Summary

In this conversation, Michael Byars shares his journey as a serial entrepreneur and his experience in acquiring and managing multiple companies. He started his entrepreneurial journey with a tech company and later transitioned to the restaurant business. After selling his restaurant, he ventured into real estate and began acquiring companies in various industries, including HVAC, plumbing, and forest mulching. Byars emphasizes the importance of adding value to the companies he acquires and implementing systems and processes to drive growth. He also discusses his approach to advertising and the importance of targeting specific demographics. Additionally, Byars shares his experience in acquiring a coffee chain and the benefits of partnering with someone who has a passion for the industry. In this conversation, Michael Byars shares his experiences acquiring and managing multiple businesses. He discusses how he acquired a coffee shop by reaching out to the owners and negotiating a deal that worked for everyone. He also talks about his acquisition of a mailbox company and the success of the business model. Michael emphasizes the importance of cashflow and building a strong team of talented individuals. He shares a lesson learned from a failed acquisition of a concrete company and highlights the importance of due diligence. Overall, Michael's approach to entrepreneurship is focused on creating win-win situations and building a positive company culture.

 

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Transcript:

Jon Stoddard (00:00.714)
Welcome to the top M&A entrepreneurs. To me, my guest is Michael Byers, who I've been trying to get on the show for over a year. That's because Michael has acquired over 50 companies in 22 years. He's rolled some in, he's sold some, and now he's got 22 companies under management. Michael Byers, welcome to the show.

Michael Byars (00:23.134)
I'm just honored to be here, John. I'm sorry it's taken so long, but I appreciate the invitation to join you.

Jon Stoddard (00:30.67)
Uh, patience comes with those who wait, right? So, uh, welcome Michael. And so let's, I mean, you started 22 years ago when you were 21. So you're only 43 years old or something. That's pretty young. And yeah. So how did this start? Tell me about like the very first company, what did that look like? And why did you decide to buy a company versus going with every other 22 year old does is go to work for somebody.

Michael Byars (00:44.494)
Yes, sir.

Michael Byars (00:57.206)
Right, so when, I guess when I was younger, I grew up in a small little town. I went off to college, but while I was in college, I ended up starting a tech company. It was doing okay when I got out of college. I didn't stay at college that long. I stayed there maybe a year and a half, and I quit college to concentrate on that tech company.

I got out of the tech company, I was looking to do, you know, something else. You know, I still had the company, but I kind of got bored doing the stuff I was doing. And, you know, I was looking at, you know, startups are tough, man. You know, they're extremely tough. I started the tech company and I just, yeah, I mean, it was, it was brutal. And for me, after doing that, the tech startup, I was like, man, there's got to be a better way. So I went looking for.

Jon Stoddard (01:41.27)
I wouldn't recommend it on anybody. Yeah.

Michael Byars (01:53.854)
something that was already cash flowing with staff in place, because as a 19 year old kid, you can imagine how hard it was to hire anybody. Nobody believed in you. Staff was already in place, systems, operations, processes were already in place. I came in, I bought that company and I was able to, man, we went from doing about $200,000 a year gross.

about 50 grand a year net to in two years, we were doing over a million dollars a year gross and right at 400,000 a year net. And in about another year and a half, we were over 3 million gross and over a million net. And I had that company for about 10 years before I sold it. But you know, for me, it was all about compressing that time. I went and paid someone else for what they had already done just to save myself that time, you know, growing tech company.

Like I said, it was a startup man and it was a, it was slow going to start with. It took me. I mean, you know, really probably a year and a half, right at two years, maybe before I made a hundred thousand a year. And that's, that's a lot of grinding, a lot of sleepless nights, a lot of, you know, 16, 18 hour days, a lot of eight day work weeks, you know what I mean? So, you know, for me to be able to go buy something else that was already existing.

Jon Stoddard (03:04.907)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (03:16.215)
Yeah, yeah.

Michael Byars (03:22.274)
that had all the stuff that I had to build to get to where I was at and start out, you know, day one, I was making over 200 grand a year, which is what I worked two years to get to, to try to make half of that. You know, I thought I'd hit a home run and I wasn't, I wasn't going back. Right.

Jon Stoddard (03:38.102)
Yeah. So, so you love that. What kind of company was it that you

Michael Byars (03:44.69)
It was a restaurant, but it also had, yep, it also had a lot of different, I guess you could say, caveats to it. There was a restaurant and the guy that I bought it from, you know, he stayed, not stayed on as an employee, but kind of just hung around. And he would help me and he did a lot of other things, taught me a ton of stuff, man. I mean, without him, I don't know that I'd be where I'm at today in business world.

Jon Stoddard (03:46.879)
restaurant.

Jon Stoddard (04:14.934)
Well, restaurants characteristically have high failure rates, really high failure rates, like in the 90%. What's a... Oh, so it was a good location, good food, good prices. Yeah, not a restaurant turnaround. Do you...

Michael Byars (04:15.158)
So.

Michael Byars (04:22.326)
They do, they do. He had it for 30 years before I bought it. So it was a.

Michael Byars (04:35.85)
No, no, not a turnaround and not something that's, you know, in that restaurant business normally, in a location you're there for, you know, six to eight, maybe 10 years, and then you either gotta close it or sell it because, you know, that restaurant business, everyone wants to go eat at the new place, right? After you get to be the old place, things tend to slow down. But, correct. Yeah, for sure, you know, if it's a place the young kids like to hang out.

Jon Stoddard (04:57.634)
And the population moves too, right? Yeah.

Michael Byars (05:03.994)
The young kids don't stay young for long. If it's a place the old folks like to hang out, they don't stay old for long either. So, it's just, with the restaurant business, you're right. It's normally a churn, but this one was steady. It had a good customer base, wide variety of customers, age group, demographic. So for me,

Jon Stoddard (05:06.625)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (05:13.483)
Yeah.

Michael Byars (05:33.054)
It was a safe bet at that time. I would never do another restaurant again because, you know, it was, it was hard work just like the tech company was to get started, but it was hard work all the time. It's a 16 hour a day job, you know, six, seven days a week. It's just brutal. You know, you can do a lot of other things and make the same or more money with, you know, a 10th of the time invested.

Jon Stoddard (05:50.155)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (05:57.27)
Yeah, but at that time, I mean, look at you, you're 23, 24, 25. You're not doing what 23, 24, 25, other 20 are doing. You know, they're out there probably still in just graduated college and still looking for the first job or doing a lot of partying or whatever. You're running your own business, throwing off a couple of hundred thousand dollars in net. Yeah. And why would you say you...

Michael Byars (06:20.706)
Yes. Yep.

Jon Stoddard (06:25.962)
would never do a restaurant again. It's just because of all those things like the transition of customers, the hours put in, but I mean, some people like for Tita, he has a billion dollar empire with restaurants. Yeah.

Michael Byars (06:42.09)
Yeah, he does, you know, but you know, he's for me, the little one off location. It's tough. If you're going to run it at the scale that, that he's running it at, you know, you've got a lot more infrastructure below you and a lot more staff to help you out. I didn't have that. And I didn't want to, I didn't really want to grow it that much because that was that restaurant business is brutal, man.

Jon Stoddard (07:06.434)
Could have been grown. I mean, it's probably just like, yeah, it's not really a growing thing unless you buy another restaurant. Yeah. How did you buy that? I mean, did you, did you know the owner? It was an on market, off market sale. What, how did you finance it?

Michael Byars (07:12.75)
Correct.

Michael Byars (07:21.222)
I knew the owner and just like, you know, we all talk about at the end of the day, he was, he was aging up. He was getting older and man, he was just burnt out. You work 15 hours a day, seven days a week for 30 years. You know, you just, you're burnt out, you're done. He was looking for someone to come in and take it over and someone to buy him out. And you know, that's, that's what I did. It was kind of for lack of better terms, changing of the guard.

If you want to call it right, you know he was.

Jon Stoddard (07:51.434)
Yeah. Did you get seller financing or a loan or what was it?

Michael Byars (07:56.548)
Nope, all seller financing, 100% deal. Yep.

Jon Stoddard (07:58.346)
All seller financing and it allowed him to step back. And, and, and then you be in charge of all the cashflow and. Employees hiring firing. I got to tell you, I have a buddy that was in, in restaurants. He was general manager, a couple of restaurants. He's just hated it. He's like, kids would come in a little note on the corner or they'd give it to a friend at the note and go, Hey man, I got a concert tonight. Can't make it like, and not show up. And yeah.

Michael Byars (08:02.734)
Correct.

Michael Byars (08:24.226)
Right, yep, that was it. And there's nothing you can do about it really because I mean, it's tough to find people to work, you know.

Jon Stoddard (08:32.362)
Yeah. So about the 10 year Mark, you decide I'm getting out of this business, but it didn't, uh, you know, diminish your, you know, you know, your goals of keep going and grow something bigger. What, what did you decide to focus on? And did you spend some energy and goes, okay, I'm not getting in the restaurant again, what am I going to get into?

Michael Byars (08:57.174)
Well, John, I wasn't that smart at that time. So I sold that restaurant and bought another restaurant. But the one I bought, I am crazy, but the one I bought was failing. They were losing about four grand a week. And I bought it and I sold it within 13 months. And within that 13 months, I had turned it around from losing 4,000 a week to we made a little over a million dollars in that 13 months. Then I sold it off. And just by taking those same systems, operations and processes that I had,

Jon Stoddard (09:02.866)
Oh, you crazy!

Jon Stoddard (09:07.948)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (09:20.15)
Yeah, and then sold it.

Michael Byars (09:26.73)
had from the first restaurant, dumped it in the second one. But when I sold it off, I vowed to never do a restaurant again. So, yeah, I got a little smarter. I was some dumb, but I wasn't plum dumb. So, but you know, when I sold that off, I started getting into real estate. You know, I was looking for some place to kind of put some money, looking for, you know,

Jon Stoddard (09:36.182)
There, now you vowed to do it. Never, yeah, yeah.

Jon Stoddard (09:42.282)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is.

Michael Byars (09:56.606)
what I could do that I enjoyed. And I started buying single family homes. Then I started doing fixing flips. So I was doing anywhere between 125 and 175 fixing flips a year. But every fourth one that I did, I was putting it in the rental portfolio. I was making enough revenue on the first three, where the fourth one was paid for. And, you know,

Jon Stoddard (10:22.06)
Yeah.

Michael Byars (10:25.566)
I did that for probably eight or nine years, but as I was doing that, I seen the opportunity in those types of businesses to go by, I went and bought a property management company. I went and bought a plumbing company. I went and bought an HVAC company. I went and bought a forest remotting company. I went and bought a general contracting company. I went and bought a rehab company. I mean, I'm super vertically integrated in that real estate space still. I've got, I still got about a hundred. Yes, sir. Yep, and I can always service.

Jon Stoddard (10:49.998)
because they all support each other, right? And somehow, yeah.

Michael Byars (10:55.786)
my properties or my customers or my renters before I have to go take on outside public jobs, right? So I'm always giving my tenants or my renters much better service than they get anywhere else because they're waiting on the next guy you call if they have a service problem. I don't have to do that. You know?

Jon Stoddard (11:15.766)
Yeah. Well, let me ask you about those HVAC companies and plumbing companies. How did you buy that? Was it out of cashflow from the business to get a loan? What, how did you finance those?

Michael Byars (11:27.458)
So I don't got any loans on anything I got, businesses or I've got 185 single family homes that I rent out in 10 commercial buildings. All those are paid for too, just from taking the cashflow on the past stuff, rolling it right over. So everything like the plumbing company, the heat and air company, it's all, you know, a lot of somebody was consulting for equity. Some of it was, you know,

Jon Stoddard (11:30.354)
No loans at all.

Jon Stoddard (11:43.915)
Yeah.

Michael Byars (11:55.675)
seller finance, a small portion of it, some of it I wrote a check for.

Jon Stoddard (11:59.882)
Yeah. What size of HVAC companies were you looking for? Were you looking for somebody that's, you know, kind of smaller or bigger guys in the market or...

Michael Byars (12:09.214)
I was looking for something with, you know.

Couple million bucks with, you know, I think we had five crews when I bought it.

Jon Stoddard (12:21.654)
Five crews, meaning five guys with separate trucks.

Michael Byars (12:25.362)
Normally we run two man crews, but yeah, five separate trucks. Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (12:27.966)
mangroves. Okay. Yeah. And when you make these, you find these HVAC companies, were they already doing business with the properties that you owned, calling them up or how was that found? Yeah.

Michael Byars (12:41.366)
Yes, so the companies like that I like to buy, or if I'm currently doing business with them, I'm going to buy the most dependable ones because I know they've got the best structure, company structure, infrastructure internally. Those guys, I knew that when I called, everybody else I called, they might be two weeks out, three weeks out from me when I called this group here.

They would try to get to me within three or four days and they kind of worked me in. But I knew that, you know, what they all were working, how they worked, you know, I knew their work ethic. I knew that, you know, they weren't gonna just halfway do a job. No matter which crew I got to come out, they always did the job right. They always were punctual. They, you know, I didn't have to call my tenant and say, hey, Boba Bob's Fleming's gonna be there at 10 a.m. and it's.

2 p.m. And my tenant's still sitting there waiting on Bob to get there, right? That's it's not good business and I just I wouldn't want someone to do me that way So I wouldn't want to do my customer that way so for me It's all about you know good infrastructure and you know a good business You know every time when I you know when the job was done a day or two later I would get an email with an invoice, you know, we pay invoices every Friday. I would pay those guys

Jon Stoddard (13:39.661)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (13:46.958)
pray.

Michael Byars (14:06.274)
You know, it's just more infrastructure stuff. You know, are they taking three months to send you a bill or do you get one immediately? You know, it's not that, you know, I didn't ever ask for terms, but you know, I wanted to look and see that, is there admin staff doing what they're supposed to do? Are there people in the field doing what they're supposed to do? Are they providing me with a quality product and are they punctual? You know, it's all the things I'm looking at when I'm looking to buy something like that.

Jon Stoddard (14:35.102)
Yeah. And did you, when you looked at these guys and they say, Hey, these areas are cool. And I'll give you my experience. So we had two different plumbing companies out here. And it's funny, one plumbing company, uh, you know, didn't run the camera through the pipes and just made a guess of where it's possibly stuck. And the other guy ran a camera and just showed me where their problems were. And the previous company left a couple of the tops off of the exhaust where the bathrooms are. And the other

company pointed out and he goes, Oh, it was there when we got here. Okay. Great. We knew what you wanted to go with. And you, you know, the conversation you have with them, how did you approach them and say, he had liked to buy you if you're ever interested in selling, how did that conversation go and how did you value it and say, we think it's just worth this much and

Michael Byars (15:27.694)
Well, you know, for me, when, you know, I was honest with them, I came to them and said, you know, hey, you know, I'm looking at buying an HVAC company. I do a ton of business with you guys. I would like for it to be you. If it's not going to be you, you know, that's okay. But just know that I'm going to buy someone. I'm definitely not going to start anything else. But I'm going to buy someone and, you know.

The year I went to talk to him about buying him, I spent $980 something thousand dollars in just that HVAC sector of the property management company. And so I said, you know, hey, I'm going to buy someone. I'd like for it to be you. I've done a lot of business with you. But just realize that, you know, if you don't want to sell all or part of your company, I'm going to take my $980,000. I'm going wherever else that I do buy.

Jon Stoddard (16:23.086)
That's a little leverage.

Michael Byars (16:25.538)
It is, you know, especially for a company that was doing about a million and a half dollars a year. So I was two-thirds of their revenue. So, you know, it's not that I was trying to strong-arm them, but you know, that was the reality. I was going to buy something, you know, and they couldn't stop that. I enjoyed doing business with them. I would love to buy them, but if I couldn't, you know, you're gonna have to find some new customers there, bud.

Jon Stoddard (16:30.303)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (16:34.883)
So.

Jon Stoddard (16:54.41)
Yeah, yeah.

Michael Byars (16:55.402)
But, you know, since I bought them, we went from, you know, we went, we went from, they went from doing about a million and a half to a little over $3 million in a few years. So.

Jon Stoddard (17:07.114)
Yeah. Did you buy how much, what percentage did you buy? 100% or 51 or?

Michael Byars (17:11.602)
No, I bought about 30%. But, but I've got managerial control.

Jon Stoddard (17:15.054)
30%. Okay.

Jon Stoddard (17:20.266)
Yeah. Meaning what? You steer the boat. Yeah.

Michael Byars (17:21.474)
So I steer the boat means any decision, I make the decisions.

Jon Stoddard (17:27.146)
Right. It's been like writing checks or over 5,000 or installing a new piece of software. Yeah.

Michael Byars (17:32.869)
I make all the decisions. Their job is to do heating and air work. I make the business. That's it.

Jon Stoddard (17:37.79)
Yeah. How much of a time do you spend like, oh, I'm going to, I got to go buy a CRM system, a great HVAC, you know, a project based system and quotes and everything. Did you, did you have to do that yourself or did you have the guy do it that still 66% off?

Michael Byars (17:55.23)
No, I've got, so I've got, you know, I told you I started the tech company when I was 19. I still got it. So I kind of put some of the, my quarterback for, for that company to helping me find some good software. You know, we tried three or four things. You know, these guys were still writing paper tickets. So we found some good software to where we could track the employees, where we could.

Jon Stoddard (18:02.388)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (18:16.864)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Michael Byars (18:22.994)
send texts and emails to the customers where the customers could pay immediately online after the service was completed. And, you know, it just it worked out very well, you know.

Jon Stoddard (18:34.486)
Yeah, it's all phone now, man. They pay immediately right at the phone. Yeah.

Michael Byars (18:38.916)
It is. Where were we at when we were young, John, when you had the phone hanging on the wall with the little curly cord?

Jon Stoddard (18:40.863)
And it's not...

Jon Stoddard (18:49.23)
That's so true. Ours was about 15 feet long after my brother and I and sister and I would walk around the house. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So these kind of all, there's a lot of synergy. The HVAC, how much were you spending with the plumbing companies that you kind of made the same offer and electrical companies?

Michael Byars (18:54.89)
After you stretch it out. Yep.

Michael Byars (19:10.931)
I don't have an electrical company. I got a plumbing company, but I spend right around the same amount.

Jon Stoddard (19:13.491)
Oh, Palme Company, yeah.

Jon Stoddard (19:17.566)
Yeah. And you still own those, those guys. Yeah.

Michael Byars (19:18.99)
So, yep, yep. Yeah, so I still got the rental homes and the property management company. So I'll keep those as long as I have rental properties and the property management company, just because I feel like that for my tenants, I can give them a better, I can give them better service than anyone in the area can because all that's handled in house.

Jon Stoddard (19:42.006)
Yeah. And is all of this handled by general manager now? I mean, how much time do you have your fingers in this?

Michael Byars (19:53.491)
Maybe two hours a month.

Jon Stoddard (19:56.194)
two hours a month. It's kind of like the mailbox money, it's running well and they only come to you if there's a big problem.

Michael Byars (19:58.388)
Yeah, baby.

Michael Byars (20:03.318)
There's a problem. They'll come to me. You know, I talked to those guys multiple times a week But it might be five or ten minutes here and there. Hey, how's things going? What do you need from me? What can I do to help you? You know, do you need any? Tell me what you need If you need more employees talk to the HR lady if you need something, you know, you need whatever I've got a person for that, right? so

Jon Stoddard (20:15.724)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (20:28.394)
Yeah. And how do you find these people to run these kind of separate companies? Uh, obviously the guy with the, uh, HVAC companies running himself and he's taken it helped you to take it to 3 million. Uh, like, what do you say? Like, what's the future? I go, I keep doing what you're doing. You could take extra pay from it. You know, your 401k and there's upward mobility. What, what does that look like? Is.

kind of trying to find out how you treat your people.

Michael Byars (21:01.302)
And I want them to make as much as I can, as they can make. When I buy a piece of it, I don't want them to take a pay cut. I want them to make more. Let's come in and implement some strategies that I've seen work in other companies. Instead of you making 250 this year, let me come in, let me buy a piece, and let's try to get you to 350 or 400 the year after. For me, I only buy stuff.

It's cash flowing, but only buy stuff that I know I can add value to. You know, I want to be able to come in, purchase the company and I want to make up for the lost, you know, 30, 50, whatever percent, if I'm going to buy a percentage of it, I want to make up for that in the first.

Jon Stoddard (21:47.158)
Right. So normally it's like if $200,000 coming off now, 30% of that revenue is your money, right? $60,000. Now they go, hey, I got to help this guy grow it to where he's not only going to, you know, make his money back, but also more. Yeah.

Michael Byars (21:54.73)
Yep. Right.

Michael Byars (22:06.882)
correct. You know, that's always my goal. I won't buy anything that I can't add value to that I that I am not 100% sure that I can't grow, you know. So for me, that's important.

Jon Stoddard (22:20.406)
Yeah. So what, what do you do? You put, you help that just bought company put systems in place. And then you say, how do we grow organically or acquire other companies or what?

Michael Byars (22:35.31)
all of the above, you know, I want to start running ads. Most of these smaller companies, they're not running any ads. You know, their business is referral, word of mouth. That's it. No ads. You know, I want to start running ads. I want to go talk to some of the bigger guys. I want to, I just want to grow. I want to, like the other companies, you know, we had to put the software in place but they were still writing paper tickets. You know, that gave us essentially,

It gave us about another one and a half jobs per day that we could get done just in the time they saved and the extra cash that was generated because you know, paper tickets, they get lost, you know, you know, plumbers or HVAC guys, they just toss them in the truck and they bring them back in the office once a week and you know stuff, you know how it goes man, stuff goes missing. Right. And it's not, you know, per se, their fault, but it is their fault, but it's not their fault if you ask them. Right. So

Jon Stoddard (23:28.802)
Yeah, yeah.

Michael Byars (23:35.286)
with moving everything over digitally, the back office gets all the stuff immediately. The follow-up for the invoices, it's all automated. You don't have to worry about, well, did you call Bobby over there at the convenience store? Cause he ain't paid us in three months, but he's probably forgot about it.

Jon Stoddard (23:53.987)
That's taken care of. That should be paid immediately. Yeah.

Michael Byars (23:57.378)
Yep, so if they're on terms, I got it set up where they get a reminder, that, you know, they're on, let's say 30 day terms, they get a reminder at 20 days, 25 days, and 30 days. They also get a text at 25 and 30 days. You know, the accounts receivable went from about a half million dollars when I first came over now, we're less than $30,000. So all that money is now money as well.

Jon Stoddard (24:19.31)
It was a half million dollars. Yeah.

Michael Byars (24:23.338)
You know, they already wrote that off. You know, I got all of it down to about 30 grand. I mean, that's.

Jon Stoddard (24:23.619)
Jesus.

Jon Stoddard (24:30.474)
and it's 30 grand per month kind of average, or is it, yeah, rolling average. Yeah.

Michael Byars (24:33.678)
It's rolling average, correct. Yes, sir. So that's 470 grand and found money that they had wrote off thought they would never get anyway.

Jon Stoddard (24:43.971)
Right.

Michael Byars (24:44.866)
That's huge, you know?

Jon Stoddard (24:46.39)
That's, that's huge. That's, that's like, uh, yeah. And what do you guys teach about unit level economics saying, well, here's two guys per truck to get to a million bucks. We just need to do this much advertising to get another million bucks.

Michael Byars (24:48.418)
Cause all that goes in the bottom line.

Michael Byars (25:07.406)
Correct, you know, it's all about, especially with that advertising, it's all about cost per lead. You know, if I know I can spend, and I just looked at some of these numbers the other day, so let me use the example of the Forestry Mochin Company. So for me with that company, I can spend 1500 bucks a week and I can get about anywhere between 35 and $40,000 a week worth of work. 1500 bucks we can have.

Jon Stoddard (25:32.782)
$1,500 a week, you get $30,000 to $40,000.

Michael Byars (25:35.81)
35 to 40,000 a week in jobs. And my average job is $8,000 and about half of that is profit. So if you go look, if you got $40,000 a week, if you do $40,000 a week worth of work, you got $20,000 a week in profit. And at that point you pay $1,500 to get $20,000.

Now, granted, it took me probably 15 to $20,000 to get that advertising dialed in. My client, you know, who my client avatar was, dialed in perfectly, but it's like a sewing machine now. And you know, for other companies in the area, you know, sometimes they get short on work. You know, I'll contract some stuff out. You know, hey, give me 20% of the profit. I'll run ads and you can take my overflow. You know, I can move my ad.

budget up to, you know, maybe it's 2000 a week or 2500 a week, I can spend an extra 500 to $1000 a week. And you know, I can make an extra couple thousand dollars.

Jon Stoddard (26:47.042)
And you take some kind of commission on that overflow or something? Yeah. Um,

Michael Byars (26:48.898)
I do take a commission, yep. And it's all about, once you get that audience dialed in, it's all dependent on your amount of ad spend. I know if I spend, you know, 1,500 a week, I can get $40,000 a week worth of jobs. If I spend, let's say I spend $3,000 a week, you know, I'm gonna get somewhere between 80 and 100 grand a week worth of jobs. Just depends on how much.

how much bandwidth I wanna take on or how much bandwidth I wanna, for lack of better terms, lay off to another person.

Jon Stoddard (27:24.574)
Yeah. When you talk about ads, man, what are you talking about? Like, uh, radio commercials locally, paper ads or, uh, circulars. What do you. Yeah.

Michael Byars (27:31.906)
So for me, most of the stuff where I'm spending money on ads is either like Google ads or Facebook ads. You know, for home services, yeah, for home services stuff, Facebook's a monster. You know, people don't think that, dude, it's insane. People don't think that, you know, nobody goes on Facebook to look for somebody to cut grass to get on Google. No, dude, no.

Jon Stoddard (27:40.19)
Okay. Locally for Facebook. Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (27:47.455)
Is it really?

Michael Byars (28:01.59)
Like the Forestry Molching Company, my only source of advertising was word of mouth and Facebook ads.

Jon Stoddard (28:08.65)
Yeah. The forest remulching business. What is that? When did you buy that?

Michael Byars (28:10.394)
Like, here's a great example.

Michael Byars (28:15.79)
2019 when Corona came along, I bought it. Yep, I bought it. My dad was actually needing some work done around his house and I was doing some development in the real estate company. And I had a guy that I had hired and I let him work for me for probably a month and a half. You know, I was just contracting the jobs out to him. I didn't have any equipment at that point, but.

Jon Stoddard (28:19.453)
Right before it, yeah.

Michael Byars (28:45.322)
He worked and done some stuff for me in a development project and done a few jobs for my dad. Worked about a month and a half. I had about a week lag in between there from moving him from that project to the next project. And I called him back and said, hey, we're ready to get started on a project. Oh, I'm about two months out. You're just gonna have to, you'll just have to wait. I'm like, man, I can't wait. So I went and found someone else that was smaller but had the same type of equipment.

bought them out, then I went and bought some more stuff to add to that. So.

Jon Stoddard (29:17.942)
Yeah. And we're talking about taking trees and trimming trees and taking the roots and digging them up or whatever it is, just turning wood into mulch kind of stuff. Yeah.

Michael Byars (29:28.286)
Yep, these particular machines I have a drum with teeth on it. And you actually just run the tree over and it turns it into mulch. You can take a tree. I got one machine that you can take a tree the size of your waist, cut it, push it over and turn it into mulch like you put in the flower bed in about four minutes. It is insane. But

Jon Stoddard (29:53.278)
What do you do with that mulch?

Michael Byars (29:55.266)
You just leave it on the ground. You know, customers are looking to clear out.

Jon Stoddard (29:57.514)
Okay. You know, I got to tell you, there's a company locally here that does, takes that mulch and then they create compact and little logs for burning.

Michael Byars (30:06.567)
Oh, that's cool. That's a cool concept.

Jon Stoddard (30:08.01)
Yeah. And it's like, there's an ACE hardware here pretty close here. And I've tried, you know, it's a good starter logs. I got a fireplace and you usually use Mesquite and Mesquite burns a long time. But sometimes you buy these logs and the paper, the papers things and you burn them. But, uh, there was one on, it was local and I go, I'm going to try this out, you know, and it was a bigger log and then actually burned longer and it smelled better and everything because it was Mesquite from Arizona. Like, uh, love it. Right.

Michael Byars (30:15.946)
All right.

Michael Byars (30:32.782)
Right.

Jon Stoddard (30:37.066)
And that's what they do with all the mulch and they're selling those for, I don't know, $14 a log. Yeah.

Michael Byars (30:42.102)
Wow, that's strong.

Jon Stoddard (30:44.562)
I just gave you a business idea to take home.

Michael Byars (30:48.03)
Man, you know, with the mulching company, you know, we can turn it, it's easy to get customers, you know. During Corona, they're doing Corona for probably, maybe a year and a half, maybe two years. We were doing, man, we were doing a little over 100 grand a month just in mulching. You know, people were sitting at home, they were looking out the back window.

You know, the wife was complaining to the husband, the husband complaining to the wife. You know, we've been meaning to take those trees down for two years. You know, everybody was working from home at that point. You know, for us, you know, we had to change our marketing and our marketing demographic. You know, we went from marketing to men and women in a certain age group to only marketing to women. Because as we went to the job sites during Corona, normally the man and woman were both home, working from home.

The woman was the one doing all the, not complaining, but complaining, right? You know, she was steering the boat. And I've been asking my husband to take those trees down for two years and they're still up there. You know, we're gonna get that knocked out if you can come do this job today. We went from concentrating on men and women in a certain age group to only women. And we doubled our business in about the first, I don't know, 20 to 30 days, man. It was insane.

Jon Stoddard (31:52.076)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (32:15.159)
And was that a, like a filter on Facebook? Just select women? Yeah.

Michael Byars (32:19.466)
Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yep. Same age group, but we did only women, not men. And man, it's like a rocket ship.

Jon Stoddard (32:30.01)
Do you have an inside ad agency or an outside ad agency?

Michael Byars (32:35.746)
Some of both. I was running the ads internally for the Forestry Motion Company.

Jon Stoddard (32:41.527)
Yeah.

Michael Byars (32:43.042)
So, you know, just because, you know, all those guys reported back to my office every day and I could get a ton of feedback from them, it was just easier to be able to convey internally than externally.

Jon Stoddard (32:44.067)
Yeah, and-

Jon Stoddard (32:56.982)
Yeah. And do you still own that forest mulching company? Yeah. And you still own the HVAC company and the plumbing company that just support all of your properties. Yeah. That's just throwing out cashflow. So what, what other things came along that you go, okay. Uh, let me, uh, before we go on that, that forest mulching, one guy was two months out, uh, he too busy to take your project. You, you find a smaller guy with the same equipment and.

Michael Byars (33:00.118)
Yes, sir.

Michael Byars (33:04.995)
Anything to do with houses? Yes, sir.

Jon Stoddard (33:26.134)
You made them the same kind of offer. Say, hey, I'll buy X percentage of your company because I need you to support. Oh, you bought the whole thing? Just how'd you finance it? Just out of cashflow and just like 100% write a check? Yeah. Is he still working with you for you?

Michael Byars (33:30.07)
How about the whole thing?

Michael Byars (33:36.406)
That's out of context though.

Yep, just wrote a check for it because at that point...

No, he's not. He worked for a little bit and he wanted to get out because he didn't like the industry. It's cold in the winter and it's hot in the summer and he wanted to go back to working inside in a plan. So at the end of the day, it worked out good for everyone.

Jon Stoddard (33:58.986)
Yeah, that's just, it happens. Yeah. All right, so what came next? What kind of company did you look at next to acquire?

Michael Byars (34:09.034)
Man, I've got a wide variety of weird stuff. You know, I've got a...

Jon Stoddard (34:13.386)
All right, let's go down a list, some weird stuff. Let's talk to some weird.

Michael Byars (34:17.754)
Um, got a partner and I have a coffee chain in Wisconsin. I don't even drink coffee, John.

Jon Stoddard (34:23.758)
Coffee chain.

You don't drink coffee, any kind of caffeine kind of related products.

Michael Byars (34:31.927)
You know, I'm from the South. I like sweet tea. But, uh, how do you do? Other than that, no, I don't really drink sodas. No coffee. I don't like the flavor of coffee.

Jon Stoddard (34:34.291)
Oh, you like sweet tea? Yeah?

Jon Stoddard (34:41.298)
Well, so coffee chain, it's in Wisconsin, you don't drink coffee. How did this opportunity come along and why did it attract you?

Michael Byars (34:51.21)
Well, you know, it's my partner in that business enjoyed coffee.

Jon Stoddard (34:57.932)
Yeah.

Michael Byars (34:59.99)
She wanted to, she always wanted to buy a coffee shop, you know, and you know, at the end of the day, it was a good opportunity, good cash flowing business. You know, we bought three coffee shops, three brick and mortar coffee shops, and a roastery and a wholesale division. And you know, it's been great. The guy that we bought it from.

He still works there with us. You can't find a better guy. Super, super, super good guy. You know, he just, you know, his wife wanted to kind of hang out and retire. He wasn't ready to retire. So it's the best of both worlds. They got the sale. He still works with us. You know, I mean, he's a great guy. We learned a ton from him, you know, just by, you know, the stuff that he's built. They had it for 20 years, the husband and wife. So, you know.

Jon Stoddard (35:53.482)
Yeah. And what were they doing? They were, were they actively selling it or I guess, let me restart that.

Michael Byars (35:58.078)
No, no, they weren't selling it. She, you know, I met her through one of the events that I put on. And she says, you know, I was asking, you know, same question. We always ask students, you know, what do you want to do? You know, that's, that's normally the, the million dollar question because a lot of them aren't sure. They just want to get into entrepreneurship, but she knew she wanted to be, she wanted to own a coffee shop.

All right, well, which coffee shop would you like? No, you want more than one. She's like, yeah, I've got a favorite one that's right down the road from my house. They got a few stores. I'm like, okay, well, do they want to sell? She's like, no, it's not for sale. I'm like, everything's for sale. So, you know, she, I told her, I said, go get greeting cards. Write up something in the greeting card, you know. Hey, my name's Chelsea. You know, I love your coffee. I, you know.

If you've ever thought about selling, here's my number. Give me a call. I said, go drop those. It's as simple as that. I said, go drop those off at every one of their stores that they have and the bean roast. I said, they'll know you're serious. And if they have ever thought about it, they'll reach out to you. Well, it was about a week went by. And she said, I hadn't heard anything. They, I don't want to.

Jon Stoddard (37:02.286)
As simple as that.

Michael Byars (37:27.05)
make them mad or anything. I'm like, just give them a minute. Just, you know, who knows? Come to find out they were on vacation. So they got back and they gave her a call. And, you know, they said, you know, we've seen three different cards at three of our locations. We know that, you know, we know you're serious. So, but at the end of the day, they,

Jon Stoddard (37:33.528)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (37:45.504)
and on LinkedIn and on Facebook and everywhere else. Yeah, yeah, I have that, I do that, yeah.

Michael Byars (37:57.506)
You know, they wanted to sell the mobile units that they had. They had some like units where they service like fairs and festivals. We weren't interested in those. We were only interested in the drive-throughs and the brick and mortars and you know, the roastery and the wholesale. So, you know, we, it was one of those things. Well, we, we haven't thought about it, but we'll, we'll get back to you. It's about a month goes by, reach back out. Hey, have you thought about it?

Jon Stoddard (38:04.322)
Yeah, yeah.

Jon Stoddard (38:22.858)
And she doesn't really reach out to check with them. She just lets it sit out there. Okay, great.

Michael Byars (38:26.358)
Nope, let's it simmer. You know, about a month went by, we reached back out and I said, well, you know, we have been thinking about it. Hey, let's go to dinner and see how that works. You know, let's figure it out and see if there's some synergy here where, you know, everyone can win. You know, because I don't like buying stuff where, you know, at the end of the day where.

they have to lose in order for me to win or I have to lose in order for them to win. It's gotta be a win-win situation. If not, I'm not interested, man. So, you know, that negotiation took probably seven or eight months. But, you know, we finally ended up coming up with something that would work for everybody. Everybody was happy. We got the deal done. And it's been great ever since, you know?

Jon Stoddard (39:06.178)
Ooh, wow. Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (39:19.418)
Yeah. Let me ask you about the relationship between you and Chelsea. I'm sure it's just anonymous name. It's Chelsea. Like what did you agree to, to be partners at 50 or what, or what did it look like? You're bringing the money. She's going to be bringing the management. Well, what did that look like?

Michael Byars (39:35.638)
Yep, 50-50.

Jon Stoddard (39:37.334)
50 50. Okay. It was there a specific responsibilities. Hey, I will handle like day to day operations and you will handle what? Like your chairman of the board of advisors. What?

Michael Byars (39:51.722)
Yeah, I mean, really, it was the company that the husband and wife that sold it to us, the company that they had built. Man, it was 98% on autopilot, John. Now there's not much to handle. She handles a lot of the stuff that, personnel issues or stuff like that or getting stuff scheduled or any of that. But you know.

Jon Stoddard (40:06.673)
Was it? Yeah.

Michael Byars (40:21.226)
the guy that we bought it from, he still handles most of the day-to-day stuff. I mean, like I told you, man, the relationship there is great. He's a great guy. He's really helped us out. It's one of those dream jobs or dream acquisitions where you say, hey, I wanna buy a company that's up and running that has good infrastructure in place. It's just coast alone. I mean, this is it. But I think that...

The work that they did to start with to get it to where it was at and the fact that, you know, we work good with him, he works great with us, you know, and it's a win situation for everybody. It's like I said, nobody had to lose for the other person to win. And that makes it where it's fun every time that every time you see each other, you know what I mean?

Jon Stoddard (41:11.746)
Yeah. Well, what were they looking for? I mean, a lot of people go, you know, that's ranges from, hey, I want to, I think it's valued at this. I want this upfront, write me a check. And as soon as we do, great. Or some people are just, you know, I'll work it out in some kind of installment seller financing plan over five years or something.

Michael Byars (41:35.274)
We, I can tell you, I got an NDA, so I can't talk about it, but I can give you, I mean, it was favorable for both parties is all I can say, you know? But I mean, it was a good deal for everybody. You know, the terms and everything worked great for everyone, so I mean, you know, it was a good deal, everybody was happy.

Jon Stoddard (41:59.254)
Yeah. And their financial integrity, they delivered some financial report cards to you and they look clean. Did you go through due diligence with them or did you, are you, are you, you know, got the skills today to just go, Hey, these are clean books. I like them. Let's move forward. Yeah.

Michael Byars (42:08.758)
Yeah, we went through.

Michael Byars (42:15.882)
Yep, we went through due diligence of, you know, I don't know, probably.

60 to 90 days going through and just looking at everything, looking at the past track records. It took their account a little longer to get us the stuff, which is what stretched it out a little bit longer. But I mean, at the end of the day, they had good numbers. They kept good books. Everything was solid. Like I said, at the end of the day, after...

After kinda coming through it, we knew it was a good deal.

Jon Stoddard (42:55.114)
Yeah. And you made a fair valuation or high valuation on a coffee. I don't know what coffee shops sell for it's kind of in the restaurant category. Is it, what are they?

Michael Byars (42:57.056)
No, so.

Michael Byars (43:04.958)
It was it was definitely a fair evaluation fair to high. You know it's on the high side of fair. I guess is a.

Jon Stoddard (43:08.63)
Fair to high. But into your terms, right? Because he was gonna stick around a little bit more installment. I know you're under NDA, so yeah.

Michael Byars (43:19.594)
Yep, yep, it's, it worked out good for everyone. They were happy, we were happy.

Jon Stoddard (43:24.906)
Yeah. Well, that's cool. Uh, you like Wisconsin in the winter?

Michael Byars (43:30.482)
I don't like Wisconsin, period, man. It is too cold in Wisconsin. It's a good place in the summer. I don't know if you've ever been in the summer, but there's a lot of cool stuff to do. And it gets, it doesn't get Arizona hot, but it gets 85 to 90 and it's not bad. In the winter, man, it's a brutal place.

Jon Stoddard (43:35.37)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Jon Stoddard (43:48.906)
Yeah. I used to live in Indiana. So Midwest stuff. Yeah. Yes. So what was the other next, uh, weird, let's say another type of business that came in your life?

Michael Byars (43:52.527)
Oh, same concept. Yeah.

Michael Byars (44:03.414)
I bought a mailbox company.

Jon Stoddard (44:05.55)
What do you mean a mailbox company? What's that? I mean, I know what a mailbox is, but what is a mailbox?

Michael Byars (44:11.606)
like a mailbox store, like you've seen like the UPS stores that have mailboxes. Yeah, yeah, same concept, but right, same concept except just a privately owned, not franchise type thing.

Jon Stoddard (44:14.218)
Oh yeah, mailbox and et cetera, right? Yeah, before UPS used to buy them, yeah.

Jon Stoddard (44:26.494)
Yeah. And was this lead come through one of your coaching programs where you, Hey, partner with me, or did you do it by yourself?

Michael Byars (44:35.778)
So I've got one of the students is actually out there running it. It's in Las Vegas. So yeah, Las Vegas.

Jon Stoddard (44:41.45)
Las Vegas. Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (44:47.178)
How's that business doing? Is it good business or is it, you know, hey, a guy walks in and buys 60 cent stamps and walks out? You know.

Michael Byars (44:47.191)
So.

It is a good business, man.

Michael Byars (44:54.506)
No, it's a good business. We've got about 750 physical boxes and about 4,000 virtual boxes. So.

Jon Stoddard (45:02.562)
So that's all reoccurring revenue, right? I know that I was actually looking for the virtual boxes. Those are like 19 to something about dollars a month. And then you got your physical boxes. So it's all reoccurring revenue.

Michael Byars (45:05.772)
Yes, sir.

Michael Byars (45:14.762)
Right. And, you know, bought that and seen the, there was a real potential because there was not a lot of the software aspects for mail stores. You got to have about five or six different softwares and they're just pieced together to run the store. I took and built out some software to, I mean, we took, when I first started, it was about six steps to get one transaction done. Now I got it drilled down to one step. Also,

When we first bought it, we had two people and their sole purpose in life was to sort mail every day and put it in the right box. And like if it's a virtual box or if it's a local box, we scan the mail in the front, the front, like a front visionary piece of the mail, we'll run it through a scanner and send it out in the email to every one of the customers. We had two people, that's all they did all day every day. With the software we developed, we took that.

that process and turned it into about a, takes maybe an hour, hour and a half for one person to do now. So we built out software with optical character recognition where it can go through and read the addresses and the names on the box. It automatically sends out the emails and we do it with about a 93% accuracy. So we took.

We didn't do that to be able to lay off people or fire people. We did that to be able to buy some of their time back because at that point we couldn't scale when we first bought it. Nope, no, no. So now with where all of that stuff is automated, I mean, it's sky's the limit, you know, because those two people.

Jon Stoddard (46:49.649)
You can't scale doing that.

Jon Stoddard (47:00.186)
Well, what do you mean sky's the limit on, let me give you an example. I did an interview with Brian Beers over at, he bought some Midas's and I go, well, John, I can't scale. I got two bays. We're only open 40, 50 hours a week and I can only get so many cars in. I can't, you know, that's it. I'm going to do a million, million and a half, depending on what, you know, state I'm in based upon the pricing. Well, what does scale mean? Like.

Michael Byars (47:28.418)
You know, for me, especially with like the virtual box, you know, product that we offer. A virtual box is, you know, I give you an address. They ship everything to that address and it goes in, you know, for lack of better terms, a cardboard box in the back room. I can have as many virtual boxes as I need. It's not a physical box that you go there. Correct, yep.

Jon Stoddard (47:48.362)
Yeah. And that's unlimited. Yeah. Do you have subcontract with somebody that does that? Because I, I was looking for a virtual box and then they go, Hey, here's a location and here's a location and there's a location.

Michael Byars (48:00.65)
Yep, so I've got some of its internal and we've got contracts with five or six other white label people out there. Where they sell the service, we fulfill the service.

Jon Stoddard (48:10.146)
that are advertising nationally. Yeah.

Very cool.

Michael Byars (48:17.177)
So it's a cool concept, man. And it's one of those weird old things that you don't ever think about unless you use a service or you have to think about it, right?

Jon Stoddard (48:26.486)
Yeah, well, there's, there was a reason why UPS and FedEx bought all those locations. There was important transactions going on. Yeah, it's cashflow.

Michael Byars (48:31.598)
for sure. It's great cashflow.

Great recurring revenue, you know. And you gotta think, it's a $20 a month mailbox. You know, it's kinda like your Netflix bill. It's one of those things that, hey, I need to cancel that mailbox because I don't do anything out there anymore. I will do it next month, it's 20 bucks. Next month comes, next month comes, next month comes. You know.

Jon Stoddard (48:52.721)
You can't forget about that money. Yeah.

Yeah. And is your part owner, half owner, 50 owner was this one too?

Michael Byars (49:04.935)
Uh, I want a third of it.

Jon Stoddard (49:07.15)
on a third of it, right? And so on a third of cashflow, do you, any, any of these businesses is, is all throwing off like I own a percentage of the cashflow or is it let it roll over? Sometimes maybe we'll keep it or sell it or what's your strategy on that?

Michael Byars (49:23.178)
It just, it's all dependent on the business, you know? You know, I still have the real estate stuff and the tech support company, they'll fund whatever it is that I decide I wanna go do. You know, these other businesses, I'm just really, I'm just buying it for cashflow or buying it because, you know, I know I can add value to it. You know, some of them I'm buying to build and resell like the mailbox company will resell it. But...

I was able to add so much value by the software build out. It was, it's great.

Jon Stoddard (49:58.05)
Jeez, are you selling the software now to other locations?

Michael Byars (50:01.878)
I'm not currently. That doesn't mean that I won't in the future, but I'm not currently.

Jon Stoddard (50:07.883)
Yeah. Well, see, that's the insight. I mean, if you weren't in a tech company and didn't realize like, Hey man, this is all man hour stuff. This needs to be in its frequently used, frequently asked questions, whatever it is. It's a process that needs to be automated with software. Yeah.

Michael Byars (50:21.994)
Right. Yeah. I mean, you know, that's there's so many options, especially in today's world with automation or, you know, I've the tech company that I've got. We've also started building out a lot of like question and answer bots for lack of better terms to where we can feed the bot for like, like here's a great example for like construction companies. We built out a, I don't want to call it a bot, but it's a bot.

We built out a program to where for their employees, if they have a question about the state building code or the local county codes, we can load all that information into a chat bot. They can ask that bot, hey, you know, what?

what's the setback off the road in XYZ County for us to start, you know, us to start doing ditching or, you know, underground lines and it'll spit it right out. You know, there is no, these guys are buying back hours and hours a week of employees time and especially like high level employees where some of the guys in the field would have to call and ask questions that aren't necessarily dumb questions. They just don't have enough experience to know, right?

So we're putting all the documents that they need, all the SOPs, all anything into a program and they pull it right up on their cell phone. They ask it a question. It spits out the information that we have already put in. So we are training it and telling it what to say, what not to say, what to do, what not to do. Man, it's monstrous.

Jon Stoddard (52:03.358)
Yeah. So is this a, is this the same tech company that you had, or is this a new company you bought? Yeah. Same tech company you started when you were 20, 21. Yeah. 19. Jesus. Now are you reselling this to other companies?

Michael Byars (52:08.842)
Yeah, it's the same one.

19, yep.

Michael Byars (52:22.066)
either reselling it or building the stuff for the companies. It just depends on what they wanna do, what their end goal is. And it depends on what the sensitivity of the information is.

Jon Stoddard (52:28.798)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (52:34.306)
How are you getting the word out to say, hey, we've got this solution for you? How do you do that?

Michael Byars (52:41.43)
Honestly, I haven't had to even worry about that. I'm probably booked out six months in advance for just projects that we got going on.

Jon Stoddard (52:45.249)
Not yet, huh?

Jon Stoddard (52:52.638)
Yeah. All right. I'll talk to you that one later. Well, so tell me about mailboxes. What's it, what's an interesting one? Tell me one that didn't work out where it just, everything kind of looked ugly. Whatever it was. Yeah.

Michael Byars (53:05.846)
Yep. I bought a concrete company maybe, maybe 10 or 12 years ago, you know, right back to trying to vertically integrate with the, with the real estate stuff, but didn't do, didn't do much due diligence on it. Not, not near enough as I should have. I mean, it was a quick turn. The guy needed some money. You know, I've been looking at concrete companies. Uh, some guys I knew brought him to me and said, Hey, this guy, he needs to

Jon Stoddard (53:12.863)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (53:19.17)
Right.

Michael Byars (53:35.026)
He'll continue to stay on. I thought it would be a good deal. I didn't do enough due diligence on. The company numbers looked fine, but he himself was an absolute train wreck. So I didn't do enough due diligence on him as a person. And it just came back to bite me.

Jon Stoddard (53:54.858)
Yeah. What kind of salacious type of behavior did he not pass muster?

Michael Byars (54:01.026)
I mean, just not, not doing the jobs, stealing, going, doing jobs on the side and putting the materials on my credit card. I mean, it was an absolute train wreck. It just, it didn't work out.

Jon Stoddard (54:14.583)
Yeah.

Yeah. And you bought that piece and then what happened? You shut it down?

Michael Byars (54:23.094)
Yep, I shut it down.

Jon Stoddard (54:24.851)
After how many months?

Michael Byars (54:28.078)
Probably 14 or 16 months.

Jon Stoddard (54:32.77)
14, did you go out and look for a new concrete company or did you just put that vertical integration idea aside?

Michael Byars (54:40.93)
Nope, I just tossed that one to the side. The employees in there. Yep. That was a, yeah, it was a definitely a poop sandwich. Definitely a poop sandwich.

Jon Stoddard (54:43.262)
Yeah, you should. I'm not gonna bite. I'm not gonna go taste that again. Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (54:54.142)
Do you feel like you lost a lot of money there or was it just a yeah.

Michael Byars (54:58.218)
I lost a decent amount, yeah. But for me, I know we've been on phone calls a numerous times, I'm sure you've heard me say it. For me, it wasn't a loss, it was a lesson. I learned something by it, I learned what not to do. I learned a few things that maybe I wanna do to expand on in the future in different markets. But it was just, some people pay 100 grand a year to go to college. I paid...

you know, 300 grand in a year to learn I didn't want to do concrete, you know.

Jon Stoddard (55:32.808)
Ha ha ha!

Yeah, let me, let me ask you, you and I have talked for a couple of years and we just have a number of different things and partnerships is definitely a hot subject. And how do you, and we both been burned by them, but how do you, you know, every time you've been burned, you go, okay, I won't do that again, but something new comes up. Like, how do you find somebody that's good and then, or disqualified the bat that you're able to go, you can't really ask a, Hey, are you going to cheat on me in the future?

No, right? Right.

Michael Byars (56:07.414)
You know, at the end of the day, I think it's all, you know, it's all about, you know, what you feel about the person, you know. As you eat more poop sandwiches, you determine that there's more versions of poop than one, right? So.

Jon Stoddard (56:25.842)
Yeah, there's a lot of different poop sandwiches out there, man.

Michael Byars (56:29.234)
Right, you know, and, you know, for me, it's just about, you know, trying to find out the most about the person to start with. And, you know, does that always work? No. But for me, I always try to give them give everyone the benefit of the doubt until they show me different. You know, that's come to burn me, you know, a lot of times, you know, but, you know, at the end of the day, here's my.

Jon Stoddard (56:52.322)
Yeah.

Michael Byars (56:58.098)
outtake an opinion on the whole situation. If they're gonna be a bad person, I can't make them be a good person. Only person that can make them be a good person is themselves. And if they're going to be a bad person, they're going to, you know, whatever they're going to do, steal or lie or whatever, you know, they're gonna get me once. After that, I just don't fool with them anymore. So, you know, right. Yep.

Jon Stoddard (57:22.54)
It's like Kevin O'Leary, you're dead to me, right? Yeah.

Michael Byars (57:27.03)
Better make it good the first time's all I know to tell them.

Jon Stoddard (57:29.662)
Yeah. So now you have, and we're coming up on an hour. You've got 22 companies under management and it's throwing off what we're talking excess of 5 million in EBITDA type stuff.

Michael Byars (57:46.026)
Yep, it's not bad.

Jon Stoddard (57:46.826)
Yeah, it's a private company and like I got trying to figure out what it looks like. And, uh, and, and then you're only working a couple hours a month on these.

Michael Byars (57:56.106)
Well, and that one, but you know, I'm just like you, John. I'm working, you know, six, eight, 10 hours a day, but I can do it all from my phone now, you know, because I have good people in place. You know, I've got a quarterback for every business that I have. And, you know, I only put top tier talent in those spots. You know, I just, I won't settle for subpar. And when you do that, and when you hire the best people and you...

You know, you take care of them, you treat them right. They treat you right in the long run. So at the end of the day, you know, I just, you know, I hire fast, but also fire fast. If you don't fit into, you know, the culture that I've built or you don't have the same, you know, morals and ethics that I do, you're just not going to fit in. It's time for us to part ways and keep going. Right. You know, it's just, I don't want, I feel like that I've got a great group of people.

anybody else that I hire in, you know, they have to get along with everybody and they have to have the same, you know, mentality and work ethic that everybody else does because, number one, I don't want my people that have been with me a long time to, you know, to get frustrated because somebody else is not pulling their weight or they're not a good person. But I also don't want the new person coming in there ruining the culture that I've built. You know, like I said, it's, you know, I'm not sure, I've got a great culture.

that I built out and I'm not sure what I would change about it if, you know, if the opportunity arose.

Jon Stoddard (59:29.686)
That's lovely. And we're going to end on that. Michael Byers, 22 companies under management. Thank you so much for being on top M&A entrepreneurs.

Michael Byars (59:38.114)
Thanks, John, I appreciate the opportunity.