Obsession, burnout, and work/life integration 🔄 | Tyler Dunagin

Obsession is probably the most common theme around business owners, and a lot of the times it's frowned upon. I could proudly say I am truly obsessed with my business and I love it. It provides a lot for myself and my family and it gives me purpose. I really enjoy it, but it's really healthy to have boundaries. Don't get me wrong. I think a lot of that is just understanding yourself, understanding your tells. If you constantly feel burnout, if you constantly feel just like a spotlight effect, you might have to turn off your phone for, you know, at 5 o'clock every single day for a few weeks until you start feeling normal or sess or whatever it might be, but I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all for this work-life balance thing that most people talk about, because I don't know that every, every single person's day is identical.

This week's Millennial Master is Tyler Dunnigan, founder and CEO of TurnServe. He grew up watching his dad build a business from scratch and followed in his footsteps, but Tyler burned out flipping houses, found himself in therapy, then rebuilt his career from the ground up. Today, he's running a platform of multimillion service brands among the fastest growing in America, all while handing out equity to his top people and turning bathtubs into patents. In this episode, we talk about how to actually let go and delegate as a founder, why giving managers equity changes everything, and the reality of work-life integration as a founder and parent. Millennial Masters is brought to you by Jolt, fast, reliable web hosting built for founders. Whether you're launching a WordPress site or scaling an app, Jolt gives your project a rock-solid home starting from just £3.95 a month. You'll get 99.99% uptime, support in under 30 seconds, and flexible payment options including Bitcoin and Amex, so you can rack up those points while you build. Get your first 3 months free at jolt.co.uk. Smart hosting for people building what's next. Tyler, welcome to Millennial Masters. How are you today?

Daniel, thank you for having me. I am wonderful. I'm excited to be here and talk to you today.

I'm delighted to have you on, which is why I'm gonna jump straight into my first question, because I know you call yourself a relentless entrepreneur, even though your team give you stick for it, from what I understand. So the question is, Where did this drive come from and how do you keep sharp after all the growth that you're gonna tell me about?

Yeah, I think inherently I am just competitive by nature and that started off just, you know, younger version of me in sports all year round. You know, my father was an entrepreneur. I just watched him do his thing, you know, and I think that had an impression on me as well, but I just, I just always wanna be up to something and it's just naturally wired with who I am. I don't really sit still too well and I just constantly wanna work on something new. And so if somebody tells me that, you know, this is the only way to do something, I just naturally kind of wanna challenge that norm a little bit and see what's, what else is out there. And for me, it just started off being competitive as a, you know, younger kid. And then eventually that grew to, admiring my father in the space. And then, you know, the stakes just got higher and I just kept on, you know, going down this path of entrepreneurship. And that drive is just kind of inherently intertwined with who I am.

So your father is an entrepreneur and that inspired you since you were a child. Tell me how it was growing up in an entrepreneurial family. What inspired you? And What did your dad do? What was the business?

So I watched my dad get up every day, 5 AM, do his thing. I heard the phone ring all day long at home. These were landline days. And I just remember watching him come and come back home. Some days it was 8 o'clock at night and I was so excited to see him and I just wanted to know, where were you at today? What were you doing? So my father owned a building company when I was growing up and it would be picture remodeling and other renovations and whatnot. And one story that always stuck out to me, and I was really proud to tell my friends about it, was he remodeled Jim Tomey's house and Jim Tomey Tomy is a, um, he was a player, he's a Hall of Fame player today, uh, for the Cleveland Guardians, uh, previously the Cleveland Indians. And I just remember him telling me that story and I just thought it was so cool that my dad was at Jim Tomy's house. I told all my friends and that just stuck out to me. So, you know, early on, just a lot of pride and just watching him do it, do what he does every single day. Uh, it wasn't anything super flashy, it wasn't a SaaS company or anything like that at all. It was a remodeling and installation business and I just thought he was the coolest, coolest person in the world and that just left an impression on me.

But And then the remodeling kind of like got you into where your origin story as an entrepreneur begins with flipping houses, but that kind of burnt you out. What's the story behind that?

Yeah, so I segued into doing single-family real estate. I started off doing handyman services and my friends will laugh at that because they'll tell you I'm not all that handy, but I figured things out and—

Handy enough.

Handy enough. Well said. Well said. And I got into the space just doing small, small jobs, built my way up. I did some work for some real estate investors and I went from doing just a handful of small odd jobs to doing full house flips and renovations to becoming a single-family investor myself. And I kind of had this pinnacle set up where everyone said, if you can co-invest in deals and you do all the work and get paid for the work and you still get some of the upside, you win. Well, I kind of met that and I just realized I was working 80, 90 hours a week and I was starting every single one of my days either at a project or at Home Depot. And, it was hard to plan around these things because I was still learning how to build a team. There's a lot of variables in these houses. You had no idea what you're going to get behind a wall or in a foundation or what have you. And so, I was constantly on my toes and I was constantly active and I was getting very tired. And so I just came to this realization of this is it. If everyone says that this is exactly how it should be in this space, I want out because I can't figure this out anymore. It was successful. It was incredible, all of those things, but I was miserable and I created the most high-stakes job in the world where I was constantly on the job and on call 24/7. And that's what led to burnout and me venturing into what was next for me.

But before you ventured into that, you did a bit of soul searching, so to speak, having wouldn't you? Um, you did a bit of therapy and discovered that your passion was slightly elsewhere.

Yes, exactly, exactly. I did a lot of self-development, a lot of therapy, spoke to a lot of mentors, and just trying to really find my path. When at that time in my life I was early to mid-20s, you know, that's probably a tough, tough age for most, most people. Um, just, you know, you realize that you have to do something with your life and trying to figure out what that is. You constantly feel behind there's a million options for you. So, there's a lot of indecisiveness and indecision, and it's that game of feeling behind, but also feel like you have so many things to do, you kind of spin your wheels. And that's where I found myself at that time. And I realized that a lot of the anxieties I realized I had with working 80 and 90 hours a week and just not really sure what I wanted to do with myself, I decided to look inward first and really just work on like, hey, What, what, what do I really want? And that's actually what started my self-development and therapy and whatnot was I just realized I wasn't quite sure who I wanted to be or what I wanted to do. And that's where the work began.

And what was the path then to pivoting into your next career point? Let's call it that.

So when I was doing the single family, which is just one house, the, the common houses you see. I was, I was flipping those and I realized that, so real estate was always said to create the most wealth and that was a stable industry to get involved in. And that's why I got in initially. When I started to realize that I was, I was sluggish, I didn't want to do this anymore. I was looking for an exit door. I decided to reach out to random people in the larger industry of housing and that's multifamily. And just by chance, I realized how nice people were in the industry because people took me under their wing and they would give me conversations and mentor me and you name it. And people that I could never repay or give any value to, so to say. And so what I did was I reached out to a few now mentors, just cold email style or introductions, referrals, however I could talk to them. I said, hey, I'm in the housing space. Here's some things I'm working on. I don't love it. What did you do when you were in this space? You're in multifamily, you're in real estate, you manage $1 billion, so to say. Help me understand. And some of those mentors encouraged me, if you don't enjoy single family because of the variables, get in multifamily where everything is the same, just multiplied times 1,000. And that's initially what led me to look into the multifamily space. The only downfall was I wasn't sure what it was. I didn't know anything about it. And so I, I was encouraged to get involved and I did, and I found my way into that space via consulting. And that's where I started to learn my way around a little bit.

So it was at that point you founded TurnServ, which is your current company, which was about 2018, right?

So yeah, loosely. So I got full-fledged involved in multifamily and that's where I started off just focusing on leasing and marketing operations and everything else. I worked hard. I was, you know, you know, when you come from working 90 hours a week to only working 45 or 50, feels like a vacation. And I think that showed in my energy levels because I was just ecstatic to be there and learn and do. And I eventually learned every facet of multifamily. Well, I came in to consult with a property management company and what had actually happened was the owner of the assets I managed, which I managed around $250 million worth of real estate, the owner approached me and said, hey, unfortunately I'm going to fire the property management company. And that's who I was consulting with.. And I thought that was the end of the road. And I said, hey, thank you for everything. I appreciate it. This has been great. And he says, no, I think you misunderstood me. I want you to fire them and build me my own management company. And I said, oh, got it. So we went from third-party managed to owner-managed, and that's when I built the systems from the ground up. I literally formed this guy's LLC and just helped him from legal to accounting to maintenance and leasing, you name it. There wasn't a facet of property management I didn't touch. That's what taught me CRMs property management software. That's what taught me seasonality trends and goals and budgets and you name it. And when I was in that world, I was, I was managing 2,000 apartments roughly.

Okay.

You realize how essential scale is in volume and speed and all of those things. And if you don't have systems built, you're in trouble. Well, I did everything very well in that space, but the thing I constantly came back to was I could never find enough vendors suppliers to help us at scale. And this was such a problem where I eventually said to that owner, I said, hey, I'm flipping houses on the side. I have a small crew. Are you okay if I bring them over to help out here a little bit? And he said, I don't care at all. Just price match for me and let's not make it weird, but do your thing. And I said, you got it. Let's go. And so I essentially took my construction crews, construction crews, modified them a little bit. And I said, hey guys, We're painting apartments, we're doing flooring in apartments, we're cleaning these. Here you go. They loved it because they're all— they go from all these variables in single family down to a big rectangle that's painted the same color with the same floor covering over and over and over again. They're empty. There's no homeowners half the time to deal with, so to say. And the crews loved it. And so I realized that I was able to build these crews at scale. And at first it was to solve problems that I was having in the space.. But then I realized how viable of a company it could be and how huge of a need there was in the space because I was having friends in the industry call me and say, hey, you're still renovating your own apartments, you're still flipping these and all and whatnot. I said, yeah. They said, who are you using again? I said, well, it's actually my own crews. And they kept on asking me, and they kept on asking me, can you come over and help us out? And I was like, well, it's not really built for that, but I could try. And so we did a couple units that way for a few friends and everything was going really well.. And that's when I just realized like, hey, I, I, I'm kind of getting the entrepreneur itch again to jump back in and do something. It's not quite the path I envisioned, but it's still around real estate and I'm still using my strengths and I'm having a great time. I'm gonna dive in and do it. And so I essentially left corporate America in 2017, 2018. And I started full-fledged into my own company at that same time. So I left corporate America, comfortable job into just entrepreneurship again and hoping that this turnover company worked.

And I launched TurnServe.

In February of 2018, and that's— and that was the start of it.

And now TurnServe isn't just one business. There's a whole platform of brands under it. So how do you decide what to launch and what's the secret of scaling what are now multiple $1 million plus companies at once?

Yeah, so So Turn Serve was launched and that became our platform company. And we launched small companies underneath of it, such as apartmentpainters.com, apartmentflooring.com, Liquid Liner Bathtub Refinishing. And the reason why we stumbled into these things was because we were already in the space. We were already providing services and clients were asking us, hey, can you guys help us here? Can you help us here? And we looked at it. If you notice everything that we do, it's the largest ticket items inside of an apartment turn. The reason for that is obviously because they're, these have to be viable enough to grow a big business, so to say. And so, so for us, everything that we have done, everything that we have launched has always started within arm's reach. We're not industry hopping, so to say. We're not all of a sudden installing solar, not today at least. And you know, we're just trying to do these things that make sense for us. We're already in the apartments and if we could do a great job and make a big impact and our clients want it, that's what we end up doing. And so we actually know a lot of the vendors in the space. We know the entire chain of a turnover from specialty vendors to supply to common vendors. And so we have a really good arsenal in front of us where we could pick at and say, hey, let's swing at this and try to do this. And that's what we've done over the past few years. It's wonderful because we already have a massive client base that we have great relationships with that will let us trial and error these things because they trust us. They know that we'll fix anything that we might mess up at first. We give them some credits for their other services that we're already there doing. And, you know, it's a win-win situation. That's kind of how we stumble into these things. And somebody mentioned to me that it reminds them of a strategy called the Edge Strategy. And that is a book. I forget who it's by, but Edge Strategy. And I read it after somebody told me that. And it is exactly what we do today, starting businesses within arm's reach that literally compound off of one another. That way you're not plopping down in a new ocean trying to learn how to swim. It's right in front of you already. And that's what has led us to success and scale. You know, it's kind of crazy to talk about, but I always try to give my team props for this. Last year we were one of America's fastest growing companies. You know, we were the Inc. 5000, we were the top 500. We're the second largest— I'm sorry, we're the second fastest growing in our state. And, and that comes back down to our systems, our clients, our team. And it just speaks to how big this opportunity is in this industry and how far you can go because there's not a lot of people doing it quite yet.

And one of the things you've developed during TurnServe, is you patented a bathtub product after you saw dodgy results on a job site. What's the story behind Liquid Liner, which is also behind you now?

It's true. It's, it's kind of an incredibly surprising story. I don't have a chemistry background. I never thought that I would get into patenting something. I'll tell you the story of how we landed on Liquid Liner. So first, Liquid Liner is a bathtub and tile refinishing product. Picture a very thick paint for bathtubs where instead of replacing those bathtubs, tearing them out, doing the plumbing, that whole process, you could essentially sand down an, an old surface like a shower surround, tile, bathtub, whatever it is. And our product goes over it, it pours over and it's self-leveling. It doesn't need spray or applied or anything like that at all. It's 30 times thicker than most products in the space and there's a peel-free guarantee with it. Those things were important to us because the clients need those types of things. And so those things paired with the low VOC are critical to why we ended up building this product. One day when we were painting an apartment for somebody, it was my lead crews that were on the site. It was a client that we went to every single day. It was a really smooth transaction, normally smooth process with this person, no hiccups normally ever. And my lead painter was there one day and he said, hey, we can't service this unit. There's a very potent smell here. We'll come back. So that's fine. No problem at all. Get out of there. The second day rolls around and the same thing happens. And I said, and I was like, you know, Tony, that's so weird. Any idea what's going on? He's like, I have no idea. I think they're spraying bathrooms in this hallway or something. I'm not sure. And said that I've never heard of that. Let me check it out. And so I went to this complex to check on the crews and see what was going on. And I saw somebody in a full-fledged hazmat suit with a big sprayer and there, there are loud things going on. There's, there's, uh, wires ran all across the floor. A full bedroom is packed full of big toolboxes and I see a, uh, I see a person just spraying this fumes everywhere. You can't see anything. The smell is awful. And I like, I, I, I'm looking at this person and they finally look at me cuz I'm in this unit that caught 'em off guard and I watched them do what they do. At this point I have a mask on, right? And so they recognize, like they, they notice me, I should say, they acknowledge me. And, and I kind of give them like a, like, hey, I need just one minute of your time thing. So they, they wrap up what they're doing. I'm in the hallway. I have a mask on at this point. I'm waiting for this person. And then I say, they come out and like, hey, can I help you? I said, yeah. I was like, so sorry, but what are you doing? And they explained to me what they were doing. And I asked him a couple questions at the end of it. And I said, do you enjoy what you're doing? He said, no way. Yeah, you know, like paint all over his face and all these kind of things. The last thing I asked him, I said, how much money did you make today? And he said, on this unit, probably around $800. And in my head, I'm like, huh, that might be a viable model. And so I helped this person carry their tools out to their car, back and forth. I picked their brain. I learned everything they could, everything I could about the space, refinishing, you name it. Right after I left that property, I called Sherwin-Williams and I said, hey, I need a sprayer. I need this, I need this, I need this. I was trying to replicate what person was doing. Fast forward, we did replicate it and we realized that we replicated exactly what we saw, a hazardous environment. You know, it was a hazmat suit, sprayers, trip hazards, air movers, you name it. And I said, cool, let's find a better way to do it now. So an evolution of trial and error and a lot of amendments at the processes, procedures. I tried different products on the market. I went to all the big box retailers and distribution centers, you name it. All the products were kind of the same. And, I eventually got frustrated because I couldn't find a good product and I took 5 of the best on the market and I went to a lab partner and I said, "Hey, here's the characteristics that are great, here's what doesn't work, and here's the system and strategy you need to fit in." So, we need to be able to do this whole process in just 2 to 3 hours. So, that means that we can't have to have the product sweat in so to say. That's when you mix it and has to sit still for an hour or what have you. There's so many stipulations around the old products in the market.. And over the course of, of a year and a half to 2 years and a couple hundred thousands of dollars later, we eventually had our 70th iteration of our trial product. Um, and we had it third-party tested by a big firm called ChemQuest, independent third party. We don't know them, but they are the gold standard, so to say. And our results came back. They tested it against all of the big box's best products, and we got 10 out of 10 scores. The next closest was 6 out of 10 scores. And all the other ones were like 3 outta 10 scores. That's when I realized we'd built the best product on the market today. And that's what they also told us. They love the product and said, that's great, cuz so do we. But that's how we got into Liquid Liner and having our own product and a patent on that. And it's just going onward and upward from here. And it's kind of crazy how we got here, but I'm excited that we did.

So Liquid Liner then is built in into your line of services that you do across TurnServ.

Yes, absolutely. Our install teams for bathtub refinishing use it across all of our locations.

And in order to grow your business and develop Liquid Liner and TurnServe, you had to look for private equity and funding to, to keep you going. And you said before on other podcasts that you were rejected by over 40 investors before landing your first deal. So I'm wondering, what did you learn from the no after no after no phase, and how did you finally break through?

Yeah, so I think the most important thing that I learned was timing is important for all of this. A lot of the initial early rejections were trying to get initial funding to launch the business, or that, like, a first year, get some growth capital. And that's where a lot of those nos came in because I would approach somebody and said, hey, this is a viable model. Here's the unit economics on it. Here's the industry. Here's what I want to do. And I had to sit in front of probably 35 different investors early on and they all said, hey, it's too early. We don't love the space. There's no big companies doing this, which is probably a red flag. Like all of these different reasons of being told no. And that's just when I realized like it really has to be compelling. Like, yes, there's the element of it solved a problem for me and everyone else in the industry around me, but it also has to be compelling for the investors. You have to understand what kind of investors you have. What are they looking for? It's great that somebody has a good idea, but an investor wants to 10, 20, 50, 100x their money. And as, as capitalistic as that sounds, that is the name of the game with an investor. They only put in money where they think it's going to have a massive return and disproportionately outearn the S&P 500 or something similar.. And so what I learned early on was timing is important. Traction is very important. Showing results, year-over-year growth. Unless you're getting venture funding, it is very difficult to get any sort of funding at all for something around tech-enabled services. Anything that's not, not software is a tough, tough buy for a younger company to get investors for. So timing is probably the most important thing I learned around investments, but also tailoring and knowing who I was talking to, who I was pitching, what are they looking for? So at first, the first handful of meetings, actually the first 20, if I'm being honest with you, I was asking, like, I had the frame of mind, this is everything about me. Look at me. Like, here's what I'm doing. So exciting. You know, like, you name it, it was all focused on me. I did very little questioning around what they want, what they do, what they look for. Because, you know, young entrepreneur, you're excited. Like, look at what I built. It's so polished. It's flashy. Like, let's go. But you really have to reframe and think from their perspective. And start answering questions for them. If you could answer questions that their CFO might have, for example, like, hey, what's next year look like? Is the industry growing? What's your growth rate? All of those things that you think like, oh, that's a lot of numbers. I don't want to think about those things. You really have to change places with the person that you're asking to get money out of and understand that they also have checkboxes that they need to check and feel confident in. I started flipping that and I actually paused trying to raise money for a good probably 2 years between that initial batch. In that secondary batch of, of people that I was trying to raise from. By the time the second batch came around, I wasn't really looking to get money right then and there. I got introduced to somebody and right away I just knew that this person, this group was the right group for us. And it was just one of those things to where right place, right time, right industry, right phase, you name it. Um, there's a lot of overarching compelling synergies and we just knew it was a match. So it took 35+ trial and errors before I got to that point.

And also bootstrapping to a certain extent to show traction and a lot of time in order to do so.

Absolutely. I was the first technician for the first full year of the company. And I leave corporate America making a nice salary, a 6-figure plus, all those things, to pulling out all of my savings and my 401 against advice of my advisor and all of these things. And I, I started Tern in the first year. I think I paid myself right around $25,000 the entire year. And so you can imagine the lifestyle change and living off of savings, but also the time commitment. When you are the manager, the technician, the billing person, the scheduling, the customer service rep, the sales rep, all of those things, you really learn this deep intricate need of an organization. And so for me, that was one of the larger realizations is just noticing you do everything. And so, yeah, I jumped, I jumped over and, um, all of the companies I run today, they always start off, I am Guinea Pig 1, I am Technician 1, I am the person that tests everything. I want to make sure that I feel comfortable doing it before I ask somebody else to do it. And also that allows you to time yourself, learn basic KPIs, uh, baseline metrics. Hey, how long should this take? What variables might pop up? Like, how's this feel doing it for the first 2 months? Is production going to go down? And all you do is measure against yourself. And eventually you have very baseline realistic goals and KPIs and you learn finances and all these other kind of things along the way. And so I, every single company I start still to this day, I am the first person that tries to take a swing at it and make sure that I want to do it.

So how do you move from you wearing all the hats hats and doing everything to hiring people and splitting those roles between them and then delegating that work? Because I know that is one of the hardest things for founders to do in a way is to let go.

Yes, you said it well. It's tough because, uh, I, so I have a career slash executive coach slash, slash personal coach today. And Roto, Roto says it well, entrepreneurship is a game of constant evolution, uh, and growth., and we'll use an American analogy really quick. So on a football field, you go from being the all-star player on both sides of the, of the game to being the coach to eventually being in the owner's box and being able to think prospectively from each of those. They have different needs. There's different time where you have to be each one of those, but just flipping that metric from being the only technician to being the one that's coordinating everybody else, that is a big difference. And it's tough for a lot of take charge entrepreneurs to, to be comfortable with that. And so for me, I think just in hindsight, it was just by sheer, just had to do it this way. It wasn't strategic that I did it this way. I couldn't afford to have anybody else with me that was that first year. So when I was, when I, when I was technician one, when I was getting down baseline KPIs and goals, that's when I realized I'm starting to make goals and targets for other people. Because if I didn't plan on other people joining, why would I even take the time to see how long it should take me? I'm just kind of like pushing myself, so to say. And so I built the baseline KPIs and the goal was always bringing other people. Well, to do that, in order to delegate, you have to understand what you're delegating, right? And a lot of people think that the problems go away. So entrepreneur, I have 20 different hats on. I'm doing so much. I'm on my heels all day long, just getting hit with need after need after need. They hire somebody and they think that, you know, they're going to take over half my problems. All actuality, what happens is if you don't have a system or KPIs or know what you're delegating, you just doubled your problems because now not only do you have those initial problems, Now you have to explain to the person that you want solving them how to solve them. And so you're doing twice the work and then you're paying for them to do the work. And so instead, the real trick is to make sure that the whole operations from start to finish, from sale to collection, you name it, all of it goes closed circle. And a lot of people skimp here because it's tough to do. But if you spend a few hours doing it and as simple as it sounds, get in front of a whiteboard and you need to truly, truly write down What is the journey here? What am I trying to accomplish? What's each category of the company? I might not be able to afford a head of marketing right now, so I'm just going to cross that one off or I'll do it. I might not be able to afford a sales director right now, so that's going to be me. But I can afford a service director, so I'm going to embed that person into this wheel of operations. And so for me to delegate, I have to have a clear visual pathway of like, what am I actually delegating? And what is the goal with that role? So that first half, half of delegation, as simple as it sounds, is simple, just structuring. We call it frames and rails. Where does, what is the journey of our team's energy? What's the, what's success look like in defining that? That's half of it from the operational side. The human side is completely different as far as being able to delegate. So delegation is going to really show off whether or not you care about employees or not in the response to you. So by way of example, when I delegate today, when I hire a role, I have a very clear-cut, here's the KPI goal. Are we on point, off point? What's our budgeted versus actual? Here's what success looks like. Here's what I'm going to do to empower you. Here's what I'm going to do if it's not successful. And here's the final rung if we both agree that it's just not a good fit. Managing expectations upfront is more important than talking about how you're going to celebrate the wins together. And a lot of people shy away from that simply because it doesn't feel great. But when you manage things up front, it really sets expectations for everybody. It creates alignment and clarity and also just aligning interests so that theirs matches yours. So you could delegate to, to these other team members and, and also make it feel like they are winning because they are. By way of example, today in my companies, all of my managers have equity in my companies. And so when we talk about things and we run open books, it's very easy for me to get excited and not feel like I have to hide it. Because when we, when we talk about, hey guys, look how much we've grown. Hey guys, we might sell one company in the future. I say that proudly because the rest of the team is like, oh, that's super exciting. Like, let's talk about it because they benefit too. So making sure that you have the right processes, the right people, but also the right upside and incentive is just as important as anything else. Because if you're lacking any of those, you're going to get mediocre results and you're going to be the busiest business owner ever to exist because you're just, you're, you're going to be trying to ride a bike with one wheel. It's going to be very difficult.

So you did the job yourself wearing all the hats in order to learn what needs to be done, how much time it takes you to do each process, etc. So how do you find and select the right people? Because that's, that's the next step before you actually decide to hire somebody, give them equity, and we'll talk about that one in a second as well. What are your learnings now for hiring the right people? Because I'm sure like everybody, you would have had some hits and some misses along the way.

A lot of misses early on, and that's more so indicative of me not managing things up front and me not setting up everybody for success. But also there's just some situations you can't anticipate and you just get surprised all the time. So by way of example, early on, I mentioned that you need to manage things up front, right? Here's the clear expectations when you bring on somebody, because I've had a lot of misses. At first, you just want somebody to show up. You're so excited that somebody showed up to work for you. You just can't believe it. And so right away, it's this cool feeling. You're like, oh my gosh, I have somebody else here to help me. Let's go. And then you might start letting that compromise, like, oh, they took a 3-hour lunch today. That's okay. You know, then it turns into like, oh, they didn't show up for, you know, for 4 days in a row without notice. That's okay. And eventually you kind of like that, that polish wears off and you just realize, hey, I really need to be goal-focused with people. Like we really need to be, here's what we need to do today, manage those things up front. But also I think the big thing that I learned going from hiring right, hiring wrong, I've hired from Fortune 500 companies and have been right. I have hired from Fortune 500 companies and been wrong. It always comes down to the culture side of things. And understanding the company's purpose and understanding our core values and defending those with the team and embracing those, that is what has led to winning. And if it's simply just money, like, hey guys, we want to make $5 million this year. $5 million is great. Don't get me wrong, but it's very quick and it's going to be very short-sighted. If you talk about the impact that the team makes and you measure your results based around your purpose today. We hire and fire based around our core values and our purpose. If somebody isn't defending that or if they're jeopardizing it and the entire team is sitting here and we're all rallying except there's one person trying to compromise this, if that person isn't receptive to change, they're gone. And I think that's probably the biggest thing that I've learned over the, the past 5 years or so was just understanding it's always deeper than the thing that you're doing and it's always about the impact and the feeling at the end of the day. And if you measure those things and you create goals around those things, Everybody, no matter what category of the company they're in, from finance to sales to operations, it doesn't matter. Everybody can recognize a, uh, recognize a common theme and a purpose. And if you parade that and defend it and embrace it, that's where the team wins. That's where you win as a hiring manager.

So is there a particular question in interviews, especially when you hire managers, which I'm assuming you still do personally, that you ask that in a way tells you everything you need to know about that person's mindset?

So yes and no. For a while there, I would have a couple Easter egg questions and like, oh, if they answer this wrong, I got them. And then I realized that I was probably a little bit biased when I was asking some of these things, and it kind of evolved. I really, when I connect with somebody, the first thing I look for in somebody is this intrinsic motivation. I don't want somebody to come in and they just You know, like, ah, yeah, I wanted to come today. You know, they're not super excited. I'm not saying somebody has to be doing backflips, but if there's a lack of morale right away with somebody and I'm talking to them for an hour and it's still there, if their energy isn't up to speed with probably close to being on par with everybody else, then it's probably not going to go far. It's just not going to be a great fit. So it's not necessarily just one or two questions. It's just a common theme. What's their energy like? Are they positive? Are they saying awful things about a previous employer? You know, a lot of the times they don't need to have the best answer. They just need to have authentic answers. And if the best thing somebody can say is, you know, hey, I can do 3 out of 5 things very well. You mentioned you want 5. Here's the 3 I'm really good at, but I'm willing to learn these 2. That's a really good sign. That is a green flag. If somebody comes in and they're perfect, they had no faults, and, you know, it's a sales pitch. It's like, okay, hey, like it doesn't need to be that way. Like we could just converse, you know, that's always a red flag. But unfortunately, a lot of people prepare for these things and they have the perfect answers all the time. They have all these things ready to go. And every now and then that comes across as being not authentic, so to say. It's great to be prepared. It is wonderful to be, hey, here's how I'm going to answer this style question. Those things are wonderful, but not for this in the sake of losing that authenticity as a person and as a human. You don't want to sound scripted. So not really one question I asked today that would like, oh, that's the answer I want to hear. Let's go. Instead, it's kind of like I look for a few outs. Again, the biggest one is just complaining about others right away. That one's going to go and show itself time and time again. So that's probably a hard out for me. But if I ask somebody why they want to work here and they say, oh, you guys make a big impact for people. I learned about, you know, I heard about your purpose or whatever it is. I'd love to do that too. That's it all day long. Like I'm probably going to have a bias because I'm going to hire you on the spot. So that's probably a bad thing. But those are the big things I look for when I'm talking to somebody. The last thing I'll say about that is this. I always ask them what they want. If they had a magic button to hit and it was their career fast forward and they were able to get somewhere, I always ask them, "What does that thing do? What's that pathway look like?" The reason why I ask is, and it's okay if they don't know the answer, it's okay if they don't know the final version of their life like, "Hey, when I'm 40 years from now, I want to be on the tail end of this," or whatever it might be, it doesn't matter. But I always ask because of alignment. If someone says, I want to be here for 6 months, I want to go work for Google for 12 months, I want to be here. One, I don't want anybody short-term. It doesn't mean that we have to have somebody like full lifespan, so to say. But I do want to, if I invest time and energy into somebody, I want to make sure that they're going to view this as at least a couple notches on their resume, so to say. So that's the first thing. And second thing is I want to make sure that we could actually give them what they're looking for. If somebody wants to be, I'll make this up. If somebody wants to be a software coder and They're applying for us. They say, hey, you're a tech-enabled services. I would love to work with you. And I say, what's your goal? Oh, I want to be the lead developer of software for this, this, and this. It's probably not a great fit because we're not inherently a software company. And so that's where I just want to check for alignment to make sure that this person could reach their own goals and not realize 6 months in or 12 months in that all of a sudden, like, oh, I'm never going to be a lead software developer here. Here's why. So I just try to get ahead of things, to be honest.

And speaking of motivation, Tyler, you said that all your managers have equity. How does that change the energy, accountability, and overall motivation in your experience at Turnser?

I think it was probably the single largest game changer that we ever instilled for operations, from culture and morale to support and just eagerness And it's tough to put a metric on it. I'm sure I could sit here and say, hey, morale went up and I could do some math. Like, hey, it's 18%. I'm just making that up. It would probably be closer to 80%, to be honest with you. I think the biggest thing is just flip places with that for a second. And if you are an employee and all of a sudden you sit down and employer says, hey, by the way, you're also going to have equity in this thing and we're going to be partners in one regard and you're going to have some upside in this long-term, short-term, whatever else it is. You get very excited. It's just, it's very cool to hear that. And I think the biggest thing is just, just aligning interest. It doesn't mean that every day is going to be perfect for somebody. It doesn't mean that every single thing that we have to work on is the most fun thing. Sometimes we have to build, sometimes we have to clean up and all those kinds of things. That's part of the job. But it's a lot easier doing that when you feel like somebody else is taking care of you and cares enough about you to give you upside in an organization. All of your efforts, they don't just expire when you clock out for the day. They're compounding in long term. And so you feel like you're constantly building towards a future for yourself that you don't normally ever hear about in software or SaaS or something like that to where, oh, I have options, I have this, I have that. That's fantastic. But for us, we're really trying to make sure that people in the service space have options to do the same exact thing. And that way when the company wins, they win. And from a motivational standpoint, you know, my team whistles their way into work and whistles the way out most days. Some days we, you know, it's a 9-round batch and it's just a long one. But every now then we have these offshoot outside offsite conversations and we're able to talk about, hey guys, we have a huge partnership coming up with X, Y, and Z. We have a massive thing in the future for whatever this might be. And the team is super excited. Whereas if they didn't have equity and I'm like, hey guys, this could be a potential $10 million deal for us. And they're like, cool. If they were like, yeah, my salary doesn't change. Like, that's great for you. Like, why do we care? Well, it's like, well, the valuation of the company's going up. Like, oh, that's true. And my equity's going up too. So it's just a way to show them upside and hopefully increase their commitment and longevity, but also reward them for years or months, whatever the timing is of efforts. And so that, that right there, it just creates a team environment, taking care of one another because now if there's a situation in the company and there's a person that's hired and they're not quite embracing our core values or theme or whatever it might be. There's a lot more at stake for the rest of the employees by tolerating something like that or what have you, or not defending our core values. And they're not going to have it. My team embraces the rules and regulations far more than I do. And that's because they care about it because we incentivize them to also have incentives just like us.

You also mentioned, Tyler, about defending the culture of the business and fostering that across the entire team. So I'm wondering, is there any particular moment or scenario when you had to make a tough call to protect the culture in TurnServ?

Often, unfortunately, and I say often, if it's once or twice a month or every, every 2 months, that's still way more often than, than what I'd like. A lot of the times it's, it's normally around people having, it's okay to have a self-interest. It's okay to be self-motivated and it's It's perfectly fine to care about yourself and your future. Do that all day long. That is 100% right. What I, what I normally see crosses the line the most is somebody's self-interest turns into stepping on others to get it. And a lot of that turns into, you know, like I'm going to make up a hypothetical here. Then I'll give a real example. Like if somebody was talking about they want a promotion and their boss is awful, so they want their job, here's why, but it's completely made up and whatnot. That's not supportive. That's not embracing our purpose or anything like that at all. That part of it's just not going to go well. And that happens way more than you think in the corporate America world. It really doesn't happen a lot with us anymore because we learn how to manage ahead of that and we have a really good culture today and we have a really good feel-out vibe vetting process before we welcome people on. But we also move fast. If we see little red flags in somebody, we normally manage that up front and have that conversation conversation right away. So that, that happens quite a lot, and that's probably actually a real example of what we have dealt with in the past. You know, I, and I have examples from small to large, uh, issues. Another quick example is this, and we'll pick on people outside of the management office for a minute. And in this, some of our installers— which, our installers are amazing, they have, uh, they have wonderful work ethics, they do incredible things— but every now and then, just like, just like anybody else, we want to make sure that our good group is protected as much as possible.. And so we have somebody show up and they say that they have 20 years experience. They don't care for the processes that we have in place. They don't care about the reporting or the checks and balances that we have to have. And they undermine the entire team's process. Like, no, no, hey, here's how we run things. That's great. You have experience. Here's our, here's our checklist that we do for every job, start to finish. Here's what it is. And kind of just like slug that off and say, I know what I'm doing. Like clockwork, those examples are always the worst. They never go as planned. And so having to move on quickly from, from those types that are just willing to, to just collaborate are probably the most recurring type of, uh, defending the culture that we have happen all the time.

Besides culture, you emphasize attracting talent. And I know you said before that you're big on personal branding, not for ego, but to attract great talent to your business. So A lot of the founders I've spoken to build, especially in the initial stages, their personal brand. So I'm wondering whether you're at the stage now where you can have an idea on the ROI of building your founder brand and any advice about how others should think about it.

Got it. You know, so I can't put an ROI on it right now, and maybe I will be able to eventually, but I can answer it emotionally at least, and just from a a, um, a feeling in the gut, so to say. You know, I started doing a lot of promo to talk about my team, uh, a lot of personal branding so that there's validation. Somebody researches me, hopefully it makes it easier for my team to get in somewhere, or like, oh no, we're familiar with Tyler. Or hopefully somebody sees me and right away they're like, oh, we either want their services or like, hey, I would love to work for Tyler or with Tyler or with one of his companies, whatever it might be. My main goal starting off was recruiting, to be honest to do. I wanted to attract like-minded people. I wasn't out like doing like promos for like, today you come work for me and here's what I do for you. Instead, I just wanted to be authentic and like on this podcast, no transcript, nothing like that at all. Just trying to be authentic and talk about what we're doing. And my goal was to just find people that wanted to be a part of something like us, that like what we're doing. And that's how it kind of started. Now the personal branding side, you know, once we did our private equity deal last media kind of went crazy, and I have never been flooded with inquiries like that before, ever. You know, when you have a private equity partner like we have in Colig Companies and what they have done, I mean, Matt and his team have been phenomenal. They own massive companies. They invest in 50+ other companies, real estate. Matt owns part of the Cleveland Guardians. The guy's a big deal, and he's done wonderful things for the community. We are associated and attached to that. And, right away, all of the media just— it was incredible to see it in real time. And, that's when I started watching Matt and what he does. He never talks about his ultra successes. Instead, he talks about how he's doing things, why he's doing it that way. I'm watching what he's doing in real time. And, there's a part of that that also inspires me to, "Hey, it's okay to talk about things I'm proud about. It's okay to talk about my team. It's okay to talk about charities I'm interested in." And, just putting myself out there to be authentic. And so I really started to do a lot of personal branding and getting out there and doing podcasts and everything else towards like the timing of that deal because that's what I realized. That's when I realized the importance of it. And this sheer, you know, somebody could recognize you or there's validation for the brand or what have you. Last zinger I'll give you about that is this, and I'm still getting used to it. I don't know if I endorse this or not. I'm still feeling this out. I have to talk to the team about it. I get stopped a lot. And people ask me if I'm the bathtub guy. And I say— and I asked them, I said, possibly. What are you referring to? And they said, oh, your product, the liquid liner stuff. You're the bathtub guy. And I say, ah, yes, yes I am. So that has happened to me probably 6 or 7 times in the past 6 months. And just people that I've never met before referring to me as a bathtub guy, when I never thought I'd be a bathtub guy, to be honest, Daniel. That's still getting some—

getting, uh, taking some getting used But that's in a way of validation of all the promotion and personal branding that you've been working on for months and years before that.

Absolutely. 100%. It's marinating, it's coming around, and I'm seeing it more and more.

Outside of your work life, a lot of people talk about work-life separation, but I get a feeling, Tyler, that You're more about work-life integration and that, I know that's a dilemma many founders and business builders have. They, in a way, identify with their business. It becomes their lifestyle. So I'm wondering from your perspective, what's life actually like for you as a founder and also as a dad of 3, if I'm correct?

You're correct. Yes. Big on work-life integration, family of 3 boys at home. You know, it's at times, there's times that it feels challenging. Don't get me wrong. I'll say this, I live and die by my calendar. And I know that that probably sounds awful to some people. It probably sounds really comforting to others. You know, I was watching something once and I was listening to a psychologist and trying to structure the day and whatnot. And I realized that this was kind of like one of those aha moments that are so obvious that I should have like realized these sooner. You know, I'm always on my calendar. I realize it's okay to block off free time on the calendar as well, to where you could set up 3 hours of nothingness, no calls, no nothing. I'm going to be present and still and with my family. And although my schedule is rigid, there's also gaps in there to where I could do absolutely nothing at length if I want to. So fast forward, you know, as the families grow, companies grow, almost every founder is going to be deeply, deeply obsessed with their business. Obsession is probably the most common theme around business owners, if I had to guess. And And a lot of the times it's frowned upon. Proudly say I am truly obsessed with my business and I love it, all those kind of things. It provides a lot for myself and my family and it gives me purpose. I really enjoy it. But sometimes on the work-life side of things, you know, every now and then a life thing pops up during work and it requires my full attention and I go do it. I don't feel guilty about it because there's also other times when I'm at home and a work thing pops up and it takes all of my attention for a couple of hours and I have to do it and that's just how it goes. And so, I think there's trade-offs both ways and it's okay to have boundaries. It's really healthy to have boundaries, don't get me wrong. But, I think a lot of that is just understanding yourself, understanding your tells. If you constantly feel burnout, if you constantly feel just a spotlight effect, whatever it might be, you might have to turn off your phone at 5:00 every single day for a few weeks until you start feeling normal or sess or whatever it might be. But, I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all for this work-life balance thing that most people talk about because I don't know that every every single person's day is identical. I'll use this weekend as a good example. So Friday, right after work, the family and I went to downtown to stay at a hotel, and the next day was to go to the aquarium. We celebrated my birthday. I just turned 35, and we never really stopped to celebrate stuff for me, I guess. It's mostly around the kids, but we went up to stay at this hotel. We had a full weekend there. Now, there was 3 hours each day that I was there, so Saturday and Sunday, where I just— there was no other option, I had to do a couple things for work. And it's like, oh, you know, like every now and then, sure, I want that full separation, but in the moment, anybody that has kids, you realize you can either be your kid's best friend for the moment or they don't want anything to do with you the next. And so I try to take advantage of that, that as well, and just really just, just understanding when I need something, uh, when my, when my kids need something, and playing it by ear. No doubt I'll have a hard stop on some things. If, if I feel like one of my kids needs me in the moment, I will drop everything to be there and This is if I feel I am overwhelmed, overstimulated, I need to take a breather, I will shut it down and go for a walk or do something similar. But, it really just comes back down to knowing yourself and your environment and being able to be realistic with yourself enough to say, "Hey, I'm working too much. Hey, it's okay to work this much," or whatever it might be. There's not a one-size-fits-all. So, just really understanding what you need as a human and what the people around you need too, critically important to make work-life integration work.

You mentioned burnout. You experienced it before. And it can also easily happen, especially in fast-growth companies like yours. You briefly touched on a couple of tips, but I'm wondering if you can share some of the habits and routines that keep you grounded at peak times when things get really crazy.

Sure. I think the big thing is to start having a baseline KPI set for the team. That way you don't have that all-star fallacy where you feel like you have to constantly do everything. Giving my team clear KPIs and goals for the week, and they report those on Friday. It's not to micromanage. It's just to confirm that things are going smooth, but it's also peace of mind for me. If I have nothing to do with that category of the business for a week, I don't want it to live in my head. And if the numbers are good, out of sight, out of mind, I'm onto the next thing. It's good for the person that's doing those things. It's great for me. It's great for the company. Onto the next. That's a big part of it. As far as the burnout goes, I learned this through some coaching and therapy and everything else I had mentioned before, is recognizing that feeling of overwhelm and what it means. Like what happens? Like what do I need to do in that moment? And very very, very few times is it sit down and keep working when you feel completely just on fire, so to say. Doing something physical, example, like, uh, where my main headquarters, we're on a closed road, and I go walk often if I feel that, uh, that buildup, if I just feel that way, uh, just go for a brief walk and back. But one thing I have done to really avoid it is I, I realized that for me, for example, I'm a very high motor. I can't drink caffeine, I can't do anything like that at all, or else I'll stay up there for days. But one thing that I started doing was between meetings, just taking break, not jam-packing my schedule where it's back to back to back to back, but deliberately putting in 15-minute breaks, 20-minute breaks, hour-long breaks between things and realizing that to be as productive as I have to be, it doesn't always translate to busy work that leads to where I need to be, so to say. I read the book "Deep Work" by Cal Newport, and that really taught me a cadence and a rhythm with my own scheduling that allowed me to think deeply on things but not do nonproductive busy work all the That those things are, those help lead up to a way where I stay grounded to where I avoid some burnout, but also on the personal care side of things. I say this proudly, I'm probably the most pampered adult male in America. And what I mean by that is it doesn't mean that I have a limousine drive me around or anything like that at all. It's, I have, I have things that I do at home that are normally like, that are not common, so to say. You know, people ask me, hey, in your free time, what do you love to do? I love to do. My number one thing I love to do the most is nothing. I love to sit around a bonfire with my kids and just be in the moment, be still, and just soak it all in. From manicures and pedicures to massages to you name it, I really try to take care of myself in that regard just so that I feel caught up and refreshed and to make sure I give the best version of myself. But also, lastly, if I feel like the team that I have around me is capable, and they are, and if I feel like they're incentivized to win if I win, and they They are. It's really good peace of mind for me at the end of the day. If I felt like I was completely extracting every ounce of soul out of my team and they weren't benefiting and whatnot, I wouldn't be able to turn it off at night. My mind would be racing all the time, but that's why I also built it the way I did. That way I could sleep good at night. I feel confident having a support team around me, a high productive team at that. And so on the work side, that's one way to do it. The home life, just knowing your tells, knowing when to kind of unplug. And for me, hot shower with the light off, with the blue light on, that's the way to go, man. That really just gets the stress all the way gone.

The pampering part, I haven't heard it so far from other millennial masters, but I'm sure we all have our little pampering sessions one way or another. But I'm wondering, Tyler, in a fast-growth company like yours, and I'm sure you still have high ambitions, how far would you have to go to feel content that you've made it?

That's a really good question. Admittedly, there's probably no finish line. I'll speak for me. I really think that I just love doing, I love building, I love the thought of crafting an idea into reality. That part for me is fun. I don't know what else I would do outside of that. I tell people this all the time and I mean it. I would do this for free just because I love what I do. To do. Now, I do have some big goals, and I'll try to realistically answer your question as best as I can on this. It's going to be a little bit biased in the moment, but I'll take a swing at it. I think so. One, one crazy big goal that I had when I started this company was like, how crazy would it be if we could IPO a service company? And so IPO, meaning initial public offering, go, go, go public, like have a public stock out of a service company. And I always told myself like, that would be crazy. And in my head, I'm like, we should do that one day. And so I think it'd be very fascinating and very fun to have a company that goes public that started off not too long ago, so to say, and being able to get on Acorns or whatever platform that people use across the world and see your stock on there. That would be so fun for me. So something like that would be pretty fun. Outside of that, like I talk about what's next because I do this thing called 3 Horizons. Like what do I want to do today? What's tomorrow? What's the future. In the future, I still find myself working. Like, even after an exit, whatever it is, I'm still doing it. And after, like, Turn and after TurnServe, my companies today, I want to get heavily involved in private equity because I want to work on more businesses. I want to do more and make more of an impact. So I don't know that I'd ever be able to hang it up, but I definitely have some, like, flashy, like, this would be really cool to, to do or achieve. And a lot of that's just around making a big impact and having a big team, to honest.

Something that I also like to ask my Millennial Masters interviews, Tyler, which still stays in the self-reflection space. 7 years in now after starting your own business, or your second business, what would you say are the biggest sacrifices you had to make to be where you are today?

I think on that for a second, because there's definitely been a few. I think, especially at first, I think the biggest sacrifice that I had to make was staying incredibly disciplined to a schedule. And that is, that was tough for me because when you're an entrepreneur, you start half the time because yes, you want to be wealthy and whatnot, but you want freedom. You don't want a boss and you don't want to answer to anybody. That's normally how it starts. And for me, just realizing that that, hey, I need to block this off. I need to be comfortable going from 9:00 to 9:30, at 10:00 and 11:00. I need to have that discipline. And I think one of the biggest compromises was I learned that being disciplined creates way more freedom than the art of just doing nothing for a little while, so to say. And so I think that was probably the biggest trade-off, I would probably call it, when I first started and biggest realization that I ever had there's that. And then there's the obvious ones too. You know, again, I started my journey early 20s, mid-20s. Like, I, and I'm not saying that I was a complete homebody all the time, but I had buddies that were, would go and get a beverage at lunchtime and ask like, hey, do you want to come do this? Like, no, I actually have like a meeting with a homeowner later on. I can't do that. And, and just kind of realizing that my pace and my speed and my needs were a lot different than the people around me, especially in my early 20s. 20s, uh, where, where people are still figuring it out and people were still going to parties every day. And I just like, hey, like, I don't really have an inkling to do that, uh, but I couldn't do it how I wanted to. And that, that was probably a big trade-off and just really going from, you know, college football to straight entrepreneur work mode just 24/7. So that was also probably a big adjustment that I was hoping for but that I had to go through as well. So there's— and there's a million smaller ones too. It's hard to just point your finger on one or two of those things, but the adapting to discipline was very, very— took a lot of adjustment at first.

Something else that I wanted to ask you, Tyler, was if you had to start from scratch tomorrow, no money, no connections, what would be the first thing you would do?

Okay, no money, no connections. See, that, that's where you got the curveball at me, because if I, if I had connections, I would just go to them. You know, I think the first thing I would do, pretending that I don't have the experience or what have you, um, you'd still have your experience. Okay, okay, got it, got it. So with the experience still, I would probably do something along the lines of entrepreneurship, and that's where I would pick a company that's in a space that I really enjoyed and the industry that's growing with a company that's open and innovative and kind of more modern, and I would try to create a subco underneath their umbrella. I'll make up a hypothetical here. I'll pick on Home Depot. It's right down the road for me. Love you guys, Home Depot. Thank you. You know, for Home Depot, for example, I'd probably go to them and say, hey, I really want to start an at-home pet delivery business. I want to make sure that we could deliver from bones to bedding to food to, you name it, artificial grass maybe. Here's what it's going to be called, and I want to offer it to your customers at your Pro Desk. I would probably do something using somebody else's infrastructure, size, and customer place. Because if you don't have resources or anything like that at all, so to say, if I'm starting from scratch, if I don't have millions of dollars to invest or what, whatever it might be, you're going to have to get creative and innovative. So I would probably do something underneath somebody else's umbrella and see where it went to from there. Uh, it's probably— so entrepreneurship is probably the, the quick answer. I can come up with a few others too, depending on the day, but I'd probably start there.

But wouldn't there be a danger that, the rug can get pulled from under you at any time when you work on somebody else's platform in a way.

Absolutely. And that's well said. I would probably try to deal around that and here's how I would do it. I would create a, a, an LLC where it's just mine. There's nobody else in it. And then I would try to create a partnership with Home Depot. And there's rules and regs in that partnership or minimum volumes or what have have you. That way I still had autonomy over my own LLC. I am my own boss at the end of the day. But then also there's a partnership agreement between my LLC and Home Depot LLC, and hey, here's the terms and conditions, here's the minimum conditions that need met, here's what happens if they're not, here's the supply agreement, whatever it might be over time. Just that way we kind of manage those things up front just to avoid those awkward conversations that might come around like, oh hey, Home Depot wants to change course after 2 months. Good job, but no, this it, which they very well could, unless you have some sort of futures contract, which I probably would try to have just to manage those things before they would happen.

And just a final question, uh, for you, Tyler, and that's more asking for a piece of advice from somebody who's working on a super fast and high growth company for any other founders out there who feel stuck in a in a slow or stagnant business, what would you say is the fastest way to inject a shot of growth culture and momentum into the business from your experience?

Yeah, so the first thing you have to do is step back a little bit. Well, you need to— well, the whiteboard's my best friend, and that's what you should start with. You need to map out your business, not the workers' names or how much money you made or anything like that at all. Draw a square on the whiteboard, and on the left side you have customers, on the right side you have your solutions. You need to map out exactly the framework work, what your business is. One, you need to do that because you need to remember the core thesis of what you're doing. That's the first thing. Second, you need to then look for, are there ways where I can extract more dollars? Is there ways that I can get to a new industry? Could I cross-sell into a new industry with a service offering? Well, a lot of the times we have founder bias and we only think about our favorite solutions that require the least amount of work. However, a lot of the times there are a plethora of opportunity and things that we do or that we're close to that we never think about. And so, visualizing these things on the whiteboard is really going to be a good frame of mind and a reference point. So, always start with a visual and take yourself from in the moment, in the fire, because if you're feeling that burnout, if you're feeling whatever that is, you're probably super close to the fire, so to say. You need to detach and reflect a little bit. That's the first thing. Give yourself some space, on it so that you can analyze it accurately. From there, I would look at my options, my opportunities. I would say, do I have a viable business? What is my career path? What do I want to do with this? Is this investible? Like, what are my options? That's probably next. So understand what you're offering today, what options do you have in front of you, and then kind of go from there. And then I would probably look at something if you're feeling stagnant, if you're feeling a little bit just behind or just, hey, this is really routine now. It's probably more so in your head than anything else. Previously. I would even try to talk to a coach or something along those lines and just say, even if it's a friend, you know, it doesn't have to be a paid coach. Let's pretend it's somebody in the space, a mentor or somebody else that's been there. Reach out to them and ask them for 5 minutes of their time, and that's normally going to snowball into more time spent with them. But just ask their perspective and their opinion, like, hey, here's how I'm feeling in this right now. What's your take on this? Like, what would you do if you were me? And just getting a different frame of mind, a different perspective on it, it's going to go a long, long way. So talking to people that have already have done it or are doing things that are higher than what you're currently doing is a really good way to shrink your problems down, so to say. And then lastly, I'll say you probably need to revisit your why and your purpose. A lot of the times if we're feeling burned out or stagnant, it's because we forgot why we started. And it's never the first thing we think of. It's never, oh, I want to create a lot of money. That's fine. That's fair. I hope you make a billion dollars. But unless you know why you're doing what you're doing, you're going to get burned out. And normally when we lose focus of that, if we forget about the impact we made. If we forget about the purpose, if we forget about where we started from, that's where it is a slow decay. So, just really reminding yourself of, "Hey, this is why I'm passionate. This is what I do every single day. Here's the people I'm trying to impact." That'll keep you going. And, it's okay if that changes. If your purpose tends to modify or change over time, that is wonderful, but at least start by reflecting on it and see if you kind of strayed or misaligned on that. And, a lot of the times, it just creates space, reflection, and realignment in order to understand what options you have in front of you or just talk to a smart person that you trust and see what their take is on it.

That's a great parting thought. So thank you so much, Tyler, for sharing your journey and your lessons learned so far at TurnServe and beyond. And I can't wait to see what you're going to do next.

Thank you so much, Daniel. It's been fun.

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