[00:00:00.000] - Chris
How's it going, man?
[00:00:01.240] - Brandon
You know what? I saw it on your face.
[00:00:03.680] - Chris
Yeah, you knew I was going to... I'm gunning for that first word.
[00:00:07.200] - Brandon
It's getting silly. Now, I've noticed that this has been a pattern. I don't feel like it's a one-off.
[00:00:12.780] - Chris
That's true, man. This is silly. \
[00:00:14.570] - Brandon
Where are we going today?
[00:00:15.590] - Chris
We've got a really great guest. You teed this one up. Oh, my gosh. You guys ended up chatting it up, you and Wayne, with Holden at the recent AGA, Regional Gathering for RIA in Phoenix. Wow, I got to say, I didn't really have a hand in pulling him into the podcast, but what an awesome conversation we had. Holy cow.
[00:00:32.480] - Brandon
Top tier.
[00:00:33.120] - Chris
Do you know how old he is?
[00:00:34.840] - Brandon
I don't. You know what? Honestly, I was like, I bet you this guy completely gets sick and tired of people asking him how young he is because he's a young man, but bro.
[00:00:44.180] - Chris
Yeah, but it does matter, and it is remarkable. This guy has to be in his early 20s. Early to mid 20s, at the very, very latest. But
[00:00:52.150] - Brandon
just a stud.
[00:00:52.960] - Chris
Incredible. I think for those of you that are in family businesses as an employee, or you're an owner, or whatever, you're part of the family, this is going to be just jam-packed full great stuff, either one that you'll identify with if you're so lucky to be in a really healthy, vital family business. If you're not, which I think is probably the bigger majority, you're in a family that's like, We're trying to figure this out. This is hard. I think you're going to discover some nuggets that you can really directly apply to the relationships in your family business. Just so much good stuff here. I know as a dad, it's deeply inspiring to be able to look at somebody who's been the product of great leadership. Yeah, that's true. Like great integrity.
[00:01:30.530] - Brandon
I think many people listening to this already know of or know personally Ben Looper, the founder and senior leader at Southeast Restoration, currently the RAA President.
[00:01:38.000] - Chris
Those of you that had interactions with Ben. You won't be surprised by the content in this, I think. I mean, Holden is absolutely clearly his own person. Absolutely. But you can see the influence. It's special and it's really neat to watch.
[00:01:49.790] - Brandon
I think many of us, we didn't I have a picture of what that would look like to lead and to run a family business in that way.
[00:01:57.570] - Chris
And this just provides a really clear picture of how some of the things you can do to do it well. So here we go. Holden Looper, the CEO of Blue Shield Environmental and part of the Southeast family of businesses. So here we go. Let's go. Wow. How many of you have listened to the Head Hard and Boots podcast? I can't tell you that reaction, how much that means to us. Welcome back to the Head Hard and Boots podcast. I'm Chris. And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead. This new camera angle makes my arms look smaller than yours. I'm noticing that, and I really appreciate it. I thought you did that on purpose.
[00:02:33.330] - Brandon
No, I don't. I didn't, and I am not happy with it. All right, my man. Well, thanks for joining us, dude. When did we run into each other?
[00:02:41.470] - Chris
We were at RIA's regional event, right? Arizona? Yeah, over in Arizona, at ATI.
[00:02:45.280] - Brandon
Yeah, that's right. I think it was a in time that Wayne and I got to escape the Uni-Cloud that hovers over the entire state of Oregon, it feels like, for a time period. And so we got to hang out in the sun and run into you. And you and I, man, we were just BSing back and forth a little bit. And all of a sudden I was like, oh, my gosh, this dude is going to be perfect for the show. And then for those of you that can't see this, we've never actually gotten an outline from a guest before. So this is just a reference to the caliber of guy that Holden is. No less than a two and a half No, it's like I could have submitted this for maybe a business plan.
[00:03:23.710] - Holden
I just graduated college. I thought that's just what you do in places. You submit things and you just submit homework. I thought that was what you wanted.
[00:03:31.350] - Brandon
Oh, man, I love it. It's going to be fun.
[00:03:34.250] - Brandon
All right, well, let's get in. So, hey, we started out with this idea, right, that we were going to talk family business because you clearly are part of one.
[00:03:42.400] - Brandon
So I think we're going to start there. And then we've already identified, I think, some new direction we want to take part of the conversation. But set the stage for us, man. Give us your family history. How are you even on the show and in the industry?
[00:03:55.980] - Chris
Tell us about your small family business.
[00:03:57.850] - Holden
For you all that don't know me, my name is Holden Looper. I'm from Kent, Georgia. Been in restoration my entire life. I started going to the office with dad, sweeping the warehouse before I could remember, really, bugging him any chance I could get.
[00:04:10.300] - Holden
And then I went on my first fire job when I was 11. I talked about being catapulted in. It was a fire job, total loss, renters, had no renters insurance. And then an 11-year-old hops out with two by fours and a sheet of plywood ready to board their house up. I just got catapulted into it. And since then I was like, man, there's no other industry where you can help people in their worst time other than a firefighter or police or something like that. I love building, so I kept hanging out. Then when I was 13, I started working on the back of the MET trucks in the summer. I was the crawl space kid that they would throw under the crawl spaces and suck in water every summer and winter break I could get. Tunnel rat in Vietnam. Yeah. Send the kid. Exactly. We can talk about it a little bit later, but my dad really wanted me to start at the lowest level and be the grunt and figure it all out and stuff. So did that. When I was in school, in high school.
[00:05:03.320] - Holden
I went to a unique school.
[00:05:05.220] - Holden
I went two days a week and home-schooled three. So like a college-ish set up. So I had the opportunity to work while I went to high school, worked at Chick-fil-A, just because it was easier on a schedule, you can't really go to school part-time and be a mid-tech. So I wanted I wanted to get away from the family business. Worked at Chick-fil-A, graduated. Towards the end, I'd always stayed connected with Southeast, editing videos for their training and helping Trent, our COO, just trying to figure out like the special projects and that stuff. And then when I went to college, went to Kennesaw State for my Bachelors in Construction Management and got the opportunity to go work at Chick-fil-A Corporate down in Atlanta. Their restaurant development department helped build some stores, strategic reinvestment, maintenance, that stuff for the summer. It's very irregular for them to ask any intern to stay on. But I was young enough, they were like, Hey, if you want to stay on, go to school semester, come work here, and then you'll get a job when you come out. I met this inflection point of, I mean, anybody else in the world working at Chick-fil-A Corporate is a really big deal, but I just knew it didn't fulfill me as much as restoration did.
[00:06:06.180] - Holden
I turned them down, came back, worked at Southeast the rest of my college. I went to school at night, and I worked during the day, and I graduated in three years. Yeah, I worked during the day and then I would go to school from 7: 30 to 9: 00-ish at night. I did that whole thing, came back, and then when I graduated, we decided, Hey, we think the next best step for Southeast, we saw a gap in our service offerings, a beautiful service restoration company, and this environmental space of asbestos abatement and testing. We met a guy who's now my operations manager, Ben, and he said, Hey, I really know this asbestos stuff, but I don't really know the business stuff. I'm an operator, not a business owner, and you know the Southeast systems and that stuff. What do you think about it? Back in August, we started working on it, and then we got catapulted, ended the business with Hurricane Helene that came through in October. Then since then, we've just been growing and growing. We've now got 10 on our team. We're licensed in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee. We're continuing to help Southeast and other restoration companies around here try to do environmental work as safe and compliant as quick as we can.
[00:07:07.100] - Brandon
Love it, dude. I don't know if you guys are picking up on this, but clearly, communication is a soft skill that you have in spades, my friend. And this is like one of the things that it hit me when I was chatting with you when we were out in Arizona. It's like, man, concise, clear thought, knows where he's going, is clearly driven. I've just really been pumped, man, to get you on here and just let the crowd hear you talk about your worldview and business because it's just absolutely phenomenal.
[00:07:33.110] - Chris
So what can I dig in, though? I want to maybe start us out on a part of your story. Are you going to go in your own immediately? No, not yet. Okay. I don't know. Just hold on, because it's coming. Yeah, well, just this family business topic, we have so many clients that I think there's just so many family businesses within restoration. And I think it's frankly the dream, including myself, to one degree or another, the idea of building a company that someday our kids may work in or whatever is, I think, something that a lot of entrepreneurs have.
[00:08:01.570] - Chris
You talk about getting started at 11 and then 13, and then I imagine there's lots of in between or since. But how did your dad set that up? Was it just like, Hey, your mom's going to drop you off at the shop at 08: 00 AM in the morning, and just get out on the trucks and do some things? Or was there a process? Did your dad sit you down, Hey, I want you to come work in the business. Here's what... What was that like? Because I think it happens different for a lot of different families. Yeah, I think I'm a big family and business history nerd. Studied a lot of great family businesses, studied a lot of really bad family businesses, and my dad has as well. I think he knew from an early on, that's just what we did. I have two sisters, an older and a younger sister, both separated by three years. I'm the middle boy, so I just always hung out with dad and always wanted to go to the shop with him and see the employees.
[00:08:53.320] - Holden
Back in that time, we were one, two offices and go and shredding papers, highlighting papers that they didn't need highlighted just to keep me around. I would do anything they asked. Then once I got to 13, it was the age where summer camp started going away. My mom was like, Holden has ADHD. I can't keep him here all summer. He's a wreck. You just need to go do something with him. My dad was like, Hey, I don't... In Georgia, at least, the law is you got to be really like 15 to start working places legally. But there's some rules with family business. You can work if you're a family business. I started working when I was 13 in the mid-department. I mean, very early on, he was like, You're going to have to work twice as hard than anybody else is out there just because you're holding. It sucks, but you got to work twice as hard. You got to do the stuff that nobody wants to do just because you're holding. And so starting off like that, I knew I wanted to do mitigation just because it was the fun thing. You got to remove stuff and suck water.
[00:09:49.870] - Holden
But yeah, dad would drop me off in the morning at the shop. Then whenever we got back, I was working 60, 70 hours back in those days, in the summers. My mom would sometimes if it was super late, I remember One night, I was working with a guy. We had done two full basement guts that day. We were coming back. It was just me and him. It was 12: 00 at night. She met us at a racetrack, and he just picked me up and rolled me out of the box truck and was like, I'm so sorry for working holding like this. She picked me up at the racetrack and took me home. And so, yeah, that's what I did until I got a little bit older. And then once I got to later high school, I got to start working at our support center with Trent, working on the special projects. I really found a niche in complex commercial mitigation, really large time and material billing, things like that. When a 13-year-old or a 14-year-old or a 16-year-old is told that, I can imagine internally, part of you may have felt like, well, that's not fair.
[00:10:45.340] - Holden
And there may have been times of resentment where you resented having to always carry that burden, so to speak. What was that like for you? And was that ever a wrestling match between you and dad? That's not fair or anything like that over the years? I don't think it ever really got to that point where we were frustrated each other. I just I think I knew and understand.
[00:11:04.840] - Chris
As I grew up, the business kept growing and I saw the weight of the business on my dad's shoulders, and I knew that I wasn't going to be an extra weight. I don't want him to have to work harder and make up for me being not a hard worker or people not like him to work with me or whatever the case may be. So no, I think just growing up, I knew that you got to work twice as hard.
[00:11:27.800] - Holden
And it wasn't like a one-time thing. It was like he told me pretty frequently, Hey, you got to work twice as hard. It wasn't like a one-time thing. He told me pretty frequently, Hey, you got to work twice as hard. It was like every time I went to Southeast, he reminded me, Sorry, you got to work twice as hard and do all the things that nobody wants to do just because you're holding and just because of our last name. You're going to get a bad rap. I don't think I really appreciated it until I was probably in high school and I went back in a different capacity not working on the back of the trucks. All of the techs, the lead technicians, and the guys working in the field really appreciated working for me. When I started going on to these larger complex mitigation claims is what I got into with this time of material billing and other special projects. I had a respect from them because I had done everything that they had to do, and I still have a great relationship with all of our field staff because I was there. I knew exactly what it was like to not know when you were going home that day and having to work on call and all that stuff.
[00:12:45.710] - Holden
I think it was the right call, no doubt about it in my mind. But I don't think it was ever a point of contention between me and my dad. It was just that's unfortunately how it is. There's good things and bad things about family business. Yeah.
[00:12:57.980] - Brandon
That's interesting, your comment about I didn't want to be another burden for my dad. Okay, I'm curious. Like, context, what age are you having thoughts like that? Because that's hard for me to believe that a high schooler or younger is really... And that's not bagging on a high schooler, but I know what I was doing in high school, and I wasn't looking at my dad and being like, I really don't want to be a weight on that guy's shoulders. So when was that showing up?
[00:13:22.240] - Chris
Yeah, I don't think many teenagers are thinking about the burden they are on others. Yeah.
[00:13:26.510] - Holden
Yeah, no. And I don't think it was like I saw my dad super stressed out, pulling his hair out. I just saw the magnitude of the business and the influence that my family had, and I wasn't going to be a reason. I don't want to negatively tarnish that reputation or legacy that he had created. And so, yeah.
[00:13:43.110] - Brandon
Was there a lot of communication at home around those ideas and concepts? Was business open dialog at home or what did that look like?
[00:13:50.820] - Holden
Yeah, I think for better, for worse, you can ask my sisters, they probably think about it a little differently than I do. But I mean, that's just what you talked about at the dinner table. I think It's very healthy for families in business to talk about the business. There is a quote that I heard when I was at Chick-fil-A, The health of the business does not always determine the health of the family, but the health of the family can greatly determine the health of the business. And so my sisters are still not directly involved with the company, but they still show up to our big events. My mom is my dad's executive assistant, and so she does us emails. It's a very much so family affair. Like I said, right, wrong, or different, we might do it too much sometimes. But yeah, it's a very open thing about what's happening at Southeast, what's happening in the locations. Even at a young age, they did not stray away, which I think is important from the hard things, whether it be having to close a location or fire somebody that I knew or let them go or, Hey, somebody made a really bad mistake and their last day was today.
[00:14:48.570] - Holden
They never really steered away from those conversations from us. I think it really benefited me now because I've seen those things through growing up and seeing my dad invited me to leadership team meetings and stuff like that when I was young, just to see how it goes. Now when I'm presenting to the leadership teams, I've known those general managers for my whole life. They're like uncles to me. I think starting your kids out in the business at a really young age is really important.
[00:15:13.620] - Brandon
That's so interesting. Just blown away. In those earlier years at the dinner table, were these intentional conversations or was it just learning by exposure for the most part?
[00:15:25.340] - Holden
No, I think it was just what we did. That's just the life we did. Hey, what did you do today at work? It wasn't always about that stuff. Don't get me wrong. But I mean, that's just what our life was like. The business was a very big part of our life. My dad worked really hard at it and we knew it.
[00:15:42.310] - Chris
Were there patterns of behavior or certain things that you observed your dad doing consistently? I mean, you spend a lot of time with him, and obviously you're very active in the business. The behaviors or standards or disciplines that you observed your dad having within the context of the business or his personal habits and stuff that you ended up adopting and still leverage in your own leadership today?
[00:16:04.020] - Holden
Yeah, there's a bunch of them that can come to my mind. One really simple one that I knew growing up is my dad, not that he doesn't like alcohol or doesn't drink. He's got, between us, one of the greatest bourbon collections I've ever seen. But whenever he was in a Southeast shirt or he drove a Southeast truck, he would never get behind the wheel if he had a drink because he never wanted even one drink. If he got pulled over to tarnish his reputation or the company's reputation. If he got put on a mugshot website somewhere or in an industry event, you'll never see anybody with a Southerners Blue Shield logo at any of the happy hours with a drink. Not that we don't like it. We just don't think it's worth tarnishing a reputation and snowballing. And it's easier to say, hey, we're just not going to do that. And selfishly, we've saved probably thousands and thousands of dollars at company events, not having to have alcohol or anything like that. But that's one little thing that he did. Also, he never travels alone with a lady other than my mom. That's a big reason why she's his executive assistant now, because they can travel together.
[00:17:07.450] - Holden
It's easier for them. But driving together in cars as simple as, hey, we're going to lunch. Somebody's in my car other than my wife. You got to have more than one person. So little things like that just to guard our hearts. It's really easy to slip into that. So garden our hearts, garden our morals, little things like that.
[00:17:24.530] - Chris
I respect that a lot.
[00:17:25.380] - Brandon
Big time, dude.
[00:17:26.710] - Chris
Big time. Wisdom.
[00:17:27.530] - Brandon
I'm wondering, as growing up in this environment, it's like an incubator for opportunity. It feels like, at what point did you look to your left and right with fellow students and say, I'm not exactly like the masses. Was that always obvious?
[00:17:43.790] - Holden
Yeah, you can call it an incubator for opportunity or failure. I mean, you're going to go one way or the other. But yeah, I mean, one really practical example. I was a junior in high school. I played soccer all growing up and I got to my junior year and was like, I'm not going to be an an MLS star. I'm not that good. I probably couldn't even play in college. I enjoy it. I enjoy playing with my friends, but I'd much rather make money and set myself up, work at a different company like Chick-fil-A, learn their values, then play sports. And so I decided I am not going to play sports after my junior year of high school because I wasn't going to be a professional MLS player, but I was going to be a professional somewhere. So I thought, Hey, probably should start working instead of doing sports. That was one thing that I can remember switching up So cool.
[00:18:31.730] - Brandon
Did you have a sounding board in your dad? I mean, this is almost steering a little bit, but man, was that an intentional opportunity for you to be coached a little bit in terms of some of these strategies, the way you're thinking about the world? Or was it all just mirrored for you? Or what did that influence look like?
[00:18:48.740] - Holden
No, I mean, I don't want it to seem like I was in a boot camp to become an executive. That's not how my life was. I was a very normal kid. I went to school and I just think I really enjoyed work and I really I really enjoyed the family business and I really enjoyed restoration. My dad just always hung out with me and that's what we talked about. We talked about what the next thing Southeast was doing or projects that were going on. I mean, that's just how he operated. It wasn't like he was, Hey, reading me the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Leaders every night when I was 10. I mean, it wasn't like that. It was just growing up, that's just what me and him did. I was just very interested in it and he included me on everything. So cool.
[00:19:28.260] - Brandon
I've got some families in my mind right now, just folks that we've had the honor of working with over the last few years. And I'm just thinking we've watched them do their own generational shift where they're the ones taking over the business. And many of them are at that age where they're beginning and have started their own families. I'm hearing your words and part of me is thinking about some of those families and going, man, their little incubator program is about to start. Their kids are going to start showing up at company events and having an influence starting to pick up on what's going on around them. And I think what's really neat is when we hear a man like you talk about what that meant and ultimately how it influenced the early trajectory of your life. I think it's like, wow, what a cool opportunity that we have when we have these kinds of companies to expose our kids to just some really great battlegrounds to learn some really important lessons about life and impact.
[00:20:23.180] - Chris
Along these lines, man, I'm just so curious, and it's not like we're trying to dig up dirty laundry here, but I think just the reality for so many business owners is there are some really, really dark times that you go through. Oh, yeah. Whether it be financially, where it's like a struggle to meet payroll, taking on debt, filling up the line of credit. There's these periods of time that you go through where you're scrapping your way through it. And a lot of people, they turn to substances and things to try to manage that stress. And of course, that has its own impact on a family, potentially. Can you talk about just your experience of the really hard times growing up? And what did How did you learn through watching your dad and your mom navigate those things as a family in the early days? Presumably, maybe even recently, you've experienced challenges and hardships.
[00:21:10.510] - Holden
Yeah, I can think. I mean, Southeast isn't today what it was growing up. I mean, my dad started in a single wide trailer with my mom, and we moved into a small house. That's where I was born and had a really normal upbringing as kids. We didn't really know what Southeast really was outside of knowing immediately what it was in the industry or anything like or size-wise or anything. I remember times where my mom was like, Hey, dad is going to... Southeast is a little slow right now. Dad's going to cut back his salary a little bit. I just wanted them to know that. We're watching it. It's nothing to be scared about, but like, Hey, he's putting our own salary on the line to help Southeast grow. And then there's been really, really good years, too. I mean, those are a couple of things I can think of. We've had family in the business, but not directly nuclear family. But we had a family member that was a general manager of one of our other locations that didn't work out and my dad had to let go. I remember that being a really hard time in our family's business journey because how do you let your uncle or nephew go from the business and still keep in contact with them?
[00:22:12.870] - Holden
We had a very close family friend who referred us somebody that was in their family. Some stuff happened and they had to be let go. When they're your closest family friends and you have to let one of their relatives go, it's tricky. Yeah, it's not all good times. But me knowing that, I knew everything that was going growing up. And so I've seen a lot of it. I've seen techs that I drove within the box truck that failed drug test later on in my life that I had ridden with for years that failed drug test. We had to let them go just because they couldn't get back on the wagon. And so that's really hard when you work with somebody for that long. And then out of the blue, you find out, hey, they failed a drug test and you got to go. They just got let go. And you had a relationship with this person. And so, yeah, it's not always good times. But I think that's what made me. And I've learned from those experiences. But, yeah.
[00:23:01.850] - Chris
Sounds like you guys never hit anything from each other. Yeah. And there was a lot of stability in that because it sounds like from what you're saying, your parents were so transparent about what was happening in the company that bad things happen, good things happen. It sounds like you're saying you just learned that we're going to get through this. This is another thing we're going to deal with and we're going to move through this and it's going to be okay. Is that the general sense that you had growing up? Is that hard stuff happens, but we're going to figure it out?
[00:23:28.360] - Holden
Yeah. I don't think they ever sheltered us from information. They might have not shared the full truth of what was happening just for specific things. But yeah, they were very open with us on how things were going in the business. We never really shied away from that. Most of the time I knew before other leadership team members or things like that, just because that's what was happening in my dad's world that might not have affected the company yet that I just knew about. And so I was top secret certified since I was a little kid because I knew a lot of things and future plans for Southeast that no one else knew. I might know somebody was getting let go or somebody was getting a promotion before they did. And so I always respected the privacy of the information and never really shared it. But yeah, they were very, very transparent in all the information growing up. That's just how I grew up. I didn't really know there was a different way to do business until I got older and found that's really not how things go most of the time.
[00:24:22.230] - Brandon
Yeah, I think unbelievably not so, right? So okay, so that takes a lot of interpersonal skill, though. So can you point towards some of the things that was teaching you that to have that ability to say, this is just information that wouldn't be great for me to share? I mean, when you're young, those are difficult things to keep front of mind. I mean, what?
[00:24:44.070] - Holden
Yeah. I mean, there is a phrase I can remember my dad always telling me. He's like, hey, I'm going to tell you this, but if I find out you tell anybody, you're not going to hear anything like this again. And so he would all... If there was something that he didn't want me to share, he would preface it and be like, hey, I'm letting you know something just to keep you in the loop or let you know what's happening, but you can't really say anything. Or once you break that trust with me, I'm not going to be able to keep sharing these things with you. I never really wanted to break his trust like that. I always respected when he would tell me something like that to keep it to myself.
[00:25:17.270] - Chris
And answer force. We tend not to give the attention to our call and take that I think we really ought to have as restores. And of course, one of the biggest challenges we have with our call and take, whether it's an in-house receptionist or a service like And the answer force, is what do you do when your receptionist goes out to lunch? Well, answer force makes that very easy to solve for. They're 24/7. You have a receptionist or a call intake person that's out for maternity leave, out on vacation, et cetera. Answer force has a solution to all of those things. And I think, too, it also solves for us having a very consistent, repeatable call intake process. We all know how important that is. A hundred %.
[00:25:54.170] - Brandon
And the cool thing is, actually, we just hung out with these guys and they let us know, let us in on some big feature updates that have recently been pushed through the system. First, verified contacts. Verified contacts, basically it allows the system to understand that this is a repeat caller, and then it allows them to auto capture and fill those details as part of the intake process. So smoother, more professional intake, much easier to give that client that impression. That's also for commercial. This isn't the first time you've called, right? Yeah. We'll listen to the rest of these sets because I think they're super applicable to our commercial opportunity. Specialized scripting, okay? This is great because this is everything from holiday shifts, after-hour shifts. I mean, you name it, there's different reasons or different layers of the cake, if you will, just based on what's going on in terms of call volume, what's going on time of day. With specialized scripting, the script then will match that. It's shifting live, if you will, along with that richer context of what's actually happening in the business. Then this other thing, I thought this was super cool, is dedicated phone numbers.
[00:26:56.370] - Brandon
Going back to that repeat client or that key client or customer, we now can associate a specific phone number to them. And so what happens is, is they get received very uniquely. I can imagine creating a custom script for that client. We now can recognize a repeat caller and autofill and speed up their intake. And then on top of that, there's a specialized number that's dedicated to them. You really get to marry up that professional service offering that we're promising, if you will, during the prospect.
[00:27:27.830] - Chris
Right from the jump, if you've got a commercial client with specific needs or specific expectations, build that into the script to call and take.
[00:27:34.690] - Brandon
It's beautiful. Yeah, it's super powerful. Another one is just access to information wherever you are. I don't know how many of you are already currently using answer force. You should take it seriously in terms of getting a demo and checking them out. But if and when you shift over to them as a partner, the cool thing is now is that you've got access to all this data, all this information on the go from anywhere on your mobile device. You can literally check inbound out on calls, you can listen to recordings. So actively coach the team midstream, right? And so, again, just a ton of efficiency, a ton of automation, and just higher levels of customization coming out of answer force.
[00:28:13.040] - Chris
And it is so stink affordable. This isn't just for big multimillion dollar companies. This is for you that's still working out of your home shop, your garage. And it's also for you that are running a $25 million operation with four locations. It's pretty extraordinary. They work with some of the biggest companies in our industry and many of the smallest ones as well.
[00:28:33.080] - Brandon
So, okay. Actionable. So, guys, we have talked about our friendship and relationship to these guys for a long time. Many of you know in the recent, probably, year and over the last several months, just this hyper focus on the efficiency and quality of our estimating. At the end of the day, our cash flow is heavily impacted by our team's skill and competency around writing a really comprehensive sheet and really making sure that the scope is accurate. One of the powerful things that Actionable has is their actual Xactimate profile. This profile is a live AI tool that's monitoring you as you write the estimate, and as you're implementing specific line items, it's helping you be sure that you've really taken into full account all the individual elements and line items associated with this element of the scope that you're trying to accomplish. I'm not going to highlight any specific teams, but we have heard robust numbers from teams When they're using this. We're hearing anything from 5%, 6%, even 8% top-line growth, specifically from the quality of their estimates increasing.
[00:29:39.250] - Chris
I remember when they rolled this out to you that one of the use cases or part of the value that they were trying to hit on is the ability for us to bring up a new estimator quickly up to the standard and competency and the results, ultimately, of the more experienced estimators on the team. This is an incredible onboarding and training tool to get somebody up to where they're very, very competent and producing quality estimates just that much faster.
[00:30:05.250] - Brandon
Way faster. Just one last thing I want to hyper index on is they have just an absolute boatload of white papers and F9 supporting notes. This is That's one thing that you could participate in being a member with Actionable Insights. But guys, we all know that getting our estimates approved in that negotiation phase is hard right now. It just feels like every carrier is significantly understaffed. They're fighting for air, we're fighting for air, and anything we can do to reduce that friction is better. The better we are at providing really good support for what we're calling out in our scope and why we're calling for it, the better. These white papers, these F9 support notes are super powerful. Man, it's been a little while, but we've been refueling the relationship with CNR quite a bit lately, and that's been good, man. I think both teams got so ding busy. We had a tough time locking in and getting some FaceTime together. But the team over at CNR has been great for our industry, you guys. We've often referred to Michelle as a friend of the industry. She really is keyed in on giving us what we need in terms of tools, communication, intel on the industry.
[00:31:11.770] - Brandon
We just continue to encourage you guys, participate, make sure that you're receiving your quarterly copies and that you're getting all the online content that just comes in boatloads from their team. Cnr magazine, guys, pay attention. Make sure that you're participating and getting your intel from that team as well. Liftify, bro.
[00:31:30.760] - Chris
Yeah. Liftify, it's interesting. Yesterday, I was just seeing one of our clients was getting awarded their 750 Google review trophy, and they were already talking about hitting a thousand. A thousand. That's right.
[00:31:44.500] - Brandon
Which Somebody has done. Yes.
[00:31:46.240] - Chris
One of our clients has done. It's remarkable. And I think the most remarkable thing that people are discovering, we're seeing this every single day with our clients, is that when you start upping the volume of Google reviews you're getting consistently week after week, the recency. When you're getting the recency dialed in and just meaning every week you're adding Google reviews to your profile, dramatic jumps in organic phone calls and lead gen. And of course, who doesn't want that? Every single one of us, including floodlight, we want that. And that's why we've indexed on. We use Liftify to build up our Google reviews. So it's a simple turnkey service. They've really created a process for capturing the most quality Google reviews from the jobs they are already getting. So if If you want to get more work, grow your revenue just off of the existing work you're already getting, Liftify is a big part of how to do that. And it's simple. It's very, very cost-effective. From our experience with Liftify and what we've seen with our clients, significantly better value and better results than many of the other platforms that some of you might already be trying.
[00:32:51.320] - Chris
So if you're not happy with the number of Google reviews you're getting, you need to reach out to Liftify. And I think as a point of reference, it's worth us saying, Liftify expects 20 to 25 % conversion. So think about that within your own numbers. If you're doing a thousand jobs a year, you should be adding 200 to 250 Google reviews to your profile every single year. If you're performing under that, you owe it to yourself to reach out to liftify. Com/ floodlight.
[00:33:17.980] - Brandon
One last thing to add to that as part of their more recent integration of AI or advancing that integration of AI, one of the big focuses for their team is gathering more live project data and analytics for you guys. Really what this is focused on is equipping all of us to create better customer experiences. Not only are they keyed in and driving Google reviews for us, but now they've actually turned the corner and began developing toolkits for us that use Liftify to actually be getting information that can help us modify our service delivery to create better client experiences. Midstream. Super powerful. Midstream. We're talking mid-job. Yeah, super powerful. All right, liftify. Com. All right, guys. Thanks for hanging out with us. Let's get back to the show. If it's okay, and obviously, Holden, you don't have to answer this, but we're going to go back a little bit, non-business for a moment. Yeah. What was happening? What kinds of things was your dad doing or can you recall dad did that built this almost a follower, you were really paying attention. You're really admiring him and his character. What was happening in your guys' relationship that created that?
[00:34:29.560] - Holden
I don't No, I think honestly, it was just a blessing from God. My dad's still one of my best friends, and he has been for a long time. He was my coach growing up, and he was always involved. He never missed events for us for work or anything like that. Even recently, he's the RIA president currently. He's got a couple more days left until he hands that down. But he wouldn't do it until my younger sister graduated from high school because he didn't want to compromise missing events and stuff like that. He was always very involved with us, and I think that's just how he grew up. I can't point back to one thing, but he's always been a mentor in my life. And that's just me and his relationship. There's nothing I can really point back to to say this is what he did. It was the thing. He was just intentional.
[00:35:12.940] - Brandon
So even in the busyness, because Obviously, when you're a kid, he's in the midst of building and grinding the foundation of the business and somehow dragging you to the shop or whatever it was, he was able to continue to show you he's prioritizing his family, you specifically.
[00:35:29.550] - Holden
Yeah, part of it was bringing me to the shop like, Hey, I got to go work on a Sunday afternoon so I can get caught up before Monday comes, or, Hey, I got to go in on a Saturday, or, Hey, it's your break and I know I want to hang out with you, but I got to do work, so might as well come to the shop with me and hang out and bug all the other people in the offices. But yeah, I mean, Southeast has just been our second family my whole life. A lot of the people here know that. One of our earliest employees, she's literally known as Auntie Jill to me. She's worked for us for 25 years and I just know her as Auntie Jill. And she comes to Easter and Christmas, and she's Auntie Jill. So, I mean, it's just been a very family thing growing up. But, yeah.
[00:36:07.470] - Brandon
It's such a healthy-It's so cool. It's just a healthy backbone across this entire story arc. I think Sometimes we hear stories like this, and I'll speak for myself. I hear stories like this, and I think to myself, some of the things that I did or didn't do with my kids growing up. And there is a sense of there was something special your dad paid attention to. So even though it's not the one thing, there's a theme in his character in the way that he prioritized certain decisions. And clearly it had this long lasting, positive impact. I mean, the caliber of individual you are speaks, I think, in and of itself. But then just like this, just a very high integrity and your willingness to work hard and be in those uncomfortable positions and not really have a crappy attitude. Now, I think what we have to do at some point is get Ben on the show and be like, okay, tell us the truth. I'm like, What did he really like as a kid? We'll find out.
[00:37:00.470] - Holden
We'll do a duo podcast.
[00:37:01.980] - Brandon
That's right. We'll find out. We'll swap story. Okay, so I'm interested. So we've been hanging out in this kid portion of this. Yeah. Obviously, now, though, you are an active business owner. You talked about that very briefly. You're in the throes of building your own organization that's partnered with the team at large. Start to move into that with us. In terms of now, are you recalling some of these experiences and now able to apply them more intentionally now that you're at the helm of your own organization?
[00:37:30.650] - Holden
Oh, yeah. I think it was probably five plus years ago. Southeast Holding Group is the parent company of Southeast Restoration Group. And there's four partners and they're like my uncles, because I've known them my whole life. And they figured out, hey, to do this full circle restoration thing, we need to have some more service offerings and we're going to strategically partner with people. So we opened a contents division. We opened a Contents division, we opened a Textiles Cleaning division. And then when I graduated, they were looking for the next thing for me to do. Was it going to be where I'd worked in complex commercial claims for mitigation for a while? And those come in, and when they come in, they're really big and really tricky. But we didn't have enough coming in every day that it was enough to staff a full-time position for that. Then we just been fell in our lap, and they had known eventually we might want to do asbestosabatement. There's not a lot of companies in our area that do residential. You can find asbestosabatement contractors, but most of that is hard bid Commercial GC stuff. Not a lot that's specific to insurance restoration, who know the claim process, who use Xactimate and all that stuff.
[00:38:37.720] - Holden
They knew the industry was shifting to that. We just didn't have a lot of service providers. They said, Hey, you know the systems, you know the culture, you've been ingrained with it. We know you're young, but we think you're the right guy to go and start this new company with Ben. We started working on that last August, and then Hurricane Helene hit, and thank the Lord, our license got approved. It That's the craziest thing in Georgia. You have to work with another contractor to get experience before you can get licensed as an abatement contractor if you don't have experience. I had to go find a competitor to let me work with him and him sign off on all my supervisor papers. I found a guy to do it, and then Hurricane Helene hit, and we had 35 jobs that came dumping and hundreds that we had to go test and work with our hygienist. We got thrown into it, thrown into the deep end to figure it out. Then January, we switched over to the new company of Blue Shield just to expand our service offering. And now we've got a team of 10 and we've just been going.
[00:39:33.990] - Holden
But yeah, a lot of the same backbone and culture of Southeast, it's still the same family of companies. We had our big annual meeting yesterday for Southeast and all the Blue Shield people are there and the textiles and packouts people are there, too. So it's still same family, just different logo on the chest.
[00:39:48.680] - Chris
So Holden now as a business owner, business executive, how do you continue to grow and learn? Are there podcast, books, public figures that you look to for inspiration and that stuff?
[00:40:02.770] - Holden
Yeah, jokingly, I mean, Southeast, they joke it's... They're like, We're a leadership development company. We just get funded by construction to be able to do that stuff. And so we have, I mean, I think we have four or five different programs, specific programs for leadership development. I just went through one of them, which was Emerging Leaders, where you read through seven-ish books and go through and learn about yourself, learn how to time manage, all the things you think about. So reading a lot. I've done all the certifications I can think of. I've got like 40 something now. I mean, I'm triple master as of this month. I've got all the asbestos and lead disciplines. I can pretty much get OSHA 30, 40 and the Purdue. I mean, all the industry knowledge I could get. I worked really hard since I was 16. That's when I started my IICRC classes. And then I finished them up in this last little span before we started Blue Shield. I wanted to get those classes knocked out. And I just finished my last a couple of weeks ago.
[00:41:02.110] - Chris
Congratulations. That's an achievement. Yeah. Wow.
[00:41:05.140] - Brandon
You were 16 when you started your IICRC?
[00:41:08.230] - Holden
Yeah, I took my WRT when I was 16. They had to call the exam place because they were like, Is there an age limit on this? It was funny. They had to call them and ask if it was okay if I took in. They're like, We don't have anything that says it can't. Phenomenal.
[00:41:22.460] - Brandon
That's phenomenal. What does it started to shift for you in terms of some of the examples that you're setting for your now down downline team? I don't know how to phrase this, man, but it's like, what are the core principles that you took right to the front of the line? It's like, Hey, if anything gets passed on to my team from a leadership position, it's going to be these things. What are those?
[00:41:45.010] - Holden
Yeah, so that's probably been the hardest part of my seat as general manager because I've seen Southeast work at things for 25 years. Then they're like, Hey, you got four months to instill the best of it into this small little team. We got a different accounting system. We've got a different project management system It was like, Hey, how do we get all of the great things about Southeast distilled into this new little company? So I've tried doing... I mean, at the core where your Christian values, Southeast, Colossians 3: 23, whatever you do, work for it as if you're working for the Lord, not for man. And so, I mean, our team, we start huddles off, we start meetings off with prayer, and it's all about that. But all of the business things like huddles and something that we're really big on at Southeast right now is Teams and Microsoft teams, and the task the reoccurring task that we've really tried to instill into the new team at Blue Shield to help us stay organized and that stuff. Book reviews, we're trying to get spun up with Blue Shield, but with all the little minor differences, we're still trying to figure it out.
[00:42:43.360] - Holden
I mean, don't get me wrong, we're still really young and we're just scrapping every single day to try to figure out how to get everything done. It's a blessing to have Southeast and get all these jobs in. And it's also like there's no slow ramp up. It's like, Hey, you're turned on, let's go. And you're held to the standard that the company that was there 20 before us had been holding. You're held to that same standard day one. That's been a little tricky, but yeah, we're still trying every day to continue to instill a lot of the things that make Southeast great. We're trying to still instill those into the new company.
[00:43:14.230] - Brandon
How do you How do you balance that, man? It's tricky.
[00:43:17.040] - Holden
I'll let you know when I figure it out.
[00:43:19.050] - Brandon
Yeah, when you figure it out, you'll send us an out.
[00:43:22.010] - Holden
We'll have a part two to this thing because I haven't figured it out quite yet.
[00:43:25.990] - Brandon
What's personal life looks like outside of work? Is there such thing right now?
[00:43:29.670] - Holden
Oh, Yeah. So I married my high school sweetheart in November, Maggie. She's my only girlfriend. We dated since we were in high school and went through college. We went to different schools and still dated. Our parents grew up right down the road from each other, like two minutes, and we never knew it until high school. And I met her at Chick-fil-A. Some people say it's like meeting a girl at Chick-fil-A is like church. If she's gone through the Chick-fil-A interview process, then she's probably pretty good. So yeah, married Maggie back in November. We live pretty close to the shop. I've gotten back in to go off. My dad, he had a cancer in his shoulder back when I was younger, and he's gone through probably seven shoulder surgeries. And some of his most recent ones were when I started college. And when I got to college, I was like, hey, I'm going to pick up golf. I played a little bit in middle school, but I was like, I'm going to pick up golf so that when he gets rehabbed, I'll I'm really able to compete with him, and I still can't compete with him.
[00:44:18.320] - Holden
He's insane. But he had the shoulder surgery before last. He had gotten a dislocated. He had to go back and redo it. And he shot six over with a dislocated shoulder and what my... But after practicing every day for two years. But I'm still working to beat him at golf. But yeah.
[00:44:35.760] - Brandon
So you're finding time. I think that was actually one of the jokes that Ben had with you guys at RIA. He said something about the fact that you were somehow still finding some time to be able to go out and do some golf.
[00:44:45.590] - Holden
Yeah, that's actually pretty fun. It's funny. It's family's in business. You schedule all your vacations around industry conferences. So next week we're going to RAA. My sister's and my mom and wife are flying out. Wednesday, we're going to Disney World. That's our summer vacation is attached to RAA. Me and him took a couple of days of PTO, got to play in Arizona for some golf right before that conference. So, yeah, it's way easier now, I would say, because when I was in school, I would work from 7: 00 or 8: 00 to 4: 30 at night, go to school from 4: 30 or 5: 00 to 7: 00 or 8: 00 at night. There was no time to do anything except weekends. When I graduated, I was like, Hey, I got to find some stuff to do. I got all this time on my hands now. I don't have to do schoolwork and homework on the weekends. So, yeah, graduating, that's been the best part is not having to do anything after work, start the second full-time job.
[00:45:34.030] - Brandon
You got your half your life back.
[00:45:35.930] - Holden
Yeah, that's right.
[00:45:36.750] - Brandon
I'm super curious, man, with Maggie. Did she know ahead of time then? I'm assuming she did. She knew what she was getting on?
[00:45:44.980] - Holden
No. Very intimidating. It was interesting trying to... And still, she's still figuring it out. She came to our annual meeting yesterday and she's like, wow, you work at a really cool place. And I'm like, you've been around us for five years now. You didn't know it was a cool place. You didn't what I was doing. She's like, I had no idea. So I mean, yeah, she's still figuring it out. But yeah, her family is just, I guess, regular people. And both of her parents have regular jobs and not family businesses. So it was very different coming into a family business and probably pretty intimidating. You'd have to have her on here and talk about that. But yeah, she didn't know what she was getting into, but she's been a trooper and she's great. She talks to everybody at Southeast, just like she's known them her whole life and just like I do. So, yeah, she's awesome.
[00:46:28.640] - Brandon
That's so cool. I am curious. I know we've been hammering you with questions, but- No, you're good.
[00:46:33.660] - Holden
Keep it going.
[00:46:34.500] - Brandon
As you look into the future, and obviously you've got vision that you've cast for yourself in terms of what you plan to build at Blue Shield and all that. But what are like those future casted, I don't even know if that's a correct phrase, in terms of these core values that you want to begin, not begin, continuing to push out in front of you and allowing those to drive the business and your business decisions.
[00:46:58.180] - Holden
Yeah, from a core value standpoint, I mean, I think really hard workers who are really smart and humble that center theirselves around Jesus. That's what I want to be and I want my people to be. And then I think everything else falls into line. But in terms of just the future, Dabo Sweeney says, the head football coach of Clemson says, bloom where your feet are planted. And so that's something my dad tells to me pretty often when I can try to get ahead of myself. He's like, hey, be the best, when I was in high school, be the best video editor that Southeast and any other restoration company has has ever seen. Even though I knew I didn't want to be a video editor past high school, he was like, hey, while you're doing it, you're going to be the best video editor. Hey, you're going to be the best guy sucking water of any carpet that we've ever had. Like, it was just, hey, while you're doing what you're doing, we'll figure out the rest later on. But just while you're in your seat right now, just be the best that you can be at that specific task.
[00:47:51.020] - Holden
And then we'll figure out the rest is when we get there. It's something that he's instilled in me that I'm still working on because I like to get ahead of myself quite often.
[00:47:58.610] - Brandon
Yeah, I would assume somebody with your drive has a problem with that. I know. Oh, yeah.
[00:48:03.340] - Chris
Yeah.
[00:48:03.930] - Brandon
Okay. Maybe this is the last question. Every time I think that now, just I'm going to throw one more at you. Keep it going. What are you doing that has not been instilled by dad? At what point are there any moments where you're like, I really appreciate that I learned that, and I'm not going to do it that way, though? Oh, yeah. Just like a test for Ben.
[00:48:23.060] - Holden
Yeah, I don't know if there's any... I mean, I'm really trying to think. I don't think there's anything that I've decided, I'm not going to do it that way. Not I got to say that he gets everything right, but nothing's really jumping out at me that's like, Yeah, he's doing that, and I'm just not going to do it that way. We see pretty close on everything.
[00:48:39.370] - Chris
Let me ask another form of that question because I got to keep it going.
[00:48:42.360] - Holden
Keep it going.
[00:48:42.490] - Chris
I'm just curious, with you having All this history of Southwest. Did I just say Southwest?
[00:48:48.810] - Holden
Southwest. That's the airline. We're Delta people in Atlanta.
[00:48:53.050] - Chris
We're united folks over here. Are there things that come up for you, like fresh vision, where it's like, okay, this is what Southeast is today. But have there been these moments where you're like, oh, but we could totally grow in this area or there's this other thing that I see that doesn't currently exist and wasn't a part of your upbringing? Are there plans in your mind or vision in your mind to, I guess, deviate from or add to or?
[00:49:20.480] - Holden
Yeah, I think when I started, so Southeast went complete opposite of a regular restoration company. Most restoration companies you see start in carpet cleaning. They then some fans on the truck and call themselves a mitigation business. And then they're like, oh, crap, now we've demolished everything. We probably should put it back. Let's figure out this reconstruction. Southeast was totally opposite. My dad was a GC first. He did restoration and rebuild. And then back in 2010-ish era, he bought a mitigation company local to us, and that's how we started Mitigation. So none of the partners to date really have a background in Mitigation. And I think that's why he wanted me to start there, because they just didn't understand that side of business. They don't have a ton of certifications necessarily in the industry because they really didn't need it at that point in time. And so growing up, I think mitigation was like their big area for opportunity that, hey, we never really figured it out the right way, but I think we want you to head down this area, which is now bloomed into environmental work that I'm trying to still figure out to this day.
[00:50:20.870] - Holden
It was this big, bad, scary, super legally, we're going to go to jail if we do it wrong. And then once I started breaking into it, I was like, I don't really think it's that bad. I think we could do this pretty well, actually. It's not really that different than mitigation. You just got to have more licenses and more red tape to jump through. But I think we can handle it. And so I think probably more service offerings to become more full circle restoration throughout the whole process to where a client signs up with Southeast and the family of companies of Southeast carries them through the whole process that we can control the narrative of how we guide them through that process. I think it's probably the future for us.
[00:50:54.730] - Brandon
Yeah, right on. Fricken killer. Yeah, it's so cool. All right. As we're wrapping up, man, advice for all the family businesses, because there's many that are listening right now, and I have a strong suspicion that it hasn't sounded exactly like the picture that you portrayed. What is two or three things that these family-owned companies, regardless of where they are in the journey, could do immediately to begin having a more healthy impact on that familiar relationship inside the business?
[00:51:24.200] - Holden
Yeah, I think I've probably got a couple. I work with the Cathy family at Chick-fil-A. They're probably the best family in the country. Find me a better one. From a value standpoint to a continuity, a generation standpoint. I mean, they're they're awesome. And while I was there, I actually got to become a mentee of their head of family office. And I asked him a ton of questions. I just looked him up on the directory and I was like, hey, let's meet. And so me and Ryan have hung out a couple of times and he's a good friend. But some of the things that they do that I think is important is you pay your people what they deserve, not because of their last name. So you pay them for the job that they do because it gets into a really unhealthy place. If you're overpaying for family, I think it's really important that your kids are called into the business. Don't force them into the business. My two sisters were not called into the business. They might have thought they wanted to become into the business, but they didn't have that heart and the want to behind Southeast and the really drive.
[00:52:18.690] - Holden
If you don't have that drive, then it's exhausting and it's just not worth it. Go do something that you're really good at and that drives you, but don't come into the family business if you're not called into it. I think involving your kids that are really young age is really important and showing them what you do and bringing them to conferences and introducing them to people and showing them what you do is important, getting them interested in it. Yeah, I mean, those are a couple of little things. Transitioning, something I saw Chick-fil-A do really well when I was there, Dan Cathy, the CEO, the old CEO, Truitt's son, transitioned to Andrew Cathy, and they call it the baton passing, because in an Olympic race, when you're passing the baton, there's no loss of momentum when they're handing that baton off. And that's really important, I think. And one of the things that jumped out to me is they said, you can't wait for the current generation to be ready to pass the baton. You got to pass the baton when the next generation is ready to grab it. And so that's something that I stuck on to and something where I'm not yet ready to grab the baton at Southeast and It won't be for a while.
[00:53:16.100] - Holden
But I think if you wait too long in the old generation, you lose some of that innovation, spark, and drive that the younger generation might be able to bring to the business.
[00:53:27.030] - Brandon
Man, I think that last one, guys, if you're listening, is really interesting. I think that that's a difficult commitment to make because there's lots of question marks about the family, the dad, mom, whatever that owns that business. How does it relate to their retirement and their post career plans? I think it's gray. It can be super complicated. I think those words are really interesting. It really is succession planning, essentially, and getting that journey started sooner rather than later could have some really profound impacts on the business for good.
[00:53:58.600] - Holden
I think probably I'll close on this. Something that me and my dad have done that I learned from reading and books and about family business, how to do it the right way. In my mind, he's got three hats. He's my dad first, then I'd rather go work somewhere else than tarnish a relationship with my dad. So if anything happens in the Southeast, I'm like, I'd rather go work at a gas station down the road than not be able to have a bad relationship with you. And then second, he's my boss currently. He was not my boss until January, but he's my boss. So there's sometimes that he's got to put the boss hat on and be like, Hey, I'm telling you to do this, not because you're my son or I'm not trying to teach you a lesson, but this is the way it has to go because of the business. Then he's a business owner third, and he's the partner at Southeast Holding Group, and he has to make a strategic future decision that I might not understand. We're pretty good about like, Hey, is this holding I'm your dad and you did this wrong, or holding I'm your boss and you did this wrong, you need to go fix it, or, Hey, I'm trying to teach you a lesson.
[00:54:54.350] - Holden
I think I know people in the industry who have gotten those hats mixed up or the order of importance of those hats It's tarnished their relationship for years and crushed family businesses because they put the business owner before the dad, or they put the business or the boss before the dad. It can just really tarnish a relationship when you start miscategorizing those and those hats in the relationship.
[00:55:16.070] - Brandon
Holy cow, man. That's good. That was a perfect wrap up. Holden, thank you, sir.
[00:55:20.360] - Holden
Thank you all. I've been a huge fan of this. It's been super fun.
[00:55:22.870] - Brandon
Oh, my God.
[00:55:23.540] - Chris
Yeah, man.
[00:55:24.220] - Brandon
That was well worth people's time. Hopefully, you were following along in the truck cab on the way to your next because it's worth its weight in gold. Thank you very much, man, for joining us. We know that you're a busy man right now. Looking forward to following along. We'll obviously see you in the gang at RIA, most likely. Yes. Really honorable, man. It was What an unbelievable story. You're an impressive dude, man.
[00:55:48.140] - Holden
I appreciate it. Hope to do it again soon. Right on.
[00:55:50.670] - Chris
Thanks, man.
[00:55:52.540] - Brandon
All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart, and Boots.
[00:55:58.210] - Chris
If you're enjoying the show, you love this episode, please hit follow, formerly known as subscribe, write us a review, or share this episode with a friend. Share it on LinkedIn, share it via text, whatever. It all helps. Thanks for listening.