Aaron Shishilla (00:01)
Hello everybody and welcome back to the marketing alpha podcast. Today we have a really special guest and a really awesome podcast my personal opinion, as you can probably tell by the title, it's going to be an interesting conversation. So today we have Austin Hines. He's the former CEO of Waypoint Property Inspection based in Tampa. He's also the co founder of Wolfpack advising the digital marketing agency that runs this actual podcast. So we're diving into the story of how Austin and I met ⁓ his grow up

and ⁓ I guess his his exit out of the home inspection industry ⁓ and how he grew a powerhouse of an inspection company, what it's really like to sell your inspection company or your small business and what he's doing today. So anyway, that being said, Austin, welcome to the marketing alpha podcast.

Austin Hintze (00:49)
Awesome. Thanks Aaron. Happy to be here. And I know you've had a super long list of really great guests. So glad that I could finally be included on an episode, somewhat one and a half years after you've started the podcast. So thanks for having me.

Aaron Shishilla (01:03)
Yeah, yeah, I think it's it's been a year I think since we've started the podcast and you know, there's at the beginning it was going a little bit slower Definitely got more of a routine into everything with the podcast itself But you know, it's funny after a year that you're finally making your your appearance in the podcast itself

Austin Hintze (01:21)
late than never.

Aaron Shishilla (01:23)
I guess so. Alright, so let's I want to get some of the big stuff out of the way. I just like real quick, we'll go into the the details of it later on. But just give me like a quick background, some like synapses of like, how you grew up, like what happened and like, what you're doing real quick right now, like, you know, minute, minute tops.

Austin Hintze (01:46)
Yeah, it's a great background. was born in California, but grew up and pretty much spent my entire life in Florida. My dad started the home inspection business back in 2005 after holding a few managerial positions in corporate America. His company was going through some changes and said you can either accept the package or you can move your family out of state. And he decided to accept the package since a lot of the family had already settled down in the Tampa area. And he spent some time exploring what he wanted to do, settled on home inspections.

And I remember, I believe I was in fifth grade at the time, had a friend whose parents were looking to move and I actually got him his first home inspection before he was actually ready to even start doing inspections. He was licensed and everything. He just like the mental, you know, preparedness of being ready to do your actual first one. So I get to take that credit that I actually got him his first home inspection. But basically grew up around home inspections and swore that I was not going to get into it because to me it sounded boring and I wanted to do something different.

And as I feel like happens with every child in a family business, they end up finding their way in one way or another. And that's what ended up happening during college. Started working in the business as a part-time job. And as we'll talk about later, moved up into a few different roles until we ended up successfully exiting the company earlier this year. So now still working in Wolfpack, helping in a few different areas of the company, as well as getting settled in or attempting to get settled in in Denmark.

Which is a fun adventure and challenge in itself. But yeah, lot of stuff keeping me busy today

Aaron Shishilla (03:20)
You know, there's two things that I want to touch base on there. The first one is how does anybody decide or settle on home inspections? So you said your dad like, you know, he settled on home inspections. You're like, I feel like nobody walks to home inspections, home inspections walks to them.

Is there any insight there on why you chose home inspections at all?

Austin Hintze (03:42)
Yeah, I don't know specifically how he made that final decision. I know he evaluated a few different options. Like some of the things I had heard him talk about was he really enjoyed being an educator in his managerial positions and being able to train and teach people. So he was considering maybe getting into teaching, even if it was just as a substitute teacher. I know at what point he was also exploring potentially getting into like a UPS retail location. Don't really know what put him in that specific direction, but that was something he was considering as well.

Aaron Shishilla (04:11)
And the second part of that, and your little introduction is, and we'll get into this as well as Austin has always been the keen marketer. And so it's ⁓ very fitting that you found your dad, the very first home inspection.

Austin Hintze (04:11)
So yeah, for home inspections, I honestly can't say what made him land on that specifically. It could have been other people he had talked to or people that he had already built connections with along the way, but that's where he ended up settling.

Aaron Shishilla (04:40)
knowing your background Austin. That's funny. I didn't know that.

Austin Hintze (04:43)
Yes.

Trying to think back on it, I honestly have no clue how I made that connection or how it happened, but I guess I was smarter back then than I give myself credit for.

Aaron Shishilla (04:52)
I guess so. Okay, so walk me through ⁓ Obviously, I know but walk the audience through though. Like how did Aaron and Austin get connected? and then Let's let's talk about some of the early days with marketing of the home inspection company and like what that actually looked like

Austin Hintze (05:12)
Yeah, so we got connected ⁓ because I had been involved and my dad as well in some industry coaching groups for a little while. And I know Waypoint as a company was growing. I think we were becoming a little bit more known in some of these industry groups as well. And Michelle Shoshilla was somebody who was familiar with us and what we were doing over in Tampa. And being your mom, she was like, hey, Aaron, I think this is...

possibly a good connection for you. This other young guy in the industry who's in a home inspection company doing marketing and she sent you over to St. Pete. We worked together for a few days. You went around with me to real estate offices, saw how, let's say fun, I guess is a good way to put it, fun it was to visit real estate offices and deliver chocolate, which we can talk about that when we talk about the marketing side and giving presentations and whatnot. So.

Yeah, that was the connection. know Michelle likes

Aaron Shishilla (06:04)
You

Austin Hintze (06:05)
to take credit that we're friends and everything that has come after that is because of her. So props to her.

Aaron Shishilla (06:13)
So in those early days of marketing for Waypoint and this was like it started out as a part-time job you said to do this and then it became more of a full-time gig after after school

Austin Hintze (06:24)
Yeah, it was part-time. I believe I was in my sophomore year when I started part-time. And then once I graduated, that's when I jumped into it full-time. So when I had started the marketing, we were very much following, for those who may remember back in the day before IGO was IGO, it was MIC. Started as the millionaire inspector community, then became the mastermind inspector community, but Mike Crow's coaching group, they had a very specific way of marketing that they promoted called Big Bang, which there were a few different components, but

to really try and boil it down, it was what can you do to get into a real estate office time and time again, to get your foot in the door to then be able to give presentations. Because what was being promoted was presentations was the easiest way to get in front of a large group and promote your company. So the way we did that was by having chocolate bowls, where we would go into a real estate office with a bowl of chocolate, we would have our brochures on the back of it. And that gave us a reason to go back in week after week because we knew they were gonna eat the chocolate.

and we knew they wanted more, so we'd be able to go back in, fill it up, strike up a conversation with the person working the front desk, and then hopefully that would all lead to a presentation. So early days when I was doing it part-time and full-time up until COVID, which I'm sure we'll talk about that transformation as well, it was all based on in-person marketing, visiting real estate offices, running routes, giving presentations, very labor and time intensive work.

with basically the hope that a presentation was gonna come out of it. I there were some real estate offices that I would visit for six months and they still were not open to having us come in and talk to the agents. Or we'd finally get that presentation booked and there would be like three people there. So it was very much a shotgun approach to see what we could capture. But I do think quite frankly, it worked for us early on because we were also one of the first in the area to do it. Around the time when we started shifting our marketing strategy,

there were some offices we would go into and there would be like five different candy bowls because all the other companies in the area caught on, started doing it and it became watered down or there were some offices that started saying no more, like we're not allowing anybody to come in and bring a candy bowl because it was just getting too overwhelming. But that was the early strategy and the early process that we followed to start gaining some traction with the company.

Aaron Shishilla (08:36)
Hmm.

So going back into how we first met because that's really what I was learning about at that time, like how Waypoint was doing marketing and that was what you had introduced to me. ⁓ Going back to our relationship, our early friendship and then segueing to Wolfpack at that time too. ⁓ Let's start with the question and don't hold back. What were your first impressions of little Aaron?

Austin Hintze (09:02)
Little Aaron had a lot of big ideas. ⁓ What was the one that we talked about? I don't remember. Was it like a wristband, like a color-coded wristband or something? So that way if you were on a college campus, you would see other people with similar wristbands and that way you would know who you could relate to and connect with. So that was one of like three different ideas that I think you pitched to me when we first met. So you had a lot of ideas and a lot of them were honestly like undercover marketing focused or just general business ideas of you were

Aaron Shishilla (09:15)
Yeah. Yeah. you

Austin Hintze (09:32)
finding issues that you felt needed to be solved. So my early impression was somebody who was very eager, a go-getter, had a lot of ideas and just wanted the platform or the ability to start making some of those things happen or to be able to start testing some of them.

Aaron Shishilla (09:49)
So let's segue over and then we're going to continue on with the waypoint side too, because a lot of this happened around the same time. You know, what do you think helped start the conversation and get into like Austin being co-founder of Wolfpack and running that alongside?

your journey at waypoint.

Austin Hintze (10:08)
Yeah, I the big thing that we had talked about back then when we were talking about starting Wolfpack was seeing the gaps in marketing for home inspection companies overall, especially when it came to digital, because we knew that a lot of companies were doing the physical marketing with the presentations, visiting real estate offices. And we saw some of the gaps that even Waypoint had in terms of our own website. was very much like an early 2000s style website. And we met

you know, way after the 2000s. I don't remember exactly what year, but the website was outdated by like 15 years. We had no online presence. So even just the gaps that we saw within our own company and even stuff that you had been working on with Honor, we saw that as an opportunity to say, well, we know we can fix these things for the companies that were involved in. So why can't we offer these as services to fix it for others as well?

Aaron Shishilla (10:57)
Mm-hmm. And I think it was 2019 when that was launched, correct?

And so we probably met what in like 2017, 2018.

Austin Hintze (11:04)
Correct.

Yeah, something like that.

Aaron Shishilla (11:09)
It would have been 2017 to 2018, I think, because I would have been turning 21 at the time. Because that was when I first went over. Look at that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's funny. You know, I think at the time I probably wouldn't have been about it, but...

Austin Hintze (11:18)
True. That's right. You left. I think you left the day before you turned 21.

I don't know if Michelle would have been too happy if you had stayed for your birthday and we went out to the bars in St. Pete.

Aaron Shishilla (11:37)
you know, looking back at it, I feel like I should have done that. That would have been a lot of fun. Okay, so at that time, you know, you, ⁓ you kind of hinted at like the candy bowls weren't working anymore. You know, everybody was kind of doing it. The presentations were shock and approaching in terms of how to get it. And we're coming up on the year of 2020, which is a big year.

Austin Hintze (11:42)
Yep, too late now. We can just live through the memory.

Aaron Shishilla (12:05)
So walk me through kind of that transition from candy bowls to like a more of a, you know, I don't want to say an integrated marketing approach, marketing and sales approach, but I mean, if I were to define it, I mean, in my opinion, that's what it would be like. How would you describe Waypoint's transition in that year and everything that happened thereafter?

Austin Hintze (12:27)
Yeah, great question. So I think to lean into what happened then, we still need to take a step back and look at actually when you joined Waypoint, right, as Waypoint's marketing manager, because you joined before COVID took place. So when you first started, we were still doing the presentations, the office visits. And I remember that was a big point that you brought up of not feeling it was effective, not knowing that we could successfully measure it, knowing that there were opportunities to do other things like Google Ads.

Facebook ads, things like that, that we had not previously been doing. So I think we were slowly going down that path of making some of those changes and getting more into that side without wanting to fully give up the in-person visiting offices. And when COVID hit, that forced us to make the full change because we know a lot of offices shut down. They stopped...

having agents come in for office meetings and they were doing it all via Zoom. And I know there were a few that we tried to do and just the impacts of presenting on Zoom are nothing compared to in person. And even in person, we were having a hard time measuring the business that was coming out of it. So COVID definitely was the thing that forced us to go all in with digital marketing, since that was pretty much our only option to try and stay in front of buyers or even to try and stay in front of agents through like CRM stuff with ActiveCampaign and the automations that we were building out.

So yeah, COVID was the thing that forced us to go that direction. We were already slowly going in that direction though. And I think we really started to focus on how do we measure the exact return. And those online efforts is what was allowing us to measure the exact return when previously we hadn't been able to do so.

Aaron Shishilla (14:05)
So, you know, I joined Waypoint, what was it, like 2019, I guess?

Maybe like, yeah, I guess 2019. And I do remember that time, like we were doing a lot of the initial like marketing approach. And that was the method that we wanted to start out with. And I think that was also the method that you wanted me to start out with at the time to to say like, hey, this is the tried and true method of what we've done in the past. And we need to do that first. And part of that conversation, as you just mentioned, was like tracking the exact return on investment for everything, making sure that we're actually spending the time and the money in the place that is resulting in the money back.

the company or the inspections back to the actual company. ⁓ Now, in that particular realm, like we had Wolfpack going on to where we were doing some digital marketing stuff. And at that time, I was now doing the marketing. What did you how did you shift in your role with waypoint? And then what led you to CEO of waypoint?

Austin Hintze (15:02)
So my role shifted more to just general operations. So I know I was still helping with some things from the system side of marketing, like ActiveCampaign was something we were learning continuously on how we could use that better. I remember when we had our WeWork office for however long that was, it doesn't feel like it was that long at all. ⁓ I remember going in on the whiteboard and just like drawing out all these connections of ways that ActiveCampaign could be working. And

It was a never ending process, right? Of trying to fine tune it, trying to test different things, running A, tests and automation. So I still was pretty involved in that side of things with the marketing, but for the rest of it, it was mainly focused on operations. What systems are we using for our phones? What are we using for scheduling? Do we have everything talking to each other properly? Do we have the right scripts for the office team in the way that they're answering the phone calls and trying to promote our unique selling propositions?

So yeah, that's a lot of where my focus shifted towards was more just general operations with a focus on systems and efficiency and making sure we were set up where we needed to be at that point in time, but also that we were implementing systems that were gonna support the future growth so that we wouldn't then just have to change everything again within six months as the company was continuing to grow.

Aaron Shishilla (16:20)
And how did you think your mind shift shifted at that point? Because this is a pivotal time for you. I mean, you previously you were doing marketing, and kind of just handling that. And now you're probably learning a lot about leadership, a lot about hiring, and learning a lot with with marketing with everything changed.

⁓ Walk me through some of that and what was going on in your mind in terms of how you shifted to being in operations, running a company and everything else. What are some of the key lessons you think you've learned in those areas?

Austin Hintze (16:50)
Yeah, that's a great question. One of the things I learned is rely on people who have been there before or people who are going through the same thing but may have different experiences going through it. So I mentioned in the early days we were part of my Crows group which became Igo. We stayed a member of that until we ended up exiting from the company earlier this year. So that was about 10 years. I went to my first meeting in 2015. So I was a member of that group for about 10 years.

So I got to meet with peers that were in a similar situation to our company and hear what they were going through with their people, with their operations. And I also got to meet with some of the largest companies in the industry who had gone through what we were going through five years prior, or were maybe still going through the same issue, but just on a different scale. So I was able to really lean into those groups because I had never run a company before. I had not been in operations before. And I would argue to a degree with the way Waypoint was growing.

You know, we had three owners at that time when you were involved. was Bob, my father, Eddie, my uncle, and myself. Even though my father and my uncle both had vast experience in corporate positions, neither of them had vast experience in running and growing a small business. So the things that we were experiencing that I was experiencing for the first time, all of us were experiencing for the first time. So that was one of the things I also had to remind myself is

Aaron Shishilla (18:10)
Mm-hmm.

Austin Hintze (18:13)
you sometimes we would come into our meetings and we would talk about things and not really know the correct answer or the direction to go. And I had to remind myself, well, it's because none of us have been here before growing a small business. So that's why I felt it was really key to lean into some of those other people that either had been through it, were going through it, had different perspectives. That way we could learn from others as well.

Aaron Shishilla (18:37)
How do you think your mindset has changed or your opinion has changed in marketing from the early days of Waypoint to, you know, even back then or even now?

Austin Hintze (18:49)
terms of marketing, think back then it was very much like one or the other, right? Like we were all in on the physical until we had to shift to the digital. And then we were all in on the digital, not wanting to do the physical anymore. And then coming out of COVID, I would say maybe starting two years ago, three years ago, we started getting back into the physical again, in addition to the digital. So I know like when I see...

some comments on Facebook and certain inspector groups, people are talking about how well they're doing online. Other people are bashing them and saying, that's not the way to do it. You need to be making personal connections, right? And then people are bashing them saying, no, you need to be focusing only on direct to buyer. So that's one thing that my mind has definitely shifted on is it's a balance of both, right? You can benefit from both as long as you can do both properly and as long as you can measure them. So when Waypoint started getting back into the physical marketing on top of what we were doing digitally,

we made sure we had a good tracking process in place using ActiveCampaign to know which agents were our marketing reps meeting. Because we had the integration with ISN set up, we would be able to then run reports to see, how many inspections are those agents bringing us? Where did that agent come from? Was it this networking event or was it this sponsorship that we did for the office? And then we can measure exactly where the marketing budget was best spent. So that's what I think my mindset shift was, is it's a mixture of

a little bit of everything, right? As long as you can properly measure it and as long as you can properly implement it, that way you're getting the benefits from all places versus just sticking to one lane and not getting the benefits that you can get in others.

Aaron Shishilla (20:25)
And at this time, too, that that we're we're in for waypoint, you're running operations. There's three owners. There's you. There's your dad. And then there's Eddie. And what what changed to then now say, Hey, Austin's running the company.

Austin Hintze (20:46)
Yeah. I think a lot of it had to do with what I was learning attending these mastermind meetings. So it was that when I was getting into the position of CEO. And one of the things I decided is this information that I've been getting from this group is great, very valuable, ⁓ a lot that I feel like I can contribute back. But I also wanted information from outside of just a bubble, right?

In reality, any group that you join that's specific to an industry is going to be in somewhat of its own bubble because everybody in that group is part of that industry. So that's when I decided to seek a group that's outside in conjunction with staying involved. And that's when I joined Vistage. And Vistage is an executive coaching program for all industries and companies of all sizes. So the group that I joined in North Carolina had companies, I actually think we were the smallest company.

But they had other home service companies like a roofing and remodeling company that was doing maybe 40 million in revenue per year. And then one of the members was the CEO of a pharmaceutical company who was trying to raise funds to basically ⁓ fund the research of this product they were producing and they were valuing their company at like 200 million. So I was learning a lot from people outside of just the bubble of home inspections. And that was happening around the same time as the decision of me stepping into the role of CEO.

Aaron Shishilla (22:05)
.

Austin Hintze (22:10)
and taking more of the strategic approach in how we run the company, and also leveraging some of those connections and the information that I was getting both within and outside the industry to try and shape how the company was going to continue growing successfully. So I think that was the main thing, was just knowing that I was the young guy of the three of us, right? And I had all of these groups and connections that I was leveraging and trying to use that to the best benefit of the company, while...

Like Eddie was very specialized in inspections and helping the office team. So that way he could focus on running the inspections and helping the office team. Bob very great at admin stuff, HR, payroll, paperwork, documentation, extremely detail oriented. That way he could focus on those things as well. And then I could assume that role of more of the overall strategy.

Aaron Shishilla (23:00)
And during that time, ⁓ how many years were you CEO of Waypoint?

Austin Hintze (23:06)
I want to say three or four. Three or four.

Aaron Shishilla (23:10)
So during that time, I'm sure you've you made a lot of great decisions and I'm sure there were ⁓ points during that where you hit challenges or roadblocks and you feel like you made some mistakes. What are some things that you felt like you made really good decisions on as a CEO and then some challenges or roadblocks to where it felt like it was a mistake or you made ⁓ a bad call?

Austin Hintze (23:37)
Yeah, I would say in terms of successes. So we hit a point, I want to say it was 2023, where all of this growth that we saw during COVID drastically slowed down. And so we were running into capacity issues where we just did not have enough business coming in to keep everybody's schedule full. We were running into some revenue issues where we had a very high payroll expense and not enough revenue coming in to offset that payroll expense.

And we were having tough conversations internally of, you know, can we cut more expenses? Are we going to have to potentially start letting some people go in the company? ⁓ Do we as owners need to take significant pay cuts or not get paid at all in order to try and preserve some of the cash in the business? And so that was a conversation that I really helped to shape and take the lead on in conjunction with our great bookkeeping team over at RTC. And they were helping provide forecasts.

of our cash flow and we would meet sometimes weekly, sometimes twice a week to look at that forecast, look at what we actually brought in revenue and then project out basically like what was our end date, right? Like if nothing changed, when were we going to run out of cash? If everything stayed the same. And very stressful time to have a Google sheet that's showing you on this day, you're done. Like you've now lost so much money that you don't have enough cash to keep operating the business. And obviously the goal was not to let that day come.

So to keep making decisions that would push that day further and further out until we got to the point where that was no longer a concern because we now had more than enough revenue coming in. So there were a lot of little things and little nuances that went into the decisions to help support that. But the ultimate outcome was we were fine, right? In all the decisions that we made along the process, we were able to preserve cashflow. We were able to...

successfully set up the company for us to be able to exit at the beginning of this year. So that is definitely a challenge that we face that I'm proud that we overcome. In terms of obstacles, you know, I think not so much an obstacle, but we were very, or I was very bullish at a point about expansion. And we had already had some requests coming in from realtors for different areas that we didn't already have an established presence in. So Orlando being one of those, we had.

quite a bit of crossover between Tampa Realtors doing business in Orlando. And that got me thinking, well, why don't we just establish in Orlando? It's a huge market, right? There's a lot of opportunity there. And I think I drastically underestimated how much it takes to actually get established, even if you already have a name and a presence in one area. And even if you're running campaigns online, even if you have a marketing person in a new area, like it's not just overnight that things are going to get put in place and business is going to be there to support a growing team.

So we had an inspector in Orlando, great guy who stuck with us throughout the entire process, even started helping with some marketing to try and bring in business. But we just, never got to that point of seeing like a full fledged, successful Orlando team of inspectors. And in hindsight, there was still so much opportunity in Tampa that we could have just focused more in our own backyard. You know, we look at things like market share numbers, which is a big one that the industry talks about.

and Hillsborough County being our biggest market, I think the most we ever got was maybe 3.5 % market share. On average though, it was more like two to two and a half. And in all the other surrounding counties like Pinellas, we barely broke 1%. Yet the number of transactions happening in Pinellas was not too far off from what was happening in Hillsborough and Pinellas was right in our backyard. So if we could have just taken that energy.

the time, the money, and focused on expanding in our own backyard, I think we would have seen more success and we would have seen growth happen quicker than trying to go further out. So that's definitely, I think, a lesson learned and an obstacle that I basically created for us that we then ended up having to work through and learn lessons from.

Aaron Shishilla (27:38)
Do you think that you, going back, you wouldn't have focused on it at all and not worried about that particular expansion? Or do you think like, hey, lesson learned, ⁓ now I have realistic expectations on what it takes to expand like that. And maybe that wasn't necessarily the wrong decision, but my expectations and planning are more in line.

Austin Hintze (27:59)
Yeah, I'd say more of that last one. Now I would know what to do differently. I would make sure that we aren't expecting too much too soon. One thing I've heard other companies talk about, which we didn't do in this case, is start marketing like three to six months before you even get an inspector established in a region. So that way you at least start getting the brand out there.

Me though, in the way my mind works, I want to be prepared for anything. So I want to be prepared for those five phone calls, the five inspections needed and having an inspector ready to go versus having to ask someone from our Tampa market to go stay in Orlando for a week to get the job done. So that's definitely something that I've learned from and I need to overcome that and take some of these lessons of what other companies have shown works and make sure that in the future I'd be more considerate of doing it that way.

Aaron Shishilla (28:49)
Yeah, yeah, 100 % agree. I will say I'll give my own personal thoughts or comments on just that particular item. you know, maybe Austin, you completely disagree with me and everybody in the audience also completely disagrees with me. But, you know, personally, if I were to say like I was in your shoes in Tampa looking to expand in Orlando, and that was the direction I was going. ⁓ Like I know I can run some advertisements and get get jobs immediately.

So what's the point in kind of running some, you know, marketing thing for three to six months before you even have an inspector out there, rather finding either the right person that lives in the middle ground to where they can, you know, cross between, you know, the two different markets somehow, live in some like kind of limbo land, or you have the funds to kind of support that inspector as maybe like the inspections are trickling in. So they only have like one, two, three a week.

and you're paying them extra or whatever to kind of sit there and take those jobs knowing full well, like that's the cost of the growth of a new market, right? It's like starting a completely new business. I don't know if you agree with that or not, but that's where my mind goes. Yeah.

Austin Hintze (30:02)
Yeah, can definitely agree with points of that. For sure. I think there's many different ways you can do it, right? Many different ways you can try and it's going to depend on so many factors as to which way is successful and which way isn't.

Aaron Shishilla (30:14)
100 % okay, so let's get into the the juicy stuff All right, ⁓ so the juicy stuff is What what is now making the decision of like you're running the company your CEO and you're like, hey ⁓ You know, we could we could we could sell this thing we could exit, you know You know what what comes to mind for that?

Austin Hintze (30:19)
OK, sounds good.

Yeah, I think it's a conversation, especially when you're part of coaching groups, that it's always something in the back of your mind, right? I think common phrase out there is everybody has a number. Your number may be super high, it may not be, like you may not even know what it is right now, but everybody has a number. And when you're growing a business, usually the mindset is grow it so that it can be sold, but you don't have to sell it if you don't want to. And so I think that was really

the method that we had started taking coming out of COVID as we were looking to reestablish, as we were building the company to be stronger moving forward, we weren't necessarily setting out to sell the company at any scheduled point in time, but we were just keeping that thought in the back of our mind to try and focus more on profitability, to try and focus more on documentation, on structured training, on all the things that would put the company in a good position to sell if that opportunity ended up coming to us. ⁓

That all was around the time that acquisitions were starting to get talked about more in the industry. So I know different coaching groups had different players within them that were like local inspection companies that were acquiring other local inspection companies. And it seemed like they were growing pretty rapidly. So that's sort of when we started getting into this mindset as well of just preparing the company to be in that position where it could be sold. And then we know that we also had some big players that entered the industry pretty recently and that sort of

bought into that mindset of if the company is in a good place, then that just gives us the potential to consider an offer, right? Not saying we're going to accept it right away, not saying we want to the company right now, but it would at least give us that opportunity to consider it and learn from that process of going through it.

Aaron Shishilla (32:23)
So what ultimately led to the decision of going through with it?

Austin Hintze (32:28)
Yeah, was being approached. So getting a text saying, hey, we've got acquisition plans in your area. You're a company that's on our list that we want to consider. Are you open to having a conversation? And that just led into everything I just mentioned, which is, of course, like, let's hear what it is. Let's hear what the number is. Let's hear what the process looks like. Let's hear how our team's going to be taken care of. And so I was the primary person to lead that initial conversation and get just

generic overviews of what the process would look like. And then after that, it was basically left in our hands of here, you know what we're looking for and what we do. It's now up to us if we want to move forward with actually getting the process started. And that took a lot of internal conversation around, hey, I know we've been building the company to be able to sell it eventually. This is now a potential opportunity on the table. Do we actually seriously want to consider this?

And that was a big point that I pushed is are we serious about this? Because if we weren't, I didn't feel in good conscience moving forward with all of this stuff if we were just knowing we were going to say no at the end of the day anyway, and not even give it a fair chance. So got confirmation from the owners, which there were four of us at that point after merging with another company on the East Coast that yes, we were all potentially serious, right? Still that potentially, because it depended on what's going to happen with our team, what's the number.

How long do we need to stick around, things like that. And then the second point of that conversation was, okay, now I know we're all potentially serious. Well, what does the number need to be? Right, because if the number is not even anywhere close to the minimum that the four of us set, which side note that adds a lot of complication, you've got four people talking about a number versus if you just have a single business owner or even just a partnership talking about a number, what does that number need to look like? Because then we'll know pretty quickly, can we continue this conversation or not?

So for that conversation, I found it difficult to lead while also trying to participate because I also had my own thoughts around the number for myself and I was trying to lead the conversation at the same time. So I ended up reaching out to my Vistage Coach and brought him down to Orlando for a day to meet with all four of us and help lead us through some conversations and exercises. So coming out of that day, we came up with our number, which was still a range and it was still pretty big. So.

Not anything that I would say was defined or concrete, but at least better than not knowing anything. So went back to my original contact, said, OK, like, we're serious. We have a potential number in mind. Let's continue forward with the conversation. And that's essentially how things got started.

Aaron Shishilla (35:10)
So do you think part of it was a group of the owners just in general wanting an exit like they were kind of just I don't want to say tired but like you know it was kind of in the back of their minds of like you know at what point am I gonna stop?

Austin Hintze (35:27)
Yeah, I think that was definitely in the back of I think everybody's minds, which again, I think to some degree for most business owners, that is something they're thinking about moving forward is, one, is there a number? If somebody came to me today with $10 million, would that be what I want to sell the company? And two, what is the plan moving forward from here? Am I building this business to hold on to it? Am I going to want to exit at some point? Am I hoping to give it off to the teams that way they can run it?

Aaron Shishilla (35:27)
Or what am I gonna do?

Austin Hintze (35:56)
So I think, yes, it was a combination of getting close to that point of wanting to consider what other options are there outside of just working in the company day to day. And this opportunity coming to be like the first serious opportunity to consider that could help reach that point.

Aaron Shishilla (36:16)
Walk me through the conversation with your Vistage coach in that room. You know, give me an insight into what it was like being in that conversation or in that room. What were you guys talking about? How do you arrive at that number when you got four owners? How does anybody arrive at that number?

Austin Hintze (36:35)
Yeah, great question. So pretty easily when you have four owners, because everybody has their own, right? That's the easy part is as long as you can get it out of somebody, everybody has their own number. And then for us, that just became the big number, which is what we had in mind that we would need total for this to move forward. ⁓ He is a very inquisitive person. So he just asked a lot of personal questions like, do you want to work?

after this is done? Or are you hoping that this is going to be your retirement? He's also a very realistic person. And we were looking at some of our numbers, we were looking at our revenue, our profit, our market share, our growth plans. And does that support the number that each person was saying? So if you wanted 5 million bucks, but the company is only doing 3 million in revenue and profit is, let's say 10%, like that's just not realistic.

So if that's not realistic, are you willing to stay in the company engaged for the next five to 10 years to get it to that point that you want it to be at to be able to exit? And that's where a lot of the conversations led was sort of that planning ahead based on what people wanted now in order to really get down to, well, what truly does each person want? And that's where we got to the ranges. And even those ranges were still flexible, I would say, because somebody would give a range and he'd be like,

Well, like, so you're telling me, like, let's just say, for example, the number was 500,000. He'd like, so you're telling me if they came back and offered you $400,000, you wouldn't take it. And some people are like, well, I'd consider it. like, OK, so then your number is not 500,000. Like, you still have some flexibility there of what you actually want. So we came out of it definitely with a clearer picture, but it still was not 100 % concrete. But I think he did a good job of helping us think it as where is the company right now? What is realistic?

Aaron Shishilla (38:02)
you

You ⁓

Austin Hintze (38:28)
every business owner wants that $10 million payout, right, is like the lofty goal. The company's nowhere near that. And do we have the energy to be able to invest for the next 15, 10, 15 years to be able to get it to that point? That's where I think he led the conversation in a way that I was not able to lead and participate in at the same time.

Aaron Shishilla (38:47)
Mm-hmm.

For those people now that you've you've gone through this entire process and actually exited I guess the first question is like do you have any regrets and ⁓ You know, we'll get into everything going on afterwards So do you have any regret regrets and then number two if you were to give advice to your former self or? Advice to the people listening who are Just thinking about it. Maybe not actually going down that road or path or anything

What would you what would you say?

Austin Hintze (39:21)
Yeah, I would say in terms of regrets, the only ones that I have are ones that are tied to could we have done this or could we have done that, right? Like could we have made Orlando successful as a market? Could we have buckled down for five more years with the company and grown into multiple different major cities across Florida? Could we have done those things? And I don't know, right? Like, yeah, we could have. Would we have?

Who knows? You know, the market I know has still gone through some challenges in certain parts of the country. And I know in certain areas of Florida, like there are still some challenges with affordability. There have still been some issues with just the market overall. So who knows? Like in three years, yeah, the market could be gangbusters and we could have reached 10 million in revenue or it could not be. And we could be in a worse position than we were when we exited the company. So I don't necessarily have regrets about exiting because I was very confident in

the way that this partnership was going to move forward. And it is truly a partnership with the company that we ended up moving forward with. ⁓ We still have ⁓ interest in the overall company succeeding. So it's not like we just sold and we said goodbye and we're not at all looking at it anymore. ⁓ I genuinely do want the company to continue to succeed and the company that we partnered with to succeed as well.

And I know in all the conversations leading up to the process that they genuinely wanted our team to see it as a place to stay and be successful. And so I don't have any regrets about that process, right? Every person on our team who wanted to stay on was offered an opportunity to stay on and be made whole. So it's not like they came in and cut half the staff or cut a bunch of people. Like that was not at all part of it. So I feel good about that from the people's side. ⁓ So yeah, just the regrets are just what could we have done if we held onto it, but we wouldn't know either way.

if we could have done it or if we would have done it if we hold on to the company.

Aaron Shishilla (41:21)
And what would you tell other people listening or your former self if you had any advice? You were thinking about it, considering it, maybe, maybe not considering it realistically, but you know, just thinking.

Austin Hintze (41:28)
Yeah.

I would say even if you don't have plans to sell right now, be open to the conversation and be open to learning. So we actually went through this twice with the company that we ended up partnering with the first time, it ended up being a rejection. So it was not a good fit for us to move forward at that point in time, but we learned a lot about what they were looking for and what companies in general who are acquiring are going to be looking for. And so we were able to make some changes.

And then that started up the conversation again. And because we had made some of those changes, that's when it successfully moved forward. So even if you're not really looking to sell right now, be open to the conversation to learn from it. The other thing that I wish we would have put some more focus on is we always hear business owners say, like, not always, we hear some business owners say profitability is king, right? Like aim for 20 % net profitability that shows a really healthy company that adds a lot of money to the bottom line that you can then reinvest.

You hear some other companies say, I don't want to show any profitability because I don't want to pay taxes. So I'm going to spend all of that money before the end of the year, buying new vehicles, buying new equipment. So that way I'm not paying taxes on it. Well, the thing is when you don't show profitability, which is one of the key things that a company looking to acquire is going to look for, it doesn't put you in as strong of a position as if you showed consistent profitability. So.

I'm not a financial expert. don't pretend to be one. I'm sure there are legitimate reasons to strike that fine line between wanting to show it and not wanting to show it. But I just know from the standpoint of we were leaning more towards the side of not wanting to show it. So if we had extra money left over at the end of the year, we were buying new equipment or we were giving it out to the team as bonuses, things like that. If we had maintained a bit more healthy profit margin consistently, then that would have leaned into a better offer at the end when it came to selling. So

being more focused on that side of things to prepare for that potential future exit. And also, I would say just to be very diligent with documentation. So they're going to want to know any claims that you've received within like the last five to eight years, we had to have documentation to present on that, both the claim that came in of the person complaining, as well as the insurance company's letter back to them declining or paying out.

any workers comp claims, like all of that stuff, we had to have a robust history to be able to present to them. So I would say if you do plan on even exploring selling anytime in the near future, just make sure you have all that documentation there and make sure you have it well organized because that's just gonna make the process move a lot smoother throughout the whole thing.

Aaron Shishilla (44:06)
That's really good advice. I have one other thing to ask you before we segue into your life after the sale. that is my thought or feeling that maybe a good question somebody could reflect on and ask themselves if you're looking or considering selling is what is your own energy look like for putting into a company? So...

You know, you mentioned like, are you gonna stick around for another five, 10 years to get the company where, you know, it could be this, or are you looking to retire in some of these questions? Do you think like a lot of it comes down to what is your energy and mindset and mood when it comes to grinding or putting in the work for your company? Would that be a fair assessment?

Austin Hintze (44:58)
I would say yes, but I would also say it changes,

right? Like you're going to go through highs and lows in the company and your mood's going to change as you go through those. And there are going to be times where you just don't know. Like that's something I was not comfortable with, especially around these conversations of do we as owners want to sell? If we do, what is our timeline? What is our number? Before I got our Vistage Coach involved in that conversation, I was trying to get that information for probably a year.

Aaron Shishilla (45:07)
Mm-hmm.

Austin Hintze (45:27)
And the reality is people just don't know. And that would get me frustrated until I had my coaches that I was working with tell me it's okay. Like people just don't know and you can't force answers out of something that somebody doesn't know. So yes, I would say energy is definitely a key factor in if the opportunity is there, think about it, but think about it long-term, not just because you're going through a sucky quarter and now you want out, right?

Aaron Shishilla (45:52)
Mm-hmm.

Austin Hintze (45:53)
If you know that you've had success

overall and you know that there's opportunity for success, like I don't know the exact saying, but there's the other saying like, don't don't sell while you're down, right? If you don't have to sell when you're up, because if you sell when you're down, that puts you in a bad position where you're not going to be on strong terms to negotiate if your numbers don't look good, if you're disorganized, if you're in a bad mood, if you're not motivated. So don't exit just because of that, because the energy is negative. But I'd say if you see a trend in yourself over a longer period of time that you just know you're

you're getting drained then yeah, I definitely think that's something to take into consideration.

Aaron Shishilla (46:28)
Okay, let's shift to our final segment. So ⁓ Austin, you're not you're not in your usual setup in your usual room. And I don't know if maybe a lot of people know that about you because you're not on a ton of like these podcasts or anything like that. But where are you at now? ⁓ What's life been like since? And ⁓ what do want to do?

Austin Hintze (46:53)
Yeah, great question. So where I'm at now is in Denmark. So got here five days ago and got sick like within a day. So I've been sick all week, which is not fun coming here and being holed up in a small apartment. ⁓ But the goal is to settle down here ⁓ to see what it's like living here, working here, working from here. So that's where I'm at. Definitely an adventure, definitely a journey. We'll see how it ends up going. ⁓ Still.

working in Wolfpack, working with our web team, working with our CRM team, working with some internal improvements, working with you and Jenna. So really just leveraging what I feel is my strong suit around systems, processes, efficiency, things like that, to make sure that we're making our systems talk well together. We're getting set up as we continue to scale Wolfpack as a company, as we hire more team members, making sure things are set up from the system side for everybody to be successful. So helping out with that.

In terms of what I want to do, so currently working on getting a company set up here in Denmark that will hopefully ⁓ work with companies here in Denmark on automation, on processes, on efficiency. So still in the process of getting all of that going, but all part of the journey. And we'll see how it all comes together here soon.

Aaron Shishilla (48:12)
Awesome. Austin, thank you for hanging out with me for, you know, 45 minutes or so. ⁓ I guess let's ask one final question. ⁓ If there was one word to describe this journey, what would you give it? Or this chapter?

Austin Hintze (48:35)
Hmm.

insightful. A lot of lessons learned, a lot of information, a lot of knowledge, a lot of challenges, lot of reflection. So I'd say insightful.

Aaron Shishilla (48:52)
That's good. That's good. I'm your biggest cheerleader and your biggest fan right now, Austin. ⁓ I hope you continue doing awesome things. For those people that are listening, ⁓ or thinking about growth,

thinking about leadership and maybe selling your company. Feel free to DM Austin, I'll give you his cell phone number. He's happy to listen to you on the phone for hours on end. He's got nothing better to do. No, but seriously. Wow, really?

Austin Hintze (49:24)
Thankfully, phone calls from the US to Denmark don't go through right now. At least from iPhone. I don't know.

Aaron Shishilla (49:34)
No, no. If you guys do have questions, comments, anything like that, of course, you can reach out to any of the resources listed throughout the podcast. And I'm sure one of us will be able to get back to you and Austin can, by all means, share those conversations and have some of his additional commentary and everything. But everybody, thank you so much for listening. And Austin, thank you so much for being here and sharing your story. ⁓ wait, before we go. I do have one final question I do have to ask Austin, I have to ask and then you can just

Austin Hintze (49:57)
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Aaron Shishilla (50:04)
you know, tell me the answer that you want to tell me or whatever, but every I have to ask, okay? How much money did you sell it for? How much did you make? All right. Thank you, everybody. See ya.

Austin Hintze (50:11)
Okay.

Yeah, okay. I think my connection's breaking up. Bye

everyone.