Latest / The Turn: Blue Collar to Billions / They Didn't Buy His Customers. They Bought His Culture.

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They Didn't Buy His Customers. They Bought His Culture. · The Turn: Blue Collar to Billions

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: He said, can you meet us at Philadelphia International Airport?
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, yes.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, what would it take for us to get you?
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, well, we have a list.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: He said, show me the lists.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: He said, if we look at the list and we say yes, will you sign an LOI today?
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think by the third time he looked up, he goes, we're gonna do this.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the turn.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Corey Mitchell of Iconic Founders.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Today's episode is with Phil Cooper.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: He has a pest control business that does bed bugs.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: He took the business from 500K to 11 million and sold it for life-changing money.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: He was the sales guy and CEO, his brother, an entomologist, the scientist.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: But together, they had a superpower.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to The Turn.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Corey Mitchell of Iconic Founders.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: The Turn is where blue-collar founders talk about the businesses they've built, the value they've created, and what comes next after they sell.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Phil Cooper, welcome to The Turn.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Corey.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Tell our audience a little bit more about your family business and how you got started.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, pest control, second generation, started going down to the office when I was five years old, working on magnet boards, learning how to see what not done list was by moving magnets around on the board.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: That was my Sunday morning for like years.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: I went off to school, got and you know, got my degree in marketing and finance, came into the business in 84.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: Then we're tiny.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: And by when we finished up in 18, we had gone from where we had like five employees when I started.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: And my brother and I grew into the largest privately held pest control company in Jersey, 110 people, not looking to sell.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: And my dad always taught us to build it, build those systems, build the people, and you'll be a wanted commodity, but you don't have to.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: And we were thinking going third generation, didn't got an offer from Terminix.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: We had a number and things we wanted, they went beyond that.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: And yikes, it was uh it was a sale that was unexpected, and generational wealth for the family.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: So awesome.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's incredible, especially for an$11 million business to have generational wealth is crazy.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: I want to hear more about that.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to go back a step.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: There's something your dad had that made him it's very courageous to go start a business.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so, what was it about him?
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: What was he like where he went out on his own and he started this small business that became this business that created generational wealth for you and your brother?
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: Corey just worked his ass off.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he just was selfless.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he did this for us and the family.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, my mom would take us to the ball games, and my mom would do all the things with us.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: And he was working his rear end off and he'd come home and he was exhausted, but we'd talk shop every night.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: There was no separation of family and business in our world.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: And we have I had friends who, you know, they had no idea what their dads did.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Heck, I was part of the business.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that funny?
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I relate to this so much because it becomes the dinner table conversation.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I remember walking into restaurants with my dad, and we're counting customers and we're trying to figure out the average ticket size.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: We're going, how the hell does this business make any money?
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so I'm sure you had those same exact conversations where it just becomes it becomes part of the rhythm.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: And 99.9% of families don't do that.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: That is not normal.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: It was our glue.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: And my mom was there too doing it.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: There were many times where I said my mom was a smarter business person than my dad.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, she would just because she was of the outside board of directors looking in, and she would just give her insights saying, like, I really don't know what I'm talking about.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: But well, yes, she did know what she was talking about.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like, brilliant.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Tell us about the where the business was at when you joined it as an adult.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: So it's 84.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: We had these things called borough machines.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: So he had these disc things that we still have some.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: It was in the advent of you know computers.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: Hey guys, if you're watching this, you have no idea what we're talking about here.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta be like, you gotta be like a dinosaur.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's like crazy.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: But but he was he was really in the forefront of trying to bring in technology.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, we had you know, like five, you know, five people in the company, as well as like three technicians, and my dad has these dreams, and he sees, you know, it's the sun, and I'm a commission-only salesperson.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: And he says, I want you to grow a commercial business, I want you to go into virgin territory, like expand this business, see what you can do, go at it.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's what I did for my first four years and crushed it.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: It was great.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, I uh I can still remember the buildings I knocked on, and it was cold call sales and developed markets, and we became, you know, we went from doing small mom and pop to owning the office building market in New Jersey.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: We did.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: We owned the Building Owners and Managers Association, we were vendor of the year many times.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we just we just grew it.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then my brother, and the next thing, Corey, was to get my brother in.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: My brother wanted nothing to do with pest control.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: He hated pesticides, he hated what we did.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: My dad used to send him on the worst jobs, which completely wrecked him.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: We sent him up to get his master and he came out of the University of Delaware, comes out with a degree in entomology.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: He wants to be a scientist, he wants to be a professor, yada yada.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: My job, transformed the company so that it's something that he wants to come into and that we can go get his degree and you know, take us to another another level.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: And that's exactly what we did.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: My brother is now, um, he has his doctorate in entomology.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: He's one of the top three bed bug experts in the world.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of the things that attracted Terminex to us.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: They wanted us to change their bed bug program.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: My job make money off of my brother's brilliance.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: And that was my job.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds like you really admire your brother.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Tell us a little bit more about the relationship with your brother.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: The great news is my brother and I, I mean, we're super tight.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: We're thick as thieves, but we're totally different.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, our core values are the same.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: So that's, you know, you always go back.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the values have got to be the same.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: And we do.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: We have the base core foundations that are the same.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where it ends.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he's, you know, I'm a triple A.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: I love a lot of material things.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm just that guy.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: And in the world of, you know, like an EOS world, I'm a flaming visionary.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: And Rick, on the other hand, you know, he's a deadhead.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: He traveled with the Grateful Dead.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: I would never travel with the Grateful Dead.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he's, you know, up and down, you know, he can do it really, you know, he's really laid back, he's really, you know, doesn't need a lot of stuff, wants to change the world, a lot of kumbaya.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, oh my God.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and he's a scientist, and he never wanted to run the company.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, when we were selling Determinix, I mean, he wanted the cash up front.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: I was willing to take a chance, you know, and you know, if a PE had come in and had given us, you know, more of an upside, I would have taken that if it was if it was right.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: He didn't need that.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: He wanted the guarantee.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so yeah, he's but he's still amazing, and yeah, we did wonderful things together.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: Transitions from family member to family member are always hard.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: How did you ink a deal with your dad to take ownership of the company?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, first was, you know, I always my well, I'll I'll give you the the my graduation gift to my parents that you so it's the George Washington University, it's graduation day in May, and I hand them a USN News and World Report, and it says like the top fastest, you know, um impactful CEOs, and I cut out the picture in the middle and I stick my picture on there and I change the date from 10 years from there, and I put I think Pepsi down there.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: Because I always thought I, you know, and I had said to my dad, you look, it's one of two things.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: Either I come back to the family business, but as much as I love you, we're exactly alike, we're gonna kill each other.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: And if you know, I work for you past my 30th birthday, I'll probably kill myself.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: So you've got to, you know, if I can cut my teeth and prove myself, the company's gotta be mine by age 30.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how dare I?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god, like you got a lot of balls.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: But but but what 22-year-old with you know, like we do.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's and otherwise that I'm gonna head off and I'm gonna go get a job in corporate and I'm gonna be that guy in that on that you know, US News and World Report.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: He said, I want you.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you do what you say you're gonna do, it's yours.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm going it, well, it's 98.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm approaching my 30th birthday, and it's not I'm learning, but there were things that I just he wasn't teaching me at that point.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like I didn't know how to go buy insurance.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: Crazy, but he didn't teach me that.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: He and I knew that if I didn't know how to do that, there was no way I could run and own the business.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I sat down with him and I said, Look, you know, this is not going according to plan.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: Am I cutting my teeth?
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Yes, it's and then we got to finish this off.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, I'm out of here.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: And my brother was supporting me.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember, gosh, it was like my 29th, just six months after my 29th birthday, like a year and you know, and I'm not 30 yet.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: And he called my brother and I in and he said, I've got news for you guys.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: We're transferring stock today.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: This is your company now.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't even get to my 30th birthday.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: There was no there was no negotiation on purchase price.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a gift of the stock.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: He gifted the stock because he had built his own wealth and was conservative enough to secure his future.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know very many business owners that gift their company to their to their second generation.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't happen.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: But he did.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: So he had he had a half a million dollar revenue business at the time, and he was able to save enough money to feel really comfortable in his retirement.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I think by then we were probably, you know, it's funny, you don't remember, but we're probably closer to a million at that point because we had grown it from 84 to 91.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: Slowly, steadily, you know, maybe we were maybe at 800,000.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: I have no idea.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's a lot of money.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: And he just kept plowing and we leave and we lived really simply.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we didn't do a ton of things, we didn't go on extravagant vacations, you know, and he just he just plowed money away.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: Just plowed it away, just kept putting it away, putting it away.
• 10:32
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• 10:35
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• 10:41
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• 10:43
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• 10:47
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• 10:58
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• 11:00
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• 11:12
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• 11:14
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• 11:16
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• 11:20
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• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things I see all the time when I'm working with companies is that they literally have all of their money tied up in the business.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: They might have been making millions of dollars a year for years and years, but they haven't carved any out for themselves.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: And they literally have no way to retire unless they sell.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Phil's father, he did it differently.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: And even though it was a small company, he was in a great position to retire, and that set up Phil and his brother for success.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: I tell my clients all the time, your business is overwhelmingly your largest asset.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: And no wealth manager, no money manager is gonna have you that concentrated in one thing.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm always advising pull out some of your profits and diversify away from your asset because you just never know when things are gonna change in your company or the economy, and you want to have some diversification outside of your business.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: So you're the sales guy.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Tell us about that job.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: That had to be so hard.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it was hard, but it was also learning the things that work so that I could eventually build a sales force.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we didn't get to 11 million on me, we got to it, you know, with you know Allison and Mike and Dennis and you know, my my sales team.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: But it was understanding the activities.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I think everything that we talk about later on, you know, the systems that we built, you know, the use of EOS, the use of what now has become accelerated gross profit for our frontline managers.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's all systems, Corey.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I learned the system of selling.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it was, you know, what were the activities that I had to do every day?
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: How many doors did I need to knock on?
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: How many people did I need to call?
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: I understood that funnel inside out.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: Most people don't ever get beyond being the core salesperson in their organization, which is why most businesses don't grow, or at least they don't grow very fast.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, let's do 10 years of screwing it all up, trying to get a sales manager and salespeople.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I made like, you know, gosh, I mean, how many years did I cost myself?
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: Way too many.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: So help our listeners skip that 10 years.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: What are a couple of things that you learned in that 10 years of pain?
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: Well, number one, that you know, the first four weeks while I'm impatient, a great sales, if you know the activities that a great salesperson should be doing, they don't have to know anything about your business, but they can go do those activities in the first four weeks.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: And if they can't do those activities in the first four weeks, they're not gonna do it.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's number one.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then number two, that a great sales manager was usually 99% of the time not a great salesperson, you know, they're just different animals.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, and then I guess the third thing was that you know, somebody that's out there hunting or you know, knocking on doors like I was is not your account manager.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: And if you want them to develop business from your current accounts, again, different animals.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so those lessons served us well.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, in our last, you know, it took us 30 years to get from one million to six million.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: It took us three years to go from six million to eleven million.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that amazing?
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, crazy.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, to me, the multiples are driven through great systems, strong leadership, clear, predictable growth, that it's not all over the place, that it's not, you know, like a jackrabbit.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: And truly, you know, culture.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you've got a great, if you've got happy people that are gonna stay because, you know, generally speaking, you know, with a higher multiple, they're not looking to get rid of the people.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's right.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's what they're buying.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: They're buying, you know, when Terminix bought us, they didn't buy our customer list, I can tell you.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't pay what they paid for our customers.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: They paid for our culture, they paid for our leadership, they paid for our systems.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: And they were and they were deep, and they wanted to use those and leverage them within the organization.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: Tell us a little bit about the process of being approached by Terminix.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: How do they reach out to you?
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: So we get a call.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, a couple things.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, number one, I'd always been told you have a number.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just not a number, it's what it would take to sell your business.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: What would it take to actually pull the trigger?
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I always always had this list, and I always had coached my brother that we were gonna have this list, and not in our heads on paper, and we did.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: And the other documented this and documented it.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: And did it change every year?
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, a little bit.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, like one of the things that was on the list was I wanted to be one step below the C-suite.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: Who's gonna hire a 55-year-old white guy to be in the C-suite of a two billion dollar company?
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody's doing that, but I could get really close to that, and that was one of the things that I wanted, right?
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: So we had our number, and I knew all the multiples that my friends were selling for, and crazy numbers at that point.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I had the we had the list.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: So we had that.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing that I had been told and taught in Build a Cell was you also have a bro, you have a you have somebody on your by your side that's helping you make sure that you are truly building the company in the best way possible, that it's framed the best.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: That person was Lance Tullius, the Tullius Partners.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: He was one of the best brokers, still is in the pest control industry.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: He understood our industry, he understood, and we talk all the time.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: But he was never shopping and I wasn't for sale.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: So when Terminix came knocking, I had both.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: And they said, Can you meet us at Philadelphia International Airport?
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Yes, and I called Lance and said, Can you fly into Philadelphia?
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember Dion Pearson, who was their chief revenue officer, comes in and he's, you know, telling us about this new CEO that they have.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, There's six months, Nick Varty, who's changing, you know, he's been brought on to trans transform Terminex, and they've been looking and they found us and they they wanted us.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, you know, what would it take for us to get you?
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, we have a list, and you know, but you're not gonna give us this.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, Well, can you get can you show me the list?
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, yeah.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: I said, I'd have to go, like, I don't, I didn't bring it with me.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, if I get online, give me Rick and I a few minutes, and we just want to just make sure the list is right.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: He said, If you if we look at the list and we say yes, will you sign an LOI today?
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: No pressure.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like, well, yeah, if you but you're not going to, but that's fine, yeah, sure, whatever.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: And my brother and I go off and we bring out the list and we hand it to Dion, and he looks it over.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: He looks it down, looks up, looks down, looks up.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think by the third time he looked up, he goes, We're gonna do this.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I looked at my brother and went like WTF.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what now?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: And my brother looks square at B9 and goes, like, you know what now?
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: You've been telling me for all these freaking years, Phil, that we had to have a number, and then if somebody said they would give it to us and all the stuff, we're doing it.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: Sign the piece of paper.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's what you're gonna do.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, crap.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: And it was my baby, right?
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, you're you're because you're given, yeah, right?
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's it's that moment of truth.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like, it's like, wow, like this this is really gonna happen.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: And there's still gonna be due diligence.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's again, it's an LOI.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: We know what it is, but they they know our underlying numbers.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: They've done research, clearly.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: And let me tell you, I'd never, I don't know about you in due diligence, but I would never wish that on anybody.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: I say that all the time.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: I say there's there's no scenario where it doesn't suck, it just sucks.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I tell that to everybody you want the check, you got to deal with the the nightmare of diligence.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Tell us about that relationship.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: When did it start?
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: When did you start kind of thinking about that narrative with him so that you'd be at a position where you could actually, you know, have this conversation with Terminix?
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: Probably, I'd just have to say seven to eight years prior.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god, way early.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: And he was land.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he's an amazing guy.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he he was really looking out for us.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: It was never about his number.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: There were so many things we didn't think about.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I thought I thought of everything, and he would just ask me a question, I'd go like, shit, didn't think about that.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, really made us think.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it was getting it, you know, really, it was the talk conversations leading up to that point.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we were in a great place at that point.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: And if, you know, if it hadn't gone well, no problem.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: We would have just kept building the company.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: So but you wouldn't do it without someone in your corner.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I just had a friend who did it without somebody.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: And God bless him, but I wouldn't.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think it was the most, you know, it was worth every penny.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: There was things I never thought of.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: I can promise you I would have made some really significant mistakes that would have cost me much more than what we ended up, you know, what he ended up taking.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: Plus, it just made me it made the process easier.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't as stressful.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a price for that.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it needed to work for Terminex, it needed to work, and he and he worked both sides too.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: He wanted to make sure it was a good deal for them because look, I was coming to that organization.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't want to feel like they had gotten duped either.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: It would, you know, it has to win for everybody.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: So you sell the business.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: First off, does your brother come with the business?
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: Does does he is he in the business post-transaction?
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so the cool thing was we had very, very, very small earnout.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: It was really short.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it was of small earnout too.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: It was mostly cash up front.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because we were, we had built the system in the company that this company could run without Rick and I.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: Rick was there to go build and transform their bed bug markets.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: And he did.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: Changed the way they did bed bugs.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: And my job was to take the companies that we had acquired that were$20 million or less in revenue that had they had kept the brands and grow them and systemize them and get them deeper and stronger and better.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that was my business unit.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: And it was just way cool.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: What what an M on the job MBA, Corey, was the hardest job I've ever done in my entire life.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I've learned more in the 20 months that I did that than I've done any.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: It was the fastest 20 months of learning that I've ever done because there was things that I had never touched.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, what are two or three things you learned?
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: What was in this, you know, this graduate degree you got post-gradual?
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: One data data.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I would go in once a month to do the monthly operating report to the C-suite.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd go in with my deck of what my business unit was doing, and Dion would have me come into his office a couple of days before, and he'd say, Show me the deck, and we'd be like at 5:30 at night, and I'd pull out my deck, and I was so proud of it.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I'd work my rear end off to get it right.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: And he'd look at me and he'd go, Phil, do you believe this or do you know it?
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: I go, Oh, Dion, I know it.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: And he'd go, Really?
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: Well, where's the data?
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd show him my data points.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: And he'd go, you believe it.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: And he would go, Phil, you go into that room and you tell them, you know it, you're gonna be just chewed alive.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you have nothing.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's your belief.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if you want to say you believe it, that's fine.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: You go do that.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: You do whatever you want.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, the first few times I would go in there and I go in there and said I knew it.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: And Corey, what do you know what happened, right?
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's it's data rules.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I mean, when we're you look, you you're you're a fan of EOS and traction.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: You get data.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: And data isn't just the outcomes, it's the activities.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: Data is critical.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: Data drives, data takes you know, the subjectivity out of the business and brings you objectivity.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I'm not saying data is everything, and it isn't.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I still believe in gut.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: But gosh, should I work more from a data set?
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: I learned the importance of data, where to get the data, how to gather the data, and critically, understanding the activities.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: We talked about you know when you were asking about me knocking on doors.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, back then I was running by data even though I didn't realize I was running by data.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: One thing that's come up on almost every episode of the turn is EOS.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: What the heck is EOS?
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's a system of managing your business.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things I will say is that as businesses get more sophisticated and as they get harder and harder to run because there's just so many people to manage, tools like EOS can be an amazing thing to scale.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: So if you haven't, it might be something to look into because as you'll see, almost everyone we interview, they've sold for huge sums, and they were using EOS to do it.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: So when he's pushing you like this, did it piss you off?
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: Look, I also understood that you know they sometimes too much data takes slows you down too.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I think there's a balance there.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think as a, you know, in my you know, formative you know, in the first 30 years, we didn't have enough systems, we didn't have enough data.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then again, the last three years, we were we were, you know, EOS pushed us to have data.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: EOS pushed us to have systems.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then how were we developing our frontline managers?
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't have a system to develop our frontline managers.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we created a system to develop our frontline managers, and we started having data on that.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: So, Phil, you saw all these businesses Terminix acquired.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm curious, you know, what are some lessons learned for our listeners on like what you guys did to those businesses after you bought them?
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: Let's start with they they didn't have a lot of systems, they didn't have clear target markets, they had probably effective to somewhat effective leadership, you know, they were usually pretty good at doing pest control.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: But all the other stuff, you know, they're flying by the seat of their pants.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: And if you ask them questions, they couldn't give you a concise answer.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that was consistent across all of them.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: And and tons of inefficiency, a lot of inefficiency.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's amazing how many businesses run on gut instinct.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: But let me tell you, as you grow and get more sophisticated, that just doesn't work.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: You have to be able to manage your business in real time with real information.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: Phil talks about this, and in fact, after he sold, the CEO pushed him hard.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it didn't feel that good, but the reality is, he learned a ton.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: And he went from running his business on gut to conviction because he had good data to back it up.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm kind of curious what led you to the point, I know you left at a certain point, what led you to leave the company?
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: Simple.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Nick Vardy, the guy that brought me in, the CEO, had run out of runway with the board.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: Some things happened.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I, you know, Nick called me up in, I think it was January 19th and said, Phil, you know, I have a short list of people that I'm letting know that I'm going to be resigning tomorrow, and you're on the list.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: And uh because Nick cared about me.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Nick brought me on for a reason.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: I was there to help him achieve his vision.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, what what the board had, you know, the deal that he had cut with the board didn't, you know, it didn't pan out, didn't work out.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so Nick resigned, and I then went to HR and said, I'm sure you don't probably want me around.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: And they said, No, not really.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: You're you're, you know, you're with the group.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Okay, so then, you know, if you want to buy me out, you can buy me out.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: And they did.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: They bought me out.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: They did, I, you know, it was a good deal.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so I, you know, we cut the deal the first week of February.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: My last day was April 1.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: So you you sold in 2018.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: What year was this?
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: 2020.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: April was 2020.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: For two years.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, just short of two years.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: What's life looked like for you since that time?
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I tried retiring for three months because I always thought I was going to be retired at age 55.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that lasted for a whole three months.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: I I learned real quickly that retirement will never happen in Phil Cooper's lifetime.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean that I don't have passions.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: I have a lot of passions, Corey.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: I also like making an impact.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I like changing things and touching things and growing things.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: That matters.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: So we had done EOS self-implemented at Cooper Pest for you know three years.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I knew what it was like to, you know, I saw these implementer guys, and I said, that would be kind of cool to be one of them.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I called uh one of the best implementers in the country, Hank O'Donnell, who's local to us, and I said, Do you think that maybe I you could you see me doing this?
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: And he went like, yeah, Phil, you were like born to do that.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so I took that journey and I took that leap.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: And that happened in August of 2020 when I went and became an EOS implementer.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: Gosh, I love it.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I building systems and helping people, you know, build build that operating system for a company and their leadership team and the joy it brings is fantastic.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do people find out about your program?
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: Where can they where can they find you?
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: For accelerated gross profit, it's very simple.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: Look up accelerated grossprofit.com, or you can find me on LinkedIn.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: For EOS, it's phil.cooper at EOSworldwide.com.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: Look, I'll talk shop with anybody.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: I love helping people and talking, and yeah, I'll talk EOS any day of the week, and I'll talk frontline manager and development any day of the week.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: So on that note, uh Phil Cooper, thanks for joining us and talking about your business.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: What a great story.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Corey.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: You're awesome.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, my my pleasure.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: Let's win.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you could do me a favor, like and subscribe.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: I've heard from so many people that they've listened to the show, but we're new and we need subscribers.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it really helps with the algorithm if you click the like button.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you for watching, but also send it to a friend who might enjoy it.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: For more information, visit us at iconocfounders.com.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: Or send us an email at the turn at iconicfounders.com.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because I love it when the good guys win.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: If you've made it to this point in the episode and you haven't watched my interview with Seth Zeller yet, please do.