Advertise on podcast: The Turn: Blue Collar to Billions

Brenden Van Buren grew up inside a fifth-generation heavy highway construction business that was just shy of $1 billion in sales. By the time he left, he was running a $50 million project and had been offered a promotion to chief estimator. He turned it down, went to business school with one stated goal, to buy a small business, and joined Carnegie Mellon's first entrepreneurship through acquisition class.  In Part One, Brenden explains how search funds actually work, including the traditional, self-funded, and platform models and how searcher equity gets earned. He makes the case that most searchers blame competition when the real gap is relationships, and he walks through the outreach engine that found his company: a goal of 500 letters and emails every week, with envelopes hand-addressed over football weekends.  He also covers the deals he walked away from and why, how a five-hour first meeting with an owner turned into the acquisition of Pro Max, a commercial fencing company doing more than $10 million in revenue, and the 90-day/90-day transition plan that made the handoff work. Plus, why every leader he hires spends a day in the field with a digging bar. Part Two drops next week.  Running a blue-collar business? Wondering how to think about value or selling? Iconic Founders Group helps founders like you explore what's next. If you're doing over $2M in profit, check us out at iconicfounders.com or send us a message at [email protected]. Iconic Links: • Learn More: www.iconicfounders.com  • Connect: [email protected]

Once you take the check, you lose control. Baxter Fain learned that the hard way. He built Trinity One Group from a HELOC and 4:30 a.m. mornings during the Great Recession, then sold it less than two years later after naming a price at dinner. What followed: changes to his team’s healthcare, commission splits, and policies he never negotiated up front. On this episode of The Turn, Baxter and Kory Mitchell talk about founder guilt, partnership pressure, and why the terms for your people matter as much as the price. Running a blue-collar business? Wondering how to think about value or selling? Iconic Founders Group helps founders like you explore what's next. If you're doing over $2M in profit, check us out at iconicfounders.com or send us a message at [email protected]. Iconic Links: • Learn More: www.iconicfounders.com  • Connect: [email protected]

Integrating acquisitions under private equity pressure will break an unprepared team. Former Blue Sky CEO Drew Bisping unpacks his journey taking the restoration company to a billion-dollar valuation through calculated M&A. Scaling requires an operational shift. Bisping details absorbing an eight-location competitor and the mechanics behind adjusting EBITDA when an anomalous $120 million project hits the books right before a sale. Taking the top seat of a massive enterprise demands trading a scrappy mindset for strict governance. Walking away successfully means intentionally engineering your own obsolescence so the organization can stand on its own. For operators managing rapid expansion, this conversation provides a blueprint to structure buyouts without wrecking your core margins. Subscribe and share this episode with a peer navigating the transition from founder to executive. How are you removing yourself from the daily bottlenecks of your operations? Running a blue-collar business? Wondering how to think about value or selling? Iconic Founders Group helps founders like you explore what's next. If you're doing over $2M in profit, check us out at iconicfounders.com or send us a message at [email protected]. Iconic Links: • Learn More: www.iconicfounders.com  • Connect: [email protected]

Scaling a construction business from $10 million to over $1 billion demands ruthless operational discipline. Drew Bisping joined Blue Sky as employee 20 or 21 and worked his way to CEO, steering the restoration giant through massive organic growth and four private equity buyouts. We break down the blueprint for successful greenfield expansion and why launching bare-bones satellite offices causes failure. Drew explains the necessity of replicating a fully staffed business model, establishing local leadership, and absorbing heavy initial costs to secure new markets. He also dissects the grueling due diligence process, showing how his team used audit questions to force financial rigor into their everyday routine. For operators aggressively expanding their regional footprint, this conversation provides a practical roadmap for maintaining quality control across multiple locations. Subscribe and share with a fellow builder preparing for acquisition. What operational bottleneck slows down your expansion efforts? Running a blue-collar business? Wondering how to think about value or selling? Iconic Founders Group helps founders like you explore what's next. If you're doing over $2M in profit, check us out at iconicfounders.com or send us a message at [email protected]. Iconic Links: • Learn More: www.iconicfounders.com  • Connect: [email protected]

Blood ties don't guarantee business competence. In part two of our conversation, Erik Guggenheim unpacks the messy mechanics of buying out his parents and the six-year estrangement that followed. Running a generational company requires drawing hard lines between kinship and performance. Erik explains why enforcing a rigid, employee-voted progression track for relatives prevents unearned promotions and toxic work cultures. He shares hard-won methods for transitioning unqualified kin out of executive seats and outlines why forcing a legacy plan often destroys both the enterprise and the household. For founders wrestling with succession planning, this discussion offers a clear blueprint to separate operational roles from emotional obligations. Subscribe and share this episode with an operator navigating difficult family business dynamics. How do you maintain objective performance standards when your employees share your last name? Running a blue-collar business? Wondering how to think about value or selling? Iconic Founders Group helps founders like you explore what's next. If you're doing over $2M in profit, check us out at iconicfounders.com or send us a message at [email protected]. Iconic Links: • Learn More: www.iconicfounders.com  • Connect: [email protected]

Family businesses are messy, and adding private equity to the mix often creates a powder keg. Erik Guggenheim shares his journey of scaling his family’s specialty carbon fiber construction firm and making the brutal decision to buy out his parents. Operating a self-funded contracting business requires massive upfront capital for projects, a cash flow cycle that Wall Street analysts rarely grasp. Erik outlines how a seemingly lucrative exit transformed into a battle over project financing when backward-looking investors clashed with the demands of forward-looking construction contracts. He breaks down the friction of moving from a founder-led setup to a process-driven organization and the hard choices required to execute a complex buyout. For operators navigating a generational transition or considering outside capital, this conversation provides a blueprint for surviving the structural friction. Subscribe and share this episode with a founder preparing for their own exit. How would you handle a major disagreement over scaling your family business? Running a blue-collar business? Wondering how to think about value or selling? Iconic Founders Group helps founders like you explore what's next. If you're doing over $2M in profit, check us out at iconicfounders.com or send us a message at [email protected]. Iconic Links: • Learn More: www.iconicfounders.com  • Connect: [email protected]

Hitting $75 million in revenue isn't a finish line; it is a shark tank where companies go to die. Bret Biggart built a massive solar operation, taking it from zero to $300 million by treating market pressure as an asset. We break down the mechanics of bringing on a minority private equity partner while maintaining operational control. Bret opens up about the logistics of moving away from gut-feel management into strict data reporting when customer acquisition costs threaten margins. You learn exactly how to weather severe industry headwinds without panicking. When revenue dropped from $300 million to $150 million, his board forced a hard look at the analytics instead of throwing cash at the problem. For founders struggling to outgrow pure instinct, this conversation provides a clear roadmap to install disciplined financial reporting and scale safely. Subscribe and share this episode with an operator who needs to hear this right now. What data metric completely changed how you view your own operations? Running a blue-collar business? Wondering how to think about value or selling? Iconic Founders Group helps founders like you explore what's next. If you're doing over $2M in profit, check us out at iconicfounders.com or send us a message at [email protected]. Iconic Links: • Learn More: www.iconicfounders.com  • Connect: [email protected]

Hitting rock bottom rarely acts as the blueprint for building a $300 million enterprise. Bret Biggart shares how he used the discipline of addiction recovery to bootstrap a solar business with zero working capital. Scaling a regional operation into a streamlined sales engine requires brutal honesty. Bret details the daily grind of early-stage acquisition and managing negative cash flow without venture backing. He breaks down the operational stall he hit at $5 million a month and the internal constraints he couldn't crack. By bringing in an external operator, he overhauled his sales structure and pushed monthly revenue to $50 million. For founders stuck in a plateau, this conversation provides a framework to identify when external talent is necessary to unblock your pipeline. Subscribe and share this episode with an operator fighting a growth ceiling. What metric tipped you off that your internal processes were maxed out? Running a blue-collar business? Wondering how to think about value or selling? Iconic Founders Group helps founders like you explore what's next. If you're doing over $2M in profit, check us out at iconicfounders.com or send us a message at [email protected]. Iconic Links: • Learn More: www.iconicfounders.com  • Connect: [email protected]

Growth can be a silent killer if the systems underneath it crack. When a business scales too quickly, top-line revenue might skyrocket, but profit margins and operational standards can easily collapse into chaos if the foundation isn't set. In our second episode with Cory Brymer, who bootstrapped a fiber optics infrastructure company from zero to $50 million, we unpack the brutal reality of managing hyper-growth and eventually exiting on his own terms. We get into the specific mechanics of scaling a blue-collar workforce, starting with the exact labor-hour metrics Cory used to forecast bidding and feed his expanding crew. The conversation covers the massive risks of failed ERP integrations, the danger of relying on flawed working capital methodologies from a CFO, and the intense process of renegotiating a bad broker contract mid-deal. Cory also shares his secret for establishing true walkaway power during acquisition talks, a mindset that fundamentally shifted his leverage at the negotiating table. The hardest phase of building this infrastructure empire was the realization that generating $50 million in gross revenue still resulted in a net loss during a critical year of mismanaged growth. Cory opens up about the toll of complacency, the failure of his initial executive team buildout, and the heavy burden of jumping back into 70-hour workweeks to rebuild the operations he had already delegated. Listeners will walk away with a clear understanding of why calculating a post-tax, post-debt baseline valuation is essential before you ever entertain a buyer's offer. If you care about scaling an infrastructure operation, navigating middle-market acquisitions, and maintaining operational control during heavy growth, you’ll get a lot from this. Please subscribe to the channel and share this episode with a founder who is currently in the trenches of scaling. What is the firm, non-negotiable baseline number you need to hit before you would ever consider selling your business? Running a blue-collar business? Wondering how to think about value or selling? Iconic Founders Group helps founders like you explore what's next. If you're doing over $2M in profit, check us out at iconicfounders.com or send us a message at [email protected]. Iconic Links: • Learn More: www.iconicfounders.com  • Connect: [email protected]

Being a penny-pincher works on day one, but it will inevitably choke your operations as you scale. In a landscape where well-funded competitors are constantly trying to poach your best people, knowing how to properly structure compensation and upgrade infrastructure is the difference between stalling out and breaking through. We sit down with Cory Brymer to dissect how he bootstrapped a technology infrastructure company from minimum-wage beginnings into a $50 million operation. We get into the actual mechanics of out-punching your weight class against entrenched industry veterans. The conversation covers the friction of migrating away from basic accounting tools toward robust ERP systems, the specific math behind structuring phantom stock plans to keep high performers, and the stealth tactics required to secure major contracts without alerting the competition. Cory shares his foundational philosophy that calculating the true hourly value of your own time is the ultimate trigger for transitioning from a solo bootstrapper to an executive who pays a premium for A-level talent. The path to these operational milestones was not paved with easy capital. Cory opens up about the devastating firsthand experience of watching a family member's business slide into bankruptcy and personal financial ruin. You will walk away with a stark understanding of the emotional toll of rebuilding from zero, the operational limitations of working 14-hour days to save a few dollars on overhead, and a framework for maintaining firm boundaries during complex compensation negotiations. If you care about retaining elite employees, scaling past early growth plateaus, and navigating the complexities of commercial project bidding, you will get a lot from this. Please subscribe to the channel and share this conversation with a fellow founder in the built environment. What is the most expensive mistake you've made when trying to save money on your early operations? Running a blue-collar business? Wondering how to think about value or selling? Iconic Founders Group helps founders like you explore what's next. If you're doing over $2M in profit, check us out at iconicfounders.com or send us a message at [email protected]. Iconic Links: • Learn More: www.iconicfounders.com  • Connect: [email protected]

Selling a business isn't just about a clean balance sheet; sometimes, the dirt sitting underneath your warehouse dictates the terms of the deal. With private equity pouring unprecedented capital into the blue-collar sector, understanding how to strategically position both your operations and your real estate has never been more critical for founders. We sit down with an industrial commercial real estate expert to break down the heavy collision between legacy property ownership, family business dynamics, and modern company acquisitions. We get into the exact mechanics of what makes a trades business attractive to institutional buyers right now, moving past the hype. The conversation covers total addressable market, the importance of recurring revenue, and why capital allocators are pivoting away from heavily overbought sectors like HVAC. A major shift in perspective comes when we unpack why buyers actually prefer to lock in long-term, fair-market leases during an acquisition rather than buying the building, strictly to protect their own future exit valuations by normalizing EBITDA. The hardest part of transacting isn't always the negotiation table, but the environmental red tape that can quietly kill a buyout before it begins. We discuss the heavy burden of historical liabilities, the current surge in industrial subleases as struggling companies fold, and the real cost of trying to grow a business without strategic financial guidance early on. You will walk away with a clear framework for deciding whether to hold your real estate forever as a cash-flowing asset or restructure it to maximize the final sale price of your operating company. If you care about business acquisitions, commercial property management, and maximizing your eventual exit strategy, you’ll get a lot from this. Please make sure to subscribe and share this episode with another founder currently building in the trenches. What is the one operational bottleneck you need to fix before you would confidently put your company on the market? Running a blue-collar business? Wondering how to think about value or selling? Iconic Founders Group helps founders like you explore what's next. If you're doing over $2M in profit, check us out at iconicfounders.com or send us a message at [email protected]. Iconic Links: • Learn More: www.iconicfounders.com  • Connect: [email protected]

Tying your entire personal identity to a company is the fastest way to lose yourself when the business is gone. In a market where founders are constantly chasing the next revenue milestone, knowing when and exactly how to walk away is a rare, necessary skill. We talk with Jonathan Sherrill about his journey from getting fired by a private equity firm to bootstrapping a manufacturing business built strictly for a strategic exit. We get into the tactical realities of preparing a company for acquisition. We cover the necessity of eliminating founder risk, deploying an ERP system early, and executing a rigorous quality of earnings audit before ever going to market. We also break down the process of building out a confidential information memorandum that actually attracts serious buyers. The core takeaway is his operating philosophy: if you cannot hand the business over to department heads and disappear for three months, you do not have a sellable asset. The reality of selling a business often involves intense isolation and a sudden loss of purpose once the deal closes. Getting walked out the side door of a company you helped scale to nearly $40 million takes a massive mental toll, and surviving a strict three-year non-compete requires severe geographic and professional pivots. You will walk away from this conversation with a clear framework for systemizing your daily operations and a stark warning about navigating the psychological void that follows a clean break from your life's work. If you care about structuring an exit, systemizing manufacturing operations, and prioritizing family over endless scale, you’ll get a lot from this.  Connect with our guest, Jonathan Sherrill, at waypointfounders.com Please make sure to Subscribe and Share this episode with a fellow founder navigating their own growth phase. What operational bottleneck is currently keeping your business entirely dependent on you? Running a blue-collar business? Wondering how to think about value or selling? Iconic Founders Group helps founders like you explore what's next. If you're doing over $2M in profit, check us out at iconicfounders.com or send us a message at [email protected]. Iconic Links: • Learn More: www.iconicfounders.com  • Connect: [email protected]

Stagnation is the silent killer of middle-market businesses. Scaling past the $40 million revenue mark requires a fundamental shift in infrastructure and leadership mindset that most owners simply miss until it is too late. Greg Hirsch joins the show to share his expertise in buying mid-sized companies, breaking through their growth barriers, and engineering highly profitable exits. We sit down to break down the exact playbook for achieving twenty percent organic growth year over year without burning out your staff. We cover the shift from reactive hiring to proactive capacity building, the necessity of ripping out legacy HR and finance architecture, and the strategic advantage of joining a health care captive. Greg shares his operational secret sauce, which focuses heavily on optimizing the universal seventy-five percent of business infrastructure so that his team can completely dominate their twenty-five percent industry niche. The hardest part of rapid growth is managing the organizational fatigue that sets in when pushing continuous improvement. Cutting the checks to upgrade technology and back-office operations requires serious conviction, and learning to get out of your own management team's way is often a painful transition for hands-on owners. You will walk away from this conversation with a clear framework for building transferability into your daily operations and a roadmap for turning your key operators into bankable buyers. If you care about middle-market acquisitions, operational scaling, and management buyouts, you’ll get a lot from this. Please hit the like button, subscribe to the channel, and share this episode with a fellow founder. What is the biggest infrastructure bottleneck holding your team back from scaling right now? Running a blue-collar business? Wondering how to think about value or selling? Iconic Founders Group helps founders like you explore what's next. If you're doing over $2M in profit, check us out at iconicfounders.com or send us a message at [email protected]. Iconic Links: • Learn More: www.iconicfounders.com  • Connect: [email protected]

Phil Cooper joined the family pest control business in 1984. He got handed the title of commission-only door-to-door salesman, and went to work. His brother wanted nothing to do with pest control — he hated the pesticides, hated the smell, wanted to be a scientist. Phil restructured the company so his brother could come back as an entomologist instead. That decision became the thing that eventually attracted Terminix. Phil's dad gave him an ultimatum at graduation: prove yourself by 30, or the business stays his. Six months before Phil's 30th birthday, his dad transferred the stock — gifted it outright. No purchase price. No negotiation. He'd built his own retirement separately and didn't need the money. From there, Phil and his brother spent 30 years getting Cooper Pest Control from $1 million to $6 million, then three years getting from $6 million to $11 million once they finally cracked the code on sales systems, leadership, and culture. When Terminix came calling, Phil had two things ready: a number, and a list of exactly what it would take. When their chief revenue officer asked to see the list on the spot and said he'd sign an LOI that day if it checked out, Phil and his brother had their moment of truth. They sold for life-changing, generational wealth. Phil stayed on for 20 months running newly acquired pest control brands, calls it the hardest job and the fastest learning curve of his life, then left to become an EOS implementer when his sponsor inside Terminix resigned. Here's what we discuss with Phil: • Growing up in the business and joining as a door-to-door commission-only salesman in 1984 • Why his dad restructured the company so his brother — an entomologist — would want to come back • The graduation gift that became an ultimatum: own it by 30, or walk away • His dad gifting the stock outright with no purchase price negotiation • The 10 years he "screwed up" trying to build a real sales team — and what finally worked • Why a great salesperson, sales manager, and account manager are three different animals • Going from $1M to $6M in 30 years, then $6M to $11M in three • Building "the list" — the specific terms it would take to sell, on paper, years in advance • The moment Terminix's CRO asked to see the list and offered an LOI on the spot • Why Terminix paid for culture, leadership, and systems — not the customer list • 20 months running acquired brands inside Terminix and the data lessons that came with it • Leaving after his internal champion resigned, and becoming an EOS implementer Running a blue-collar business? Wondering how to think about value or selling? Iconic Founders Group helps founders like you explore what's next. If you're doing over $2M in profit, check us out at iconicfounders.com or send us a message at [email protected]. Iconic Links: • Learn More: https://www.iconicfounders.com • Connect: [email protected] • Production: Lower Street https://lowerstreet.co Running a blue-collar business? Wondering how to think about value or selling? Iconic Founders Group helps founders like you explore what's next. If you're doing over $2M in profit, check us out at iconicfounders.com or send us a message at [email protected]. Iconic Links: • Learn More: www.iconicfounders.com  • Connect: [email protected]

Chris Lee's mom called him with a U-Haul in the driveway. He'd already accepted a job in Little Rock. The U-Haul went to Texas instead. He joined his family's landscape company — Earthworks — when it had 25 employees, an answering machine, a pager, and no real systems. His stepdad was a brilliant operator who couldn't tolerate people. Chris was the opposite. He liked people. That turned out to be enough to start something. Over the next 25 years, Chris built Earthworks from a few hundred thousand in revenue to more than $40 million. He expanded geographically before it made obvious sense. He invested in data systems early, then figured out how to share that data with his team — and tie it to how they got paid. That comp shift, he says, was the single biggest thing they ever did. He opened new branches in Dallas and went greenfield into Houston with one operator and a foreman. And two years before going to market, he hired an advisor and did his own due diligence on the business — so when buyers came, there were no surprises. He sold to Osprey Landscape Group and rolled equity. He's still running the Texas platform. Still working more than he expected to. Still proving they made the right call. Here's what we discuss with Chris: • Canceling his job offer and joining the family business in 1998 with a pager and a roll of quarters • Expanding the geographic and demographic footprint when the business was being too restrictive • Investing in their first ERP system and what real-time job costing changed • Why sharing financial data with your team is terrifying — and why you have to do it anyway • Teaching employees the difference between profit and cash flow • Tying comp to actionable behavior — and why it became the single biggest move they made • The rule that changed everything: "My check gets cashed last" • Opening new branches in Dallas and going greenfield into Houston • Starting the sale process two years before going to market • Doing their own due diligence before buyers did • Getting four LOIs and why the decision came down to culture, not price • What it actually feels like post-close — more pressure, not less Running a blue-collar business? Wondering how to think about value or selling? Iconic Founders Group helps founders like you explore what's next. If you're doing over $2M in profit, check us out at iconicfounders.com or send us a message at [email protected]. Iconic Links: • Learn More: https://www.iconicfounders.com • Connect: [email protected] • Production: Lower Street https://lowerstreet.co Running a blue-collar business? Wondering how to think about value or selling? Iconic Founders Group helps founders like you explore what's next. If you're doing over $2M in profit, check us out at iconicfounders.com or send us a message at [email protected]. Iconic Links: • Learn More: www.iconicfounders.com  • Connect: [email protected]