Top Investor Reveals Best Small Business Acquisitions

Summary

In this conversation, Jon Stoddard interviews Nick Haschke, a serial acquirer with over 12 acquisitions under his belt. They discuss Nick's journey from management consulting to entrepreneurship, the dynamics of his partnership, and the strategic approach to acquiring small businesses. Nick shares insights on the challenges faced during the pandemic, the importance of recurring revenue, and the lessons learned from navigating the landscaping industry. He also explores future opportunities in various sectors, emphasizing the need for a local focus in business ventures.

Takeaways

Nick Haschke has made over 12 acquisitions in his career.
He transitioned from startups to acquiring profitable businesses.
The partnership dynamics between Nick and his co-founder are crucial for success.
Recurring revenue models provide stability and predictability in business.
COVID-19 presented significant challenges but also opportunities for adaptation.
Nick emphasizes the importance of understanding competitive dynamics in the industry.
He is exploring new business opportunities in water treatment and biotech.
The focus is on niches that are less competitive on a national level.
Nick's journey reflects a shift from startup culture to acquisition entrepreneurship.
He values the luxury of time in making strategic business decisions.

 Watch the Interview:

Transcript:

Jon Stoddard (00:00.078)
Today my guest is Nick Haschke, who's made over 12 acquisitions. He's a serial acquirer. He bought Wright Gardner, made nine tuck-ins there, and then a couple other landscaping companies. So welcome to the show, Nick. We're gonna talk to you about that. Nice to see you. Thanks for having me, So let's start from the beginning. What were you doing?

before you started on this acquisition journey? Yeah, so I've had a bit of a meandering career. I spent a few years in management consulting with McKinsey, focused on Fortune 500 strategy and operations projects, kind of large scale programs. Spent a little time in clean energy and technology, had a startup there, worked on a couple of different startups there.

And also worked with a Fortune 500 company called NRG, large energy company focused on their clean tech initiatives. What happened before we go to what happened to the startup companies? The first one we sold to a larger company and then the second one it was with the same co-founder that was an electric vehicle like electric fleet electrification company. That one ended up kind of shutting down abruptly. And so

was one of the one of the 99 % that fell. It's not hard to be lumped into that group. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's a little bit of a there's a lot of luck to it. million ways to sign the West. Yeah. Yeah. So what's that? What happened next? You went to for NRG big company and then Yeah. went to

So I've had two kind of startup careers before doing what I'm doing now. The second one was the startup company that had failed that I went to after NRG. And that's where I met my now partner Anu. And we just had compatible, really compatible working styles and objectives and kind of career stage and all that. And we decided to get to do what we're doing now, which is acquiring small businesses. Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (02:14.258)
When did you change that? you guys like screw that small startup stuff, you know, takes too much to get an airplane in the air and in flow. Yeah. So we, we were with that company from pretty early on and grew it pretty rapidly. And basically came to the end of a fundraising cycle without raising funding. And that business, you know, we realized

It was we were in the same situation. A lot of venture backed startups are as if you don't prove it, it you got to shut it down. And so we were there till the bitter end shutting the thing down. And we liked the, you the opportunities in kind of the idea of starting a business and being the owner. And we weren't owners in that one. But we, you we had equity. And so we liked what we.

the pace and the work style and all that. But I think what we were not comfortable with was getting into another 99 % likelihood of failure situation. And so we wanted to have a lot of the benefits of entrepreneurship and starting something and kind of being in the ownership seat and equity and all of that without the risks. And so we had some, we kind of reworked our objectives.

that landed us on buying a business that was already profitable as the mechanism. Where did that inspiration come from? Did you start reading about books or did you have some mentors that say, you know what, stop the startup stuff, start buying companies that are already producing revenue? Yeah, I had heard about it over the years.

heard of a search fund. haven't really read about it before or really spent any time digging into it. my dad, I grew up with a father who was a small business owner and he was always drilling into me that if you're not working for yourself, what are you doing? And then I had a friend, Michael Kenefec, who I grew up with playing baseball, who started an independent sponsor and had found some pretty significant success. Basically,

Jon Stoddard (04:18.729)
searching for businesses to buy and then buying and then working on them to grow them. so, yeah, I guess I'd had little encounters with this idea of just buying a business that was already functioning, already profitable through the years. that, know, Anu and I, when we got our heads together and decided we were going to partner up and do something that seemed to be the fastest and easiest path, really the path of least resistance to meet the objectives that we had for kind of the next step in our career. Yeah.

Now, is this a search fund where you financially supported by a search fund or is it you're an independent sponsor? Yeah. Yeah. So we started as an independent sponsor. We thought we were going to raise money, but we ended up finding a deal that didn't really require that we raise money. We were able to put together the equity just between the two of us. And then we used a small business loan and a seller note to wrap up the of financing.

Yeah. So we didn't have to sell out equity outside. We didn't have to go through a fundraising process. And I think in doing that, realized those are very fun. Are they? We just realized, especially the first time, like we didn't have a real credible story to tell. And we hadn't really even done our homework on this in terms of being able to go out and raise money and show them that we had gone through all the steps that a lot of the entrepreneurs who are out there raising money for their search funds do. We we skipped all that.

And we just found a deal to buy. Yeah, and where did you find the deal? Was it on a website a broker side? Yeah, there's a broker side or biz by cell was there's myself Okay, I'm doing a lot of promotion for biz by cell when the last 20 interviews I've done I think Yeah, so we found it on does by cell connected with the broker told him our story I think in retrospect and having conversations with him later. He left our conversation thinking this is the buyer and

what I don't know what it is that we said or what it is that we did. Intellectually overqualified and potentially probably looks at this like, I'm going to build this like massive business with all these KPIs and measure everything with some software we code and write ourselves. Yeah. And so, so for whatever it was that struck a chord with him, he kind of helped us navigate the process, help us get the SBA loan.

Jon Stoddard (06:37.229)
get the deal negotiated and get to the finish line. And that was the beginning of and I stepped in as CEO, my partner was still working part time, but also kind of consulting on the side to support income, you know, near term income requirements. Where did the down because it was a small business. Yeah, where did the down you guys have that in between you both of you or did you have to go outside outside investors? Yeah, yeah, a mix of savings. I had a home equity line of credit that I was able to draw.

because I had some equity in my house. yeah, we basically just went, we're 50-50 on it and funded the equity ourselves. How did you guys know that you'd make a good partnership? mean, aside from the harmonious relations you have, did you ever just test yourself in certain situations, see how you'd act? Because goofing around in a bar and talking and say, hey, let's make my partnership is great.

Until you get to a situation where you're running out of money in a company. That's when your character shows up. Yeah. No, that's really true. We weren't friends before, actually. I'd say we we're we developed as friends. But even now, like we're very we have a very professional working relationship. He is essentially, you know, my partner is essentially my my spouse in the sense that like financially we are 50 50 tied together at the hip. You know, we rise and fall together.

But before that, we weren't bar buddies. He was the CFO, I was the chief commercial officer. We went through probably multiple near-death experiences from a business standpoint, like the business was about to die. We had situations where we nearly shut down by the regulator three or four times. And so we had kind of been through the worst of the startup ride together.

and had developed a mutual respect for each other and what each of us brings to the table. And to put further light on that, I'm the yes guy, he's the no guy. Yeah. But you guys kept your wits about each other in situations that could have been a harrowing, you know, somebody will. Yeah. Interesting. And how long did you own this business before you started? Say, hey, let's go make some other tuck ins to start building.

Jon Stoddard (08:59.659)
this little enterprise we're trying to do. Not long, about six months between the, between the first purchase and the second purchase. And, and really we were in contract for the second purchase probably within four months of the first purchase. Yeah. And did you have the thesis? What were you going to do? You're going to do, you know, a whole bunch of different businesses or businesses in the same niche, which could be exposed to up or downs in an industry.

Yeah, I think at the beginning, before we found a business at all, we thought was we diversify and get into it, launch a couple of different platforms over the course of however many years. We liked that the first business we were acquiring had a lot of inorganic potential because it was just a very fragmented market with a lot of small players. So we knew that there would be a lot of opportunities. I think we didn't.

fully appreciate how true that was going to be that turned out to be be kind of more true than we had even anticipated. And you know, we've been able to do nine, nine tuck ins over and so kind of we did the first four over the first like year and a half though. What did you like? What did you guys like about it? mean, guy, so he's looking at the numbers. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And both of us, I think we're pretty

you know, had a decent amount of financial experience. He was more of like a CFO of financial operations, whereas I was more of like strategy and deal making and corporate development. But we like the recurring revenue profile. Like I have very, we had very, you know, high precision on what our revenue is going to be this month, next month, the month after. So just a pretty tight rein on what the financial profile of the business was. We like that the net margins were pretty good. The gross margins were great.

which created some operating leverage as you scale and grow it creates, you know, better economics as the business gets bigger. And the, and we liked that the, was a relatively small dollar item for the customers. And so it doesn't get a lot of scrutiny. It's not really, not like, not a lot of friction. It was providing a service that the customers like and want to have, and it's kind of table sticks for running an office in the Bay area.

Jon Stoddard (11:15.405)
A lot of money was flowing into the commercial office market, really thick commercial office market here in the Bay Area, just hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of companies. This business did really well with the small customers. so the Bay Area, there's just tons and tons of small companies. tons. Did you, when you bought the company, did you

fill in a role and say, I'm not going to tell people what to do until I do it myself. So I'm to go out to an office, try to sell some plants, decorative plants and see what that is like. Yeah, I was I was our only sales guy for the first month. The owner, the seller trained me to do sales. And yeah, I I started on day one. I knew zero. Like I didn't know the names of plants, anything. He taught me how to sell, how to specify.

And then we had a sales guy who was out on disability leave. once he came back, then we had a real sales person, which helped me kind of get out of the, know, focusing 100 % on sales. The nice thing about recurring revenue is you don't necessarily have to be out selling every day because today's sales is tomorrow's growth, but today's sales isn't. You don't need to be constantly backfilling your.

your operating capacity with new sales. Sales is growth, not... Yeah. Let me ask you about expenses because I would say a CFO for a startup is pretty high dollar amount. San Francisco Bay Area for a technology company, $150, $175K. How was he adjusted his salary to fit in as maybe just accounting for this couple million dollar gardening company? Yeah.

Yeah, so I mean, we both had to moderate our expectations in terms of how much money we're going to make for a handful of years. Both of us had, you know, working spouses. So we had a little bit of latitude there to be able to flex down and not take such a large income requirement. Because make no mistake, we would have made more money working for somebody else for a year, probably for quite a few years.

Jon Stoddard (13:32.245)
But it was an investment we were willing to make in ourselves. was an investment we were willing to make in the flexibility that we have day to day. so, that's a sacrifice and a compromise. We were both eager to make. Did you immediately set out and say, hey, we're going to start doing some tuck-ins? Or say, well, why don't we just grow here? Or were these tuck-ins to say, I'm going to buy the business and shut them down? Or just?

What did you do with these? Yeah, so the tuck-ins were acquisitions of accounts and staff. so we were- their book of business, kind of. We bought their book of business. The situation was the market was very fragmented and a lot of the owners that remained in the market were running businesses of a couple of employees and, know, decent size, know, varying in size, but, you know, decent size books where they were able to make enough to live.

And but it's stacked nicely onto our book. And we were able to get some geography, some scale economies of operating within a constrained geographic footprint. So we would, you know, for instance, we buy a book of business where I do already do floors one, two and three. the guy, you know, the guy we're buying out does floors four, five and six. And all of sudden I got one tech going to all six floors in one building. Were these guys actually real businesses? How did you find them?

Yeah, they're real businesses in mix. One of them was referred to by our SBA lender who said, hey, I just loaned to another guy who bought the business. So he referred us to another broker listing. So we saw it very early and was able to get it under contract. We were, I guess, just we were making it known that we wanted to be buying these things. So we talked to our upstream suppliers, our nurseries, said, hey, if know of anybody who might want to sell, we're interested in buying.

so yeah, we were one of the younger groups that, you know, had kind of made our desire to, to acquire books, you know, books of, of accounts known. And that helps us generate the interest, generate the ideas, get out there, talk to the owners and, make deals happen. What were those? mean, those tuck in sizes. We talking about 50,000 to 500,000 kind of look, size revenues. Yeah. Yeah. I'd say, yeah, that's about right. and, and generally.

Jon Stoddard (15:56.973)
We were not making big tuck-ins relative to the size of the business. So we weren't doubling the business. We were adding 10%, adding 20%. I think the biggest we ever added was around a third of the business. added in one tuck-in. Were they making money profitable or some mixture of not profitable? Yeah, it varies. mean, a lot of them, they're...

Really the desirability of any acquisition to acquire in and run as a standalone business. How desirable that is kind of depends on how much the owner is making. If the owner is making $50,000, you're basically buying a job and it's not real desirable job because it pays $50,000 at best. That's if you don't take any debt, if you have no interest expense, no. So those tuck in very nicely because that just adds to the bottom line.

And there's nobody else to buy them really because nobody wants that job or you're very few, you know, there's just not a lot of people who and like trying to figure out how to get rid of it. Right. Yeah. So we did a lot of those and those those work really well for us. We did a couple of bigger ones that were like real businesses that, you know, the owners had made a good living and they made a good go at it and they were in the, you know, they were well into the six figures, but not like, you know, not making half a million bucks a year and they're making like

Like what they would make if they were working for somebody else. Yeah. And, and the, mean, those also are good. Those are a little bit more desirable. They, it costs a little bit more in terms of how many years of owner earnings you need to, you need to pay to get one of those. And by that time, where did you use the same bank SBA bank, or did you buy, use your cash flow from the business? yeah. For most of the tuck-ins we didn't actually never went back to the lender. We've been doing.

the rest of the tuck-ins because each of them was small relative to the business. We've been able to fund with Bounce Sheet and Seller Financing. How much Seller Financing? It varied a lot by the business, by the portfolio, how attractive the portfolio is, how long the clients have been there, how well they're priced, a wide range of, and how much we wanted the accounts. Some accounts are more desirable than others. Restaurants are problematic. Hotels,

Jon Stoddard (18:13.829)
much more likely to turn. we kind of wait the portfolio and figure out like how much are we willing to put down in cash because that's money that's gone forever. And then the seller note, we've been doing more of like an earn out commission structure on the seller notes of late. it creates a little bit more flexibility in what the repayment looks like and it aligns our interests with theirs. scenario earned a better higher earn out or seller note?

the commission, think is a bad deal for. Yeah. mean, like, which one? Like a better high commission? I see what you're saying. Yeah, gotcha. Yeah. So if I do a low down payment and a high commission rate, provided we do, you know, we do well with the business, we haven't done well with all of them. But I mean, we did badly with one we closed on February 28th, 2020, because it was a hotel and restaurant portfolio that was all gone within like,

It will stop traveling. Yeah, a lot of offices in San Francisco too. How was that affecting you? Yeah. Yeah, that was a pretty brutal reckoning. We were down a lot very, very quickly. There were others who I know in the industry who I keep close with who are down more. And it was really just a function of our team quickly retooling the operation to operate in a new environment.

and, but yeah, was, it was very, very painful March, April, May of 2020. And that actually got us to go buy it, to go buy an outdoor company because we were trying to, trying to stabilize the revenue. had no far, no idea how far it was, how far it would fall and over what time period. Yeah. At some point in that COVID thing, we're just like, is this the whole thing going to collapse? We just, yeah. Yeah. And that was before we knew what the financing was going to look like and all that. And so we went out.

very quickly and got another outdoor company under contract because that basically set up a floor for how far we could fall. this outdoor company was a landscaping company. There's an outdoor landscaping company. had come it was a little bit of a turnaround situation. It was I'd say failing slowly. Very owner in his late 70s. Great guy. Just kind of owner not pushing it.

Jon Stoddard (20:28.877)
Yeah, and like he didn't really want that much more business. He kind of had all he could handle. He wanted to reduce his hours and he was taking care of the clients and the employees that, know, as best he knew how, but you know, the world had kind of lapped him as far as his business career went and he was no longer interested in running the business anymore and his kids didn't want it. Yeah. Where did you find that? It was another broker, just a broker that we knew and we had talked to before about other deals and he, I guess he thought of us when

He saw it come up for sale because he gave us the kind of the inside track on it before he even had it listed. And so we had it in contract kind of right away. Right away. saw it because we'd seen some other business. Was this another SBA loan? We were and we did that one with with balance sheet and cash flow. You didn't put a lot of cash down on it or was it more so? No, that one. No, that one we put we put cash down or we pretty much did all cash. Yeah.

How did you guys change your, when you're voting for your paste of, you you're always going to vote. It's like members of Congress. Well, let's all vote for a 15 % raise. you know, how did you guys do that? Well, for us, that comes into a conflict with what we would like to be doing, which is investing and reinvesting and reinvesting. And so every dollar we take out of the business is a dollar we can invest. so...

we take out what we need, not what we want. But you know, expenses living in California Silicon Valley are it's expensive. Yeah, no doubt. Yeah. So so yeah, I mean, we just haven't we haven't like adjusted our life really at all. And we just kind of have the same needs that we had a year ago and four years ago and five years ago and some stuff costs more. And so we try to make some adjustments there. But for the most part, try to kind of just very much live within our means and and

any extra cash flow gets reinvested. Yeah. So this landscaping business, how long have you owned it? You said you sold it? You did sell it? We did sell that. So we kind of turned it around. We brought on a manager. We modernized it because it was running pretty old school. We were able to do one more tuck in, which was actually the seller's brother who ran a competitor.

Jon Stoddard (22:52.159)
Okay, yeah, smaller business. We put those two together. And then I think once we realized that it was easier to fix than to grow, and how difficult the growth path and how cash consumptive growth was going to be in that business, because it was pretty small still. And there were a lot of much, much bigger competitors. We realized that expensive to grow, like go out and get new accounts. That's why you Yeah, and yeah, very expensive to grow. Adding crews is expensive.

There's a lot of regulatory uncertainty and actually I mean the that really came through While we were in contract with the with like lawn mower lawns with gas motors, right in California. Yeah $5,000 gas mowers that break and then California says hey and you can't buy those anymore and you have to buy this $30,000 one instead Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, and you got up

and got to upgrade your facility infrastructure because you got and you got to buy all these extra batteries. And so it was going to require a major retool of the operation to to electrify the whole gas equipment fleet and transition it to electric equipment. Plus, then they came down with another egg to ban all watering of commercial and industrial properties. Well, guess what properties we serviced commercial and industrial properties, which properties will all die without water.

those ones. So we and so yeah, the landscaping industry is going through a pretty massive change here in California. Ouch, that's between those two things. And so we I think we were not interested in being along for that ride. Much to get $31,000 batteries. Yeah. And so

Yeah, that gave us and we found a good opportunity to exit the business with and put it in great hands with another landscaping company that is really, really good. And did you make money on your investment? Yeah, we did. We did reasonably well with it. And I'd say more importantly, like I feel really good about where it landed to just in terms of the people, the clients. Like I feel like we we created, I think a lot of opportunities for the people who stayed with the business to transition into new roles, better roles.

Jon Stoddard (25:13.165)
make more money, do better. I think all around, like every stakeholder in that transaction is, is, is happy with. So what are you looking for now? I mean, you've got right. Gardener, which delivers plants. Yep. Plants and commercial buildings offices, but what's next? Yeah. So I've been leaning into that a bit more, getting back and trying to figure out how to try some new things to grow that I think.

that can only grow so fast organically and the inorganic opportunities are starting to come fewer and farther between since a lot of that opportunity has been captured and a lot of the ownership market has turned over. And so yeah, it has me looking for new things working on. I kind of start with a macro thesis of kind of where is the world headed and then specifically what does that look like here and how is that unique from what it looks like in other places? then it's different in Silicon Valley than the rest of the world. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And so then turning those macro thesis into kind of a local thesis and then that local thesis into a, here are the types of businesses we want to buy and let's find some examples and then go talk to the others and see where that takes us. Yeah. And that's off market or are you kind of perusing biz by seller both? A bit of both. I think I have the luxury of time now because we have, we have an existing operation.

And I have think I don't have a big rush. Whereas at the beginning where you don't own anything, you don't have anything, nor do you have any income. There's kind of a big rush. that's a real sense of urgency. Here, I think we have the luxury of time to be able to wait for the right thing and make sure that it's it's exactly the right thing. Do a little bit more homework. Make sure we get ourselves into a good position and don't make don't make any mistakes and find something that we think we can hold and grow for the long term.

So what are the, mean, aside from, you know, outside economic forces that kind of change your direction, you didn't make any other mistakes that you go, man, now I'm wiser. Yeah, I think the, I think we didn't really study in order. really have time to study the competitive dynamics of the landscaping industry. So I don't think we realized like how brutally competitive it's going to be and how much,

Jon Stoddard (27:34.061)
we were going up against some really, really good landscaping companies and not knowing all that much about landscaping going in. That's a huge disadvantage. And we were able to hire, you know, to fill some of that gap. But there's really no substitute for the business for like really knowing the business you own inside and out at the beginning so that you don't have to make mistakes that, you know, have been made over and over and over and over again by that is is that is

being in the industry and understanding who the players are, the other players on the other side going, okay, they know what's happening in the legislature, Sacramento going to, you know, they know it's coming and they may be prepared for it or they're waiting for all the other guys to just die out. No, that's true. I think it got us thinking more carefully about what niches are make good niches for a small operator like us. Yeah.

things that are not going to be nationally competitive, nationally interesting. We don't want to get steamrolled by some national private equity firm rolling up all the locals or we want to focus on in places where we think we can compete and win. And that have a good, a good fundamental outlook, but not so good that, know, Carlisle Group's looking at it. Yeah. Any industries you like, laundromats or self storage or anything like that.

Yeah, can give a couple of examples of things we're looking into. think we see the seeds of change going on in the water industry. So I think there's a lot of interesting things going on in water treatment and kind of generally the water space just because of drought, regulatory change, legislative change. So I think that can benefit people who really know the space and have a business infrastructure and kind of know how around water treatment and

And there's a variety of different applications and business models in that space. But so we're looking closely there. mean, it's a bit. You're just like you're going to like picks and shovels. Yeah, OK, gotcha. Yeah, picks and shovel services, a knowledge base. There's some technique. There's some technical stuff to it. And having a bit of an engineering background is helpful in that space, which creates some opportunity for some advantage. The Bay Area biotech scene is really booming.

Jon Stoddard (29:57.965)
and specifically around lab R &D. it seems like that is if you get similarly finding kind of picks and shovels business models where you're selling into that market, selling services, all sorts of unique requirements for these types of spaces of how you operate a biotech R &D lab. And those will vary depending on whether you're specializing in, you know, lab diagnostics, therapeutics, plants, genomics, you know, all sorts of different.

versions of biotech. so, and depending on where you're focused, that can create some really interesting opportunities to serve into that market. then the third one is around- to figure that out. Yeah. And that's luxury of time, right? We can spend our time studying these industries and figuring out who's got business models that we like and who's small now.

but may not be small in the future because they have a certain expertise and when targeted at a fast growing market could have the opportunity to really amplify it and scale quickly. And then the third one is around labor. We have a thesis around labor scarcity is not going away anytime soon. And so figuring out locally, especially what are the unique labor needs that are here and how do you...

How do you get into the labor supply chain? Like a recruiter or something? Yeah. Could be recruiting, could be staffing, could be training. Yeah, I remember a guy, a buddy that used to do recruiting in Silicon Valley. And he said, look, it's zero startup cost because it's just a phone. And then you could make 200,000 a year just putting engineers over here and over there and over there. Yeah. Yeah. And so, and then I think within that finding the really specific niches where you can develop.

unique relationships and not have to. So I think we're looking for things that are fundamentally less scalable, right? Things that are not nationally or globally scalable. We don't want to compete nationally or don't or glory. Where private equity dips their toes in. We would prefer to compete, compete locally and use the fact that we're here, not as a disadvantage, but as an, but as an advantage.

Jon Stoddard (32:14.475)
Gotcha, gotcha. That's an interesting way to put the thesis. What's the cub investments? What are you doing there? You are starting a fund? Yeah, no, no fun. It's basically just our identity as investors. It is us as, you know, making investments in small business across, you know, these different kind of different ideas and thesis. We've got some investments with some other operators who think similarly to us. We do a little bit of board work, have some

and more passive equity investments in similar ventures as the one that we operate ourselves. Yeah. Does Anu work for the company full-time or is he still doing a little consulting for Tizen? No. So about two years into the Right Gardener, actually, we switched spots. He took over as CEO, day-to-day operator of the Right Gardener, and I spent my time hunting for new stuff.

and coming up with new ideas and trying to figure out where we're going next. And I still do some project work. Like I built the software for the right cardener, but I am doing a mix of- Well, CRM software or something or what? Mostly field management. At least that's what we built from ground up, which is field management software for managing all the accounts and managing the service of indoor plants. Yeah. Is that something you're going to start selling to other places with?

I don't think so. I don't really want to be mission critical in anybody else's operation. I'm nervous enough about being mission critical, being the mission critical software engineer in my own system. But so far it's worked out great. Being able to customize it and move fast and adapt to the needs, the operational needs of the business has been a huge competitive advantage and allowed us to move quickly and scale up our operation and improve our speed and accuracy with everything we do in the operation.

And me being able to deliver that functionality to the team has been really useful because with COVID, we had to redesign a whole lot of it, which we were able to do quickly. There wasn't anything at the shelf that did with nothing? There are things that people have made fit. I've talked to plenty of competitors. There isn't really anything that has the...

Jon Stoddard (34:35.181)
that people have the confidence in that will exist long term. Because that's the other thing. If you're going to run your business on it, you better be darn certain that it is going to be around forever. You become very, very dependent on it. so we got to the point where we're like, there's nothing. it, know, if you decide to sell and you get into 50, 60 years old and you go, they have this antiquated legacy system, right? That means the new person has to go recode everything or take buy something off the shelf.

Yeah, I mean, the I think the no code tools are getting better and better. And so I think the ability to customize your own software and kind of work with drag and drop tools. mean, that's what it's built on. It's built on app. You system we run is built on Google, a Google tool set, local tool set that it would take a little bit of time for me to onboard somebody and to learn how to operate it, fix it. But it doesn't really break. It's it's pretty, pretty robust at this point.

And so, but if we were to have to totally rework it or redo it, it would be a lift and most people would need to hire some outside help to do it. And I could do that too. So I don't know. I'm not too scared about it. It works pretty well for us. That's way down the road. Anyway, let me ask you about this. Like who you were in the startup scene, failure, non-failure, that person, Nick, who you were to today. You're like an acquisition entrepreneur that's over 12 acquisitions.

And you like this Nick? Is this the Nick you like? Happy and good. Yeah. You're a good self, good husband, good father, etc. Yeah, I mean, I've changed a lot. I didn't have one. When we started this, I had one child. Now I have three. And and yeah, I mean, overall, I think I'm really happy with the trajectory. I'm really happy with the partnership. And I think it has me doing what I'm best at and

which is sort of pursuing finding opportunities and executing against them. And it's a little bit different than being in the startup world, but not entirely different. And so there's a lot, there's definitely a lot of similarities. But certainly playing with your own money is at times it can be a little bit more emotional and take some calming down when things aren't going your way. Yeah, you ask a number of before you write a check for when you edit your own money. Like we're never going to get that money back. So

Jon Stoddard (37:04.309)
Let's ask ourselves a couple of questions. Mick, I really, really appreciate you being on the show today. So thanks so much for being on the top &A entrepreneurs. Thank you, John. All right. Take care. Take care. Bye. And hope, I hope this video has inspired you. If you need help buying your first million dollar business, make sure to visit me at dealflowsystem.net. If you like this video, make sure you subscribe down below.

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