Host: Previous guest George Vallone comes back today to share his progress with Nouveldis, a cleaning business he bought in Nashville in 2021. Nouvelles was a sub million dollar revenue business at the time. It is now three times larger and poised to launch in new markets. So George quote bought small and Much of this episode is devoted to how George has taken the raw material of a quite small business and implemented process, built tech and hired management to establish a foundation from which he can grow into the next phase. To me this is what it looks like when you buy small and it goes well. George's entry point into this business was low, so he will capture so much value as Nouveldi's becomes a much more substantial business. Listen for the incentive program he devised for the contractors he hires to clean and how these incentives have unlocked quality control which has in turn allowed him to charge premium prices. George's first episode was also strong on tactics. In that episode we went deep on the outreach campaigns he used to find novelties, including even the exact language of his cold emails. So definitely go back and listen to that the link as always in the show notes. Okay, please enjoy this return appearance with George Vallone, owner of Nuveldi's Apartment Turnover Services. Welcome to Acquiring Minds, a podcast about buying businesses. My name is Will Smith. Acquiring an existing business is an awesome opportunity for many entrepreneurs and on this podcast I talk to the people who do it. Listeners of Acquiring Minds know that for almost any business you acquire, its success comes down to the people and how you develop and manage them as their new leader. Thing is, in addition to management there is also a lot of process and bureaucratic work when it comes to your new employees. Payroll, compliance, HR technology, hiring to name but a few. These processes are crucial to get right, but at the same time distract from where you want to be putting your energy in leadership. So Aspen HR is an HR firm and PEO that takes this work off your plate and handles it with the care it demands. Aspen is owned and run by Mark Sinatra, himself a successful former searcher, so Aspen's own leadership understands the HR challenges that searchers have post acquisition. The firm is offering Acquiring Minds listeners a complimentary pre acquisition HR and PEO review for your target business. Check out aspenhr.com or contact Mark directly@markspenhr.com George Vallone welcome back to Acquiring Minds.

[3:04] Guest: Thanks for having me again. Well, I appreciate it George.

Host: It's been over a year and a half since our first interview. You and I exchanged emails over the last couple weeks and you shared Some of your progress with me. You've been busy since our last conversation. Lots of progress, lots of updates with more moves in the offing. So we'll want to hear all about it. But start us off, George, with a quick reminder of who you are and what it was that you acquired.

Guest: Yeah, sure. So, George, George Vallone. I acquired a cleaning business in Nashville, Tennessee in January of 2021 and restructured and rebranded it into an apartment turnover service. So we're strictly working with multifamily communities, 150 units plus and handling the entire apartment turnover. So when one resident moves out and they're getting it ready for the new one to move in, we go in there, we clean, we paint, carpet clean, handyman work, kind of whatever needs to be done to get that unit ready. And yeah, it's been, it's been going great over the past couple years.

Host: And, and give us 30 seconds or so on you. A big part of our first conversation was the process of your search. You did this a really systematic outreach. You were target. You targeted, I don't know, eight to 12 different cities. You were doing it from the New York City area where you're from, and you ended up in Nashville. And maybe I just took all the words out of your mouth. Fill in the, whatever, the gaps there.

Guest: Yeah. So I come from the tech startup sales community, so just working in B.C. backed startups in a variety of sales capacities. Kind of saw a window during the pandemic to try to switch things up, take advantage of the changing world. So I launched a search, did it myself with an help of an Internet targeted 400 cleaning companies across the Southeast primarily, and wound up getting a really good deal because it was the pandemic on Uvalde's cleaning services.

Host: Yeah. So of course that first conversation will be linked to in the notes, but I highly recommend people go back and listen to it because it was a great. We, we really got granular about your proprietary outreach method, including even the messaging of the emails that you use. That was really effective. I that really remember that the value of that episode fondly. All right, George, so open ended. How are things going? If mom calls you and says, george, you bought a business, how's it going? What would you say, mom, we've tripled

Guest: the revenue since I bought it.

Host: Say it again.

Guest: We've tripled, probably more than tripled the revenue since I bought the business. Two and a half years. Fantastic. Which is great. And so if, you know, I was thinking about this before our conversation, so I spot it in 21 and I think there are kind of three distinct chapters of the business so far. So 21 was really about sort of stabilizing the business and learning how to run the business, making sure that we could keep the lights on. Essentially, 22 was all about growth. So we grew like 120% in 2022. And the theme of 2023 so far has really been about laying the foundation for this to be a much, much bigger thing. And so our growth has been moderate in 23. That's been on purpose. We're on target to grow about 20% this year compared to last year. So slower growth this year. But I've been doing a lot of things to set us up for a nice four year expansion starting in 24. So I'm really excited about the things that we achieved this year to set that up.

[7:05] Host: Great. Well, we're going to hear about these things, but I will just say, George, 20% growth is great growth. So if, you know, if 20% growth this year over last, you consider modest growth, things really are going well. One of the topics in our conversation, our first conversation was exactly what you wanted to do, revenue wise. I think in, according to my notes here, in 2021, you were at 1.1 million and you wanted to double that last year. 2022. So what did 2022 end up at?

Guest: Yeah, we got to 2.3 in 2022, which was awesome.

Host: We were super. So that's over 100% growth, over doubling.

Guest: Yep, that's. Congratulations, that's great.

Host: And then another 20% this year, which, as I said, anybody would be happy with 20% growth, but you were actually kind of, your growth was a little bit restrained because you're focusing on investing in the business to grow into something bigger in the years ahead. Okay, well, one thing I want to do before we hear about some of this, these, these initiatives looking forward, is it look back at the big initiatives that you did as you became owner of the business. And the big one was nouvelle. These was not focused just on turnovers. It was a. It did some turnovers, but it also did, I guess, some cleaning, did Airbnb cleanings. And you made the strategic decision to cut everything that wasn't turnovers out and just be a turnover shop. Has that proven to be a good strategic move on your part?

Guest: I think it's probably the primary reason for that aggressive growth is because we, we found a product market fit in multifamily with these turnovers that is very unique to at least the Nashville market. So that was Huge for us. We're developing a really nice reputation. We talked about this on the last episode where it's word of mouth and it's a tight knit community here. So our name is really getting out there. And this 20% growth that we saw in 2023, we still are turning away some customers that don't fit our criteria. And part of the work that we're, we're doing this year to get ready for our expansion in the future is to be able to take on as many of those customers as possible. It just wasn't possible with our current infrastructure. We were basically bursting at the seams and I didn't want that to affect the quality for our existing customers. So some changes needed to be made.

[9:47] Host: Yeah. And the, your typical customer are multifamily projects. And so when somebody comes to you and they're outside of that, what type of, what type of prospective client is that that you say no to now? Just out of curiosity. Small, basically smaller projects, garden style project sort of thing.

Guest: Yeah, Smaller multifamily apartments will probably stay away from. But really it's, it's customers who, you know, they don't want to pay for the, the quality of service that we offer. So our price is our price. And if, if some customers try to negotiate that just we're in a fortunate position where we can say, no, sorry, that's our price. So it's, it's been a decent amount of that. I'm trying to. In 2023, I tried to choose quality customers. So customers that pay on time, that pay the price that we propose to them and are easy to work with. Those, those are the customers that we choose to work with, people that fall outside of that criteria. We unfortunately said, you know, maybe we can try this again next year.

Host: That's great to have that pricing power and that, that positioning in the market to be able to really hold the line on your pricing. And when you're delivering quality, you can, as you said, you can cherry pick, might be too strong, but choose to just work with quality customers. Fantastic. So kind of quality, big gats quality. And one of the things that we talked about in your first, in our first conversation was your focus on the quality of the service you were delivering. You. We talked as if I recall around at some point wanting to actually have a quality assurance person visit every turn that you guys execute. So your crew will do the clean, do the turn and then you'll have somebody come in after them and check the quality. There were some techniques I think you were experimenting with I guess all of that came to fruition. Give us a picture of your kind of your quality assurance process.

Guest: Yeah. So we've built out the quality assurance team. I'm doubling down on that. Like you said, if we have a quality service, we can have that pricing power or more pricing power. So it's actually a really. I'm really proud of this function of my business. So the way that it works right now is we have on any given day, two to three people out in the field doing inspections of the jobs. And they are also in charge of logging mistakes into our. Into our scheduling software, which runs reports, according to the contractors, on who's making the most mistakes. We then review that report with our entire contracting team about three times a quarter or once a month. So there's some kind of social, you know, aspect to it. You see your name up there with kind of how many issues that you had. Of course they can. The contractors always can push back and let us know, hey, this wasn't my fault. We take that very seriously. We try to have their back, but some of these things are pretty black and white, especially when our QA team can provide pictures. And then the repercussions to the contractors is, if they ask me for a raise, that's the first report I pull open. And if you're towards the top of most mistakes, no, you're not getting that raise. If you. If you have no mistakes, yeah, absolutely, you deserve five more dollars, you know, a job or whatever it is. And then second, the contractors with the least amount of mistakes get priority selection on their schedule. So they get to say, hey, I want to work only at these properties. I want Fridays off. If you're good and you don't have a lot of mistakes, we will absolutely tailor the schedule to make you happy. If you're making all the mistakes, like, sorry, you're gonna have to take what we give you. So that combination of really tracking them very closely and then rewarding and punishing them according to how many, quote, unquote, mistakes they're making. I mean, we've just seen our quality and sort of the discipline and the thoroughness of our contractors really take off in 2023. So I'm super proud of that function.

[14:01] Host: As you should be. Man, that is really cool. And, yeah. Did you work out kind of that whole incentive structure through trial and error or. I mean, you mentioned that your history was in. Was in B2B tech. Sales and sales teams often have kind of really well measured, tracked social pressure, kind of. You know, everybody's Name on a board systems in place to incentivize the sales team. And was, were you bringing any of that to bear or was this just a blank slate and you kind of figured it out on your own?

Guest: It was probably an amalgamation of my experiences and just intuition and things like that. But what was that famous quote? Show me the incentive, I'll show you the outcome. It's like if we're not incentivizing our contractors in some way to do better, well, they're going to take the path of least resistance. If there are no repercussions and no rewards for, for their job, the quality of their job, then how can we expect to have, you know, control over that? So it was trial and error. It's, it's, you know, it's been two and a half years to kind of figure that out basically. So yeah, it was just an amalgamation of different things and just out that way.

[15:19] Host: Really neat. The other initiative that I think that you were going to pursue was getting in with local property managers. So obviously probably your primary customer is, is the property manager, the one who, who is managing this multi family building or multiple multifamily buildings and is, is the one paying you and having you come in and do the turn and so, so cultivating relationships beyond the ones that, that were there when you came into the business was kind of sales initiative number one. Have you done that?

Guest: Yeah, absolutely. I'm still very involved with the Great Asheville Apartment Association. They're still my primary source of customers and I try to actually, you know, volunteer and give back them. So I'm not just kind of taking from that organization, the multifamily industry. There's you know, probably 50 national players that have operations in multiple cities. And so, you know, if you get in and you get into their system and you start to meet their people and then kind of work your way up and meet the regionals they do, they bring you on to, to multiple properties. And that's also what makes me excited about the expansion in the future, is that if, you know, property management company A has properties in Nashville and we do a great job and have a great reputation in Nashville, they're likely to have properties in another city. And in the future if I want to, you know, when I expand, I'll actually be able to map out, okay, which customers do I have in Nashville and where are their sister properties located. And I could almost do like a concentration map of what the best city for me to go to where I have, you know, sister properties. So I'm Starting to figure out how the, the, the property management industry works and take advantage of, of that. And so it's, I'm grateful that there's a, a structure to this industry. It's, it's like there is a structure to it which makes it pretty easy to operate from a business development stand standpoint.

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[18:57] Guest: It's a very different type of sale than SaaS. It's pretty quick. It's like, you know, come look at the property, put together a proposal and then they'll say yes or no basically. So it's not like this, you know, in SaaS it was like, could be like a multi year sales cycle. So this is like a couple weeks. So might be a segue into the changes that are going on. But I did hire a VP of operations and he's, he's handling a lot of the, the, the sales stuff. I'll step in when I need to, but mostly that's on him right now.

Host: Great. Well, perfect segue. Tell us about, we've talked about revenue. Tell us about headcount. What? Give us a picture of what it was back when, back in early 2002 when we talked and then what it is today.

Guest: So the, when I bought the business, the head, there was one full time employee. She was the office manager, she was the sister actually of the couple who sold me the business. In 21 I hired a QA manager and then in 22 I hired another scheduling assistant for the office manager. And then in 23. I hired a VP of operations. So we're up to four full time headcount right now, plus me.

Host: Four full time, plus you. So five.

Guest: Yep.

Host: And then your actual cleaners are all contractors. That was pretty clear from the way you just, you described your incentive structure.

Guest: Correct.

Host: And have you thought at all. I'm sure you have about. Is there any incentive for you to bring any of those folks on as full time?

Guest: That's a really great point. And I, I am, I do have plans in 2024. Probably January of 24. I think I missed it this season because we, we are very kind of seasonal. We, we spike about 20 to 30% more average revenue in the months of May through September. So probably towards next year's busy season we'll be building out a carpet cleaning operation. We have a carpet cleaner right now, but it's not. The equipment is. It's basically a portable machine. So we want to get one that is in a, in a van which enables you to do buildings that don't have elevators. So you can just run the hose out of the van up the stairs. And so I will be hiring a full time operator of that van but I'm going to wait until next year's busy season to do that. The reason I want to hire that person is because right now we are. It's. It's difficult to have somebody. We. Our carpet jobs probably constitute maybe two full days a week of work, but spread out across five days. So it's hard to have a contractor work for only maybe four or five hours a day. And so next year if I hire a full time employee, I'll have him doing sort of half of that carpet cleaning work and then I'm going to train him to do one of our other services which is the handyman service. And so spread out the work between the carpet and the handyman and that should, should yield a pretty significant profit off of that one extra headcount.

[22:23] Host: And when you talk about handyman service, carpet cleaning. So those are still fall. Those aren't adjacent services. Those are still under the umbrella of turnover because sometimes when an apartment turns something's broken, got to get a handyman in there to fix it some if there's a carpet, got to clean the carpet. So it's all still okay.

Guest: Yeah.

Host: And this, this decision to hire a VP of operations, that's always kind of a big decision. Is this somebody that if you wanted to obviously you're, you still seem like you're eager to grow as much as possible. We're going to get to, to that. But if you wanted to. Is this, is this the fork in the road where you've kind of put in an operator and could step out and relax now if you wanted to and, and, and not be in the business, really?

Guest: Yeah. Yeah. So his name's Jeff. He is, he's awesome. He is, he was a former customer actually, so he was a regional service manager. So he knows all about the industry, all about maintenance. He's very knowledgeable when he speaks with our customers, which they love and I love. And he's a really hard worker, very intelligent, very organized. I absolutely could step away right now and leave him in the driver's seat. And that's what I've been training him for because I do want, I do want to do that. I do want to step out of the day to day operations of Nashville. And you know, he started in January and, and it took him maybe three, four months to get up to speed. And then I, I really did step out of the day to day operations, including sales, which is great. But you know, I think there's one, one of the things that I'm candidly struggling with is like, you know, putting somebody else in the driver's seat. They, not that I, I lack confidence in him, but it's like how could I possibly expect somebody to grow this business as aggressively as I would if I was in the driver's seat? Right. So there's, there's a bit of a give and a take with that. Even though he is financially incentivized to grow. It's, it's something that I just gotta kind of see how that plays out. But hopefully that, with that free time that'll open me up to be working on other aspects of the business that will, that will grow it as aggressively as I want it to grow.

[24:45] Host: Well, that was, that was kind of. My understanding is that was what was happening. I didn't mean to suggest you were going to step out of the business and not do anything, that you were now going to basically focus on growth, but in theory you could, if you wanted, have basically a two and a half million dollar business and not have to work very hard at it.

Guest: Yeah.

Host: With this, with the higher of this, with of your operations guy, of Jeff.

Guest: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's where we're at right now for sure.

Host: I mean that's, that's a, that's a tremendous milestone. And how are margins in the business?

Guest: We're, yeah, we're, we talked about this on the, on the last podcast and I'VE just, I've been very disciplined with it. So 50% COGS, 30% overhead and 20% profit margin and that's, that's where we're sitting, at least on an accrual basis. Collections is another, another beast to itself, but on paper, that's where we're at.

Host: That's great, George. And you know, you bought a business that was sub million dollars in revenue. So it was you, you quote unquote bought small. And you are, anybody who buys small, what their goal is to do is to grow into something bigger and more stable and with a management layer. And the caution there, of course, is the smaller you buy, the more fragile the business is, the more you're going to have to be working in it, which is, can be fine. That may be what you sign up for or, and you're also, you know, one crisis away, as the expression goes. You're one crisis away from the business tipping over. But if you buy small also, you, you get in at a pretty low entry point and that much more of the value that you add just comes to really to you. So it can be financially very rewarding, especially also if you buy small. I feel like I'm about to say something that might not be true, but it feels true that it's easier to grow something small, to kind of double a small business than to double a big business, you know, so, and, and that's exactly what you did. I mean, you doubled the business in one year. So I, I think yours is a story of somebody who bought small and it's gone exactly how you would want it to if you choose to buy small.

[27:08] Guest: Yeah, I think, I think, I think that's exactly right. And it's frankly, it's gone better than I even expected it to go.

Host: Well, one thing on it going so well that I do want to ask about, there's another guy in our, in the search space. He also bought an apartment turned business and his outcome was not, was not nearly as positive as yours. What do you think the differences are between your business and a business in this space that might not be thriving like yours is?

Guest: I don't know. You know, without, without knowing the details, I could probably come up with some theories. I think in, in this industry

Host: at

Guest: least, we're doing so well here in Nashville because of the new growth explosion, population growth, there's new multifamily communities coming on online, you know, every month. And so there's a, a deficit in vendors compared to the demand for vendors in this city.

Host: So you believe that a Big part of your success or your growth is not just all the great things you're doing internally, but you've got this incredible tailwind of being in a growth market. Nashville, where towers are going up like crazy.

Guest: 100%. Yeah, I, I do not want to take full credit for our success. I'm, I'm in the right place at the right time for this business.

Host: Yeah. Yeah. You know, you're the second guest to say this to me in two weeks. You, Johannes Hawk, who's whose interview hasn't yet aired, bought a artificial turf install business in Dallas. And, and we joke in the interview that he, his kind of thesis of buying that business could be distilled to. He was long Texas. Texas is booming and long turf. Long Texas, long turf. And so his, his business has grown tremendously because he's in a market that's, that's growing just in terms of population Texas and then the adoption of turf is, is also growing like crazy. And, and it has already grown in California, already grown in Arizona, is relatively newer in Texas. So he could kind of look into the future just like maybe you could in other more mature markets like a Houston where apartment, you know, there's an established industry, albeit small industry of apartment turnover and where that end. So, so it's natural that an industry is going to exist at some point and if you step into an immature market, you're the one to enjoy all of that growth and then b. When it does mature, you're the one there. Yeah, the king there. Really interesting. Just a couple more questions for you, George. The you mentioned in your email to me you've done a lot with tech. You've built some custom stuff. Tell us about that.

Guest: Yeah. So this is part of laying the groundworks for, you know, aggressive growth over the next two, three, four, five years. I realized that we weren't going to be able to scale as efficiently just by adding headcount as we needed it. I wanted to find a tech solution that would help us scale and keep our overhead down. So I scoured the market for technology that exists to solve problems that we have with scaling. Wasn't able to find anything that 100% met my needs. I was able to get 60% there with some solutions. So I decided to build my own or hire somebody to build my own software for this business. And it's a pretty big gamble. So they, it could, could flop. Maybe my customers won't use it, but we're going to see and if it works, it's, it should basically negate our needing to purchase or sorry to hire a new scheduling manager every time we, you know, meet a certain threshold with customers. So that's, it's done. Right after this call, I have our final walkthrough with them before I launch it to our beta testers, which I have a group of property managers who are going to test it. So, you know, if, if everything works out, then it should be really kind of reducing our headcount as we scale here.

[31:30] Host: And it's essentially, I assume it's an app.

Guest: Yep, it's an app. So in the turnover kind of function of a property, most property managers and maintenance people have in their office literally a whiteboard with markers. It's called a turn board and it has dates and it has services across the top. And basically they just say, hey, unit 2221 is going to get clean painted this day, clean this day and you know, the other services. And so that's 99% of my customers have one of those in their, in their office. So I said that should be digital. Why isn't that digital? So effectively what we built is a digital turn board which has two way communication between my scheduling software and the customer. And so they schedule their services right there on that turn board and it automatically goes onto our schedule for our staff to approve or deny or change. And so the idea is to reduce the time it takes for us to schedule a job down from about four minutes. We'd like it to be under 30 seconds to schedule a new job.

Host: And so to multiply this out into understand the kind of aggregate savings that you stand to gain here from 4 minutes to 30 seconds for scheduling a single job. How many single job jobs are you orders are you receiving a day?

[33:12] Guest: We're right now, since it's still sort of the end of the busy season, we're doing about 300 jobs a week.

Host: Oh, wow. Wow. So 60 a day. So 60 times three and a half minutes is three hours. Yeah, is, is three hours. Three, three hours and 30 minutes. I guess so significant a day.

Guest: Yep, a day. And, and that's, that's the primary benefit. I mean there's, it's, there's going to be a lot of ancillary benefits. Like our customers are going to be able to finally see that what their schedule is with us. So there have been times where like they thought they scheduled something and we didn't show up and they call us all mad and it's like you didn't schedule that with us. We go back, we look through emails and texts and there's no information there. Well now everybody's on the same page. There's one single source of truth between the customers and our staff and then you know, there's a data play there. We're going to be able to get a lot more data from our customers. We're going to be able to remind them of their past due invoice balances. We're going to be able to capture quality assurance issues that the customer reports instead of ones that we find and be able to automatically track that in our software. So there's a lot we can do here.

Host: That's super cool George. And then, and the benefit to them is because you said the risk to you is there won't be adoption and whenever they're, you know, some new cool app comes out and then there isn't adoption for some kind of utilitarian purpose, it's because the target customer is just like I'd just rather pick up the phone. Just easier for me. But, but you've built baked in an incentive here where you know, you're, I assume the pitch to them is look, this is a digitization of your turn board. So that's also just good for you. That alone, you know, makes one of your own internal processes better if you just use our thing.

Guest: Yeah, yeah.

Host: That's kind of your pitch to them probably.

Guest: That's my, that's my pitch to them. And there's you know, I think there's, there's pathways in the future without giving away too much for this to become even more valuable with them to automate some more of the stuff that they do on a day to day process. But um, if anything yet like they're at least going to have more visibility into the schedule. They're going to have a way to organize themselves a little bit better and then you know, eventually there could be some more sort of autom automations that we build into the system that help them more.

Host: And so I got to ask you said this is a big risk for you. So how much does some building something like this cost?

Guest: I think I'd rather not say right now.

Host: Can I ask you above or below a certain number?

Guest: Sure.

Host: Above or below 50 grand?

Guest: Below.

Host: Really cool George.

Guest: If anybody, any of your listeners is interested potentially in the future for using this for their business if they feel like it meets the needs of their business, I'd love to connect with them and explore that.

[36:09] Host: So you think that this is, this is generalizable. It can be used for anything where there's kind of scheduling involved, like there's no reason why this is specific to apartment turnovers.

Guest: Correct. I think, I think it works really nicely right now for multifamily. So if you offer services to multifamily, this, this could you. You could use this? Yeah, absolutely.

Host: Okay. And. And you said you did a pretty exhaustive search for software that would do what you needed because I assume there's all kinds of SaaS products that service the multifamily property management industry. But no one has done this because it's one of those like many good ideas. It's like now that you've articulated it, it just seems obvious nobody had gone after this.

Guest: Yeah, there are some similar, there's some similar products out there. I think the pieces that I was missing when I did my search where most of the, most of the softwares that exist are for recurring services and we are reoccurring services. So it's not going to be the same service every week. So there needs to be the ability to collect a bunch of different details for every job that's scheduled. That was the first piece. The second piece was there wasn't one that offered unique pricing on a customer basis in an easy way. So each of our customers has different pricing. So if I do a clean at property A, that clean is going to cost be a different price than at property B. And so we built a really nice backend for our team in the office here to be able to manage our different pricing for different properties. So those were the two, two sort of unique pieces that we, that we put into this one.

Host: And it is an app, so does it run? Did you build both iPhone and Android? You must have.

Guest: Yeah.

Host: Well, I want to start wrapping up here. The other big kind of part of your laying the foundation and seeing where, where, how far and how big you can get this business, how far you can take it, how big you can make it is of course looking at other geographies. So what you got going on there?

Guest: Yeah, so last time we spoke there was. I was deciding, or I think I told you frankly that I was pursuing roll up acquisitions and since we last spoke, I decided to first test a bootstrapped operation in a new location. Couple reasons for that. One, frankly, it's not really fun paying the SBA every month, so I'd like to do it without, without a law and then, and then to the interest rates right now. So obviously that makes it even more painful. But I think, I think we can actually start a new operation in a new city and we're planning on doing that in 2024 in a city not too far away from Nashville. And so the idea is to have a VP of operations, same playbook that we have here in Nashville, who handles sales, hiring, day to day operations, and then plus a quality assurance manager so we can run the same playbook with our quality assurance. So it's a two, two person operation in a new city. And then we're going to build a shared services office in Nashville that handles the scheduling, invoices, hr, legal, finance, all that stuff. So that's the idea.

[39:53] Host: And then of course, the, the cleaners themselves and the handyman carpet cleaner, those are all contractors. You only hire them as you need them and get, and get business and get sales.

Guest: Great.

Host: And you wanted to hire a VP of operations rather than doing it yourself?

Guest: Yeah, yeah, doing it myself. You know, then I'm back in the business. Not able to work on the business. Sure.

Host: But just as your first, your first acquisition attempt, I wouldn't suggest you do it time and again, but just because, you know, you're standing this up from scratch. So there's some new stuff here to learn and as leader or as visionary, you know, maybe you want to have your hands on it. Sounds like I'm, I'm, I'm criticizing you. I'm not. I'm just thinking it through.

Guest: Well, I, I'll still be heavily involved in the new location and I'll probably, you know, have to camp out there for the first couple of months. It's close enough that it's, you know, within driving distance. But now the, the, the idea is, first of all, the person that I'm hiring down there, I already know her. She's, she's a customer right now. And she expressed to me that she wants to kind of get out of property management and she wants to, you know, more money, which are all great things, and we have a great relationship. So we kind of organically came to this conclusion together. But she's going to do better than I could down there. I think she has the network. She's been in the industry for 20 years. And so I would, I would say she would do as good or better than I would do down there. So I'm going to let her, I'm going to let her take that and run with it.

Host: That's exciting. George, didn't you say, I think it was in our email exchange that your other VP of operations here in Nashville, Jeff, also was in property management? Was that what it was? And wanted to get out?

Guest: Yep.

Host: So why, is, is there, is there a trend here or Is that kind of a common pattern that people are in property management, then want to get out? And, and, and why is being in an apartment turnover so different than being in property management? I guess because you're not. You're not dealing with tenants. There's that, which is nice. So what's the story there?

[42:16] Guest: I have a lot of empathy for my customers in property management. It's a really difficult job. And if any of your listeners have ever lived in a apartment community,

Host: you

Guest: know, there's sort of. There's a lot that goes on behind the scenes to make sure that your living experience is pleasant. And it's really important. You know, it's all numbers, right? So renewals are super important, and people are pretty finicky. So it's very competitive to get good property managers. And they're under a lot of stress. I mean, they have. They have people, you know, get very fiery with them when something is wrong with their home or with their community. So they get a barrage of, you know, angry residents that they have to deal with all the time, people that don't pay. So it's stressful. And so I think there's some burnout in. In property management. And I like to hire people that come from property management because who better to sell to new customers than one of my old customers, who. They understand our value proposition, they believe in the quality of our services, and they know how much we care and that we do a good job. A lot of them, like, neither of these two people were formerly salespeople, and like, my VP of operations in Nashville, he. He, you know, thought salespeople were sleazy. He, you know, he. He never could see himself being a salesperson, but he says that it's not really selling when you believe in the service, which is, to me, as his boss, is like music to my ears. So. Yeah. So I think it's a great place for me to pull from for these. These VP of Operations positions.

Host: Well, George, here in Northern Virginia, there are lots of new multifamily buildings going up, so tempting proposition here, seeing your success. Anything that we didn't touch on that we. That you'd like us to.

Guest: I will. I just wanted to thank you. I think maybe, you know, you deserve some accolades and kudos. You've built an amazing community. Um, and. And I get so much value. I know a lot of the listeners do out of. Out of these weekly stories that you tell. I. I've been an avid listener and will continue to be. So thank you for doing such an awesome job.

Host: Oh, man. George, that's really nice of you to say. Thank. Thank you so much for, for saying that. And I'm, of course, it's deeply gratifying that it's been helpful to you, especially as somebody who, who's now got so much experience under his belt. His acquisition is, is far in the rearview mirror that it continues to be valuable and relevant to you. Good deal, sir. Well, thanks for coming back on, George. Good luck in your expansion experiment here, and yeah, I'm sure I'll want to know how it goes. So keep an eye on your inbox here sometime in 2024.

[45:10] Guest: Sounds good. I appreciate it. And for your listeners who I've talked to, 20 or 30 of them who've just reached out to me. So thank you everybody for reaching out. And I love having those types of conversations. So if you want to shoot me a email georgeorgevillone.com or just shoot me a message on LinkedIn, happy to connect with anybody at whatever stage in the process you're in right now.

Host: Awesome. Take George up on that.