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Welcome to Founder 2 Founder, the ultimate podcast for entrepreneurs who refuse to settle for ordinary. Hosted by Sardor Umrdinov, founder and CEO of Home Alliance - a $100+ million tech-enabled home services platform operating nationwide.
From bootstrapping his first business to building a horizontally and vertically integrated empire, Sardor brings you raw, unfiltered conversations with successful entrepreneurs, industry leaders, and game-changers who've turned their visions into multi-million dollar realities.
Each episode dives deep into the real stories behind business success - the failures, pivots, breakthroughs, and strategies that actually work. Whether you're scaling your first startup, planning an exit, or looking to acquire your next business, you'll get actionable insights from founders who've been there and done that.
What You'll Learn:
- How to scale from startup to 8-figure valuations
- M&A strategies and exit planning
- Home services industry insights and opportunities
- Investment and business acquisition tactics
- Leadership, team building, and operational excellence
- Fundraising, private equity, and wealth building strategies
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Subscribe now and join thousands of entrepreneurs building their path to financial freedom!
"Partnerships are everything. Success is not a solo journey." - Sardor Umrdinov
I've closed a deal on one call. I'm trying to learn from the best. Everybody's looking to to take your money. What are the three red flags when you are looking at the deal? They you got to have a number in mind, right? What is the most effective marketing challenge? When was the last time you listened to a radio station? It was a strategic move or burnout. Anything that I touch was going to win. I'm proud that I'm going to make that guy more money than he ever will need in his life. The next generation of millionaires going to be the electricians and plumbers and HA guys. Do you think is that true? to 25 million in less than 24 months. I can be the big player overnight. I can dominate the market. They don't spend as much money on marketing. I I will [ __ ] everybody up.
Hello everyone. Uh in today's episode of founder to founder, I have a CEO and founder of gross rocket holding company. We're going to be talking a lot about how he have it's a self-built, self-made. We're going to be talking about how he he started from getting paid as a mechanic $6 an hour and actually built the empire of home service acquisitions home service company and he's actively acquiring and a lot of home service companies in nationwide and we're going to be learning his wisdom his experience how he have done it and I'm sure it's going to be a lot of valuable Victor thanks for joining
you started as a mechanic and working for $6.75. And uh when did you realize now instead of working for somebody else, you want to start your own business? You know, you know, honestly, I never thought I could. Um you know, back in that it was like 12 years ago, I was doing oil changes for $6 an hour. And you know, I never in a million years would imagine I'd doing what I do now. Um really, I had no plan of starting a business. I never did. Uh I was going to be a sales guy. I was making more money than I knew what to do then. And you know, one day my boss pissed me off and I was like, "Well, [ __ ] it. If this guy can figure it out, why can't I?" So, you know, I had an entrepreneurial seizure back in 2018 in August and, you know, from there just had to learn everything on the way on the way through it. But, you know, they say sometimes you got to build a plane while you're flying. What was the hardest part in the beginning? Like, it was uh experience or lack of money or confidence. You know, I would I would say I never lack confidence. You know, I figured I can build it. It was really a lack of experience. Shoot, I didn't know how to set up an LLC. I didn't know what an escorp was or, you know, any of this kind of stuff. And so, I had to like learn it on the fly. And then obviously capital is always a big thing. You know, I was a sales guy. I made a lot of money, but I I spent it faster than I made it. So, you know, I had the Mercedes, I had the house, I had all the stuff. And then all of a sudden, I had I went from making a lot of money to making nothing. So, that was definitely a humbling experience of having to take a step back to go forward, I guess. When did you realize like you're not a technician anymore, you are a business owner? Right away, to be honest, I I I knew right away that I couldn't be everything. Um, you know, most people they start out, they're by themselves, they don't hire employees. I hired people right away, which was a gamble, right? cuz I had to go figure out how to feed these people and take care of them. But I think that was the best way to go about it. I knew day one I had I couldn't be in the truck. I couldn't be the sales guy. I couldn't do that. Um I still had to do it for a couple years, but along the way uh like I said, I I was like, "Hey, I don't do this anymore. I'm an operator." So it was pretty quickly I had to realize it. Cool. Cool. Cool. If you would started uh over again with one van, one thing, what would you do differently? Which was the I would set up my life for that situation, right? like I I would I wouldn't start with a situation where I had all that overhead. You know, I I would start, you know, live simple, do the little things, invest, you know, I invested a lot of money back in the business, but you know, I like I said, I like nice things. I like to party. I like to do [ __ ] bottle service and all that fun stuff. So, I I would go back and, you know, kind of be like I am now. More more live more minimal. And then, you know, just invest it all back into the business or into uh any kind of investments. Honestly, instead of spending it all out, you would basically invest it back in the business and grow the valuation or like grow the bigger company, right? Yeah. I mean, obviously making sure you get the right hires. Uh I would set up the systems and processes, really have a game plan. So, I had no no business plan, no budgets, none of that stuff in place. It was just kind of I was really good at sales. I figured out how to sell. I knew how to get customers. Actually, the funny part is I got a lot of the customers cuz I partied so much that I just met so many people through the years that I was able to start pretty easy. Um but yeah, I would definitely put the system and process in before I launched the business. And when you are establishing that company like you would do some people do DBA, some LLC, some corporations like I I think DBA is too risky, right? Like you are not limiting yourself like you're not protecting yourself. Yeah. I mean obviously we set up as an escort right away. Um so obviously you know if I'm doing a home service business that's what how I would set it up. Some guys are, you know, limited LLC's, you know, sle proprietors, things like that. And you really have to protect your assets, right? Like I've learned that now through having to go through, you know, lawsuits and things like that and what's protected, what's not protected. You know, when your lawyer says, "Hey, you know, this is what's going to happen or they're going to do this." And I'm like, "Well, [ __ ] I wish I would have thought about it then." So now definitely, you know, we there's so many lay layers of protection between me and my assets that no one can really touch me. Yeah. Yeah. When I was starting my business as well, first thing was I think DB under my social security. Later on, I figured out that I had to protect myself, my family. uh and then I actually put up corporation I believe then multi-level structure and holding uh and actually eventually the trust I believe uh you can protect your your assets right yeah you got to protect yourself and you don't think there's a problem till you know till it happens right you don't think it's going to happen to me you know and and I got to the point where I became such a big target you know you got you got freaking 50 60 trucks driving around you got advertising everywhere you're on the radio everybody's looking to to take your money especially here in
your first acquisition, it was a preferred heating, right, in 2020. What went wrong or what did you learn from it? Like your acquisition uh story. So, probably the worst deal I've ever done in my life. It really it hampered my business growth. So, you know, we we had just came off our very first year in business. We didn't a little over from about $5.1 million from scratch, you know. So, we grew pretty fast, you know, going into year two, which was 2019 or 20 2020, COVID happened. COVID hit, didn't know what the hell was going to happen. It's still a new business. You know, we didn't have a big slush fund of cash. Like, we invested all that 5 million really back into the business. So, we just did a rebrand. We did all these things. CO happened. We ended up taking off. You know, the beautiful part about CO in California is normally it takes you two hours to get to LA. We were able to run calls in get to LA in 25 minutes. So, we can run more calls a day. So, our revenue jumped up, you know, from 5 million to 12.5 million by the end of December, October of that year of 2020, you know, as the SBA was giving out loans for fre you didn't have to put any money down. You can go get these loans. And, you know, a lot of the business valuations were really skewed. Uh, but, you know, I believe that anything that I touched was going to win. And, you know, I went to go look at this business. It was it was valued at an 8x multiple when really it should have been a 3x on a $350,000. So, you know, ended up being I ended up being like uh I think I paid like 3.2 2 million after that after everything was said and done when the business really was worth about a million, you know, but my ego said, I got to make this acquisition. It was one of those things like, hey, look what I can do, right? And I still remember driving out there the day I'm out to sign the documents of the, you know, signing the documents and buy the business. And it was a 2-hour drive away, you know, from where I was at. So, like I would have to be out there, which was a dumb idea anyways. I already had, my business over here is doing great. Let's go do this thing two hours away. Bad decision. Uh, gut said turn around. Didn't turn around. Ego said let's just get it done. We'll make it happen. we can make anything work. Number one thing on a deal is you the the win is made on the upfront deal. Like you know, you got to figure out how to make the best possible deal up front. Took a bad deal. Everybody kind of gave me [ __ ] They're like, "You paid 3 million for that [ __ ] business." Like, and I'm like, "Oh [ __ ] what did I get myself into?" So went through, you know, 2 hours away. I'm driving out there trying to recruit, trying to do all these things and replicate what I did. And my market there was was not very easy. I had a $34,000 a month SBA loan that I was paying on this thing. And um you know obviously that could have been that 34,000 a month could have went into marketing my other business and scaled it. Instead I have this fire all 2 hours away all the employees left cuz I didn't have any plan in place. I never did an acquisition before. Uh so employees left hours away paying 34,000 a month. It got to a point where that business was losing about 60,000 almost a month. 60 70,000 a month. Mentor came to me. He said hey you know you got this thing. What is this? He's looking at him like I'm like oh it's an acquisition. He's like it's losing you 70 grand a month. I'm like oh this and that. like, "Dude, take that [ __ ] out back and shoot it in the head." So, I shut the business down after about 9 months. Wow. And I still have to pay the note. And by the way, you it's not legal for you to shut down an SBA funded business without paying off the loan. Uh, so SBA came after me. I did all, you know, caused me all kinds of headaches and I was able to get out of the get out of the mess and all that stuff. But it taught me right away like, you know, you got to negotiate like the deals have to be how they get negotiated. So now like the structure of how we do things is completely different. But, you know, I paid $3 million for education and it is what it is. $3 million for education. That's the expense of education. Yeah. And I I teach I tell a lot of guys, you know, I had I had a one of my one of my good friends, he he's looking at doing this acquisition. He's got this great business here in Southern California and they're they're doing good over here and I think they're towards like Canyon Lake and he's talking about buying this business over here and he's overpaying for it. I already told him I was like he's like, "Well, we're paying it over 7 years." I'm like, "You're still paying 1.2 2 a million for a business worth maybe 250,000 bucks. I said I don't care if you paid over seven years or how many years. Like obviously in our heads we can turn he can make money on the business but I'm like well now you have this business that's doing good. It's growing and now you're going to go put take half your focus and put it over here you know and I wish that people would have told me to stay narrow right and focus on your one thing. So at that time you said in 2020 when you bought that company your company was doing what you said about 12 million 12 million and you bought this company for three and we just shut it down. Got it. Yeah. It was a lesson that was a lesson learned. You know between the rent and the trucks and all the truck payments, insurance, all that [ __ ] It was Yeah. It was at that point where it was just eating our cash flow alive, right? And you know the number one rule of business is don't run out of cash. So we had to cut that out. Now you run Rocket Holding and you buy companies across the country and uh how do you uh make a decision what kind how do you choose what kind of company to buy? So I found that I with my skill set I I buy struggling companies. So I I don't buy somebody that's you know wants a big you know big check for 40 50 million bucks or whatever it is. I find the company that's about you know anywhere between 2 to 5 million. You know they have decent decent amount of employees. They've been around for a little while and I look at the leader. So instead of buying 100% of the business, I buy a percentage of the business, bring the leader on, give them an opt, it depends anywhere between 50 to 70 and then I'll let them I allow them to stay on and get a second bite of it. Um, so I have, you know, they become the operators, things like that. And it's allowed us to scale faster without putting out as much cash. I would rather put the cash into marketing, growing the business. And, you know, most of these owners would never make the money that they make. Like, you know, the business I got in Arizona last year, you know, the business was worth 400 grand when I came into the business. This is in May of last year. We just turned down 17 million. two weeks ago. And so in the 16 17month period, we took a business worth 400 grand turned to 17 million and my out of pocket was zero. Another question is what are the three red flags when you are looking at the dealer that's going to make you walk away from the deal? Debt equals death, right? How much debt do they have on the business, right? What kind of cash flow do they currently have? Obviously, we want to look at the cash flow and debt stack. And then from there, it's the leader. You know, who's in place? Uh, I don't I don't want a guy that's been doing it for 30 years and thinks he knows it all. I would rather have a guy that's in his, you know, 30s, 40 years old, hungry, wants to win, just doesn't know how to do it. Um, and I can take that company and blow it up overnight. What is a perfect acquisition target looks like for you? Like the numbers, the leaders, the people, culture. I would say market matters, right, where you are. Um, you know, a lot of private equity is actually looking in big cities. I'm looking at like the the, you know, the a cities are like say a Phoenix and Denver or uh, you know, LA, right? I'm looking at the smaller outside cities where I can be the big player overnight. I can dominate the market. They don't spend as much money on marketing things like that. So like, you know, the Arizona one, we're we're in Northern Arizona. We're not in Phoenix, 120,000 people. But, you know, we're now we have a $15 million plus business overnight because we have nobody to compete with. So, I'm trying to go find markets, you know, like that, Auburn, Alabama, things like that where we go in there right away. We put our stuff in place. There's no one else doing it. We could just dominate the market quickly. And once you close three deals in 10 days like how do you structure your your team like for the acquisition to to after after buying the company like it's your CFO CEO like legal integrations like how do you structure it? So we we try to keep it simple but we have a obviously we have a whole integration process. We have a you know a first week 30 days 60 days 90 days what we need to get implemented. So I have a you know my COO he kind of flies around. I don't I got three kids. I try not to travel as much. He flies into the business day one. You know, we sign the deal. He's there next day. And from there, we're we're starting to integrate with the team, figure out who we have, what we don't have. Obviously, get the get the team excited about it, and then obviously we have the finance side, sales training. And so, we start we just start bringing in all the different parts. So, in the Rocket Group, we have people that have already built the next city companies that are partnered with me doing the same thing. And so, you know, when we come in, we know exactly what to do, what to integrate. And then our goal over the first 6 months is that every business operates exactly the same from marketing, finance, our CRM, everything. So, you know, when we go, we already know what leverage the pool and how to win it. I'm also building uh M&A platform in home services, but more appliance repair, handsman, home cleaning, like more of a services industries nationwide. And for that, I'm trying to learn what is your biggest bottleneck uh when you are doing the M&A. it's capital, it's uh the people or integration speed. I think the big the biggest thing, right, is is bandwidth, right? Having having enough people on your team that can handle it and on board. Um, you know, that's going to be the biggest thing to scale. So, that's why you want to make sure you have the right partners that aren't going to freaking take extra time or or move you down, like slow you down. So, like I get people bring deals to me where it's like, dude, they'll give me half the business. They'll do all these things, but I know he's going to slow down our speed and what how long it's going to take us to integrate and I will turn the deals down. Um, I would say, you know, we probably take two out of a hundred deals that come to us that are like there all the other deals are good deals. People would look at them like, damn, that's a [ __ ] good deal. U, but I've been able to identify what's going to slow me down. And, you know, we have a, you know, pretty, I think, moderate goal of 20 locations doing 20 million by the end of next year. So, it's 400 million in the next, you know, you know, 12 to 18 months. And we, you know, for us, like we just had to make sure it's the right people because you got to go fast. When you buy a company, uh, do you normally leave them alone as it is or you merge cultures like how you deal deal with Oh, no. No. We [ __ ] flip that thing upside down. So, we have to we bring most of these companies are, you know, they're great technicians or, you know, whatever installers and we're like, "No, we're a sales organization." So, we come in right away. We're a sales and marketing company that happens to do whatever the [ __ ] we're doing. Uh, so we come in, you know, some people come, some people go. Um, the thing that I I have a big social media following. So if I say if I post in this if I I open this business here in Denver magically I have 50 guys that want to come work for me because they want to make more money. So we go from you know being an every employees make an hourly. Now everybody's on commission. Our from our technicians our installers even our call center reps have a potential to make commission and that's just human nature. If you work harder you make more money. That's where they want to be. Uh so we bring in we bring in a players you know like in Houston I think we've been there for six weeks. Business has been around for 60 years. We just and and we're in the slowest time of year. We've already we've already doubled their all-time record in the first five in the five weeks. So this month we'll hit their all-time record after 60 years in business. We replace the entire staff in 5 weeks. What what is your buy box now? Like what is the top line? What is the EBITA looks like and what is your multiplier? What kind of company you looking for and where? Right now if I'm looking it's 3 to 5 million anywhere in the continental US. Probably not in in Alaska, but uh you know I don't really want to go to Alaska. I don't really don't want to go to Hawaii because I don't like mini splits. Uh but anywhere in the continental US pretty much um as long as they I said anywhere between two to five million uh maybe they're making three five% net. You know the the big deal like these private equity guys are going to buy these big businesses that are already really successful. And you know what happens they come in they change everything up. I'd rather buy a small company and grow it because I have the skill set to do it. I've done it over and over and over. We went into Vegas. We went from 1.8 million to 25 million in less than 24 months. Uh Georgia the same thing. Sacramento. So, like everywhere we go now, I take a $2 million business, I turn it to 20. I would much rather have that upside than, you know, I go buy a $50 million business, I got to try to get it to 100 where there's levels of management, all the other stuff you have to add. It just it just slows you down. For the listeners, uh, for the owners who can actually do the self diagnos on themselves, how can the owner can tell if they're ready uh if they're truly ready to sell the company, if they're ready to exit? They you got to have a number in mind, right? And you know, I talk to entrepreneurs in they're like, I want $100 million. Like, dude, you ain't getting $100 million check. You guys, you don't understand the amount of level of work and stress you have to get to a $100 million check is going to take you 10 to 15 years to build a business that's worth 100 million. Now, if you want a $30 million check in the next 24 to 36 months, I can do that. Getting them to understand the realistic what's possible, what's out there. And, you know, a lot of these guys, they think their business is worth like million, you know, they are doing 2 million, they think it's worth five. And I'm like, it's just not the reality. You know, back in 2020 when the multiples were really high, they were literally private equity. who'd buy anybody that had a HVAC company with a pulse anywhere in the US and they'd overpay for it. They're smart now. You know, they know that they can come in and they instead of spending 3 million on that, they can build their own business for a million. Why would I go buy that? So, I think they're looking for do you have management in place? How involved are you? So, if you're still involved in the day-to-day, you're not ready, right? Um, do you have do you have systems and processes in place? Are you the market leader? Are you are you one of the you know, top three in your market on everywhere on social media to Google everywhere? If not, you're not ready to sell. uh what are the three signs the business is mature and what are the those three signs that uh the business owner is not ready emotionally to let it go. I don't I don't think you're ever emotionally ready to let go of a business you know and that's one thing that no one talks about. So when I you know I grew my business from you know zero to 60 million in four and a half [ __ ] years and you know that was my business. That's all I did every day seven days a week and then all of a sudden you sell the business and you got a big chunk of cash but you don't know what to do. You lose your purpose. So you know if you're going to sell you got to go figure out something else to do next. like what's going to get you excited? You know, I I ended up sitting on the beach in Newport Beach [ __ ] drinking, partying, doing stupid [ __ ] you know, flying out to Vegas, blowing cash. I didn't know what to do. And I was miserable. It took me about, you know, probably up until about like 8 months ago to find purpose again. You know, it's been almost 3 years. And it took me a long time to really figure out what the hell am I good at? What do I want to do? And, you know, I finally found it. But I would think you've got to plan for what you're going to do next because it is all of a sudden you go from busy every single day of your life to I don't have [ __ ] to do. And the money is not that fun. And how do you value the HVAC companies at the moment and what is the multipliers to correct? So if you're under $2 million in IBIDA earnings and you know if you don't know what IBIDA is you can go to my social media there's a post on there that tells you exactly how to calculate your IBIDA. It's really your true earnings of your business. They said under 2 million you're going to get 3 to 5x at the most. Five is if you have like a good market all these things. Now if you're in a small market in middle of nowhere you might get two to 3x. So private equity is looking for a $2 million minimum. Ibido is where they think that's a that's a good business. that's something we can scale. It's got systems, processes, and stuff. So, if you're below that, I would focus everything I can for the next 18 months to get over 2 million in IBA. That that's the main thing. So, everybody thinks it matters your your memberships, your Google, the private equity doesn't give a [ __ ] They don't care about your memberships. They don't give about your Google reviews. They don't care how good your brand looks. They don't care that your [ __ ] everybody in town uses you. If you're earnings aren't there, they don't give a [ __ ] because at the end of the day, they're looking at rate of return and they're not going to get the rate of return off a little business. basically the quality of earnings and how they actually do this cash basis acral right yeah if if you're on cash basis quit now like you have to go on acrual you can't really you can't understand the real true profitability of your business without having you know cruel based accounting um you know that's the first one of the first things if if I have a partner with a business on cash we're going to acrruel immediately what do the sellers most often hide during the due diligence [ __ ] everything so you know they they think they can hide those things that the things that run through their business or you know these things they try to add you adbacks that aren't real adbacks. Um, private equity sophisticated like my my team when they look at your numbers they know when shit's [ __ ] or not. Pretty like like you know there was one deal we looked at it we were two days in my my CFO is like yeah we're not doing this deal you know it was numbers are fluff there's how do you protect yourself from fake uh numbers and fake growth like uh obviously we do a real quality of earnings. So we go in we're going to do a quality of earnings. We're going to we're going to go through your business. We're going to pretty much trip you down naked and we're going to figure out everything about you. Okay. Got it. Got it. And and when you acquire the company, what do you do first 90 days? How that acquisition like postacquisition takes? So for us, we have a full integration sheet. So we have it, like I said, we broke it down from the first, you know, day one, day, first week at first month. And so we go like 90 days to, you know, sometimes it could be up to, you know, six months depending on the side size of the business, but we have things we execute all the time like in a row. Number one thing that I look for in the first thing in business, how do I recruit the best sales guys in the market? Mhm. If I get the sales guys, everything else will fall into place. Um, you know, obviously we can train them, but in the beginning, you have to go get the sharks. Uh, I'm really big on giving key employees equity. So, you know, it's hard to get somebody, you know, he's already making a half a million a year. You want to come work for you with this new business, this question mark. So, I say, hey, you know, you can make a half a million forever and you'll have own nothing, right? I can give you equity in this thing. You can still make that much money, but you also have part of the upside. Uh, so we tie equity in all kinds of different positions in our business to keep people that are growing. Um, I'll probably, you know, when we sell our Arizona business, there's probably, I don't know, seven, eight people that are going to become multi-millionaires. Mhm. Mhm. And And do you normally like, uh, increase their salaries like for the stuff? No, I try to run the lowest salary as possible. We're an incentive based business. I'm going to show them how they can make more money. Um, everybody wants, you know, if you're asking me or you you put more incentive structure. Yeah. If you're if you ask me for a $300 $300,000 salary, I'll tell you to go [ __ ] yourself. Okay. So, like, hey, I'll give you 100 grand, but I'll give you potential to make five. Yeah. you know, it's just, you know, those not the people that I want. I want people that are willing to eat what they kill. Um, those are that's what I'm looking for. Otherwise, it's salaries like [ __ ] is is like death in my business. How are those salaries? Because I look at a daily overhead. How much is it going to make for me to make money on that business? And that that's just overhead. I don't like overhead. If another contractor is trying to buy like neighboring uh company, uh what they supposed to do within the 90 days after they buy the company? So, neighboring depends. Is it a tuck in or you're going to tuck in? I mean, the first thing like if you're looking for a good tuck in, you want to find it, go talk to your distributors. You're going to know who's behind on their bills. Uh, so I have great relationships like almost every distributor in different markets and I I'll go to them once a month. Hey, you got anybody that's not able to make their payments? Like that's what I look for cuz I want to be okay. He's struggling. I cut a check. Like I had a deal one time. I got the entire business, a $3 million business. Got it for 35 grand. 35 fucking,000. We sold over 35 grand day one, right? So, you know, deals like that, you know, those are what we're looking for. where I'm looking for, you know, I'm looking really for a phone number, a database. You know, maybe an old-timer has been doing it for a long time. His phone rings all the time, but he just can't even get to all the work. Um, so I mean, the first thing is is is identifying who you're going to keep and who you're going to cut. Um, immediately you need to consolidate. So, a lot of a lot of mistakes I see is they keep trying to run two call centers to everything right away, day one, you're either going to work for us or you're not. We'll interview the new staff. We keep them. We keep them. Otherwise, we'll sign them a check. Here, here's a couple weeks of pay. See you later. Like, good luck. Right? So you have to consolidate quickly and and how they can use like SBA or investors to to finance the deal. Would you use like you already mentioned like you would or you would not use SBA? Um S SBA could be good, right? Is it's just really you know if you don't like I'm looking for if I'm doing a tuck in things like that. There's those companies I'm looking at probably going to pay anywhere between 100 to 500 grand. Right? If you need and most of them you can owner finance to and we can you can sell the owner on like hey I can give you a check today for 500 grand. you're going to pay capital gains on all of that or I can figure out a way to keep it, you know, keep you a steady paycheck for the next couple years. So, we try to do seller finance as much as we can on the small companies. I try not to borrow money as much as I can. So, you know, we'll put like we'll have lines of credit, things like that, but like debt's debt to me is death. I don't want any debt on my business. I would rather What is the smartest uh deal structure? Like a cash seller notes of owner financing you mentioned. Yeah. I mean, the best ones are if you can owner finance it, right? You know, put a little cash up front, pay them out over time. Um, you know, it's I found that it's better way even for the owners with the the tax implications and the other things that are are are different as well. Um, so if you can structure it that way, it's best. I mean, if you want to stroke a check, that's fine. I've just been a better negotiator. You know, most people they have to pay cash. They just have to you have to learn how to negotiate and make the deal sound better. When should uh you never use earnouts? I usually don't do any earnouts really. Like if you try to get me an earnout, you can [ __ ] yourself. You're not like when I sell a business, I'm selling the whole thing. I'm not going to be involved, right? Right. So, like I have two I'm not going to be tied to one business. It's just not possible. But, I mean, obviously earnouts, you want to try to keep the the culture intact as much as you can. Most of the deals that I do, I keep the owner on as an equity stakeholder for the long term till we go flip the next one. Like, I talked to them like, "Hey, you're going to get you didn't you're not going to get much upfront, but we're going to go sell this thing for 40 million in two years. You're going to get a big ass paycheck." Cuz most of these guys are really going to their business is worth less than a million bucks anyways. So, I'm like, "Hey, you can have a [ __ ] million dollar piece, like $800,000 piece of [ __ ] or you can have a [ __ ] you can go make 10 million, 15 million in 24 months, and I don't even need them to work. I just need them to be the face of it." They just sit back, you know? Like, a lot of my partners are out doing whatever they [ __ ] want to do. They're just the face of the thing that most people don't even know I own the thing. And, you know, I just let them let it grow and then when they sell it, everybody gets paid. Post acquisition. Uh, how do you integrate the team without losing the key key people? Well, I mean, it's become easy now because they know when I come in, they make more money. The first time, the fir the first acquisition, it was it was I lost everybody. I didn't know you. I came in, I told them what I was going to do, and they didn't they weren't ready to change. It was more ran like a mom and pop shop. And all a sudden, I come in now, you got to learn how to sell, and you got to do this, and I'm going to hold you accountable, and they're like, "Fuck this. I'm out." Right? Um, but now with my reputation, people know when I come in, they make they're going to make more money they've ever made before. Um, but I think it just over time, you have to you have to learn, you have to get that down. you can show the track record like, "Hey, look, I had this person that would made this much. Now they're making this much." And so I think now we can show the track record. It's easy. That's why the acquisitions for us are easy now. We know we're going to win. The, you know, not every deal is going to be a great deal, but your likelihood of success is is pretty [ __ ] high if you partner with us.
And now about the family. You work closely with your partner Michelle. How do you make that dynamic uh work in the life and business? We don't we don't really cross too much on the business side like you know I tell her she's she's on the finance side mostly and obviously I'm I'm over dealing mostly my job to be honest is is negotiating new deals and then negotiating our vendor costs. Um so we try to keep them separate. We try to have respect for that. Um but when we're at home it's you know it's still work. You know a lot of people like you got to shut off. We we both don't shut off. So you got to make sure if you're going to be in a business with a partner there's there's an alignment on what the goal is. Uh we realize for the next 5 years there's probably going to be no shut off. and your daughter Abeay, how she sees that lifestyle of being always in deals, like flights. It's rough. So, I I have, you know, I have three kids myself. Um, Shell has two kids. Uh, so I have a, you know, 11-year-old, 8-year-old, and a 5-year-old, and she has a a 15-year-old, and a and a 5-year-old. Um, so it's it definitely was rough. Last year, I was on over 100 flights last year. Um, so it was a lot, but now I've really reduced it. So like I you know I let I even let your like I let my kids know and talk to them about like hey look this is what you have to sacrifice to get where you want. So my kids are very involved. Like I'm trying to I'm trying to show them that you know you know you can't just sit around and wait. You got to go make [ __ ] happen. You know sometimes you got to sacrifice [ __ ] But like I'm at every sporting event. I fly back like I I'm in and out. If I'm flying out there like my kids got a sporting event the next day I'll fly in get the hell out that night red eyee or fly out early in the morning. Um so you got to make priorities with family. Uh but you also have your kids need to see that right? Like, you know, so many kids nowadays are [ __ ] coddled and they need to see how business is ran. Like, my kids can run and read a P&L at 8 years old. And how do you balance control and trust in business in the in the life? Control and trust, dude. I think that's one of my superpowers. I trust everybody. Trust until they [ __ ] me. But, you know, and I've been [ __ ] a lot, but you know, I found that, you know, if you're stressed about every little detail of every little thing and what micromanaging people, you're never going to grow. Um, I've been able to, you know, obviously you check, you got to check and balance, there's checks and balances, but I allow people to fail, too. And, you know, most people are so scared to allow them to fail that they they hand you handicap them. Um, so for me, I I just I say I'll trust you until you don't give me an opportunity not to trust you. Um, but obviously I'm going to vet the people first and all that stuff. But, uh, I think you have to trust your people otherwise you'll never grow. And about the future of HVAC industry, uh by 2030 the the HVAC industry almost going to double and who do you think is going to stay the big giants or small niche players? Um it's going to be the people like me who are thinking ahead. Um obviously AI is taking over every aspect of the business. Um every meeting that we have is asking how can we integrate AI more. Um, so like right now the the big the big competing factor from a small guy to a big guy is they can be less cost, right? Because the big guy has a lot of overhead. He's got office staff. Um, I'm trying to operate a whole business with like one or two people in the office. So I could be at a, you know, 60 million bucks and I have the same amount of office staff as you. That means I cut those costs. That means I could be I could beat your I could beat your match your price and make more and make for the profit and bring it to a volume. Uh, the little guys are [ __ ] unless they adapt. If if they don't change over it's not even a 5year runway. It's literally a two-year runway. They have about two and a half, three years that like AI has taken over every little aspect of everything. If they don't pivot, they're [ __ ] They uh and the the cost of goods is going up. Everything keep the cost of doing business keeps going up and they keep running the same way. And I think that's what's happening with private equity. They're running the same playbook they ran 10 years ago. We we're kicking their ass in every market that we go to. We're growing faster. We're doing all this stuff because we're not operating the same way. We have to evolve to the current market and what tools are out there. So, if you don't integrate in AI like immediately, I don't give a [ __ ] what industry you're in. You could be the camera guy staring at me right now. AI is coming. And it's coming faster than you think. And the people that I work with and I and I interact with, they're they're saying this is this is bigger than the internet, bigger than TV, bigger than anything you've ever done in your life by 100x. So, you got to invest in it. You got to figure it out. And the longer you put it off, the the farther behind you're going to get. Do you think uh automation and AI will reduce the dependency on human labor in the trades or not? It's going to be hard to make a robot that can fit in an attic. Um, I think as the new houses get built, they're going to be built around being able to have a robot work on the equipment. I think it's going to be part of how the building specs are made is like how can we get like I that's what I see coming in the next 10 years. Like the houses being built now are going to be built to where you don't need a human to fix it. Um, you know, even if you look at some of the AC units, things like that, they self diagnose. They can tell you what's going on with it. Um, you know, we're already we're already seeing it. And you know, I think the the skilled labor guys think that's not not coming. But I watched a I watched an AI robot frame out an entire house the other day from the stud, you know, from the concrete up. So it poured the concrete, it set all the lines for the blueprints itself. It [ __ ] put the walls up. And this is now and this is two years from now. It's going to be completely different. Yeah. They say the next generation of millionaires going to be the electricians and plumbers and H guys. Do you think is that true? Um, it already is. Um, you know, you know, I've seen my friends make hundreds of millions of dollars. You know, you got Tommy Melo who's made, you know, [ __ ] quarter billion dollars off of garage doors. You know, you know, I've had a lot of my friends that are in that space and, you know, even, you know, some of the mentors I'll be here tomorrow at the event we're having. It's like they've made a half a billion dollars already and they're still going. And then some of the guys are, you know, a little bit older than me. You know, I, like I said, I I predict our business is 400 million within the next 12 to 18 months. Um, and I think we can get to a billion dollars within the next four years. So, it's like the billion, it's already there. You just have to go take it. Some of these guys are so scared to take the leap or don't think they belong. Dude, I'm 36. I would be a multi-billionaire by the time I'm by the time I'm 50. Do you think it's possible with technology to build a platform which will consolidate and and build a platform like an ecosystem at the same time? So, that's what we're building. So, you know, a lot of people are trying to build a hundred million dollar business in one location. Like, dude, [ __ ] that. So, like I'm going to build 20 like my goal by the end of next year is 20 locations doing 20 million each. Some will do more, some will do a little bit less. And we're able to build I'm building what I call like a private equity starter kit. I'm like private equity can't build businesses. They don't know how to do all the little things to build a business. I can do that. So, I'm building the businesses for private equity to buy them and take them to the next level. Um, so I'm building what I like a farm system like with the minor leagues, right? We build these minor league teams and then they're all going to get called up in the big leagues when private equity buys them. So, I can go build a business, a $20 million business. I can build it in 24 months. I can flip that business. We get say we get 20% IBIDA, right? So, let's have $4 million in IBIDA. I can sell that for $40 million every two years. And I'm doing that in every market. Do you believe in Uberization of the industry or not? The what? Uberization like when the technicians were like trade. So, I was part of a group that called Fixifi back in 2020 that tried to do this. Um, the the problem is is that the guys that they're trying to hire just aren't they're not qualified. They're also not they're just not organized because people want service. They want things done the right way. And I think, you know, I watched them try to do it. They've tried it in different markets. They've tried it different ways. I got a buddy of mine in Dallas that's trying to roll it out in Dallas right now, and he's got big money behind it. I just don't foresee it happening. Um, obviously, it might happen with the small checks, but not big installation. Oh, no. You're not going to you're not going to build a big big business. And I think, you know, because the guys that you're finding doing that are the guys that want to fix every little part, and the fix it guys don't make cash. Yeah. And at the same time, you have to compete on the marketing with the big guys who are replacing it, right? So the marketing cost is much more. You can't compete with like if you you're a startup, a little guy that you're like even like a the app that's trying to compete with the big guy, they can't outspend us. Like we already have to like we're spending we're willing to spend $1,000 a lead. They can't spend that cuz they're not bringing back $1,000 a lead. What is your average customer acquisition cost for the client? 780 bucks by the time I pay for marketing, all my expenses to get a van in the driveway. 780. $780 you're paying to walk in to a door to the door. Yeah, that's what it costs. And by the time I mean Google's gone insane, everybody's spending money like crazy. Insurance, gas, all that stuff is all adding up and employee wages are getting higher. So when you come back with a $500 repair on a house, you're already negative 250. Yeah. You know, and the consumer can't figure it out. Why are they charging so much? I'm like, dude, I lost a thousand bucks being here. Like, [ __ ] you. Right. So, it's really you have to understand the numbers and really figure that stuff out. But I think that's you know that's the hard part is there there is a there is a point where consumers won't pay it and that's why we have to integrate the AI to keep that cost down the consumer to where they can afford it. What is the most effective marketing channel and what is the least effective marketing channel? I guess I mean there's no bad marketing channel. I mean obviously the lead aggregators the Angie's stuff where you're fighting for the same lead from multiple you know they're sending the same lead to six people at a time and you have to be the first one and trying to race to get it. Like that's okay when you start out and you got to you got to be scrappy. Um for me has been direct mail. Um we you know it's actually kind of crazy because Alex Herozi right he's uh he's really big in the social media space he's sending out mail now because the social media space all these it's more crowded no one's sending mail so you want to be where people aren't right and I direct mail you can create need right yeah so you can actually go out there and create a de need or demand and be the only person they do business with I got a letter the other day from Alexi trying to invite me to do or to his book launch or whatever it was right and a lot of people have gone away from it. They all go digital because it's really easy. Just spend money and leads come in, right? This, you know, mail is a little bit a little bit higher cost per uh customer at the phone call, but the actual lead itself is better. It's better than a than a Google lead or all that stuff because now they're going, you know, a lot of people are doing AI searches, right? And they go on there and they ask AI how much things are like we're putting on the market before they even before they ever talk to anybody before they touch AI. They're getting our mail piece. They never went anywhere. We're selling that unit before the other company even has a chance. Yeah. Yesterday my wife was showing also like Anderson Anderson renewal by Anderson like they always send out like huge direct mail like we always get those things like every month probably. And what do you think about like radio TV billboards like or sort SEO like search engine optimization? I ask you a question. When was the last time you listen to a radio station? I don't listen. Okay. So then it's probably a bad place to start advertising. Now keep in mind I do some like conservative talk radio. I do pretty well on that. You usually got to nights the demographic you want. You know, it's older demographic. They listen to the radio, like stuff like that. But, you know, I used to spend a lot of money on radio. You know, every anywhere you went in Southern California, you heard me on the radio. All right. This is Victor Rank or it was stupid ass radio ad. It worked. But now the market shifted. A lot of streaming services, Paramount Plus, things like YouTube, all that stuff. Like, I would rather run spend the money on a on a streaming service ad. Like, I was watching Paramount last night watching a movie. You have to watch the ads. You can't skip them. YouTube, you can skip the [ __ ] Paramount, you have to watch the ads. and you're not going to you're not going to get up from the middle of a movie and move. You're going to watch the ads. So, uh really understanding that that demographic is is really good. But you want to be as many places you can as as you can afford. But that's why building a budget and understanding, you know, what you can spend and your and your, you know, rate of return, right? How much, you know, what's your rorowaz on those leads spend. But I think the big play is going to be the the digital advertising. Um now radio, like I said, people will swear by it. I think it's a dying thing and you know, radio stations are calling and begging for people to advertise on it. Uh, billboards as well. Like, you know, billboards, I think they're good. The one thing that I like billboards for is recruiting because the people you want to recruit are driving around all day. Got it. So, the billboards works for the recruiting. Yeah, I see. That's what I'm seeing. Some billboards was like hiring, not for the installation. What is the cost of hire? An average new employee is going to cost you 30,000 bucks. Like that first year, that's how much like a new every time you turn over it's cost you 30,000 bucks. probably a little bit more now. Wow. So, hiring, training, all the other things that go into it. Um, so you have to make sure you're making the right hires, but you know, at the end of the day, you can't be scared to hire. I always say it's hiring is finding out and firing is knowing. So, I hire fast and, you know, hire fast and fire fast. So, you know, once they come in business, where do you think the gross profit supposed to be? Like, where do you like to run the gross profit? So, we aim for 65, we'll usually end up at 55. So, you know, whatever number you set it at, you always end up 5 to 10% lower than that. So, a lot of people like, we're starting at 50. Well, now they're down. Now they're at 40% or 38% and then their their operational cost is at 30 to whatever. So now they're at 7 8% now. Where would you like to be on marketing cost? Ideally between 5 to 7%. So people think you need to go to 10% to market. I'd say if you're at 10% you suck at sales. I see. What is your uh what percentage you spend on sales approximately? As far as what like cost um sales people. I like to have my direct labor. So my installers and my technicians, sales reps, everybody under 20%. So, we've been we average about 16% is our is our direct labor what it cost us to install. And then we want to keep our materials below 20% ideally on the HVAC side. Um, you know, 30% at the max. Um, so I mean I I think below 20% you're a healthy business. I've seen some of these companies are at 30 35% you know in their direct labor and they can't figure out why they're not making money. That means they're price they're not price and basically if you see that kind of companies you know opportunity, right? Yeah. I I also look at I also look at split. So they're they're what how much of their money is coming from replacement. How much is coming from service? My companies run between 90 to 95% replacement and five to 5 to 10% on service. If I see a company that's a 60/40 split, perfect. I got 30% more revenue I can bring in overnight just by changing the process. What what about the memberships subscriptions? They're great. I think you know that they used to be a big selling point. Private equity doesn't care. I mean obviously it's not a bad thing to have recurring revenue. Um, the only thing I care about a membership is do they have them? I don't care about how much they're paying for it. I just want them to have a membership. Jo, just imagine you you need to go, you know, you buy something and you have a Costco membership. Are you ever going to go to Sam's Club? Probably [ __ ] not. Very rarely you're going to go if you're going to go pick the two. I have a membership to Costco. You're going to go to [ __ ] Costco. So, I don't care what the membership costs. It could be $99 a year. It could be [ __ ] $20 a year. As long as they feel like they have a membership, you're going to usually be the first one they go to. Uh, and obviously you have to not suck and you can close a customer, but like so many people are worried about I got to charge this much for a membership. I'll charge less than you. I'll get all your customers to sign up for mine and then they're going to call me when the problem happens and your dumbass is still waiting for the extra money. Who cares? You don't make money. If your membership's at 240 a year, you don't make money on that. You lose money anyways. Now we are giving out first year membership. I never do I never do that. We give out I don't want to give away any once I sold them. I don't want to go back. Well, if I give away if I do a system, now I got to go back and service. I think I'm not making money. I've already made the money for the most part, you know? I don't give anything away for free. Um, but yeah, I hardly even want to sell a membership on a new system because what am I going to send a guy out there to go [ __ ] dust it off? [ __ ] that. I want to go I'd rather go look for I'd rather have that same technician on a new customer where I can make money. Yeah. Where do you like to be on eBay device? As far as a percentage, you know, same thing. We shoot for 30, we end up at 20. It's just it's just a reality. Um, you know, if you're growing and you're at, you know, 15 to 17, that's not a bad number. You know, I would rather have, you know, 17% eBay on 10 million than 30% on 1 million. So, it's just, you know, one of those things you have to give up something to get scale. Um, but ideally, we we shoot when we budget, we're setting, you know, our GP at 65, our net at 30. Now, do we ever hit 30? Yeah, summer months we'll hit 30% net. That's not a big deal. We have the volume to do it, but you know, most of the year we're going to end up between 17 to 25%. And what was your most expensive mistake and what was your uh most profitable no when you said no? I would say when I said no to doing another event. So like we were ready to go ramp up for the next one. I said I'm done with this [ __ ] And like that that saved my team's no longer my team was overwhelmed. Like there it's a year long planning these events that have events are not profitable, right? Like Yeah. Not only they're not profitable, they [ __ ] lose their money and your team's stressed out. Like we spent a whole year planning events. We got [ __ ] performers and the [ __ ] speakers are all making money. Everybody's making money and I'm over here holding my dick and wasting my time. So, uh, I think, you know, shutting, you know, shutting down the shutting down the event business was the best thing I ever did. Now, my ego said it, you know, it felt cool to have [ __ ] be on stage with Joe Montana and [ __ ] on stage with Rick Ross and all this stupid [ __ ] but in the end of the day, it didn't pay the bills. It lost me money. And why did you sell Absolute in 2023? It was a strategic move or burnout. It was uh strategic in the fact that the the the multiples are going down. I'm in Southern California where private equity doesn't want to be. I knew that the the business had a bad debt stack. Um I saw the economy that was going on. I said, "Okay, I found somebody and you know, maybe he sees this. I found a sucker that was willing to take it and they took it and sure enough everything in California has been [ __ ] since." Like there's I mean there's companies in the market doing 100 million, losing millions of dollars. Um the the weather's gone to [ __ ] the market's gone to [ __ ] Um, obviously the tax and regulations are [ __ ] dog [ __ ] here. I got it was like it was almost like I hit my parachute and got out. So that was beautiful. Uh, we seen what happened in my business since I mean the first nine months they bank pretty much bankrupt it, resold it to somebody else to another sucker. The next sucker bought it for less money than the other guy. And then uh now he's you know got 30 trucks sitting every day and you know it looks like they're liquidating all the assets. So um maybe one day I'll buy it back. I don't Yeah, because I'm sure after you did all of those business acquisitions, you can turn it around really fast. Oh, yeah. No, no. Well, my my non-competes almost up and nobody wants to compete with me here. I I will [ __ ] everybody up. That's why you are doing acquisitions other places, right? That's why I'm doing acquisitions in other states, you know. I got a little bit of time left on my non-compete here. Uh, I mean, I got people keep asking me when it is because they want to know because they know I'm going to take their people and it's like it's not it's it's it's an unfair advantage now because we have money, resources, I have the team I and and obviously I have my recruiting power here. This is my backyard. Someone's probably watching this and going to listen to this and just know that you know you got nine months to sell your business otherwise I'm going to [ __ ] you up. My favorite question, where do you see yourself in ideal picture in three five years? Uh, deal picture 3 to 5 years doing the same thing. Uh, I enjoy it. It's fun. I don't work that hard. I, you know, now it's like, you know, I always say business is a sport to me. Um, I'm at the point now where everything is just, it's easy. I just keep putting bigger teams in place. We will be multi-billion dollar platform. And that's I mean, that's kind of what we're going to do. But, dude, I I operate from my beach house. Like, I don't [ __ ] do anything.
Which deal you are most proud of? Uh, I think I said the the Fiscore deal, the the one I did in Arizona. He was a good buddy of mine. He's a client of mine. Uh, like I said, his business, someone tried to buy his business for 400 grand. And he was going to sell it and he was he was depressed. He was all these things going on. And I said, "Hey, look, just partner with me. We'll grow this thing." And like I said, we just turned down 17 million a couple weeks ago. We're going to get 30 plus million for it in the next, you know, 6 to 8 months. And so I'm proud that I'm going to make that guy more money than he ever will need in his life. And how many calls do you make before you buy a company? I've I've closed a deal on one call. One call within one week. Deal done. Our deals are our deals. Like I said, I can't lose on the deal. So, any deal we do, it's literally it's it's it's got to be a win for us only. And if I see a win, I take it right away. And the best advice you have ever received, run your business with as little amount of cash as humanly possible in the bank and take the rest. And people think that's crazy, but what happens is a lot of these businesses, they try to keep so much cash in the business. They get fat and happy and they're not paying attention to the little things. So, every chance that we get, we do what's called sweeping the cash. So I might have a million dollars in the bank and we we're running our business. We have all these employees, right? A million bucks. We know our business is making money every month. It makes money. I'll take 900 grand cash out. So we just barely have enough to payroll. It makes everybody [ __ ] hungry again. Like oh [ __ ] we don't we don't got any money to [ __ ] around. So like they pay attention all those little things. So I think yeah, Bill told me to sweep the cash and and you know, obviously when you sweep the cash, you you go invest and do other things. But the more cash you sweep, the more excited you get. Uh so many owners, they keep all the cash in the bank and they don't pay themselves [ __ ] and they can't figure out why they're not excited about their business or why it's not growing. It's because they're so fat and happy. They're lazy. It's it's more aggressive than the profit first, right? In profit serves, you're just taking 10%. But here you're saying like, oh yeah, almost I called one of my partners, you know, and they had a million dollar in the bank. I said, what are you doing with that cash? Well, you know, we maybe rainy day. I said, get a [ __ ] line of credit. Use the bank's money as your rainy day. Take the cash and put in your own pocket. I'm like, "Tomorrow morning, go wire wire 900 grand out." They're like, "What the [ __ ] do you mean?" I'm like, "Just cut it out." Boom. They never had to work harder in their life that next the next couple months, but the money grew back again and they could do the same thing again. So, uh, stop hoarding your cash. It's [ __ ] dumb. You know, go take it, go invest it, go have fun with it, you know, do all that kind of stuff. But, um, yeah, that it it's it makes you run smarter the less cash you have. One thing you will tell younger yourself, stop partying. I don't party anymore. I don't [ __ ] drink. I don't do anything but work. Um, you know, I when you go look back and you spend hundred and some thousand dollar on bottle service in a night and you're like, "What the [ __ ] was I doing?" Uh, so I I think that the partying stuff would definitely be cut out. Speed or system? Which one? Speed or system? Yeah. Honestly, both. Yeah. You know, obviously money's attracted to speed. You know, that's why we're the we call ourselves the Rocket Group. We grow businesses faster than everybody else, but the system has to come first. You can't just go [ __ ] fly by the seat of your pants. If you were not in business, what would you do? Sales. I love sales. I still love it. I I'm selling everything. That's what I do on acquisition side. Acquisition is a sales and I'm very very good at it. Um, but it's Yeah, sales is addicting. I love I love sales. I've always have. Do you have mentors or coaches? I don't have any coaches, but I do have very successful people I surround myself with, you know, and like I said, I got lucky to meet PY back in 2020. You know, he's already bought and sold, you know, couple hundred million dollars worth of home service businesses. Now, like I say, he's his real estate portfolio is ridiculous. And then now he runs a whole federal house. I mean, he runs $19 trillion dollars worth of money a year now at 37 years old. Do you others? Uh, yeah. So, we have our coaching group. I don't really like coaching much anymore because people don't [ __ ] listen. I found when I when I when I own part of their business, they have to listen and they grow faster. Um, so we still mentor and coach. I do love sales training. Um, I still do that. I do it just literally for fun. I enjoy it. How much is your chance for your mentorship? um to mentor somebody like one-on-one, I won't do it. You couldn't pay me enough. I don't got time for that [ __ ] But, you know, like we have our our training program. We give you guys we have a blue our business blueprint. We sell our online training thing. I don't really even like doing that anymore cuz I don't want to give everybody my I used to give everybody my secrets. They wouldn't [ __ ] follow it anyways. So, um I don't know. I think the the mentor training stuff, if you're mentoring and training, you probably don't know what you're doing because if you know what you're doing, you ain't [ __ ] wasting your time on that. Victor, thanks for joining for us. Awesome. Thank you. Thanks for having me on, Sad. excited to be on this. I'm excited to give back to the, you know, to the community. I think, you know, a lot of people need to hear that they need a man the [ __ ] up. Thanks, Victor. Thank you for watching this episode of Founder to Founder. Today's conversation was packed with real practical insights from how to evaluate partners and dealers to the mindset shifts required to scale fast, stay profitable, and avoid the traps that kill most growing businesses. You heard honest stories about winning, burning out, rebuilding, and building again. the kind of lessons you only get from people who've actually done it. If conversations like this push you to think bigger and build smarter, make sure to subscribe to the Founder Totofounder podcast. We release deep, unfiltered discussions with top entrepreneurs who share exactly how they operate. Thanks for spending your time with us. We appreciate every listener and can't wait to see you in the next episode.