Ben Kaplan 00:00
Hey, this is TOP CEO. The show that features CEOs making tough decisions, executing dramatic pivots and taking bold action. Featuring CEOs from startups, scale ups, established companies, and fortune 500 enterprises. TOP CEO is like a business school case study telling the story behind the story. And what you can learn from it from those who have faced the fire and come out the other side. Welcome to the TOP CEO podcast
The Detective 00:45
Hey, good to see you. Come in, come in, come in. Take your coat off, there's a coat rack just just over there. Let's get to this. Imagine you're the CEO of Bravas, a leading national integrator of smart home technology into luxury homes. That means you'll work with homeowners, designers, architects and builders to design a high end home theater, smart lighting, shades and more.
The Detective 01:22
Your business model is clear. Acquire 20 Plus local mom and pop Smart Home integrators across the US, each with about three to 5 million in revenue, integrate them into one company and replace individual inventories, tracking systems and administrative support with efficiencies in scope and scale grow by continuingly, acquiring more local companies and integrating them into the Bravas way. Only one problem, what if each of these local companies doesn't actually want to change? What if they really liked doing things their own way? Problem number two.
02:04
unemployment falling 10.2% in depth look at the global supply chain crisis,
The Detective 02:10
you're about to enter a global pandemic that will totally disrupt the in home installation process and the supply chain of electronic products you'll need to run your business. When inventories are low, and tensions are high. Will all of your required companies actually learn to work together? This is exactly the scenario that face Nigel Dessau, CEO of Bravas. Welcome to 'The Rollup'.
Ben Kaplan 02:50
Nigel, take me back to this moment where you're over one years into this company where you have a strategy of growth by acquisition, you've acquired 21 companies to create something larger. And suddenly you're like, What have I done? Was this the right strategy? How am I going to make this work? talk through what was that moment like? And what was the decision you were facing that was going to be critical to the company's future
Nigel Dessau 03:16
thinking. So I mean, we're in an industry doing luxury technology into homes, or I should say technology into luxury homes. And it's a very fragmented industry. And the idea was that we could consolidate create a national brand that would really, you know, make this a whole different play. And so the idea was to bring together multiple different small companies. And that happened in August of 2019. And after the, you know, the initial philosophy, excitement and all getting together COVID happened. Remember, we're installing technology into homes, and COVID happens,
Ben Kaplan 03:50
that's going to be a little bit challenging of whether you get to be in homes and the nature of that and how that works. Of course,
Nigel Dessau 03:56
right? Fortunately for us, we do a lot of work in new homes. So that's okay, because the building trade kept going. So we managed to keep that going. And then this whole supply chain thing happened, where you know, the world run out of parts and ran out of chips and everything runs on chips. So having got through COVID, we got them the supply chain. And then you know, we're today in uncertain economic times. The bottom line of all of this is whatever assumptions we went into this whatever assumptions the team went into when we started this business. And the assumptions we were living in at the end of sort of 2021 were completely different. And well, there was a sense that I think we could sort of let everybody do their own thing. It became really clear that we had to reset our vision, reset our strategy, bring everybody together and say, Where are we going? How are we going to get there? How are we going to fundamentally think about this not as you know, 15 different businesses in 15 different markets because when we consolidated 21 companies there were multiple in some markets, let's not think of this as fear. 15 different businesses, let's think of this as 15 pots of a single company. That was the challenge the team was faced. And that meant a lot of people who had a lot of assumptions had to have those assumptions changed.
Ben Kaplan 05:12
Talk about some of this idea of growth through acquisition or inorganic growth. It's appealing in many ways, because you can say like, Okay, we have all these entities that make money on their own, we bring them together, there's synergies involved, we don't need to repeat 21 different billing systems or 21 different marketing plans, we can consolidate, we can save costs, we can leverage in some ways we can bring them together, the conventional wisdom might say, the holes worth greater than the parts. So we assemble all the parts, have this great hole, start scaling it, then we just keep on acquiring things and grow and grow and grow. What are some of the challenges that still could be a good plan, but the things you encountered that maybe brava didn't realize the extent you would have to overcome?
Nigel Dessau 05:54
Because everything you said is absolutely right. Let's give one example of the 21 companies, there are 21 ways of doing revenue recognition. So if you're doing a $300,000 project on a big house, how do you recognize the revenue against that project? Do you do it by stage project? Do you do it by month of the project? Do you do it at the beginning or the end of the project, if there were 21, companies that were 21 days, ways of doing revenue recognition, which means when we bought the books together, although we all use the same words, we didn't all mean the same things. We had 21 Different people buying things, we had 21 Different people managing technical resources. And so while it's clear, easy to say, well, we'll get economies of scale, we don't need 21 people buying things, then a bunch of businesses that are used to working in their own way where the owner could pick up the phone and say, order me three of those or five of these, or I'm just going to put those in the warehouse. But they can't do that anymore. I'll give you an example. One of our locations, when we told them early on, they had 15, saunas, arc sandbars, you know, two or $3,000 unit, there are 12 of them six and black, six. And we're like, Well, why do you have six of them? Well, somebody might need them. Actually, we have a national shortage of these things. And we have locations all over the place. They could be selling them. Yeah, but we want to keep them in stock in case some of our customers wanted. I mean, it sounds stupid. But it's a different way of thinking, you're not putting things in your warehouse to sell to your clients, you're putting something in a breakfast warehouse, and there could be lots of clients. And so one of the ideas that came up pretty quickly as the first place we need to shop as a company is in our own warehouses, and being 15 different locations, we had 15 different warehouses, well, that means we need a warehouse management system, which we know there are all these sorts of things that which are what that's obvious, you need to do that actually quite complicated things because they are systems that need building, which take time, but more importantly, there are processes that need updating. And that means people
Ben Kaplan 07:46
what is interesting about your example is I would almost divided into two parts about that person who's hoarding equipment, because we might need it well, one, there's the sort of functional challenge of like, we need to move these sound bars around so we can get access to it. But it's also a cultural question. It's like this is someone who's built, let's say, I think your profile of your company requiring was like a maybe a three to $5 million local business, they've been successful at it. It's not nothing to build a three or $5 million business congrats to them. They saw this as an opportunity to be a part of something bigger, maybe cash out some of what they've done all of those sorts of things. But now they're part of Bravas. They're not part of, you know, Mike's Smart Home integration company. What was that challenge? Like? Just culturally? And what was greater? Was it the functional challenge, and we've got to recognize revenue the same way, or we've got to shift how we think about who we are,
Nigel Dessau 08:39
I don't know, I could tell you what was harder than the other, but they were both quite difficult. And because you're spot on, you're talking about people who are at the scale that they live, they're probably not college educated. They're probably not, you know, white collar jobs. There are people who started by installing TVs on people's walls, and compared to most of their people in their life. They're extraordinarily successful. They built amazing businesses. And now suddenly, somebody's coming in and saying, Hey, that's great. But that's not the way we want to work when we got all of the GMs together, and we said, we're going to do best practices, great. They said, best practices perfect, you do understand that my practice is the best one. Okay, so we had 15 best practices do the same thing. And so what what happens is a third of them, when, hey, this is great, let's do the best thing, a third of them when I can't cope with this, and really opted out. And about a third of them took a couple of years to work out which of the other two groups they read. And so establishing what the best practice for doing something can be hard across, you know, multiple locations, which are not there are 10s of 1000s of people in the company. We're a 300 person company, which means there may be one or two people in each location that are doing lots of different jobs and you're saying to them, stop doing it this way, do it this way, and that that can be hard culturally, particularly when there's nothing in it for that, by the way, you're absolutely right. And lots of these people sold their businesses because it's a way to cash out. Now we didn't pay all we paid someone they got shares. But if I'm the admin person or the finance person who's already working 45 hours a week, someone says, we're going to change all the way you do things, because it's good for somebody else they like, I'm too busy as it is. So there is the process stuff, but there's a huge amount of cultural change. And there were lots of people in the businesses and we lost lots of people who went I don't know, I want to work in a large company, because that's not what I wanted to do.
The Detective 10:35
As the fog rolls in over the city of luxury technology, our protagonist, Nigel Dessau finds himself in a tangled web of challenges with 21 companies under his wing. He's up against the murky labyrinth of differing revenue recognition methods, and the smoky haze of clashing cultures. Stay tuned, as we journey into the dimly lit streets of the next chapter, where our hero unveils his master plan to conquer these obstacles and bring Bravas to the dazzling spotlights of success. Keep your ears open, and your eyes peeled. But this tale is far from over.
Ben Kaplan 11:20
How did you navigate the culture shift when you have that many cultures coming together,
Nigel Dessau 11:25
we tried early on to make a lot of decisions centrally, and they didn't work. So we really tried to push decision making down to a much lower level in the company and give people more empowerment to make decisions. But the truth is, you have to show them a better way. And you have to convince them why we're better together. And it's not until that really becomes real to people does that trigger it, I'll give you an example. In our home installations, we do that maybe hundreds or 1000s of parts. And under the supply chain problems, there could be one or two parts that were missing from an installation, that meant a multi $100,000 installation couldn't go ahead because we were short of a $10 pop. And the teams are getting very frustrated because they can't get the $10 part because it's on a 369 month backlog. But we have another warehouse in another city that has 10 of those parts. And by just shipping like a few $100 part from one location to the other, we can now move a multi $100,000 job into production into somebody's home. And when the team started to see how the Better Together was real to them, then it really gained momentum until this point until we started finding the examples of why we're better together, just talking about it meant nothing to them. I think the other thing is I try and get to every one of the locations every year. And the first thing I do is I sit down with the technical team, the guys who are doing the reinstallation and try and talk to them about the value of BRABUS. And what's in it and what we hope for them. And what you discover pretty quickly. It's if you do that right, then we're all looking for the same thing, which is to the best thing, job by our clients get the best possible work and get paid for it.
Ben Kaplan 13:04
Do you find that you were spending all of your time focusing on I've got to align people, I've got to get them on board, I've got to convince them, I've got to persuade them that you spent all your time doing that, that it became more difficult to do the other things that you've got to do as a CEO, like look at strategy moving forward. Other things, how did you balance the role of CEO when you just sort of have like, I've just got to get people on the same page, because I can't do anything if I don't do that.
Nigel Dessau 13:32
Look, I have a lot of smart people who work for me, these are smart, intelligent, hard working people, but have never worked in a large company before. So there may be simple things that in large companies, CEOs have no problem saying to their head of strategy. We're into a strategy day with a board. We're going to do it in June. And we're going to set the strategy for the next year, I had to face facts, I know not only don't have a head of strategy, I was surrounded by people who'd never done a strategy day for board before. So they didn't even understand the question they didn't understand the need for setting the strategy. And when it came to doing a full plan, the annual planning cycle they'd never had to do on before, they'd never had to have anyone say I'm sorry, you need to give us your plan, we'll review it will add up all the rows and columns. If they don't add up, we're going to have to do something never done any of that before. So what seems like very simple, you know, organizational heartbeat moments were completely missing and had to be built. So not only do you have to explain them, you have to set them up, you have to run them and you have to get people who who can help you do that. So I needed to add some resource into the team, a chief of staff, we changed our CFO, people who were able to join the team and help explain and execute those things to people who've never seen them before.
Ben Kaplan 14:46
You assume the CEO role. And the original CEO maybe didn't have the skill set to cross this new sort of scaling challenge. What was that like? Was there uncertainty And did that add complication to all of this, because you're trying to get everyone line, and now we're changing who's at the top?
Nigel Dessau 15:06
Look, we changed the CEO, I don't think all the reasons matter. But I would tell you, I don't think he did anything wrong. I think we had COVID, we had supply chain, the world changed around him, and he didn't necessarily have the skill set to execute to that. And by which point, even if he did, if you lose competence of the board, then those things don't make whether you've got the skills or not, so everybody loves him, he's still an important part of our broader team. But I think what happened was, when we made that transition, what I needed to do was to set a completely different tone for what was gonna happen, why was there a regime change, and what was going to be different in that regime change to some extent, and someone sent me a book called turn the ship around, and I read that book, and it struck me that was exactly what we need to do it, we've got to go to change the way we work as a team, we got to re empower the people are close to the bottom, we're going to make everybody feel part of the decision making progress and not not be so structured, not be so controlled, and really think about how we move faster.
Ben Kaplan 16:03
One of the definitions that I've heard of success, which could also be be applied to leadership, and certainly aligning a team is saying what you're gonna do, and then being able to do it. So how much of that when you're setting a new vision, you need buy in, you need alignments? How did you go about walking the walk, not just talking the talk for this change, and how things were going to be different.
Nigel Dessau 16:29
I'm a huge believer in transparency. So I think you have to be transparent with your leadership team, at least what you're trying to do, and why. And you have to put metrics and success factors in place to do that, they'll always come a point where there's things you can't explain, I was lucky enough to spend my formative years at IBM and other places where I got all a good training and lots of this stuff. And I always say to people, I tell you what I know, I tell you what I know, I'll even tell you when I know something, and I can't tell you. So I try and be as transparent I put the metrics on the ground, I said, this is the number every month we need to generate as a company, if we're going to be successful. So let's focus ourselves not on all the politics, let's not focus ourselves on all those things. Let's focus on what we need to do to make this number real every month. Because if we make this number real, everything else takes care of itself. How much
Ben Kaplan 17:17
is a successful organization do to focus? Is it more hard to just be really smart? Is it more important to be really innovative? Is it more important to have great focus, like how important is focus in the mix of all the things that might be considered positive qualities to scale a business.
Nigel Dessau 17:33
I'm a great believer in in the quote from Alice in Wonderland, where Alice says should the Cheshire Cat which way should I go? And Cheshire cat says where you're trying to get to. And Alice says it doesn't much matter which case has the cat doesn't much matter which direction you take. So if you're really not clear about where you're trying to get to what the destination is, then the rest of it's completely irrelevant. And so is setting a target of saying, you know, we're $100 million business today, we'd like to be at $250 million business, which means we want to be in 25 cities, you know, $10 million in each city, here's what we need to do to do that, and try and make that real to somebody, then that gives the context. And people can argue about the various details. But setting the destination setting, this is what we're going to try and do. And where we're going I think is the single most important thing you do.
Ben Kaplan 18:21
From this period during the pandemic, you're really looking at reorganizing repositioning the company building the playbook, that's going to take you forward. Is there a moment where you say like, Okay, we've made, the first hurdle we've gone through doesn't mean where we've won the race that we want to win yet. But it was there a moment where you say, like, you know, hey, at least take a moment to feel good about what we've done here.
Nigel Dessau 18:43
Actually, it was last week, we just run our annual sales Summit. And we did it in 2020. And then 21 got canceled, and 22 was hard, because we were still in sort of semi COVID, depending where you were in the country. 23 is the first time everybody really got together for the first time. And we've really built this model of shared resources and how we can do more with less and work together. And for the first time last week, I got relatively little or no pushback from anybody about the idea. Still, there's room for improvement, and then the execution and making right for the first time last week, I felt Nobody said to me, this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. I don't know why true.
Ben Kaplan 19:22
So you're getting that for a couple of years in there first. Oh, yeah,
Nigel Dessau 19:25
I'm fine. I don't know why we need to do this. I mean, we've we've centralized some of the design engineering, some of the programming tasks, and people go, I don't know why you want to centralize programming, why can't I just have my own program? And so now we've been doing this for a while they went, you know what, we did this for a client and the client said, What's going on here, my wife and I said to them, we have the best program in the world working on your machine. He doesn't have to live in our city, but we can still bring him the client goes. That's pretty cool, and that people go on and think about it that way. You know, people are so used to being self sufficient for the first time as we bring resources same value proposition changes the way you think about it changes the way you sell changes and they go, okay, I get this, I see why we're better together. Again, I don't want to tell you that we fix every execution problem because we really haven't. But for the first time last week, I think we got there. Okay, I see how this works. Let's take this forum
The Detective 20:24
I've been mulling over Nigel's case a man who united companies like a master conductor. Amidst a tempest decentralizing decisions, he forged an alliance, proving they were stronger together. But the story takes a darker turn my friends. As we ventured deeper into the abyss, we unravel the enigma of Nigel's playbook, the very heart of his strategy, pulsing with intrigue. After assembling a mosaic of smaller companies, he prepared to make his boldest move yet, fasten your grip. We're on the precipice of a revelation, where secrets lurk and high stakes, Gamble's are played, and there's no turning back now.
Ben Kaplan 21:14
What is the challenge? Now you've reached this milestone where we're aligned doesn't mean we're perfect. But we're aligned. Now you have to execute the playbook. So how do you think about that? Is it a whole new set of challenges? As of last week, you know, congrats, Nigel, your job has just changed. And now there's a new set of things and a new set of skills and new things to do what is next to get you to the second milestone,
Nigel Dessau 21:38
I think we've got the stuff now we need to run it. Now we got to execute it. Now we got to keep people focused on doing the things they said they were going to do. We got to we got to get the common processes and practices working. And then we've got to do the single biggest thing internally, we have to do, which is we have to get onto a common set of systems. So we've done all of this with 15 Different QuickBooks files and 50 different other things that we have to consolidate every month. And at some point, we will bring those together as a single backend finance stuff. So our CFO has, has an interesting challenge ahead of it, which is now to go automate that stuff. If we tried that automation two or three years ago, really complete disaster because it would have been automated things that don't work together. So as things work together, we now need to go automate them, the more of that we do, the better. Because the more that allows us to go and start acquiring new companies. And when we did some acquisitions, and the last couple of years, people say you know, I want to be inquired and integrated into the province way of doing business. The truth was, we hadn't thought about what the best way of doing business was because we were doing it 15 different ways. Now we have a robust way of doing business, we go back to start acquiring businesses start working some of those things out. And when we acquire them, we've got something more consistent for them to integrate into.
Ben Kaplan 22:52
So what is your recommendation for those CEOs or entrepreneurs or leaders who are thinking about growing through acquisition in organic growth? If you were going to go back in time and do this all over again? Do you have a set of recommendations, maybe minimize the pain accelerate the process? What would be your advice, if you're going to contemplate this type of growth
Nigel Dessau 23:14
is going to sound frightfully obvious, but it's really easy to forget, it's not about the business, it's about the people. And it's not about Yeah, if they do revenue recognition differently, that's difficult. But if the person doesn't want to change the way they do revenue recognition, it's even harder. And I think when we now are starting to, again, look at acquisitions, the first part of all of that work is get to know that people get to know what drives them, get to know what's important to them, you know, we aren't a retirement home for people who want to get out of their business, we are a place where if you are excited by this industry, and you want to do more you want to join so we can fix all the process stuff, we can work all of that stuff out. But you're not acquiring businesses, you're acquiring people. And when you acquire people, you've got to spend the time to make sure you're acquiring the right type of people who want to be on the journey with you.
Ben Kaplan 24:02
Anyone who's done a lot of hiring, you can have a checklist of things you're looking for. But sometimes just as important is that checklist of things you don't want to have that can be hugely disruptive to what you're trying to accomplish. So what have you learned about this? This is your industry. This is your type of business about how do we get first of all, not just get people aligned, but get the right people to begin with? How do we know the difference? And is it purely just, you know, this is the business they've built? They seem to want to be a part of us or is it more nuanced than that?
Nigel Dessau 24:32
I think is both I think when you bring people from with inside the industry, they've got to believe in the vision of a bigger company, a bigger brand, but I think you've also got to be willing to bring non industry people in so there's a huge amount our industry can learn from other adjacent industries from other businesses that have done roll ups that aren't specifically in the home automation business. And I think typically what you what you find when people look to hire professionals, they go Well, this person has no experience in the home automation business. No, but do they have another set of skills that would be really useful? Are they from adjacent businesses or similar industries. I mean, there are lots of other industries that have done roll ups, we can teach them the product, but maybe they bring a set of skills, they used to managing multiple locations then used to integrating different people, they used to doing all sorts of other things. And so we continue to want to acquire businesses and businesses who want to be part of brothers. We also want to keep acquiring skill from people who have similar experiences, but might be new to the industry. And that's something people within the industry initially seemed to react against, because they don't know the industry, but they don't yet understand the value of those people.
Ben Kaplan 25:43
And if you believe what you've said that it's not about the business, it's about the people. How do you do that? Is that just conversations and one on one time? And, you know, is it understanding people's motivation? Where they want to get to? How do you go about that? It's one of those things that, at least in my experience, is easier said than done to understand the people on the team,
Nigel Dessau 26:06
we'll find out how successful we are, too, because we're just starting this now. But particularly the conversation I think we want to have with people is where do you see yourself in three, five years, what job do you want to be doing, because there are 1000s of companies we could acquire. But we are not a retirement home, you know, we're not, we're not trying to give people who can't think of anything else to their business, a way to cash out relief, because often these owners are salespeople, they are the goodwill in the business,
Ben Kaplan 26:33
meaning if they leave the business leaves, right,
Nigel Dessau 26:37
that goes all their relationships. So if you think about one of these businesses, it might have three to five great builder relationships, and those three to five build relationships, maybe worth hundreds of 1000s dollars a year, if they leave so to those relationships, so we're not, we're not a way to cash out, we're not a way for you to get a couple of million dollars, because your kids don't want to go into the business and you want to go off and live in Baccarat. That's not what this is about. And so the first thing we need to do is understand we're not your retirement strategy. The second thing we want to do then is say, Okay, so let's say we integrated the businesses, what in what we do is interesting to you, where do you think you could add more value? And what you'll discover is some will say, I really love managing people, other people say, Hey, I'm really excited by the technology, I'm really interested to know, others might say, We love working with suppliers. Well, these are all things that when you're a small business, you change your hat every five minutes. But as a large company, we need people to manage our suppliers. We need people to work with the people, we need people to run the technology, you know, there are jobs. And so the trick is to work out after some integration time. What do they do then? What's the next thing? And if the answer is I can't think of anything else I want to do, then that's probably going to be a problem.
The Detective 27:54
When it came to growing through acquisition, Nigel was wise. He knew the real score was about people, not just the business, he sought out passionate owners with fire in their bellies ready to contribute to something bigger. Now, as they say, their strength in numbers. Expanding their empire, Nigel blended the needs of local businesses with the power of a national brand, providing assets, tools and capabilities, he created a win win situation that left competitors in the dust. Let's see what's in store for this company that managed to crack the code in a world full of riddles.
Ben Kaplan 28:37
What about the challenge through growing through acquisition, rolling up companies of establishing maybe departments systems practices that didn't exist before, notably here, here's one that you've worked in, you're brought into work on I work in was where a global marketing agency functions like marketing that may be at the size of business that you acquired didn't have to have more formal things didn't have to have, in your words, a national brand, but like local businesses, maybe local brand to mean something kind of foodies the phrase like kind of localized at national scale, how do you think about establishing those things in a right way? Maybe you got it's not even 21 ways of doing things. It's like no ways of doing certain things you need at a certain size
Nigel Dessau 29:22
from the marketing point of view. So let's use that as the case study to this example. The first thing I did was go and talk to a whole bunch of these guys, tell me about your business. What are the problems you're solving? What would make you different? What are you excited by? And that came back as the marketing person said, there's two or three things we could do that could really help them that would really differentiate you know what we do? And so I made sure my first priority was to deliver those for them. And I sneaked in all the rest of the stuff I wanted on the back of that stuff. You know, we rebuilt the website. I think we have the best website in the industry done with our partner. We have a set of deliverables which I know some of our competition should now you know are pointing out and starting to use. But I reckon if we could put the best foot forward from a marketing point, if I could give them assets and tools and capabilities they didn't have before, not only would they use them, I could sneak in some of the stuff I wanted the common look and feel I get, you know, the common messaging, the Common Look, I could do all of that by making and giving them what they wanted. And I think that's part of the secret here is that in this sort of model, these guys are trying to run a business, it's hard work, it's a lot of work, how do you help them? How do you make their life better? And if you make their life better, if you give them tools and facilities that make them more effective, they will use them?
Ben Kaplan 30:39
Maybe to paraphrase what you're saying, you took a very customer centric, the end local business, Cedric, can I serve their needs? And if you would have come and said, Guess what, we're on our national brand. These are our color, don't you see how this all lines and looks better? And we're consistent all stuff? And they might have said like? Yes, so what I don't really care about that doesn't says that, okay, I guess if that makes you happy, go do it. But instead, you sort of said, let me try to think about how I serve your needs and help you market better and can give you support to help you. And by the way, what I deliver you is going to be consistent with my brand is going to have nice cars, you know, all of that. And you're gonna say thank you.
Nigel Dessau 31:20
So the first thing was I tried to, you know, be really clear about what would make them more successful, what would help them, and then I'm aggregating 15 into one. So I could do things at a scale and a quality and a completeness that no one had ever seen before. So we have a set of deliverables that we give our sales team that, you know, they walk into those, none of their competition has anything like this, none of them has. And it gives them the opportunity to say, Hey, this is where a national brand, this is what you get when you it changes the game in the way they work. And I get all the stuff I need as a national brand driven through that way, if you go to the website, you'll see a great website, we're really proud of our website. But if you go to our locations, and you click on Minneapolis, the first thing you'll see on that page is a picture of downtown Minneapolis. So to the point you were making, yeah, we're a national brand, but we're local. And so we always try and make things feel real to them at a local level. Always try and make things work but deliver, you know the value to them and do it in a way when they look at them. They go, there's no way we ever could have had this type of stuff ourselves.
Ben Kaplan 32:23
As far as you've come, what do you think is going to let's say the next milestone is get all the way 100 million, but then get to 250 million, and probably you're not in this business to just be at 250 million and probably goes up from there, you need to execute the playbook. Now you reorganize the team. But what's phase three? Where does this go to get to even look ahead? Some of what a CEO has to do is have vision for where this is going even when you're not quite there yet? How do you get this 250 million? How did you get this $2 billion.
Nigel Dessau 32:52
So we get to 250. By organic growth, I mean, there'll be inorganic growth, there'll be some organic growth, you can grow five or 10% a year and these things is much harder to do that we're gonna do it by going to new markets we acquire in two different ways we we do tuck ins as we describe it, where we talk into the business into an existing market. And we do new platforms where we go into a new market. But that's really not the end game here. The end game here is a fundamental reset of this whole industry, and the way it works. And so what got me interested and excited originally was you don't often in your career get a chance to completely reboot and reset in industry. And this is the industry that is ripe for resetting, it's right for rebooting it's right for for fundamentally changing the way it operates. And as we do that, not only do we become the dominant player in the industry, we will do for this industry, what Waste Management's done for waste management or any one of the other large roll up companies you can see out there and reset the way and the value proposition of the industry.
Ben Kaplan 33:52
I think it's an underrated quality in a lot of entrepreneurs, which is just desire to to just like I cannot believe the world operates this way. And it should not operate this way. And it just bugs me because clearly there's a better way. And I cannot rest until we do it as one of the reasons where sometimes I worry about entrepreneurs or founders that are pursuing something, because it's a great market opportunity, solely meaning I can see it's a great market opportunity. I can see it's a great business, but I don't have the burning desire to be like, I just want to change this thing. This thing should not work this way. Why is it this way? It's a failure in the universe that it operates this and I just have this burning desire to change as soon as I see people they pursue it because yeah, I think I can make a bunch of money from this. What are your thoughts on that? Whether I mean, do we always want to build companies? That's fine, make money? Hey, there's some nobility in that because you employ a lot of people, you can help a lot of people get further long career. There's nothing wrong with that. But should there be something deeper this desire to like, change the way something works?
Nigel Dessau 34:59
Yeah, I mean As a marketing person, we all know get why we've all learned target to why and so the why here is that there's a fundamental flaw in our industry. And and the fundamental flaw, particularly in our industry is that, you know, we don't we don't provide the service to our clients, we never finished the last 5% of the job, because it's always too hard, we walk away, and people left unsatisfied and unhappy. And it's just amazing that if you have a luxury home, we talk about 10 20,000 square foot home, sometimes, if they can't turn on the light in the bedroom, or they can't operate something in the house, they don't live happily in their home, and they could spend all this money. And it's one stupid thing that we didn't get done. And we're an industry of not doing the last 5%. And I think what's going to happen is the commoditization by the apples and the Googles, and the Amazons is going to crush the industry unless it works out how to solve that problem. And as it starts to solve that problem, which is what we're going to do and continue to do, we're gonna make it better for people to live in their homes, we're gonna, whether they live work or play in their homes, we're going to make it a better place to be, we're going to make it a healthier place to be, we're going to make it a place that they just love even more. And that's, that's the excitement here. That's what this is about. And it's it requires a change in approach. It requires a change in in the way people think. But that's what gets me excited every day is making people happy about their homes and love their homes even more. That's where we're going to make the change.
The Detective 36:24
Okay, turn off the lights. Listen, I'm going to show you something. The switch is just over there. I've got one of those slide projectors.
The Detective 36:37
Here's a guy who took on the challenge of consolidating the luxury home technology industry, making sense of the chaos and building a brand to stand the test of time. As the story unfolded, we saw that Nigel was orchestrating the acquisition of 21 companies and aligning them like pieces on a chessboard. His mission to create a unified brand identity, a beacon of light in the darkness of a fragmented market. But life's never easy in the big city. COVID-19 pandemic threw a wrench in the works, forcing Nigel to adapt to a world that had changed overnight. It was in these trying times that Nigel found solace in the wisdom of Simon Sinek. And every single organization on the planet knows what they do. But very, very few know why they do what they do. And by why I don't mean to make a profit. That's a result by why I mean, what's your purpose? What's your cause? What's your belief? Why does your organization exist?
The Detective 37:39
Cynics TED talk on finding your why became the cornerstone for Bravas, guiding the organization and its people through the murky waters of uncertainty. Our protagonist here understood the importance of perseverance and adaptability. When the going got tough. He doubled down, determined to see Bravas thrive despite the odds. Now, we can cast our gaze towards the future where brava stands tool, ready to take on new challenges and revolutionize the luxury home technology industry. The night may be dark, but Nigel and his team have a vision and they won't stop until they've etched their legacy in the city skyline.
The Detective 38:31
So there you have it, folks, the tale of Nigel Dessau and Bravas the story of leadership, team building and overcoming challenges that will echo through the streets for years to come. Thanks for helping me work out the case. Remember to subscribe and rate the show. CASE CLOSED
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