Ben Bortner

@blueprintsmb22 From what I can tell of your business, the bags and packaging you produce is a tiny portion of the overall cost of a product so you should be able to pass along your cost increases fairly easily? Especially if all vendors are experiencing the same pressures?

This resin situation can't be fixed until 2027 is what a few resin distributors I talked to today. Even if the Strait of Hormuz opens up today, it will take 60+ days for capacity to come back online. Resin was $0.50ish per pound in December 2025 and if the price increases go through May, pricing will be $1.05/pound soon. If everything goes perfectly this weekend and the Strait is open, resin prices won't get back to $0.50ish per pound until 2027 at the earliest. The resin manufacturers aren't even returning phone calls to the distributors with priority to ship to the export market where margins are higher. One resin distributor said one his customers agreed to buy 25 railcars (200k pounds per railcar) for the year at contracted rates tied to CMA. Demand was so weak for the industry in Q1, they only used 2 railcars but are now pulling railcars as end market customers want to buy before the resin price increases. The problem is the resin manufacturer said any railcars now are tied to spot market which is closer to $1.00 per pound). This means that the remaining 23 railcars will cost $4.6MM when the customer had budgeted $2.5MM for the year! Obviously they are working on finding remedies but this is the most extreme environment, resin distributors have ever seen in their lifetime. What a time to be alive. x.com/blueprintsmb22…

@bradford_hardin @MikeBotkin_ Magically something is broken every time!

@Slackwatercap @MikeBotkin_ I just tell them “be sure to fix anything that is broken”

Here is my contribution of the day. The industry that I tried rolling up but could not gain traction? Residential irrigation. I love...(repeat)...LOVE residential irrigation. A-MAZ-ING business. I just could not get traction/momentum. I hope somebody sees this and does it. Send me a check when you sell for $$$$$$

@gavin_nurick @MikeBotkin_ Are we converging on full service?

@MikeBotkin_ We do it but haven’t put any money behind growth. Your post has prompted me to test some paid ads around it.

@MSUKyleBrown @bradford_hardin @MikeBotkin_ both these companies are going to get cold called by 5 searchers tomorrow

@bradford_hardin @Slackwatercap @MikeBotkin_ Mine was very similar - $100/hour and ~$50 in parts

@bradford_hardin @MikeBotkin_ Some providers do what they say they will. Some don't. I'm aware of some companies that don't really perform all the checks they say they will.

@Slackwatercap @MikeBotkin_ Isn’t that service the primary repairs sales funnel? It is at my house!

Insurance litigation reform in Florida is working. Progressive gave us a $1,325 "Florida Insurance Reform" credit for the three vehicles on my family's auto policy.

@StumpGuyTy He went for the low bid I see

Since starting my biz, my dad sends me any tree related work happening on his property. Check out how accurate this tree drop was!! Insanely close to the house.

@Robbie_R23 Don't want to sign up for Marketing Pro?

Anyone who does email marketing/newsletters for customers, what is the software of choice these days? Have we moved on from Mailchimp back in the early 2000’s.

@guessworkinvest Did you tell it to "make no mistakes"?

Is there a prompt engineering way to stop Claude from making small silly errors, like dropping brackets? I'm getting errors and the fix is often so basic. I don't get why it's making these errors...should I be prompting it to go slower and be more careful?

@MikeBotkin_ @MaxKrakow_ All you have to do is throw out the fax machine, Mike.

@MaxKrakow_ hell yeah....the ole add a website + fix marketing playbook. Tried and true! Easy peasy.

There is a guy who is sourcing capital to buy a home service business. ~$5m top line, $3.3m ebitda (that tracks I am sure!). His main pitch? Year 2 — they will do $50m in rev and $23m in EBITDA. How? The plan is to buy 30 adjacent companies at an avg of $1.4m in rev. Year 5 — $100m in revenue at 45% margin. Valued at over $1b (with a b) Man….wish I had his confidence. Go get em tiger. I will have to pass on the SpaceX of home services.

@JackieHirsch_ Or bad advisers... :(

@Slackwatercap This also happens. It’s lack of experience often on both ends. Or sometimes the deal just isn’t right for either party. But mostly I see buyers jerking around the seller.

This is how many deals buyers are missing by jerking around sellers.

@BPD1776 They've ruined F1. Hope it changes soon.

YIKES I wrecked like this once. Leading the race, on the back straight at Road Atlanta during Petit Le Mans support race. My closing speed on lapped traffic was dramatically faster than I expected. I spun. Wall. Rear end first. Driveshaft through the transmission into the motor. Only car that Panoz Race Series ever cut up. Cost me the Championship. Probably for the best for me. Realized I wasn't a racer capable of going pro. but these are PROFESSIONALS! FIA will wait until someone is dead to give up on their folly

@aakashgupta Few understand the number of people and cost that comes with managing and maintaining a vessel of this size and complexity.

Zuckerberg's yacht once sailed 9,600 nautical miles, burned 676,800 liters of diesel, and waited two months in the South Pacific for him to show up. He never came. It turned around and went home. The vessel burns 1,165 gallons of diesel per hour at cruising speed. The carbon output of 630 cars running simultaneously. In nine months, it produced 5,300 tons of CO2, what 400 American households emit in an entire year. Meta's sustainability report pledges net zero across their value chain by 2030. Zuckerberg's personal fleet (there's a $30 million support vessel that follows the yacht everywhere carrying submarines, helicopters, and water toys) produced more emissions on that single empty round trip than most people will generate in a lifetime. The fuel tank holds 423,700 liters. A full fill costs about $230,000. Based on his 2024 wealth increase, Zuckerberg earns that in under 90 seconds. Net zero is a line item in someone else's budget. It always was.

@MikeBotkin_ @JackieHirsch_ @paulswaney3 @wraithbrokerage Answering with your background and planned capital structure will get you by the PFS question 95% of the time.

1. Yes, every deal I’ve ever looked at that you have been involved with has been 100% professional and all the key components are covered, if there is something missing, it’s usually because the seller does not have it but it’s being worked on. I’ve said this before, a good broker can add a .5 turn to 1 turn of PP for a seller (sssssoooometimes 1.5 turns), not to mention the time to close vs a bad broker. You are in that camp, sellers get higher PP and quicker closes with you as their broker. 2. You are also probably right, I’m not helping myself with brokers that I do not know. When I get asked. I usually respond with my background and capital structure.

Searchers / Search Funds If we ask for a PFS, or to clarify who you represent before sending materials, please do not act surprised. Astounded by the amount of people that fill out NDAs and buyer registration with unclear info We take the time to follow up and you act like I’m accosting your family just because we want to understand the situation. This is not how you win deals

@pestctrlguy This is why you don't wrap YOUR car

My tech sent me this photo and I saw it had 57 comments already. My heart sank. We were getting flamed in a local Facebook group. I opened it as fast as I could and was just hoping I could do some damage control. To my surprise, nearly all 60 comments were positive towards our company. Many of our customers backed up our service. Most people thought it was lame that the OP was anonymous. This was phenomenal, free marketing for us. The poster deleted it after 100 or so positive comments. Huge win for the brand today.

@homeservicebase How do you actually have time to manage your businesses while you're playing around with all this stuff?

@homeservicebase You're a genius. You're doing the most crazy smart shit I see on here.

I accidentally made a scalable recruiting system that generates free technician applicants in any city – without spending on Indeed. Using Claude Code, I created a careers page on my website with job postings for all cities where we're hiring, plus an "apply to job" flow with a questionnaire to filter candidates. Next step – I researched websites listed in the Jobs block in Google (mostly job boards) and asked AI to generate better on-page content than those listings, along with proper technical SEO and correctly filled Schema for job postings. Then I created SEO-optimized content for each job listed on my website – city in the title, proper meta tags, etc. and submitted those pages to Google Search Console for indexing. In 5 days, I’m ranking #1 or #2 in most cities where we need technicians and getting 1–3 applicants daily. Looks like the Jobs block in Google still uses a pretty old-school algorithm – whoever does better on-page SEO ranks higher. I think domain reputation still matters, but mine is much lower than Indeed or other major platforms and still ranking above them. It's not replacing candidates from Indeed, but it's a solid additional channel for ongoing recruiting.