The Path from $2.5m to $60m in a Tree Business

Summary

Episode Summary: "The Path from $2.5m to $60m in a Tree Business"

Podcast Information

• Title: Acquiring Minds
• Host: Will Smith
• Release Date: June 23, 2025
• YouTube: Acquiring Minds
• Episode Summary Signup: acquiringminds.co

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of Acquiring Minds, host Will Smith delves into the inspiring journey of Brian Hartman, the owner of Northside Tree Professionals. Brian shares his remarkable experience of scaling his tree business from $2.5 million to an ambitious $60 million in revenue. Joining him is Adrian Pinto, a seasoned acquisition entrepreneur who played a pivotal role in Brian's accelerated growth. The episode offers invaluable insights into acquisition strategies, digital marketing, managing accounts receivable, and building a resilient team.

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Brian Hartman's Acquisition Journey

Finding the Right Fit

• Will Smith [00:00]: "Brian had near perfect business buyer fit... a decade plus in the tree industry was a big part of how Brian could hit the ground running in his acquisition."
• Brian Hartman [04:17]: Discusses his rationale for purchasing a tree business, emphasizing the advantages of industry experience.

Initial Acquisition Insights

• Adrian Pinto [04:21]: "I grew small businesses from $1 to $6 million, and realized buying a business had more advantages than starting from scratch..."
• Will Smith [06:27]: Highlights Brian's strategic decision to focus on an industry he was familiar with to mitigate risks.

Negotiation Strategies

• Adrian Pinto [22:27]: "I offered three times the business's initial price and settled on $2.5 million..."
• Brian Hartman [23:11]: Suggests ignoring the listed price and grounding offers based on personal valuation, a strategy Brian employed successfully.

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Growth Tactics and Challenges

Doubling Revenue

• Adrian Pinto [33:25]: "We grew from $2.6 million to $5.1 million in revenue within a year."
• Brian Hartman [33:43]: Reflects on the almost 100% growth achieved in 13 months.

Balancing Residential and Commercial Segments

• Adrian Pinto [37:07]: Transitioning from primarily residential to incorporating commercial clients, significantly boosting revenue.
• Brian Hartman [38:00]: Explains how expanding into commercial services introduced longer payment terms, leading to increased accounts receivable (AR).

Managing Accounts Receivable

• Adrian Pinto [25:07]: Faced with AR swelling from $58,000 to $585,000, Brian had to make strategic decisions to stabilize cash flow.
• Brian Hartman [27:34]: Emphasizes the importance of understanding the nature of AR in commercial vs. residential segments.

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Operational Investments and Team Building

Investment in Equipment and Safety

• Adrian Pinto [29:20]: "We invested $20,000 upfront in new equipment to ensure safety and efficiency, which was crucial for employee trust and performance."
• Brian Hartman [30:24]: Notes the importance of safety in the tree business, differentiating it from other home services.

Hiring and Management

• Adrian Pinto [56:25]: Identified the need for robust management as the business scaled, leading to key hires such as a Director of Administration and a General Manager.
• Brian Hartman [58:01]: Discusses the strategic value of investing in top talent early, even at a premium cost.

Cultural Shifts and Retention

• Adrian Pinto [63:27]: "We doubled our employee count from 16 to 35, fostering a culture of growth and ownership."
• Brian Hartman [64:36]: Highlights the importance of maintaining a happy and safe workplace to retain top talent.

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Strategic Partnerships and Future Acquisitions

Collaboration with Adrian Pinto

• Adrian Pinto [72:40]: Details his ongoing partnership with Adrian Pinto through Caravel Capital, facilitating further acquisitions and growth.
• Brian Hartman [73:23]: Explains that 25% of their enterprise was sold to Adrian's fund, aligning financial and operational strategies for expansion.

Second Acquisition: Expanding to Dallas, Texas

• Adrian Pinto [79:44]: "Our second acquisition in Dallas involves a company with a similar financial profile but a different revenue structure, including plant health care services."
• Brian Hartman [83:24]: Reflects on the challenges of replicating success in a new market without an existing network, emphasizing the importance of strategic local partnerships.

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Key Takeaways and Insights

1. Leverage Industry Experience:

   • Deep industry knowledge provides a significant advantage in acquisition and operational efficiency.

2. Effective Negotiation:

   • Grounding offers based on personal valuation rather than listed prices can lead to favorable acquisition terms.

3. Balanced Growth Strategy:

   • Diversifying between residential and commercial segments can drive substantial revenue growth, though it requires careful financial management.

4. Operational Excellence:

   • Investing in safety and quality equipment fosters employee trust and enhances service reliability.

5. Strategic Team Building:

   • Hiring top talent early, even at a premium, sets the foundation for scalable and sustainable growth.

6. Managing Cash Flow:

   • Proactively addressing accounts receivable and securing sufficient working capital are critical for maintaining business stability during expansion.

7. Collaborative Partnerships:

   • Strategic partnerships, such as with Adrian Pinto and Caravel Capital, can provide the necessary capital and expertise for further acquisitions.

8. Replication in New Markets:

   • Expanding to new geographical areas requires tailored strategies and local partnerships to replicate success.

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Notable Quotes

• Will Smith [00:34]: "Brian has what you might call unfair advantages that accelerated his progress."
• Adrian Pinto [04:21]: "I went in to work for Valleycrest and grew their tree care division from nothing to over $2 million in revenue."
• Adrian Pinto [22:27]: "I offered three times and ultimately we settled on $2.5 million."
• Adrian Pinto [36:04]: "I attribute about $800,000 to a million dollars worth of that first year's additional sales just to that."
• Adrian Pinto [56:25]: "Putting in key hires early was essential to sustain our growth trajectory."
• Brian Hartman [58:01]: "Hiring early and at a premium is crucial for building a robust team."
• Adrian Pinto [78:07]: "We're aiming for a $60 million business by 2030, with a valuation around $120 million."

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Conclusion

This episode of Acquiring Minds provides a rich and engaging exploration of acquisition entrepreneurship through Brian Hartman's success story with Northside Tree Professionals. Listeners gain valuable insights into strategic acquisitions, effective growth strategies, managing operational challenges, and the importance of building and maintaining a strong team. Brian's journey underscores the significance of industry experience, strategic investments, and collaborative partnerships in scaling a business from $2.5 million to a projected $60 million in revenue.

For entrepreneurs aspiring to embark on acquisition entrepreneurship, Brian's story serves as a testament to the power of informed decision-making, strategic planning, and relentless execution.

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Connect with Brian Hartman:

• Email: [e-mail]
• LinkedIn: Brian Hartman (Link to be provided)

Learn More:

• Subscribe to Acquiring Minds Newsletter: acquiringminds.co
• Join Webinars: Acquiring Minds Webinars

Transcript

[Will Smith]

Today's guest had near perfect business buyer fit. Brian Hartman had helped build two tree businesses in the Atlanta area when he decided to buy himself a business. He considered other industries during his search, but when an opportunity to buy a tree business arose, he pounced. That decade plus in the tree industry was a big part of how Brian could hit the ground running in his acquisition. He almost doubled it his first year of ownership, but notice I said part.

[Brian Hartman]

Of how he did this.

[Will Smith]

Yes, Brian has what you might call unfair advantages that accelerated his progress, but there is a lot that Brian did that someone from outside the tree business could also do. Listen for how he dialed in his digital marketing. Also, he's recently acquired a second business halfway across the country where he does not have a network. So there's a lot to be learned from Brian's experience. Even for those of you who don't want to acquire a business in the industry you come from, you'll hear us mention Adrian Pinto a few times who invested in Brian to help supercharge the growth. I'm proud to say that Brian and Adrian met through Acquiring Minds. Adrian's past three interviews are linked in the show Notes okay, here is Brian Hartman, owner of Northside Tree Professionals Offshoring is a key lever to generate value in a small business. But maybe you think offshoring is great for just white collar office work, not in the blue collar type business that you're looking to buy or already bought well, in an upcoming webinar. Nick Huber yes, that Nick of sweaty startup fame will correct this idea and show you how offshoring can indeed be a tremendous tool that you bring to your blue collar acquisition. Nick has built an empire in self storage in offshoring roles to the Philippines, to South Africa, to Latin America has been key to his success in that industry. The webinar with Nick is How to Offshore in a Blue Collar Business. It is next Tuesday July 1, 2:30 Eastern. Register at the link in today's show notes or on the Acquiring Minds homepage. Acquiringminds Co or go to acquiringminds Co Hiring how to Offshore in a Blue Collar Business See you there.

[Adrian Pinto]

Foreign.

[Will Smith]

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 looking for an SBA loan to buy a business. Then meet Pioneer Capital Advisory, your team for getting an SBA 7A loan quickly and at great terms. The team at Pioneer has closed 81 SBA loans in just the last two and a half years with an average close time well under the industry standard. Founder Matthias Smith and general manager Valerie stash both have 10 years of SBA experience and know the process cold. There are three analysts at Pioneer who build you a lending presentation that speaks the language of the bank's underwriters and gets them to yes, two account managers to guide you from underwriting to close as fast and smoothly as possible, and two sales associates ready to walk you through the Pioneer Capital advisory process. That's nine people at Pioneer, a real team. To get you where you're trying to go. New owner of a business, go to pioneerCapitalAdvisory.com or click the link in the notes.

[Brian Hartman]

Brian Hartman, welcome to Acquiring Minds.

[Adrian Pinto]

Thank you. Will, longtime listener, first time caller all right.

[Brian Hartman]

Well, you bought a tree business in the Atlanta area. You grew it over 3x in a little over two years and you've just completed your second acquisition, your first bolt on now, you have some unfair advantages, as you put them, that has enabled so much success, Brian, but there is still a lot here that could be done by somebody without those same advantages. We're going to tease all that out. But start us off, please, with where you got the notion that you might want to buy business in the first place.

[Adrian Pinto]

Yeah, I had a unique opportunity out of college that I didn't see as an opportunity at the time, but graduated as a finance major in 2009 and went out looking for a job and and just called everybody I could and wound up at a local residential tree care company very similar to what I'm doing right now. So that's where I wound up and got a lot of energy behind growing a small business and grew them from about 1 to 6 million dollars in revenue and watch that owner have a pretty exit to a corporate buyer. And before they sold, I decided I wasn't going to go along for that journey and I I went in to work for at the time what was Valleycrest and turned into I was brought on as a part of the merge of Valleycrest and Brickman in the Atlanta area and worked there for seven years, started their tree care division there and grew it from nothing to a little over $2 million and in revenue and decided after that that or I told everybody that the next time I do something like that, I was going to do it for myself. And through a lot of research, like a lot of people are probably doing that or listening to this show, realized that buying a business had a lot more advantages than trying to go out and start up, especially Coming from a guy who had two kids and a wife that was pregnant with a third, it wasn't really feasible for me to just forego my income and, and start out from scratch. So that's, that's where I started doing a lot of digging and diving and finding podcasts and books to listen to, to educate myself. And that's, that's how I wound up wanting to buy a business.

[Brian Hartman]

And what year was that when you started going down the rabbit hole?

[Adrian Pinto]

When I went down the rabbit hole was probably late 2020, early 2021. So that's when I started listening to your podcast, joined the acquisition lab cohort 11 with Chelsea and Walker at the time and learned a lot through there and then just continued to go down the path of, of trying to find a business that worked well for me.

[Brian Hartman]

Well, you bought a tree business. We're hearing that you have all of this tree experience and I'm actually going to have you double click on, on that a little bit here in a second, Brian. But just going to how the acquisition lab helped you figure out what you wanted to buy. So it was not inevitable that you buy a tree business because it feels that way.

[Adrian Pinto]

So I thought that my unique ability was management, and I still think it is. The Acquisition Lab, I would say, gave me a broader view of you can buy anything. I had nailed it down. The acquisition lab did a good job of nailing down that. I wanted a service based business that had people that you managed in the business. And yeah, it helped with that. But like I said, I ultimately wound up going back to a tree service business because when it came down to making offers on businesses, I've realized no business is perfect. And it's a lot easier to get comfortable with what's not perfect about the business if you knew the ins and outs of the business already.

[Will Smith]

Interesting.

[Brian Hartman]

So you thought coming out of the lab that you could do any sort of, you know, field trucks business, guys in trucks business. And frankly you probably could have. But when you started looking at putting out Lois and offers, you really felt that to do so confidently you needed to understand even more, which was in specifically the industry from which you came. Trees.

[Adrian Pinto]

That's exactly right. And since our pre call, I went back through my journey and reviewed my notes and some of the companies that I looked at did not submit Lois on and I thought to myself as a broad overview, this business was probably better than Northside Tree, which I ultimately wound up purchasing on paper. I was just able to get more comfortable with the flaws within Northside Tree Because I'd fixed, started and done worked in these types of businesses before, so.

[Brian Hartman]

But sorry to interrupt, Brian, but that's a really interesting insight. So. So the takeaway is that the first version of yourself was. Was right. That it didn't have to be a tree business. You should have pushed through that lack of confidence. Or you could have. Everything's worked out great. But you, you should have and could have pushed through that. Like put yourself in the. In the. In the shoes of somebody listening.

[Adrian Pinto]

Yeah. If somebody who's still searching for other tree businesses. If I was thrown to the wolves and had to buy a business, I think that I could have purchased. For example, there was a security business that I was looking at and there was some employee turnover that concerned me. And I didn't know anybody in the security business. I didn't know. And the owner was very stressed about the staffing, like everybody is that you talk to that's selling a business or most people have trouble staffing a business. And I wanted to grow a business quickly. And that scared me to. To get into an industry where I didn't know anybody. I didn't know a single person I could call and say, hey, where's a good pool of talent for this particular business? So that. That was one I was reviewing this morning, and that was one that I was not able to get over the. I mean, the numbers looked better than Northside Tree when I was looking at it, but I wasn't able to get over some of the. The hurdles of analysis that. That presented itself.

[Brian Hartman]

But reflecting back, you feel like you could have. And figured it out.

[Adrian Pinto]

Reflecting back, I think because of the person that I am, I would have figured it out. I don't think it would have been as easy as. As doing something that I already know, though. Yes, but absolutely. I think a lot. I actually just had this conversation with a friend of mine earlier today. Is, you know, hard work can get you through a lot and helps to have a little intelligence too, but hard work can get you through a lot. And I think that I. I know I would have succeeded with that business as well. Probably not to the extent that I did within the industry that I was already familiar. Familiar with.

[Brian Hartman]

Yeah, Very interesting. Okay. And just I said we double click on your more about your experience in trees because I know from the pre call you saw acquisitions, you saw integrations gone right, gone wrong. You ran and built tree business from zero. You were working at the. I'm. I'm stealing your thunder here. You were working at the biggest landscaping business in the country. Give us another two or three minutes on, on all that experience.

[Adrian Pinto]

Yeah. So I did get experience with when I was at Brightview, the biggest landscaper in the country of when they would. They had an acquisition team. I was not a part of that. What I was a part of was the integration team on the ground. So I got to see all the different businesses they bought and I was able to one from the initial Valleycrest Brickman merging of cultures, which was two close to a billion dollar companies coming together, I got to see a large acquisition. But then once we started doing bolt on acquisitions within the city I was in, I was able to be a critic and pick through, hey, we should have looked at this prior to acquiring and did two integrations that way with them. And it was a learning experience. I had fun doing it, but I was able to pick out not only the bad, but some of the good that was done with it.

[Brian Hartman]

Can you share any bullet points there that you recall how a big company, when integrating to also large businesses, what they did right, what they did wrong?

[Adrian Pinto]

Yeah, I think the biggest bullet point I'll take away from what they did wrong is my opinion was that they saw it more as a sales pipeline and it was great to close any business that was of a certain amount. And with my search now and my search before, I really wanted to make sure that I was getting quality business with quality employees, quality customers. Brightview is a little different model because a big part of the issue was some of the contracts we inherited. So that does not apply to a lot of the tree care industry. But as far as merging of cultures and good people and making sure the two cultures are going to mix well together, that's something that we're highly focused on now with our search.

[Brian Hartman]

Okay. And so it was a question of just culture clash between integrating these two companies at Brightview and just how difficult that is. And maybe even maybe the learning is it can't be done or keep them kind of segregated as entities if they're too different or don't buy the. Or don't buy one. That's whose culture is so different than the, than whatever one is first.

[Adrian Pinto]

Well, I think both of what you said. One is when we would buy people and Brightview still does this, I think, but they immediately rebranded, whereas you're buying a $15 million company within the same city as you and they've built this great brand over 40 years. I thought that part was just kind of crazy because when you went out to your customers and all of a sudden in the Landscape, world. You were somebody they'd probably used in the past and either had a good or a bad experience with you already. So that was, that was one piece that I thought that we, that's when we buy companies now, if it's not. If they have good brand recognition, our goal is to not change the name.

[Brian Hartman]

I see, and so that's what you meant, that brightview saw it as buying pipeline. They were buying revenue and they were going to go. They didn't see value in retaining the brand. I got you.

[Adrian Pinto]

Yeah. And another one more thing on that, Will, is that since it was a pipeline, they would buy based off of making sure they hit a certain number. Whereas with us, we're able to strategically decide, hey, we've got a really strong team in Atlanta. If a bolt on comes up in Atlanta, that would be a great place. And hopefully throughout the future we can buy in areas where we have a great team in place already. We, meaning that brightview could buy something that they wind up buying a company in an area where their existing team isn't very strong and they buy a company that they're gonna merge into it. And if you don't have a strong leadership team, it's really tough to merge a company in.

[Brian Hartman]

Gotcha. Okay, so the platform has to be robust. Don't be bolting on things to a rickety platform.

[Adrian Pinto]

You got it? That's right, Will.

[Brian Hartman]

Okay, okay. Okay. Anything else on your backstory before we turn our attention to your search?

[Adrian Pinto]

No, I don't think so. I think it's pretty quick. I've only had two jobs in my career, so it's easy to fly through, through what I've done.

[Brian Hartman]

Okay, well, we'll probably return to some themes there. All right, so you said about searching. Anything to say about the search? Yeah, maybe. Maybe give us a criteria if nothing else. What were you looking for?

[Adrian Pinto]

Yeah, so I, I was just looking at my target statement this morning too, and I think that my search criteria at the time was to acquire a business that had somewhere between six hundred and a million in SDE and was. I really wanted a home service based business, but I, I opened it up broadly to say a service based business. So that was, that was my main criteria.

[Brian Hartman]

Okay. And you weren't going to move, I assume?

[Adrian Pinto]

I was not going to move. There was no chance of it.

[Brian Hartman]

Okay, what was your, just to get very specific, what was your driving radius that you would allow yourself 45 minutes?

[Adrian Pinto]

Oh, yeah, I was up to, up to an hour. I mean the driving portion didn't matter. And the metro Atlanta area. If you expand out an hour I live in the city. That gets you pretty well covered throughout the metro area.

[Will Smith]

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[Brian Hartman]

You find.

[Adrian Pinto]

Northside where How I found Northside Tree through a friend that pushed the push the listing across the table. I told him I had one LLI fall through. I made an offer on a mulch business that at the end of the day I just had a lot of flags as far as too much capex involved for smaller profit margins. And then I was having lunch with a friend and he knew I was looking and he was a big time searcher for fun and he slid the listing across the table and I said I'll reach out and get the sim today. So obviously a lot of negotiations went on past that point, but that was how I found Northside Tree.

[Brian Hartman]

And who was this friend?

[Adrian Pinto]

This was a former guest of yours, Adrian Pinto.

[Brian Hartman]

And, and how did you meet this friend?

[Adrian Pinto]

Funny you should ask. The Met met him. He was on your the Acquiring Minds podcast and one of the guests who gave his emails out at the end. I listened to the podcast and was intrigued immediately because he was one of my competitors at the time, had bought a commercial landscape company in Georgia and I said, I listened to the podcast and I said this guy doesn't seem to know a whole lot about landscaping right now and I don't know a whole lot about business buying. I've never emailed or reached out to anybody from a podcast before, but I think this is the right time and got done with my run which is when I typically listen to your podcast and and send him an email and said exactly what I just said to you and he immediately responded and said let's grab lunch and the rest is is history. I mean him And I have been very close since that point in time.

[Brian Hartman]

That's so fantastic. Yeah. Adrian. The Georgia scapes was the name of his business. Later partnered, sold to Mike Bodkin, another guest on Acquiring minds. And Mike has also now exited that. So Adrian has had a lot of connections come from that appearance, which was his first appearance was probably pretty early. Probably first 50 episodes anyway. It's great episode. Adrian Pinto, everybody. And his name's gonna come back up in your story. So Adrian slides this. This listing across the table to you. What. What. What do you find? What does north side look like?

[Adrian Pinto]

So Northside was. I got my numbers here. The north side, when it was slid across the table, was 2.6 million in revenue and $650,000 in Ste. LTM. So that. That's what you slid across table. It did have an asking price of 3 million at the time. And that was, you know, through my studies, that was more than the business was worth. And. And I didn't offer anywhere near that. But ultimately we wound up settling on a purchase price.

[Brian Hartman]

Can you share what that number was?

[Adrian Pinto]

I bought Northside for 2.5 million. So.

[Brian Hartman]

So what is that?

[Adrian Pinto]

3.8 somewhere around there.

[Brian Hartman]

What else? Can you get more bullet points on the business? How Headcount age. Why? I was a seller. Selling.

[Adrian Pinto]

Yeah. Some of the really like, key driving factors where I said, this has to be the business I buy. And I probably fell in love too quickly. I told myself when I got into the search, I wasn't gonna. It wasn't gonna be like buying my primary residence with my wife. It was gonna be like buying a rental property where you don't fall in love and you make an offer and if it doesn't go through, great. Had 10 minutes from the house with my three small kids. Had an operations manager that's been in place for 20 years and has a. Has a reputation around the industry as just being a real pro. And also had been around since 1968. Being in the industry. I'd also followed them around and known that they did pretty high quality work. Customers that use them, love them. You know, I was able. Since I was in the community that they worked in, I was able to get on nextdoor and Google and check out their reviews and a lot of good things being said about them already.

[Brian Hartman]

And they were a tree company, and.

[Adrian Pinto]

They were a tree company.

[Brian Hartman]

I mean, you could run this thing in your sleep.

[Adrian Pinto]

I ran through a lot of scenarios where everybody walks out first day. What would I do? And I still felt comfortable around being able to Cover the debt and you know all those nightmares that people that are under loi wake up with in the middle of the night. And this is one that I was able to get comfortable with any which way.

[Brian Hartman]

And why. So was this proprietary?

[Will Smith]

Did.

[Brian Hartman]

Did Adrian come across this proprietarily or was it all.

[Adrian Pinto]

Yeah, it was just a biz buy sell listing. It was.

[Brian Hartman]

It was.

[Adrian Pinto]

Yeah, it had sat on there for. For a couple weeks, probably because the broker listed it a little bit too high. But that's. It was just a biz buy sell listing. I had seen it. I just hadn't reached out and asked for. For a sim.

[Brian Hartman]

Oh wow, you had actually seen it.

[Adrian Pinto]

I had, yeah. I just. I had kind of cooled off my search a little bit. I just. Because I was under loi on that mulch business and this was right after that I broke that off and. And that was. Yeah, it was right back when I was. We were having lunch because I was getting geared up to start my search again.

[Brian Hartman]

Okay. And so you got. So share a little bit about the negotiation, how you got that price down.

[Adrian Pinto]

Oh, that's. It's hard to remember. Well, I was going back through my notes. I think I initially just took Walker's advice on from acquisition lab and just offered. And from listening to a lot of different podcasts, I offered three times and ultimately we settled on 2.5. So. And 2.5 when I plugged into the. Plugged in the debt service, I was able to look at it and get pretty comfortable with it.

[Brian Hartman]

To be clear. 2.5 million. So what did you say? 3, 3 8x?

[Adrian Pinto]

Yeah, 3 8x. Somewhere around there.

[Brian Hartman]

Well that Brian, that reminds me of a good technique in and negotiating these and maybe just broadly negotiation. Whatever the business is listed for, you can just ignore it. You. You don't have to. You don't have to pay attention to that number at all. It's hard not to. It'll anchor you. But if you can resist doing that and you can ground up, come up with your own offer. It's a much. It's a. It's a great way to at least start open a conversation.

[Adrian Pinto]

Right? It is. And now that we're making offers on businesses, they usually don't have a purchase price listed. Right. I'm sure that's a lot of your listeners see that too. And you just ground up what is it worth to you?

[Brian Hartman]

Yeah.

[Adrian Pinto]

And go with that.

[Brian Hartman]

How did you. How did you. Is there anything to say about your calculation there? Can you even remember from Northside Trees purchase.

[Adrian Pinto]

I can't remember exactly what I did, except for I remember plugging in the numbers and, and getting comfortable with the debt service that I was going to have to pay. That was really it, it actually, you know, through the sba, it was an SBA loan and through them you have to get an appraisal. It actually did not even appraise at 2.5 and we were still able to get the deal done, but it didn't, I think it appraised it at 235 or something. So we, we were able to get the deal done. Had a great SBA lender. Don't know where he is now, but he was a great SBA lender and helped me work through all that. And, and we were able to purchase for 2.5.

[Brian Hartman]

Great. When you were looking at the debt service that you'd be comfortable with, let's just do some quick napkin math. So if the business was doing 650 in SDE, we assume half of that's going to be taken up by the SBA loan. So that leaves you a 325. You're going to need to pay yourself 100, 150. That, that knocks you down to what, what 175.

[Adrian Pinto]

Call it Y.

[Brian Hartman]

And that was going to be enough, you thought to reinvest, grow.

[Adrian Pinto]

That's exactly right. That's what I thought at the time. Wish, wish I would have taken out some more working capital. Told myself I was taking out a lot from listening to all, all the horror stories, Working capital seems to be the, the toughest thing to get through as a first two year business owner, at least when it's hard to get a line of credit.

[Brian Hartman]

Do you remember what you took out for capital?

[Adrian Pinto]

I took out $150,000 working capital loan as part of it.

[Brian Hartman]

Okay. And then so you get in the business and find out that even that wasn't enough or you did or it was tight.

[Adrian Pinto]

It, it would have been a perfect amount of working capital had interest rates stayed the same and had we not grown the way that we grew. So my math checked out. Everything was right, but as we grew it was, it was not enough because we, the business had actually shrunk a little bit right before I bought it. So they had extra equipment. So I felt comfortable with not having to purchase equipment through the first wave of growth. What happened was we wound up growing even faster. We did wind up having to purchase a little bit of equipment towards the back half of 2023, which was my first full year. But the real cash struggle was when I Bought the business. There was $58,000 of AR and in August of 2023 we had $585,000 of AR. So the, the receivables are a big part of what, what shoot it up. And that had to do with, with a lot of going out and picking up more commercial customers with longer payment terms.

[Brian Hartman]

We, we're going to, we're going to get into all that. Brian. So let me pause you couple, you said a couple things there when kind of as you looked at this business. So it had a positive and negative aspect to it. Business had declined. We don't like to see that. So I'm going to ask you how you got your head wrapped, wrapped your head around that. But this decline means that there's, that the business basically has excess capacity. So you got this equipment that's being unused. You're not going to have to invest in Capex. You thought for, for more than, than maybe you might have might have otherwise. I'm reminded actually of my interview with Will G. Bought a, bought a, a food ingredients manufacturer. So completely different business. But they lost an enormous contract right before he bought it. So revenue had just declined a ton. So that doesn't look good on paper, but it ended up being a blessing in disguise. First of all, he got rid of the customer concentration without having to do it himself. So he bought into a happily unconcentrated business. But anyway, the, the, the business had all this capacity. It had just lost this really big customer that they were, that they were producing for. And so it had. So he knew that he'd be able to grow back up to that revenue level without investing any more in Capex or roughly anymore in Capex. So it's an interesting dynamic. How'd you get comfortable though with the fact of, of, of decline?

[Adrian Pinto]

You know, the decline wasn't enough. I should, I should explain. It went from 2.9 to 2.6 from 2021 to 2022. So it wasn't a significant decline. But what they did do is they that the owner before me did not like repairing equipment no matter how minor the repair was. So they winded up making bigger crews and finding out a way to be efficient that way. So there was really two ways why there was additional equipment sitting around that wasn't being used.

[Brian Hartman]

Okay. Okay. So there wasn't some structural decline really.

[Adrian Pinto]

No, it was nothing structural. It was a, it was an owner that knew he was in his final years of business and just kind of took his foot off the gas.

[Brian Hartman]

Okay, great. And so when did you buy? When did you close?

[Adrian Pinto]

I closed November of 2022.

[Brian Hartman]

November of 2022. Okay. Anything to say about the transition before we hear about everything you did to grow this business and in fact grow so fast your wheels almost came off. But anything about the transition to say first?

[Adrian Pinto]

The transition was actually a lot smoother than I anticipated because the. The company's been owned by five or six different owners over the course of its. Since 1968 when it was founded. So this owner that was before me was only there for three or four years, and he was not one of these beloved owners that everybody was really sad to see go. There was a beloved owner before that who worked with us for a while, actually, after I bought the business, just helping out here and there. And so when the owner walked out the door, there was a lot of employees that were happy because he was cash cowing the business to get ready for a sale, not doing some of the repairs that needed to be done, not providing the proper equipment to the crews. And so when we came in and we made our initial call it integration investment into the company, they all were thrilled with, with what happened.

[Brian Hartman]

Integration investment? What is that? What do you, what are you referring to?

[Adrian Pinto]

Well, in the tree business, we came in and. And replaced a bunch of old saws and climbing equipment, stuff that the crews use day to day that help them do their job more safely and efficiently. So.

[Brian Hartman]

But that was not capex. It was.

[Adrian Pinto]

Well, good question. It was roughly about $20,000 right off the bat. And I thought that $150,000 of working capital was more than ample to do that. And from my professional background, I couldn't sleep at night knowing that my guys did not have what they needed to do the job safely. And that was. It was a. I had to do it. So that was an investment upfront that I did. Wanted to help win people over, but. But also to help me sleep knowing that I was sending people out with the right equipment to do the job.

[Brian Hartman]

Yeah. Yeah. One thing we often hear, tree businesses lumped in with landscaping and H vac or whatever is, you know, kind of just another home services business. It's easy to overlook that this business is incredibly potentially dangerous.

[Adrian Pinto]

Yeah. As we're, as we're talking right now, we probably have nine guys that are between 50 and 100ft in a tree tied in with ropes. So it's, it's. And that's, that's slinging chainsaws. Slinging chainsaws. Driving big pieces of equipment down the road. So, yeah, every. It's a. It's definitely a risky business and you have to mitigate that risk as much as you possibly can to get comfortable with it.

[Brian Hartman]

Anything to say, Brian, about the fact that this business had transacted so many times? Did, did, did that. I mean, now granted, since 1968. So that, that's. But the fact that the, the most recent owner had bought rel. Bought the business relatively recently was. Do you feel like there's in a, in a team of people who are being passed. That there's a sense that they're being passed from one owner to the next? Is there a morale issue for a business that's transacted so much?

[Adrian Pinto]

You know what? I, I think there probably would be. Typically the I, where I gave you, I told you I had an unfair advantage is the group of guys that I inherited over here were all connected somehow with the group of 150 employees that I was managing at Brightview 10 minutes from this location. So they were able to do basically a background check on me and make sure that I was an okay guy coming in.

[Brian Hartman]

Well, they must have just said to himself, wow, somebody who actually, I mean, this guy really knows what he's doing. This is a, a fellow tree guy, albeit a manager, but he comes from trees.

[Adrian Pinto]

Yeah, but then the owner before me was a corporate. He worked at Home Depot and, and wanted to buy a business and I don't think he ever really loved the tree business. And so I think they were. I think it was a breath of fresh air to have me come in initially and be out there on job sites, working with them and, and hanging out and. Yeah, get to know him.

[Brian Hartman]

Yeah. Well, that's good for you now, Brian, but it will, some people will hear that and see themselves more in, in the previous owner than in you corporate refugees that, that just want to buy a business. So I don't know if there's anything to say there, but.

[Adrian Pinto]

Well, I think there is. I don't think that my. I haven't worked on a tree crew minus the few times I did here to earn some street cred in many years. So I, I mean, when I was at Brightview, I was mostly sitting behind a desk looking at financial reports and on calls. So what I did do is I was able to interact with our group of people there and here as people. And I'll tell you, if you're going to get into the tree or landscape industry, learn a little bit of Spanish so you can talk to people about their families and, and get to know them, but it's it's more of a. Just actually caring about the people that work for you. I mean, that's. If you can do. If you can do that, it doesn't matter where you come from. It's. There's just two different type of people in this world. The people that care about the people that work for them, the people that don't, and the ones that do seem to. Seem to do a little bit better.

[Brian Hartman]

Yeah, that's. Well put. Great, Brian. Okay. All right, so remind people how much you grew this business from. It was 2.6 million in revenue when you bought it. You got it to what in how long?

[Adrian Pinto]

So I bought it in November of 2022. It was 2.6 million in revenue at the end of 2022. In 2023, we finished the full year at 5.1 million. And then.

[Brian Hartman]

So you doubled it in year one and it. Well, in 13 months. Yeah.

[Adrian Pinto]

Yeah.

[Brian Hartman]

Almost. Yeah. Great.

[Adrian Pinto]

Close. Yeah, it was. And that was our goal or our goal. Once we were realized that we had a chance to do it, that was our goal, and we fell just short of it. So I think it was 96% growth, not 100. And then we set a big, big goal on our budget in 2024 at 7.5 million. And we. We hit that right on the head. So. Finished 2024 at 7.5 million. And here we are today, which I think we're going to get into in just a minute.

[Brian Hartman]

Great. Did you. Before we get into how you've done this, did you see that growth potential from the outside when you were considering buying this business, was there something you saw in this that made you go after it or only once you got in there and developed a plan did. Did these pro forma numbers come. Come take shape.

[Adrian Pinto]

I knew I could grow the business quickly. I didn't see quickly being 100% growth year one. I thought I would grow at 25% year one and maybe 25% year two. I. I did not think when I bought the business that I would be able to grow it by 100% year one. If I did, I would have pulled out a much larger working capital loan.

[Brian Hartman]

Okay, perfect segue, perfect reminder. Let's get into that now. Okay, so what was. Start telling us. Tell us the levers.

[Adrian Pinto]

You started pulling the levers. I started. So when I first got in here, one. One of the nice things and. And a piece of advice I give to everybody who's looking at buying a business is treat everybody you work with with a lot of respect, Build relationships with them. Because ultimately you might be working with those people again and they might be your boss in the future. So a lot of the people that I managed at my prior jobs winded up taking different commercial landscaping positions and they gave us a lot of their business. A lot of people were inclined to. They knew, everybody knew that I wanted to buy a business or wanted to be own my own company someday. When they worked for me, I just, that's. It was in my blood. And they, they were all very excited when I actually bought my business. And the got people that had left the company that I left went and got positions and were able to subcontract their tree work to me. So I attribute about $800,000 to a million dollars worth of that first year's additional sales just to that.

[Brian Hartman]

So you had been vocal about your. Or they could just tell it in your character that you were going to do something entrepreneurial?

[Adrian Pinto]

I think so.

[Brian Hartman]

And, and you just had a good reputation as a professional that you built up over years through your, through. Through your being in the business.

[Adrian Pinto]

Yeah, the nice part about where I was was there was. There was, you know, 30 to 35 managers and I, through growing the tree care service that, that serviced all the different locations within the Atlanta metro, I was able to build good relationships with almost all those managers in town. And they were, they were very good to me. Still are.

[Brian Hartman]

And so a lot of these folks were at other businesses when you bought north side. And so you called, called up and said, hey, can we offer you our services? And these were. These were going to be commercial tree customers as opposed to residential.

[Adrian Pinto]

Correct. So we, we act as a, a subcontractor to a lot of the large landscapers in. In town in Atlanta.

[Brian Hartman]

Oh, I see. So you were calling them to be subs on their jobs.

[Adrian Pinto]

Correct. So most of the landscape companies did not offer tree service in house in Atlanta. So we are the professionals that they work with and they sub us and we work on, we work on all their commercial properties, but we work as a subcontractor to them.

[Brian Hartman]

Great. So in the first. You said the first year that you attribute a full million bucks of revenue to this strategy, give or take.

[Adrian Pinto]

I was just looking at it this morning. It was somewhere close to that. So figured that was a million dollars in the step up.

[Brian Hartman]

Great. So that alone was what, a 40, 40% growth there from 2.5 to, to 3.5.

[Adrian Pinto]

Right.

[Brian Hartman]

Okay. And so now. But this quality or the nature of this revenue was different than what that, what north side. So Northside had been Primarily residential.

[Adrian Pinto]

Yes, it was 95% residential when I bought it.

[Brian Hartman]

Okay, so, so what happens when you start buying. Expanding into commercial.

[Adrian Pinto]

What happens when you start expanding into commercial is you accept the payment terms, whatever they are from your customers because they give you so much work and they, they do pay. I haven't had any bad commercial payers, but sometimes those payment terms are net 60 or net 30 and, and it stretches, it goes, makes your AR accounts receivable that much higher. So, which was like we were talking.

[Brian Hartman]

Earlier, would have say, say the number again. AR accounts receivable was what, when you bought it?

[Adrian Pinto]

And then when I, well, it was, it was funny, it's almost exactly 10 times. It was 58,000 the day I bought and in August of 2023 it was 585,000.

[Brian Hartman]

Wow. It's, it's remarkably close to 10x, which is an enormous, enormous jump. Okay, so, so you're doing everything right, you're growing the business, but now your AR is half and over half a million dollars. Maybe that's just the nature of the beast in running a commercial, being a commercial sub in tree. So why did it cause you to pump the brakes as opposed to. Let me just adjust to this new reality. Yeah, does my question make sense?

[Adrian Pinto]

Why did I pump the brakes on going after more commercial work or.

[Brian Hartman]

Well, yeah, you see this AR expand to over half a million dollars and you, you could either say to yourself, wow, let's, let's, let's backpedal here, you know, which is what, is what you did. But the other option would have been like, oh, I guess this is the new reality I'm going to have to live with is this really uncomfortably large ar. But that's just the nature of the beast. I'm just going to adjust accordingly.

[Adrian Pinto]

Yeah, so it definitely is the nature of the beast. I do think that first year when you're bringing on new commercial customers, you're getting set up in their payment portal and the ar, the time to get paid is actually even longer. Now we feel pretty comfortable when we do a commercial job. We know when our payment's going to come in. So I pumped the brakes for just the reason that my wife's a saint. She let me buy a business when she was pregnant, eight months pregnant with our third child. And I had already put 100 plus thousand outside of the initial transaction into the business to be able to feed it. And I didn't have the guts to go to her for more. And there wasn't, wasn't a whole lot more that was liquid at the time. So that's why I pumped the brakes and focused hard on, on collecting money and, and, and really focused more on, on putting as we collected that money, investing more into marketing. So we had more residential customers coming in who are pretty much, pretty much pay on completion.

[Brian Hartman]

Yeah. And we're going to turn our attention to that in just a sec. So there could, and there could be some future where you return to commercial when, when the, the balance sheet supports it. You could go back to that, to, to that line of business.

[Adrian Pinto]

Oh, we collected the money and we got aggressive with going after commercial right away. I mean it's, it's, we started growing and picking up more commercial customers. Part of it's like any kind of recurring revenue business like you lo, you're going to lose some customers. So you got to continue to, to build, be out there doing business development to make sure you bring in more and then you lose. So we basically collected our cash wintertime, like November, December is a great cash time of year for us and we started out the next year going after.

[Will Smith]

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[Brian Hartman]

So the future for Northside or, or the present even is a tree business that does both residential and commercial?

[Adrian Pinto]

Yes, yes, we just a balance of both. We just, we just hired our first business developer in January and he's doing a great job getting us out and talking to a bunch of commercial properties and getting us more estimates and jobs with commercial, with the commercial side. So yeah, we are definitely going to grow through commercial but we're also going to continue to grow through growth, through residential as well.

[Brian Hartman]

And I heard you say you put $100,000 additional into the business Say, what was that?

[Adrian Pinto]

Yeah, somewhere around $100,000 around that August September timeframe of, of 2023 out of.

[Brian Hartman]

Your own pocket, you put in another hundred to carry because of, because of the AR issue.

[Adrian Pinto]

That's right. That's right.

[Brian Hartman]

Capital.

[Adrian Pinto]

I was able to pay myself back once we collected the money, but that was like a personal line of credit. I was able to, to use that money as opposed to going to a loan shark for 25% interest and getting, getting a loan. Since we were less than two years established as an entity, it was nearly impossible to get an affordable line of credit at the time.

[Brian Hartman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which actually is something that Adrian talked about in his follow up interview how he, he bumped into that as well as a, as a new entity. He, he couldn't get the, the lines of credit to go buy to, to expand his fleet.

[Adrian Pinto]

He found, I recall, yeah, even I had that issue too. Luckily I had an entity that I had had for years for, for real estate that I was able to borrow to get new equipment through in those first two years. So it is a struggle. You can get, you can get loans, they're just, you know, in the teens as far as interest rates go.

[Brian Hartman]

I can't remember if there's. So there's no solution to that. And just to be totally clear for the audience, if you do an asset purchase with which at this end of the market most acquisitions are going to be, you are buying a, let's call it landscaping business into your frankly brand new entity, legal entity. And so when you try to go get a line of credit, they're going to say this entity was just created yesterday. I'm sorry, we can't give you a loan. And so if you wanted that line of credit to go buy, you know, three new trucks for two new teams or whatever, it would be one truck for, for a new crew, then it's you just that you can't get, you can't finance it. You cannot finance it. So it makes growth hard even, even if you know everything's going well.

[Adrian Pinto]

That's exactly right. Yeah, you can finance it, but there's the, the rates are double what you would pay. I mean there is, I looked at a ton of different options between financing it out of my personal name and, and a lot of different ways of doing it because we had to get the equipment and we, we finally figured something out. But it is nearly impossible to get an interest rate that is a decent interest rate on a line of credit within that first two years.

[Brian Hartman]

If it's an asset Purchase if it's an asset purchase.

[Adrian Pinto]

So my, my Rock Haven holdings is the name of my entity. DBA. Northside Tree Professionals was formed in September of 2022. And when I needed that line of credit was less than 12 months later. And I just basically there were real quick phone calls with the banks that I called because they just said either I don't offer it or refer me to, to somebody who wanted a, you know, 17% interest rate in order to give me a line of credit.

[Brian Hartman]

But they didn't. But so you had this entity that you'd be been doing some side real estate stuff with over the, over the years I guess. So it was an entity with age and they didn't press you on that when you gave them that entity like this doesn't seem like the same entity. You know, it was just like I.

[Adrian Pinto]

Bought it through there and, and I rented the vehicles to Northside Tree, so.

[Brian Hartman]

Oh, interesting.

[Adrian Pinto]

It was. Yeah and it was funny. I made a joke about it because I sent him my bank account at Northside Tree Professionals with all the transactions and I sent them that one which has you know, a thousand dollar rent checks coming in every month and that one got approved and they said they didn't want anything to do with, with my main entity that had, you know, $5 million of transactions going through it.

[Brian Hartman]

Well, this is, this is why.

[Will Smith]

Sometimes.

[Brian Hartman]

Banks get more credit than they should in terms of how their powers of analysis are really, really kind of trying to understand deeply a situation and just kind of following rules. It seems something else to say about your hundred thousand dollars. So you basically personal loan to, to the business. This is why post close liquidity is so important. And yet one more thing that an underwriter might look at and post close, post close liquidity is not talking about liquidity in the business. Not talking about cash on the balance sheet or line of credit or working capital. It is you principal and your personal balance sheet. How much cash do you have? So it's kind of the, the backstop of the backstop and is there something there? And some lenders will really look at that and rightfully so because you got into a situation where you actually needed to dip back into your personal personal balance sheet to keep the business going.

[Adrian Pinto]

That's right.

[Brian Hartman]

That's right.

[Adrian Pinto]

Yeah, it's, it's. I did have to. And, and honestly I, there were times where I thought about buying a larger B business and, and utilizing that additional cash on hand off my personal balance sheet and I did not do it. And I'm very grateful that I did not do it.

[Brian Hartman]

Brian so you turn your attention back to residential and how do you grow that side of the business? Because you do so I learned a.

[Adrian Pinto]

Lot about marketing from my, my first company I worked out out of college. I would say the owner of that business was an expert at marketing to, for the home service industry and went out and, and started trying to utilize some of the strategies that worked 10 years ago. Found out that some of those did not work. But really what marketing in a home service business is, is it's throwing a lot of lines in the water, seeing what works and tracking your, tracking your metrics to figure out which marketing sources work. So high emphasis on if you're not asking for how people heard about you or have called tracking numbers so you can track the way each marketing source is working so you can adjust your budget to be more effective, then you're not going to have a whole lot of luck with dollars. I shouldn't say you won't have luck. You, you'll spend more money to get the same amount of leads in the home service business.

[Brian Hartman]

I'm reminded of the adage the guy said I, I, I know half of my marketing dollars are wasted. I just don't know which half.

[Adrian Pinto]

That's exactly right. And you're going to waste marketing dollars regardless. It's g, it's, it's part of the experiment. And honestly I think in, in our business that's very fragmented a lot of mom and pop. That's why there's such opportunity to do it because a lot of people will waste those marketing dollars and then they'll swear it off for the next five years when really there is effective marketing to be done. It's just figuring out which ones have the best metrics.

[Brian Hartman]

It's interesting. So what you're saying there is really that tracking and attribution and just paying attention to that. So it's not just about dumping $5,000 into Google Ads. It's about then having the discipline to also see what worked.

[Adrian Pinto]

Exactly. So dumping $5,000 into Google if it's giving you a 40% close rate and a high average job that you're selling that is is a pretty effective marketing source. When you could dump the same thing into XYZ Marketing Company and have a 10% close rate with that marketing company and a smaller average job then you just know that you want to reallocate your marketing dollars towards the systems that are or the different ad sources that are working.

[Brian Hartman]

You know. But it's interesting Brian couple I'm Having a couple reactions to this. First of all, it's surprising to hear that there's still opportunities where it's like, oh, just turn on marketing and, and you'll grow. Now you're not, you're not. I'm oversimplifying. You're saying you do have to be more sophisticated than that. But as long as you're just following through like, you know, best practices of marketing, so not just spending the money, but then also figuring out which channels work and which don't, that's pretty, that's still pretty basic marketing, let's be honest. That's just marketing. Best practices, Digital Marketing 101. That alone you think is still an edge in a lot of home services?

[Adrian Pinto]

Absolutely. Yeah. You're working with. Yes, it is. You tracking and knowing what your cost per lead is and which sources are great. And I also want to put a lot of emphasis. I know this sounds like something super simple, but having an office staff that knows that getting that lead in and getting that lead booked is the most important part of their job. So there's no reason to market if you're going to have an office staff that waits to call people back or doesn't pick up the phone live. A lot of marketing dollars are wasted because in today's age, you go out and you research on Google, you call three companies, maybe two of them pick up. You're not going to wait for that third company. You're just going with the two people that picked up or got back to you right away. So I do think that a lot of the, a lot of, there's a lot of marketing wasted dollars in the lower markets because people are owner operators that are out doing the quotes themselves and don't have an office staff. Therefore, somebody calls, they pay $78 for that lead to come in, they wait till tomorrow to call them back and they've already got the job done.

[Brian Hartman]

Yeah, yeah. And this was something I wanted to hear you expand on, Brian. So, so because you had said like you got to get your, your, your processes dialed in before you turn on marketing. You've just made clear what one of those processes is. Make sure that that follow up and that response time is tight and then the whole process of closing the business and getting it scheduled is all super tight. Anything else? Or is that, is that basically the answer?

[Adrian Pinto]

That's basically it. I will just tell you in my search now, part of what I do is I'll call after hours and see if they have an answering service, leave a message, see how long it takes them to call me back, just not, not because I won't buy them or I won't make an offer if they don't have that in place, but because that's additional opportunity that's like right off the bat easy to click on to make sure that phones are answered and estimates are scheduled.

[Brian Hartman]

The other thought here, Brian, is that in certain home care industries, of course, H Vac being top, top example, it's the, the, the window to take advantage of the lack of sophistication. Digital marketing sophistication by the industry has long since shut. I had a, had a interview with John Wilson about this point. 201617 if you're an H vac and plumbing was the time to, to, to, you know, where you could really make hay. But now that industry, those industries are so competitive. There's so much private equity money. It's so, it's, everyone in that world recognizes that basically those industries are won or lost based on who gets the lead for their lead gen. I mean that's where the competitive advantage is in those businesses in Legion. But maybe, maybe those are the exception, not the rule. So not the case in tree, just to be clear.

[Adrian Pinto]

No, I, it's, it's still the same in tree. I mean you have to, you have to have a presence. You have to pop up quickly on Google or other marketing sources and you have to book the lead. It is a little different in tree that usually I think when somebody calls an H Vac company it's, they're going to charge them a service fee and they're just probably calling one company. Whereas in tree service they're usually calling, you know, two to three people to get competitive bids. So that, that's the difference. But I do think as far as digital marketing, like you can still, you can still get out there and, and digitally market effectively, but you can't do it if you're not tracking the way, you know, like we talked about a moment ago, where you're not tracking your KPIs associated with your marketing.

[Brian Hartman]

Yeah. And give me say a couple of KPIs that you look at.

[Adrian Pinto]

So for our office staff, the booking rate, meaning estimates that come in, how often, what percentage are booked. And then when you're looking at after the leads booked, we're looking at close rate, cost per lead and average job are our three that we're, we're really focused on.

[Brian Hartman]

So booking rate, close rate, cost per lead, average job. Okay, great, so this works. What happens to, to revenue on the residential side? Of your business?

[Adrian Pinto]

Well, that's a good question. I guess it's the difference between 3.6. So I guess we increased the residential revenue by about 1.5 million that first year. And then residential is great because it's. You acquire a new customer, you do a great job. Tree work's not like your H Vac, where they're usually there every year, but it is, you know, something where every few years in Atlanta, somebody's calling you back. So a lot of making sure you do good work when you go out gets you a lot of the repeat business where you don't have to pay for that lead next time it comes in.

[Brian Hartman]

And you know this to be true because you haven't been in the business, in your business in Northside long enough to see that play out.

[Adrian Pinto]

Well, we've seen it play out a little bit. Some people do call multiple times a year, every year. Your higher end homeowner is going to want a certified arborist out to walk their property every year, which usually results in a sale. But Northside's been around for so long that, yeah, there is still a lot of repeat business that, that comes in from people they've done work for in the past. Keep in mind they. They were a $2.6 million business with no business development and no marketing when I bought it.

[Brian Hartman]

Okay, let's talk about how you invested in people in management. What can you share us with us there?

[Adrian Pinto]

I. I'll tell you, this part of the podcast will be easy because it's what I'm most passionate about. So I've, I've developed a lot of good people over my years of working through my two careers I had prior to this. But after that first year of growing so quickly and me having to do a lot of the work, I realized, especially with a young family, that I had to make sure that I put good managers into place quickly, even if it meant less profit for the business or less, less money in my pocket. So went out and made two really key hires. One, one that's my director of administration and she's phenomenal. And then another one that was. Was my head, my lead sales arborist. And now he's been promoted to general manager of our Atlanta location. So those were two of the, the key hires that I made once I realized I needed more help as we were growing.

[Brian Hartman]

So the decision there was basically you just couldn't be in the business as much as maybe in a, in a former life you could basically because of your, your capacity constraints, because you have a family you have three kids.

[Adrian Pinto]

That's right. Yeah.

[Brian Hartman]

So you hire these folks at. And maybe overinvested or invested earlier. Overinvested, seemingly. It's worked out great. So to talk about that tension, you. You got a little bit of raised eyebrows from people, like, really, you're going to spend this much money this soon? But you did it for the reason that I just said. But it's also ended up being a really good strategic. Having real strategic value. Say. Say more, please.

[Adrian Pinto]

Yeah, so it definitely had good strategic value because what I knew I wanted to do here. And keep in mind when I was doing this, I wasn't thinking. I'm still not thinking that I'm going to sell the business anytime soon. And so I thought to myself, I can live off of this amount of money very comfortably. Let's bring in these key people. They will be able to get us to be. At the time, I was thinking that the team that I hired could get us to be a $15 million business with that team. So. And I still think that with our team in Atlanta and they. I hired them early because. For a couple reasons, hindsight, it was great because it made me grow. I had to grow into those people, which meant that we found a way to continue our growth trajectory. But also, they are the type of people that take ownership. And I knew this. I knew both the people prior to hiring them. They're the type of people that take ownership in the business where they don't want you breathing down their neck. They don't need to be micromanaged yet. They're going to. They're going to make sure that the business runs smoothly. So I hope I answered some of it there.

[Brian Hartman]

And do you think that it. It is a prescription that you give everybody to. To invest early in management?

[Adrian Pinto]

I think when you know the. If you know a person as top talent, especially the ones that I hire, were within my industry, but any kind of top talent that you followed along in their career, if you have a chance to hire them for a 20% premium over what you pay somebody that you're going to hire from a Craigslist ad, then absolutely that's worth the investment. So I was able to watch these people for. For 10, 15 years in their career and watch what they did and the ownership they took. And I thought to myself that I would be absolutely crazy and not have them do that with me.

[Brian Hartman]

And when I talked about the raised eyebrows and certain people who knew your story or what you were, what you were working on, kind of being like, are you sure. What, what do you think that, what do you think that they were so skeptical of?

[Adrian Pinto]

I think just the rates that we were paying, paying people to come in and work for us. You know, a lot of the people I was talking to were, you know, that's, that's $100,000 more than I really think you need to bring these people on for. You know what that is as far as a multiple and what, what the value of your business is. And to me it wasn't about that at the time. It was about building the team for the future. It wasn't about current day valuation because I didn't expect to have to worry about that for many, many years. So I was trying to, I was trying to get the foundation for my team, for the team that we were going to bring to be a, a $15 million business. And my goal back was five years. I wanted to be a $15 million business in Atlanta.

[Brian Hartman]

So, so it was a long term versus short term perspective.

[Adrian Pinto]

Yeah.

[Brian Hartman]

And, and yours was long term. And, and these other people were saying, man, if you spend that extra $100,000 to hire these people, that's a hundred thousand dollars times whatever your multiple is that you've declined in enterprise value. And of course they're thinking about enterprise value today. You're thinking about enterprise value five and ten years from now.

[Adrian Pinto]

What you find out is if you really get the right person that you don't, that a hundred thousand dollars is made up through them taking ownership in the business too. So that's.

[Brian Hartman]

They pay for themselves.

[Adrian Pinto]

Yeah, they more than pay for themselves or more than pay for the additional amount that you paid on top of what somebody thought you should hire somebody for.

[Brian Hartman]

And to be clear, what was unusual about this decision of yours was not just paying a premium for good talent, but also maybe bringing those types of people hiring early. Hiring early and at a premium.

[Adrian Pinto]

Yeah, yeah, hiring, hiring early was key because I saw, like I said, I said, if we grow even half as much as we grew last year, I'm not going to be able to keep up. We're going to have to press pause. And I don't want to press pause on growth. And so having these people was my, my excuse that not only could we not press pause on growth, but we had to, we had to get substantially large in order to support these salaries. And they helped me get there.

[Brian Hartman]

There was an impact on culture, was.

[Adrian Pinto]

There not when I hired those people. There was an impact on culture, I don't think because of those people. They were great cultural fix. There Was there was impact on culture just from it being a. A $2 to $3 million business for many years. And then all of a sudden it wasn't just those people that came in. Keep in mind, in the first year we went from 16 employees to end of 20, 23, we had 35 employees. So we had a bunch of new employee or 19 new employees that were brought into our culture and trained. And so yeah, it was, it was. The two people that I was specifically referring to weren't the cultural shock. It was really the addition of, you know, doubling the company's employee count and everybody learning how to get along.

[Brian Hartman]

And it was kind of. It was almost like a vibe shift. We're going from this level of tree company to a growthy tree company.

[Adrian Pinto]

Exactly. Yeah, it was a vibe shift and all the way down to the ground level. You know, it affects everybody because when you're growing at the way we were, you basically hit capacity and then you hire a few people and then you hit capacity. So these guys are typically working a lot more than they. They were working in the past, which means that they were making more money than they made in the past too, which was good. But. But it's definitely a different workplace for them now.

[Brian Hartman]

Reflect at this point in the story on your. The. The. The. The advantage and in the industry for years hiring those people, you. They. They wanted to work with you, so, so you could. You could reach out to them. You also. They were known quantities to you, so you could. You. They. You had de. Risked your selection of them being able to pick up the phone and get some commercial business pretty quickly. What else? Anything else?

[Adrian Pinto]

No, that's basically when you said. I said I had an unfair advantage. It was really my Rolodex of, Of people that I could call when it was time to grow. And we. And not just that, but people's brothers and cousins and neighbors that were willing to come on, that were strong referrals from. From people that I knew previously. So we, we were able to grow. And the first of, the first. That first year, I was just looking at 20, 23, we had 35 people. We still have 34 of those 35 people with us today. So that's something we're really proud of here is that even though the culture did shift, we've been able to continue to make it be a, A, a happy, fun, safe place to work, which hopefully lets us continue to recruit top talent.

[Brian Hartman]

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I guess the question, Brian, is for the listener who is looking at, you know, your story and wondering if they could do something like this is the takeaway that you. To do something like this probably requires having so much deep industry local and industry relevant experience. Because some of this stuff, you know, the, for example, the digital marketing and how you did that, it seems generalizable. What do you, how do you respond?

[Adrian Pinto]

Yeah, I think that the, the digital marketing even. Even to an extent the commercial business outreach is just really. A lot of that commercial business outreach is just hustle and, and we brought in a lot of customers that I didn't know as well. So I do think anybody can do that. To an extent. The digital marketing is. Is something that anybody can do. With enough research and commitment to it, anybody can do that. I do think that recruiting people to grow your workforce when really all you are is we charge a premium on top of the labor that we pay. So each additional person is extremely important to us. Recruiting people and having years and years of trust built up within these communities that we're recruiting from is certainly very helpful in us being able to staff appropriately. Yeah, most people, when they run into hurdles, it's not, you know, I hear all the time on podcasts that, you know, I've got all the leads I can handle because I, I can't staff to do what I have. We're. We've got. We were able to actually get that staff and a lot of that came from my, my personal relationships that I had in the past.

[Brian Hartman]

Yeah.

[Adrian Pinto]

Yeah.

[Brian Hartman]

Well, it seems like basically wherever in your business, wherever it was a question of people hiring the great talent at your management level and then, and then also hiring the, the guys in the field whenever calling the commercial. The commercial clients. That's when all of this industry experience, and I'm. We're stating the obvious here, that. And that that's where your real benefit was. The stuff that had nothing to do with people, I. E. Your marketing funnels, then it, then it mattered less and kind of anybody could do it.

[Adrian Pinto]

Absolutely. There's a reason why somebody who has background, experience is a lower risk profile for the banks because we, we do have experience and, and have people we can call on within the industry.

[Brian Hartman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's. You're a great example of that. All right, Brian. We're getting toward the end, but still got a couple big topics to hit. Want to hear about just the tree. Just a little bit more on the tree business. Get quick education on the tree business. Want to hear about Adrian again and kind of what. How you guys are working together. And they want to hear about your acquisition, your Second acquisition, your first bolt on. So in that order. So just. We've talked about the tree business. We've talked about like so many of these businesses, that's residential and commercial and the different, the different payment dynamics if you do residential versus commercial and how, yes, residential is less recurring, but it's actually quite reoccurring. If you have a good brand, you do good work. I'm get, let's start here. I'm getting the sense that like we hear in a lot of these types of businesses that demand is not the problem. That there's, there's, you know, you can make the phone ring all day, essentially, it's the everything else. Fair characterization.

[Adrian Pinto]

Yes, yes, to an extent. It's definitely seasonal. But demand is, demand is there based off of how much money and how well you're willing to track your marketing sources. The, the struggles within, the struggles within the tree business are, are number one, that the people. Because you have to make sure that the people that you have work safely and professionally. But work safely because there's so many businesses that don't value safety and it's, it's only a matter of time before something terrible happens. So there's just, so there's so many accidents within our industry because of the nature of the work that I think that differentiates it away from a lot of your normal home service businesses.

[Brian Hartman]

And so how do you enforce safety in your business? So is it just training, constant training, tighter processes, all the above?

[Adrian Pinto]

There, there, there's training we also do there. We do weekly safety training. We do on site, monthly job audits on each crew to make sure they have their first aid kit, their cones and all their different safety equipment that they need, all their ppe and then observe actions that's scored, it's brought in and if somebody has a bad score, we'll sit down and figure out what's going on. A lot of times it's a way to dig into is there one bad apple on your crew? How do we fix it? But that's, that's. We have two great production managers here that, that do that for us. And then I'm involved in the conversations if somebody, you know, gets a bad score or report back that they weren't doing something they were supposed to. So yeah, so it's, it's one of those things that safety is such a big part of our job. But it's probably. Thanks for letting us talk about it a little bit on the podcast because it is something that is very important to, if you're thinking about getting into our industry.

[Brian Hartman]

Great, thank you for that. And, and what else might differentiate this business from a landscaping business or an H VAC business or some other home services business? How should people think about tree?

[Adrian Pinto]

Yeah, it's different from a landscape business because the frequency that somebody needs to use you is usually not a whole lot more than once every two years. Like I said, our high end homeowners will call you every year. We try to get in front of all of our previous customers once a year because there's always something you can do but, but typically they're going to be calling you two to three years later to come back out and do something similar or if a tree dies in the meantime. So it doesn't have that reoccurring revenue function. At least in Atlanta. It doesn't have that reoccurring revenue function. Some portions of the industry do where you do line clearance for power companies or something like that, that you've got contracts but everything we're in does not have that.

[Brian Hartman]

And those commercial clients, was that recurring in nature?

[Adrian Pinto]

No, it really, I mean there's a few jobs but it's pretty much the same exact thing. We will do a big commercial job and, and two to three years from now we'll do the same big commercial job in capex.

[Brian Hartman]

It's a little, it's, it's a little on the heavier side. Capex wise.

[Adrian Pinto]

It is, yeah. So our, to put on a new, if we wanted to get all brand new equipment we figure it was just north of $300,000. A capex and a crew is. A crew is good for roughly 1.2 to 1.5 million in revenue.

[Brian Hartman]

Oh great. And how many, how many guys is a crew?

[Adrian Pinto]

We run five man crews.

[Brian Hartman]

Okay. And so you, you're always thinking about the step change when, when to do a new crew because you can't do it very incrementally. It's this big, it's this big sunk costs or investment to, to spin up a new crew.

[Adrian Pinto]

Yeah. Usually we're a backlog driven business. So usually if our backlog gets out to three or four weeks, we know it's probably going to be time to put on a new crew because you're going to lose a lot of business if you, if, if will calls me tomorrow and says I want my tree job done next week, I got a graduation party and I tell you, I'm sorry, the first date we have available is 6-6-16th. They'll just immediately go to the next listing on Google or whatever marketing source they found you on and go to the next person. So we figure anytime you get three four week backlog, you probably need to, to look at getting another crew put on.

[Brian Hartman]

Yeah. Anything more to say about Tree Brian before we, we hear about. No. Great. So let's, let's bring Adrien Pinto back into this story. So he sl, he slid that they're listing across to you. He also is more involved in this business. Talk, talk to us about that and how you're thinking about it.

[Adrian Pinto]

He's, he is more involved in this business. We, Adrian and I have stayed very close talking every week through his transaction. He, when he exited and up to now he's been a, a big cheerleader of the company and, and, and cheered me on from the sidelines for a long time. Adrian decided to start his own private equity firm and launched a fund and we are the first investment in that fund. So his company is Caravel Capital and I sold 25% of our overall enterprise after we did or just prior to us doing our transaction in Texas recently.

[Brian Hartman]

And so you sold 25% of the business to Adrian or Adrian's fund and that allowed you to take money off the table or that was poured right back in or what?

[Adrian Pinto]

Nope. I got evaluation and I rolled 100% back in. So no, no liquidity event for me for, for many years. So no, I, I, that's, I, I believe in this business wholeheartedly, especially now that I have Adrian as a partner and he specializes in some things that I'm not, not as good at. So like you saw from early on in the conversation, he just slid that listening across the table and that's what sparked me so hoping that he could.

[Brian Hartman]

So what are his strengths that you don't have?

[Adrian Pinto]

Do you think his strengths are that he will make us move into acquiring more companies and over a shorter period of time? Whereas it's easy as a day to day operator for me to get caught up. I've, for the past two years I've looked at businesses but I haven't been as aggressive as going out and having conversations with each one and making offers. And, and he's definitely a great guy to have on the finance side to keep you in check and make sure that you know you're tracking the way that you want to be as well. So he's been a, been a great partner so far, but it hasn't been long.

[Brian Hartman]

So does that require more capacity, Brian? Because part of the reason you're not more aggressive on M and A is because you're busy. So to step away from certain duties means somebody. Somebody else is going to have to do those. So. So does that mean bringing on another resource or what?

[Adrian Pinto]

Yeah, I've been very busy with Adrian and I working out our agreement, but last year we had Hurricane Helene hit, and the team was fully trained that I talked about hiring and putting in place. And I've traveled out of town every week for eight weeks. And when I came back, I kind of found myself twiddle on my thumbs trying to figure out where to plug in. And that was kind of the. And of course, coincidentally, there comes Adrian at the door with another offer. So. So that's what really got me thinking. The team's in place. I can focus on. On building something really great outside of just this Atlanta location. And that's when the wheels started turning and thinking, hey, Adrian and I are partnered. It was great to have his capital come in. But we're, we're partnered because I think he's going to, he's going to elevate me to the next level as far as bringing, bringing more action to the table on the acquisition side.

[Brian Hartman]

And you are at 8 million in revenue. You. Right.

[Adrian Pinto]

Yeah. In Atlanta. We're 8 million in.

[Brian Hartman]

In Atlanta, I heard you say getting to 15. When, when we were talking about hiring your managers. What was the 15 goal?

[Adrian Pinto]

15 goal was just always my organic goal by 2029. And in Atlanta, I wanted to be $15 million in revenue by 2029. And I wrote that down in 2022. So still tracking to. To hit that goal. And that. That goal is not going to change.

[Brian Hartman]

Great. And. But I understand that there's a, there's also a goal for the overall business.

[Adrian Pinto]

Yeah. So our, our overall business by. By 2020, 30 is. We'd like to be somewhere between 55 and 70 million through not just organic growth, obviously, but through quite a bit of acquisition as well.

[Brian Hartman]

55 to 70 million in revenue or enterprise value revenue.

[Adrian Pinto]

Yes, sir. Revenue.

[Brian Hartman]

55 to 70 million in revenue by 2030. So you. And you said 15 in Atlanta by 2029. So we're talking about basically, if you do 15 in all your markets, doing another three markets, getting to 15 in another three or four markets. Is that. Am I my mathing?

[Adrian Pinto]

Yeah, that would be great. Doesn't necessarily need to be three markets. Could be more than three markets, but yeah, you've got it pretty well mapped out. So we basically, from the acquisition side, we want to acquire about a million dollars worth of EBITDA a year and then organically grow the businesses that we already have to continue to grow like they've done over the past few years.

[Brian Hartman]

And how did you come up with the number of 55 to 70 million by 2030? Is that based on an enterprise value you're trying to hit?

[Adrian Pinto]

No, not necessarily. It just, just seems like a lot of fun, Will. No, we mapped it out. That's fairly conservative. Organic growth with, with acquiring the amount of businesses that, that I told you we want to acquire. So that's just. I'm a big goal setter. I'm a big. Put it in front of you and I'm usually pretty good at beating what I put in front of me. So that's, I only mentioned it to you because it'll help hold me accountable.

[Brian Hartman]

Yeah, well, now it's. You got six and a half thousand people who are going to hold you accountable. But, but Adrian, but you too. But in particular, Adrian with a fund, being a finance guy, he's going to be attuned to, with the enterprise value of such a revenue goal represents. So let's say you get to call it 60 million in revenue. What do you think the valuation of a tree business doing 60 in revenue is?

[Adrian Pinto]

We should get Adrian on the phone for this. But I would think that 60 million gets you to somewhere around 12 million or, I'm sorry, them. Let's do some math. Sorry, I should have had.

[Brian Hartman]

That's right, that's right, 12 million.

[Adrian Pinto]

So I figure that's probably, that's probably 10 times 10, maybe a little bit more than that.

[Brian Hartman]

So 60 million. So for everybody listening, a $60 million tree business at 20% margins, let's call it. That's good, good. Rule of thumb for a business like this is 12 million in EBITDA. 12 million. EBITDA business in this industry might trade for 10 times. That's 120 million dollar valuation by 2030. So 6 and a 6 and a half thousand people are going to hold you accountable.

[Adrian Pinto]

Let me, let me, let me tell the people then that I'm sitting here staring at our number and it's, and it's a little bit less than that. But that's my, my stretch goal. That's that obviously Adrian would be more than thrilled if that's what happened. But we've, we've got a lot that we're working for.

[Brian Hartman]

That's really, that's really exciting. Okay, well, let's close out, Brian, with the first big move in that direction. Your second acquisition. Tell us about it, please.

[Adrian Pinto]

Yeah, so second acquisition was a company in Dallas, Texas, started talking to Them kind of during that same time where I was twiddling my thumbs after coming back and my managers telling me that they didn't need me here anymore, pretty much started talking with an owner out there that is just salt of the earth guy that has run a very good business that has almost identical financial profile to Northside Tree. When I bought it, 2.2. 2.4 million in revenue, similar SDE and has never really done any marketing at all. And him and I grew quite close and I would never buy a business that's that far away unless I built that much trust and with the owner out there. So he's decided to roll a. A significant portion of what his payout would have been back into the overall enterprise to. To come along with us for a few years and. And see if we can accomplish these goals that we've talked about together.

[Brian Hartman]

And the playbook will be do what you've done at Northside out there. So get residential going, then also commercial. Be aware of too much too quickly.

[Adrian Pinto]

Yeah, their. Their revenue profile and their business is a little different than ours. If anybody's familiar with those cities and has ever looked at trees. Dallas has a lot fewer trees in Atlanta has. And they do a lot of plant health care work out there, which is maintaining trees with using chemicals and fertilizer to make sure trees stay healthy. So a lot of their business out there is more recurring, actually. Even though I just said tree, you know, trees not recurring. They have many customers that use them year after year after year after year for their plant healthcare services. And that makes up about 35% of their total revenue. And then they. They also have some. Some municipal contracts that are year over year. So the revenue profile was different than Northside Tree in the fact that they've got. They've got close to half their total revenue that is on the books for. For next year already.

[Brian Hartman]

No. Wow, that's great. I'm reminded of Boston Tree Preservation. I don't know if you heard that episode, but. But I had the. I had. Let's see. Sorry, Bear with me. What is. Where is. Oh, yeah, I was right. I had Don and Carlos on. And Don bought the business and Carlos kind of arranged it. Two Babson guys. But anyway, it was a business founded in the 70s that was more preservation than it was tree cutting and tree trimming. And I think it was. Even. Even the preservation angle of it was. Was kind of organic preservation as opposed to chemicals anyway. But a nicely recurring business. They basically have contracts with homeowners and they. And they come through and they take care of the trees on a regular basis.

[Adrian Pinto]

Exactly. So our, our goal with that too, and we've already started in Atlanta, is taking what they do out there in Dallas from the plant health care side and implementing that same type of program in Atlanta, obviously tailored to what our soil conditions are and what trees need out here, but starting to educate our clients to try to do more of that in the city of Atlanta.

[Brian Hartman]

Yeah, well. Well, Brian, what of this whole thing that we, that has been a theme of this interview that so much of your advantage in, in your success in Northside was your, the reputation you built, the network that you'd built over years in the tree business in the Atlanta market. You don't have that in Dallas. So how you. So you're just going to power through, is the answer. Just going to figure it out. But maybe, but maybe reconcile that fact for us.

[Adrian Pinto]

Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. I don't have the cheat code that I had in, in Atlanta, but what I do have in Dallas is one, I've got the, the direct to home marketing playbook that we implemented here that attributed or, or was a part of a lot of our growth in Atlanta. And I also have an owner out there that's staying on that has been in Dallas his whole life and is very plugged into the community. And I hope to leverage that with, with getting out there and doing community outreach and trying to do our best to, to be involved out there. So I think that, no, I think he's probably exhausted all of his resources calling on people, but there's also a little bit of overlap with customers that have businesses that we do work for in Atlanta that also have businesses that could subcontract to us in Dallas. But the rest of that story will have to be told at a different time because we're just, we're not even fully through integration in Dallas yet.

[Brian Hartman]

And when did you close on that?

[Adrian Pinto]

We closed on April 16th and.

[Brian Hartman]

Oh wow, almost a month ago and three days. And Brian, how did you think about or how do you think about owners staying on and coming with you on the journey versus not Was that driven based on what he wanted or what you guys insisted on or case by case, do you think about it going forward or what?

[Adrian Pinto]

I think case by case. I, I But I do think that an owner that's willing to stay on like our, our perfect acquisition target would be an owner that's willing to stay on, has grown to the, the extent that he can grow and wants help growing and would like to share in the upside. Like that's because there's so many owners out there that get to that 2, 3, 4 million dollar level but have been there for, for 10 years and can't figure out how to get over that hurdle. So an owner like that we would love to have stay on because they've got the operational experience. They just need a little help with marketing or, or some of the things that we track very closely at Northside Tree business development. But they're usually, if they've done that kind of work for that long, they've got a pretty good presence, pretty good grasp on the community and they just need a little, a little bit of fuel.

[Brian Hartman]

Yeah, well, you'll, you'll really be able to write a playbook for that after you, after you do it in Dallas. Yeah. So, so presumably once you kind of dial that in figuring out how to, how to grow it, being remote, not being on the ground there, I could see the acquisitions speeding up. Well, yeah, it'll happen how it happens, but you got to get to 70 million in the next five years.

[Adrian Pinto]

Now we're, we're, we're constantly looking and talking to, to businesses. It's just like I told you, if we don't get to the number that we want to get to, it's going to be because I was a little too picky and what I wanted to acquire. I'm not going to rush into, I've done that too many times in my life where I've set a goal and, and don't rush into something that didn't need to be done. We're not going to buy a company that, that doesn't have good culture, doesn't have a good current owner or doesn't fit perfectly within how we would put in a manager ourself out there.

[Brian Hartman]

Okay, great. Anything else, Brian Hartman, that we didn't get to in your story?

[Adrian Pinto]

I don't think so.

[Brian Hartman]

Great. Well, this was very thorough. Thank you for sharing. For sharing so transparently. I should also say that you were on a webinar, which is actually how we first met. One of my webinars with Chelsea of the acquisition lab. She brought you and another closer from the lab in. So I'll, I'll link to that if people want more. Brian Hartman, that's a, that's a way to do it. And we'll link to your LinkedIn. We'll link to, to Northside Tree. Can people reach out if they have questions? Want to connect?

[Adrian Pinto]

Just [e-mail] I'll give out the email because that's how this whole thing got rolling, Right?

[Brian Hartman]

Beautiful. Yeah. Full circle. All right, Brian, thank you very much. Great interview.

[Adrian Pinto]

Thanks, Will.

[Will Smith]

Hope you enjoyed that interview. Don't forget to subscribe to the Acquiring Minds newsletter. We send an email for every episode with an introduction to the interview, a link to the video version on YouTube, and soon, key takeaways, numbers and more essentials from the interview. For those of you who don't have time to listen or watch it, subscribe at acquiringminds Co. You'll also find all our webinars there on the website, both those we have coming up, and recordings of past webinars. At this point, There are over 30 webinar recordings, a wealth of information on all the technical nitty gritty of buying a business. Acquiring Minds Co.