a teenager, which was a dream come true in and of itself. You know, there's 200 million people in Nigeria who are always looking for that opportunity to come to the United States. Right. I mean, there's a saying that, you know, when you get here, it's kind of like being in heaven. Little did they know that there's, you know, there's something that happens after you get here and you know, you kind of have to continue to work and push. But it was a dream come true. And part of my journey in entrepreneurship really started as a kid. My dad, who never got the opportunity himself to start and run something, always imparted in us that, hey, listen, if you ever got the opportunity to start, operate, own a business, you should. And part of that was driven by the fact that in the culture that we grew up in, a lot of immensely talented people, much more talented people than myself, who, if given the opportunity to kind of allow their creativity to flow, would be wild successes and that's one of the great things that the United States provides to people. And so when you get the opportunity to come over here, it's like, how do I maximize the opportunity that I've been given?
- [06:34]
Bill Barlow
Right?
- [06:35]
James David Williams
And so that's kind of where the journey started. And that was imparted to me at a very young age. We moved to the United States for college. I studied a chemical engineering degree. One thing about Africans is, you know, you, you, you're either going to go into the sciences, you know, for, for a degree, or you go into something in finance or law. Any other degree wasn't something you looked at. So I didn't necessarily love engineering, but it was that, okay, well, this is a path to financial security. And so that's, that was the road I took. Graduated from college, and during college, I started a few businesses. One of them helped, help pay partially for my, for my education. And, you know, so I always, you know, kind of tweaked that entrepreneurial part of me through the course of that journey. Graduated, went to work in corporate America again. Another dream, you know, in my first job, I like the first job I ever had coming out of corporate America, coming into corporate America was a role in which, you know, you know, when I look at the math of it, in the first six weeks of, in my job, I earned the same amount that my parents combined earned in a year, you know, and so, you know, these things were happening. These were really joyous moments. But, you know, I kept wanting to go, right, you know, you don't reach these, you know, hilltops and, you know, stop, you know, you want to keep going. And that's a big piece of, of what this story is about here. And we'll get to it eventually. Anyway, fast forward, you know, you know, kind of kept, kept hitting a lot of goals, financial milestones that said, professional milestones. And then, you know, I got to the job that I was told that I, you know, if I worked hard, I would get it, you know, in corporate America. I got to that role and I got there and I said, well, this is not exactly what I expected it to be in terms of how I expected it to feel. And so at that time, I was married and I told my wife, I was like, you know, I know, you know, we have a great life. We were living in California at the time, you know, not too far away from the beach and, you know, just had a great life. And I said, well, can I uproot all of this and can I go pursue this entrepreneurial dream? And you Know her and her wisdom said, well, yeah, you can do it, but let's not be stupid about it, so let's find a safe way to do it. And so what that meant for me was, you know, I applied to business school as a way to say, okay, well, if I pursue this entrepreneurial thing, it doesn't work out. You know, I would have, you know, great fallback options. You know, I got, you know, I got into Northwestern, Kellogg, Kellogg School of Business. And, and then we, you know, we transitioned there. And the summer before I got into Kellogg was when I found out about search funds. You know, I didn't know. I didn't know what private equity was. I knew what search funds were. But one thing that resonated with me about it was the fact that, well, I didn't have to go from 0 to 10 like many others. And this kind of fit with the model that my wife and I talked about about, let's do it in a safe way. You could acquire business. And there's a piece of it that just seemed incredible to me and should seem incredible to anyone who goes down this journey, is that there are people out there who are willing to invest millions of dollars behind a novice, which is what I considered myself, you know, at the time, to go out and buy a business and could not believe it, obviously, coming from the background. But, you know, it turned out to be true after I investigated it. I spent my entire time in business school kind of investigating, you know, the, the C fund path and ended up, you know, partnering with the family office, you know, while I was in business school. And we decided that we'll go down this path together. There's a lot to unpack there about why not just kind of raise money from what's called the search fund mafia and others. And there's a lot of thought that went into that for me. A few reasons for that was one, I've come from this kind of deep blue collar manufacturing background where I got to lead large teams. And I thought to myself, well, a lot of these traditional search fund investors don't like, know these types of businesses. And I want to go and do something that I already know. And, and so that. That was one of the reasons why I decided to move down that path. I will say, though, you know, the, the search criteria that are out there, there's a lot of wisdom in them. And for those who are thinking about, you know, deviating from them, you. You need to be careful about making those choices. And you'll see some of that as I go through my story is, you know, the recurring revenue track and, and you know, making sure that revenue is growing and you know, strong profitability and some other things. I think those things are important to keep in mind. Fast forward, you know, partner with, with this family office, very supportive of, you know, kind of allowing me to kind of go down this path and explore other, maybe not, not what would be, would have been non traditional search industries at the time. And the other thing I liked about that path was the fact that I didn't have, you know, many investors I had to go talk to to say, hey listen, are you interested in, you know, putting up the dollars for me to buy this business? You know, I had one, one decision maker and you know, they were with me throughout that journey of making those choices. And so, you know, it was kind of like, okay, well we, we, we're married together and you know, we're going to make these choices together. And when it came time to actually write the check, there wasn't this entire process that you needed to go through to find, get the investors to, to kind of agree to this. And what is important about this for searchers that are listening to this is, you know, when you're searching for a business, you need to think of yourself like a project manager, right? So there are multiple different work streams that you're managing. You know, you're managing the seller, which is sometimes the most unpredictable portion of this. You're managing your own emotions. You know, you're managing, you know, lawyers, bankers, QOV providers and that if you can reduce the variability by having something manage itself, Right. It's Leadership 101. Right. So you delegate the things that you can delegate that increases your chances of success. And that's kind of what was my mindset. And that should be the mindset of every researcher is, you know, kind of like find the things you can delegate. In this case, I delegated the fact that, you know, I didn't have to go to multiple different investors to go raise. You know, they were with me through the journey. I didn't have to spend the 40, 80 hours, you know, of trying to get people aboard.
- [13:06]
IO Phillips
So you, so you. There was just a process of getting them on board and they were, they were going to take your whole equity position, all the equity, your sole investor. But I. What, what, how did you weigh that against the. There is some value and diversification of investors. So you were going all in with this single partner. How did you, you did. Is it as simple as you thought it was worth the risk or is there More to say there.
- [13:31]
James David Williams
There isn't much more to say there. I mean, I think the way I thought about it at the time was, you know, the speed to close outweighed the risk of, you know, the diversification. Right. So, and to me at the time, you know, I saw this as a very long term kind of thing, you know, and I, I thought, you know, being married to one versus being married to many was kind of a better fit for me on a personal level. You know, I tend to be pretty, you know, simple in the way I think about things. And I will tell you, you know, kind of like in hindsight, I mean, I think that there you could make the case for either path.
- [14:08]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [14:08]
James David Williams
And, and, and, but, you know, this, that was the path I chose and you know, I'm, I'm, I'm glad I chose that path.
- [14:15]
IO Phillips
Great.
- [14:15]
James David Williams
Yeah, great.
- [14:17]
IO Phillips
So carry on.
- [14:18]
James David Williams
Yeah, yeah. So, so, so ended up, you know, partnering with them search. Started out searching in manufacturing, which is where I started to realize that, you know, those multiples will not work anyway. I'm going to condense those two years into very short points. So I had three Lois. Two of them were proprietary. The deal I ended up closing on was a, was a broker deal. The earlier two Lois ended up dying on the vine, you know, for different reasons. Businesses that I loved, but they died on the vine. And this particular transaction came up roughly, I'd say five months before, technically when your two year search timeline would end at that point. And so it's kind of getting to the end of it and trying to make decisions about what you do next. And I will say that, you know, my emotional state at the time, you know, kind of looking back on it, was one that was going to try to find a way to get a deal done, you know, maybe to the detriment of the quality of the deal to a certain extent. And this is more hindsight looking back now because, you know, when you look at some things during diligence, you know, and you're like, well, maybe, maybe I should have said no because of that.
- [15:39]
Bill Barlow
Right?
- [15:39]
James David Williams
Or maybe I should have said no because of this other thing.
- [15:42]
IO Phillips
Well, you're not alone. IO, I mean, especially in people who are kind of following a traditional search fund model, you get toward those two, those two 24 months tick away very quickly. And as you get toward the back half of them, you start to feel some urgency. And if you're really committed to this path, really committed to buying a business, it's very easy to loosen your criteria to make something happen. So that you can go off and be an owner, which is what you set out to do.
- [16:09]
James David Williams
Yes, yes, yes. So anyway, so ended up, you know, kind of closing on this transaction. And, you know, that's kind of where the fun, the fun, the fun begins, I would say. So I closed on the transaction. It was at the end of July.
- [16:28]
IO Phillips
July of what year?
- [16:29]
James David Williams
2017. That was. And you know, kind of my wife and I were living in Chicago, Chicago at the time. She was nine months full pregnant with our second son.
- [16:42]
IO Phillips
Aya, let me ask you also, I think you can't say much about numbers in this interview. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you can't say numbers, what can you say about. Give us a picture of the business, the size of business, if you would.
- [16:57]
James David Williams
Yes, sure. Oh, yeah. So the business at the time when we acquired it was a resurfacing and refinishing business and they provided that service to apartment complexes. At the time we had, you know, when we acquired the business, we had roughly 21 team members, you know, split between, you know, technicians and, you know, kind of, you know, call it administrative staff and supervisors and that kind of thing. You know, it was kind of, I would say it was a small, smaller than the typical traditional search investment, but bigger than what would be a self funded deal today. That's kind of the rough size of the business.
- [17:49]
Will Smith
Running payroll, paying your bills, closing your books, and producing financials. These are critical tasks every business owner must do or oversee. But spending time on them distracts you from the leadership in growth work you want to do. So let system 6 do it for you. Owned and led by a former Searcher, Chris Williams, System 6 is a leading outsourced finance team for hundreds of SMBs, including over 50 searcher acquired businesses. Chris, Tim and the System 6 team understand firsthand the challenges, the opportunities of jumping into a business as its new owner. So whether you own your business already or have one under LOI, talk to System 6 about how they can give you time back and improve your financial operations. Mention acquiring minds and they'll provide a free review of your books and financial ops. A $500 value. Check out system6.com, link in the show notes or email helloystem6.com and resurfacing and.
- [19:02]
IO Phillips
Refinishing means exactly what, what is this? Give us a picture.
- [19:08]
James David Williams
So we went into apartment complexes and in between the time that a resident leaves and a new one comes in, we would go in and refinish countertops, cabinets, bathtubs. And that was kind of the scope of the business at the time when we.
- [19:25]
IO Phillips
But it's not a full quote, unquote, turnover. It's not a turnover service.
- [19:28]
James David Williams
It was not, it was not a turnover service when we acquired it, but it became that when we sold. So it is a turnover service, but so turnover services, they're typically five services. So there's painting, there's something that's called make radio, handyman services. Then there's resurfacing, and then you do kind of light, electrical and plumbing as well as part of that full turnover, essentially.
- [19:56]
IO Phillips
Gotcha.
- [19:57]
James David Williams
And yeah, so. So fast forward now to the two to. So we've, we've, we've acquired the business. You know, my wife is nine months pregnant. We're living in Chicago. The business is in Houston, Texas. And so I fly down and introduce myself to the team for the first time. I didn't get to meet them during diligence, which is kind of one of those things that sometimes you get to do, sometimes you don't get to do. In hindsight, I wish I would have gotten to do that prior to the acquisition. But anyway, so my wife is pregnant, so I fly down. I spent a few days there. So I then flew back up to Chicago about roughly 10 days later in preparation for my son's birth. It was intended, the intention was that I was going to be there for like two days and be, you know, be back in Houston running the business. Well, there were complications with my second son's birth and roughly 10 hours later, you know, I went to drop my son at home with, with Grandma and I get back to the hospital and they go to my wife's room and she's in the or. And I'm like, well, you know, like, what happened? You're like, well, she, you know, she, she fainted. She was bleeding. We had to rush into the or. I hear nothing else for the next three hours while she's in the or. I'm sitting outside of the or. And then. This is crazy. The chaplain for the hospital, this is, this will be around 1am in the morning. He comes and sit, sits by me. No, apparently he had been called basically to say, hey, you need to sit by this guy. You know, we're not, we're not sure she's going to make it, essentially. Wow. And so, so I'm, I'm sitting out here, the chaplain is with me. You know, he's praying with me, he's talking with me and, you know, just kind of keep me going through it. He, he didn't tell me this. But I could, I knew that that's why they sent him to me. Um, anyway, so sorry.
- [21:58]
IO Phillips
Did you think that she had passed or did you.
- [22:01]
James David Williams
No, no, no, no.
- [22:03]
IO Phillips
Very likely pass. Well, in this moment, when you see.
- [22:06]
James David Williams
The chaplain appear, I, I thought she might. Yeah, I thought she might.
- [22:10]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [22:10]
James David Williams
And when I asked, they said, well, that's what we do. And we think someone's not going to make it. We send the chaplain over. Wow. Anyway, so this is roughly three hours into the surgery. Yeah, I'd say another three or so hours go by and then, you know, the surgeon comes out and is like, man, you're a very lucky guy. She's gonna make it. And I was like, obviously, you know, I, you know, I break down weeping and I'm grateful. And then probably another three or so, three or four hours go by, the surgery is done, she's put in a medically induced coma, which she stays in for the next five or six days. And so, you know, obviously I'm by her ICU bed and I'm kind of, you know, trying to get some work done during that same week payroll. I was going to have my first payroll with the team and the guys that the technicians go to start cashing their checks and the bank refuses to kind of like allow them to cash their checks. And obviously I'm not there. I can't solve it. And you know, I'm in the icu and at the time, I don't know why with this hospital, they, they wouldn't let you kind of use your phone, the icu. And I was like, well, I kind of have to kind of deal with this. And so, you know, I'm spending hours on the phone, you're trying to get money moved and, and you know, trying to get these guys paid. Because obviously, you know, as a first impression, this was kind of like one of those major trust busting things.
- [23:30]
Bill Barlow
Right?
- [23:30]
James David Williams
You, you, you take over this business, you say, you know, it's going to be a better future for people. And all of a sudden, you know, you're, you're dealing with this.
- [23:37]
IO Phillips
Well, that. Yeah. And that first payroll is, is kind of the, it's kind of a make or break moment.
- [23:43]
James David Williams
Yeah.
- [23:44]
IO Phillips
Or. Yeah, it's really needs to go smoothly. It's kind of a first impression, trust building moment. Brutal.
- [23:50]
James David Williams
It is, it is, it is. So it was, it was brutal. And I was not.
- [23:55]
IO Phillips
You. You hear that they're being refused, but how, how are people reacting? Are you getting insight into the team?
- [24:01]
James David Williams
Yeah. So, you know, I'm, you know, at this time, you know, I kind of, like, line into my bookkeeper and, you know, line into kind of one of my field supervisors. And, you know, basically, like, I could hear, like, the cursing in the background on some of these calls, you know, while they were, like, in front of them demanding their, their pay. And, and so, you know, eventually, again, this is one of the benefits of having the kind of partner that I had. You know, they, they kind of helped, you know, kind of move. Move some dollars around while I was, you know, kind of in the ICU and doing some of these things and, you know, ended up getting the folks paid.
- [24:32]
IO Phillips
So your investors, to be clear.
- [24:34]
James David Williams
Yeah, yeah, my investors. Yeah. So crisis averted in that. In that one. In that. In that particular situation.
- [24:41]
IO Phillips
And so I'm going to interject with realizations that you. So, so you have prepared this great Twitter thread of this story. We'll link to it in the show notes. And of course, I reviewed it closely for preparation for this call. And you have these. You. You pepper the story with realizations that you have at various points that I, that I plucked out here. So when we hit one, if you don't articulate it, I'm going to do that for you.
- [25:06]
James David Williams
Sure.
- [25:07]
IO Phillips
I think this is the point in the story realization number one, where in your Twitter thread you say, this is what it means to be a small business owner. My family, my work and my life are intertwined in a way that's unlike anything else. Say more.
- [25:21]
James David Williams
Yes. So, you know, for many, and I didn't take out an SBA loan for those who took on SB loan, this is even more so. But you are in a place in which, you know, you've. You've invested dollars, you know, you've invested dollars, you've invested time, and your family is along for this ride, but you also now have this new baby, right? This new baby is the business, right? And your ambition and your identity is tied to this new baby, right? While the family that you came to the journey with now has to deal with this new thing in your life and then your money as well, right? Whether Whether it's the fact that you took an SBA loan or you took money from investors, right? And you told them that you were going to make them whole and you're going to make them wealthy as a result of those dollars in, In, In. In your business, right? And when you have those things all coming together in one, you're in a place in which you, in the, if you're in the corporate world, you can separate, you know, like your work, from your life, from your money. And, you know, and you have like these, you know, kind of vacation days and paternity days. None of those things exist as a business owner because you've essentially caused them to be one. The business is now a baby. You've got a family that you. You brought to the. To the game. And then you've also committed to, you know, invest money on behalf of people and make sure that they come. They come out ahead by being with you. And so it's just something that is very difficult to explain until you go through the experience yourself and really start to kind of feel what it feels like to be in that seat now, which is very different from kind of your prior role in a corporate environment in which where you're just exchanging your time for money. And at some point, yes, that can end, but. But, you know, it's very different than taking someone's money and using it, you know, to kind of generate more.
- [27:32]
IO Phillips
Well, and these boundaries between everything falls. The compartmentalization goes away. It's all. Yeah, it's all blurred into one, the one blob of your life.
- [27:42]
James David Williams
Yeah. And the other saying I tell people now is that, you know, like, one of the reasons that people go down this journey is like, oh, yeah, I want more flexibility. And what I always tell them is like, you know, your body might not be at work, but your mind will always be on call. And you just have to accept that walking into this journey.
- [28:03]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [28:04]
James David Williams
You know, you're never going to. You're never going to be in the place that you once were. You know, in a corporate environment in which, you know, like, you could walk out of the office and, you know, kind of put your out of office sign on and that's it.
- [28:14]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [28:15]
James David Williams
Your mind will always be on call. And the thing about the way the human body is created is that.
- [28:20]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [28:21]
James David Williams
You know, during the nighttime is when the body tries to put pieces of the puzzle together about problems that you need to resolve. And so the sleepless nights that you hear that SMB owners have.
- [28:33]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [28:33]
James David Williams
Is because of that, is that you just. You don't have enough time within the day to actually solve problems. And so during your sleeping, resting time, the body tries to put the answers together so that you wake up in the morning with those answers. And so you. It's a 247 thing, really. And, you know, anyone who's walking down this path should just be well aware that that's what you're walking into. And yes, you will get flexibility. You might not be there in body. But I can tell you your mind will, will always be, you know, kind of working on the business.
- [29:04]
IO Phillips
Great, great realization. Great point. Thank you.
- [29:07]
James David Williams
Carry on. Yeah, so let's see. So, so we, so, so we get through that, that situation of your wife. Yeah. So she, she, well, recovers. Didn't happen for many more months, but you know, she, she, she comes, she gets out of the icu, she spends roughly five or six days in the icu. You know, I'm there with her and then I fly back, I fly back to Houston after she's, she's somewhat, you know, kind of like mobile and you know, grandma was, was at home and could help watch over her a little bit for me. And then until I fly back to Houston. And during that period of time, you know, it was hurricane season in Houston and, and what, what ended up happening was a 500 year flood was, was coming through the city and, and this is. Yeah. Hurricane Harvey. Hurricane Harvey. And so. And I'm a little embarrassed to say what I'm about to say next, but, you know, like, I just been away from the team, you know, for, you know, I think it was a total of 11 days, you know, unplanned. And you know, in that moment, you know, I had a decision to make. I could stay, you know, in Houston or I could go back to Chicago where my wife was recovering from a traumatic birth.
- [30:30]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [30:30]
James David Williams
I'd only been in Houston three days, roughly three days. And Harvey was going to hit. And you know, in that moment, I actually was like, well, you know, I, I really should just stay here, you know, stay here with the business and, and you know, like, this isn't, I haven't been here enough. You know, I, I've got to be here. I've got to tend to this, to this thing.
- [30:48]
IO Phillips
And these are still the first 11 days or 14 days of your ownership, to be clear.
- [30:52]
James David Williams
Well, no, so this is now, we are now probably into day roughly 20. 20 or 25. Okay. But of those first 20 or 25 days.
- [31:01]
Bill Barlow
Yeah, right.
- [31:02]
James David Williams
You know, more than half of it was spent not there.
- [31:05]
IO Phillips
Yeah.
- [31:07]
James David Williams
And so, you know, at this point, you know, again, so the reason why now, in hindsight, I think there was an issue there is that, you know, again, I talk about kind of like the identity piece of this where again, you know, like, your identity is so tied to the business that you can't effectively see clearly that, well, you came to the game with the family that will be with you beyond, you know, whatever this business does, whether it's successful or not. Right. And it was actually a decision to say, okay, well, okay, well, I guess I should go back because, you know, she kind of needs me versus no, like this is a no brainer. You, you go back, you be with her because you could be stuck here for, you don't know how long. It could be 20 days, it could be 30, you know, you just don't know. Anyway, so I fly back and I'm, I'm there with her, but obviously my mind is not there. But I'm watching the scenes from Harvey and Horror, you know, as the city is getting devastated. You know, no flights in or out. I'm having, you know, I'm having daily huddles with the team. Well, not with the team, but with like two, two of the team members just, you know, figuring out where things were, you know, if their families were okay and all that. We ended up, luckily we ended up with some minor damage, you know, but, you know, we had lost, you know, kind of like roughly a week and a half of any kind of, you know, revenue generation during that time. And you know, and then, you know, one of our employees did have, have some issues at their home, but, but, you know, we resolved that quickly and we were back on our feet. You know, I'd say roughly, you know, call it 20, you know, 20 days. And yeah, 20 days post Harvey, you know, we're kind of back up and running and, and things were, were, were, you know, back in shape. So after those days spent in Chicago, roughly seven or eight days, I fly back to Houston and my time might be off on some of this, but I ended up doing what I should have been doing, which is getting to know the team a little bit and trying to figure out what was going on. And something I should have mentioned was that prior to acquiring the business, the business had been declining. Another red flag that is important, is important to note here. So it had been declining and you know, we had retraded the seller as a result of, of that. But it, it, sometimes it turns out that you can't out structure a bad, a bad deal, right? And you know, sometimes it just makes sense to walk away, even though this doesn't, this has, you know, a positive, you know, ending eventually, but it, sometimes it makes sense to walk away, you know, and so we structure it as declining. And so I go out with one of the key supervisors on the team and I'm doing it right along with him and just learning who our customers are, what our team does. We have Gatorade in the backseat. I'm handing it to our technicians as we go from property to property. And, and so I was asking him, hey, listen, this, this business has been declining for some time now. You know, what's going on? How can we get it back up and running? And, and so at first, you know, he, you know, he, he's a little coy and he's like, well, you know, you know, we just need to, you know, do more for the customers and you know, this and that and this. And I could tell that he wasn't fully, you know, kind of telling me exactly, you know, what, what he really meant or what, what, what he really wanted to say. And, and one of the next thing he said, you know, absolutely floored me. And he said, well, you know, what, what, what we really need to do is we need to hire women to go have to go f the guys. It's what he said, well, hire women to go ask the guys. And, and I, at that point I thought he, you know, I don't know if I thought he was joking. Obviously I was shocked. I was quiet. You know, I was just trying to contemplate more. And he said it again while he's like, well, we need to hire women to go f the guys. That's what we need to do. Right? So what he was referring to, they're essentially. Yeah, so what he was referring to there was that essentially. So, you know, with apartment complexes, you know, you typically have property managers and then you have maintenance men on property. And you know, these maintenance men are, you know, they are your gatekeepers in many ways to, you know, the, the work and service that that occurs on properties. And so he, and so what he was suggesting there was that, well, if you do this favor for those guys, they will generate bogus work orders which will, you know, gin up sales. Essentially. That, that was, that was his, you know, solution.
- [35:54]
IO Phillips
The domino effect of, of, of what this means for the business. It's not just that you have the guy that you're doing your ride along with is kind of a bad apple that you might need to get rid of. Yes, it's in that you bought a business where totally shady stuff happens, but it just starts to make you. Are, is this, is this the, is this how you have to play in this industry? Is this what your competitors are doing if you don't, I mean, it starts to cast a pall over the entire industry that you're in. I mean, yeah, there's so many follow on negative implications of him saying that.
- [36:31]
James David Williams
I will say this, that from an industry perspective, Right. And a market perspective. This was a very. This was a symptom of kind of a broader market problem, is what I would say, because it wasn't just, you know, this wasn't the only tactic that I came to be aware of as I moved. Moved down and as I learned, you know, more about what was going on, you know, within the market that we were in. You know, later on. Later on, you know, as I started to get the opportunity to go out into the field, you know, I was walking onto a property and. And, you know, and one of the maintenance guys, you know, he's like, oh, are you the owner? He's like, oh, yeah, welcome. You know, thank you for stopping by. And we've been waiting for you to kind of like, you know, come. Come stop by. And he walks me onto the property is like, hey, listen, like, if you want to maintain this property, you know, you have to pay me 500amonth, you know, in order to maintain this property as one of your. One of your properties.
- [37:29]
Bill Barlow
Right?
- [37:30]
James David Williams
And, you know, I. I want making cl. The point around, you know, the industry and market dynamics associated here is we were just in a marketplace that was used to, you know, good quality work, you know, good. Good pricing, you know, good structure of services, you know, providing the customer what they want wasn't enough, you know, to kind of win you the customer, right? This was a low barrier to entry. Tons of new entrants constantly, tons of immigrants like myself, who were coming from all over the country and were like, man, you know, if I could get this one property. This one property is worth $60,000, right? And the. Think of. Think of yourself. You just walked. You know, if I just think of myself, you know, 20 years prior, right? You know, if I just walked across the border. Border, and, you know, I'm now in the United States, and, you know, I have this opportunity to win this property, and someone tells me, hey, listen, all you need to do is pay me 500 bucks to win this property. I mean, like, it's not. And I need to feed my family. Maybe, maybe, you know, the. The rules of ethics go out the door, you know, and you. You make that call.
- [38:36]
IO Phillips
You know that.
- [38:36]
Will Smith
One of the most common levers to pull in a target acquisition is technology updating the systems of a business that may still be running off a spreadsheet or even pen and paper. But tech is complicated with tons of solutions out there. So choosing the right cloud platform, CRM, telephony, compliance and cybersecurity, not to mention implementing all that is a job in itself, Acquiring minds Guest Nick Akers knows this firsthand. As a former searcher who now owns Inzo Technologies, Nick has seen the tech challenges searchers face when acquiring businesses. His team at Inzo regularly works with searchers and their acquisitions, offering a complimentary IT audit of the target company. Nick takes a personal interest in all their searcher clients, drawing from his own experience in the search phase. Enzo dates back to 1989. So this is a company that has managed the tech for hundreds of small businesses over decades. And one last thing, no long term contracts with Enzo. A big differentiator. Check out enzotechnologies.com I N Z O or email Nick directly@nickzotechnologies.com and don't forget to tell them you're a searcher.
- [39:59]
IO Phillips
I wonder why, what, what is unique about this industry that these dynamics are happening? You know, in more than 300 interviews, I haven't heard a story like this. And, and so I'm just wondering, are these more common in small business land than I have realized or is there something particular to your industry? And it sounds like it might just be endemic to this because you have this weird dynamic where one maintenance guy who probably doesn't earn very much money, controls $60,000 or is the gatekeeper to $60,000 in spend.
- [40:34]
James David Williams
Yeah, so actually I would, I don't think that your framing is correct there, right. There's several industries with these issues. So I mean, if you, if you go up north, right, the garbage industry is like this, right. The dumpster rental industry in some markets is like this. So I mean, this is not, this is not, this is not an uncommon thing. And that this is, this is a very important point is that, and it's part of the big lesson here is that, you know, when, when, when a searcher is doing diligence on the business, right. They need to carefully investigate the industry and the market, right? Not just the industry, the market as well. Because there are market DY dynamics at play, especially in highly competitive environments, which again, was another red, should have been another red flag because again, you know, within the searcher world, right, you know, one of the traditional search rules is don't go to highly competitive industries. Just don't do it, you know, like you're going to face headwinds. Logistics industries is like this, right? Not, not in totality, but in segments of it. So there, there's several industries that, that, you know, fall into this realm where, you know, they're, you know, kind of illicit practices that, you know, people used to drive you Know, drive revenue, revenue, revenue. And I will say actually, in my, in my situation, this business in many other markets around the country would have been incredible. Would have been an incredible business. Right. It just so happened that, you know, we were in a market in which very highly developed, you know, 600,000 apartments and you know, the apartment industry actually, you know, outside of New York, you know, this Houston was, you know, kind of like one of the bigger apartment industry. And so it was longer and further developed and you know, had, you know, kind of evolved into this thing that had metastasized into some of these practices over time. So these things don't, in these industries, don't start that way. But as they get more competitive, you know, you know, people find ways to win that may not be, you know, that may not be up on the up and up. And market and industry are different things. And you need to diligence both. Not just the industry, you need to diligence the market as well, because.
- [42:43]
IO Phillips
And you mean the flavor of the industry, the practices. How would you have diligence, how would you have found out that this practice is not uncommon in this industry as an outsider?
- [42:56]
James David Williams
Yeah. So it's, it's very, it would, it would have been very difficult. But there are a couple of things I, I, I would say, number one is try and truly understand what are the barriers to entry into your marketplace.
- [43:08]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [43:08]
James David Williams
At a very high level. So if the bar, in my case, the barriers to entry were, you know, you know, if you had like a certain type of paint gun, right. And you went through a three day class, you could have entered the resurfacing marketplace, you know, and started, you know, kind of offering the service that's number one, two, the access to the clientele, the access to the customer. Right. Anyone could walk on a property, right. There's no gatekeeper. Anyone could walk on a property, find the maintenance guy and sell him on something. Right. Three in this case.
- [43:38]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [43:39]
James David Williams
You know, like that individual, if you look at their compensation related to the assets that they're managing. Right. I mean, you know, there, there's, there's an opportunity there for, you know, for a lot of things to happen.
- [43:51]
Bill Barlow
Right?
- [43:51]
James David Williams
Yeah. And so you, you, you, there's some things that, you know, again, a lot of this is, I have a hindsight bias now and I can, you know, I can, I can tell, I would say fourth thing, and this is something I tell every searcher to do, is you want to kind of understand what I call relationship concentration. Everyone talks about customer concentration. And is it 2% or 5% of sales and all that.
- [44:12]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [44:12]
James David Williams
But relationship concentration is something different. It's that, yes, you might have multiple different customers with a small portion of revenue, but if there is any bottleneck from a relationship perspective, maybe it's like, you know, one person on your team that's managing like eight relationships, you know, or you know, one person on the customer side that's actually responsible for multiple different, you know, kind of like locations. Wherever you see relationship concentration, it's, it, it's possible that there could be other things going on there. You know, it's kind of maintain or keep, keep those, those, those relationships. So, so in your, in your case.
- [44:56]
IO Phillips
The maintenance men were the, there was concentration of high relationship concentration in the form of event in your industry. You know, this word that you used before, I think is really is a great word to take for the audience to take away. Gatekeepers. Try to understand, I mean, and so too is your concept of relationship concentration. Try to understand if there's relationship concentration. But in general also in most industries, there's some sort of gatekeeper somewhere. And just understanding how the gatekeeping works in the industry is, is valuable. Maybe it's another version of saying the same thing you're saying.
- [45:31]
James David Williams
Yeah, yeah, I think that's a very, very important point. Especially when it's a situation in which, I mean, these guys were making like 50 grand a year.
- [45:39]
Bill Barlow
Yeah, right.
- [45:40]
James David Williams
But they were controlling spend in sometimes the low millions of dollars.
- [45:46]
Bill Barlow
Right?
- [45:46]
IO Phillips
Yeah.
- [45:47]
James David Williams
The asset that they're responsible for is maybe you know, anywhere from 5 to 60 million dollars in, in asset value. Right. And so, you know, it's, it's, it's kind of easy, you know, relatively easy, you know, in that, in that marketplace.
- [46:03]
IO Phillips
IO this, this point about the, the, the competitiveness of the industry and you call it a red ocean industry in your Twitter thread, this was one of your realizations that you, that I wanted to call out versus blue ocean industry, I can't remember is that I don't know which business book that comes from, but it's a classic framing. Blue Ocean industries is, you know, there's a lot of opportunity and not a lot of competition. Red ocean is basically just blood in the water, competitors killing each other to get business. Yeah.
- [46:32]
Will Smith
But you know, one of the things.
- [46:34]
IO Phillips
That you'll hear in our world is that it can often be easy to out compete what are seeming in seemingly competitive industries. Because in a lot of these competitive industries, the service is terrible. In blue collar service, home services, probably in commercial services as well, the service is terrible. So as long as you bring a better caliber of service, which isn't that hard, the threshold isn't that high, you can steal market share pretty effectively pretty quickly. Does this. Does your experience give lie to that. To that framing?
- [47:10]
James David Williams
So that there's two. There's two. I would say at a high level, that can be true, but there's two issues with that in the framing. So in the H VAC industry, that framing that you've described works the best when you're thinking about B2C businesses, because you have absolutely no customer concentration and winning additional market share. It's not like building a relationship that's recurring over time. So in an H VAC business, I mean, yes, if you're going to provide better service and you're hiring the Google rankings, there's tons and tons and tons of customers to go after, right? In this industry, it's different. There's a fixed number of apartment complexes that exist. There's a fixed number of potential buyers that control multiple different assets. And so it's a completely different dynamic there. So that's one, two. There's this idea that I like to frame as what you call the technician operator or the passionate operator, and this is the guy that you're competing against that is not doing it for profit. They're doing it for meaning, right? They have been a technician all their life, right? They don't know how to run, you know, they don't know how to run a business. And if. If him and I walked into a building and said, hey, listen, I need to chart $10 so that I can earn a profit of $2 at the end of this, right? And because there are so many of us, me and him, and, you know, nine other people that walked into that building, that buyer has the power. So this goes back to Porter's five forces, right? That buyer has the power to pick one from the ten of us. Yeah, well, he's a passionate, you know, guy that's doing this for meaning. He's doing this so he can have work tomorrow, right. He's not doing this necessarily for profit. And so when she says, well, no, I'm only going to pay you 5, right? She's like, okay, okay, I'll take. I'll take the job. You know, okay, okay, I'll take the job. So it's very different. So it's very different from that perspective, right? When you combine those two factors, the fact that, you know, you don't have a broadening of, you know, the customer base as you would have in a Consumer situation. And you pair that with the fact that, you know, you're competing against people who aren't doing it for, you know, who are technicians first and business owner second. You know, you, you, you know, that, that, that, that theory that you just spoke to really quickly falls on its face.
- [49:36]
IO Phillips
Okay?
- [49:36]
James David Williams
And that's kind of what my, my experience was.
- [49:39]
IO Phillips
Great. Well, I am just watching the clock and there's, we have a long way to go, so let's return to the, to the plot. So you've learned that it's a corrupt industry. What happens next?
- [49:52]
James David Williams
So, well, in between all this, you know, obviously I'm a rookie CEO like I like to call myself at that, at that time. And, you know, I'm making, I'm making bad decisions too, right? So, you know, I'm hiring people from industry to fill industry people. And part of this happens before I really fully understand what's going on in the industry. I'm, you know, I'm hiring people from the industry to come into the business. You know, I ended up, I ended up with 19 known former employees that became my competitors during the course of this process. Ended up with a lot of turnover, you know, while I was in the, in the field. I hired a general manager too early, which I know is a top as a theme, you know, with some of your guests. And, you know, she came in and, you know, we had different styles. That was one thing. But she also kind of helped me accelerate the turnover. And, you know, but I was kind of like, well, she's, she's filling the hole right now. I'm going to keep her in there for now while I figure out this market thing. And, but, you know, I ended up, we ended up parting ways, you know, probably five months later, but five months too late, she caused some more turnover. So I'm making some bad hiring decisions as part of this.
- [50:56]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [50:57]
James David Williams
And, and so anyway, so, so, you know, some of that is going on during the course of this time. And so maybe, maybe a couple of lessons there. Number one is, you know, a lot of times, you know, people talk about key man risk and, you know, kind of like, you know, you need to kind of like, you know, get people into the right roles and all that. And, and one of the things I tell people, I tell people today is, you know, sometimes the best way to get rid of keyman risk is for you to become the key man temporarily. It's not going to be permanent, but you need to be that for a period of time. You can't just put someone in the Role to kind of like, you know, just cover up gaps when you actually don't know yet what you need.
- [51:43]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [51:43]
James David Williams
This is not the case in every business. You know, it depends on the size of the business and where you are in the journey. But sometimes, you know, entrepreneurs should not be scared to become the key man. You become the key man for a period of time and that way you understand really what you need and then you can then progress forward with, you know, hiring the right folks anyway, so, so I made a lot of errors there from a higher perspective. But eventually, you know, I basically make the decision that I have to treat this like a startup, which is kind of what I was trying to avoid.
- [52:11]
IO Phillips
Which, what my wife, I think we haven't heard that basically sales start dropping fast. Oh, first six months. And you're, you've mentioned the turnover, but you're losing people fast. So this decline in the business, I guess accelerate, certainly continues, maybe even accelerates. So, so, so why does this, when does it become clear? Why does it become clear, other than this corruption stuff that you've bought a lemon?
- [52:39]
James David Williams
Well, I mean, I'll say over the next 18 months. Over the next, yeah, roughly 18 months. I mean, sales were down. You know, I think.
- [52:47]
IO Phillips
Why were they plummeting? What was happening?
- [52:50]
James David Williams
Well, I mean, I think. Well, I was losing clients, I was losing clients to multiple different things. You know, some of it was what I, I just talked about, but some of it was, you know, I, I had, I was breeding competitors within, within the business. I mean, I think within the first month, month or two, I think I lost like four or so people who then went and became competitors of mine that, you know, one thing that I didn't say is that the, the, the, the guy I was talking to that told me about this, this plot, you know, to kind of like hire the women. He was running a side business at the time with his wife. His wife used to work at this business. You know, I didn't really know that at the time. And so they, they were siphoning customers. And you know, one of the decisions I make is I made, and I think I talk about this in the thread was, you know, there were so many holes to plug at the time that I actually brought the wife back in, even though I know this, knew this guy was holding me hostage. I brought the wife back in to help me kind of transition from a paper based system into kind of like an electronic based system because she understood the business better than most. But you know, in doing that, I was, I was handing her I was handing them, you know, kind of customers as well, because, you know, obviously, when they left, they took those customers. But. But, you know, the point there is, like, in crisis, right, you often have terrible choices to make.
- [54:11]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [54:11]
James David Williams
And. But you have to. Sometimes you just have to make them in order to survive to the next day and then clean them up later, you know, when. When you have a better opportunity and better foresight and. And. And, you know, kind of better bandwidth to deal with things. But, you know, bringing her in was. Was a good decision for me because without bringing her in and kind of institutional, institutionalizing some of, you know, what was kind of tribal knowledge across the organization, I would not have had the system, right. To eventually kind of use it to kind of build the business back up anyway, so sales are plummeting because of some of the stuff I talked about. I had multiple different competitors from within the business. I had this general manager that she ended up stealing from me, but also stealing from the company, but also kind of like, you know, started her own thing after I let her go. And. But, yeah, the industry dynamics, I would say, were kind of like the primary dropper of, you know, kind of sales. And sales dropped more than 50%. Profit dropped way more than 50%, you know, at the time, in those first 18 months or so. And.
- [55:22]
IO Phillips
And this hap. What's this doing to you, IO, personally, emotionally?
- [55:28]
James David Williams
Yeah.
- [55:31]
IO Phillips
I mean, it's easy to. I mean, you. You know, you've got a. You're kind of laughing about it now, but I assume in the moment, right, weren't so philosophical.
- [55:39]
James David Williams
Well, no, I wasn't. I mean, you know, I. You know, I tend to be somewhat of a numbers guy, but I started not to want to look at the numbers. It was kind of one of the first. First. But there was also a part of this where I was just kind of like, you know, you know, I was waking up every day and just trying to deal with whatever was next, you know, and not really processing. There was not a lot of processing.
- [56:03]
IO Phillips
Yeah.
- [56:04]
James David Williams
I will tell you, though, that I was the worst husband, the worst dad that you could ever think about. I think. You know, I felt like I was failing, but I didn't know how to verbalize it. And so the way that played out in my family, in my life, was verbal eruptions at my wife or being silent.
- [56:25]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [56:27]
James David Williams
Wanting to either really hold my kids really close or not to be around them at all.
- [56:34]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [56:36]
James David Williams
I think you talk about fetal position moments. There were several for me, but the one that I remember a lot was, you Know, at night, typically when I would get back home, I would just sit in my truck in the driveway, right, for like, 45 minutes, and I would just, you know, kind of lay back and close my eyes for a few minutes in preparation for kind of like walking into the house, you know. And, you know, the goal was to try, you know, get myself in the mood to deal with home.
- [57:04]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [57:04]
James David Williams
And, you know, let my kids not feel it. But I was not successful at that. And I mean, it brought my marriage to the brink, to be quite frank. And. But my wife forgave me. You know, she forgave me. She showed me a lot of mercy. You know, God showed me a lot of mercy during that period of time. And, and so, yeah, I mean, I. It really. That definitely was. You know, those were. I had a bunch of fetal position moments. You know, I gained 25 pounds during this period of time. You know, you know, I was eating like crazy. I don't drink, so, you know, lucky. Luckily I didn't have that vice. But. But it. It was, you know, it. It. It took its soul. It took its toll on. On me and my body and. And most importantly, my family, you know.
- [57:51]
IO Phillips
Yeah.
- [57:52]
James David Williams
And something I will say here, too is like. And, you know, there's going to be a lot of people that listen to this who have a family and, you know, like, well, I'm doing this for my family. Well, you know, one of the things I tell them, I'm like, you know, that's sometimes a falsehood that we tell ourselves, and it's used to cover, you know, ambition that's driven by ego.
- [58:12]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [58:13]
James David Williams
And. And, you know, we're typically trying to meet someone else's definition of what success is, not what the wife and kids that we have at home think success is.
- [58:22]
IO Phillips
Yeah.
- [58:22]
James David Williams
And I think, you know, as. As men, you know, or women who go through this, we need to kind of, like, be realistic and tell ourselves the truth about what we're really doing. We're pursuing an ambition. We're not pursuing what they told us to. You know, my wife did not ask me to go. To go do this. We had a great life before we started, you know, started going down this path, you know, and we had other opportunities that we could have taken, you know, without. Without, you know, kind of putting the family through this. So, so. So that's kind of, you know, some of the personal toll that. That. That some of this took on me.
- [58:57]
IO Phillips
That was great. I also just want to say for anybody, any Breaking Bad fans out there, it. The obsession with that Show, I think, is just because of the wild nature of this chemistry, this dour chemistry teacher becoming a drug kingpin. But under it, under that whole trajectory of those five or seven seasons or whatever it was, was this, was this theme that you just talked about. He, he gets, he starts selling drugs and he breaks bad because he needs to pay for his son's cancer treatment. And he continues, as his ambition grows and he continues being more and more successful as a kingpin, he tells himself, and eventually his wife, who finds him out. I'm doing this for the family. I'm doing this for the family. I'm doing this for the family. And in the final scene of the show, spoilers, everybody, in the final, or the final episode of the whole show, he, he finally admits to her and to himself, I did this for myself. And, and it really, I, I really feel like that's really the kind of, the whole, the, the whole message of that show, which is, yeah, men, like you said, I think in particular can frame to themselves their ambition as selfless, as being the patriarch, as provider, as providers, when really it's an ego game.
- [60:18]
James David Williams
Yes, it absolutely is. And, and, well, at least for me, it was not. Not for everyone. You don't want to see. For everyone.
- [60:25]
IO Phillips
Sure, sure.
- [60:25]
James David Williams
For me, it was. But anyway, so that, that was that, you know, and that was, that was one of the big lessons there is, you know, for, for men out there. Just, just be careful about what you, what you think is, you know, is selfless, because sometimes it's not, you know, anyway, so declines happening, it's obvious that we can't continue to try to make hay in this market that we're in. And so I go back to my investors, I'm like, well, I never wanted to do a startup, but I think we're gonna have to treat this like a startup. And, you know, we have to find new customers, new markets, new geographies that we need to all get into. And so, and so you throw your.
- [61:06]
IO Phillips
Hands up at the industry. The industry is just too flawed, too competitive, too corrupt to, to continue on. Okay, all right, so, but presumably when you talk about being a startup, you talk about you're looking at adjacent opportunities. You're not going to pivot too hard. You're gonna, you're gonna pivot a little bit into these better, more attractive, but adjacent industries.
- [61:24]
James David Williams
Yes, yes. So, and, and, you know, I, I think, and now that, you know, I, I, I have folks, you know, kind of sending me their investment memos to look at their deals and, you know, like, Invest and all these. If whenever I see one that has that as its, you know, as one of its first things, you know, where there's like a slight business model change immediately, I'm like, well, no, I'm not participating in that. You know, the search model is about, you know, buying, you know, an enduring business that can exist, you know, without you having to make these kinds of changes to it. But here I am.
- [61:55]
IO Phillips
You don't find it already works.
- [61:57]
James David Williams
Exactly, exactly. That's the point. So, so to your point, I throw my hands in there, I said, well, we're going to have to treat this like a startup. And I tell my investors that that's what I'm going to do. And so I start just testing out a bunch of things, a bunch of different ideas, just leveraging the team we had. And this is kind of like where you can kind of look at what you have. Right. So what are the assets that the business currently has? What are you currently good at? Can you offer that to a different set of customers? Are there skills that your current team members have that you can leverage in different ways? I mean, so we give a few examples. So the name of the business had surface in its name. And we were doing resurfacing prior. And so one of the ideas, I was like, well, let's start a driveway resurfacing business, which is something we had never done. We started that business and it generated like six figures from doing it. We brought some cash in. We started a roofing business because one of our project managers had some experience in roofing. So we started that, you know, we started an a fact business which failed miserably. That, that failed miserably. We had a warehouse, you know, with, with inventory that we were using for our team members. But I turned that into a store. We turned that into a store for our competitors who, some of them who had left me to go compete against us, I turned into a store. So we got square readers and, you know, we marked up the product in there and started selling that. And that ended up being like a nice new great revenue stream for us. And, you know, I had IO at.
- [63:35]
IO Phillips
This point, I assume much of the team has turned over. And what, what I'm getting, what I'm getting at is, is so much disruption in this business, you know. You know, we, we searchers have to be very delicate about making changes at the business. It spooks the employees, it can cause a mutiny, it can cause huge amounts of turnover. I guess you didn't have to worry about that because so Much turnover had already happened.
- [63:59]
James David Williams
Yeah, well, at this point, I was the most tenured employee in the business. I had done every job in the business. I had written all the job descriptions for every single role in the business at this point. So I'm the most tenured employee aside from our bookkeeper, who she, she stayed through it all. But there was no one else in the business. Well, on the technician side, we did, but there was no one else in the leadership or administrative ranks in the business. Customer service, all of that, that was there when I acquired it at this point. So this was a business in my own image at this point. It was like, this was like now it was, it was basically a startup right at this point. And so, yeah, so I didn't, I didn't have to worry about, you know, you know, what are the people going to think because, you know, everyone that came, I personally hired. So it's kind of like, well, it's kind of like a follow the leader kind of thing is what we're gonna do. Although I did burn my team out with trying a lot of these things.
- [64:51]
Bill Barlow
Right?
- [64:51]
James David Williams
Because like, well, today I'm like, well, let's try roofing tomorrow. I'm like, well, we're gonna do some H Vac today. You know, the next day, you know, I'm saying I, I put our bookkeeper on upwork to generate some, some revenue. Oh, wow. Wow. Yeah, yeah.
- [65:08]
IO Phillips
Talk about going in into red oceans. Upwork is pretty brutal.
- [65:12]
James David Williams
Well, I, she, she made some money. She made some money doing that. She made some money for the business doing that too. Anyway, so we, we, so we, we tried a bunch of these different, you know, kind of like things and you know, all of them, you know, little, little by little, I mean, those things, you know, they all together, they made, they made good money. But the saying that helped us help this not be a, you know, we're going bankrupt thing was that we went into an adjacent market like you said. And, and that adjacent industry, it was still kind of turnover services, but it was turnover services for single family rental owners. So if you remember. Right, so, and I'll talk about the pre Covid part. So basically apartment complexes have existed forever, but single family rentals have now become an asset class that, you know, institutional investors are making investments in. It's not as developed as the apartment complex side.
- [66:10]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [66:11]
James David Williams
Because it's newer. It only started in 2008 after the financial crisis. And so that, that was just becoming an asset class. And these new institutional owners did not have professionalized service providers to Go out and do the turnovers for them. And so I went knocking on their doors. Yeah. When knocking on their doors, you know, in Houston, and say, hey, listen, we can provide you the service. Service for you. And the first door we knocked on, you know, I walk in there, I'm like, he sets us up as a vendor. That very day, three days later, we start getting work from them to go do perform turnover services. Within three months, it's like a six figure a month business.
- [66:57]
IO Phillips
A month. Wow.
- [66:58]
James David Williams
Yes. A month. Like within. Within three months. Within three months of starting working on this. And this was. That was from one client. From one client. One client in one city. The city of Houston. I mean, it was. It was. It was transformational, let's put it that way. I mean, it was transformational for the business at the time. And so we take that, we start scaling that. I have these other things that have started, and start shutting them down one after the other. Even though they were earning some cash, this felt like, okay, this is the thing that we need to proceed forward with. And so we proceed with that. And it's growing like crazy. It's growing like crazy.
- [67:42]
IO Phillips
And you're getting other clients. It's not just growing within this first single client.
- [67:46]
James David Williams
Yes. Yeah. So after we get that client, you know, we start I. I start to hire, you know, I hired a project manager, and I, you know, I keep. I keep selling.
- [67:54]
IO Phillips
Yeah, yeah.
- [67:55]
James David Williams
And I keep knocking on doors. And so we. We grew to a few other clients, and then roughly five, six months into. Into this covet hit. And obviously, you know, everything goes to zero. And, you know, at this point, I'm kind of like, well, you know, I'm on my, you know, ninth life at this point. I'm like, well, whatever, you know, like, it's Covid.
- [68:23]
IO Phillips
At least it wasn't your fault this time.
- [68:24]
James David Williams
Yes, yes. You know, this. This is very. Yeah, that's a very important point. I felt like everything else up until that point was my fault.
- [68:35]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [68:35]
James David Williams
I chose the business. I chose the industry.
- [68:38]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [68:39]
James David Williams
And every choice after that really did not matter. You know, even some of the errors I made in hiring. If you. If you buy a good business, it can sustain some of those mistakes.
- [68:50]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [68:51]
James David Williams
But, you know, kind of choosing the business I chose, choosing the industry I chose essentially set me up for, you know, the turmoil I experienced in those first 24 or so months. Yeah. So. So, you know, when. When Covid happens, like, okay, oh, man. This is the first one that I didn't cause. So. So, so. So, you know, you Know, let's, let's, let's play it out. But, you know, obviously I've, I've built, you know, I've built kind of like a, a hardness to me at this point. I'm like, okay, well, what are the choices we need to make? A few, A few important choices. And, you know, this is kind of important because I believe that we're walking into kind of a treacherous time in, in. In acquisition entrepreneurship in which people are. People are going to try to buy great businesses, but they may not always hit the mark. And so you're going to run into challenges and you're going to have to kind of be in turnaround situations sometimes. And so there's a few things that I think are important to note here. One is keeping your sales generators employed in turnaround times.
- [69:46]
Bill Barlow
Right?
- [69:46]
James David Williams
So I'm not talking about salespeople, I'm talking about sales generators. So that's the person that's actually doing the work and, you know, allowing you to exist. Because if you have a downturn, you want to be the first to be out there with your client base and telling them, hey, listen, I'm ready to go right before your competitors are. So we kept sales generators on.
- [70:03]
IO Phillips
You know, sorry, what is a sales generator? If it's not a salesperson, it's the person the, the delivery. The. The technicians delivering the work.
- [70:13]
James David Williams
Correct. Okay. The person that's delivering the work.
- [70:15]
Bill Barlow
Right, okay.
- [70:16]
James David Williams
And then you can, you can. Salespeople can fall into that realm as well. Every business is slightly different, but every business is going to define the sales generator generator a little bit differently. Right. So, but it's is mostly the person that's delivering the work. Because sometimes if you are a software company, let go of engineers and, you know, like, you actually need engineers to get, get software out. You know, I think you need that more, especially in a situation like Covid, where it's like, you know, kind of like a downturn that was caused by a God event, so to speak. And, and so we kept, kept those guys on, you know, cut staff. You know, we tried to do it in the way I did it. And this is what I encourage sometimes when you're in that kind of situation is I think you can encourage people to leave and say, hey, listen guys, things are going to be slow for a while. We're going to have to make some decisions and tell them upfront.
- [71:02]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [71:03]
James David Williams
Which is what I did because I wanted to not have to lay off people, even though I still had to. And we got lucky. Some people just left on their own, which I was happy by because it reduced the number of people that I actually had to kind of cut and kind of trim the business to size to a certain extent. Um, but we were still.
- [71:22]
IO Phillips
I think this is the point in the story in your Twitter thread where you say you were a hardened mofo.
- [71:28]
James David Williams
Yeah.
- [71:29]
IO Phillips
Say, say, say more.
- [71:31]
James David Williams
What? What?
- [71:31]
IO Phillips
How had you hardened? How had you changed?
- [71:34]
James David Williams
Yeah, Well, I think the, the best way to describe it is everything. When you acquire business, everything seems existential to you initially. Every little problem, oh, that person left. Oh my gosh, what am I going to do? Oh, you know, my 2% client, client left. What am I going to do? You know, like, oh, you know, the roof is leaking. What am I going to do?
- [71:58]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [71:58]
James David Williams
Everything seems like it's a big thing.
- [72:01]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [72:02]
James David Williams
But because of the experiences I had had.
- [72:04]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [72:05]
James David Williams
I would say, you know, my blood pressure was not modulating with, with, with the, with the vicissitudes of the business or what was going on on the day to day of the business anymore. It's. It just did not modulate that way. Right. One of my kind of like 16 commandments of search is things are never as good or as bad as they seem. Manage your emotions accordingly.
- [72:29]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [72:30]
James David Williams
And that is so critical in this journey. But you have to train yourself to get to the point where you can manage your emotions. I mean, you know, accordingly. You know, it just doesn't come by you being there, but it's good to know that, hey, listen, it's never as bad as you think it is, and it's never as good as you think think it is, regardless of how good.
- [72:48]
IO Phillips
Well, the thing I, and I wanted to make sure we hit this, so I'm glad you're, you're bringing it up. And let me say one thing before I get to my question, which is that this is, this is something that I've heard a lot of guests who've had fetal position moments say, which is, yes, the business. When I had that fetal position moment, I was going through a hard time. The business was going through a hard time, but part of it was my own. My, My skin has gotten thicker over time. And today a similar event could occur and it would roll off my back. So, so, so part of the fetal experience, it seems, is that you just haven't your thin. Your skin hasn't gotten thick. Thick yet. And, and it's so. It's more, it's almost more internal than it is actually a statement on, on the wheels coming off the business. Now let's Be careful sometimes. And so actually it's perfect segue to my question. In fact, though, IO you were in a business that was, was collapsing, so your fetal position moments in the, in those first 18 months seem perfectly justified.
- [73:53]
James David Williams
Yes, right. But I think they do seem justified. But the broader point is this, and I think I'm going to get to this later. Like in the context of life, right? And in the context of, you know, you know, just, just living, I think that my, my, the fundamental principle is this. When there's life, there's hope. The only time when there's no hope is when you're not living, right? So regardless of whatever the situation that you're going through at that particular moment is, the fact that you are alive means that there's hope for it to become better. That's why they're never as bad as they think it is. There's a lot of this, a lot of what happens in business, right? So we look at metrics, right? We think about leadership and all these other things. But for business owners, a lot of what makes you successful or not is your mindset and how you manage that, right? Yeah. You know, another commandment I have is like, you know, if, you know, if, if your, your waistline and your business are in crisis, fix your waistline first. It'll fix your, your mind, which will fix your business. The high, the idea behind that is like your mind controls what happens day to day within the business. And as long as you have life, there's going to be hope for a better future. So even in the worst case scenarios, I mean, you know, even in a bankruptcy scenario, right, which would be the worst case scenario in a business. You know, in, in a business environment, it's not the end because you, you are still alive, which means you have hope for the future. And a lot of times, you know, as individuals, we think of ourselves within the context of other people and what other people consider to be success, right? And what other people consider and that ultimately leads to, and this is going to go into kind of what I'm going to talk about. One of the key lessons at the end is that, you know, even, even if, you know, even if you walk out the door of this business with $100 million, you know, in your pocket, right. Talk to any business owner that's exited business, you do go through, if you're not prepared for it, you go through kind of like a, a period of depression because you realize that, well, I thought that this was the goal I was striving for, right? But it doesn't fulfill me the way I thought it was going to fulfill me.
- [76:17]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [76:17]
James David Williams
And, and so that's why I say like, whether it's good, you think it's good or it's bad.
- [76:23]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [76:24]
James David Williams
You, it's important to kind of like understand that it's not going to feel the way you think it's. It's going to feel.
- [76:31]
Bill Barlow
Right?
- [76:31]
IO Phillips
Yeah.
- [76:32]
James David Williams
And so as human beings, it's kind of like we need to have the second order of understanding that there's a spirituality beyond just kind of like what the physical, you know, manifestations of, of, you know, what good or bad look like. And you have to kind of like manage through that piece of it on a day in, a day out basis. So I think that's, that's really, that's really the point. And for the business owners that do this the best, I work with one now. So, you know, I, you know, I'm kind of, I'm, I'm, I'm a private equity. I work as an independent sponsor with a partner today. And he's one of the most positive, optimistic leaders I've ever met. And like, he, this is Thomas Ince. Yes, yes. And he, he shape shifts the world to fit into kind of, you know, into what, you know, he wants it to be right. Things that look impossible to him are like, well, it's just a matter. It's, it's all possible to him, you know, and it's been, it's been such a pleasure being around him and I've, I've learned a lot being around him. But anyway, so that, that's, that's the overarching point there is like, you know, we need to kind of like, you know, get out of this thinking of like, oh, yeah, you know, oh man, you know, fetal position moment. It's, it's going to end. And that's just kind of a, it's a self defeating mindset. And I, and I do understand that, you know, it's difficult to get out of it yourself, which is where, you know, it's important to have peer groups, you know, coaches, people around you that can help you recognize that, hey, listen, it's not, you know, it's not going to end.
- [78:05]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [78:06]
James David Williams
People have been through worse, people have been through better.
- [78:08]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [78:09]
James David Williams
And you know, we just need to figure out, to manage your emotions accordingly.
- [78:13]
IO Phillips
Yeah. I.O. well, first of all, the 16 commandments that you're referring to, I don't, I don't think we've properly plugged that, but you have distilled your key Learnings in from this experience into what you call the ten Commandments plus six this of search of acquisition entrepreneurship. So the sixteen Commandments. And of course we'll link to that in the show notes. It's really a wonderful, it's a two pager, very concise. In time permitting, we're going to hit a bunch of them, my favorites. I have four or five of these that we'll get to. So that's what you're referring to. Audience with the 16 commandments. I also to two questions, one related to this topic of how difficult or not this was for you. Do you think you had talked at the very top about your experience coming from Nigeria as a high schooler, how to, you know, a country of 200 million people, virtually all of whom would have loved the opportunity to come to the US or some other rich country. Do you think that that gave you broader perspective about how existential or not this misadventure was?
- [79:22]
James David Williams
Yes. So I often say that, you know, growing up in a third world country prepared me better for running this business than anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I often say that. So there is that. But I do. Yes. And this will just go to one of those, the big lessons here, which is, you know, coming to the United States was a dream that in and of itself, you know, if you, if you rewind me back to that time would have been the accomplishment of my life. But some somehow that was not enough.
- [79:54]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [79:55]
James David Williams
I wanted more. You know, I got that first job, you know, made more money than I thought I could ever made, but I wanted more. That was another dream. Set a dream for a goal. Okay. I wanted to hit my first $100,000 a year. You know, I did that like three years into, into my, my, you know, employment as a 26 year old or something. When I was that that was not enough.
- [80:15]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [80:15]
James David Williams
Got the job I wanted as a professional, you know, as a leader, you know, within the organization that I was in. And that was not enough. The point being is that, you know, we set these goals and it's important to set goals and kind of move forward towards them, but they do not fully satisfy. And you know, and, and you know, especially in the United States, you know, we have kind of like this, this feeling of hey, you know, we're self sufficient culture and you know, if I, if I, you know, if I, if I strive for this and I hit it, you know, it's going to make me feel this way and it really doesn't because one of the things I say to people now Is like, for everyone that's listening to this, that's like, I'm searching for a business. You're really not searching for a business. What you're really searching for is you're searching for a purpose and you're hoping that the business search and the outcome of that, whether it's the autonomy or the money, will fulfill you. Well, the thing about it is that it cannot fulfill you. Anything that's created right does not fulfill right. It just doesn't. My family doesn't fulfill. And even worse is that it puts a bigger burden on my wife if I expect her to fulfill me. It's the same thing with acquiring a business. It's the same thing with money. And so in my case, I came to terms with this in those fetal position moments, which is, you know, typically for every business owner, you're going to go through this process of getting to the point where you're like, okay, well, I don't know what to do. I'm at the end of my self sufficiency, right? Whether it's in great, in a great outcome or in one that is like a fetal position moment and you're going to make a call and that call that you're going to make is going to sound like this, oh, God, help me.
- [81:59]
Bill Barlow
Right?
- [82:00]
James David Williams
And, and you know, you know, you know, the person on the other line, your God, you know, your creator, you know, you might expect to say, well, I'm not aaa, you know, don't just call me. Don't just call me when, when you're in trouble, you know, and, and, and one of the things that I found in my personal journey is that, you know, God is looking to make, to build a relationship with us, which is not the traditional view of how we think about God. It's like, okay, he's up there and I'm here. And, but no, you know, like, it, it's not the transactional relationship that he's looking for. He's looking for like, true relationship with us on a day in and day out basis that we can walk with him on. And it's in that relationship that we find fulfillment beyond our wildest dreams. Not in arbitrary goals, financial, family, or outside of that, you know, that we find our fulfillment. And to me, if there's anything that anyone should take out of this interview, it's what I just said there. And it's going to look different for each person and it's going to sound weird to some, but you know, we do weird things all the time, right? You know, I talk to Myself.
- [83:04]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [83:05]
James David Williams
If you think about that, you know, within the context of life, you know, the fact that I talk to myself, like it's odd that you talk to yourself, you talk to other people. Well, talking to God is only one step removed from that. And I would encourage people to just try and just, you know, just have a regular conversation and see what that brings for you and see if it starts to get you down this path of really understanding what fulfillment can look like outside of these arbitrary goals that we set for ourselves that ultimately do not satisfy us in the long haul.
- [83:32]
IO Phillips
So do you have a version of this advice for non believers?
- [83:36]
James David Williams
That is a great question. I don't, I don't, unfortunately, you know, I don't, unfortunately. I think, you know, I think there's a lot of good things in this world. It's difficult for me to see it outside of, you know, kind of what I have come to know as my relationship with, with Christ, you know, and, and he being, you know, kind of my link to God in that sense. And so, and you know, I, again, that's, that's my, that's been my journey.
- [84:10]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [84:11]
James David Williams
I think if there was one thing to take out of this for those who are like, well, I'm not really comfortable about that with that, is just to recognize that fulfillment is not going to come from things that I created, then it's not going to come from, you know, the money you earn, the business you buy, the family you have.
- [84:29]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [84:30]
James David Williams
And in the case of the family or the people around us, when we try to make them into those that fulfill us, we are burdening them, you know, and we're placing a burden on them that they were, they're not designed to carry.
- [84:43]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [84:44]
James David Williams
And that is a very, very, very important thing to note.
- [84:47]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [84:48]
James David Williams
Making my wife. Yeah. Making my wife into the thing that should be my everything that filled a hole. That's really a God shaped hole in our hearts.
- [84:57]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [84:57]
James David Williams
Trying to make her into that is just not going to close the gap.
- [85:01]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [85:01]
James David Williams
And instead it's going to not fair to her.
- [85:04]
IO Phillips
Right?
- [85:04]
James David Williams
Yes, they'll crush her. And so I think that's. And it's the same thing with money. It's why people, you know, get to those stages and you know, they turn to alcoholism and you know, start doing psychedelics, you know. You know, what's interesting about, about, about, you know, kind of like, you know, financial, financial freedom as you would term it is that it's, it actually turns you into becoming a slave to your desires sometimes.
- [85:26]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [85:27]
James David Williams
So you think you're actually free, but you're now slave to your desires. Meaning, okay, now, okay, I should be able to kind of like, you know, fly private jet now. Well, that's great, you know, fly private jet. But guess what? You know, the first time you have to go fly commercial because you didn't have to fly a private jet. How are you going to feel about that, right? You're going to have a decline in your happiness because now you didn't get to do the thing that you just upgraded to do. And that's where happiness from created, created, created things or things that we aspire to fall falls on its face is because those things, once you get to them, right, you can only be let down. You can only be let down from them, you know, and so I think that's, that's just, that's a critical, critical concept that I think even if folks are like, well, you know, Jesus a God, I'm not sure about that, but I think if you just walk away with this concept of, hey, listen, these things that I have around me that I think are gonna satisfy me, money can be taken away from you. Private jets can be taken away from you. I will make you unhappy when you don't get to fly them. And you will crush your family if you make them into the people that need to fulfill you and just start asking that question, well, if none of those things, does it, what does it?
- [86:43]
Bill Barlow
Right?
- [86:43]
James David Williams
For me, the answer is clear, right? It's, it's, you know, it's God through Jesus Christ. And for others, it's going to be, it's going to be something different. It might be something different, but. And this is one of, you know, this is one of the areas where I'm happy to talk with folks about and, you know, you know, help, help think through, you know, because I, I had to come to this realization, you know, through a lot of, of, you know, kind of hard work. You know, hard work is not the right word, but I'd say, you know, God helped me come to this conclusion. I would say, you know, in many ways, right? Through kind of building that relationship on a day in, on day out basis. And so, you know, this is, if this interview ends now, this is kind of where I would say this is the most important thing that I wanted to get across here was as you walk through that journey, just think about it through the lens of what does fulfillment look like outside of the things that I think are the goals that I'm striving towards, because those things are not going to satisfy.
- [87:47]
IO Phillips
It's such a great question. So I'm buying a business, but what's the why? And that. You know, always trying to understand what the why is. And, and that, that is such a kind of obnoxious business book framing. But it does get to a central thing, which is that there's often a reason behind the things that we are ostensibly doing. There's a, there's an emotional driver or maybe an emotional lack. But, but there's something compelling us in a direction and we need to understand what that is, or it would serve us to understand what that is. Got to say, I hate to, I hate to be a negative Nancy, but I think for the non believers, they would believe that feeling unfulfilled is simply human nature, that there is no answer to feeling unfulfilled. That's, that's, that it's what it is to be human and it's, it's just learning to process that is, is what you do. Not, not seeking fulfillment, period. Either in God or elsewhere.
- [88:49]
James David Williams
Yeah. Yeah, fair enough.
- [88:51]
IO Phillips
We, we, I, I, I'm, I'm absolutely loving this, but I have to, I have to bring us back to the nuts and bolts of, of this story, back to your investors. Your decision to go with a single investor on this journey now, going through all of that turmoil, reflecting back on that decision, that marriage. How do you reflect back on that? Going with one investor versus many. How, how are they reacting to all of this happening? How are they reacting to the phone call? I'm doing a startup, guys.
- [89:23]
James David Williams
Yeah, well, so I think one of the things I like to say about them is that we, we were kind of like teenagers that got married, right? We were like 17. We got married. We, we both didn't really know what we're doing initially.
- [89:42]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [89:43]
James David Williams
And you know, we're going down this journey together. So to them, it was kind of like, oh, what's going on? You know, and, but they were incredibly supportive through the period, right? And, and, you know, trusted in my, you know, trusted that, you know, I'd make, I'd make the right calls, but they were there, Right. You know, I had weekly conversations, you know, sometimes, you know, you know, in between calls, you know, we would talk. They visited very often, go back and forth, you know, and they were, they were very supportive through the entire journey, you know, and it was a learning experience for them as well, you know, so, so I say, you know, so pro and con there, right? So I felt like I, I had a real partner in this business.
- [90:29]
IO Phillips
Yeah.
- [90:29]
James David Williams
The con is they weren't you know, gray haired search fund investors that had done this like 50,000 times before and could have maybe stopped me from buying the business, you know, he said, I, oh, this is not a good decision. Don't buy this.
- [90:42]
IO Phillips
Right, yeah.
- [90:43]
James David Williams
So, so pro, con, Right, Gotcha. Yeah. Pro and con.
- [90:49]
IO Phillips
Right. So to get to the end of the story because I, I, I still want to have time for a few of these, a few of your commitment commandments. So let's get to the end of the story. You basically get the business to a place where it's on solid footing with this new model, correct?
- [91:04]
James David Williams
Yes.
- [91:06]
IO Phillips
And you decide that it's time to step out of your, the role as CEO. Why?
- [91:14]
James David Williams
A few different reasons. One more to the story. So we Covid, you know, Covid, you know, causes the decline, but we get, we get the business back up and you know, we had like record, you know, record revenue, start to grow our profits, but we were now in bed with these customers that were not paying, essentially not paying. They were not paying us. You know, we're showing paper profits, stretching cash. And that caused a real strain on the business, both from a, you know, just people, personal perspective. I lost, you know, I lost team members during that period of time and, and so, and the business started to change as well in the sense that, you know, if you think about that post Covid world, right, you know, labor cost started skyrocketing, material cost started skyrocketing and you know, these were all the inputs into the business. And so that was kind of like another thing where I was like, okay, we have to change the business model again.
- [92:14]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [92:14]
James David Williams
And I was, I would say the new business felt more like a, a construction business than, you know, kind of like the old business did because we were doing much, much larger turn, turn turnovers, you know, for these new homes, for, for rentals. And so we just kind of looked at all of it and said, hey, listen, like, is this a business model that we, you know, we want to be involved in, you know, long term, you know, like where we started and where we are today, you know, what do we see as, you know, the long term path for a business that continues to kind of change in this way?
- [92:49]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [92:49]
James David Williams
And so at that time, frankly, and this was probably a bigger piece of this, you know, I had put my wife and kids through hell up until this point as well. And I'm looking at this change and the potential for another term, you know, for another thing where it's like you have to pivot again. And I, at that point I Said, you know what, we have the business on a stable footing right now. Let's just maintain the customers that we have right now. I hired a GM because I said, okay, well, I've got to start reinvesting in my relationship with my wife.
- [93:19]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [93:20]
James David Williams
And the intention initially was for me to kind of like just step out of day to day operations into an advisory role. And so I had that conversation with my investors and you know, they in their wisdom were like, well, you know, this, this thing could change again. You know, it could change again and it looks stable now, but it could change again. And it's difficult to be accountable and not in charge is what one of them said.
- [93:48]
IO Phillips
What did they mean by that? I had that called out here. From your Twitter. From your Twitter, Yeah. So difficult to be accountable but not in charge. Yes.
- [93:56]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [93:56]
James David Williams
So if I would have stepped into an advisory role and, you know, kind of like pursuing something else, but I had this new leader who would have been the day to day operator of the business. The thought process was like, well, it's difficult for you to kind of be doing this other thing 100% full time while this other person is running it. They're relatively young in their career, they're kind of progressing, they're doing well, but you're still going to feel like you need to get pulled in day in and day out. What they were trying to tell me wasn't in their best interest, to be quite frank. They were trying to say, like, it's in your best interest to cut ties with this business is what they were trying to tell me. They were trying to say, hey, like, it's in your best interest for us to like, just say it's done, you know, and say that, you know, you know, we're moving on from this. And so, so when what ended up happening at that point was earlier in the, in the, in the acquisition story, I'd had some strategic acquirers come in and ask about buying the business, but I was too ashamed to show them anything at that time. This was like, you know, year two and a half or so. I was too ashamed to show them anything then because, you know, the business was just in shambles and. But now, you know, I was proud, you know, like, we were just coming off like, you know, you know, you know, record performance on several different metrics. And I was like, okay, well, I'm going to call these guys and see if, you know, if they have some interest. And so we ended up with four potential acquirers and we kind of cut it down to Two. One of them dropped out. And then we closed the transaction with one strategic acquire, which is an acquire within the industry that we're in. And so that was kind of how. That was how we came to the end of the journey.
- [95:55]
IO Phillips
And how was the exit financially?
- [95:58]
James David Williams
Well, it was, I'll put it this way, if three years ago, we thought that we might not make it, that the business might not make it. So Was it a 10x exit? No, but it was good enough for us to feel like, okay, we came, we saw, we accomplished something, and we conquered, and, you know, we're moving on to the next thing. It definitely wasn't the thing that, you know, I, you know, I could retire on if even if I wanted to retire. It wasn't. It wasn't something that. That would make a name for, for my investors, but it was a thing where we looked at it in terms of the journey that we were on and considered it a miracle that, you know, we're even able to get, you know, the outcome that we did get, you know, so, so, so, yeah, we're very happy. Happy. You know, our investors are like, wow, this is a great. This is a great outcome considering the fact that we. We could not have been in existence a few years before.
- [96:53]
IO Phillips
Well, I, I want to get to some of these commandments. We've talked. We've talked about a few of them already, but Again, audience, all six, this, this two pager of 16 commandments of acquisition entrepreneurship. Check your show notes for that. But, but let me go through some of these. IO this is the number one commandment, making it to the top job, meaning becoming a CEO of a search business. Making it to the, quote, top job isn't a ticket to avoiding accountability. Your market, customers, employee, and employees will hold you accountable. They are harsher judges than any boss will ever be. Elaborate, please.
- [97:37]
James David Williams
So for. For those who are running away from a boss, right, Just recognize that you have a personal relationship with the boss that you will never truly have with a customer. Like your employees, your vendors, right? Those relationships are transactional for the most part, right? You meet their need or you're gone.
- [98:03]
Bill Barlow
Right?
- [98:04]
James David Williams
A single boss, in many cases, at least in my experience, right. Sometimes they know you, they know who your kids are. You know, they, you know, they have some other relationship with you and they might care, you know, they might care to a certain extent. You know, they're not making decisions in a vacuum or decisions that are solely based on their own personal interest alone. That's a very big distinction from, you know, what it is to be the CEO of this business or of any business is that your employees in many cases are making decisions that are solely in their best interest. Your customers are making decisions that are solely in their best interest. Your vendors are doing the same thing, and you are the guy in the middle that's left to wrangle all that.
- [98:46]
Bill Barlow
Right?
- [98:46]
James David Williams
And so if you think that you're going to get here and all of a sudden you're in control of all these kind of like, myriad of forces, you're in for a rude awakening. There are some caveats to it, right. We talked a little bit about the Porter's five forces. And if you buy a business where you are truly not just a market leader, but I think about Nvidia right now. Who makes the chips for AI, who makes AI chips, right? They are living in a world in which the world is their oyster in many ways. Right? Everyone kind of bows to them in many ways, except the government. The government could take away, could take away their, you know, their, their, their, their ability to kind of function the way they, they are. So the point is just that, you know, you, you, you, you're essentially giving up one boss for multiple bosses now.
- [99:39]
Bill Barlow
Right?
- [99:40]
James David Williams
And you just need to acknowledge that.
- [99:42]
Bill Barlow
Right?
- [99:43]
James David Williams
And yes, they're not, you know, they're not in your space every single day. They're not slacking you to ask you, oh, like, what did you do today? And all that, but they're actually more cruel because they are operating solely in their own best interest for the most part. And if you don't meet those objectives, you're gone, essentially. So, so that's the point there.
- [100:02]
IO Phillips
Fantastic. I hope this one we have has been threaded throughout our conversation, but I think since it's your number two, it deserves just calling it out again. Number two, the industry you choose can break you much faster than your skill as a leader will make you choose wisely. Speak for itself, just all about the industry. Well, anything more to say on that?
- [100:26]
James David Williams
I think the, the only other thing I would say about this one is that a lot of money is made or not made before you step into that CEO seat. And I would not underestimate what that means. You know, I, I, I often tell people that, you know, like, they're the three H's of which I got into that led me into buying this business that maybe I shouldn't have.
- [100:53]
Bill Barlow
Right?
- [100:54]
James David Williams
So there was hope, heart and hubris. Hope, heart and hubris.
- [101:00]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [101:00]
James David Williams
And the hubris part is part you need to pay attention to. You are not going to dominate an industry, not as a small business, you know, some people do eventually, but that you should not walk in as a rookie CEO with the intention that that's what I'm here to do. And so picking that industry will give you such a leg up that even if you suck as a CEO, right? You could, you could, you could be, you could walk away, you know, looking great. And I've, I've Talked to some CEOs, I'm like, well, are you sure you actually were CEO? Like, yeah, yeah. You know, but, you know, the results, you know, the results, you know, at the end of it, from a financial perspective at least, you know, kind of, you know, would lead you to believe that, you know, this person was, you know, great. But, you know, picking the right industry sometimes is really what drives, you know, drives, you know, kind of the outcomes.
- [101:52]
IO Phillips
So, number five, commandment. I love this. You had said this to me in one of our earlier conversations, and it, of course, is life advice, not just buying a business advice. Focus on making decisions good, not just making good decisions. Don't obsess over too similar options. Put in the work to make the decisions that you make. Great ones.
- [102:18]
James David Williams
Yeah. So this one is, is for the folks, you know, maybe like me, who maybe, you know, you, you're coming from a MBA school where, you know, like, you get all this data and you analyze it and you're like, well, it could go this way, it could go that way, it could go this way, it could go that way. And in small business, you often do not have the luxury of time to make choices. Once you are down to a couple of different options, take one of them and make it the best decision that you could have made and stop reflecting on the past, on what you could have done, and instead stick to what you've chosen and make it the best decision that it could be.
- [103:04]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [103:05]
James David Williams
This is, this is about looking forward and not looking backwards.
- [103:08]
Bill Barlow
Right?
- [103:09]
James David Williams
And so, and I think, you know, a lot of the folks that I went to school with, you know, would, you know, would. Would be. We get into this trap of, oh, well, should I do you look at it even with searchers? Well, should I go to self funded? Should I do traditional, Should I do the accelerator? I mean, like, pick one option and make it the greatest option that you could have, you could have ever, ever chosen versus worrying about, you know, whether you made the right decision or not. And that's the point here.
- [103:37]
IO Phillips
Number six, in the early days, be great in the ways your business needs you to be great in the future. Your business will reward you by being great so that you can be whatever you want to be. What did that mean? I didn't actually fully understand that one IO.
- [103:53]
James David Williams
Yeah. So I think it's best to use an example here. You know, I have the opportunity to coach a few CEOs now. And sometimes one of the things you see is again, if you talk about people that came from the environment that I did, right, you know, corporate environment with a lot of great, you know, support systems and structures, and you walk into, into this business in small business environment in which there's a lack of resources available to you to do what you need to do and you need to step in and get dirty, right? And, and, and, and similar to what, you know, I had to do in my business, I did every single job within the business. Sometimes there's a resistance design, like, well, well, I really need an operations manager to fill this role. You know, I really need, you know, this new sales guy to do this. And the idea here is that early on, right, what your business is going to require of you may be something that you've never done or you were not used to, right. Or does not feel comfortable to you, right. But in you kind of, you know, dropping your resistance to doing those things right, it will make you great. And eventually you won't have to do, do them anymore. And then you can do whatever you want to do after that, right? So be great in ways that the business needs you to be great initially so that then you can be great in the ways that you want to be versus, you know, trying to be great in the ways that you want to be upfront. Because your business will never get as great as you need it to be in the long haul if you don't flip it around, if you don't do it the other way, right? So I think that's, that's the point. That's the point I'm trying to make there is do not run away from doing the things that are required early.
- [105:41]
Bill Barlow
Right?
- [105:42]
James David Williams
And it's not going to feel comfortable. In fact, the fact that it doesn't feel comfortable should be a sign that you should pursue it and do it. In most cases, this feels like a.
- [105:53]
IO Phillips
Version of the value of working in the business. We're so often focused on working on the business and working, you know, on just the big strategic stuff and not getting our hands dirty. But there's real value in working in your business for at least a time. It will enable you to work on the business better later.
- [106:15]
James David Williams
That's a great point. I Wasn't thinking of you that way, but I think that's exactly it. It's also tied to the point I made earlier around. When you have a key man race problem, sometimes it makes sense for you to become the key man for a period of time. Absolutely right.
- [106:33]
IO Phillips
Jumping to the last of your commandments, number 16, be a winner. Winners are eloquent quitters. They use fancy words like pivot when something is not working. There's no glory in banging your head against the wall. The wall is designed to beat you. What does it mean that winners are eloquent quitters? So.
- [107:02]
James David Williams
The point there is this, is that again, this goes back to kind of our ambition, our identity, being tied to work and wanting to make something work so bad because you believe that, oh, well, this was exactly how it was supposed to look when you are moving down that track. And in my case, if I would have continued moving down the track that I was on, this would be a totally different conversation that we're having today, right? And the point there is that if you look at leaders within, think about, like Netflix, right, Netflix, and the transition that Netflix has made over time, right, from where they started DVD by mail to a full streaming service today. The greatest businesses in the world, right, don't take it personal when they need to pivot, right? Apple moving from the computer to the phone, right? All those things. If you look at the greatest businesses in the world, they know exactly. Well, they maybe don't know exactly when to pivot, but they're not scared to do it. They don't let hubris or sunken cost fallacy prevent them from taking the right next step. You know, there's another point I should bring up here, which is what I call the ambition trap, right? And this is like really, really, really, really critical. Is that again, because of the ambition and the fact that identity is so tied to our work, a lot of times, you know, you end up in a situation in which you're like, you can't divorce yourself from solving the problem. You know, you and the problem are the same, and you need to actually be able to separate those two things. It's like a surgeon thinking that the person that they're working on, right, is their own heart, right? They won't be able to do the work that they need to do to actually solve the problem. And you need to kind of like step away from the problem and be able to kind of see how to solve it effectively as a result of stepping away. And this is a version of that, is that don't let Your identity prevent you from pivoting when that's the right thing to do in the business right now. You might need, you know, you might need other people around you to help you see, you know what that is. But, but that is, that is, that is, that, that was, that was critical in my case. And you know, if we did not pivot, we would not, we would not be here, you know, we, we would not be here. So.
- [109:32]
IO Phillips
Great. I, I want to close with what you're doing today and there's, and I think there's two, two things to talk about there. But before we do that, any, any other of the commandments that, that you really want to make sure the audience hears or any other learnings from your journey. You've been, you've been great at just surfacing a lot of the lessons, but any that we didn't hit that you really wanted to.
- [109:56]
James David Williams
I think, I think we covered a lot of them. I mean, I could probably go on for days and you don't have that kind of time, you know, like it was.
- [110:03]
IO Phillips
Well, here's one actually, I. Oh, here's one.
- [110:05]
James David Williams
Yeah, go ahead.
- [110:07]
IO Phillips
That I, that we didn't get to, but it was in your Twitter thread and it was, I think the last realization I noted. You write staying at McKinsey would have made me more money, but this was the greatest professional experience of my Life. When I'm 80, I won't be wishing I built more PowerPoint decks. I'll be boring my grandkids with this story. They'll roll their eyes, but I hope deep down it gives them the confidence to do hard work things. So maybe doing hard things, Yes.
- [110:37]
James David Williams
I think that's one of the commandments as well.
- [110:39]
IO Phillips
It is, it is actually.
- [110:41]
James David Williams
Yeah. So I should say this as well. And this is, I get a lot of people ask me, would you do it again? And really what they're asking me is, should I do this? You know, that's really what the question is. What they really asking me, and I often tell people is like, you know, pursuing this entrepreneurial path, it's not for everyone. But if it is the path that leads you towards attaining your God given potential, you should absolutely do it. Because it's in, it's in, it's those experiences that bring you to your knees and to your knees in prayer or in whatever.
- [111:18]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [111:19]
James David Williams
That grow you the most.
- [111:22]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [111:24]
James David Williams
These last, those, those five years were the greatest professional years of my life. They were also the hardest years of my life. And in some ways I'm concerned that maybe I don't get to experience something like that again. I'm glad, I'm not glad in terms of the experience, but it was kind of like a defining pivot point for me on a personal basis. And no one would characterize that experience as being easy, right? I mean, nothing, if you think about life and live life, nothing that gets accomplished that is valuable, right? Is easy. When I go to the gym to work out, it hurts, you know, you know, that's a physical example of, you know, what is, you know, kind of like an ephemeral concept here, right? So, so that's the entire point, is that you want to do hard things. And so for those who are in a corporate job today, right, and you're like, hey man, you know, I'm walking in every day, you know, like, you know, I'm working two hours a day and I'm walking out. And if you feel like, hey, this is going to allow you to kind of maximize your God given potential and that, you know, it being hard is part of what you're seeking out of this, right, you should definitely pursue it because it's gonna lead you to the ultimate goal, which I stated before, which is finding fulfillment in something that's greater than you. Because it's in that partnership and relationship for me, which is, you know, in God, right, that you find your greatest fulfillment. It's not in actually accomplishing what you think is the goal, you know, it's actually in having to rely on something that's outside of your self sufficiency to realize that, oh, there's actually more to life than there is in me as an individual. And so that's how I think about this beautiful IO.
- [113:19]
IO Phillips
This has just been such a rich conversation. Wow. To close us out. Tell us about your day job and then tell us about operators. Coach, you touched on your day job already. You work alongside Thomas Ince. Tell us about LP First Capital.
- [113:32]
James David Williams
Yes. Yeah, so LP First Capital is where an independent sponsor actually. And you know, we acquire low middle market businesses in dirty industries for the most. Dirty is not the right word. Service based industries. So H vac roofing, property management, we own a dental platform as well. We've done 61 acquisitions over the last five years and we're looking to do more. And in fact, you know, we have a concept right now that we call the flip and roll. So you know, for searchers who are in that, you know, three to $4 million EBITDA level now and are like, well, I don't want to stop running this business, but you Know, I need, you know, additional capital to buy a bunch of additional businesses. We're partnering with those folks now. We're, we're in conversations with two of them right now, you know, to kind of, you know, you know, take their business, add many more to it, build a platform that take it to roughly 30 million EBITDA and then sell those businesses. So that's what I, that's, that's, that's LP First Capital. That's what we do, I guess.
- [114:29]
IO Phillips
What's your role there? IO?
- [114:31]
James David Williams
Yeah, so I get to be on our operating team. So what that is is, you know, I have certain platforms where I partner with the CEOs and the leadership teams there to help execute value creation plans, to drive process improvement, deploy operating systems and then I serve as a coach to those CEOs as well. So that's kind of what I do day in and day out.
- [114:54]
IO Phillips
Day out. And how do you find the world of being investors? You're, you're on the operating team of an independent sponsor group, so, so you're very operational. But still fundamentally, I suspect that many of the day to day conversations and the attitude of the organization is one of investor versus operator. Correct me if I'm wrong. How do you find thinking like an investor, the life of an investor versus thinking like an owner operator in the life of an owner operator?
- [115:22]
James David Williams
Yeah, so, um, I get the opportunity to sit across from, from a lot of CEOs and, and obviously as an operator, sometimes you want to kind of like, you know, jump in the seat sometimes and say, well, can we, why don't we do this or do that or do this, right? But then I remember that, you know, I don't have to leave live with the sleepless nights right now. They do, you know, on a day and on day out basis. And I have to respect that. And my role is that of an advisor to help them, you know, drive them to becoming their best selves from an investment perspective. I, I think the question you're actually asking me is, you know, sitting on the other side of the table and evaluating these businesses. I mean, it's been extremely eye opening in, in multiple different ways. Right. So one of them is that first of all, I want to talk about the part that's probably most applicable to searchers. There are different pools of capital in the world out there and the only shot for a searcher to actually be able to win is to differentiate themselves in a different way than capital because you can just not compete from a capital perspective. I think about some of the Businesses that we are able to buy because we have larger platforms and what we're willing to pay.
- [116:46]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [116:46]
James David Williams
That 2, 3, 4 maybe turns over what a searcher can pay because of the caps of the sba. And because we have a larger platform, it still makes sense for us to do those deals. And so the differentiator definitely has to be you, your story, right. And your willingness to kind of like step in the seat and do and be that day to day leader of the business. So, so that's number one. Number two, I would say that on the investing side, the bigger you get, as platforms get larger and larger, one of the things that becomes really apparent is that number one, the problems are still kind of like the same. The problems are still the same even at the lower level, higher level point being buy as big as you can because the problems are still going to be the same. You just need to, you want to have, you know, you want to have the cash you need to solve the problems regardless of the size of the, of the platform that you're going to get.
- [117:46]
Bill Barlow
Right?
- [117:47]
James David Williams
So, so I, I would encourage people to buy bigger. It would be another thing. There are probably several others that I'm not, I'm not, that aren't immediate immediately coming to mind. And if someone called me, I'd be, I'd probably think of some specifics. But it's been very illuminating, you know.
- [118:06]
IO Phillips
Well, let me ask you this IO do you want to remain in on the investor side of the table for your career or is there something in you that sees going back to being an operator owner?
- [118:19]
James David Williams
Yeah. So the way I think about my career now, in light of kind of what I've said around fulfillment, and I'll not go into that anymore, but I would say this like I think the lower middle market, there are many ways that an individual can play, right? You can play as a broker, you can play as a banker, you can play as an investor, you can play as an operator, you can play as an operating partner, you can play in private equity. My, my goal is to. One of the things that I'd like to see myself do is play in, you know, many of these different spots to be able to touch, you know, touch the elephant from, from all from it, from its different sides, you know, and frankly I get, you know, I get to do a lot of that now. But I'm an operator at heart. I'm an operator first, you know, and could I see myself operating a business again? Absolutely. You know, is that day today? No, but, but, but, but I could I could certainly see myself operating again. Yes.
- [119:21]
IO Phillips
And to close us out for good here, IO, what is Operators Coach?
- [119:26]
James David Williams
Oh, yeah, thanks for asking that. So Operators Coach is a platform I started, you know, about a couple years ago where I get the opportunity to coach CEOs who are acquisition entrepreneurs going through this journey, you know, like every day as a new owner operator. Like I said initially, everything feels existential, you know, like it's really bad or it's really, really good. And you know, and some of them are right. You're making these really tough decisions around, you know, how to grow your revenue.
- [119:58]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [119:58]
James David Williams
You had a big customer just leave you, a key employee is threatening to leave, and you, there's a lack of sleep.
- [120:04]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [120:05]
James David Williams
All things that I've, you know, I've had to kind of like, deal with and worry about. And you know, you, you have investors, but sometimes they're a fiduciary and you don't want to tell them everything. You know, sometimes, sometimes it's like, well, should I tell them that, you know, is this the right timing? And sometimes it's not the right time to talk to them. You have your spouse or your partner and, you know, you don't want to burden them with all the vicissitudes of what's going on in day to day of the business.
- [120:31]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [120:32]
James David Williams
And then your employees, you definitely don't want them involved. That's like, you know, kind of like, you know, trying to explain the bird. Birds. Birds and the bees to kind of like to, to, to your kids.
- [120:42]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [120:42]
James David Williams
I mean, you don't tell them what, you don't tell them what that really means, you know.
- [120:46]
IO Phillips
Interesting analogy.
- [120:47]
Bill Barlow
Right, Right.
- [120:48]
James David Williams
So, so the point is, you know, CEOs need an outlet, you know, and there's several outlets, you know, to, to do this. You know, they could peer groups, but the way that I, I, this is like a passion of mine just because I lived it and I've seen, you know, kind of the benefits of it is the opportunity to kind of like work one on one with, with, with CEOs, to help them through the difficult periods and help helping them make these decisions, you know, each day in a way that no other person, whether it's folks on your cap table or it's your spouse or it's your employees, can. Just because I've lived the life.
- [121:23]
IO Phillips
Yeah.
- [121:23]
James David Williams
And so, and what is the format?
- [121:25]
IO Phillips
Is it sort of a weekly call?
- [121:27]
James David Williams
Yeah, well, it's, it's usually twice a month roughly. Sometimes it's weekly, depending on, you know, if someone is going Going through something that's really, really tough. And I don't do a lot of these. So this is not, you know, if like 10 people reach out to me, that's not, it's not going to happen. You know, I have a day, I have a day job. But, you know, it's something that I, I'm passionate about and it's something that brings me quite a lot of fulfillment. And, you know, when I think about, you know, making impact to people and their organizations.
- [121:57]
Bill Barlow
Right.
- [121:57]
James David Williams
This is. I feel a lot of joy when I do this. And so it's really more about that and, you know, kind of like, you know, helping, helping folks kind of navigate, you know, what I had to navigate and maybe shorten, you know, instead of it taking them 18 months to figure out something, maybe it takes them three weeks, you know, and they can start moving down the right path. And so that's what. That's what that is.
- [122:20]
IO Phillips
IO, how can people reach out to you to take advantage of operators, coach or otherwise?
- [122:25]
James David Williams
Yeah, so, I mean, multiple different spots. Well, you can go to operatorscoach.com you can also find me on Twitter. I'm on LinkedIn as well. So multiple different spots, you know, to find me. So. And I also look forward to talking to people who are looking to kind of exit, you know, they're in that point 3 million EBITDA and looking to kind of, you know, you know, keep going, but, you know, want to de risk a little bit. And I'm looking for an equity partner to help them do that. We're looking for folks like that as well.
- [122:55]
IO Phillips
So for the LP on this and.
- [122:56]
James David Williams
The LP capital that's on the L side. Yeah. Yes. Yes.
- [123:00]
IO Phillips
IO this was in fact worth the wait of getting on here. This was an incredible story and your thoughtfulness about your whole journey, I think is really something to admire and learn from. Thank you very much for sharing it with us.
- [123:19]
James David Williams
Thanks, will appreciate it.