22. Why You Don't Need An MBA To Run A Successful Building Company With Rachael Boyer

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Hello and welcome to the Professional Builder Secrets podcast, a podcast by the association of Professional Builders for building company owners, general managers, VPs and emerging leaders. Here we discuss all things running a professional building company from sales, processes, financials, operations and marketing. Welcome. Today I'm joined by Rachel Boyer, President and CEO for the Home Authority Inc. Based out of Minnesota in the U.S. rachel, welcome.

Thank you. I appreciate being here.

Well, Rachel, let's start off with a little bit about the Home Authority Inc. And what is it about and what have you been doing and how long have you been doing this for?

Sounds good. The Home Authority Inc. Is a general contracting company. We do primarily remodels, new additions. We also do new custom home building. It is one company out of six companies that we own and operate in the Fargo Moorhead area in Minnesota.

So you mentioned six companies. When did you get started and what is the experience of managing? Did you start off with six companies?

No. We originally launched our first company in 1996 and my husband came home one day and said, I'm going to start a painting company. And I said, really? We're starting a painting company. So we, we had. Neither one of us had any business experience, knowledge, background. I was actually on a trajectory for my medical career, which ultimately led me to be a physician assistant. And ultimately then I proceeded with a role in an executive role as vice president of operations of a large healthcare system. So in the process of him coming home and saying, I'm launching a painting company because it's what I love to do and I don't want to do the norm anymore. And I had to figure out how all of a sudden to be a business owner and navigate through that world without having any business knowledge and background.

Which seemed like it was a breeze at the time.

Yeah, it was not a breeze. It was the lack of awareness. Starting how do you take something that you're passionate for and how do you create the opportunity to expand upon it? How we started, that is, I literally became a sponge and I soaked up knowledge from our local SCORE group, which is retired executives that help with the business side of it, so that that company was the originating company and our model and our philosophy was we didn't want to Be the biggest. We simply wanted to be the best. And that company then led to multiple other companies as a result of that progression.

So looking back at your life back then, was it a Monday to Friday role? How was the family life when you first got into this?

I don't think any business owner entrepreneur could ever, ever be a Monday through Friday 8 to 5. I think there's misconceptions that when you're a skilled technician of whatever nature, well, you could certainly start your own company and make more money and do better. The missing link typically tends to be that you have to have a plan and you have to work at that plan. And that plan does not start at 8am and it does not end at 5pm And a true entrepreneur and a true business owner takes their passion and delves deeper into that to understand that those hours are not limited to that time frame to build a successful company.

You know, tell me a little bit about this sort of call to action to start this company. Obviously it was something that your husband had induced. Did you feel like you were living your purpose when you started the company? Has things changed? Do you feel like you're living your purpose now? Like, at what point did you feel driven by this particular goal?

My only purpose in 1996 was to pay the bills and to figure out a way to make that work. I did not truly understand the why. The Simon Simek book understand the why, start with why and that it wasn't a part of where I was at back in that time of my life. I was again going down a different path. But I knew we had to pay the bills. And I also knew that I needed to help my husband be successful in whatever he wanted to do to be successful for our future. The ultimate why and passion and purpose I am now actually living is and bringing that vision to life is entirely different. It's still not a Monday through Friday 8 to 5 job. It's something that overcomes and transcends every boundary of an hourly timeframe.

So tell us about. I guess we're going down time travel lane at this point, but tell us a little bit about the company and what was the pivotal moment for you to. To grow the company, I guess, and sort of really change the operations because you make all those classical mistakes. I understand as an entrepreneur when you start out, but what was that defining moment?

In 1996, we launched the Brushes End, which is our first initial company. Over the course of owning the company for several years, we understood in a deeper sense, especially after getting some more business knowledge, and training which is so essential. You can be a highly trained technician in whatever you choose to do. But if you don't have business knowledge understanding, you can't put those two and two together. The pivotal moment came in soaking up the business knowledge and understanding. Oh, the market can only support this type of environment, this type of service for this capacity. So we ended up going through a diversification strategy without me even understanding what a diversification strategy was because it was again, survival of the fittest. So as a business owner and an entrepreneur, you have to really understand where does your market take you and how do you understand better what the customers and clients are needing. So we went through a diversification strategy and launched a few divisions of the original company. I later went down the classic journey of every entrepreneur and I went into business with two friends and I wrote a 300 page business plan without any business knowledge. And it was not in the construction industry, it was in another industry that I was passionate about, but unrelated. That journey took me through the process of understanding better what I needed from a business perspective and how to marry what I needed to have happen with the original company as a subcontractor. At that time we were working for a multitude of different general contractors and we saw what not to do. So we learned the process of this doesn't work, this won't be successful and we know we can do it better. But we needed to have the bandwidth and we needed to have the support in order to make that transition happen.

I have a question about that too. You mentioned that you spent some time attaining the knowledge, the business knowledge. Is that something you learn at the same place you're acquiring your talents or at the time were there two different places where you know, where do you go? I mean this is an era where I think the dial up era was starting to finish up and we were starting to get the Internet era at that point. And I don't know even if Google was that popular, you know, so where do you go to get this knowledge in the 90s?

Yeah, there was no. So we didn't have cell phones when we originally started. Our very first. Just to put it into perspective of time, our very first phone was a bag phone that we had in our vehicle and we thought we were so cool. We did not have Google, we didn't have email, we didn't have. We just didn't have all those luxuries that we have today. So my business knowledge came as starting again. Survival of the fittest, you have to have that. So I started soaking it up through the training, through SCORE to through other individuals, learning on my own and just doing research on my own. Eventually I progressed because again I'm traveling down the journey of my whole entire medical career at the same time while I'm launching multiple companies, while I'm doing this and realizing, wow, I have an interest in both business construction, healthcare now where is that going to take me? So in that journey I decided to get my mba. So I went through a formal Masters of Business association training program which taught me from a street smart business knowledge perspective, zero from a get me a corporate job and become a vice president of operations of a large healthcare system. Excellent. Because I had to have it in order to do that. It's not something you have to have. However, to your point, there is a multitude of different opportunities now from business training perspective and coaching and mentoring and I can share a little bit more knowledge on that backside of the street smart business. You know, in the journey as well too. I think that's more critical than achieving a degree that says you have a degree and really it's not applicable to anything related to business.

So you know, take me through this MBA process. You, you know, you get your mba, it sounds like had your foot in the construction industry and then the other foot sort of trying to see what else. I mean it looked like you were playing with two different careers really at.

This point I was, yeah. At that point I just discovered and I knew I had gotten accepted into medical school, into advanced admission and I knew I did not want to do the same thing the rest of my life, but I didn't know what that was supposed to look like. So I went down the path of becoming a physician assistant so I could have the luxury of changing anytime I wanted to within that journey again. After launching 2nd 3rd company I discovered after I wrote the 300 page business plan and had no business training, I should probably get some business training. When the banker said I'm not even going to read this because I've never even seen anyone ever produce something like this. Gave us the money and sent us out the door, I thought well okay, that was successful. But what ended up happening was I was able to fortunately for myself fulfill multiple passions. I was able to combine my healthcare and construction and business passion and tie all three of those things together. And I did fortunately have the opportunity in my healthcare career to do healthcare construction for large corporate massive organizational construction related projects. While I could still keep my patients, my clients, my staff, my personnel and I could keep my small businesses running successfully because I Could see the larger picture of that. The mba, again, was essential for my executive career, for training, for law, for legal, for understanding the complexities of business, but not necessarily for the, again, that street smart business opportunity.

So at what point did you decide to dive in, go all into the construction industry? And what was the factor, the X factor, that created the love for this industry? Because obviously it sounds like when you went all in, that's when everything started to really just hyper grow.

Yeah.

So tell us about that journey.

My journey was an unfortunate journey in the fact that I was working in a health care system. And many health care systems have these issues. It's not one single environment. There were a lot of medical malpractice issues. There was a lot of moral and ethical issues. There were many things behind the scenes as an executive leader that you face and the challenges you face. I electively decided to retire from health care in 2016. And in 2016, I had the opportunity to decide what I wanted to be when I grew up, which I still don't know, by the way, because again, I'm uniquely different that way. I took myself on a journey that I was already kind of leaning towards to get that street smart business training. And I took six months. I traveled across the entire United States, and I learned from the most brilliant business leaders and strategists around the country. And I literally was the sponge. Six months into that journey and I was home. But I would travel to the different events and trainings, and with each one of them, I would come back with a multitude, and I mean a multitude of notes and plans and purposes. And it was as if I was writing my own script for how the next stage of my life was going to go. I came back and in six months time, I came into my husband and I said, I am no longer. You are no longer the CEO or president of this company. I am taking over. And he goes, thank God. And I said, I know where we're going. And so what I did was I took. I had no passion for the company at that point. We were a $300,000 company. It was nothing. We were relying on my income and my corporate career. We didn't have to be big. We didn't have to be anything that we wanted to be. We were simply a subcontractor at that point. But I developed that passion for, we can do this better. We can serve people in a better way that they deserve to be served. And we have the craftsmanship, the skill set. And what now became a proprietary process that became our secret Sauce. And we didn't want, want to sell that to any other, just any other contractor. So I took the original company and I rebranded it and became the Coatings Authority. And that was our original start. We, we had to be very careful in our market. We have a small market and we didn't want to tick off our, our contractors that we were working with. And we also didn't want to do it inappropriately when we were launching the multiple other companies. So I set forth a plan where we were going to launch the subsequent companies to follow. Those subsequent companies became the Home Authority, Cabinet Authority, Studio A, Authority Home Services, and then our real estate company, which is our B3 holdings. And the journey was simply the knowing. Okay, now I, now I knew where I was taking the companies and now we knew how we were going to get there. I had a plan.

So it sounds like you came in and changed the Playbook. And I guess it came full circle in some ways because your husband started off with saying, I want to start a painting company. And then you come back and go, I'm going to take over this company and now run with the Playbook. I guess that's a really inspiring story. Tell me a little bit about the love for what you do and has it changed over the years? Looking back, what do you love today about the role and has it changed a lot?

I found, I discovered that I love business. I love the challenge. I am again, uniquely different in the fact that nothing is ever the same for me, and I like the diversity of that. I knew that about myself early on, but I didn't understand how to fully develop that. What I'm passionate about is, and has been from day one, is serving other people in the role that I have now. I have the opportunity to serve and bring families together, which is our number one.

Why.

So why we exist is to bring families together. How we do that is through transforming and creating spaces that allow families to come together and also have their own individual spaces where they can retreat and be alone and have their quiet time. And if every company can just focus on that, why that allows the opportunity to be successful and for you to live your passion. So really truly understanding that why was. Was the biggest, the biggest opportunity for me, for me, maybe more selfishly, I loved challenge and I still love challenge every single day. As Andy, my coach through the apb, says, you are always building the airplane while it's flying down the Runway. That's fair and it's true. But I think there's a lot of opportunity out there that hasn't been tapped. And if we use our creativity and our passion for serving others, then that's a great way to tap into what hasn't been developed and fully developed yet.

So it sounds like there's been a few moments for growth, one of them being, let's go into this, let's change the playbook and you start growing these companies. Looking back, what were some of those key transformative factors that allowed you to grow and play into a bigger playing field?

The biggest pressure, I would say, and the biggest transformation came as a result of I decided to retire and leave my executive career and health care career behind, which means I needed to make money to be able to support the company, to be able to support my family. So the honest, the honest thing that drives people is you have to be able to earn a living and you have to be able to take care of yourself while yet serving your passion and your purpose. So that was probably the most pivotal thing that allowed the shift to happen was the simple pressure of we had to figure out a way to make money and we had to do it the way that we knew we had to be in order to love what we're doing. And so launching the Home Authority out of the Coatings Authority was very strategic for what that time. Fortunately, by the time we launched the Home Authority, we were in a position where we already had projects lined up, we already had things in motion, we already had things moving. And I was about six months, well, I was about four months ahead of what my projected timeframe would be for that. Within that three year period, I was able to take the $300,000 company and turn it into a now a 3 million doll with likely doubling the revenue even as early as next year. And that comes with a lot of focus, a lot of commitment and then understanding what that whole entire process and business structure should look like in order to navigate that change from 300 to 3 million.

Looking at this journey, obviously you've probably introduced a lot more systems into the play and you talked a little bit about coaching as well. How is the awareness of thesis association of Professional Builders story and how did you get compelled to join there and how has that journey been so far?

My entire career has been soaking information up and being a sponge. I was in the process. I had the Home Authority launched and I thought I was winning really big. I had a 10% markup, mark up, which now I understood the difference between markup and margin. There were many things that I thought we were smoking hot on because we had failed in all of the other things with the other business for so long that I was not going to do it wrong with the Home Authority. And for many things I did, I did right with Home Authority. But I was missing from an executive perspective. I was missing my $200 million operating budget, where I had KPIs and I had all those key performance indicators and all the data coming my way, and operating a small business 10 million times more challenging than operating a large executive organization. And the reason why is because small business owners don't have the data, they don't have the knowledge, they don't have the background, and they don't have someone doing it for them. They have to be able to do that themselves. So having that need and that desire to know more, I started doing more research. Now that I'm into the age of where we can Google and where we can have Facebook and we can have things, I found the association of Professional Builders and I signed up for their original portal where I could download, and I literally knocked out all of their training within probably less than a couple months. When they reached out to me, I said, yeah, I get the sales funnels, I get all this stuff. I just need to know how I can get on the right path and get more knowledge than what I've ever even desired before. That whole journey of having now benchmarks, KPIs, processes, systems, all of the things that are offered through the association of Professional Builders was just like gold in my fingers. And I've taken that information and expanded that even further and created again now, subsequently, from the Home Authority, the multitude of other companies that have launched as.

A result of that shift into the highs and lows of the construction and industry space as well, and your business as well. Looking back, what do you think was the biggest challenge you face? I've talked to so many builders and know that it's not plain sailing and it takes time and, you know, like you said, you've had to soak up a lot of things as well. But what do you think, looking back, what do you think is the biggest challenge? If you had to articulate it, would it be one key factor or a couple of them?

The biggest challenge that I faced in the originating company was not having business understanding and knowledge, because, again, you can be an excellent technician if you don't have some kind of knowledge and support. It's really hard to do both and to be both in that world. And what happened was I didn't necessarily charge for the services that were rendered and even in the learning over these Last few years and, or a year and a half with the apb, I've really, really changed the entire structure of how I charge for the value of the services that are rendered. And I would say that if I could summarize anything, it's really charging adequately for the value of your services and having enough business knowledge to understand what you should be doing in your business.

Now, every entrepreneur, every leader, every business owner has one classical mistake that will define them. Some people that I have interviewed or had the luxury of interviewing have given me some amazing stories. One of them being, oh, I didn't invest in Uber, or I didn't invest in a company that blew up. If you look down memory lane, what is that classical entrepreneur moment that you're fondly aware of that will forever change the way you operate?

I unfortunately had three in a row that were pivotal changes in our companies. And those three in a row were again related to not charging for the services rendered and giving away your secret sauce, giving away who you are and what you do and not really truly understanding the value of that. I fortunately had the opportunity to work with three amazing clients who I designed their homes, designed beautiful homes for them, got everything set, did way, way, way, way, way above the work and effort and everything else that could have been done, and they backed out of their contracts. Three in a row, three new projects that I was counting on, and that was the most pivotal experience of my life. To have invested that much time, money and energy and to understand that people are fickle and you want to be able to give and serve and you want to be able to do the things that you're passionate about. But you also are a business owner and you have to run a company and that means being paid for the services rendered that moment and then understanding the business processes around that and why that happens to new business owners, especially in the construction industry, that's a really key thing to feel confident about and to not stress out about when you're trying to build your company. So again, unfortunately, I lost some time, money and energy and I was stuck without a lot of projects as a result of that. So again, pressure was on to perform and to overcome that challenge. Those are very big swings in projections and planning for a company. And that was a very, very key, pivotal moment for me for how we were going to do things different in our business.

So losing, I mean, three prospective clients, that's a pretty game changing sort of impact. And at this point, you're probably going through doubt yourself, questioning yourself as well. How do you bring yourself back to going, we need to change, but at the same time, we're going to be okay. I'm sure that must have taken a knock on your ego as well as a leader, right?

Yeah, absolutely. I felt like I had failed our companies. I felt like I had failed our team. What ends up happening as a business owner, especially one who's passionate about what you're doing, is you take things personally. And that is probably one of the first laws of sales is don't be offended, don't take things personally. It's a business. But yet when you're serving your purpose and you feel like you're serving your purpose and your clients for a very specific reason, it's hard not to take that personally. So, yes, I did have the personal impact, but then there's also that part of being an entrepreneur where you are naturally a risk taker. And I looked at it as, in everything that I've done, as long as I continue to fail forward, I'm okay. If I fail backwards and I fail to get up, it's not about getting knocked down. It's about how you get up or the fact that you simply get up. And with that being said, I had to figure out now how to shift other projects and how to bring other opportunities my way, and I had to move past those three, three in a row at the same time experiences. But I think that's the triple effect of, okay, that's the wrong way to do it. If you're going to get knocked in the head and understand what you should be doing, that's a pretty clear indicator that that doesn't work, to do it that way. And so over the course of time, I've been able to shift our processes and align the business practices so that doesn't happen again.

It sounds like it's a really valuable lesson that you've acquired, obviously, about yourself as well and the vision for the company. How has being in this particular role transformed you as a leader? And I asked this because there's two clear observations. One is you're running multiple companies you've made through those classical eras to get to where you are today as well. It hasn't been an easy journey. But also you're one of the minorities right now that come from that feminine space that is in a very male dominant environment running a company. I'm sure that on its own is a story in a book, maybe on its own, but how has this experience changed you and has the thought really hit you that you are in a very small circle that's growing. It is still a male dominant environment. How has that changed you?

I guess from my personal perspective, I've always been in a male dominated field and environment. I grew up with all boys around me. I played with boys, all my friends were boys. So as a child, that's all I knew in health care, very, very in, in the role that I was in. Very male dominated and very, very different environment to be in as a young female executive in a good old boys club environment in healthcare. Whoa. That was the biggest life lesson in how to not only trust myself and respect myself as a female leader, but to bring others around me to create that same sense of collaboration and trust and teamwork. Being in the construction field, I was in healthcare construction, telling the guys, no, I'm not going to settle for a quarter of an inch difference. It has to be exactly like it needs to be because there's going to be a patient on the operating room table and it has to be this precise. I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to work with absolutely brilliant men and women in the field and learn how to become the best leader that I could. And fortunately, I have whatever skill set I have, I have the ability to build really strong teams. And I think as a leader and a successful leader, it's not necessarily about you being so brilliant. It's about surrounding yourself with brilliant people and taking the weaknesses that you have or the lack of desire to do specific things and to find people around you that are talented in those areas and being willing to be vulnerable and being willing to know your limits and your boundaries. I can honestly tell you that my team does not let me rip tape in this field. They don't let me even pick up a scissors in this environment because I don't know how to build. I don't know physically how. I don't have that talent. But I can tell you that I can design and build any project or any home and blow up any space and feel 100% confident in it because I have the right team around me. I know what I want. I have the vision, I have the right team. They can do the work to make that right. So being a leader is about knowing your limits, building the right team and establishing those critical boundaries between the entire group to know where you can be successful. And as a woman, there's really no defining point at a woman can or cannot do. It's a matter of choice.

So it sounds like you've had a lot of reflection on this and it looks like you're playing to your strength and the team's playing to their strengths as well. What do you think is the biggest achievement that you're really proud of today with the Home Authority Inc. It sounds like there's a collection of companies. I was reviewing your website. It sounds like you almost offer or a one stop shop. Is that a fair assessment?

Yep. I would say the biggest accomplishment that I feel is that we've created an environment where individuals who are investing even a small amount of money because they don't have the luxury of building a multimillion dollar home, they can have the same great experience as someone who's building a multimillion dollar home or investing in whatever they're investing in for their future. Every single client that can come into our space will have a unique experience. They will have an inspiration showroom to guide them, a home design center. They have the Studio A, which is our design firm. We do all of the custom fabrication, we have our private collection and we do all the interior design. They have custom cabinetry that's custom specifically for them. They have the coatings that they deserve for concrete coatings and painting and finishes, cabinet refinishing. And they have us at the end with Authority Home Services, which is our kind of our handyman type service for those little jobs that are just too big for you to handle. And that whole conglomerate of companies is so uniquely different that I don't believe there's anyone else like us in the world. And I'm proud of that. There's more to come with that and there's definitely more that I can do to make it better every single day. And that's what my goal is, is to continue to develop something that can outlive me and outlast me and be a part of the way that we should be serving our clients and our communities.

So what is the long term goal? You know, what's the plan for you building companies? This going to be something that you are. Do you have an exit strategy in play and what does that look like? Is it a franchise model? Is it a generational handover? Like what, you know, where, where do you sort of see this moving to?

I don't necessarily have a specific exit strategy, which it was very interesting because when I went on my street smart business journey and learned from brilliant business strategists, the first thing they said is you have to understand that business is about going into business, is about selling the business. And I went, what? Really? That's really my only purpose. But I have a general plan of how I want to continue to develop and Grow the companies. I don't know that our one and only son that we have will be that person who wants to take over and continue for generations to generation. But I do want to establish a company that will again outlive us and outlast us. Meaning that when I'm not here, it can still run on its own. That's a true business that you don't become or you aren't the bottleneck of the company that you're running. And so as I continue down my next three to five years of what does that exit strategy look like? Ultimately, what would be really nice is to have a long term strategy for whether it be franchising or whether it be our son taking over and taking it down that direction. But we don't have a clearly defined path at this point. And if I've failed as a business owner because I don't have the sale of the business in mind, I'm okay with that for now because there's bigger fish for me to fry at this point. But I do recognize that that has to come as part of next stage business planning. As an entrepreneur, as a business owner, as a new business owner, or even a business owner who's changing, you have to take the first thing first, which is get things cleaned up, get a system, make it operate the way you need to, and then take the next step forward from there.

I noticed on your website you also offer financing. It's openly advertised as well. Tell me a little bit about what the process is there because it was so unique. I've seen so many different website builders, but that's not something that they throw out there. Tell me a little bit about that.

Yeah, so again, this is about being different and being uniquely different in the community that if we're truly saying that we're here to help people and bring families together, then we have to offer that. One thing that we found was that a lot of our clients didn't have the financial resources to be able to, number one, understand how to get an optimal return on their investment, which is another one of our values. We want to. Anytime we're creating an environment for a homeowner, it's the biggest investment that they're going to make. And so we want to make sure that they get an optimal return on their investment. We've opened up the opportunity for them to have third party financing through us. And we have everything from 0% financing to 15 years to 3.99%. There's a whole different diverse class of what we can offer from financing we also have a local banking partner who does all of our, what we call renovation financing. And they built a program for us to allow our clients who want to wrap in renovation financing with their primary mortgage and finance it all in one and one transaction. We also have our real estate partner who can, we can literally take a client through any situation that they want or need. We can sell their existing house, we can buy them a house, we can renovate their house, we can finance their house, we can build them a new house, we can do whatever the case may be and just the fact that we care enough to work through that process with them. And yes, it does take time and investment and you have to have some knowledge on market and rates and industry and keep up on that. It's still a service that no one else offers in our region. It's one of those things that creates a competitive advantage that we can literally say we can do anything, but we don't also have to be everything to everyone. We can be very specific working with the clients that we've set as our avatar and be very specific with what we offer them and how we can serve them best.

I have a hard question here, but is balance a myth for people that run companies? You're running six right now. You're a mom, you know, a wife. How's your schedule? Is it still chaotic?

Well, you can ask my coach how he feels about my schedule. My schedule is definitely getting better and it's definitely a challenge. I'm a natural hard worker. That's all I've ever known in my entire life. My grandparents grew up on the farm and when you're a farmer, you just work your fields and you do what you have to do to keep your hands to the plow. In the world that I grew up in with medicine, I was up at 2 in the morning operating and in the middle of a trauma. And then I would be back in the clinic to see patients by 8 o'. Clock. I don't know anything different in my brain. Balance is hard when you don't have the right people in the right seats. For me, it's been really, really critical to start to develop these companies. Building the team is starting from scratch. It was me and it was my husband running the operations and our employees for the Coatings Authority. And now it's not just me. So I've had to add the right people. I track how many hours do I spend on X, number of things that I'm doing and where do I next need to move the chessboard? Whatever you Call it, how do I take that next step to build the right team and put them in the right seats so that I'm not constantly doing everything? I could definitely use some more balance in my life. But what I have learned to do is I now take a week every single quarter and I literally retreat. And I go through both a personal retreat and a business retreat, kind of strategically by myself to have time to think. And that has been just an absolute blessing for me as a business owner and as a mom and a wife and, and team member and all of the other things that I do.

So the industry is changing, obviously, over the years. Where do you think the future state of the residential and construction industry is evolving to, especially in Minnesota and the.

U.S. i would say that we have to be exponentially smarter and we have to be exponentially more process oriented and systematized. And the reason why is because we already see what happens when we have personnel issues, manufacturing issues, and lack of process and system, and lack of control and lack of leadership. In the United States, it's very prevalent, and I'd say even across the world, people struggle because of the interrelated events that happen as a global economic impact. So as a business owner, my approach and my philosophy in the next year and a half is all on mergers, acquisitions and having a systematized strategic plan on how that is going to happen. Because, number one, the smaller, less prepared companies will not be able to withstand what's going to happen. Even in the next nine months in the United States, we're going to have some major financial and economic issues and even more so than we've already seen. And if you're not prepared as a business owner, the association of Professional Builders is very, very specific about this, about having your cash on hand, operating and working, and knowing your WIPA and really being strategic and thoughtful about where you're going and what your direction is. And I, as a business owner and a business leader, will not fail. We're going to continue to thrive in the pandemic like we have. We're going to continue to build and increase our projections, but it's going to come at the expense of other companies that are not going to be able to perform because they don't have the systems in place, they don't have the right strategic plan, and they don't have the right team members behind them working in unison.

If you look back, and this is my final question for the day, but if you look back on this entire journey, past, present, future, what advice would you give a younger version of yourself getting into the industry today, or any of the listeners out there who are new builders as well that are listening to this episode, what advice would you give them?

My advice that I would give them is to be fluid and to never, ever put yourself in a position where you are only limited to one thing. As you continue to age and grow and develop and meet new people around you and learn new things, it's really important to allow yourself to be free and willing to fail forward and to understand that you don't have to have limits. The only limits that you have are those that you put on yourself. We have the opportunity as business owners and leaders to change how we deliver the products and services that we provide, whatever that may be. Whether you own a restaurant or you own a construction company or you're a salesperson for someone else, it doesn't matter. I would say don't limit yourself and be prepared to take on any challenge that comes your way, but also to define, clearly define what it is that you have passion for and what it is that you're willing to do. As I mentioned earlier on, I launched another company that was completely unrelated to healthcare and it was something that I was passionate about. But I learned now that if it doesn't fall into my three buckets, I have to say no to it. And I'm willing to say no to something that's not going to fulfill those three buckets in my life. So clearly understanding that there is no limit. You can do whatever you desire to achieve, but know what your passions are and know what your purpose is.

So staying fluid is the advice. Thank you so much, Rachel, for such a lovely interview. We really appreciate you being here today and your time and your wisdom as well.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

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