The Hard Truth About Taking Over a Family Business

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Unknown
Oh.

00;00;15;10 – 00;00;32;05
Speaker 1
Welcome to the blue Color Start Startup, the podcast where hard work meets big ideas. This is your home for real talk, real stories and real strategies from the frontlines of life in the business of the trades. I’m one of your hosts, Mike Nelson from five Hours Media, and I’m your co-host. Their foster table cleaning systems.

00;00;32;07 – 00;00;57;06
Speaker 1
Let’s get to work. What’s up D? You know, all good stuff. All good stuff. Yeah. Well, yesterday we had, certain delivery company that decided back into our, fenced in area and absolutely smoked one of the back of our vans. Nice. And then drove forward and proceeded to back up and smoke our loading dock. So.

00;00;57;06 – 00;00;58;04
Speaker 1
Oh my God.

00;00;58;06 – 00;00;59;27
Speaker 2
Oh, not the dock.

00;00;59;29 – 00;01;25;10
Speaker 1
I yeah, it was just you can’t make stuff up, but, you know, it it it was fine. It all it’ll all work out. So everybody was safe. Nobody got hurt. God. Yeah. Just one more chance. You ever know. That’s it. Yeah. And we were at the awards breakfast this morning. I did not win, unfortunately, but, it was.

00;01;25;13 – 00;01;48;14
Speaker 1
I was pulling for you, man. I know, I appreciate it, but listen, the folks at McCann’s pharmacy that won it, they are amazing. Fourth generation. And, you know, to be fair to like I was when I think about their business, I think about the fact that they are a small, hometown, family owned pharmacy that has been fighting the good fight against all the national brands and chains.

00;01;48;17 – 00;02;07;15
Speaker 1
They don’t have their buying power, they don’t have their resources. And these guys are still going strong after four generations. So amazing story. Amazing business, very well deserved win. So if I was going to lose, that was the that was the business to lose too. I was going to say there were there are some heavy hitters and contenders up there.

00;02;07;15 – 00;02;25;03
Speaker 1
So, you know, get them next year. That’s it. And, you know, great event put on by the Adirondack Regional Chamber of Commerce. As always. Those guys do a great job. So happy to be a part of it and grateful to be nominated. So very excited about that. But I hate losing. But anyway, speaking of winning, let’s move on.

00;02;25;06 – 00;02;29;19
Speaker 1
Let’s move on to our our guests here. Daniela Devine, how are you? Nice to meet you.

00;02;29;19 – 00;02;39;13
Speaker 2
Great. It’s good to meet you guys. I’m doing great. It’s Thursday. You know, the weekend is. I can smell it already. Smells like we’re doing good.

00;02;39;15 – 00;03;02;00
Speaker 1
We’re doing great. We’re doing great. Daniela, I’m going to let you introduce yourself as far as what you do. Because like we were talking about before we started recording, you do a lot of things. Aside from being a third generation business owner with Peacock Floors, you’re doing a bunch of other things as well. So why not give us, tell us about who Danielle Devine is, a little bit about yourself and and your businesses.

00;03;02;03 – 00;03;25;04
Speaker 2
Sure. Yeah. So I like to say that I live at the intersection of commercial real estate and business ownership. And, you know, I buy businesses from boomers. That’s what I do. I bought my family’s business, and I am looking to acquire and bolt on to that existing business. And I help other business owners like me, with their commercial real estate as a commercial broker.

00;03;25;11 – 00;03;47;14
Speaker 2
So I found that these two things I personally, my philosophy is that one really shouldn’t exist without the other. It’s really it’s it’s one thing, and it’s an incredible accomplishment to build a business where you’re making tons of income and all of a sudden you have an income problem, right? You can you can go buy boats, go buy a yacht, go buy a plane.

00;03;47;14 – 00;04;16;14
Speaker 2
The copilot, it’s a whole other thing to learn how to keep that money. And my family has always, purchased real estate out of a desperation to help our businesses survive. Rather than I get to purchase real estate to create an income vehicle and a compounding vehicle that, is not associated necessarily with my businesses. And so, I do those two things.

00;04;16;14 – 00;04;32;19
Speaker 2
They marry, they’re married with one another. When one is successful, that means the other one is successful. And as a mom of three young kids, seven years old and under, I need all of the extra help I can get as well. I’m trying to build, low and slow.

00;04;32;22 – 00;04;42;07
Speaker 1
Low and slow. Well, we can certainly relate. Derek, you’ve got three kids now. Yeah, and I know Ford. We know. We know the fight. We know the fights. Yeah.

00;04;42;09 – 00;04;42;21
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00;04;42;27 – 00;05;05;08
Speaker 1
You know the victory. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, I love that you’re talking about buying businesses from boomer boomers. We’ve talked about this. I don’t want to say extensively, but we’ve had multiple conversations on the show about the silver tsunami that’s happening right now and all the opportunity that comes along with that. So I definitely want to get into that.

00;05;05;08 – 00;05;21;22
Speaker 1
But we’ve we’ve got to talk about your family business. It’s got a great story. You’re sleeping floors when you’re four years old. You know, that’s a I thought that was adorable. So tell us about your your third generation family business.

00;05;21;25 – 00;05;43;05
Speaker 2
This is a trippy, right? So I’ll give you, like, the high. I’ll give you a high level. But I was, in fact, always super ambitious. And I love to work from an early age, which sounds crazy, but, you know, welcome to my world. And my dad would bring me in to work and he’d give me job. And my first job was to do the thing that he never did, which is sweep the warehouse.

00;05;43;08 – 00;06;12;21
Speaker 2
So, but, you know, my family’s been in flooring since 1960s, and my grandfather came, immigrated from Egypt, and he had this weird thing he got into, like, he came in, like, most immigrants have, like, these weird, strange business, iterative stories. He just came up on oriental rugs, like, he bought a bunch of oriental rugs, put an ad in the newspaper, sold them out of his garage, and then ended up being in San Francisco in the sunset near Ocean Beach.

00;06;12;27 – 00;06;31;05
Speaker 2
There were so many people that came to buy those rugs, because they were not available in the city of San Francisco at all. They he created a traffic nightmare, and the cops shut it down. And when the cops came to shut it down, they bought two rugs. And that’s what led him to open up stores in San Francisco.

00;06;31;11 – 00;06;50;27
Speaker 2
Hey, my grandmother were together for 37 years, and they were of the. When they divorced, the only thing that she was left with was a semi truck full of carpet. And so they had three sons and my dad was the youngest. He was in Europe with an afro out here playing guitar in the late 70s. She was like, you got to come home and help, help me.

00;06;51;00 – 00;07;13;27
Speaker 2
So what are you doing now? It’s like, I need you to come home and help me move this rug. I need one year, one shop. I need your help. And so he did. In 45 years later, we’re still here. And so I, I was not supposed to work in this industry. This was like, Daniela will never work in flooring.

00;07;14;00 – 00;07;35;23
Speaker 2
She’s going to be the first to get a college degree. She’s first person to not work in flooring in our family. And I got the color story in 2008 and I couldn’t get a job. And so what was offered to me come work at the shop, which is what I did, because there was no way I was moving back in with my parents.

00;07;35;26 – 00;07;53;09
Speaker 2
So I retired my grandma in 2008, and I worked with my dad as his partner, for 15 years, and I did other things in the background. I tried to get out of it. I tried to go away. I got my master’s degree. I had other things I did in my career, and no matter what, I always came back to the shop.

00;07;53;12 – 00;08;12;24
Speaker 2
And eventually I bought the shop and bought it from my dad in last September, and he wrote it in the sunset. And we’ve just been trying to basically build a startup under the umbrella of a 45 year third generation business. And it is, but it’s 2024. Oh my God. It has been like the hardest year in my life.

00;08;12;24 – 00;08;25;01
Speaker 2
But we have stabilized and we are on track to double in our first year of acquisition. And I’m really, really, really proud of, what we’ve been able to do.

00;08;25;03 – 00;08;38;23
Speaker 1
So, how the and how does a business go from selling carpets, oriental rugs. Right. Like, how does it go from there to doing all the work that you are now doing on the installation side?

00;08;38;23 – 00;08;45;11
Speaker 1
Commercial, residential. Like how does that what does that turn that pivot look like?

00;08;45;13 – 00;09;11;29
Speaker 1
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00;09;12;02 – 00;09;17;04
Speaker 1
Commercial, residential. Like how does that what does that turn that pivot look like?

00;09;17;06 – 00;09;42;18
Speaker 2
It’s wild. Right? I mean, I think that flooring, if you really think about all the trades flooring is it really still is in the like me and or is all ages. It’s primarily owned by older folks. People could be and there’s a lot of shops out there installation provide an install and it’s like the owners are 77 and they will die in their chairs.

00;09;42;18 – 00;09;58;13
Speaker 2
And that it’s just that older industry. That’s just what it is. No one is like waking up going on flooring. No one says that. No one. And if you’re in the trades, you don’t wake up going, I’m going to learn how to be a flooring. It’s are like, it’s just a trade. That is not, it’s not up front.

00;09;58;15 – 00;10;20;29
Speaker 2
And for the first 20 years, my father and my grandmother sat on a main street with a retail shop. You walk into, like, you go and buy a car. And they barely made any money. They barely made any money like that. They could not figure out how to build the business into something where they could go, oh my gosh, we’re actually really profitable.

00;10;21;01 – 00;10;45;15
Speaker 2
And they were not, you know, business educated, like they were just bootstrapping it. And I would say in the 20th year, we got a call from the Presidio Trust, which is a government, a federal entity here in San Francisco. You know, a couple million square feet, in military housing that turned into residential housing and commercial, tenants.

00;10;45;17 – 00;11;11;11
Speaker 2
And they asked my dad to come bid some units, and he beat them to height. And two years later, they came back. And he we have been on the Presidio Trust ever since. And that was our blood way into public works. And once you start to do public works and you figure out the compliance and the paperwork, it’s game on, because then you start to go, I’m competing for repair, maintenance and jack contracts, job a contracts with SFL with San Francisco State University, with University of California, San Francisco.

00;11;11;11 – 00;11;29;23
Speaker 2
It’s like, oh my gosh, the world of institution opens up to you. And we’re nonunion. So it’s not like we are sitting there doing new dev. We’re not doing new dev. I don’t want I don’t want ground up. I want you tenant improvement. I want your repair and maintenance. I will come and do a 100 square foot conference room.

00;11;29;26 – 00;11;50;24
Speaker 2
If I know that there’s a hundred more in the background. No problem. Night work tomorrow, Union Square. No parking, no problem. And you know people in the trades in San Francisco. It’s just really hard. California’s hard to do business in San Francisco. Turn it up by a hundred. Yeah, and a lot of people don’t want to work where I work.

00;11;50;26 – 00;12;16;20
Speaker 2
And that’s just what we do because it’s what we know. So we slowly opened that door and we became a firm that primarily did government property management because we figured out how to bid it. And now, you know, funny enough, when I bought the business, that was our Achilles heel because I didn’t have enough working capital to hold for 120 day net on average.

00;12;16;22 – 00;12;43;18
Speaker 2
And, it killed us. Six months in, we were dying. And finally, my partner Chris and I, we, for the first time put together a marketing campaign, dedicated ourselves to I first marketing and learned how to do that and completely changed our client mix. So now we have private commercial projects that come in inbound leads every single day.

00;12;43;20 – 00;12;54;26
Speaker 2
And on all those projects we collect deposits and we collect as soon as we’re done. So we’ve got our government property management. Where’s the help will never happen.

00;12;54;28 – 00;12;55;13
Speaker 1
Right?

00;12;55;14 – 00;13;15;10
Speaker 2
Yeah, lots less people will always pay. And now we’re starting to really develop a company that is diversified and can see its way through some of these challenges. You know, things that I would have never thought was a problem. Because when you do something for 45 years, you keep your working cap in that account. You don’t worry about it.

00;13;15;13 – 00;13;35;20
Speaker 2
But when you walk into something that’s already living and breathing and that previous owner takes away the working cap and you said they’re going, well, okay, so we figured this out pretty quickly or no one’s going to eat. So it’s it’s thin. It’s been a journey. But I feel I feel like now we’re looking to a kaleidoscope. When I bought the business, the ergo, we had three institutional accounts.

00;13;35;20 – 00;13;41;09
Speaker 2
Those were contracts that I purchased. And, it was a massive risk.

00;13;41;11 – 00;13;59;08
Speaker 1
And if that were you, is that what you meant when you’re saying that you’re like a startup operating under the legacy of an existing business? Because because of these challenges that you ran into, and all of a sudden it was like, oh, well, we can’t go 120 days without getting paid. So we’ve got to make some changes.

00;13;59;11 – 00;14;16;24
Speaker 2
Thousand percent. I mean, there’s things that happen when you’re new business fire. Right. And I cannot pretend I’m like some M&A professional. I am not I am totally bootstrapped. That is, when you go and buy a business, you start to understand the numbers you’re supposed to look at. Same thing as an investment property is residential home, whatever it is.

00;14;16;26 – 00;14;35;29
Speaker 2
And you look at that profit, that bottom line, you know, and when we look at it, it’s our net operating income as business owners, as a business fire e they tamper with it a little bit and it ends up coming out as like EBITA per se seller’s discretionary earnings. Right. It is great. You go I’m going to buy it.

00;14;35;29 – 00;15;00;29
Speaker 2
And that’s what’s going to happen. And that’s what I’m going to make. No that is not true. It is not true. Because then you put debt against a business. Probably doesn’t have that. That’s an older boomer business. You didn’t have debt. It built it. It didn’t buy it. Right. And then you go, okay, well now I’ve got debt and my profit has shrunk and I’ve modernized systems because everything was on paper and that costs money.

00;15;01;02 – 00;15;25;11
Speaker 2
And then I hired a person or two to do things because I’m drowning and I need help. And then you forget about the most important thing, which is growth. Immediately you have to grow a business. You buy almost from the day you close to counteract all of the costs associated, which is walking into a functioning business that you buy.

00;15;25;13 – 00;15;57;12
Speaker 2
And, I think that there’s different business, different kinds of businesses. Right. Like, I, I didn’t buy a 5 to $10 million construction company that had infrastructure people, middle management, maybe even a CEO. You know, some business buyers come in to organisms and they really do act as strategic C-suite. That’s what an experienced business buyer does. What I bought from my dad was like a six and a half, and I, I did not realize that.

00;15;57;12 – 00;16;00;21
Speaker 2
I thought, I know what my dad does. I’ve been doing it.

00;16;00;23 – 00;16;02;04
Speaker 1
For 15 years.

00;16;02;07 – 00;16;25;04
Speaker 2
Totally different situation. Once he left completely. And people that have known me, whose accounts I’ve managed, who’s who’ve people projects I’ve sold and installed for years, they were the first people to not give me business. So all of the assumptions of a multi-generational business, it was like Murphy’s Law all day, every day. And I just had to adapt.

00;16;25;06 – 00;16;31;14
Speaker 1
A lot of during the transition at all. Daniela Rossi Yeah, pretty much no.

00;16;31;16 – 00;16;35;15
Speaker 2
I gave him a check and he never came back.

00;16;35;18 – 00;16;37;01
Speaker 1
He was dead.

00;16;37;03 – 00;16;57;14
Speaker 2
I mean, I call him, I call him every day of Marty’s foreign consulting services. How can I help you? You know, and he’s great. Oh, my God, it remains one of my best friends. But I could not get him to come to the warehouse. Unless there’s an extreme situation happening. And if anything, he just likes, anecdotally know what’s happening.

00;16;57;17 – 00;17;21;09
Speaker 2
But, he’s concerned for me as his daughter. He’s like you to get out against something that I know to be emphatically challenging. And that makes me worry. And so he’s with me as we grow. But as far as having him be a part of the transition, like most smart business buyer should, that was not an option.

00;17;21;12 – 00;17;24;06
Speaker 1
So then learned he was done.

00;17;24;09 – 00;17;27;29
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00;17;28;01 – 00;17;33;20
Speaker 1
What you mentioned I first marketing I, I would love to hear what that means.

00;17;33;23 – 00;17;53;27
Speaker 2
So we live in a different era now, especially in the San Francisco Bay area. You can’t walk ten feet without walking into an eye. Billboard founder or I. Money and people don’t use Google here anymore. They search through llms through language model. So, you know, pick your poison, your ChatGPT, your clod, your Crock-Pot, cure whatever it is that you like.

00;17;54;00 – 00;18;19;02
Speaker 2
But people are searching for reputable contractors now through these LMS because they are sourcing review platforms. You know, BB they’re going everywhere. So you can get a really good, quick, comprehensive look. And being a tradesperson, I already know I’m walking into somebody that doesn’t have faith in me to perform and is pretty much waiting for me to screw them over, so having any sort of credibility that we will not do that thing helps us.

00;18;19;04 – 00;18;41;23
Speaker 2
And we were able to figure out how to just basically be in the top three of all searches. Does it matter what you’re using? We’re in the top three, and the web scraping enough data and information about us to substantiate that claim. And so that’s what we had to do. We went from being completely web invisible, completely web invisible to being up front and in your face.

00;18;41;23 – 00;19;11;11
Speaker 2
And so my partner is knows nothing about the trades. He came from Google and we work together incredibly well. He manages our entire backend. He’s our cloud and he understands how to scale businesses through marketing because he came from a Google and he does things that I don’t understand and don’t need to. Oh, so all I taught them to do and like make the phone ring and you’re doing your job.

00;19;11;13 – 00;19;27;16
Speaker 2
And the phone was ringing. So I know he’s doing his job, but we had to figure it out. Like we live in a really weird corner of the earth. Now that, if you’re not using AI in your business, you’re not getting business.

00;19;27;18 – 00;19;29;22
Speaker 1
Yeah, get left behind for sure.

00;19;29;25 – 00;19;30;27
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00;19;31;00 – 00;19;33;18
Speaker 1
Rules are changing and they’re changing fast.

00;19;33;21 – 00;19;37;02
Speaker 2
No mercy out there, let me tell you.

00;19;37;05 – 00;19;49;07
Speaker 1
So I, you know, as far as the the last year goes, it sounds like a big lesson you learn for the next business you buy is to make sure that the owner, stays involved for the first year.

00;19;49;07 – 00;19;59;11
Speaker 1
What other kinds of lessons have you learned in this transition? And and taking over this business, that you would think would be valuable to pass on?

00;19;59;13 – 00;20;21;22
Speaker 1
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Speaker 1
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00;20;35;03 – 00;20;44;03
Speaker 1
What other kinds of lessons have you learned in this transition? And and taking over this business, that you would think would be valuable to pass on?

00;20;44;06 – 00;21;10;07
Speaker 2
I think that a huge lesson, and this was the most frustrating lesson for me, that I think most people looking to transition into a multi gen situation or set up a succession plan or purchase a boom or business, right, is this idea that, you know, what made people stay? What made people a four decade client? Why do people like doing business with you?

00;21;10;09 – 00;21;37;00
Speaker 2
And, you know, it was tough with my dad. And full disclosure, because my dad was the business, you know, he came from nothing, not having profit a very little money to live off of for 20 years in the same business. And he kept doing is kind of crazy. But one thing that he did figure out was that he was going to be accountable to every mistake.

00;21;37;03 – 00;21;59;12
Speaker 2
So when you called Peacock, you called his cell phone, his personal cell phone, also crazy. But you had direct access to the owner. Every job, walk he was on, every proposal he did, every manpower issue. He was there. And when he retired, I threw a huge 45 year shindig for him and which he would have never done.

00;21;59;14 – 00;22;23;15
Speaker 2
But he enjoyed showing up and watching people that have worked with him throughout his entire career. And I went up to every single one. And I said, why? Like every single one of them was like, I love your dad. And I’m going, yeah, for sure. Yeah, I get it. Yeah. No, no, I loved working with your dad. And then we started listening and we’re going, why?

00;22;23;17 – 00;22;46;28
Speaker 2
Why did you love working with my dad? Why did you keep coming back? And the. The message was so simple and yet so hard because he did exactly what he said he was going to do. Not one time, not two time, every single time. And when things went wrong, because they do with the trades, he never made an excuse.

00;22;47;01 – 00;23;11;12
Speaker 2
He didn’t just bow down, he was just very even keeled, logical and always had a solution that everyone met in the middle. And he he fabricated and orchestrated that. It wasn’t like, oh, I’ll give you the money. You’re all it was like, no, let’s be logical about this. And they loved him for his honesty and his transparency. Now, when I came into trying to to do that, it really pissed me off because I’m like, they’re making it so easy.

00;23;11;14 – 00;23;44;05
Speaker 2
Like, I just have to do what I’m going to do is. So I need people now, I need clients tomorrow. I need people to pay me and trust me. And that’s not how this works. And so I had to eat it when I made mistakes and show up with kindness and respect and logic. And I had to stand by my manpower and defend them when clients were being unreasonable and I had to do things that were just debilitating to do what I said I was going to do every single time.

00;23;44;07 – 00;24;05;17
Speaker 2
And a year and a half later, I can say that it has worked, even on jobs where we have completely shit the bed, which there have been projects like that I have personally shown up and I have clients say, because you just did what you did, you’ve kept me and I’m going, okay, I’m starting to figure, I’m starting to figure it out.

00;24;05;19 – 00;24;31;20
Speaker 2
It’s a super easy lesson. And yet it is the hardest lesson because when you purchase a business, there’s three lanes of retention. It’s. And if you don’t retain all three, you will die. It’s retention of the margin, retention of the accounts, retention of the manpower in the staff. Like you can’t do what you do without all three. And so it was just heart was really hard and it remains hard.

00;24;31;20 – 00;24;48;17
Speaker 2
I had to show up yesterday on a job it was just did not do well on. And I’m walking through that site and I’m wincing and I want them to see it because I want them to know it’s not standard, but then I have to do something about it to. Right. And it’s tough.

00;24;48;20 – 00;25;05;15
Speaker 1
Yeah. Speaking of, you know, staff and and whatnot, your how many hours a week did your father work doing all of those things? And did did you inherit staff when you took over.

00;25;05;18 – 00;25;33;17
Speaker 2
So my dad was able to finally, after 35 years, by a facility 16,000ft² in San Francisco proper, super hard. And we were the only two people that worked in it. We did everything, I offloaded semis, I cut carpet, I dropped, I delivered materials, managed projects, did accounting, did the books, did taxes, did everything. It was just us too.

00;25;33;19 – 00;26;02;25
Speaker 2
He openly said, I hate people and I don’t like to manage. So it’s menial. And his business was capped because of that. But he had six journeymen that were with him probably for about 20 years. And so we knew what we could do, what he wanted to do. Now, when I closed on that business, I hired a general manager because I knew I couldn’t be my dad, and it was me and Tom, and that’s it, it’s thing.

00;26;02;27 – 00;26;22;10
Speaker 2
And now we have about eight people with us focusing on different areas of the business. And, and it took it, you know, I didn’t grow up in it with exposure to big companies. I didn’t know the recipe. Like when you when you grow. Now it’s time for the field officer. And now when you grow now you can bring in the health and safety.

00;26;22;10 – 00;26;42;23
Speaker 2
But like I didn’t know how to do this. And so hiring for me was a really hard skill to learn because I constantly was like, what do you mean you can’t do 20 jobs? You’re chump, you’re fired. This is ridiculous. Why can’t you get a forklift? Come on, man, like chip in, you know, and it’s just like most people don’t run like that.

00;26;42;25 – 00;27;07;12
Speaker 2
Most people can do 1 or 2 things and do them really well. But you can’t buy a business or start a business and go out and hire all these people. It’s something that has to stack ever so delicately. And so we figured out how to do that. And, now it’s it’s getting easier. But, you know, now we are running at a higher expense rate.

00;27;07;15 – 00;27;25;21
Speaker 2
Right? And so growth is if we don’t grow, we die. Like every day I wake up and I’m still selling, I’m still on my bought off. I’ve got like eight proposals to get out after this. You know, like we got I got manpower sitting. I’ve got to get them to work like all of that, at the end of the day, remains on the founder.

00;27;25;21 – 00;27;40;27
Speaker 2
And, until you get to, I think a certain point where it doesn’t like we’re about to bring on our first salesperson. Terrified. I know it’s 50% success rate. It’s not looking forward to it.

00;27;40;29 – 00;28;02;19
Speaker 1
We’re going to have to have you back on, in a few months to let us know how it goes. I’ve had a tough time with that. I was going to say. Yeah, and if it works, we’re going to need to know all the magic sauce. Because Derek and I have talked about this at length. We’ve both struggled with this over the last 15 years, like finding good salespeople when it’s not the owner of the company.

00;28;02;19 – 00;28;07;18
Speaker 1
I just I don’t know what the formula is. I know they’re out there. I know some of them, you know.

00;28;07;18 – 00;28;27;21
Speaker 2
But. Right. It’s like, do you build them? Do you buy them? What do you do? Like it’s so hard. And then the time it takes for us to get them to sell with just a fraction of the way we sell, right. Like all three of us could walk on any particular site and just go double down. No, there is no freaking question.

00;28;27;21 – 00;28;36;18
Speaker 2
I know exactly what I can offer you without a doubt. I don’t know how to train that, so we’ll have to circle back with with me.

00;28;36;21 – 00;28;42;24
Speaker 1
Are you? Please do selling or buying your salesperson?

00;28;42;27 – 00;29;03;24
Speaker 2
A little bit of both. Okay. And so it’s, you know, again, it’s like you guys, I’m not I’m in flooring. Okay? I am already dealing with in a recruitment pool that is less than I do. And I don’t care if people get offended by that. We know where we stand, in the in the ladder of the trades.

00;29;03;24 – 00;29;24;14
Speaker 2
And so, I am going to shops. I need to hire somebody better than me. And I don’t mean better than me as far as, like, my confidence, which you guys can relate to. I mean, better than me technically, you know, like a technical estimated that’s better than me. And, I think I’m going to have to buy them.

00;29;24;17 – 00;29;52;09
Speaker 2
I think this first time I have to buy them because I’m, I’m building a team from nothing. And so I need somebody that’s going to come from a company where there was infrastructure so they could help us create that infrastructure, which is honestly a really painful process. You know, my GM came from a $100 million company a year, and he walked into a startup and it was a year transition for him to hang in there and understand what was required of him, and then help build what he knew how to build.

00;29;52;11 – 00;30;05;23
Speaker 2
Once we really opened the faucet and the company doubled, I saw him light up and work in his own of brilliance. Before that, I was like.

00;30;05;26 – 00;30;13;27
Speaker 2
I am on the verge of firing you every other day because I don’t know why you can’t do everything I can do. It. So.

00;30;13;29 – 00;30;21;10
Speaker 1
So that’s all I have. Do you ever think about quitting now?

00;30;21;12 – 00;30;45;25
Speaker 2
Now, when you buy a business? They thought my organs. Are you kidding me? I’m. Eat up to my neck. I think they, They got my. I bought my personal home and collateral, my retirement accounts. Like, my husband is a 30 year union veteran. He’s a general form, an electrician downtown San Francisco. And in every couple and every real entrepreneurial couple.

00;30;45;28 – 00;31;08;22
Speaker 2
Maybe you guys can relate to this, too. There’s always, like, that solid W-2. You know, that solid W-2 was like, go do this and do not it up. I don’t like if I have to come work for you. We got problems. And I’m like, yes, we do. So my only way out is through. That’s my only way out of this is for I love it.

00;31;08;22 – 00;31;10;05
Speaker 2
I don’t have a choice.

00;31;10;07 – 00;31;31;14
Speaker 1
Love it. What? I, I want to leave the salesperson, but not really, but I just. But one question before we leave the salesperson side of things, as you’re looking at possibly, you know, and for anybody listening that didn’t pick up on it building is you take someone that’s never done it and you’re going to teach them how to do it.

00;31;31;14 – 00;31;50;07
Speaker 1
Buying is there. You have the experience, which means they want a higher salary when they walk in the door. As you’re looking at potentially making what could be a large investment financially for you and in the form of a salary for this person. What what are you looking for? Like are you I know you said technical. You want someone that knows the business.

00;31;50;07 – 00;32;01;11
Speaker 1
They need to be able to estimate, be able to look at a square footage, run a formula, put in some pricing, etc. but like outside of that, from a character characteristics like what does that person look like for you?

00;32;01;13 – 00;32;26;25
Speaker 2
I think that, over the last year, seeing how my GM has sold, which granted, he would never sell, hey, thing is sold over $1 million. And I’m very pleased with his ability to do that. I’ve learned that I really need someone who, it’s like water off duck’s back, right? Like, we are constantly going to get opportunities.

00;32;26;27 – 00;32;48;21
Speaker 2
Don’t attach yourself emotionally. Keep going. And every day wake up with a sense of just resilience and confidence that you’re going to win and that we’re there to solve problems. Right. Like when we come off in sales as salesy, right? My dad always used to say this, people compare me to a used car salesman. And I was like, no, you don’t.

00;32;48;24 – 00;33;14;25
Speaker 2
You compare you to a used car salesman. So that’s how you sell is that’s how you feel, right? I’m not there to sell you flooring. I’m there to provide a solution to your problem. I’m a technical expert, and that’s why I’m here. You called me. You have a need. I’m not pushing this on you. And that’s a large reason why we got out of a lot of residential work is because it’s highly emotional, highly selective.

00;33;14;25 – 00;33;33;21
Speaker 2
There’s so much time that goes into the design process. I love working with residential folks that know what they want. I’m like, I can give you what you want, but I’m not here to dance around and help you find what you want. And that’s what’s different in commercial, right? I can walk into any sort of asset class, high school education, whatever.

00;33;33;23 – 00;33;57;15
Speaker 2
I know what they need. And I want somebody that’s a salesperson that is there to provide a solution and be an educator and do it confidently. Because when you come across like that and you’re following up with folks, I followed up with some accounts every week for eight months to close them, and I don’t care. It does not bother me.

00;33;57;17 – 00;34;13;04
Speaker 2
I just ask them, are you still pursuing this project? It’s not like, oh, why aren’t you buying from me? Why aren’t you giving me the time of day? And what? Oh, no. Are you still pursuing this project? Are you still considering our firm? Are there any other questions I can answer for you? Fantastic. I gotta run it up the chain.

00;34;13;04 – 00;34;32;06
Speaker 2
This person has no problem. Shop back next week. Have a good one. Like, move on, man. We’ve got 75 other things to do today. Yeah, right. So I need somebody that can keep moving and not become deflated and like it, like internalize this process because it’s not personal. We provide a service, they’re going to pick us up or not.

00;34;32;09 – 00;34;54;21
Speaker 2
And then when they do pick us, we’re going to show them why they picked us. And I think the fact that everyone in my company is under 50, in flooring is giving is energizing. People like, we open up our books every week and show people in the staff meeting what we’re selling at, what numbers were at, what the margin was.

00;34;54;21 – 00;35;19;05
Speaker 2
We celebrate every tiny thing because I want people to become infected. You know, like the reason why I didn’t survive and 9 to 5 was because I constantly had a ceiling over me as a young person, and I had to fight constantly for validation and more. But no matter what, I was always going to top out. Even if I became director of the division I was, I had a top down salary.

00;35;19;08 – 00;35;34;27
Speaker 2
So when I bring people in, I go, you are coming from this glass ceiling environment. We are here to break glass ceilings. It’s not my job to break your glass ceiling, but I’m going to give you every fricking tool I got, every hammer there is. Here’s a tool set right here. Let’s go. But you got to shell it.

00;35;35;00 – 00;35;55;28
Speaker 2
And I try to like I am like I am so in this you guys like I everyday wake up and breathe this. I’m just like it is exciting. You walk into our warehouse, there’s music playing. There’s young guys walking around. People are ready to work their way to earn the right to make money. I want people to come to Peacock and now, like, I’m going to make a shitload of money and we’re going to have fun.

00;35;56;00 – 00;36;00;18
Speaker 2
We’re going to do good work. That’s it. It’s that simple.

00;36;00;20 – 00;36;03;11
Speaker 1
What kind of music is playing in the warehouse?

00;36;03;13 – 00;36;25;10
Speaker 2
It’s so cool. I’ve got this 22 year old Tongan warehouse man, he’s almost seven feet tall. He’s a nice guy. You ever met in your life? I snagged him from a Costco warehouse, and I walk in in the morning, and sometimes he’s playing Aretha Franklin. Sometimes he’s playing you funk, sometimes playing reggae. Sometimes we’re listening to just like YMCA.

00;36;25;10 – 00;36;56;06
Speaker 2
It’s wild. And I just love this so much because he’s such a young guy. I’m like, this is great. I love the energy. No, I don’t. I used to walk into my dad, shock, be like, oh, oh my God, just like this weight on him. Which means there’s a weight on me. As a leader. I want to be weightless so that everyone else feels weightless and we can, like, do the thing.

00;36;56;08 – 00;37;08;01
Speaker 1
So I got to hear about you’re obviously a glutton for punishment because you bought this business, and now you’re you’re looking for other opportunities.

00;37;08;01 – 00;37;14;19
Speaker 1
You’re looking for other businesses to buy as well. So tell me what your mindset is there.

00;37;14;22 – 00;37;38;16
Speaker 1
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00;37;38;19 – 00;37;44;05
Speaker 1
You’re looking for other businesses to buy as well. So tell me what your mindset is there.

00;37;44;07 – 00;38;06;24
Speaker 2
Well, there’s two ways to grow a business, right. There’s organic growth and then there’s growth by acquisition. And so I think that, you know, when you want a lifestyle business, you grow organically. Right. And you like figure out your marketing. You figure out what you’re Max’s. And that’s my dad did he’s like, I’m maxed at this gross rep and I live really well and I make this much margin.

00;38;06;26 – 00;38;27;02
Speaker 2
I’m just going to do that until I retire and I’ll be so happy. And he did. And I don’t want to do that. I can’t run my business like my dad, because if I do that, I will miss all the cool moments with my kids. And that’s not why I decided to do this. And so, I knew I have to I know I have to scale.

00;38;27;04 – 00;38;52;09
Speaker 2
Organic growth is awesome. It takes decades. It takes so long. And there’s capital risk, too. And there’s capital outlay and there’s working capital that you have to build while you’re doing that, when you acquire and grow through acquisition, you get to go from 5 to 15 overnight with a system. And that’s what I’ve learned. So Peacock will grow organically.

00;38;52;11 – 00;39;30;20
Speaker 2
But one thing in flooring, and this is a funny thing, when you’re really good at flooring, your clients aren’t supposed to come back right away. Like, right? You do good work. Unless it’s a school or multi-family apartment buildings like you’re not getting that turnover as quickly. And so we need sticky services. And what I’m looking at next is offering a commercial cleaning service that’s beyond your in-house janitorial, because the more and more facilities I go into where their in-house janitorial has been cleaning their flooring, I’m literally going, you’re replacing your flying because your in-house janitorial has trash, your flooring.

00;39;30;22 – 00;39;59;03
Speaker 2
So I, we’re going to start looking at subcontracting commercial cleaning services with the impetus to acquire commercial cleaning and stand it up alongside and next to our flooring solutions and services. Now, I know a lot of the older folks in town that also own flooring companies. But I’ve also learned that a lot of those folks are founder owner operators, which means I’m going to be buying something potentially similar to what I already just bought.

00;39;59;03 – 00;40;20;13
Speaker 2
And I will never live that nightmare again. So I’d rather I’m going to start subcontracting with cleaning companies that have been in at least 20 years in existence, that are bigger, and start talking about succession planning with them. You know, the easiest way to buy a great boomer business and something people don’t do because they don’t like to work and put in the work.

00;40;20;20 – 00;40;46;26
Speaker 2
Create a relationship, create the relationship with these folks. So what if it takes five years? Like then you’ve got a killer seller finance deal because this person trusts you and knows how you operate and that you can do it. So I’m looking at doing that. You know, I want us to expand our services so we have more sticky services, more frequent services, that don’t have that working capital outlay that, you know, what we already do.

00;40;46;28 – 00;40;54;00
Speaker 2
And, I own a car wash. My partner and I own car wash. We love car washes. So we’re looking to purchase more car washes nationwide.

00;40;54;02 – 00;40;59;21
Speaker 1
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Is it like a floor autonomous? Like.

00;40;59;23 – 00;41;24;16
Speaker 2
It’s so much simpler. We only buy self-serve and in automatics. So a lot of these self-serve car washes, I don’t have to pay for attendants. I don’t have to worry about working staff. So it’s not like a full touchless. It’s also not a tunnel. Tunnels break down really easily, and they’re super, super expensive to repair and replace. So we do self-serve with the automatic, which is like a really truncated tunnel, a drive through rather.

00;41;24;19 – 00;41;48;23
Speaker 2
And, a lot of these kinds of car washes have enterprise accounts with fleet companies. And so that’s really we’re looking to do I’m looking to purchase more franchise them, create enterprise value and work on contracts with folks that have fleets and just need like, hey, we need you know, here’s our card. We have a contract. Same thing is like a joke.

00;41;48;23 – 00;42;08;18
Speaker 2
Repair and construction, a job order contract. You know, you get in with the university for four years and you do all your work very similar. You know, city of San Francisco has got a fleet. Fleet needs to be washed. We’ve got a contract with the city. So, yeah, I’m going as boring as you can get. Florida. Oh, and self-serve car wash.

00;42;08;18 – 00;42;23;19
Speaker 1
Let’s listen. I hear that the most boring businesses are the best businesses to be in. So, And I assume to, you know, mama three, you’re already have a full time job with your business. You’re running, so you’re probably not looking for a couple more full time jobs.

00;42;23;21 – 00;42;47;05
Speaker 2
No, no, I am. Look, you know, that’s why the car wash thing is great. Like, am I going to get rich with one car wash? No, no, that’s not the point. But, you know, like, I get to do a little bit of everything. I’m kind of a chameleon, and I’ve accepted that I’m never going to just do one thing in my life, and that means I’m going to grow slower, but I’m also going to be really happy about what I do.

00;42;47;08 – 00;43;04;02
Speaker 2
So I get to help other business owners with commercial real estate when they have that need. People that trust me, like me, know me, love helping people get into buildings for the first time, love helping them get their first building for their business is so gratifying. The car wash thing runs in the background. Doesn’t take a lot of my time.

00;43;04;04 – 00;43;23;10
Speaker 2
Peacock is my heart. I’m in it every day. No way out put through. And so I’m involved in my city. You know, I’ve been in the San Francisco since the 60s and I love, I love, I love San Francisco and I love the people that run businesses there. So.

00;43;23;12 – 00;43;43;08
Speaker 1
I’m curious about to kind of turn it back to the transition a little bit because I meant to ask this question sooner, and I forgot to, when you purchased the business from your dad, I’m assuming from our conversation. And maybe it’s a bad assumption, but I’m assuming that probably a lot of the systems and things you had internally were a little antiquated.

00;43;43;08 – 00;43;51;20
Speaker 1
So I, I’d love to hear about how you modernize the business, whether it be through software, equipment, whatever that may be.

00;43;51;23 – 00;44;18;15
Speaker 2
1,000%. So my dad was a desktop QuickBooks enterprise guy, which means that when he left the office, he left the office. And I did not have that luxury. I didn’t want that because the kids, right, like, kids get sick and I have to have everything available in the cloud. So the biggest, most irritating, most challenging part of the transition was taking everything into the cloud.

00;44;18;18 – 00;44;42;22
Speaker 2
I mean, he didn’t use Google Drive, just like Jesus Christ was horrible, is horrible like that. Everything from password integration, right? I was working back there accounts where he still had my grandmother who was dead as like the account holder. So it wasn’t a massive it was a year long cleanup. I just had to call the, you know, seed for California sales tax.

00;44;42;22 – 00;45;01;17
Speaker 2
And they go, well, you’re not the account holder. And I’m like, God, yeah, I am the account holder. What do you mean I want this is what we about. I’m still dealing with this stuff. A big thing was that we had we had quick QuickBooks center, QuickBooks enterprise. That was it. No CRM, no project management, no estimation software.

00;45;01;17 – 00;45;23;28
Speaker 2
We manually did our proposals and estimations. And so that was huge. And we had tried to integrate that software to the business before. But you have to fully commit. You have to complete in to make those, as you all know, that technology work. That was huge. We lived through that software. Now it’s industry specific. It’s not perfect. We kind of hate it.

00;45;23;29 – 00;45;53;03
Speaker 2
We’re probably gonna have to build something custom, but now we know how to function using this software first. So, we migrated from my dad’s cell phone to a tech platform that, routes into everyone’s personal phones. It has a phone tree. It records everything. We had I integration for every single conversation. So our eye integration is connected to click up, which is our, project management suite.

00;45;53;06 – 00;46;15;11
Speaker 2
So every time somebody gets off a call, tasks are automatically put into click up and tag that person. We have transcripts available. So we run transcripts through Claude. And we have a skill that essentially disseminates. And that’s of it a rather breaks down our sales conversations and make suggestions on, hey, you know, tweak this, tweak that, all of that.

00;46;15;14 – 00;46;34;14
Speaker 2
We have a complete financial dashboard now, which we never had. So now I can basically just we built this in. Claude, I can open up this financial dashboard every single morning when I wake up. I’ve got five emails in my inbox, all of the bills. So it’s a accounts receivables tracker, like accounts payable tracker. Who do we have to pay?

00;46;34;19 – 00;46;52;09
Speaker 2
Accounts receivable tracker who owes us and that those schedules. So I basically know when I wake up, is there somebody I have to pay somebody to have to asked to pay me? And then a financial dashboard, you know, where where’s our crunch? Where are we? Are we positive this much? Are we negative this much? Can we make payroll this week?

00;46;52;11 – 00;47;14;24
Speaker 2
Do we need to move money? Every day? I get financial reports. All of it’s automated. We have an I note taker, like most people do now, but we connected our I note taker with click up. So after every single meeting, there are automatic tasks that are put into your click up and you are tagged and you are responsible for those tasks.

00;47;14;27 – 00;47;39;09
Speaker 2
We basically just said, hey, we’re opening up the engine. Everyone has to feel good about transparency. This is not personal, but we are going to integrate AI to support you, give you more time, give you comprehensive macro level feedback, because that’s what we needed to make sure that we were growing the business quickly enough. It’s one thing to have 100 calls come in a day.

00;47;39;11 – 00;47;57;27
Speaker 2
It’s a completely different thing to have a 65% close rate, which is what we have, and even that is considered too high. You really should be 40 to 60%, which tells me our pricing isn’t high enough. Right? So it’s like without this level of a strategic analysis, like I can’t get my brain there and still too deeply embedded in the business.

00;47;58;04 – 00;48;07;29
Speaker 2
But now we have macro level strategic analysis coming into our inboxes every day. It’s unbiased. It’s it’s pretty sweet.

00;48;08;01 – 00;48;09;28
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00;48;10;01 – 00;48;33;24
Speaker 2
I mean, we went so far as recently to create an enterprise cloud account for everyone in our company because before this, my partner and I were building out peacock skills. So now everyone can see everything we’re doing. So GM right, huge issue with the GM was like, dude, I need our SOPs because if you get sick, I don’t know what you’re doing.

00;48;33;24 – 00;48;54;04
Speaker 2
I don’t know how to pick it up. So now somebody that is completely computer reverse even though they’re under 50 and they were anti AI because they thought they were cheating their boss by not working hard enough. Those microphone I am sitting in front of the roll of door right now. We’re going to put together an SOP for roll up door maintenance is going to be one time a week.

00;48;54;04 – 00;49;11;03
Speaker 2
These are going to be the things I need examine to make sure the roll up door doesn’t get stuck. I we don’t get stuck here over the weekend with an open roll up door. And then it goes into claw and it’s completely branded. We put all of our marketing branding logos into Clyde, so everything that it pumps out is Peacock branded.

00;49;11;06 – 00;49;47;04
Speaker 2
I have a skill in there. I’ve got a bid right now. I’ve got a run through it. A GC sent me like 150 unit senior affordable housing tenant improvement project. You know, these things 500 page plans, that thousand page project manual, 75 denims. I used to read it online. I load it all into clod. I’ve got a skill it comes up with, like a ten tab Excel sheet that gives me every red flag, every single compliance, insurance, bonding material, everything, everything.

00;49;47;07 – 00;50;10;01
Speaker 2
In about five minutes I have a complete analysis of every single document, and then it judges it based on my own criteria. Whether it’s a red, a yellow, or a green. Green is a go. Go ahead and beat it. So there’s things that we’ve just done that like have massively helped our company and our service. We’re still pretty lean, you know, like we basically operate.

00;50;10;03 – 00;50;44;11
Speaker 2
You do everything you can utilizing AI to help you get there until you topple. When you’re getting close to the S.O.S., ring the bell, and that’s when we’ll hire someone. And so it’s everything I think about now. I think, how can I run this through? I help me, you know, I don’t know everything about flying. I can’t so now what I’ll do is somebody will send me spec and I’ll run it through.

00;50;44;11 – 00;51;10;06
Speaker 2
Claude, give me a good, better, best give me. You know, I ask the client dealing with big government building in Sacramento right now, and they were worried that the carpet wasn’t durable enough. And I’m like, how do I explain durability to a layman? Right. And so I was talking to Claude and I go, I want you to come up with a one page or PDF talking about why this carpet tile backing is more durable than this carpet tile backing.

00;51;10;06 – 00;51;29;26
Speaker 2
And compare these two mills. Advantages and disadvantages I want visuals, I want charts so that they can not just read a bunch of yucky words. And within 10s I get a beautifully branded peacock floors analysis of two specifications. I shoot it off.

00;51;29;28 – 00;51;56;16
Speaker 2
Like that service. Yeah that’s service. And so when somebody asked me a question now I don’t just tell them I provide them with an asset and it’s branded so they can take that to whoever procurement, whatever GC or whatever specifier. And it’s helping me get into private projects with the ability to pre specify because now people trust me enough to choose their flooring.

00;51;56;18 – 00;52;18;11
Speaker 2
And in flooring, when you specify you have leverage and pricing, which means I get those jobs. Now it’s been like now I think about it every day you guys every minute. Can I do this better? How do I do this better? How do I do it faster? How do I make it more personal? You know, so I think a lot of people are nervous to use I because it feels so impersonal.

00;52;18;14 – 00;52;38;26
Speaker 2
It’s like, oh, you know, is that data? Is it accurate? Is an accurate. But when you’re looking at something like the trades and you’ve got all those beautiful manufacturers with spec sheets and you know, like they have the data on their website, but we used to have to crawl through it, analyze it, put it together, present it. I don’t have to do any of that now.

00;52;38;29 – 00;53;00;23
Speaker 2
And so I get to service twice the amount of clients that a sales goal this year. It’s like, man, if I can run this business and train and do all the things and sell $1 million, I will be thrilled, thrilled and have more than double it. And the year’s not over. The only way I was able to do this is because of this.

00;53;00;25 – 00;53;06;02
Speaker 2
Yeah, so I just had to rewire the way I think about I, you know.

00;53;06;04 – 00;53;34;12
Speaker 1
Yeah, I do I mean, we use it a ton for just and in similar ways that you were just describing as well. I just really astounding how quickly you can create things. Do you get any kind of like pushback from anyone on unlike. Because one thing that we have seen recently and and not really with our client base, but more with just the general public is pushback on I using you know, I fliers I this people are losing a little bit of trust maybe I don’t know do you see that at all or.

00;53;34;14 – 00;53;53;11
Speaker 2
Well I will say this that, you know, I think you have to have a little bit of personal integration with it, you know, like if you’re using it for social media, like every other third post, you got to have your face. People want to buy from someone and it should be the founder, right? Should be one of the owners.

00;53;53;18 – 00;54;25;00
Speaker 2
Somebody that’s invested has buy in. But where I was, that’s not a thing. You know people here are using I to do too much. You know, it’s like a race to it’s a race to duplicate yourself in San Francisco. And so I don’t have to deal with the authenticity issue. And if anything, you know, again, like, I kind of keep going back to my trade because it’s an antiquated trade.

00;54;25;03 – 00;54;47;13
Speaker 2
You know, when I can come up with a one pager that’s branded like that, people aren’t necessarily assuming I did it with I. Yeah, you know, like I kind of have that advantage. And then as long as I can technically and proficiently back it up, and they have a human element like that’s always what it is. It’s like the human element is so critical in the, in the use of AI.

00;54;47;15 – 00;55;09;09
Speaker 2
But we don’t do a ton of marketing fliers, you know, like we’re not overused in marketing. If anything, I’m I’m overusing it when it comes to working through sales objections and concerns about, like, technical aspects of the trade that people just don’t know. You know, I’m using it to help me communicate in a in more layman’s terms.

00;55;09;11 – 00;55;13;07
Speaker 2
So I don’t talk myself out of a job.

00;55;13;10 – 00;55;14;12
Speaker 1
That’s there.

00;55;14;15 – 00;55;15;17
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00;55;15;20 – 00;55;29;12
Speaker 1
Danielle, I think we could probably keep you here all day, but, we’ve already, you know, chewed up an hour of your day here, which I, you know, very much respect your time. If people want to learn more about Peacock, they want to learn more about you. Where do they find you guys.

00;55;29;14 – 00;55;47;08
Speaker 2
While we’re at Peacock, Forbes.com. I’m on Instagram at the Danielle Divine, and you’re just going to hear me prattle on about whatever. So if you’re interested in hearing more, but you can always reach out to me if you’re a business owner, if you’re curious about, you know, some of the things that we’ve implemented in our business, please DM me.

00;55;47;09 – 00;55;57;23
Speaker 2
Please reach out. I’m an open book. I know, I know what you’re dealing with. I live it every day, and I’m always happy to share, some things that have helped us.

00;55;57;25 – 00;56;16;05
Speaker 1
Amazing. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. Okay. Yeah, absolutely. And of course, you know, thank you to all of our listeners that make this show great. You know, you can find our episode, this episode and all of our episodes at Blue collar startup.io. And of course, we’re on Apple Spotify Rumble, YouTube.

00;56;16;12 – 00;56;38;29
Speaker 1
Guys, do us a favor. Leave us a five star review on Apple. I’m being told that it’s very important for our podcast rankings that we need to have those, reviews on there. And of course, thank you to our sponsors. You know, because of them, our show is able to continue to go on. And, also, we’re able to donate tuition money for, or money for tools and tuition, the Kids in trades programs.

00;56;39;01 – 00;56;45;28
Speaker 1
And, we want to keep doing that. So, keep sponsoring the show. We appreciate it. Thanks, everybody. And, you’ll hear from us next week.

00;56;46;00 – 00;57;14;00
Speaker 1
And that wraps up another episode of Blue Collar Startup. A big thank you to our sponsors, Five Towers Media, Daigle Cleaning Systems, Daigle Fire Solutions, The Michaels Group, Martin Electric, MLB construction, Pinocchio Construction People, and Catamount Consulting for making this podcast possible. And thank you for tuning in. If you learned something or felt inspired. Connect with us on our website at Blue Collar Startup Audio or email us at Hardhat Derby CSU at gmail.com.

00;57;14;00 – 00;57;26;26
Speaker 1
We’d love to hear your questions and topic ideas. Help us spread the word by sharing the show and following us on social media for updates. Until next time, keep on building, keep on dreaming and keep hustling like your future depends on it.

00;57;26;29 – 00;57;27;27
Unknown
Oh.