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Action Academy | Millionaire Mentorship For Your Life & Business
A Year Into Business Ownership: How He Went From Corporate Employee to a $6M+ Business RollUp w/ Piercyn Charbonneau
00:42:01
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- [00:00]
A
So if you take two companies that are doing 500 and you bolt them on or tuck them in, like Pearson just said, all of a sudden you just shortcut it your way to a million dollars. You can go from a $1.5 million valuation to all of a sudden now you're looking at like a 6 to 9 million dollars valuation through just a handful of deals.
- [00:16]
B
The purchase price was 900,000 for that business. We jumped in, increased it to just under 900,000 before the end of the year annualized, and it was not the right path.
- [00:27]
A
This is the real, real, because I can tell you one thing that's a virtual certainty thing as a perfect business. There is no such thing as a passive business. And if you put perfect to passive together in the same sentence, then I've got oceanfront property to sell you in Idaho. It's hard to say when you're going through it that you're going to be like, hey, you're going to be here a year from now saying, hey, this is kind of fun. But it is. You become addicted to it. And you look at companies like Meta and Tesla and all of these big companies and they have the bankroll to go hire the best in the world at whatever function they want to improve. And that's sick. All right, all right, Pearson, you and I, along with now many other Action Academy members as our small but mighty team has grown, are doing a multi million dollar strategy that before was reserved exclusively for the elite, for the back rooms and for the private equity professionals. But now this is available to Main street is something that we're doing in Action Academy. I would, if I had my way and I could wave a magic wand, it's what all of Action Academy would be doing. What are we doing right now in commercial cleaning and how are we going to make millions of dollars from this?
- [01:38]
B
Yeah, excited to be here and excited to talk about our strategy. So we, we are just past one year in Hoods of Kansas City. We've kind of pivoted. It did not go the direction I fully expected it to from the beginning. But what we are now pivoting to a roll up model doing tuck ins left and right. We did our first one this May. We've got a handful of other ones on our radar. And just for the listeners, that means we are using a platform model for our service company and buying up local competition between mom and pops, other hoods, franchise locations, things like that, and expanding that way. It's a, it's a shortcut.
- [02:25]
A
It really is a shortcut. And I mean, that's what private equity companies do. So can you explain how wealth creation happens through this process? Because for somebody that's listening that maybe is making, you know, $300,000, they're an senior engineer or something, and they've got a couple of Airbnbs and they're learning about business buying. They're trying to figure out, okay, cool, so I know that I could buy a business for 10% down, I could do all of that. And I know that a business is normally valued at multiples of profit. So let's say that they already know that. So for example, a $500,000 profit business, maybe a 3 to 5x multiple, which would put it at a 1.5 to $2 million business. How does this impact the multiple and impact the enterprise value?
- [03:16]
B
Yeah, so like you said, a business between, you know, zero and $500,000 in SDE is going to run you anywhere between a three and a five times purchase multiple. Once you get up past 500,000 or so, it can range, it can be from four to seven times multiple, up to a million in free cash flow. And that's when, that's when the multiples really start to jump. So just by combining existing businesses in, jacking up our SD quickly and then stabilizing, it's kind of proof that anybody can roll up this model. And that's why it's so appealing to future buyers and other businesses like that is because you are increasing the revenue by so much so quickly and showing you're able to stabilize. It was a repeatable process that, that they can pick up.
- [04:12]
A
Yeah, and this just for reference, guys, this applies to all industries. But I want to double click here because this is, I think the best wealth generation move in the next decade is doing exactly what Pearson and I are doing here. And I want to just really make sure that it drives home for the listener because this applies to the same industry. I want to be very, very clear about that. So don't go buy a plumbing company, then a roofing company, then a laundromat and try to bolt them all together. That doesn't work. How this works is you want to buy something that is either in the same exact industry and or vertically integrated within the industry. So an example of that is, you know, I've got a friend that has self storage facilities and he bought a company that does the garage doors that go on the self storage facilities. So that's a vertically integrated company. So this ha. This works with roofers. It'd be buying a roofing company, then buying more roofing companies. More roofing companies, more roofing companies. Because there's two different ways to grow your revenue and two different ways to grow your profit. You can have organic growth, which is what you naturally drive through business operations or acquired growth, acquisition growth, which is what we're talking about. So if you take two companies that are doing 500 and you bolt them on or tuck them in, like Pearson just said, all of a sudden you just shortcutted your way to a million dollars. All the operating systems can now intertwine. You can now benefit from economies of scale. You have cross sells and cross training between your different teams. And now you're able to have that million dollar multiple which can again, like you can go from a $1.5 million valuation to all of a sudden now you're looking at like a 6 to 9 million dollars valuation through just a handful of deals. And so that's why this is, I think, the single coolest strategy. So do you want to say anything more about the specific strategy or do we want to just get into like sequentially how we're pulling this off? Pearson?
- [06:10]
B
Yeah, let's just get into how we're pulling it off.
- [06:14]
A
Cool. After you.
- [06:17]
B
So the, the goal, like Brian said, is, is to, is to put together and combine companies doing relatively similar services. It doesn't need to be 100% identical. And it does help when the business that you're purchasing is already running and functioning properly. One thing we learned was, was that some of these are going to come with some baggage. Whether that's employees, whether that's processes and systems, whether it's data collection information, lots and lots of potential baggage. But the goal really is to combine businesses that are doing very similar services or vertically integrated.
- [07:05]
A
And for people listening, this is hard. Like, it's not easy. This is not passive income. We're not going to mention passive income one time in, in this. Like we're talking about, if you guys do this strategy, you're going to make six figures, take home in a deal, active income, but you're going to own the business. And by the end of this, if we do this the right way, within three to five years, we're all sitting with millions and millions of dollars in, in free, net free cash from the sell of this to private equity. So let's begin with the original purchase, do a quick recap about the original purchase, then the second purchase, and now what we're planning to do in the future. And then we're going to go into how we're operating, you know, what were the things that we expected, what were the things that we missed? That will be the tail end of the episode. So let's do a little recap about the actual acquisitions themselves.
- [07:55]
B
So the first one, we were originally under contract in March of 2024. Negotiated, fell in and out of contract, ended up getting 90% seller financing. But it took us until mid September of last year to get there. Got in, thought the process and the strategy was going to be dive in and grow by sales. That's been my strong suit. I love sales. I love program building and stabilization. That was not the case. I thought we were walking into a well oiled machine. A program that we would be able to just throw the gasoline on with the sales process and expand that way. And quickly realized that that was not, was not all we were going to have to do. Our systems were broken, the technicians were untrustworthy, unreliable. It was all around pretty bad. I did step in and hit sales pretty hard. But I didn't feel comfortable about the product and the service we were selling. We added about 75,000 in revenue. And back to the original numbers. The purchase price was 900,000 for that business. SD was roughly 300,000. It was on track to do about 815,000 top line revenue the year we bought it. There's a bit of a step back from the year before. We jump in, increased it to just under 900,000 before the end of the year. Annualized and it was not the right path. I needed to take a step back and stop selling. I didn't believe in the product. It was very difficult for me to contact people and convincingly sell them our service.
- [09:41]
A
So what do you, what do you do in that situation? Because that's a situation that a lot of people are in and guys like this is, this is the real real. Because I can tell you one thing that's a virtual certainty is there is no such thing as a perfect business. There is no such thing as a passive business. And if you put perfect to passive together in the same sentence then I've got oceanfront property to sell you in. Idaho doesn't exist. So everything that the one thing that is true is the owner is passive in the business. We can guarantee that because a lot of the times there's a bunch of stuff going wrong. So it's all about the capabilities of the entrepreneur and who you become through the process to be able to determine how big and how passive you can make this thing. So you've got this standoff. So you, this Maybe go back so that somebody can get a very, very clear picture here for that, somebody that's buying a small business. You close. Walk me through the 30, 60, 90, what we did and then what you would do now that you know better. Any changes you would make.
- [10:46]
B
So many. Yeah. So throughout the entire negotiation phase and in the due diligence term between March and September of last year, I. I was working with the seller pretty, pretty consistently. I had my hands in the business. We were doing calls together with potential customers so that I could hear what the sales cycle was like. Uh, the theme of our conversations was basically that he only worked in the business about five hours a week. And that's why it was so appealing to me, was because I knew, or at least I thought the business was operating properly with such little effort. And I was willing to absolutely throw myself into this thing, which was good because as it turns out, the business was not functioning properly. Um, like I said, there were all of the issues with the technician and training and quality and things like that. So our 30, 60, 90 quickly, quickly changed. After about a week of being in the business, I wanted to not focus on changing anything on the technician side. I wanted to not rock the boat. I wanted to learn from them in shadow. And, you know, it lasted for about a month before I had to absolutely just step in and make changes. I was worried for a while that they were not going to be received well, that the guys would not want to be held accountable, that they wouldn't want to see new direction for the business, that they wouldn't want to increase the service quality. I was super pleasantly surprised to find out that everybody actually liked the additional care that I was taking of the business, the effort I was putting in, kind of the investment that I was making in them to get them trained and make sure that they were doing well and providing high quality service. And really during the end of the transition period, about 60 days in, everybody kind of came to me and said, really? Like what you're doing with the business. Could not be happier about this new direction. It's cool to work somewhere that I feel proud of, of doing the work at. Like, I. I show up excited to go and take care of our customers. Now, before, it was just I'd show up, do what I needed to do and leave. And it was really cool to hear that feedback.
- [13:09]
A
I was about to say, yeah, how'd that feel?
- [13:14]
B
It felt great. Yeah. I. One of the main things that I've always wanted to do is create a really good work environment for my Employees. And I was so afraid to rock the boat and, and ruin the, the culture of the business. And to, to hear their feedback afterwards that that's what they actually wanted and that's what the business needed and that they agreed with everything that was going on was, was really powerful, actually kind of empowered me to make a lot more positive changes with their help.
- [13:45]
A
A coach of mine gave me the feedback that champions crave accountability, you know, so it's you, you either coach people up in your business or you coach people out of your business. And so, I mean, we've both ran into that and it's, it's a, it's a huge thing. And, and also, I want to say this too. Like, man, I didn't, I didn't. I wasn't even available to help you during this. And it makes me feel bad. I, I understand that I was passive in the business, but it's just even myself, like I didn't have the bones yet. Like I didn't have the chops to be able to come in and help, which now I can. Because at the end of the day, you can go read all the John Maxwell books you want, you can go jack off detraction and eos if you feel like it. But at the end of the day, until you're actually just sitting across from customers and you have to have a really tough conversation, or you're sitting from in front of employees and you have to have really tough conversations, the truth of business is there is no, like, right way, wrong way, there is no easy way, hard way. It's either. This sucks. This also sucks. What's the best suck for the business? So can you kind of share being in that position and like, how do you choose which suck to kind of tackle?
- [15:00]
B
Yeah, I think at the end of the day that the best suck to choose is typically the one that is most painful in the moment, but has the highest upside on the back end, which usually means it's going to be the best for the customers. Extremely high quality customer service is always going to be my priority. So choosing the action, whatever it is, whether it's the harder one or if it happens to be the easy one, it's whatever is going to ultimately result in the best quality of customer service. The most referrals. Because people enjoy the work we do. Yeah.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Sometimes it's harder. Usually it's harder.
- [15:41]
A
Yeah. So before we get on from this, this day 90 period or day 60 period, where you come in, you kind of clean house, you set new standards, you set new culture, they thank you for it. You and the rest of our team pretty extensively underwrote this business. I can't really name many people that underwrote more thoroughly and proficiently than you guys did. What's advice, knowing what you know today where that you can now give to somebody that's in the process to help them mitigate as much as possible, like what are the questions they should be asking or what are things they should be paying attention to that maybe we didn't pay attention to as much.
- [16:19]
B
Yeah, so we were pretty good about being conservative about growth for the first year. I, I truly thought we could, we could add 30% to the business by organic regular outbound sales. And we didn't put that in any of the projections, any of the investor modeling, things like that. I could not recommend that more be extremely conservative because you just don't know what's going to happen. We ended up hitting our goals and surpassing them, but for those first 90 days, I wasn't sure we were going to even come close to it. Just because I had to stomp the brakes on sales and really slow down the new customer acquisition process. I would say if anything, underwrite as conservatively as possible, undersell to your investors and you know, do not exaggerate about your abilities. Be very realistic about the skill sets that you have, what skills you need to work on, and if there's any gaping holes in your ability, you need to find a partner who fills them.
- [17:21]
A
So what was your skill set? Stack? What's, what were your gaping holes and what partners filled what for you? Because I wasn't of any help. Hey, if I can give you any flowers. I was over here being a little passive princess. I was, I was having the time of my life collecting my checks. But now I feel bad as this podcast is continuing. I'm like, ah, I wish I helped Pearson.
- [17:46]
B
No, no, I, I actually, I, it was for the better that you never stepped in. I had spent the last nine years developing my skill sets in terms of management and subscription service program building. I actually was not lacking on the operations side. What I was lacking was enough experience managing this type of blue collar labor. In my past, I've managed white collar employees, teams of blue collar employees. This, this is a different breed of employees that we're dealing with. Very hard manual labor overnight, completely unsupervised in a lot of bars and restaurants where there's booze and cash just laying around. Who knows what's going to happen. Trust is a huge part of that. I needed to quickly develop a skill set of leadership for that type of personality. Other than that, I, in all honesty, was pretty well prepped from my corporate role and from my experience that I had to do operations and sales sells really well in the past.
- [18:51]
A
Yeah, what. What's some advice that you can give? Because I feel a lot of people that are listening to this will buy something in the trades and it will be H Vac. And again, this isn't saying anything necessarily negative. It's just saying it's different. It's completely different from how I manage the Action Academy team, which is very white collar, to managing electricians, managing roofers, managing people climbing trees to cut tree limbs, manufacturing, or people that are cleaning junk out of kitchen hoods. What are some leadership lessons that you learned for somebody that's listening to this, that's looking to buy a service business in the trades?
- [19:34]
B
I think it's really important to meet your people where they're at. That's something I had to learn quickly in my last role, managing blue collar employees was. Okay, I cannot talk to them in corporate speak. I can't circle the wagons or. Or any of.
- [19:51]
A
Circle back.
- [19:52]
B
Yeah, circle back. Or put a pin in there.
- [19:54]
A
Touch base.
- [19:55]
B
That does not work with them. You need to meet them where they're at. Just like any sales job or any customer service role, you need to fully be a chameleon when you're talking to these people and don't pander and don't come off as cringy and use, you know, ridiculous phrases that you hear and think they use. Like, you need to actually slide into the way that they talk. You need to make an effort to dress the way they do. There are a lot of subtle things that you can do that really speed up them accepting you kind of into their. Into their pool of. Of people.
- [20:29]
A
Yo, what's up, guys? One sec. You're listening to a podcast right now, and I freaking love that. But this is not making you more money. What makes you more money, more wealth, more equity, is being in the room with the people that you're hearing on today's episode. If you want to be around hundreds of other people like you leaving corporate America, doing big deals in business, commercial, real estate, and land, check out action academy.com. go in the show, link the show description, and click the link to book a call with our membership director team. We'll give you the resources, the connections in the community to actually pull off the stuff that you're learning about on this podcast, and we'll hold you accountable to the actual implementation of the the information that is actionacademy.com now let's get back to today's episode. I'll share some of my experience from the past and I'm curious if. I'm curious if you share the same experience. So my previous role is like I was in B2B sales, which a lot of people think is white collar. And at the surface level, it was white collar because I was forced to be clean shaven to wear a suit and tie every single day. Quickly realized after about a solid two months on the job that they're sending me out to factories in auto, auto parts manufacturers and in H vac companies wearing shirt, suit, tie. And so everybody thought I was either coming to sue them, screw them, or that I was gonna like, I was in corporate coming to like take over so everybody would run and hide, which is ridiculous for the company that I was employed by to force me to wear that stuff. So I quickly realized that I had to have a change of clothes in the car. So I would pull out of the, the Kennesaw parking lot of my office. I would go down the street to Dunkin Donuts or a quick trip. And I had a pair of Carhartt jeans and embroidered polo with my company name on it and some boots that I would put on. I'd take my watch off and then I'd kind of mess my hair up a little bit. And then that's what I would sell in all day. And so the running joke was then you would go and you would change back into your shirt and tie to go back into the office. But then when you're actually out in the field, you know, I'm cussing a little bit more than normal. I'm talking about the football games. I'm speaking their speak. I'm actually like, it's the, it's how to win friends and influence people more than anything. It's mirroring is what we're talking about. So A's mirroring exactly what you just said. B for me, the first thing that I did when I was trying to get my service techs that were on the trucks delivering these uniforms, I just hopped on the truck with them and I was like, I'm gonna wear what you're wearing. I'm gonna be there at 5am I'm gonna go get the donuts, I'm gonna get the coffee, I'm gonna get the monster energy drinks. I'm gonna come here and I'm gonna help you scan dirty pants for the next eight hours and I'm gonna Let you know that I'm no better than you. And for me personally that's how I've always been able to build really fast rapport and that was one of the reasons I was the top guy was because all of my text loved me and they would send me so much business. I'm curious if you bring them to the same experience.
- [23:30]
B
Yeah, absolutely. That is, that is how you become a well trusted and likable person for the, for the people that you manage in that, in that group of people. Could not agree more. Obviously mirroring, dressing, similar, throwing in some more cuss words and you know, non corporate language. I, I think that your point to the amount of value that comes from you showing that you are willing to do any job that you're asking them to do.
- [24:01]
A
You're not above anything. You're not above anything.
- [24:04]
B
No. So in my last job in this role, everybody knows like I am not going to ask him to do something that I'm not willing to do. During that first 30, 60, 90 at Hoods, I was, I was on truck shadowing overnight, working full days and full nights, a lot of times, you know, with maybe five or six hours of sleep between. But I wanted them to know that I was there in it with them and that we were a team and that I needed, I needed to learn from them as much as I possibly could. And I think that that's, you know, not only did they see you as an, as more of an equal or an understanding elevated position, but for them to be able to teach you gives them a lot more buy in on your success as well.
- [24:49]
A
Yeah. Another big leadership lesson that I've learned that we now implement is instead of telling them what to do, instead asking them what's possible. And that was a big thing that we just learned and I've implemented that in our businesses and holy crap, it's so different. And an example of this for people listening specifically would be instead of going into your roofing company and being like, all right guys, like you're responsible for hitting selling 20 roofs this month and right now the current output is 10. So basically you're coming in, you're like, we're doubling it. Which is what sales does all the time from the top. Rather than doing that, you're going in and you're like, all right guys, we're setting new goals, like what do we think is possible together? And it's called getting way in before the buy in. So it's just like everybody's weighing in, they're like, you know, What I think we can do 21. And then like the top person's like, Well, I do 24. And I don't see why everybody else is just being lazy. Like, they can do it too. And all of a sudden now it's like the entire team's creating it and then you're just stoking the fire and then you're like, you know what? 24 sounds good to me. And it's so effing hard to do that instead of just being like, here's the target. But now I've done it multiple times and it just blows it out of the water. Dude, it's so cool. So can you give maybe some a light at the end of the tunnel for people? So you learned these lessons kind of. Now how do you feel on the tail end of this? It's been over a year. Are things starting to get a little bit smoother now? I mean, obviously we, we bolted on another company, so that just kind of added more complexity to it. But walk us through it. What can people expect is what I really want them to take away from this podcast episode.
- [26:41]
B
Yeah, so I, we hit on it earlier. I think the main point is that you should not be expecting to step into a business and have it be super easy. Like you are going to need to bring all of your existing skill sets and then break and relearn them and all sorts of stuff. Now, a little over a year in I, you know, fast forwarding, we added on this other company. We merged. It was a very difficult process, but we got through it and I learned the skill set I needed to, to, to do it more in the future. What we've also been able to do is build out a full sales team, which is incredible. You know, I as. As confident and cocky as I was, I thought I was going to be the only one who was able to to sell as many new accounts as I did.
- [27:25]
A
I hope I had a part, I hope I had a part of this. In the admin, I was like, dude, why are you still selling? I did the same thing. I was like, nobody could sell Action Academy besides me. And now we have a full sales team and it's just wonderful.
- [27:37]
B
Yeah, it's been incredible. We had basically one full time salesperson for part of the summer. We were tweaking our training programs and everything and we finally had that system fully up and running. Um, in the last month we had one and a half full time salespeople. Somebody joined halfway through the month and they already closed more contracts in a single month. Than I was ever able to. As of last week, we now have four full time commission only salespeople and they are crushing it. We are, we're going to grow through organic and outbound like I never thought was going to be possible. It's, it's, it's been really great. So I've been able to take a huge step back from, from the sales side. Obviously I still do the high level networking and you know, the lead magnet type things, but really the sending contracts, closing, follow ups, that's all going through them and they could not be doing a better job.
- [28:35]
A
Yeah, it's so, it's so good, dude. It's so, it's so different and you just, you kind of dig your heels in for so long and you're like, oh, nobody can do this better than me. But as soon as you're working like on the business, not in the business, then it's, it's so much more rewarding. And then also like, I don't know, dude, like there's, there's like this really cool sense of accomplishment. I think when you kind of unlock different things in the business because for instance, like we don't know paid ads and we're just now learning paid ads and then it's really hard. And then when you unlock it, you're like, dude, I get 100% of this upside down. That's what's different is you're already doing hard stuff in corporate, but now it's when it's your business, you're like, oh, wow, no, hold on a second. I own 100% of this. It's really cool. Can you talk to that?
- [29:28]
B
Yeah, it's, I mean, it's incredible. It's exactly like you said. I built out sales teams and administrative teams and labor teams in the past through corporate. And you know, in the beginning when you're setting up those programs, obviously your salary is a higher percentage of the net revenue or the total revenue generated by those programs. But then as you continue to build out more systems and build out teams, your salary becomes a much, much, much smaller percentage of the over overall profit for that program. And in this, it's like as big as I can scale through leveraging other people and training them and being a good leader, that, that is as big as my income is going to get. It's unlimited. It's infinite.
- [30:13]
A
Yeah. And you become obsessed with personal development because then you're, you become so much better that you can now go and say, oh, holy crap, now I, I pull this lever and now all Of a sudden that's another hundred thousand, another a hundred thousand, another million. And another thing that you're talking about also from the very beginning, I like that you brought it up, is shifting. It's like the dance between operations and sales. You're always going to go back and forth like that's never going to stop. And so right now I'm a little bit more back in operations than sales and marketing. But then as soon as you fix the operations constraints and bottlenecks, then you go back over to sales and marketing and then you work on that again and you just kind of go back and forth. And what I've just come to realize and the muscle that I'm working on, building on is that none of the problems that you're running into are really worth the stress that you're prescribing to them. It's just we prescribe that stress because we've just never ran into that problem before. But then once you run into it one time, then you're like, okay, I've seen this before. Now what? You know. So can you share some examples of that?
- [31:21]
B
Yeah, I mean the personal development unlocks have been crazy. And honestly I would say probably the standout biggest thing I've learned for sure is we're only going to scale to the level of my ability. So continuing to develop my skill sets and like you said, jumping from ops to sales and then selling until ops breaks and then switching over to ops to fix that bottleneck and then getting that so streamlined that guys don't have enough work and then switching back over to sales and growing until we break the next thing and back and forth and back and forth. It is so much fun, honestly is running into issues where I've been the bottleneck time wise on things before, but my skill set has never really been challenged like this. And it's, it's been super fun. Like I can see myself unlocking new skills and new like new leadership abilities every day. And it's, it's cool. It's just cool.
- [32:18]
A
And you build so much confidence too because you're like, dude, like put me into any company and I can do this. Like I just did it and you're like, put me into a company. I can, I can run this. You know, and then that's, you know, we're doing a lot of Tony Robbins stuff and Tony Robbins whole stuff is just like, you have this like zone of competence that's a circle around you and then you have the problem that's outside the zone of competence. And so you have to stretch the circle, which is uncomfortable, to go tackle and swallow that problem. Then another problem occurs. So you have to tackle and swallow that problem. And it's just like, dude, it's, it never stops. But a big thing that I learned recently was it's like you're gonna hit all your goals. Like all of us are gonna either figure it out or we're gonna die. That's it. There's no other option. Like you're either gonna figure it out and get through it or you're gonna die. And so there's no point stressing about it. And so the last couple of weeks of this business is like, we've been some of the most like anxiety inducing, stress crippling weeks that I've had and everything worked out and I got over it. I didn't die. And so it's hard, it's hard to say when you're going through it that you're gonna be like, hey, you're gonna be here a year from now saying, hey, this is kind of fun. But it is. And you're directly, economically, like rewarded for that.
- [33:44]
B
You get all the upsides for making it through. Yeah.
- [33:48]
A
Yeah. So what's next, man? So we've got the sales team rolling. We've got the second team bolted on, which I think as soon as you said that and I wired the money for that transaction, I was like, this one's going to be the one that is the toughie is bringing on a new team and introducing them to your systems and culture and getting them bought in. But you did it. So now what's next moving forward?
- [34:14]
B
Yeah. So also on the hiring and stepping back side, I about three weeks ago promoted one of our service technicians from just a service technician to a night supervisor. So previously I'd been working basically from 6am to 9 or 10 or 11pm Pretty much every day. And then being on call from 11pm to 5am when the guys were out working. I hire, I promoted from, from an inside one of our service technique technicians to a manager. And he's been the guy in the field doing what I would do. Our service quality has increased significantly and it's like it's taken all the stress off my plate for overnight work. So I'm thinking clearly again. I'm getting a full seven, eight hours of sleep and like functioning properly. And earlier last week I was like, okay, I'm ready for a new challenge. Things have stabilized. It looks like we have fixed a lot of our OPS problems. We're on the track to Scaling significantly through outbound sales Team's in a good place. Now it's time to go out and hunt for new, new, new businesses to tuck in. So a lot of my time is going to be focused on networking with local, local ownership groups, mom and Pops, other nearby hoods, franchises really growing that way so that we can. We can kind of double and triple our. Our profit and then hit those. Hit those giant revenue multiple.
- [35:48]
A
Yeah. A big lesson I want to take out from this is that this is why you buy a bigger business instead of a smaller business, period. And it's not because of the multiples. It's not because of all this. It's just simply because you have enough revenue to hire, and there's not a problem that can't be solved by writing a check. And that's the number one thing that I've realized is I was like, oh, my God. Like, this is because in the beginning, like, I built. Like, so this is like, I built this. So I was everything. So I was marketing, I was sales, I was fulfillment, I was legal, I was finance, I was hr. I was everything all at the same time. And now it's like, you can just hire functions, because even the. Even for us at Action Academy now hiring Shelby to do the events, and now all of a sudden, it's like, we have somebody to actually, like, go out and hunt and find. Find hotels for us. Because it's a lot of negotiation and a lot of. A lot of planning to get our full event calendar done for 2026. And she's out hunting, and she's out finding deals. And while she's doing that, it's like we're bringing in more people on the. On the service side to come coach and do this and do that, and you own this, you own that. And the better and better and better you get at this, you realize that the ultimate level of business isn't building the business yourself, but it's building the team and building the culture that builds the business. And so that's where we're at right now. And it's freaking fun because now you become addicted to it. And you look at companies like Meta and Tesla and all of these big companies, and now you. You finally get it because they have the bankroll to go hire the best in the world at whatever function they want to improve. And that's sick. And so now we're getting to that point where we're like, all right, cool. Like, who needs a 200,000 to $400,000, like, base salary? Like, what does that position look like for us? I feel it coming soon. You know, I don't know what it is yet, but it's just, it's, it's cool. All of this is cool. And I'm trying to remind myself not to stress out as much as I'm trying to remind you. It's a lot, man.
- [37:53]
B
Well, that's cool. It's actually been really cool to watch you implement a bunch of these changes and improvements the last couple weeks since your announcements. I cannot believe how much it's improved in the three years that I've been in Action Academy and watching it go from basically you and Caitlin trying your best to get things done to having people who have implemented systems for you in terms of onboarding and training and running things. It's. It is night and day. It's in terms of the quality of product that you're providing and the service of the mastermind. It's. I mean, you hate to hear it because you didn't do it all on your own except for build the teams, but it's, I mean, it's, it is better than I could have imagined. I'm sure it's better than you could have ever imagined.
- [38:41]
A
I still struggle to be grateful for that at the same time because all we focus on is what's wrong and what needs to be improved, you know. But the reality of the situation is we've got 532 members with $632 million of acquisition done. And that's sick. I mean, you're one of them. Like, I've done multiple deals with you and we're just going to continue pumping out deals together and, and roll this all up together. So I mean, it's a, it's a big deal, man. Like, it's just getting better too. Like we, I would say right now that we are, we're great at what we do, but we're not like elite. I want to be to the point where we're so elite that nobody can touch us like you can't. You can't touch us because of the quality of talent and systems and process and in org chart depth that we have. So that's what we're working on right now. So the next couple of years is going to be even crazier for this stuff, man, is like, it's going to be crazy. And you've been helping, you've been in a super huge help too. Like being in the thick of it, helping people as they've been going through. So we appreciate that too, man. So Maybe if you can tell people in closing kind of where can they find out more about you and any advice if they're kind of on the fence about doing something like Action Academy. What do you recommend?
- [39:58]
B
Probably easiest to reach out to me on Instagram at this point it's just Pearson C, P, I, E R C Y N C. Or you can message the Hoods of Kansas City Instagram account. I get that too. At least until I, I figure out how to delegate social media properly.
- [40:13]
A
That's a hire.
- [40:14]
B
Yeah, it'll be one when it, when the time comes. Reach out to me there. I'm happy to talk about pros, cons of Action Academy of buying a business. If you're looking at a business, happy to help underwrite it. Talk to you about it. Really any anything you need in terms of buying a business. Like it's, it's what I do for fun at this point as, as an ace, it's my favorite calls of the week are the, the ones where people are in the thick of it, underwriting deals, trying to negotiate seller financing, figuring out broker relationships. Bring me your problems. Let me help solve them.
- [40:51]
A
All right guys, go follow Pearson. And as always, thank you so much for tuning into Action Academy. Guys, you're listening to this. In November, we're about to do the biggest and best Black Friday offer ever done before for Action Academy. So sit tight. It's coming. It's gonna be the last two weeks of the month. Talk soon, guys. Boom. Thank you guys so much for listening to another episode of the Action Academy podcast. My one ask real quick before you go. If you enjoy this episode, if it brought value to you, please share this episode with one to three friends that you think could get value from it. This is how we grow the show and at minimum, if you could leave us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or whatever platform you listen to, Google that would mean the world to us is how we get in front of other entrepreneurs. If you're done sitting on the sidelines, you're done listening to the podcast and you want to be the freaking guest on the podcast, go into action academy.com, go in the show description, the show link and book a call to speak with our Action Academy community. We have hundreds and hundreds of people just like you buying businesses and commercial real estate with full coaches, full mentors, full support, full capital, everything. ActionAcademy.com is where you'll find us.