Summary

Alright, here’s the deal—Rob Lombardi went from military life to crushing it in business. But it wasn’t all smooth sailing. He took some hits, learned some hard lessons, and figured out what actually works: adding value, knowing when to exit, and making smart moves instead of just chasing money. His secret weapon?  Consulting for equity.  Instead of just giving advice, he helps businesses grow and then negotiates a piece of the action. Less risk, more reward. And after some early failures, he’s all about due diligence—knowing exactly what he’s getting into before making a move. If you’re serious about business—partnerships, exits, valuations, and playing the long game—you need to hear what Rob has to say. Check out the full conversation and see how he’s making big things happen in the restoration industry right now. 🔥 Watch the video.

Takeaways

Rob Lombardi transitioned from military service to entrepreneurship.
He emphasizes the importance of adding value in business.
Rob's approach includes consulting for equity in businesses.
Understanding business exits and valuations is crucial.
He prefers minority stakes to mitigate risks.
Rob learned valuable lessons from his early failures in business.
He believes in the importance of due diligence before acquiring a business.
Rob's experience highlights the significance of business culture.
He shares insights on navigating partnerships and exits.
Rob is currently exploring opportunities in the restoration industry.

 

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Transcript:

Jon Stoddard (00:01.132)
Welcome to top &A entrepreneurs. Today, my guest is Rob Lombardi. Rob is out, is a army veteran. He's bought and sold six businesses at least. So we're going to talk to Rob, how his process went, why he bought these businesses, why he exited some, and some of the horror stories. Rob, thanks for joining the show.

Rob (00:23.244)
Yeah, thanks for having me on, Joe.

Jon Stoddard (00:25.572)
So let's kind of rewind and talk about how you got started in this journey and why.

Rob (00:33.806)
Okay, let's see, I'll try to condense 26 years into a couple of minutes here. Yeah, no, I guess I'll go back to high school because that's kind of where it started. Yeah, I was just never really a college university kind of guy, even though back in the late 80s and things like that, that's what you were told, right? You had to do so.

Jon Stoddard (01:00.25)
That's all. Yeah.

Rob (01:02.028)
Yeah, so that's what I thought I had to do. The problem was I was really, I was good in high school except for like algebra. I had some kind of weird dyslexic thing with algebra. I just couldn't figure it out. So my first big sales pitch in my whole life was when I was about 17 in high school. And I went and told the principal, said, Hey, I can't figure out this algebra stuff. So if you want me to graduate, you have to give me something different. said, can I take a county? And they said to graduate and they said, yeah.

you can take the county. So I was able to take that instead. actually that turned out really good for me because that was way better than algebra anyway.

Jon Stoddard (01:41.678)
Yeah, we use it every day.

Rob (01:43.778)
Yeah, I took like accounting one, two, even got into advanced stuff, right? By the time I was done. So I loved it, man. It was great. So that was kind of, guess, my first sales pitch in, you know, learning, learning business. But then after I got out, actually went in the army, I was in the military for a couple of years. And I thought I was going to stay in there, but

You know, real soon after I got in there, I knew I was getting out. So I did.

Jon Stoddard (02:14.574)
Yeah. Well, what were you learning about that? Because I think we share the same feelings about being told what to do by sergeants that didn't seem to be too smart.

Rob (02:26.138)
Yeah, exactly, man. yeah, no, just within a few months of being in there, I was just like, man, this is too restricting. It's like they tell you when to get up, when to shower, when to do this, when to do that. I mean, everything. So I'm like,

Jon Stoddard (02:39.915)
my God, the paperwork to replace a product.

Rob (02:45.25)
Yeah, so I was like, I can't handle that. I was like, I'm do my time, I'm gonna have fun, do it well, and then that's it. So I did, I got an honorable discharge, had that, what is that, GI bill, do you remember that? Yeah, I used it too, I got out, but I only used it for like a year. And then the rest of the money. And then I went to a college when I got out.

Jon Stoddard (02:51.428)
Yeah, yeah.

Jon Stoddard (02:59.214)
The Veep? I use the Veep. Yeah.

Rob (03:11.438)
just for like less than a year and I dropped out and, cause I had to go to work. mean, I I had to support myself, right? So I, I went to a flooring company. I got a job as an installer for a couple of years. And yeah, I learned the installation part, the sales part, all that. And then about three years after that, I said, I could probably do this on my own. I,

Jon Stoddard (03:19.076)
Yeah.

Rob (03:39.31)
My first business was a flooring company, residential flooring company where we installed, you know, just for homes, residential homes. And grew that to me was a failure, but it wasn't, it wasn't really a failure because I grew it to like 400,000 in sales. And then I was still like 23, 24, 25 years old, something like that. And it was doing okay, but I started having cash flow problems.

Jon Stoddard (03:47.47)
Yeah.

Rob (04:09.518)
and all that. And so eventually I just said, you know what, I grew it some, I just, the startup thing, it's just tough, man. I mean, there's a lot of things. I mean, I just spent, you know, probably lost 20 grand in marketing and advertising. We would do those mailers, you know, in the mail and all that. Just, yeah. But a lot of lessons learned there, you know, in the startup phase that it's not easy, man. It's just,

Jon Stoddard (04:27.576)
Yeah. The weekly mailers. Yeah. Yeah.

Rob (04:38.506)
You know, got unless really honestly, I tell people unless you've got something that has a high high demand. Don't do it and like you're the only one doing it. You're not going to make it, you know.

Jon Stoddard (04:51.044)
It was too much of a push forward to get it out there. Yeah.

Rob (04:56.108)
Yeah, I was just, I didn't really do the, the due diligence I should have as far as my competitors went, which is I was in a saturated market, just selling the same thing everybody else was, you know, that, that, that's part of the problem, you know, and I'm, I haven't been, I've never been the strongest marketer. I'm good at sales and operations, but marketing has never been my thing. So unless you're like a, a genius marketer or something like that, it's going to be a real hard to keep things going in the start.

Jon Stoddard (05:07.62)
Yeah, yeah.

Jon Stoddard (05:24.996)
Yeah. And it takes some time to get, you know, get some establishment. It's not like you're going to, I'm the greatest marker in the world and six months, everything's working. No, it takes some time to, you know, other competitors, how to go out of business or other competitors, you know, are, are just falling asleep and then you get noticed.

Rob (05:26.051)
Rob (05:38.061)
then

Rob (05:46.786)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I did that for about three years. I don't like to quit, you know, so I kept it going. But then I realized I got a pivot out of it. It was just a grind, too much of a grind. I don't want to do this for the next five years, you know. So, but so at that point, though, I knew a lot of people in the industry, in the flooring industry, especially, but in the trades. And one of the people I knew had like a two

and a half million dollar flooring company and I knew the owner so I just said hey why don't you just can I just sell you my my vendor list and my customer list because that's all it was really worth and he said yeah I'll buy it from you and I said all right so I sold it and he said well why don't you come why don't you come work with us for a while and I said all right what do you guys you know what are you guys doing in the commercial space because I wanted to get into commercial we were doing residential and he says not really and it's like

Well, how about if I told him, how about if I build up your commercial side? And he said, okay. And, so I went in there and I basically within a year and a half, two years, you know, I added like a million and a half to close to 2 million in revenue to that company. Just, just from, doing large commercial jobs, we started doing like, like, you know, these Burlington Coke factories, best buys places like that.

Jon Stoddard (07:16.174)
Yeah. What are the characteristics look like as far as like profit margins versus the residential?

Rob (07:23.212)
Margins are lower for sure. Cause, cause you're bidding in the beginning, in the beginning, well, even later, but you're always bidding on these against other companies, no matter what. Right. And almost always it's the lowest bidder until if you can create a niche, like a few years later, I finally figured out a niche, like say, and this, this could work. Anybody that's listening to this, if they're in the commercial space, whether it's

flooring, plumbing, whatever it is, paint. If you just develop a niche, like what we did was we started doing, kind of did it by accident, but we started doing the Burlington Coat factories, right? And after we did about six of those big ones, because they were like 150 grand each, right? We started figuring out what the Burlington company really likes when you do those and all the little nuances of how to do them.

at what the GC expects and what what Burlington expected. So after doing a few of those, we started bidding them. But then once, once I started to bid them, I started telling them my sales pitch was like, look, we've done a bunch of these already. We know exactly how your client wants it done. we know all the ins and outs, give us the deal. So we would charge them like three, 4 % more, and we would still get the, win the, get awarded the deal because.

it was less risk for them because they knew we did them. So that's, you know, it took us a few years to figure that out, but we did that. And then we did it again with, think Best Buy was another one we did it with. so it takes a while, but if you're in commercial, that's, you do it that way. That's probably the best way to do it, but it's still lower margin. Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (08:51.0)
Right.

Jon Stoddard (09:15.694)
Yeah. Yeah. So what happened to this? Now you're back to being an employee or salesperson. What happened there?

Rob (09:25.04)
yeah. Well, I got part of the company. after they saw what I, this is a pattern I always do. I try to add some value first and then I'll go in and, you know, ask for part of the business. But back then, I didn't really know how to value a business, how to buy one. I didn't even know you could buy a whole business, right? But I did know you could take equity in the company. So I went and studied whatever I could, the library, just, there wasn't really anything online.

You know, I mean, that's I think probably who are the only knowledgeable people like big private equity firms, you know, 15 years ago, 20 years ago that knew how to do that.

Jon Stoddard (10:07.93)
Yeah. Yeah. And was that equity, uh, like I own 10, 15, 20 % of the business and the cashflow of that equity, or what did that look like? Like I could sell it at some point in the future. What did that look like?

Rob (10:25.39)
Yeah, usually I would shoot for like 20 or 30 % of the equity and then whatever it's worth when I leave, just give me a check for that. And in the meantime, all I would take would be like a small commission or salary or something or distribution just to keep me afloat. And then when I left and then when I exited, I would just take whatever equity I added to it.

Jon Stoddard (10:53.934)
Yeah. And then you.

Rob (10:54.628)
So basically, I got in with no money really.

Jon Stoddard (10:58.138)
It's like they call that today consulting for equity, it looks like. Yeah. Yeah.

Rob (11:03.094)
Yeah, yeah. But yeah, so I did that. And then once I did it with the first company, there was other companies in the in the city. You know, at the time I was in Atlanta, that's that's where I spent most of my most of my years. So I developed a pretty big network of not just flooring companies, but contract other contract, general contractors, big ones, small ones, different trades people. So I

I exited that business there after about three years or so. And mostly because, you know, other owners from other companies heard of me and said, want to, you want to come and do that with me? And they would say, I would say, yeah, but I got to own part of the, I don't want to come just as an employee. know, I just, I'm going to need to own part of the company. So some of them would agree to it and some won't, wouldn't, but the ones that did.

Jon Stoddard (12:00.602)
Yeah.

Rob (12:02.99)
you know, I moved on to. So another one.

Jon Stoddard (12:06.554)
What did that, let me ask you what that looked like. And you say I want 20 % of the company or 30%, but you said I'm going to grow your top line and bottom line by, you know, a million to 2 million or something. What did that proposition look like?

Rob (12:25.71)
Yeah, well, I got pretty good with the commercial side of stuff. So if they didn't have any commercial presence or very little, I said, well, here's how I can grow your commercial side. And I would just show them, right? Because I did it before. And I said, well, bid on these types of contracts. This is how I do it. This is what we can expect in six months and a year.

I just need the resources. I just need your resources so we can do it. Because some of these, if you get two that are 150 grand each, you need a lot of cash to put up front to get them done. And if they agreed to it, I would just do it that way. And it wasn't really that hard to do. It just took time. But I got, you know, but I myself got better at it too. So I could do that with a

Jon Stoddard (13:02.393)
Yeah, yeah.

Rob (13:20.512)
a restoration come I could do with the flooring. I started out in residential and then eventually years later too, I got involved with a company where we just did military bases. And that's all we did. We just specialized, let's just stick the military bases and that's it. And yeah, well, it was, yeah, but it was working with the GC. it required.

Jon Stoddard (13:32.484)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (13:38.522)
Were those government contracts?

Jon Stoddard (13:44.963)
Okay.

Rob (13:47.138)
bonding. It was more complicated, but they were lot bigger deals. And some of them were riskier too, but we did lose some money here and there, but for the most part, we did pretty good. And I was doing that up until even six years ago, I think I exited. No, three or four years ago, I exited that one.

Jon Stoddard (14:11.318)
Let me ask you about the dynamics of the type of sale. It's bigger sale requires more money. And they said, if you went to these guys and say, yeah, let's increase your commercial business. But some of these sales are huge, 150,000, maybe more. You're going to need what? Letter line of credit or more cash or you know, what's their response to that? How was that conversation?

Cause like, no, I don't like that. like, you know, cash conversion cycle to be a little bit better and a little bit smaller. moves faster.

Rob (14:49.198)
Well, the cash conversion cycle, was nothing much you could do about that. I mean, they paid when they paid. That's in the contract. But you could have it. So what was better would be a line of credit. Or some of the owners, the company owners I worked for, even myself, we had other investors. So if we had a big project or two really big projects, we would just get investor money for that. would say, hey, we need 200 grand for this.

front and then in six months we'll give you a percentage of what we get. Or we'll say nine months. We don't know when we're going to get paid exactly, but it's going to be somewhere in there. We'll be completed the project and paid in the six to nine months and investors would just stroke us a check for that if we needed it.

Jon Stoddard (15:37.144)
And these investors were just like lenders, right? Yeah.

Rob (15:41.259)
Other business owners too, yeah. Yeah, but that and the line of credit from the bank is usually what we use.

Jon Stoddard (15:50.18)
Yeah. And let me ask you about the, your, your exits. Did you have a specific time where you'd stay around or was it just, you got bored or, and what did that look like that conversation? He goes like, Hey, it's time to leave. I want X for the company, which means we have to go get an appraisal valuation. What does that look like?

Rob (16:11.522)
Yeah, well, we, yeah, usually that was it. I would move on like, I don't know, got ADD so I couldn't stick around. After a while, I'd be in two companies at the same time after I got a little better at it. But yeah, I would exit for one reason or another. I mean, if you've got partners, I mean, you probably know eventually you guys are gonna have a difference of opinion for whatever reason, whether it's a business thing or a personal thing and somebody's gonna wanna leave, right?

Jon Stoddard (16:24.569)
Yeah.

Rob (16:41.414)
And I never really had an interest in owning a hundred percent, you know, taking on a hundred percent of risk and owning a hundred percent. always liked kind of the freedom of having more of a minority stake or being 50 50. and sharing some of the risks. Cause I always got along with most people, you know, if we split up, I never in all the ones I've done six, seven, eight of them, I never split or exit it because.

Jon Stoddard (16:56.654)
Yeah.

Rob (17:10.506)
somebody was like, you know, was doing crooked stuff or anything like that or, you know, guided to a. And now because I, well, I kind of saw it coming down the road. So I would leave before that, you know, you know, so that's the beauty about being in a bit, because once you're in the business, you understand how it runs, you know.

Jon Stoddard (17:17.922)
You never had that? Never encountered that?

Jon Stoddard (17:26.827)
Rob (17:36.238)
You know what other people, the owner knows outside the business, you know, you know what the, relationships are like. That's why now when I'm looking for a business, like, I don't think I would ever pay like, you know, like get an SBA loan and pay 80 or 90 % to a seller to a business. I have no idea what it's like. I'd have to get in there a few months and do due diligence on my own.

That's what I did before. That's how I did it. Always did it. And I just did that by accident because I didn't know what I was doing. now, but I still do it the same way. I just get in there for a few months, just go to the business every day or a few days a week and just do my own due diligence because you can get all the Q and E's you want, but that's not going to tell you like what's going to come out of the woodwork in six months, you know.

Jon Stoddard (18:26.702)
Yeah.

Rob (18:27.97)
That's not going to tell you the owner's character. who does he know outside the business that could sabotage your business or anything like that.

Jon Stoddard (18:38.618)
Yeah, or the little shortcuts they're taking that add up. What do you mean by who they know outside the business? How do you, how are you doing an evaluation of like their character, emotional quotient about that?

Rob (18:42.542)
you

Rob (18:58.53)
Well, mean, you know, once you're there a few days a week and you're working with the owner, eventually you get to know most or all the people that the owner knows, right? Like, I'll just, like, just one example from one business was I, I was friends, I became friends with the owner and we were pretty good friends. He was a good guy, but after like two, three years of being in there, he started what he wanted to do.

Jon Stoddard (19:08.771)
Yeah.

Rob (19:24.716)
He was getting outside investors on his own. got like two or three on his own and didn't really tell me about it. But I knew about it just kind of, cause I would kind of see it and then I would ask them and then I would ask, you know, the art manager or someone like, who's that? And he would tell me, but it, you know, it didn't happen like in one day, I just figured it out over time. And he started taking some investor money that I didn't know about and, in the actually invest in it in other businesses.

and using some of the money from our business and the investor money to fund some of the other businesses that had nothing to do with ours. And he was kind of doing that in the background. That's another thing you won't figure out really on due diligence, that kind of stuff. yeah, so I saw that and I saw that the other business he had, started kind of going downhill.

Jon Stoddard (20:12.154)
Not until you're inside. Yeah.

Rob (20:23.67)
And I saw the writing on the wall. I said, you know what? I can't be a part of that, man. I don't know what you're doing with these guys. I don't know how much money you owe them and I don't want to know. So I just, I said, I'll just take my exit. I'll just exit from this now and we'll be done. That was just before COVID actually. Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (20:43.012)
Yeah. And how long between the time you say, I want, let's it's time for me to exit. They receive that, you know, that acknowledgement there, not the copy that. And, you get a check from them or how does that look or what, kind of terms are, is that payout?

Rob (21:08.526)
In the last one, we had an accountant that actually came to our business like three days a week. And I would just get him to value it, right? To figure out what my equities, because I didn't know, like again, this is why it's real important to learn this accounting and not just accounting, but how to value businesses and all that. Like I didn't do that till.

long after, man, way until it became public on the internet and all that. But before that, yeah, I was just having an accountant figure that out. And I probably got beat out, know, beat up a little bit on exit money. But I didn't know it, you know, but probably not by much. I mean, it made sense to me when the accountant explained it to me. So I think that I hope that answers.

Jon Stoddard (21:56.494)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (22:00.058)
Yeah. How do you take it? Like, is he going to write a check? If you own 30, 40 % of the business, that's a big check could hurt the business. Does he write a check or does he refinance that to pay you off or what does that look like?

Rob (22:15.266)
Yeah, I would just get a check. Yeah, where he got the, where they get the money from it, for it, I don't know. But yeah, the accountant would just say, hey, this is what I think it's worth. This is what your exit check should be. And that's it.

Jon Stoddard (22:21.156)
Like, yeah.

Jon Stoddard (22:33.306)
And as a minority owner, did you have access to the books that you could see on a daily, weekly basis?

Rob (22:41.422)
Sometimes I did, and most of the businesses, yeah, because the owners trusted me so much that, and I never even signed an NDA or anything like that. They just trusted me because they could trust me and I never burned anybody. Even to this day, a company, $3 million company send me all their financials with no NDA.

Jon Stoddard (23:08.612)
Do they know you?

Rob (23:10.84)
They know me a little bit. Yeah. This is just a couple of months ago, but I don't know what it is. People just, but I have signed a lot of NDAs. Don't get me wrong. Yeah, I have, but I'm always able to sell my way or somehow I come across trustworthy or work in the business. But again, like I said, I always like to give value for like in this case here, just a couple of months ago, I gave them a couple of...

Jon Stoddard (23:22.582)
yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rob (23:38.68)
big leads, property management companies, I just gave it to them. I said, here's a guy I know, you know, go have your sales guy, go talk to him, tell him I told you to call him and maybe you'll get some business from that. And people typically will trust you and like you if you do that for them ahead of time.

Jon Stoddard (23:49.732)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (23:58.254)
Yeah. Do you feel you're good at reading people, your emotional quotient about like, Hey, I think this guy's an ethical guy or

I mean, that's the difficult thing. And just because I tell this story, was like, I had this one student that bought a security company and guy was, I don't know, in his late sixties and seventies and said he was going to retire. And so he kept him around for 19 % and then bought the business and six months later he opens the same exact competing business.

Rob (24:38.318)
Yeah, I think I heard that. Yeah, I've listened to a bunch of that was like recently, Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (24:44.004)
That was recently. Like, like, how, do you read that? mean, really good judge of character on any of these, like, like, you know, you meet somebody and they're on the, they're, they're in their interview, right. And you want to, always like, you, your best behavior, but you, you almost have to be around them for like what you're talking about to, to see if they're, they take shortcuts, like little tiny shortcuts, right.

Rob (25:12.27)
Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, I mean, I think it's kind of a learned thing over the years, you kind of get better at it, but you're still never going to be 100 % on it. That's why I would never just like go out and drop two or $3 million on a business in the first 30 days, you know, and just give it to them because you don't know.

I mean, you got to get into that business. mean, if they like you and know you, trust you, and they know you could fund the deal and add value, there's no reason they, unless they're hiding something, there's really no reason for them to say, no, I don't want you working in my business for a year, you know, and do your due diligence slowly over that time period. They wouldn't say that, you know, if they had nothing to hide.

Jon Stoddard (26:07.171)
Yeah.

Rob (26:08.298)
So with me, that's the way I would do it every time. I don't like taking big risks, man. And not only that, but if you do that, the lenders, you know, the lender at the end of a year or two, the lenders, it's a lot easier to get money for it. But yeah, I would walk away from a deal if they didn't agree to something.

Jon Stoddard (26:31.802)
So you're just a hundred percent opposed to spying 90, a hundred percent of a company because of the risk. I'm not going to plop down $2 million for a 10 year loan.

Rob (26:44.044)
Yeah, exactly, man. I just wouldn't do it, man. Especially if you go in there and there's a lot of moving parts and a lot of people, don't know what's going on in there, man. And I don't think like on the internet, you don't hear about all these failures, but that's usually what it is. It's usually like a culture problem. That's the culture of the other big, probably the biggest thing is the culture. know, it's like, unless you're in there every day for a few weeks or a few months.

Jon Stoddard (26:46.074)
Yeah.

Rob (27:12.064)
and see how that culture's running. Like you don't, you can't get a sense of what people are ready to leave, how many are really dissatisfied, you know, how many are maybe doing fraudulent things or maybe they're not doing them on purpose, maybe that's how they learned. And it's like, wow, man, now they got to unlearn all this. It's like, you don't want to take that. But again,

Jon Stoddard (27:30.638)
That's how they learn.

Jon Stoddard (27:40.606)
You just don't see a lot. mean, okay, I'm just generalizing, but just like all these small businesses, the culture is the owner and there's not a lot of polished employees, let's say. He's been at this company, he knows how to behave, he's been at that company, he knows how to behave. It's a small company. Tell me about this restoration company. Is it the same kind of...

Rob (28:03.459)
Yay.

Jon Stoddard (28:09.594)
idea for that, how you came in, took 20, 30%, tell me about that.

Rob (28:15.852)
Yeah, so from flooring, there was a guy, you mean recently or from years ago when I had.

Jon Stoddard (28:22.882)
Years ago, I was just looking at your list of past businesses and there was a restoration company. Yeah.

Rob (28:26.242)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, from the flooring company, I met a guy that owned a insurance fire and water damage restoration, which I was never into, but he, he, same thing. His name was Jeff. asked me to come into his business because he started one, right? And he built it to like, he was a really good marketer and sales guy, but he built it to like a million and a half, 2 million, and then asked me to come work with them.

Jon Stoddard (28:34.383)
Yeah.

Rob (28:55.342)
And I told him, I'll come work with you, but only as a partner. You don't have to tell me today, let me come in, I'll show you what I can do. But within six months or a year, you got to make me a partner. He said, okay. Just on a handshake.

Jon Stoddard (29:07.386)
Wait a minute, can you explain that? What that looks like?

Rob (29:14.198)
Yeah, just like that. I just told him, said, yeah, I'll come in, but I don't want to be an employee. So I eventually want to be a partner, an own part of the business. And I just get that out of the way right up front.

Jon Stoddard (29:27.715)
Is that a contract? Like six months and like it you've asked with the company? Yeah.

Rob (29:32.024)
yeah, not, not usually, I don't do it that day. What I do is just, if they agree to it verbally, I'll go in there, work a few weeks or a couple of months or whatever it is. And then I'll, I'll say, let's put this on paper. And then they agree because at that point it's like, there's no selling involved. know what I can do. It's like, if they want me to stay, they're going to do it.

Jon Stoddard (29:56.034)
And what are you doing in that first two weeks that you came in?

Rob (30:00.482)
Well, in the restoration company, didn't need, it depends what they need to. That's the other reason why you always want to dig into a business. Cause unless you can add value, you don't know how you can add value until you dig into it. So in this case, I dug into it. I was there a couple of weeks and their operations were all screwed up, not all screwed up, but it could have been a lot better as far as their CRM goes, their software, that kind of thing.

Because the owner was a killer marketing guy and sales guy. And he was getting these insurance adjusters like just to feed us work, this feed us claims. Constantly, constantly. was like, the business was growing really fast, but he was losing. Yeah, exactly. That's, that's what he was doing. Insurance adjusters. Yeah. Right. You know how that goes probably, right?

Jon Stoddard (30:43.642)
And he'd wine and dine these people or what?

Jon Stoddard (30:55.416)
I say, well, I had a guy, his business took off. He did a lot of Facebook marketing long time ago, 15 years ago. He did a lot of other circulars Wednesday, and then he figured out like, if I just go wine and dine and give tickets to these insurance adjusters, they just throw business.

Rob (31:14.73)
Yes, they did. That's it. And it's like that to a degree. But he was really good at it. I'm not that good at that. But he was so but he was losing a lot of money out the back door like the equipment would like equipment would like get lost. It would break. It wouldn't get fixed on time. Then he would lose money because we got broken equipment. So all the operations part I took care of all that stuff.

Jon Stoddard (31:41.274)
So was he losing money when you came in or good sales but losing money?

Rob (31:44.354)
He wasn't losing, yeah, he was losing money. A lot of sales, lot of growth, but still losing money. Yeah, because when you grow fast, it's like, if you got 150 different things going on, you're gonna lose a little money here, a little money there. What do they call that shrinkage or something? Yeah, so if you can put the kibosh on that, then.

Jon Stoddard (32:05.806)
Yeah.

Rob (32:12.078)
you're going to save a lot more money. that's what I did for him. yeah, so after.

Jon Stoddard (32:18.298)
And when, so two weeks go by and you come back and go, here's what we need to do. And it's a list of recommendations. And, and I, I, you know, I've been in small businesses before. Sometimes they do 50 % of them. Sometimes I don't know if anybody does a hundred percent of the recommendations. What, does that look like? Like, Hey, we need to do this to get the profitability.

Rob (32:40.398)
Yeah, it depends on the person. Yeah, some of them, some, you know, some people are real open to it, some are not. But in this case, he was just like, yeah, do whatever you got to do. I don't care. So I just got right to work. I didn't mention money. I didn't mention equity, nothing. I just got right to work. And I just started executing and implementing on what, what we think we should do. Cause it all made sense. He had to do it. Somebody had to do it. And, um, about, so I did that for like another six months or so.

not only that, but that business, I didn't know real well, so I needed to know like how the equip, how the emergency service is done, how the equipment goes out, how we schedule that, all that stuff, right? So I was learning too. I needed to. So after about six months, I was able to add a couple hundred thousand right to it. Plus I, I put some other systems in place already and I said, okay.

I got a lot of this stuff done, there's, you it still has to be managed and more needs to be done. But I need, I said, now can we talk equity? And he said, yeah. So.

Jon Stoddard (33:51.386)
Hey, Rob, you pause a second? There is a light coming right on your chin. You got a shade that blocks out?

Rob (33:58.774)
Yeah, let me see if I can fix that one second. Was that better?

Jon Stoddard (34:06.884)
Yeah, there you go. Cause it was like a, just the sunlight right on your, it's weird. Yeah. All right. We're back. And I just took a time note here from three to, three 18. So, then you, you, but you didn't know this guy before. Like you came in, you, you sit down, you figure out what needs to be done to get you probability. You show them.

Rob (34:10.77)
Yeah, the sun's coming through the window.

Jon Stoddard (34:32.826)
a list of things and hopefully you trust him enough that he just doesn't take the list and do it himself to, no, go ahead and do what you need to do. And I'm going to ask for equity. Well, what did you ask for? 20, 10, 20, 30 % or what? 20.

Rob (34:47.822)
I asked for 20 and he was fine with it right off the bat, no problem. So we had an attorney, we just created a real simple, just his attorney, not even mine, which I wouldn't recommend, but I didn't know any better. Just threw up a simple agreement and that was it.

Jon Stoddard (35:05.924)
Yeah. And are you asking for any payroll at that point to, know, you got living expenses. So, and you're fixing the business, but the business is unprofitable at the moment. How are you getting paid?

Rob (35:19.246)
Well, I knew it was going to be profitable really, really soon because it was growing. mean, money, the cashflow wasn't a problem. That was the biggest, what would be my biggest worry. So if that's not a problem, everything else is pretty much fixable. So I would just ask for a couple, you know, whatever, a couple grand a month, whatever I needed, because I was single, right? Whatever my living expenses, I like just paying you what I need. And in the meantime, give me some equity. then later.

Jon Stoddard (35:41.636)
Yeah.

Rob (35:48.846)
When it's built up, we'll worry about the rest then, but I know we can build this thing up because with his content, his marketing and sales and my operating, it's just a matter of time. So I'd say with less than a year, were doing like 20 % margins.

Jon Stoddard (36:06.158)
Yeah. And he's great at marketing. So it went back into more marketing and what did that grow to?

Rob (36:13.174)
Man, it grew. Well, I, I, started, grew more after I left, but by the time I left, it was doing like, it was doing like three million.

Jon Stoddard (36:23.076)
Yeah, that's great. Let's double it. You said it was 1.5. Yeah. So do you put it, when you go for that contract and that equity, do you put a term in and say, I'm going to be a minimum here two years and I may ask for, you know, put call option to sell my shares. I'm out.

Rob (36:42.606)
no, I think it was open ended. Just whenever I wanted to exit, we could talk about it and I would exit. I know if they needed me to sustain more time, I would, you know, it's like, it's not like, I need to exit next week and I'm gone now.

Jon Stoddard (36:49.338)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (36:57.774)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, you haven't done anything to increase the value. Here's your share. It's a dollar. Yeah. Well, so what about this commercial cleaning company? Where was this in your career and turning that around? Yeah.

Rob (37:02.254)
Yeah, now.

Yeah.

Rob (37:16.43)
Commercial cleaning, that wasn't really a turnaround. That was an existing, pretty, that was like an $8 million business. And that was one of my most recent, well, before COVID, just before COVID. That was a company that, again, an owner, a subcontractor introduced me. I would know, I knew 100, 200 subcontractors throughout the city.

They knew everybody, so we would connect each other to each other. And he connected me to an honorable commercial cleaning company, which I didn't know him. I never heard of the company or anything. And he...

Um, he kind of wanted to get into the flooring business, right? Also. So his, uh, friend of his, which knew me to kind of introduce us. Cause he told, told him that I knew a lot about flooring. That's what I do. And, you know, all that stuff. And he wanted to get into that. Um, and that's when we got into the military bases. Right? So I went and met with him. We had, he had this business for a long time. He didn't want to sell it.

Jon Stoddard (38:21.838)
Yeah.

Rob (38:28.142)
But he wanted me involved because I would get, because he knew I could get these big contracts, right? And he was figuring, well, if I can get these big contracts, his commercial cleaning company would have the opportunity to bid on the ones I already have, the contracts I already have, right?

Jon Stoddard (38:47.55)
When you say you know how to get the big contracts, does that mean you were going out and being the face of the company and getting the contracts from the vendors and everybody else or the customers or what was it?

Rob (39:00.758)
Now he, wanted a part of the, flooring company to do that. He wanted to kind of, I guess you could say, we didn't really merge the two companies, but we created a different LLC, eventually, but at first we kind of did merge them just to kind of test to see how it would work. And it worked out pretty good. And then we created a separate LLC where we were both 50 50 owners and,

Jon Stoddard (39:28.74)
Yeah, okay.

Rob (39:30.678)
Yep. And so I would bid on these, you know, like I said, the bigger, Best Buy's type, big, huge, you know, renovation or reconstruction jobs. And he was an investor actually in the flooring cup because he would put up all the money to, where I put up some too, but he put up most of it to where we would

do the flooring part of it, but then we also on the back end, we would do the cleaning, the commercial cleaning.

Jon Stoddard (40:05.207)
And you had a part of that business. Yeah.

Rob (40:07.266)
I had a part of that and, but we also, before I ever came in, he had a pretty good chunk of that business was just doing like high rises, apartment buildings and things like that. but I, or I could add, what's that?

Jon Stoddard (40:18.297)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (40:22.234)
How did you exit that business? The commercial cleaning, that 50 % new LLC, how did you exit that?

Rob (40:31.886)
I exited that how?

Jon Stoddard (40:34.552)
Yeah, how and when, yeah.

Rob (40:36.78)
when I would say probably a year before COVID, something like that.

Yeah, it was about a year because he needed some of my guys to stay, which they did. Yeah, it was about a year or so before COVID. And we actually ended up, it was a little, got a little convoluted because we ended up losing like on a military job. We were doing pretty good and then we ended up losing like 150 grand. And just, it's a long story, but just through the...

Jon Stoddard (40:49.7)
Yeah.

Rob (41:15.36)
not the bidding part, but the estimating part. We had two estimators.

Jon Stoddard (41:18.074)
Isn't that the key to it, right? Estimating right with enough cushion?

Rob (41:24.096)
Yeah, that one got kind of that one kind of got rocky man, because I we had a really big project. It was like 250 grand. And I'm like, I cannot screw this up because I was the head of it. Right. He didn't really have much to do with it in the flooring part of it. He was busy running the cleaning part and I was running more the flooring part. So I was like, I cannot screw up this estimate. So I hired two estimators. Right.

Jon Stoddard (41:36.644)
Yeah.

Rob (41:52.288)
I paid them like 700 bucks each because if the first one got it wrong, surely the second one would not get it wrong, right? And guess what? They both got it wrong.

Jon Stoddard (41:58.862)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (42:03.547)
Why was it off? Yeah.

Rob (42:06.494)
Well, the reason it was off is because with these big thick military freaking blueprint plans that the architects give you they cut corners in them a lot so Some of its kind of vague so like in our case They're needed we needed like an extra 10,000 square feet of ceramic tile that goes on these walls, right? massive walls all over the place but on the drawings

They didn't have the actual walls up there. The way architects cut corners is they'll like put notes and just say something like, tile goes, this tile goes on this wall.

Jon Stoddard (42:42.089)
so you didn't bid on those. You didn't know that that was gonna be...

Rob (42:47.022)
We did, we knew, and they put up walls, right? But they don't put them all up, right? So it's kind of hard to tell. So when you're calculating your square footage.

If the architects of egg, you're going to miss it, right? But a good estimator, even myself, we still catch it most of the time, even when they screw that up. So that's why I thought, because I've done it enough myself to know we still catch these things, right? But in this case, nobody caught it, man. And it was just like, Oh my God. And I had a lot of explaining to do. So, um, so when I exited, I just offered to take all that.

Jon Stoddard (43:11.524)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (43:23.85)
money on that deal yeah

Rob (43:31.192)
to like deduct all that from my.

Jon Stoddard (43:34.202)
Oh, for your percentage of your company. Gotcha. Well, that's kind of kind of honorable thing to do. Yeah.

Rob (43:37.442)
Yeah.

Yeah, I I was just like, felt bad about it. Our attorney, we went to visit the Army Corps of Engineers to try to extract as much money we could. And I just, I was in the car with our attorney because he drove to Fort Benning. That's where it was. And I was like, man, I feel bad about Jacob about all this money we're losing. And he's just like, you knew the risk.

And I'm like, yeah, I know, man, but it was my idea and I had it and all this stuff. And I hired the estimators. So I was going to pay it back, man. And, you know, but one thing like that goes wrong. can ruin every, even when you, everything else was successful, all the other projects before that doesn't matter. That's what everyone remembers is that one hit, you know, so.

Jon Stoddard (44:16.804)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (44:29.986)
Yeah. Is that your, I mean, you've been doing this for 28 years. Is that your biggest horror story right there? Cause it's fresh or what? Yeah.

Rob (44:40.32)
Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, that's my biggest one. I mean, I probably would have had bigger ones if I took bigger risks, but like I said, I don't like taking massive risks, you know, even because like that, I was thinking like, what could I have done really differently? Nothing. I mean, I had that risk as much as I could and it still got went sideways. Right. So you never know, man. You just have to.

So again.

Jon Stoddard (45:13.69)
How do you get new businesses for a consulting equity project now? What do you do? mean, just waiting for the network to, you know, hey, you got to go talk to Rob. What does that look like? I mean, the reason is like, I see a lot of guys teaching the consulting for equity. You reach out there and say, hey, I'll do this for your business. And it's not a complicated proposition because it's always a promise of bigger numbers.

more profit at the end, like, but can a person do it?

Rob (45:47.47)
Well, I've seen what you I've seen that consulting for equity stuff and no one's going to no one's going to give you part of their business. If you don't prove, you know what you're doing. They're just not. That's a bunch of BS. got to go in there. Yeah, you can bring it up and explain it to them. But until you show them what you can do, nobody's giving you a percentage of their business. You know, I mean, they could just hire a good. You know, just hire someone to do that.

Jon Stoddard (45:58.232)
Yeah.

Rob (46:16.994)
You know, there's no reason for them to.

Jon Stoddard (46:19.566)
When you say nobody's going to give them part of their business until you show them what you can do, that only means like either I use testimonials or referrals or I'm in the business and I do something for them and okay, I did it for you.

Yeah. Is that what you're saying? That's it?

Rob (46:41.454)
That's it. I just, and I still, you know, even now I'll do it. I'll say, look, if I can do X, Y, and Z by this period of time, I need 20%, 30%, 50 % or more of the business. And then, and then we'll work those details out a little later, but that's what I want to tell you upfront now. And if you're okay with that, we could move, move ahead. And some say, yeah, some say no, you know, plus.

Jon Stoddard (47:10.136)
Yeah, ask him?

Rob (47:10.786)
The other thing too is I got to know how much value I can add to the business. Like even just recently, I've got, now I've got four fire and water restoration companies that I'm talking to sellers with all proprietary, nobody else. the only one. And now I'm getting them through like a letter campaign. send out letters, emails, cause I moved from Atlanta. not Atlanta.

Jon Stoddard (47:36.356)
You're in Pennsylvania now, right? Yeah.

Rob (47:38.178)
Yeah. so that's how we do it now. And, so now it's more cold, right? but I do have a, I have some leverage, right? always good to have some leverage. have a, I'm in a joint venture now with an insurance loss prevention company that I'm wanting to buy, but he's not ready to sell yet, but he gave me a, we're doing a joint venture together so I can.

Understand the business a little better because I've never been in that type of business and then we're going to talk about buying it later But in the meantime, I told him hey if you never sell me this business, it's okay Because now I've got tons of leads up, know We we probably meet we probably meet a couple hundred property management companies and in restaurants every month we do reports for underwriters, right and that's the kind of

So now I kind of take that and I leverage that because really what I really want right now is another fire and water restoration company. So I've been.

Jon Stoddard (48:41.795)
Why do you like those? You see the arbitrage of those or what?

Rob (48:44.302)
Hi, Mark.

for the restoration company. High margin, lottery current revenue.

Jon Stoddard (48:49.05)
Yeah, the restoration business.

Jon Stoddard (48:56.302)
Well, wait a me, I did have somebody on my show that bought a restoration business. He hated it because it was all project based. What, where's the recurring?

Rob (49:05.772)
Recurrent revenue is when you have, like even in this insurance business, Either the underwriters or adjusters can just feed you a steady stream of leads, right? And if you incorporate SEO with that, where you're also getting leads from homeowners, that's kind of the ideal way to do it. But you're also getting leads from property management companies too. Depends on the business. Now, if the business is...

If they're getting 90 % of their leads from SEO, that kind of thing, not so great. It's not so recurring, but if they're getting them from adjusters and like property management companies, that's great because there's almost no marketing involved. They just keep coming.

Jon Stoddard (49:49.988)
Yeah. So, so you do also, you look for the arbitrage and the like, here's opportunities in marketing and sales. and then operations too, like running the equipment, the care of the equipment and the, and the people too, like training. Yeah.

Rob (50:06.51)
Yeah, the people too. Yeah. Yeah. That's the most important part. It's like, gotta, you gotta know how to deal with subcontractors, people that go out in the field. Once you do that for a few years, you learn all the little nuances on what to avoid, what kind of people to hire, that kind of thing. Cause it takes a certain kind of person to go to a residential property and then a totally different type of subcontractor to go to a commercial property. two, two different mindsets, right?

Jon Stoddard (50:37.668)
And are you working for a franchisee? Cause I know that restoration pros is really big in that industry.

Rob (50:44.846)
I don't really like the franchises and, right now I'm looking at a damn 400 page franchise agreement. Cause there's a serve pro right. That, that wants me involved over there and their numbers, their financials are like stellar, man. mean, really good, like 22 % margins, recurrent revenue, three and a half million. I mean, growing every year, everything, but the franchise agreement is like, you know, my, my.

Jon Stoddard (51:08.634)
Yeah.

Rob (51:13.774)
I'm getting dizzy reading it because they control so much. It's like, if I get involved, it's like the franchise agreement basically says they can do whatever they want anytime they want. They can compete with you in your own territory. can all kinds of stuff. And that's probably the case with most franchises. So I'm not sure if I want to get involved because the other three I'm looking at, they're not franchises at all.

Jon Stoddard (51:42.648)
Yeah. Do you think that ads value, a franchise ads value to to helping a franchisee get business? I mean, if it's a great name, like Midas, we know Midas, right? We know what they do, but if it's, you know, something nobody knows what it does is that we're taking 10 % off the top and all the restrictions.

Rob (51:43.48)
there.

Rob (52:07.318)
It depends on the, on the type of franchise. think like with the Midas thing, it's probably good because you got that brand name, right? and, but in restoration, yeah, surf pro is, is a brand name, but most of the people giving you the business don't really care. It's like property managers, adjusters, they don't really care. I mean, they care a little bit that it's surf pro. got a brand name, but if you got a track, if you got a private business and a pretty good track record.

Jon Stoddard (52:16.122)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (52:37.86)
Doesn't matter. Yeah.

Rob (52:38.094)
That's all you need, but in their case, even with the franchise fees and everything, they're still doing 22%. That's after all that. So it's good. I mean, the numbers are good, but what happens two, three, four years from now? Are they going to like change all the rule? mean, who knows? You know, I don't know.

Jon Stoddard (52:46.586)
Wow, yeah, that's good. Yeah, yeah.

Jon Stoddard (53:01.242)
Yeah. So you stumbled and created this consulting for equity kind of industry and in the background, it's like, it's because of the, you don't want to take the risk of spending, you know, putting a lot of debt on and buying 90 % of the business and paying a loan for 10 years. That's your risk tolerance. Yes.

Rob (53:22.722)
But in the beginning, didn't know. Yeah, my risk tolerance is low just because I've been through cashflow crunches, right? I've been up a lot of nights, sleepless nights trying to figure that out. And that's the last thing I want to do with a big loan like that again, you know?

Jon Stoddard (53:42.456)
Yeah, I find it curious as, hey, you know, we'll do this loan at 1.5 debt service coverage ratio. And I go, you know what that means? It's like, means that 66 % of your cashflow is eaten up. And if you have a down month, I guarantee you, you will. That's going to hurt.

Rob (54:01.42)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just one month, man, if you got a $15,000 payment, then you have one bad month or two bad months and every business has it right. mean, at some time during the year, it's like, where's that extra 30 or 40 grand going to come from when that happens? Cause it's going to happen. All right. so, but I agree with you, you know, one point.

Jon Stoddard (54:14.651)
SMBs, every business has it. Guaranteed.

Jon Stoddard (54:24.922)
Yeah.

Rob (54:31.502)
I like 1.7, you know, one or two, yeah, two, yeah.

Jon Stoddard (54:35.896)
I like two. Closer you can get to two. Shoot for two. Well, yeah. Rob, man, thank you so much for this enlightening interview about consulting for equity. Yeah.

Rob (54:42.22)
Yeah, I, you know, if it has a

Rob (54:52.856)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, now, you know, I've got some relationship with banks and investors, you know, I'm thinking about being majority, know, majority owner on a couple of things I got now, but I'm still on the fence about it. If I don't have to do that, I won't do it. But again, I can, you know, I can do the same thing or you can still get in there for a year or so and then.

Jon Stoddard (55:09.71)
Yeah.

Rob (55:21.624)
buy the whole thing after a year or two. I still do it.

Jon Stoddard (55:23.94)
Yeah, it's just you're not greedy upfront. You're patient about your and your confidence and your skills to see what the outcome looks like in a year or two years.

Rob (55:37.166)
Yeah, in my case, I know I can do it because I've done it before and I can tell a seller that, right? And they know I'm about to do it here just in the next few weeks. I just got to figure out which company I want to do it with. But yeah, in my case, not everybody can do it, but if you can do it that way, if you've got the experience and you can show the seller a plan and what you're going to do and you execute on it, it's not that hard to do, and then buy some or most of the company later.

Jon Stoddard (55:42.511)
Yeah.

Rob (56:07.726)
I would do it that way. Again, the most important part is get in there for like a year, that due diligence over time. So, because you're going to feel like you're going to sleep a lot better, man, at night. I mean, yeah, you're not going to own much of the company, if any, for a few months or a year. But who cares, man, if you can sleep good for a year and then own it, do it that way, you know.

Jon Stoddard (56:30.724)
Yeah, let me ask you one more question. So you have four opportunities that you're going to pitch this consulting for equity kind of opportunity to. What can you tell about, you know, at this point, 28, you got some wisdom, gray hairs, and just going, yeah, I probably, you can place a bet on which one's going to take it, which one's not going to buy the owner's personality. Can you make that call?

Rob (56:59.118)
Yeah, pretty much,

Jon Stoddard (57:01.218)
Yeah. And what does that look like? What are you looking for? Somebody that's open and transparent. What else?

Rob (57:07.062)
Yeah, well, mean, if they're like two of them told me just point blank, they said, we want you involved with the business. Just we want you involved with the business. They told me that the other two didn't tell me that yet because I don't quite know them as well. But I met them face to face and actually March 1st, I'm going to their facility to tour it. And I'll get into the weeds a little more with them at that point.

yeah, I would say, yeah, for me it's like, know if, if how they behave, if they behave well, and you can kind of tell if someone's plus I ask questions too, you know, it's mostly the greed part. That's the part I hate is greed, greedy people. And I can kind of, you know, figure out if that's their main goal or not just by asking a few questions. and not only just questions, but what they're actually doing, right. In the business, like.

Jon Stoddard (57:56.856)
Like what questions, for instance.

Rob (58:03.51)
Seeing what their culture is like, if they're giving their people big bonuses, if they're putting themselves last, not just with money, but in other ways with their time, if they're investing their time in the community, if they're investing in their people, they're, what do you call them, delayed gratification, if they're things that they're delaying things, that's a big one. Like that's what I do a lot is I'll delay gratification.

Jon Stoddard (58:24.12)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jon Stoddard (58:33.05)
They don't show up with a Lamborghini or something.

Rob (58:33.325)
Yeah, just little things like that. can pretty much tell, especially if you go meet them a couple of times. That's why face-to-face is so important, right?

Jon Stoddard (58:49.006)
Yeah. it is. Yeah. Do you do any deals over zoom? mean, no, it's face to face.

Rob (58:54.025)
Never. Initially, yeah, but you know, but say all my stuff's local, you know, but I live in a big city. So it's not that hard to find. mean, it takes a little more time. You got to have patience too. Again, I wouldn't buy a business that has like below 12 % margins either. So you just have to delay that gratification. I you don't want to, I don't care how good the business is. If it's still in like 10 % margin, you're going to

kill yourself on cashflow later. Yeah, yeah, just little things like that, always face to face, man. I've got two more meetings face to face this week with two more restoration companies, because I get on the phone with them or I do a Zoom with them for like 15, 20 minutes. I don't talk anything about the bids and I don't talk about equity, none of that stuff. I just talk about them.

Jon Stoddard (59:24.462)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's kind of a turnaround to get that to 15.

Rob (59:53.007)
what they're doing, what their goal is, how long, usually if you just shut up, they'll tell you everything you want to know before you even ask.

Jon Stoddard (01:00:03.418)
Do you ask the same questions in your first Zoom with everybody or is it?

Rob (01:00:10.484)
no, I mean, it's always different. It's usually, I just ask them about them. It's now I start out asking about them, like where they can't, like their background a little bit and how they started the business. And then usually after that, I'll just shut up and then they'll just tell me everything. They'll just, if I stay quiet long enough, they'll just tell me, I don't even have to ask. Like sometimes they've given me their, their gross sales. give me their net sales over the phone. They tell me how many people they have.

Jon Stoddard (01:00:15.546)
Yeah.

Rob (01:00:38.744)
They'll tell you all that stuff. You don't even have to ask. If you just act interested, but you got to be sincere. you know, if you just act really interested in what they're doing, which you should be, they'll tell you all that stuff most of the time, you know? And, and then again, I'll, I'll, if I liked the business, I'll say, Hey, you know what? I got a couple of property managers, big ones I met last week in my other business.

How about I send you their names and numbers and you do that man, flood gates open, you know.

Jon Stoddard (01:01:13.434)
Yeah, yeah. You're filling their bucket first. Yeah.

Rob (01:01:16.43)
Yeah. So, um, that's what I would tell people. It's like, whatever you're into, whatever business you have or connections you have, just get into the habit of sharing them right off the bat with someone. If you got a good feeling about someone and you met them in person, you know, give it away, give something away and that'll really open things up. People really, really trust you to say, Hey, I don't want anything for it. Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (01:01:40.708)
Reciprocity. Rob, thank you so much for being on the show. Appreciate it.

Rob (01:01:47.308)
Yeah, thank you, man. Great show.