Next Level Pros - From Stuck to Sold: The $18M Turnaround Story Every Business Owner Should Hear

Episode Date: October 14, 2025

In this episode of Next Level Pros, hosts dive into an eye-opening conversation with Elaine and Todd, co-founders of Mainstream Electric, Heating, Cooling & Plumbing. After spending over 15 years stuck at $3 million in annual revenue, they made a powerful decision—to get out of their own way.By confronting ego, redefining success, and seeking mentorship through Nexstar Network, Elaine and Todd transformed both their mindset and their company. The result? A thriving $20 million business that attracted private equity buyers—and a journey that redefined what “winning” truly means.This is a story of humility, discipline, and the courage to evolve.🔑 Key TakeawaysThe Ceiling Is Internal: Why your business only grows as much as your mindset allows.Revenue Feeds Ego—Profit Builds Freedom: How they shifted from chasing sales to building wealth.The Power of Mentorship: How Nexstar Network and a trusted community sparked real growth.Scaling Through Humility: Why letting go of control was the best business decision they ever made.The Private Equity Exit: What it really takes to prepare, sell, and stay true to your values.💡 Episode Highlights[00:00] – Hitting the wall: $3M for 15 years and the realization that something had to change.[04:00] – Killing the ego: redefining leadership and embracing coaching.[08:00] – Lessons from failure: expanding too fast and learning to stay focused.[12:00] – Building systems that serve both people and profit.[18:00] – Joining Nexstar Network and discovering the power of shared experience.[22:00] – Preparing for the private equity sale and what the process really looks like.[28:00] – Life after the exit: freedom, impact, and Elaine’s next chapter.💬 Memorable Quotes“The business only grows as fast as the owner does.”“Revenue is for ego. Profit is for sanity.”“Ego is the silent killer of growth.”“We stopped chasing more trucks and started building a better company.”📘 Mentioned in This EpisodeNexstar Network – Contractor success and leadership communityElaine’s Book: Made in Vietnam – A powerful memoir on identity, forgiveness, and resilienceLessons in leadership, mindset, and sustainable growth for service-based companies🎧 Listen If You’reA business owner stuck at a plateau and ready for a breakthrough.A contractor or service professional looking to scale profitably, not painfully.A leader who wants to trade ego for excellence and growth for freedom.Partner Spotlight: 1SEO Digital Agency: At Next Level Pros, we teach you the best ways HOW to market your business. If you want additional hands-on help executing, we trust 1SEO, our marketing partner. They implement SEO, PPC, Google Local Services Ads, and high-performance websites that turn stronger operations into booked jobs. Learn more or book a consult: https://1seo.com/next-level-pros/📍ConnectWant to be a guest on our show? Apply here!https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1YlkVBSluEKMTg4gehyUOHYvBratcxHV5rt3kiWTXNC4/viewform?edit_requested=trueWatch my latest PodcastApple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/next-level-pros/id1687030281 Spotify- https://open.spotify.com/show/1e0cL2vI1JAtQrojSOA7D2?si=95980cd4e55a437a YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/@NextLevelPros 

You ever look at your business and think, hey, we're doing fine. But deep down, you know something's off. That was Elaine and Todd. 15 years in business, solid margins, good reputation, and completely stuck. They hit a ceiling most owners will never break through. Then they got real about one thing. The business only grows as fast as the owner does. They stopped chasing vanity metrics like revenue and started chasing value.

Instead of bragging about trucks on the road, they focused on profit per truck. They stopped pretending that busy meant successful. They joined a network that forced them to level up and scaled from $3 million to almost $20 million a year with margins most companies would kill for. In this episode, we're going to break down exactly how they killed the ego, focus on the right metrics, and built a business private equity, couldn't ignore.

If you're tired of playing small, this is your wake-up call that you've been meeting because the mindset shift they made might be the one you've been able. So you guys owned an HVAC electrical plumbing company for 21 years. And based on kind of some of our discussions, 15 of those years were good, but they were just kind of stagnant growth. And that took place until what year? I think that was 2017. So you guys were just in the electrical space doing about $3 million a year?

Actually, it must have been 2015 because we spent 15 years. So it was 2015. and then we got into HVA, we added HVAC. Got it. So you're up until 2015, 3 million, you're running good margins, 15, 20%, and now good things. And then something happened. What changed that you're like, hey, I'm sick of it, ready to make some moves. Like where do you see the big changes that took place?

I would say every year we'd get to the end of the year and assess, you know, how did we do what we do different and finally the mirror had to be held up to like myself and todd at that time i decided to go get my MBA to expand my horizons and um a business can only grow as much as an owner's mental limitations and that's where we started so it sounds kind of like just like a hard hitting like, oh, maybe I don't know everything. Maybe, you know, it's, it's interesting. I went through similar things. So my, my first business failed. Then I started some other businesses and I just couldn't grow. Like, I was just like, and it was like, finally, I was like, you know, I'm the issue. I'm the problem. I got to go figure some stuff out. And so like what, what, so you went to

go get an MBA. What are some different things that you guys did to like make the big changes to go from three million to eventually you guys before you sold a private equity you're doing like 1820 million a year that's right okay cool so yeah what were like those big bridges gosh we uh joined an organization called next star network and it was just full of like over 300 contractors who were successful and we just decided let's just copy and do what other successful businesses are going to do and we can't help but be successful. That was another thing we did. Nice. So, so deciding like, hey, we want to go mere success, see what other people are doing in the space? And then what did you guys do for like your own like personal development from a, from a leadership standpoint? We got involved

with Tony Robbins. Yeah. Started doing some personal development there, you know, getting out of our own way. Basically was the biggest thing with Tony Robbins. And what were like the hard realizations for yourself personally that because I'm sure you felt like a king of your own ant hill at three million bucks for for some time right like you're like hey I'm pretty awesome we're doing doing great because like you know making 600 grand a year like is not a you know especially especially pre-COVID before things went you know double price I mean 600 grand was pretty awesome so like what were like some hard personal realizations that you had to go through well you know being an electrician by trade, I really thought we could show the whole industry that we could

do what everybody else was doing just an electrical. Yeah, it took a lot of years, 15 to be exact, to realize, you know, the big money is in HVAC and plumbing. Yeah. The demand's different. The money's different. They want stuff done right away. And it just having to realize this time and just that shift, there's just the one day you're like, we got to do this. And I think she brought it to my attention is like we have to bring on HVAC and so so it's interesting you're saying like hey you know I felt like I wanted to prove that you could do this like who was talking in your in the back of your mind that was like that you were trying to prove wrong because everyone's got someone that they're trying to prove wrong was it was it friends was it family was it people you grew up with was it people

from the trades like what what was like eating you that made you like no I'm going to do this Boy, I'm not exactly sure. I haven't had that asked them yet. That's my goal. Every show is to ask a question that you have never been asked before. Hey guys, it's Chris. If you're finding value in what you're hearing, go ahead and like and subscribe. That way people just like you can find this content for free here on YouTube.

Now, let's stop back in the show. I don't know, when we're around all these next star members that had huge HVAC shops and plumbing, you know, I just really thought there's a lot of electrical. work out there. But it's super, it's a little more challenging than HVAC and plumbing to bring in revenue. Yeah. And I mean, I just thought we could really, I thought we could go into like 20 million in our small little market, which there's probably great electrical contractors that do that. We just, we weren't able to do it. And we just had to put our ego aside and say, listen, we're in business to make money. Yeah. And even more money. And we can do what these other

big players are doing. We had the talent and we had, you know, we had the team. And we just went for it. Yeah. Ego is such an interesting thing. You know, I had a guy come in the other day, one of my sales guys had brought him in, and, you know, he was interested in getting some help with his business, but it didn't appear that way when we sat down and talk. It was like, it was like this measuring contest of like what he's done and who he is and

everything else and not like, you know, cool, but like it's so often, you know, there's a lot of people that are just stuck in that and like the fact that you're able to overcome that I think it's one of the hardest things to do as a business owner is just come to that realization like hey maybe I don't know everything and maybe I don't need to try to prove someone else wrong and you know maybe I just need to go with what works yeah yes well one of the things we decided early on though when we were we were meeting with all these great contractors and it was always discussions about how many trucks you had yeah and we realized we don't care how many trucks we had what we cared about was that net margin, the EBITA number.

Yeah. And we focused on that. And, you know, it sounds real sexy to say you have 100 trucks. But if you're only doing 5% net, that's not good. No, it's terrible. And yeah, I mean, everybody knows that revenue is just for the ego, right? Profit is where all the sanity is. And one number that we had talked about before the show is like the gross margins you guys

were selling at. You want to share a little bit more of that? Yeah, we were selling around 65% gross margins. And, you know, I'm just going to give you a round of applause because, you know, this is a, that's the exact range that we train people like, and so few contractors can wrap their head around that. They're just like, no, I've got to be like 30%, 40%, and all they do is they try to compete with that bottom tier. And, you know, the interesting thing is when you pay against the bottom tier, you're never going to be the cheapest and you're still trying to deliver a quality experience for the bottom tier price, which is just like the thing doesn't work. And so. So you're 65% gross. And then from a net standpoint, what percentage were you guys hitting on a consistent basis? We're in the 15%, 17%. Yeah, which is, which is phenomenal, right?

Like you can build a real business with that. Can I share a mantra? Yeah. Actually, I'm having an aha moment after all of this discussion. We would ask ourselves all the time to keep focused. Do we want to do a $5 million company at $20? percent profit or a $10 million company at 10 percent profit. Did I say that right?

Yeah, exactly. You're doing twice a much work for the same amount of money. And when we would, it is easy to get sucked into the conversation of the number of trucks and we'd be like, nope, how do we maximize the 6% we're spending on marketing, all the follow up and how can we even make that smaller and just focus, focus, focus on that And because we want more money and half the headache. Yeah, half the work more money all day. Why do it and not make money?

So, you know, it's crazy. So we had a company coming to our community that was doing $100 million a year. Okay. And to everybody that would be like, oh, man, $100 million is so cool. Net EBITDA margin, which includes ad backs, was $2 million a year. And it's just like, and it. And frankly, when you looked at the books, they were on the verge of negative cash flow. And it's just like, oh, shoot me now.

Yeah, I would much rather do $10 million at $2 million in net. I mean, so that's an extreme example and the level of stress that these people were going through and everything just to really feed their ego. And a lot of it, I think, is driven by the inability to have hard conversations and address the real elephants in the room, right? Like, we're paying too much. We're losing efficiency here or whatnot. And you just kind of sit on the back burner. Like, well, at least I'm doing $100 million. Right? Like the justification. And I think that's where revenue always comes into place. People use it to justify their inability to run quality business. And so, It's the fact that you guys had figured it out, obviously that's one of the biggest reasons that you were able to go and exit to private equity, because that's what private equity wants, right? They want somebody that it's good, quality, healthy margins that they're going to be able to go and scale. Yeah, plus we always kept a lot of money in reserves, too, to weather any storm. If we did have a bad month, we kept a lot of capital.

That's a great, I got a great question for that. Did you have a methodology or an algorithm that you used as far as like how much cash that you wanted to keep in the bank? Not really. Just this more of like six months worth of money, you know, and that liquid that was easily, you know, used for the company. So like six months of fixed costs? You're right. I got it. Got it.

Yeah. Yeah. So typically the, the methodology that I teach, it's 10% of the previous six months of revenue. Yeah. is usually, and which comes close to aligning on the fixed cost type deal. It's just way too stressful if you don't have any reserves. Yeah. It's just way, way too stressful.

And it's really easy. I've seen contractors do it, take the money out, and they're buying jacked up trucks and, you know, lift kits on their pickups and swimming pools. Yeah. But, man, you have to keep, you know, retained earnings. So that's, you need that to run your business. Like, it'd just be way too stressful not to have it. What is your guys' position on debt?

like leases, debt, finance, like what did, what did you guys use for your philosophy there? Well, we owned most of our vehicles, but like we had to finance quite a few of them, but our philosophy was half of our fleet had to be paid for. Yeah. That way, if anything happened, the bank couldn't come take it from us. Right. So we've always felt like we were in a good position. Towards the end, we started leasing more.

It became more advantageous to lease. So we got out of the just, you know, we were buying them on like five-year terms and we started doing those track leases. Yeah. But we were trying to have about half of our fleet paid for it any one time. And as far as like an operational line of credit, did you have one in the background? Did you ever use it? We had one and we hadn't used it in years. And we would just sometimes take money in it just because the bank wants you see you using it.

We were just doing it just pay it right back, like just to move money around. But we didn't need it at all. Now, I mean, you guys built a great business, built it up to 18 million, sold it to private equity, kind of during 2021. That's right. Perfect timing, I would say, in the private equity world. So you did fantastic there. What regrets do you have in building your business? Not starting plumbing and age vac sooner.

Okay. Yeah. So not getting outside of the ego earlier on. and realizing, man, maybe I don't know everything. Okay, so that's great. What else? Operationally. Maybe let me phrase this.

What actually got me thinking of this question was your stance on debt. Do you have any regrets on not utilizing financing more, knowing that you were running good quality business? Or is that the way that you would do it every time? I think that's the way we would do it every time. Yeah. It just don't want to behold any bank. You know, I don't, when we first got started, we had SBA loans and just the reporting

and all the stress of having to take your land of credit down to zero, then, you know, by the end of the year. And it's just if you can do it with your own money, that's way, to me, it's a much easier process. Love it. So you guys ended up running north of 80 vehicles out of one location. Do you have any regrets as far as opening up additional locations? Would you ever consider, like if you could go back and talk to yourselves 10 years ago, would you have ever opened up an additional location?

We did open up one. We opened up one in Seattle. Electrical. And so this was pre-2015. Yeah, that was. This was when you were only doing electrical. That's right. That was probably, what, 2012?

Yeah. 20, yeah. And it doesn't sound like it went too well. Just for a few years. It was like for four years. Yeah, three or four. Why'd you shut it down? Well, we had helped a friend out that had electrical business over there.

He was struggling, you know. So we bought it. We paid off all the debt. And we got to work and, you know, just like we kept him on as a minority owner and um of just that branch right got it right and it just wasn't working out like i we would make money if i was there all the time so i was actually leaving spokane monday mornings i'd drive to seattle and i'd come on Thursday night and the weeks i wasn't there we'd lose money and after four the first year we actually made some profit

dollars and i thought well this is going to be good but it just didn't work out you got to have when you have a second location, you're only as good as your management team. Right. If you don't have a good team that could run it without you there, it's just not going to work well. So knowing what you know now, right? You ran the business for 21 years? Yeah. Okay.

Everything you know now. And you go back 21 years. How different would that business look over a 21 year span? Tell me, pay me the dream. What do you think could be done different? know how would it look would it be multi-location or we just or would you keep it to 20 million just making incredible profits? I don't know if we need to do multiple locations. That always sounds that always sounds sexy but it's a lot harder than people think it's super challenging.

I would think I would think no one now I would just add more streams of revenue. I would probably get into like restoration work, water mitigation and high margin stuff like that. Yeah. I would add that to our, to our local area. I would, before I move locations, I would probably add different things like roofing and these new things for home services that are coming out. Pest control. I would probably invest in those things before I'd, I would move a thousand miles away.

So one thing I've seen, I've worked with thousands of business owners. and one thing I've seen that one of the biggest deterrent to success is focus, right? And so, you know, what you're talking about is maybe a little bit of diversion of focus. At what point do you decide to add an additional service where it doesn't take away from the focus of what you're building? What would you tell a young entrepreneur there? Go ahead. Well, first of all, if you have to be super profitable in the areas that you are growing. if you're not don't even do it because it's going to take a lot of resources to add that new

line of revenue or new location um so that'd be that'd be the first thing so then it's so you got be running like a well-old machine before you add this other you know especially if it's outside of the trades of what you're doing you would definitely have to be functioning really well and highly profitable yeah that that's um because there's learning curves to all of it yeah And to take that year or two or three years to get to start making money, it's going to take quite a bit of capital to do it. Yeah. So that's, I mean, I don't know if I answered your question. No, no, that's good.

So what organizational change or what like big, obviously there was like a leadership aha for you, but allowed you guys to be able to expand into HVAC, expand into plumbing, like what moves did you make from an organization standpoint? Gosh. we didn't really do anything at first like honestly like yeah we were we were like so we were running well um you know we just took it slow i mean you could do as many davenants you can buy a company you could do this we just decided to start from scratch as green filled it yeah so we just we just put ads out looking for a technician that could service and sell uninstall right one guy and we found that guy. Unicorn.

And we did that by just talking to everybody. We knew doing the traditional advertising for employees, but then just everybody we ran into and just let them know, hey, we're looking for this journeyman, you know, skilled HVAC techs, you know, who could sell and install service and install. And when we hold one of our, was it our graphics person? Yeah. What was his name? Um, anyway, he said, my son-in-law just lost his job at another, one of your competitors.

Let me have him call you. So talk to him that day and he was working. So we only looked for like five days and found this guy. So got our foot in the door. We made a lot of mistakes. But being in the next star network, having friends in the HVAC business, they helped us through phone calls of what to do and how to get going and pricing and, um, all that thing. So we got sort of like that. And then we just started adding, you know, this gym, this manager and service manager that would do our service and install.

He brought on a friend that he knew from the trades. And we just grew up from there. And we actually, we used our database, leveraged our database. So we called every electrical client and said, hey, basically, you get a free tune-up because you just did electrical work with us. Or you've done it in the last year. And they're like, send them over. It was like super easy to get calls. Same with plumbing for water heat.

Flusches. Yeah. Just get a free. Yeah, nice. The challenging thing with HVAC for us was not getting a demand lead. I don't think we got a single call because the thing was broken for like three years. Because nobody knew we did it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We actually had to call people to do. What was the name of your company? Did it have like electric in the? It was mainstream electric heating and plumbing. We just, but for years it was just mainstream electric. Right. And then we added mainstream electric and heating. And And then we had a cooling, you know, 18 in cooling. Right. And then we had a plumbing and drains.

Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. I was talking to a guy down at Pantheon. And I won't say the exact name of his company, but he had the word wrench in his name. And we're like, oh, so you do plumbing. He's like, no, I do these other things. He's like, why do you think I only do plumbing?

I'm like, wrench is in your name. I mean, I don't know what else to tell you, but, you know, it's, yeah, it's just funny. It's, and it is one of those hard things from a demand standpoint, like when you've established yourself in one thing to be known for anything else. Yeah, that took a while, but we just did it through cold calling just by calling our, we didn't call people we didn't know. We called our existing client base. Right.

And you automatically were entitled to a free tune-up or system check if you did work with us. Yeah. And that worked pretty well. Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. So let's fast forward. So at what point did you guys decide, like, hey, maybe this private equity thing is a route that we want to go and sell our business? I think it was probably more my idea.

I was just burned out and stressed out. And, you know, being in the service industry, it's an everyday show up all day long game. And we had some friends who were selling around us, and I was like, I am ready. So it wasn't necessarily like a build to sell. It was just like, man, I'm done. This is stressful. I'm ready to move on to the next thing. Yes.

So at what point, so you made that decision to that you actually go and close the deal. How long was that in between? Was that years, months? Just a year, I think. Yeah. Wow. So pretty quick process, frankly. And so initially, if I'm recounting it right, you guys go and approach a private equity group

and say, hey, you know, make us an offer or how did that go down? Yep. Just do a high level assessment and, yeah, make us an offer. And the offer. Based on what we knew in the industry, it seemed low. Seemed low. Yeah. And was this a group that had bought other trades companies or whatnot?

Yeah. Okay. So they were just hoping to be able to maybe take advantage. of the situation a little bit. Hey, these guys are coming to us. Let's just give them a low ball type of offer. Is that how it felt? Or and maybe we didn't do a good job as owners building the value or we didn't know where we could add value. And so you decided, hey, this isn't the route we want to go. And then what did you do from there to be able to take it and get in front of other groups? We had decided there was a number we needed to sell or we just wasn't going to be worth it to

us. Yeah. Like, and so we then contact an investment banker that's, you know, other people have been using or they've actually sent us, I think, an email or a letter. Yeah. And then I contacted them and sent them some financials. And then they gave us, I mean, instantly within 30 seconds gave me a number what he thought he could sell it for.

Yeah. And then. And you're like, hey, that aligns. Yes. He said, Elaine, do I think this number's going to be okay? They're like, sell it, sell it yesterday. Yesterday, please. So, so awesome. So you decide, hey, we're going to go with him and then walk us through the process. How long did it take? What did the process look like to be able to take it to market and go and close a deal? I think I remember back that was almost four years ago. So, you know, you got to go through your financials. You got to go like just through the, you got to give them everything. Quality of earnings. All that stuff. cash flow um you know there's just a lot of your there's a lot of due there's a lot of dude a lot

of um the employee stuff like they want to know your um census your employee census like it seems like all the time like almost daily for for weeks but you know it's interesting this is like one of the subjects that isn't heavily covered on the internet right like yeah there there's not a lot of YouTube's out there and I produced another video where I kind of went through the process and it was like one of our best performing videos just because people were like, oh man, I didn't even know that. Most people think like, you know, just one day a buyer shows up on your porch and is like, hey, I want to buy your business and the next day they hand you a check and, you know, of course, we both know that that's absolutely not how it goes down, right?

So you got all this due diligence, all this work. So you go, you hire, you hire the bank. They put together the package, they go, and they send out a teaser to everyone. Initially, how many LOIs came across the table of interest a group? I think we had like 20, 25? That's pretty remarkable. We had a high number. Yeah, that's a great number.

So clearly you guys have built an awesome business. It was right in the ballpark of what people were looking for. Typically, most will, so that was LOIs. not iowis well i mean we a lot of intent we only um we got a bunch of we have like 2025 companies interested in us okay so those were the iowis which is still still pretty high um most i would say get five to 10 i i think we had five because we had narrowed it down to people out of that group right of like 10 companies that we would want to be but you had five legit LOIs come across the i think that's about which is also fantastic whenever you can

I mean, that may be competing. Most people hope for two, maybe three to be able to compete. And then once you decided to go with the group that you signed with, how many days of due diligence did it? Because obviously, so there's the initial due diligence for those that are watching this. You have your initial due diligence, and that's like, you know, basic financials and everything else. But then once you sign the L.O.R. then these companies, they decide to invest real dollars, right?

Like they start bringing in all their, you know, security assessment teams and finance, like they go and hire an outside accounting firm that's going to go and do more than just what you had previously prepared for them. And so they start investing in a bunch of dollars. And, you know, a lot of these guys, they say they're going to do it in a certain amount of time. How much time did it take from LOI to seal the deal, get a check?

I think it was like 120 days maybe you're 160 maybe like 120 yeah cool and that's that's probably pretty standard a lot of these guys will come in and they'll say hey we'll do this in 30 to 45 days you know and with all the intentions of the world but you know they're really yeah so they're just fact checking you that's just all they're doing they're just making sure your stories holds up and tell tell us about that was it stressful was there any anxiety along the process like Were you just ready to, you know, hand the keys over by the time it was done? Was there any deal fatigue? Yes, yes, yes. I just think the due diligence and the fact-checking, just slicing and dicing the information and questions in so many different ways. And I'm thinking, God, I just gave that to you yesterday. It literally was, I felt like eight to 12 hours a day of due diligence of sending information days.

upon days, which turned months into months. And at one point, I think our closing date was in a November, and then they pushed it back to, like, December 21. And I thought, I am not going to survive this in providing more information. So, yeah. There was a lot of fatigue, stress, anxiety, just because anything can happen a long way. Like, we were confident in the information that we provided. And knowing what you know now, I mean, I don't need you to, like, divulge information.

info about the deal, but like just far as like deal points, because a lot of people don't realize that it's not just cut and dry, like, here's a dollar amount, right? It's like, how are things going to operate from a go forward? How are you going to allocate capital that's currently in the business and, you know, what value you're going to get for that? Is there anything that you missed that you wish that would have been done differently from just a sheer deal point standpoint? point you know what you just yeah go ahead well i think i would coach anybody you know this like try to get a distribution for your taxes if you roll equity this is an our deal we don't get that so you know we get a k1 and it can be a large number and we got to pay income tax on that money

and we don't get a distribution we don't get any that money and we don't get a distribution to pay taxes so that you're saying on the on the roll forward basically my equity yeah because That's still there. They're not distributing into that capital. Yeah, we're partners in the business, right? So I think right now we own about 10% of the platform, one of the thing. And so we get a share in 10% of the profits, but you're not getting 10% of distributions. No, we don't get that.

Right. And it's, it's terrible. It's paid taxes on dollars that you're not getting. Right. Yeah. And this is actually a very important thing for like entrepreneurs to understand. and the way that corporations are structured, right? Like, when you're talking about an S-corporate and LLC,

everything that comes on that K-1 is a pass-through to your individual taxation. And so even if dollars, right, there's, let's use a million dollars as an easy example, right? A million dollars is earned as a company and you own 10%, you're going to be taxed on $100,000 of income that you didn't receive, right? In the event that you're an S-corporate and LLC, and I'm assuming that's what the structure is. And the only way around that is if the corporation is set up as a C corporation. Because then, and the C corporation isn't all great and dandy either because C corporation

pays taxes for the corporation. But then when you ultimately do get paid out, you got to pay taxes again. And so that's kind of the downfall of the C corporation. But it is an interesting thing to like consider, right? because these aren't things that you, like, look forward in the future and be like, oh, you know, I'm going to hate this sometime. Is there anything else that was, like, similar to that? Like, knowing what you know now, what advice would you give to somebody that's considering selling to private equity?

Let's see. Advice. I think there's going to be some changes. And they're not always pleasant to watch them make the changes that you've built. You know, you've took 21 years to build something and have this outcome. And right, wrong, or indifferent, they're just going to do what they're going to do. Yeah, go ahead. I was just going to say, and for me to watch those changes was really, really difficult.

I mean, we are awesome operators together and super profitable. Yeah. And in the end, it's going to be okay. Yeah. It's okay. Yeah. You know, I, and I, but I do think it is an important thing for anybody that's considering selling to understand that is going to happen. Yeah.

Right. And if you don't understand that, don't sell. Like, like if you can't handle your baby being, I mean, like slightly torn apart and tattooed. up and, you know, whatever else and all the things that you would never do to your own child that they're going to go and do, like, yeah, just, you just understand that's going to happen. And I think the other thing we did was we worried a lot about our employees and how they're going to act. But, you know, really, the reality is some of them just do very well in that environment. There's a lot of boundaries when private equity corporations come in and buy it.

They set hard, fast rules of what's allowable and what's not. And we were a lot softer on that stuff. And people, your employees will thrive in that. A lot of them do. And I think we put way too much stock in the fact that they're not going to be okay. Right. And they are okay. Right. And then that they rely on us. Yeah. Right. And that's just the ego talking again, right. It's just like, oh, nobody can do this better than me. My way is the only way. Yeah. It's a. And I think looking back to I can really see where Todd and I probably stepped in the way of our leadership team. And they did really get to thrive into what their potential was. So once we were out of the business and to really see them get to become the leaders that they were meant to be, that was pretty

cool. That is pretty awesome. So relationship with private equity aside, whether that's good, bad or ugly, whatever, what do you have any regrets about selling your business and no longer being active in the day to day of a business. Not that business. It's nice. I mean, I really recommend it. Takes a while to use to it. I was an electrician first and then started the business.

So like for 30 years, I got up at 5.45 every single day. And, you know, when I finally retired, it took me like three months to get used to the the fact that the night before, I didn't have to worry about what I was doing tomorrow. You know, that thing of what do we got to do tomorrow, you know, all day long. And it really took like three, four months for me to kind of just settle down and have some slow mornings and then start working on projects and things that I've left behind in the last 30 years that hadn't got done. Awesome.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the thing that everyone fantasizes about, right? Like to be able to have that free time, to be able to go and do. What are some of the, how are you using the extra hours? Well, spending time with our kids and grandkids, and then I just wrote a book. Awesome. Tell us about it.

Yes. It's called Made in Vietnam. And it is my memoir about being an Amarajun woman growing up in the mountains of North Idaho with a dragon Asian mother really hard on me. And I had a life-changing trip with my parents. My mother's Vietnamese, my dad's American. back to Vietnam when I was 36 years old and their love story and what they went through to so I could be born in America as an American citizen rocked my world

and to have ultimate forgiveness and love for my mother and love her the way she deserved to be loved before she passed away. That's awesome. Yeah, it sounds like a great book. And I mean, ultimately living the American dream. Yes. And at 36 discovering the story, that is my why and driving me to be successful and becoming more in the United States of America

because it's our capitalism and free market that allows us to thrive and grow. And that's how I pay my gratitude. Awesome. Awesome. Well, I appreciate you guys both coming on the show today and sharing your great story. I know it's very inspiring to other people in the trades. You know, a lot of people aspired to get there one day to be able to let go of control, let go of the ego a little bit, to allow other people to come in and flourish and ultimately be able to have a nice little exit. So thank you so much for coming on the show today. Thanks for having us.