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- [00:00]
Will Smith
Today's guest wants you to open your mind to project based businesses, even project based businesses in construction. Our hero Enrique Rodriguez bought Mac General Power Solutions, an electrical contractor that does work for commercial, industrial and wastewater type projects. It was small, about 1.4 million in revenue, less than 250,000 in SDE. But in just nine months since closing in September 2024, Enrique has built it up to a projected 4 million in revenue for 2025, 750,000 in SDE. And he gives us the playbook, the how and the why a project based construction business like this can grow so fast. Now there are elements to both Enrique and Mac General that would be hard to replicate. Enrique has years of experience in construction and electrical and in the very same metro area as the business. So the business buyer fit here is 98% as he says. Meanwhile, the business focuses on the types of jobs that require specialization expertise. This is not installing light switches in a house. It would be especially difficult for a non trained electrician to own and grow this business. So while you can't copy paste Enrique's path here into your own search journey, there is still much to learn. Listen for how he systematically pursues revenue. Listen for how having multiple jobs at a time allows him to tetris them together to smooth out revenue and keep his crews working and generating revenue. Listen for how he kept on his seller even though he made decisive firm changes to the business immediately upon taking ownership. Okay, here he is. Enrique Rodriguez, owner of Mac General Power Solutions. You know how easy it is to get emotional pursuing a deal and how dangerous that is. Well, tomorrow Tuesday, Chelsea Wood of Acquisition Lab is hosting a webinar on how to resist certain temptations by committing to the math and and logic of deal making. Topics to include why seller financing can often create a hidden cash crisis, how bigger deals can look better but leave you with less free cash flow, what kinds of multiples different buyers can realistically support, and more. That is tomorrow. Tuesday, July 22nd noon Eastern. The webinar is the the Math and Logic of Deal Making link to register is right at the top of today's show notes or on the Acquiring Minds homepage Acquiring Minds co. Then Thursday SBA loan broker Heather Anderson returns for an office hours on working capital in SMB Acquisitions. Regular listeners of Acquiring Minds know that working capital is such a pitfall for business buyers, even for entrepreneurs who know to be paying close attention to it. So come get a tutorial on this invaluable topic. Heather will be joined by Chris Williamson of Cane Crossing, a leading financial due diligence provider in our space. So you're going to learn from two pros with deep expertise in working capital and how it can make or break your acquisition. That webinar is this Thursday, July 24, noon Eastern. The webinar is Working Capital in SMB Acquisitions. Link to register is right at the top of this episode's show notes or on the Acquiring Minds homepage. Acquiringminds Co 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. You know that 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 inzotechnologies.com I N Z O or email Nick directly@nicknzotechnologies.com and don't forget to tell them you're a searcher. Enrique Rodriguez welcome to Acquiring Minds.
- [05:47]
Enrique Rodriguez
Thank you for having me. Will. Happy to be here.
- [05:50]
Chelsea Wood
Enrique, you bought a project based construction.
- [05:54]
Will Smith
Business and and you're not apologizing for it.
- [05:58]
Chelsea Wood
If anything you're going to tell us the strengths of such businesses.
- [06:02]
Will Smith
We will get there but start us.
- [06:04]
Chelsea Wood
Off please with some background on you.
- [06:06]
Enrique Rodriguez
Enrique okay I'm local Northern Virginia. I moved here from native Peru with my parents when I was seven. I went to school in Annandale, Virginia which is sub suburb of Washington D.C. after high school I went to Virginia Tech and I studied electrical engineering after Virginia Tech. In the summers from Virginia Tech I would work at Whitey's Pool Construction. It was just for you know, foreman based business. It was you know my first four into you know, blue collar work. I would get you know, I would work alongside blue collar guys and some college, you know, and some college guys just getting beer money for the rest of the year. And you know, I worked there every summer and I, you know got that. That was my first foray in construction. After I graduated Virginia Tech, I got a job at a small engineering firm in Fairfax, Virginia. It was 12 person outfit, two owners, one admin and then the rest of us. And you know that was at the same time as the recession. So there wasn't really, didn't really like the place that much but there wasn't anywhere to go. Learn some engineering and I really want to get a background on these companies because I got to experience small business, lower middle market business, a very established middle market business. And then I worked for a Fortune 500 company also and I got to see the pluses and minuses of all those businesses as I did my engineering. So my second job it was like an established middle market company with hundreds of millions in revenue. But I still worked at the same size 30 person office. It was, I think had like 20 or 30 independent profit centers. It was more like a hold co than one large engineering firm. It was just loosely based offices that somebody with deep pockets just started acquiring and they weren't really interrelated or working together. So it was more like a whole code that you know, that grew to the hundreds of millions with one owner and you know, that's about as far as I knew for it. I was just a mid level engineer. Then I went to a KTA group in 2013 where I got promoted very well. That was probably, I would say my favorite job. It was a 37 person engineering firm. The owner was there on site, he was hands off. But it had all the structure of a large company. It was the most efficient place and effective place I worked at. It was a single office. It was a lower middle market company. Made me bringing in 8 to 10 million a year and it really did a lot more than bigger places and everything else. So I got to see how a well run organization look like then. You know, I always wanted to work at a large firm and I got a job at a very large, the largest engineering firm in the country. I worked there for five years. I got to work on some pretty interesting projects locally around the D.C. area and then internationally. And as I you know, grew as an engineer, so did my salary. And you know I manage people, I did project management and I was a department manager. So I've managed in my career maybe like a dozen people and you know Projects in the millions of dollars. So that's my background. What led me to buy a business I started in 2018 to, in between my job at KTA and my last employer, I started, you know, what's next for me? You know, how do I grow career wise? And I was thinking maybe starting my own engineering firm, but then I'd had to bootstrap it for a few years. And then I learned about the SBA program. There wasn't much information out there. I just knew that you had to put 25 down and then the SBA would back 75 of it. I didn't even get to read that the Walker Divel or, or the, or the HBR guide. Then I didn't read that till a few years later. And I asked my wife, I'm like, hey, what if I buy this? There was actually an electrical company for sale in Fairfax, Virginia. And I said, what if I buy this? I think the price was like two and a half million at the time. And, and, and you know, you know, we could probably scrub up together close to a down payment at that time. And, and I, she asked if, she talked to me frankly, and she said, hey, what makes you think you can run the place? And I said, well, I'm, I, I do the plans that the contractors build and they're like, what else? What's your business background? You know, you know, what's, you know, you don't even have the right licensing, so you. So I, she was right. So I went back to the drawing board. I changed jobs. Then my plan was always to get my MBA so I could be comfortable in business. And then I also got my master electrician license so I could be able to take over an electrical contractor.
- [11:10]
Chelsea Wood
Were you always going to go back for an MBA or was this all now going back for the mba? Was this all part of the plan to event now buy business?
- [11:19]
Enrique Rodriguez
Yeah, it was part of the plan to either start a business or buy a business.
- [11:22]
Chelsea Wood
Oh, okay.
- [11:23]
Enrique Rodriguez
Before I did that, I wanted to be comfortable with business and you know, I have extensive engineering background and electrical industry and in construction, but not, not in business. I didn't feel comfortable in it. I don't like getting into things unless I'm comfortable. So I, and it was, you know, natural progression. I was a mid level manager and in case I did. Yeah, so. And it was, it was very educational for me. I, you know, I, it made me feel very comfortable in business. I know some people, you know, you know, struggle with should I get an mba? If I buy, I would Say yes. I, it really makes. Yes.
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Chelsea Wood
What about your MBA education? Have you found most valuable?
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Enrique Rodriguez
I found that, you know, the, the George Mason in state education goes, you know, toe to toe with any Ivy League education. We all learn the same curriculum. I learned finance and accounting and I had an entrepreneurship class and, you know, we got, I got to read a lot of case studies and, you know, gave me just the, the confidence and, you know, reps to, you know, now that I'm in, in the owner's seat, I, I have to deal with finance and accounting all the time. And I wouldn't want to not be speaking the same language. I'm not an expert by any means, but I know how to speak the language and I know, you know, the, the mode of information, you know, all the important stuff of running a business.
- [12:40]
Chelsea Wood
Yeah. And when you do a night school style MBA, how long does that take?
- [12:47]
Enrique Rodriguez
I did it in three years.
- [12:50]
Chelsea Wood
Okay.
- [12:50]
Enrique Rodriguez
From 2021, I think I ended December 2023. So three full years in night school, 16 classes. Yeah. Summers too. Yeah.
- [12:59]
Chelsea Wood
Okay. Okay, great. And so you get out and then you decide, you're confronted again with, do I buy or do I build a business?
- [13:10]
Enrique Rodriguez
Yeah. So, you know, I, so I, I had an LLC where I did some side work as an engineer, small projects. So I had that since about the same time as I started night school. So I would do like 20 to 50 grand to work a year on the side, just like designing a, you know, the electrical system, the engineering systems for, let's say, a restaurant renovation or very minor commercial work. And so I had, I, I wanted to get the feel, though. Do I really want to, you know, have to do the books myself? You know, when you, when you own a business, you gotta, gotta get the work. You gotta do the work and then you gotta do the business. So I wanted to be comfortable with all three on a smaller scale. So I, you know, I would do this side work. I still have the engineering firm. You know, it's just an LLC with some subcontractors that I, that I, you know, that I, you know, get work from when I need, you know, have a contract. So that made me feel comfortable. I did that for about three, four months in 2024 or more than that, like to. I graduated in December 2023. And then I spent maybe six months in 2024 looking at that, getting a few more contracts. And then, you know, by then I really wasn't doing my day job too much. I was just focusing on what's my, you know, how comfortable do I feel in my next step, which is buying or starting a business, I would start looking on biz by sell again. And then this listing came up in Sterling, Virginia, another suburb of D.C. area. It was MAG General Inc. At the time. And I said, you know what, it was around maybe April of 2024. I said I'm going to take a look at the sim. So I reached out to the broker and he sent me the sim and it was smaller than I wanted. At the same time when I thought.
- [15:06]
Chelsea Wood
What had your criteria been for your search?
- [15:08]
Enrique Rodriguez
Well, you know, I heard on podcast and I, you know, I read the HBR guide and I read you know, Walker Dibel's book and whatever, you know, you know, searcher related stuff was out there. I joined Search Funder and everybody was talking about the bigger the bot you buy, the better it is because it's a long way down and the SBA will give you up to 5 million. And, and so I pulled some capital lines of credit from, from. I got a HELOC for, for, for my house and I got a personal line of credit on securities, on stocks and bonds that we, we, we wife and I own. And, and we, you know, so I had like over half a million dollars in cash, plus cash. I had cash savings. So I had more than half a million dollars. More like 750k if I wanted to buy a business. $5 million. I did look at other sims for an engineering business in North Carolina, a very large electrical contractor that was in Maryland. That was about 4 million. I but the first one I looked at was Mac General. And you know, the first thing I said to the broker was it, you know it's, it's not the size that I was looking for. And he's like yeah, but the price is right. It was at 450,000 was the asking price. I bought 1 1.35 million of revenue.
- [16:28]
Chelsea Wood
And how 40th and 240 SD and.
- [16:31]
Enrique Rodriguez
That'S an average of three years. They fluctuated. So they obviously were, they were presenting their best. The best year was 2023. That was probably 300k in SD. But 2022 was not that good and 2021 was good. So an average probably is 240.
- [16:47]
Chelsea Wood
So the price being right, what the broker meant by that was that is less than a 2x. Yeah, at first, at first blush that is correct.
- [16:54]
Enrique Rodriguez
Yeah.
- [16:55]
Chelsea Wood
Now as well as we'll find out, you had to put quite. You put it, you then infused more money into the business. So it's not, it wasn't truly a less than 2x but we'll we'll get there.
- [17:08]
Will Smith
The team at Aspen HR recently published a short white paper targeted at searchers in Entitled A New CEO's Guide to Human Resources. It lays out the key items you should be thinking about as you transition into CEO and owner of the business you bought. The link to download it is in the show notes. Aspen is a professional employer organization or PEO run by a searcher for searchers. Search fund veteran Mark Sinatra runs the company which provides HR compliance, flawless payroll, Fortune 500 caliber benefits and HR due diligence support for your acquisition all for a fraction of the cost. Go to Aspen hr.com or contact Mark directly at mark aspen hr.com.
- [18:00]
Chelsea Wood
Less than 2x but we'll we'll get there. Keep going. What else did you like about Mac?
- [18:03]
Enrique Rodriguez
Mac you know I that so I looked at the SIM and the broker said how about you meet Mike the owner? And I said okay. So I went to his office, you know in early summer, this was maybe May or June. We met several times on, on the weekends I met first time I met him in the broker he seemed like a good guy. He is a good guy now that I know him well. And you know the, the, the, the books seem more or less it wasn't a big company. There was 10 to 12 employees fluctuating. I when, when I after I get we negotiated an LOI or right before I negotiated the loi he showed me something that made the place special. He showed me his, his bid log. So he has an email where all the bids come in. And it was always coming in. It was his bid flow was every 10 minutes a new request for contract would come in and from his 30 years of doing work and it wasn't just little residential work or that it was large projects, medium projects. Although I recognized all the contractors around town. It was he had an extensive bid bid flow.
- [19:10]
Chelsea Wood
So, so just to be clear for those of us who don't come from construction land project based construction land, what it is is the, the GCS will put out a request for bid.
- [19:23]
Enrique Rodriguez
That is correct.
- [19:25]
Chelsea Wood
And then you as the contractor bid on the work and hopefully are awarded that work.
- [19:30]
Enrique Rodriguez
Yes.
- [19:31]
Chelsea Wood
And so your bid flow is how many of these requests for requests for bids are coming out. You look email alias for that inbox and he was getting you know, ding ding ding every 10 minutes there was a request for bid. So while he didn't have that business there was just this was basically like the equivalent to construction business of a ringing phone Phone just kept ringing.
- [19:53]
Enrique Rodriguez
It was the equivalent of you're looking at a waterfall and you put your little red cup out there to get a drink. That's what it is.
- [20:01]
Chelsea Wood
And, and he was not bidding on. Is the idea that he was bidding on a lot less than, than he could have. And he was small for by choice, by design sort of thing.
- [20:11]
Enrique Rodriguez
Yeah. He picked what he thought it was best fit for him and he bid it and then he got the job. Then he did the job and then he went back to the waterfall and you got another drink. Yeah.
- [20:23]
Chelsea Wood
And from your perspective, you interpret it like if I want to grow, I can just start accepting a lot or start bidding on a lot more of these jobs.
- [20:31]
Enrique Rodriguez
That's right. Our, you know, our, our, let's say, you know, our bid hit rate on what we estimate. So our sales process is sending estimates every, let's say every 20. Every. I think it's every 17 estimates. We're getting a job so we have to send 17 estimates. And it's not like you get to pick the one you want. I have yet to even close to tap what that bid, you know, that bid flow does. And we send a lot more than 17amonth. We're probably sending one or two a day. And these jobs are range from 200k to, you know, 2,3 million in electrical work only. So we send about 17 of those more than that and we still get to pick what we want to send out. I've got a. So yeah, so it's a. And then to get into the bid list is not like you just sign up on a, on a, on a web server. You have to pre qualify to the contractor. You have to show them I am a real company. I've done years of work. Here's my, my projects, here's my references, here's my lines of credit, here's my bonding. Here's half a dozen. So to get into there. So we try to add more contractors to the bit, to the bid flow. It's a, it's a bit of work.
- [21:46]
Chelsea Wood
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and we're going to hear about how you, how you amped that up once you got into the seat, but just a little bit more about what you liked about the business. So this bid flow was incredible. You thought the seller was seem, seems solid. The multiple was good. But even, even though it was a really small business, you, you said you were prepared to max out the SBA. I mean you had half a million $750,000 that you could put toward this project as a Down payment and then max out the sba. So quite a bit larger business than this one, which is basically a tenth of the size of that at 450,000. It didn't bother you that, that, that how did you think about it being so small and it being so much smaller than you had kind of aimed for?
- [22:31]
Enrique Rodriguez
Well, I went back to the drawing board. I, I, I thought about it and I said, hey, you know, there's, there's two things you can do. You got, if you take out a five million dollar loan, that's financial risk. Right. You got to pay 800K a year in, in, in debt service to the SBA that, you know, give or take, depending on the rates these days. And you got to have a million in EBITDA for them to give you that five. So, so that's financial risk because that million can go to half a million and then you can't service that loan. So I basically what it did, I transferred my, instead of having big financial risk, because I'm basically doing all cash, I have more execution risk. I have to, if I want that $5 million or to $10 million revenue business, I have to execute, I have to have a better plan and grow the business. So I transferred the financial risk and now I got execution risk. I got a lot less financial risk now.
- [23:28]
Chelsea Wood
And the execution was something you felt confident in. This was right in your wheelhouse. You had worked in all varying sizes of projects and businesses and you had already at this point you said you got your master's electrician license.
- [23:46]
Enrique Rodriguez
Yes, I got that one in 2020 during the pandemic. I had some free time in the pandemic. So I just got my master electrician. Wow.
- [23:53]
Chelsea Wood
So great business buyer fit. Of all people, you are, are, are the guy to grow this thing.
- [23:59]
Enrique Rodriguez
Yeah, I, I would say I would give myself a 98, you know, grade as business buyer fit. I've got the skills, the experience, I'm local, I know all the, you know, the same contractors. He knew, I knew, I knew I had a plan coming, day one coming in. I mean the only person that could probably fit better is somebody that bought, grew and sold this exact same business in this industry. Yeah. So I told you what I liked about it. Let me tell you what I didn't like about it. Yeah, that's where the execution risk comes in.
- [24:31]
Chelsea Wood
Okay.
- [24:31]
Enrique Rodriguez
He had zero backlog, which in project based businesses you need like a healthy business has a year and a half of backlog. He had a month. So because he got a job, he, he did the job ran out of re, you know, backlog. Then he went to go get another job. And that's how, you know, he went from get having a job to zero to having a job to zero.
- [24:53]
Chelsea Wood
So he was, he was only ever with one job max, maybe two, you.
- [24:58]
Enrique Rodriguez
Know, maybe the tail end of one and the other. But it was, it was a very owner central business and everything went through him. He was the estimator, he was the project manager, he was the, the accounting person. Sometimes his wife helped, but she had her own career and, and you know, and then anybody around him was either a helper or an admin. Not nobody to take ownership, not a manager. So the one of the first things I, so there was no management team. So that's what made it actually small. There was no backlog. The technology wasn't like, it wasn't from the 90s, you know, but because the wife was a, his wife was an IT person. So let's say it was stuck in 2009 when he decided not. So he had an ERP system. He had printers. Yeah, he had, he had technology. But it was technology from maybe 10 to 15 years ago.
- [25:49]
Chelsea Wood
Okay.
- [25:50]
Enrique Rodriguez
The space was a, a bit of a mess. It took a lot. You know, I spent, I had a guy for a month and a half just driving stuff to the scrap yard non stop. It was just loaded up with stuff that was.
- [26:02]
Chelsea Wood
What do you mean?
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Enrique Rodriguez
I mean he just, whatever finish you finish from a job, he would bring it in and leave it and then sometimes he would like buy things at auctions and, and it was just the warehouse in the office space was like they had a lot of unwalkable areas. It was stacked to the ceiling with crap.
- [26:17]
Chelsea Wood
It sounds, it sounds hoarder ish.
- [26:19]
Enrique Rodriguez
Yes, it was a bit like that in a nicer term. And you know, day one I just said all, all this has got to go. That's not who I am. I like you go in my house. My clock closet is big towels, metal towels, little towels. It's all perfectly in order. And, and so I spent the first couple months just cleaning it up as, as much as I could. You know, new equipment, computers, back to the other, you know. Yeah.
- [26:47]
Chelsea Wood
Enrique, let me, let me understand about how you bought the business. So 450. You didn't use any SBA loan. That's almost too small for an SBA loan.
- [26:59]
Enrique Rodriguez
You can do an SBA express. I, I actually, you know, reached out to like the banks to see if they just give me a loan even though I had the cash and they Said, Yeah, it's under 500k. You know, you can get an express. You know. I talked to someone at Live Oak. I reached out to Matthias Smith. He said less than a million he won't do. It's just not, you know, worth it for them. And you know, they're like just buy cash, you know, and, and, and is that small.
- [27:27]
Chelsea Wood
Now the thing is, is Enrique, like, despite the fact that you don't have the financial risk of a big, of a big loan hanging over your head at $450,000 and you've got half a million 750 to your name, that does, that does spend a lot of your own money. So you got a lot of your own.
- [27:49]
Enrique Rodriguez
I don't have 750 just to my name. So I, you know, I'm, I was okay losing 750,000. My wife.
- [27:57]
Chelsea Wood
Oh, okay.
- [27:58]
Enrique Rodriguez
Yeah, you know, we have.
- [27:59]
Chelsea Wood
So you. Sorry. So you had 750 to put toward this project that actually had more behind that.
- [28:06]
Enrique Rodriguez
Yeah, yeah. If, if the, if the investment went to zero, we, we still spend the summers at the beach house. We still send our kids to private school. We still, you know, really nanny and everything. Yeah, yeah, we, we were, yeah, we've been, you know, doing okay for a while. So just the next level, the next level would be to own a business and you know, and then. Yeah, we're both good professors. She has her own business. You know, actually she was the financier for my, for my purchase. It's her 750, 000, not my 750,000. Yeah. That makes me very, very lucky husband. Yeah.
- [28:47]
Chelsea Wood
Good, good for you guys. That's cool. All right, so you, and did you have any seller note in there?
- [28:54]
Enrique Rodriguez
No, I did a 20 hold back for one year. So the form of the 450, 360K up front and then 90K goes into escrow for hold back. He gave me one month, you know, transition labor and then I pay him his hourly rate that we negotiated and he's a full time employee. Basically it was a small business. So I did the due diligence, I did the quality of revenue and earnings and everything. I checked every number that he spent since mid-2020 and you know, it was all in the right pot.
- [29:28]
Chelsea Wood
Oh, wow. You, you went through line by line.
- [29:30]
Enrique Rodriguez
Since mid-2023 62 transactions since like October 2020 till when I bought it.
- [29:37]
Chelsea Wood
Wow. Yeah, you really did learn something here. Mba.
- [29:40]
Enrique Rodriguez
Yep. Yeah.
- [29:42]
Chelsea Wood
Okay. And, and why did you not want to just pay for. Pay for a third party expert to do your Due diligence kind of tisk.
- [29:50]
Enrique Rodriguez
It was kind of expensive. Just, you know, just because I have the money doesn't mean I just throw it around. Yeah.
- [29:56]
Chelsea Wood
Even in a project based business, Enrique, where we know that, we know that those are the, the, the ones with the trickiest cash flow.
- [30:05]
Enrique Rodriguez
Yeah, but I mean I've, I've, you know about project based business. I, I spent my entire career in project based business, so is my wife and we've done very well. And there's entire companies out there in industries where everything's a project. So it's fed me well. I'm never worried about if I started an engineering firm. It's project by project.
- [30:26]
Chelsea Wood
Yeah, yeah.
- [30:27]
Enrique Rodriguez
Well.
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Chelsea Wood
And Enrique, I want to hear you give your, give your monologue on why you're a believer in project based businesses. I was just leaning on you because I feel like project based construction businesses, the working capital can be particularly hairy there and so all the more reason to lean on an expert for financial due diligence. But you've, you've answered my question on that.
- [30:51]
Enrique Rodriguez
Yeah.
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Chelsea Wood
And you had the license to be clear. Now we've.
- [30:54]
Enrique Rodriguez
I am a master electrician, so all.
- [30:56]
Chelsea Wood
Of that stuff was.
- [30:59]
Enrique Rodriguez
I have all the licensing to own a day one.
- [31:02]
Chelsea Wood
Great. Okay. So I heard you mention a plan. Your plan. What was your plan? As you looked from the outside looking in, what were you going to do when you got in the seat and what did you do?
- [31:12]
Enrique Rodriguez
Well, I had a value creation plan. I thought, you know, everybody creates a business plan. But since I didn't have to sba, I didn't have to do a business plan. And you use a business use the existing company's data to create a business plan going forward. And I didn't like his existing data. I liked his qualifications. Right. I was buying Mike's reputation in the industry and the bid flow and his workers that were loyal to him and Mike, his experience. I wasn't buying much else. So why would I create a business plan with data that I don't like? So I had to recreate it to what I want and you don't. So I did a value creation plan where you know, the, the typical levers. I, I had, I, you know, planned my own ERP system. I, I started from the top line. I, he, his, his estimating process was a little bit slow and I sent it around. Mike, I got a software, it's called Vision Infosoft Electrical Bid Manager, which is the latest technology for bidding and bluebeam that has some automations and now we can just you know, bing bound, boom, bound beam every four hours send out an estimate instead of every couple of days. We, you know, we, we using the latest technology for estimating. Then I have an ERP system that does project based accounting. Connects directly to QuickBooks, manages the project and the time and everything. I had materials management, sop. I cleaned the place up. I literally took the out of this place and made it into an office for professionals. I hired. My plan was to hire key management staff. I've been, I think I mentioned to you that I, I'm a big fan of the Rewild Group, the growth guide. So Mike had like a level two business that was one to two. So it was owner centric. Everything went through him and I, I, I'm trying, I was. My plan was taking it from Mike's level to level three which is, it's called the delegation stage. I get it confused and it's. So I had to take my general from, from 10 employees to about 23 employees and set three to five have a professional level of managers in place. So my plan was to hire one or two key managers and then I would sit above the rest. There was already a office manager in place. She was admin assistant, promoted her office manager. I made Mike my head of estimating. So he's you know, head of sales. That's another manager. I hired a guy from my previous industry to be the project manager but really with the intent as I grow to be the head of all project managers. So that's my third manager. And then for accounting and finance I rely on my dad who's a cpa. He's retired but he does my books. So that's my fourth manager. And so I got right there I got accounting, finance, the office projects estimating. And what is the fifth manager?
- [34:29]
Chelsea Wood
I forget Enrique. Just a little bit more in the Rewild Group. So quick context for the audience. Matt Paul People might remember it was actually a year ago that his episode aired. He bought a welding business. He and his wife bought a welding business that was really small, two welders in the shop basically. But he also has conceived of this framework the Rewild Group where as you as you alluded to there are stages of a small businesses development and maturation from you know, you as you can imagine it just sort of like startup 1 to 10 employees to stage 2 which is you're ramping up but it's still owner centric. And you started to describe it stage three is where you have some managers and it goes on from there and so, but, so that's kind of it in a nutshell. I'm sure I'm oversimplifying there, but just say a little bit more about your adoption of this framework.
- [35:31]
Enrique Rodriguez
Why?
- [35:32]
Chelsea Wood
How, you know, why not eos? Is it like eos? How's it different? Tell us more eos.
- [35:37]
Enrique Rodriguez
I thought it was just like how to run meetings and stuff. I didn't, I don't have much research on EOS system. I did do the look at the Rewild Group after watching one of your episodes and I hired a strategy consultant from a business consultant to help me grow the business from the Rewild Group. His name is Lee Mulberry from Northern Star. He's been with me since the beginning and he's been helping me strategize as I go along. He's my business consultant. So actually since I bought the business cash and I didn't need to get investors, I felt like I needed like a, like a circle of advisors so that I wouldn't just go in the wrong direction. So I, I, part of my plan was to have advisors to help guide me because it is my first business that I own and I, I lead it and. Can you excuse me one second? I gotta yell at the guys outside. I'm sorry. Yeah, sorry about that. These guys are getting real loud over there.
- [36:36]
Chelsea Wood
Enrique, is this, is this, did we just get a window into your management style? You had to go out there and yell at the guys. That what I heard you say.
- [36:43]
Enrique Rodriguez
I don't have to, I don't have to yell. You know, I just have to flex a little bit and that's it.
- [36:47]
Chelsea Wood
Is that, is that what a blue collar business is like?
- [36:49]
Enrique Rodriguez
Yeah, but you got to be able to, you know, be able to take charge and take control and you have to enjoy that. If you don't enjoy that part of, of delegating in whatever, in that fashion and you're going to have a lot of issues managed.
- [37:07]
Chelsea Wood
What do you mean? What do you mean? You got to kind of, you mean as being assertive or just beyond assertive?
- [37:14]
Enrique Rodriguez
I, I always felt like the people in, in the military make, make good people operators for, for this industry. I'm not a military background, but you have to be assertive. You can't be wishy washy. People need direction. You've got field guys, they're like, you know, you got your foreman, he's like a sergeant and you're the captain, you're the officer, you're look, you know, and you have to have clear direction and a Plan, and they will follow you through. And you can't be wishy washy about your plan. You have to be direct. And if somebody is not following your directions, you have to correct them. Like in the military.
- [37:46]
Chelsea Wood
You're kind of smirking there. What does that mean? I mean, just discipline them clearly. And you have to let them know clearly.
- [37:54]
Enrique Rodriguez
Yeah, I mean, that, that there is, you know, there's no, there's no. Especially in construction, safety is an issue. You know, work is an issue. I, you know, I tell you, when I, when I hire new guys, the first thing I tell them is like, hey, sometimes there's issues out there. There's, there's, you know, one contractor doesn't like another contractor. A lot of people are working together, they're rubbing shoulders. No matter what happens, there will be no issues on my job site under my, you know, if you're wearing my, my shirt, you will clock out. You will take the day off. Sure, go meet the guy down the street if you want, but not on my clock, not in my project site. Because if we get kicked off the job, I don't get paid. You might still get paid because that's the law, but I'm not going to be happy.
- [38:37]
Chelsea Wood
Okay, Enrique, wait. Hold on, hold on for a second. So in construction, land fights between contractors, different contractors on the same site break out sometimes.
- [38:47]
Enrique Rodriguez
No, no, no, no, no, no. Never. No, there's a lot of. Everybody gets kicked off the job. If there's any sort of issue, everybody knows that there's. And if you would have something like that, once you're off, you're, you're off to now, you know, find a new job. No, nobody does it, but it happens. On rare occasions, people rub them the wrong way and you have to pull the situation. Yeah, it happens. It's happened. It's happened. Yeah.
- [39:11]
Chelsea Wood
Okay.
- [39:12]
Will Smith
Okay.
- [39:14]
Chelsea Wood
All right. You were saying about Rewild?
- [39:17]
Enrique Rodriguez
I bought a couple of his, you know, like, workbooks and stuff, and I. Yeah, this is good stuff. And it was at the. I think I listened to the episode about the same time that I was figuring out my plan for, for Mac General. And it, it made sense. I saw, you know, what he said in the, in the workbooks fit exactly into the people aspect of how Mac General was. And then the next level looked like something that I wanted to have. So I tailored my plan to follow the, the, the people approach to the growth and the strategy.
- [39:49]
Chelsea Wood
Yeah, and, and is there, like, something that you can map out? Like, you talked about how you've built out a management team do you have? Is it like in year two you do this and in year three you do that sort of thing? Is it some very clear kind of prescription you're following?
- [40:05]
Enrique Rodriguez
It was all right away, right away, day one, get it all happening, you know, okay, that's something about the, you know, that buy, then build or where walker says wait 90 days and don't do anything. I completely disagree with that. Day one, okay, you're a new owner, you're change, you're walking like you're a walking representation to change. Just have the change in owner, might as well take advantage of it and rip out the kitchen sink if you don't like where it's at. You know, buy new equipment, check, change the erp, make it all happen.
- [40:41]
Chelsea Wood
And what about the. So let's just steel man this a little bit. Enrique. The, the big reason, one of the big reasons not to do the change is of course. Well, one of the big reasons is people resisting that change and it being overwhelming. The other though is not knowing what the ripple effects of a change could be because you just don't know the business very well and you need the 90 or 180 days to learn what you don't know. I suspect your answer might be different. If you like many of my guests bought into an industry they didn't. They don't know, you know this business, you, you. So that probably gives you a little bit more confidence to make changes fair.
- [41:18]
Enrique Rodriguez
Oh, that is correct. Yeah, I wouldn't buy into an industry I don't know much about. I feel like that's a very big execution risk.
- [41:27]
Will Smith
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- [42:28]
Chelsea Wood
You embrace rewild. You've told us about the other changes you make. You we've talked about the bid flow but you haven't told us how, what you actually did with your cup in the cup in the fountain, actually.
- [42:42]
Enrique Rodriguez
So, you know, you know, it was revealed to me like, two days before our agree, you know, agreement of purchase, that he had about a month left in backlog. And, you know, he said it very kindly. He's like, hey, I think the first thing you should do when you take over is get more work. And I go, why is that? He's like, well, we only have about 80,000 worth of work left, and I think it's going to run out in September. I'm like, and that was, oh my God. Moment. Do I still want to go through with this? I thought deeply and for a day. And I talked to my wife again and she said, just go for it. You'll fix it. I trust, you know, she's in my group of advisors, you know, you know, you know, I respect her, her vision. And I said, okay, all right. You think I can do it, I can do it. And, you know, we went forward with it. Whatever other problems they were, that was the biggest problem.
- [43:35]
Chelsea Wood
But Enrique, at this point, you already, you, you did know that the bid flow was strong. That was one of the first things you saw about the business, actually. So even though he only had this $80,000 of booked work, you knew that you could come in and start bidding on a ton of stuff, right?
- [43:49]
Enrique Rodriguez
Yes, I actually started helping them bid for stuff. So we had a, a, a scheduled by date, like right before Labor Day, and then that got pushed two weeks. So as soon as he told me that, I actually started. I had the plan to implement the new software, and I had already bought it on my own desktop, on my own laptop, so I can now learn it and I, you know, take some videos. So I already had the software set up and the plan to use it. So I said, hey, just start sending me some bids and I'll start sending stuff out there and, and start fixing the problem. So on top of doing all the agreement paperwork and, and still pretending to do my day job and, and, and, and, and the other, you know, family really related stuff, I have a wife and two kids. I, you know, I started doing bids for them, you know, and, and, and seeing if we can get a job. In hindsight, it really didn't do much. It was like I said, I did like two or three bids, but at least it got me into the routine of how I can make it efficient. So I, I started before we even bought. Like, I'm already, you know, we're already working on the agreement and hashing out the details. One of the main things in the, in the purchase that, that we also hashed out besides that is I, I included working capital in my purchase in the 450, about 170k of it.
- [45:10]
Chelsea Wood
You mean he had that on the books and he left it behind? He left that 174 half.
- [45:16]
Enrique Rodriguez
Half, yeah. Accounts receivable. Half of ounce receivable went to me and then the other half went to him.
- [45:23]
Chelsea Wood
And that half was about 170 or that half was 185 and.
- [45:28]
Enrique Rodriguez
Then he had 100. So basically for the 450. I know it sounds like a cheap price. I'm giving him the opportunity to cash out. He gets to, you know, take the cash that he used to fund the business. When you do cash accounting, you have to have a higher account. So he had like 200k in his bank account to, to go over on all the cycles of payroll. And when he gets paid, he left like two. He had like $200,000 in the account. He can take that money out because I have to put my money in. He gets to have half of his accounts receivable goes in his pocket, plus he gets 450 of my money.
- [46:02]
Chelsea Wood
And there's actually another piece of the deal that we didn't talk about, which was the, the additional money that you brought and put it on the balance sheet. Tell us about that, please.
- [46:13]
Enrique Rodriguez
I mean, if you look at where's the paper? Yeah, so I put in. Here it is. So over the 450 I told you that he had, he was doing cash accounting. So he had like maybe 225,000 in his account, give or take on average. Because I got to see all his numbers. And when you do cash accounting, you just don't. If you had that much money, then you don't worry about it going up or down. That's how he just functions his business. I changed to accrual, so I figured I could do half as much. So I think I put like 125,000 into the account. They wanted to start covering payroll and everything. So it was 450 plus 125,000. So it's 575. And then as the business grows, after I got, after I spent the first month getting the first couple jobs, then that accounts receivable starts growing. So I had to add more money into there. I think overall my own cash. I did put all the 750k. Then I got a business line of credit for another 300,000 and then another. Got another line of credit for 150. I've only put 150,000 of that line of credit into. And it's all in the accounts receive Seoul. I mean, for example, right now My R is 733,000. 230,000 of that is my bottom. Is my net profit stuck in accounts receivable. That leaves 600,000. I have 120,000 in accounts payable, that from distributors that I haven't paid yet. So that, that takes my, my working capital down to 480,000 that I actually have in there. 170 of that. 480,000 is my initial AR that then that came with the company. Then you got 310,000 left. 160,000 of that. 310,000 is my line of credit that I have in there. And then that 150k is my money. The last 150k is my money.
- [48:10]
Chelsea Wood
Okay.
- [48:11]
Enrique Rodriguez
That's where, that's how, and that's how it's grown, you know, over time.
- [48:15]
Chelsea Wood
Okay, well, thank you for this transparency. Wow, Enrique, it's great. But, but net it out for us. If I, if I press you to say like the effective price to buy this business. So not just the, not just the 450, but then money that you, out of your own pocket, that you put on the balance sheet that you know isn't coming back to you other than an exit. What that's, you know, it's basically equity in the business. It's not a loan. What would you say the effective price of the business?
- [48:44]
Enrique Rodriguez
I would say I put all that 750k cash into it, plus maybe I didn't pay myself for the first five months. So let's put 90,000 on that. I think the number that I had on my, you know, Payback calculates 840,000 all in.
- [48:59]
Chelsea Wood
840.
- [49:00]
Enrique Rodriguez
But that's not buying a business to keep it the same size. That's buying a business with the plan to grow it immediately.
- [49:06]
Chelsea Wood
Exactly.
- [49:07]
Enrique Rodriguez
And investing in the ERP system and all the other things and tools and, and everything that was necessary.
- [49:13]
Will Smith
Exactly.
- [49:13]
Chelsea Wood
So that 840, a lot of the, the cash of that 840 is going to, is immediately going to be spent on investment.
- [49:23]
Enrique Rodriguez
Yep, that's gone.
- [49:24]
Chelsea Wood
Hiring the managers, the new erp, et cetera. Okay. All right.
- [49:28]
Enrique Rodriguez
And then now to date, I, I think I owe, I think it's 525, 000 is what's on my lines of credit. I pay back with the cash and I'm, I, you know, I've paid back maybe I think 300,000, but a lot of it's in, in AR. So I, I think I've cashed myself out a hundred thousand to pay and, and then the loans are back to like maybe 500, 525.
- [49:59]
Chelsea Wood
Well Enrique, I am not keeping up with all of the, the details here but we are getting a good picture of you know, small business accounting and, and cash flow and, and money moving around the different accounts and ARAP loans and whatnot. So it is more complicated than it might seem. Especially in a project based business.
- [50:19]
Enrique Rodriguez
Yeah, I mean it's, I mean once if you look at it every day it starts looking pretty simple and I see the number every day and I, I got a nice ERP system that shows me to date what my backlog is, you know, where, where my cash is, where everything is. So I, I have a nice dashboard that, that the system I use is nullify. I've been pretty happy with it. Okay. And I have my backlog and then my, what my active contracts is and everything. So you know, I try to keep track of it daily, you know, make sure it's all right, especially when I'm trying to grow.
- [50:53]
Chelsea Wood
Enrique, one thing that we, I skipped over just going back to the, the, your selection of this business. Actually two things. First, you didn't tell us exactly like what the business does and what industry it operates in because you really liked that about it. So tell us please.
- [51:11]
Enrique Rodriguez
So Mag General Inc. Is an electrical contractor and mainly it was exclusively a subcontractor to general contractors. So you know, when a job has electrical work, you know they need an electrical to do the electrical portion of the work. And we mainly are in the commercial industrial and the wastewater industry where there's, in the wastewater industry doesn't have much competition. That was something else I liked about Mag General that it played in a, in, in a, in a league bigger than than or there's much bigger companies that are doing the electrical or wastewater.
- [51:47]
Chelsea Wood
And so bigger companies, bigger projects. As I think, as I think you put to me in the pre call, this is not something a guy in a truck can compete with you on.
- [51:56]
Enrique Rodriguez
That's right. You know, in a service based industries your margins, when you expand and grow your margins are always the same because your projects are always little and you're always competing with truck in the truck. So you're going to have the same margins. In a project based business as you grow, you get bigger projects. Bigger projects have higher margins. More complicated projects have higher margins. Also if you're a subcontractor you can in easy commercial work. Like for example, around here in the D.C. area, you have a lot of office space, right. A lot of tenant renovations. That's a very commoditized commercial work around here. Very competitive. I see gross margins 20 to 30%. Now if you're the G, I also compete as a prime contractor on jobs that are mainly electrical. So if it's 90, you know, like upsizing the service to a building, small building, like a bank, that's an electrical project, you know, that has a little bit of demolition, I would just take that as the GC. My margins there are anywhere from 30 to 40 ish gross margin because I take the GC's cut, that's about 15% to 20% and then I have my subcontractors cut. So the margins are better when you do prime work. And I look for that prime work. And also since I'm a licensed engineer, we do design build work where we take on all the risk of giving the end user what they want based on their criteria. And I got to develop the plans and do the work. But the margins in design build are 40 to 60%. And then as the projects grow, those margins can creep up. If you're doing a $1 million project, the margin is going to be less than a $10 million project because there's less competition on those large projects. I don't see the service based business having those types of margins.
- [53:55]
Chelsea Wood
Great, thank you for that. And why was Mike selling?
- [53:58]
Enrique Rodriguez
Mike. Mike 64, he was reducing his risk appetite. You know, he mag. General provider for him. He owns this, I lease this, this, the, the warehouse, he owns the building. He has three properties around the D.C. area including his, his primary house. He, he's got a beach house in, in, in Chincoteague in Virginia. Everything's paid off. He's got lots of money in the bank. And his biggest risk at 64 was not completing. You know, him having a heart attack and not completing work and getting sued for not completing the work. So getting rid of that while still maintaining in, in the construction industry that he likes is something that he wanted.
- [54:42]
Chelsea Wood
You mean still maintaining. That's why he continued to work rather than retiring outright?
- [54:46]
Enrique Rodriguez
Yeah, he, yeah, I mean he has the money. He, he's got a few years, his wife still works and he's got a few years left in him. And so he's, he's working as a head of estimates, you know, or. And it's working out pretty good. So that's another thing that Walker Divo says To get rid of the owner in the first 30 days. Yeah, I disagree with that. I mean, if you have a good relationship with the owner and he's a good person and, and a good employee and, and all this knowledge and experience, I mean, I would say Mike is in my, you know, circle of advisors. I, I bounce ideas off them almost daily. It's my, My, My. My. My brother, he's. He's an architect. He calls him my reverse foster father because I paid to have him as my daddy. You know, I ask him questions, you know, in the industry. He has 45 years of experience in. In. If any other place you work at, you would not get rid of someone with 45 years of experience.
- [55:41]
Chelsea Wood
Well, it's funny, Enrique, that we're. That you're mentioning this very point. I just earlier today did another interview with Jan Vanarski, and he had a bad transition, specifically with regard to the sellers and his. He had fully expect the sellers. It was a family business, so multiple family members in the business were going to stay on. And every. He and the sellers, that whole family clan, very hunky dory, getting along super well during the acquisition. But at least his take on what happened after the acquisition was that they didn't really expect him to come in and make changes. Now, that was probably naive of them. That's why he's buying the business. And they reacted really badly to this guy, and they're making all these changes to their family business. Again, what. What were they expecting? But still they did, and it. It just. It went sideways. It got actually really ugly. So to answer your point, and, And Walker Dibel's suggestion, Mike's, I, I presume is okay with all the changes you're making. I don't know, but it may be. It may be that he's a guy who sees you cleaning out, you know, the antiques that he had in his office and all the stacks of stuff up to the ceiling, and he wouldn't. He might not have liked it. Turns out he was fine with it. But do you. Am I. Am I right to say that it could have gone either way?
- [57:08]
Enrique Rodriguez
I don't know if he was okay with it. I didn't ask. It's my company now.
- [57:18]
Chelsea Wood
Fair enough. It's not. It's not that you need his approval, but the point is that it could, if he didn't like, would mean that it's probably hard for him to stick around.
- [57:30]
Enrique Rodriguez
I get. Yeah.
- [57:32]
Chelsea Wood
I think the conventional wisdom is most sellers are gonna feel territorial, and if you just come in and start Making changes. They might think they're going to be okay with it and then they're not. And, and oh, by the way, another huge point is the employees are going to feel like split loyalties or they're gonna, you know, they're gonna have a hard time knowing what the chain of command is. So those, do you think that those reasons have credence?
- [57:58]
Enrique Rodriguez
I didn't see the, you know, employee risk was a big concern of mine. And I talked to everybody the day one and, and then afterwards, you know, I didn't see it be that bad. Everybody stuck around, by the way, all the employees. And you know, I talked to the leadership, the foreman, one on one, and I told them my plan is to rip everything out and make everything, you know, not that Mike did a bad thing. Mike's gonna do it his way to what? He fit his lifestyle and I want to grow and make a large company. What do you think? You know, I didn't ask permission, but I said, what do you think? Okay, well, whatever you want to plan, it's fine with me, boss. That's it. That's how it ended up. And then that was it. Yeah. And I ripped everything out and put something else in.
- [58:49]
Chelsea Wood
Okay, so let's move along here. I only got you for a few more minutes, Enrique, but so you get in there, you start bidding for jobs. You actually did it a little bit before from home. That didn't really go anywhere. Once you got into the seat, you were the owner and you were bidding aggressively. What happened?
- [59:06]
Enrique Rodriguez
I mean, I didn't. The first, I mean, like, like the first thing that we need to do is get, get future work. So the first month, no matter on top of the transition, because you got transition stuff to do, like changing over payroll, you've got, you know, all, all the transition stuff that happens the first couple months. Then I, I'm implementing all my new software stuff and at the same time I'm trying to bid non stop. I got Mike bidding non stop. I've got, I mean, I had issues with. And then those other issues just popped in randomly. Because you can't think of everything when you're transitioning a business. Yeah, just silly things looking back, but it was just all put together at once. So month in, we're finally starting to win some work. Just because you win the work doesn't mean it starts right away. But you know, when I first started winning the first and second job, I started seeing the light of day. Till then I had tunnel vision. It was all dark. I just had to keep on bidding until you win the first job. That was mission number one. And we all, everybody in the office understood that. Sometimes the, the people on your show talk about their fetal moment. I didn't have a fetal moment per se, but between Thanksgiving and the last, like the two weeks leading up to Christmas, like maybe mid December, when I'm waiting for that first project to kick the first check and I'm, you know, I'm, I'm looking, you know, I, I've already put in an extra quarter million on top of buying the business. It was, you know, it was hard to wait. It was just, everything's in place and then you got to wait. I'm at the bottom of the J curve. I, I check my numbers every day. I'm like, I'm just at the bottom of the J curve, which is very real. And it's, it's going to start rolling forward very soon. But those three weeks were pretty tough.
- [61:02]
Chelsea Wood
Just waiting, just waiting because, because you were sure stuff would come in, but of course you're not 100% sure until it actually starts happening.
- [61:09]
Enrique Rodriguez
So the guys are, you know, they're working on, I build the new jobs, the checks are going to come in the, you know, the cash flow starting to get better. And then, I mean, it all worked. By the end of January, it's like it never happened. We're break even and then we're growing. You know, January was break even and then February was a little profit. March was a big profit month. When we started our third project, at the same time I started growing with people. So really the growth, most of the growth started in March. I had a target of billing about $200,000 of work a month. We're about 320 right now. So I think like we're going to hit maybe anywhere between 3.5 and 4 million for this year. So maybe 2 and a half to 3x what we did last year.
- [61:53]
Chelsea Wood
Incredible and so exceeding your hopes by a lot.
- [61:57]
Enrique Rodriguez
Yeah, yeah. More than what I needed the, what I wanted to, I mean, my payback for the business will be March of next year. Our backlog right now is six months. I have some active contracts in the works. I'm trying to make it be a year and a half at a 4 million run rate. So I'm trying to get 6 million in backlog. My limiting factors for more growth right now is financing the working capital. So I have that line of credit, but I think I'm going to go through it sometime around October, November. I, I have all the softwares and everything in place, I can have projections as much as far as I want. Now I'm working with Lee at Northern Star on my three year strategic plan. Now I'm getting a real business plan in a place to shop around with the banks and get a real working capital. And so I'm basically doing, like I told you, the SBA in reverse. I put cash in, I fix the business. And now I'm going to ask for, for working capital through the SBA program that can give me a line of credit up to $5 million. And that at $5 million of working capital, you know, that's like a $30 million business. So if I can get a line of credit through the SBA or not, I've talked to a couple of banks. They may or may not need to go through the working capital pilot program to give me that type of line of credit. It depends on my business plan and how strength, the strength of my financials.
- [63:24]
Chelsea Wood
And put some, put some numbers around that. You mentioned the 30 million. If you do the 5 million working credit, working capital line of credit, that'd be a 30 million dollar business. But you had said to me that 15 million in revenue was what the year three goal here for.
- [63:44]
Enrique Rodriguez
Yeah, I was trying, you know, we're working on our business plan and it's, you know, I'm trying to hit 4 million this year, 7 million next year and maybe 11 year, that's a, maybe 55% growth, between 50 and 60% growth. And then maybe at the end of the year three would be somewhere run in a run rate of 15, 16 million because it takes time to grow. You got to hire people, you got to get more, some equipment. We're not equipment heavy. We do a lot of renting of equipment. So you know, there'll be some growing pain. So you don't want to grow too fast and you want to make sure you got the backlog.
- [64:22]
Chelsea Wood
And what's, what's the magic, what's magic about 15 million? Why is that your, your goal line as opposed to 10 or 20?
- [64:31]
Enrique Rodriguez
I'm at 15 profit. So 15 million puts me over about, over 2 million EBITDA. And then I'm, I'm in the lower middle market and then more opportunities for, for non dilutive credit capital is out there for me at, at 3 million EBITDA. You get, you know, the SBIC start. Look, you can talk to the SBICs and you can get lines of credit that are two to three times a year's earnings. Right now I have a line of credit that's 60% of my accounts receivable. So they asset based lending. But, but once I get to a certain size, even though I'm project bay, you know, especially if I'm project based, it has bigger ebbs and flows. I, I will be large enough to be open up to middle market credit lines and then I can grow, you know, with a 10 million credit line I can grow. My limiting factors to growth is my bonding capacity. I don't think we touched on that. And my working capital. Yeah, because the bid flows there. I have a bid flow for I, you know, a wild estimate of 25 million a year without having to do much business development.
- [65:45]
Chelsea Wood
And so the 15 million revenue number is not where this journey ends. It's just you see that as getting into the next category of construction business where you, as you said, you can get much more generous and larger working capital loans and therefore bid on much, much bigger projects and accelerate growth that much faster. I guess to get to 30 million.
- [66:12]
Enrique Rodriguez
I would keep the growth at a certain level that's comfortable. You grow too fast and then, you know, things get out of control. I think 50 growth is aggressive, you know, and, but still manageable mainly because that's what we've been, you know, this first year has been, you know, explosive. But I don't expect that to happen every year. I just, you know, put an additional, you know, capital to lift up the company to where it should be. You know, it was kind of in starvation mode and they wanted to be at this size. I feel like.
- [66:43]
Chelsea Wood
Yeah. And what's your long term. So is your long term plan to run this for the duration of your career? Are you building it to maybe sell it or you know, you'll worry about, you'll just build options for yourself and worry about that in five years.
- [66:59]
Enrique Rodriguez
I, I do have a plan. So. So everybody I hire for the office, my project manager, a guy with I used to be an engineer, worked for me years ago. He is a key hire. I want to develop him to be the head of project managers. I have a young man here who does estimating and pre construction who I think I could shape to be an operator. And I can, you know, uh, you know, eventually he could be general manager here and I can look at other acquisitions. I've. So everybody I hire is a potential operator. I have a long Rolodex of engineers that I can contact that you know, would like to make the transition maybe you know, and, and you know, I could forge them into being an operator much like me and I would you know and maybe in year two, this three year plan I have, I would go in a different region, maybe North Carolina or Georgia, a very high growth region and buy probably a larger company, something like maybe 7 million, 5 to 7 million in revenue and try to grow that one at the same time as Mag General. So as I grow I'm, I'm every, everybody I all my key hires, I want to shape them into operators. I know where that's part of that rewild growth plan that tells me hey, you know when you hire someone and then with my strategy consultant like you right away what do you want them to be? What are they now? What do you want them to do? Where do you want them to be? So I'm, I'm, I'm, you know and, and my overhead has gone up because I've hired these people earlier than later and that's okay, you know, I can afford it. I wouldn't want to hire 10 guys all at once and they're all just kicking cans. But you know, as I can't if I can hire them a little earlier so they can learn and then plug them into. As the company grows, they grow into the position that's probably best. But getting the right person in the right spot right before the right time is, is, is, is very valuable. And so that's what I'm, I'm looking at now as I grow.
- [68:56]
Chelsea Wood
Well it, it seems like you have big aspirations for the company like it could be.
- [69:01]
Enrique Rodriguez
Yeah, I like to grow, you know, you know as, as like I said, my limiting factors to growth are the working capital that I'm trying to fix. I'll fix in, in, in the long term it will be fixed because I can always just you fuel. Fuel growth with profits from the business. The business gives me about 15 profit a year so I can use you know, 2/3 or all of it into, into. I pay myself a salary. So, so for example this year I don't think we talked about the num. I'm shooting for 4 million and it's going to be about 750SD. That's, that's, that's the target, give or take a few thousand, you know on the revenue and that's what it's looking like. So my salary and, and what it's 150k so the company is going to make 15 on the 4,000,600k. That's my, and I'm going to reinvest most of that, you know, back into working capital. So that's where I can see 7 million growth into 7 million.
- [70:04]
Chelsea Wood
So. Enrique, Enrique, let me just stop you there. So just to hear the progress you've made this year, you're run rating $4 million. You think you'll get to 4 million or you think you'll get to $4 million? Excuse me. For the whole year you'll have 4 million.
- [70:17]
Enrique Rodriguez
If I don't grow anymore the rest of this year and I keep everything month on month as is, I'll probably do 3.4 million. But I want to do a little more growth. I'm at 19 employees. I'm going to grow to about 23. So for every employee I'm gonna. My run rate increases about 15 to 20 grand a month in revenue. So if I grow to 23 by the end of the year, I'll be close to that 4 million.
- [70:42]
Chelsea Wood
And then 750 of that is profit or it's seller discretionary. Seller discretionary earnings. So you could pocket that or, or pocket not all of it, and then reinvest, which is what you're going to do. 150 to pay yourself. That's the salary you're paying yourself. 600 right back into the business. Great.
- [71:05]
Enrique Rodriguez
Maybe I'll, I'll probably cash out a little bit to, to transfer debt for. If I get a higher line of credit, I probably transfer some debt from my personal balance sheet to the business's balance sheet. Yes. And I will probably take some of that profit and pay down my, you know, a securities line of credit, which is a higher rate than the business gets right now. So I probably would pay that off.
- [71:28]
Chelsea Wood
Yeah.
- [71:28]
Enrique Rodriguez
Yes.
- [71:29]
Chelsea Wood
Okay. Okay. Let's turn our attention. By the way, congratulations. I mean, it seems like everything's going. I'm serious. It seems like, you know, you're, I don't mean to flatter you, but it seems like you're crushing it and everything's basically going to plan.
- [71:42]
Enrique Rodriguez
Excuse me.
- [71:43]
Chelsea Wood
Going better than the plan.
- [71:45]
Enrique Rodriguez
I mean, I, you know, I spent 17 years in a career and I, you know, until the day I bought this business, I, I always, you know, I felt like I like the Shawshank Redemption when he's crawling through, through the, the sewage. And then the day I bought this business and I started running it, it was like when he got that first.
- [72:05]
Chelsea Wood
Yeah.
- [72:05]
Enrique Rodriguez
You know, you know, the, the rain on him, on, on the freedom side of the wall.
- [72:09]
Chelsea Wood
That taste of freedom felt liberating.
- [72:11]
Enrique Rodriguez
It felt very liberating. And I've been enjoying it ever since. You know, sometimes some of your guests talk about, you know, every day is a knife Fight. Yeah, I, I haven't felt that because I have a, you know, the, because of the business buyer fit and my advisors. I have, you know, you know, I have my father, Mike, my wife, Lee Mulberry, my, my consultant and my brother who you know, listens to me complain and you know, and I feel like I, it is a knife fight, so there is hurdles and obstacles but I feel like I walk into that knife fight with a machine gun. So it, everything solves itself very quite easily. There are problems, Growth has problems.
- [72:50]
Chelsea Wood
Well, but also Enrique, which, which we've gotten a taste of here now two or three times from you is that you are more at home laying down the law in a construction blue collar environment than a lot of people who are coming from W2 jobs and maybe buying a blue collar business. Right.
- [73:09]
Enrique Rodriguez
But I do have experience in construction management. Exactly. Large. Yeah, exactly. So that goes back to my experience. Exactly. Obviously placed me in that position years ago because I, I had the proclivity to be able to handle that.
- [73:24]
Chelsea Wood
So you're a natural. It's not even the experience you were always destined to.
- [73:28]
Enrique Rodriguez
Yeah, yeah. I got to just, you know, turn it off sometimes and, but I do enjoy the construction. I like construction, I like engineering work and I like, you know, I pal around with the guys too. I like, you know, sometimes people tell you, you know, you, you know, you can't be social with people that you, you, you, you lead. And I, I, I don't disagree with it but it's like, you know, I, I am social with people. I just, you know, but when it's time to do work, it's time to do work.
- [73:57]
Chelsea Wood
Before I let you go a little bit of an education here on construct based construction businesses because as we touched on many times in this conversation, I want to have you speak to are the ones that banks say don't buy that everyone is scared of and for good reason. I don't mean to poo poo everybody's, everybody's wariness of them, but you are just absolutely thriving in it and actually think that people should be more open minded about it. Please give us your pitch on what, what, what makes these businesses good. What don't we see?
- [74:34]
Enrique Rodriguez
I mean, when it's very small, the banks shy away from it. When it's a foreman based business, what I call it, it's five to seven guys, it's owner centric. You get a job, you do a job, you're doing cash accounting. Those big, those businesses are unbankable. Right?
- [74:50]
Chelsea Wood
Yeah.
- [74:51]
Enrique Rodriguez
And so when you're that size and they get into those guys can get up to a million dollars or so you, but you're still unbankable. You're not going to get in. You don't have, you know, the accounting systems in place. You don't have erp you're just. Everything goes around the owner. Owner. When I worked at Whitey's Pool Service it was owner based and he made a pretty penny. But it was all around the owner. Nobody knew what was going on. But the owner, what Mike used to be actually Mike's company in 2009 before the Great Recession was 26 employees. The recession hit, he went down to four employees. Then he grew to 20. Then the pandemic, he went down about 14 and then recently he was down to 10. Because guys just left for other jobs and you know, time catches up to you and you're not going to grow up to, you know, back to 25 people when you're you know, mid-60s. So. But it shows me this, this is a resilient company that survived many, you know, historical events.
- [75:48]
Chelsea Wood
Yeah.
- [75:50]
Enrique Rodriguez
So that, that was one plus that I saw in the company. It's been around through a few things. The project based business, when you get to a certain size would you have professional managers? It's a more stable company when you have, when you get, when you depend on one project and also the commercial projects, they last from a few months to a couple years. So you can plan, you, you can plan if you have multiple projects you can fit the manpower around and you can project a year or two out how much manpower you need. I can project out my growth in. To me a service based business with a good backlog has what, four weeks, you know, six weeks. Like I don't know how you, I couldn't, I probably wouldn't go be able to go to bed at night too often if I drop you below three weeks. But you always have to, you know, you have a certain gross margin that's limited and then you have to have a big sales funnel and you're paying for leads to keep getting all this residential work and, and whatever service businesses do. I don't have that issue. I pre qualify and the, the, the larger I get, the more I pre qualify for larger jobs that the smaller guys can't get. Yeah, I am not competing with Chuck in the truck and I'm not changing old ladies fans in their basements. I do switch gear replacements. I, I design, build, you know, service upgrades, heavy electrical work that uses where and then I, and then me being an Engineer and hiring my project manager. As an engineer I have a very good value proposition where on giving you better quality work at the same price as other electrical contracts. But back to the project based business. If you have multiple projects you fit the manpower. It's called, it's operations management. You're just like a call center where if you have one person answering the phones the phone calls could go from, from you know, one minute to 10 hours because all you have is one person. The more people you have, the more likely your average call time hits a certain number. And you can plan around that.
- [77:44]
Chelsea Wood
Yeah.
- [77:44]
Enrique Rodriguez
When you have multiple projects at the same time of differing sizes and different schedules, you can plan around that. You can fit your manpower, your crews in between these jobs as, as the projects progress and phases and level of construction and you, and then the length of the jobs and then you, you know, I can bid on jobs that aren't happening for another year. That's my backlog. I can, you know and I plan hey, in February and March of next year I got to do the switch gear replacement. I'm not going to, I'm going to need eight guys. What you know, as I fill that up I can plan ahead very far in advance once I start building that backlog. In a project based business also the bigger I get, the margins get bigger. If you look at the largest 50 companies in construction that are all project it's, they're all billion dollar plus companies. I mean I can't name any service based businesses that can grow to that size. You know and I think neighborly one of them. But yeah, yeah. You know and so the project yeah at the single level, at the foreman base level. Yeah it's very risky but when you get to a certain size you just continue. You have your, you know my company set up with. I've got the, the estimate is my sales funnel. Right. I got Mike and one other guy estimating all day and sending estimates out at my bid funnel. And around every 17 bids I win a job and I plan it out. I'm more operations in project management. I also have a dedicated project manager that handles all the product and we have an admin that helps them. I have my foreman, I have five foremen out there in multiple projects right now. I have five active projects where guys are in construction and they, they delegate the work from the plant to the laborers to do the day to day activities. And I do you know with my, my dad was accounting. We do the billing and we run, do the business right. I got guys that do the work I got, I got guys that get the work and I do the business.
- [79:45]
Chelsea Wood
Let me follow up a few things there, Enrique. So this point that you have about project based businesses where you have multiple projects going on at any given time over the next six and you know, 24 months, all these work streams and you can kind of fit them together like a jigsaw puzzle. So, so that in fact the resource, your resource allocation, your people allocation is, is, is kind of evenly spread out nicely. And, and so too, maybe more importantly your revenue. So you take in, you take in what is we, we think of as very lumpy revenue. And you've smoothed the, smoothed it out.
- [80:22]
Enrique Rodriguez
Just like the call center, if you have enough projects, it can smooth itself out. We do more work in one and the other. The schedules are flexible. They're not that constrained usually. So you can smooth it out when you have several projects all and then, then you get more profit. Because, for example, Mike had a utilization rate for, for his guys of 50 to 60%. That means just guys were not busy 40 to 50 of the time and he was looking for them to work. My guys right Now I got 14 guys in the field full time and they're at 110% on overtime. I have everybody at 110 utilization rate that, you know, that 10 tells me I need to hire another guy because I'm paying overtime out there. But.
- [81:08]
Chelsea Wood
Well, Enrique, I, I would imagine it all sounds good in theory. Not me, you. You know, this not theory anymore. Well, yeah, exactly. I don't mean to sound skeptical, but. But it does. It sounds good in theory. But then like when I hear you talk about, what did you say? The switch? The switch, return repair or whatever that you have next year. All these pride and construction is also notoriously not on schedule. So all this stuff when you're, when you're scheduling something for, you know, nine months from now is bound to change. Right.
- [81:42]
Enrique Rodriguez
So could change.
- [81:43]
Chelsea Wood
And so you just juggle it. I mean, the answer is you just, you just adapt.
- [81:48]
Enrique Rodriguez
Yeah. Then you go get, you know, more jobs. If it changes, it shouldn't change last minute. Yeah, there are delays sometimes not so much at the subcontractor level, unless you create it. So bad subcontractor will cause delays. I try not to be that subcontractor. This year has been a hectic year, you know, because of, you know, lots of outside forces. And so I've had materials issues and I've had. I asked Mike if this was normal. We've won five jobs that have been canceled and Usually like municipal and county funded jobs, that doesn't happen because the funding happens years in advance. But due to irregularities, you know, there's been a lot of canceled product. So I'm like, okay, I've got this half a million dollars in the pipeline for the summer. Disappeared a week before it starts, which is very unlikely. That's a hurdle. Yeah. And then we get around it, you know, it means my backlog went from a year, you know, oh, well, that if I had nine months to a year, went down to five to six months. Right now. That's a hurdle I'm dealing with right now. I had a project get canceled, but I got another one in the books that if I, if I get, I'm gonna be pretty happy. That was another thing I was telling you. If I don't know how you celebrate in the service based business, but when we get a huge project, 2, 3 million dollar project, we go and get beers immediately and celebrate, you know, the project, the service based business, they're not gonna. Well, you know, I just plunged my thousandth toilet. Let's go get beers. It doesn't sound right. You know, it's, it's not. But yeah, there are. I wouldn't call it a cyclicality because it's. The commercial work is cyclical, sort of. Not like residential, not like residential multifamily that's tied to mortgage rates and stuff. But when you do municipal work like the wastewater or, or you're working in schools, the budgets are planned out so far in advance. Like it's very, that's why it's very rare that this happened this year. Lots of canceled jobs. It's not.
- [83:49]
Chelsea Wood
And I assume being in the D.C. area, not far from me, this is all related.
- [83:55]
Enrique Rodriguez
Yeah, there might. There was definitely a federal job that we won that was put on back burner. There was a elementary school renovation in Frederick, Maryland that got canceled the week before we're about to start. Now. It's very rare. I got another job in Leesburg that, that got rebid. So it gets backtracked. It's always, you know, it could just be a, just a misalignment of stars. Have nothing to do with, you know, outside forces. But you know, it's regular that have several of those projects that you win get canceled. But you know, we go, you know, it, it, you move on.
- [84:29]
Chelsea Wood
Okay.
- [84:29]
Enrique Rodriguez
You just keep bidding. That's why I got my sales funnel always bidding.
- [84:33]
Chelsea Wood
Yeah.
- [84:33]
Enrique Rodriguez
And I don't worry about that. And you have your, your three key structures and they're all working in Sync. You can react to issues much quicker. Everybody knows their function. I got the sales. Always be estimating people doing the work and managing the work. And then I, you know, I'll take care of managing the business.
- [84:50]
Chelsea Wood
Say again about the fact that the bigger you get, the bigger the margins are. Is that because there's less competition for bigger jobs and so you can command bigger margins? Because that's counterintuitive. Usually the bigger the company margins compress as you get bigger is generally what you see.
- [85:05]
Enrique Rodriguez
The, the work is larger, it's more complicated. More complicated work gets a higher margin.
- [85:12]
Chelsea Wood
Right. But they're, but they're also, you know, dangling a $10 million job. And so they can push you down on price because it's such a big piece of work. You'd be willing to come down on your own bit.
- [85:23]
Enrique Rodriguez
For example, I can't, I can't compete on it. I can't be at a $10 million job. So there's a moat if you're a certain size. If you don't have the manpower. For example, I, I have a buddy in the data center industry and he told me, hey, I got this job. It's replacing a bunch of ATS switches. The transfer between generator and line voltage and utility voltage. It's, it's a, it's something small. Maintenance. Basically a maintenance job. If you can do it, it's yours. But the, the data center construction is very smart and they know how many guys you need when you need them. They would buy the equipment, but they're like, oh, yeah, you'll need 26 guys working from 9pm to 9am for, for six weeks. I don't have 26 guys. I can't take that job. I'm limited at my size. And there's not many. There's a, there's, there's a gap in the middle market for construction, for electrical contractors. So there's very large ones and there's a lot around my size a little bigger, but there's not much. There's less competition.
- [86:24]
Chelsea Wood
So, so for the rest. So for certain size jobs, you actually have pricing power, which is not something we associated with. We associate construction.
- [86:32]
Enrique Rodriguez
There's a lot of pricing power. The larger you are because less companies can do. You need hundreds of man, you know, people, you know, you need a, a full staff of engineers to work through the details. You need a, a, a, a, a handful of project man. You need such a large workforce to do a large project like a data center. People can, you know, very few competitors.
- [86:55]
Chelsea Wood
Yeah. What is bonding and how does it work? Just briefly.
- [86:59]
Enrique Rodriguez
So bonding is basically insurance that the job will be completed. So when you're the GC or sub, they, they, you, the, the owner will ask. Usually it's a, it's the law for, for, for any publicly funded work that you are bonded for payment and performance. It means you will pay everybody and you will perform the work. And if you don't, the bonding company will find another contractor to finish your work. And that's, that's basically, it's not just insurance like here's money the job didn't get built that it's, the bonding company will find another contractor, pay them what they want to complete the job and obviously afterwards the bonding company will take the non performing contractors, you know, assets in court. But you know, if, and you pay.
- [87:46]
Chelsea Wood
And you have to pay a bonding company to, to, yeah, yeah, you pay.
- [87:49]
Enrique Rodriguez
Like 2,2% of the project fee. In bonding that's like the going rate. Depending on if it's more risk, it could be higher. If you're well established, it's probably lower towards your one and a half, 1%. I'm, my rate is 2%. I have a couple jobs that are public jobs that I had to get a bond. And yeah, that's, and, and so the.
- [88:11]
Chelsea Wood
Bonding company is, they're not an insurance company, but it's similar in that they're pooling risk so that you know, 90 or 98% of their jobs, it's all fine. But then for that 2% they have to foot the bill, find the new contractor and then they chase you down to get reimbursed.
- [88:27]
Enrique Rodriguez
That's, that's, that's what the bond says it will get done and the bonding company's guaranteeing it.
- [88:32]
Chelsea Wood
Yeah. Okay. All right. Enrique, did I miss anything? This has been great.
- [88:37]
Enrique Rodriguez
You know, you know, you know, I always wish all the searchers best of luck. I, I joined Justin Willis, joined the Nova ET created the Nova ETA Group.
- [88:47]
Chelsea Wood
Yes sir.
- [88:47]
Enrique Rodriguez
Searchers, you know, you know, buying businesses and, and, and you know, I wish that I had that when I was searching. I would say, you know, don't look, don't look past project based businesses, but definitely have a plan and maybe even get, get a job as a project manager and you'll understand projects and how they work. Key hires are very important. I learned that through my consultant Lee and business buyer fit. I, I, I, I can't stand when people say I'm agnostic to what I'm gonna buy. You know, it doesn't make sense to me. You Know if you have, if you're a professional and you have value in a certain industry, exploit that value. Why wouldn't you do?
- [89:31]
Chelsea Wood
I hear you, Enrique. On the other hand, what if you want to get out of your industry? What if your industry is not a good place to buy a business? So it, it certainly there's logic to it if you can make it happen.
- [89:41]
Enrique Rodriguez
But you should probably experiment with a job in a different industry before, before you dive in and buy a business and get indebted millions of dollars.
- [89:51]
Chelsea Wood
Yeah. Yeah.
- [89:51]
Enrique Rodriguez
Well, definitely have a plan before day one. You know, I would always recommend that. And, and sometimes the business, the business will tell you what it needs, what it wants, what it needs to grow and to prosper.
- [90:04]
Chelsea Wood
It just, it whispers in your ear.
- [90:07]
Enrique Rodriguez
It whispers, it actually, you know, like slaps you outside the upside. Yeah, yeah.
- [90:13]
Will Smith
Have a partner.
- [90:14]
Chelsea Wood
It sounds like your wife is, is good. She presses you when needed, but she also encourages you. So it's not, she's not just so she said, go get an mba. Why do you feel you're like you're qualified to, to run a business? But then when you started getting cold feet, she said, no, I believe in you. Go, go do it right now.
- [90:33]
Enrique Rodriguez
I mean, you know, she's, once in a while she's like, hey, what happened to work this week? And I was like, ah, it's all good. A couple problems. She's like, okay, you know, baby needs a diaper change. Sounds good. You know, she's not worried about it. Everything's going good. And, and you know, but yeah, I appreciate her, you know, every day.
- [90:52]
Chelsea Wood
And, and let's not forget that 750,000 too.
- [90:56]
Enrique Rodriguez
Yeah, that's, you know, that's, you know, being. She's basically my independent sponsor, so I appreciate that too. And yeah, you know, you know, thank my dad for all the free labor because he does most of the accounting until I find I'm actually looking for like a remote accountant now. That's going to be one of my, in my management team. And yeah, you know, I'm trying to.
- [91:20]
Chelsea Wood
Check out System 6 plug for one of my sponsors in the searcher community. Great guys. Chris Williams. Yep.
- [91:28]
Enrique Rodriguez
Looking@, uh, somewhere.com. i, I what I think what's, what's this guy's name?
- [91:32]
Chelsea Wood
Nick Cuber somewhere. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [91:34]
Enrique Rodriguez
I look, because they, you can hire your own, you're not doing fractional or anything. You can have your own person right offshore like that.
- [91:41]
Chelsea Wood
Of course, that's their whole thing. Yeah. All right, Enrique. Well, cool if to put your LinkedIn in the show notes if people want to reach out.
- [91:50]
Enrique Rodriguez
Yes, it's, it's Enrique Rodriguez, Mag General Power Solutions. Reach me out by LinkedIn. I look at it, you know, daily. And if you have any questions on projects, you know, I'm happy to answer.
- [92:04]
Chelsea Wood
Great.
- [92:04]
Enrique Rodriguez
Or construction or. Yeah, managing people. I don't know.
- [92:09]
Chelsea Wood
Well, thanks for coming on, Enrique. Thanks for all the transparency down to the, down to the numbers, down to where you got your 750. We, we really, we really appreciate it and congratulations on, on this plan going so well. It really, it really seems, you know, thank you.
- [92:25]
Enrique Rodriguez
Thank you for having me. You know, I appreciate your show. It's, I've listened to every podcast and it, you know, it inspires me, it teaches me lessons and, you know, I listen to every single one.
- [92:34]
Chelsea Wood
Oh, that's beautiful to hear. Thank you.
- [92:36]
Enrique Rodriguez
And I listen to the Mind's Capital. Maybe in a year or two, I'll probably graduate to the Mind's Capital podcast.
- [92:41]
Chelsea Wood
You're on your way. Good stuff. Thanks, Enrique.
- [92:44]
Enrique Rodriguez
Thank you.
- [92:45]
Will Smith
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