John Wilson: I'm John Wilson. Welcome to Owned and Operated. Twice a week, we talk about home service businesses, and if you're a home service entrepreneur, then this is going to be the show for you. We talk about our own business in residential plumbing, HVAC, and electric, and we also talk about business models that we just find interesting.
Let's get into it.
Hey, this episode is sponsored by Service Scalers. So Service Scalers is actually a brand that I've used personally with our companies for a little bit over a year now. They've helped us manage our digital advertising. Frankly, they did a lot better than our last agency. Leads went through the roof and cost per click went way down.
Check out Service Scalers if you're a plumbing, HVAC, or electrical home service company. That's what they knock out of the park and they did a great job for me.
My good friend, Mike Botkin on, this was a fun episode because now in 2023, he sold his business. So we talked to him early on in his journey when he was just starting to acquire these different businesses. And this was a fun one to listen to knowing that just a couple years later, he grew it into a Goliath landscaping company and sold it.
So he's freshly exited and this was a fun episode to relisten to enjoy.
All right. Welcome back to owned and operated. Today, we have Mike Botkin on. Mike, welcome to the show.
Mike Botkin: Thanks for having me, man. I learned something new in this whole process of setting up this podcast interviews that you have an associate that does a lot of work for you. I'm very jealous of that.
John Wilson: Oh my gosh. Yeah. You texted me about that. So here's the real answer.
I have two. Oh my gosh. And it's amazing. It's amazing. You need to get yourself what?
Mike Botkin: It's next level.
John Wilson: I don't even know if it's next level. I'm going to be honest. It's, you're probably there, but yeah, welcome I'm super pumped to have you on here for those that don't know. Could you give us like a 60 second primer into what you're doing?
Mike Botkin: Yeah. So I am the CEO of benchmark group. We are a holding company focused primarily on home services, we made an acquisition in December of 2020 in the landscaping space.
And we just did a second acquisition in October, also landscaping, both have been in central Florida. And currently we are the largest residential provider of landscaping services and we are transitioning that to more commercial. But our goal is to acquire home service businesses and not specifically in Orlando or central Florida, but anywhere where there's a good operator and a good opportunity.
John Wilson: Yeah, I mean, I've got some immediate follow-up questions just to just sort of clarification questions. So you said you're the biggest. The biggest in central Florida, all of Florida.
Mike Botkin: Yeah. So it's hard to kinda get more information than our immediate area, obviously, to quantify it.
But in our immediate area, we'll call Central Florida. We are the largest residential provider of maintenance. We are transitioning the company to more commercial. Maintenance and, you know, your traditional landscaping and just to like kind of give an education on this because even I didn't know before I started this entire process, there was a difference between maintenance and landscaping right maintenance is the guy that cut your yard and he's there every week and landscaping is more of.
You know, you're planting and redoing your trees or your plants or, you know, installation, things of that nature. So we're definitely getting more into the commercial and landscaping aspect, but yeah, currently, as I said, we are the largest provider for residential maintenance, which is, I think it's cool to say.
John Wilson: Yeah. I mean,
it's cool to hear, honestly, that's like, I'm like, hell yeah, that's cool.
Mike Botkin: Yeah. I mean, we'll be drastically different. I think a year from now, you know, I think your business. Being residential versus commercial probably doesn't matter because on the majority of time you're doing one off jobs and you try to get a maintenance package I'm sure, but for us there's a vast difference in I'll call it the landscaping space between commercial and residential.
And how I describe it is homeowner that pays us 150 bucks will contact us and complain or demand or, you know, just one human attention as much if not more than our commercial customer that pays us 20, 000 a month. And so that's obviously one of the bigger reasons why we're transitioning to commercial versus residential.
And we did it at the first acquisition. The first acquisition was about 50 50. And within a couple of months we were 95 percent commercial. So, you know, we have playbook. Yeah. Yeah. It was a big change and we have the playbook to do it. It's just about executing it.
John Wilson: All right. That's pretty interesting. Brandon's background is landscaping. So we've dove into the sort of nuance between residential. And commercial and you're right, like totally, totally different animals, commercial being better.
Mike Botkin: Oh, for sure. Well, in commercials, you know, like we do, we're the largest provider for a bank. That's a regional, a Southern bank for the largest provider for the bank.
And You know, they're getting mulching done multiple times a year. They're getting tree work done multiple times a year. Our average ticket grows because of all the extra work and a normal homeowner may only get mulching once a year, if that. So it's not even just the maintenance price that they're paying us, but it's all the extra add on work that we see with commercial clients.
So like we do hospitals, we do hotels, we do schools, we do churches, banks, pretty much anything commercial, a ton of HOAs, and, you know, that's where we want to play. And I think another big reason for that and it's kind of looking down the road is if we ever get to the, I am not a hold forever guy. I don't think that makes sense in a lot of ways, but I'm only 31 years old.
And if, you know, we were doing this right and we ever had an opportunity to get, you know, provide some liquidity to our group and, you know, five, 10 years, if we're doing it right, the best way to expand on your multiple is commercial contracts for landscaping. Now our other home service industry that we're going to be into.
That's not necessarily the case, but for landscaping is commercial. So we're also looking at today, what fits us today, what fits our operating style, what fits our customer relation style, but also, you know, we're trying to look 10 years down the road. How do these retrain if we ever wanted to?
John Wilson: Yeah.
All right. We've got a lot to dive into here. So I think the way just from where we've gone so far, I want to do is sort of a zoom in on just the past couple months because you just acquired your second company and then I want to do a zoom out where are we going? You mentioned home services not landscaping.
So that means i'm pumped to hear what else you're looking at. But yeah, let's zoom into the past couple months. So you just bought your second company In October and it's mid December. What's the past two months been?
Mike Botkin: It's been great. Right.
John Wilson: Like give us the dirty details.
Mike Botkin: It's hard on some aspects and listen, I'm not like, you know, my day to day is not as hard as some other people's, especially our guys in the field, but I have to have a battle from 10, 000 square I mean, landscaping, I talk square feet all the time, 10, 000 feet view all the way down to, you know, boots on the ground.
And that's kind of where my mindset goes when you ask that question of what answer do you want, uh, the 10, 000 or the boots on the ground, the boots on the ground.
John Wilson: I think give us boots on the ground.
Yeah, let's do boots on the ground.
Mike Botkin: So boots on the ground, right? The business we bought, the owners were largely absentee.
They are practicing attorneys, so they were not super involved in landscaping and there's pros and cons of that, right? The cons of taking over an absentee business are, you know, the processes aren't as tight, the systems aren't as tight, the guys kind of did what they wanted to, you know, clocking in wasn't really monitored, clocking out wasn't really monitored, and the focus wasn't there from a supervisor level, right?
There was, you know, just some basic quality control things out and even hiring and firing and raises like some of that stuff was missing. And here's a funny story. And I mean this with all respect, right? When we buy business, we have to go through HR and like, you know, on board everyone, right? And we had a couple of guys, you know, hey, we need your IDs, we need your socials.
And a couple of our guys were like, you know, will you take a jailhouse ID? And I'm like, thinking they're kidding. And I'm like, oh yeah, well, you know, put your name on it and we'll take it, right? Joking. And one of the guys hands me a jailhouse iD.
John Wilson: What is a jailhouse ID? I don't even know what that means.
Mike Botkin: Great question. Great question, John. I can tell you're in the upper echelon of home service because you don't know the answer to that. Again, allegedly, when you go to like a county jail, they give you an ID, right? That's your ID. Well, that's the only ID this guy had and his buddies were messing with them.
Like, Oh yeah, we got one too, but this guy, that's all they had. Like, yeah, no driver's license. Again, I mean that all day and he's actually a really good guy. Like he's still here, like great worker, but like he was not kidding. That was his ID. And that's what you kind of have to deal with.
And we had to, you know, redo not only the internal processes of how we look, how we operate. And I mean that from even the aspect of how we get in the truck every morning and how we get, you know, on the road, right, our guys were generally getting here between, you know, seven and seven 30 and everything we just lacks a basic, but there was no rhyme or reason that they're getting their trucks and I wanted to, and just pulling out.
Well, we were going to the gas stations. We were spending, obviously, prior to us being here, they weren't getting the job sites on 8. 30, 9 o'clock. Well, now they're getting to the job sites at 7. 30, 7. 40, because we've had to tighten that entire process all the way down to getting an ice machine here, getting water here, how they set literally their truck, which I'm sure you're familiar with and your industry.
And then we had to externally train customers, right? They went from having really absentee owners. No one taking accountability of positive things or negative things to us being here in the forefront, right in your face. Like, no, no, yeah, this is us. It's like, well, yes, that's our fault or nope. Yep. Our guys did that.
That's a great job by them. Please let us know so we can congratulate them. You know, we had to change customers, mindsets, employees, mindsets and processes. And You know, that's a challenge. Sometimes the positive side of absentee owners is low hanging things have huge impacts, right? Go back to what I talked about.
They weren't getting the job site for an hour and a half. Now they're getting there in 2030 minutes. We just saved an hour of dead time every single day, and it was within one day of a decision being able to do that. And we fixed it.
John Wilson: Across like five crews.
Mike Botkin: Well, yeah, we actually have 22 trucks, so, you know, it's a big gap.
We have over 58 employees, it magnifies every decision we do positively or negatively, obviously. So, you know, there's pros and cons to it, but that's what we've kind of been doing it, and I'll say, I got a lot of inbound from Twitter when I talked about this, but one of the biggest things that we did right before we bought this business is we went out and tried to recruit the best talent we could.
And we didn't want to look at landscaping. We wanted to look at just in general what companies are known for customer service because we knew buying a residential, you know, business Listen, I'm a homeowner and I'm a pain in the ass. I'm sure. So these people that live in very high end houses and very high neighborhoods, we're going to be the same.
So who has good customer service? You know, the enterprises, the Chick fil A's the, you know, this, this, this, and this. And we went out and recruited a general manager on the Chick fil A and brought them over to us and she's been unbelievable. She's been outstanding. Her customer service or attention to detail, her knowledge of processes has really, you know, helped with our customer service and even our crews.
And so that's been an enormous help for us. But yeah, sorry, long winded.
John Wilson: No, I like it. I want to, like, microscope in on that last section. So this is something that we've talked about a ton internally. But we've only talked about it and you actually did it. So this is cool. So we've talked a ton about like, okay, what's the archetype?
What's the person? And, and it's always like the background, the background always comes up. And I love the food service background because I feel like you have the shittiest hours, the shittiest customers, the worst employees. Like it's just terrible. Like if you've been a general manager at a restaurant, like you've dealt with everything, but you still have to serve, learn how to upsell and do all the cool stuff.
So it sounds like you nailed it with this hire.
Mike Botkin: Everything you mentioned. I mean, think about a restaurant, think about a Chick fil a. Chick fil a's are massive down here. You're hiring 15 year olds, 16 year olds, 17 year olds. 45 year old. So you're getting the gambit, you're getting uneducated people, you're getting educated people, you're getting people late in their career, people are laid off, you're getting the entire spectrum of employees.
They all have to walk a certain way, talk a certain way, act a certain way, dress a certain way, because it's a privilege, right? And one of her comments she made, which I thought was great. Every single person should know how to do a task, right? So if you're the person that bags, you know, the meals, I should be able to put a brand new person in training and they know how to bag it.
They may not be as quick as the 20 year veteran, but they should be able to do it the same. And I think that's a great correlation and analogy I use for our guys here. Is just because you weren't the weed guy on this crew, you should be trained in that. So you get put in that position, you turn up that right.
You know, and then the aspect of the customers out of fast food. I mean, she's like, I think our customers are bad sometimes. I mean, those customers are brutal and, you know, she's been flawless with it. Absolutely flawless with it. And she's a former educator to boot. So she was a teacher and had the patience. Uh, it's great. Yeah. And you know, I think this may help you. So I really looked at Chris Saka made a comment about his time at Google. They were hiring hackers, right? The best hackers in the world to learn how to prevent hacking of Google. A guy asked him, well, you know, they're not, their backgrounds aren't very good, right?
But they can hack. And his comment was, well, in the early days at Google, it was just get the best person possible. Fit it in later, right? And I think a lot of times you look at, you know, especially for a position like hers, or I'm sure what you're hiring for, you know, do they have experience in this industry?
Do they have this? Do they have that? And I'm like, you know, she can learn landscaping later. Are you good with people? Do you know processes when you see it? Like, if you can do that and you're the best at that, let's go, like, we'll figure out the rest of the way I can teach someone that part of the business, but you know, sometimes you got to have it in a, that customer relation.
John Wilson: Yeah, I totally agree. How long did it take you to find her?
Mike Botkin: Well, I put the word out and again, I had to be discreet because not a lot of people can know.
John Wilson: Is that just like indeed or like what's putting the word out to you?
Mike Botkin: Well, just my contacts, my network, my local network, friends, family. And again, I think about my comment to them was, these are the traits I'm looking for.
Who should I talk to? Right? Do you know anyone? I didn't say what the position was for how much money like what I'm doing nothing, you know, and it led me down to this path of her and say probably 30 to 40 days all in and then one of the benefits, you know, that I think we have and as a strength is we move extremely fast.
We bought our first business December 2020, bought my second one in October. We're about to purchase our third one here any day now, should be closing. So a benefit to us is speed. And when I saw all her attributes met what we wanted and she was available and Like, Hey, I had to put on my recruiter hat and go get her, right.
And again, that was our best decision by far. So find someone, you know, when you find someone you want, like, what the hell is the point? Like, Hey, let's set up a zoom call. Let's set up a phone call. Let's like go get her. Right. And I did, I went to Chick fil A. Hey, like I'm here, right?
Like, you know, she's at the phone calls and we started doing things. I was just for us and getting.
John Wilson: Yeah. I'm into that a lot. That is such a tough position to hire and we've almost exclusively hired out of industry for ours, different framework each time. So I don't know that we have, like, we definitely don't have it down.
Mike Botkin: I just said all that. And it still makes me nervous. Like, am I missing something in the industry? Because there is value to experience, right? Like, you know, they may be able to see around the corner a little quicker than you, or they may know what to do or know what not to do. And so I get nervous as we get bigger and expand more, do I need more industry experience?
But, you know, one of the benefits, and again, you understand this, I think more than a lot of people, but when you're acquiring businesses that already have employees, one of the benefits, not just the business and the customers and the revenue and even on all that. You're buying the employees essentially and the experience that they have.
So we've actually been pretty careful in our next few acquisitions. We have kind of lined up to learn more about the people of the business than really more about the business or less so about the business because we feel like that's a hidden asset in acquisitions.
John Wilson: Yeah. So like, let's dive a little bit deeper into that.
So what exactly does that mean?
Mike Botkin: So, you know, listen, I think all owners that are selling their business are full of shit. I think it's your job as the buyer to decipher how full of shit they are on what aspect, because again, have you ever seen a seller, Hey, I'm leaving the business because it sucks or it's terrible.
And it's going downhill and I'm just getting out and I'm trying to dump this off to you. It's always I'm going to retirement or I'm going to be, you know, the next real estate tycoon or whatever it is and about they always have great employees, right? These guys are all great, you know, so on and so forth.
Well, every time in my previous career, we bought businesses as well. So I even knew this kind of from back then. Every time you purchase a business, I was like, this guy sucks. Like he's got a bad attitude. He's late all the time. Like, what is this guy talking about? And we are spending a lot more time learning about the people.
Like, Hey, I know where your customer concentration is. Tell me about John or Steve or Jim or Jessica, like walk us through that. And it was something we stole from you actually is a requirement to meet the employees prior to the acquisition. And, you know, it's hit or miss on the reception we've gotten after that.
But I think, you know, again, all credit to you, man, I stole it from you. It's ingenious, right? Like the owners aren't the business when we acquire the business or the employees that make it go. And especially from our standpoint, as a holding company, like our life will be dictated by these people. And so let's make sure we have good people.
John Wilson: Yeah, yeah,
I think we started doing that. We've always met with the key people. We just started meeting the whole team prior to close this year. That was a new thing for the last three deals. The key managers we meet about a month out and for basically the same thing, but it really helps You know, I'm saying this and the key managers of the company that we're closing on in a few weeks.
Listen. So, Hey guys, but it really, it's a big deal because it helps get you on the same page. It helps make it less intimidating and you get to meet the people that will, yeah, determine your destiny. Like it's a big deal.
Mike Botkin: I've noticed when owners understand what we're asking, like, Hey, we're going to meet your guys.
Right. The owners tend to be a lot more open and honest about the staff and how they've been treated, positively, negatively, because they know I'm going to see them before you get a check.
John Wilson: Yeah, I think the dangerous part is not weaponizing that. If I met with someone's staff, And then backed out of a deal.
I mean, I would mess someone's life.
Mike Botkin: How do you answer that? Cause owners always ask me about that. How do you handle that?
John Wilson: If I'm meeting with your staff, I'm going to close. There's no other option for me just because I don't want to mess someone's life up.
And that's like from a purely, I want to be a good person. I just want to be a good person. And the flip side of like, if we just run with that a little bit further, there's real risk of you could get sued. , I mean, there's a lot of stuff that could happen. So I think it's finding out the bad early enough that it doesn't become a real issue.
Mike Botkin: Our meeting isn't contingent. Our meeting of them has no contingencies on it on closing. It's strictly just to meet them, say hi you know, that kind of stuff.
John Wilson: Like what up? I'm Mikey mike.
Mike Botkin: Well, yeah, you know what I feel? I realized it's alleviated is the first acquisition. I didn't do that, right? Like I, you didn't share that publicly.
So I didn't know anything about it. The previous acquisition I did, we never shoved the first day and how's it going? And I had the most senior guy quit the second day. Everyone's jaw was dropped when it was me. And again, like I was 30 at the time. And I'm buying a landscape and you can tell by looking at me, I'm not like a 30 year landscape veteran.
Right. And it was difficult. It was very hard. The shock was, you know, there, whereas this time it wasn't and I had guys. So we didn't need all the employees. It was just the managers and you know, when you have kind of those guys in your corner, it makes all the difference. Like, Oh yeah, I've met this guy, he's, you know, seems all right.
And it's giving them a shot. Like, because, Hey man, you want to buy a shitty business? How about the employees leave on the first day? Like the business will suck.
John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. It's tough, but I agree. So we started. When we were doing deals this year, this is the most active we've been in a year, deal wise, and a lot of lessons learned, but one of the bigger ones was more of a look at the team and not just meeting them beforehand, but like next year, we will probably only do one deal next year, which is a big difference to then three in a year, but that deal is going to be big and it's going to be one swing, right?
So we're probably going to talk to a hundred, 150 businesses and we're going to swing once. Which personally I'm excited about. And one of the biggest things that we care about is team. Whereas that has slowly become more important on every deal, mainly from lessons learned.
It's
Mike Botkin: I agree with you, man. You're ahead of us obviously in the acquisition stages, but isn't it funny, like how you learn the business, like you, you can fix a business, right? You can, I can fix a process by the snap of my fingers, but the people are tough. And the people can make or break your business or accelerate you or not.
And, you know, that's key, right? Like, it's funny. I bought the first acquisition we did in retrospect. I've said this before, it was probably too small, but I learned so many things by doing that. I think search funds are a joke, but I guess we can talk about that later. I learned so many things being more boots on the ground than anything and dealing with the people that on this next one.
I was very people conscious and obviously moving forward, I've grown to be more, you know, what you're saying and how you are now, like the business is great. And I'm like phenomenal, but let's worry about the people too.
John Wilson: I think it's a good thing to learn now. There was a competitor that was acquired earlier this year in my market.
They were the big boy or they are the big boy. We're only second to them, but it was a PE firm that bought them. And I totally get the attraction. I mean, these guys are, they're making money, but their leadership totally sucked. Just terrible, like just immoral. Like that's the level of, and you know, you can't, it's hard to do a good deal with bad people.
And the guys running this company are bad people, but this is an example of like, you know, they spent probably 40 million on this company and they've been struggling with leadership for the past 18 months because they didn't do the due diligence into this people that, that they should have learned a long time ago.
Mike Botkin: It's funny, man. Like a lot of P firms and I think even search funders to a degree, you know, don't have the experience knowledge that you just talked about and don't even, you know, again, it's people are so ancillary to the deal that it's not even a conversation other than, yep, this guy's background checks out.
He's been in the industry for 35 years. He must be, you know, great, great. Let's move on to the next checklist that we have. And, I think I'm learning and it sounds like you've already learned, but you have people. And it goes back to recruiting your people, right? One of the things that people talk to me a lot about, especially search funders is, you know, about the industry, like, Oh, do you find the industry hard for labor and like, yeah, I mean, I think every industry sucks for labor to a degree.
I think we're putting a big focus on training and retention versus recruiting, even though, you know, I've recruited kind of the top level people. If you're training with people, right, I'm talking to boots on the ground up to the middle managers and beyond, but you're training, right, you're putting things in place to help them to benefit them.
They can see that whether that's safety stuff, whether that's financial gains, whether that's just little tiny benefits and perks here. You know, you should build a war chest of people and you won't have to be recruiting. So as much, I guess, and we do overpay, like I don't wear it as like a badge of honor by any means.
And I don't look at it as a negative either. I'd rather give this person an extra couple of bucks than have to go recruit somebody. I'll tell you that , and kind of my saying is I want to be recruiting when I want to recruit, not when I need to recruit. And I think it was a big difference. And so many times you settle for people when you have to hire someone versus.
We're about to grow. We're about to do this. Or, Hey, we could add this person and, you know, grow our business or fix issues in our business. Let's go out and find someone. And I think you end up with better people just because you're, you know, mentally, you're more clear.
John Wilson: If you're a home service entrepreneur that's just starting out, or is early on in the journey, and you haven't broken the five million dollar revenue mark, we've got an event for you. This spring in Cleveland, March 19th to the 21st, we're hosting an event at my office. It's going to be awesome. Honestly, some of the most impactful visits of my career have been visits to companies that were larger than we were, that we could take lessons from, and see how they're doing stuff.
Like get a behind the scenes look, how are they structuring warehouse? How are they thinking about call center? Can I talk to their managers? Can I understand what their KPIs are? We're going to dive into all that stuff. We are here to help people get above 5 million in revenue. So join us in Akron, Ohio, March 19th to the 21st for a breaking 5 million event.
Love to see you there. Details are owned and operated dot com. This was good. People talk. I'm into it. Let's jump to like 30, 000 square feet. So you did a deal. And you're about to do a third, like, what does the next couple of years look like for you? Where are you guys going?
Mike Botkin: Yeah. You know, interesting question. We see a massive hole in the market and landscaping, which is why we're moving pretty quickly.
And we're going to continue to move quick until we don't see an advantage. Like, I'm not like the same guy, but you know, I kind of have a phrase like all I want is an unfair advantage. And anything I do, I just want an unfair advantage
John Wilson: And don't play games. You can't win, right?
Mike Botkin: Exactly. And I think that there's, I have an unfair advantage in landscaping in central Florida. And so we're going to continue in the multiples we're buying out. We're buying between 1. 75 and three.
John Wilson: So just catch me up. Is that typical for landscaping? Cause it's a tougher.
Mike Botkin: A little bit, yeah. Anywhere in between. 1. 5 and I see some that are traded at 3. 5, but ours have been between 1. 75 and 3.
This next, this third one we're doing is 2. 2 and it's an all commercial landscaping business. And it's pretty well set up and multi year deals.
John Wilson: Just to clarify 2. 2 million or 2. 2 multiple.
Mike Botkin: Multiple, multiple, so yeah, they're EBITDA. So the first one I bought was based off SDE because it was a sub million dollar business.
The second one we bought was massive and it was traded for sure off EBITDA. And this next one's also traded on EBITDA as well. So we're getting bigger and bigger and bigger in our purchase prices and our acquisitions. So we see the need in that. But what's come about this is we're also looking at a lot of other industries in the home services and this was actually pretty popular on Twitter, but the trash can cleaning, the fresh wash trash cans, there's actually.
John Wilson: Brandon wants to do that so bad.
Mike Botkin: Talk to me. There's actually one kind of in our market and I reached out to see if they'd be interested. They're not. They're crushing it. They don't want to sell, right? Doesn't everyone? So we're either going to start that ourself in 2022 or we're going to find one to buy. And kind of my criteria for what we're going to buy is, is it a good standing business?
And that does not have anything to do with financials. Is it a good standing business, right? Does the name mean something? You know, or when you say, Oh, I work for, you know, Wilson's plumbing. Is it, Oh my God, that's a great company to work for. Is that the answer? Yes. Great. Let's go to the financials. Is it a good profitable company?
And we want to kind of stay away from the companies that got boosted because of COVID or the companies that got killed because of COVID. We want that nice consistent revenue, and then we can put gasoline on it and jump it. But we've, you know, look at HVAC, we've looked at pressure washing, we've looked at painting, we've looked at water service, we've looked at plumbing.
You know, we're kind of looking at the gambit of home services and outside your home. And so that's kind of what the next couple years look like is, can we find those companies with great operators? it doesn't even have to be a, you know, acquisition per se. But it could be growth capital, right?
You're not in this position, obviously, but if you were in the South and you came to me and said, Hey, we're doing X, Y, Z, we're acquiring other businesses, we're kind of ramping up, we need some growth capital. Okay. Like, let's do it. Let's talk. Right. As long as it meets our criteria. And in terms of landscaping, like think about the market and we want to own the complete vertical.
So I talked about the difference between maintenance and landscaping earlier, you have maintenance, you have landscaping, you have supplier, which is where like I get our rock or mulch and stuff like that, you have a nursery, you have sod farms, you have irrigation, you got tree, all these other, you know, side products of the landscaping business and we want to own all of them.
So we're talking to sod farms, we're talking to tree companies, we're talking to these because we want to own the entire vertical. Our kind of joke I have is we want to own from the farm to the house. So if you're getting inside, you're getting it from us. If you're getting mulch, you're getting it from us.
If you're getting your yard cut, you're getting it cut by us. If you're getting landscaping done at your church or your hotel or your hospital, it's by us. And that's, you know, another big focus for us in 2022. And, you know, we're going to be pretty aggressive, but it's patient aggressive. If that means anything, it does obviously doesn't make sense when you say it out loud.
John Wilson: You'll sit on your hands until something worth.
Mike Botkin: Yeah. And we're going to shoot fast.
John Wilson: And then you'll move fast.
Mike Botkin: Yeah. Like this deal, we just did the second one. There's no debt. It's cash, all cash at close. You know, obviously there's some holdbacks and stuff like that, but you know, we're not going SBA.
We're not going banks. We're not going it's if the business is good, the business is profitable and it's what we think can fit in our wheelhouse and we can add value to it, like we'll close. We close this last business in less than 60 days. I closed the first business in less than 30 days.
John Wilson: Let's talk about this briefly.
Mike Botkin: We don't mess around.
John Wilson: You don't mess around. And the reason you don't have to is how you're paying for it, right? Like that's the superpower or that's one of the superpowers.
Mike Botkin: What do you mean?
John Wilson: Like you're raising money instead of debt. You don't have to go sba.
Mike Botkin: Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah, sure. So I think the SBA is great for what they're, and I've talked to them, you know, especially a, before my first acquisition, like, Hey, what is it into?
Because I didn't really know much about it at my previous firm. We used more, institutional capital and private equity debt versus, you know, like an SBA, obviously we're a bigger firm, so I had to learn what the SBA A was before I could speak on it, and I decided it wasn't for me.
John Wilson: Yeah. Walk us through why it wasn't for you and you ended up raising.
Mike Botkin: Yeah. So overview of the SBA, right? You have to go through a bunch of hoops and you have to check boxes. They don't really give a shit about the business as long as it meets their box that they can check. You're going to, and if you can walk into gum, you're going to get, you're alone.
Right. And I didn't want that. And that's hard. That's kind of a controversial say, maybe, but. I wanted someone that, you know, when the SBA closes the deal with you, they don't ever talk to you again until you miss your payment, or unless you want to refi because you have a balloon payment somewhere, or they want to add on to you, and I wanted someone, especially being a first time, you know, sole operator that I could jam with, that I could call, that I could talk to about things, and I I was nervous about, you know, Hey, this is my life on the line.
What happens if this doesn't work? What happens if we run out of money? And I thought the quickest way to run out of money was let it walk out the door and letting money walk out the door to the SBA every month, no matter what the business was doing. Was a bad play. If we had a great month, cool. You can send their SBA the money.
If you have a bad month, guess what? The SBA wants your money. And I wanted a partner that could walk the ebbs and flows with us, help us on the down months, assist us and help us grow on the big months and, you know, have some skin in the game. And, you know, I kind of came from humble beginnings to say lightly, and I respect someone's dollar more than anything.
And the fact that someone believed in me to give me money, I look at that as a huge responsibility that I have their capital. Not only do I have their capital, but I have to make it work and I have to return a lot more back to them. And I think I spoke to this on Twitter the other day, but kind of summarized my SBA conversation.
I think there's a big gap between a business's potential and actual potential. And a lot of times capital standing in the way of a business reaching its full potential, right? If you can execute and you have a proper plan and you have everything lined up, capital should come in and make you grow like crazy.
And it did with us. We grew 40 percent in our first year with our first acquisition. Because we had the capital behind us and I wasn't seeping out the doors. That's not saying every business is like that because sometimes you have an execution problem. Like I could give a bad business a million bucks and if they can't execute, then I just burned a million bucks.
They should go to the SBA because SBA loves burning money. It's a joke.
John Wilson: Yeah, yeah, that was good. I liked that.
Mike Botkin: So I needed a partner and that could help me and help me jam and I could call on in a pinch or. And also act fast, right? Like speed is our advantage. And so I need a partner. If I found a good opportunity, then, Hey, I need to be able to call on this guy and say, Hey, we need to raise, you know, X number, or we need to do this, or we need to do that, or can you help us to assist this and it did, and the group that we took on for the second acquisition. I'll just give you like an example, autonomous mowers, or I believe are going to be really, really popular for commercial landscaping and maintenance. Then the next couple of years, there's one company that was raising a ton of VC money for autonomous mowers.
I reached out and couldn't get them, couldn't get them, couldn't get them. We take on this group for capital and I tell our guy, Hey, I want to read like, have you ever heard of this company within the next day, he already talked to the DC that led the round and had conversations going, the SBA would never be able to do that.
They wouldn't even give a shit. They'd like, yeah, it sounds great. Google them. And so I think capital leaving the business should be at our choice, not someone else's. I think debt is bad to that degree that it leaves no matter what. And I wanted a partner that could help us operationally and financially moving forward.
And I think it takes a ton of energy to raise money. I think it takes a ton of focus. And I wanted a partner that I didn't have to ever raise again. And so to complete our thesis, I do not have to go out and get one more dollar from anyone else. We haven't committed. We have the capital. We can complete my entire thesis without ever having to raise money again.
And, you know, circle back to kind of our point before that allows us to move very fast. And I don't think, you know, people talk to me about the SBA a lot, and I don't think the SBA is bad, right? Like, if all you're doing is one acquisition, and the financials are solid, and all that, I think you should go SBA.
I think it's a great program. I think it's built. I think you'd get out of it exactly what it's built for. For me, my thesis was to buy one, then buy another, then buy another, then buy another, and continue to scale this. And I knew I wasn't going to wait, you know, the 24 months that they want you to wait or 36 months and have to check all these hoops again and all that.
It's like sometimes, you know, and I was talking to our investors about this when we had our board meeting about the second acquisition, like, is it a good business? Yep. Are the customers real? Yep. Is it profitable? Yep. Are the people good? Yep. Let's go. Like, what are we talking about?
Like, let's just go. And that's why we're aggressive because it boils down to a few other things and you can move fast.
John Wilson: I think something I've never thought about until this conversation, cause I've always been a let's go get debt guy versus Ray's guy is I'm probably the typical person that doesn't want to split equity, right?
Every penny matters. And then I, somewhere along the line, you said something I'm going to re listen and catch it. But it brought up a thought I've never thought about, which is the amount of cashflow that goes towards servicing that loan is either worse or the same as paying off an investor anyways.
Mike Botkin: Yeah, well, it's not even that. Think about it a different way. This may help you. I'm just going to make it up for round numbers. I suck at math. But if you're paying 10 grain a month back to the SBA or whatever, you know, debt that you're servicing, what could that 10, 000 do for your business throughout the year before you have to have the return to your investors, right?
Which ours is set up annually. Some do a quarterly, monthly, whatever it is. But, hey, Mr. Investor, instead of 10 grand going out to service our debt, we're going to put 10 grand into working capital. We're going to put 10 grand into growing our business. We're going to take 100 grand that we were going to give to the SBA in year one.
Instead, we're going to go buy, you know, a tuck in and we're going to go buy new trucks, right? It limits your thinking and your ability to move because you always have to service that debt. That debt has to be serviced first. You know, you pay your employees on it, but that debt has to be serviced. And it just limits your thinking, especially when you have covenants around it and you can't do certain things.
And again, I wanted capital to work for us, not against us. If I had to say one sentence on the SBA or private equity or selling off equity, I went capital workforce, not against us now in the event. We ever sell what I make less money. I think it's debatable because we could only get so big using debt, whereas having private capital allows us to scale a lot quicker.
So I think, you know, hindsight will be 20 20, when it happens to see if I'm right or wrong. But not only would I rather have that capital versus debt, I'd also rather having those partners because the doors that opens the conversations that opens, I will take the deal that I had and the amount that we raised and the partners we have over SBA debt a hundred out of a hundred times, and I'll stand on the roof screaming it, for me, that made more sense.
Now, that's not to say we'll never, ever use debt, because I don't want five years to say, hey, we took on some debt. When you're financing acquisitions of 30, 40, 50 million bucks, yeah, you're probably going to use some debt, right? And that will also work to your advantage at that point. But where we're at buying businesses that are doing a million to five million of EBITDA, it makes sense to just not use.
Obviously, SBA, a lot of times, won't even qualify for it. But the smaller ones that we do, cash is more important to us.
John Wilson: Yeah, I'm super into this. This has been a big thing that I've been wrestling with a lot in the past couple months, just because we've done a series of acquisitions.
It's always been me. So, you know, I'm 100%. And we're at the point now where you either pour gas on it or you slow down and pouring gas on it is either a pile of debt, which does not sound attractive, or you sell off some equity to somebody and you sort of remove the constraints, which does sound like that sounds great.
You know, that's the path to a hundred.
Mike Botkin: I'll say the biggest thing that I focus on if I'm hearing you correctly, I think one of your, not issues, obviously, but you would be nervous of is like, Hey, it's all me. It's all my family, your family's history, giving up equity kind of removes the whole family atmosphere out of it potentially.
And what partner do you get and all that stuff? And, and I'll say, I think there's a lot of great venture capitalists. I think there's a lot of great private equity groups. I think there's a lot of great high net worth individuals. I think there's a lot of bad venture capitalists and private equity and high net worth individuals.
I spent more time doing due diligence on our partner than I did on any business we've ever had. And I turned money away. And again, trust me, John, I value every single dollar. So turning money away made my skin crawl that a, someone's even willing to offer me money. And I'm saying no to it. Like the fact that someone's even willing to offer it was amazing.
But I had to be very careful that the money that I took, and not to say the people I said no to are bad, because I thought they would have been great partners, but I wanted a smaller group. I wanted an individual. I wanted, you know, just a handful. And it was important to me that they understood small business.
They understood the people that we deal with, customers, employees, you know, so on and so forth, but they also had the resources and capabilities to fulfill our thesis. And I found one. I mean, I got extremely lucky. It's a needle in a haystack and the due diligence worked out. They have a huge history in small business.
They have a history of scaling small businesses. They know what that's like. And they have the capital resources to do what we needed to do. So I found one. And, you know, again, it's. It's luck of the Irish, I guess, but I would say, don't be scared of that. I would challenge you to continue to search for that and network that and find that, because I think, you know, what you said is a hundred percent, right?
Like getting a pile of data is scary, but getting a partner scary, but a partner may also be your business goes to a height you never thought it could go.
John Wilson: Yeah, I think it's definitely legacy is definitely a component of it. And then the other component is I've bootstrapped it here. And the reality is I know that I can do it to a hundred million in sales.
Like the path is, pretty clear. I know how to get there. I just don't think I want to accept 40 million of burden that I'm going to have on my shoulders to do that. And I've never been bothered by debt, but now that we've crossed five, I'm like, okay. I feel a little bit.
Mike Botkin: Yeah. I mean, unless you're running a casino or like an illegal enterprise, I think you're going to have to take on something to get there, you know, unless you actually do it, tucking after tucking after tucking after tucking, which sounds like, you know, you've done some I think you're going to have to make a decision on that.
You may get to 100 million, but you may be 60 So can debt get me there before I'm 50 or can private equity or whatever it is? I think there's always pride of ownership, especially when a family run business and you bootstrap and scale with it I think there has to be pride of ownership in that.
I mean you're living the american dream I would challenge you.
John Wilson: We are sure. You and me buddy.
Mike Botkin: Hey, i'm not going to associate my current
John Wilson: Yeah, I can help you change that yeah
Mike Botkin: I think there's a partner out there for you. Or I think that, I mean, I don't think it has to be one size fits all. I think you can try someone out and you can try some of the partner and see what happens.
And I think you're in an attractive position to decide what you want to do. Keep it going steady, keep bootstrapping it and using the cash that business generates or take on debt or raise money. I think you're in a dilemma and I think you should do a whole episode on it, really. Pros and cons of debt, pros and cons of equity, pros and cons of just bootstrapping it.
And really, I challenge you, write out what the next year, three years, five years, 10 years, 20 years looks like. Do it in all those ways.
John Wilson: Yeah, we're starting to work through that exercise that you just said right now. So we, joined up on EOS. And we're working on laying out our 10 year vision, which our 10 year vision has basically been like whatever John wants to do.
So we're professionalizing that a little bit. it has made me sort of face stuff exactly like this because the, the raising, we've been thinking about this heavily since May, we've talked to a pile of PE firms and none have been the right fit. Otherwise I would have done it. We have financing set up with a variety of banks.
And so like we're all ready to go. It's just sort of I guess paralysis analysis, which is not something that I'm often plagued by. I'm usually, I have a bias to move.
Mike Botkin: Yeah. I think one of the things that helps us internally is everyone knows the role and knows where you're needed, where you're not needed.
Partner a, you just may be strictly capital to us. You know that we know that you're accepting of that. We're accepting of that partner B. Maybe, you know, networking and operational help. No, obviously you have to have the capital with you, but we're going to lean more on you for this and partner C and partner, like everyone has to know their, and here's what my role is and don't cross, you know, boundaries.
Don't cross your role. Like if you see input, you can have it obviously. And that's what you're here for. But not every partner has to have input on every single thing you do, or not every partner has to have you say or, nor do you have all the answers like use your resources. And again, I'm a big, big proponent.
Having partners, you know, it's just easier to do. Let me ask you this, I know briefly, right. Open a family kind of history. And I know Brandon's kind of your guy, but and this again, it just no If you have a real issue or a financial issue, or even on a positive side, you don't have a peer you could talk to, like you're either talking to Brandon who, listen, I know seems like great, but he is your employee, or you're talking to, you know, maybe your family, which is kind of already exited the day to day operation out, you know, which you run, or you're talking to someone that, you know, has no skin in the game and no business, which You know, they don't give a shit what happens.
I would say don't take advice from someone that can't live with the consequences. So if I make a decision and it goes bad and you, your life stays the same, I don't really care what you think. Having a partner is like, for me, is a great psychiatrist in a lot of ways, because they have complete skin in the game.
They're a peer in a lot of ways. But this is bad. It goes really bad for them as well as it does me versus I can share some things with my, you know, leadership of employees. I can share some things with, you know, friends and family. But personally, I need a peer and I would challenge you and question you like who do you have in your corner to do that?
That has equal skin in the game as you do.
John Wilson: Yeah, nobody.
Brandon's probably the closest, but the equity distribution is very different. I don't know that you can ever, without doing the way you've done, I don't know that I would ever want to have that.
Mike Botkin: Hmm. Okay.
John Wilson: So I think that, I don't know.
I've had a few real estate partnerships that were equal partnerships. And maybe not even equal, but like close.
Mike Botkin: Sure.
John Wilson: And I totally get the benefit. And this is probably down to choosing your partner, which I did not do very well. So if I had chosen my partners very well, I might have a different answer for this.
But because of the partners I did choose in some of these real estate endeavors, the partner was always the one holding it back. And even in the operating businesses, I've had minority partners, like a few percents that they were meant to come in, take on a specific role, and they were always the one that got in the way of what we had to do.
So then it became an issue point way more than it was like a selling point. So I had someone to talk to, and this, again, I think this is totally down to your earlier conversation about like picking the right person to partner with, which I didn't do because some of it was family. And you're like, your family is who your family is.
And some of it, like one partner was just a bad decision on my end that like, yeah, I look back and it's like, yeah, okay. That was totally on me, but yeah, I don't know. That's my experience with partners so far in the business. exploded the moment it became just me because I didn't have to convince anyone of what the right steps to take were.
Mike Botkin: Sure.
John Wilson: Whereas like in your case you're probably flowing in tandem because you from the beginning had a common vision and that I'm sure helps quite a bit more.
Mike Botkin: I think we're probably similar in a lot of ways and an aspect of like you have a very clear, distinct vision.
I hear you talk about all the time. I see all that on Twitter and you know, some of your comments and points strike me as very interesting. When you know it's a good decision, you'd want to go. And when you know it's a bad decision, you know when to pull back. And you don't, you know, like fluff in the way.
And you've been proven right, it sounds like, and seems a ton. So you should be that confident with it. It was important for me when I was taking on Partners, because I had a very strong belief and confidence in our thesis, and where we were going, and what we wanted to do, that everyone had to understand what I was doing.
Everyone had to understand and agree with what my thesis was. And not that you can't question the decision I do or what, where we're going, but this is the fucking boat we're on my friend. So if you want to jump off, be my guest, but this boat is going that direction. So either you're on the boat or you're not.
And, you know, I think there's all kinds of things you can set up to continue that and have that, but. Yeah. I mean, like, dude, when you've got a thesis like you have or someone like I have, and you know, the right decision is this way and that's all, I definitely think it's hard in partner selection to get people to, you know, fully buy into that because a lot of people like to have opinions and sometimes it's like.
You're the capital guy. Stay over there. And then there's guys like, you know, I need your opinion on this. Like I'm turning right. Should I be turning left? Should I jump over this line or should we walk on it? It's all about roles. I have a huge sports background. I was a basketball coach, you know, wants to say titles, all that kind of stuff.
And I think role implementation is a key, especially in high level partnerships like this. Like, you know, your role.
John Wilson: So if I were to go raise money tomorrow, like, Hey, give me a couple of bucks. Is it a matter of equity percentage or just operating agreement? Cause if someone's giving all the capital, they might have more equity than the operator.
Mike Botkin: I mean, you have to look at it from both sides, right? So if someone was raising a million bucks. And you were the guy giving the money. Let's say you were given 800, 000 of it. How would you like that to 10%? You would hate it.
John Wilson: You'd be like, that'd be terrible.
Mike Botkin: Yeah. So you got to be okay.
There's all different kinds of ways to structure it. There's all different kinds of layers and levels and trenches and paradas. And there's a million deal points you can do to structure where you want it. Like you do have to be okay with. If this person's input to what we're doing here is capital, that does come with equity, you know, needing to go out, or maybe it comes out to the prep on a return that they did, or maybe it comes out to, you know, step ups.
It just, you got to find out what's important for you. What's important for them. This is key. I think what's a non negotiable for me and what's a non negotiable for you. I don't care about these other things, but I cannot do this. Or I have to have this. Are you okay with that? Yes, great. We can move forward.
No, we can't be partners. Or tell me why. What's your non negotiable, right? What can you not move on? And again, like, did I give up more equity than probably, like, it probably surprised people on what I gave up. But again, like, for me and what we're doing, I saw speed as an advantage. And if I had X, Y, and Z, Which means I take less in the beginning, we could get there a lot quicker, and the fruits of that labor will come.
So, I was okay with it, but I know a lot of people struggle with it, and again, in 10 years I'll tell you if I was right or wrong.
John Wilson: I'll call you in 10 years.
Mike Botkin: Yeah, but it's also, think about this, like, wouldn't you want to have a good partner for 2 percent or 5%? Like, that's not a good partner, they don't give a shit, like.
I don't care what happens to you. Like my partners will answer my phone call on Sunday nights at nine o'clock at night, or one of my partners was just at a friend's wedding overseas or as international, and we were talking to each other right before he was walking into the wedding, so he has skin in the game, right?
They have skin in the game. They have good equity. Like it's meaningful to all of us. And that's kind of a hidden thing. I'll just use a dumb number just for easy math. I could have raised a bunch of 10, 000 checks or 20, 000 checks. Teams don't have skin in the game for what we're trying to do.
Like, they're not going to answer the call on Sunday at 930 at night to jam on a dumb idea that I have. I need you to have skin in the game and I'm willing to give up the equity that it takes to get you, but I need you to be this partner and I need you, you know, I'll use a sports analogy, right? Did you ever play sports growing up?
John Wilson: I ran.
Mike Botkin: Oh my God.
John Wilson: So you're like the most individualistic sport ever.
Mike Botkin: There's a lot of psychology behind you. Have you read some of Malcolm Gladwell's books and some of his podcasts. He has a bunch of theories on runners. So in team sports, there's all like the best players always like, you know, pushes the line, right?
Like he's 30 seconds late to practice. Coach says, touch the line. You know, he'll put his foot an inch away from the line and not touch it. And I always use it. And listen, you know, I coach Jason Tatum, who's in the NBA, Pat McCall, who's in the NBA, we've had players in the sec all over college basketball.
And I'd always tell them I'm good with that because you're performing, you're a producer. The minute you don't produce, I'm going to be on your ass about touching the line, being 30 seconds late. So moral of the story, you better fucking go score 30 because when you don't score 30, I'm going to be all over you.
And I think that's the same with a partner. I'm giving you equity. You better perform. So I need you to answer that phone call. I need you to provide the capital, whatever your role is. That's what I need from you in respect. You expect certain things out of me and I've got to perform and I have to do that as well.
John Wilson: This was fascinating. This definitely was very different than how I thought this conversation would go, but I'm glad it did.
Mike Botkin: You thought we were going to be talking about cutting loans.
John Wilson: Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's if Brandon were here, we'd be talking about cutting lawns. We're talking about the real stuff.
No, I mean, you know, picking partners. That's interesting. You've definitely given me some good food for thought on what this thing looks like as we keep going. So over the next 18 months or five years, what's your timeline that you're measuring off of?
Mike Botkin: We don't really have one. That's one of the benefits of the partners we selected.
Again, there's no fun life. We have the capital. We have the extra capital committed. We are in aggressive mode right now. We're trying to, you know, like I said, acquire, you know, from four to five to six, whatever the right ones are that come across our desk. But if we only acquire one next year, then we only acquire one.
It's hard to answer because we don't really have any terms on anything or any life of anything that's
John Wilson: I guess more like it was more of a, what's your vision? What's the timeline that you're using in your head? Like in the next five years, we want to be 50 million or something like that.
Mike Botkin: Yeah. I don't put quantitative numbers on it.
I think, you know, to have a total cop out answer, I think you either get disappointed or you think you're great and you're really not when you put. Set goals like that at 50 million, because you could be doing 50 million and making 800, 000, or you could be doing 50 million and making 10 million. Just continue to acquire good businesses and put us in position, put us in position to be able to acquire when we want to acquire, how fast we want to acquire, always have that flexibility and liquidity.
To do that and again, I'm 31 like I want to be in a position and this is a very, very frank statement I'm going to have and not a lot of people agree with it and not a lot of people I think can say this but I haven't had the life changing moment yet and I think we all strive for that. I mean you're a younger guy and I'm younger as well and I think we're all doing this to kind of have that moment whether that's cash flow from the businesses we're buying or from an exit that we have and I think just continuously put you in position to do that.
One of my investors is JD Ross. He's a co founder of open door. Ironically, I didn't know this, at least, but we kind of had a similar tweet about a year and a half apart from each other, and he saw me tweeted it referenced it, but. If you want to do good, whether it's a life or fitness or whatever, do the simple things well, every single day.
So, you know, eat right every single day, get good sleep every single day, work out every day or read or whatever it is you want to do, whatever is good to you as a guy that doesn't work out. And so for us in business, It's do good things on a daily basis, weekly basis, monthly basis that will continue to put us in position to acquire the next good business because I do only believe in growth through acquisition.
I do not believe we're making growth to get to do what we're trying to do. I think that's, you know, a fool's wrong. So I only believe in the acquisition. And be put in position where people want to, you know, be sold to us, right? Like, we're not doing this to go buy and operate ourselves. We're doing this to have good operators.
And I think probably in the back half of next year, we're going to put a ton of focus on building a pipeline of operators. And again, it could be growth capital. It could be acquisition capital. I know you and Isaac are kind of doing some of the growth or startup.
And I think we're similar in a lot of ways with that of, we want to either help someone start and help someone buy or help someone grow up all ends of the financial spectrum. So all you search funders out there that fail to buy a business, you know, give me a call.
John Wilson: I do need to start recruiting specifically out of that pool.
That would be good.
Mike Botkin: You should make, get mad for real quick. Sam Rizzotti has a great, great incubator and you should do it with your pipeline of people. Sam Rizzotti, he's a private equity guy down here in Tampa, but now, I mean, he's holding the S and dash and he's creating that and running that.
John Wilson: Are you going to that?
Mike Botkin: I'm actually speaking at it. So he's let me in the door. I fooled him enough. Nice door I still don't know if I have to buy a ticket or not. He hasn't told me that actually
John Wilson: Actually, I have the same question because I think we're doing a live pod down there and I don't know if we're supposed to buy a ticket or not
I don't know.
Mike Botkin: I don't know. I'm gonna tell him. Hey john wilson wants to know if he has to buy a ticket Yeah, yeah, throw you under the bus. Yeah, nice. You should group text us So he has a great incubator and where he is essentially training guys that he's going to be providing capital to an equity to, to go out and buy businesses.
And I think you should do the same thing. I think you should have an incubator of guys that go through your process and maybe not buy the business or start the business like they want to, but maybe they come work for you, you know, for six months or nine months or 12 months or three months, I think you have a real asset on your hands there to use multiple ways.
John Wilson: Yeah, that is one of our big projects for this year right now. So we created an academy for techs, but we very quickly ran out of operators just because of our deal flow. So now we're in the process of creating, how do we build a bench? How do we always keep operators ready to go?
And that's part of our associate program is people come in, they work as an associate and then they get placed into an opportunity. So sometimes that's, An operator, sometimes it's a service manager, but we have to scale it up a lot more if we're going to keep, keep moving at the pace we're going.
Mike Botkin: Yeah, for sure. I think what you're doing is phenomenal. I wish it was around, you know, when I was having those thoughts a while ago.
John Wilson: So this was an awesome conversation. If people want to follow you, where can they find you, Mike?
Mike Botkin: Yeah, the best way is on Twitter. It is Mike Botkin underscore. I will tell everyone I do not do phone calls immediately.
So stop asking me to jump on a phone call. You can email me and we'll go from there. Yep, that's the best place. Mike Botkin underscore.
John Wilson: That's awesome. All right. Thanks for coming out today and thanks for sharing your story. This was awesome.
Mike Botkin: Yeah, man. Love it. Appreciate it.
Thanks for tuning in to Owned and Operated, the podcast for home service entrepreneurs. If you enjoyed today's episode, please hit the like button and subscribe to the podcast. If you have any questions or topics you'd like us to cover, feel free to reach out. You can find me on Twitter at at Wilson companies.
I'll see you next time.