This episode is a supercut of standout moments from multiple Owned and Operated episodes, focused on one theme: how great operators build, scale, and eventually sell home service businesses.
John Wilson pulls together some of the most valuable conversations from past episodes—covering acquisitions, exits, org structure, leadership at scale, and what actually changes when you stop running a single trade business and start building a platform.
These clips span decades of operator experience, from buying broken HVAC companies to leading a $600M national home services business, and now applying the same playbook to new industries.
What you’ll hear in this supercut:
- How serial operators think about exits from day one
- The difference between running a trade and building a sellable business
- Why growth breaks when leadership and org structure can’t keep up
- How multi-location platforms balance local autonomy vs centralization
- What private equity looks for in home service acquisitions
This episode is ideal for listeners who want the big-picture thinking behind acquisitions, roll-ups, and long-term value creation—without committing to multiple full episodes.
If you’re building (or buying) a home service business and want to understand how experienced operators really think about scale and exits, this supercut is a must-listen.
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John Wilson, CEO of Wilson Companies
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What's up everybody? It is John Wilson from Owned and Operated. Over the course of January, February, and March, we are acquiring a couple businesses. So we're a few weeks into January. We've already bought two. We're about to, uh, bring on our third. So I'm super busy and because of that we are. Gonna be our recording schedule's a little bit messed up.So we have some super cuts of some of my favorite moments. Also, stay tuned as we start dropping more information about the deals that we're doing and how we're thinking about acquisitions.Was that always the plan with Gettel was uh, I mean it sounds like it probably was 'cause it was your sixth one, so you had a sort of a roadmap of, Hey, I'm gonna build this and then transact at some point. I, I know for. Folks like me, that's, uh, this is our first one. So I think for us, that journey is starting to come where it's like, okay, I think we'll have to bring on money at some point.Uh, but when I set out, I didn't have it in mind. That it would be an exit. So how did you think about that from the get go? Here's an uncomfortable truth. Growth breaks the moment that your team can't keep up. I know that finding good people fast is really hard, especially in home services positions like hr, accounting, marketing call center.It is hard to keep up. Quick staffers helps home service companies build reliable virtual teams that actually understand the trades. Quick Staffers provides vetted remote staff who are pre-trained on ServiceTitan and use best in industry SOPs. These are team members ready to integrate into your business on day one.Handling roles like customer service, lead follow up, scheduling support. And more. We're actively hiring an offshore assistant controller right now through quick staffers. I can't recommend quick staffers enough. They've helped us scale our business without a headache. Head over to quick staffers.com for more.You know, I had been in it on my, all my life. I, I bought the, bought a business when I was 25. I started going, like I said, a couple years in, I got. You know, I, I got notified by the IRS, I didn't pay my payroll taxes, and I said to the IRS the, uh, agent, I said, what's payroll taxes? Because I was so green, I didn't even know.Mm-hmm. And, you know, that kind of sent me on the journey. And so I made a business plan at that point, because at that point, you know, you, it, it, I was in a really tough situation. But I really couldn't get out of it because, you know, you can't discharge payroll taxes and bankruptcy if you went bankrupt, for instance, and you can't.And I owed people money that, that I bought the business from. And so I was like, okay, well I can't be the stews that just fails in two years, so I have to gut this out and figure it out. So I wrote a plan and the plan was like, okay, I gotta get through this. I'm gonna get through this and I'm gonna. Build a business and I'm gonna sell it.And I made the plan of what you have to do to sell it. You gotta have a management team, you have to have some steady revenues and profits, things like that. And then I said, now I was a young guy, like I was 26 or something. I said, I'm gonna sell for $1 million. You know, that was my goal. $1 million. $1 million.And, uh. I thought that was all the money in the world. But anyway, so I end up, you know, we put it together and, you know, I figure out, I, I create my EMOS system and then I start buying either broken, bankrupt, well broken, bankrupt, uh, or uh, uh, HVAC businesses. Uh, businesses where the guys are retiring, guys retiring or struggling, even old phone numbers from, uh.You know, from companies that shut down are gonna shut down. I'd gather up these phone numbers and I put 'em into the mix, and I started scaling my business by buying these. Inexpensive broken businesses and, and I became good at it because I had fixed my own business and I figured out what the process is to, to build a business system and I documented it and I, and so it was easy for me just to go ahead and start organizing these companies and putting the routines in.I had the plan to sell and then I started building them up, and I got to where I had three locations. When I was about 30 years old in Las Vegas, and that's when a RS, uh, are you familiar with a RS American Residential Services? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So that's when a RS was born. And, um, they came to me and said, Hey, why, you know, why you join our, join, uh, our rollup, you can be a founding member.And so, you know, I was one of the, I don't know, five, six. Guys who got it started and then we built it and I got, at that point, the business was worth a lot more than $1 million. I think I got, you know, maybe five, six times that. But, um, I went out and I executed my plans. So I was in, I'm in my early thirties and I sell the business to a RS and I'm in that world for a while.And, uh, so I had hit my goal. I wanted to build it and sell it and go figure out something else to do. Because I hadn't done anything else all my life. I thought maybe I wanted to be a, you know, stockbroker or something cool where you wore a suit and you know, that kind of life. Mm-hmm. But when I got into, when I, when a RS bought us, I got into, I was very fortunate that I was able to get involved with these guys who knew a lot more than I did about business in a bigger scaled business.By that time I knew how to build a HVAC business system and a nice, uh, high performing business, but I really didn't understand how to do multi-branch very well and, and, uh, m and a very well. And, you know, real m and a not just buying broken stuff, right? And so I worked there for a few years and I got a really good education there.And so I said, you know what? I'd really enjoy this. I enjoy now. Because I'd be traveling around doing acquisitions and I'd see guys who did a lot better than I did. And I'm like, oh, I could have done that. Oh, I could have done that. I should have done that. Mm-hmm. And so it re-inspired me. So I decided back in, uh, 2000 to.Do it again. So I decided at that point, I'm in the business building business. I'm not in the HVAC point business. I build businesses and I sell them. 'cause I kinda like this whole deal where you, you know, you sprint for three, four or five years and then you sell it for. 10, 15 years of profits, a nice little chunk of money.Right. And I like just, I just like the idea of kind of being my own private equity shop. So that's what I did. And so I did the, mm-hmm. Did the first one. Did the second one in Vegas and Phoenix called Yes. Air Conditioning, plumbing and mm-hmm. You know, various ones along the, along the way. Yeah. And at one point, one point, uh, after I sold yes to, um, a RS.I was a, uh, I was a regional VP or a division vp, they called it, and they gave, uh, my team and I have seven businesses to fix for them. And a big reward for that. So, you know, we put the team together and we just executed, just execute my plan on building a business system, get it implemented, get the right team in place, get 'em focused, and start driving results.So then I became the president of a RS for a while. So I was the president of this national company, you know. I'm a guy kid, started in a AC van fixing air conditioners. Now I'm the president of this, you know, $600 million business, national business and, uh, you know, learned a lot more. I, you know, every time I had these opportunities to get with these bigger guys, I really picked up some new knowledge that, you know, most of us from the industry, like yourself, who, who no different than me.You, you know, you came from a family business, you're just not, you're just not gonna be able to. Experience. Yeah. So I did that. Yeah. My, my hope you, you're describing what I hoped my post life, my post exit life would look like. Where, how, how do I, you know, yeah, the money's great, but like how can you learn something interesting that, like when, when would be another chance you'd get to go work somewhere with 200 locations?How else do you get that? So yeah, that sounds like amazing. That sounds like what I hope my post exit life looks like. Yeah. Learn, you know, get paid to learn somewhere for five years and then go do it again. That sounds like fun. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's all I've been done doing. And then, uh, and so on this last deal with Gale, we, we really rung the bell in a big way.You know, we had a very, you know. Industry leading exit. Yeah. And then I said, well, what's next? But I, you know, I had this team, this, this business, you know, this business development team that I've created over the years. Who knows, you know, we attack leadership management, money, marketing, lead generation, lead conversion.Client fulfillment. We attack client fulfillment. We attack every chunk of the business right there. We get the processes documented, get into training, start training our people, start recruiting the team, getting the financial, uh, understanding of the operation and GE and keep going. So anyway, I sold the business in 21 and then I, uh, was stayed as a CEO for 22.Uh, and then it was a plan, me plan retirement from hvac. So they brought in their new CEO and then I went off and my team and I, we started attacking the standby generator industry. So I've been in that for. It end of the year. End of the year will be two years. So it's two years now. And we've had, uh, we put together four locations, uh, Dallas, Houston, Tampa, and uh, South Carolina.You know, we're off to the races. We acquired 14 million in revenue and. We'll wrap up about 50 million with the same store growth this year. Is there a Goliath store or are they roughly equal? 50 million generators is a lot. I know that's a lot of generators. Yeah. Um, well, obviously our two big stores are, uh, are our Houston, you know, Houston's the number one, uh, standby market in the country.And then, uh, and then Tampa is our second. But as you're, as you're thinking about this, so. Your ghetto was your sixth, uh, industry leading exit, um, as you're thinking of, and, and your whole life was sort of this HVAC building and selling HVAC businesses, maybe like a flare plumbing in there too. But, but there was always like a buyer, like, because you knew the buying landscape.How do you think about that for. Standby generators because it doesn't seem like the buying, I just don't know. So I'm looking for education, but it doesn't seem like the buying landscape is as straightforward as HVAC. Well, look, PE is all over Main Street. Every, every business there is, you know, they're looking for opportunities and, and yes, they're there.I I, I can't help but. Think that, um, you know, when I got in, when I got into generators last year, there was one PE shop that had a meaningful business. They had rolled up, was starting to roll up, and it's a nice, they have a really nice thing going, but as soon as I got in and started talking about it, um.And I don't know if this is because I was talking about it or because just, uh, the natural things have happened, but, uh, there's been a lot more PE involvement, so there's a lot more com, uh, competition for the businesses in the generator space today. I would say probably there's five, six PE shops sniffing around it.Yeah. And then I get calls every single day from other PE shops that wanna partner and see how they can get involved with it. But I want to get it, you know, we're gonna get a little bit. Beefier. Have you ever bought enterprise level software and realized that managing it really just became a full-time job?Well, that's pretty much exactly why my restoration business switched over to Field Pulse. We were tired of software that promised efficiency, but came with endless training sessions, onboarding and frustrated techs, and using it began to feel like it was a job all on its own field. Pulse was built for owner operators who don't want more dashboards, they need scheduling.Invoicing and job tracking, and they needed all to live in one place without the chaos or the learning curve. Field Pulse is simple to roll out. It's easy for your team to actually use, and it was 75% cheaper than the other titans of software we were using right now. If you book a demo with Field Pulse, you'll get an exclusive partner offer.It's 20% off an eligible annual subscription and 50% off. Premium support for your first year. If your software upgrade has turned into a time suck, it might be time to make the move, book a demo with Field Pulse and see if it's a better fit. I'm, I'm trying to visualize in my life going from z maybe not zero.Like you've led teams, like you were doing big stuff mm-hmm. In, in a previous life, but going from like zero to 3,500 employees in five years. I don't, I don't even know, like, what does that look like as a personal development, a professional development, how do you brace yourself for impact? It's, I'm, I'm trying to learn every day about how to be a better leader.Um, there's so many things that I'm not good at and I, I, I know I need to work on. Um, one of those things is I communicate. Pretty well with enough of our team, but at at this level, most of the people don't ever see me. Most of our teammates don't see me enough. Yeah, I mean, you probably work with like six people.Yeah. I mean, yes. And, and people at our corporate office. I see. I, I try to pop into our companies every now and then, so, you know, that stuff helps. But there's certainly a lot of areas to improve when you're highly distributed like this. We have over 30 offices all over. Yeah. And one of the areas I'm excited to improve on is to bring more communication deeper into the organization.Yeah. And show them I'm excited for what they're doing and that I, I don't speak to them enough, but I care about what they're doing. Yeah. And so there, there is areas for improvement. I'm willing to admit we. Got, we've grown so fast, we don't have a good internal way to do that. Yeah. LinkedIn is one of the ways I do that.Yeah. Um, I try to be pretty active on there. We've got about a third of our workforce force on LinkedIn. Mm-hmm. Or at least connected mm-hmm. To us somehow through our companies or through me. And um, yeah. Just a lot to improve upon when you're that big. 'cause it's. It's never perfect, it feels like. Yeah.Yeah. That'd be a lot. And that's a complicated problem. I mean, even, um, we, Chad, uh, Peterman from Peterman Brothers started a podcast. And it was an internal podcast. He, he later ended up publishing, uh, live, but the, that was his original goal. I think there are 10 or 12 locations now, and it was the same thing.They're distributed. I see these guys once a month. How do we still spread culture? How do we talk about what I'm doing? How do we talk about like Jimmy's amazing five star review? How do we still do the small but really important stuff? Spot on. I, I love the podcast idea. We we're exploring a few other, yeah, mediums.What's also pretty cool is some of our companies have already got mechanisms where they, they do it within their company already. Yeah. And so most of the companies have some sort of connection already, at least to their. Which is probably what matters the most. Yeah. I would imagine like the people you see every day eye to eye.I, I would agree. I want our teams in the field to know they're a part of a local organization that cares about them. I care about them deeply, but I don't get a chance to see them all the time. Yeah. So the leadership in whatever local. Organization or Opco, it really matters to me that that person takes this seriously as well.Yeah. And I get to see them more. Like we're all gonna be together next week. 50 or 60 people from around the company are flying in that. All run p and Ls in our local leadership. Yeah. And we're building that culture. Yeah. Twice a year, see each other at least four times a year for various things. But this meeting is a real culture.We focus on culture there so they can go back and at least impart some of. The care that we have for them through them as the leader that's locally there. Yeah. Can you walk me through a little bit of the org structure? So there's 30 locations. Mm-hmm. Each one has a branch president or branch GM or something.What, what's the smallest location? What's the biggest? It's a range. Uh, we we're, we're, we've combined kind of some of the smaller ones. So really when you look at the small ones that are like 15. A million roughly. Yeah. Our biggest ones in the high two hundreds. Yeah. So there's a range. Yeah, that's big. But what we've done is we've created divisions.So we have five divisions. We have a West Division, a northeast division, a southeast division, an industrial division, and a service organization. The service organizations, national industrials, national, those other three are regions of the us. And so we have leadership in those divisions as well as key team members for those divisions as well.Yeah. HR leader, recruiting, finance, safety in each service for each division. Oh, okay. And these are like regionalized department? Yeah, the for the three that are regionalized. They're, they're, um, they're regionalized. The other two that are national have kind of a customer focus. Yeah, an industrial customer focus.There's a HR leader for that. There's a finance leader for that. There's a couple operations leaders. There's a leader and a, you know, a vp and so we, we've developed a, um, a part we, we've. Sized part of our business. So they're all roughly the same size? Yeah. And they all can, um, like they each have roughly the same head count, like total reporting?Is that what you meant? Roughly. Okay. Roughly. Yeah. That's hard. And revenue and, and profitability and everything like that. So the leaders that run those divisions are running a sizable business with the local leaders Yeah. That are boots on the ground? Yes. Okay. And we, we think that's, that, that's relatively new for us.Not that long ago, it was me and my partner. Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm everyone, I'm, I'm like listening to what you're saying and I'm like, the org, the amount of changes you must have made in like a five year period to nail down an org structure and still a moving target 'cause you're still acquiring companies.But yeah, it'd be a lot. I mean, I just think about what we've done in a one location, you know, not that big business and we've gone through a lot. I, you know, I'm trying to envision that. Over 30 locations. It's, it's super interesting because when we started, I was the president, CEO of one Opco. Yeah. And that, that the one, the first one in Arizona.Okay. That, that was my job, was to survive. Yeah. Yeah. Collecting payments from customers. Getting big hire fires, hiring, firing, and, and that business, when we bought it didn't even have a website. Okay. So we, we've learned, we've, we've had to evolve constantly. Yeah. I mean, I, I came from Walmart. I was an, an executive at Walmart before I came over to this job, and it was, it was a culture shock because I got used to the big company benefits.Post a job you get. 1,000, 200 people applying for that job. Yeah. Come to this little opco with no website. Yeah. No social media presence. Nobody hardly knows who they are, but they still do 17 million per year of revenue. Yeah. And I would post a job for a project manager. And no one would apply. Literally no one would apply.I remember, I remember getting a guy to, to, I talked to him on the phone. Mm-hmm. And he was gonna come in, I was gonna interview him, he was gonna come in. And I remember sitting in the lobby for an hour after the time that he said he was gonna be there thinking, oh, he's gonna show up. Yeah, he's gonna show up.Never showed up, literally. Multiple times this happened to me. So there, there was a lot of learnings when you talk about org. I mean that, that was like my challenge not that long ago. Yeah. To now what we're, what we're dealing with. It's just totally different. Yeah. Environment. Do you think this is easier?For me. Yeah, way easier. Yeah, a million times easier. Yeah. Yeah, I would, I would imagine so. So we're getting ready to go multi-location and likely multi-state will be our first like new location. So like as I'm thinking about. I, I'm, I'm thinking about the next six months of my life and I'm, you know, I'm thinking about the last five years of yours and how I think about org structure.Like what should I be doing every day? I'm not as in the weeds as you were, but like, not long ago, like three years ago you probably were Yeah, yeah, totally. At some point, yeah. In 2022 I was helping pick up the phone 'cause we accidentally turned over our whole call center, like, you know. Yeah. So you do what you have to do, you do what you gotta do.Uh. But yeah, I'm, I'm thinking about that and I'm thinking about all of the decisions that you've probably gone through, like what should be centralized, what should be decentralized, and what I seem to have landed on in theory, but obviously I haven't executed on anything, is like centralized, almost nothing.Like, 'cause if I, the more I centralize, the harder my life is gonna be because then I have to. Frankly do more versus like, people wanna know, they wanna be eye to eye with their, the people in their branch that, like, that's who matters to them. Like, I don't matter to them in Cleveland. If somebody else is in Pittsburgh, like nobody gives a shit about John.Right. Yeah. And they shouldn't, they shouldn't give a shit about me. Yeah. Like, I'm not in their life very much. Right, right. Yeah. It's, it's a difficult thing to say what, what it should be for you guys or, or even for us. 'cause it, it's a moving target a little bit. But I do highly believe in empowered, decentralized teams.Yeah. To a degree they should have autonomy to make certain decisions. Yeah. They should have autonomy to, you know, drive the p and l. Yeah. And are there things that that person wants to do? And are there things that that person doesn't wanna do? And I think the decisions of what. Corporate does is is gonna be unique for each Yeah.Individual in each company. But I think generally speaking, the person that's gonna drive the best p and l for you doesn't wanna manage insurance. Yeah. And doesn't wanna manage for us bonding and Yeah. Um, employee renewal, you know, insurance, renewals and a lot of the back office stuff. Yeah. So, so there is.Parts of this that I, that, that I think you can get to where a new branch probably. Yeah, we want them to be empowered, but we don't want them to be bogged down, completely bogged down. Yeah. With the overhead stuff that doesn't drive any revenue or profit. Yeah. For too long I was letting the wrong marketing agencies set my money on fire, and their marketing looked pretty good.On paper. The reporting was attractive, but at the end of the day, it just wasn't driving leads. That's why I started using service scalers at Wilson Service. Scalers is a marketing agency built specifically for home service company. They focus on the channels that actually drive leads, like targeted PPC, local service ads, SEO, Google Business Profile, so that you're showing up in front of your customers that are actively searching.They'll help you see exactly what's working, so you stop wasting ad dollars on low quality leads. Right now they're doing something crazy and they're giving the opportunity for one entrepreneur to get up to 12 months of marketing on. So that's up to a hundred thousand dollars in services for the right operator.If you are serious about tightening up your marketing in 2026 and want to see what this could look like for your business, go to service scalers.com and book a free strategy call and let 'em know that I sent you and I think you, you are correct. Um, I think you have to change your mindset when you think about hiring technicians, uh, in a smaller area because it's the long game.It's always gonna be the long game and I would much rather pick up somebody who's got soft skills mm-hmm. And train them, take the time to train them on the service system and all the ways that we do different, you know, do business differently than try and take a seasoned person who has, you know, junk for skills talking with the customer.That I can't, I mean, I can try, but we've learned over and over again, it doesn't work. Mm-hmm. You have to, you have to have those skills. So I think for us, we just kind of figured out along the way that invest, you have to invest in the people. And does that take a lot more time than, than you're talking about?Yeah. It takes a heck of a lot more time, but I think that. We find they're more apt to stay longer. Mm-hmm. Um, because we've invested so much into them and built that relationship. So, you know, we're not only building relationships with customers, but we're building relation long standing relationships with, with our employees as well.And. I think it's just a different mindset to how, how you're gonna hire, like we're getting a lot of the, uh, people from factories or from trade schools, uh, coming in and, and applying and from different industries and we're just, you know, very open to that. And, and just like she said, they, they thrive in that freedom to be kinda creative.Mm-hmm. You know, and we just train in-house and, um, you know, on the technical side. And the customers. Customers just love that. Yeah. How many people a year are you like training and how long does it take? Like two years, one year? It can take two, two years, um, to fully train, sometimes four. And it really depends on the individual.Mm-hmm. Um, we've been using next tech, um, yeah. To through Nexstar to train a lot of, of the green, super green, uh, people who come in. Um, but you know. It really depends on the individual. Like I had an electrician who went through the entire next tech program in two months. Mm-hmm. Which is mind blowing.That's a lot of content and a lot of videos. Mm-hmm. And a lot of checkoff to make sure they know what they're doing. So it really just depends on the individual, on, on their capacity to learn at a faster pace. But somebody who already has the, the knowledge and you're really just working on refining their, their service system.How, how long would you say for that six months? Yeah. It's, you know, it's really tough 'cause you're trying to plug in a person into a, into a department and you want them to get, be productive and, and be able to bring revenue in mm-hmm. In, in the shortest amount of time. Right. And, uh, and that's, that's not.It's not always ideal. Yeah, it's not ideal. I mean, you gotta think, think out six months. So we've went to a little bit different model, uh, on our staffing and, and I don't know that we have anybody, maybe a couple of HVAC technicians, uh, but most everybody has a trainee, uh, that's in their truck right now.So we're just trying to get ahead of that curve on the staffing. It's something that I think once you get it in your head that you have to constantly be hiring and constantly be training. All the time. Mm-hmm. All the time. It's just something that you have to do to maintain that steady, steady stream of individuals coming in for, to, to build them all up to be that, um, that revenue producing tech.It's just a constant have to. Yeah, and especially now, I mean, there's less and less coming in. To the trades, and I, you know, I, I have high hopes for, for the newer generations of, of realizing, you know, you can make a really good living, not going to a four year college, and you can just come right on into the trades and I'll welcome you with open arms.Mm-hmm. Come on in. Um, you've got the data on this 'cause of your work with it's explore the trades. Yes, but like my, I'm, I'll give a vibe. So this is, you know, zero, zero facts all vibes over here. Okay. It, my vibe is that. There are more and more young people joining the trades. Yes. Every day. I mean, TikTok, I think this was just on either Wall Street Journal or New York Times, but like TikTok is driving like a trades revolution.Mm-hmm. For exactly what you just said. Yeah. Hey, you wanna make a hundred grand at 25 and you can buy a house and you don't need college debt. Like, that's a hell of a pitch. It is. And I feel like it's finally getting heard because, you know, there's not, there's not, yeah. There's TikTok. It's, it's finally getting, I feel like it went backwards.It's like it's, it's gotten from industry and finally into the schools. And the schools are finally getting the point that, oh, oh, I don't have to tell them all they have to go to college. Mm-hmm. You know, 'cause, uh, I mean, I could, I could almost quote I, Mike Rowe, you know, for how many years have we been Yeah.Shoving it down everybody's throat that you have to go to a four year college and you don't. Mm-hmm. You know, a funny anecdote about my life, okay, is I was not a very good student, so I became a plumber, right? But I was not a very good student. And in junior of high school, I had a teacher that told me, Hey, if you don't get your grades up, you're gonna end up being a plumber.And she was right. And she was right. But like, you know, here we are today, 160. I know employees later. Don't you wanna just walk into their office and be like, no, really? Like, no, I won. Like, but I do, I do think it's, I do think it's funny 'cause it's sort of like, yeah, yeah. It's the exact, and I'm really glad that happened.I, I have a similar actual experience like that. Yeah. My guidance counselor told me not to bother going to college 'cause I'd never make it. And it's, yeah. Exact opposite. I got my degree. Yeah. And, and here I sit, but mm-hmm. They never would've, you know, I, I just think the point is stop trying to push them in areas Yeah.That they don't wanna go. Yeah. You know, if they don't like school, they don't like, um. Doing what they're doing. If they wanna explore other options, give them other options. I mean, I'm not, I'm not opposed to four year college. Obviously we need that for other trades. Mm-hmm. You know, if you want a doctor, you're hoping they're, they're going to be licensed.So it's, it has its place. But don't forget, there's other areas, other conversations to be had about opportunities. You know, don't just shut the door. Don't even tell them the door exists. I mean, if you wanna go down that rabbit hole, you can go down women in the trades and how that was unheard of. Mm-hmm.My grandfather actually ran the same type of business that we have. Mm-hmm. It was never ever brought up, ever. Yeah. It ever even occurred to him. Yeah. He had two daughters. Yeah. And it never even occurred to him to ever pass down his information. It all died with him. Yeah. That's wild. And it's sad, you know, all that knowledge that just went.To the wayside and you know, quit assuming you know what's best for the kids that you have influence over and start asking more questions instead of, you know, this is what you need to do. Yeah, well, what do you want to do? What are you good at? You know, I think that's another conversation. What are you good at?And where do you wanna be? Because if you just tell them what they have to do. You know, they're gonna go do that, and then four years later they're gonna have 200, whatever, $500,000 in debt and they're still gonna be lost. Yeah. I think we'll have a boom here shortly. I think it's already started. Mm-hmm.But, uh, I don't know how much of your business so far has been impacted by ai, but. I mean, it's, it's a thing. So I think the more that we see ai, like take over more of the jobs that were entry level or, uh, even like knowledge worker jobs, the next best earning is the trades. So I, I, I think it'll be interesting to see like Gen Z is already there.Mm-hmm. With TikTok and like, Hey, no college debt. Hey, a lot of money. There's a lot of good here. What happens when the 30 and 40 year olds start getting displaced from jobs that were historically like safe, but between offshoring and ai, like they don't exist anymore. Like do accounting jobs exist anymore?I think that, like, that's a real question that I think most of the industry trying to figure out. Uh, so yeah, I, I think we're, the next five years are gonna be fascinating because we have Gen Z really coming into their own and a large portion of the country being displaced. And they gotta, they gotta put food.I think that's a great opportunity. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You're talking about the 30 and 40 year olds. Mm-hmm. Uh, because the, you know, the young generation, the 20, you know, the mm-hmm. The 20 year olds that are coming in, they have their own challenges of, of maturity and, and life skills that they don't have yet.Yeah. We, that we all to deal. So if I think about, uh, somebody that's in their thirties and forties and have a lot of life skills, that would be a great transition into the trades. Yeah, it would. Yeah, I think so too. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think so too. Yeah. I don't, and, and I don't really have stats to back this up, but it sure feels like plumbing is going to be really big.The business. Yeah. Plumbing is, plumbing. Is plumbing's great? Yeah, plumbing's awesome. Plumbing's great. Um. It just feels like there's, well, it's less ai. I mean, that's a part of this too. Yeah. Like there is already, uh, with the Google glasses, like AI can diagnose, uh, furnace problems. So that is a part of the, is there a displacement there or likely less of a displacement and more, Hey, we can onboard an HVAC tech in mm-hmm.30 days because AI does all of the work instead of, you know, years of experience now. Yeah. Whereas plumbing, I, that feels harder. Like a is probably not gonna drill a drain.
