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The LFG Show
The Pain Behind Success (No One Talks About This) | Edmond Pain
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Most business content celebrates the win… but skips the part that almost breaks you.
On this episode of The LFG Show, we go the opposite direction.
Instead of flexing the highlight reel, we unpack the real moments entrepreneurs face before scale ever feels “safe.” The sleepless nights staring at payroll with the wrong bank balance. The painful lessons in forecasting. And the realization that hustle alone can’t replace financial strategy forever.
My partner Edmond Pain joins me to break down the hidden landmines that show up when companies start scaling fast.
We talk about the painful side of growth most people never post about:
• Cash flow panic during rapid scale
• Forecasting mistakes that nearly break companies
• Tax structure errors that cost business owners millions
• Why “you don’t know what you don’t know” becomes expensive as you level up
Edmond also explains why so many founders miss massive tax strategy opportunities simply because they never structured their companies properly or built a proactive financial plan.
And we get real about something most founders avoid: *knowing your numbers.*
Having a CFO (even fractional) only works if you're willing to actually understand your financials.
We also unpack a brutal near-exit story where valuation moved fast because buyers look at **rolling performance**, not just a clean calendar year. When the solar market shifted, the deal changed overnight.
Then we connect it to what’s happening right now in **roofing and home services growth**.
We break down:
• Scaling from $5M → $10M → $25M
• Seasonality and material costs
• Labor challenges and operational structure
• Org charts and putting the right people in the right seats
• SOPs that actually protect EBITDA
Finally, we talk about what’s working today:
AI automations, virtual staffing, and back-office systems that remove chaos and give businesses flexibility when markets shift.
If you're building a business and want the *real roadmap — not just the highlight reel — this episode is for you.*
Subscribe, share this with a friend who's in the grind, and drop a comment with the biggest pain point you're dealing with right now. We might cover it in the next episode.
No Money. No Honey. 🍯
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SPEAKER_02Newsbreak is the fastest growing local news app in the United States with over 50 million monthly and 16 million daily users checking in throughout the day. When you sign up, the Newsbreak team reaches out with White Love Service to get you onboarded and making money right away. Up to$5,000 in matching ad credits, quick account approvals, and dedicated account management to help you find early success. To learn more and sign up, check out the link in the description below. Don't waste time. Sign up now and let's fucking go. Ringba is the leading inbound call tracking and analytics platform for marketers, brands, and paper call teams. It gives you real-time reporting, intelligent call routing, and fully customizable call flows backed by global telecom access in more than 60 countries. With enterprise-grade reliability, a powerful API, and no contracts or set of fees, Ringba has become a go-to platform for performance marketers worldwide. To learn more and to sign up, check out the link in the description below. Get goaded and let's fucking go. Alright, guys, listen, this is gonna be a way on different kind of podcast here. I know a lot of times we talk about making money, scaling companies, but bro, before you get to those levels, there's a lot of pain that goes on. And this is very proper segue for my partner, Ed Pain. He's gonna be launching a podcast called Pain Points, and it's gonna talk about the pain, the bullshit you go through before you hit those numbers. No one talks about that, right? All the pain, trials, and tribulation. I know you had it. We talked about on the first podcast we did, right? Where you didn't know what was gonna happen with yourself or you have your kids, or you have all this stuff going on. I've I've had that happen. We had this happen recently with us, right? We're like, we we went from this to this, now we're coming back. Like, are we gonna be in business? So this is exciting. I'm I'm excited to have you talk about this. We're talking offline about these things, like we're gonna talk about a hundred different pain points, man. So that's what we're gonna be focusing on, man. What's what your two cents and all that?
SPEAKER_01Nah, man, I think you're right. And one of the things that's happening lately is that mentoring other roofing companies and other small businesses that want to scale. You know, it's identifying um the certain um landmines ahead that no one knows about, right? That things you don't know until you know. And um, and the thing about League Gen is you have a lot of peers, but what happens in every success level is you get to this new level of making money, and then your your sphere of influence changes again. You know, I I don't know how to uh set up like for tax shelters or tax or or just tax protection. I don't know how to spend money. I don't know how to the people I'm supposed to hire when you get to a certain level. And what happens as as our as we get more successful, um, our peers need to change, right? People that have been there and have done there, been there, done that, um, need to also advance with us. Tony Robbins talks about proximity is the number one thing that allows people for growth and success, right? Like Bill Gates is Bill Gates because his parents were on the board. We need proximity to other types of business owners and influences. And what happens if you don't have that, you just learn through trials and tribulations. And it's expensive, it's painful, it's repeated over and over again until something changes, right? If nothing changes, nothing changes. Yeah, but most of the time we don't even know what we're supposed to change until we're there. It's like now what? Yeah. So I yeah, I mean, I think it's uh I think every business owner goes through it to some level. Um, and if we can help curve those learning curves or or or condense, like you say, condense time frames. You know, how much could we have saved or how much more could we have done if we would have known what we know now?
Mentors, Proximity, And Hidden Landmines
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I maybe let's let's get into this if you if you're cool with it, right? Uh, and we're gonna be a little vulnerable here. And that's funny. Hearing you say that, man, it sounds like I know you, I know how smart you are, I know how successful you've been. I, you know, even prior to our emerging, I remember you have you have these massive fucking days where you you made shitloads of money, right? And uh was very like what do you call it, aspirational, right? But hearing you say that is like, man, this is this guy doesn't know shit, right? Because like I don't know this, I don't know that, but you you do, but that's that's the humble part of being a humble business owner. There's a lot of shit you don't know, right? And and and that's when you got to go be in proximity to the people that do know that stuff that can help accelerate and collapse those time frames, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. No, and I think it's also like you're saying the humility side of it, right? People don't identify to perfection. Yeah. When I talk about like um having like payroll coming up and not have like having$200,000 in payroll and having$10,000 in the bank, what do you do? Right. Uh, that's identifiable for a business owner. It may not be on that scale, it may be millions, it may even be hundreds or thousands of dollars. But the the thing about it is what people don't understand is cash flow issues, um, how to scale. Um, when your back's against the wall, when you when a when a publisher or an advertiser stiffs you um and you get stuck and you they go out of business, you get stuck with the million dollar um uh invoice out, what do you do? Right, yeah, you're you're you're depending on that money. So you either have enough money in reserves to handle it, or you have to uh or or you just gotta get creative, right? And and no one teaches you about that. No one talks about those moments, right? They're always talking about like the million dollar days or the or the$10 million months or the whatever. They don't talk about, you know, um, hey, I don't know if I'm gonna make it this month. What am I gonna do? Yeah. No, and that's great.
SPEAKER_02And I learned as we were, I was driving here and I was thinking about different uh as this project launches, right? Like there's so many things you can do. I mean, you're the first one that told me I I heard about what for fucking ProFormers were, but I didn't really know what it was. Yeah, right. And I think as business owners, you hear about things, but you never spend time doing it. And it was pretty cool. And I I would see you blow people's minds away with these proformas. Okay, this is the campaign, this is what it should do. You were forecast and projected, and you have meetings to see if we're getting there. But those are the things that people don't know about. And that that helps you with cash flow, helps you forecast, are you on track? Because I mean, someone I think a lot of business owners are like me. Um, and I don't know if you see it on the roofing side, but like, you know, we go fast, right? And but sometimes you got to slow the fuck down because you get yourself in trouble. A lot of the trouble we had, the landmines we hit, were from running really fast, right? But yeah, I want to thank you for that because I mean that opened my eyes to another way of doing business where, yeah, you can run fast, but you also got to slow down sometimes, look at the numbers or see where you're at before you blow yourself up because it's easy to blow yourself up.
Forecasting, Proformas, And Slowing Down
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but I think that's also like you're talking about growing pains again, right? Like you're a visionary. Um, we don't want to stop you from moving a million miles an hour. You got it, you're an idea minute guy. Yeah. Right. To stop you from your superpower is naive, right? Because that's that's your charm, that's who you are. You you sense stuff, you smell blood in the water. Of course, you want to go after it, right? So the problem, though, like you're saying, the pain points in that is do you have systems and processes? Do you have an RD department? Do you do calculated risks? Um, what's what does this mean to be a successful campaign? When do we pull the plug? How much budget do we put to it? So all these things like you're talking about right now, it's not about stopping business owners or especially people like you, the million miles an hour guy. I'm one of them, right? I I've had to learn to check myself because everything's a good idea. Yeah. Or um, you know, and then you're chasing 20 shinies. But but are you rowing in the same direction? Does your team understand what you want? Do you have the right leadership in place? And and we always talk about the reason why companies fail is either people or process, right? If the process is correct, then it's a people issue. If you don't have processes, you can't really blame the people. So even though, even though you want to do an idea a minute, and and and that's not the bad thing of it, it's is it calculated, right? Are you risk adverse? How much risk are you willing to take? What's the end in mind, right? One of the things that happens when I talk to business owners, and and it blew my mind when I first heard this, right? What's your number? Yep, right. And if you don't know what it means to, like Socrates says, you don't know what it means to go into war without defining what it means to win, um, you're never gonna win the war. It's like us in Afghanistan, us in Iraq, we never defined what it meant to what we're gonna meant to accomplish while we're there, right? So we occupy for 20 years now, what? Right. And that's what most business owners do. You get into business just so you could not work for the man or you have an idea. But if you don't have the end in mind, if you don't have that number which you're willing to retire with, how are you gonna reverse engineer a process to get there? And the same, and it could go as much as the business I'm in, or even um an RD initiative, like saying, Hey, this is a new thing I want to chase, define what it means to win. Even if it's like mini scalable wins, what does it mean? And when do we pull the plug? If you don't define that going in, next thing you know, you just hemorrhage money with no end in sight.
Defining The Win And Pulling Plugs
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that that happened to us. So let me we'll talk about that too. Uh so let's get into it. Like what what we we talked about this offline again. There's probably like a hundred pain points went through. What's the biggest pain point for you in the last, I don't know, I don't know. Maybe in your last five years or your career or like whatever.
SPEAKER_01Well, the most expensive one, um, well, there's two the one that we were supposed to exit, which we could talk about that one. But um the my biggest one is um even how to how to structure the companies with with taxes, right? Because of if I knew what I knew then, what I know now, I could have saved million dollars and not in taxes I didn't have to spend because I wasn't set up correctly. The companies and the corporations weren't set up correctly. And it's not about tax evasion, right? It's not that not that at all. It's just not knowing what I don't know. And you know, and CPAs and different they can't help us because they do our taxes, but they don't know anything about tax law or corporate structure. They're just thinking about just um um just doing our taxes and following these rigid guidelines, and this is what you owe. But they they only really write up what we tell them. So knowing what I know now, I would have set up all of our companies so differently because of how many millions we spent just in taxes alone.
SPEAKER_02What's an example? Is this a state structure or well e uh like where you live?
SPEAKER_01Um that's that's basic, right? If if you were spending like like Florida, Vegas, no no no f uh state income tax, right? That alone saves hundreds of thousands uh a year in um in uh in in in our good years, you know, if not if not millions. Um the other thing is like what we did later, like cash and accrual, have cash and accrual companies, right? But make it but it's legit. Um for instance, like we have we can have a labor company, a 1099 labor company that's on cash in construction. I can have my construction company on accrual accounting. Now, since most of my cogs, most of my fixed costs are labor and material. Those are the two biggest costs um for uh for any company for lead generation is marketing dollars, right? By having a cash and accrual company that's legitimate, at the end of the year, I can invoice for future revenues that are that I'm using for um for labor. And it's it's a legitimate tax write-off, right? And as and for me, that's I it's gonna have to pay the piper someday. So it's not like I'm divert, I'm just diverting uh or deferring taxes. And and the reason that works for us is that you know, we got stiff for millions of dollars and and solar companies going out of business, right? And so you can't go retroactively back to the IRS. So when we have a negative year because people go out of business, we still have to pay those bills. We still gotta pay our vendors, we still gotta pay our publishers, right? We can't say, Oh, I'm sorry, we didn't get paid, you don't get paid. But if if you divert the taxes the way that or defer them, you know what I mean? And when it's not if something big happens in business, it's when we could have saved millions of dollars that we've already paid in taxes and had the money in the bank to pay our vendors, and it's not like and it's not and it's and it's legitimate. Yeah, something as basic as that, you know, and most most companies or most business owners don't even think that way because they don't even know gap accounting principles, you know. Um, and so just on the most basic level, we could have saved millions on that.
SPEAKER_02So, how does uh and it's all it sounds amazing, right? But again, a business owner, like I would never know gap accounting methods, right? That's not my thing. I probably wouldn't fully understand it. But what's is is it as simple as hiring the right CFO? Is that it would the right CFO be able to handle it? Like, how did like how do you actually put this into place?
SPEAKER_01And and and Tony Robbins said this a lot. I don't drink all the Kool-Aid, but I like some of it. And one of the things that he said at Business Mastery was uh get a CFO. And whether it's fractional or on staff, and we've been blessed, or we've been having we've we've been able to employ CFOs. But the but the thing about it is you got to know the numbers. If you don't know the numbers, man, you're going in blind. You're throwing darts at a board. And the thing about it is you can make five, 10 million a year on hustle. Yeah, no systems, no flows, no operations, but eventually it's gonna collapse on itself if you don't have it. So you need to have the right people in the right seat, and that's in that's including finance. It's basically a three-legged stool in business. You got supply, which is ops, you got demand, which is sales, and you got finance. It's a three-legged stool, man. You don't have all three legs, man. You're gonna it's it's not gonna be stable, you're gonna fall. So finance is, yeah, definitely hire the right people, right? We need people that are able to accurately tell us, not just on a forecasting model, but cash and accrual. It's okay to recognize money. I always like the phrase excellent ears, right? Everyone always says, look at all the money I can make. That's great, but when does the money come in? Like in the solar, if you're if you're having these big guys that are paying us net 60, you know, you can't spend money now because money's not coming in for 60 days, right? How are you leveraging that cash? You know, so people are spending money that's not here yet. And and you got to have somebody that's pulling the levers that tells you when and when and how to spend that cash.
Tax Structure Mistakes That Cost Millions
Hiring Finance And Knowing Cash Timing
The Exit Process And Rolling Numbers
SPEAKER_02Yeah, 100%. I'll tell you, and you you mentioned this, uh, the taxes, one thing you mentioned, uh the exit. I mean, for me, that was the the pain point. It still hurts to this day, right? Because I remember we were at uh affiliate, was it affiliate? I don't know what show, LeedsCon or Affiliate Summit. We probably spent, we spent a shitload of money at that event. We had we had two booths. Remember that? Yeah, we had the connecting the dots booth and the solar direct booth next to each other, which was smart though, because connecting the dots had data, right? Age data, age leads, which companies wanted to buy for the dialers outbound. This is before any talks of one-to-one consenting that crap. And then uh solar direct or whatever company was, maybe it was connection only. That was a live lead side. So it was great because the people that came for the data would also talk to the solar direct. Like it was great from a biz that perspective. The issue we did is that we we went, it was almost like a dog and pony show. It was like we we were we were we hired a lot of people, we were very top heavy. So I think that I think that show in particular, we sent 10, maybe 12 people to that show. We only needed three or four max, yeah, right. So we sent too many people, and then you have more hotel rooms, more miles of feed, you do events. I think we rented out the fucking chandelier for this second floor. I don't know. That was like we split it with uh a couple of different sponsors, man, it was another 10 grand, but man, that was like we would do that pretty regularly, right? All the time. Our top line was high, our EBITDA wasn't bad though either. I mean, we did what I think if you're cool with Sharon, we're like close to 30 million. I think we did that year, and it was like a little over 4 million in net earnings. Uh but but the the bottom line is that we we we we the numbers were were okay, we could sustain that. But looking back, I think I don't know what you think. I think we definitely pissed away at least half a million that year, which would have made it 4.5 net. Maybe it was a million. I don't know. You agree? Like how much do you think we pissed away? Like that we didn't like I don't know what I call it frivolously, but like it was like dumb spending. At least half a million. At least half a million, right? But and the key thing is you might say like half a million is half a million, but on an exit, if we're a six X exit, six X, that half a million, if we if we did we're successful, that would have been an extra three million in our pockets that we split, right? So it's like that's what you got to think about. And at the time, you know, we were making, we made ink 5,000 four years in a row. There was one year where it was like connecting dots 214, solar deck was 187. Like that, that was an amazing moment for me. But we're at affiliate summit or leads con, whatever it is. It's like the offer. January 2022, we're talking to a company and they they make an offer to us. And uh, we're like, holy shit, this is for real, right? It was a 6X multiple. It was an 8X. Or 8X. Oh, yeah, yeah. We got two of them. Yes, there was a 6X and there was an 8X.
SPEAKER_01And the 8X was 80% up front.
SPEAKER_02Yes, like 30, 32 million, one, 24 million, another. Like, and we we almost cried, but we looked at each other like come to Jesus. It was like a this is like this is for real. This is this is like fucking companies want us, right? So I didn't really think it was gonna happen for like a month, but then like when we signed the paperwork, and then they would come to our office, they would look at our financial, like there's a quality of earnings period, right? And we were like two months into that. We went to like offices in Charlotte, we're doing all this stuff. I'm like, well, this shit's gonna happen. And we wanted to make sure people got taken care of, right? Yeah, that was our big thing. Listen, we want to do this, but we want to make sure that people get taken care of. And then I remember I was in Puerto Rico, man, with my family, and that was the first call that was going the wrong way because uh that solar started, it peaked out. Solar peaked out in January. We signed the paperwork in February to exit, and I was nervous this was gonna come come back to harness, but I'm like, it's gonna come back, it's gonna come back. Solar never fucking came back, it just kept going down and down and down, right? So anyway, we should have cut the we should have cut losses then. Exactly. And that's a thing, like looking back now. We know, but um anyway, yeah. I want to talk about that because that to me was a big it was it's it's there's no like I don't think we did anything wrong. It's just we didn't know.
SPEAKER_01You don't know what you don't know. Well, the other the thing we didn't know, and this is this is kind of the thing on exiting. What happens with the uh P ⁇ groups is that um uh they want it on a rolling calendar. Yes. We thought it was on uh on a physical calendar, yeah. And because our fiscal year was up, we were fine. But that but because January, February started the dip, it was our first dip ever, actually, yeah, as a company. Yeah, and so when you when you have a million dollar on fluctuation, there goes the you you want to sell when you're on your update. Yeah, right. You can't you don't want to sell when you have any kind of decline. So by having the decline, we went from an 8x with the 80 to a 6x with 50 upfront. Yeah, right. And and then we we ended up not selling, right? But the thing is we didn't know that. If we would have known that, we could have made the cuts, yeah, we could have laid off, we could have condensed cost, we could have done anything that we could have done to just kind of defer that that that kind of loss, right? But we didn't know. We said let's keep everyone, let them decide who they want to lose. We're just ignorant, yeah, right. We just didn't know.
SPEAKER_02We didn't know what we didn't know, yeah. And and bro, man, like I mean, I've I'm both of us, and then we had to call you know what happened with us. Everything we did worked, everything we touched worked. Yep. There was points where we were like, we could talk about Tim Lee. Tim Lee got a quarter million ahead of us because this was a stupid error. We had all these different entities with senior direct and solar direct, and somehow it got invoiced from the wrong entity. So Ronan didn't see that. Ronan would have seen that, been all over that. He would have never let that happen. Maybe he would have let 20, 30 grand, no one ronan, but whatever would have been better than a fucking 250,000 hour. But he this guy got 250,000. Like we were making so much fucking money that we didn't even realize that because regularly people would always like half a million a week or something's a million dollars, and then we would get paid, it would come in. But this one was a quarter million. We didn't notice it because it was a mistake. Then we I remember catching, like, what the fuck? And then I went after him. I was able to get like 180,000 that. But the point I'm trying to say is that we were doing so well that we didn't even catch these little things, and we were growing so fast that it was hard to catch it. We had the call center was working and sounds. We got that, we were the number one call center in solar, pumping out like you know, 30, 40,000 a day there. We're killing it on the age data side, we're killing on the web lead side. Everything was senior direct was doing well, everything was going well, but that's when you're you're vulnerable, right? That you can you start leaking and you don't realize how those little leaks turn into fucking, you know, what do you call it? You start hemorrhaging.
When Solar Turned And The Deal Shrunk
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, that's the thing about having the right person in finance and having these levers, right? It's it's the it's the thing of you know, knowing what DSO is, knowing that collections is going out, knowing what's AP versus AR. Yeah, understanding like when these when these fluctuations of the marketplace are happening that you're navigating, right? Um lead gen has changed a lot, right? It's uh we we keep joking, twice the work, half the pay. Yeah, because margins are getting crunched. Everyone's going direct. Everyone wants to be a business owner now. You know, um the the the the the the verticals that we're in are highly saturated, right? But a lot of these um indust industry trends happen way before we know. But once again, not knowing when you're making that kind of money, it's it's it's e in the yang, right? But are you saving for a rainy day? Do you have an RD department? Are you diversified enough? You know, are you um getting into the next hot thing? Are you are you so so big that you can't get out of your own way? Do you and that's and then for us, I think it's a lot of systems and processes, yeah, right? That once you have those systems and processes in play, um, if we would have had it back then, we could have seen those trends or flag those opportunities, you know. And like I said, we uh we did everything I feel right, but I wish we knew if we were to do this again today, that that's the thing. What would you have done different? Yeah, because I it was a fun ride, right? We travel the Dubai trips, all the fun. Well, we made a lot of memories, yeah. But but what would you have done? Let me ask you that question. I know I know you're I know you're leading the podcast.
SPEAKER_02No, no, but that's a great question. And what would you do different? There's a what the first thing that pops in my head is this because you know, you know, I love to trade. I I went to NYU during the dot-com bubble. I love, and you always say I I love I love it when one can find something before anyone else finds, or you catch it early, right? Which we both got into solar, and that's how we really connect is that I think I met you in 2017, and then we were both doing solar, and we had some mutual clients that come on, some of them were kind of tough clients, but they had good things to say about you, and they told you good things about me. And then that, and then we worked together, we had a good partnership, and like did this make sense. So, what I was gonna say is that we were able to crack solar early and then get into all these other verticals and make it work. But I would say is like it on Wall Street and stocks, when everyone's hot on something, that's when you sell. When everyone's cold, that's when you buy. Everyone in the mothers was hot on solar. Biden passed the inflation reduction act. I was At I don't know if you were with me in uh California, but it was August or September 2022. Biden passed the Inflation Reduction Act, right? And bro, everyone, I never it was so much enthusiasm. There were 50,000 people at this show. Everyone was happy. People are popping bottles, people are high-fiving each other. And it's almost like when we were high-fiving each other, when we made remember we made we made the two companies made it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02That's the fucking time to sell. But it doesn't feel like it. So I feel like that's when you got to start. Because we, I think what what I would have done differently, look, if we can go back the timing, because the solar lead factory sold their company, I think nine months before we were in talks. They they they timed it. They were doing these act talks like a year or a year and a half before us. We started it late, is what happened. I think if we had started earlier, we would have gotten out. We would have exited and when the time when everything was.
SPEAKER_01Even if we were three months earlier, we would have even three exactly three months earlier.
SPEAKER_02Because we were that whole process was gonna be six months max. We were two or three months into it. So I do I was gonna say that first. We had if we had signed the dial line three months earlier, uh, that would have been, and I think also if we had contact with a broker, could we talk to some brokers, whatever? I think that would have helped us too, because that would have made things move a little quicker. Yeah, we would have given up something. So I think two things is that when people are high, that's when you get out. When people are crying, that's when you get in. The same people, no one loved gold or silver when gold was under a thousand. You're fuck this, it's just a barb, it's old school, whatever. Gold six thousand, right? If Bitcoin, Trump got elected, that's another one. Oh, Bitcoin's going to a million dollars. People talk about Bitcoin million, that's when you get the fuck out. Now Bitcoin's 60,000. It might make sense to buy it here. Yeah, people aren't crying yet, but they start crying. That's when you buy, right? So that's what I think. And then and getting the right help, like you don't know what you don't know. So when this it'll happen again, we're gonna have that opportunity again. Now we're more prepared. And that's the reason why we want to talk about this because that's what pain points is gonna be about. Yes, these fucking experiences that you went through, I went through that. We had a$30 million opportunity uh to exit that it slipped through our hands. And but now the next that was our first time doing it. The second time, we'll do it properly, you know.
SPEAKER_01Like like now, then that's the point about having the end in mind. Yes. So so now when I start a company, like even in roofing, we have a three-year-old three-year exit plan the day I come in, right? Because they want to see three years of historics, we want to create systems and operations for scale, want to make sure we sell on the uptick, right? And we want to and we got to exit during that time. So the negotiation, the the steps to exit happens at year two, when we start when we start forecasting and all of this, and then and then we exit uh at the three-year mark. We're gonna get the most reward. Everyone wants something when it's scaling. They don't want to buy it when it's down, but knowing now that's what we that's what we do. If we would have known that, hey, we're gonna do the three years, we had the exit in mind. When we got into business, like I think most people do, you and I uh have a great mutual respect. You're on my Mount Rushmore of best friends. I trust you more than anyone in my life, really. You're like family to me, right? And I think it's a great intentions to get into business with someone like that. And and you know, no regrets on that side of it. Yeah, the the issue comes where like we're into this thing, not knowing what we don't know, right? And if we would have just day one said it said, what's what's the end game, yeah, we would have reverse engineered it from day one, you know, exits are not actually probably would have been better because we would have been selling on an upteck exactly on a higher EBIT amount. We would have done it the year we hit ink, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Not that's what I was gonna say. Not the year we hit it, not the year after. But we're like, I'll tell you what, this happens to be trading. When I get when my head gets big, yeah, and I made like a bit a lot of money, that's when I get fucked. Because then I feel you feel like you're invincible. It's almost like I I know you don't drink, but it's like sometimes when you drink too much, you think you're fucking invincible. Yeah, then you run through like oh fuck, whatever. You become like an alter ego comes out, right? And that's I do that without drinking, so I don't I don't need that. But you get what I'm saying? So that's the thing I think in business. When you when you get because I remember when we we hit it, I I actually fucking cried when we both hit when we hit Inc. 5000 uh 214 and 18. I I called you and I fucking teared up. Yeah, I'm like, congratulations. And I couldn't, you're like the I think at first you thought something went wrong. I mean, you probably thought someone died. Yeah, yeah. I think I called you and I couldn't even talk, right? Yeah, and like and I was talking like like a woman, like my voice wasn't making sense, right? You okay, you okay? And I'm like, no man, listen, I I yeah, I'm perfect. I love you, man. Like I'm I'm talking like sappy stuff, and you're like, yeah, I didn't think you know how to take it, man.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, I mean, I get those moments with you time every once in a while, but but when they happen, it's rare. So I think you said someone either died, or it's someone that like something really we should have sold.
SPEAKER_02We believe what? We're selling the fucking company.
SPEAKER_01Well, like and and we weren't like we're not even young spring chickens back there. We we were we were seasoned in in business, so it's not even and that's the thing about not knowing what you don't know. Timing's everything, but even so, I I yeah, no, but but that's one of my biggest regrets too. But at the same time, do you want to sell a bag of goods?
SPEAKER_02That's what makes it tough.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, did you want to exit just to say, yeah, I won, but then now the company that acquired us, then one to one came the year after. Yeah, oh all those other things. They hit everything. Yeah, I mean, things would have uh things is that is do we want to go on go out on top with the with with with smoke and mirrors, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, that's true too. I thought about that too. Like if they we if we did get acquired, because there's a when you do they're they're gonna give us 80% up front, and then there'll be a 20% earnout, whatever. But I mean, that was gonna not gonna happen because I mean solar just went like that. Everything went like that. And what's crazy too going back, people were popping bottles because the inflation reduction act got they extended the solar tax credit for 10 years. Yeah, so I'm like, we have a 10-year runway. That's what I that's what everyone thought. But that's a thing. When everyone thinks the same thing, that's when you got to think differently and prepare for the worse. Be pessimistic, right? Be like paranoid, like yo. So I think that that's it is beautiful that that happened to us. I mean, it sucks, it does burn, but it teaches that when that opportunity happens again, people are popping bottles. That's when I got Anthony Chandra. You know, like funny thing is Anthony worked in one of a call center that Ed Rand, he timed it perfectly. His his fucking timing was impeccable. But I'm always thinking the same thing. If we had sold, these guys wouldn't have heard of a bag of goods. Like, and it happens, that's part of the risk, but that's why they dropped our valuation, they saw it, and we didn't want to do it. Like, oh fucking, I'm like, I thought, I don't know, I think more so than than you. I'm like, I'm gonna fix this shit, I'm gonna turn this shit around, right? And we kept one of the things I have mistakes I made at the you you put in in eventually, I fucking listen, but we held on to some people a little bit too long, and they were good people, and I felt I felt bad, but like there was a point where I had to look at the numbers, like, listen, this isn't making sense. This is like at the point we became almost like the government, we're subsidizing people, right? And good people, but it enables them. It's better, they can't grow with us anymore because the earnings are down, so we have to start cutting. So I that that's what helped us fucking survive, honestly, man.
Org Charts And Right Person Right Seat
SPEAKER_01You know, yeah, and and that's the thing, like, you know, and I think that's what makes those good leaders too. So I I don't like the regrets on like letting people go because sometimes you have to. And I think whether it's a it's a season or forever, you know, the reality is is that uh we care about our people, and that's why people follow us. Yeah, so I I don't ever think we need to change that kind of stuff, but but yeah, but like but there is an expiration date, you know. It's um and and one of the things that I love to ask business owners, this is another pain point, and I love this, is uh I one of the first exercises I ever do with people is say, create an org chart. Let's say it's a company doing 10 million a year. I'm saying, create an org chart. And if I hired you as a consultant, how would you structure it? Right? Yeah, and it's kind of funny because people tend to run businesses like uh uh that they don't even follow their own advice, right? What what what and we're guilty of it too. We we manipulate our org chart to fit the skill sets we have on the team. We don't hire to fit the org chart, right? And it's like so it's kind of funny, like we know things. We know this person isn't quite qualified, we know this person's kind of operations, but not really a COO. We know this person's okay at um at tech, but not organized enough. We know that this person is not really a hunter, they're more like an account manager, but we keep them in roles because that's who we have. We're filling seats. But we we we manipulate a process and a vision that we have to fit the people, not not hire the people to fit our system, right? And um, but so you can be loyal, but I think sometimes there's loyalty a fault by putting people in positions that they're not gonna succeed in anyway, right? I think that's my other big learning curve and how I start every company now that I start is is the right flow to begin with. Yeah. And then and that and that allows me to so less, so much less stress by hiring the right people. So you brought up the point, but I don't think it's about getting rid of the people. I think it's putting them in the right seats to succeed. I like that.
SPEAKER_02And I also want to say too, keep in mind the the pressures uh as a as a husband, right? As a as a family man, um, you have four kids, right? Yeah, all different ages. I mean, when I met you, some of them were just born like two years old, like whatever right now, like they're they're getting older, and same thing with me. I got three kids, right? Man, you the the thing is that you you sometimes you do you hire someone and you hope they didn't figure it out, right? Then you start hoping. And but when you see the numbers, like you're making money, like sometimes that that excuses, not that excuse, but like it kind of gives you an excuse. All right, fuck, it's worrying let me deal with it. You keep kicking the can down the road and you don't have those tough conversations because you gotta go home, you gotta handle your your kids, you gotta they have problems at school, or you know, your wife needs help, or this happens, or that happens, right? So like those things fester is what happens. So I think the key is like having those tough conversations soon because that that's one thing that happened to me. I think it happened to you too. It happened to both of us. I think I've gotten better at that, but man, like you sometimes you gotta just rip the band-aid off and have the conversation. And it's tough sometimes as a businessman that's married, that has family, and whether you're married or not, it's still tough. There's a lot of daily pressures, but you add that on top of the regular pressures, man. It's easy for those things to to fesser and become bigger than they are.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, man, that's uh yeah, the the avalanche, right? It's kind of like you're trying to stop this avalanche from coming. I I do feel like there is a season in my life too, right now, where I'm at this phase. And like, trust me, I I don't I have a hard time letting people go. But if it's not the right fit, it's not the right fit. And and I gotta think about it through my own trials and tribulations, right? Every time I've lost something, every time I walked away from a company, there was something better for me anyway. Yeah. Right. And and one of the things, regardless of people's faith or not, I mean, I'm Christian, so it's easy for me to say this, but you know, I believe God has in store for me what I'm supposed to be doing, right? And if I'm in a position that's not supposed to be there, who am I to kind of keep people preventing them from being what's gonna make them thrive? Every time I've left a company or moved on to the next thing, I've had something bigger or better in store that I would have not have, I would have not been in front of me if I stayed where I was. And so I think a lot of times, even though we care about our people, once again, who are you to deprive them that lesson or opportunity for them to step in the shoes that's right for them? You know, and I think as business owners, we want to care for our people, but um, this there's something better for them out there if they're good people and if they're culturally aligned. And we always say this too in in EOS, right? We say right person, right seat, right? If you're a cultural fit for us, we'll find a seat for you on the company. Now, the now, is it the right seat? Are you supposed to be there? That's the other question. If it's a cultural uh cancer, then cut it, right? But as long as as long as you're a good person, you do the right stuff, you have integrity, yeah. We always want to find a home for those people. Now the problem is that sometimes those people we're paying them six figures, so we're trying to shove them into a senior management position and their middle management entry at best. That costs a lot, yeah. So that that that means that's a different conversation, like you're overpaid, right? And that's also hard, right? Because it's hard to go back to someone and say, hey, you're you're$30,000,$50,000 overpaid. Yeah. But that's that's the business talk, that's the real talk, right? Most people get one or two promotions past their pay grade, self-included. Yeah, right. And then so are we giving them a service by putting them in a role that they're gonna fail in? Because it's it's too big, too big a shoes to fill. I love that.
Roofing Scale Limits And Seasonality
SPEAKER_02This is great. We get to this is uh I'm excited for the podcast. I feel like this is the stuff that's very relatable. Everyone goes through it, or if they don't, they will go through it at some point. And you you just got to come across, get get across the other side. You got to keep the cash flow alive so you can survive and then you know catch that next up cycle. Um, another point I want a question. I want to ask you, we talk about pain points. We're talking about our experience with connection ownings, uh, growing the company. But what do you see? Because you're big, right? You have roofing companies, you're big on that side. What's the biggest pain point on the roofing side you see with roofing companies, uh home improvement companies?
SPEAKER_01I think a lot of them is real simple to what I just said. Yeah. Most most of them are like chucking a truck or small companies that got to a size they never thought they would get to. And most of them don't know how to get out of their own way. What happens to them is through pure hustle, you can get to three to five million a year, but then you kind of get stuck unless you have processes. That jump from five to ten or ten to twenty-five is is almost impossible for these small guys, and they don't know how to get out of their own way. So in roofing businesses, the two biggest things I see is everything I just mentioned, not understanding cash flow, not having the end in mind, but more importantly, what's the system and process to do in a multi-billion, if not trillion dollar industry? It's funny that no one does it the same, you know, and that's the thing. It's like uh I even had a slowdown, right? Uh I'm in multiple states. I was in 11 states last year. I had to slow down because I had to consolidate my back end. And that's hard for me. You know, you know how I am. I run like you. I want to, I want to go. And but I I saw that if I didn't stop and fix the processes, um, I was gonna, I was gonna collapse. So I owe it to my partners, I owe it to my team, I owe it for the people that didn't trust in us, that I had to I had to create something that was replicable and not and not built a foundation on quicksand. But what I'm noticing though in this industry, I would say 99%. I mean, that's a high number, maybe 95, but a lot of these business owners, um, the great hustlers, the great workers, the great visionaries, like you're seeing family people, um, but but they just don't know. Um, and no one's took the time to teach them. And that's kind of what's happening right now in this industry for me at least, is that I almost get this burden of almost how do I mentor or teach, which is actually why pain points came up for me, because I I'm not really a rah-rah guy, right? I want to stay true to myself. But the thing about it is, is I want to be able to mentor and help and teach and to show these business owners how to do this, right? I've only been in this a year and a half and I've scaled pretty quick. Oh, yeah, amazing. Um, and I and I'm passing people that have been in the industry forever, you know, and it's like, and it's not because I I I know how to swing a hammer, I've never been on a damn roof pretty much, except for fourth of July parties, right? So um, but yet I understand systems, processes, replication. Yeah. And um, and so that that's why I've been successful.
SPEAKER_02So we're talking about education with roofing companies, right? And I could tell you firsthand, I I I've seen we've been at roofing shows, and it's a different animal. It's not like the lead gen shows. It's they're it's a again, it's more like saw the earth people, truck in the trucks, you know, guys that maybe I don't know, they maybe they didn't go to college or they did they're more like you know, guys in jeans, right? They're not guys in suits, they're not fast talking salespeople, is what I'm trying to say, right? So the point is that I've been at these shows with you, and you when you talk, like you, you, you assemble, they they they congregate, they enjoy hearing you speak because you hit it from a different angle, but it's relevant to them, is what it is. And I got pictures of that. I've taken pictures, like wow, man, I don't know if I ever sent them to you, but we'll put them on the on the show uh when we do the clips and everything. But it's it's a valid point that you're making because it's like anyone else. Like in Legion, we didn't know what we didn't know, but in roofing, I mean, I mean, you're talking there's a lot of overhead in roofing, right? There's you got then you gotta talk about weather considerations, right? You can't install a roof when it's over 40, uh when it's under 40 degrees, right? So you got you got these months where like what the hell do you do those months? You got to size down, you got to staff. I mean, there's so many freaking moving parts, right? So I think that that's the the beauty of this, and that's why I'm really excited because I think you could hit it from the lead gen side, roof side, but it at the end of the business is a business. There's certain components that's all the same thing, and pain points are pain points, and that's what you're gonna hit upon.
Shifting To Business Solutions
SPEAKER_01100%. And this is why like we we switch with what connecting the dots does, right? Uh connecting the dots before was a data company. When I first started it, um, I I I connecting the dots was supposed to be I know a guy, right? I wanted to be a super connector. And um, and what happened was I ended up starting doing data deals, so it turned into a data company because my first$15,$20,000 in income was data. So I'm like, crap, I guess I'm a data company. It was fast. Yeah. So it was quack, fast, easy, back against the wall. How do I make money? But but now it's changing. Um, it still does data, but I it now it's shifting to what it was initially supposed to be. And right now, when I look at the need in the community, we still do data, it's still, it's still a great uh revenue stream. But the thing about it is is that the um is businesses, business solutions. What do businesses need to grow? You know, what what what what do we need to grow? Right. And um, what's cool about owning multiple companies, like um we we we could be our guinea pigs. Yeah, right. So we have virtual staffing, we we monetize data, we do lead generation, you know, we have a hard time filling operational seats. Um, lead generation is no longer a 15, 20% EBITDA business. It's a it's a four to 10, depending on what you're doing in month over month and revenue streams, right? So in order to hit those numbers, you can't be hiring high six-figure back-end people anymore. So we had to adapt to do virtual staffing, to do do some C-suite overseas to cut cost, especially during the offseason. And we can't hire and fire because we we need to be able to replicate and grow when scale's ready. So we so we started virtual staffing. We started um following KPIs, we started creating out processes and systems and replication. And so now what we're doing now is we're offering the same solutions to all types of businesses to grow and scale the same way we have. And that's what I kind of love right now because I feel like it's also manageable. I mean, the days, at least for now, there's there's home runs out there. I don't want to say there's no home runs, but but these million dollar, like quick money kind of things in this economy isn't as often. Well, and so now what can we control? And I remember the last recession in 2008, 2009. I was in, I was in marketing back then, and I had my record year in income. Because it's not that business owners or or consumers aren't willing to spend, they're much more price conscious of where their dollar moves. And so for us, it's kind of like where where can we offer solutions for ourselves, but extend this is and what's scalable to our competition, right? And so for me, it comes down to virtual staffing, AI, AI bots, data, cheapest cost of acquisition, speed delete, um, controlling um our labor and fixed cost, controlling our material cost. That's why I've been successful in roofing because now we're considered a national buyer. So now we get extra percentage off. You know, all yeah, they give you free tickets to the shows, right? It's an extra 10% off top line of cost off of uh shingles and materials is going right to our pocket. And then when we become a national buyer, it's even more percentage off. So this is stuff that not only makes us more competitive in the marketplace, but also brings our cost down for us and our partners, right? By by by combining it. But these are supply chain management and wholesale, wholesale pricing and labor. Like I said, the two biggest costs for any company is labor and materials or product, right? If you can control those two things, um, then you can actually exist or weather a storm. And it's not just weathering the storm, so you can be profitable where historically you may have a minus e bit a month, but it's also being able to be more profitable when the times are good, right? It's it's both. And so this way you can pocket more money to reinvest back in your company, to grow, to scale. But also when times are down, you're you're not you're not digging into your piggy bank to keep your doors open. Yeah. Right. And so what connecting the dots has really shifted its focus on is offering business solutions that do that. And um, and I love those conversations because it really does like you're to the point of this, the whole theme about this, it's really identifying the pain points, but offering them a um a clear solution on on how to navigate these storms.
AI Automations Replace Manual Back Office
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And with a good use case, we're just talking about AI here. We're actually, and it's funny because in about 40 minutes, we're giving away a Mac Mini. And and uh that's Claude bought all this crazy stuff, right? Like I don't really understand it, but we have Samara who's a big ass. He's been always he's doing all these cool things with it. We have a Chris on our team. He's he came on board with us. When was it in I don't know, October, November? And he already made an impact, right? And I remember I told you we have something here, it could be good, right? But we've been we've we we were excited. We have a lot of people we hired, and we were so excited about them, and it just fizzled out, nothing good happened. But he's been really consistent, right? I don't want to jinx anything, but the one thing he did was he has this AI acumen. He really gets it, he geeks out on this stuff, man. And and now we have a product that we're gonna be offering to our clients on the connecting the dot side and on the roofs in the box side, right? So, like we're so excited about that, it's gonna really help them scale and grow. It's happening with us on the lead gen side, and you you're seeing already in three days on the roofing side.
SPEAKER_01Well, even on the lead gen side, like we're talking to uh partners of ours, like uh even today. We talked to partners of ours saying, hey, let's automate some of the RPCs, let's automate like um AI telling us what to do as a company, uh, look for industry trans, looking at ads that aren't working. But imagine how how Instead of hiring someone full time, AI can do that for you 24 hours a day. Yeah. Right. And so it's it's it's it's not only in our industry where we're offering these solutions to create these bots that are people think like uh Terminator 2 kind of stuff is years out. It's her now. I mean, AI is so intelligent, so ready. I mean, it's it's it's putting out invoices for us. It's it's if a roofing is telling us all the pricing from all three major distribution companies, which is cheapest, you know, um it how how do we price negotiate that this house and this zip code is is worth more if you pull it from this company? You know, it's it's pulling levers and ideas that would take me. I can't even have my guys stop to even price check this stuff because it's just too much manual effort. Yeah, right. So we almost just have to do this the the status quo copy, paste, repeat. But AI is uh is eliminating those things. It's eliminating all of the admin kind of roles, but it does it in real time. There's there's no setup, there's no there's no thought, there's no um, there's no, hey, let me check. It's doing it for you and then telling you what's going on. So for us to offer these solutions, not just in the lead gen space, right, to to companies that that are just hemorrhaging money on staffing to overlook and try to give you these reports, but especially in roofing on material orders, on DSO, on cash flow, on on APAR, on uh activity from sales reps, from you know, QCing their calls and make sure they're saying everything that they need to do on a sales call and ranking them. I mean, all these things that would take hours of of hundreds of hours of manpower are happening now in seconds and pennies on the dollar. Yeah. So it's just awesome to be able, like you're saying, to be able to offer these solutions, not just for ourselves, right? Because we're the guinea pigs. We tested on us, crap, it works. Let's sell this, right? And so we're offering the same solutions that we've that we've discovered.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's exciting and it's just great to have someone on the team that understands it. It's really helped lift a lot of. We've had a lot of loyal people on our team now are very loyal, all hardworking, that they're they're great. And that to have somebody with that expertise, like you talked about in the beginning. You talk about your circle and the as you elevate, you want to be around people on that same wavelength. If they're not, you're gonna be going down. So to have someone on that wavelength, and that's why I'm excited. And I know I was working with him more closely, and now you are. So I'm glad that you're seeing it because again, like I just all said everything sounds good to me. I'm I'm an easy guy to sell at the end of the day, right? Salespeople are easy as people sell, but like I've seen it and like it's all working out, and I'm like, man, this is good, it's moving near. So now how can we incorporate that to other businesses where our clients could could win? And at the end of the day, it's about value, value creation, right? For the longest time, we were top five in the nation in solar. We're probably top two, maybe number one in data for a long period of time, right? So we were creating all this value. We we put up big numbers, but our clients were putting up even bigger numbers for every million they spent with us, they were making three, four, or five million, right? So now, you know, the the that that industry's constricting. And I don't see us, we're we're always gonna be involved so capacity, but then it gives us an opportunity to give more value to our clients. Now it's just a lead vendor, now we're like a true partner because we're helping them grow. You got you got I have a client that, man, they're doing the work of three or four people, and we can automate that stuff and relieve their burden, right?
SPEAKER_01People, people fire lead vendors, they don't fire partners. Exactly. And um, and I'm kind of on the on on the idea, like I love the gold mines, but I'd rather get rich on the shovels. People that make the money so the picks and shovels, right? And I think that's kind of where we're at right now. We're selling picks and shovels in this new economy, right? And it's and and people that aren't on AI, it's like I said, it's not some futuristic stuff. It's here now. You're already obsolete. Yeah, right. It's it's kind of if you're not doing it, you're behind. Yeah. And it's uh, and so for us, I just feel like we're on on the front edge of a lot of that technology stack, with whether it's CRMs, whether it's virtual staffing reducing costs, whether it's virtual bots, whether it's simplifying systems, whether it's offering SOPs and back end and support. Um, it doesn't matter what it is. We we can offer you solutions. And and what I like about what we're doing, this isn't, I know this isn't to toot our own horn. We're our products are like month to month. Yeah, it's not working. Stop.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, which is way different than everyone else. They're almost locked into a year of contract, even six months, like that's the beauty of it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I love the analogy. I I use it more in relationships, but when the horse is dead, dismount, right? Yeah, it's like some of these horses we just drag along too long, man. And oh, we've been stuck in contracts. Like, what the fuck? It was a bitch you get out of. Yes, yeah, yeah. And we don't want to do that to our to our partners. Yeah, we just don't.
Avoiding Bad Contracts And Knowing EBITDA
SPEAKER_02That's a pain point right there. Yeah, avoid those fucking contracts. I mean, remember, especially like in the call center, like we had called, man, we wanted to talk about because that's a whole other podcast, call center at pain points. Yeah, we're in the call center right now, we're in properties and really well run. I see like good culture and everything, but man, how many times we the worst part is when your call center, we were losing money, and then you're locked into a fucking contract you have to pay 10 grand a month on that you're not using. It's like adding insult to injury, right? And then you I that was the worst. That was a shitty time in life. We we were we went from our having our best quarter to having our worst quarter, like boom, boom. Now we're not getting all this money, and like we're working out like three, four times as hard for the same fucking pay. It was a shitty chance so many towards the talent. Like I was losing my shit a lot of times, man. And uh God, man, it's like the worst thing. And then when you have a fucking contract you can't get out of, that's the worst, man. Like that's damn. Yep.
SPEAKER_01That's the thing, right? You got the dialer fee, you got the lease, you got labor, you got unemployment insurance, you got all the stuff that you got to pay for, whether or not the the center is open or not, right?
SPEAKER_02You got you you just got the fucking taxes you talked about, right? It never ends. Never, and that's why it's never I love the accelerator thing because it doesn't matter if you made a million dollars in a day. How much did you fucking keep? Didn't you even get paid on that? You know, if if you only got paid 10 grand or 20 grand, whatever it was, you is it's not worth it. It's not worth that damn risk.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I was talking to a company yesterday, and and and I'll leave their name anonymous because I may end up interviewing them. Yeah, but I was talking about like what's your EBITDA? And they're like, oh, we're like at 40%. I'm like, no, dude, that's gross profit. Yeah. What's your EBITDA? What's your take home? What's your what's your net operating? You know, what what is it after everything's paid? What is it that you're taking home? You know, and people don't know. People just see margin, right? People don't realize that, you know, you could be at 40% margin, but by the time you pay rent, insurance, taxes, uh, labor, material, all the different things, you may be running at 10%. So you bring a million in. 100,000 is really the profit in that. And but if you spend 200,000, now you're 100,000 in the hole.
SPEAKER_02You don't yeah, and especially in the worst case, you get a legal issue happens. This happened to us year later or two years later, like, why where the hell this should come from? Yeah, and then so then you think you made X amount, and then you have to always account for that kind of stuff. Something will come up. That's why you need to have the prudent reserves, all that stuff. And that's again, that's why I'm excited about this. I'm glad we're we haven't we're talking about this. The audience is gonna, you guys are gonna love it. And everyone subscribe to LOG, subscribe to pain points, we'll we'll have a release date, we'll do a whole Ed and I are gonna go on a road show, we're gonna go to some cool places with some good influencers, have some podcast interviews with them. But it's gonna be exciting, man. I really can't wait. And this this gets me excited, and it brings back some like like kind of fucked up memories, but uh, I'm proud that we survived those things because some of those things we there was like one year, I don't know if it was last year, but it seemed like every week there was something brand new. And like the fact that we're still here, that we survive, a lot of guys have closed doors, guys and girls. We're still here, we're still profitable, man. You know, it's not what it was back, you know, years ago, but it's it's there, and that's all you need. You need to still you need to stick around. And then when the tide turns, if you got through the we made winter came, you know, winter was coming, it came, man. And I mean, it might come, it's got a problem again. But like I feel like we got past that phase, and now it's we have some really cool experiences and lessons, and that's the stuff that you're gonna be talking about. And we try to talk about LFG. Yeah, I can probably talk more about that stuff, but hey, that's why we have you on the show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's awesome.
SPEAKER_01Like, I think it's a great collaboration. Yeah, we can do we can have a combo of uh both. We can do the rah-rah because I think we need motivation, we need to see success stories, we need to see it's possible, you know. But I also think that we need to know how to get there, we need to understand the roadmap. Uh, our my new holding company is called Rising Tides because I like that because all all great name. Yeah, because all as water raises, we all raise with it kind of thing, right? All ships rise with. And I think that's uh that's kind of our philosophy how we do things. But it's um, but we we rise together or fall together. But you're right, man, we made it. And that's and that's like you're saying, we've seen some juggernauts go out.
SPEAKER_02Oh my God. It was like shocking. Like I remember back in the day, it was like this guy, that person, like, what the fuck? I mean, and then you see them go out and like, damn, are we next? And and then like you don't want to let down your your your employees, you know, when do I let down? I mean, there's months where we dug into savings. There's months we didn't pay so I think we didn't pay ourselves for like three or four months at one point. Easily, and then that's a point where like, yo, fuck this. I mean, we this is this is we gotta start cutting, man. I mean, this is a point where it doesn't make sense because if we go down, if we can't pay, if we you're not paying ourselves and we're digging the savings, like that's no one wins. We're in like every we gotta fix this. But anyway, that happened to us, and the fact that we stuck we we made it work, but that's business, it is business, yeah, right.
SPEAKER_01And this is the thing that you you just talked about a prudent reserve. How many businesses have a prudent reserve? Yeah, our rifting companies have a three month meaning that even if we have no business come in, our our vendors and our employees will still get paid for three months, right? And then we only give disbursements above and beyond three months prudent reserve, and it's and it's because that's how you run business, it's not supposed to be ran like a personal piggy bank. But uh, but the idea of it though is once again, I've that's pain points, right? I we I learned that through what we experience, right? We have companies that are failing and like crap, we're digging into our piggy bank. Yeah, we see surplus, we pay ourselves, and it's like, no, we don't, you know, these are things, I mean, and these are things you just don't think about until pain points happen. Yeah, and it's anyways, yeah.
SPEAKER_02No, I was gonna say one other thing, too. It's kind of tied in together, but we've both been to Tony Robbins events. I I love those events, and they're very ver, they're fucking it's it's like a uh an athletic event. You're there four days, you wake up early, you're out late, and it's like it's almost like being high without doing it's all natural. Like the guy gets you fucking moving, it's it's fun as hell. And I see a lot of people leave with the sugar highs, yeah. Uh, but they don't the thing is they don't execute, and and that's what it comes down to. And I know they have coaching programs to try to try to help you do it, but more the thing is most people don't execute on it. And I think that's why these the podcasts and what you're doing, you know, if people listen to consistently, actually put into place that'll get them ahead of the game. And there's so much, I think a lot of BS out there and sugar high shit out there, right? But how do you actually execute and actually do it? And that thing, yeah, I know you won't do that because you're actually gonna deliver the goods because you've been through it.
SPEAKER_01And that's and that's the problem with those kind of events, the sugar high, right? And even if you get coaches, they never ran a roofing company. They never ran a little sales. So how are you gonna coach me on a success story that you haven't you never done until you have dozens or hundreds of employees, until you understand the pain points of cash flow and issues? You can sit there as a rah-rah guy all day and trying to get motive motivate me. But what's the application, right? Um, I love the definition of wisdom is knowledge is is is the application of knowledge, right? It's it's um am I applying it? But if I'm getting coached by someone that's never been there, who it's not shoulder to shoulder. It's not even the right hierarchy. You know, I I can I can get a coach, but it's like, um, do you I I I need a mentor. Yeah, I need somebody that's gonna help uh lay lay the groundwork. Show me the path, you know, um, and then and then and once again, give me the action plan of how to how to execute it. Not not say, hey, oh look at look at I've done this path. That's great, you know. But it's like, but I need to I need to understand that the time, the energy, the sweat, the process, um, you know, even for riffing companies, I give them my SLPs for free. You know, nothing's secret for me. Uh, I and people that act in um we heard this from someone here in this office, actually, people that act in scarcity mindsets, I mean, forget them. Yeah, you know what I mean? It's like uh they're too busy worried about what they're gonna lose. I don't care. I don't have time. You know what I mean? If if if I offer the olive branch and and I and I remove obstacles of doing business and we don't do business, you were never gonna do business. Yeah, I don't mind giving the first olive branch, you know. But it's like, but the thing is, is that most people they're just and and business owners, especially salespeople, were pretty intuitive. You know what I mean? It's like, yes, we're easily sold, but if you screw us, good luck ever getting business again. Exactly. Yeah. You know, and it's so I think those people are loyal, right? If you if you do your business right, you know, and like you always talk about, create win-wins, you know, um, even if there's a loss, just own it, move on, make it right, right? But the thing about it is, is that it's not the losses, it's it's it's the it's the smoke and mirrors, it's the it's the BS that that that that makes us like callous to this thing, right? And and but I think that's what the business owners are hungry for, especially small to mid-sized business owners. Right? They don't know how to they don't know how to get to that next evolution. Like how how do I double, right? Five million, very few get there, but how do I get to 25? And for me, it's just as easy to get to 25 as it is to five, right? It's but for people that have never done it, it seems like it's it's it's it's like a theory, right? It's like quantum physics or something, right? They heard about it, but they don't really understand it. And and that's and that's the problem with most of this raw raw. It's all it's all in the clouds kind of stuff, not not tangible.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I was gonna say too, I I saw Arnold, you know who Jesse Itzler is? Yeah, yeah. So yeah, he's uh super everything he's he's got the mightest touch, but he went through a period where he had to hustle and like get creative, do crazy stuff. Great testimony, though. Great testimony, right? His wife's super, she owns Spanks, she's on paper, more financially more successful than him. Great testimony as well. Another testimony, right? So they're a power couple. I went to one of his events in 2020, it's 2020, this was before we merged. I don't know if you remember, I went to Georgia in the mountains. I fucking he has some weird events, not weird, it's unique events, I should say. Yeah, where he combines like physical endurance events with like business knowledge and networking. Um, and uh that's when I first did my first ice plunge, and I was I was worried, I was a punk out, but I I made it work, man. But anyway, yeah, then I know you do that regularly, but the the point is that he says something I liked a lot. He was at that point, I think he was 50 or 51. He was like, Listen, guys, you got all these gurus that are 20, 25, maybe 30, even 35. God bless them, yeah, they've had success, but they haven't been around the ringer. You want a guru that's close to 50 years old, and he wasn't tuning his own order. He doesn't have to do any of this shit. He's super risk successful. But like, you want someone that's been through all this shit, that's been fucking sued. Maybe they've been divorced, maybe they've been arrested, maybe like they they've been through it and they learn they come out the other side. And I remember him saying that that's a good fucking point. And his stories were just a crazy, like the craziest stories you can, and they're all legit, they're all verifiable. Some people make up, so they embellish this guy. Doesn't have to embellish. So when he said that, I was like, wow, and then I start thinking about like with LFG show. We did this, we started this two years ago. I think I was 44. I'm like, I was like, man, I'm I'm too old to be doing this shit. What the who the fuck was I here? Like, I you know me, I'm young, I got I got young energy. I probably have the energy for 20 year old, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, easily, like three of them.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but I I had that self-consciousness with me, like you, who the fuck's gonna listen to me? I'm gray, whatever the fuck, man. But I we did it and it there was an there it resonated. And I think the reason why is because people see what I they see what I've been through. I talk about the ups and downs, you know, it's we have our own little way we do things here, the LFG way. But how old are you? You're 49 now? 49. 49, right? And I think that's great because I'm 46 now. There is such a yearning for real knowledge, real people that aren't flashing Lamborghinis. You're not a flashy guy. And that and he he could flex a lot. I could I can say I could flex, massive house, beautiful house, right? Uh, you know, I know you you do great, you're good with your money. That's the people you want to hang around. You don't want the flashy fuckers because they don't know. He talks about Ibora, like all the stuff. So that's why I'm excited because yeah, this is the real shit you want to know about. This is the real shit that moves the needle. So that's why I'm excited because I it reminds me of Jesse yesterday. He was 51 at the time. Now I think he's 54 or 55. But all the experience he has, you have access, you get proximity to that, you walk away like wow, it makes you realize that there's so much to learn, man. And you've done it, you've been in the business world for 20 plus years, maybe 30 years. I don't even know. Me's too. So that's the beauty of this. That you've got the trip, you've been through the trials tribute. You're still here, you're still standing, and you're still crushing it, man.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01And that's the other thing, too, man. It's like, uh, and yeah, I mean, I don't even know where we're gonna end with, but uh um, you know, and that's the thing. I I had good mentorship. You know, I wouldn't be anywhere in life without great leaders around me, shoulder shoulder, prison company included. You know, you taught me a lot, you know, and and and and even just with some of the people that I would normally walk away from, you you've introduced me to some amazing resources that I didn't see what you saw, right? And so all of us need to ride each other's coattails a little bit. All of us got our own superpowers, all of us got you can learn from everybody. But the the thing about it for me is that um, you know, you I just want to say it like this, man. It's like there's so much BS out there, there's so many people that um that that get paid. And I'm I'm not even gonna say names. It's not about slander and saying like who's what, but uh 95% of these mentorship or these podcasts, they don't talk about anything real or tangible. Yeah, you know, and and and for me, it's just I think that's one of the things that we've been blessed with is amazing teachers, amazing people that kind of show us, amazing people that don't act in scarcity, amazing people that have nothing to gain, but allow us at the same circle and the same dinner table as them, right? Um, just being humble, just normal people that have made it and been successful, you know. And I feel like uh as as as older men, um, and now that we can consider ourselves, it's our job and duty to give that same mentorship back. Yeah. Right now, the problem is is time and um and energy. What's the what's the most effective way to do that? But it's uh but uh but I I love the fact that that's continuing to be um our legacy is is continuing to allow people to grow with us, to be able to include, to look at their best interest, to not have a monetary game. Obviously, it's about money at the end of the day, but we do it because we love it. We love people, we love the energy, we love to teach, we love to learn, we love the excitement, we love the newness, and and and we don't, and we don't act like we have it all. We don't, and nor do we, when we are killing in, everyone shares in the prosperity.
SPEAKER_02Well, listen, this had been this is that we have so much more left on our journey, you know, in terms of business or friendship and all those. We've already made so many great memories. And I'm I'm excited. I'm really excited about this next phase and about the the value creation, and it's gonna be fun, man. And uh I can't wait. And I don't when are we when are we dropping the when's pain points come out?
SPEAKER_01Um, I think it's gonna come out mid-March. In March, we're kind of just waiting on a couple of sponsorships and uh a couple different um couple companies of mine that we have that um would greatly benefit for having their name on this type of audience, hopefully. Hopefully they see the value.
SPEAKER_02We talked about EBIT uh top line, not being excellent there, right? Cost of goods, payroll, fucking rent. There's so many I could like paper cuts that add up, right? In this day and age, everything's through the roof. We live in Miami. This might be the most, I think there's the most expensive place in the country right now. So I yeah, whatever we were in San Francisco. San Francisco is the most expensive place, more expensive than New York. New York might be a little bit more, New York City might be a little bit more expensive in my head, but Miami is crazy. So the point is that you operate a business, no matter where you're at, you have a lot of expenses. So we talk about roofing companies, right? Roofs in the box has helped a lot of roofing companies save money. So besides the virtual assistance, like how what's the how are they actually benefiting? And what's been like the maybe some case study or testimony you can talk about?
Roofs In A Box Offer Breakdown
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there's a lot of case studies. Uh I'll start with my own companies. We have uh testimonials up on our site as well. Um, I think what it is, it's not just uh it's not just saying that we're doing it, it's actually showing how we've done it, right? Like most people, like they come to us and they say, I need a virtual assistant, you know, and they're a three million dollar company, which isn't bad. I mean, most riffing companies don't get there, right? Or even a five million dollar company. And they say, I need a virtual assistant, like uh my EA, Wendy, right? She's amazing. But uh when when you when you get to a thorough needs assessment, they need SOPs, they need operations, they need automations, they need systems and and processes to scale and grow because they're a sales org with no back end. And and what and so through a thorough needs assessment, and because we've done it, we can show them our organizational flow, we can show them processes to grow and scale. You know, um, my org chart actually works from anyone from 3 million to 25 million, 30 million. It's the same workflow, right? So to to get to that jump, it's it's it's already created. Um, and so part of only riffing companies is that I can consult, we can consult to tell them how to get there and more importantly, identify their real needs. So when you start talking about like virtual staffing, yes, we can give them a COO at 20% of the cost of what it will cost someone stateside, but it's also the right cultural fit. You know, they understand SOPs, they understand AI, they understand automation, they understand reporting. They're your entire backend support, right? And and that's what they really need. Or they say, hey, um, I'm I'm a business owner, but I'm also doing finance, I'm also sending out invoices, I'm also doing payroll, I'm also doing production manager where I'm um I'm ordering materials. They basically gave four jobs. That's not an that's not one's assistant's job, you know. So one of the things that we do also for small business, we offer fractional services, right? If you need a fractional CFO and AP and AR and a bookkeeper, we could do that too for a small business anywhere from like$1,500 to$4,000 a month. Basically, cover all four of those, right? And it's it's like I said, if you're a three million dollar company, you don't want to hire a full time bookkeeper. You're not big enough yet. So pay fifteen hundred, two thousand, get a CFO, get all Your get all your accounts receivable stuff taken care of. People say they need marketing. Like, well, do you even have processes? We do this all the time in lead generation, right? People say, hey, I want leads. That's why we don't sell the trucks in a truck. They don't even have processes. They don't have speed to lead. They don't understand, they don't have systems and areas to understand what how much revenue each lead is actually generating. They're so reactionary on each lead that comes in. They live and die on the vine of everything that comes in. So when they say they want leads, no, you need back in, you need a system to actually get to this lead and um and set the appointment and understand your numbers. So what you really need is a customer service manager, or you need a VP of sales, or you need um automations or AI to respond in real time. You know, and so I think the thing that we offer is not just heavily cost reduction with virtual staffing, but the right virtual staffing and also other solutions like AI, um, CRMs, different things that people just don't think about. Like once we're talking about pain points, they don't know until they know. So I think for us, because not only have we grown roofing companies, we could tell them the pain points to come. And we can also tell them when they need to hire these people or what revenue streams. And like you were talking about performers earlier. I could show them a performer for companies, I could show them the numbers, I can show them the actuals, you know, not just theory in real life. This this is my experience, right? In multiple states now. So it's uh so I think that's the thing that separates roofs in a box is is that is that expertise. The other thing just to mention about virtual staffing is you were talking about earlier about the seasonality, right? When when you you if you can't put a roof on or do a roof replacement sub 40, you know, granted in those colder climates you got siding and windows, but you can only one crew can only do maybe two or three siding jobs a month, right? Roofing you can do, uh one crew can do two to three jobs a day if they're good, right? It's uh so you have six months out of the year, you don't have real business coming in. So by paying uh 20% of operational costs doing it remote, you don't have to fire people in the off season, and you can still be somewhat profitable versus going negative. But like I said earlier, that what allows you to do during the six months of peak business, now instead of a 15% EBITD business, you're at 20, 25, 30 percent EBITD business. So now you can all also wither the downturn, but you collect more in the uptick. And and I'm not saying this so we can lose American jobs. What it's actually doing is keeping small business in business with cost, inflation, all the different hurdles that we're experiencing right now as business owners. Uh, people need companies that they can trust to help navigate these storms. And that's what I love about roofs in a box and connect the dots, but roofs and no box in particular is we're very versed in the roofing space. And we're basically giving people the same solutions we've used to grow. We're giving away our secret recipe. Um just because it's just because we're good at it. That's like part of rising ties theory, Andrew. Everyone rises, you we all rise together, and just to love it, man. Yeah, it's no scarcity, man. If you if you do what I do and make it better than me, if you're in the same market as me and kill it, kudos, man. Go get it. But we're still partners. I'm partnered in your success.
SPEAKER_02The pie is so big. The market is what what's I don't know what the roofing union is we know what was a total like market cap a trillion? It's like, yeah, if if your competitor makes 10 million, you make who gives a fuck? Everybody's winning. People get so caught up in that. Yeah, yeah, it's crazy.
SPEAKER_01I like the challenge, I like the I like the flex, I like the whatever. But the thing about it is celebrate victories, man. And you know, it's it's people that are like gonna say, I'm not getting what you get, or this jealousy mindset or like whatnot, man. Forget those people. I don't have time to walk over, um, sit down and look look at the dead bodies. I just need to keep moving. Yeah, and it's a people when people are successful, man. Celebrate, yeah. You know, and I I love celebrating people's success because as like just in our companies, when they succeed, we succeed. Yeah, you know, they'll never they'll never fire a partner. And I believe that we're that's what we are. We're partners in the roofing space.
Client Success Stories And Partnerships
SPEAKER_02I love it. That was great. You have an example that was a good example of uh like the best, I don't know if it's a turnaround, but bigger success story on the roofs in the box side with a client.
Pain Points Launch Plans And Subscribe
SPEAKER_01There's a lot. Um, I have a couple, well, recently, um, I've I could tell you one that just happened recently. I'll keep the name anonymous. Um they're they're on my testimonials or on our testimonials. But um what what happened was is we started this um this as more like a sales team, but we we didn't talk about sales, we talked about their pain points. We we did we did uh a month or two of needs assessment. They started buying services. Now we're partnered. And it wasn't even like I was trying to get into partnership with them, right? It was just kind of like uh they didn't know what they didn't know. But now all of a sudden they're part of rising tides, my holding company for roofing, right? Because now they under that they trust our back end, they trust our processes, they see what it does to their EBITDA, that uh they understand that they're they had broken systems and workflows, and and and now they just want to be part of the company. And because our back end is so dialed in, I I can I can acquire or merge with companies overnight and give them a back-end process that works. And it was not why I did it. I wasn't trying to acquire companies, I was just growing and scaling my own companies. But but what's happening through this is that it's creating these partnerships, a mutual language, a mutual trust, a mutual understanding. And like I said, it wasn't my motive. But because you you can't get intimate with companies on that financial level, watching the success, going shoulder to shoulder, and sometimes you just share in the journey. It just feels right. So I have a couple of testimonials just like that, you know. Um, it and and then yeah, so besides the factor saving money, besides the factor EBITDA has gone up, besides the fact that now they're able to reallocate and put and open up new markets with the profit that they wouldn't have been able to do otherwise, right? These are the same companies asking us to come along for the journey with them, which which is which is when you talk about that level of trust, man, it's not just that like I'm saying, celebrating their success, whether or not they invited me along or not, but just to be included in that journey on that level. That's amazing. That's that says something about satisfying 100%.
SPEAKER_02That's great.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well, guys, this has been amazing. I th I thought initially we'd do 30, 45 minutes, and we've gotten way over an hour, but there's just so much, and we could keep going. We could go three, four, five hours if we wanted to, I'm sure, especially on the pain point subject. There's gonna be, yeah, that is bro, uh, that's that's crazy. And uh, I I can see this going a lot of, you know, I geek out, guys. I can see this becoming a big thing. So and good community as well. So Ed Payne, guys, we're gonna put all the information, proofs in the box, links, connect to the dots links, pain points. We'll put we'll do a big thing. We're gonna be doing a roadshow for that in March, shoot more podcasts, getting the word out. Subscribe, guys. Learn, learn from the best. My main man Ed Payne in the house. Let's fucking go. Your network is your net worth. We got a fucking crazy network of people. I'm not talking about your average motherfucker, I'm talking about people doing$300,000,$400,000,$500,000 a day in admin. People that made billions of dollars in sales, people exit their companies for about a billion dollars. You hear the hundred episodes. Guess what? We're about to take shit to the next level. So you want to be part of it? Subscribe right now. Remember, no money, no honey.