Why Only 15% of Roofing Companies Are Ready to Sell

Only about 15% of roofing companies that want to sell are actually ready when a buyer shows up. This episode is about getting on the right side of that number.

Follow along at @forgestrategicequity: Instagraminstagram.com/forgestrategicequity

In Episode 2 of The Forge Podcast CEO Roundtable, Sam Taggart sits down with someone who sits on the other side of the table when roofing and home service companies get bought. You'll hear how private equity actually values your company, why "key man risk" quietly kills more deals than bad financials, and the honest math behind selling now versus keeping your cash flow.

By the end, you'll know what makes a company worth buying and what to start fixing today if an exit is anywhere on your radar.

Benton Sturt is a Director at Meridian Capital, a leading middle-market investment bank, where he co-leads the firm's consumer practice and advises home service companies across roofing, HVAC, plumbing, and pest control through mergers, acquisitions, and capital raises.

A Goldman Sachs alum and a 2025 M&A Advisor Emerging Leaders award winner, Benton has guided owners from first conversation to nine-figure close.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• Why only about 15% of companies that want to sell are actually ready, and how to join them
• The "key man" problem that drags down valuations, and how to fix it before a buyer finds it
• How a $90M home service deal actually comes together behind the scenes
• The sell-now-or-keep-cashing-checks math every owner should run before talking to buyers
• What separates a $10M roofing company from a $100M exit

Here's the truth.

If your company falls apart the second you stop showing up, you don't own a business, you own a job. Buyers smell that from a mile away and they price it in. Build the reps and systems that run without you, then let the right people look under the hood before a buyer does.

That's exactly what Forge does.

Apply at Forge Strategic Equity: ForgestrategicequityForge Strategic Equity | Home

#roofing #privateequity #businessexit #roofingbusiness #homeservices #forgestrategicequity #d2d

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

What's up guys, Sam Fagner here with the CEO of Roundtable and I'm with my partners and we brought in an amazing guest. We got JD Beck, we got Josh Langford, Cody Klein, and we have our guest Ben Staut, who is partner of a private bank called Meridian, and been doing acquisitions in the home service space for how long now?

SPEAKER_00 0:17

10 years.

SPEAKER_03 0:18

10 years. And seeing under the hood of how many acquisitions? A lot. Dozens. Dozens of amazing, big, small, and they're they're not the little guy. Like your average transaction is probably what?

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Uh average the last at least last five, seven years, it's about 90 million across our industry groups.

SPEAKER_03 0:39

Which is super cool. And you you you honed in on the home service space. Why do you find like that's a fun up-in-commenting happening industry right now, the market?

SPEAKER_00 0:49

You know, it's it's been interesting, I think, largely since COVID, um, and the fact that people have been locked up in their rates and locked up in their homes. There's been a surge of activity um just in and around homes, both in inside and outside. And so we've seen um, in many ways, a lot of the private equity and and professional investors of the world get really excited about both the organic growth and this fragmented opportunity with you know hundreds and hundreds of companies across the country in different areas, and this this opportunity for them to kind of bolt them together and build them into large platforms. Um, and so there's just been a lot of interest, a lot of activity, and these are you know good businesses that have um you know recurring type uh revenue models and and uh you know brand recognition, and and they're just good businesses. So I think the the market has been appreciative of that the last few years.

SPEAKER_03 1:46

So Bent and I going back where we he was like, hey Sam, do you have any people that are looking to sell your their business? And we would connect you with a few, you know what I mean? And it's like there's people that are I've heard of that. There's people that are like, I need to get out yesterday, and there's people like in three, four years, one day I might do that. You know what I mean? There's just this weird, this is my baby, right? And you look under the hood over, I guess how many businesses do you bet that are like, all right, I want to sell, and then you're like, you don't you can't already, yeah. Like, like how often, let's say you looked at a hundred companies, how many of the hundred are you like, okay, you're actually ready to sell?

SPEAKER_00 2:24

Like that says 15%. 15, wow. Most of the time, um, you know, we'll we'll get involved early on in a company's life cycle, whether they're in the middle of their growth phase, um, or you know, at the the tail end, there's a lot of options for owners and founders, you know, throughout the the ownership of the business, whether that's I want to bring on a small partner, a capital partner, or I'm ready to sell it and move on. And so, you know, I think for us, it's less about an unsellable business and more about what are the goals of the owner and what do they really want to achieve? Someone who's got five, 10 years of gas in the tank might say, you know, I want to bring on a $50 million capital investment and build the business to 5x the size it is today and then sell it. Um, you know, others might be at the end of their career and say, you know, now's the time. And so I'll kind of take what I could get in the market. What should I do for the next 12 months to maximize that?

SPEAKER_03 3:24

And so at Ford, we're trying to attract the I got five to ten years still in the tank type of exit, which is also this weird, why would I sell my business and give away control? And why would I go through an acquisition if I'm like still got I'm not looking to hang up the hat? And so the theme of this is kind of like as we go through uh acquisitions or or due diligence, we constantly, Cody and I were jamming on this, is like they keep saying, Well, why don't I do a roll-up? Or why don't I go buy companies, or I still why would I give away control and sell my company? So let's make that kind of the premise of this. And why would somebody maybe sell knowing that they have five, ten years still in the tank? What what is the value of taking on a capital investment, like you said, for like why are there the shift in thinking of like, okay, sell three, four times? You still got time, you know what I mean? Like, what's your logic there?

SPEAKER_00 4:19

That's a great question. I mean, you know, candidly, it it totally depends on the goals of the entrepreneur. You know, what I would say is um, you know, why does it make sense to bolt your company together with other businesses? Well, a lot of reasons. One, it takes you to a larger size, you you become more interesting to larger investors who have more money and ability to pay more a lot faster, right? If you're a great entrepreneur, you can sure you can build a hundred million dollar business. Is that gonna take you five, seven, ten years to do? Or do you partner with three or four you know, smaller versions and your hundred million dollar business in two or three beers?

SPEAKER_02 4:55

Like, I I think part of what you're saying is like there's options, but a lot of the conversations that I've been a part of is like these guys don't really understand what the options are. So, like even the couple things that you just said, it's like they might not realize that they exist. I know for me, I personally had a roofing company and I was involved in the what I I always say like as the first one of the first waves to kind of come through the roofing space of PE. Um, it was disguised, not as PE in the beginning, and then that's what it kind of evolved into. Um but for me, it's like I didn't really know what options I had. I was really, I always talk about how like I was mesmerized by the deal. I was like, Oh, I really want to go through an acquisition, I want to understand what this looks like. I want to be, they did the year prior to acquiring me, they did 102 million. I'm like, I want to see what it looks in, I want to lift up the hood and see what's inside of here, you know? What does a hundred million dollar company look like? And so yeah, I think it comes down to a lot of these guys don't know their options. But what you said, Sam, a moment ago, you were like, um one of the things that we've heard is why don't I just go do this on my own? In your experience, what would stop the like uh I know it's like well, why haven't you yet? But like what what do they not understand about strategic equity partners or investment banks, like partners like you guys? Like, what what do they not understand about actually trying to put one of these things together? Um about putting their own roll-up together. Yeah, when they say that, when they say, like, hey, well, why don't I just go do this myself?

SPEAKER_00 6:32

Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, you know, candidly, that's um there a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of founders that are good, you know, running good small, growing roofing companies are great at running roofing companies or running their own roofing company or being the guy or being the rainmaker and building the business in that way. Running uh an a portfolio of businesses or like bringing on different personalities, different ownership type personalities, um, you know, you need a uh a specific skill set, right? How do you do they understand how to scale a business when you're bolting on a different team? You know, do they have the right tech? Do they have enough capital? I mean, there's a lot of considerations around um, sure, I could do it, but if you don't know how to do it or if you've never done it, it can get you can get way out over your skis really quickly, right?

SPEAKER_01 7:28

Like yeah, I think one thing can one thing to that too. I think the hardest part is if you're running your business and it's doing well, that doesn't mean you can help run these five guys' businesses and Bolton and integrate and get all of that, but maintain yours. I think that's the part of the sentence people forget is well, we're doing this, or we have hockey stick growth, yeah, and that's because that's your sole focus. Whereas if all of a sudden everybody here's also an entrepreneur with an ego, and we're all coming in, now everyone has to continue performing, including my own, but I've got to spearhead that integration, which is extremely difficult.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

Something I've never done before, and then by business belongs in this kind of environment, right? Not every founder belongs in it, and that's just the reality. Some people are like, I built this all my own business because I wanted to be my own boss and I wanted to control my own destiny. Fine. That's awesome. If you can't, you know, if you don't want to play nice in the sandbox, you're not a good fit for something else, right? Right. Yeah, what if that person wants to go and build their own, they gotta find people that are retiring, they gotta make sure that the businesses that they're bringing in are like the right fit for their vision. Um that's tough to do.

SPEAKER_02 8:43

It is. It's funny, like I wholeheartedly agree with what you just said. And I think that even a few months ago, when you and I sparked up conversation at the the Rufing conference, it's like Josh and I had already been talking and putting, you know, putting some plans together. We had already talked to we talked to 17 companies, I think, at one of our live events last October, November. And now, only a few months uh post that conversation, all the conversations I've had with you and JD and uh Ryan and and all of the other people partners that we've we've had conversations with. It's like I had even the version of myself three months ago, I had this uninformed optimism. But like, even in the I'll I'll use a recent example, like the last two days, we've met with these insurance guys and these risk management guys, and it's like, thank God I have these partners now that are like thinking about these other parts of the business that I I had no idea about.

SPEAKER_03 9:45

You know, it's like E and M.

SPEAKER_02 9:48

E and M. Yeah, it's like good blue. So it's like if I I've worked with in the last few years, we've had 260, 270 roofing companies come to our advisory system. It's like if I have had that many repetitions and I haven't been exposed to everything, it's like if this $10 million founder who's lived in his silo, done what you said, basically hustled his face off to have that exponential hockey stick growth. It's like there are so many dark parts of business that he is just he probably has the same uninformed optimism that I did, like, yeah, why don't I do this on my own?

SPEAKER_01 10:28

But it's just there's like it's and I love those businesses, and I love those entrepreneurs. Like, I think it's such a cool thing to do that. And honestly, anybody that ends up doing a couple million, like I'm tipping my cap to you because you did something really cool. And I think for us and what this is, that may or may not be the right fit, and that's okay either way, right? It just comes down to people that say, Hey, I like the idea of a transaction, I want to be part of a group that has connections that knows people like you that can provide immense value early on, and says, Man, I know it requires a team to do something at that level, and that doesn't fit everybody, right? Like the sandbox may not work.

SPEAKER_00 11:04

You're right. And look, like, you know, our role as an investment bank, like, we're not the builders, we're we're not the value creators. What we offer is here's what people are buying, here's what they're paying a lot for, or here's what they're not paying for. Right? Like we work on this, you know, tons of transactions, we're talking to investors every single day. Well, here's a company that traded for whatever 15 times Evita, and here's one that traded at four times. Like, what we help bring is what's the difference between the two? And and how do you, you know, if you're on the path to create that, here are the metrics, here are the things to think about in order to actually unlock that that value. And so what we like our role in it in all at least is really at the transaction, we're taking what's been created and driving as much value as we can from the investor universe to the profile that's been built, right? And sometimes that profile is capped out at a certain amount of value, and that's fine. And like that's what it's worth, and that's what's been built and developed. Uh, in other cases, if you say, hey, I this is my goal, this is what I want to achieve, sometimes that path looks a little bit different. Not that the either path is wrong or right, yeah, but based on what the goals are of who's involved, like that's what defines here's here's where we're headed, right? If someone comes to me and says, I want to sell my business for 100 million, I can look at it and pretty quickly say, I don't think you can get it, or I think you could get it. And here's why. And if you want to get to 100, here's what you need to do in order to achieve.

SPEAKER_02 12:39

So you said um, whether or not, basically, whether if someone came to you and they said they wanted to sell for 100 million, you would understand if they had that value or they didn't have that value. The way we're structured as a team is like we actually are kind of, I think where we differentiate from you is like we actually are trying to build value, like we are the value builder, because we're the industry, we're not great. And so for us, we have laser focus on really three big things. It's like, what does uh how do we define value? And so we just talked about this over the last couple days. It's like predictable sales. So, like you mentioned recurring grab and mail, and when you said that earlier, I was like looking at him because like that is our sales model, is like how can we um you know have predictable new sales, but also keep getting more money from each client? So it's predictable sales that's silo one. Silo two is just uh having you know uh dispersable profit, you know, like basically profit at the end of the year where there uh are distributed uh profits. And then the third element is just transferable value, which in our world is just like the business is worth something to us and the founders right now, but is it worth something to you as the buyer? Would you add anything to that list of predictable sales, uh the transferable value and the um distributions?

SPEAKER_00 14:10

Distributions, but it's interesting, like distributable profits. If you're building something with an exit in mind, less important. Interesting. I mean, I would always recommend to somebody you know, build a company that you want to own too, right? So is that because the company's putting off a lot of cash every year? Great, that's interesting to a lot of people, especially investors. If you're building something to sell, it doesn't have to be distributing a lot of profit in that path. In fact, a lot of businesses are just reinvesting all of that and more into the growth path if really an exit is what they want. Some founders we work with will get to a point where they're basically like either I could sell it or I could just keep taking these huge cash distributions every year. Both are good options, right? Sometimes we're like, you know what? Don't sell the business, like just keep taking $10 million out of the year. Like, now you're you're fine or you're happy. It totally depends off cool.

SPEAKER_03 15:10

So, how does that work? If somebody's like, man, I can't sell right now because I don't have the EBITDA or the net profit shows zero, because it's like they have been just investing in growth, buying more teams, buying more trucks, uh scaling fast because they're opening up new markets, etc., and that costs money. And then they're like, Well, shoot, I heard that I need to have money to sell, and I haven't taken a dollar. How does that work? Because I think there's this weird myth there, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 15:38

It's a good question. And I and I I'm not minimizing, you know, EBITD-generating companies, you know, are are attractive to investors, especially in this market.

SPEAKER_03 15:46

But when you're like him, going for growth here and showing you that, it can't be in a growth phase and a profit phase kind of at the same time. You you can, but it's hard.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

It's that's the top 10% of performers are doing both. What the reality is um investors are going to look at if you're investing for growth and you're putting everything back into the business and you're growing the business, that can be really exciting. A lot of investors are underwriting what what will it put out from a profit standpoint, right? Once I throttle back on like the super aggressive investment in the growth, what is the business, what does the core business look like? And so they're looking at different parts of the income statement. They're looking at like, hey, what is the what's the gross margin of this company? Like, is it producing a quality gross margin? Even though below that I'm putting in all this money in marketing, if I pull the marketing back, all of a sudden does that just flow to the bottom or not? Right. And so how how the business, how the business model is set up can take on a lot of growth and can you can put all that back into growth, but without a path to profitability, yeah, you grow yourself out of the business, right? And some do that. You take on debt, you you all of a sudden, you know, we have these companies that are like, I've been zero profit and growth on all this time, but if I don't have a path to be in a profitable business, like you can't groan yourself into eternity, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 17:11

Like, and the scary part is if you don't maintain that, now you have all the capex, all that infrastructure is there bloated, and if it declines at all, you're in huge trouble. But I I've experienced that like stepping up where we have crazy profitable months, years, and then it kind of flatlined for a while in that growth, and you gotta bump up significantly to get back to where you were, and then if you don't hit from here up, it actually becomes detrimental. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

If you're investing in and and hiring people and systems, and like you're building a company to be a hundred million dollar revenue company, and you get to 50, you're a truckle, yeah. Right, like no one's buying that, yeah. Yeah, but if they are, they're cutting out a ton of the uh the overhead, you know what I mean? Like, so so you know, growth and pouring a lot of money back into the growth is great. Like the holy grail is profitable growth right now. So if you're a profitable business and you're growing at a a reasonable you know clip, um, that in many ways is the holy grail.

SPEAKER_03 18:11

So, Judy, you sold your company at the peak of solar, right? And then I'm assuming what went through your head was it's always gonna be like this. Yeah, why would I sell? I'm making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, we're freaking on a tear right now, and I'm sure that question went through your head. 100%. Many, many people had deals on the table at the same time you did and took the alternative. Why would we sell right now? I'm freaking kicking ass. I'm only 40, I'm only 30, why would I you know what I mean? Yeah, and now that I'm all going bankrupt. So, what have you noticed in that element of like timing where people almost let their ego and their glove trajectory almost like you said, they f they fall head over heels? Like, where do we find that balance? Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 18:57

That's the that's the ultimate question, right? Like, that's that's what every entrepreneur is dealing with all the time is do I continue to take the risk and build the business and grow it to the next level? What does that look like? You know, the the the thing, this is the same case in the stock market, but like trying to time it perfectly is impossible. So, like our our recommendation is like don't try to just focus on the the optimal timing because you're gonna you're likely gonna get it wrong, right? The people that sold their HVAC businesses at the end of 21 or 22 got lucky, right? Because now in 23 and 24, like multiple is just aren't the same. And so um, you know, they they they capitalize on that opportunity, and that's great. I think what's way more important is building a business that you want to own, building a business that has value. What does that mean? You have additional growth, right? We always tell entrepreneurs you can't sell when you're at the end of your growth road. What is the next chapter? Who's gonna buy your company if there's not a next chapter, right? And if it's not clearly defined, selling into that is super important.

SPEAKER_04 20:06

So then when when things are going good, like don't people think like, oh, well, I'll just wait three years and then I'll be good, and it'll be just like it is today, but it's not, and then they're ready to get out.

SPEAKER_03 20:18

Yeah, and not a topic when the top team leaves, yeah. The marketing cost went up double, which happened.

SPEAKER_01 20:25

A macroeconomic thing, like the big beautiful bill, big beautiful bill. And it comes up completely, you can execute flawlessly, but it's out of your control. Macroeconomic shift.

SPEAKER_00 20:34

Every I mean, yeah, COVID, right? Well, whatever I ran every every year, there's been yeah, last year in the product space, it was tariffs, right? Like, how do you buy a company that's sourcing everything from China right when you know tariffs tripled? And so the key is again building something that is valuable to you that has opportunity, like in my opinion, selling or doing some type of transaction on that path often unlocks you know a lot of value. And look, the this that you I can't remember, someone asked about uh or you were talking about options. The truth is, it's not just owning a company 100% or selling 100%. A lot of the people we work with will along that path will say, you know what? I want to bring on a 30% partner, or I want to bring on some growth capital, and but I'm gonna still you know hold majority of the business. This unlocks the next phase. Sometimes it's I'm gonna find a partner to buy 65% of the business, I'm gonna keep 35%, and I'm gonna do two transactions along that path, right? That's a really common scenario. So, you know, it's it doesn't need to be as finite as I think a lot of people think, is like either I own the business or I sell it and I'm gone. That's a good point.

SPEAKER_05 21:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:49

That's a super good point. There's optionality in portions along the way, small bites to a bigger bite, but it's not wow, I built it for five years, I'm walking away. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 22:00

Yeah. Sorry. I was just gonna say one last thing on that topic is like in our coaching, like the consulting that Josh and I have been doing for the last four years, we show a path of like, hey, the goal is to exit your business, but exit doesn't mean, like you said, it doesn't always mean leaving the company. But when you say exit to uh a roofing founder, at least in the conversations we have, typically, that's automatically what they think is selling their business and and being out. But like we talk about it as like first, it's like we've got to get you to exit the field. You've got to like not no longer be the guy on the roof, right? And then it's like exit the day-to-day, and then we call it exiting the org chart, which is the exiting the org chart could just mean that, like you said, you're a shareholder, you could leave altogether, like there's just different shapes and sizes. So it's like that's well said, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 22:53

Well, article we're building is something where you can take some chips off the table, it's you know, and you can keep keep working on this, keep going.

SPEAKER_03 23:02

Yes, which I think that's my question is you understand our model where it's a cashless merger where somebody's kind of sitting there going, Wait, you're gonna get my business for no money, and then we're gonna sell at one big arbitrage multiple and integrate. I guess what's your two cents on that model? And like, and you can be honest, like, this is like where it's like, um I'm a $10 million roofing company, I've bolting into this thing, they pay a management fee, and why would somebody do that or not do that?

SPEAKER_00 23:34

It's it's a great question. I I I think there's a couple things that you have to be cognizant of in any type of what's the option for a $10 million revenue roofing company today? Um you could sell your business to a larger roofing company, which is what the private equity firms are doing. You could continue to build it on your own, see how big you can get it and how much cash you can pull out of it, and you know, eventually sell it. Um you can do something. I I would say what you're offering is something that's a little bit, you know, unique in that it's why don't we accelerate all of our values at the same time and kind of do that together? Why is that hard? It's hard, you know, to figure out like what's the structure, who's making the decisions, right? Like, how do we decide how to enter your markets? Is it someone, you know, in Denver that's going to expand into Salt Lake? Is it someone from California that's like there's a lot of just um discussion and governance and kind of management that needs to be figured out at the front end so that you don't get you know a year into it and it's like I don't know who's in charge of this decision, I don't know how to, you know, I don't know what we're supposed to do with this. And it's kind of you know, decision by committee that that can be that's a challenge. It can be done. That's a that's a challenge when you do, you know, these kind of virtual or cashless mergers, um, as opposed to it's a buyer when they're buying a business, and now that business is part of this bigger business, and it's just the the lines are less ambiguous. Um but it it really comes down to the goals of you know that entrepreneur, right? Like uh we talked about multiple kind of transactions. We have clients who will go do a transaction with a private equity firm, sell 60% of the business, uh, and then they'll do a second exit. Obviously, they still own 40%, right? Eventually they're gonna sell that 40%. I could give you countless examples of times that 40% was more dollars than the 60% of the original transaction. Well, why is that? They have a they're partnered with a firm or a team that knows how to build $100, $200, $500 million companies, right? If you're a two, if you're a $10 million briefing company, chances are you've probably never run a hundred billion dollar business before. Well, if you're partnering with someone who knows what that looks like and has done that before, they know, hey, we got to get this type of person onto the bus, right? We you you don't have a CFO because your business is the size that it is. That's a really important role. How do you trade? How do you scale? How do you do this at a you know a national level? Um most of the time, uh an entrepreneur who's building a business that's a relatively small business doesn't have that skill set. And so partnering with a group or partnering with a firm or or you know, transacting in that way that plugs you into all those resources to build a bigger business can unlock a lot of value. Sometimes it doesn't, but it can unlock a ton of value if you're staring at you know your version of the company you've built versus your ownership of a broader. Yeah, your smaller percentage of a bigger pie. It doesn't mean your value goes away. It just means, you know, I'm taking my whatever value called 10 million bucks, plugging it into something that's worth a hundred, and trying to take that hundred to two hundred and and unlocking you know more value for myself, more my path.

SPEAKER_03 27:09

Which I think is the I love how Cody comes in. He's like, Can I be on a seat at at the board of advisors, right? Can I just be in the room? And I think the curiosity, what's made him successful and like me successful, even JD, it's like, how do you get in the room? Like, even this room is an interesting room to be in today. Well, you rewind four years ago, or you're sitting with the banker and uh having this conversation four years ago. You know what I mean? Like, like it's just a different conversation to say, can I put myself around those guys? Because we all have to realize, like, we're the coolest guy, depending on the room that we're in. And all of a sudden we go to a different room, and it's like, I'm sit down, you know. And I think that's the part. It's like the coolest thing. You're the coolest guy in your town because you're a $10 million roofing company and you're the shit all your friends are still working at Home Depot, and you're just like, Look at me, I'm killing it. And then it's like, well, do you have a bigger goal to then get out of that room and starting a new room?

SPEAKER_00 28:06

You know what I mean? And look, some some don't, and that's fine, yeah, right. I I think um optionality, like giving yourself optionality is probably the most important thing that that we tell founders and owners as they're on that journey, right? Like, why wouldn't you want more options for yourself? Cool. And if you're building a great business, awesome. If you want to keep that business and just stay the man in your town, and like that's that what that's what you know what what your goals are, awesome. If you want to go and do that and 10x it, that's a different path.

SPEAKER_03 28:39

Yeah. So we got one last question because I gotta work out number one mistake. You or you've seen a CEO make in the business.

SPEAKER_00 28:50

Number one mistake. Uh outside of fraud, I'd say uh I'd say I'd say the biggest I I think the biggest mistake that we run into that people don't appreciate is key man reliance. I think that uh maybe explain that just in case or somebody doesn't know. Yeah, what what that means is like your business cannot be successful without you. Um and that could be a host of different things. Either you hold all the customer relationships, and the only reason your business is great is because you're the one that's taking the call.

SPEAKER_03 29:26

You're the guy.

SPEAKER_00 29:26

And so um it is really hard, if especially if you want to retire and play more golf and travel and kind of do less, it is really hard to sell your company if the company really heavily relies on you being there every day, driving the growth. Um, build a team, build systems, like build a business. It's really hard emotionally to to separate those. And I understand that. An entrepreneur separating from the identity of the business, it's really tough. Um, but that's a really, really important thing.

SPEAKER_03 30:01

You want to sell it and and have it grow beyond you know your capabilities is is uh it's valid I didn't be the guy, but at some point, if you're one of the like you said, it's like, oh, everybody loves that dopamine hit of like everybody needs me. Yeah, it's like we need to see that shift. Yeah, and I'm I'm going to do that shift, you know what I mean. Even at DD experts, I'm like, it's D D experts. Like, I you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_02 30:23

I heard you say the other day on a call, or maybe it was to a group or of your teammates or something, you were like, This is no longer a personal brand. Yeah, this is no longer the Sam Tagert show. It's like this is door to door.

SPEAKER_00 30:34

I think you're a good case study of that. I'm a great case study, right? I think you're you know, a lot of people thought of DDD. It was really like, I need Sam to come and you know and help me out on my my path. Um, you know, building a business and not building your own personal attachment is is important if you want to sell it to somebody else. I don't know. If you want to keep it and retire and you're the guy forever and then you die, fine. And then it ends probably, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 31:00

You know, like but it's more valuable if you're less valuable, which is a crazy concept, you know.

SPEAKER_00 31:06

Yeah, and burnout is often what whatever happened. I get a lot of calls that say, you know what? I'm just I'm just burnout. Can someone else take this? And sometimes the answer is maybe not. Yeah, what if that's the wrong time?

SPEAKER_03 31:20

It's the wrong movie. That's true. That's why I brought in some amazing partners. I'm like, guys, there's no way I'm going to carry the boat so far. Like, that's it. Like I just said, I need Josh doing the weekly calls, like he coaches them on a weekly basis. I need them getting in a recruiting conversation, I need us helping marketing. Like, I am not doing this alone. And I learned here, I'm like, I was the guy with an awesome team. Like, I have 50 employees that do the experts, but it still was like, You're making the decisions and you're the guy in the stage, you're the guy on the video because you know what I mean. Um, so we appreciate your time, man. Like, honestly, it's been fun to one, just be behind the scenes, and and guys, that was a dumb though. Ben was the big inspiration to make this happen. It was like, I come to him one day and I go, What if we just did this? And you're like, You'd be dumb if you did it. That was like her answer. And I think that was like the confidence boost that I needed to say, Hey, let's go, let's go see if we can't make some acquisitions happen in a creative finance way. Um, but anybody that doesn't fit in our category, hit up Meridian, guys. Like, go in and say, Hey, let's have a conversation with the bank and say what would that look like? And you know, I'd highly recommend to hit up Benton and say, Okay, cool, like walk me through this. If you know what I mean, and and um, what's the best way for them to reach out?

SPEAKER_00 32:39

Yeah, I mean, I can give you my email or sell or whatever. I mean, uh, we I'll do both. Um, we we give a lot of free advice um along that path, right? Like our service is executing a transaction similar to a real estate broker, right? Like when the sale happens, that's how we get paid. Before that happens, it's just a lot of sharing notes. Hey, we sold one last week. Here's what the market said about, here's what they liked, here's what they didn't, here's some things for you to think about. Like we we do that um from a transaction lens, you know. That's that's we do that all the time. And that's you know, us building a relationship so that when the time comes and you're ready to take that, you know, hundred million dollar check, but we're we're the ones who can facilitate it. So love that. Happy to to chat.

SPEAKER_03 33:26

All right, love it. Thank you guys, appreciate it. And make sure to subscribe, share this with somebody that's maybe on the fence or has thought about some other company, or maybe you're just going through another acquisition, and you know, hopefully we get some massive value. But again, subscribe and share. We'll see you guys on the next episode.