Like A Champion Podcast | M&A Mastery with Wes Shelton

Kevin Couper | Ditching Wealth Management, Buying a Plumbing Company and Owning His Future #14

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Former wealth-manager Kevin Couper discusses why he walked away from finance and used Acquira’s “search-funder” playbook to buy 30-year-old Kyle Plumbing transforming it from construction-heavy and paper-based to service-focused, tech-driven, and rapidly scaling. 


He and host Wes Shelton unpack their experience from two years ago when Wes served as a sell-side advisor for Kyle Plumbing, discussing the process, overcoming its challenges, tips and insights from their experiences and other great business minds like Gary V and Alex Hormozi. They also talk through some of the successes that followed, like Kevin rolling out ServiceTitan and AI chatbots, as well as the straight-talk KPIs & culture moves he made that keep top plumbers on the team. 


If you’re looking to sell, are considering buying or just crave more control over your career—you won’t want to miss this episode of Like A Champion.

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[00:00:00] 

Wes: There was just pretty strong research to say that the sellers sell for less money by doing that. But in their mind it's like, Hey, I don't have to pay a broker or an advisor. So 

Kevin: that's interesting because I did two smaller deals. They did not have a broker, and I got sweetheart deals because I learned a ton working with you and like there's still so much to learn in deals.

You could structure them a million different ways. Yeah, yeah. And I think it's just Pennywise dollar foolish. Like, hey, I'll save 10% on the backend. But it's like, okay, but if you get a one x purchase price and you save, you know, a hundred grand, cool. But you could have got three x.

Wes: So Kevin, like a champion. 

Thanks for coming on. Yeah, thanks for having me. It's uh, this is an episode I was really excited about specifically because we got a chance to do a deal together. And it was a transaction, like many, I think was challenging in ways. But I think it also, I feel like we were [00:01:00] able to establish like a mutual trust right away and For sure.

And um, and, and just work through the details and get it done. And so for me that was really fun. And obviously you're still here, you know, talking to me two years later. Yeah. So it couldn't have been, couldn't have been too bad on your end. No. 

But just starting off, you spent years preparing for a career in wealth management.

Yep. You did undergraduate work and graduated from Johnson and Wales. Yep. Major in finance, minor in entrepreneurship. Then you get out and for those who don't know, series 7 66, life and Health and Certified Financial Planning. All licenses and designations you got, which required a tremendous amount of time to get done.

Yeah. So you go out in the field. Help me understand at what point you said, you know what, I don't wanna do this anymore. I'm gonna go out and buy a business or, uh, which ended up being a plumbing business. Want to hear that story? 

Kevin: Yeah. 

So in college, uh, you know, I started with [00:02:00] entrepreneurship as the minor and I, I loved it.

So my intention was to kind of come out and start my own thing, whatever it was. I just liked business. And then I kind of felt like, you know, I got the gist of it and I was like, Hey, let me, let me learn about this finance thing. This is always interesting. You know, stocks and stuff. Lemme learn about that.

And then I started thinking like, Hey, maybe I could just go into finance route and start my own finance company. I was like, cool. So graduated and it was, I was like, Hey, let me just get some licenses. And started with an insurance company, got some sales chops going and just kept getting licenses as I went.

Five years in, got my CFP was making good money. I liked the sales side of it, business development side of it. Worked in New York, opened an office in California, then I ended up in Bo at open an office here. And, uh, it was good. It just, it was just boring after a while because it just kills your entrepreneurial spirit.

'cause finance, you're just regulated by so many entities. Like [00:03:00] for example, LinkedIn, you can't even, you have to shut off your testimonials. You can't have people give you testimonials. You can't really have Google reviews per se. So it's really just schmoozing and stuff like that, which I'm good at. But it's just, it just kind of, you know, you're very limited.

It's almost like a popularity contest. And I kind of got, I, I learned a lot and it was just kind of the same old thing. Mm-hmm. You know, and I kind of realized I was at scale. 'cause once you get 80 ish clients that you're working with, managing their wealth, you can't really go any further than that unless you hire people below.

So I considered, you know, starting my own finance company and I was like, well. Passion's not really there, it's still kind of boring. So at some point I was like, you know, I thought about it for years and then when I was in, in Boca running the office here, I just, I was just so bored and I like realized, I was like miserable.

I just hated going to work. 

Even though I was good at it, I had good relationship with my customers and, uh, I realized I just, I, I was either gonna do, start a franchise, which I almost pulled the trigger on, start something from [00:04:00] scratch, but there was too much risk because I had a, a newborn daughter and I was like, well, let me go look at buying a business.

And I realized I didn't really care what business it was. I just kind of liked the game of business. And that's where I kind of stumbled upon the home services space. I got in touch with a consultant, kind of like a partnership thing to train me how to look for businesses to buy. And that's when we honed on that.

You know, investment thesis, home services, which as you know, is very popular right now with private equity groups and stuff. So it seems like it was a good move and, uh, started looking at a bunch of businesses. So this, I think Kyle Plumbing was the 20th business I looked at when I met you. I had an LOI and one other flooring company that went bus pretty quickly.

The numbers weren't there. And uh, yeah, the motivation was just, I just wanna be my own boss. I wanna, I kind of figured, hey, if I'm 80 years old and I look back, what would I regret? And the only thing I'd regret was not doing something business related versus taking the safe route. You know, even though it, I was successful in it, you know, in my [00:05:00] opinion, I just felt like this is something I had to do, I wanted to do.

And I ended up meeting 

Wes: you. That's great. I love that. And so, um, especially the part about looking back and saying, just having that perspective to, to know that you like can only live once and like that was a pivotal time to do it. And, and pretty bold to do it, like you said with a newborn. And, um, I've got a couple kids myself and I know that plays into like, those risk versus reward decisions.

Right. Um, was there anything, I know a lot of people, uh, uh, somebody like you is often categorized as what we would call like a search funder, somebody that's looking to buy and operate a business versus a strategic or, you know, private equity financial buyer. Were there any, um, I know there's a, a popular book out there called, uh, buy then Build, so I didn't know if you were aware of that book or there was some other, what was it that turned you from, Hey, I wanna start a business to actually, I could buy an existing business and have the immediate cash flow and stuff.

Like, was [00:06:00] that something you came to on your own or was there. Somebody turn your sort of thought that way. I think 

Kevin: you're just doing some diligence and starting my own, doing a franchise. Like starting your own. I didn't have the time to do it, you know, 'cause that just takes a lot of time and I just didn't ramp up period.

Yeah, brutal. And uh, I also didn't know any, I didn't know anything about plumbing. Now I'm two years in, I'm pretty dangerous, I think at least. Yeah. I don't do any of the plumbing work, but I can run it from the back end. A franchise to me just had too many rules and I knew I'd be bored and annoyed with that.

Like buying specific vendors, certain marketing, geographical expansion limitations and stuff. So I figured you buy a business, you got an existing client base and for this trades, you know, specifically this business had people in place to run the business. And I can just, you know. Uplift it mm-hmm. Pretty quickly with technology and just my own thoughts that I, I would want to add to it to bring it up to a modern time.

'cause it was a 30-year-old business, very successful business, but it was still [00:07:00] paper print. Yeah, yeah. You know, different types of things where I thought there were some good instant wins to be able to implement pretty quickly. 

Wes: Yeah. I mean, you felt like you could put your sort of fingerprints on it and, and make it your own.

And, and so I love the, I'm always keenly fascinated by what's the play, right? Like, what do you bring into the table? Clearly it's not an expertise in plumbing, not that you couldn't learn it over time, and I think we can learn pretty much everything over time. But just like that, that, that thesis that you talked about earlier, that, um, you know, there's a lot of different ways to attack and, and look at it.

But, um, I, I'm really interested about that part and dig into. What are those instant wins that you felt like that you, did you, did you go after and did you achieve them? 

Kevin: Uh, yes. 

Um, and I just thought there was transferrable skills, like sales skills. I did manage people. I did start things from the ground up in new endeavors in finance, but, uh, one immediate win was really adding [00:08:00] ServiceTitan, which is a software CRM program for field management.

Right. So dispatch, invoice, take payments, basically, you know, pricing estimates right in the field to be able to do things quickly. Mm-hmm. Which was a bear to get off the ground, but now it's up and running and it's just great. I mean, you can send automatic text messages for, Hey, we're on the way. Yeah.

Dispatcher's here, send a picture. Um, so just efficiencies built in for speed and professionalism, whereas before it was they had a printer Yeah. Bolted into the front seat of their truck. And a laptop as well. And they would go back to their truck and type it up and things of that, like that's just a lot of time, a lot of inefficiencies.

Plus it's just easy to, you know, your printer dies, you run outta ink, whatcha gonna do, you can't charge the customer. So that was one instant win. Took a little while to, I had to get the buy-in from the team, like two months in we decided to, to make a move and everyone was on board and we built it. So that was a huge win.

There wasn't really any marketing of any sort going on. There was some minor [00:09:00] website stuff, a little bit of SEO. Yeah, minor. It wasn't, I wouldn't even really categorize it as marketing. So my thought was, hey, if you're successful now you got a nice client base. You know, if we just actually strap on some better marketing here, it should be more of a rocket ship.

So we did that, hired a different marketing agency, new website, new logo, rewrapped, all the trucks. So he had a little bit of a seasoned logo, so we kept the name, but we just kind of upfitted the trucks better. Um, he had big, bulky box trucks that were just gas guzzlers, so I just phased those out and got new Fords.

Um, the guys didn't have a lot of higher end tools on their trucks, just a lot of parts. So I supplied them with these higher end tools, again, for efficiencies. Yeah. So it's like, why, why come back to get that from the warehouse when you can have it in your truck? So it's a bit of an investment for sure.

Yeah. But it pays off pretty quickly once the guys can do the jobs pretty fast. Plus they can bill and charge right then and there. So [00:10:00] those are some immediate wins that I implemented pretty quickly. 

Plus compensation, A lot of the guys were getting paid hourly with some minor spiffs, like 15 bucks if you sell this faucet, 25 bucks if you sell that faucet.

So I, I basically gave everyone a raise instantly and then I went through a few different commission type structures and we all decided together as a team. Which one we were gonna go with, and they were all hesitant. But then week one, week two, they made more money than they ever made, and we never looked back.

So now we're in a place where we're attracting the higher end plumbers, you know, 3, 4, 5 years experience at a minimum. But they like the culture, they like the speed, the technology, how the businesses ran, but they like to pay too. So it's, it's a competitive industry, but the good ones want to get paid well and they kind of want, I just looked at it from a sales perspective.

I just wanted all my tools available and just let me go, you know? Yeah. So I just try to make it as easy as possible for them [00:11:00] to succeed and we handle everything else behind the scenes. 

Wes: Yeah. I love that you build the processes and provided the, you know, the technology and correct the tools they need. I wanna back up a little bit.

Um, this is one of the parts that I found interesting. When we were going through the process. 

You went through a company called Aquira. In Portland, that was what I would essentially call an incubator. Right, right. And so they, my understanding is that you came in and they gave you a lot of the tools and helped guide you in the right direction into buying a business, buying a home service business, evaluating diligence, financing it, integrating it, post-closing.

Would love to hear a little bit more about like how you found that process, how you found them, how you feel like that they added value 

Kevin: to the equation. They're probably the biggest advocate I had during this entire process and even still today. So as I was doing the initial diligence of starting franchise buying, I [00:12:00] guess their algorithm found me so on Google, like, oh really?

Their stuff started popping up on YouTube, you know, Instagram and whatnot. So I had a few calls with them, but they didn't have too many testimonials, so I was a little hesitant, but their. Really, really great group of guys. But I mean, yeah, they had like a little, I call it like a little mini MBA course in m and a that I think I went through in like 30 days or so.

It was 30 to 60 days. It's at your own pace. You pay 'em a little bit of money, you have open access to their literature, their documentation, their education on pretty much every step of the process and honing in on investment thesis. And that's, that's who helped me figure out, hey, the home services space is probably key for what you wanna look for.

And that's what they were interested in looking at too. Um, and then they also had, uh, a weekly phone call, like on Zoom, so everyone's in the same group, whether you just started or you're about to close on a deal. So it was a really good group of like two, 300 people that were in the same arena around the country.

And you just, [00:13:00] it was like a really good way to speed up your learning curve. Like, hey, what, just all different phases of what people were dealing with and you had an open forum to ask questions, hear other people's situations. And I had a coach. That I had access to pretty much once a week, but also on slack and text as well.

Mm-hmm. So they pretty much just educated you on the entire process, but then they were there to help guide you along the way. 

And then, they basically, it was almost like a little mini shark tank where they had like an investment committee. So once they coached you through it, it was very much, you know, you gotta kind of take the bull by the horns.

They're not gonna do it for you. But if you listen to what they were saying, you found a deal, you can put together a quick slide deck that they give you the template. It's like, Hey, fill in the gaps. And as long as your coach kind of signs off on it, says, yeah, this looks decent. Set up a meeting with the investment committee.

You go through it and they try to poke holes in it, not like in an aggressive right way. It was like very nice and helpful. Make sure you're looking at it. Right. Like, hey, be, that's a good idea that, that makes sense. [00:14:00] Ask the questions here. I would like to see more there and just kind of give you the, hey, you're in the right direction.

Or like, I would walk away from this, this deal. So it was very reassuring because it's, you know, a lot of people can, can learn those skills, but just having that, you know, brain bank of people to help bounce ideas off of was huge. And that was, that was pre-deal. And then post-deal, they also had some other add-ons with consultancy that you can kind of tack on, which was also helpful because, you know, everyone's excited.

And then the day of closing I remember it's like, you know, great. It's very exciting. But then the next day you start, you gotta introduce yourself to all these people and it's like, hey, I'm the new owner and I don't, you know, I'm not a plumber. Yeah, right. So having, I had two guys with me there making the introductions and we got to talk to everybody within two days have one-on-ones, but they were with me for nine months.

Kind of just prioritizing, Hey, here's the roadmap, here's the things you should prioritize, you know, financials, let's clean up your p and l to make sure we're at, we're looking at that properly. When should you look at marketing? Who should you hire first? [00:15:00] All like a basic, a roadmap and just a constant resource to call or text if you had a question on, on how things are going.

So it was a nice way to just have that like shoulder to cry on sort of to be like, Hey, what do I do in this scenario? And they just help you versus just going at it alone, which I thought was great. 

Wes: That's an amazing program. Yeah. I mean, education, coaching, vetting all that. Did they help with Align arranging financing or structuring your, your capital stack?

Kevin: Yep. So they help you with how to figure out the financing? They actually co-invested in my ideal. That's not a requirement. Uh, at the time that I was a member, just started and, and they actually liked my deal. So they said, Hey, we'll, we'll co-invest and help you know, their, whether you wanna do SBA or other, other types of financing, it's your call.

And then you just have a conversation about how much you need, how much you want them to be, you know, how, how much percentage you want them to own. But I'm in a driver's seat the whole way. They're more of a silent partner as a, as an investor. So that was also n nerve wracking a little bit. 'cause I, I, I assume that they were gonna be [00:16:00] like, really up my ass, like asking me for this.

Yeah. Right. Left and right and they haven't, they've been great. So even to this day, even people that aren't like the fund manager. He's a great resource if, as we do other deals, uh, just restructuring things from a tax standpoint. And the CEO we talk once a month now just at for free. Like, 'cause we just, we hit it off.

We're buddies. We meet every time he comes to town and we just enjoy catching up and we exchange ideas on like, what's working, what's some of his portfolio companies, what I'm doing. He does some cool stuff with AI recently, so we just exchange ideas and see like, you know, what's working with some other companies and it's just a really good conversation.

Wes: Are you incorporating AI into what you're doing yet? I am. Yeah. And, and, and how, how, what does that look like? 

Kevin: So, I think it's in a couple ways. I use a company called Podium, which it's uh, it's really a text platform. Phone platform. So for example, all our phones go through there. It's like voiceover ip. So all the phone systems.

Go to go to the people's cell phones, right? It's all [00:17:00] recorded. It's all tracked into ServiceTitan. So it syncs together. If we miss a call, you get an automatic AI text that says like, Hey, it's Kyle Plumbing. We saw the call dropped. How can we help? There's a chat bot feature on the website. So it's, and it also sends the reviews out.

There's an AI response right away and everyone can see everything at the same time. So it's a really quick, efficient way, like speed to lead kind of thing. Mm-hmm. So if a customer wants to text in like the a, I will jump in if we're not there and we train the AI to specifically answer certain questions.

So there's like a bank of like a hundred q and a questions for, for you to start with, and then you can continue to train it as you go. Like you can literally click thumbs up, that's a great response, or thumbs down. And it says like, well, what do you want me to say? And it's not like so structured where it's like, say this specific word.

It's like say something like this. So it's more like of a normal conversation. So I've been very impressed with that, but just from a front end. Like lead standpoint or customer conversation standpoint, it's great. And if like the AI gets in [00:18:00] trouble, like they're not sure how to answer a specific question, an immediate alert goes out to three of my girls and any one of 'em can just grab it and they can just respond right away.

Or you can, you can basically do whatever you want. You can say, Hey, if this kind of question comes up, send a message to me. If this happens, send it to the team. So that's one version of AI where it's worked out really well and we're continuing to build upon that in ServiceTitan to kind of just be quicker with our leads and categorize things properly.

Wes: That's amazing. So it's really, it's mainly front end customer service. You know, sales inquiries, stuff like that. Right now, pretty much 

Kevin: it's just all communication via text and IT records and also transcribes conversations, and then it just links that to ServiceTitan too. So we don't really miss anything.

Yeah. And we respond super fast, which is huge. That's also good with Google marketing too, because when a review comes in, it responds right away and it's, it's a nice response. It's not a canned response, it's, it's always something different and it's always spot on so far. But again, you can train it. Yeah.

But Google wants you to respond to reviews in [00:19:00] 24 hours. I think if you look on, on Google, you look, it says like common response time, like a few minutes. 

Wes: Like that's good. Like, so if I leave a positive review, thank you very much, Wes. Like, and if it's negative, I'm sorry. You know, we wanna make this right or you know, if it's 

Kevin: a four or five, I, you can customize it.

But if it's four or five star review, it'll send out automatically. If it's something less, the team gets notified and then we look into it so we can customize it, reach out to the customers. Ah, gotcha. See what's going on. Because that's a little bit more sensitive. Yeah, we wanna look into it. I'll still respond within 24 hours, if not same day.

But I wanna look into it, see what's going on, why is the customer upset, what happened? And we try to, usually we have a very good success rate of like the other day I had a one star review. Looked into it, called her, said, Hey, sorry about that. New tech didn't understand the process. I'm gonna refund your 300 bucks.

Sorry about that. She changed it to a five star review, referred me to a property management company. Like that's great, but like I knew. So I saw right away I called her. She's super appreciative that the owner called her and we got handled [00:20:00] within 24 hours, one star to five star and a referral. And this, we just saved that customer and we got another commercial customer out of it.

So 

Wes: that's all. That is amazing. That is, I mean, what a like way to flip the script. Yeah. From, you know, from the worst of the best scenario. Um, so Kevin, I want to go back earlier you said that Kyle was the 20th company that you saw. 

Curious if you interacted with other advisors or brokers. I mean, I'm sure you did what, what that experience was like.

And we'll drill down a little bit further, but just generally in the sort of. Atmosphere of, m and a, what was your experience 

Kevin: there? Extremely underwhelmed with the quality of the, the brokers, the quality. Um, I would say out of 20 deals I, you and one other broker I was impressed with. It's not even really about being impressed, I was just severely underwhelmed with the quality.

For example, the, the, I mean the follow up time, [00:21:00] uh, just the, the lack of knowledge within the business that they're trying to sell itself, like really weren't getting a lot of details. A lot of them were kind of, you know, pushing for you to sign an LOI, without even getting details. Very hesitant. Like, you know, you sign a confidentiality agreement, you know, NDA, and then you're asked, I'll usually ask for like, you know, basic documents last three years, income statement last three years, balance sheet tax returns as a starting point.

Some guys are like, oh no, I'm not sending you that yet. It's like, dude, I, I need to see that before I commit to like a. An LOI and I can, you can always back out of it, right. But I'm like, why do I have to do that? So, just kind of interesting with just kind of making it difficult to do business. Like they just kind of seemed like they just wanted to get signatures and show, Hey, I got all these signatures.

But it's like, you're not really interested 'cause you don't have enough information yet. 'cause the deck that they give you to kind of basic, there was the, the one company I put an LOI into, you know, he was saying they had a million dollars ebitda. And I'm looking at the documents and [00:22:00] I'm like, this isn't show.

Once he, he finally sent me all this stuff. He was one of those guys that had me sign an LOI, they were like flat, like when you do out, he was like, negative. You do the add-backs. He was like, even So I'm like, what's up? Am I missing something? Yeah. He had no answers. He said, oh my, uh, the corporate handles that, you know, different part of the state.

I was like, okay, can I get on the phone with them? Like, what's up? Because everything else looks good. But this is not jiving. Three, four weeks. I had, I had $1,500 of lawyer costs to like look over the LOI. Yeah. Confirms the data's correct. I'm like, how do you not, you're, you're, you're selling something at a million dollars ebitda and it's really zero.

So that, just to give 

Wes: you an example, do you feel like that their brokers like that are, are simply just trying to bring a buyer into the equation and then sort of put them together and let it hopefully work 

Kevin: out? Probably, but I honestly feel like it's a little bit incompetence. I think you get some people that, I don't know what the requirements are.

I mean, you can speak to that, but like, I feel like you get some realtors that are selling, [00:23:00] you know, homes and they're like, oh, I could sell a house. I could sell a business. Very different dynamic, right? Like, you need to know a lot of details, financials, cultural stuff. Just totally different skillset, I think.

And, uh, I think they're just getting over their skis, like, yeah, I sell businesses. And it's like, you don't know what you're doing. 

Wes: Yeah. I think that there's, there's also a perception in the market amongst many business owners that all the brokers do is bring buyers. And in many cases that may be true. I think that.

A good broker or advisor or investment banker does a lot more than just bring a buyer. But there's that perception, and I think it's a lot because of brokers like that who are just bringing buyers and introducing them to the seller, and they'll just sit on the call or the zoom or whatever and let 'em talk and just kind of hoping they figure out without, you know, really having the deep financial knowledge and expertise to understand how EBITDA works.

And, you know, taking three years plus financials and, you know, understanding how the adjustments that are made and, and all of that stuff [00:24:00] that it's a science, right? I mean, you're trying to figure out what's the cash flow that the gen, that business is generating. And so, stepping further down into that topic of, you know, the, the businesses that you're seeing beyond the brokers, what are the common themes that you saw in the businesses that you passed on?

Because we see that, I mean, roughly they'd say 80% of businesses that are on the market don't sell. So I'm just curious as to, you know, there, are there common threads between the businesses that you passed on in terms of the flaws that, that just, that were too difficult to overcome? 

Kevin: Yeah, I think it's a handful of things.

The, the, the, the biggest red flag is like, the data just doesn't line up, right? So deck looks good, at least at first glance, ask for the financials, you get them and you're like, this is way off. And even you're looking at the deck and say, you know, it's, it's stale data to an extent. So it might be like, Hey, this was last year and maybe you're looking at June of the following year, and they're just, they didn't update it yet, which is totally fine.

But then you get [00:25:00] those, you try to match up those numbers with that, and you're like, where's, so then you, you kind of lose trust immediately. It's like, who's lying here? Or is there just incompetence? So you get that kind of stuff. And I don't know, it just didn't really match up. But then. Sometimes the data did match up and there could be other red flags that you just didn't see in the deck.

Like you can look at tenure of employees and you can just see there's a ton of turnover. And if you're somebody like me or really anyone, if you're looking to buy a business, you kind of want it to stay the way it is 'cause it's successful, at least to start. And if you can't rely on people to run the business, 'cause there's just so much turnover.

It's usually a red flag of bad management at the top. Like, what's going on? Like, is there a cultural issue there? So that could be one red flag. Um, you can do further diligence on lawsuits. You know, it might say no lawsuits pending. Next thing you know, there's a whole bunch of lawsuits that they've gone through are, are currently active.

Um, or [00:26:00] you, you ask for further data. Like they say, Hey, it's 90% service work, 10% construction, and it's totally swapped. So it's usually things like that that kind of come up and it's usually just not jiving with what's on the, the main deck. Things of that nature. Sometimes it just comes down to kind of the, the price is too high.

I found a business I really liked, but they just had a massive piece of real estate and they wanted to sell that with it, and the numbers just didn't work. Mm-hmm. Because most of the loan was going to pay off this building that was non-revenue generating. So sometimes it's, it's like a good thing. Like you just, you uncover stuff that you didn't think about or it wasn't really spelled out.

And sometimes, more often than not, what I found looking at 20 of 'em was there was just red flags all over the place that just, and you just, you know, if, because once you, you can't really go into the business before you buy it. You know, I've asked everyone like, and I think I did that with you. Like, Hey, can I.

Stop by the office during the day and meet some guys. No, because you don't wanna spook the, the employees. And I know that now, as a business owner, it's hard. Yeah, [00:27:00] right. So like we, I would always ask and like, no. So I would, you know, we'd go after hours and check some stuff out, but you, you're still making an educated guess on the business itself.

So if you start to see things that don't make sense and you're like, lacking trust, the last thing you wanna do is buy the business. 'cause it's like, well if I'm identifying skeletons in the closet here that you don't have good answers for, what am I gonna find when I actually close the teeth? Yeah, 

Wes: a hundred percent.

we see a lot of commonalities and visit work. We, we pass on so many, I mean, for every 10 that come to us interested in selling, I would say we pass on maybe 60 to 70% just because it doesn't benefit anybody to go to market and sit there and not sell. Uh, you know, it doesn't benefit us, doesn't benefit the seller 'cause we're always gonna be asking, Hey, we need these updated documents and we need to have a call with this buyer.

And so we try to be really upfront about that with them and, and we dig in pretty deep before we even agree to take an assignment. And, and if it's, if it's not something that's saleable for whatever reason, like we try to offer some [00:28:00] guidance, here's some things that you should work on. Here's some people you can talk to that are exit planners or evaluate advisors.

Clean this up and then think about it, get it ready, and then let's revisit every six months or a year. I had that phone call last week in my office. You know, there was a large decline in sales because they lost a major client, which happens. I mean, so I just said, Hey, love to sell your business. I think it's a great business, but I don't think for the value that you want now.

I don't think you're gonna get it. So let's retool your growth strategy and. Let's revisit every six months and see, and if you're getting the hockey stick effect where you're going back north, I think now we've got a conversation. But so many of these businesses unfortunately, have these fatal flaws. But even when they look to be ready and the value's, right, like Kyle, Plumbing I always try to, I think it's super important that to just recognize that there's no such thing as a perfect business.

They all have flaws. Correct. And, and so one of the things that we try to do is when we're going out to market, we're dealing with buyers. And I, [00:29:00] hopefully I did this with you, I can't remember the specific of all the conversations, but try to establish trust and say, Hey, here's this business. Here's what we like about it.

Here's, you know, the threats and the weaknesses, and just be right up front about it. Because sometimes those threats or weaknesses are things that you can deal with and you know how to mitigate. And sometimes it's just a fatal flaw for you. And it's like, you know, it's like a marriage, like, Hey, you want kids and she doesn't.

That's, that, that's a problem. And so, uh, I feel like that is something that, um, too many of advisors and brokers don't do is rather than trying to pretend like it's the brand new shiny car with no flaws. And so just curious if like, what your experience was like in the marketplace and if you felt like, you know, you weren't always getting the real story.

Kevin: Yeah, and I mean, that's a good example though too, because like you, your firm did a really great job at kind of hitting those key points of things that matter. Uh, I think other brokers don't. See it as clearly as you do from the buyer's perspective and they're just putting [00:30:00] stuff together or they're just highlighting the good stuff.

They're not really like having one client that's maybe 80% of your revenue. Right. You're gonna find out anyway. You're gonna find out. So you might as well just save everyone some time and get it out. Right. Right. So, you know, and those are sometimes, and those are questions I would always ask, but I think you kind of highlighted a lot of that stuff.

Like here's the top 10 customer breakdown by percentage of revenue. And it's like, oh, okay, cool. Uh, that makes sense. 'cause that way, 'cause you have a huge risk of new owner, that customer may say, Hey, I was, I just like the owner. I'm out. Yeah. And then you lose half your revenue, so that's a problem. So things like that.

Or one guy, he had 60%, I looked at a landscaping company, he had 60% of his revenue was in cash. And I'm like, well, can you prove the cash is there? Oh yeah. He was like, yeah, that's a big one. And I'm like, so I'm buying, how do I know that I'm buying it based upon your word that it's cash. Like, 

Wes: I just met 

Kevin: you, by the way.

Right? So things like that kind of pop up. So part of it I think is just natural diligence, but I think, you know, a lot of these brokers did not really [00:31:00] come at it in the right presentation of saying, here's what you know, and that changes. But it's like, here's some things that you should consider and here's what's important.

To your point, you turn away some deals where other people probably just take anything that comes to them and they're just highlighting the good stuff, wasting everyone's time trying to get a signature, trying to get a phone call saying, Hey, I'm, I'm, I'm doing work here. Try to hope that a deal comes together.

Wes: So I, I agree on all of that, and I think lets apply that practically with Kyle. Like, this was a business that had been around for 30 years. They had a lot of tenured employees. They had seemingly a pretty good brand and reputation. Roughly two thirds of their business was residential maintenance and repair, which for the viewers who don't know, that's like, that's.

That's the, the, the holy grail of the home services business is the bread and butter maintenance repair your toilet breaks, like it needs to be fixed. This is not new construction. You're not putting that off. 

Yeah. 

Wes: You, you can't put it off. And similar to their peers and, and, you know, electrical and, and, uh, an HVAC like your [00:32:00] AC breaks right now, like your, your pounding the phone right now trying to figure it.

So yeah. You want somebody fix it. Right. Whereas new construction tracked home like that, that's obviously volatile, cyclical. So this business was roughly one third construction. Um, how was that gone for you? It was, 

Kevin: it was actually the opposite. It was like three quarters construction, one quarter service work at Kyle.

Yeah. It was two years ago, Kevin, so I know, I know. It was, uh, it was a lot of construction work, uh, commercial, residential. It was just consistent. 'cause he had a great group of tight-knit contractors that he worked really well with. Mm-hmm. So like he would, he just had a really good thing going on there.

And then he had, he just had this, the service work kind of covered the overhead and stuff, so I think it was like 1.35 million of service and like three, three and change million in construction work. Mm-hmm. Just depends how you kind of categorize that. 

So I've actually, we're probably 30 to 60 days out from completely [00:33:00] shutting down construction.

So I've grown the service side from 1.3 to 5 million in two years to totally flip flop and get outta construction. Um, construction's just not something that I like. The, the margins are lower, liability's higher, the cash flow is very long to get paid. Uh, it, it just wasn't really ideal for me where my strengths from my background on sales and technology and like speed getting in and out, efficiencies on the service side was kind of recognized immediately and that's more fun for me.

So that grew and I did a couple other small acquisitions along the way on the service side. So we got to a comfortable place where it's like, cool, we're gonna stop taking on new construction jobs and shut them down. But not to say construction's bad, I just think service is a better fit for me. Yeah, and I think to your point, I think that's where like a lot of PE groups like it, I think the profit margins are higher, just easier work, less liability, uh, higher margins.

And uh, you know, I know some guys that run [00:34:00] really successful construction, plumbing companies or construction like that, but I think running two, it was kinda like two businesses in one for me. You know, not having the experience. And I felt like, you know, even still as I'm shutting it down, 'cause construction's.

Diverting a lot of time away from me focusing on the other stuff. So once that's fully gone, I'm excited to just focus 100% on the service maintenance side. 

Wes: Well, I think that, um, without a question, regardless of what your timing is on an exit plan, that's a huge value add. 

Yeah. 

Wes: Because, um, the construction work is, you know, like you said, I'm sure it's profitable, but just from a valuation standpoint, you're gonna get a much higher multiple for the residential and the service work.

And what was, what was some of the other things about Kyle that drew you to it, that like led you across the finish line in terms of the value prop? 

Kevin: Um, I really liked the owner. I thought he was kind of like a no BS kind of guy. Um, I think I, I mean, I think he had a higher offer from a PE group, if I'm not mistaken.[00:35:00] 

True. And he went with me because I was boots on the ground. He liked my story, um, even for a lesser value. And I just. I think, 'cause initially he told me no and he was going with that offer. And then once he figured out that no one was gonna be on site, he thought the culture of his team was gonna be diminished.

And when he came back to me, that was huge. Right. Um, and I, I, it's just kinda like a vibe. Like I said, it's kind of an educational guess, but I, we got along very well and then that proved true throughout the negotiation process. We weren't, you know, we negotiated very well. Like, he had things that he was a stickler for and so did I.

We met in the middle and even now we still, we still talk 'cause I rent the building from him. But, you know, some guys, I, I felt like I could trust him. They had good reviews online. Been around for 30 years. Some other owners that I met, you know, they kind of just didn't have, we didn't really vibe like that, like from a personality standpoint, or they didn't really seem like they had all the details of the business and like, maybe they were just kind of like it was running into the ground or they were really kind of far [00:36:00] removed from the culture.

So the culture piece, I, I like felt the culture walking around the office. Meeting him, his wife, you two As as a awesome broker. I must say like I hit it off with you. You were super knowledgeable, thank you. Easy to talk to, quick getting back and forth with things. Other, other people were just super slow and it's like, are you motivated to B to sell your business or not?

Like, you know, it doesn't need to be right now, but you know, the communication lines were there the whole time. So there was a lot of things like that. But the cultural piece that's unique 'cause you, it's just like a vibe and you just on paper you can see with the tenure, you know, and all those pieces kind of jived and it seemed like there was really not many flags there.

Wes: You talk about your rapport with the seller and to a degree with me, which is the feeling is mutual. I like to bring up an instance post deal that I think is part of like sort of my philosophy of. when you're finding the right buyer, finding the right seller, finding the right business, we can talk all about the attributes you from the sellers, from the buyer's side, what [00:37:00] you want in a business.

And I think from the seller side, we can talk about, you know, who's offering the most money or whatever, but I feel like not enough sellers and buyers put stock in the people that they're dealing with. And so, and, and, and we can talk about also putting everything in writing. And I, I, we, we have clients many times talk about, oh, we gotta get some language in the contract.

And I say, listen, that's important. And we have attorneys to do that. And I, I certainly am not gonna discourage that. However, some of this transaction that we're doing has to be a product of trust to a degree, because at the end of the day, the contract means something and it's a, it is absolutely a necessary document to have, but at the same time, you don't want to have to go to that contract.

From a litigation perspective, no. Ever. No. Unless you absolutely have to. Like dire 

Kevin: straits. Last resort. 

Wes: Last resort. And, and, you know, and, and attorneys serve a very useful and important purpose, but I think most of the ones, especially the ones I deal with, would say, you, you don't want to have to go [00:38:00] litigate this if you can help it.

So if you can work it out. So we had a situation in our deal where you called me one day and you said, Hey, you've got a little issue. You know, there's, there's a breach of one of the reps and warranties, and it was unintentional, I'm sure, but essentially what we had was, was an undisclosed liability.

Correct. 

And this was an accounting thing. Right. And so do you remember kind of like Exactly, 

Kevin: yeah. 

Wes: Why don't you just, yeah. Gimme your recollection of that. It 

Kevin: was, well, it was, I think it was twofold. One was, I think we pushed the closing date like a week. And it just, with that construction side of it, like the accounts receivable literally changed like 60 to 80 grand differential from like one day, like in one week.

So that was one thing, and we just never caught it. Um, because we just pushed the date, kept the numbers the same. So the money that we were holding, as, you know, working capital that was agreed to was a little light. So that was one piece. And me, and me and the owner worked it out. [00:39:00] Yeah. You know, I think I, I said, just gimme half, let's just, and he was like, yeah.

So again, we just worked it out. The other was, he took a, I think it was two or three deposits for, for work to be done in the future, but he didn't account for that. On the balance sheet, you're supposed to have like a negative, like deposit, you know, work to be done. It's a liability. Right, right. Yeah. And that was not on the statement.

'cause he would asked me like, well, why didn't you guys catch that in, in the quality of earnings? And I was like. Because it wasn't on the balance sheet. 

Wes: Right, right, right. But Q of E should have technically asked, do you take deposits on jobs? How do you book them? Correct, exactly. Either way. So it was like, it doesn't make you wrong or your Q of E firm, but Right.

Either 

Kevin: way, the, and in both cases, you know, we all worked it out and you know, the owner, there was no legal stuff, no liability stuff. And even if he had said sorry, like, would I have sued him? No, probably not. Like it was like, it's substantial dollars for 60, 80 grand, but like, I think we could point blame at both sides.

Right, right. So that was just part of how our group worked from the [00:40:00] beginning. Like it's like, Hey man, why don't we work something out here? And we just explained our sides and we worked it out and that was it. I 

Wes: remember, I was like, gimme a day or two to investigate this and I'll get back to you. And I looked into it and, and I was like, okay.

So basically they're taking deposits on future jobs and. Naturally, a lot of businesses of this size, they, they don't follow gap accounting. It's very complicated. You can't afford A CFO for, you know, six figures a year to, you know, book accordingly. So they booked it as, as, uh, a debit on cash. And a credit on revenue.

Kevin: Right. 

Wes: Whereas you haven't earned that revenue yet, right? Correct. You should be crediting the liability. Right. So I was gonna 

Kevin: start these jobs and I'm like, alright, you gotta pay. And they're like, no, we already paid like half. And I was like, whoa. 

Wes: So, so, and, and you know, my client looked to me and said, Hey, you know, I'm not an accounting guy.

Tell me if we own money or not. And I said, yeah, he was a good guy, right? And he said, okay, let's make it right. And I believe the way the contract read was, it was an offset to the note. And you said, 'cause [00:41:00] that was, that was the default, was you offset the note by that amount. But, and we kind of went back and said, well, you know, I've spent a lot of money on trucks and raises and stuff.

It'd be nice. I think he just gave me cash. Right. And we negotiated some, and I would've said yes to that 

Kevin: too, but I was like, Hey, I prefer to do this. And he was like, okay. Right. And so it worked 

Wes: out. Yeah. But like you had two reasonable people, whereas all it would've taken is one of you to be unreasonable for that, to end up in some sort of nasty legal dispute.

And so I think that that is a super important part of the deal that we did and validated both of you to a degree that like you decided to do this deal. I mean, you, you weren't the highest bidder and he wasn't the perfect business, but you, you felt like you could just, you know, all of the big rocks were there, right.

For a good deal. And it made sense. And so, by the way, that's not, and I didn't want it to be perfect 'cause it was perfect. There's multiple would've been higher, right? Honestly. So prob probably so. Yeah. So, um, in the process that we ran, and you kind of [00:42:00] alluded to this already, you know, we went to market, we spoke to many, many buyers.

I explored many different. Sales channels and fielded offers and had meetings and stuff. Curious as to how that influenced you and how you structured your deal. Because I think, I'm pretty sure at one point there was a bid and then it was, Hey, I'm sorry this was a good bid. You know, you're a good buyer, but you know, Kirk's gonna go somewhere else.

And you changed that. Do you feel like the deal heat and the competitive process influenced you to, you know, up your bid, make it stronger, you know? 

Kevin: Oh yeah. I think, I think in general, I mean, my personal philosophy, 'cause you never, I'm never gonna really go in at my highest bid. Not never, but usually I'm not gonna go in my highest bid.

So I went in at a reasonable bid and I said, let's see what happens. They're like, Hey, we got higher bids, or like, we got another offer that like, we're probably gonna go with. And I was like, okay, counter offer. Here's my highest bid. And that's when I got acquirer on the phone investment committee. Like same day.

I was like, [00:43:00] Hey, emergency scenario. I really love this business. I, what's the max that I can reasonably go without being dumb? Make sure this thing cash flows because I like everything about it. I don't think I'm, you know, like, I think I did, we did good diligence here. I don't think I'm missing anything.

And I was like, this is where I think we should be. And they're like, okay, yeah, I think that's the highest you can go. And I was like, cool. So I submitted that bid, still said no, but then he came back and took the bid. So ultimately I, I had a max number in my mind and a max valuation, and that's what I went to.

So I knew I was, I was like, Hey, if I get this, I'm, I'm not gonna be uncomfortable with this valuation. Yeah. And if I don't get it, at least I know I put my best foot forward. Yeah. So it was helpful. And that's just my, my philosophy. I mean, if I saw. If I knew there was like a bunch of competition, a bunch of deals for deal I saw today, like would I go in at the highest bid?

Maybe? I don't know. But like still, I still had a max. I think everyone's got a max number. Yeah. Or a seller's number, A minimum number in their mind. And I just hit that, you know, and thankfully it worked out and I don't think [00:44:00] if I went up I would've gotten it. 

Wes: I'm the same way. I think most people are. You never want to put your best off record and then you've got nowhere to move.

Kevin: Correct. 

Wes: And then you're gonna, if you get it cool, you 

Kevin: save a couple shackles, great. Right, right, right. You can't go down, you can always go up on the buyer's side, you know, so. 

Wes: Yeah, exactly. And we, we, we see a lot of, I mean, I, I estimate based on, I, I, I read a lot about the industry and with private businesses, not all of the data is out there, right.

Because they don't have to disclose how much they sold for whatever. But based on what I've read, roughly half the businesses in the lower middle market, like five to 50 million sell off market, no advisor. Buyer directly to the seller. No process. And you know, I I, there was just pretty strong research to say that the sellers sell for less money by doing that, but in their mind it's like, Hey, I don't have to pay a broker or an advisor.

So 

Kevin: that's interesting because I did two smaller deals. They did not have a broker, and I got sweetheart deals because I learned a [00:45:00] ton working with you. And like, there's still so much to learn in deals. You could structure them a million different ways. Yeah, yeah. But from like a valuation standpoint, like I feel like I, I had got a decent handle on that, but without having a broker, I, I scooped up a couple smaller deals and I think it's just Pennywise dollar foolish.

Like, Hey, I'll save 10% on the backend. 

But it's like, okay, but if you get a one x purchase price and you save, you know, a hundred grand, cool. But you could have got three x. Yeah. And when you look at the net net difference, the values there, plus, I mean the smaller ones, I don't, I think with any size. They should probably hire a broker.

'cause you guys can, to your earlier point, you can probably spot some things like, hey, if you kind of clean these items up in the next 12 months or so, like we can really get you some more money if they wanted to or not. But like, I think they did themselves a disservice. But it was in my benefit as a buyer to buy it without a, without a broker.

Yeah. And it's quick. It was quicker too. 'cause I didn't have any financing involved. 

Wes: Yeah. And you, I mean, [00:46:00] you have, even though you're not necessarily an institutional buyer or what have you, but like you have way more experience than most of these smaller sellers have in just acquiring businesses. Right?

Like, you've done it before. You're in the space so you, you know the numbers and they're operating in a vacuum. Like they don't have the benefit. Well they 

Kevin: started a business, they got successful in their own right. They, most of them, they started from scratch. They never bought a business. They never sold the business.

So it's their first time. So they don't know what they don't know. And also what they knew 30 years ago or 20 years ago when they started the business is night and day difference today when they're going to sell it. So it's definitely, you know, as a buyer, they should hire a broker. 

Wes: They're very stubborn.

Very stubborn. 

Um, I dunno if you've ever heard of Enneagram, you know what Enneagram is. It's, it's basically, it's like personality types, a way of understanding people. And it's, I would say the opposite of a horoscope. Horoscope is you were born in a certain time that determines who you are by the alignment of sar.

This [00:47:00] is like, no, we've observed the world and all the people in the world and now we've categorized all of them based on their nine different personality types. And here's what your personality type people like you are good at. Here's what you're typically like weaker at. And now that you know what you're weaker at, now you can work on it.

Or mitigate it, or you can 

Kevin: hire someone to do those things Exactly that too. Just identify it and then you can strategize, you know, you find, find the data, get the data right. And then you can come up with a variety of solutions that you can choose to opt into 

Wes: instead of being weak at that, you hire somebody that's really good at that and now all of a sudden you good as a team, you're really, you're great.

Right, exactly. 

And so Kevin, I wanted to jump back in sort of some of the details of, just sort of finish up on the actual acquisition that you, that you did. And so you chose to acquire a plumbing company, which requires a, a, uh, a license, a qualifying license. Right. And so how did you think about that going in?

Was that something that was an [00:48:00] initial deterrent for you? Did you not think anything of it? Did you have contingency backup plans? Like how, how, what, how did you think through that? 

Kevin: I don't remember if I knew going in you needed the license. 'cause every state's different. But that was one of the questions like, Hey, do you need a license?

What is it? Who holds it? How does it work? Um, so. That was in Florida, you need a qualifier, a master plumber that has a Florida plumbing license and you need them to sign off on permits and stuff like that. So he, he had his son-in-law who was in the business, who was the qualifier, who was happy to remain the qualifier and sign off on permits.

And, you know, we spoke beforehand and we hit it off instantly. It was a no brainer. He is like, I'm happy to continue to do that for you. And without that in Florida you cannot operate. 

Wes: Yeah. So, and that was, this was roughly two years ago. Two 

years, yeah. Is 

Wes: it two June 5th? 

It was two years 

Wes: ago. And he's still there.

Yeah. 

Wes: Yeah. And so it is interesting that, um, people do seem to put a [00:49:00] lot of stock into that. But my experience, and I've done a number of transactions in healthcare too, where it's a similar type of thing where you need a qualifying license and I'm like, for me, you're, you're already. The business is already paying somebody.

So if for some reason he were to leave, whether it was after closing or whatever, I would think there would be a taker out there probably. So I never really thought that much about it, but I'm just curious if it was something you were super concerned with. 

Kevin: Um, from, from what I can tell, yes. Because I think, uh, in Florida you, you have the ability to qualify up to three businesses.

Okay. 

Kevin: So I don't even know, I don't think you have to even be employed at all of them, but you have to sign the permits. Yeah. You know, you have to do your diligence and if an issue comes up, you might have to talk to an inspector or board or something like that. So, uh, yeah, I think there is, in Florida anyway, I think it's easier to find people.

But you know, the, it's also not just like, Hey, can you. Ha, let's work out an arrangement so I can sign your permits. It's like the good ones are like, well, let me make sure, like, I don't wanna lose my license here. [00:50:00] So like, are you pulling permits? Yeah. Right. Like, how's the quality of your crew? Are you doing, are you running a solid business?

Are you, do you have ethical standards? Because like Yeah, well it's, we can have a good relationship if, if you're not pulling permits and doing terrible work. Yeah, right. Then you know, they could lose their license and they can't qualify anybody. 

Wes: Are you properly insured? Am I covered? Correct. If something, you know, errors in emissions, things like that.

Yeah, sure. Um, can you say what you would've done differently if you would've gone all the way back and done it again, if anything? 

Kevin: I mean, honestly now what I know about construction, I probably wouldn't have bought the, bought the company to be honest with you, because it was just, you know, it was, I say that now, but Ask me again, like.

Every year check in on me. I mean, we touch base every so often anyway, because I, I learned a ton from that, which actually helps me manage the service side better. And honestly, if it was just service, I probably would've wanted to get into construction anyway and probably learned the same thing. So funny.

Yeah. I just, I just saw the explosive growth on the service side and if [00:51:00] I had just gone in to do that, it probably would've been even more explosive growth. So that, that's probably one thing. 'cause if I, if I came across the same exact makeup of a company now, I would just say, Hey, let me break off that service.

Yeah. Side. I'll take that. Otherwise I don't want it. Like 100% I wouldn't take on, you know, I would take on a company that maybe had a small construction component, but still say like, Hey, I'm shutting that down. 

Wes: Yeah, 

Kevin: yeah, yeah. Are you just, are you getting killed by the float? Pretty much, yeah. A lot of working capital that I just, that's really what crushed me because you can make money in it, but.

Uh, I didn't realize you had that, that working capital. We did the diligence on it, so it was, I think it was spot on what you needed, but like, I also just didn't know what I didn't know, so I was taking a lot of that capital that I had sitting in the bank and investing in other things, and then things start to get kind of tight as those jobs take a little bit longer and 

Wes: Yeah.

You 

Kevin: know, 

Wes: lag and then you're, you're filing liens and like, just having to be bad guy all the time and 

Kevin: Yeah. I mean, is there any 

Wes: way around that? I mean, 

Kevin: [00:52:00] not really. I mean, it's, it goes back to the litigation thing, like, sue me. 

Yeah. 

Kevin: You know, and then you gotta go down that. So it just depends, you know, if, if it's worth it, if it's enough money, if you've got the right documentation and they owe you money, cool.

You can go do that. Spend six months to 18 months in litigation. That's a huge, it's, it's, I value time, so it's kind of like, yeah, sure. Hey, am I gonna win this? I think so. There's no guarantee. How much time is this gonna suck? Even if you win, like, like, Hey, you owe me 30 grand. And I'm gonna spend another 30 grand in lawyer fees that I might get back.

But how much money am I wasting of my time focusing on this from the business? Probably not worth it. So it just depends on the situation. But you can file liens, but the only way to, so you, you have a lien on a property, you still have to file a case, go talk to a judge and still kind of go through. You kind of still have to sue them to make them sell their property to then go pay you.

So there's still a legal process. You can just file a lien and say, Hey, [00:53:00] cool, I'm gonna foreclose in your house. You still have to go through legal procedure. So it's cool. You can do that. But there's still a pain. It's like leverage. Some people get scared when you do it or you threaten it, but you still have a process to go through to get your money.

Wes: So on that note, what problems or challenges did you run into that you didn't foresee going in? I mean, this is kind of on the same subject, I guess. I think the 

Kevin: biggest struggle, and probably still is today, although I've gotten just better at it and more used to it, is, you know. 

Going from like a white collar space with like a bunch of intellectual people, like having conversations with them, training them.

A lot of those people kind of get things pretty quickly. And there's just, and where I came from in finance, there's just so many people you can hire behind that person if that person's not working out for whatever reason. 

Mm-hmm. 

Kevin: Here, you know, I find myself, you know, as I'm trying to get plumbers to give them sales skills and get them outta their comfort zones is a challenge.

I have to find myself having to [00:54:00] say things like seven times before they get it or it's just you. I can have really great guys and they're just not really meeting the mark or expectations, but you're very limited with the pool that's behind them to go hire some more people. So you have to kind of be okay with people.

Not exactly listening to everything you say and being like the perfect employee, which I don't even know if that exists, but like yeah, there's not exactly. A huge pool of qualified plumbers that you can just go out to and say, Hey, I'm gonna get, go these two guys, and I've got 50 guys behind them. I can make a phone call to.

So you kind of have a different communication structure. In the beginning it was really more trust. It's like, Hey, I'm not a plumber. You are. And I just, I'm a straight shooter, so I'm just like, Hey, I'm here to run the business. You're here to do your job, and I'm just trying to make everyone's lives better and we'll work together as a team.

So that's cool. And I think they appreciate that. That took a little while in the beginning to Yeah. You know, build that trust. But that was a challenge, just kind of also, I never managed that many people before. Now we're up to like, I think there was 23 ish when we started, and probably about the [00:55:00] same now.

So just managing that many people and delegating to the right people. Mm-hmm. To make sure that they're managing the right way and just communicating. People learn in different ways. Yeah. So trying to figure out what resonates with different people and kind of having the patience to. Figure that out and give them the tools that they need to figure it out, but then also not being shy to pull the plug when you've got a bad apple.

Wes: That was kind of part of my next question really, was like, how did you win credibility with coming from an industry like finance? And if I'm hearing you and coming into the trades, right, and like I'm, I'm hearing you correctly, is just like you're sensing that everybody learns and like relates in different ways and you kind of have to just feel it out.

How I built, how I built, just coming from such a different field. 

Kevin: I, I was just being honest, you know, like when I first came in, I'm like, I wasn't bringing up the subject of, hey, I have no plumbing experience day one. Yeah. Because I don't want, everyone's nervous as it is, do I have a job? Like what's gonna happen?

Whatever. [00:56:00] But even I just wear it on my sleeve. Contractors, clients, customers, property managers, new plumbers that I hire existing, I just say, Hey, like my skill sets are on the business side. Your skill sets are on the plumbing side. We all work together as a team and just being honest with them. And, uh, I think I've built good relationships with the team that I have for just being honest and a straight shooter.

Like I don't mess around with their money. If there's a mistake, if there's an issue, if there's some miscommunication like they, and I'm just easy to get ahold of. I'm present, they have my, everyone's got my cell phone numbers, they'll call me, text me, they got problems. So just being real with them. Yeah, I think no bs I think that's really what built trust pretty quickly.

Wes: When I used to do the podcast on Zoom, I interviewed Keith and Andrew Koenig, who owned City Furniture and Andrew's a son and when he got outta college from uf, it's one of my favorite stories that we had on here. He was like, he went and worked on the loading docks and like, not only on the loading docks, but like at the midnight shift for like a year or two and.

Earn the [00:57:00] respect of his people. He's like, I'm not walking into a corner office in this building. Like, I'm gonna put in the hard work and the time and I wanna learn like how this works. Like I wanna learn how you guys work and maybe things that we can fix to make your, your job easier and more efficient and you know, more comfortable.

And that's like, I think that roll up your sleeves type approach, like is sounds simple and sounds like maybe even almost obvious, but I think it goes like, I think it really goes a long way. Yeah, I mean 

Kevin: I think another thing was, um, you know, just keeping the culture intact. So when there is a cancer somewhere and you get rid of those people as it comes up and you, like, I had to do that, I had to remove somebody and there was no one to back them up.

No one knew their process warehouse manager. So I was the warehouse manager for about a month and then it actually, like, I hated it, but I had to do it. And I think I gained some respect for it. I've had to do that in the business too. I've actually learned the process [00:58:00] better and made it more efficient.

Yeah, for sure. Or at least it actually gives me comfort to know like, Hey, if that happens again, I, I know how to do that job. I know how to do it. So like there's some, and there's some people who are like, you should know every facet of your business so you can do it. I don't necessarily agree with that.

'cause I think you can just put good people in the right places, but you should have a backup plan. But it worked out in the sense that I learned about the business. But I think you do earn some respect for doing that. You know, you're not just firing somebody and saying like, Hey, I need to move you over here now.

Sorry, that's not your role. I'm gonna do it. 

Wes: Yeah. I think there's value in, and, and the message is I think, hey, this is not beneath me. It's not always the best use of my time, but it is not beneath me. Like, these jobs are all important. And, um, I wanna jump forward to, we, we talked about this earlier, but not far down the road.

You decided to rebrand the company and change the logo and. Everything around, like walk me through what, what was the process and, and, and how you did that, but also what was the impetus behind it? What pushed [00:59:00] you to do that? It's 

Kevin: actually a funny 

Wes: story. 

Kevin: So I was keeping the name obviously, 'cause you have a lot of equity in the name, people know the name.

So a buddy of a buddy of mine I hired to redo the website, do some SEO stuff for me. He's like, Hey, we should, we should rebrand. And I was like, whoa, whoa. Like, I gotta keep the name. He's like, no, we'll keep the name. Like, let's just rebrand. And I was like, okay. And then like, I think at like 2:00 AM I woke up, I saw a text message and he had like this little green commando head as like the, the logo.

And I was like, I hate it. And I'm like, I don't, I'm like half asleep. Like I don't, I don't care if you just do like a cartoon monkey with a wrench, like through my phone, went to sleep, woke up and there was a, a monkey with a wrench. And I was like, I love it, let's go with that. So like I, I wasn't even planning on doing it.

I was just gonna rock the original logo, if you know, even though it was a little dated. And he came up with the whole color scheme and stuff and I was like, great. And then we just took that. Ran with it and people love it. So you 

Wes: had before I, it was the baby with the wings on the cloud wrenches, the heavenly sort of, right?

Yeah. Yeah. [01:00:00] And which was kind of, I would think it was kind of recognizable. I think it was something more than a lot of your competitors like had brand whatsoever. 

Kevin: It was different. Yep. And then, but then he also had the Kyle with like water logo, so I was kind of keeping that and getting rid of the babies with, with the wrenches.

Yeah. Um, it was kind of funny because it's, it was like an ongoing joke because my plumbers would say like, every time I pull up to someone's house or people stop us on the road, they're like, what are you delivering diapers? Like, so, uh, it, yeah, I just changed it up and we just morphed it out over time.

'cause I wasn't gonna rewrap all the trucks. It's very expensive. So we kind of just, so I think I have one truck left that we're getting rid of in the next week or so, and then it's all brand new. 

Wes: Have you, Kevin? Um. Improved. 

Like, I know you've implemented a lot of technology, but like are, do you have meaningful KPIs now that you didn't have before?

Kevin: Oh 

Wes: yeah, yeah, yeah, 

Kevin: yeah. ServiceTitan is huge with that reporting KPIs. Um, and it's kind of all around, you know, it's like I have, I have my [01:01:00] dashboard for the plumber KPIs, and then we have now our CSR KPIs as we're like really building out our, our lead sources, figuring out where they are, like what comes in, what's truly a lead.

If it, if it wasn't booked, why was it not booked? And if it's not a lead, you know, you kind of market that way. So it's kind of cool. As long as it's done right, you can actually see like, hey, what's, what's working in my marketing plan? Yeah. Like you can track what dollars are going to each marketing source.

Is there training needed for them? Is there certain objections that are coming up that we need to be better at explaining so we can close these leads better? Mm-hmm. How do like whatever good data you can make decisions from that data. Right, right. So just getting that clean without putting too much of a.

Tremendous strain on the training process. So trying to simplify the training process so that can be done right. And then the plumbers, you know, that's, you can see like average ticket, you can see their efficiency rate, like if they sold a job. 'cause we do flat rate pricing now. That was one huge change I did too.

Instead of going to hourly time and material, it's flat rate. So it's just, hey, you have to change a toilet. [01:02:00] You have low, medium, high level toilet depending on which one you want. That's the price. So if we're there for six hours, 'cause we have an issue, you're not paying us more. And if we're done super quick, you're not paying less.

It's just, that's the price. Um, but you can track all that stuff. So if they sell it for two hours and they take four hours, like are they slow? Did they miss bid the job, are they doing it quick? Are they overselling it? So you can see that. Um. You see the average revenue, you can see their closing percentage rate.

So if someone has 14 calls and they close and they have like both, we, we track pretty consistently an 80% closing rate, which is great for the service techs. Yeah. so if they're like really outta whack, you can kind of see it. And I look at it as a training opportunity and you kind of dig in a little bit and talk to somebody about it.

So we've got KPIs for days and we can run different reports for different things. What do we, what do we sell a ton of, like water heaters, backflows faucets, like what? And that could change depending on trends, but with good data, you can make good business decisions. Like, hey, if we're, yeah, if we're not selling a lot of this, why, why are we [01:03:00] promoting it?

Or if we're selling a ton of that, let's promote that more. So we have KPIs all over the place. 

Wes: What a drastic change, I think from what you were, you know, you came into and, um, let's talk about talent. 

The trades obviously from most of the businesses that I see, aging workforce. It's interesting. So many of the owners that I talk to that are in home services, electrical, hvac, plumbing, pest control, oh we would, we could grow so much.

We turned down so much work. 'cause we don't have a pe have enough people like you should, you know, as if that's a selling point. But everybody's in the same boat. Like how do you attract talent? 

Kevin: Thankfully I haven't really had an issue with that. I've had, I mean, we've had guys come and go most of the time I let them go.

I've had a pretty good, I haven't had too many people quit, maybe two or three in the last two years, to be honest with you. But I think it's the culture. Um, compensation's, obviously it's, it's kind of everything. 'cause you get, some guys just care about money, so that's okay as long as you're doing things ethically.

But you'd have a rich compensation [01:04:00] package. I added health insurance recently, which is nice. I think the, the guys like work I've, I've heard feedback from them like, they like working for me because they see my vision. And since I'm not a plumber, like I do things differently, for example. A lot of plumbing organizations will say like, Hey, you can't see your next call until you're done with this one.

Or you can see your next call only to me. I think that's stupid because like my guys have jobs that they sold that they need to prepare for those jobs for the week, you know? Mm-hmm. So I think the, the comment, the rationale for just seeing one is like, well, you don't want them to complain if those jobs get moved around.

I'm like, I'm just, I'm a straight shooter. Hey guys, you can see your stuff. Just don't complain too much back and forth, and we're in a good spot. And like, I took that away from them at one point and they were miserable. Oh, really? So, so I think things like that, like I just try to do things in their best interest, not just the business's best interest from an operational efficiency standpoint.

So I kind of look at it from both sides. So I've had good feedback from them [01:05:00] on that. Um, I don't micromanage them at all. You know, I, I train them, I provide technical training from outside vendors. I've sent guys to, I'm sending guys in a couple weeks to go get four guys, which is gonna take a huge hit to the business revenue for the week.

But it's good ultimately for them and the business to go get trained in some advanced things. Um, so I invest in them on that, on that front too. And I just, I treat them like adults, you know, I have conversations with them, so I think, you know, I don't mess with their money. I've heard that a lot from different companies, like, oh yeah, yeah, they promise them this, and then they make them do that.

Or they'll, they'll make them, you know, they, they set 'em up for a nine to five kind of work week, and then all of a sudden they're doing after hours work mandatory for like months on end, or, you know, it's just usually the, the, the owner or the manager is, is not doing what they said in the beginning. So I'm just a straight shooter, full transparency from the get go.

And I think that's worked out well. But from, from attracting new talent, I [01:06:00] mean, it's pretty, the best. Plumbers I have is all from referrals and word of mouth. You can't, to me, if, if a plumber has a resume, he's not a good plumber. 'cause the good ones will just pick up the phone and they can get a job in two seconds.

So I built some decent contacts where I say, I say, Hey, do you know, do you know of anyone? I make a few phone calls or the mo most three recent guys that I got were referrals from an existing plumber and they love it here. So they're like, oh, you should come here. You should come here. You should come here.

Like, I have, I have the guys. Yeah. And I've had, I have a guy now, I just interviewed. I, I told 'em, I can't hire you because I promise my guys I'm not gonna just overhire and then they have limited jobs to make money. Yeah, right. I'm gonna make sure we're smart about bringing on the next employee. So I actually have some people kind of as like a little pipeline of, of employees.

So it's, you know, that's my take on it. Um, we're not going on indeed looking for plumbers or anything like that. It's usually just make a few phone calls, ask your [01:07:00] guys. In the past I've done, hey. Here's a $5,000 bonus if you guys bring on a qualified technician. And I did that at the, at the onset, 'cause nobody knew who I was and I needed to incentivize, I needed guys.

But now it's just word of mouth referrals. Oftentimes my service manager or myself or my guys are getting calls asking if we're hiring, which is a good thing. 

Wes: That is a good thing. You've, so you've feels like you've built the culture and now the word's kind of out and is sort of magnetic 

in that sense?

I 

Wes: think so. And then you've developed an intuition as to, you know, the, the types of plumbers that you want and the p types of people that you want and correct those that are, you know, looking for the right things, quality and good, good at what they do versus those that are just looking for money and bouncing around all over the place, like, 

Kevin: yep.

Wes: Yeah. 

Kevin: And if they are bouncing, I'll ask some questions like, tell me what went on here, because there could be a rational reason why. You'll usually know in two weeks once [01:08:00] you bring somebody on if they're 

Wes: Yeah. 

Kevin: True to 

Wes: their word or not. 

So there's, there's a buyer that's in your shoes like you were a couple years ago.

' cause you looked at 20 different companies, which by the way, based on what I've seen, is pretty good that you were able to pull the trigger at 20 because I know it's, it's tough out there for the search funders trying to find the right business and pull the trigger. And, um, what did you, you have some points of advice, like, you know, maybe three points that you could say now looking back, that you've done it, that you know, might be helpful for a 

Kevin: buyer?

Yeah, I would say one, focus on the stuff that matters. Don't get bogged down in the details. Like what, what are your non-negotiables? If you find that, just hit it. 'cause you're gonna, it's, it's far and few between deals that you can find. So if you find those non-negotiables, don't focus. There's so many details that you can, that you should look at, but like, what are the key points that you need?

Go for it. Um, the other thing I would say is like, shit, or get off the pot. Be ready to pull the trigger. Yeah. 'cause I feel like you probably see this where people are like, no, I'm interested. I'm [01:09:00] interested. And then they're really not sold on the fact of buying the business. Yeah. Like, you really just gotta pull the trigger and go Take the risk.

Right. Take the risk. Yeah. And then, um, don't get bogged down with asking a million questions. Like, it kind of goes back to the first point. Like, you don't need to spread a deal out over six to 12 months. Like just have conversations quickly. Focus on the stuff that matters, ask good questions and leave the other stuff on the side because you can just live in diligence for forever and ask questions.

'cause I, I talk to people that are looking to buy businesses and they're asking me like a million questions and I'm like, why does any of this matter? Yeah. This does not matter. 

Wes: Yeah. I feel like many of them are looking for reasons not to do a deal more looking for reasons not to do a deal than to actually do it.

Right. Like talking themselves out Analysis paralysis. Yeah. Paralysis by analysis. Exactly. Like avoid that. I get it. You know, it's, I, I just think that so many folks are there. There's a cognitive [01:10:00] dissonance there with I want to own a business because I've seen successes. Perhaps it's been glamorized to a degree, but I'm just too risk averse and they just can't reconcile that in their own minds.

Right. And like I was saying with one of my previous guests, Jay Black, who was an attorney, he's kind of like, I'm paraphrasing, but some point, you just need to take the risk. You can't, you can't document away all the risk in a, in a sales contract. And you've gotta just pull the trigger. And I think that if you look back over the course of history of successful people, they've all taken risks, some of 'em, crazy amounts of risk.

And so, um, I wish that I. Because I talk to, to buyers like you all day, every day that were, you know, it's coming from similar shoes, career changes. And they, I can hear it in their voice and in their, their reasoning and their questioning that they just can't get there and they're tired of the corporate world.

And [01:11:00] I have those conversations all the time. What's that? 

Kevin: I have those conversations all the time 

Wes: with people. They just can't get there. They, they want to, they romanticize it, but they're just not, and maybe for some of 'em, it's a process. Maybe for some of 'em it's, you know, might take 'em a little time, but they'll get there.

But a lot of 'em just don't. I, I think there's, I mean, there's whole ecosystems if, you know people on the web who are looking for the right business to buy and they're looking for the perfect one and it doesn't exist. 

Kevin: Correct. 

Wes: And so, like, so now putting yourself in the shoes of a seller, having gone through the process, what advice would you give to a seller who's, you know, going through the process and looking for the right buyer?

Kevin: I would say talk to somebody like yourself. Figure out what. What the markets, what buyers are looking for. Like what, where the, where are the multiple leverage levers that you can pull to, you know, what, what do you have to have buttoned up? Right? Like, what are the non-negotiables to sell? Yeah. Where are the points that you can extract extra alpha from, from your business?

And it's a, it's like some of the [01:12:00] things you might say, you know what, I'm, I'm good. Like, where's my value now? Cool. I'm good. But you should at least explore that conversation to prepare, because a lot of the things you can do probably within 12 months, you know? Yeah. So it's, and they're, they're relatively, you know, they're doable.

I wouldn't say they're easy, but it's doable. Yeah. Right. And they should. And you may say, Hey, I'm gonna do these three things that makes sense. Let's do those. And they can go implement that and, and boom. It's like once you have the bones there, that's cool. You can always implement and tweak things and, and build it.

Wes: I'm getting ready to write an article. I'm pretty excited about it. But this is all coming from experience that, you know, if you're looking to exit at some point in time, whether it's a year or five years. You know, consider reinvesting in your business because the examples that I've seen, the sellers that invest in their business or reinvest in it, the ROI is off the charts.

You know, they're just, I think that they, too many of them see that like, Hey, I have a, I have this dollar or whatever unit of profit. If I don't take it out, [01:13:00] it's never coming out. As opposed to maybe I sacrifice now taking it out. 'cause it's a lifestyle business. A lot of times it's a lifestyle business, right?

I'm used to taking out three, four, $500,000 a year, which is a lot of money in the grand scheme of things. Or maybe I can sacrifice and put some money back in on providing a key man policy for, you know, my key manager or updating my fleet a little bit or you know, switching to a right accountant and have my financials audited and cleaned up and you know, these things.

And I just have so many examples of. Seeing such a massive ROI from that reinvestment to where I wish more people would get it because even if they didn't ever hire me to be involved in anything, I, I would hate to see business owners leave money on the table. Especially 'cause most of them only get one shot.

Right. To sell it. Yeah. 

And so, um, one thing, Kevin, that we talk a lot about on this show, which is kind of near and dear to me is, is [01:14:00] mentorship. And we have, um, this show I, I had kind of modeled after the years over Tim Ferris and Tools of the Titans and the book that he wrote based on his podcast. And he had so many incredibly successful business owners on there, male and female from all over the world.

And. So many of them talk about mentorship and even the ones that I've had on my show. Talk about that. Is there any mentors you've had in your life, whether that's an official title or not, and what kind of impact did they have on you and, and your progress and success so far? 

Kevin: Yeah. I don't have like a formal mentor.

I would say There's people that I follow, like on social media. Um, like good example, like two, two things that I saw that actually got me over the hump to earlier point, like you're not quite there yet. Mentally. It took me probably five years to get there. Um, and the point I mentioned earlier, Gary [01:15:00] VI think I stole it from him.

He was like, if you're like 85 years old and you look back like, are you gonna regret this? If the answer is yes, you should probably do it. And he also talks about. If you're 40 or 50, you have so much time left. So like if you're, if you wanna do do this, you wanna get into entrepreneurship, just do it. It doesn't matter if you start now.

I think Warren Buffet started when he was like 40 or 50 or something like that, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. Um, the other one, Alex, EY love him, Layla, follow them on social media, but he, he also made a comment that, uh, he said like, if you feel like you're in a cage and like, you just need to get out of it, like you should probably do something else.

And I saw that and I was, I like, I just like sat there. They'll hit you like 15 minutes and I'm like, I'm in a cage. Like I, I have to do this. And like, that was literally the point, you know, led up to it from Gary V and then from him. Uh, and that may sound corny, just following people on social media, but like, those were huge words and I follow.

A lot of stuff. I actually do some consulting with, uh, hor MO'S [01:16:00] group@acquisition.com, and it's like game changing stuff really. That's been huge. It's not like a formal mentorship, but, uh, I just follow people that, you know, I, I think I align with their thought process and if, and just try to surround myself with those smart people and follow, you know, listen to what they have to say.

I don't always agree with everything. Right. But that's helpful. 

Wes: So with Hormoze, I'm a big fan myself and, um, I love the way, I think we were talking about this earlier, how he's able to just simplify things down. There's no BS with him. He'll just say things in the least amount of words possible and it's crystal clear the point that he's trying to make, and I love that about him.

What was it about his advice or his guidance to you that you think was the most helpful? 

Kevin: It was a handful of things. So I mean, I, I went out to Vegas and with a group, there's a huge group of people, and I actually got a microphone and asked him a question, and I was considering closing down construction.

I was just getting stressed out [01:17:00] and going with service. And I was, I asked him that question, should I like, grow both or shut it down? And he was like, what do you think I would say? And I'm like, I don't know, that's why I'm asking the question. And he is like, you should shut down construction Cash flow sucks.

Liability sucks. Like, you'd be surprised at how fast you can grow on the other piece by, and he's, and he is like straight up, like, your plumbing company's not gonna be crazy different from any plumbing company. He's like, get rid of that. Focus on that. And his theme is like, focus on the constraints. Get rid, what's your biggest constraint?

Get rid of that. So I'm working on doing that. And then I, and I've gone back once, I'm gonna go back again. Um, another piece was I identified my constraint after that as marketing. Like, Hey, I can get plumbers. I just need more work. And if I have more calls coming in. we'll continue to grow. Yeah. Yeah.

So we looked at my marketing agency and they were like, get a new marketing agency. They don't tell you who, they don't provide vendors. It's like find a marketing agency that specifically specializes in plumbing. Did that total game changer [01:18:00] KPIs, as we were talking about before, really huge night and day difference.

ROI like. It's really expanded my business and it's very specifically geared towards plumbing. Cool. Did that focus like where should you focus the marketing on in addition to that? Like focus on one channel. Don't be like Google, Instagram, YouTube, this like cool. All those things could work, but it's like maximize the hell out of the value out of one thing and then once you cap that, then go do something else.

Um, also what I just did recently, as of Tuesday, I hired a business development person, B2B sales to get into commercial plumbing. Which is a big move because it's, it's expensive. Mm. Yeah. What they would say is, you want someone, batteries included, like they have the contacts, they have the experience, they're like an alpha, they'll just, they're just a doer.

They're go-getter. So that's been working out so far. I think we've got 15 new deals in two days already. So simplistic things, but just really hyper, specifically focused on stuff that [01:19:00] works, that actually moves the needle. Um, another thing was, you know, I saw him say like, Hey, you know, you might want to go change something.

And as entrepreneurs, like you're always constantly wanting to change things. And this was enlightening recently where he is like, now when I, before I make a decision, I'm like, Hey, what's the, what's the, like, what's the growth going to happen out of this? Like, is it 40%? Is it 5%? Because if you're gonna change something massive.

You're gonna have like a 25% dip in revenue to get to that change, the upside must be exponentially greater than that for it to make sense. And that's been huge too, as I'm like, just focus on the stuff that matters. That doesn't make sense to do. Even though you might think it might be better or easier, it's not really gonna change the business.

So things like that, you just really, as you said, super simplistic things that are kind of common sense, but kind of coming from him, just pointing those out is like very enlight. I'm honestly 

Wes: amazed that he could give such incredible guidance for [01:20:00] a specific business like yours. Like that he could be a generalist in nature.

Right? 'cause he does a lot of different stuff. Originally he was a gym guy, right? And now he's got this school thing like, um, I think that's so amazing and just goes to show that, um, honestly, I think validates how. Smart. He is like, don't let the the nasal strip fool you or you know, whatever. He's got no, super smart.

I think he just knows 

Kevin: business and he sees a ton of businesses with the business model he has now. He's failed. 

Wes: Oh, he's failed many times. He'll tell you like, and he's like, he's got the scars to prove it. 

Kevin: Yeah. Because I think, yeah, I think it's just battle tested, seeing a bunch of different businesses, things that work.

And I think there's just a lot of commonalities that transfer over across Yeah. Businesses, regardless 

Wes: of the type of business. There might be certain specific things about your business, but there's definitely, you know, broad strokes concepts that, like he seems to have just, he's got it figured out. So I think that's 

Kevin: helpful.

'cause it's easy to get caught in the weeds stuck in the day-to-day. Yeah. Hundred percent. You gotta pull, you gotta pull yourself out. And it's like, especially 

Wes: when you have that, like yeah, [01:21:00] you have those clients. 

Kevin: Yeah. What do, what are we, what really matters here? Why are we like, let's not, let's focus on this for the next three months and stop having meetings every week about.

Everything. Like, do this 'cause that's gonna move the needle. Let's get that right and then once that's done, do something else. So that, that's been tremendous for me. That 

Wes: sounds like a great mentor to me. 

Kevin: Even 

Wes: if he's not 

Kevin: like, like he doesn't know me. I spoke to him once, was cool, but like, uh, somebody I listened to.

Wes: Yeah, for sure. 

Um, just delving more into the personal stuff, what do you, what do you like to do with your free time? Like what is your, when you're, when you're not a Kyle, you know, I know you're, you're a big gym guy, I think I remember 

Yeah. Seem to 

Wes: have a lot of those on this, on this show, but, 

Kevin: um, um, yeah, no, I, I like to stay healthy.

Uh, my fiance's got a gym background too, so we try to stay healthy. I don't work out as hard as I used to. Um, but I think that's just a huge, like a mental thing for me to, to be able to work out and just be healthy. Whether riding a bike, going to the gym so that otherwise [01:22:00] hanging out with my daughter, my fiance, uh, and just the business.

Uh, those are the main things that I like. I've kind of stripped out the other. Yeah. Things, but family, business, health, health and wealth kind of thing. Um, the business sucks up a lot of time. Yeah, sure. But I also enjoy working. Yeah. So to me that's not a negative to my fiance. That's not a negative. She actually works with me now.

Wes: Oh, does she? Yeah. Congratulations on getting engaged by the way. Oh, thanks. Social media tells me this and I'm happy for you. Thank you. 

Kevin: Yeah, so that's cool too. Um, that's actually working out very well. She's got operational marketing, sales skill sets that Oh yeah. I don't really have and just seems to be working well and somebody that I trust in the business that cares about the success of it is, is 

Wes: sure.

I would think your, your daughter would be a sales manager at this point, but, um, at three, it's a little, a little soon. Should probably kill it though. Yeah. If you get the bossiness down, then you might have it. Oh, she's got the bossiness down for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I had one of those, I have one of those too.

She's [01:23:00] 16 now, but, um, still got this SaaS when she needs it, but, um, it'll serve, it'll serve him well in life. Exactly What this is, what we want is dads right. Um, one of the questions I love to do on this show is if you, if you had a billboard and it could say whatever you want, what would it say? Like a personal billboard or for business?

Whatever you want. It's your, your mantra, 

Kevin: your credo, the message you want to get out in the world. My, my mantra and my GM will tell you this, life is short. Live it on your own terms. And that's kind of why I bought a business. You know, you get stuck in red tape corporate world listening to other people having to, you know, maybe you don't have a voice and you have to just, yeah.

Follow the leader. And, uh, if it doesn't make sense, it doesn't make sense. Not to say working for somebody's bad, but you should be relatively happy. E everything, whether you're doing it on your own or working for somebody, has its negatives. Right. But you should genuinely enjoy what, what you're doing doesn't, I don't think you have to have passion [01:24:00] for it, but you should like be happy.

Yeah. Like you have, like live your life, 

Wes: put some effort into it. So life is short. Live it on your own terms. Yep. 

You feel like you're, you're not in the cage anymore. I'm not in a cage. Yeah. I am the cage. That's, that's a great thing. I love that. And so close out, as you know, we're a rebel motor company, which we've got a lot of amazing vehicles here.

Rebel. They all, they store cars, they rest to mod cars too. They, they make dream cars. So if they're making one for you right now, what is it? Dream car. 

Kevin: I dunno. I, I drove, I did a ex extreme car experience recently drove a Porsche, a Lambo, and a Ferrari. And I love the Ferrari, but you know, if they were gonna mod something for me, I mean, I don't know, the Ferri was just great because it's like best of all worlds as far as fast, smooth, um, probably something dope like that, like Ferrari.

Wes: You're a supercar kind of guy 

Kevin: now. I am. Yeah. Yeah. After driving [01:25:00] those, it's addicting. 

Wes: I don't blame you. Um, Kevin, thanks for being on like a champion. It's great to have you. Great story. I think that you, um, executed this in, um, incredible fashion and you learned a lot along the way and it seems like you're well on your way to making Kyle into.

A real force in the, in the, in the, in the world of plumbing. Yeah, man, thanks for having 

Kevin: me. I appreciate the friendship that we've built. Yeah. I think is probably, I dunno if this is rare to have a relationship after I, you were representing the seller, but we hit it off from the beginning. So I appreciate our friendship as it continues to grow.

And thanks for having me. 

Wes: You were a pleasure to deal with and continue to be, you know, a friend. Appreciate it. 

Kevin: Thanks 

Wes: brother.

Kevin: Was that good? Proper clap. Nice. That was [01:26:00] fun.

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Wes Shelton

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