Empire State of Mind
Empire State of Mind
Building a Business Through Collaboration with Will Misegades
In this episode of Empire State of Mind, host Matt Williams sits down with Will Misegades, a seasoned home inspector, to discuss the exciting and challenging journey of merging his company, Redfish Inspections, with Magnolia Home Inspections. This insightful conversation explores the complexities of business mergers, the importance of relationships, and the role of mentorship in achieving long-term growth.
Key Highlights:
1. The Merger Process:
Will dives into the merger of Redfish Inspections and Magnolia Home Inspections, offering a behind-the-scenes look at how the two companies came together. He talks about the challenges, opportunities, and the essential factors that made the merger successful, including the alignment of values, culture, and financial goals.
2. Building Strong Relationships:
Throughout his journey, Will emphasizes the importance of building and maintaining strong relationships with clients, partners, and industry peers. He explains how relationships have played a pivotal role in his business growth and the success of the merger.
3. Organizational Changes Post-Merger:
Will shares insights into the organizational changes that came with the merger. He talks about how both teams adapted to new roles and responsibilities, ensuring a smooth transition while keeping the company’s mission and values at the forefront.
4. The Role of Community and Mentorship:
Will highlights the significance of giving back to the home inspection community. He discusses how mentorship, both as a mentor and mentee, has been a cornerstone of his career, helping him navigate the challenges of entrepreneurship and business expansion.
5. Surrounding Yourself with the Right People:
A key takeaway from this conversation is the importance of surrounding yourself with the right team. Will reflects on how having the right people in place has helped him manage growth, handle challenges, and maintain a successful business.
This episode is packed with practical advice for home inspectors, entrepreneurs, and business owners who are thinking about scaling their operations or exploring mergers. Will's journey provides valuable lessons on aligning goals, navigating change, and the power of community support.
Contact IEB -
- web: www.iebcoaching.com
- email: support@iebcoaching
- social: @iebcoaching
Contact Matt -
- email: matt@dciabq.com
- IG: @the.matthew.williams
Welcome to the Empire State of Mind. On this episode, we have Will from Houston and we're gonna be talking about mergers, acquisitions and team building.
Speaker 2:We believe the purpose of owning a business is funding your perfect life. Welcome to the next generation of growth and opportunity in the inspection industry. This is the Empire State of Mind. Empire State of Mind Helping build companies with faster growth, higher profits and more time freedom. Finally, a podcast for the home inspection industry and beyond. This is the Empire State of Mind and this is your host, matt Williams.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the show. I'm so glad that you tuned in today. This is going to be a fantastic episode. I have my friend Will on the show today and we'll be talking about mergers, acquisitions, team building, all kinds of amazing things. Will, how are you doing today?
Speaker 3:Hey, Matt, thanks for having me. I'm doing fantastic. I've been wanting to be on your show for quite some time, so I'm excited that I got the call.
Speaker 1:I'm really happy that you are on here. I know there's been some big things that have been going on in your world as far as mergers acquisitions and that's such a hot topic right now inside of our industry. But before we get to that, I got to ask you I know that you're in Houston how long have you lived in Houston?
Speaker 3:I'm going on 18 years now. Got married and moved straight to Houston.
Speaker 1:And then, when did you start your inspection business?
Speaker 3:2010. So almost 15 years ago, yeah.
Speaker 1:Holy cow. Wow, yeah, you've been doing it for a hot minute here.
Speaker 3:For a little bit. Yeah, I mean, it was one of the worst times to really start it, you know, right after the economy tanked. So yeah, it's been a challenge, but it's been fun.
Speaker 1:That's right. You went through that, the housing crisis. You started your business on the back end of that housing crisis when it was still in. It was still kind of in the gutter, wasn't it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, the prices were really high at the time. Nobody was really doing inspections Now. Granted, compared to the rest of the country, Houston was still a pretty good market to start in. I guess I was blessed with that aspect.
Speaker 1:That's pretty good. I know we both share a passion for overlanding, off-roading and Moab. This year, Last minute, both of us had to miss it. I was so bummed.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, that would have been a fun trip. You know, I really enjoy going out there. It's one way for me to just get my head out and just rejuvenated basically, you know, avoid breaking cars. Rejuvenated, basically, you know, avoid breaking cars. You've got the stress of being able to go over obstacles and still remember that you've got to drive back home afterwards. So all of that's fun. But, more importantly, like it's just such a rich environment to build connections, not only with other friends, members of the IAB community, but also with staff. So last year I brought three of my staff members and two of them were people I knew quite well, one of them not as well personally, and so it was a really cool experience, great time to grow together.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that really is. You know, it's interesting. Who you surround yourself with and the relationships that you cultivate um really matter. Um, and that really matters makes a big difference in who you are, and I know it's. It's a common phrase that you know the people, the top five around you, uh, the top five people around you are going to have the most influence over your life. But, um, I think that overlanding trip that we do within the IAB community uh, certainly um helps us to uh kind of cultivate more of those deeper relationships and be intentional about it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, um, you know the, the cool thing that happened for me last year, maybe, maybe the year before I forget, um, but there was this, uh, particular competitor in my market that I didn't really know well, um, and until we went on that trip together it's like okay, he's also a human being, he's not just the competitor, um, and so he's not just a villain exactly, but to get to know him on a different level was such a blessing, and I can rat him out it's Chris Enright.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's been on the show before.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he's turned into a really cool friend and I've called him for mentorship purposes before. So, yeah, I mean it's a great way to get to know people, so I highly encourage it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really cool. Find, find those community groups, find those people that you can connect with. And even if you're not part of IEB or maybe you're not even a home inspector and you're listening, you know, to the show, it's, it's, it's something that you find your industry, find your niche like. One of the beautiful things about what we do is that mastermind community is that we start to build relationships with like-minded people who are all going the same way. And you got to find that as a, I think, as a business owner. It's so easy to be on an Island and it can be really lonely at the top If you let it.
Speaker 3:Oh, absolutely. Um, not only is it lonely, it can get lonely, um, you know, at home if you don't have a spouse working with you or in the business with you. And even though my wife is highly supportive and she's way more intelligent than I, am very smart person, but there's certain things that she doesn't want to think about because she's more risk averse than I am, and so being around other business owners is very critical for my personal growth as well as the business side of growth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. And speaking of growing, your company Redfish Inspections has been growing. And then just recently this is interesting because there was another company in town in Houston. You're on the south side, they're on the north side you guys end up merging together and that process is fascinating to me. That's something that's happening in our industry now is the conglomeration and the aggregating of these companies. People are buying other companies, merging businesses.
Speaker 1:Our industry traditionally has been like a man in a van, you know, or you know a truck in a truck or whatever you want to call it, but like a single man operator. You call this dude. This dude is a home inspector. He answers the phone, he's like yep, bob's inspections and. And he like put you on the calendar and then Bob shows up and does the inspection and then he sends you the report.
Speaker 1:And over the last probably decade, you know, maybe even 15 years, 20 years we've seen the rise of multi-inspector companies and I think there was a. There was a one point in time this is before my time, I'm not that I've been in the industry that long but there was like a millionaire's inspector club and there was this idea of like could a home inspection company actually produce a million dollars of revenue in a single year, because that's how infant our industry was. Now you see million dollar companies all the time, or multimillion dollar companies all the time, and and and so we've seen this, this rise of multi inspectors, and then now we're seeing aggregating happening inside of the industry and you're part of that and you're kind of on the front end of this trend that's happening. So I am fascinated to hear um, how did this go about? Was it just like you're out, you know, having drinks one night, and you're like, yeah, heck, yeah, let's do it and you did it, or is there like how much thought did you put into this?
Speaker 1:What does that process even start to look like?
Speaker 3:All right, how much time do you have? So I'll kind of go the semi long route. It's not going to be super long, but everything happens for a reason. Like IEB, so when you surround yourself with other business owners who think alike, who want to grow, you find a community. And so IEB was one of those communities and the ambassador of my particular group what he was in charge of was just calling around the companies that was in his group and just see how things were going. And so this person calls me up and says hey, you know, I'm just checking in with you. Happens to be. His name was Jeremy Lovelady, the owner of Magnolia Home Inspections, with his dad, mike, and so he was just checking in with me. So the interesting thing with IEB, with this, this abundance mindset, it doesn't matter if you're in the same market. If you're in that community, you're going to share, you're going to want to share.
Speaker 3:And so this ambassador for IEB is calling me his competitor, even though we're an hour apart, just to check on me, see how I'm doing. And so I told him you know, I'm just tired. I'm tired of the day-to-day operation, and I was really. I was getting to the point where I was pretty close to burnt out and I just needed to figure out what the next step was.
Speaker 3:And so he invited me over for a cup of coffee and just to chit chat and after about three hours of conversations of you know my dreams, my staff dreams, my pain points, mainly, you know we kind of ended that conversation and as we're driving both home, he calls me up a half hour later and he goes well, have you ever thought about merging? So really, the idea came from him, it didn't come from me. Um, and so I was like well, I told him, no, I had thought about it, but more in the acquisition side, not the merging side. Um, I knew very early on, and from prior family partnerships that didn't go well in the business world, I knew that a partnership would be very difficult to do, very difficult to achieve, and especially like you've been a sole owner.
Speaker 1:Is that correct For, like at this point, what? 10 or 12 years before you had 12 years for 12 years. For 12 years? You've answered to no one. Yeah, you exactly. And so to bring in a partner is a level of accountability? Does now you're both having it's just like getting married. You know it's like as a single guy, I can do whatever I want. I don't have to answer anybody. I can. You know there's no accountability there. But as soon as I'm married, now there's accountability and there's a consideration to all these other people and you're giving up well, you're giving up something in order to get into a partnership.
Speaker 3:On that freedom side, yeah, wow, and it's not just with Jeremy, it's also with Mike. So now we're three partners, right? Because?
Speaker 1:Jeremy and Mike were business partners on their on their venture Correct.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And so there was a lot for me to think about, um, and I had to come to the point where Do I? Do I look at it as me losing something, or do I look at it as me gaining something? Oh, that's a great reframe. I love that.
Speaker 3:And so, in marriage, are you losing something or are you gaining something? And hopefully you're gaining something? Um, but the way that I approach life is you know what? Why am I here? Why am I put in this situation? What lesson can I learn from it? What can I gain from it? And so we just decided to take it very slow. And the very first meeting we had, I told them all of my concerns about partnerships. I told them about my family's partnerships that didn't end well, and I told them that I'm very skeptical. And the only way that this is going to work is if, during the conversation, at any point in time, any of us can can just quit. We just say Nope, like until we sign that paper, until we have the shared bank account. It's like Nope, we can just quit. No harm, no foul. We've become good friends, we've gotten to know each other and it's a good relationship.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, a little like a red light, green light. You know, if you have green lights and there's probably well, I guess I'm going to ask is because there's probably some yellow lights along the way where you need to slow down and go. Well, hold on a minute. Were there some yellow lights along the way or was it just straight green lights the whole way through?
Speaker 3:No, we had a couple of things that we needed to work through, um, and, to be honest, they weren't that, they weren't like super big issues, since I can't actually remember them really, but I do know one of the things that we did do was hire a merging coach.
Speaker 3:So, being in the coaching world for close to a decade now. I was part of the MIC group, millionaire Inspector Community Group. This is how I actually started to grow the business, because I was a one-man shop. I didn't know any better until I joined a mastermind group. And then I grew and then I needed something else. And that's where Ivy kind of came in and it's like okay, this is what I really what I needed in that phase of my life in that phase of my life.
Speaker 3:But so we knew that we we don't know what we don't know. And so we hired this merging coach and he gave us a step-by-step process and the one thing that he said was, is this an acquisition or is this a merger? And when he wanted to make sure that the right term was used and and we said, well, it's a merger, we're not buying one other out, and he goes okay, so just so you know, this is the hardest form of partnership there is.
Speaker 1:Right, because you're used to doing it your way. They're used to doing it their way. Man, that sounds stressful.
Speaker 3:And the interesting thing is I really didn't stress Like the the entire time, because I knew there was an out if needed. It's like we're just here for you know, for a conversation. This is a cool thing. That that we learned through IB was hey, I'm just curious and I would like to have a conversation, and so when you approach somebody that way.
Speaker 3:you're not um, what's the word? Um, you're not a risk, You're just there to just chit, chat, to have to, to just get to know the other person. And and so we took it slow. Um, it was about an eight month process of just conversations, of, I would say, anywhere from four to eight hours a week of just talking.
Speaker 1:Wow, 48 hours a week for eight months.
Speaker 3:Yeah, for eight months and just making sure we were on the same page everywhere. And so this merger coach, um, as we're doing, you know, a couple of sessions with him, at one point he goes you guys are already this far advanced in the process and we're like, yeah, and we kind of did things a little bit backwards. Um cause goes, you guys are already this far advanced in the process and we're like, yeah, and we kind of did things a little bit backwards, because, one, we didn't know any better. But two, because of the quality that IEB brings, the teachings, the mentorship, the guiding, the coaching that it does for its members. And yeah, I guess this is turning into an IAB commercial, but they don't pay me, I promise you. It's just that it's that good of community.
Speaker 3:And so by the time we're on session two, the merger coach is like I don't believe you guys already have done all these steps, like you've already talked about all these things. It's like normally, you know, I don't believe you guys already have done all these steps, like you've already talked about all these things. It's like normally, you know, I don't deal with these small little mergers. And he's not meaning it in a bad way. He goes. Normally. I deal with 100, 200, $500 million mergers and acquisitions. So he was very surprised that a $2 million merger was wanting to be coached by him. And we just need a power of coaching that you don't know what you don't know, oh, you don't know.
Speaker 1:right, like, how many companies have have you merged before this? Right, like exactly, yeah, even if you've done it once or twice, it doesn't matter. Like this guy does it professionally all the time, and and and. Plus having that outside perspective, because from our own view of our own product, like we have a very specific view, I have a very specific view of my company and how I think it is. But to get a coach from the outside, fresh eyes, to come in and look, they're going to see where the bumps are that I don't even see them.
Speaker 2:They're going to see that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're going to look at it from a completely different perspective than you would do, or also the other side of the transaction. I'm curious what are some of the big pieces? If someone else is considering merging, obviously get a coach, I like that, but what are some of the big I don't even know big category things that you got to maybe think about in terms of merging?
Speaker 3:How deep do you want to go? The very first thing and I think that's why it worked and it's not going to be for everybody but the very first thing that we needed to align on was our faith, and it doesn't mean that I was specifically looking for another company that had the same faith as me, but it's just. I knew that it was going to be a big part, um, and so we first aligned there, um, and that's really important though.
Speaker 1:like we are, like, we are all spiritual beings and and regardless of what you believe, um, if, if your faith and your spirituality is a a portion of who you are, especially if it's a bigger portion of who you are, you got to align on that. And if you have two different spiritual viewpoints, you're going to view the world in different ways, different worldviews, which means your values, priorities are going to be misaligned and spirituality is such a core piece of who we are as a human being. Like that's really not going to shift and change that. I mean maybe a little here and there, but the fact that you both lined up on such a major piece of who you are as a human being yeah because, because mergers and business is so much more than just numbers.
Speaker 1:It is so much more so. I love that um, the spiritual alignment, and you guys are on the same page, like in your faith and your spirituality, as co-owners of a business, and that's really important. I love that. You even that you brought that up.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the second one was how do we align with our staff, like how do we view our staff, what is the culture? And the interesting thing was that we were really close culture wise. We were really close culture wise. We. Even the vision that we had as far as building multiple companies was very close to identical. So I showed them like an organizational chart with eight different companies and this is kind of what I wanted to do. And then during that conversation they said this is almost exactly what we had drawn up. You know, just last year they said this is almost exactly what we had drawn up just last year.
Speaker 3:That's incredible, yeah. And so we knew we were on the same page spiritually with the staff, the culture and then the direction where we wanted to go with it.
Speaker 1:So you were aligned on culture, you were aligned on vision and you were aligned on your spirituality side.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yep, and so the last part was going to be really, are we aligned financially? And so we were. You know, same size company profitability wise, I believe they were a little bit more profitable, but my company was actually grew last year in the down market and so between their way of looking at numbers and between our growth we knew that right there it would be a pretty good match and I was comfortable moving towards the way that they ran their business financially wise. And so, yeah, and all of that took a lot of conversation.
Speaker 1:I love that. You said, lastly, we looked at numbers. I think that that is such a breath of fresh air. Sometimes in business, people can get really caught up on the numbers being the forefront of every business and um and and it's. They're important, you have to know them, uh. But if you make numbers the primary focus of your company, you'll lose the other side of it, you'll lose the culture, you'll lose the vision, you'll lose the spirituality and the fact that you started from the deep core as a human being, of who I am, spiritually, and then you worked your way out in like, in, in waves of rings, outward of K, spiritually, and then culturally, and then vision wise, and then you finally got to finances. I mean that that's amazing. What a fantastic. Was that, like something you guys just did organically? Or was that something that your coach helped you with?
Speaker 3:No, that was organically. That was when I say you know, the level of conversations that we have with an IEB is at a level that is close to unheard of. The way that we talk about growing, about building businesses, about building teams. Well, first of all, we don't have I don't know many industries that have this kind of um of mentorship of, uh, let's get together and let's share what works for us in our particular industry, in our particular market, and let's try to grow together. I mean, I've hired people, um, like my former um operation operations manager.
Speaker 3:He came from corporate world, he came from Walgreens and the first time that I brought him to a mastermind session, he said never in a million years, like he was amazed he goes. Never in a million years would I see Walgreens and CVS getting in the same room and talking about what works and what doesn't work Right Now. Granted, they're much bigger than we are, but at the same time, there's some truth to that of OK, where, where and in what industry do you have that? Yes, I really don't know. I don't know either. You're in Houston.
Speaker 1:I know right now, off the top of my head, there's like five or six different companies inside of our mastermind group that are in the Houston metro area.
Speaker 3:That are multimillion dollar companies, yeah.
Speaker 1:Multimillion dollar, right. Larger companies, right, y'all are competing against each other and um, but yet you'll come together in the same room. What works, what doesn't. I'm in a mid-market, so my entire market is less than a million people, just underneath a million. And there are two major companies in my market myself and another one and both of us are part of IEB that's cool, largest in the in the market.
Speaker 1:And both of us part of IAB and both of us share and collaborate and we get coffee every so often and and we check in on each other how you're doing. And it's turned into a personal relationship where you know how's, how's the kids, how's the family, how's, you know how's business and and we've been able to be vulnerable with each other in the sense of, like man had a rough couple of months, you know, and yeah, me too. And we commiserate is like, oh, I had this employee situation I had to go through and oh man, yeah, me too. And and you know, being able to collaborate and it's actually kind of funny, a couple of their employees left their company and wanted to come work for my company and, and so when I got the call from one of them, I was like, oh, this is awkward and so I, like your owner and I are friends, like we are friends, and you understand that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you understand exactly, and I said so. If I call right now to your current employer, what, what are they gonna say? You know, and um, and they're like, well, I'm not really sure you know, and so we had to like I was like I'm not. No, I'm just saying this is a much deeper conversation than just any old job applicant coming in. Yeah, so you, you, you had both had similar sized companies, and I think you said you had six inspectors before that. Is that right?
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 1:And they had six.
Speaker 3:Yep. So, you all have about 12 right now. Yeah, so we have. We have 10 in Houston and one, possibly two, in Dallas I know my services manager is busy interviewing a bunch of people and then we have one in San Antonio. So we've just opened up those two markets.
Speaker 1:Wow. And so when you guys merged I know your Redfish, they were Magnolia. What did you guys decide to rebrand as? Are you keeping one brand or what are you doing?
Speaker 3:So what we did? We kept the Redfish name, so we merged Magnolia into Redfish, but we created a holding company called OBF Dreams, and so the holding company actually owns Redfish. And so the idea and kind of my job now is to go around and find companies who would be interested in a conversation about acquisition, and so we now have the option to organically grow Redfish just by hiring a bunch of people or acquiring other home inspection companies and bringing them into the Redfish family acquiring other home inspection companies and bringing them into the Redfish family. Or we can grow the OBF brand and just bring in a bunch of home inspection companies from other states, for example under the OBF brand, while still growing Redfish.
Speaker 1:Got it. How'd you come up with Redfish?
Speaker 3:Oh man, so that was one of my nicknames growing up. Oh man, uh, so that was one of my nicknames growing up and uh. And so when I started the business, my wife's like you know why, why not call it redfish? I mean, everybody's calling you redfish anyway. And she goes. You know it has nothing to do with home inspections. The redfish is a popular fish in galveston, um, but everybody's going to remember the name. That's awesome, there you go.
Speaker 1:That's it. That's really interesting. So your role has changed, obviously yes, as the owner of a company with six inspectors and then doing the merger. Now you have three owners over a company that has 12, and you're growing and you're hiring your organizational chart on Redfish side, the organizational chart of Magnolia. All of a sudden there's overlap and there's changes. How did, how did your team handle all that Cause? Now your team just doubled. How did everybody like your staff? And then what is like org chart wise? What does your role look like? How do? How do you divide that up?
Speaker 3:You have, because to me that's fascinating- yeah, what we did, because we were three owners, we each decided to be the head of one of the divisions. So Mike was the head of operations, jeremy was head of services and I was head of growth. And so we decided and we made clear hey, we're not going to step on each other's toes. If I'm the head of growth, then I will lead the growth division, if Jeremy's head of inspectors of services, I won't bug him with that. And that was super hard for me because the one division that was very well established was the services. Very well established was the services, and I suspect for most multi-inspection companies, multi-inspector companies, the division that works the best is going to be the services, because that's where the owner came from and so it's a well-oiled rig pretty much. And so for me it was really hard to just step back and trust that Jeremy's process was going to be good. And then, mike, we both Jeremy and I, both really trusted him implicitly when it came to the operation side of things, and so that really made it easy. But so it really was that division of work within the first few months and then making sure that the transition was going to happen really well with the future leader of that division.
Speaker 3:So during that process we're still interviewing. So what we did is, for the services division, we opened up pretty much, actually we opened up every position to everybody in the company. We're like, hey, if you're interested in this, this position, we're going to start interviewing whoever wants to be interviewed. And so we interviewed everybody who wanted to be interviewed and we chose, you know who the services manager was going to be. Then, on the, the operations side, we found the general manager pretty fast as well within the company, and then, after multiple interviews on the growth side, we decided to hire from outside, and so with somebody completely new to the industry but very familiar with KPIs and how to manage a lot of people at the same time, right, yeah, because that management piece and then KPIs are super, super important in how to manage a lot of people at the same time.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, cause that management piece and then KPIs are super, super important. Understanding what, what data you want to be looking at and what really matters, and um and and yeah, and there's like input and output metrics that you're always looking at and like what makes a change and what's the fruit, what's the root? You know, measure the root and you'll get the fruit. You know, if you're always chasing money, you'll, you'll always chase it. But if you figure out what produces the money, what produces it, then you know you feed the root and you get the fruit. But having the right people to understand what those KPI numbers are, what are those indicators that you need to be looking at and paying attention to and which ones you invest in, but having somebody who has great knowledge of that and that that that's really important to have.
Speaker 3:It's a game changer. I mean, it was completely for me, like I. I thought I knew how to track KPIs and through this process I went man, I'm a doobie, I don't know how to track KPIs properly, and so it's been fascinating to just see the leadership. You know, we gave them the freedom once we identified them and we trained them in a way that we want to gather the information and how we want to see it. And after that we're like okay, it's your turn to fly. And it's been amazing because you know all three owners, we can step out completely of the business for, you know, two months, three months and it's still going to grow. I it's been amazing seeing the leadership team, um does, having the desire to grow the business, um, and then doing it.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's gotta be cool to see your, your baby, that you started. Um and man, I know there's something about the transition of like. One day 14 years ago you thought maybe I'll inspect a house. Did you ever think you'd end up here?
Speaker 3:Never Now, 14 years ago, like I said, my the first time that I went to a mastermind group, I had no idea one what I, what I was getting myself into going to this particular event, but I, just I was content, I was happy to just do my this particular event. But I, just I was content, I was happy to just do my little home inspections. And I figured, you know, if I can do five inspections a week, I'll be good, I'll be set. And then I remember I had a spreadsheet of okay, if I just do one up to five, I didn't even think that I could do two inspections a day back then I had the same thing when I got started.
Speaker 1:I did the numbers, I thought, at three a week, this is worth my time, and if I could do like one a day, like I think like I can support my family, you know, and not any sort of glamorous, just enough to to keep the bills paid. And I thought, man, I can be happy. And I did the same thing and then it didn't take long, my stuff took off like a rocket ship and, uh, and with it's within I don't know. Six months I was doing two a day, uh, five days a week, um. And by nine months I was doing three a day, six days a week, um. And then I was killing myself, man, like, just trying to keep up with the demand. I just slept and worked seven days a week.
Speaker 1:It was one point in time just and I realized I, I'm gonna kill myself, like I have to find a way to, or this is gonna kill me.
Speaker 1:I should rather say, um, and this is gonna kill me if I keep doing this and and then, and then now here we are, you know, with multi-inspector firms that are running themselves and um, and with with, obviously there's effort and leadership and we've worked really hard to get here, but the job changes, like when you're out there inspecting.
Speaker 1:It's a completely different skill set than where you're at today of needing to, like understand KPIs and what are the metrics and what are the levers you need to be pulling with your finances. You know, in the beginning it's just like earlier you had mentioned that your profit, like, although your revenue is about the same, your profit was different and you're maybe calculating or your levers, or, as a business owner, you have some control about where the money is going to be spent, what kind of profit you're going to get, where do you invest, like, invest for growth, invest for maintenance? How do you like there's a lot of little levers and switches and stuff that you can control as a business owner, and now your levers are different, switches and stuff that you can control as a business owner, and and now your levers are different, and now you've actually had to I'm understanding, I think had hand off some of your levers and switches on controlling your own company to other people.
Speaker 3:Completely. Yeah, I mean our general manager. She's the one who is in charge of it. She, she reports to us. Now we were at once a week and now we moved it to twice a month, and so we get an update of the projections for the month every day. So our growth manager sends us that and she goes all right, this is the projection for this month and, for example, for this month, we're going to finish at 30% above what our projection was, which was already more than last year. That's fantastic, and so being able to just sit back and and be in awe of what the leadership team is able to do is is freeing, because now I have that stress that's off of my shoulders and now I can focus on other things, on other projects, on helping other companies grow. So you know, you talk about how you grew your business really fast. My story is completely different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you started in a down market right.
Speaker 3:I started in a down market and I knew nothing about marketing. My background is construction management. I don't know how to market. My first year I did 12 inspections. My second year I did 55. And my third year I did 180. And so you know, at least we see a good progression, but nothing to support a family, really. And so when I hired my very first inspector, I had only done 180 inspections that particular prior year. Well, I knew that if I had more people, at least I knew that I have more capacity. So the year after I hired my first inspector, we did 420 inspections. So that was a pretty big jump for me.
Speaker 3:But no, I never had growth like you did or some other guys that I've mentored. And so this is where I'm at now in my life, where I want to be able to help anybody who wants to hear me out and wants to avoid going through the pain points that I went through, because there is no reason. There is no reason, especially in in the Houston market, to only do 12 inspections in a year. Yeah, there's no reason. And so why? You know, if I can help just one person, I'll be very happy, and so that that's kind of my goal. I mean, I've always been a sharer, really a giver, and uh, and so there are really no secrets, there's just implementers. And so if you're an implementer, this is for the people listening, but you don't know how to go about something. I give me a call. I'll be more than happy to sit down and have a chat with you, because I I don't want to see anybody struggle the same way that I did.
Speaker 1:That's amazing, you know, it's um, that it's. It's interesting the whole idea of I can just help one person. And, um, and uh, you know, sometimes it's like, well, the world is a big, scary place and it's like, how can I even make any kind of impact in the world? And uh, you know, it's like I can't change the world. Um, neither can you, but I can change one person's world.
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 1:And if I can change one person's world, then that makes a big difference. And then, once you do that, change another person's world. And another person's world it's just one at a time. I just want to help one. Can I just get one more? Can I get one more person that I can help? And, um, and maybe at the end of this life we've helped one person, maybe we've helped 10 people, but maybe those 10 people have helped 10 people and you don't know the effect of what our life is going to have. I love that philosophy that you have Will on help. Just help one more. Can I just help one? I think that's incredible, yeah, incredible. So you've had to make these changes from dude in a truck Just doing this kind of I want to say part-time in the beginning, if I can be fair 100% part-time.
Speaker 1:100% part-time in the beginning I was a stay-at-home dad. So, yeah, okay, you're a stay-at-home dad, you're part-time. I'm going to do a little inspection, bring a little extra cash into the house to help with the home. And the transitions that you've had to make over the last 14 years is unbelievable from part-time to building something that is now a multi-city, 12 inspector plus, with a massive vision, massive momentum, growing in the right way. What are some of the biggest changes? What were the how do I say this right? What were some of the most difficult transitions along the way from part-time inspector going all the way up to where you're at now?
Speaker 3:Figuring out what I need to do. That was it. So in 2019 is when I made the decision I'm stepping out of the field. I was having some health issues and I was, and my mentors had told me, you know, the only way to grow is if you actually step out and you work on the business, and so if you're doing inspections, then you can't. It's going to be a lot harder to grow the business if you're doing inspections every day, and so that was a scary part for me, because at the time we were doing teams, and so you know we're doing three inspections a day and doing that five days a week, and so that's a pretty considerable revenue that all of a sudden would be lost. But what I found was and I've got the graphs actually to prove it that the month after I decided to step out, we grew exponentially because now I had the time to interview guys, I had the time to train guys, I had the time to put you know starting to put leadership in place. I had a whole lot more time.
Speaker 3:And so the difficult part for me was I was in the office, which I was not used to doing, to being in during the day. It's like, ok, what's the next thing I need to do? And so there were many days where I'm just kind of looking around going, ok, what do I need to do? So I really had to sit down and actually write down different projects that needed to happen within a certain time frame, because otherwise I'm just wandering the halls not knowing what I'm supposed to do. So that was the biggest change for me was taking my inspector hat off, putting my owner on and just sitting down and then brainstorming as being creative, with my mind of okay, this is the next step, that we need to go in, and then calling a bunch of people too. So I was on a lot of phone calls.
Speaker 1:With other people inside of IAB. You mean Yep?
Speaker 3:Inside IAB, outside of IAB just people. You know other business owners, and it really was that I just wanted to soak up as much knowledge as I could from other business owners, and even outside of the industry, because they see the world differently too, and their input is as valuable as anybody else's.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have a core group of friends here in Albuquerque, new Mexico, where I'm located, and the guys that I hang out with during the week and grab lunch occasionally.
Speaker 1:And I have a group of business owner friends that we hang out. We're all in completely different industries and it's one of those places where we'll go grab happy hour once a week, give or take, and we'll sit down and we laugh and joke, we have a great time and inevitably someone's got something they're fighting through and we bring it up. And now you have this perspective from wildly different industries Some guys that are doing you know 20, $30 million companies with you know, dozens of employees. And then you have guys that are, you know, just have two or three employees, or you know a guy like me somewhere in the middle, and and you have all these different business owners from different industries, walks of life all sharing. I tell you, whenever you can get in a space like that, good things happen, man, and the fact that you are proactively calling and looking and searching, that's probably a huge key to your success.
Speaker 3:Yeah, who you surround yourself with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Yep, Actually, who you surround yourself with really matters. Hang around me long enough. You're going to hear me say this thing, and I say it all the time. You know your friends are like an elevator. They're going to take you up, we're going to take you down, but they're not going to leave you the same. And uh, and so you've got to have friends in your life and people in your life, whether it's personal or business or whatever. Who you surround yourself with really matters.
Speaker 1:My kids are tired of me hearing, of hearing that from me all the time. I have two teenage daughters and sometimes they'll be in a situation and, just as a dad, I'll be like you know, your friends are like dad. I know they're like an elevator and I'm like I was like who's pushing the buttons? Like are you, are you pushing the buttons on this elevator, or are they pushing them? And they'd be like I get it, they're, yep, they're in there, they're pushing the buttons, we're going down and I was like you got to take charge. And they're like, yeah, and you got to lead yourself.
Speaker 1:One thing I hear from you is that in the beginning, you led yourself into doing the inspections and then, when you realized the changes you need to make. You took that tough step and I think that's one of the hardest steps is to get go from the guy doing the inspections to the guy running the company. It's a radically different skillset and you led yourself into how do I make this change. You said you're bouncing around the hallway going like what do I do? Yeah, yeah, and there's nobody to tell you. It's your company, you own it.
Speaker 3:You can do whatever you want. I can take a nap, but is it going to be productive? Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And there may be days where you need to. You know, there are days. There are days, there are days where you, you know, as a business owner, you have to go. Okay, I just need to stop for a minute and, like, breathe and maybe go, decompress and do something and then come back and revisit it. You know and and whatnot, but you've, you've done a good job of building a team to be able to help run your business. Now is what it sounds like.
Speaker 3:What has that been like?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and building a team. What are some of the things that have helped you in identifying and building team members?
Speaker 3:Well, for one, I didn't do it alone. So I think you know my team, my core team, is Mike and Jeremy. Without them, we wouldn't have what we currently have, and so you know, yes, we kept the Redfish name, but this is not Redfish, it's not Redfish company anymore. This is an OBF company, and and I have two really smart, amazing partners who think at a different level, and so the cool thing, I'm going to say that in a good way. So Jeremy is ADHD, like he is up there, he is hopping.
Speaker 1:He is. I love that guy. I've hung out with him a few times.
Speaker 3:Yeah, really smart, brilliant. And Mike is super mellow, like he is the stabilizer and I'm right in the middle and so like I'm a great bridge between them too, and so it's interesting to go back and forth and kind of go no, you know what, I agree more with this side than this side, or I agree more with him than him, but we're able to bounce ideas off, and Jeremy's a fast thinker and he's a fast doer too, and so with us three we have a really good mix of okay, yeah, let's go fast, but at the same time let's take our time. And so, like I said, we have the Redfish name, but it's not the Will Mizegates Redfish, it's the OBF Redfish, and so it's. And what?
Speaker 1:does OBF stand?
Speaker 3:for, oh man, am I allowed to say that?
Speaker 2:And if you're not, that's okay. No, no.
Speaker 3:It's opportunity benefits, uh, opportunity like OBF, opportunity benefits, freedom and then dreams, nice, um. But then uh. So one of my staff members said is that what it really means? I said, yeah, what did you think it means she goes? I thought it meant our big effing dream. What did you think it means she goes? I thought it meant our big effing dream.
Speaker 1:I like that version too.
Speaker 3:I love that version. Actually Our big effing dreams, and so I mean the idea. Really, what we want to do is create an environment for anybody who works with us to have the opportunity to grow. If they want to start a business under our umbrella, then we have that opportunity for them. We have that freedom and then we allow that dream to just develop. That's kind of the backstory of OBF dreams.
Speaker 1:I love that. That is really fantastic, Will. It's been really great catching up with you, hearing your journey, this whole merger, and how you've been able to merge together the roadmap, the big building blocks that you built with. This has been really exciting to hear. I imagine there's people today listening that maybe have more questions and maybe they're looking at this kind of stuff. How would somebody get ahold of you if they wanted to get in touch with you?
Speaker 3:The best way is going to be to text me or call me Now. If you call me, leave a voicemail, because if I don't, really if I don't recognize the number, I typically don't answer. But my phone number is 469-834 six or you can email me directly at will. So W I L L at O B F dreamscom.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, man. Well, thank you so much for being here on the show. Um, this has been a fantastic, uh fun time and I've loved getting to know you and your story and your journey a little bit better. And a best of luck on your future endeavors, and um man, it was just really good to have you here today.
Speaker 3:I was happy to be here and hopefully next year we'll see each other on the trails.
Speaker 1:Absolutely have a great day. Yeah, you too.
Speaker 2:You've been listening to. Empire state of mind for the home inspection industry and beyond. Our passion is to elevate the home inspection industry with mindset strategy and beyond. Our passion is to elevate the home inspection industry with mindset strategy and tools. We hope you've enjoyed the show. Make sure to like, rate and review For more follow on Instagram at IEB Coaching and don't forget to hit the website at wwwiebcoachingcom. Learn about IEB at no cost and have all your questions answered on our open call once a month on the third week of the month. We hope to see you there and we'll see you next time on the Empire State of Mind.
