UNCHARTED: Leverage Your Expertise to Grow Profitable Businesses

Starting the conversation:

The depth of your knowledge creates opportunity. The more you know, the more you realize you don’t know, and curiosity becomes necessary. When asking questions like: what’s behind this process, or what new findings for our industry can help us evolve and provide a modern solution, or what are we doing that accidentally creates different or new problems for our customers? RK Bob Brown, Founder of Spatial Vision, shares his depth of knowledge and how his curiosity led to patents and inventions to disrupt the foundation repair industry.

Sometimes, we find ourselves frustrated with the way our industry operates, and we build an offering that addresses the shortcomings. To do this well, having a team that brings a depth of knowledge and curiosity about how to do things differently is necessary. And even then, a commitment to leverage available information, research the areas that are lacking, and tap into the knowledge of others with deep knowledge in the same area will illuminate where product, invention, and process innovation exists.

In this program, you will hear about the building of a business that had a successful exit, that business being dedicated to modernizing the foundation repair industry, and advocacy for bringing better solutions to the people who need them. Jess Dewell talks with RK Bob Brown, Founder at Spatial Vision, about being the best at one thing and leveraging that to drive growth strategically.

Host: Jess Dewell

Guest: RK Bob Brown

What You Will Hear:

4:15 Recognized that it was a problem when every solution was created through the lens of product suppliers.

• There are still a similar number and type of solutions to repair foundations as there were in the 1970’s.
• RK Bob Brown realized something was missing: needed an approach from the understanding of how soil and dirt work as much as maintaining the buildings placed on the dirt.
• Created a process to work with and manage clay that keeps foundations sound.
• There is a monopoly: a few suppliers with products for foundations

10:45 Foundation repair salespeople are not necessarily qualified or trained engineers.

• The reality is that salespeople are unqualified to answer the majority of homeowner questions about the situation of their foundation and the dirt around it.
• You must be your own advocate. Take time to learn something about the topic so you can better understand your options.
• When to bring an expert along with ‘the experts.’ It is worth the small investment.

17:03 Foundation repair is a business model ready for disruption: it needs more oversight and accountability built in.

• Remove the one-visit close from the model.
• Bring qualified engineers to oversee project work and strengthen the sales process to sell the right solution.
• Add additional levels of inspection and approval during the repair process.
• Difference between a lifetime warranty and an approved/inspected work signoff.

23:00 You can apply learnings to your decision-making using the foundation repair industry’s disruption to your business.

• Know how to access the right professionals when they can help you.
• Know the standards for quality and analysis and service and how your unique selling proposition positions you competitively.
• Keep asking questions, and get better at asking the hard questions.
• Identify where band-aids exist to solve a symptom and dig deeper to find the root cause.

37:00 Business ownership takes courage and a commitment to providing a solution that lasts and attracts a buyer.

• RK Bob Brown set up his business to do the work right and to stay relevant over time.
• Sometimes exits don’t go as anticipated – deals may not reflect the intentions.
• Multiple offers were nice, yet chose a company that would support and continue the legacy of good work.

47:07 It is BOLD to build a business that specializes in one thing and be THE BEST at it.

Transcript

Jess Dewell 00:00
I’m so glad you’re here. Thanks for stopping by. At the Bold Business Podcast, we are normalizing important conversations. Yes, there are tips. Yes, there are ways to solve problems. More importantly, are going to be what do you need for yourself to be able to solve those problems and make the most of the education, the training and the programs that you are already using. This is a supplement to that it can sit on top of it, fuel your soul, fuel your mind, and most importantly, regardless of where you’re at on your journey, maybe you’re starting out, maybe you’re ready to scale, maybe you’re going through reinvention, the conversations we are having will help you at each of those stages. So hang around, see what’s going on, and I look forward to seeing you engaging with our videos.

RK Bob Brown 00:48
As a homeowner, you are not the expert. You have no clue. What do you do? You go with the guy you feel best with, right? Which is probably the best sales guy, which, by the way, coincidentally, is probably the least qualified to act as an engineering mind frame.

ANNOUNCER 01:08
You are listening to the Bold Business Podcast, where you will hear first-hand experiences about what it really takes to ensure market relevance and your company’s future.

Jess Dewell 01:20
Bob Brown knows dirt. He’s known as the dirt whisperer. I invited him to come speak with me and have a conversation on the Bold Business Podcast, because he has taken 35 years of experience, and not only drastically, has the breadth of knowledge, he has the depth of knowledge with which to make a difference today, he actually shared with us. Over those 35 years, not a lot has changed in his industry. That’s crazy. We’ve improved all kinds of things regarding residential, real estate and the way we look at it, feel about it, own it, live in it, insure it, even and yet take care of it. Is a big is a big piece of it, yet the solutions are similar to what they were 35 years ago, crazy. And so one of the things is he was talking about is that when you have a problem, you sell the solution that you have to and make it fit the problem. And so if you have a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. He is changing that. He is saying, Hey, I understand that we are in this repeat process in our industry, and we’ve got to change it. We need to change our ways. Homeowners, I can help you with that, mortgage brokers, home inspectors, I can help you with that. Real Estate Professionals, I can help you with that so that everybody in the process understands what’s going on. Everybody in the process can know what’s happening, so that the sale of real estate can occur with more confidence. More importantly, while we’re living there, we get to enjoy it and know our house, provided we’re choosing to live in, houses, will stay standing around us regardless of what the dirt is doing, and better understanding where we live and what the dirt is doing. And there were three things that I took away, so you’re going to hear about his experiences as a business owner, how he was trained, all of the things, and then what happened when he decided to sell his business. Very interesting story there. The second thing that we’re really going to focus on that I want to highlight now is that that 35 years of the same solutions, what, and not a whole lot of new stuff. So there’s room for disruption. There’s also room for better understanding for us, we can be and that takes us to the third thing, which is we can be our own advocate. So when we are dealing with anything in our life, and he talks about foundation repair, but really, any decision we’re making in our life, who is the person that will have the information that we can pay for a little bit of their time so that we can make a more sound decision that has lasting impact in the future? So be your own advocate. That is what I’m going to say to you, and let’s just hear, let’s hear the passion and the excitement that RK Bob Brown is bringing us in this conversation, and I can’t wait to hear what you think in the comments after Have you always lived in Arizona.

RK Bob Brown 04:14
I was born in rural Arizona. When I was a young kid, my parents moved to Southern California, I grew up there and came back about college age, and I’ve been here ever since. So that’s been about 40 years.

Jess Dewell 04:30
What we build on is very different from actually rural Arizona to Phoenix from Southern California even, isn’t it?

RK Bob Brown 04:36
Part of the time we ended up living in Yuma. I remember it was real hot, yeah.

Jess Dewell 04:40
So let’s talk about being attracted to dirt, knowing that there was work here that you wanted to do that launched your career on the path that it is today.

RK Bob Brown 04:49
While I was going to Arizona State, I was studying architecture and finance, and I had to self finance because I didn’t have any money and I didn’t have rich parents. And I the way I did it is I did concrete repairs for commercial properties. It worked out well for me. I became known for good repairs in concrete after I graduated. Had a good thing going. I just kept doing it. And eventually, I kept looking for ways to innovate and differentiate and all that kind of stuff. And maybe I was a little bit more forward-thinking than a lot of people in the, in those industries. I ended up in the foundation repair world, the National distributor came looking for somebody to install their products. I learned that part of the business from them. They recruit new guys to be their single installer for an area. Those guys learn the business from the installer. One of the things I found out is the problem with that is you start to recognize all the problems through the lens of solutions from your single source supplier. That’s one of the big problems in the industry, is this myopia through the training, they don’t recognize expansive soil heave. They don’t recognize a lot of things because their, their supplier doesn’t have solutions for it.

Jess Dewell 06:11
As you started to learn from this installer, and learn business from this installer, you said something really powerful. I learned solutions to problems that only my supplier could solve. That’s right, you said it differently, but Right, yeah. And with that in mind, how many I’m going to actually ask a snapshot type question, looking back then to today, are the number of solutions the same as it was then.

RK Bob Brown 06:36
That are being offered by suppliers? Yes, they’re focused on installing peering products, either helical piers or push piers.

Jess Dewell 06:44
I heard you say something serious is missing here. That’s right.

RK Bob Brown 06:48
What’s missing here, you have to understand soils a little bit. So maybe we should back up and talk about soil for a minute. One of the common myths that people have, and by the way, I have 15 myths and 10 mistakes that real estate people have with foundation and foundation repairs, and they can get a free by signing up for my newsletter at foundation repair secrets.com I’m going to try not to use jargon, but I know it’s going to be like drinking from a follow those. So that’s how many people can catch up and rethink some of this stuff. So okay, so dirt, it’s not one big mass of similar dirt all the way down, it’s deposited in layers, and each of those layers have different mineral contents, different densities, different affinities and reactions to water. And those layers are not even they’re all lopsided and angled, and stop and start with rocks and all kinds of things. And so each of those layers, when soil comes down to them, reacts differently. And if there’s clays in there, clay is unique because Clay, Clay particles are very tiny. The only way could see an individual clay particle is to look at it with a scanning tunneling microscope. They have a slight positive charge, and water has a slight negative charge. So they attract water to them. Clay sucks, because it sucks the water right over to it like a vacuum. When it does that, it deposits each watermark particle right in between clay particles, and so then it expands. They move away from each other. The clay particles do and, and when they dry up, they shrink back down. Take the pictures of the desert with all the cracks. When it’s dry, it shrinks up, and when it rains, all those cracks close. That’s clay, if it’s, if it’s down in the soil beneath the structure, and it pushes up, and that causes it’s very powerful for us. You cannot restrain it with steel or concrete or anything, it will move. Whatever’s on top of it will move, and when it shrinks, it’s going to go back down. Think about all the different layers. Some of them might be clay. Some of them might not be clay. Some of them might be consolidating. Some of them might be expanding. Can be very complicated, and it all depends on how much water gets to them and how often, one of the things that missing in the industry that coming back to your question is that there hasn’t been a lot of good solutions out out there to fix clay heat, as I mentioned before, you cannot restrain it. It’s too powerful. So what I did many years ago is I develop a drying system to manage the heat, and it uses the airflow through the gravel layer underneath the concrete foundation to dry out those wet clays and keep them from heating so much. We don’t want to shrink them too much. We don’t want them to expand too much. And it’s more of a management system. It’s not going to take a big, giant heat and pull it down for you, but it’s going to keep it from getting worse, and you can patch all your cracks and live with it. Okay, the problem is, that’s the solution that was invented by me. I haven’t been very successful in getting it adopted in the industry, because it leads me to my second problem. The guys in the foundation repair industry don’t do very good analysis. You call a foundation repair company, Hello, yeah, I got a problem. Okay, we’ll be right out. What do they send out? They send out a commissioned sales guy who is 100% commission. He sells nothing. He makes nothing. And these guys get paid pretty well. They get paid somewhere between 103 100,000 a year. If they don’t make at least 100 grand, they fire. So there’s a lot of stress to perform, and there’s a lot of opportunity to perform. When they come to your house, they’re not really doing analysis like a forensic geotechnical engineer would they’re coming out there to do a sales presentation. Hold on. Okay, there’s a forensic what? Forensic geotechnical engineer.

Jess Dewell 10:50
And we should come back to that, because I’m enjoying this conversation about, here’s how the business works, right? Which, by the way, I think other businesses are built on this model as well. So maybe our listeners might not know foundations. They may not understand this as much, but you will understand the model and be able to take some of this with you. Okay, got it keep going. It’s similar to other industries.

RK Bob Brown 11:12
But the ramifications are much greater. The reason why is because what these sales guys are doing is work that should be done by an engineer. You don’t design repairs to a structural foundation system without an engineering license, and you don’t interpret soil data without being a geotechnical engineer. But all of that is going unnoticed throughout the world, and nobody says anything, and it’s happening, which is wrong. These guys come out to the house, and homeowners have a lot of questions, is it going to get worse? What happens if it gets worse? Lots of questions. And these guys are not geotechnical engineers, and they’re motivated by sales. So how do you think they’re going to answer those questions? I’ve heard sales guys say something like, on a scale of one to 10. Mr. Jones, your foundation is like an 8.5 and I’m thinking, Okay, first of all, what scale is that? I’ve never heard of that. Scale is that like the Richter scale of foundation repair? What is that? And then I think, okay, how’d you arrive at 8.5 based on my experience all the years and everything and the fact that my kids need braces. It’s just subjective salesmanship designed to make homeowners feel good and pretend to be analysis when it’s not really analysis.

Jess Dewell 12:30
So homeowner crawl balls, salesperson comes. They’re unqualified. They’re setting up the solution to match the problem from the lens of the salesperson presenting.

RK Bob Brown 12:40
The only tool you have is a hammer. Then all your problems start looking like nails. That happens. And in the industry, they have what they call the one call close you look around the house, see the damage problems, figure out a solution in your head right then and there. Design a repair plan on the spot and sell it, sign the contract, all in one visit.

Jess Dewell 12:59
We’ve alluded most homeowners, their home is their most valuable asset. It’s the thing they spent the most money on. Any sort of repair carries a different level of emotion and a desire for understanding, but also maybe not the technical knowledge or the ability to understand the details, which is why the ask for help is occurring, right?

RK Bob Brown 13:21
And that’s one of the reasons why I wrote my book, so that homeowners could have a good understanding and they don’t get the wool pulled over their eyes quite so easily.

Jess Dewell 13:28
You’re listening to the Bold Business Podcast. I’m your host, Jess Dewell. This is your program for strategizing long term success while diving deep into what the right work is for your business right now.

ANNOUNCER 13:44
Focused on growth? listen to more programs like this, which support the challenges and opportunities you are working with right now. Search bold business podcast for the key terms at red direction dot com, or your preferred podcast listening app.

Jess Dewell 14:00
We are our own best advocate. That is really one of the things that is incredibly important to remember. We think about it with our health care, the doctors we choose, the clothes we buy, the places we live, or the cars we drive, and we forget about it, and some of the other things like as little as toothpaste or as unexpected, and maybe just because we don’t have exposure to it, issues with our biggest asset, our home.

RK Bob Brown 14:25
What do you do? You look up in the phone book, in the phone book anymore, everybody just Googles or whatever. Okay, yeah. And what do you find? Foundation Repair companies, because they’re really good at marketing.

Jess Dewell 14:35
Most companies are these dudes, right? They got a good digital presence.

RK Bob Brown 14:38
Oh yeah. You get three guys that come out to your house. One guy tells you you need five peers on this side of the house. The other guy tells you you need 15 peers on the third guy tells you need 25 peers all the way around. How you supposed to know which one’s right? As a homeowner, you are not the expert. You have no clue. What do you do? You go with the guy that you feel best with, right? Which is probably. Calling the best sales guy, which, coincidentally, is probably be the least qualified as an engineering mind, because engineering personalities are detail-oriented. Sales personalities are not detail-oriented. You would never ask a salesperson to do accounting work that was just that’s not going to work.

Jess Dewell 15:17
You wouldn’t know the problem bond. When I went to college, I thought I was going to be a biochemist. Turns out, I grow businesses and I’m a podcast host. I am that I know exactly what you’re saying. I can ring the financial report, but I’m not necessarily the best one to put it together, and I think that owning that is important.

RK Bob Brown 15:37
I would hear sales guys, foundation repair owners because I knew a lot. I was in lots of associations, and they’d be saying something like, I have this really good sales guy, and he could sell ice Eskimos, every one of his jobs is a disaster. I had to come behind him fix all the crazy stuff, because it doesn’t make any sense. And the other guy says, I have a guy that man, every job is perfect. The problem is he can’t sell anything.

Jess Dewell 16:03
I uh, ta-da. Okay, so let’s talk about, I have so many things I want to do, but first I want to say you’re coming to this conversation. You’ve talked to me and we’ve decided to have this conversation because you are working to disrupt this model, right?

RK Bob Brown 16:23
That’s right, yes. So how do you want to my advice to homeowners and realtors is to get to know and have a business relationship with geotechnical forensic engineers. These are the guys you want to call out now. They’re not going to be free. Foundation Repair companies are free. Of course, it’s not really analysis. It’s just sales dressed up like analysis. But if you call a forensic geotechnical engineer, you’re going to get real advice. You’re going to get a good opinion about whether it’s done moving. Could keep moving, whether it’s a problem, whether it’s not a problem. How bad is it? All these things, they’ll use a scale that engineers use to grade these things objectively. You’re going to get a repair plan if it’s a problem that needs to be fixed. Most of the time it could be fixed easily with things like fixing drainage. But if it’s a problem that is going to continue to get worse, and the engineer feels like you need to underpin it, he’ll give you a plan that says, Put 17 peers right here. Get a bid for 17 peers from three contractors, and you can get apples to apples bids and save a ton of money that way. So the model makes more sense to have engineers oversee. Now you’ve picked a contractor before he starts work, he needs to talk to the engineer. The engineer needs to qualify him and say, Listen, Mr. Contractor, don’t come to the homeowner with change orders. Oh, Mr. Home Water, we need to add five more peers. Now that we’re on the job site, we discovered something new. And what does the homeowner do? The homeowners like, I don’t know all it’s got to do on it, right? I don’t know what you think, but the engineer, you can’t pull the wool over his eyes. Explain to me it might be a valid reason, but explain it to me, convince me, you better be pretty good if you’re going to convince a geotechnical engineer that you need a change order. And then when it’s all done, the engineer stamps it and says it’s done. For my he does a special inspection on the job. A lot of contractors hire their own special inspector. He’s being paid by the contractor. How much of a stickler Do you think he’s going to be about things? Not really. The better way is to have the engineer who designed to be the special inspector, because he knows exactly what needs to be done, and he’s going to insist on it, if he’s going to put his seal on it at the end and make sure that it’s right and say that it was done for his plans. Then when you’re all done. So let’s say you’re a seller, then you go to sell the house, and the home inspector says, Oh, by the way, I see some cracks. Everybody starts to panic. And you go, don’t worry. I have this seal from the engineer that says, everything’s good. All of a sudden, all those concerns disappear. Otherwise, you might be able to say to the homeowner, I had it repaired by ABC foundation company, and they gave me a lifetime warranty. How good is a lifetime warranty? Sounds good, but in reality, it’s not worth the paper. It’s written on those contracts are long and complicated, and they have all kinds of Get Out of Jail Free cards for the contractor. One of the biggest ones is you call the contractor back after five years and you say, like, cracks again, your stuff’s not working. They send out one of their really experienced guys who knows all about heave, and says, Mr. Homeowner, these are from heave, and it says right here in our contract that we’re not responsible for Eve, and our peers can’t do anything about it, and we can’t stop he. Have a nice life. We’ll see you later. And the homeowners wait. If it was he all along. That means you diagnosed it wrong in the Contra Whoa, why not? I’m not an engineer, I’m just a contractor, and that’s one of the problems in the business. There’s. No oversight for the designs, the contractor will try to BS the homeowner. They’ll try to say, oh yeah. When we submit this for permits, the engineers can look it over and make sure that everything’s good. That’s a lie, because the engineer who does the permits, the only thing that the city requires is a spacing calculation. That is how far apart are the peers from each other because they don’t want to be too far about droop between them, right? So all we want to do is a calculation to make sure that the peers are close enough to spread the loads around the house. That’s the only thing they require, the only thing and that’s the only thing the engineer will seal when he, when he gets a set of plans, when he, when he seals a set of plans for work. You could have the peers on the wrong side of the house. You could have them not even needed at all. You could have all kinds of problems, and the permitting process does not correct for any of that the engineer cannot unless he gather these original data. He’s constrained by law and by ethics to not opine or comment or do anything on work that was not gathered. The data was not gathered by him or somebody under his direct employee, not another company. He cannot take work from another company, he cannot, by law, look over the plan and make sure everything’s good. It will not happen.

Jess Dewell 21:27
Let’s say tomorrow all of this happened. What does it look like? I’m thinking about this from a business sense because there are other business models that are these. One call closes. I’m trying to think foundation is one of them. Painting houses is another. Roofing is the third, right that’s just related to homes. This happens in many industries, in a lot of different ways, to empower ourselves and to understand that it’s here this oversight actually has relevance across our lives when it’s your experience of what you’re seeing and how you want to disrupt the foundation world, to say, hey, we need to do better. This is what we owe our communities and the people that we are selling to. This is a skill that we can use in our life. I guess that’s where I’m going with this, which is I’m excited about it. So if you were able to flip the script and go, Cool, everything was here, what would it look like?

RK Bob Brown 22:22
What it would look like is there would be a whole community of forensic geotechnical engineers that people would be able to easily find, and these geotechnical engineers would utilize better tools. One of the things that I developed is software to help engineers be more effective at doing this work. What people would easily find them, easily hire them. They would provide answers to questions, and if there were repair plans needed, then they would specify them, and the homeowner could go and get bids to install those plants. Now, to your point, could it be applied to other industries? I think it’s far more important here for a number of reasons, at least, to start here, the reason is because we’re talking about work that should be done by an engineer and is not being done by an engineer. I don’t know why the engineering community is not up in arms about it, but someday, maybe we’ll figure out the answer to that. The second reason is, this is a huge outlay of money. When somebody like, let’s just take a real estate agent example, they’re in the middle of a closing escrow is grooving along the inspectors in the inspection window. He comes back and says, Oh, by the way, it looks like there’s signs of foundation movement. You need to hire an expert. So what are they? Google and find a foundation repair company. What does he do? He comes out and says, Oh, yeah, you need $80,000 in period. Everybody chokes, right? What happens to the pilot? The buyers gone, the buyers out of here. Oh, the listing or the selling, the agent he just lost. Maybe the customer will stay with him, but he lost that deal, right? What does the listing agent do? Well, the seller, he can’t ask the listing agent to lie. That’s not going to work, right? So what does he do? He fires the listing agent. Then the homeowner goes and patches everything up and tries to hide it all and finds a new agent to put it up for sale. And that’s exactly what happens with this business. And it’s a huge business. The foundation repair business is over $50 billion every year. That’s a lot of money, and a lot of it, by the way, is not even needed to be done. I would say at least half of it is money this that doesn’t need to be spent.

Jess Dewell 24:44
Oh, it that happens in business every day. Are you spending smart money? Are you asking questions to actually support and help your effort? Do we have the right data from the right people? Can we interpret this data Correct? I was actually researching the butterfly principle to. Made, you know the butterfly effect from 1963 right? This guy, Lorenz, I can’t remember his name exactly, but what did he do? He took a point, he had six places after the decimal point, rounded it to three, and found craziness. Over two months, he found out, anything is possible. We can’t predict this, and I think that’s empowering. It’s also scary to the point of, we can’t always rely on others, and let’s create our own net. I was thinking about that because I love the opportunity, and yes, it would take a lot of money, and it takes time, and so that’s why I was like, the flip of just a snap of a finger, every single person listening, every single problem we’re solving, every single way we show up to the world. What you have said is important to your industry. Bob, it’s something we can all take and go. How do I do this? Who owns my favorite brand of cereal? What is their motivation behind this product? Where did this come from? How long has it been around? Just asking some of those questions so that we can get better at asking questions to find out, do I need an expert? Because here’s the thing, is, what I love, we don’t need an expert to live in our house with us to do this. We just need them for a couple of hours to help us get through this. So that’s way different. In my opinion. I’m all about inserting short-term smart money to have the right data set with which to work in, and that’s what I hear you saying, too, is, Can homeowners shift in your case? I know you keep you talked a couple times about real estate professionals, and I know they have different names in different states. In Washington, they’re called Real Estate Brokers for commercial or residential. And being able to have them understand and be able to help out actually would help them. You’re right close deals. But what does it do? It preserves our urban assessment, if we gotta interpret, if we gotta cover it, and by the way, those are things that I think make a difference, probably to our insurance too.

RK Bob Brown 26:56
Most insurance companies don’t cover foundation repairs because they have what they call an earth movement exclusion, which says, if the damage in your house is caused by Earth movement, we exclude it. If you can prove that all of a sudden you had a pipe break and it caused a sudden and catastrophic movement, you could possibly get it covered. It’s difficult. I did it on one of my properties, but is encourage home inspectors to do floor-level surveys and give them the right equipment and the right training to do it on every transaction because that’s very valuable data. Now you can go back and say, Hey, here’s what it looked like five years ago. Here’s what it looks like now. Everything’s good, or hey, Mr. Insurance Guy, look it was this way, and all of a sudden we had that pipe break. That’s really good data that you can go back and make a claim and probably win with your insurance company. If you have the data from beforehand.

Jess Dewell 27:58
Who can we align ourselves with, too? It’s a big part of this, who is part of our network to help make sure that we have the right people. And here’s the deal. Was like, what you’re talking about with the forensicio technic engineer, and they sound like elusive creatures. Just saying, it makes me feel like they’re incredibly rare.

RK Bob Brown 28:14
Let’s talk about engineers for a second. Most people want to call a structural engineer, and that’s the wrong guy to call. I’ll tell you why. Tea comes out to the house, sees a couple cracks, writes a one-page letter and says there’s no structural deficiencies. Okay, we knew the house wasn’t ready to fall down on us, but it’s gonna get worse. It could get worse if the ground continues to move. Was it gonna ground continue to move? Oh, I You got a contact a geotech engineer for that. I was structural engineer. So you’re wasting your money with structural engineers. Now, there’s a few of them that do forensics for this, and they do a pretty good job. They’re aware of geotech and all that, but it’s pretty rare. Most of the good guys to do this are geotech engineers. This is a soil problem. These are caused by soil movement, and you need geo geo-tech engineers. They understand the geology of an area, how, how the layers were done in an area, the locally. They understand the soil profiles. They, they bore into the ground all the time. They know the typical profiles, they know all this stuff. They’re the experts with soils. That’s the guys we need to be listening to. Anybody else that tells you it’s all going to continue moving or it’s all done moving, if, if they’re not a geotechnical engineer, they’re BS in you.

Jess Dewell 29:37
I’m your host, Jess Dewell, and we’re getting down to business on the Bold Business Podcast, this is where we’re tackling the challenges that matter most to you with actionable and achievable advice to get real results that lead to your success.

ANNOUNCER 29:52
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Jess Dewell 30:26
I live in Washington State, outside of Seattle, and in Kirkland, we found a map that sits on top of the neighborhoods and can tell us there’s fault line exactly where we are. But let’s say there was a big earthquake of a certain size, it can tell us what land is more likely to move and how which is used to insure the houses of the neighborhoods as part of their homeowner’s insurance.

RK Bob Brown 30:49
And there’s also a map that you can get from the NCRs National Soil Conservation Service. It’s from the Department of Agriculture because it was originally built for farmers, but it’ll tell you where there’s expensive clays and it’ll give you a map. It’s not everywhere, but most of the time you should be able to get a map.

Jess Dewell 31:06
And if not, they’re the, they’re the people to go, hey, where could I find out about this? Who is my local resource? We spend a lot of time researching things that have made less consequence in our world when it comes to these unique things. What I’m hearing you say is especially foundations is one of these unique things. First, we have to have a structure that we own, that is our responsibility, and then we have to want to take care of it. And then if a problem happens, we are responsible for fixing it. So depending on all of those confluence of things that comes to that rounding error again, where do you want to be? What could the outcome be? And I hear you saying, just having some awareness of the question will help sift through to find out. Do I need to talk to anybody else?

RK Bob Brown 31:54
I fully understand the problem here. It’s hard to find good Forensic geotechs, right? I’ve tried to help a little bit. I put a directory on my website, foundation repair secrets, and I’ve listed it by, by state. I haven’t vetted any of these companies yet. I’ve looked them up, seen the services they offer, and figured out that, yeah, they do residential. Most engineers don’t do residential. Most work on infrastructure, dams, freeways, parks, commercial buildings. Very few work in residential, and the ones that work in residential, even fewer do forensics. So I’ve tried to sparse that out. I don’t have any idea of their quality, but I found them. I’ve listed them. I hope that’s a resource that helps people.

Jess Dewell 32:43
So armed with our questions, we could make a phone call if needed, which I think is great and amazing. You’ve taken the time to even just have something. All you’re doing is telling us we have more and more of a it’s almost like they have a name, forensic geotech engineer, but it sounds like maybe we’ve made that up, like unicorn, or it’s a mythical they’re the mythical engineer when it comes to this, which is not a bad thing, by the way. It just means, ha, they’re there and everybody’s found and here. Okay, so let’s talk about this. You are a business owner. You own your own foundation repair business for many years. It’s not like this is news to you. You watch, you worked with it with parameters, and recognized what the shortcomings were, and here you are now today. Tell me if I get this wrong, you’re out of the day today, these days, and you’re focused on education and advocacy for our foundation.

RK Bob Brown 33:42
While I was in business, I was also one of the few contractors, I think the only contractor that I know of that also owned the forensic engineering company. Those engineers would do the analysis. We never let salespeople do it. I tried to advocate and convince people in the industry that this was the most ethical, most precise, the most accurate way and taking care of the homeowners, and if you’re taking care of the homeowners, that should win out in the end, right? No, I couldn’t get any buy-in anybody. The company that bought my company promised that they would keep the engineering team in for three years, and they let everybody go in three months that told me that change is not going to happen from inside the industry. It’s got to happen outside the industry, and I’m going to be the change agent to make it happen.

Jess Dewell 34:30
This was like a double catalyst. Not only did you know people will tap my shoulder to help them out, of course, I’ll do whatever I can. I have all of this knowledge to help educate homeowners in general, and then being able to have this legacy, being able to move this forward, was ripped right out from under you. Basically, I only have four little words that you can’t say on my podcast.

RK Bob Brown 34:55
Yeah. How long ago was that? It’ll be two years this December.

Jess Dewell 35:00
Right? So everybody listening, this was also recent. How did you get approached? How did you get approached for this entity to be interested in buying your former company?

RK Bob Brown 35:11
It turns out that this entity was a single source supplier, and they were motivated because another large national player, owned by private equity, was interested in buying us as well. So they both bid up the price, which was great for me. I eventually elected to sell it to our supplier. I now regret that a little bit, but it is what it is. Did they bring the most money? Yeah, they both were fairly equal on the money side.

Jess Dewell 35:43
What was the deciding factor between the two if you bid them to their max?

RK Bob Brown 35:46
The deciding factor was what I thought I went with the person who would continue the legacy that I built with the engineering principles and a number of my patented services that were unique in the marketplace, which gave us a tremendous advantage. I felt like they understood it and would continue it the most fortunately, they didn’t.

Jess Dewell 36:07
So part of the sale was also all of your patents. No, I kept those. These are really interesting points. So when they purchased your business, they were interested in the book of business, they were interested in the process, they were interested in your sales funnel. What else were they interested in?

RK Bob Brown 36:22
We were the dominant player in our geographic area. They were interested in the ready-made operations and the business we were providing. They bought your area pretty close to 2 million a month, and that’s just that they could rely on that and and so can

Jess Dewell 36:39
I ask what your profit margin was for that business.

RK Bob Brown 36:41
Oh, generally in the 10 to 15% range.

Jess Dewell 36:46
Your business was incredibly profitable. It was a specific geographic area. These two entities were interested in it, possibly for the same reason. Not only is it profitable, not only is it continuous, it was also a specific geographic area that was a well-oiled machine that is going to keep giving a return, right? And they bought a cash cow, right? And from the outside, looking in that big let down at the get-go, sounds harsh and horrible. Was there anything redeeming? Did they do other things according to the intention of the agreement that was made. I know it wasn’t in writing, and I know they didn’t follow the first one, but were there other intentions that actually did go well?

RK Bob Brown 37:30
There were things that didn’t go as they promised both.

Jess Dewell 37:35
It was the intention that was all lip service.

RK Bob Brown 37:37
It was the money and everything else went out the window.

Jess Dewell 37:40
Were you happy with the money? Was it worth it?

RK Bob Brown 37:44
Yeah, it was time for me to move on. I realized that I was not going to make a change from the inside of the industry. And hey, I’m 65 it’s time for me to do something else. I’ve been doing this all my life. Time to make a change.

Jess Dewell 37:57
Thanks for being really candid with me, because I know sometimes that’s hard to talk about. Good for you for wanting to make the change. Good for you for having somebody that was there at the table to show up, bad on them for whatever it is. And you know what? Hindsight being 2020 I guess we all learn that. And maybe some of that passion we were talking about at the beginning of the broken promise. I think there’s a lot of similar stuff that happened in terms of the agreement versus the execution, a lot of intention with without, a lot to back it up. And in a business sale, that’s actually a truce that just is the way that it happens. But it doesn’t have to be for an everyday thing that we do for somebody’s profession, that they’re going out and working with homeowners on a regular basis. So if I were to come back and say, Now on the outside, now being in this next stage of of life, now being able to go, oh, I don’t have to run a business anymore. I actually get to be all advocate all the time. Here’s what I’m doing. You’ve got this list on your website, you’ve got a book. You’ve got myths that real estate agents can get from your website. What is your biggest goal? There’s not a lot of traction yet, but you’re not giving up, which I love, because that’s how movements are made. Are there specific kinds of real estate professionals, home inspectors, locally or nationally, that anybody that’s coming across this can go, I know somebody like that. I can pass this on because you want to you’re looking for something that you can make a bigger impact in the community. Who are the people can help you in the community?

RK Bob Brown 39:28
I learned a long time ago that when you make a change regarding people’s homes in the minds of the real estate professionals, it filters down to the homeowners, ultimately. So I figured out that I need to convince realtors and home inspectors, educate them properly. I can have a a targeted, immediate impact with real estate people, and if I can convince them that, yes, you need to call forensic geotech engineers, get a relationship now, get to know them. Take them to lunch, have them ready when you have the problem come up. And then the other side of the equation is, I’ve got to convince engineers that this is a service UI consider offering. It’s profitable, it’s not risky, and it’s not being served engineers, part of their code of ethics says they must watch out for the health, safety and welfare of the public welfare includes making sure they don’t get ripped off. I’m appealing to engineers saying, listen, here’s a calling for you. It’s needed. It’s badly needed. We need your help. And by the way, you can make money at it. What makes them bold?

Jess Dewell 40:41
You know, your business so well. You know how to disrupt it.

RK Bob Brown 40:44
As I said, I’m uniquely positioned. I’m the only contractor that also owned a forensic engineering company, so I know how it does work and how it should work. I did it how it should work, and that’s one of the reasons I developed the software that I’m now helping engineers with while I was in that business, I’m uniquely positioned to help people understand the problems and provide the solutions to help move it along.

Jess Dewell 41:16
Every single time I have a conversation, I take away something that I want to share with 25 people. I know when you’re listening to this podcast, you’re also listening for that and will have something that you want to share in the comments. I would like for you to engage with us. What is that thing that you want to tell 25 people from this program? Here’s why it’s important. It’s important because, yeah, there are going to be how to’s, yes, there are going to be steps. Yes, you’re going to be like, Oh, I wish I wrote that down. I wish I wasn’t doing this and I could actually take action on that right now. But guess what? You’re not so engage right now, because that one thing you want to share with others will be the thing that you can figure out how to incorporate in your business, in your workflow, in your style tomorrow.

ANNOUNCER 42:06
Jess hosts the bold business podcast to provide insights for building a resilient, profitable business by deeply understanding your growth strategy, ensuring market relevance and your company’s future, it is bold to deeply understand your growth strategy with your host, Jess Dewell, get more information about how to drive solutions and reset your growth mindset at Reddirection.com. Thank you for joining us, and special thanks to our post-production team at The Scott Treatment.