Two Exits. Totally Different Outcomes.

Kris Birch: I came to him with a very simple proposal. You stay, I go. I go, you stay. And it wasn't like this is going to happen tomorrow, but this is where we need to go, with the letter in it saying, "Dad, I love you. I want this relationship. I'd rather have this relationship than this job or this business. Let's figure this out." Kory Mitchell: So that's Kris Birch. He sold two businesses. The first one was a lawn and snow business that he sold to a public business back in 2020. The next one, a tree care business that he sold in 2023 to a private equity partner. The first one didn't go the way he planned, and looking back at it, there's almost nothing left of the business today. The second one, well, right now he's a lot more optimistic. Totally different playbook, but the story remains to be seen. Kris did something that very few people get to do. He sold a business and then he sold another one. Most people don't get a chance to get it right the second time. He had that shot. Welcome back to The Turn. I'm Kory Mitchell and I founded a business called Iconic Founders Group. We support founders in the blue collar industry who are thinking about selling their company. Back when I had my business, I had no idea who to turn to. Most of the founders that I meet are in the same boat. They know how to build their business, they know how to make money, but they have no idea what it would look like to sell it. If you want to talk and you own a business that's doing at least 2 million in profit, shoot us an email at theturn@iconicfounders.com, because I love it when the good guys win. Kris thought he was going to play professional hockey. That didn't work out the way he planned, but before he could build a business, he had to figure out who he was. Kris Birch, thank you for joining us today. You've done something that very few people have done. You successfully built and sold two companies. Take us back to the beginning. Kris Birch: Thanks for having me. I really was kind of blinded for most of my young adulthood thinking I was going to go play pro hockey and clearly, that didn't happen. So what was Plan B? I tied myself onto college, get an education. I'm a Gen X-er. That's what you do. After you're done with high school and maybe some sports, you go to college. There wasn't much I was interested in, so I got a degree in biblical and theological studies, but what started to come to the surface was the desire and just how I was built to be an entrepreneur. I don't think I knew that word even halfway through college, but that's what my dad was. That's kind of how we were raised to tread our own path and take some risks and build teams. That was starting to come to mind for me as I was getting into my early twenties. I needed to refine who I was and my identity, which was what ended up happening. I took a year off and went to Ecuador for a one-year discipleship school to really replant myself and just built the right platform for me to start a new next chapter in my life. Kory Mitchell: What happened in Ecuador? Kris Birch: It was a life-transforming experience. I went from somebody that was identity in hockey. I was good at it, especially in Minnesota. It's a small world, and I really had to reset what was my identity, what was I about. And I've always had Christianity in my life, but I think at 20 or so when I was there, figured out what it meant for me and just built that foundation that wasn't based on anything I did, but just who I was created to be. And I fortunately got to walk with 38 other people that were on that same path for different reasons. We had a life-transforming year figuring out who we were at a youngish age. Kory Mitchell: So you get back. What next? Kris Birch: Those credits, the schooling didn't really apply very much, so I was still not started on what this new chapter looked like. School was extremely difficult, so that wasn't working. Called the hockey coach at the Bethel University. They were happy to get me enrolled. That's when I continued and finished there at Bethel, learning about biblical and theological studies academically and then starting to learn about business and getting a minor in entrepreneurship, which really was what started the path of those two businesses and being a leader, an entrepreneur. Kory Mitchell: So theology and you've ended up in the green industry in two different iterations. Is this when you started working with your dad? Kris Birch: I don't know what spawned it, but I had an opportunity to get into some business, maybe some prompting from my dad, but I started looking at what the options were for some business classes. Minor in entrepreneurship is what was intriguing to me. When I got to my last year, I needed to have an internship and the path of least resistance was doing an internship at my dad's company. So I got that approved to do and I was working with my dad as free labor for a almost college graduate, and that was really the start of what it would look like. Kory Mitchell: So you start out cheap labor for the old man. How does that move to being an owner? Kris Birch: It was a smaller business. I think he was doing at the time about 750 to a million dollars in landscape maintenance. His primary customers were townhome associations, which was very insightful when he started in the eighties that boomed in the Twin Cities of building these townhome developments that needed these services. So he was dialed in, he had a great business, high margins. It was smooth. It wasn't big, but it was smooth. And I think that was maybe the beginning of the end of a little bit for my dad and I. I love him dearly. He is super impressed what he did, but the two approaches, he was looking at it going, "Don't touch anything. This is working well." And I was like, "What's this? What's this? Let's try this." That visionary mind of how to improve it, and also naively not knowing all the work he would do with these different ideas that were coming up, and they all weren't good ones. Kory Mitchell: He's got this nice lifestyle business. He's like, "Hey, don't mess this up, kid." Kris Birch: Exactly. Kory Mitchell: Obviously he figured out that you can get high margins. I mean, that's something that a lot of entrepreneurs don't figure out, especially ones that think about it as a job or a lifestyle as opposed to a business. So sounds like you butted heads at some point. I want to hear about that, but what did you learn from him? Kris Birch: I think about the EOS system and they talk about the leaders of company and EOS traction, about that operations type mindset and a visionary mindset. My dad had things dialed in, he knew what things took to do and he knew how to build the process for it. Was he the most inspiring guy? Probably not, but he was one that he knew his stuff and would drive to make things efficient and follow things through and execute. That was something I didn't have. That's probably where our butting heads really started was when an operations person doesn't understand a visionary and a visionary doesn't understand an operations person. Kory Mitchell: So you want to grow. He doesn't. How do you end up resolving that? Kris Birch: In the end, we kind of didn't resolve it. It was, let's see, 2009. So I've been working with him for four years, probably thought I knew everything and how to do it, and he was again on his way out. He wasn't interested in digging back in. Our relationship was deteriorating. We were legit arguing on how to run the business and you're messing this up and you're messing this up, and it wasn't working and I was losing the relationship with my dad, which I valued more than anything. So I came to him with a very, I think I still have it somewhere, a very simple proposal. You stay, I go. I go, you stay. And it wasn't like this is going to happen tomorrow, but this is where we need to go, with the letter in it saying, "Dad, I love you. I want this relationship. I'd rather have this relationship than this job or this business. Let's figure this out." That was tough. He chose to leave, which maybe he really didn't have a choice to or not, but that's what he chose. We knew nothing. What was the business worth? What were multiples? What was EBITDA? What were the add-backs? None of that was discussed. It was here's what he needed and here's what basically I could afford, and I would call it a seller finance now. We never even heard of that term at that time. It was just, all right, I'm going to go out. I need this amount of money. You're going to stay in, you're going to make this amount of money and good luck. Kory Mitchell: So you come to terms, you buy them out over some period of time. Kris Birch: Two years, yeah. Yeah. Kory Mitchell: Does he leave right away? Kris Birch: Yeah, he left right away like, "All right, you asked for this, you're going to get what you asked for." But then I would say six months or so into it, that conversation picked back up. I think there's something to be said when there's no one else above you, you're the last one. And that pressure set in for real. That was a different weight that I had not felt before, making payroll, all the things owners talk about, managing people, customers, et cetera. It was, again, a small business, so I wore a lot of hats. And then he walked with me for quite a while with talking me off the ledge. I mean, part of the business with snow removal, and snow removal is just tough. It's middle of the night. It's getting people to do work that's really tough. You always think it's a bit of a miracle to get it all cleaned up. Kory Mitchell: Did your relationship with him heal? Kris Birch: A hundred percent. He became my biggest fan. And I think what was weird for another stage in there is as the business was growing, some of the conversations weren't as relatable. As we were thinking more about EBITDA and building a leadership team and growing to a size that he wasn't familiar with, the conversations had less value of the tactical, but had more support of, "Hey, Son. You can do this. You got this, you'll figure this out. Keep working at it." That encouragement more than tactical advice. I mean, that idea of if that transition's going to happen in hindsight, I recommend to people and wish we would've done it, is bringing a third party in that's trustworthy to help us break through some of the father-son conversations and help navigate that. There's a lot of emotion there. Kory Mitchell: A hundred percent. Yeah. So you're off to the races and you now have the freedom to do whatever the heck you want with the business. Where do you take it from there? Kris Birch: Growth. All I was thinking about is growth. Kory Mitchell: So you start growing. I mean, do you go through some of these typical cash crunches or any of those kind of pain points as you're growing? Kris Birch: I mean, cashflow, if they went over it, I was sleeping during that in college. I mean, man, that is so important. I thought it was the P&L, and the P&L's looking good, but the bank account's pretty shallow. Yeah, exactly that. I remember being in a conversation with our insurance guy and a banker and I don't know if it was year-end taxes or something, but I was one of the people in the room going through the business on the year-end and just how they talked about how expensive growth was and how cash-stricken... I was like, "What are you talking about? Growth makes everything better." And obviously after running the business and seeing it happen firsthand, you're like, oh my gosh, where's all the money going? Every CapEx, everything costs money, every new hire. I don't think I realized all the risk I was taking on growing a business as fast as we did. I learned my lesson though. That's part of the story is when I had it to myself and to be able to grow it, these blue collar industries, especially the green industry, everything you sell, you have to do. None of it's add another zero. It is work. Every bit of it is work. And that's where we peaked and we started to fall back down. We were losing contracts. I was not understanding the importance of executing the work to the high level, of getting that client and experience for them to be a top-notch experience. So I thought if I sold it and we had a good relationship, it would work well, but you needed to perform, and I wasn't great at performing. That was where it was a come to Jesus moment for me on what am I good at and who do I need to bring in to be good at what I'm not good at. Kory Mitchell: So I live in Colorado where it's super dry climate and one of the biggest challenges I had with my business is keeping my guys hydrated. For me personally, I literally drink all of my water with an electrolyte. And one of the things that makes me more interested in drinking water is putting a flavored sugar-free electrolyte in it. Salt of the earth. It's awesome. You take a packet, throw it in your water and you're good to go. 15% discount for all of our listeners. Click the link in the show notes and you'll get a discount on us. My favorite one in this is not the orange, it's the grapefruit. It's what I'm drinking right now. It's Himalayan salt. I recommend it to businesses that I work with because hydration is one of the first parts of safety in a project-based business, particularly in places that have really, really hot climates or places like Colorado where I live. I can legitimately tell you that this tastes better than the rest of them. This is better. Sometimes the hardest part of taking over isn't running the business. It's actually learning what you're not good at. Kris Birch: Dan was the guy in the industry that I knew of. He ran a good business and he was in our market and a little bit serendipitous of what was going on with the business he was a part of and a little bit of as we just connected. And he was operationally minded. He did great at even challenging me going, "That's a great idea, but here's what it would take for us to execute that idea." So we were a great combo. I mean, he was crucial in the growth that we had. Like I mentioned, we were around three quarters to a million dollars. We were 5.6, approaching 6 million when we were doing the transaction in 2020 as that was happening. So it was a huge jump. A lot of growth in a short period of time. Kory Mitchell: What made you start about selling the business? Kris Birch: I mean, I would say that the seed was planted early on in the conversations with my dad, just going, "Don't make this your life. This is a business. This isn't what you need to do for the rest of your life." And I like that idea. I also got the advice that have a plan to exit, have an idea of what this might look like at the end because it's either going to come because you chose or it's going to come because you didn't choose. So I had a few people in me that gave me that advice that stuck. So I was never planning on doing this for 50 years. It goes back to EOS too. Some of these rocks that you're setting, these big hairy goals and looking out 10 years, so the 10-year mark in 2009, 2010 was an easy numbers for us to look at and go, "Here's what we're going to grow towards." So that was part of like, all right, in my mind there was always going to be some type of exit. I don't even know that term at the time, but there was going to be some type of transaction. I was approached in late 2019 or so by a local entrepreneur that bought into the industry and was looking to do a mini roll-up, call it. And he approached me about buying Birch Inc. at the time, and that was my first real conversation that somebody would be interested in buying what we were building. And that led into a lot of other conversations. I was participating in Vistage, a peer group for entrepreneurs and C-level people, and that was pretty crucial in me understanding and learning about what the options are and how I would approach it. And with one buyer, you really don't have any negotiate and you need to get other buyers or other people interested to really negotiate. So I went and found the pavement. I was calling other businesses that thought would be interested and the one I ended up selling to was Brightview. I called their 1-800 number and left a vague message with- Kory Mitchell: No way. Kris Birch: ... some receptionist and said, "I'm interested in selling. I'm not going to give you too much information, but if you're interested in the Twin Cities market or growing, blah, blah, blah, I would like to talk to somebody." Kory Mitchell: So you didn't hire an investment banker, you just went direct. You called the 1-800 number on the website. Kris Birch: Yes. Yeah. Kory Mitchell: God, I'm learning all kinds of new techniques today between the faxes and- Kris Birch: Oh, old school, little bootstrap. Kory Mitchell: Yeah. Okay, so let's go back for a second. You talked about essentially building it to sell it. Did you do anything specifically to make your business attractive for a sale? Kris Birch: I think the green industry did a pretty good job of having information in the market of where value's created in the green industry. So I started learning podcasts and books and conversations with people and even some of my competitors that were great and sharing information over a beer or dinner became super valuable to me. And reoccurring revenue was important. Some diversification, some landscape, project-based work, but not too much so you could still get the value out of your reoccurring revenue and not look like a landscape install company. And then I learned about expanding our services to really meet our customer needs. At the time, we were doing lawn care, so we're cutting the grass and adding fertilizer and weed and feed applications and then we'd plow the snow, but we weren't doing irrigation, which was a pretty high margin segment of the green industry that we had customers that needed that service. So we added that. And then landscape enhancement, same deal. Pretty high margin, our clients needed it. So that really helped our business grow in revenue and also increase our margins, our profitability. Kory Mitchell: What were your net profit margins by the time you transacted? Kris Birch: I want to say just below 20%. Kory Mitchell: Oh, that's fantastic. Kris Birch: Yeah. That being said, I got lucky. We transacted at the peak. Part of that transaction was an earn-out, and I remember having a conversation with my accountant, he's like, "Don't count on that money. Do you think you'll win the World Series twice in a row?" I was like, "Yeah, I don't think so." So that helped me negotiate and also helped me understand how fortunate we were instead of trying to think or get this earn-out, to just be happy with someone paying us for a business that we built for 10 years. And- Kory Mitchell: Did you ever get the earn-out? Kris Birch: No. No. It wasn't even close. Kory Mitchell: When you say the peak, did you mean peak valuations or do you mean the peak of your business revenue at the time? Kris Birch: I would say peak valuations, I think if we continued to run it, we could continue to grow it, but when I looked back at our peak profitabilities over the last three years or so, I mean, we were growing, but we also just, we hit it right. I mean, one of the variabilities in lawn and snow businesses is the snow. And it's not a, if it snows more, you make more money, or if it snows less, you make more money. You really want to build a type of mutual fund almost in snow revenue, some billable, some per time, some contract-based so it can be profitable regardless of the snow event. But we came off a great year. We were doing a lot of de-icing, and de-icing was typically never included in people's contracts and that's super high margin, so we had a great winter that helped us be profitable. Kory Mitchell: In poker, we say, "I'd rather be lucky than good." From Kris's perspective, the first deal looked pretty good on paper, but then reality hit. I know you left at some point. Talk to us about the post-transaction environment. How'd it go? Kris Birch: Disappointing. I learned a lot from that. I should have been more proactive than I was. I learned maybe what it would be like to participate in a national brand. It's a bit of more of a simulation than I thought it would be. We lost a lot of autonomy and entrepreneurial spirit in our business, and unfortunately there's little to nothing left of that business. Once it was assimilated by Brightview, a lot of people left and a lot of clients left over a couple of years, which was unfortunate to see happen. Kory Mitchell: How did you handle that? Kris Birch: In my mind, I was passing off this team, this company that was successful in somebody else with deeper pockets and made me more proven business practices, was going to take this platform that we built that was a pretty decent size and continue to grow it in our market, and one day I could tell my kids the decade down the road that, yeah, that Brightview brand that you see everywhere around the Twin Cities, we were a part of getting that off the ground in this market. And it didn't happen. But I also, with my dad's advice, didn't make the company a part of me. I made it as this is something that I am contributing to just like everyone else on our team. This is something we're responsible for, but it's not about Kris Birch, it's not about Dan, it's about all of us. We are a group, the team that incorporates this business, but I didn't have too much of a identity crisis with the demise of that business. Kory Mitchell: How long did you stick around? Kris Birch: I made it a year. I had an employee agreement for that time. I needed to stick around. They weren't asking me to participate. They brought in a branch manager. I wasn't part of the interview process. They were not asking me to go on customer calls and help people renew contracts. There wasn't a lot of involvement or engagement from their side. Kory Mitchell: How are you feeling at this moment? Now you've got this lump sum of money in the bank, you're unemployed. Then what? Tell us about the emotions. What's going through your head? Kris Birch: Well, I guess back up, a bit of the storyline that happened during this time of building the lawn and snow business was one of my good hockey buddies that I've been friends with for a long time was part of the tree care industry. And him and I connected quite a bit because we played hockey and we connected quite a bit because we were sons of entrepreneurs. His dad was running a tree care business. My dad was running a lawn and snow business. We both got involved with our dad's businesses, so we had a lot in common. We grab lunch every other week or so, and his dad was going through a similar transaction around 2013. So before I was thinking about doing any type of transaction, they sold to a national brand. Multiple years into that, the writing on the wall was for him, this isn't where I want to be. This is, I want to do something different. And we'd always joked going into business together, but it's questionable. I don't want to ruin a friendship over business. And there's a lot of hesitation in getting in partnerships with people, and for whatever reason, we just said it's worth the risk. So in 2015, we started Birch Tree Care. So there was a lawn and snow business that I was running and then starting up a tree care business with Tony. And Tony was really the tree expert. He is the practitioner. He grew up in the industry, has done the work, has sold the work, has managed the work. I was the business partner end of it. Here's the structure we need, I'll run the financials, I'll run the back end pretty much of the business. So as that was growing, Birch Inc., the lawn and snow business, like I said, in 2020, did the transaction with Brightview. I still had Birch Street Care as a business that we were running. And that had totally created a ton of comfort in what's next. I was comfortable in going, "All right, this chapter of the lawn and snow is done and now I can spend some time on the tree care business and see what we can do with that one." Kory Mitchell: So you go from a partnership that didn't work out so well with your dad? Kris Birch: Yeah. Kory Mitchell: How's it having a partner again? Kris Birch: Yeah, we went through our tough times. I mean, one of the classic ones is I'm promoting and mandating that we need to do these quarterly meetings and Tony is a doer. He wants to sell, he wants to cut, he wants to get stuff done. And I'm saying, "No, we need to take a time out, for a whole day, meet with this consultant and talk about where the business is going." And he's like, "This is so dumb." So I've got this consultant, he was a friend, he's running the EOS program. We've got a conference room rented at Caribou and four of us are going to sit down and talk about where the company needs to go, what's working well, what's not working, etc. And it starts at 8:00 and Tony doesn't show up until about 9:00, and he rolls in at 9:00 and instead of coming into the conference room, he walks and goes and gets a cup of coffee like, "You guys can wait for me." And that was one of those moments of going, "This is not working. I can't tell you how important I think this is if we're not going to put our time and energy into doing this. I just don't know where to go from here." And I think now fast-forward almost 10 years later, he believes in that, we still have the debate, how much should we cut to how much should we sharpen the saw, but he will be the first one to say the importance of focusing on culture and having a plan and taking moments to step out of the business and look at where we're headed is super valuable. Kory Mitchell: You've mentioned EOS three times. Kris Birch: Yeah. Kory Mitchell: I can tell you that most people listening to this have no idea what the heck you're talking about. Kris Birch: Got it. Kory Mitchell: First of all, maybe tell us what it is and then tell us why it's been important. Kris Birch: I do. I think it's a bit of the secret sauce and it's not that secret. It's great information to go out and find. So Entrepreneurial Operating System. You can take basically any business, plug this into the operating system and have it function and it just puts it all together. It freed me up to focus on what I was good at and really keep me in my lane instead of trying to do all things, which I think is a little bit of an entrepreneur's identity for a certain period of time. But to scale, to build really needs to identify where you best fit, and EOS helped us identify those roles and responsibilities. Kory Mitchell: Love it. Talk to me about peer groups. You mentioned that twice, something I advocate all the time. I've been in peer groups including Vistage that you mentioned. I started there, I moved on eventually to a different peer group. How has that impacted your life and your business? Kris Birch: It's been super instrumental. I think originally Vistage helped me organize what that was like. I grew up under my dad of going, "The competition's the enemy," and that just never sat well with me. And it relates back to hockey. I was playing a lot of competitive hockey, and as you get more towards the top, you're playing against your friends, you know everybody on the ice. So there was some weird thing of I'm going to go compete hard against these guys and then we're going to go hang out. There's something to that that never sat well with me in business of going, why shouldn't I go hang out with that guy? He runs a great business. We should go have a beer. I started doing that just independently and then Vistage had even more of that. And now today, I think it's just part of my lifestyle. I enjoy spending time with people, maybe not necessarily in the green industry all the time, but just other businesses. I think having dinner, having a cocktail, having a coffee with somebody and hearing about what their experience has been like, I learn something almost every time. And people are way more transparent in sharing than I thought they were. It helps me want to be more sharing and transparent, and it's kind of like that high tide raises all boats. I really value and appreciate that and continue that as part of just who I am of connecting with other business owners and peer groups, if you want to call it that. Kory Mitchell: Hopefully if you get a second chance, you don't make the same mistakes twice. Kris Birch: Part of my responsibility in running this company, in any of the companies is like, are we heading in the right direction? And sometimes that is what we want to do as a choice, this is what we're choosing to do, and sometimes it's what is the industry dictating? What do they find valuable? So I would take calls and meetings with people that were interested in buying Birch Tree Care just to make sure that we are aware of the game we're playing and how we're creating value. We knew we didn't want to go down the national brand again. We weren't going to fall into that trap of assimilating an entrepreneurial-style company into a corporate brand, but there's other options and private equity is one of those options. I think at the time, I thought private equity was all one type of partnership, and as I got involved and learned more, there's an array of type of private equity relationships, and we frankly kind of stumbled into it again. Tony was getting harassed by a cold caller, and that was kind of my responsibility to follow up on those. And about a month after this, Tony was getting these messages once or twice a week, he's like, "Will you please call this guy back?" And I did. And I don't know. Every now and then, some of those conversations go really well. You don't get the high pressure. There's some type of connection there. So I called Tony back, I'm like, "Hey, I scheduled a meeting. We're going to chat with this private equity group." I really liked what they had to say, and I think that says something because I typically come into those pretty critical, like, "Yeah, thanks for calling. We're not interested." And clearly, they were on the same page as us. They were valuing people. They seemed to understand the industry and where dollar values, so customer base is coming from. I wanted to hear what they had to say. Kory Mitchell: How do you know that you're getting the right price if you're not even calling anyone else to find out what else, what they pay? Kris Birch: Yeah, great. I mean, the first one, I think I was even more naive, but I did get a few different offers on the first one to see where the multiples were coming in at, how they were valuing add-backs. The second one, I had some other offers verbally, never really in writing, of how they were evaluating tree care businesses of our size with our EBITDA, with our customer base and structure. And so I felt it was a good buy. And to be frank, on that one, since we weren't that interested, we were verbally talking about what it would look like. And I talked to Tony on the side and I said, "What's our number? Let's throw him the number that says we'd actually do this." And it wasn't a stupid number, it was a real number. I didn't want to be disrespectful and say $50 million for a $6 million tree care company. And they said, "That makes sense. I think we can do that." And I was like, "Oh, all right. Well, let's keep going." Kory Mitchell: Did you ever think you aimed too low? Kris Birch: A hundred percent. Every time. Whenever someone says yes, you're just like, "No. I mean..." Kory Mitchell: Shoot. I aimed too low. Kris Birch: Yes, so true. Yes. Kory Mitchell: Okay, so you do a deal. Any part of that process that's different or surprised you? Kris Birch: I mean, I hate due diligence, Kory. Just it is a- Kory Mitchell: Everybody does. It's the worst. Kris Birch: I feel like it's not my strongest suit. Kory Mitchell: Big surprise. Nobody's strong. Everyone in the world hates it. It sucks. You have to figure out how to get through it in the most painless way possible, but it always sucks. Kris Birch: It's like I'm waiting in the dark, not knowing when it's going to end and just waiting for somebody to punch me in the face again, and then I have to figure it out. Kory Mitchell: How long did it take? Kris Birch: Maybe not under 60, but for sure under 90 on the second one. The first one was a little bit longer. COVID messed things up and really kind shuffled the deck. Nobody knew which way was up. But once that kind of went back to normal-ish, that one went pretty quick too. But the last one here with the private equity was 60 to 90. Kory Mitchell: That's fast. So at least the pain was- Kris Birch: Yeah, that's fast. Kory Mitchell: ... compressed. Kris Birch: Yeah, I mean, we're not a overly sophisticated business. We're again, pretty small. I think, like I said, we were doing mid-fives, almost six I think at that size too, for the tree care company. So it wasn't overly complicated. Kory Mitchell: The guys that bought you, how's it been so far? You're, what, a year in? Kris Birch: Yeah, it's been good. I think the guys that were representing the private equity group were guys I want to work with. They seem to get it. They've got talents and they want to work hard. That was a big connection for me. And I don't know the full gamut of private equity, but the one that I was afraid of this roll up in resell, and no one's really washed their hands of it. Everyone got their 5X on their money they left in there, and who knows what's going to happen next? And that the conversation was different with this group that they were, let's build something that's sustainable and continue to produce. Let's make good money and have a financial transaction, but let's keep the entity in place as it continues to grow. And the balance with them that is, we're still trying to figure out, is how do you keep that boutique autonomy on the business level in the market and also have 20, 30, 40, 50 tree care businesses connected to each other? And that's kind of an interesting problem to solve, and I wanted to be a part of helping that happen. And the business, the private equity is about two and a half years in. We've been a part of it for a little over a year, slowly getting figured out. It's not solved, but the process has been fun to work on. Kory Mitchell: You are a visionary. You've had two businesses. You already identified that you don't tie your whole sense of wellbeing into a company. I'm assuming someday you're going to have some new foxy idea and go maybe do something else. Anything excite you right now that you'd consider doing next? Kris Birch: I don't know. I don't have my eye on anything specific. I enjoy the problem I'm solving still at Birch Street Care and with the private equity group, but I'm looking. Kory Mitchell: Talking to kids that are just coming out of school, what advice do you give to your younger self if you're back there in that moment where you're kind of having this crisis of identity thinking about where you go next before you went to Ecuador? What kind of advice do you give yourself or kids today? Kris Birch: Yeah, I mean, I'm raising two of them right now. 16-year-old daughter and a 13-year-old son. Think about the times that we've grown the most have been some of the most difficult times, and they're tough. I mean, there's been tears shed, there's been rough situations in running a business and just in life in general. And I've made it through it. You've made it through it. We can make it through it, and we learn something. Yet as we've succeeded, we continually build more comforts into our lives more, making it easier for ourselves and maybe even sometimes for our kids, but that's not exactly where we're best suited. So that balance of I can do hard things and then also be gentle with yourself, work on recovery and whatever that looks like for you to fill your bucket back up. But also find ways to drain your bucket, be challenged, test yourself, and then be conscious about how you fill it back up. Kory Mitchell: Do hard things. My peer group right now, we all asked everyone to come up with a really hard thing and we call it a misogy. So everyone has to come up with a misogy and then be held accountable every month with a tracker on how they're doing against their goal. Kris Birch: Love it. Kory Mitchell: It's hard. All right, man. Kris Birch, do hard things. I love it. Kris Birch: Thanks, Kory. Appreciate the chat, man. Kory Mitchell: Two exits, two very different outcomes, but like all great leaders, Kris learned from his mistakes. Not all exits are the same, but the key is knowing which questions to ask so you don't make the same mistakes twice. I'm Kory Mitchell. Thanks for listening to The Turn, a podcast by Iconic Founders Group. Make sure you follow and subscribe to The Turn wherever you get your podcasts. And visit us at iconicfounders.com. We help founders like Kris sell the businesses they care about and protect the legacies they've built. Let's win.