In this episode of Owned and Operated, John Wilson is joined by Jack Carr, CEO of Rapid Response, to break down their recent partnership and the strategy behind building a multi-market home service platform.
They share what it actually looks like to scale through acquisitions—covering the real advantages of size, from better pricing to shared capacity—and why smaller operators struggle to compete.
The conversation also dives into one of the hardest decisions in scaling: what to centralize vs. what to keep local. John and Jack unpack lessons from past mistakes, including how over-centralization can break a business.
In this episode, we cover:
- Scaling through acquisitions and partnerships
- The real benefits of scale in home services
- Sharing capacity across markets
- Centralization vs. decentralization
- Building toward a $100M+ platform
If you’re looking to grow beyond a single market, this is a candid look at what it actually takes.
Host: John Wilson https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbwilson1/
Guest: Jack Carr https://x.com/thehvacjack
💼 Extra Special Thanks to Service Scalers!
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Join John Wilson and Jack Carr May 5–7, 2026 in Akron, Ohio for the Breaking $5 Million Workshop—a 3-day, in-person event for HVAC, plumbing, and electrical owners ready to scale. You’ll see the Wilson operation live, sit in on a real sales huddle, tour the shop, and build your roadmap to $5M+.
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John Wilson, CEO of Wilson Companies
Jack Carr, CEO of Rapid HVAC
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John and Jack are now partnered in hvac, plumbing and electrical, so this is fucking awesome. I'm now employee number 300 and something of John's. He's enjoying this very much just to like give everyone what Jack and I are trying to build here. What we're looking to do is create a super regional platform. Can we connect the west side of Pennsylvania to Chicago and Michigan to Nashville? We're really excited. So what do you wanna do now? I wanna go buy some, some more businesses. If you are in Nashville, we'd love to talk to you. Welcome back to Owned and Operated, a Top 200 business and entrepreneurship podcast. I'm your host, John Wilson during the day, I'm the CEO of Wilson, and we are a $40 million plumbing, HVAC, and electric platform across three states in the Midwest. And for fun, I run this podcast where I talk to my friends about how to build their home service business. Today I am joined by my good friend. Partner and, uh, co-host Jack Carr, the CEO and leader of Rapid Response in Nashville, Tennessee. Welcome back. Welcome back. Whoa, John, that, that intro changed a little bit. It went to three states. It did. It recently changed a little bit. It's so weird. We, um, yeah, we put this out on Twitter or, well, Jack put this out on Twitter, so maybe you should be the, you should be the one to say it. Well, how's business going? I heard you. This is going great. I heard you just added like six or $7 million to your top line. Yeah. Business is going great. We. Uh, recently part partnered with this incredible entrepreneur down in Nashville, Tennessee. Uh, oh, competitor. Wow. Yeah. That's kind of rough. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's gonna be pretty tough. No, everyone met everyone who's not catching the, in between the lines here. John and Jack are now partnered in multiple businesses, including hvac, plumbing, and electrical. So, uh, we merged here, uh, this week actually a couple days ago. Yeah. And we are now. I'm now employee number 300 something. John think it's 58. Yeah, you're number 3 58 inside our payroll system system. I system my first W2 in seven years and it's for John. So he, he is enjoying this very much. I am enjoying it a little bit. I am enjoying it a little bit. Yeah. No, I thi I think it's, um, I mean this, this is fucking awesome. I, I think I was talking to, I was talking to Bridget about this, um. And my twenties felt very isolated in entrepreneurship. Yes. And, uh, a theme of my thirties and I'm, I'm turning 35, so, you know, midlife crisis. The theme of my thirties are, Hey, for the past five years I've like really connected with, uh, the nation, uh, through this show, through the newsletter, through acts, through whatever. And built this incredible group of friends and, uh, peers and people that I admire and like want to work with one day. And so my twenties was like building alone and it worked. And my thirties has been like industry friends and like being able to work closer with industry friends. Uh, so that's been a lot, that's been a lot of fun. So we partnered with Jack in Nashville. Um, but, but this year especially is kind of funny. Because we've done three, we've done the three new. Like add-ons this year. Yeah. And every single one of them was a friend. Like they were all like people that I have just known for years through the show. They went through the breaking five workshops. Like Jack knew 'em, said groomer. That's what I'm calling. I'm a groomer business groom. Jesus Christ. This is like that. That's what this all is. It's just all a big ploy to like find, I met you years ago Find and I eventually acquired you. Yeah, exactly. Um. No, man, I'm super excited. This is, I mean, we've been working on it for months. We've been hinting at Yeah. If you, if you've been listening to episode, we started working on this this almost a year ago. Yeah. You, you've probably heard some hints towards it. Um, and now it all makes sense, but yeah, we've been working on this for a while. Yeah. And so, I mean, we're really excited. I think that this is a good. Uh, partnership that I'm, I'm super excited about. Yeah. Because we're, we're able to really put some gasoline onto our already, uh, raging fire. And yeah, I think for both of us, uh, the next couple years are gonna be, yeah. Crazy. Crazy. Really? I was gonna say intense. Crazy. Intense, crazy. Yeah. It's gonna be crazy. Um, but it's gonna be fun. Like Yeah. Building with friends is building this podcast has been fun. Yeah. Building our other projects have been fun. And so yeah, it, it's, it's already been fun working with you and your team. You too, man, to get through due diligence and to get into like, the stages we are now. So, yeah. No, this, this has been, this has been awesome. I think, um, yeah, I remember, uh. Well, when I, I was talking with Bridget, so we talked about like, Hey, twenties, were alone in like thirties. I just like want to do business with like people I like. And uh, but I remember that you and I started talking about this, um, it was almost a year and a half ago was when it first came up as like something I feel, I feel like I remember it was like December of 24 and. We had, I don't remember. I remember the podcast and I remember like where I was sitting when we did it, but I don't remember what started the conversation. Like maybe somebody got bought or somebody offered to buy me or something. Um, and it was just like starting to think through like what is the, what's the benefit and what's the point? Um. Which is, which is kind of interesting 'cause I think like as someone that's built, like both of us, as someone that's built like privately, like without private equity funding, we've just built our businesses. It's hard to imagine a partnership. It's hard to imagine like how it, how it works and like why would I, why would I do it? But I remember like a year and a half ago, we were talking about like, oh hey, hold on. Yeah, Goodman pricing is like 40, 50% freaking less. Uh, ser like, yeah. I always get really annoyed when I hear people's ServiceTitan pricing. Um, like I heard someone's yesterday, it was like $160 a user, and I was like, that's cute. That, that's, that's a cute, that's a cute thing that you've got there. And, uh, like it, it's like there's these economies of scale that you get to benefit from. By being a part of something bigger, most marketing agencies will show you clicks, impressions, and maybe even traffic. But none of that really matters if the phone's not ringing. And that's why we partner with Service Scalers. They are built specifically for home service companies, and they focus on one thing. Which is driving real high quality calls and book jobs. This is a no-brainer. They're offering a 60 day money back guarantee on LSA management, Google Business Profile optimization and website builds. If you don't get more visibility, more calls, and better leads, then you don't pay. If you want more book jobs without the marketing headache, click the link below and book a free strategy call with service scalers. Yeah, I mean, across the board and, and I think that was probably the conversation that spurred, is we were talking about Wrench Group or one of these other large groups that have came together and then. Or it was, uh, we were looking at somebody's crazy pricing and going, how is this group, I think maybe like Coolray or something. How are they getting these, this nuts pricing? And it's just this, these economies of scale that you're not able, it's real able to touch, but you can see other companies utilize and it hurts because you have to sell at the same market rate as them, or within a, yeah. Reasonable percentage. Yeah. But their margin is like a 65%. You know, gross margin on something at the same price that yours is a 45. Yeah. So they're able to rip 20 more percent out of material than you are on each job. Like it's just nuts. Yeah, it is. I think that something that is not well disclosed inside the industry and, um, I think wholesalers kind of get, I, I don't think they're totally in, they're not in control of what I'm about to say, so I'm not like digging on any wholesalers here. Um. Because factories, like wholesalers like have a point that they can go to, and then at that point it's factory. So if your wholesaler's telling you you're getting a good price, like you very well might be. And it like, who knows if it goes beyond that point, they have to go talk to the factory. Um, I think it's really hard for the average contractor to understand the price difference of materials, of software, of services, of anything, when, when you haven't seen it with your own eyeballs. I remember back in 2024, we were working on this like HVAC negotiation that we've talked a lot about, and one of the most formative moments of that is I was down in DFW and I visited with um, baker Brothers. Mm-hmm. And Jimmy and I were reviewing what they were paying for equipment, and it was just like literally 50% less, like five zero. Percent less than what we were paying and they were doing it through Lennox and Lennox's headquartered there. And I'm sure there's some stuff going on there, but it really opened my eyes to like, holy shit, this is, this is what scale brings you is exactly that. Like it allows you to compete in a totally different world. And I, but the cool part, and I don't wanna jump subjects here, but like that's one portion as well, right? Yeah. So a again, I, the distance between Akron and, yeah, Nashville doesn't allow for this, but once you start to. CL yet, once you start to close the gap, hint, hint. Anybody in, uh, Kentucky, if anyone's in Kentucky and they would like partner, anyone Kentucky? I have a problem I need to solve. Roughly. Bowling Green Kentucky would be great. Bowling Green, Lexington Lewis on the, just anywhere there. I'll just spit balling if you would like, like. On a map, take Akron or Columbus and, uh, yeah, just I need a, I need a, I need a path. Uh, but like that's the next huge area of leverage, which you get with your current businesses up in, in Ohio. Yeah. But, um, we don't see just yet is like the people leverage is having the ability to, to pull up, share capacity. Yeah. Share capacity, share installer capacity when, yeah. When one person is, uh, oversold. Yeah. Like we just had it this month where we sold $180,000 more than we were able to install. That's crazy. And we were purely handicapped by the fact that we were doing, you know, three HVAC installs with two teams a day. Like if we had somebody close that had extra capacity on the install side. Yeah, right. We could have knocked out an additional 20, 30,000 easy. Easy. Easy. Probably like 50 or 60. Yeah. Well that, so that's what we've done so far. So the, just to like give everyone the, what we're trying to build together, like what Jack and I are trying to build here. So in our headquarters is essentially Cleveland, Ohio. We're just south of Cleveland, Ohio. And, uh, really big market, um, like three and a half total million people in like that MSA, it's Akron, Canton in Cleveland. Um, a lot of people, uh, we, we bought a business about 30 minutes west of us in January 1st. It's been an awesome addition to what we're doing, and we get to do exactly what you're talking about, where, you know, I've seen it with a one, I've seen it with Peterman, I've seen it with Call Dad. Like, these companies are doing this incredible job. Sharing capacity. So there's no, there's basically no such thing as a slow day anymore, because if you're slow here, they're busy as hell over here. And it, it's a totally different way of looking at scale. Um, so we, uh. So we brought on that business and then a month later in February, we brought on one in Fort Wayne, Indiana. And we're actually about to, I, I'm hoping we're gonna bring on a second one in Fort Wayne here in the next, like month or two. Uh, we have one that we're about to get under LOI and um, so we've got that and now we've been sharing capacity there too. And that's a two and a half hour drive. But like, we've still been sharing capacity, so like, Hey, we sold out the week. Let's send an extra crew for a week and just get an Airbnb. It's not ideal, it's not as profitable as it could be. Uh, so like our plan is to connect them. So we have Toledo and we have kind of Dayton that are like directionally where we want to go. Indianapolis. Mm-hmm. Uh, Ann Arbor maybe like, there's a lot of different ways that we can skin that, but like we want to be able to connect it. And then now, uh, we have Nashville and what we're looking to do is create a super regional platform. Hey, can we connect? The west side of Pennsylvania to Chicago and Michigan to Nashville. And like, can we connect all of that and build ourselves a path, uh, through all of it. So like that's what we're trying to build. That's what, that's why the next two years are gonna be kind of intense and crazy. 'cause like that's what we're on the path for. Which, I mean, I love acquisitions. I started a whole YouTube channel about acquisitions, so that's super fun for me. Yeah. Um, and definitely intense, but a lot of fun. And then the interesting part too, so I mean, you have material, you have physical, uh, personnel, uh, yeah. Leverage there and then. You have centralization, which is an interesting one that you and I have gone back on. Different centralization, different been crazy. Yeah. That's been been crazy's and I'm, I'll say it for the world. You were right on a lot of this stuff. Yeah. The but the, I think the point is, is a very good point to bring up is like, how do you. Think about centralization without thinking. Yeah. Without hitting an over decentralization point. Yeah. Because you can over centralize and it can cause additional issues on top of it. Well, let's just like explain what the concept is. Yeah. So the idea, and this video might as well be like how to do a rollup, like how to sell fund a rollup. So the idea is as you go to bring on businesses, you can run one of two models. You can run centralized or you can run decentralized. Centralized means that you're going to centralize as much disciplines into one office as you can. So call center dispatch, potentially install coordination, accounting, recruitment, hr, marketing, purchasing. Those are, those are probably the big ones. Yeah. And um. And then like what you, the whole goal of it is to leave at the branch, the branch tasks, sales go sell, go install, do do the job. And um, so that's centralization. Decentralization. Decentralization is the exact opposite. You buy a bunch of businesses and you let them run on their own. Run solo. Yep. Run solo. Yeah. No, no resources. And obviously that's a spectrum, um, of like. Very centralized to Not at all. And like, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of different ways it could look. The success that we've had so far this year, uh, has been heavy centralization. So we've, we've bought two and we centralized absolutely everything as fast as we possibly could. And what it meant for us is that branch level. EBITDA or branch level profit percentage went from 10% or 15%, like for the seller to 30 to 40% for us. Now, obviously there's some allocated costs, like if I put a fraction of my accounting cost or call center or whatever back into that branch, maybe it's like. You know, 25, 20 5% or something. Yeah. But it's still extremely helpful. Yeah. But the downside, right, is if you overdo that, um, which I know, I don't know if you're, you, you're going full centralization or not, but there is a point where if you do too much of that, it can cause issues, right? Yeah. Um, and that specifically is, hey. Y there are things that happen at the local level where it's much easier and there's efficiencies to having someone local doing those said tasks. Yeah. Um, where those are is the, the area of hot debate. So one of the initial Yeah. Conversations John and I had was regarding marketing. Yeah. It's for, it's for example, um, you know, different markets require different marketing to some extent, uh, but how much of a difference does it actually make? And so having. Marketing moved to one central location, pushing out to every individual location. Yeah. Uh, and then filling capacity at every individual location based on capacity planning is the idea. Um, and the original conversation that we had was, Hey, we should probably centralize marketing. Because that's generally what smaller companies have the most issues with. Uh, they don't have time. Yeah. The owner's the one who's doing the marketing, turning it on and off. It's an office person. Yeah. Who's also in charge of dispatch, who's also in charge of CSRs, who is doing that. And so that's one of the ones that makes sense to market or to, to centralize. Yeah. At least parts of it. Yeah. At least parts of it. Yeah. But there's, there's other parts. Like if, um, we have a local company called, uh, dairy Berry here who does a lot of local, like boots on the ground marketing, um, not necessarily canvassing, but like sponsorship of teams and uh, things in that nature where it's a very community-oriented thing, which would be very, very difficult to centralize, especially if you overdid, it said all your marketing budget is going centralized. If we're gonna kill the local budget, um, yeah, obviously you've just absolutely destroyed the, a good marketing system. Yeah, I, I think that's a good, I think that's a good example. I'm gonna take it a little bit outside of marketing of like what I was seeing risk. I think it's a great idea. Yeah. Um, is like sales. So a lot of companies, us included, are running a remote sales process. Like inside sales, they're doing live close or like over the phone, cas or, you know, whatever you wanna call that. Uh, there's call by call. Um, and to me that's a good example of like, I think there's some, like, we're doing it with caution because I think there's some real risk. I, the way to, like, the way to think about it is what am I, what problems am I taking on and what am I taking accountability for? So if I'm centralizing a branch's sale in, like we get something in Kentucky and I centralize their sales process to Akron's inside sales team, what I'm saying is, I'm accountable for your sales now, and I've centralized it. So if you miss sales, the first response is gonna be well. Sales guys are in your office, go talk to them. Like that's your problem. Like my problem is Y and instead of X. And I think that that's where some of these companies over the past couple years have gotten really tripped up is you can take too much and once you take too much, it's hard to put it back in 'cause the muscle is gone and then all that turns into like, I have friends that for a few years. They had branches all over the US and they were just flying from branch to branch to firefight because they had stripped so much autonomy out of that, out of that team that they, they were no longer a self-sufficient team. And I think that's the, that's my big concern. I think you were right on marketing. There's too much like knowledge of what works. There's too much measurement that has to happen. Um, but you know, before we even started recording, you and I were talking about recruitment, which is a perfect example, I think. Yeah. Like if we took over your recruitment, what could happen is we, if we're recruiting for three other branches, then like, what if we do a terrible job? Like we don't keep up. Why did you sales this month? Well, we've only had, well, we didn't have the three texts we needed. Well, and you're so much closer to the problem. And then I don't wanna be choosing your team, like for you, I don't wanna be choosing Kevin's team for Kevin. Yeah. So it turns into like, am I allowing people to lead or am I babysitting? Yeah, yeah. I mean, you, I think it's a hard decision. Yeah. I think there's a lot of, a lot of layers. Agreed. Agreed. And so that, that's the problem is kind of fun though. I mean, it it is really a big puzzle to solve. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it's like how far do you go? And that, and that's where the conversations come in where you and I have had lots of extensive conversations on like why and what to centralize and brought in Yes. You know, people from private equity companies to talk about why they centralize. What they centralize. Yeah. And so it's been an absolutely fascinating process to, to understand kind of yeah. Behind the reasoning of why certain country companies are centralizing and why some aren't. Um, yeah, I think target size is a really big part of the equation. Mm-hmm. Where, um. Like if we go and take over, I mean just in, just in our year this year point, like you know, we took over a plumbing company that had six employees. Well if you go take over, like we have a potential partner in Dayton that is obviously more complicated 'cause it's an $11 million company, right? Yeah. Like if I centralize too much, I actually might just totally break that company and remove all, like that's a company that's a real business and they were doing great without me walking in the door. A million and a half was not doing great without me walking in the door. It is time again for our Breaking five workshop. This is the fifth time we've done it, and we've had over 130 contractors go through this cohort. If you're hovering between one and 5 million of revenue and you're feeling stuck, then you're not alone. I know the hesitation. Can I really step away from my business for three days? Is the workshop actually going to be worth it? Is it too HVAC specific? Well, here's the truth. Breaking Five isn't a big conference. It's 25 to 30 operators in a small room. It's highly tactical. There's no rah rod nonsense. You'll be alongside myself and Jack Carr at my home service business in Akron, seeing the actual systems behind accounting. Call center dispatch service. Install the real bottlenecks. You're gonna work alongside other operators at your exact stage to build a plan that you implement the second you get home. The networking alone is worth it, and the clarity is game changing. Three days limited to 30 seats. If you're serious about breaking through the $5 million wall, grab your ticket for 500 off@ownedandoperated.com with code breaking early bird, or click the link below. Which, uh, actually is a great point to show the other like juxtaposition of the other model of thinking here, right? Is the other framework is I'm gonna go buy a bunch of businesses that are extremely self-sufficient. Yeah. I will centralize a very teeny bit like that. The purchasing Yeah. Component. Like, Hey, how do we get better pricing on things? Yeah. And then. You run yourselves. You guys have been a good company. You guys have been profitable for the last 10 years. Like, go continue. We're not gonna try to optimize anything. We're gonna let you run the way you run, um, as the other end of the extreme spectrum, which some, some private equity groups have done absolutely fantastic with that. Right? They've been able to just, if you buy big things. Yeah. Yeah. And, and it generally comes down to that I think is, is size of uh, yeah. The acquisition target. Target acquired? Yeah. Well, like, yeah. Yeah. Well, how, how well were they doing before you walked in the door? Yeah. And, and did they have maybe a better version is like, if somebody bought me tomorrow, what would, like, what would they need to, they wouldn't need to add anything. Right. Like I have a marketing team. I have an HR team, I have an accounting team, I have a purchasing team. I have an awesome senior leadership team. Like, we're not missing a discipline. Whereas a $2 million business is missing all of those disciplines. Yeah. Uh, so I, I don't know, I, what I, what I think is gonna be really interesting, I mean though Peterman just like super hypothetical Peterman was to say, Hey John, I want to buy you for a ton of money. Um, Chad, like. Chad Peter, you have my number. Yeah, yeah, right. Feel free to text. He is known to have a great call center. So even though you have a call center, like the idea though still is he would centralize into himself even though he is buying a $40 million platform. There is some Well, it's faster. There is decent, centralized. This is how this dude, this is how this shit happens. So when we, when we in 2021, we bought these businesses. We've told the story a lot. Yeah. In 2021, we bought three businesses and we had to figure out multi, multi-location management and. The way this was John. This was John five years ago. Give him some grace. Like he was young, he was 30 and uh, he was an idiot. And the way that we solved problems was we took them over, we took the monkey. Like, isn't that the, who put the monkey on my desk thing? We took the monkey from from them. So what that turned into was we had this management company and this management company, we started staffing to take over. Branch level issues. So some of them make sense like, Hey, we need accounting. Well, yeah, like no shit. Um, but purchasing got really tricky. 'cause there's, there's a few layers to purchasing. Is it, is it contracts with vendors? Is it relationships with the vendors or is it parts that I need an hour? We tried to centralize parts we needed in an hour and it was a total like, miserable experience. Yeah. Um. But like vendor relationships is a very key part of like our ability to drive scale. So we have to centralize that part. Um, so it, what my point is this small company, we had a hundred team members total. Our, we had like 11 people inside our shared services company, which like. What, and that wasn't even call center, that didn't even include call center or anything. I did a bad job, but it's because I centralized way too much shit and kept, instead of like helping to like grow leaders and like helping people solve their own shit, I just took it on personally and like started hiring people and then they stopped, started dropping the ball. 'cause they're fighting fires in four branches. Yeah. Which makes sense. I mean, it makes sense. So it's a very, it's a very intricate issue. Right. So what do you wanna do now? So, I mean, I wanna go buy some, some more businesses. Dude, me too. I mean, I'm really pumped. I'm excited. Excited. If you, if you were in Nashville, we would love to talk to you. We would genuinely love talking to you if you would be a lot fun if you pre Nashville and, uh, Akron, Cincinnati. Yeah. Anywhere. Cincinnati, uh, Clarksville Bowling Green. Oh man. That'd be so much. Bowling Green would be nice. I looked it up. It's an hour and 15 from you. I was, I was checking earlier. It's a, it's a, it's one of the top growing markets in Kentucky as well, so not a big deal or anything. Okay. Okay. I don't think I've even met a, one of our contractors in any of our groups that are from there though, so I damn it. We have some in Elizabethtown, which is nice. But outside of that, um, I know that's, I've already started, John. I've already started. Okay. Okay. Feelers are out. Feelers are out. Um, but that would be fun. I'm excited for that. Um, yeah. Has a good next step And like what's, I guess a good question is like, what's, what's the goal? What are we trying to, what are we trying to get to? A hundred million. Like a couple hundred million? Yeah. Like couple hundred. Yeah, a couple hundred million. Like, let's fucking do this. There's, there's, so, you know, it's, it's a bunch of, uh, young guys who have just giant egos because, and, and like so solely on the fact that it's like a, a nine figure number. Yeah. I don't know about you. I'm talking for myself Here it is like, oh yeah, sure. Nine figure is such a driver for me, just because it looks like so much fun. It's extra number. It's an extra zero. Yeah, yeah. Like totally. Um, but also it's, it's from, from like a career standpoint and a growth standpoint, being. At the forefront of a company that's growing from, you know, going from 6, 7, 6, 7, 6, 7 million to, you know, 40 million part of a 40 million organization. Yeah. And then helping grow that into a hundred million dollar organization is really, sounds like really exciting stuff to me. Like that's, that sounds like a fun Yeah. Team to be a part of. Yeah. Yeah. I, I think, um, I think it'll, I think it'll be fun. I'm, I'm looking, uh. This year has been kind of fun so far, because the last time we did m and a, like first off, we did, we did three in 90 days, which is a little chaotic. It's it's crazy. And um, your team's got it down though now, dude. I know. I, that's, to me, that'ss, the other part that's crazy is like, it wasn't that big of a fucking deal. Like it's kind of wild. That the downside wild this though. How good it was. It was like super anti-climatic. It was one of your team members like playing. It's closing time and I'm sitting there like signing on a DocuSign by myself like nobody else is in the room besides the down. I do have a video of this. I need to put this on Twitter. This is super, uh, this is exactly not what I expected as a closing on a business. And then everything just went back to normal minus like, yeah. Operating Well now you're, now this is just a bigger number, which is kinda fun. Yeah, exactly. But, um, but no, it, it is, it's really interesting. Uh, I think that, um, so a couple things for me happened this year, just as like as the listener, as you're thinking about like what, what you wanna do with your business. Uh, there's a couple things that were interesting. One, I understand why the size that Wilson was at the end of last year is. The investible platform size. Like to me it makes total sense because we have every discipline. There's a strong controller, there's a great accounting team, there's a strong HR manager. She's got an awesome team of recruiters. Like our inside operations is locked and dialed. Our sales team is locked and dialed. Our marketing is top tier performance. Like I get it, and it is like we're just a couple of fucking cowboys. And we were able to, in 90 days, bring on three partners. That's kind of fucking crazy. And it really, like, I remember 2021, it broke the business. It felt pretty casual. Like Yeah, it's not like, it was like hard it, it was not like it was easy, but it wasn't like. I have not been stressed also. It's honestly just been fun. Yeah, I was gonna say that's, that's the crazy, the, the interesting part of this as well, like due diligence process. I mean, you and I still going through any due diligence, going through any contractual agreements, going through anything like that, as. Uh, two people sitting on the opposite sides of the table. Definitely. I don't even wanna say it gets heated because it's not heat. It's just like there's definite, you gotta nail down conversations that happens that you have to nail down and it is a, uh, you know, conversation. Um, but what's hilarious is you, you know, we didn't, you're not. The, a private equity group either. So like as we, I'm just an idiot. I'm just like an idiot in Akron, Ohio. No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying that like it's, it's just like the, the group that, that I'm working, so I know all the people at your business anyway, but like there's, there's, I feel like you need like one or two gray hairs in your business. 'cause all of us are like in our thirties. Okay. Okay. I've got, I've got absolute um. Like type A psychopath. So John, I learned the hard way that John's, um, GM up at, or president, COO, Brandon. Yeah, Brandon. Brandon Dres. He's 31 8 shots of espresso a day. I thought I I was on a lot of caffeine. Oh yeah, yeah. No, we caffeinated here. Yeah, he puts him down. Yeah. Um, so anyway, point being is that, that, you know, there's no, there's no, there was not a single blazer. Oh yeah. Yeah. There's not a single sports coat in all of this conversation. Yeah. Megan playing closing time and cast being bubbly and Patrick trying to get his eyes around the numbers. Yeah, totally. It was fun. Yeah, it is. That's hilarious. But I, I think, I think it's, um, you know, for, for like three, four years we've had multi, multi-location, like multi-location has been the thing that's been like on the brain of like, how do we do it? Because at scale businesses. Are multi-location businesses, like the biggest businesses are multi-location businesses. There's two, there's two examples of that not being the case. And that's Four Seasons in Parker. Yeah. Like as it, everybody else is multi-location. So like if you wanna scale, you gotta go multi-location. Um, so this has been this thing we've been studying and learning about. 'cause we didn't do it that great the first time and we merged into one. So when we, I, I think my point is I wouldn't have done anything different than what we did. We got almost a 30 million of revenue, strong ebitda, strong gross margin, full built out disciplines before we went multi-location. And then we went from one to four in 90 days. And it wasn't that intimidating because the team was built. The team is capable. Um, I don't know. It, it's kind of wild. I always wondered why everybody sold at 30 million. Like why is that such an attractive number to be a platform? Yeah. And it's like now it's like, oh, holy shit. We just did this on our own. Like this is crazy. Just a couple cowboys. It's a couple cowboys. And so ne next steps trying to get to a hundred million. Yeah. Probably the next like big insight goal that we've talked about. Yeah. Um, a big portion of that obviously is going to be acquisitions, and I'm sure a big portion of that is, uh, organic growth compensation. Yeah. Maybe we buy 20, 25 million of revenue over the next couple years and we, that's what I gonna say. So what does that look like? 30, 40? Yeah. Well, this year. Depending on growth, it's kind of hard to get a, get a hold of like to, uh, total output when you're bringing on new brands. But, um, I think we're gonna do two more deals this year. We have, uh, one we're looking at that's gonna strengthen an existing branch, and I really want to get one that would, uh, like somewhat connect us to Nashville to like make this more of a like super regional connected platform. And. And also for like vendor, for like vendor conversations. It's, it'll be easier if we're connected. So probably one or two more deals this year. And I think we're just gonna be in a cadence because it really, like the team did good. Like it felt good, it felt normal. Like our systems are good. Like we can, we can do this, like we can scale on the back of m and a, somewhat rapidly. Um, I think the biggest challenge is gonna be leadership, but. We are on our third cohort of a leadership development, like we've been preparing for this for 18 months. Like yeah, feels awesome that we fucking knocked it outta the park. But, um, so yeah, I think we, we have leaders to deploy. We have, I mean, the biggest downside is gonna be like cash. Like we have to actually buy, you know, buy these things. Yeah. But yeah, I'm hopeful for one, one or two more deals this year. And then I think like m and a just becomes a much more consistent part of the business. We haven't bought anything for two years and, um. So I think it just has to be, become a much more consistent part of our business. And what's been really exciting is you go into these, uh, smaller companies and there's so much low hanging fruit because they just haven't been. Maybe they just didn't know how to do this marketing channel, or they didn't know how to measure it, or they didn't have the right tech stack or, or like, Hey, I can save 50% on your HVAC equipment. Like there's just so much low hanging fruit. Yeah. I don't even take it as an insult. There is, and like I think all of us smaller business owners know that. But totally. It's it's capacity of an owner capacity of the leadership team. Yeah. It's like, hey, it's no punches to throw. The guy's probably working 70 hours a week, like, how's he supposed to do it? You're grinding. How are you supposed to worry about like this one thing that's totally gonna do 10% when there's like 10,000 fires? Yeah. And so it's, that's, that's what I'm excited about is it's really cool to be able to work with your, your great team and, uh, frees me up to focus on exactly where I wanna focus on. Yeah. Um, so podcasting. Pie. Yeah. Media. No. Um, I mean, just like we've talked about it before on the podcast, like my main job is marketing here. Like that's my one sole responsibility is really focusing on that. But now that marketing is, um, being, being supported to some extent, like I can take another 10, 15, 20% off my workload to focus on growth initiatives. Yeah. And to focus on like these really big items that can move our company forward. So yeah, I'm really excited. This is gonna be fucking awesome. This is crazy, man. Crazy for anyone listening. I know, like we're talking about this nonchalantly, but it's, uh, it's, it's really cool. And we're really excited. I'm, I'm pumped. Yeah. Um. I'm smiling a lot. Uh, it's, it's been a lot. The only thing I don't like is, uh, John going around. You have to, if you sell, ever sell to John, you realize he'll, he'll just go around saying, I bought Jack. I bought Jack, I bought this person. I bought that. Um, I have been using partnered and merged. Um. Except with me. So this is just, this is just a me thing. I think I've only said merged with you. I don't know about that. I think I've heard things. Nope. Nope. Not from me. I mean, the definition of what we did is a merger. No, I know. But I think you just like to, to throw shade as much as you can. Ah-huh. So it's already started Uhhuh. It's already started. Um, well if you wanna work with us, like shoot us a message, it's fun. Hit up our dms, Jack. Super relatable. Um, so you're like that, like what was that? Just like people DM you more than they DM me and I'm like, why? I think you're friendlier than I am. And I My takes are too harsh. Jack's kind. That's true. He's kinder than I am. I've funny kind of eyes. Yeah, if you have kind eyes, but if you do live in, uh, Indiana or Kentucky or Pennsylvania, I mean, if you live outside of Indiana or Kentucky though, and no. Uh. Maybe. Maybe I still say have the conversation with me or John? Just for funsies. Just for funsies. Just for funsies. Cool. Thanks everybody. I'm excited to work with you, Jack. If you like what you heard, if you like what you heard, go to owned and operated.com and there's a contact form. You can say, Hey, I wanna partner with you guys. Uh, but if you like what you heard, make sure you like and sub Also, I think we're supposed to say may. May 5th through the seventh, there's another breaking five. This is our fifth or sixth one. Yeah. Um, it's filling up that we now do bear the risk of, uh, being acquired if you go, uh, so fair. You have to understand these are purely grooming these events. These start paying you to go to these things. These are real risks guys. Yeah. Uh. Yeah, you're gonna come, you're gonna drink the Kool-Aid, you're gonna walk away a partner. It's gonna be fucking awesome. Yeah. No, but on a serious note, like in terms of growth and, and everything, uh, you can see it all over Twitter. You can see it from people who've gone in the past, like these sports. Dude, we are like 120 people in. It's so awesome. It's so much fun. Yeah. It's so awesome. It's so awesome. You get to meet all of us. Um, and honestly, you walk away with, there was so much great information Yeah. And a good cohort of other business owners in your field usually. So, oh yeah. Um, May 5th through the seventh. Uh, it's on the website. Um, operator operated.com, baby. Alright, thanks everyone.
