From $2,000 Startup to 100% Employee-Owned: Art Hoover on Building Matrix HG

In this episode of ESOP Radio, we sit down with Art Hoover, CEO and Co-Founder of Matrix HG, to talk about his journey from starting a company with just $2,000 to building a successful HVAC business—and ultimately transitioning to 100% employee ownership through an ESOP. 

Art shares why he chose an ESOP over private equity, how the transition reshaped his role as CEO, and what it takes to build a company that can thrive long-term without losing its culture.

We also dive into leadership, succession planning, and the importance of building a team that can carry the business forward—plus a few unexpected lessons from Art’s passion for racing cars.

Whether you're exploring exit options or simply want to build a stronger business, this episode offers practical, real-world insights.

🔑 What You’ll Learn

•  Why Art chose an ESOP instead of selling to private equity 
•  How employee ownership preserves culture and independence 
•  The mindset shift from founder to ESOP CEO 
•  Why strong leadership teams are critical to ESOP success 
•  How ESOPs impact recruiting, retention, and motivation 
•  Lessons from navigating economic downturns and COVID 
•  The difference between growth and profitable growth 
•  How racing translates to leadership and business discipline 

Learn more:

• ESOP Radio: https://www.menke.com/esop-radio/
• ESOP Boot Camp: https://www.menke.com/esop-boot-camp/
• Confidential feasibility review: https://www.menke.com

Transcript

0:03

Hi everyone. Welcome to the official ESOP Radio. We are excited to have Art Hoover join us today. Art is a CEO and co-founder of matrix HG. Matrix is based in Concord, California in the San Francisco Bay area. We helped Art and his team matrix become 100% Esop employee owned. In 2023, they manage the Hvac systems of large commercial and institutional buildings throughout the Bay area. Art also races cars on the track. There are many parallels between racing and the long term focus of Eastside business ownership, which we will explore. I'm Trevor Gilmore, CEO of Menke Without further ado, let's dive in. Thanks for joining us here. My travels always good to see you. Thanks for having me. Before choosing an Esop. What exit pass did you seriously consider and what ultimately ruled out a third party or private equity? Well, to me also, there's, you know, as when you're running a business, you're always running the business and you start thinking long term, like, okay, well, what does this really look like for us? It's reality. There was there's a lot out there, but there's there's a lot of unknowns. And the first time I went to a new software, I thought, let's go look at this easy thing. And I went to, and a conference with a bunch of trainings putting it on. It was so bad I left early. I had no idea what they're talking about. I couldn't understand what they're saying. I'm like, this is way too complicated for me. And then we went, met with a couple of big conglomerates and a large, company, and they explain to me how they do things and how the company value, I have to stay on the ground for multiple years, and then they're evaluate the company based on how we do that. Do not excite. We ran this probably for 24 years. The last thing I wanted to tell me, tell me what to do and how to do it. I would struggle with it. The other thing is we have at least now 21 years with us, and they put we've worked with as far as we have to give them. Yeah. You know, our donors and the Esop gave us that option. Oh, so when you started the business, what, 2002? Yes. So you shut down many different options, pros and cons, zeroed in on. Hey, matrix. Better off independent. You know a great thing going great team. Let's take it to the next that right. You know. Well one of the things when you're looking at it is when you sell you you sell your company and you sell to you. Like for us we have Honeywell or there's carrier training and you're somebody they're buying these companies up and they look for profit. They don't really care about people. They don't care about anything. They want to know how much cash you generate. That's it. Being 24 years, I've hired, trained these people. They put a lot of work in. So I want to see them. If we support the company. To one of those people, I think we got the company dissolved pretty well, like we know or whatever it is. And later on, when we are at the beginning of the game, we have a lot of great clients. We have just the employees we felt like we ordered. And and honestly, you got, you built there's a good price for very a better than what we would have got. But private work. That's right. And it's killing the business. I mean, you all started from 0 in 2002. All the data, serious revenues, built a team. So the idea here is keep it going independent and Esop being a fair market value. Got you a price that when you weigh all the tax benefits, you not weighed what you would have got in the open market, you know, safe if you took the business to market, sold it to one of those competitors, sold it to private equity. So it was the Esop. There's good or bad, right? Well, everything. Well, once we met with you guys and realized, okay, well, this is what the value works. I started looking at, the tax incentives for the owners. Right. So 100% and, and there's complications with everything, like there's a wall you have to deal with. But we've been learning. It's a learning process for sure. But I feel it's been a very good traditional day. We went and you saw nothing changing, which would help me. States running these same all the better investing at this point. And that was actually really nice to business continuity. That's kind of a, underrated aspect of these sort of transactions, you know, because you think, hey, I've seen business sell. The big focus that people pay attention to is the overall price, right. And so on. This is continuity keeping the team in place, companies, operations continue the board. You know maybe we can talk about that. You know, later possible governance changes, you know independent directors and so on. But overall the company is still staying as it is intact. Operations are continuing as normal. There's no shakeup not what changed that what I get I run it exactly the same. The only two different things actually. The interesting thing that changed was how I saw one quarter to end approach. That's a little bit is no, I'm Steve Yoder. I'm not I'm not not the owner anymore. I'm saying you and me, I have to drive to price. That's my job. And that kind of had to change my mental focus a little bit from just being founder and running and putting fires out to like, I got to drive stock price. Like, how was change your mindset and kind of helping you transition the company from bottom pop shop, where you don't need age. And it's like, okay, well, when are we giving you the hard time? We're working 255 now. I would start looking farther out bigger. So change in mindset to co-founder were so many hats. You see it on post transaction as a CEO. So that's a new title. I mean your role you know doesn't change. You know the CEO but your focus now stock price right is now. Yeah this annual valuation. And it is it's more of a strategic focus probably than before where your focus on growing the business. And then as a co-founder in the beginning probably sweeping the warehouse, you're hiring people, you know, doing everything. And now its CEO seat focused very much on long term strategy, share price. So that's probably a fun focus for it once it's changed things right. I've had to like, change my focus, but it was like I probably should have been doing this ten years ago, 15 years ago. And it kind of I get almost mad about stuff like, why wasn't I thinking like that? So it's actually helped me, and I think it's can help the company in the long run. When we first started the company, we put $2,000 in. That was our only money we ever put in the company. We never borrowed money. We put $2,000 in, worked out of my house, and now we have two occasions. And like, I think we have about 200 employees. And I would say about 140 of the employees were union. They're not part of the you saw the other 60 are union are nonunion and they are card data. But it's now like you know, it's allowing me to give back to them. And that's, that's actually pretty fulfilling. And I remember that back from when we were doing the initial assessment, modeling the $2,000 investment as I am when you double check this, is that right? You know, and so I don't know if it's kind of the start, that's for sure. Absolutely. Yeah. So good ROI there. Yeah of course sweat equity right. Yeah. No it was definitely sweat equity. You know we put in a lot of time. We still put in long time because you care like I don't want to just bail on these guys. I'm part of the use up. What makes it work, though? You want to have a management team that's ready to replace the word. And. And they can't run the company without you. But that's the way this works. If you don't have a good team beneath you, it doesn't work unless you're sure you want to stay for a long time. That's critical for an easy transition is the team you need that rock star, solid team in place and if you have one partner or two partners that are also the brain trusts, like it's not going to work, right? Yeah. If I'm if I did all the decisions without the company, the company at that point, I had a lot of great people here, but they've never really dealt with all the banking. And I was people for that. But all the other stuff didn't never steam. So we're now like convenient to start understanding the business side of of the company. And that's, that's been interesting to watch because it's one of the things we've always wanted from like quarters. It's hard to think like an owner of getting paid like an order or, dealing with all the other stuff. So now it's giving them, you know, some more growth for them. But the goal is to let them make more money. And I told them, as you start scaling this thing up to be more like, I want to see this in your few years. And now the deal happened, using round numbers three years ago, how was the team handling it now? Obviously in the beginning, it's a very intangible. Okay. What does this mean? And now we're a couple of years in. They've seen a few Esop accounts, statements. And you know, especially on the finance side, they understand okay, the impact of the growth, you know and how it all works. So how is that, you know, in terms of excitement retention and then even recruiting, the fact that you all have this skin in the game. I think on the recruiting side, it is something most people it's hard to explain. He's not a new recruit. It's hard. But people have been here for three years. They're still trying to figure it out. It's a very simple step and once you understand it, recruit something going, hey, once you get better at it after six months or whatever we said in the contract, you're now part owner and you start getting three shares of a company. It's a retirement account for them. You know, it's a good thing. And and it kind of locks in the company meaning like, you know, the company's not going anywhere. We've got a good team that's bigger. We're going to keep this thing with them for a long time. And I think that the other side of it is, the first few years I was like, the company's over its members, right? Because it's old myself order the most money out of money into the stock price. So it's actually the best time to get it is I always say that it's the best time to be in and is up on company is right after the transaction. Because, as you pointed out, how does the Esop pay for it? Well, the company cash flows pays for the Esop. So if you get in right after the transaction, you get a ride that way. You know, it's basically like it's very simple system. It's complicated at first when you're trying to understand it, but once you start dealing with that, you're like, oh, I get it now. I was really nervous when we first started it. We had to hire a trustee board of directors, and and I'm like, oh man, what's this trustee going to do? She's going to come in and tell exactly what to do and ask you. Weird. She's been great. I talked to her once, quarter or once a month sometimes. And had we have conversation aware of the exactly the financial bar it's been a really easy transition for us. Yeah. For you listeners, the trustee, if you listen to other episodes, you'll know this, but they act as the fiduciary for the Esop trust. And in these negotiations, they are the buyer, you know, so they're on the other side of the table and key. When we do help the business owners help the company. So we're on the other side, you know, and there's an arm's length negotiation that goes back and forth after the transaction. The trustee is viewed as a business partner, and they want to stay in contact with the business generally not going to take a board seat. Maybe there's some negotiation on independent board seats and so on. But the hallmark of a good trustee is to really focus on the Esop, and that is through Sheryl making sure that everything's working well under the lens of the Esop. So arts experience here, you know, highlights that, you know, several years in the trustee that matrix says she has is that, you know, sort of a strong partner, but allowing the board and the company to operate as they would normally. And you know, the board, like you seem really like we don't we were private companies. We never had a board. So we had to hire two independent board members. We had first first year, one setting year, we had to get the second one. And then I had my partners on there and she had those on there. And so you didn't really know how this really worked. I had to learn how to run a board meeting. Right. The stuff that you would never have, I never thought about. So we're sitting there and that actually what I found is it's totally board members. They have so much experience. It's actually been helping the company. And so I'm, I'm actually been talking you just read for this podcast, one of the board members just emailed me and, and we're working on some change stuff, but I need help with this is what she does. So I'm actually preparing it outside the board to come and help consult with us. It's a benefit to the company, actually. It's more brain trust at the top. Really helps. You know, the two members you got, you know, seems like they filled a gap. You know, in essence, right. As you this is part of CFO. You know, you have that expertise there. So it's like okay, these two independents, you ended up picking people that have this deep expertise that's going to complement and really help drive. Yeah. Good. Well, one board member is is a previous CFO of another Esop award. These are mechanical company like us, but they're 20 times bigger than I was like. So I had to see if I was on the board. Yeah, that's part it. But as you can see I mean, Dan, to talk about an Excel spreadsheet, they'll go to town on that. But I my independent, the other one, Cynthia, she's kind of a business consultant. She's great. She brings a whole different perspective on strategy and stuff that we really never thought about. We always just do. Like we'll talk here just because it happened. She's like, no, no, we're going to build a plan and we're going to get there. You know what I mean? And I have to slow down and be like, okay, you're right. We need to let's do this right. And I wish we would have done this years ago. We would have been a lot harder. Try to have been a couple, 200 or 200 people right now. Yeah. And you're on that track, though. You're you you're making way. So let's change gears. Have been talk about race cars driving here. So as a race car driving drag racing in particular. What analogies do you have for your passion which is that auto racing. This I think you were just in Phoenix. You said racing and building matrix HG from the ground up. So kind of an interesting story was I was racing before I started matrix and I've been racing for a long time. I didn't have the money to race, but I did, and I was sitting in my trailer sweating and drinking water on this is pumped, right? These people, nice race cars, motorhomes. And I'm like, how are they doing? Is I'm working my blood up if I can't afford this stuff? And finally I kept talking about people and then also the owner of properties. Okay, okay, I know what you do. So I went to grab my partner that'd be floating on the lake. And I said, hey, what's the one company? And, he's like, let's do it. So that much like when we started matrix$2,000 and out of, I asked Google Vans and that I built part of the company I can afford to race. But that was how it also. And it kind of goes the same, like when you have like the difference between a good employee and a great of what is possible. If you have passion, you will push through it. And, you know, I think the county's important. I think it's the thing where when, everything's on fire, you put your feet marching through added racing. It's the same thing if you you raced bikes and triathlons. It's the same thing. You get to get beat up and want to say there's no quit. It's put your head down, right. And in racing, there's times when the car's ready to go. Yet I had one I would, you know, 16 hour drive, choke test. I worked these cards perfectly together. I get there, unload my car, that one, that and there's water going off the head. It wouldn't even got there. I rolled it, shove it at the car and. Okay, we end up winning the race. But I was I was the you know that if you don't have the car, you don't have that want, it won't work. And then the competition, anybody out there that know what they know, we're the probably the best team in the world. And, you have, you know, you take care of good people and, generally when it comes to my neighborhood, it's never, hey, we do this great job. Here you go. It's good we got this problem. Here you go. Okay. And so racing for me is that big. You know when it out then when I go racing I relaxed. I let my brain turn off of work. You know, I could put it off because I know I'm won't be competitive if I'm thinking about work. So it's kind of goes handy. Absolutely. Nice escape. Absolutely nice focus outside of the intense focus of the business. Now of course, racing very intense to every second or every. Yeah, I lost by 17/10,000 of a second. Phoenix. I'm still that. It was my fault, I missed I, I made a little mistake and cost me that way. And that's very similar to bike racing. And actually the time. So you can do these races, lasts for, you know, four hours and it's a photo finish at the, you know, and then you had to figure out, okay, who actually crossed the line first. Yeah. So bike racing is very similar to a car racing and also the time trials, in bike racing. And it's basically you against the clock. But there's 20, 30 other or 50 or sometimes 100 in a big race, other people and everyone is going every 30s and then those, those can often come down to a very, very split second, you know, to see who actually won. Right. So oh yeah, the precision there. But that's why we do it. If it was easy, I wouldn't do it for, I dare bike ride. It's unbelievable ride. And I love the boats and everything else, but we Val, we always made the joke on the dirt bike trails. If you didn't know which way I went. If there's a hard way or easy way, go the hard way. That's where I will. I will not ever go the easy way. Yeah, that analogy I made comes through to a business, right? Has you decided? Hey, the young age, dark matrix age. She from the ground out. Take on that risk. Work hard because it probably would have been easier. You know, the past 25 years of you, you know, stayed put not me I was I was 26. So I started the company, got married, my son all in the same year. I was like, well, if we're going to do it, we just started this is create Chaos by now. That's the best time. And it worked out well. So let's talk about resiliency here too, because, I mean, you all went through a couple ups and downs through the economic cycles. You know you started in 2002 here in the Bay area. That was right. Post.com 1.0 and then zero eight downturn. You know so on. So kind of talk about that in terms of ups and downs. Were there days where it was super hard as an entrepreneur, you know, in those downturns, you know, and then you know, basically working hard smart through that and how that basically translates, you know, really to where you've built matrix today. You know, I consider you on a, you know, very strong position in the marketplace and what you do, you know, and those lessons, you know, well, you know, one of the things we learned, I learned a very, very harshly was during during the because when it got up, we were everyone and every company, just 100%. The money you work fell on you. You need change on data. And we were all buried. I didn't see it coming. You know, I think I think I was nine, I was running 101 and then all of a sudden I. I didn't know what happened. I didn't see it coming real slow down the hill. It was just growing. And, I was really like, how did you come up every two months? I model, I said, he's selling. I don't care how busy you are and what had happened. We got so busy, I got back a little sales a little bit. We just couldn't get it. I couldn't get the work done. And what I've learned is I don't care. Get the work and we'll make it happen. Because you never know when it's going to stop. So focus on sales. That really helped you get through those valleys. On those economic contractions that happened. Yeah. And that's great advice. And I think that applies to all industries in I mean, that was I mean, unprecedented, right? No. We've ever been through this. We're in California. So we were the first to shut down. And we don't know what's going on. And what we we basically transitioned immediately because I found who was going to be open and that was government schools, essential stuff. So we I switched my team to go find what's essential and where we can keep working. And we did a good job with it. Stayed busy. Yeah, I recall looking at the financials, you know, back then during the Covid, some of your competitors who didn't pivot right. They they definitely noticed a huge pullback in revenue. Right. Because offices no one was going there. So you still have to maintain all those all the systems had to be maintained. But you know it's not going to the wear and tear. And you know and the maintenance probably goes down you know as an empty building versus does it where it goes down. But they still have to run it for a minimum. Yeah. And for fresh air and keep boilers hot because a lot of the building what happens is the piping will actually. What's up. The hot water goes cold. They have big, tall, gaskets, and they start leaking. So they have to keep building, kind of running. And, so we just found a way to stay busy. And that was the key was to keep working. And, a lot of people wanted to work around with the stay home screen. We're not that way. But how do we going take care of our building? It's big working, right? Yeah. Because you are in the fields, you know, it's. Yeah, to be out in the field. And so our mechanics are union. Well, we don't get paid if they're not working or might I, I take it to heart that these guys can't pay the bill. You know, I want to see the buy home, because take care of the families when all of a sudden it's like, you know, they need to stay home. I was like, we're going to go find work that they can go work out. And, should be okay. It's important. Sometimes you're going to try to just make fun of it. That instinct worked well during the pandemic. Yeah. What do you see now? You know, year 2026. You know, I know a couple of years ago, you know, interest rates went up and, you know, there was a saying survive to 2025. I know that was like the same when we were doing the deal back in 2023. So, you know, we're seeing for Cisco still it's it's well coming back. It's not going to be even for a while. We're seeing the tears pick up which talent for the work. A lot of capital works down a little bit because people are they're waiting for the buildings to start filling back up. So they're actually trying to get them to move in and sort of spending money there. But they're trying to just rebuild the old system of wheelchairs, boilers and cooling towers. And just kind of pushing that off. This year's going to be a good year. I just finished up. There's work there. We're picked up working and there's one right now. But we're you know, service always say that it works. We we have a pretty big service department. And then we mainly do retrofit works. They'll retrofit work for us. There's rebuilding buildings. And so they don't want to go. We're not building a lot of buildings right now, but we are rebuilding and repairing the old ones. And that's really fits our our niche pretty well. That's great. It. Yeah. And the Bay area obviously I always say you can tell the economy of a metro area by the billboards occurs on the 80, the one on one these days. It's all I you know, I hate to say it like this because we obviously need to stay around. We don't know which companies are always going to be a couple little ball. And there's always the new the you know what happened in 2008? A lot of people were putting out their eggs. Those companies were making money off people, investing a lot in them. Some of those companies went under and it costs a lot of people a lot of money. So I, I'm, I'm a little hesitant because I feel that they're a little overvalued. But I'm blessed for the work. I'll take the work, you know, and then in the in a few years, it'll be some other trend. You just got to be able to transition. Exactly. It sounds like, you know, a speed of, of changing course pivoting. Right. That's been one of the key strengths that you all and matrixes you have. You know, the ability to do that. You're on the pivot quickly in a smart way to understanding, hey, this this is where we should be. Let's let's focus there and the nice thing about these are we're not restricted to anything. I don't have to go ask anybody for permission. I see an opportunity. We're taking it. I, I still make the final stage now. It's allowed us to cut. It's freed us up to, like, start rotating the company. So it's employee owned. You know, sort of a you'll stay independent, right? Because overall board's job is to support the CEO, make sure the CEO has the support necessary to execute. Right, right. Drive stock value. That's my job. I have to keep telling myself that it's all right. I still like going and helping people. And I got to get back in work like, no, no, no, no. But your job is to go create, plan, stick looking farther down the road. Yeah. Luckily, this is up to you to value once a year. So you're not subject to the quarterly earnings. You know, like that public company. Yeah. Yeah. I'd lie if I didn't think I was running the numbers every month, like, okay, let's just do it, you know. Oh that's yeah, that's a fun part to do. So once you understand the value metrics, what really drives it. You know, it's cash flows. Basically if we're esops then say okay what is this look like. Increase this lower five 1,015%. Right. Go big. Increase it by 40%. You know. What is that. Yeah. The hard part right now for everything I do think is finding quality people to come and do the work. Right. It's one thing I we want a whole our quality, our level of excellence high. It's hard to do. I need new people finding people that are tech. You Bernard area. So tech is pays really good. You have to compete with that. And then a lot of people want to go at it. You know they kind of lost it inside. Like I think realistically when I start seeing that money is going to be if people actually can go repair things to fix. Yeah, I'm seeing that in our client base as well. So, you know, for people that actually know how to fix and build things. Yeah, you know, overall and time will tell. Right. But it seems like I know you'll build the operate a business smoother, you know, so on less friction you know. But those skills are always going to be in demand. Yep. It don't it won't. People need to be have hot water. You know we to talk showers. Everybody's got to have you know be comfortable outside their buildings like pool and heating. So that has to happen. Yeah it's has to. And then you think the future too. You know there's this idea of converting offices to residential. I mean it's not even an idea. You know, it's been gone. They've been talking about it for a while, you know, vacant offices and so on. All those places have to be replaced and rejiggered on that. Each fax systems. Yeah. So I was in the Salesforce Tower this week and I mean, speak about complex Hvac system that all these glass buildings. Right. And they just trap heat. Yeah. You know what? You have just skills. It's a very the, temperate climate. They're not a fog. The buildings are so close, they don't get a whole lot of sunlight or solar load on them, but they do. I mean, there's a lot of deep inside and and, But the economize hours we used to college, actually, I was doing something else. And you guys on the East Coast, right? What state economies are what here we use economize. Must begin back east. They have they have so much you willing to dictate use free cooling. And we're economize. We're we would bring in a cool outside and just run the plans a little higher and and use that to help cool the buildings. And, before it gets too warm, then we have to start drilling the the chillers or whatever else we have to whatever equipment we got along. So. So Cisco though, it's it's very diverse city Lake, there's just very diverse place and, which makes you kind of fun to work out. Yeah, I can imagine those large old buildings, a lot of them have steam, right? Like steam, steam heat. And these are all the systems are underground, right? I mean, I'm talking about in the basement. Yeah. Like a lot of our equipment. Like, we'll have two orders and boiler. It's gonna be like, throughout the building, like, charge the other room or there'll be baggage or never really in the middle, but the boilers are generally on the roof on the high rise with one on the basement. You got to run them through all the way up. So that's why some of these buildings and on the roof you see like steam basically generating here on cooling towers Road to use that good stuff. Okay. Changing gears how the overall eyesore transaction. Was there a moment during diligence where you question whether these was actually the right call? You know, so I know due diligence, right. With the trustee team, the banks, you know, there's a whole data layers. You know, under another question everything. And that process can be quite stressful. So I was there a point where were like hey what am I doing. No. You know, we know what the final goal was. And we wanted to get there. And she just honestly learning about understanding game what this means. Cuz a lot of terms and and rules that we had to kind of abide by or figure out. I didn't know what they meant. So we just had to it was more just learning more. And we kind of learned every day from it, from you guys. What a lot of trying to figure out that it once we kind of saw how it all worked, because I think we had more fear in our head that it was actually real and all the unknowns. You just don't understand it, do. You're kind of afraid what you don't know. But obviously the transaction was my advice, probably like, hey, I want it. I could get it done in three months. Yeah. It's not that I get maybe really lucky, but definitely give yourself more time to keep yourself on time. It put the pressure on because it just gets more stressful. Just transactions. They go through distinct phases, you know, so condensing everything three months, that is pretty quick. You know, for the first phase you want to assess, hey, is this even interesting value structure branded a bank not about eight months from start to finish, all said and done. Yeah. And I think that was about with your transaction would end up being from the time we initially started were to actually close, you know, and that allowed for good decision making along each phase, you know, versus what money is actually really good with, helping us like, hey, what will happen the next phase? Prepare for this. Okay. You agreed and you put it. It's the unknown is what I always keep to kind of, like, not scare us, but kind of like, you get more questions and answers. And then once we understood how it all worked, we went, okay, it can get that done. Trying to manage those unknown unknowns. Yeah. I think you all asked me to like, hey, how can this whole thing blow up? You know, what's the downside? Yeah. You know, it's like, well, the downside is like, the downside with anything, you know, is doesn't work. It's the only way this works. The company's got a cash flow. If you're not cash blown, you start pricing going up and you're not getting paid back. So there's a couple different ways you could do this. So we did 100% of these off and we did 0% funded by a bank. So we self-financed it. So myself and my partner basically for all of our shares in the company put in this truck. And now that trust owes us the money. And he's like take the money out of the legal loophole there. But you can't pay you any money. Not like before. So, but we took that risk to kind of keep the company and, we get each. And so it's like, so but some people were realistic, right. You provided based on the spot where some of these 70,000 years old and they don't want to pay on or like they need somebody to take over, look to different reasons. Definitely. I mean, I've noticed a trend as well with a lot of our clients in the past several years are similar to your profile. You know, where you still have runway left, but you've built this company and you're very intentional about what that future looks like. And you want to, you know, basically plan and execute your own solution there versus, you know, waiting, you know, which we have seen with older generations, you know, where it's like, okay, you have now a majority shareholder here who might be well past retirement age and then start to think, hey, what's my exit? Right. And that's a whole different solution and a whole different, you know, it's a it's interesting that we've seen it. I've seen we've been to some auctions where old HPC companies are up for auction. You see the old owner in the desk, dirty desk and just angry. And I'm like, I never want to end up like that. I want to be that person. And we've got such good all year, or we're trying to groom them to take over for us. I want somebody that's passionate about the passion I had years ago where they're just ready to go. Let's take, you know, take the mug, run away with it. And that's what we need. The company needs, right. And I, I won't I don't have that as much to like you and the company. I feel I'm doing it this year completely where I have a lot of experience helpful. But I want to see it in the one way you are not. I can't tell you how to be the leader of a company, how to make y hard decisions. You've got to be in the hot seat and you can make mistakes. I got what I'm doing. So having that culture in place tier that's growth oriented, you know, says, hey, let's let's grow. Learn on the journey here. You know, and I've learned we've learned the hard way. Growth isn't always great. It's positive. Profitable growth is great. And growth chasing revenue doesn't work. It's chasing profit works. And so we we pass it or hold on we want to make. And then then we really are able to get there. And that is helped us a lot. You sound like a CEO that's concerned about feature stock price. They're my job growth profile. Well growths my friends in tech it's you know they always just talk about growth right. Because you don't care about profit. You're on Myspace and it's all these top companies. It's like cash flows profit. That's what matters not just growth. It's good. It's a different mindset like but it works. I honestly, I'm a very conservative person when it comes to growth now because I've learned the hard way multiple times. And and I laugh at people. I actually laugh at myself now. You see a lot of people, but I laugh at myself where I'd be like, oh, you went to college? I didn't go to college, my partner didn't go to college. And I'm like, you spend a couple hundred thousand dollars for education. I was free and I was like, I was proud of that. And now that I'm an old man and I'm looking at this, I'm like, wow. I think my education cost me about $20 billion. How much I've mistakes that made over the last 24 years. And I'm like, you know, so and so. It's kind of laughable. But overall I just didn't see it. And now I'm seeing you. And one of my experience to the younger generation and, and, help them out as much as I can. Yeah. And all the employees at matrix. Yeah. You know, they have a great leader in you, and they're lucky to have that. You know, the mentor I. And I'm honestly extremely lucky to have them because we have such good people. I do enjoy working with them. And they want to do a good job and they work hard. No, we're obviously we're not driven by the industry. So always have answer always. You're never calling it is they want to give you good news or you know, something broke and they need you to kind of figure it so that underneath the chip, the constant go and I have it's a different unique mentality. Absolutely. So you have a, you had a 5050 business partner and you both you and Dan both decide to go down the seesaw path. From my perspective, you both had is this a unanimous you know, it didn't seem like there's much friction, but was there at all, you know, with the in that kind of 50, 50 situation, you know, because the move forward, obviously we both had to say, yes, let's, let's do this. You know, we we it's funny. Have you ever met Dan and you meet me here about poor officers gets the polar opposite view. But when it comes to business, we kind of, you know, if it's you made a call, I'd back them up. If I made a call. You back me up. You might not always approve of it, but he was like, hey, Bart made that whole goal with it. And so we came to this. It was we generally have the same idea, luckily. Like, if I put together the corn walk, I didn't have to, like, I would never worry about anything. And when we did this, we're like, what's the best way to give this property, this company going these up kept coming up. And then finally, once we started really worrying about it, we decided, yeah, this is it was a pretty easy that was my takeaway as well, was, hey, these two business partners have alignment. There wasn't friction. Sometimes there is you know we're one is into it. And the other side is I don't know I don't know, you know, let's let's think about something different. So having that alignment, I mean, and the trust I think that's all built to trust something of the day, as you said. And it's when you have that, then it's like, okay, you can make good decisions and scale for the future. Yeah. You know, like I said, it's one of those things where it's a big decision. I mean, we built this company and we've had like a long, long term to lose our stuff tied to it. Like any business owner out there, every bank has their fingers in my trust. If I house anything I own and pretty big deal. You learn it during lunch and and you'll find generally older or sharper night at the end. You're grumpy, grouchy, and just tired of what? We beat you up every day and and and, that that is pretty interesting. One for us is it is trying to get these guys a start stating like, hey, okay, I want you to make these decisions. You know, let's start learning. But it's a, going Esau. I think it's kind of awkward. Exact. Like, okay, this was really like giving us the bandwidth to like, hey, the copies are hard. What is our record really look like now? You know, so it kind of opened it up or was like, oh, we have eight or now it's real. Now we have it in place. You keep running. You know what? Stop. I think that you got a global strategy for me. How are we doing that and how will you stop that to be taken care of now? Is that you dealing with people? So in the end, the Esop allowed business continuity was a great solution for you and Dan to sell your shares, get some liquidity, obviously get good value for your company, you know, but still be involved and really craft and plan your asset as you scale the business up to be successful in the future. And we talked about is is you'd only been meaning to kill me like a 1089 employee where I stay on as kind of an advisor or the CEO for our time, or I'm, you know, couple zoom meetings, we type thing and just helping transfer the knowledge. 24 years holding a company, you learn a lot and it's stuff that you don't think about, but you already know the answer before somebody asks you the question. And something new is not going to have that. So you can kind of help that out. Absolutely. And you have time on a CEO. So it's like, hey, I know you're probably thinking, hey, the next couple of years, what does that look like? So fast forward five years, a recent war. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. This year actually, we're going to run the whole piece in on the West Coast. But there's a lot of stuff on the East Coast that we haven't raised. I've only raised a few times dollars and Illinois once. It's just a drive in time. And one year I my mentality was always I had to be backed. I've been wanting for work and I'm a very strict person on myself, so I've learned for meaning. I need to have somebody coherent if I'm not worried about it. You know, a lot of free me up to to raise more and that that's really my goal, not just racing. We like to travel and and go up to the mountains and, and fish and pike. And so if I could do that more, I would be happy person. That's great. ESOP built the foundation. So nature says she seems to have a bright future. Yeah. The right team in place. Focus on profitable growth, increasing the stock price, you know, getting that next generation of ownership. Been there and excited and passionate for the future. Yeah, absolutely. It's important are people that the company is nothing without people. So true. And it's more important now than ever is hey your best assets they're they drive on the parking lot each day. Well and you see most people now is the next generation of, younger younger generation coming up. They were raised different and they've been exposed to different things than we were back in the day, where a lot of them don't like to communicate over the phone or in person. They'd rather text or email. I hate that, I hate it because there's no connection to people, and I enjoy that. So, getting the next generation to be more comfortable with talking to people and dealing with conflict resolution without panicking and being freaked out like, it's okay, you know, making a mistake, it's okay. We'll make them still make them, you know, and, getting them comfortable with, you know, they're people are ready to make it home. And I've never met people that I've, I've always been, like, all in. And while I think the next time, let's learn from it, I learned more from my last five mistakes. But I do my way. Yeah. What are the learning lessons here? Right. Because if there are, then it wasn't really a mistake. You know, if there are on the. Yeah, I. Yeah. Exactly. So yeah that's all that is baked into the culture of nature. You know, I saw that, you know, when we set up the Esop several years back and obviously we're still involved, you know, at Menke handling the annual Reichard keeping. You know all that with our compliance team and as a culture. And that's one key thing. The unifying theme here is is culture and whether to go ISO up or not. You know you have cash flows. You have this you have that. But culture is one of the main reasons whether to go to that path or not. Right? Yeah. I think, you know, you look at I was thinking about this morning and I was like, you know, we're like a small company. And they open a single owner and they, they do everything probably not to be their best. Most they have somebody up and coming at you push them out of their seat or you want to go Esop and then build the team. It's a lot like you need to have like a manager that wanted to step up. That's important. Exactly. Yeah. To have that culture, people as a building block to to make that whole thing work. Exactly. Thanks so much for joining us today. How can people find you? Well, I need that energy radiates along the West Coast, the Jovian matrix, AC, obviously bloodline. But if somebody ever used to reach out my, I think my numbers, not originals. Only if you already have any question, probably reach out to me. I'll meet with some some occult, company next week that they're looking at, but they want to have one and pick my brain a little bit. I always look at it, and I've been helped throughout the years by people with more experience. I mean, so I can help anybody I like. It's I like seeing people. Thanks, Art, and thanks everyone for joining us today. Check out Esop radio on LinkedIn, Spotify, YouTube, Apple, and also check out mickey.com. We have a lot of Esop news, etc. on there. The Trevor Gilmore, CEO of Menke. Thanks and stay tuned for the future episode. Have an awesome day everyone!