5 Lessons from Scaling a Family Business to Private Equity Success

Dylan Silver (00:00.77)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. I’m your host, Dylan Silver. And today on the show we have Will Holditch. Will is a Texas native, earned a BS in farm and ranch management from Texas A and then executive MBA from Baylor. He helped grow his family’s event rental business from under 1 million to 11 million in annual revenue before its sale in 2017. Will, welcome to the show.

Will (00:28.322)
Hey, it’s great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Dylan Silver (00:30.798)
interesting backstory there. And before we hopped on, I said, I’m always glad to have another Texan on the show. So thank you for being here, Will. But how did you get into the this space? What was your origin story here?

Will (00:45.112)
Well, so I did, I grew up in Austin, Texas.

I went to Texas A and got a degree in farm and ranch management, which sounds a little odd, but when I went to A and I went to the School of Business, there were 10,000 kids in the School of Business. It was like introduction to big business, and there was nothing I wanted to do with big business. So I found this little school in the School of Agriculture, and it was farm and ranch management. Essentially a small business degree, take out corn, insert widget.

doing small business work long before anybody had even thought about it. So I graduated with this farm and ranch management degree.

and immediately went into probably the stupidest decision I ever made, which is I went to work for big business and quickly learned that was not me. I couldn’t do the politics. I couldn’t do the brown nosing. I couldn’t do any of that. That just wasn’t me. And so I left that business and that following September, I was dove hunting with my dad. When he looked at me and he said, I need help.

with the family business. Come back to the family business and start our outside sales program.” And I was like, Dad, I don’t want anything to do with the family business. He said, No, come on back. And I was like, Okay, I’ll give it a try. And so that year, George Bush got elected governor for the second time.

Will (02:19.08)
And I was in charge of the Governor’s barbecue for his closest 17,500 friends. We did all the tents, the tables, the chairs, all this, everything. We coordinated with the barbecue guys. We coordinated with the t-shirt guys. It was amazing and I loved it. I was hooked from that moment on. And so that’s how I got into the event rental space where we were renting tents, tables, chairs, dance floor, stages, glassware, flatware, all of that stuff.

Now, the interesting part about that is it’s a stuff business. So it’s all about the inventory. So we were in a 5,000 square foot building. Well, we quickly outgrew that 5,000 square foot building and we moved from five to 20,000 square feet. We walked into a 20,000 square feet and thought we’d died and gone to heaven. And every time we moved our business, our sales grew to equal the size of the building. And the minute the sales

flatlined meant we had outgrown our building. So we moved from 20 to 40 and our sales grew again. And we moved and we were really happy in 40,000 square feet. It was great. But in 2007, our landlord walked in and said he was going to raise our rent 30%.

We like, no way, you’re not raising our rent. So we went out to the market and we started looking. And it just happened to be a timing issue where we were able to get a 100,000 square foot building below market rate on a 10 year lease. So we told our landlord in a 40,000 square foot building, good luck, and we left.

And not only did the guys who owned the building welcome us, because they were, was, if you remember 2007, 2008, the economy was cratering, housing and commercial was going through the floor. They put a million dollars into that building for us to put in the custom plumbing and the electrical and the sewer and everything we needed to operate our business in it. And we were.

Will (04:27.628)
just the most fortunate company in the world because we found this amazing building. It was below lease, below market rate, and we were able to operate out of that thing. Amazing. They were great landlords. What we did, what we didn’t know was a hundred thousand square feet wasn’t going to be big enough.

Dylan Silver (04:47.406)
Oh my goodness. So you go from 40 to 60 to 100 and it’s still you’re you’re you’re always exceeding your capacity. Incredible.

Will (04:56.11)
Well, because the interesting part was we happened to be in the right place at the right time. As if anybody is in Austin or even in Texas, Dell Computer started in the late 90s and we rose through the dot com boom and the dot com bust. And the city of Austin just kept growing south by southwest. Then we added F1 racing. Then the University of Texas won a national football championship. And the world just in Austin

kept growing and we were on a little island. Houston was too far away. Dallas was too far away. Neither one of those markets could compete with us. And we happened to have the right amount of capital and the right formula at the time to go ahead and start growing our business. And then in 2017, a private equity group walked in with a wheelbarrow full of money and we told them to go away.

They came back with a bigger wheelbarrow and we told him to go away again The third time they walked in with a much bigger wheelbarrow full of money. My dad said here’s the keys There’s no alarm code. Good luck and we sold the business and Yeah, it was it was it was an amazing crazy time

People will tell you, you only get really one legitimate chance to sell your business at any time. And since we didn’t own the real estate that we were sitting on, we were on a lease, it made our business really attractive because they were then able to move the business wherever they wanted or stay put. Because a lot of people own their own building that their business sits in and when they go to sell it, they want those people to pay them for rent.

Dylan Silver (06:36.558)
Interesting.

Will (06:46.332)
And a lot of people don’t want to stay in your spot. They want to fix it. They want to do whatever. So it made our business really attractive to sell.

Dylan Silver (06:54.83)
Wow, so here you go from the 40 to the 60 to the 100, scaling beyond that, then you have private equity coming in. Were you actively seeking these offers? Or is it just private equities basically cold calling you saying, you know, let’s buy your business.

Will (07:05.237)
you

So our industry, the event rental industry started to go through a roll up phase where the private equity groups looked at our industry and targeted us. And they were looking for, they had a very specific model. They wanted market leaders. So the number one or the number two in a market. And they wanted you to be over $10 million in revenue. And they wanted you to have a certain EBITDA.

And so we hit those numbers. And so they came in with a very attractive offer because they wanted to have stores from San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, Kansas City, and Chicago. They wanted to kind of do this central United States roll up.

where they thought they could move product from one part of the country to the next. So in Texas, as you know, July and August are really hot and we don’t do a lot of outdoor events. But in Chicago, it’s gorgeous and they need all the stuff they can get. So they thought they had this concept where they could move product up and down, essentially the interstate system and move it up to Chicago for the summertime and then back down to Texas for the winter.

Dylan Silver (08:24.718)
So at this point in time, you sell the business, what was the next steps like for you? I mean, I see such an interesting background. go firefighter, EMT, professor. What was the next steps for you?

Will (08:24.932)
So at this point in time, you still have a business. What was the next step? I mean, I see you in the same background. You go, I’m going to be a team professor. What was the next step for you? So the next step was I went and found another job.

I sold the business. I wasn’t part of the sale. My dad retired. I went to work for a company out of Virginia and we were, it was a great job.

And about six months in, my boss retired and the CEO asked me if I wanted to be the division president. I said, I had no idea what that means, but okay, yes. And he said, we need you to move to Virginia. And I said, okay, well, I’m a Texas boy. I’ve never left Texas. I’ve lived here all my life.

I’m up for the adventure, come on. So packed up the wife and three kids and we went to Virginia. We’d been in Virginia about six months when the pandemic hit. And we went from a $100 million company to a $20 million company overnight. They fired 250 of us. It was a horrible day. It was a horrible space to be in.

But oddly enough, the Loudoun County Fire and Rescue had an amazing program where they had about 600 career staff and about 1,000 volunteers. So I volunteered with the Loudoun County Fire Department because they needed people.

Will (10:09.772)
not only to fight fires, but they had this huge, massive surge of COVID people and they had so many of their staff going down for COVID. So I volunteered with them and they sent me to firefighter EMT school, and then deployed me on apparatuses and I loved it. It was amazing. It was totally different. Unfortunately, it was a volunteer position, so it didn’t pay well. but, it opened, I was like, man,

Why wasn’t I doing this 20 years ago? This is amazing. I love this work. And it’s so paralleled with what I had been doing in the event industry. I would walk into these meetings and people would go, okay, here’s our idea. We’re going to have a party for 250 people in our backyard. And I’d go, have you looked at your backyard? It’s a cliff. There’s no backyard. Like, and so I would help them figure out how they were going to do their party and what the stuff was and all of that. was the same thing in the firefighter EMT world.

would go look at houses and go okay if this house was on fire where would the people go? As a firefighter how would you fight this fire? As an AMT we would go around and we would find all the little old people that lived by themselves in our area and go okay do we need to be aware of this person this person this person what’s going on here? And so it was all about preparedness.

and understanding what was going to happen before it happened. So we would drive the fire engine around and figure out where the engine wouldn’t go or where it would get stuck or where was the fire hydrants or you know and it was this amazing time of just preparing and it was really fun but unexpected because when a house burns down

Most people don’t know this, but houses today are wood and glue. And when they catch on fire, they burn fast and hot.

Will (12:15.652)
And so by the time the firefighters get there, we’re either trying to save the houses around you or we’re trying to save somebody that might be in an upper bedroom that the fire hasn’t gotten to yet. the days of putting the fire out and saving the house are almost over with because of the way these houses are built. And, you know, to that point of it’s quite a different apple than a school made from wood and glue as you mentioned.

Dylan Silver (12:35.64)
You know, to that point, Will, it’s quite interesting that homes are still made from wood and glue, as you mentioned. We have so many other ways. Is this just the cheapest way to build a home?

Will (12:44.586)
We have so many other ways in which you can wait alone. If you’ve ever gone and looked in and around Dallas, right, and you watch them frame a house, it is the fastest, cheapest way to build a house. It two by fours, two by sixes. You watch those guys get out there and they frame stud a house in two days. And where, you know, if we really wanted to build houses,

for efficiencies, utility efficiencies, fire efficiency, cinder block, metal, those things. But they’re expensive, but they save you money in the long run. But most people aren’t looking at the long run. They’re looking at today the price of this house is $150,000. I can afford that. The same house built, let’s say correctly,

with cinder blocks and metal and all that might be 200 or 250 thousand dollars but the operating cost on that cows would be much less than the operating cost on a stick built house but you know most of us aren’t looking at you know owning a house for 30 or 40 years anymore we own a house for five or ten years we’re gonna flip it and sell it somebody it’s gonna be somebody else’s problem

Dylan Silver (13:50.584)
Minimal, yeah.

Dylan Silver (14:07.106)
Yeah.

Will (14:07.3)
versus you know some of these houses if you go around and look at some of these houses built in the 1800s early 1900s they’re built out of solid wood they’re they’re not going anywhere their biggest problem is plumbing and electrical and HVAC because those things didn’t exist when they built them

So, but from a firefighter EMT standpoint, if you know, how do I get my, the cot in to get grandma out of the bathroom? You know, and in older homes, it’s very difficult. In new homes, it’s not too bad, but it’s all about the thinking and the planning and looking forward into what’s going to happen. Definitely starting to see more trends of ADA bathrooms and ADA entryways and kitchens.

and starting to see a little bit of the trend of multi-generational housing. Where they’re setting up the mother-in-law suite because we’ve got this aging generation. I’m a Gen Xer, so there’s probably about 50 million of us that exist. But in front of me are the baby boomers and the silent generation. And there’s somewhere between 75 and 100 million of those people. And they’re aging.

out and there’s not going to be enough nursing homes, enough assisted living facilities, enough. So those people are going to have to move back home.

Dylan Silver (15:34.85)
I’m curious, Will, what you actually think about that space. So as Americans, we’ve tended to, better or for worse, send off our elders to nursing homes. Now other cultures, other parts of the world do not do this. We do. What do you make of this? Because I have my opinions.

Will (15:54.884)
Well, so this is an interesting thing. So this was kind of a joke from the days when I was in the party rental world. So we had this big, massive company, right? We had all these people and all these resources. And we were able to do things that no other person could do because we had the resources. I used to go around and visit small rental companies because those people didn’t have any money. They didn’t have any resources. So they had to innovate problems. And I would learn more

from those guys and bring it back to my team. Because my team would go, hey, we need to solve a problem. Great, throw $50,000 at it. Throw $100,000 at it. Throw $200,000 at it. And nobody would bat an eye because we had the money. But if you don’t have the money, then you have to think outside the box. And I think that’s the same problem we’re running into here with our older generation. We have the money to spend $4,000 to $6,000 a month to put grandma

in a nursing home thinking she’ll be more comfortable, thinking she’ll be well taken care of. Where you look at other cultures, they don’t have the money. So grandma’s gotta move back home. Grandma’s gotta live with us. And so I think you’re gonna have to see a cultural shift in the United States where people who don’t have the money have to be prepared for mom or dad to move back into the house.

because if you’ve ever looked at long-term care, is ridiculously expensive.

Dylan Silver (17:22.04)
with you.

Dylan Silver (17:27.618)
expensive.

you know, and people are living longer and longer. So they’re going to run out through their savings. And then at that point, just on a human level, I would feel somewhat badly about, you know, putting my I’ve joked with my parents, said, you’re going straight into a nursing home. But in actuality, you know, because they’re the boomers, right? I in actuality, I don’t feel I personally nothing against people who do this, you know, we’ve done it in my family, but I just feel better about having them in my home.

Although I will say that probably the sentiment isn’t mutual. I’m sure my parents don’t want me back in their home. But when they’re really at the end of their lives and they may be dealing with various medical issues, me personally, I would want my last moments to be with my children.

Will (18:06.724)
You

Will (18:20.476)
Well, and so you have to understand most people’s single largest asset in their portfolio is their home. And so if your parents were to sell their home and let’s say they got a half a million dollars for their house, you’d be surprised how fast half a million dollars gets chewed up by the medical world.

And if you look at your medical spending from the beginning of your birth to your death, more than half of it is going to happen in the last year of your life. That’s how much money is spent in the last year of most people’s lives. And our problem

Dylan Silver (18:55.458)
Wow.

Will (19:03.808)
And this is going to sound really funny, is we’re living longer and we’re healthier. So a hundred years ago, your dad would have just died and everybody would have gone, no, he just died. And now while your dad’s mind might go because of Alzheimer’s or dementia, his body is healthy and he might live another five or six years because he doesn’t have underlying health issues.

And so that becomes a huge problem as to what to do with these assets. So these assets are going to get chewed up by health care costs. And how does that work?

Dylan Silver (19:48.558)
Will selfishly, I have a question as an EMT and as a firefighter yourself, I don’t have anybody in my family that’s involved in that line of work. How, and maybe you have a sample size, obviously you’re not all over the United States, but what percentage of calls are, you know, old or elderly people who may have been in some type of accident, which otherwise a young person may have walked off and been okay?

Will (20:16.396)
So the vast majority of EMT calls are going to be for falls. grandma falls in the bathroom between the toilet and the tub. Grandma falls downstairs. Granddad fell. He was sitting down on a chair and he fell and he can’t get up. And it’s grandma and grandpa at home alone and they can’t pick each other up anymore. Or only one of them is home.

Dylan Silver (20:21.932)
Really?

Will (20:43.212)
And so, you know, beyond falls, then you have, you know, just general medical calls. But your elder population is going to be a huge chunk of your EMT calls. After that…

Dylan Silver (20:59.682)
Is every firefighter equipped to handle that or is it specifically firefighter and EMTs like yourself who go?

Will (21:06.18)
So it used to be that you had firefighters and you had EMTs. The vast majority of departments are going to a firefighter EMT model where everybody on the engine can do the basic care. Now, some departments, especially career departments, are going to the firefighter paramedic model where you’ve got paramedics on every fire engine. So that’s one step care up above. So as an EMT, I can make sure

your airways clear, your breathing, and your circulating. So your blood’s pumping.

And I can stop your bleeding and that kind of stuff, but I don’t really give you any drugs. But if you’re having a heart attack, you need a paramedic. You need somebody that can show up, put an IV bag in and start pushing drugs into you. And so the first responder world is getting better knowing that as the population ages, they need to have more services and more critical care right there at the very point of where you’re down. that’s the

That’s the direction that we know our entire culture is going is to an older population where you’re gonna see more slips and falls and more broken hips and more broken backs because while people are living longer their bodies are still breaking down and if you’re 85 years old and you fall it’s gonna hurt

Dylan Silver (22:30.446)
Well, what’s your perspective on-

Do you you feel like a I’m a jujitsu guy, I like to stay active. And I don’t know, I’m 31 years old, I don’t know what shape I’ll be in when I’m 60708090 God willing, do you believe it’s possible in any way to increase bone density? I’ve heard some people say weightlifting and so on and so forth. But I’m not a subject matter expert at all. Have you just kind of in your opinion and in your experience?

Will (22:38.404)
Mm-hmm.

Will (22:44.396)
you

Dylan Silver (23:02.04)
feel and see like there’s anything that people can do to prevent themselves from being injured by falls in later age.

Will (23:09.142)
If you are healthy now, you’ll be healthy later. If you are unhealthy now, you’re going to have to work really hard to get healthy. From a business standpoint of view,

If you look at a 12 month year if I lose a dollar in January To make that dollar up for the year I almost have to make $12 in December to make the dollar up that I lost in January and it’s the same way if you’re unhealthy in your 30s and 40s for you to be healthy in your 70s and 80s you’ve really gonna have to focus on Walking eating right not drinking not smoking those things and so you just have to know

that the biggest part of having a healthy retirement is a healthy lifestyle when you’re a young man or a young lady.

Dylan Silver (24:06.392)
Start now, folks, start now. Pivoting a bit here, I see in your bio, professor. So you’ve done all this and then was professor. So how did professor get thrown in there?

Will (24:16.654)
Well, so I have an MBA and I needed work and so I applied at a local college and they needed a professor in the School of Business and so they hired me and I taught for a semester before the school got hit with a massive ransomware scheme and bankrupted the school.

because they couldn’t pay the ransomware and it was post COVID. And it was just, was one of those post COVID moments where they had that cashflow hiccup of COVID. And then they got hit with ransomware attack and that just ended. 175 year old college got ended overnight by a ransomware attack.

Dylan Silver (25:01.166)
you talking about a cyber attack?

Will (25:03.548)
Well, yeah, it went in there and they took over all of the servers and all the student information and everything and they demanded $20 million to get the unlock codes. the… They couldn’t pay. They didn’t have the money.

Dylan Silver (25:14.254)
the procedure that you pay.

So the school literally got cyber attacked and shut down.

Will (25:22.168)
Yeah, they didn’t have a choice. They had to just shut the doors.

Dylan Silver (25:24.62)
Will, how come this wasn’t national or international news? This is crazy.

Will (25:27.908)
It should have been. It was Lincoln College in Lincoln, Illinois. And it was a historically, it served a historically underserved population of mostly minority kids out of Chicago. And it should have been a massive story. And it was completely nothing. Couldn’t get any traction on it whatsoever.

Dylan Silver (25:50.488)
So, was there any type of legal recourse that they ever find out who did this?

Will (25:57.258)
They were out of Russia or China or somewhere. No, there’s nothing you could do. The FBI, there’s nobody. And the president of the university basically threw his hands up and said, no, we’re done. And he just walked away. And all of those kids got the short end of the stick and the staff got the short end of the stick and the town. It was the number two employer in the town and it got, no, it was horrible.

Dylan Silver (25:59.422)
my god!

Dylan Silver (26:19.073)
Wow.

Dylan Silver (26:26.22)
Wow, we could probably send a whole other, I’m in a software engineering bootcamp outside of here. And so when I hear stories like this, which honestly I don’t hear very often, thank God, but when I do hear stories like this, Will, every time I’m thinking, how come this isn’t national news? Like these things are possible, right? Like you can have school get cyber attacked, demand money in exchange for basically running.

the day-to-day operations at the school and the school can be like, we don’t have the money, we’re done. Just totally crazy that that could happen and that it’s not international news.

Will (27:04.45)
Yep, nope, wasn’t even a blip on the radar.

Dylan Silver (27:08.238)
Well, you know, I think we could probably spend the whole other two podcasts talking about EMT, firefighter. We could definitely spend another podcast talking about Texas real estate. You know, I’m in DFW Metroplex. So Farman Ranch is big out here. When I got my real estate license and was in school a couple weeks ago, that was lots of lots of people in that industry. But we’ll have to have you back on. Where can folks go to get a hold of you, though?

Will (27:36.756)
So they can find me at authorwilliamholditch.com

Will (27:45.796)
And my book is on Amazon.com and it’s strategic planning for the golden years.

And it specifically is a workbook and it’s designed for you to sit down with your parent and go through with them and figure out everything you need to know when your loved one can no longer advocate for themselves and you have to advocate for them. Because what most people are starting to find out is that when mom or dad have to go into a facility because they have Alzheimer’s or stroke or dementia, they don’t know where the long-term care policy is. They don’t know where the life insurance

policy is they don’t know where the bank accounts are they don’t know any of that information about their parents and that is causing financial havoc in people’s lives not only is the stress of mom or dad being sick but now you have the stress of trying to figure out how to pay for it and it’s strategic planning for the golden years

Dylan Silver (28:40.174)
Wow, Will, what’s the name of the book again?

Will (28:48.428)
and it’s workbook it’s on amazon dot com you can put my name in william holdage or the book’s name strategic planning for the golden years and it will come up in it is designed for you to sit down with your family member and start talking to them get their information to is your my dad is a vietnam vet is he does he have via services i don’t know is your pair is is your does your parent have a a pension that you don’t know about did that pension

with benefits, all of those things that that our generation is going to have to start dealing with and if we want to protect the assets like the house these are the things we need to know and and what we want to do is we want to talk to our parents about the fact that we’re not trying to take over their life what we’re trying to do is help make sure that the quality of their life is good and we can help advocate for their needs wants and desires.

Dylan Silver (29:48.042)
Amen. Will, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Will (29:48.733)
Amen. Will anything? Hey, you’re welcome. It’s great fun.