Determined Society with Shawn French | Adversity & Mindset - How Anthony Perera Built a $200M Company, Lost It and Bought It Back

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

In the new episode of The Determined Society, Shawn French sits down with Anthony Perera, founder of Air Pros USA and Exuma Capital Partners, for a powerful conversation on entrepreneurship, brand building, risk, loss, loyalty, fatherhood, mindset, and what it really takes to rebuild after watching something you built fall apart.The episode dives into different chapters of Anthony’s life, including:• Starting his first magazine business with a $10,000 loan meant for tuition• Selling magazines at events with no experience and no safety net• Learning that perception becomes reality in business• Taking risks before the money was there• Building brands across media, hospitality, HVAC, technology, and capital• Launching Air Pros USA with one truck and his father• Using bold branding to stand out in a crowded home services market• Scaling Air Pros into a $200M+ company• Stepping down as CEO and watching the company be dismantled• Losing massive paper net worth and facing public criticism• Learning who was loyal when things got hard• Buying back the Florida legacy operations through Exuma Capital• Why mindset, positive energy, and family matter during pressure• Building companies that create real impact for employees and operatorsThis conversation goes beyond business success. It is about risk, resilience, loyalty, fatherhood, reputation, and the determination to keep building even after the company you created is taken apart piece by piece.Watch the full episode now on The Determined Society.Connect with Shawnhttps://pillar.io/theshawnfrench Subscribe to our newsletter for all updates and heavy doses of DETERMINATION:https://thedeterminedsociety.com Subscribe on Apple/Spotify:Apple- https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/determined-society-with-shawn-french-adversity-mindset/id1555922064 Spotify- https://open.spotify.com/show/5kS9tkLGQLcVyRgB3mDznw?si=184c18d1b9d44f53 Connect with Anthony PereraLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonyperera Website: https://exumafunds.com/  The Determined Society is hosted by Shawn French — a show for people who refuse to quit. Every episode goes beyond the highlight reel to explore the real stories behind resilience, reinvention, and the relentless pursuit of a life built on your own terms.Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all others.. If this episode moved you, share it with someone who needs to hear it — and leave a review. It helps more than you know. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Most people spend their lives building the one thing that matters most to them. My guest today took six years to build something so massive that he started with a $10,000 loan from his grandfather that was supposed to be used for tuition. Now get this. Before building this HVAC company, he was a magazine guy selling magazines at events by handing them to people and getting people to buy into what he was doing. In six short years, one truck turned into 800. a thousand employees, seven states, and over $200 million in revenue. This guy was crushing it. And so one day, he watched it all fall down. He was put on the board.

He stepped down as a CEO. And almost overnight watched the company that he built with his father be disassembled piece by piece. Fast forward a few years later through Exuma Capital, he purchased the Florida legacy sections back from the people that he watched take his business apart. So today we have Anthony Pereira on the show, and the thing that I love most about this man's story is not that he's a successful businessman, is that he knows what determination actually really means.

See, true determination is not what you do when you're winning, but it's what you do the day after you lose everything. Anthony, welcome to the show, buddy. Happy to be here, man. Man, so good to see you, man. Good to see you. You look great. And so do you.

You look great, man. I like your haircut. It's freaking sweet. Thank you. Thank you. Dude, so let's get into it, man. You know, when I look at your background, right, let's really talk about being at events, you know, early on when you were 19,

you had a media brand company, and you were slinging magazines like a hot dog vendor. That is correct, yeah. No fear, just doing what you needed to do. What is the most humbling thing that you did at the beginning that you would still do tomorrow? Yeah, humbling is a big word. Like for me, when I first started the brand, it was because I wanted a magazine to read about a sport that I love, which at the time was mud racing. We had big mud trucks and swamp buggies and ATVs and all these things. And I went to a store one day and tried to find a magazine about that genre of off-roading, which didn't really exist.

And so when we launched the company, listen, I had no knowledge about writing a magazine. That was very humbling. I was not a good writer in general. I had to bought my first camera to be the editor-in-chief. I was actually petrified he got on a phone and cold call people for advertising. So that was my probably most humbling experience that I had was learning how to overcome that fear.

I mean, now I'll talk to anybody, putting in a room, it doesn't make a difference. But back then, I would literally fear getting on the phone and talking to people. And so, but we had to. I had no option. We had no capital. We printed our first magazine

without any advertising clients. Literally, there's not a single client. There's a picture book. And we'd go out there and we'd sell up for $3 a copy like a hot dog vendor. walking around events and eventually we started calling advertising clients, getting advertising clients. And the brand when we sold it in 2011, it was 2011, was in 16,000 retail stores.

Holy moly, it was pretty big brand, man. It was pretty cool. But it was also one of the cool takeaways from that business is I learned early on that perception becomes reality. So we went to an event one time where we show up. We have a little tiny tent and we had the mud life ironed on our shirts And we had a little banner trying to sell magazines for $3 a copy and get people to trust us to buy a year's subscription for $25. And they were like, there's zero shot on buying a subscription from this guy who's in a, you know, a Walmart pop-up tent.

And he has one magazine. And so what I realized is there's another brand across from us, I think it was called Bucked Up or something. And they were selling these shirts. They had this line out the door. I'm like, what are these guys doing? I'm not doing. So he went out, got a loan for an RV and a big trailer that we couldn't have. Ford, by the way, came out to the next event, had this huge rig that, you know, I barely

could make the first payment on, and we had a lot of the door. Perception becomes reality. The customer perceived at that time that they could trust us, they'd buy from us because we looked like we had money and we looked like we were successful. It was crazy. I don't know about humbling experience, and that was probably a pretty cool experience that I learned early on in business that perception becomes reality. I think one of the things that I heard you say that I really want to dive into for the audience

is you bought an RV. Yep. Right? you took out a loan and you were afraid that you weren't even to be able to make that first payment. We couldn't make the first payment. I wasn't afraid. We didn't have the capital. You didn't have it, right?

But there's a lot of people that hold off on their dreams and what they want to build because they don't have the capital. I can relate to this. I started to determine society with no money. It was just a hobby. I did what I had to do. I recorded it as a car. But I still moved forward. Years later, the money started showing up.

What kind of advice would you have for that, you know, new age entrepreneur or even some somebody in their mid-40s that wants to start something new but is too afraid. We get that question all times from friends of mine. Like, how do you take that first risk? Like, you just got to do it. You got to jump. You can't be afraid to leap. And, you know, in one of the companies that we founded, I mean, mud life and then going

on to the bars and restaurants and then in the HVAC and Home Services, I didn't know a single thing about any of those industries. Not a single thing. Didn't go to school for media publication. Sure or so I didn't go to school to be a bar owner. Right. Right. For an HVAC technician or an HVAC owner, right?

Like, it's so you can't be afraid to take the risk because without the risk is no reward, right? And so, you know, take the leap. I mean, there's so many opportunities now out there for first-time entrepreneurs, for guys wanting to start up. And you're in an age where AI is so abundant. And there's so many, like, SBA loans now and all this stuff didn't exist when I started my company. Yeah. And it's just so much more accessible now. And it's, so, I mean, the advice I would give is take the risk.

I mean, what do you have to lose? You're going to sit in your and your boring life you're currently in right now. I'm not saying, not saying anybody's lives are boring, I'm just saying, if you want to be an entrepreneur and take that jump, right? You got to have a pair. You know what I mean? Well freaking said, you have to have a pair. And that's the thing.

You want big shit, then you better be able to risk it all for sure. And, you know, I can relate because I did that. I left corporate America. I left, I was a top salesperson for any Fortune 500 company that I went in. It didn't matter if it was the payroll in HR industry or medical. It didn't freaking matter. because the components that I had, I just took from there to over here, and then I brought them over to the show. It was a risk. It was hard. But how rewarding was it for you when it

actually paid off? It was very rewarding. And to your story, man, like, you know, all those who were in sales typically are the best entrepreneurs, right? And that's just historically how it is, because 95% of any new startup business or new venture you get into, without revenue, you don't exists, right? And so if you are a good and you're a talented sales individual, you would make a great entrepreneur because usually those guys love getting paid commission and love, you know, killing what they eat. And those guys are on the hunt 24-7. Those are the guys who typically make the best entrepreneurs. Back to your question on reward, it was great. I mean, it was a, it was a feeling that, you know, we finally had something, you know, we did something successful, right? Our first exit,

I was 23 years old. We sold to a big publishing firm. I was an executive publisher. my first job in corporate America, you know, that didn't really last for me. I didn't think that it would have with your background, me. There's a funny story. We'll tell you later on, but it's, yeah. But it was a cool experience. I got to now see how the other side of the industry worked. And this is a company who bought us was a multi-billion dollar business.

And, you know, and it was cool to see the structure they had. It was cool to see the people that supported all the roles in an organization and taught me a lot for later on in my life. Love it, man. One of the things I really enjoyed about learning about you in this process getting ready from this interview was how fucking dynamic you are. You haven't built it in just one industry. You built it in the media, hospitality, HVAC, now capital and... We built a technology company we sold.

Technology company. What was the technology company? So he built a company out of a need for our home service company. That's right. Called Inpected. Okay. We sold that business last year. We didn't get to that too if you were.

That was Inspection.com, right? Okay, I did read about that. Yeah, yeah. I had a brain fart. I was absolutely crushing it. I mean, they're doing 14,000 inspections a month right. That's insanity. It's the largest third-party inspector, I think, in the country. Wow.

By volume, a number of inspections for single trade contractors. We essentially invented a market. Right. And it was pretty cool, pretty cool business. Very cool. So, okay, look, so you had it $10,000. Yeah. My grandfather gave me, gave everyone in the kids.

We were young, two or three thousand dollars in a, I don't know, some sort of, like, educational plan. And when I was 18, it was worth $10,000. and I took it out and I was supposed to use it for college and we started the magazine with that, $10,000. Did he know you use it? He found out later on that I did it. And I think when he found out, I decided not to pursue college. I did a year and a half or a year at Citadel and then I did another year or so at Nova

Southeastern and didn't finish. And so when I took the rest of the money out to go do that, he was like, uh, I think it's a really good idea. It was kind of not to me for a while, but he was alive to see some of the success we had and the exit we had on the mudlife side and starting the bar and he came to the bar one time, so it was pretty cool.

Wow, man. Wow. So you have mentioned in multiple things that I've read that you're not an HVAC guy. You're a brand builder first. What does a brand builder see that a technician can't? Yeah, so listen, I mean, is building a brand, again, I told you earlier about how I feel with sales guys

and revenue cures a lot of things, you've got to build a brand that, you know, customers can identify with. You got to build an attractive character no matter what you do. Whether you're selling a technology company, whether you're selling for the HVAC business, whether you're doing roofing assets now. You've got to build an attractive character, meaning something that a consumer or a customer can relate to. And so a lot of guys jump in.

I'm going to go spend money on marketing and their branding sucks, so not memorable. They don't have something that they're going to attract themselves to. And so a lot of stuff that we do, what we try to do in our companies, is build the attractive character, whether it be the operator, whether it be the business itself, but have a brand story. Like, why is a company going to choose you in a crowded market? Right. I mean, that's kind of how we've always seen our companies.

When we launched a magazine brand, I had guys getting the logo tattooed on their arms, right? And we had the Cowboys Saloon Bar, Davey. They had literally guys had their tattoos on that on their arms, right? And so you build this brand that people can relate to. It makes everything else so much easier. when it comes to marketing and driving revenue and scaling. You know, when you're talking about building the characters, whether it's the operator, the company, et cetera,

like, dude, you wrapped your vans or trucks or whatever in, like, what was it, tigers and cheetahs. Our first van was actually a zebra. No shit. Yeah, it was a zebra. So let's dive into that because that's an industry where everybody wears matching pillows and shit, dude. White shirt, blue pants.

They got the logo on their name. Yeah, yeah. So what inspired you to be loud like that right away? So listen, we opened the business down here in South Florida. You know, it's a big market. It's a major metro. You've got three major cities that are back to back, West Palm, Waterdale, Miami, or whatever there are counties. And I wanted a way that would let us kind of stand out in that noise, right?

You know, you see a tiger-striped van or a zebra going down the street. Listen, we don't know what it's for, but you're going to turn your head and look at it. And it was funny because there's a really smart branding guy who I'm really close with, Dan Antinelli. He started Kick Charge Creative, and he's wrapped some of the most iconic home service companies in the country, right? And he's like the ghettles of the world and that kind of stuff. I call him one day, I said, Dan, I want to change my Air Pro's design. Listen, full transparency. The actual logo itself was like a clip art piece.

Yeah, it wasn't very, like, exciting, but the van looked like a damn tiger or, cheater or zebra going down the street, right? It's badass. It was cool. It was definitely a differentiator in the market. Okay. And Dan and I had this like hour long battle over he wanted to change my tiger stripes. And I said, dude, I'm never changing the tiger stripes on this man. He goes, why? Then we, I just can't work with you. I said, well, come to work, we've done probably 14, 15 different brands together with him now. But yeah, I remember that story like it was yesterday. We're arguing over, you got to lose a tiger's stripes. I said, dude, that's what made us so

successful in this market when we launched. I mean, you launched a company within year two, we're doing almost $10 million in revenue. So, I mean, it's from the ground, from nothing, from zero start, you know? Right. I mean, it was like what? One truck, two employees in a parking lot, wasn't it? It was my dad was my technician. He helped you kick the company out. He gave me the idea. So he worked for me in the old bar business we had. Okay. It was my construction manager and we sold that company. He said, hey, I want to open an HVAC business. And I said, okay, well, let's go do that. Happy to help you support you do that.

We bought one truck, and he was a sales guy, and we had one technician, and if you only thing about home service is at least in HVAC, you have like a turnover model where typically a tech goes to a house. They diagnose the problem that a sales guy comes in and sells a solution. My dad would sit in the truck or the tech would go inside the house, solve the, like I figured out what was going on, come back and get my dad to go out and then sell whatever it was, the replacement or the repair, whatever it was. He'd go sell it.

We didn't know at the time, because I didn't know what turnover model was, or it wouldn't even existed, but we were doing the turnover model, you know, inadvertently very early on. And so, yeah, we started with one truck, one tech, and, you know, we started growing it organically for the first, you know, year or so. And then we started buying broken businesses, customer lists, phone numbers. You know, I think our greatest acquisition, we bought a customer list from a failed company called Service America down here.

It's a big home warranty business. I remember the day we bought the customer list, and we paid nothing for it was like five grand. And we had so many phone calls coming in. I had a scramble to hire CSRs. And people were calling because that company went defunct, trying to get service, and we bought the phone numbers. And so they would call us.

We were like, this is not Service America. We can help you and help us catapult us. That brought us from like that $10 million to greater. That was very smart. And like literally that was my next question. I'm like, did you guys give them my freaking cards? What's going on? He's still in my thundery here.

No, I just think they're in business, right? And in branding, you have to set yourself apart. This is called differentiation. The first thing was the loud ass vans and trucks of the cheetahs, the tigers, the zebras. Yeah. When I think of things like that, especially in that industry, HVAC or home services in general, it's super important. Yeah. Because you can Google something in like a thousand,

choices are going to come up. But you want to feel comfortable because you've seen so many of these trucks around or vans around like, oh, the Cheetah one. Like, you know, hey, babe, what was the Cheetah one? Oh, that was, that was, that was, that was, that was that was that was, that was, that was, that was, that was. All right. Cool, us call them because I see them everywhere. The other thing that's very, very smart is leveraging things that you can leverage in business. Doesn't matter what freaking vertical you're in. So media, you know, magazine, hospitality, you know, and HVAC. finding ways to leverage things that are not working for somebody else, like that list.

Yep. I want you to walk me in the audience through that idea specifically because not a lot of people would think about that. For sure. And yeah. And so, you know, you're always trying to chase. So, go back to marketing for a second. You know, when you're building a company, in home services specifically, right, there's two types of marketing you can do. This is not, this is not some rocket science.

You got branding. So you're going to do billboards, radio. TV, things that you don't really have a trackable, you know, ROI because you're spending these dollars for building the brand. Right. But those branding dollars drive lower cost conversions online, right? So instead of Googling, you know, AC repair near me or roofer near me, whatever it is, you're Googling AirPros, you're Googling action roofing, you're having those conversations.

But so when it comes to looking for opportunities to drive call volume, I started Googling and looking up, you know, companies that were going out of business or that had, had four. failed, it didn't exist anymore. I started calling, you know, these numbers and calling the 18Ts and the Verizon of the world try to find these phone numbers. And, you know, it was a tough go. And I got a ping from a local auction company here in South Florida that they're doing a big auction at this company called Service America.

And so, man, I'm going to steal some cheap band. Then we get some, you know, some UV lights or something for cheap. I'm at this auction. And, you know, we're by then doing well and we're growing and we weren't like crushing yet, but we're doing really good. And I see this gentleman in the corner kind of hanging out, looking he was sulking. And he was the CFO they brought in to close down the business.

And so I walked up to him and I started making friends with them. Like I told you, I talked to any guy who was afraid to talk on the phone, you know, five years earlier, six years earlier, whatever it was. Now I was talking anybody. But, you know, I walked up to him and said, hey, man, like, what's going on? He goes, yeah, you know, we're closing the business down. You know, we have some assets trying to sell,

recruit some capital. And I said, well, I want to buy your customer list and phone numbers. He goes, well, you're the first guy to ask me that question. I said, okay, how much you want for them? If he paid him like 10 grand, it's a five grand or some small number, whatever it was. And it's, it just catapulted the business. And, you know, and again, look for creative ways to, for the audience here to, to, one, get call volume, but two, to think outside the box, right? Like, like, business is closed that all the time, right? Whether they're small, big, or medium, people call those phone numbers. People go to those websites still.

Those things don't cost much money to go acquire. It's creative, right? So. No, it's important, you know what I mean? Because it's a leg up. When you're talking about finding ways to generate more revenue, really what that is is just more at-bats. A thousand percent.

You know, for the audience that's not a baseball fan, we just need more opportunities. Need more leads. Well, how do you make the phone ring? Well, you can make the phone ring, like you said, buy brand awareness on billboards and all that good stuff. but also what if you could acquire a customer database and a phone number list so that way your phone's ringing automatically. From their leads, correct.

Boom. Like all of a sudden, now you have this volume where you're scrambler for customer service representatives to field the calls so you don't, I mean, you pretty much fucking bottleneck your own business. 100%. 100%. We couldn't service customers we had. Almost broke. I literally, I literally, my next acquisition target we found was because I was trying to find someone to take the call volume I had in other states. I'm in other cities, I mean. And so I started calling

contractors in different markets saying, hey, man, this company we just acquired the customer list for is getting calls for customers in these cities. We don't have an operation in. Wow. I'll sell you a lead. Do you want it? And I found a couple of our acquisition targets. So we actually ended up buying them. Okay. Because of that. And so it's just been, it was an interesting, interesting run. That was a cool, cool time in that company's history. That's badass, too. Yeah. So year to, about 10 million. Yep. And then you started doing some small M&A.

Right. So we bought a couple of, you know, broken businesses. We opened up some greenfield locations, use our own cash flow to do it, was very creative on how we structure the deals. It would use a bunch of cash down. I'd give the guy, you know, a couple bucks and maybe an earn out or something. Company got to roughly about 30 to 40 million of revenue.

And you're like after year two. I think it's like year two and a half, maybe something like that. They made three. And it's a circa, yeah, probably year three. And we ran a process to sell the company. And it had been the biggest, at the time, the biggest payday of my life. It was, you know, we had offers that came in relatively well, I mean, mid-eight-figure numbers. Company was doing five, six million bucks a wee bit at the time.

And we also at the same time ran another process for raising the debt piece of capital. And we ended up deciding to take the debt versus taking the liquidity event. to go and scale the company. For my first deal that we closed with a debt lender, I was a group called Peacrock Capital out of Boston. That was in 2021, correct? We started the process in 2020 and we closed in 21. All right.

And to this day, I mean, the guy who lent me the money, Nick Bossow is a partner, a lot of our deals we do now at Exuma, who became friends, one of my best friends in business. And so he doesn't work at Peacrock anymore, but nonetheless, his team gave us a $50 million dollar war chest, to go out and do more M&A. Wow. We took the business from, you know, 30, 40 million bucks, whatever it was at the time,

to, you know, almost, almost 175 million bucks. At what point did that explosive growth? I mean, you know, by the time you almost got to year six, yeah, you were about 200 million in a... Yeah, so in 20, we hit our big growth spurt in 2022. I'd step down as CEO. Right. I was at an inflection point, my own kind of self-belief that the company's now over

$150 million. Just go bring in a season executive team. Guys who've done this before, of ran large-scale companies who have that kind of expertise and knowledge. It's a circuit 22, brought a CEO, CFO, COO to run the company. We then launched a full-scale process. So in 21, using Peacrocks loan facility, we acquired six different companies, rent to market in a mid-March of 22 to go and sell the business again. and had massive offers now. I mean, talking about from the top PE groups of the world, I mean, we'd be Black Rocks, the MSD Capitals,

you know, multiple hundreds of millions of dollars. It would have been generational money from my family, my kids. And 22, if you guys remember correctly, the debt market went to shit the handbasket. Yeah, or lack of better word. Our interest rates skyrocketed. And so a lot of the buyers weren't able to secure the capital they wanted, because when you do a leverage buyout, they're using debt, right?

All these PE groups, they use. 95% of the time they're using debt to do the acquisition. There's no PE guy giving you 15 times off their balance sheet, you know, in cash. It's going to be, you know, four, five, six times of debt leverage or debt. And you have equity coming in from their funds. Anyways, make a long story short, where you decided to go back to the debt market and we raised the facility from a big institutional lender. Retired the PIMCO debt, restructured the balance sheet.

And the company ran, the executive team ran the business. They ran the company for, you know, until, until 2024. They tried to go back to market again and failed. And then the lender got mad. And we had a covenant fault, right? So a foot fault, non-monetary, but it was a leverage ratio of football because of rates. And they kicked me off the board and decided to sell the company through a 363 sale, which is essentially a chapter 11 restructuring.

Right. And so at the time, though, in 2022, I want to back up two years. In 2022, when they took it back to market, that was against your wishes, right? First time was not. First time was not. The first time we were going to sell it was not against my wishes. The time again, post that. In 2024.

End of 23, early 20th was against my wishes, yes. What did you say in that room? Was anybody actually listening? No, because, listen, at the time when there was $175 million on our balance sheet of debt, my voice was very limited, you know what I mean? Sure. But it was to find a new debt, an equity partner. The company was still very successful.

It's $200 million, $220 of revenue, you know, $30, 35 adjusted of EBITA. We were a little over-levered, but most platforms at the time, even to this day, are pretty levered, right? And so, you know, the company was a solid company. And I felt that go in the market so soon after not getting a process done in 22, would just taint the process. That's what it did. It came in and you had low offers and, you know, They were some dollars over the principal debt, and it wouldn't have been a good outcome for myself or the other shareholders.

And so I pushed back. I'm like, guys, I don't think it's the right time for us to go to market right now. Let's wait. Let's put our head down. Let's go grinding for another year. Let's come back and maybe end of the year and revisit this conversation. And because we had that covenant fault, which was, you know, our leverage ratio was too high, they forced the process. Again, I don't want to talk bad about the lender.

No, sure, I get it. Yeah. You know, and, you know, they did everything that they were legally allowed to do. And we acted in good faith and tried to be a good, you know, steward of the business with them and help. But, yeah, no, it was definitely a, definitely eye-opening time, you know. For the audience, you know, I want to be clear with you guys, for those that you're watching and listening, this man built a company with his father and a bunch of other executives that was worth over $200 million. Like you said, a $35 million even.

Our offers were in half a billion dollars. It's insane, right? Yeah. So my whole point is, though, when people start talking in this, this, this, these inner thoughts of, I'm losing everything. Yep. Like, I can never do this again. For sure. You know, like, you went through this.

You were, you stepped out as a CEO because you thought that's what was best. Yep. And then you were removed from the board, you know, and then you watch the company that you and your father built. Yep. Be taken apart piece by piece. And you had to sit there. Individual business by business. Yep.

I mean, that's loss. You know, I look at it as, yes, is it, is it lost? Is it with the outcome that we wanted? No. Do I think there's things we could have done different for sure? I think it was a bad timing. But I think it hardened me as an operator. It taught me a hell of a whole lot, I'll tell you that much.

I bet. Let me explain something to you there. But, you know, is at the same time where, you know, wasn't it the only company we were building at the same time. At the same time, we had inspected growing. And so, you know, with some loss, yes, there's an impact to that. Because it's just like any business you launch as an operator or an entrepreneur, like a child, right? Of course.

You birth it. You bring it to life. You give it life. You give all your heart, sweat, blood, tears into this thing. And then watching it be potentially picked off piece by piece. You know, all the companies that they were sold are still operating today. They're still in business. You know, the parent company that we had is obviously no longer.

But, you know, it's not the outcome I wanted for myself or our other shareholders who rule in equity with us. But to be clear, and this is for their audience as well, like everybody who sold into the platform made millions of dollars, right? They made, they made millions of dollars, and they took the gamble alongside of us. They took the risk. They knew what the risk was. But again, I have guys who still tech me to this day of companies we bought who we changed their lives. Wow. See, I like what you just said there because people online are saying the people that bought into AirPros USA didn't make any money. And you said, what do you think, 175, million dollars. That's what I'm saying. Up front. You guys paid out $175 million up front for these

acquisitions. Come on, man. Yeah. Come on. Life-changing money for these people. I mean, dude, like, they made real money. I mean, there's guys who I know I have, I have frames on my wall still of wires that I sent out for $30 million to somebody. Like, real money. I mean, that's, that's real money. No, sure. Was it the turn or two that they rolled into the deal on equity or earn out that that they lost out on? Sure. But listen, some of these guys who also didn't perform. Right? Like post-transaction, these guys, these guys walk away and say, okay, well, you run the company now. Well, no, I'm buying into you as an operator. You know, you're supposed to be here as a shareholder and run the business. And it just, it was one of those eye-opening experiences because to your point, the online chatter we had posts this whole thing happening was, oh, this guy, you know, took all this money and I didn't take any of the money from the shareholders. Sure, of course. And, and, and, you know, we lost everything. But we also made multiple. people, multiple millionaires, like guys who I know who literally got, again, big checks, you know, I mean, everybody who sold to us got paid millions of dollars up front in the transaction.

In my humble opinion, there are no guarantees in life. Death and taxes. Boom. Two, it's all you got. Yeah. So when you're, when you're, I'm trying to wrap my mind around the mindset and the scarcity mentality around the individuals stating that, you know, I lost out on this. Someone gives me a $35 million wire. Real money. Real money. Like my whole life has changed, like generational, right?

My kids' lives are changed. Their kids, their kids. I can't for the life of me figure out. Anybody would have a problem with that. I didn't think about it, but it could have been more. For sure. But that's human nature, right? I always want more.

I always want a little more. I want a bigger boat. I want more property. I want more houses. We naturally always want more. It's just how we are all programmed. Whether there be more pay from your job. But listen, I want to make sure we're clear

that it wasn't everybody who'd said. It was certain people who had just a bad taste. There's some guys, like I said, I have guys who still text me to this day who got tens of millions of dollars and who are elated. Wow. I mean, they're happy about,

I mean, listen, sure, would they have loved more? Sure, we all would love more. I mean, listen, our family lost the most in this whole thing. We lost, we were looking at, multiple nine figures of net worth evaporated overnight, right? And so you know, it's, it was

definitely eye-opening. Yeah. It lit a fire inside me. Like, you know, we didn't do anything wrong. We still built that company. We still established, we built the processes, we tracked the KPI's, we had the dashboards, we had a proprietary systems. We, we train thousands of techs to our, you know, AirPro's University programs.

Like, in the grand scheme of things, I think it made me a better operator because now I'm a little more of risk, adverse than I used to be. Now, full transparency, you have to be able to. You still got that dog in you. You have to take risk. And I see it in your house. You're never successful if you don't take risk, right? But you know, listen, we've built some great stuff since then, right? And, you know, we had a great outcome on the inspected business. We exited that last year to Bayhawk. It's a great outcome. Multiple eight-figure exit there. And we still own a big piece of it. The company is now

growing at 80 percent. You know, annually, it's insane. I don't know how it's even possible, to be honest with you, with a great team of operators there. We have a large roofing platform now. We own multiple other companies in the Exuma brand. So it's definitely helped shape who we are and who I am as an operator and entrepreneur, but I don't think it's going to, it makes who I am. Does that make sense? No, of course not. It's just something you do. For sure. You know, I think that's a big distinction that I want to make for everybody right now. Yeah. It's like what I do. Yeah. I'm not a, I'm not a podcast host. It's something I do. You're really good at it, though. Thank you, man. I work my ass. These guys

really elevated. Yeah, the guys back there are crushing my dudes, man. The great partners. Yeah. You know, but like when I look at that, you know, our jobs, our careers, it is meant for one thing. It is to support our families and if one day you can make enough money and you're

able to support more people and give back to the world or however you want to do, whatever you want to do with it. 100%. That's great. But it doesn't necessarily or even at all define who you are as a person. You know, to your point on that, you know, we had a transaction. I can't really announce yet that happened this week in the home service industry.

Probably by the time this podcast goes, whatever it is, probably probably probably be the news, right? And one of the greatest things that I get the pleasure of doing now as an entrepreneur and an operator and an owner of these companies is we gave away $2 million of equity yesterday. Wow. To people in the organization down to CSR managers, production people. like we gave away $2 million of equity on this transaction. Wow. And it wasn't because, listen, $2 million extra in our pocket's great, but you know, you want to incentivize the team to go out and be successful, right? And so if you make them all owners,

you always, as operators say, act like an owner. I want to make them owners. I want to change people's lives, right? A $50,000 equity check to somebody that maybe hopefully five, six, seven X is, you know, in the grand scheme of things, the guy who's usually making, you know, $25, $30 an hour, that's life-changing money. That's paying off a house.

That's putting your kids into college. I mean, that's the kind of impact that I want to have with our team members and our businesses. I'm under the man. The word impact for me is so important. For sure. You know, that's something we shoot for here. And I'm sure you can tell by the conversation, it's not like a normal show. We really dive into the background.

We want to show the audience what happened in that person's life. So that way, when the comeback is talked about, it impacts them. Yeah. That's all we're here for. And if we live our whole lives and at the end, we're satisfied about the people we impacted, that's great, man, because you can't take the money with you. I mean, everybody says you can't take your shit with you. For sure.

What did you do here on earth to make everybody else feel like you gave a shit about them? It's definitely a question, you know, it's definitely a question that I think about all the time. Like how many people have we impacted? How many lives have I touched, you know? I have a partner of ours in Colorado who we, supported on a new business launch. It's a company called Around the Clock. Guys, really, really close friend of mine, like family.

He was my sales manager. At other company we had during the Air Pro's Day, he came to me after that old thing happened. And he goes, hey, I want to open an H-Fact business in Colorado. And I said, I 1,000 will get behind you. Put the capital up for him with him. And he launched the business a year and a half ago now. First year, the guy rips 10 million bucks off.

one year out of the ground. One of the best operators every about my life. But because I took a chance with him, you know what I mean? Listen, this guy, I didn't know he's a good business operator. He was a good sales guy. Back to my point earlier, right? The best sales guys usually make great entrepreneurs because they're hungry for the revenue. And so, you know, but yeah, I mean, back to your point about impacting people's lives,

like that company one day is going to be sold for, you know, tens of millions of dollars. And the guy is going to have life changing generation and get around some money for him and his family. I like doing that. I like giving back to that now. And if I can use my knowledge and my experience to help other people. It's amazing, dude. Yeah. When all this went down, like the fall, whatever, man.

People can define it how. For sure. What is the one thing that you learn from that, that you couldn't learn from winning all the time? That's a deep question, man. Hey, can they get some thoughts of that one? you know, I think what I learned the most out of that whole experience is loyalty means a lot. And when you're backs against the wall and you're fighting, whether it be a demon, whether it be another business issue, whatever it is, you got to make sure you have people loyal to you and around you.

Yeah, man. So post this whole thing, we got the opportunity to buy back Florida, right? And so that, you know, some of those dollars we gave away yesterday, part of that whole. situation. And those people who have been loyal to me were loyal through that as well. And so if you can establish loyalty with people, and it would be like, I'm going to go run through a wall for you loyalty, but people who have your back. See, listen, a lot of bad things are being said. And we knew when all that went down, who was loyal and who's not, who stood by me and who didn't, right? And it's crazy because there's a lot of these people online who talked all that stuff, you know,

I mean, what in front of you, they're your best friend. Oh, yeah. But behind your back, when you don't see them, they want to run their mouth, right? So it's one of those things you just kind of kind of, you know, take over the great assault. It's hard, you know, because when people start running their mouths about things or, you know, hey, you know, and you never hear it from them. You hear it from some. For sure. So-and-so made this post on social media or her wife did this or it's like.

Yeah. It's hurtful because you know your intentions. You know what you were looking to do. And you know you did them right. And some of the things that happened, you just couldn't control. For sure. You know, it went hyper speed and- Rates on the market went crazy. I mean, a macro environment shifted.

It wasn't like something that I didn't do that. You know what I mean? The company, even when they filed for bankruptcy and they filed for restructuring in Chapter 11, the company still was doing. Look at the filings. $200 million revenue with $25 million Bidda. It was still a profitable business.

The companies that came out of that are still profitable companies, and they're still around. I mean, you know, and sure, we didn't get the outcome we wanted. But it was a, it was, it was definitely, it was definitely a, a, a business that, that didn't have to do what it did. And that's why I fought the, the whole process of it, right? I was like, I'm, we don't need to do that.

Let's keep pushing. And just, we didn't come to, come to terms on, on kind of that, that view. It's, uh, you know, it's one of those things, man, where you look back and, and, like, did that happen? I really go through this. And one thing that kind of jogged in my mind when you were talking, you know, you talked about, you know, still was $25 million EBIT, they didn't have to go through that process, the BK, everything. What's it like building something so big and then reading about it and a court filing? Well, what's like builds something so big was scary as shit, I'll tell you that much. When did it start being scary, though?

When your payrolls are, you know, a million dollars or a million and a half dollars a week or whatever it is or, you know, your, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're. your Amex bill is, you know, $4 million a month. Like, it's massive numbers. And listen, looking back now, it wasn't scary when you're in it. But as it was happening to you, like as it was building up bigger and bigger, it became scary, right? And so, you know, but, but yeah, listen, it was hurtful, right? It was, like anything, it's, it's, it's, even if you go see someone talking shit about your friend online, you get upset, right? And so, yeah, and like having my own child that we built, which was Airpros at the time was, you know, seeing.

it get drug through that kind of bad PR and some of the hit pieces and some of these guys who put these articles about it because I just read a court filing and don't know the actual story behind it. I find it comical. I mean, listen, our president says it all the time. It's fake news, man. Like, these guys are just getting whoever they can do to go and get likes and views. And they post fake stuff. And it's, and sure, comical, hurtful, all in the same breath. But I kind of tuned it out. I put blinders on and so I'm going to focus what I'm doing and we're going to focus on making sure that when they do sell these companies, they go into good hands and help that transition. You can call the lender any day you want and ask them how I, how I acted, right?

I could have been a complete asshole. I could have gone in there and sued everybody and been a jerk and cause a bunch of ruckus. It wasn't the lender's fault, right? Yeah, sure, they make bad decisions, of course. I mean, I don't agree with their decisions. It wasn't their fault. They trusted me with 175 million bucks or our executive team, right? I had a duty to them to give them back as much as we could of their money, right? And I think, listen, and we paid interest the whole time. It was never a monetary default. It was non-monetary.

It was our covenant issue. We couldn't get our audit done ten time. Like it was little stuff like that, right? And so I have to blame, I point to figure out myself because we should have taken better action faster, whether it be the executive team, whether it be whatever we had to prevent some of this stuff. But, you know, looking out of the line and seeing the articles and reading the bad news that was coming out,

I just, why focus on that? Why give negative energy more negative energy? Like, I'm a big believer in positive energy. I'm a forever optimist. I'm going to care what happens. I'm going to find, I'm going to smile through it and figure it out. But if you spend a negative energy on something for too long, you become a negative person.

And it permeates your whole. Everything you do. Everything you touch, everything you think about becomes negative. And so if I get up every morning at 5.30 in the morning, I start with, I start with a positive affirmations, my kids who are six and eight years old when they brush your teeth in the morning, say they're positive affirmations. You got to have a mindset. Mindset is everything. Yeah. You know, I mean, well, dude, everything. 100%. A wife has our kids doing the affirmations. Yep. They wake up in the morning. They do that

when they're brushing their teeth. Yeah. Sometimes on the way to school. Yep. Right. They write their, they have a gratitude journal. Yep. I have a daughter. Well, I have two daughters, right? And a son. I have a seven-year-old, nine-year-old daughter. Okay. And a 12-year-old, almost 13-year-old son. My nine-year-old turns 10, like, next week. Yeah. And they do that every morning.

I love it. And then before bed, they lose their marbles. Same book. Yeah, other side. They write down all the shit that bothered them, that made them feel anxious. I love that. It's a whole point. And my wife, dude, like, sometimes I feel like, damn, like I am an inferior parent compared to my wife, right?

I feel like that every day. Dude, fuck, man. It's a struggle. Yeah, for sure. So I feel like I'm always in trouble for something. something like I didn't handle a situation with my daughters correctly. Yeah. A lot of it is I'm a man and you know, when I feel something is going on or I feel my

daughters aren't being, how can I put it? When I feel my daughters are being treated like shit at school. Yep. Like, oh bro, I want to go find the dad. For sure. I want to go find a dad. Sure. Dude, I want to bury some.

Yeah, yeah, 100%. And that's especially daughters, man. Because I have a daughter. That's the same way. Off the table. Yeah, yeah. off the table, that's my princess, don't even think about, say, don't look at it wrong. Right.

Here's an interesting question. And I feel like after talking to you for almost 40 minutes, like, I feel like I already know the answer, but I don't think the audience does. And during all of it, everything you're going through, the hit pieces online, being kicked off the board. Yep. Did you become a version of yourself at home that you did not like? The answer, I think, and my wife may answer a different. than I would, but I call her. Put her on the phone now.

No, I tried not to bring that negative energy home, right? Like, sure. Was I, was I scared? You know, I mean, the bulk of my net worth was set up in this company at the time, right? Was I, was I nervous what to do next? You know, was I, was I afraid of how I'd be received in my community where, for so long? Listen, I won entrepreneur of the year, you know, a regional winner for Florida. I had 40 under 40, like, I mean, 30 and a 30, like all the awards you can name because of my operational experience with AirPros.

I think that was more so my biggest fear was how the community would receive it after all that happened. I'll tell you now, you know, three or four years later, two or three years later, no impact at all because I'm still the same person. Yeah. We still have a lot of successes around what we've done and even post what we've done. But I tried not to bring that energy into my kids' lives. It's amazing. I tried not to have my kids impacted by that. As parents, you want to shield them any, anything,

whether it be harm, whether it be bad news, whether it be whatever, right? And so I try to kind of protect them from that. Full transparency, that's something that I'm trying to get better at me. Yeah. You know, because I never intentionally bring it home. For sure. But if I'm cooking, I do the meals. Yeah.

I'm cooking dinner and I've got all this stuff going on in my head. Yep. And then something happens. Yeah, yeah. It gets loud in the house or my girls start finding it because, Dude. Two daughters, seven to nine, going on 34 and 36 years old, they will trigger you. For sure? With their bullshit, right? Or something dumb. She looked at me wrong.

Well, I mean, because the problem is these kids go to school. They're in school. They're in school if your kids are homeschooled. No, no, no, no. My kids are in school as well, and they have to be on, you know, behavior all day long. And they get home, it's their safe space. They just let loose, right? Whether it be freaking out, whether it be fighting with their siblings. It's just, it's, yeah, I know you're paying, man. My six and eight-year-old, although my son is my younger, they fight like they're, you know, cats and dogs. It's so funny because my wife and I always talk about this. Whenever we go to school for like a conference or whatever, they always say my seven-year-old is the most well-behaved, kind, loving, and she is. And you're like, where's that person at home?

Yeah, hold on. And so I'm like, she goes, she follows the rule. She's helpful. She wants to do great. She's a high achiever. I was like, what the fuck? Babe, when she gets home, she's an absolute like Apache Indian. Like she goes nuts.

Like she gets mad. Yeah, yeah. And my wife always says, well, you know, the things that I've been reading about, my wife reads a ton of parenting. Yes. And she said exactly what you just echoed. Yeah. You know, they're on their best.

behavior. And this is for parents listening. Like, our children are expected to live in a box when they're at school. Be in a straight line. Walk through the hall. Hold the bubble. Keep your hands to yourself. Eat your food. Do your homework. Put it in the box. Line up for recess. Do this. Do that. Do this. Do that. Could you imagine as an adult being told 24-7 what to be and how to be it? It's crazy. It's crazy. Well, that's why we're entrepreneurs because we don't want

We don't want to be in. I had a six-month stint as an executive at a publishing firm. It lasted six months. Steve, I had many years in it. I'm just telling you, sometimes it gets very crippling. Yeah, yeah. Because you're a grown-ass man performing or a grown woman, right? And you're getting calls from your leader.

Where you at? Yeah. Or am I at. I'm working, doing something. I'm home. It's one o'clock. I'm like, yeah, but I have sold, like, this much, and I don't have any meetings, and I'm good. Yeah.

So, you know, that's why I always love tying in the parenting aspect, too, with everything. And that's why I asked you that question. Sure. Because I don't think men do it intentionally. But sometimes we do bring it home. And I think it has to do with the pressures that we do feel and keep silent about how we're providing for the family. Are we doing enough? Am I good dad?

Does my wife feel loved? Am I showing my son how to treat a girl? Am I showing my daughter how a man should treat them? Do you ever think about things like that? All the time. Of course. Of course, I mean, everything we do, you know, I mean, listen, I'm blessed with two beautiful babies who are absolutely, you know, the light of my life, my life's life. But no, it's all the time.

It's, it's, listen, they're a reflection of how you treat them as is what I've learned, right? So, you know, how you behave. They see your interactions. I mean, it's, you see how you act. They see how you treat your wife and their mom. They see how you treat other people. And so I do the best, listen, we've been fortunate enough to be able to travel a lot and get them exposure into traveling. and we do a lot of vacations with them

and they get to see cultures and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, I try to not bring home the work, you know, aggravations or the stress or pressure of that and show them the fun dad that, you know, that I want them to see. You know what I mean?

I'm going to need to keep in touch with you because you're going to have to teach me how to do that. Because I'm like... I'm not the best out. Listen, I'm not, I mean, I try hard. Right. I really try hard, but it's... We're humans, right?

Yeah, you come home in a rough day and you're naturally frustrated about something. Mm-hmm. You're going to have one kid screeching or one toy slamming into a wall or you step on a damn Lego or something. Right. You're going to, it may set you off. Yeah. We get triggered.

Yeah, we do. But, no, I try the best I can to not bring that home to them. And sometimes it's hard. It is hard. I mean, I'm not terrible at it. For sure. But I need to be better. We all know.

And it's one of those things I love talking to men about it, especially high level entrepreneurs and who have been successful in business on their own. Because being an entrepreneur is a lot different than being a W-2 employee. I don't look down on the W-2ers. I don't. I really think- Guys should make tons of money at W-2, man. Dude, they do.

They do. They do. They do make big money at V-2 employees. I know there's a lot of people like on socials and things like that that really rip the W-2 earners. I think it's completely shallow. For sure. I have one of the smartest guys I went to high school with, and he's smartest guy I know my life today. One of them, you know, works at a very large family-owned business.

The guy doesn't like to have that kind of risk. Some people aren't wired that way. Right. Like some people are wired where they can get up in the morning and just go and, you know, and not know where the next paycheck's coming from. And guys like, you know, you and I, you're entrepreneurs who can do that. Some people are just programmed differently. And it's not nothing bad with them, but just other program.

They still provide great lives for their families and they're still living fantastic lives. And it's just different type of, you know, mindset. This may be a hard question for you to answer. For sure. Because you didn't experience the corporate America right away. You were an entrepreneur first and then you sold that, you know, mudlife and then you became an executive publisher for that

company in a corporate situation when I went from corporate America to this full time I felt like I was going to shit my pants for 90 straight days. I was so scared. For sure. I was so scared but not to a point where it stopped me.

Was there any moment where you were like oh shit like this this is sink or swim dude? All the time all the time. All the time Listen, my early days, I'd know the next, you know, money was going to come to pay payroll. Right. We had to go sell advertising to be able to print the next media, the next copy of the magazine, right?

Even when I opened the bar, I mean, there's times I first opened. I had no knowledge of how to run bars and restaurants where I could make payroll in a week. I'd go get, you know, borrow money from an MCA guy, you know, the mafia in New York, essentially, right? Oh, shit. Might as well be the mafia, right? I'm glad you're still here. But no, it's definitely for sure. You have it all the time.

It's, and I was first getting into it, even when I left the corporate America job that I had for the short sin that I did at, you know, it was nice having that guaranteed paycheck every week. It was like, man, I can kind of get used to this. You know, I'm 22 years old. I was making $150,000. It's a lot of money for a $20. Sure.

I made a few bucks before that, selling the business, you know. Like, it was a good feeling. And I just realized that it wasn't, I couldn't go. go into an office where the next closest person of my, in what I was doing, was 40 years older than I am and couldn't log into Facebook. And so we, with the MudLife brand, why we were so, such a valuable target for them, it's because at the time, we built the Facebook kind of page back in 2000, I don't what was it, eight, nine, 10 that had a million followers on it.

Before you can actually like pay to get to subscribe, like followers, like we built a brand. And so I remember the day I walked into the meeting with the CFO of the company, it was called Source Interlake Media. A guy's name was John, what's his name? John Bodie, I think it was. And he walks in and he has these, he has, I have my magazine in front of me. He walks in with JP, with four-wheeler, with off-road, he went a big conference room, and he slams all of his magazines down on the table.

And he goes, why are you beating me in stores three-to-one? I go, I don't know, because your magazines suck. I was honest with it. Hard truth. Here I am. I'm a guy, I'm 22 years old, 21 years old. We're wearing jeans, cowboy boots, and a Mudlife like Dickie's like mechanic shirt. I'm going to need a picture of that.

I used to wear white sunglasses. Total tool, man. Total tool. And so I'm sitting there having this conversation. And he goes, how did you get a million followers on Facebook? At the time, their brands, I mean, these are big brands. They said, four-wheeler, off-road, diesel power back of the day. Had 200,000 followers.

We got a million followers on Mudlife's on Facebook page. And I said, well, we built the brand. That's what we did. And we cared about the content we put out. We created a community of what we do. And that's what made them acquire us. That's awesome, man. Again, so many different industries, right?

You're in the capital, private equity, right? So we're at a family office. We act like private equity, but it's our own capital. We're investing. Okay. And so same similar structure as a deal. We buy companies. We help scale them.

Eventually, we angst at them. The only difference is we don't have like a pool of third-party committed capital. It's our own money worth to put in these businesses. That's pretty awesome. Yeah. That's pretty awesome. Do you guys have any type of industry agnostic? Oh, really?

We're about to close on a large auto dealership. I can't disclose the brands with drying, but it is a franchise auto dealership. I guess whacked my chin on the thing. Oh, all right. Injuries happen, man. Yeah. Good thing it's soft. Yeah, exactly.

But, yeah. Yeah, a branded auto dealership. I hope not. I have a branded auto dealership. It was just my best Michael Scott moment. Like I had to throw the office in there, man. Branded auto dealership. We have technology companies now.

We own a big roofing asset. Oh, yeah. About $100 million a year in roofing, residence roofing in Florida. We obviously still do passive investments. We made an investment in a brand company called R30. One of their products that they own is a company called Space Camp Wellness. They partner with influencers to launch retail consumer products. Oh, wow.

And so, yeah, we just literally actually today or yesterday, they announced they went full chain CVS with a lip bomb called Space Camp Wellness. So pretty cool stuff, man. That's awesome, dude. Yeah, a lot of fun. I get to see all kinds of different industries now, which is what I really enjoyed doing. So with that, what is your favorite thing right now? Because like you said, you're a family office, you're investing your own money.

How much of that is, I don't want to say less stressful because it is your money, but it's actually more stressful. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. But you guys also get to operate how you want to operate, right? Yeah, I mean, so we don't. objective, our objective isn't to be the operating partner, although we do have operating partners on our team that help these companies scale and grow. We like to back entrepreneurs, right? It's kind of

what we make a lot of our money. We find good operators, whether it be season executives or entrepreneurs who've scaled companies before, and we back them and support them and help them grow. And that's kind of an exciting thing for me is obviously put together a new deal, a new platform. I love that. I love dealmaking. I love, you know, putting the structure together. It's a lot of fun to do that. But most things, the biggest fund is when you sell the company. Yeah. Obviously. That's a lot of fun too.

Absolutely. What's your guys as target when you take on an investment and you invest in an entrepreneur? Yeah. Like an auto dealership or a media brand or another roofing company. What are the frameworks of, hey, but by this time, we want this exit? So unlike traditional PE, which usually has a five to seven year fund horizon, we don't have a horizon. But we target three to four years typically. our sweet spot of acquisition is we usually buy companies from 2 to 10 million of EBITDA,

and then we hopefully exit them, you know, roughly at 2025, and we build a we call essentially a private equity starter kit. It's really cool. It's jokingly because we call them. But we come into a company, for example, the roofing business we acquired, we bought them, they were dispatching on pen and paper. They had zero CRM or any ERP systems in place, no sales process. And so we came in and put them on, you know, top of the line,

CRM in the home service world. You know, we built the infrastructure around the business. But so when I say private equity starter kit, I mean, we have the infrastructure in place. We tracking the KPIs. They're on a CRM. They're integrated. The right to keep scaling. That's kind of our sweet spot.

That's pretty awesome. So for the entrepreneur are listening, and there are 2 to 10 million EBITA. Yeah. And they want to work with the Kazuma Capital owners, right? I think I heard you say that there are some times where you guys can operate a little bit and help them. Correct. Right. You said if that entrepreneur has some promise, they're a good operator. They're a good operator, but they may not have the tools necessary to grow like that dispatching. For sure situation, right? So you guys do help them with that.

100%. That's our objective is to be a valuable resource to them, right? That's our goal. That's awesome, man. Well, dude, it's been awesome having you all. I love the conversation. Dude, this is very fun. A lot of fun. We got to get together afterwards and, you know, keep in touch. And I think there's some things that we can do together. Yep. And, dude, I love talking to you, man. A lot of fun, man. I have one more question for you, though. It's probably one of the most important ones. Defined determination in your own words, not the poster version, but the real version.

Determination. The willingness to keep going when it gets tough is kind of my own version, right? Got to be determined. When I, you know, every company we've been in, it's funny, I had this conversation, one of the operators we had yesterday. We launched a new business for contractors called servicecall.com. And we're kind of bootchopping it right now. And, you know, I'm talking to the CEO.

He was a great guy, great operator, brilliant mind. And we're discussing, like, you know, capital. And we're, you know, we're burning cash and we're trying to grow this company. And we're growing, but slowly. And I said, you know, what's funny is a lot of good businesses fail, not because they're bad operators or bad businesses. They don't have the staying power to keep going. There's so many companies that I know who, if they had knowledge, right,

or if they had, even tech startups, they had knowledge, or they had, they wanted to get access to capital, like they would be a billion-dollar companies today. But they're not, you've got to be determined, man. You got to be able to go out there and figure out a way to make it work. You have to, right? It took on our inspected company, which we, you know, sold for multiple eight figures,

is a business that we pivoted three separate times on. When I first launched a company, the use case failed. It didn't work. Second time, didn't work. Third time, it finally worked and scaled, but we would determine to find a solution. And so, you know, if you have to define what determination is, that's what it is for me. I love that definition because it is continuing to move on and move forward,

no matter how you feel emotionally about the situation at that time. Motivation is not going to be there. But if you can have the discipline and a determination to continue on, when everybody's counting you out, nobody even believes in your organization that you can turn it around after the first try, second try, oh, third try. Okay, cool. Now it worked. But it takes a special person to continue to push, man.

For sure. I know a lot of people in my industry that aren't around anymore because they didn't have the staying power. They couldn't figure out how to monetize their show. One of the biggest things in the podcast media industry is under capitalization. There's a lot of great shows out there, but if they don't have the capital, we don't have what we need. We'd be probably one of the bigger shows on the planet right now because I can operate it. For sure. Right?

Great host. Thank you, brother. Yeah. I used to suck. Ask them. They informed me that they watched the old YouTube videos. I'm like, man, you sucked. I'm like, oh, okay, yeah, probably.

And then I go back, I'm like, whoa, that was terrible. Actually, I hate watching myself on these things. Yeah. You're going to love this one. I still, you're going to love this one. I enjoy being here while we're having the conversation. I hate watching myself after. Well, then just listen to it.

I was going to listen to it. Just listen to it. You know, it's all good. But do thank you again. Anthony, it was great to have you on and sharing your story with the audience. and it's very inspiring what you've done and continuing to do and helping other entrepreneurs with what you needed help with when you were starting AirPros USA, Mud Life, every other business that you've done.

So it was an awesome conversation, man. And I appreciate you. Thank you. A ton of value. Thank you. And for the audience. Thank you guys so much for listening. If you want updates on amazing guests like Anthony today,

please head to the Determinedsociety.com and put your information in, and you'll get all the information on amazing. amazing people like Anthony every single week. And until next time, guys, stay determined.