To Sell or Not - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Robert “Bobby” Mesmer of RMG Erectors & Constructors. You can read the interview below, listen to the full podcast or watch the video.

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Heidi J Ellsworth: Hello, and welcome to MetalCast from MetalCoffeeShop. My name is Heidi Ellsworth, and we are here today with a follow-up to a previous podcast that I was so excited about and that was with Bobby Mesmer with RMG Erectors, Constructors of Montana. That's a big mouthful, but I have to tell you, I met Bobby at the METALCON show last year and have been so impressed, and I'm just so excited to talk to him some more. And today, it's about mergers and acquisitions. Welcome, Bobby.

Bobby Mesmer: Hey, how you doing, Heidi? It's great to be on. Thanks for having me again. Had a blast last time. Looking really forward to what you come up with this time.

Heidi J Ellsworth: I told you we'd have you back.

Bobby Mesmer: This is great. I love this. I love spending time with you, and helping out and helping the industry in any way that I can.

Heidi J Ellsworth: I love it. Well, I tell you what, today's topic is a hot topic. It is happening in all of the trades no matter what segment you're involved in. But before we dive into that, let's start with can you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your company?

Bobby Mesmer: Yeah, absolutely. I am the CEO of RMG Erectors & Constructors. We are the world's largest pre-engineered erection company. Pre-engineered market is a very niche market. So when we say that we're the largest in the world, a lot of people think massive, massive companies. In our business, we are a massive company. I think that we closed out 2023 year over 7 million square feet of buildings erected. 2022 year was 44.5 million square feet of buildings erected. And to put that into perspective, most of the average erectors on the large side to about 2 million square feet.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Wow.

Bobby Mesmer: We are really accelerating and really growing our business extensively. We've been in business for 24 years so we've been doing this a long time. We know this business really well. And as of recently, we actually for 2024 year, we just started our own private label manufacturing division to our company. So we are engineering, detailing in-house and private label manufacturing our own pre-engineered buildings, and then erecting them to our customer base. That's a little bit about us as a company. I mean, yeah, it's been a ride for sure.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Been a ride. Well, congratulations. That is a lot of great growth, and just creativity, innovation. You and I talked about this last time, but really looking at doing things different, and that fits your culture. Maybe just to remind everybody about that, talk just a little bit about that.

Bobby Mesmer: Yeah, I think it's interesting to talk about, right? Businesses tend to replicate other businesses. I think I said that to you before. The problem is that everybody just does it the same old way and nobody's innovative. Nobody's looking at things differently. Nobody looks at ways to cater to the client better, to cater to the end user better. What can I change in this industry? Part of that is the industry in itself too. What you end up with is you end up with a little bit of condescendingness from the industry itself. When you say, "Hey, this is the way I'm going to do it," people come back at you and they're like, "That's not the way it's done. That's not the way it should be done. This is the way it needs to be done." Well, what makes you right and makes me wrong?

Heidi J Ellsworth: Right.

Bobby Mesmer: I don't know that there's anything that makes anybody wrong. And at the end of the day, we felt that in our erection business because of the way that we attacked erection of the buildings was a, we were met with, "That's not the way it's done. That's not the way you should be doing it. That's not the way I've done it." We've always turned around and said, "We don't care." And then when we broke that mold, now what's interesting is everybody's trying to duplicate what we're doing after they all told us that we were wrong and naive and stupid and all of those things for trying it that way, and we've really innovated. I think too many people stand in their own way with that. If you have a better idea or you have a better way, try it and make it happen and see what it does.

Heidi J Ellsworth: It's so funny because that's exactly where we've been. You and I talked about this before, both being entrepreneurs. I had the exact same thing telling us about the coffee shops. You can't do it that way, that's not how publishing works, you can't do this or you can't do that. We just did what we felt was right, and I think that makes a big difference. I would love along that veins of entrepreneurship, if you could share a little bit of your history as an entrepreneur. That's going to lead us into talking about buying and selling businesses.

Bobby Mesmer: Wow, it's been a journey, right? It's been 24 years of this, but it's interesting. When I started this company, we started out as actually a general construction company. We were doing large-scale GC work, a lot of government work and we fell into the pre-engineered business. And when I say we fell into it, we were doing some pre-engineered work, very small stuff, and then one day we got involved in an airplane hangar on a military base. Buying the building was easy. There's 40, 50 manufacturers out there in the country you can buy the building from. So we ended up buying the building, but we couldn't find anybody to erect the building. We put together a team of guys, we go out over there and I go out with them and we erect the building. I stand back at the end of the day and I look at it and I still remember me standing there and looking at it and being like, "That's it? I can't find people to do this. What's the matter with this industry?"

So then on the same job site, this is on a military base, another building, another hanger comes up for bid. We bid it, we don't win the bid. A competitor of mine wins the bid, but then they hire us to erect it because they had the same exact problem. And so instantaneously, I see a void, I see what's going on in the industry, and I say, "You know what? We're going into this." And that's where the business started. And the rest is history. I mean, here we are, right?

Heidi J Ellsworth: Right.

Bobby Mesmer: Now, along the way, one of the things that I've done as an entrepreneur is I've always seeked opportunity, and I've always looked at things in ways to do it better. Too many people don't do that, and maybe it's because they don't believe in themselves. I don't know what that is, but at the end of the day, you have to be willing to do things better. So when we were in the general construction business, I always had the mindset of vertically integrating. I didn't know what vertical integration was until I started to do it and people talked about it. I'm like, "Oh, is that what that is?"

One of the first companies that we started outside of my current business was a distribution company. I started that company and wanted to distribute products because I understood through conversation and listening to people how the distribution business worked in certain aspects of distributing. I'm like, well, if I could distribute those products to myself, and then take that margin, instead of putting that margin in my pocket, pass that margin along to the customer, pass that savings along to the customer, creates a spread between my bid and the next person's bid. Guarantees me the work, I control more of the product and I control my outcome at that point. And so makes a lot of sense.

Most people, again, "No, you can't do that. It's not the way business works. You can't self do this." But I did, and then we became a very large company under most companies that sell. We ended up selling that company in 2008, 2009 and we ended up selling it to a big box company. As most sales, we have an NDA in place on that, but we ended up selling it to a big box retailer who turned it into a multi-billion dollar company at that point, based on my background and what I did.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Wow.

Bobby Mesmer: So that's one good example of it. Another good example was I got involved in another business, in a franchise business, had a partner in it and we got involved in franchises and we built the franchise business up. We ended up selling the private equity. That particular business, again, I have some NDAs in place, so not a lot to talk about there, but we can talk about the success of it because we went from one franchise facility to 54 franchise facilities.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Wow.

Bobby Mesmer: Ended up selling that, that was a couple hundred million dollars sale that we ended up making. It was an excellent entrepreneurship because what I brought to the table there was my expertise, and they had their expertise and we combined that to make this franchise successful. I wasn't scared to venture out, and look at opportunity and say, "Oh yeah, we can do this." You're already asking me to do it so if I'm going to do it, how about we do be partners? And again, thinking outside the box, what I said was, I will give you my construction at cost and my buy-in is my percentage of profit and overhead and everything else.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Nice.

Bobby Mesmer: That was my buy-in. Right, and it was a great deal all the way across the board.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah.

Bobby Mesmer: So that's just some of the stuff that I've done over the years that have from selling organizations and building them from nothing to being a successful sales side of things. And then I've used that skill set to continue moving RMG Erectors to where we are.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah, and keep growing it substantially. Well, okay, so as you were talking about selling your businesses and you just talked about that and your experience, why is it important to talk about selling your business? And I am honestly very interested in this myself because I am a business owner. Everybody has their own business. And you think, oh, I shouldn't say anything, I shouldn't talk about it, but I'm just curious, is that something that you should be talking about, or is it not something you should, something you keep close to the vest?

Bobby Mesmer: Yeah, I think there's a couple sides to that conversation. Number one, yes, you should always be talking about it. You should always have the mindset that everything is for sale, because small business owners don't ever believe that somebody or they're capable of selling their company who wants it. Because when you look at the world, the only sales that you hear are the big sales, right? This billion-dollar company selling to that billion-dollar company. Nobody thinks that they're in that league. For small business owners, you are in that league, and if you have a good sustainable business, somebody may want to buy it and it might even be your competition. So yes, you always want to be talking about selling your company.

The other part of that is the reason is because when you talk about selling your business, it puts you in front of people and conversations with people that open up new ideas and new doorways for you that you otherwise are not thinking about. What that is is for instance, your bookkeeping. A lot of small business owners, I've talked about this before, a lot of small business owners don't see the need of hiring a controller in their business so it's either them or their wives are still handling the books, huge mistake. Huge mistake. Great idea, but a huge mistake. It really holds you back as a business owner.

It opens up that dialogue about what type of accounting you should be doing, how your accounting works, how hiring a qualified accountant, even though they may cost you $20,000, $30,000, $50,000 a year, how having that accounting firm who costs you that kind of money actually saves you money in the long run. How you set up your books, keeping yourself the proper way to have your books set up in an organization that keeps you out of the eyes of the IRS. I mean, nobody wants to be in their crosshairs, obviously.

Heidi J Ellsworth: No.

Bobby Mesmer: And then it leads to the conversations that you're going to have with other people that know people, right? This person knows that person who's going to talk about something. And the next thing you know, you're in a room having conversations with people who say, "Hey, I know somebody who wants to buy a business like yours," to extend upon what they're doing or to grow their business. I'll even take it one step further. We as a company, with our growth, one of the things that we want to do as a company is start buying other erection companies around the country where we're looking at that. We're talking to people. So if I am somewhere, or I am at a conference and let's say I'm at METALCON and somebody is talking about selling their company and people know that I'm in acquisition mode, that then gets back to me and next thing you know, you're having a conversation about how I come in and I buy your company and take on that burden. Otherwise, the doors don't get open. If you just stay quiet about it, what can come about it?

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah, so true. So much of that just totally rings for me, because same thing, getting your company ready, being sure that you're doing all the right things so that when that opportunity does knock, that you're ready and aren't all of a sudden having someone say, "Oh, you need to do all of this before you can even be considered." So let's talk about that, the right time to sell a business or even to decide if you should or not.

Bobby Mesmer: So yeah, the right time to sell a business, I don't know if there really is a right time. I think it's a matter of what the business owner wants to do, where they're at in their mind. Everybody has different ideas. Typically, you hear about somebody selling a business because they have no succession plan. They're not handing it down to children or anybody else, there's nobody in the organization that could buy it from them so that's typically the conversations that you hear, right? These people, that's when you hear it, are either closing or selling.

I think that everybody in business, no matter where you're at, even if you're five or 10 years in, you should consider what it looks like to sell your company. Because what happens is that puts you on a path to want to do better, because then what you do is you say to yourself, well, if I'm doing $5 million in business a year and my EBITDA is based on 10%, so 500,000, you now know where your valuation of your business is going to fall. And so that gives you that perspective. So then when you start looking at it and you say, "Oh, well, if I sell my small business," it's only a small business, so I'm selling, I'm not going to get a standard multiplier like the big businesses get, so I'm probably going to get a three or four. So my business is worth $200,000 on the sale, because the person coming in is buying a book of business and their people. And really that's what they're getting for it.

It makes the business owner look and say to themselves, well, geez, I think my company's worth more. It may be in your mind, but what it's worth really in the world of sales and buy, sell, it is what it is. So what it does is it forces the business owner to stop and take a look and say, "Wow, I want to increase my business to make this more profitable so I can walk away with a bigger sale agreement on the backside." And then it also allows you too to diversify your business, to be able to look and make yourself unique in the business. What differentiates yourself? How do you differentiate yourself in the market? And so again, all this conversation really leads up to creating questions that you're going to ask yourself and hopefully make changes to make yourself more marketable.

Heidi J Ellsworth: That makes total sense, and I have to say, we've gone through a lot of those steps just because as a company, I think you need to, especially if you have an operating system where you're doing your planning and your goals, you need to be talking about that in order to, excuse me, in order to really be able to go to that next step and continue to grow your business. Okay. Excuse me. What are the key differences? You just mentioned this earlier, what are the key differences between succession and mergers and acquisitions? I know that's a simple question, but I think it's good for everyone out there to hear the difference in the different thought processes.

Bobby Mesmer: So succession is exactly that, right? It's creating your legacy and leaving it either to children or somebody within the business who has been with you a long time, and passing that business down to them. It's never normally a pass down. I mean, it can be both, but most of the time, the owner wants a buyout, right? Nobody's creating something and then giving it to somebody, even if it's children. At the end of the day, if I'm passing something down to my kids, they're going to buy into it and they're going to buy me out. And whether we structure that over time or whatever that looks like, it's the same thing with somebody who's in the business. You have a vice president who's been with the company for 10 years, he knows that I want to leave. He says, "I want to buy the company." You create the succession plan and it keeps the company name the same. It keeps everything the same.

Succession is very simple, but you really have to decide what you want to do, because in succession, a lot of times, even as an owner, you're still involved in succession, at least for a certain period of time because you have to be. So you got to be very idealistic in what you're doing, very understanding of what you're doing. Now, succession can also be a problem. You see it in small to massive companies where the owner who built the company ran it for 40 years, hands it down to their kids and in 10 years, the kids bankrupt the company. That's a bad succession plan. So you have to really think carefully about what you're going to do there because your kids are not always the best solution to take over the company.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Right.

Bobby Mesmer: Now, the second part of that is mergers and acquisitions. Merger is really a combination of multiple companies where you would still per se, have operation of your, you become a division of somebody else. So you would per se have operational control of your side of the company still, and then what would happen is, but you're still answering to them because technically they bought you, but you merged with them and you're still operating the same so it gets messy. Mergers tend to only have a short period of success because the owner who got merged with tends to not like the way the other company they merged with operates and says, "I'm done. I want out." You see that a lot going on. And so if you're going to do a merger, you have to understand who you're merging with and be okay and be okay with them. You have to be able to say, "Look, I get it," and most people are not. So that is very, very key point there.

Acquisition in my mind, I think if you're going to do any of that, I think acquisition is always the best thing. When you get to the point of wanting to sell your company and you get comfortable with the idea, look, understanding that you're selling your company, it's like selling a child and that's not something everybody does every day, you know what I mean? I hope nobody's selling children out there, but you get my point, and this is your baby. I know for my company, this is my baby, this is where I put all my effort. It's a big decision to make, and it's a hard decision to make. So what happens is when you decide to sell and you start running down that path, it does take a little bit to get comfortable with, but you do eventually get comfortable with selling.

When you do that, it opens up a lot of doors. When you're ready to sell, sometimes you're just ready to be done. It depends on at what point you're selling in life. Most of the time you're selling, most people I'd be willing to bet are selling organizations. They're probably in their midlife, maybe a little bit later in life, and they're selling and they are ready to be done. That is the cleanest, it is the best way to do it. The thing with that is in any sale of a business, you're going to be tied into it a little bit, because what happens is say you sell your company for $50 million, they're going to say, "We're going to give you 30 million now and we're going to pay you the other 20 million over five years." So that holds you in, because they want to see you operate the business over that five years.

They're going to consult with you, they're going to see what you're doing, and then they take you and they push you out. The other way is if you can get a clean buyout on an acquisition side, that's always a good way because then you can just wash your hands, it's not your problem anymore and you can be done with it. My last two acquisitions, what we sold, they were clean buyouts. The one did ask me to stay on, and I said, "Absolutely not. You're taking it, you take it and you run with it. That's your problem, not mine."

Heidi J Ellsworth: Well, you have another company to run, or several.

Bobby Mesmer: That's where I was at. I was like, "I got other companies to run." I started this over here by just sheer happenstance. I mean, I didn't really care. I turned it into a global company, you know what I mean? But I didn't really care about it, it was by default. I had a means to an end with that. What it became was what it became. So for me it was buy me out, I'm done, I'm not doing anything else. But it depends. Again, some people just have a hard time letting go, and that's the hard part.

Heidi J Ellsworth: It is. Okay, so let's talk private equity, because that's a big part of what we have, the three different areas. Sometimes it is, I don't know if I'd call it a merger, but they're asking the companies to actually be on the board of directors, to be more involved. So it's really not done and out of here, it's staying and growing this new roll out. We've seen it across the trades. I mean, roofing's getting hit right now, but it's been in elevators, it's been just everywhere. What are you seeing on that front? I mean, there's a lot of private equity money out there.

Bobby Mesmer: Yeah, I mean, private equity is they want a good return on their investment. So if you have a good margin, and you can show that you have a good margin, they're going to buy you. But you have to show some other things I mean. But really it comes down to private equity wants companies that make money. That's what they want. If you're a company that makes money, they want you and that's the bottom line. Now again, there's certain thresholds, and private equity companies work in thresholds. There are private equity companies who only buy up and only want to spend up to $50 million to buy a company.

There are other private equity companies who work in chunks in between all that, all the way up to billions of dollars. It depends on who you're getting. Obviously, anybody who's buying you minus an independent sale is going to be a private equity purchase. That's where I would go. I mean, unless it's a big company that wants to, for instance, I am hoping over the next couple of years that I've created enough disruption in the business that somebody like Cornerstone or Nucore would want to buy me.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Right.

Bobby Mesmer: Which that's my goal. But if they're going to do it, I highly doubt they're going to take a lot of their money out of their cash reserves. They're probably going to tap into private equity that they work with to make their other mergers and acquisitions that they do, and they're going to use private equity line to be a partner to buy me and roll me up into their organization. And that's a great thing. Come and get me, you know what I mean? I'm for sale. You know what I mean?

Heidi J Ellsworth: You're talking about it.

Bobby Mesmer: Yeah. Look, I'm always talking about it.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah.

Bobby Mesmer: And look, I have an end goal, I know what my plan is. I have eight more years of operating this business, and in eight years, I'm selling. I mean, in eight years, I'll probably be doing $500 million a year in business or more.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Right.

Bobby Mesmer: So they're going to buy me because I'm going to be disrupting the market and disrupting their market. But that's what private equity wants to see, right?

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah.

Bobby Mesmer: So if it's not the independent, like a Nucore who would want to step in and buy me because I'm a pest to them, it's going to be private equity who wants to take me up because I'm a profitable business. I control a large portion of the market segment, I have a large customer base. So you have to set yourself up, but private equity is the way to go. You hear the nightmare stories and private equity, look, they're tough guys, but they're smart guys. These are very, very, very smart people that work in the private equity sector.

You got to remember something too, they have people to answer to too. They have a group of investors. The private equity companies are not sitting on all the money. They have investors who invest in them and say... I have a friend of mine who is an investor for private equity, and he raises about a billion dollars a year to invest in the private equity ventures. There's people that they have to answer to too, so they can't buy a flop from you. So that's why they are a pain in the ass. And so it's not a nightmare story, it's just that is the due diligence that you have to go through.

Heidi J Ellsworth: I loved what you said earlier. As an owner, you have to really think about what you want. What do you want? Are you willing to go to work for a big company? Are you willing to work with private equity? Are you willing or do you just want to walk away? And then I think there's also the people who work for you too. As an owner, I always think of them too, and how's that going to work and where is that going to go? There's so many questions that you have to work through in your own head to make sure you're on the right step.

I think when you bring family into that, you mentioned it earlier, it's not always the best idea to sell to your kids or to give it to your kids, whatever you decide to do. But I would love probably for you to look at it from the other side, because this is what I see and hear a lot, that there are young people out there who have their second, third, fourth generation. They want to buy, they want to take over this company, but there's challenges, a lot of challenges. So what's some of your advice to family businesses that really are all sides agree, the next generation wants to take over? What are some of the things that they should be thinking about and doing?

Bobby Mesmer: Well, I think that the first thing that they should be thinking about is how to make that succession good and appropriate. Too many business owners think about their business and their family first. They forget about the fact that the rest of their employee base is family to them, and those people care about the business as much as you do. And so the wrong succession plan makes it a wrong succession plan for the people within the organization.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Right.

Bobby Mesmer: Because you have to think about it, if you have 100 employees, I always look at it like this and everybody forgets this motto, but if you have 1000 employees, you are responsible for 400 people. People wonder, they're like, "Well, where does that come from?" Well, where does it come from? Because it's typically family of four in this country.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Right, yeah.

Bobby Mesmer: So not only are you paying that one person, but because you're paying that person and you're taking care of them, you're also taking care of their wife and their two kids so you're responsible for all 400 people. You have to let that settle in and realize that and understand that that is the responsibility. And so when you recognize that, it changes perspective. So it changes perspective on how you look at succession. And what it does is it puts you into a position with succession where you have to now value it correctly. Handing it just over to your kids because, oh, my kid graduated college, my kid has worked here in the office for five years. Yeah, but does your kid know all the aspects of the business from the ground up? When you start a business, one of my most favorite sayings that I tell everybody is, especially when I hire people, you are an extension of me.

When I started this business, I started, it was just me. Then I had to hire employees, then I had to hire a bookkeeper and that bookkeeper because I couldn't do the books anymore, so I had to train them in the way I wanted it done. You see how it spiderwebs and it continues to move. And so typically what the mistake that people have in succession, especially family succession, is that they hand it to somebody who is ill-equipped and ill-prepared to take it. And they think that just because they have the same last name, that they're obligated to it. And I'm sorry, but you're not.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Right.

Bobby Mesmer: That's a wrong attitude to have. It's the wrong position to have. You're not obligated to anything. I tell my kids all the time, I have the business, you have nothing. If you want a piece of it, you have to work for it and you're going to start by pushing a broom. You're going to start at the low side, and you're going to learn to operate this business from the ground up, which is where I started this business, from the ground up.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Exactly.

Bobby Mesmer: Then on top of that, you have to build the respect to the people. You have people that have been with this company for 20 years, and you think that as a thirty-year-old, if that's how old you are when you want to take it over, that you're going to step in over here and you think you're going to know more than the people who have been here helping it out for 20 years and help make it what it is? That is the problem. That is the issues in succession. And too many people are like, "Well, my kids, my kids." Look, love your kids, but this is business, this isn't family. And that's a huge mistake that everybody makes.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Wow, that's great. I love the part about starting at the very beginning. Because I'll be honest, I have a family business, but the kids who work for us and all of our employees all start at the same level and work their way up so that they understand the business and what it's about. I think I agree with you 100%, so important because too often people just want to jump in at a higher level and then failure. Okay, I love this conversation so much. I could go on for an hour, this is so good. But let's go to start wrapping it up a little bit, and let's talk about your advice to contractors out there right now or building or business owners who are looking to sell. What should they be working on right now and how do they get started down that road, much like you're on right now?

Bobby Mesmer: First things first is get your finances in order. Again, we're talking about business owners that are small business owners, right?

Heidi J Ellsworth: Right.

Bobby Mesmer: These are small businesses, and the finances in all small businesses are typically a mess. They really are. And it's not a problem, it's not anybody's fault. It's just, again, most people, they just don't know better and they don't see a value in it. The value is going to be in it when it comes time to sell, because what's going to happen is it's going to restart the clock. So it takes time, you have to have three to five years of good, clean, substantiated, audited financials that you can look back on and that they can look back on and see the history of what you're doing. So finances are big.

Pay your taxes. I don't mean that like the small businesses are not paying their taxes. What I mean by that is everybody looks to reduce their tax burden, and that's what you do when you're a small business. How do I pay myself? How do I take dividend? How do I write this off? How do I do this and how do I do that that takes my earned net income and reduces it to reduce my tax burden? And that's a good mindset when you're a small business. But as you grow, when you make banking relationships and when you look to sell, the more taxes that you pay means that's the more money that you've made, okay? Paying taxes means making money. That's the bottom line. And that's how finance people look at it, that's how economists look at it, that's how private equity looks at it and that's how your banks look at it.

And if you're struggling to get bank loans, I'm doing $5 million in business a year, great. But if you're struggling to get a bank loan for something, it's because your finances are just completely out of order and you're not paying taxes. Pay the taxes that you're supposed to pay, change the way you're incorporated. Keep yourself as an LLC, but move over to an S corp to operate differently, create a different tax structure and set yourself up for success. If you did $5 million in business a year and you made a million dollars, but you reduced that to nothing, that's not success. Success is you made a million dollars and you paid 200,000 in taxes, that's success and that's what they're looking for. So those are the couple initial steps.

And then create a company structure, a company organization. One of the key things is if you're too involved in the success of the company as an owner, you're not marketable to people and in different companies. I said earlier that I'm looking to start buying up erection companies around the country. I don't care about the owner in that purchase because they're folding up into me and I'm buying basically their people and their book of business. It's a different type of purchase. And then for me though, I'm heavily involved in my organization, but I'm a highly successful, very, very, very large company. And so what's happening is the private equity's going to want to buy me and probably keep me on, but they're going to want to buy me because of that success.

When you're a small business or even a medium-sized business and you are everything in the business, nobody's going to want to buy you because you don't have a good company structure set up. You want to look at how you change that company structure. What happens if you remove yourself out of the business for two weeks? Can the business still operate? That's the keys to success, so those are just some good starters. I mean, there's so much that you can do as a business owner, but those are really good starters that you really should be doing. Even if you're not trying to sell, those are good things to do that just make your business run more, much more strong and more healthy as you continue to try to grow it.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Great advice. I have to tell you, I've been listening, open ears here, Bobby, I love it. This is great, and some things I have never heard before, so thank you so much. Really, really great. Okay, so we're going to have you back again, you know that. Another couple months we got to do this again and talk more about what you see happening. I really am interested too, in just the future so I think we need to talk about this in our next podcast of the erector business.

Bobby Mesmer: Absolutely.

Heidi J Ellsworth: I think that is so interesting, and what you're talking about buying up smaller erectors, what's happening in that business. So everyone, stay tuned and we'll be doing that one next. So Bobby, thank you so much. This has been amazing.

Bobby Mesmer: No, this was great, Heidi. Thank you for having me. I look forward to seeing you again.

Heidi J Ellsworth: I love it. We'll do it again in a couple months, everybody stay tuned. And thank you so much for listening. Please check out all of our MetalCasts on MetalCoffeeShop under the RLW or Read Listen Watch section, and be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast channel to get the notifications so you don't miss a single episode. And don't forget about YouTube. Yep, MetalCast is on YouTube. You need to subscribe and ring that bell, and you'll know every time we come online. So everyone have a great day, and we'll see you on the next MetalCast.

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