Spann @ Stoneburgh Management

What is pain? Its my competitive advantage in business! @grok defines: "It's your brain's way of yelling, "Hey, stop that!"—whether from a stubbed toe, a headache, or emotional distress" Emotional distress is doing something uncomfortable I have won more times than not because I can stay uncomfortable longer than others Its a choice, it sucks, but its like a mussel the more I've worked it the stronger I've become. Embrace & become comfortable w/ uncomfortable I can assure you will see a difference During the recruiting process to my candidate program we are evaluating the longevity of the applicants ability to be uncomfortable The first 13 of 26 weeks in the program we test how long they can stay uncomfortable Those who demonstrate get to run one of my companies w/ a path to ownership. Why? I know what level of uncomfortable it takes to grow a company where I refuse to give them the keys without seeing it demonstrated #uncompromised #businessowner #EntrepreneurMindset #learningtoearning #success

@ryandeiss This hit hard

If a time machine dropped me back into my first day as CEO, before I nearly lost everything twice, here's what I'd do differently: 1. I'd stop trying to be the best employee in my own company. The more valuable you are to your business, the less valuable your business is. 2. I'd build it like I was going to sell it, even if I never planned to. A sellable business is just a business that runs without you. 3. I'd install an operating system before I hired an operator, integrator, COO, or whatever you want to call them. No operating system, no operator. I learned that one the expensive way. 4. I'd document the 10-20 things that actually matter in my value creation process. Not 500 SOPs that nobody reads. Just the critical few. 5. I'd remind myself every single day that the goal isn't to build a team of rockstars. The goal is to build a company that doesn't require them. 6. I'd build a scorecard that mirrored and tracked the customer journey. Chasing vanity metrics has cost me a small fortune. 7. I'd set a 3-year target and execute in 90-day sprints. Annual planning is just New Year's resolutions for business owners. 8. I'd stop hiring "helpers" and start hiring functional leaders who own outcomes. Helpers make you busier. Leaders make you wealthier. 9. I'd fix my margins before I chased revenue growth. P&Ls lie. Cash doesn't. 10. I'd stop confusing a full calendar with a productive day. Busy isn't a strategy. 11. I'd stop swooping in to "save" things. Every rescue teaches your team to wait for you next time. 12. I'd resist the urge to start something new every time something old got hard. Complex breaks. Simple scales. 13. I'd fire problem clients (and problem business ideas) faster. They always cost more than they pay. 14. I'd have the hard conversations 6 months sooner. They never get easier, but the damage always gets worse. 15. And I'd remember that my kids don't want my money… they want my calendar. I didn't know any of this on Day 1. I learned it all the hard way. But you don't have to.

@therobertbrooks This is amazing and I’m right there with you. This is why we’re turning blue collar into gold collar.

Not the best pic.. but this is a picture of one of my technicians moving into there brand new home. One of the reasons I left a big global executive career to buy an HVAC company was because I wanted to get back to a place I could make a positive impact on people's lives. Helping people achieve things they didn't know was possible is something I take a ton of pride in. Growth is great... But this is the best.

@leadlagreport Ok, now this was funny

During this ceasefire can we please go back TO TALKING ABOUT THE FUCKING EPSTEIN FILES

@therobertbrooks Your killing it

The first week in April has been fun

@Torysheffer @AizikZimerman @MatznerJon Tory my man. Long time bro

@AizikZimerman @MatznerJon Just sent dm

If you own a service business and you’re interested in hiring global talent, but don’t know where to start, I'll do a call with you I have 60 overseas employees (up from 0 only 3 years ago) running the back end of my $42m plumbing company Call center, developers, marketing, project managers, job coordinators, accounting, digital marketing I offered these calls before and it was a fun way to meet more people, so shoot me a DM.

@therobertbrooks What was your biggest driver to ramp up the month?

Historically March is the slowest month of the year with seasonality usually landing at about 5% of our total annual revenue on average. +194% YOY really throws a wrench in things. Backlog of sold work is a little light going into April, but we have a massive pile of estimates out waiting to close. I won't mind if our growth slows a bit to give me some time to catch up!

@SMB_RealEstate Non discretionary spending mitigates risk in economic downturn like diesel at $5 a gallon

Everyone in ETA is fighting over HVAC, plumbing, and landscaping deals. I bought shutter and shade manufacturing and installation business in Little River, SC, right on the coast between Myrtle Beach and Wilmington. Two years in, I think light manufacturing is the best category in SMB M&A. Here’s why: 1. The moat is physical. Anyone can start a pressure washing company next Monday. You can’t replicate a shutter factory. Equipment, tooling, 30 years of supplier relationships. That’s a real barrier, not one protected by brand or Google reviews alone 2. You own the product, not just the labor. Home services sell hours. Tech calls out, revenue stops. We build a physical product in a factory and pair it with an install. Labor and install aren’t the sole revenue drivers but rather a complement to what we sell. Yes, HVAC and plumbing sell equipment too, but they’re reselling someone else’s product at someone else’s margin… 3. You capture the margin others give away. Home services compete on labor pricing and our direct competitors resell products from other suppliers. We manufacture in-house, so the distributor markup that would normally go to a middleman stays with us. That’s structural margin baked into the model, and not margin you grind for on every job. 4. The multiple was lower. HVAC and plumbing has been bid up to 5-6x+. Light manufacturing flies under the radar because most buyers want “asset light.” I bought two facilities and now own the real estate and real equipment at a price that wasn’t inflated by hype. 5. Demand is durable without being “recurring.” Coastal Carolina is one of the fastest growing markets in the Southeast. New construction, renovations, storm damage. It’s not a subscription, but the baby boomer and young family migration tailwinds (to the Carolinas) isn’t stopping anytime soon. Home services are great businesses. But a manufacturer with an install component on a growing coastline is a better kept secret in this space. “Asset heavy” deters most but for us it’s an advantage.

@Will_Schryver I had one I bought with a 1.25 sales with 480k cash flow picked up for 800K

$1.15m revenue and $260k cash flow 35 Installs and 4 employees Asking $1.2 million What’s wrong with this picture?

@therobertbrooks ChatGPT is basically a Google search engine at this point for me

I've been using chatGPT ever since it became public mainly for Writing emails, building SOPs, validating mathematical calculations, etc. At some point they changed the output and the format for SOP writing it absolutely trash. Yesterday I was writing incentive compensation plans and using chatGPT and again.. trash. Threw the same into Gemini, which doesn't even have much history with me, and the output was very near where the final product needed to be. I think it's time to move away from chatGPT. 🤔

@Will_Schryver Same here. Seller options 1-sell to PE, sell your soul 2-sell to licensed tech, who you can trust and stay on for a year 3-close the doors to walk away 4-My candidate program produces GMs who get a path to ownership. Owner walks away day of closing

Independents are pushing back against Private Equity PE’s “roll-up” playbook to buy, build, and sell in a couples of years is facing resistance “Run by investors who’ve never set foot in your neighborhood” Debt-heavy deals and singular focus on the bottom line have owners concerned what will happen to their company after selling Customers in local communities are starting to take an anti-PE approach too That’s why I decided to offer owners an alternative to private equity - Veteran owned & operated with a focus on operational improvements, not financial engineering

@therobertbrooks Your definitely winning

@spann_sbm This is going to sound horrible.. I can't remember. Maybe like $45k. I can remember how much I paid for my truck in 2021.. it's still worth about 10k less than what I paid for it after 65,000 mi.

I've driven my Tesla 7,700 miles since I bought it in Dec. Total charging cost $345 If I would have been driving my F250 6.7L Diesel, it would have cost $1,686 in fuel, plus another $250 for an oil change. $345 instead of $1936 Savings of $1591, which is just a few hundred dollars short of my monthy payment total on the Tesla. Basically end up with a 2026 Tesla Model Y that drives me around for $100-150 a month in extra costs. Not bad.

@realErikDPrince Just more reason why all my executives have them. We do not want proprietary information or conversations getting out. Cyber crime is a real thing.

Our results speak for themselves. Serious security and privacy. Zero BS.

Hilarious. I bet PE is asking themselves why the money seemed soooo good, BUT

@reachvaldo $

You don’t have The Psychology of Funnels? like + reply “$” and I’ll DM it to you for FREE right now.

@Will_Schryver My wife says I’m retarded.

@spann_sbm So true. Some of us are true gluttons for punishment and don’t mind the constant hustle

You work 15 hours a day to sleep 5 hours at night You work 7 days a week so your employees enjoy 2 days on the weekend You work 52 weeks a year so your family enjoys 4 weeks of vacation You work 45 years to give your family a better life by the time you retire Think again if you want to live this life as a business owner

@therobertbrooks They seem to forget this little model that @Wil_Schryver may recognize

Gary Air had been a Rheem dealer forever with Gemaire as the only real supplier they had. Everything was purchased through Gemaire. Bad Pricing.. Worse Service. No loyalty program.. No rebates.. Nothing. They knew I acquired the company, but they acted like they didn't gave to earn my business. I fired them in my 2nd month and partnered with another key supplier, while adding multiple other supplier as backups and where pricing requires. Now Gemaire is sending me reminders every 2 days to DocuSign their "Premier Dealer Program"... with no sales engagement, nobody to stop by the shop to acknowledge the lack of partnership in the past, nothing. No thanks. Supplier partnerships can either help you or hinder you.

@Apple any way to get my microphone to stop annoying me every 5 minutes trying to sync with my Studio Display after the recent update?

@Will_Schryver PE antiquated method of throwing money at an industry they don’t understand is costing them. For me HVAC was a whole new learning curve. All employees of former PE HVAC run companies hated it. Would be interested to find one who didn’t.

My buddy decided to walk away from the deal from private equity After a retrade and 4 months of wasted time (and money), he decided to re-evaluate his options PE group said they were growing cautious of doing more acquisitions in Florida It sounds like the PE-backed platform is also experiencing some operational challenges