Buying a Business? Don't Make These Mistakes in the First 90 Days

Avoid expensive post-close mistakes by running a calm, disciplined first 90 days after acquiring a security or life-safety business.

In this episode of Entry & Exit, hosts Stephen Olmon and Collin Trimble break down what actually happens after you close—and why most buyers hurt themselves by moving too fast. Drawing from real acquisitions (and real scars), they lay out a practical “stabilize first, optimize later” playbook: how to earn trust with a new team, avoid culture-killing moves, protect licenses and compliance, and lock down customer relationships before you start changing systems, comp, pricing, or process.

You’ll hear the biggest early-stage mistakes (the ones they made), plus the specific moves they now treat as non-negotiables: meet your top customers, over-communicate the transition, centralize logins, audit contracts, and use the seller’s knowledge before it disappears.

What You’ll Learn

• The 90-Day Mindset: Why your #1 job is to be the world’s best employee first—not the hero CEO on day one
• Team & Culture Traps: How arrogance, fast firings, and premature promotions create attrition (and how to lead with humility)
• Stabilize Before You Optimize: Which operational “improvements” (tech stack, process, comp, parties/bonuses) backfire if you rush them
• Customer Protection Plan: How to identify your top customers, meet them early, and prevent churn through over-communication
• Operational Risk & Compliance: License/CEU gotchas that can bite you when you’re distracted by integration work
• Post-Close Hygiene: Passwords/logins, contract cleanup, and why “we’ll get it later” becomes months of pain
• Pricing & Branding Decisions: Why you shouldn’t raise prices (or kill the acquired brand) in the first 90 days
• Homework Framework: Build your “do / don’t” list and keep your first 10 priorities mostly learning, not change

🔗 Connect

Stephen Olmon — https://x.com/stephenolmon
Collin Trimble — https://x.com/TXAlarmGuy

More Entry & Exit — https://www.entryandexit.co/

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Team Dynamics
• 1:08 First 90 Days: Setting the Tone
• 4:19 Avoiding Common Pitfalls
• 10:49 Stabilize Before You Optimize
• 23:31 Building Customer Relationships
• 28:31 Learning from Previous Owners

Transcript

EE 13

[00:00:00] We're actually gonna start with a whole section on don't do this, and the way we know not to do this is 'cause we did it. I'm crying on the inside. Get to know your team really, really well. Using either the carrot or the stick is usually not successful for me, but when I have a relationship with them and I understand their perspective and their why, it usually goes really well.

It's a mistake to come in and just start cutting immediately slow down. Let's really understand who everyone is, what they're good at. 

You need to be focused on stabilizing the business before you're really optimizing the business. Although it may be optimal, it may not be smart yet. Totally agree. You gotta kind of spend some time.

Wait. There's one more.

Welcome to entry and exit. I am Steven Oman, and this is Colin Trimble, my co-host and business partner. We run Alarm Masters in Houston, Texas, and we also host this awesome podcast where we're trying to provide practical, tactical [00:01:00] advice on how to grow and scale and ultimately potentially exit your security or life safety business.

I like it better when you intro us as extremely handsome podcast hosts. That's my favorite intro. Oh, it's a, it's a, it's a given. So let's, can we go back to that or, um, anyway, so LA last week, uh, on the pod we talked about, um, due diligence. And so now we wanna talk about what that first 90 days should look like after you do an acquisition.

I think those first 90 days, um, kind of sets the tone for the first year, couple years. Mm-hmm. Um, and everybody wants to go in and. Make a bunch of changes and we're gonna talk about that. We're gonna talk about our experience and some of the things that we did. We're actually gonna start with a whole section on don't do this.

And the way we know not to do this is 'cause we did it. So we're gonna jump in. Steven's kick us off with some don'ts In the first 90 days of owning a business or AC acquiring a a new business, the 

first thing I'm gonna [00:02:00] start with is your attitude. Towards, and, and this is by the way, assuming that a lot of the people are gonna stay around.

So if you're just buying accounts, yeah. That's a bit of a different conversation. This is, it is, think about blind buying a, a platform in a new city, something like that. Um, or even a large add-on in your market where you're going to keep most or all of the team. We're really kind of more speaking from that place.

There's a few things that we'll speak to that are still applicable. If you were just doing like a. Accounts only, you know, tuck in. Um, yeah. But we're, we're more so speaking about a little bit of a larger acquisition. Mm-hmm. Okay. So, mm-hmm. The first thing is your attitude towards the team. Yeah. If you come in and smell like 1% arrogant.

Or high and mighty, like, you're the expert, you're gonna teach them, you know? Mm-hmm. All [00:03:00] the things that they're too dumb to not understand. Mm-hmm. It's not gonna go well. Yeah. They need to feel respected. Um, I think you want them to feel e even if there are certain people, which. Well, we'll talk about this in a bit, but there might be some people you're thinking about letting go in the relatively near future.

Fine. Yeah. You still want to approach them with a degree of respect and appreciation and confidence. Giving them, you know, some clarity, uh, that you can at that time as like the starting point. So how do you start off the relationship? It's like first date. 

Yeah, 

almost. You know, if you sit down on a first date and you're super arrogant and you're kind of a jerk, like it's probably not gonna go to a second one, you know?

Yep, yep. And this first date metaphor, you know, you really need that to go very well. Uh, and so it does set the tone and it's going to have a bit of a domino [00:04:00] effect in the coming months. And so that's the very first thing I remember when we. Did the original alarm Masters acquisition, and we were in a really small break room and we had everyone together.

We really just tried to lead with humility. Yeah. Like we don't know everything. You guys are very experienced. We're not trying to come to the table and change all these things immediately. Um, even though we, we were tempted to change certain things quickly, we tried to come to the table with humility.

What I tell people all the time is, in your first 90 days. You want to be focused on being the world's best employee mm-hmm. Of that business and not the best CEO or manager or new owner or whatever. And so what does a great employee do? Um, they have a great attitude and they work really freaking hard and they're really curious.

And if you do those things. Um, you're gonna be a lot more [00:05:00] successful. And we didn't do those things in the first 90 days, at least in the first 30 days. Uh, 'cause we just didn't know. I think that a lot of times it's, you're excited, you, you and you're nervous 'cause you just, you know, purchased a big. Do business and, and, and even this is even particularly true.

I think the people that are the most guilty of this are the folks that are already running a platform and they're buying another one, and they think, I've already done this. I'm successful. Yeah, I've done this. I'm gonna buy another one, and I'm gonna put my playbook as fast as I can in that first 90 days.

I have nothing to learn. Here. I just need to roll this out. And anybody that jumps on board, great. Anybody else they're getting, they can get off the bus. And I, I gotta say, I think that's the wrong attitude. Um, and the reason I think that's the wrong attitude is I think that, at least in my perspective, when I'm trying to roll out change in my group of people.

Telling them and using either the carrot or the stick is usually not successful for me. 

Mm-hmm. 

But [00:06:00] when I have a relationship with them and I understand their perspective and their why, it usually goes really well. 

Yep. 

So, uh, if I want them to understand my why, like for example, we implemented a new thing at the end of service tickets, they gotta do a couple extra steps.

It's really annoying to the technicians. And I explained the reason we're doing it, and then I said, why don't you. I know this is gonna be annoying, so why don't y'all kind of show me on a couple service calls, like how long it takes. Like yeah, show me what it takes and why it's annoying and like why it's tough.

And they showed me and I was like, yeah, that is more annoying than I thought it would be. Uh, and it is more of an inconvenience 'cause the customer's trying to talk to you and you're trying to fill this thing out and Right. That is super annoying. And also. I think that there's value here because of these things and you know, maybe you tried this or this, and just the sheer fact that I was out there and I listened and I saw what was going on, bought the credibility of the employees to say, okay, I was heard.[00:07:00] 

And I think ultimately, if an employee feels heard and you have got a relationship with them, they're gonna buy. 

Yeah. So lead with humility. Start to build rapport and trust as quickly as you can. Some credibility, you know, go out on some service calls, like get into the mix with the new team some as much as you can.

Mm-hmm. Um, the next thing that I'd say is don't act on the temptation to be a firing squad and just start to like, yeah. You know, uh, try to cut and you have some, you know, goals for this acquisition to be accretive. So you've gotta try to juice, net income or ebitda, whatever. It's a mistake to come in and just start cutting immediately.

Mm-hmm. I think that even if, you know, let's say you have, um, kind of duplicate people from like a back office perspective and you genuinely don't need. [00:08:00] One or two of those people, as an example, I think you still actually want to budget in maybe a month or two for some continuity and some culture to just slow roll that a little bit.

We know that that person may not be here long term, but it's actually gonna be worth the dollars to keep paying them for a little bit. To not create this tone that you're coming in and just slashing and being really aggressive and not even considering what those people might actually be good at or, um, their, their knowledge and whatever.

And just like not really being appreciative of the history. There. Yeah. You know, we talk about tribal knowledge a lot. Like Yeah. Slow down cowboy. And this, this is, you know, we, we have done this in a way that was not very bright in the past. Yeah. And so we're just saying it from experience of like, let's, let's slow down.

Let's really understand who everyone is, what they're good at, what they're [00:09:00] actually doing, not we talk about titles versus tasks, like mm-hmm. What is someone's title versus what are they actually doing? And oftentimes that is way misaligned and so. You have to do the hard work to really know who these people are, what they're actually doing before you go in and just look at them as someone on a spreadsheet that you need to cut in the first seven days.

So that's, that's the third thing that I would say. 

Yeah, I think it related to that one mistake we made. We, there was an employee when we got alarm masters that was clearly not doing much and they were doing collections and they were like. Not collecting like they were, their, the amount of money we were paying them was way more than the amount of money they were collecting each month.

And it was like, what? What's going on? And so it was pretty evident that this person was not great. They were a family friend of the previous owner. And so we ended up having to let that person go within the first 30 days. And I think it bothered, bothered a few employees that. We didn't spend more time with [00:10:00] this particular employee 

mm-hmm.

To understand their perspective and what was going on. And I don't think it would've changed my mind, but what had we had done it over, I would've taken more time and sat with them. Yeah. Really just so that the other employees would've seen like, Hey, we're worth really thoughtful about this, and like 

mm-hmm.

Outwardly evaluating this person and making sure that anytime we have to cut somebody, there's a lot of reasons why behind that. And I think it's, it's always fancy. You hear about people talking about culture and maintaining culture and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you're like, I, I'm not the culture guy.

Like, that's not my, my, uh. Default state is like, I'm, I'm fast, I'm task oriented. I'm knock it out like let's rip the bandaid off. And I have learned a significant lesson about when you don't have culture and when you move too fast, um, you can hurt people and you can hurt key people that you don't want to hurt.

So, yeah, totally agree. You gotta kind of, you gotta spend some time. I think that kind of leads into the next point where it's like, hey, the first thing you wanna do [00:11:00] is you just wanna go slower than you think you should. And, um. For me. The kind of thing that we think about is like, Hey, that first 90 days, you need to be focused on stabilizing the business before you're really optimizing the business.

Mm-hmm. You wanna make sure that you are protecting your downside before you're optimizing for the upside. Yes. And you, you, you can do a little bit of both, but you really need to be focusing on that stabilization. And so there's a bunch of different things that go into that category of stabilizations.

I'm gonna let Steven kind of walk us through a few of his thoughts on that. But um, yeah, I think that's a really key thing to think about. 

Yes, I'm gonna come back to that. But one thing I do wanna touch on briefly is the inverse of what we talked about is not just people that you might let go, but I think there's also times where you might be tempted to over promote or promote someone too quickly because you feel like you have this 

Yeah.

You feel like, 

you feel like you have this gap. Yeah. We're laughing out of pain. Um, yeah. You have this gap and so you're just gonna. [00:12:00] Shove someone in there that you think's smart or capable or whatever it may be, and you didn't really get to know them and you didn't necessarily, um, get to know their strengths and their weaknesses and what they're really gifted at.

And you just saw this person's been here a long time or seems to be pretty smart and I'm gonna shove that person into this other area that I know I have a problem or a gap. And that can also, if you use that too quickly, be a. Huge, um, kind of determining factor of how that first year is gonna go. Yeah.

So, amen. I don't want anymore to add to that. Well, I just have a lot of pain associated with it, so just quiet desperation. 

Um, gonna leave that there. 

Yeah. So in, in terms of the, uh, kind of going slow, um, being methodical, um. There's a, one of the things that comes to mind also just from pain is all things, and this is true not just in [00:13:00] the security or life safety industry or whatever, this is true of any kind of, uh, small business acquisition, um, even like mid-market like technology, payment processing, um, systems and processes that are supporting the business.

I mean, trust me, we walked in, we bought Alarm Masters and they were using, I will not use the software's name, but I'll say it was the single worst piece of legacy software that we either of us have ever endured. Yeah. And the shocking thing is that it's actually a pretty popular software in our industry.

Yeah. Um, and we knew day, I don't know what day seven. Day one, day seven ish that we had to rip and replace. Yeah. But we didn't actually get to fully do that for over a year. Yeah. You know, uh, not entirely. [00:14:00] And so. There's a temptation to come in and say, well, we use this system or we do it this way. Or, wow, your tech stack is really thin, or, or, Hey, you're using too much technology and you've kind of over processed all this.

Whatever it might be, I don't care. Don't go. Just like banging away at all that stuff and rip it out and tear it up and say, this is stupid. This isn't how we do it. You know, I can think of a really specific scenario that is, is kind of a current item for us, and there will be a temptation to try to replace a certain system quickly.

Mm-hmm. There's a lot of nuance around that. There's a lot of people touching that system and those processes. And if, if you go buy a business and you like it, well guess what? If you go destroy all their processes overnight. You might not like it so much, you know? And you're gonna create a dumpster fire for yourself.

It's gonna be hard to turn around. And it also comes with like [00:15:00] demotivating people and like employee morale. And so I think if you're going to, because people don't typically love change, like if you're going to make those big changes that impact people's daily work, like I use this system, I know this system, I like this process.

I built this process. Yeah. Like, yeah. You have to slowly communicate, like this may be changing, Hey, this is going to be changing. Hey, this is going to be changing in three months from now. Mm-hmm. Hey, we are starting and just like slowly trickling that out. Mm-hmm. Because if you go aggressive in there, especially around, you know, let's say you have a little bit of an older employee base, and from a technology perspective, it was really painful for them to get comfortable with that.

And just in the last couple years, they finally feel confident and then boom, it's all changing. Yeah, you're gonna have some people pretty frustrated, you know? So just, you know, buyer beware, 

even if something is really, really hard, like that technology, we knew we were gonna replace. We did not take enough time to fully [00:16:00] understand the technology, and we actually went out and tried to replace it with, uh, one cloud piece of software.

And it failed. Yeah. Like we spent a ton of time and we didn't properly qualify because we didn't know, we weren't using the software in depth enough and understanding the process enough. So then when we finally implemented Salesforce, which is what we ultimately went with, it took us one year, which I worked at Salesforce.

We have a lot of connections in the industry. Uh, I, I was budgeting three months and it took us one year we paid for a year of licenses. 

Yep. 

Before we were on the platform. And yeah. Just goes to, I think it could have been a little faster if we would've gone a little slower, like if we would've That's a little slower.

Yeah. You know, just kind of like, learn a little bit more. Take it like a one 

step. What else operationally do you think is a mistake to go too fast on? Changing, like think about, I'm thinking about services, [00:17:00] like we knew there were other things that we wanted to start cross-selling. Upselling. Yeah. So ops, sales, like there's just some areas I think there that 

are dangerous.

One thing that I think that you gotta be careful changing is, um, new. Um, precedents that you set for things like, like, this is just a, a simple example, right? Like, um, if you are gonna, if, if you know you're gonna set a new precedent in how you do bonuses or how you do mm-hmm. Holiday presents or holiday Christmas parties or whatever, you just have to be mindful of like the broader picture.

Like, we didn't know, we didn't know we were gonna do, they didn't do Christmas bonuses really. And then, but, but, so we were gonna do Christmas bonuses. The year that we bought the business. And one thing that they did do was they bought like a grocery store gift card for a couple hundred dollars for every employee before Thanksgiving.

And so we didn't do that and we told everybody, Hey, in, in lieu of that, we're gonna give everybody a bonus. Well that hurt some feelings [00:18:00] 'cause they counted on that. 

Yeah. 

You know, grocery store gift card. And we didn't think about it. We're just like, I'm gonna give 'em more money in on their paycheck than they're gonna get in this couple hundred dollars of.

You know, to buy a Turkey. And it's like, that seems so trivial. But that caused a drama. Like it caused people to be frustrated. I remember calling Steven being like, dude, why am I dealing with grocery store gift cards? Like, why, why am I in some little things? 

Yeah. 

Why am I stressing about it? So there's stuff like that that you just have to really consider.

Mm-hmm. 

Um, so a lot of stuff like that. And then, you know what, I want to kind of jump back, I wanna go back to the stabilize before you optimize thing, because one thing that I didn't think about. Uh, enough and I took for granted, especially, at least in our industry, it's pretty highly regulated, so there's a lot of licenses that you have to have, and I was pretty familiar with some of the licenses at the company level, but not familiar with the individual technician licenses and some of the kind of the other sub licenses that you have to keep up and the, and the [00:19:00] requirements for those licenses like CEUs.

I would tell you in your first 30 days, that's a really, really great thing to get excellent at. Call up to the licensing office and learn everything you need to do to maintain that license and understand when it expires and set, you know, uh, reminders 90, 60, 30 days in advance and go learn everything about the individual licenses.

'cause for, for example, I knew exactly when our company license was gonna expire. I was already ready to go, like already working on all that. One thing I didn't realize is, oh shoot. You have to resubmit this form to your insurance agent, and the insurance company takes 30 days to do that. So we got behind the eight ball because we happened to be switching insurance companies at the exact same time that our license was renewing and they needed this insurance thing.

And I just like didn't think of it. Yeah. And another thing was like, I didn't think about the individual technician licenses. They needed CEUs and. It just, it is the way it is in the industry. Like most of the time the company is reminding the [00:20:00] employees and making sure their CEUs are up to date. CEOs are continuing education courses.

It's just hours of courses they have to take every year. And I just figured, okay, I made the assumption that every technician was using their CEUs and when we renewed our company license was like, Hey, did you or your technicians have all their CEUs? 'cause if we audit the technician license that don't have 'em, you know you're gonna be in trouble.

And so that's just stuff that like. It is gonna be painful if you're already fully in the job and you're like doing all the operational stuff and making a bunch of changes and you're having to try to figure out how to keep your license up to date and all the nuance. I would just say, I know this seems so tactical.

Um, it's important. 

Another, a couple other items to touch on. There are, um, the stabilize before you optimize, like. Let's say you're buying an add-on, a large add-on, maybe it's adjacent to your market and you have like really elegant like field service ops that are like super uh, dialed. Like, that's awesome for you.

Cool. [00:21:00] But you also have to take into consideration that the current techs in that business have a way of life and like it's the way they've done things. And so again, although it may be optimal, it may not be smart yet. Yeah. Yeah, so that's just another example. More like ops, you know, like slow down cowboy, you're right, it's smart, this is better, but not right out the gate.

Right. Um, and so I think there's a litany of those examples where, um. It just, it's not worth it. Like the value you'll get from being super aggressive upfront on some of those things doesn't take into consideration the human element of buying a business and, you know, trying to help people kind of ease along into that.

Anything, anything else that comes to mind on really the, the don't do the stabilize? 

Yeah. One thing I was thinking about on stabilization [00:22:00] is, um, this is a big topic, so we may be here for a minute, but. Is, um, your customer base. And I would tell you that the first thing that you should identify is, um, who are your top 50 customers by revenue type.

Mm-hmm. 

And I would go meet them face to face. I don't care how big the organization is, getting perspective from your customer on the good and the bad. Like specifically say, what can we do to improve? Is going to go a huge distance for them because they probably have a lot of things that they like and they don't want to change, and they probably have a couple things that they're wondering will change for the better.

I remember we had a lot of customers say, Hey, we love the touch from, you know, the previous owner. We don't want that to change, but the billing, the billing is tough and it's like really tough for us and like, could, could you guys do something about that? Not only did that help. It surfaced deal flow. I mean, we talk about it all the time.

Go see your customers. I could, I [00:23:00] think if you're gonna listen to our podcast, you're gonna hear one thing over and over again, which just goes see your customers. 

Mm-hmm. 

So that top 50, those first 50 customer meetings I did are producing fruit today and established a relationship that, um, is now, you know, three year three or almost three years old, because I spent the time in the first, you know.

60 days to go meet those customers. So do you even need to add on the customer side? Like anything you remember from I was gonna say 

that, that that's just a good segue into the things that you should be doing. Yeah. You know, we, we kind of started with the negative, started with the things, you know, to be careful about or watch for.

Yeah. Slow down on. Um, I think there's a lot of things to do in those first 90 days. So that's, that's a really important one. One that immediately comes to mind is a. Uh, mutual customer announcement. Um, we've, uh, seen the benefit of doing that. And so, and just as a part of a standard process, again, I would say pretty industry agnostic.

Mm-hmm. Um, but [00:24:00] given the nature especially of like recurring billing and things like that Yeah. Trying to get out in front of it pretty quickly. First week. Yeah. That a, uh, kind of a co-signed. Uh, codenamed letter, you know, we'll put both logos, that sort of thing. Mm-hmm. And the narratives change, it depends if someone's staying on or if they're rolling out, or, um, you know, if it's, it's just kind of an accounts only or more of a true platform, like those announcements can look.

A bit different, but the spirit of it is the same as that. We want to over communicate. Um, and we, we also try to like email and call as well, but that letter, that physical letter you try to put in someone's hand that says, this has happened. This is what it means. This is who we are, here's our background.

Here's, we actually have now started to. Custom landing pages per acquisition. So, you know, here is your specific landing page where you can get FAQs about us and learn more and certain documents or resources you may need, um, change your billing methods, whatever, right? So, [00:25:00] um, that entire piece of communication, um, is really critical.

To do really within the first seven days, in my opinion, that it goes out post an acquisition being completed. Mm-hmm. 

Another thing that I think is super tactical, I love this 'cause we're getting some stuff that like we didn't do and I wish we would've, and now we do it, is get a list of every single piece, every login, the company.

I'm gonna guess that any acquisition you do is probably not gonna have a centralized password manager. Um. And so that's the reality of most organizations we do now, finally, thank God. Um, but uh, I did not take it seriously 'cause it's like, oh, I'll just get that password later or when I need it. Or somebody here has it and we got locked out of a lot of systems and resetting those, particularly in that first 90 days is tough because not all of your vendors know that you guys have transition ownership.

And so you're nobody. So when you're like, yeah, I'm the owner, it's like, no, you're not. Brian's the owner. And they're like, we'll send a [00:26:00] reset password to his email. Well, Brian happens to be off or he's whatever and or he's transitioned out and you don't have access to his email. Whatever it is, we got stuck so many times.

Mm-hmm. Needing to just a simple change in the platform. And these are like smaller apps, stuff that we add that was like, ah, we've got, it's a cellular provider. We have like 15 customers there. We'll probably never need it. Or if we do it we'll just, we'll get it later. So I finally. It took me a year and a half.

I don't know why. Just did, took me a year and a half. I went through and got every single password, reset them all, centralized them to a central admin email address and put 'em in our password manager. 

Yep. 

And, um, then I added users and all that. But like, I, I just remember that being causing a lot of pain for us.

And it seems so tactical and obvious, but there's so many other passwords that you just don't think, especially in the alarm industry. It's like everything is a piece of software. I, I think we literally had like. 125 different logins. Um, so that would be something that I would say, mark that down. I [00:27:00] know that seems so tactical and small, but it was, it was really painful for us.

I love it. I think that that's a good one that I actually didn't have on my mind, but. Thinking back to the pain of it all and, and really just, there's so many other priorities. There's so many other things you could think are more important than that, but that is one of those Yeah. To focus on. It's just like the nitty gritty mm-hmm.

Of it. Um, one thing, I know I'm cheating, but I'm going back just very simply, like, don't do a price increase in the first 90 days. Like, that's so silly. Like you're just, you're just asking for attrition. You're just asking for churn. Don't do that. Like within the first year, maybe. Uh, towards the end of the first year cycle.

Okay. And maybe you do that on like a segment. Mm-hmm. Um, just, you know, be careful with that. Again, it's the, is it worth it? Yeah. And that's one thing that I would say, you know, to the, to do is to be patient, to build a plan, to, to make sure you understand the cu that customer base pretty well before you start rolling out price increases.

Mm-hmm. [00:28:00] Um, I just think that's something to be very methodical about, 

but you should do a price increase. You know, sometime in the first two or three years, I will say that 

yes, 

yes and amen. Um, you should do one, just not in the first 90 days. Um, yeah, another thing go. So going back to your customers, um, you know, I talked about doing a top 50 list.

We talked about this in the due diligence episode. I think that we kind of touched on this. It's also really important to sit down with the, um. Previous owners to get any kind of like tribal knowledge that they are, remember out of these top 50 or anything special they have or any special circumstances.

I also think that it's really important to get a perspective on that customer before you go meet them. Because when you go meet them, if you can say, Hey, I know you guys, you know, just open this location. You know how a location before this as much perspective and you know, kind of quote point of view you can get on that customer is gonna, is actually gonna matter a lot.

And also. I would go in, and this is something I [00:29:00] did and they loved it with a, I just printed off some some printer paper and put on a who's who at Alarm Masters. And it was like, Hey, just so you know, lots change. You may not have heard of it. Here's who you go to for billing. Yep. Here's who you go to for operations.

Here's the escalation chain. And I did something crazy. I gave them all my personal cell phone number. And 

don't do that. You know, I really have. Probably don't do that. Maybe don't do that. 

Yeah. Had a couple people abuse that. Um, I don't regret it. I don't regret it. Sometimes you have to do things that aren't scalable.

I know. But, uh, yeah, it was a lot. It was a lot. I did complain to Steven a lot, a lot of times. A lot of times I'll complain to Steven about things that I, that you 

chose to 

do that I, that are entirely my fault. Yeah. And that falls into that category. 

I I have another big one, which we have not touched on yet, and I'm actually surprised we haven't touched on this, which is, um, the contracts will not be perfect.

Um, yeah, [00:30:00] that's 

right. 

Show me an acquisition where every single contract is perfect and I'll show you a liar. Um, like so contract. Audit, like maybe in due diligence you, A lot of times what people do are they will audit a sample. Mm-hmm. So I think in those first 90 days, you need to go through all of them.

You need to understand your gaps, concerns, start with the largest customers, um, you know, and that whole top 50 concept, very commercially oriented. I know that we have some residentially focused, uh, listeners, but that, that's more of, I don't know if you want to go to your top 50 highs paying resi. Right.

Customers. Sure. I don't think that'd be great, but, um, more, more of a commercial comment, but on the contracts doesn't matter. Like you need to audit all of them. Mm-hmm. Um, I mean dates and initials and signatures and missing, not missing updates that maybe didn't get factor, different addresses if that wasn't ever updated.

Just to think through all that risk and, and to go through it all in the first 90 days, because if you don't [00:31:00] do it in the first three months. It's gonna get away from you probably. Yeah. Um, and so I'll just say to do contract cleanup, 

I think one thing that's important to un to, to just kind of talk about is like, sometimes when you walk into a business, we're gonna assume most of this is like if you're buying a platform, your first or a new platform.

I think a lot of times it people have different scenarios based on how long the previous owner is still in seat. What, what is traditional is 90 days minimum. Yep. Not everybody has that luxury. A lot of people get six months or even a year of some type of tapered, um, you know, um, transition. We had about six months.

We really had kind of a core 90 and then it kind of tapered from three to six months. And I was so worried about getting like stuff done and completed that I didn't spend enough time with the old owners to really learn as much as I could. 

Mm-hmm. 

And there was a bunch of stuff that I just. Fail to realize that like, Hey, I've [00:32:00] got this wealth of knowledge and there's some stuff that they were doing that were successful and there was a lot of stuff they were doing that was not great, but they obviously built a business from scratch and there was things that they did that got them there.

And yep, I spent a lot of time in the beginning, the first kind of couple weeks, but then after that I stopped doing it. I wish I wouldn't have, which is just interviewing the previous owners in very casual settings to say. And it usually happened at like 5, 5 30, 6 o'clock, because that's when things are just kind of winding down.

And I would ask questions about, Hey, what did you do? Like, tell me about your biggest project. How'd you get it? Who gave it to you? You know? Or tell me about your favorite customer. Tell me about the thing that's been like the most successful for you. And I was just. Absorbing information and learning a lot and also learning about things that they did that like definitely did not work out.

And, um, that, that kind of informed some deci decisions that we made. So I would say just spend some time, yeah, getting to know the old owners and that first 90 and learning a tremendous amount. 'cause you're gonna get to a [00:33:00] time where you're gonna be in go mode and you want to, the, the more successful that will be more successful.

Based on how much, you know, how about that? Mm-hmm. 

Yeah. Maintain to do, uh, maintain the relationship with sellers. Mm-hmm. Lean into them, uh, value their history and their experience. Yeah. Um, do not do talk crap about the former owner to the employees, or let them come and complain to you about what the, what they used to do, and kind of sit in with them like, yeah, yeah.

They were terrible. You know, like, no. Yeah, no, they, that is because. What are they gonna say about you? Six months from now? Yeah. 12 months from, like, don't set that tone. So, you know, you, you have to, I think, respect and value the former owner and maintain a level of respect of them regardless of what did or did not happen in the past.

Yeah. You know, with the, uh, the team. So 

I wanna go through really quickly one last concept that I think is really important and this, this speaks to the heart of [00:34:00] scale. You need to start figuring out a way to delegate. Um, but you, you shouldn't start delegating in the first 90 days, but you need to start thinking about your path to delegation.

And by that what I mean is you need to map out your team and really start to do kind of a team assessment and figure out where responsibilities are gonna go in each bucket, and really evaluate bandwidth on those things. You need to know how, as an owner, you really need to know how to do all the things or have a conceptual knowledge of all the things, but you also.

Need to understand where things are eventually gonna end up to get them off of your plate so that you can focus on the things that are, quote, your highest and best use. You know, buyer beware, like you don't wanna shove those things off too fast. Um, I did sales for us for a year and a half, a year. I don't know, I don't remember a long time before we hired our first salesperson.

And, um, that informed a lot. About our sales strategy and what would work. I, we actually did not come in knowing, oh, we're gonna do this coffee drop strategy. [00:35:00] Right. I started doing them. I kind of like it started working. I started having the sales guy we hired, do them, and it started really working, started doubling down, getting a little bit more specific about the strategy and it, it really started because I was realizing like, okay.

Billing. Like, I'm not gonna run RMR every, every, every month. Like, I'm just, I'm not gonna do that. So who's gonna be the person to do that? So I started doing this team assessment and realized, man, there are some people that really have like a bucket that's way too full, and I have other people that don't.

And so I had to start rebalancing responsibilities and really thinking, and I, I played chess with that on a spreadsheet for. Really the first 90 days just kind of observing and seeing, does that person really have time to do that? Like do are, they're pretty overworked, like, but could this person actually even do it over here?

That's not overworked. Um, so observing and learning a lot about your team, I think that's a, a really core tenant of all this is like, get to know your team really, really well. Their strengths, their weaknesses. Take everybody to lunch. That's what I did. I took every employee in the first 30 days to lunch.

Uh, it's [00:36:00] obvious, easy, you know, get me pats on the back for that. But, uh, what you do on that lunch is really important. And so getting to know them and learning about their job, what they like and don't like, and their bandwidth and yep. All that I think is really important. 

Yeah, that, I was gonna say that earlier, to give the remaining team like space to share their ideas, their frustrations.

Um, ideally, you know, the, the tone isn't, they're just complaining, but it's like, Hey, we want to keep improving the business. Yeah. What are your ideas? Like, I'm sure you have some input, you've been here for a few years. Yeah. And like you've been other places. Like what ideas do you have? I can't promise we're gonna implement them all, but I really wanna listen to you and take that into consideration.

Yeah. So that's a great to-do. 

Yeah. I wanna move to homework here in a second, but any, any other to-dos that you really remember things that we did that were really impactful in that first 90? 

Yeah. The last, the last thing that's on my mind, which is a bit controversial and people have different takes [00:37:00] on, is we do not advocate for killing the company name.

Yeah. Um, inherently maybe if it's like a small account add-on, something like that. But if it's anything of any size, even if it's in your current market or in a different market. Yeah. Like, I think there's too much value and continuity and customer awareness of that brand. Like maybe it's X company, a Y company brand.

Mm-hmm. You know, like you have like a tagline, um, for a while, something like that. But. I think it's a mistake to just go in guns a blazing and kill that brand and slap your name on it. Uh, I think you're, you're, again, you're asking for some employee attrition as well as customer attrition. 

Mm-hmm. We made one really big change to the brand.

We moved it from the main color from red. To Maroon. Um, because Gig Aggies, because gig Aggies. Um, and that, that truly was the only reason we did that. Like, I [00:38:00] want to say that there was some like marketing consultant or like some smart super, no, we were like, Hey, we gotta get EPS files. Is this logo and it, let's just keep it the same, do the same logo, but can you just change that red just a little bit closer to maroon and, uh, I don't regret it.

No, I don't regret it one bit. Um, alright, let's jump into, let's jump into our closing homework here. Give us, give us a couple things for homework that the listeners can think about, especially if they're, you know, preparing to, to close on an acquisition here. 

I think you want to. Uh, write these things down for yourself.

Like, what are the things I'm going to do? What are the things that I'm not going to do? And I also think that. Hmm. It depends on the relationship with the seller, um, either towards the end, uh, but pre before close, getting close to the close date or right after. Like, really walking them through those things so that they even have, you know, expectations and an understanding of your intentions.

Um, I think a lot of those things are better [00:39:00] to talk about before you close. Really. Yeah. Um, and, and just so that they understand your character and, and the way that you're thinking intentionally about the entire process, yeah. That's gonna make them a little more comfortable too. Um, so that's, that's what, you know, kind of know your non-negotiables and the things you're going to do and things you're not going to do.

And I think probably communicate that, uh, with the sellers. There's certain scenarios where I could see that being a bad idea or certain elements you may kind of hold back. So, you know, be thoughtful and considerate about that. But generally, um, that's, that's kinda the homework on my mind. 

Yeah. Last thing I would say is, is related to that is when I bought the business, I went in with 100 things I wanted to do.

I would tell you that you should have a list of 10. What are the top 10 things that you want to do? And those things should, and nine of those 10 should be learning things, knowledge, acquisition, um, and not change related things. [00:40:00] So, uh. If you're gonna make a list, make it short and make them impactful and make them long and take really great notes.

But make that list now and it should be less than 10. 10 or less, is what I would say. So, uh, yeah, so that's what we got. We're, we're really excited about this. We, we love acquisitions. We've done, you know, basically seven acquisitions in three years. We've learned a lot. We've got a lot of kind of battle scars, things that, and we're still learning, uh, and we're gonna share more about it as we go.

We've got a couple deals under acquisition or under OI now, 

wait, there's one more. Let's one. Don't buy a business out of bankruptcy. No. Yeah.

I'm crying on the inside. 

Yeah, that's a good point. I'm glad we didn't 

close. Yeah, don't do that. Yeah, we didn't close on it. We nearly did. Uh, so bad. Yeah. Is there an outlier where maybe it could work? Sure. But generally speaking, please avoid 

get 

ready to light some money in due diligence on fire. You're ready for that.

Anyway, [00:41:00] that's all we got. If you guys like what you hear and see, uh, like, and subscribe, give us a review. Give us five stars on the podcast app. Um, we really appreciate it. We do this 'cause we enjoy talking about it and, uh, we talk to people every single day, uh, and get to know some of the listeners. And so if you've got any questions.

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