I think now that the NBA time and all that like, and you probably could have guessed this already, because there, but we’re, you know, the largest pool consolidator, and we’re acquiring the next biggest one, which is called pool troopers.

This is, you know, it’s a big deal for the pool space, whether con is a big deal for everyone else still TBD, but that’s hopefully where you all can help make it seem like a big deal for other people who might not otherwise care about this. But, yeah, that’s, that’s sort of the exciting news that feels closing now, I think this has actually been updated, Josh since we talked to you. The official firm closing date now is January 19. A little bit of little bit of room now a little more time.

Yeah. And so you know, as I think we mentioned to you Josh before, like, kind of what we were thinking is, and, you know, Jim and I are not, at least I’m not. This is pretty new for me, though, you know, like figuring out how the PR would work, you know, I my prior, like, law firm experience. We, you know, would review the press releases here and there for acquisitions and make sure they were accurate, and review employees, employee announcement stuff to PR wrote to the companies. But outside of that, that’s pretty much the extent to my experience. But you know how I sort of see this is, you know, we’ve got this big acquisition. It’s the, you know, biggest like, you know I was gonna say wave, and I can’t say, Wait, when you’re talking about what’s the biggest flash?

Well, we gotta, I mean, I was thinking about it. There’s a bad idea, but you’re making the puns now. And Erica is a pun queen, like I am, and Laura puts up with our puns, but we can almost do an entire press release that’s all fun, if that fits your personality right as a company, like these little things we can do to just kind of make it more noticeable and have fun with it. But again, it depends on what kind of, you know, image you want to have.

So you know, this will be a big deal for the pool space, right? It’s a big, you know, it’s, it’s sort of where the industry is trending, which, you know, it’s, you know, sort of, sort of, it’s been on the radar as something’s happening for the last several years. But I think this is kind of the acquisition that will make people really realize it’s making the industry really realize, like, this is, this is what, where this is going. And you kind of have to get on board with it, if you’re not already, we’ve seen that with our vendors and everything like that, you know, like sort of slowly coming around the fact that they’re not just going to get to deal with a bunch of mom and pop shops that they can impose terms on anymore.

So So I think there’s that, there’s, you know, there’s, there’s this, and it’s the launching off point for us to then go into our own, you know, likely recapitalization sale to a new sponsor, you know, like Josh. So the whole team will be staying on and, you know, we’ll just kind of move along to the next to the next set of years, and we’ll get a new injection of capital. We’ll get to do more acquisitions, all of that. So, you know, I think basically, we’d like to position ourselves in the best place we can for that. And then, you know, potentially, think about how we might want to do PR going forward, after that, after the rehab kind of thing. So for right now, we’re sort of thinking, you know, short to medium term, in that sense of, like, six to nine months. How is, how can this relationship, you know, help us get to our goals? But then I think, you know, from thinking about it, from y’all’s perspective, like, you know, the longer term opportunity here would be, like, you know, just show us what this could do to us, that you know, could do for us in a way that makes it, you know, sort of worth the expenditure to continue our relationship.

So when Jim and I are talking about, kind of what we thought might be helpful from you all is just sort of, you know, nothing super crazy detail, but just sort of some sort of general idea of like how you would kind of think about approaching these, these kind of pieces, just Both initially our acquisition, and I think particularly framing up, you know, I think we mentioned, I mentioned with you last time Josh, our, see our CEO. CEO is, you know, it’s very, I would say, PR friendly, like you just got a story, you know, he makes us look good. Very personable. Yeah. Very personable. He’s who we send whenever we have any problems with, like, any seller who is not really, you know, we just get him on the phone with land and somehow suddenly, like, everything’s turned around, and everything’s great again. So, you know, so we got him, he’s got a good story, you know, very likable.

And then, you know, just sort of, I think that’s worth highlighting, for sure, because one part of this, I think the other part of it is, like, appealing to additional targets, right? Like, from my perspective, what I want to do is buy the most stuff, and that’s the most number of companies we can so, you know, getting us framed up in a way that looks good, so that these other companies want to sell to us is also would definitely be part of the shorter term, but then the longer term. Look at this too, right? Like that could be one of the big upsides of the longer term partnerships. We’re on the same page. So knowing that you have short term goals gives us a clear focus, obviously, but we’re going to be doing this in the long term the whole time. So our intention is work within the next 10 years, not the next six months. And that’s the way we approach everything. But we’ll all build it up knowing that we have a short term, six month, nine months, we got to hit these marks from the sale perspective and all that we’re on the same page.

So I mean, and they’re frankly, smarter than I am, so I’m probably gonna add a lot more context than I will to the specifics, but broader outline, here’s what I kind of see based on where you’re at. From our perspective, we want to start as soon as we can, because a lot of setup right to announce this one, even if it’s January, we want to be able to dig in, really understand it, talk to the key people making the announcement, as large as we can, getting that big splash. But how do we, I mean, it’s a kind of story that for different industry publications, there is an opening. I mean, you’re combining the two biggest and now you’re going to have, I’m making up a number now, 250, 300 different pool company kind of thing, like different companies that you’ve kind of built up, or whatever, it opens up a different potential storyline, because it’s you’re gonna be so dominant at that point where maybe we can maybe get lucky, and it’s not our primary goal, but maybe we do get some tier one media. We do get some bigger stories that are looking for stuff, and just because you’re different, and we might have an interesting story to tell them.

So, you know, through January, early February, that would obviously be a big priority. But what we need to do is work with you very carefully. Some of the you know, the pool trooper. You know, companies may be upset about it. They don’t have a choice. You’re buying the whole thing. But there’s always transition problems, especially when there are more companies, and how do they integrate into your system? Or are there certain people from the executive team of quote troopers, that are moving over? Or do they know what’s going on? Or does it affect them? There’s, there’s always a potential backlash risk, right? It doesn’t really matter as much when it’s a small, little one off company, but it’s different when you you’re buying a bigger company. And so we want to prepare in advance and how we’re going to handle these different issues. What are the talking points we’re going to help you in terms of all that aspect, not just from the media side, but also, what do you say to all these different operations across the country? Are you literally as part of this, because I haven’t looked at poetry specifically. Are they multiple states that are different than where you operate now, and does that create different logistics questions that we have to be ready to answer or deal with, and all that kind of stuff?

So our job in the short term, three months like especially, more in the next two months before the announcement is we want to have the first draft of all the answers ready to go, and then we want to try and minimize the chance that the individual pool companies push back, or the individual owners at the different locations kind of start complaining or posting things online, or messing with their own customers, or trying to break off on their own again and go independent, or whatever the risks Are. We can prepare for that in the short term. And then part of all this is building up and protecting like, wow, we’re the We’re the 800 pound gorilla. And not only are we 800 pound gorilla, we’re wet, right? So, so we weigh even more once you dumped in the pool. And so how do we take advantage of that to really position you so that when you’re ready to actually announce quietly that you’re ready for some new cap, you’re well positioned there. You know who you are, they already view you as the big kid, and they see that success and you don’t get the biggest risk to your recapitalization is a tough merger with full troopers, where they push back, like that, could push back you’re deciding to go out for the money, right? You want to get as much value as you can.

So we’re on the same page in terms of those things. But we talked about before, we talked about all the different local markets. How do we create those template and then announcements, those simple things that we get them to be able to do those announcements on the local level, whether they’re putting out the press release on their own, is those small, little company owner, a franchise owner, kind of mentality, or whether we’re doing it on their behalf, or we’re featuring different local markets, or we’re submitting them for Chamber of Commerce awards, or there’s so many different things that once we’ve got the big, big, big issues kind of covered, that we can start building out templates that we can repeat market by market. I feel like I’m just talking I have a few thoughts.

You know, we might want to consider approaching this from a couple of different targeted areas, right, Home Services, middle markets are become much more popular in recent years. Right you’re seeing, I think Bain Capital just bought up a bunch of HVAC companies. A lot of these small, little mom and pop shops finally starting to grow up, because they finally have the support of larger companies to come in. Kind of show them the operation, show them the right way. So there’s a story there for the smaller operators that they can either get bought out, they can join in. I don’t know you said. You mentioned that the people who were part of the companies that you’re buying stay in there, so it’s a matter of professional development and growth and helping them kind of come a little more legitimate, right? Some of the mom and pop shops there are the name on the truck, so the customers are always like, well, who’s who’s taking care of a pool? I don’t know. Some guy used to be this guy, but now it’s this other guy. Nobody ever knows. So kind of adding that business legitimacy operations, that kind of like grown up business approach to a home service product that, at least out here in Arizona, Florida, places I’ve lived, everybody has, but nobody knows who’s doing it.

The other part is, obviously there’s that business angle that we can talk about with some of the larger, larger publications, the largest like CNBC, kind of things not promising that week, but it’s a good story. But if your CEO is a good personality and a good person, to me, that’s what every reporter wants to talk about. They want to hear the story. Who is he? How did he grow his business? What kind of person can we put in front of people? What kind of stories can you tell? You know, it’s all about the people. So whether you’re talking about the owner, whether you’re talking about the companies that you guys are buying and the people who belong there, the customers, the regular people, and you even mentioned the vendors. It’s actually helpful to the vendors if they’re working with a larger company like you, because they’re not messing around with are they going to pay their bills? Are they going to be there when I drop off my stock? How come they like left all my stuff out in the rain, whatever like? So to me, it’s all about it’s all about the stories that we can tell, and just finding that right story for the right audience. What are you there smarter than I am?

Yeah, and I’ll just echo, you know, we like to it looks like you’re already in a lot of local markets with all the acquisitions you’ve done so far. You know, as you acquire pool troopers, you know, we can see if there’s new markets, and we can start to build your name recognition in those markets. We have lots of different strategies to suggest. I know there’s a lot of thought leadership opportunities, especially around pool safety. I know that’s a huge issue here and in other parts of the country as well. I feel like I see that movies all the time. So just a couple of thoughts there. Well, that makes sense.

Does is the company working with any charitable organizations, whether it’s swim safety, whether it’s fencing, anything like that? Is there any particular charitable Great question we had been working up until about a year and a half ago with the National Drowning Prevention Alliance, that organization went through a lot of turmoil, and we elected not to continue with them this year. We weren’t spending much, but we weren’t an official sponsor for them. Yeah, we found some other here and there, like, yeah.

Well, you times, but I would maybe consider too. And again, I don’t know how the reaction when the bull Trooper people is going to be. They might be upset that they got bought some of the individuals, which is not unusual, like any change scares people. If both troopers was really involved in certain charities, and you’re open to doing that, if you don’t necessarily have anyone you have a relationship with, you might want to consider continuing with their existing charities, if they’re local people, and that way they feel like something of them that’s moving over to you. That’s a very subtle, quiet thing. It doesn’t change $1 amount you would have spent if you already like those organizations anyway, or if they have a good program that we can expand and so like their program becomes all of SPs locations, not just, you know that the other ones, that’s another very quiet, subtle way to make them not feel like they’re being taken over, that they’re being embraced. It’s little nuanced stuff like that that, you know, you’ll take advantage of every opportunity we can.

Yeah, I think, like, you know, one of the other sort of interesting angles that when I was talking about this earlier this week was it’s just, you know, a lot of people have tried to roll up school services, maintenance, and most people have floundered at a certain point. See everything, it’s a butter really I know I love it. Those are just the words they you know, like, basically people hit a certain size of trying to go on companies together, and they’re just end up realizing they’re running like 12 different companies differently, and they can’t, kind of get them to work together. And that’s true all roll ups, but it seems to be particularly problematic in pool space. Just from what we’ve seen, the success rate is quite low. Basically, we figured it out. And most other people have, you know, hit some level where they had to slow down m&a substantially, and then they never, kind of direct back up again. We’ve gotten to know some of the other consolidators, and basically everyone is at, like, everyone hit that point and didn’t get through so it’s kind of fun to be asked where we did make it through that.

I love that. That’s a great business story. Yeah, that’s, that’s a great story angle, because you can talk about, you know, the back end, the operations, the ordering the supplies, the making sure that everyone’s wearing, you know, has the right brand and clothing on, or just all those little things, which allows us the opportunity to serve as experts, not just again, in the pool industry, but in kind of all of those kind of middle market, those smaller groups that are trying to figure out how that they can grow. So being able to present the CEO as an expert in this area, offering his advice, offering his opinions, his his his personal stories, right? Here’s what I did in the beginning that didn’t work so well. So here’s what I did and why I’m successful. We don’t have to give it all away, but just being able to demonstrate this is where other people have failed and how we succeeded. It gives us a lot of leverage, and really will position him as a as, like a business expert.

Yeah, I think that’s definitely the right, yeah, the right person to elevate in this. And, I mean, you know, we, if you ask all of us, that’s sort of, he’s sort of the answer of why we think we made it when other people didn’t. I mean, we have a lot of really talented people, but, like, at the end of the day, you know, there’s, you basically, you know, for a while we didn’t, we didn’t talk about it, because we were worried about giving away some kind of secret sauce kind of situation, right? And then I think as we got further and further along, and as we saw more, you know, we Frank, like, you know, more consolidators approached us as potentially acquired. To potentially acquire them, we realized, like, everyone was trying to do the same thing. So, like, the secret sauce was not in any way, like some sort of secret formula we developed or anything. It’s just that we have the right people doing executing, and the right, you know, executing the plan that everyone else was also trying to execute. Yeah, everyone else was trying to execute. It’s not like rocket science better, and our CEOs are large, probably a huge portion of why it worked because he had the field, the field angle that I think we we had people, had great people who could do the back office, the back office, roll out all the right programs, think of the right things to get the value out of everything. But until then, I think our CFO was without him, we couldn’t have done this.

Yes, of course, but that’s applying for awards for him, personally, too. For CFO of the year, awards had nothing to do with, you know, pool directly, just within his industry. Those are the kind of things that give you more credibility that, you know, the private equity firms love, that are investing in people. So we want to look for the first half of 2026 we want to look for a different award for each of your executive level people you know and that we you know. And Caitlin, I’m not kissing up by saying this, but there’s a lot of lawyer awards out there, right in terms of the MMA side, and we can nominate you for based on all that you’ve done and the big numbers and this big one, you’re quite a fantastic candidate to be a finalist for a bunch of these awards. Or maybe you fit for some 40 under 41 as well. There’s so many different opportunities like you, you know, so, and I’m not trying to kiss up by saying it, it’s more just this opportunity that it makes you more, you know, purchasable, right? It makes people want to feel confident. And so from our side, it’s not hard to come up with those storylines. And yeah, we don’t know where we’re going to get success, but we know what to try and do.

And then when it comes to the creative, fun stuff, there’s so many ideas that, like, that’s not the hard part. Like, if anything, it’s gonna be hard to not share all those ideas. Like, I had three more as I was sitting here. You know, those are just fun. Like, I almost want to find out. I want to do a survey of your different people and ask, like, what are, what’s the weirdest thing you found stuck in the full gutter, right? And like that could be so much fun to highlight the crazy stuff that you found, right? Or you do. I assume you must have like a convention or a conference of all your owners that they’re able to come in and do, like an off site, you know, general managers meeting every, every February. So how many people come to that? 18 GMs, plus we have some of the former owners who don’t they came last year. At least some of the former owners came to do this week. We’re trying to pitch them, trying to get them to refer more businesses.

Some of those events create opportunities, right to create news around them. But was it being in February, you know, and you’re just building your agenda for that meeting. Now, I’m not overstepping. I apologize, but we almost want to be invited to attend. We want to lead a session on media. We want to tell them, here’s what happens. If a crisis happens, you get attacked, here’s who you should call, and here’s the process, you know, how do you do that? You know, we can share potentially, some ideas of some of this community stuff, kind of stuff, or talk about, hey, if you’re already a member of your local chamber of commerce, then, you know, let’s nominate you for this award. Let’s just know that you’re United candidate. Those are the kind of things that those conferences, and I’m glad that it’s, you know, coming up, but that’s an opportunity, and the timing is great, because if they get energized and they do a couple extra stories before we hit summer point, right? Because as soon as they’re there, they’re either going to be jumping on them do something right away. So then March, April, May, you got a couple of stories going. Perfect time for June when you’re trying to get someone to buy.

Yeah, so can I ask you? I mean, I think we’re, I think at least, but I think we’re pretty interested in moving forward. I think the last, like, sort of hurdle we gotta overcome is just the rest of the leadership game kind of thought, kind of a thing, is it possible that you guys could do some, like, there’s some slide or something we could show where it’s, like, here’s a couple of the kind of bullet points of things they could you could do, just so that means, like, kind of pop it up there when we’re talking about it, even encapsulating some of the things that you’ve already just the things you’ve already talked about. Is there a way we could kind of have, like, a whole list of, here’s some potential ideas that we’ve got that between this time and this that we can, yeah, the problem is, how many flags and all that kind of stuff, because it’s, I don’t know, one that’s, yeah, that’s gonna be, I mean, it would just be the topic without it’d be so dense, heavy with all these different things. I know I send you Jim already a bunch of the like, the one sheet documents, all kind of stuff. We can just highlight some of the core areas where we can help. But it’s not going to be super intensive. We’ll try to come up with something really quick. No, it’s really like, I just want something that we can talk to when we do our, like, weekly meeting. Yeah, oh yeah, we actually have a meeting next, next Monday at noon. Alright, so whether it be tonight or this weekend, so I’ll put something together this weekend, at minimum, you’ll have it, you know, least for probably early it doesn’t have something. It’s gonna be super simple. We’re not graphics, right? So it’s gonna be really boring, okay, all right, it might be a couple slides I might like talk about who we are a little bit one slide and another slide will be just for, you know, services and that kind of thing. It might be very generic, but at least it gives you a talking point jumping that’s fine.

Let me ask this too, because I know that we’re all anxious about the timing. Even though pushing back to June 19 is an advantage, it’s definitely for all kind of anxious January. I mean, I say June January, yeah, right, January, yeah. It starts with J Yeah. So I meant January. So here’s my question, do you is it helpful, or is it too presumptuous, if I send over a contract so that you just have, I can review it at the same time, in that way, once a week. Yeah, obviously Google’s. Do you know, I mean that sheet Jim, that I gave you, that already talked about, that, you know, the scopes and all kinds of everything, in like 50 hours. You know, I do have. You, okay? And then as we see it, I’ll just write it as 40 and then as we go, if we see that, you know, we’re just going to want more and you’re comfortable, then we’ll talk about that for future time. Okay, but yeah, so I’ll send you that based on 40 hours. I’m going to list it just so, you know, as a December 1 start, because we always started, technically, the start of the month in terms of, you know, because we can’t prorate between months. If we need to start in January. Need to start January. I don’t care, but I am anxious for us to be able to dig in for that January announcement. A little nervous about it right, just to make sure we do it right. So that’s why I’m going to date it. It’s early enough in December, but so please excuse me for that. If that’s okay, I think that’s reasonable, and now we have the benefit of a few extra weeks to really get this right. I think so too. I think it’s a big this is a big announcement, and we want to make sure. I think the question and answer is actually seem like it’s not as important, but I think that that’s the biggest threat that this has other owners who are asking questions, or the GMs, or the different locals, they’re the ones are going to be the most stressed by this. So we want to be able to hit it the right way. You know, you hit it on the head when, when you talked about how we set this up internally too, because that’s that’s important.

Alright, I will give you all those things this weekend. I’m not worried about the timing. From your perspective, the meeting goes well, just it sounds really silly, even if you’re not ready to sign it yet, but you know that we’re going to move forward because you’ve won over the executive team, and they have their own board, or whatever, even just a thumbs up so that I can get because I don’t want to. Obviously they know everything, because I don’t hide things from them. But the rest of our team does not have any clue that we’ve been talking and so we already have talked about who we want to have from our team, to be part of the team, working with you and all that, but they don’t know this yet. So if you’re reading on Monday, you know you’re going to move forward, even if it’s a little bit of, you know, a little bit of whatever I want to alert my team so they can start at least looking you up online, even if our first until the end of next week or the week after the last thing I’ll throw out there too. And I mentioned this before, but just in case, easy to forget. The Office does close the week between Christmas and New Year’s should probably close to they will know beforehand, right? The team, they’ll probably be thinking about it. You know, depending on who it is, I’ll think about it. I’m not I tell them that to work during their breaks, right? I mean, I do not expect to want them to do that. I just wanted you to be aware that, except for me, everybody’s off. That’s fair enough.

Any other questions for us? No, I don’t think so hopeful and excited to work with you guys. Listen. Everybody. Have a great weekend. Talk to you later. Nice.