wavePod

Get Wave AI

When You Buy a Glorified Job, Not a Business - Acquiring Minds | Wave AI Podcast Notes

Back to Acquiring Minds

When You Buy a Glorified Job, Not a Business

Acquiring Minds

Wed Dec 24 2025

Summary

Acquiring Minds Podcast Summary

Episode: "When You Buy a Glorified Job, Not a Business"

Host: Will Smith
Guest: Tato Corcoran, Owner of Brandt Molded Marble
Original Air Date: December 24, 2025

Overview

This episode features the gripping, candid story of Tato Corcoran’s acquisition of a tiny manufacturing “business” in Milwaukee, which turned out to be more of a “glorified job” optimized for the previous owner’s lifestyle than a true, systems-driven enterprise. With no manufacturing experience, Tato endured brutal financial and emotional challenges in her first months—at one point crying daily—but managed to more than double revenue in 18 months, hitting $1M in sales by 2023. Tato lays bare the realities of small business acquisition, hiring struggles, lessons learned, and her path from chaos to cautious optimism.

Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. Tato’s Background & Entrepreneurial Path

Grew up in SF Bay Area, spent nearly a decade as an executive assistant at Salesforce.
Always entrepreneurial; early side hustles in eBay selling and flipping items (05:09).
COVID led her to Milwaukee, exposure to real estate investing, discovered business acquisition via podcasts and Cody Sanchez’s material.
Sought business acquisition as a faster route to financial freedom compared to slow-cashflowing real estate. (13:52)

Quote:
“Real estate is such a long-term game… If I can buy businesses that cash flow, you know, 4x what my real estate does… that’s my road to freedom.” — Tato (13:52)

2. The Search: Direct Mail and Market Dynamics

Employed aggressive, personalized direct mail—thousands of handwritten-style letters with her picture—to business owners (16:46, 26:03).
Contrary to the narrative of a seller’s market, she found many small owners had no buyers or suitors.
Many owners were shocked to get a genuine inquiry. (20:04)

Quote:
“I always put my picture on every piece of direct mail because I immediately stand out that I'm a young girl… I got so many calls that started with, ‘Is this real?’” — Tato (18:52, 20:04)

The Secret to Lists

Used Reference USA/Data Axle (via public library access) for highly accurate, segmented business owner lists. (26:46)
Advocates for regular envelopes, handwritten addresses, and emotional, respectful appeals in direct mail. (25:13)

3. The Acquisition: Brandt Molded Marble

Discovery & Initial Reluctance

Broker pitched a small manufacturing shop that didn’t interest her at first. Owner was ready to shutter (31:57–32:53).
Incentive was mostly the real estate value (building + land); brought a commercial real estate friend to gauge value (31:52).

Business Snapshot at Purchase (40:38)

3 employees (one about to leave); revenue mostly $300–500K (often closer to $350–400K).
Equipment and facility not maintained; prices hadn’t changed in years.
The “business” was essentially an owner-operated job, not a scalable company.

Quote:
“He didn’t have a business… he had a job that paid him okay and he had a couple of loyal people working for him. That’s not a business.” — Tato (40:03)

Deal Terms

Seller wanted $1.3M (including real estate); Tato offered $750K, focusing on real estate value (46:20).
Used a real estate, not business loan. Her down payment: ~$125K, but total up-front and subsequent investment ballooned due to unexpected expenses and bleeding cash.

4. The Nightmare Unveiled

Post-Close Reality (50:18)

Acquired during peak supply chain disruption: raw materials skyrocketed, labor shortage acute.
Business hemorrhaged cash for 7–9 months, losing ~$10K/month (70:08).
Debt radically changed cost structure; new owner inefficiencies compared to “owner-involved” prior operator.
Equipment, facility, and staffing were all worse than anticipated; prior owner’s “efficiencies” were really just deferred maintenance or ignored costs (54:17).

Emotional Toll

Nonstop stress; “cried every day on the kitchen floor” the first four months (73:46).
Constantly scrambling for cash; maxed out credit cards, lent on property, sold a house to fund continued operation (64:53).

5. Transformational Hiring Insight

Early Attempts

Big failures with Indeed, staffing agencies. Paid $15K to an agency for three hires, all of whom failed to perform/had to be fired (73:02).

Breakthrough: Tapping the Immigrant Community (75:59)

Pivotal moment: posted translated job ads in Milwaukee Latino Facebook “Compra Venta” groups.
Lands Christian, whose work ethic, reliability, and management potential transformed the team. He became shop manager; began hiring exclusively from immigrant networks.
Created a durable, refer-a-friend hiring pipeline and learned Spanish herself to bridge communication.

Quote:
“He made me feel like I could do it. We just had this bond… Since then I have only hired immigrants. And it has completely changed my business and my entire life.” — Tato (76:12)

6. Rebuilding and Growth

Restructuring

Gave equity to stepson Noah to keep key know-how (consistent with “owner-involved” business).
Shifted entirely to an all-Latin, Spanish-speaking labor force; added a bilingual woman for diversity and translation.
Is now mostly “staff stable” but aspires to be “overstaffed” to buffer against attrition. (88:10)

Financial Results (88:10)

First year: More than doubled top-line revenue, hitting $1M+ (from prior ~$400K ceiling).
Moved from months of losses to posting a profit in 2023 (though still paying herself a modest salary of $1,500/month, reinvesting all profits in growth capacity).
Achieved this with minimal customer attrition, despite having to raise prices 40%+.

7. Lessons, Psychology, and Looking Forward

Notable Wisdom

Buying “a job” vs. a business means you’ll have to build pricing, systems, and much more from the ground up.
Big price increases, while necessary, can be achieved with honest communication—especially if supply is sticky.
The business you buy isn't the business you inherit; debt, market context, and staffing change everything. (54:01)
Owner “efficiencies” are often luck, accrued knowledge, or deferred pain, not transferable systems.
Growth is not always a silver lining—profitable growth is much harder than simply generating more sales (67:45).

Emotional Arc

From daily tears to cautious optimism; still hard, still emotional, but now feels “empowered” by the journey.
Finds fulfillment and personal growth, despite significant financial and emotional cost. (101:57–104:27)
Strong relationships with employees (“I care too much… I grow attached to my employees. I love them.” (94:41)).

On Being a Woman in Manufacturing (97:28)

Encounters constant disbelief and disrespect. Must repeatedly assert credibility.
“You show up every day and you take it in the face… But you figure out how to not only grow accustomed to it, but how to thrive in it.”

Memorable Quotes & Timestamps

On Direct Mail Search (20:04):

“I got so many calls that started with like, is this real? Are you really looking to buy… businesses like this?”
On the Business She Bought (40:03):

“He didn’t have a business. He had a job that paid him. Okay… That does not by any means mean that you own a business.”
On Hiring Immigrants (76:12):

“Since then I have only hired immigrants. And it has completely changed my business and my entire life.”
On Early Pain (73:53):

“I had pretty much cried every single day leading up to that, just like, in general, but this was like full blown… I was on the kitchen floor just bawling.”
On Personal Growth (104:10):

“I have never grown more as a person than I have in the last 18 months. I honestly don’t know if I would have grown this much… in two decades had I stayed where I was.”
On Women in Manufacturing (97:34):

“I go to work every single day with all men… To grow how I want to grow, I have to sell to all men. But you figure out how to not only grow accustomed to it, but… how to thrive in it.”

Key Takeaways

Buying a lifestyle business often means you inherit a “job,” not a turnkey operation.
Underestimate what's needed—especially around staff, pricing, and systems—at your own peril.
Real estate value can be a risk hedge but doesn’t eliminate operational pain.
Tato's deal structure limited her downside but didn’t save her from near-disaster post-close.
Hiring can make or break operational transformation.
Leveraging underserved hiring channels (immigrant and non-traditional labor pools) was transformative.
Expect emotional extremes, long learning curves, and personal growth.
The hardest stretches fostered the most growth; emotional attachment and stress are part of the journey.
In “sticky” niche markets with few suppliers, strong service and communication can offset knowledge or credibility gaps.
Tato’s honesty, responsiveness, and willingness to learn bought customer patience as she rebuilt.

Structural Timeline

00:00–16:46 — Tato’s background: tech career, COVID, leap into real estate, discovery of business acquisition through podcasts.
16:46–29:56 — Direct mail campaigns, search process, and the path to finding Brandt Molded Marble.
29:56–54:17 — Deal specifics, due diligence misses, shock of “buying a job,” early post-close financial/labor crises.
54:17–76:12 — Supply chain, customer/pricing challenges, first calamities, key emotional moments.
76:12–88:02 — Breakthrough in hiring, building an all-Latino team, learning Spanish for communication.
88:02–104:31 — Results to date, financial status, mental health, being a woman in the trades, reflections on the journey.

Final Reflection

Tato’s saga is an unvarnished look at the pitfalls and possibilities of small business acquisition. Her story offers caution to would-be acquirers: Don’t mistake a “job” for a business, and never underestimate the storm that can follow a seemingly simple transaction—especially when you lack industry experience. Still, her perseverance, adaptability, and people-first approach demonstrate how transformation is possible with grit and learning-by-doing.

To connect with Tato:
Message her on LinkedIn—she’s “very easy to find because my name is so weird.” (104:31)

Loading summary...

Transcript

Will Smith (0:00)

One of the classic pitfalls when buying a business is mistaking what is essentially a glorified job for the owner for an actual business. Case in point, today's guest Taito Corcoran bought a manufacturing business, but one that the owner had optimized for his own comfortable lifestyle, to the detriment of everything else about the enterprise. When Taito took the keys, the business was doing just $400,000 in revenue, employed three people, hadn't maintained equipment and hadn't raised prices in close to a decade. And oh, by the way, Taito knows nothing about manufacturing. For the first four months of her ownership, she cried on her kitchen floor every day. Well, 18 months later and Taito has more than doubled revenue. 2023 closed with over a million dollars in sales. There's a lot of detail in this episode. Taito shares everything, but let me call out a few to listen for how she used snail mail campaigns to reach owners during her search, how the value of the business's real estate factored into her risk analysis, and how she finally cracked the code on hiring Buckle up for this adventure with Tato Corcoran, owner of Brandt Molded Marble. Today's episode may sound familiar to longtime listeners. It was one of the most popular from last year, 2024, so please enjoy it while Team Acquiring Minds takes the week off.

Sam (1:39)

We will be back next week with new interviews.

Will Smith (1:42)

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone. 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. The team at Aspen HR recently published a short white paper targeted at searchers Entitled A New CEO's Guide to Human Resources. It lays out the key items you should be thinking about as you transition into CEO and owner of the business you bought. The link to download it is in the show notes. Aspen is a professional employer organization, or peo, run by a searcher for searchers. Search fund veteran Mark Sinatra runs the company, which provides HR compliance, flawless payroll, Fortune 500 caliber benefits and HR due diligence support for your acquisition, all for a fraction of the cost. Go to aspenhr.com or contact Mark directly@markspenhr.com.

Sam (3:00)

Tato Corcoran welcome to Acquiring Minds.

Tato Corcoran (3:03)

Thank you. I'm so excited. Thank you so much for having me.

Sam (3:06)

Tato, you bought a manufacturing business in Milwaukee, a very small business, almost a glorified job for the owner you eventually.

Tato Corcoran (7:23)

Yeah. So there were at one time, five major quote unquote towers in downtown San Francisco. I worked in all of them. And then like halfway through me being there, they erected what you're referring to as the Salesforce Tower, which is a little bit of a misnomer. We paid for the naming rights and were the primary tenant, but it wasn't a building that we owned. We owned other buildings around there. We didn't own that one, but nevertheless, yes. Yeah, I worked in Salesforce Tower for several years. I actually also had the opportunity to support an executive who was New York based. And so I spent half my time in New York for about a year and a half working out of the New York tower, which is in midtown. And I got to, you know, travel the world on the company's dime and work with, you know, a gajillion other young, single, twenties, happy houring folk, while also supporting really, really well known names in the industry and having to play at, you know, a much more mature level than. Than I really was at. So it, it was hands down the most fun, incredible experience of my life. I, I loved it. It's just. It is what it is. Right? It's a W2 job at a major corporation. You can either kill yourself to climb the corporate ladder and sign away your entire life, which is what I saw every person I work for do. Or you can stay there and accept that you'll just kind of like be here the whole time, which is totally fine. That's what the vast, vast, vast majority of the common folk do, you know? Or you can go figure out how to do something on your own. And so, like I said, after close to a decade, that was. That was what I chose. And that was sort of right place, right things happening situation. Because my little sister had moved here to Milwaukee. We have family here. She had settled here and she was preparing to have her first baby. So it was our family's first grandchild. And what I thought was just a week that I had, you know, chosen to work remotely from salesforce ended up being Covid shutdown. So we were all here. We were the last family in the hospital for the day for the baby being born, and then the world shut down the next day. So. Which is totally bizarre because I never went back and ended up not even retrieving my stuff till literally two years later when I was like, on my way out. But anyways, long story made short, sort of. I ended up spending a bunch of time here. My sister had a new baby. My parents ended up buying a second house here. And it occurred to me on just sort of a fleeting moment thought that I could afford to buy a house here. Which if you're raised in San Francisco Bay area, is not something that you just, like, come to. It's not a conclusion that you come to. You know, I'm like, wow, I could buy a rental here. You know, I could spend a few hundred grand and buy, like a really great house in a gentrifying neighborhood and do the thing. I didn't know anything about real estate investment, and I was raised by a dad who absolutely detests real estate and has like. He's like the only human on the planet who somehow lost money on every California property he ever owned, which is also a whole other thing. But anyways, so I was like, okay, because he.

Tato Corcoran (10:36)

Or all of the above. He hated every tenant he ever had. He always sold at the wrong time, which is so difficult to understand because if you did like anything right at all in California, you made a billion dollars. But whatever. He was never going to bring me to real estate as an entrepreneurial path. But like I said, it. It occurred to me, being there, that that was possible. And that could potentially be something interesting, but I didn't know anything about it. And so I turned to the Internet, Googled real estate investment. What do you think comes up first? Bigger pockets. Became an absolute bigger pockets, you know, obsessed fan girl, as lots of us do. Total rabbit hole. You know, I would try to crush like three or four podcast episodes a day and just became totally consumed by real estate investing. Tried my hand at wholesaling, tried my hand at flipping. Eventually settled on buy and hold, though, you know, you need cash to do that. So I. I kind of did a mix of it all in order to make buy and hold work as often as I could and just became obsessed. And I. Real estate is still, to this day, like my true love. That's why I've done everything up to this point that I have. I have. It's my rental portfolio size isn't anything crazy, but it's certainly something I'm so glad that I have and something that I'm constantly trying to expand anyways. So I pretty much became like the poster child for why millennials shouldn't be allowed to work from home. I was side hustling like crazy during COVID Like, I figured out how to do my salesforce job in like roughly two hours a day and spent the rest of the day driving for dollars, like, hustling up deals. I was flipping houses, I was wholesaling, I was doing all the things. And I joined a mastermind group, actually, from Biggerpockets. Brandon Turner's coach at the time, Jason Dries, which I'm sure people listening to this have heard of. He created a mastermind that wasn't real estate based, but that was kind of like the base of the membership. Joined that and totally changed my direction. Became really close with several of the people that I met who are still really close friends and mentors today. And a couple of them were buying up small businesses. They turned me to Cody Sanchez, and that was another rabbit hole of kind of, you know, self education. I'm like, buying businesses. Interesting. I might be good at that, you know, but I don't know anything about that, you know, so took Cody's course, did all. All the reading, all the episodes, you know, all that, and did a lot of trying to figure out what kind of business I would want to buy, which we can talk about. But in. I ultimately found this one. I can stop there if you want me to. Like, I don't want to skim over details, but.

Tato Corcoran (29:56)

So called them all. Like I said, I think. I literally think I ended up only talking to this particular guy who ended up brokering the deal. I don't think anyone even bothered to get back to me. But he, he is like his own self as a broker versus being a part of like a larger company. So he was a little more personable in that way. But he had this business listed and he pitched me on it and Are we allowed to swear on this? Yeah, I literally, no joke, was like, I don't know shit about, but I definitely don't know anything about manufacturing. So as much as I appreciate the mini pitch, like, this makes no sense for me. And, you know, he laughed and we had a good conversation, whatever. And then he called me. It wasn't. It was probably was like maybe two to four weeks later. And he's like, hey, remember we. That business we talked about? I'm like, yeah, you know, still not interested. And he was like, well, I failed to mention that. I've had it listed for a year and a half and the listing is going to expire literally in a week, and the owner is going to close his doors. He has no other options and he's just unwilling to keep going. So it was the case that the owner owned the manufacturing facility and the land as opposed to renting it. So this broker's kind of like in with me was, you know, hey, he owns the real estate, so like bare minimum, want to come look at the building? And I'm like, okay, like, there's no reason not to. Right. And he gave me the whole pitch, like he's motivated, you know, all this stuff. So he was smart. He got me there. I brought a good friend of ours who is very entrenched in the commercial real estate market locally here, and I was like, okay, we're going to split up. I'm going to go talk to the owner. You're going to lap every square inch of the building and tell me honestly if you think it's like, you know, rentable in any way, shape or form. Because that's the only thing that, you know, I'm interested in knowing. Right. Does it have any value?

Tato Corcoran (56:42)

Yeah, for sure. So the catch 22 of it all was, and I started to say this earlier, in home building and in many other industries, they secure pricing. So even if you decide that you're not selling at a price that is sustainable, you can go in and request a price increase or demand one or whatever. First and foremost, they won't change the price for at least 30 days, sometimes upward of 60 or 90. So you're continuing to get POs at the old price even though you've decided on a higher price. But then still you're not actually going to do that job for another three, four, five, six months. So that's a lag of bare minimum, like best case scenario, four months, worst case scenario, upward of a year, where, sure, you change Your pricing. You still have to operate your business. So you're operating for all of this time at the reduced price before your price increase goes up. So that was a major. One of the major reasons why I bled for so long as it just took forever to see that elevated amount come in. Also the among, you know, in fitting with the theme. And this is just yet another thing I didn't do any research on. His prices were so. So, like, illogically low. And I kind of fit that into the category of longtime owner efficiencies. He figured out how to live his life in this box. In this little box his business ran. He only worked eight hours. He, you know, only worked with people he trusted, and he paid himself enough to feel like he was living a good life all in this little box. Well, that's fine, but it doesn't mean that your prices have any reality to them. They were, they were at least five years outdated. I would say upwards of a decade dated. So the catch 22 is I come in, I'm a new owner, all my customers, who, by the way, when I say all mine, that's like yet another due diligence. Due diligence error. They say, don't buy customer concentration. I did exactly that. We had like 10 or 12 major customers who I've retained to this day. Zero customer attrition. I'm very proud of that. But regardless, what the hell was I thinking? I just wasn't thinking. So you have 10 customers who have been working with the same person forever in a day. You come in, you have no credibility. And just looking at me, they're like, who the literal are you? You know, what do you know about anything? And so I had no confidence to go in and ask them for more money. So I decided to spend time proving that I could do it. So I spent three or four months in prove mode just, you know, trying to get my sea legs on and show them that we could go on business as usual. So then you further put off the price increase, and then you finally get to the table about the price increase and you. Yeah, you have to wait like, you know, nine months to feel it. So there is just this painfully long cycle of, of trying to.

Tato Corcoran (64:53)

So that was kind of the start of it. And then from there, you Know, the numbers just didn't work. I mean, the second I hired a couple people and did a couple of things to make the place better, I, I was literally, I was finding pennies under mattresses. You know, you always hear the stories of how like, you know, Mark Cuban starved and this and that or whatever, but I feel like I lived like a mini version of that now. Like, I totally get it. You know, you just, you switch into survival mode. You literally do anything you have to do. I applied for more credit cards in that month than I ever have my entire life. I somehow got a couple, I got lucky a couple times with credit limits that were like 15,000. So I cobbled a couple of those together before the lender on the business or on the building could gather like recent financials. Before he could do that, because I was still new to business, I convinced him to give me a $50,000 line of credit that was lucky as all hell because I wouldn't have gotten that like, if I had waited six months. And he was like, show me your financials. So I got a line of credit, a bunch of credit cards. I fortunately had bought a off market property at such an insane discount that there was like $100,000 worth of meat on the bone there. So I refinanced that and then I went and sold another house. So I cobbled together a couple hundred grand to just get through it. I didn't pay myself. I spent probably, or invested. I probably invested, I don't know, 50 grand into new equipment that in hindsight we probably could have limped along without. I definitely was, I was too eager to, to turn things around. I should have prioritized figuring out how to make money first for sure. But again, I was caught up in this whole, like, I'm your young new owner, who cares? And here's how I'm going to show you. Even though it's, you know, costing me my life saving and insanity and then just, just the, the cost to operate the business was, was quickly becoming out of hand. And I, I genuinely believe it would have for that owner too, because like I said, the, the volume was getting to a point where you couldn't operate it under his efficient circumstances. Like by the time you hired a couple people, threw a little debt into the mix and waited to recover from raw material price increases, you were losing money like before you could even open your QuickBooks.

Tato Corcoran (73:59)

Yeah. And I was just like, I can't do it, you know, and. And that's okay. I'm. I'm gonna figure out how to come to terms with that and I'm gonna liquidate and keep the building and rent it. And so I was talking that through with. I'm sure I called my dad, because my poor dad, I called him about everything. But I was definitely talking it through with my boyfriend. And yeah, I was just like, you know, I'm done. So we went to bed and I can't remember. I wish I could remember exactly what led me to do this, because I honestly don't recall. But I was like, you know what? There are literally stereotypes in life for, like, everything for a reason. Like, if it's a stereotype, there's a reason. And everyone always says that Hispanic people work hard. You know, how. Why have I never met a Hispanic person to come, you know, have them work for me? And I'm like, okay, well, we have a huge immigrant population here. That's the irony. Like, I know that south side of Milwaukee is. Is. That's all it is. And I'm like, huh? How would I find those people? And I'm like, well, I'm sure they're on Facebook. Okay. I'm sure they have Facebook groups. Well, let's try to find a group. And so I literally plugged in like basic Spanish search terms into Facebook groups and found a couple buy sell groups. They, you know, in Spanish, you know, compro evento. And I was like, holy shit. Like, why not? I'm going to post a job ad. So I typed one up on Google Translate late at night, my boyfriend was asleep and posted it with my cell phone number. And the next morning, I couldn't believe it. I was getting texts, all in Spanish. Texts and calls that I had to immediately, like, ignore. And then the Google Translate back being like, I'm sorry, I don't actually speak Spanish, but can you text? You know? And I got like half a dozen. And I was like, no fucking way. Like, this can't actually be happening. And so sure enough, the first person to actually show up from the text was Christian. And we can talk about the whole thing, but long story short, he runs my shop now. And since then I have only hired immigrants. And it has completely changed my business and my entire life.

Tato Corcoran (76:20)

So Christian showed up. He understood a ton of English, spoke very little, but I would say he like, very competent, understanding. He is from Mexico and he had lived here for not quite 10 years. And very classic, like he was a landscape labor. And here in Wisconsin, that's a shit job. In the winter, you know, it's snowing or snow plowing. It's. And just in general, like, it's just a hard job, you know, beats you up. And he was considering looking for something else. Their management had changed. He didn't really like management, whatever. And he just wanted something inside. And so we came at the time, one of one of my employees who's no longer with me, one of the two who I had initially, he spoke Spanish. And so he was able to show Christian around and tell him about what we did. And he was there for like half an hour. And my employee runs over and goes and goes, hey, this guy wants to apply. Do we have an application? Of course we didn't have a fucking application. Like, you know, I didn't. We were not formal like that, but I was like, oh my God, really? He's interested. And he's like, yeah. And I was like, I grabbed my laptop, I pulled up adp, hit add new employee. And I was like, he's not leaving here until he fills payroll out and he starts Monday at 7. And he did, he filled, he was like, okay, great. He filled payroll out. He showed up Monday at 7. Literally, the rest is history. He. So he's been with me now, he's been with me now like, you know, a little over a year. And he is, aside from Noah, hands down my most knowledgeable employee. He still has plenty to learn, of course, we all do. But he's completely dialed in. Knows how to do every single thing in the, in the shop. Knows how every piece of equipment works intimately. Understands how to produce the product, repair it, cut it, install it, you name it. He will come in with 105 degree fever and a raging cough if he has to. He is so ridiculously reliable, so delightful to work with. Totally has this hilarious sarcastic personality. We have overcome crazy language barriers and he, he made me feel like I could do it. You know, I, he, we just had this bond. I think maybe we each were experiencing our own personal difficulties at a time and just had this beautifully unspoken appreciation for one another. He also interestingly ran a food business in Mexico. And I'm like, I'm like, oh my God. Like he, so he's funny. He'll be like, look, unlike the rest of the Mexicans, I didn't leave cause I was poor. And I'm like, oh, interesting. Like why are you here? You know. And he was like, yeah, my business was successful and I was sick of every Friday at 2 o' clock the mafia showing up, demanding their cut. I was done. So we moved here. So he has, yeah, he has this amazingly interesting perspective that most employees don't. Where, you know, he was the boss, he was the hefe, he was running a successful business. And so he has also been a partner in that way, you know, helping me make well thought out decisions and actually caring about what we're doing from a bottom line perspective. He gives me all kinds of opinions. Sometimes they're unsolicited and he's the first to say that, but just all kinds of opinions and insights. And I know that he will never do something or suggest something out of his own self interest. And that is like really more than you can ask for out of an employee. But from there, the amazing thing about embedding yourself in that type of community is it there's never a shortage of people. I'm on, I'm literally on Wilker's seventh primo and he's great, and that's amazing. And then we needed some other kid and their downstores neighbor who moved in from Columbia. John, you know, showed up the Monday we needed him, and it just. It just goes and goes. It's like this wheel that never stops.

Tato Corcoran (83:40)

On the plant floor all day, every day. So, yeah, it's all men. Or was historically all men. Because of the nature of the job, we had a need that I felt could be filled by the correct woman. Slash, we. I was like, we really could benefit from somebody who's bilingual. That would help a lot. So I hired our first woman. That was maybe six months ago now, or not quite. And that's been phenomenal too. That was like a whole other kind of learning experience for me and her. I mean, I was. Couldn't have been more painfully transparent during our interviews, talking about, you know, setting expectations. So she is American born, Mexican, bilingual. She does our. She'll do some labor, but mostly, mostly she does the non laborious stuff. Setting up molds and kind of things like that. So every person is Spanish speaking except for Noah and I. And then Valeria is the only Spanish and English speaker. So after months of denial, I just decided it. Yet another thing I need. I'm just gonna learn Spanish. Of course. I took French through college. Right. That was well thought out. I'm California too. I don't know what I was thinking, but I was like, forget it. I'm gonna learn Spanish. Like, I don't wanna. You grow such a love for these people who show up every day and do such a good job. And through translated conversations, you learn more about them. But I was like, I just wanna talk to them. You know, they. I Adore these people. Like, I really can't describe the extent of the love I have for the people who work for me. And so I got a hold of the basics, and then now the shop rule is, everything said to the hefa is in Spanish. Say it slow. And any word that I don't understand, sit there and Google it with me. And then I repeat it back to you. And if, for whatever reason it's an emergency situation and you need me to understand more fucking quickly, then fine, you can go find Valeria. But that's where we start. And my Spanish has grown so quickly over time. I'm, like, totally focused on it. I speak all day, every day. I'm constantly trying to learn new verbs. My conjugations are heinous, and my articles are just all over the place, but I walk out on the shop.

Tato Corcoran (88:20)

So that's depending on how you look at it. I mean, at a minimum doubling top line, it really. It's more than that because if, if you benchmark that, you know, the original owner's top line was never more than 350 or 400, but whatever, roughly doubling top line. What's cool about that is. And these are kind of loose numbers, my tracking on my list of things to improve in 24, but loose tracking, we increased like physical output by about 33% versus increasing top line by or doubling top line. So, you know, that to say we're charging more for what we're doing, you know, which was like, obviously we went over that. But yes, we've increased what we're doing, but we've really increased what we're bringing in. So that's great. That is great. Thank you. I would like to be able to afford some. What's the word? I'd like to be overstaffed. I can't say that I am. I can't say that I really ever have been. At the moment. I can't afford to be overstaffed, but I would like to be able to afford that. I'm very proudly staff stable, which feels amazing. I have great people who, you know, show up every day, but, you know, it's inevitable, right? Like some people do leave and you have to fill them in. And when those. Or when that has happened, it has been a painful, you know, couple of weeks or a couple of months. And I would love to alleviate that pain by having one to two more people than we need and like really filling those people with knowledge so that if and when inevitably a person leaves, we're not hurting so bad. So that's like a pro con. Like I'm staff stable. That's great. I certainly wasn't before, but you know, room to improve there and then really what I'm doing, my major, couple of major focuses in 24, I've barely scratched the surface of what I can do sales wise. That is like my thing is to get in front of people and pitch them on why they should buy from us and particularly buy from me. This is a whole other thing we didn't touch on. But I'm licensed by the state of Wisconsin as a female owned business, which is valuable to developers who are trying to access things like state tax credits or build on land that, that the state requires, you know, be built up by a certain proportion of diverse vendors. So just like getting that out in front of people, you know, really capitalizing on the fact that this particular product is not easy to buy, there's not a lot of people making it and the people who are making it, you know, my competitors frankly have a service issue, customer service issue that, you know, I feel is our strong suit.

Tato Corcoran (94:41)

Yeah, definitely depends on whether you ask me my boyfriend or my father. But I would tell you that no, I will not lie to you. I cried as recently as like five days, but now it's, it's less about like, oh my God, like, I actually as a human can't do this and more, I can take way more now. Like, and my, I had no idea. The actual like personal limits that I have, my, the strength that I feel we all have is way more than you could ever really know. But the gut punches still hurt, you know, like, you still show up every day and you take it in the face. At least that's how I feel because like I said, like, yeah, I've been through a lot, but I, I really am still like so new in this journey. And so I had one of my favorite employees quit last week, unfortunately, due to. And he. He quit due to something that was wholeheartedly my fault. And that really hurt for. For a hundred different reasons. And so I cried about that. So I guess a concise answer to your question is a couple times a month, maybe, but for reasons that I feel are warranted, you know, reason. Reasons where I'm like, wow, like that, you know, God, that's a tough lesson. Tough lessons, you know, you learn lessons every day, but some just hurt. And also, too, I mean, I guess not to, like, blanket women, but I do feel that being a younger woman in this particular industry that is so wildly ill suited for women in general, it comes with its own stuff, you know? Yeah, I cry. Like, I'm sure people are listening to this podcast and they're like, seriously, your employee quit and you cried? I don't know. I do. I do the thing they tell you not to do. And I grow attached to my employees. I love them. I love him. He is an amazing human being, and it was a preventable thing, and that was such a hard lesson to learn. Now, I had a great week this week, and it's prompted me to put in place some things that were clearly lacking so that I keep the rest of the people that I love. So I feel like every, like, heartache now, like, very much has, like, a happy ending and a silver lining instead of just feeling totally hopeless before. But, yeah, I definitely care too much about everything, for sure. That's just kind of like how I am. And it's. It leads to that, like, emotional aspect of it, you know?

Tato Corcoran (97:34)

Well, you know, so you hear this touted all the time. And let me preface this with I am the furthest thing from a feminist. Like, I come home every night and say to my boyfriend, like, I effing need you. Don't ever go anywhere. I am totally not a feminist, but I go to work every single day with all men. I have phone calls every day, all day with all men. I have meetings every day, all day with all men. And to sell what I'm trying to sell and grow how I want to grow, I have to sell to all men. It just is how it is. There are definitely female designers and whatnot within, like, the building groups and stuff that's cool and fun. There aren't female decision makers. There just aren't. But I work with one builder who not owned by a female, at least Their president's a female, so that's great. But it's manufacturing, it's building, it's construction. I really don't care what you have to say. It's run by men. And again, like, you know, I'm not, I'm not trying to say like I'm so oppressed, you know, I show up every day and do it, but bottom line, you know, I've been on the end of I don't know how many phone calls of, you know, 50 plus year old project managers who think it's totally fine to just absolutely braid me because my guy's got wet caulk on the floor, you know, and I've had to finally come to a place where I can be like. So I'm going to hang up now and then I'm going to call you back and you're going to speak to me how you would want someone to speak to your wife because this was so wildly disrespectful and inappropriate. You know, there's just moments like that that, yeah, I feel that, you know, I do. I'm not going to lie. And it's, it gets better, for sure. I also, I treat this as like funny now, but this happens every five days. Probably I'll get a call or a customer visit or whatever it is from somebody and they're like, and they're like, oh, so this is a family business. And I'm like, no, it's not. And they're like, okay, but your dad started the business. And I'm like, my dad lives in California, you know, like that whole thing. And they're like, well, are you married? Like, they just like, they can't get there. You know what I mean? I was. Tell me if I'm like going on a tangent now, but I was at a golf outing over the summer with my dad and it was for like a builder thing and it was super fun. But the 17th T or whatever was a Capital One booth, you know, the Spark credit card. And to this guy's credit, I mean, he was out there hustling harder than any of the other booths on the course. But he immediately goes to my dad and is trying to pitch him on the Capital One Spark card. And my dad's like, oh, thank you so much, I appreciate that. But I'm just here as a plus one, like, you should go talk to my daughter. And he could not get us through his head. And so he came up to me and he's like, your dad sent you to me? Or me to you? I'M not sure why, because I know he started the business, but. And I'm like, what are you talking about? Like, how did you even get there? Like, you got yourself there. No one told you that, you know, so you're just, there's just this, like, immediate disadvantage disposition that you find yourself in, and you figure out how to, you figure out how to thrive in it. Like, I don't, I don't think you necessarily overcome it. I think that you not only grow accustomed to it, but, again, you figure out how to thrive in it. You figure out how to just own the fact that you own this. And, you know, they're answering to you now. But that's a very emotional journey, at least for me.

Tato Corcoran (101:57)

It really is such a hard question because you're right, I talk about it, and I do get overcome with a sense of excitement, gratitude, empoweredness, for sure. Empowerment, rather, and all of these great things, I was never not going to do entrepreneurialism, I think that I would have, I would have done it smarter or different. But honestly, if you were to then follow up with a question of, okay, well, how. I, I really don't even know if I could answer how. I think that. I think I would invite. There are things I would absolutely, like, scream from the rooftops to people to do differently. I think I did a lot of things in a way that was, like, way more painful than necessary. And I definitely am not on this podcast today talking about all the financial freedom that I have. You know, I'm not telling you that I went and played nine holes last week. No, I've. I spend five days a week at my shop. For sure that that is where I'm at in my journey. However, I have never grown more as a person than I have in the last 18 months. I honestly don't know if I would have grown this much as a person in two decades had I stayed where I was. I really don't. And so, like, that personal evolution is something that. And kind of like, going to your point of, oh, you sound so upbeat. Like, you learn that, like, who you are as a person and your evolution and your, you know, maturity and your financial sophistication and all of this stuff is something that no one can take from you. People could. You know, somebody could figure out how to ruin my business. Somebody could figure out how to burn my building down, you know, whatever, all these things, but no one can take from you the fact that you went and did arguably one of the hardest and scariest things that you could possibly do, that pretty much no one else is willing to do. And you did it, and you stuck with it. And so would I do it again the way that I did it? Absolutely not. I think it would kill me, but, like, am I coming out on the other side with things that I never would have gotten any other way? Yeah, absolutely.