Owned and Operated #147 - The Journey into Business Acquisition and Ownership

In this episode, Jack is flying solo and speaks with Rory Tyer, a new owner of an independent garden center in South Carolina, about his journey in entrepreneurship through acquisition. Rory shares his experiences and challenges in acquiring and operating a local nursery, discussing factors such as location, customer demographics, and the dynamics of retail vs. wholesale businesses.

The conversation also touches on the significant learning curve, managing inventory, and engaging in new marketing strategies such as an SP club and local school partnerships.

Thanks to Our Sponsor Supply House
Need parts fast? Supply House Dot Com is fast, reliable, offers easy returns, and has a huge inventory of parts and supplies so that you're waiting less.
Take a look at their TradeMaster program and start getting perks now!

Episode Hosts: 🎤
John Wilson: @WilsonCompanies on X
Jack Carr: @TheHVACJack on X

Episode Guest:
Rory Tyer: @rorytyer on Twitter

Learn more about Sagan Passport and what it can do for your business hiring needs

Owned and Operated 147 Transcript

Rory Tyer: I'm passionate about entrepreneurship through acquisition because so far it has been like a huge net positive for me. As soon as they heard that I didn't have any experience, they were just like, Nope, that don't want to talk to you anymore.

Rory Tyer: Something will raise the flag. It'll either be like, if this is true, this is a unique business or something about this unique. I really like this, or that doesn't quite sound right. That doesn't fit.

John Wilson: Recently, we've been buying off some. com and we've been able to get plumbing HVAC and electrical stuff off there. And my biggest concern was timeliness. Hey, if I need this thing pretty quick, can I get it? And you for sure can. So that was awesome. So it delivers your fast. They ship coast to coast and you can call them and you can get expert support with real people, which is awesome.

John Wilson: So check out supply house. com for buying supplies.

Jack Carr: Owned and operated. John is out gallivanting around. I think it's Ireland this week, which is awesome. I've heard it's really beautiful out there and I'm sure he's having a great time. So we have an amazing guest here today. We have Rory Tyre. Tyre, did I say that right?

Jack Carr: Awesome. How are you doing, Rory?

Rory Tyer: I'm doing really well. I'm in a hotel in Cleveland actually right now at a trade show.

Jack Carr: Very cool. So Rory owns a Nursery out in south Carolina that you purchased how long ago may 7th was the date may 7th So you're fairly new but tell it tell us a little bit about that acquisition.

Jack Carr: So What is it? What does it entail?

Rory Tyer: Yeah, great question. So it's a, it's an IGC independent garden center. And the former owner was just ready to retire. So I've been searching on a very part time basis while working full time remotely for, probably two years or more before I started talking with him.

Rory Tyer: We had moved to Greenville 2021. We've been buying plants from the nursery. I really liked it. I had looked at a bunch of different broker deals and a few other things and got I don't know, disenchanted with the brokerage deal process, either the valuation expectations, I felt like we're not reasonable or it was a good business and therefore it was going to become like a competitive bidding process.

Rory Tyer: And I just did not find in myself that I wanted to be part of that. And I ended up building a bunch of lists of local businesses that I just thought seemed interesting. And I really wanted something local, like within the 30 minute radius of my house, because I have been doing a good bit of traveling for my job and I've got three young girls and just didn't want to keep doing that.

Rory Tyer: And and we love Greenville, so we weren't about to relocate for a business. And yeah, I don't really know what I mean, one day we went to the nursery and bought some plants and I just was thinking like, it seems like a great business. Let me email the owner and see if I can at least ask him some questions about what it's like to run this.

Rory Tyer: Cause it's not an industry I have ever worked with or know anything about. And the first time I got him on the phone, I was just asking him some questions and he was like, why do you want to know this stuff? And so I just laid it out. I was like I'm looking for a business owner that wants to retire because I like to own a business.

Rory Tyer: I don't know if a nursery is something I want to own, but if you, Are at all interested in that and you think you're, at or near retiring, I'd love to ask you some more questions and talk about that. And then he was open to it. And so pretty quickly from that point, we started having a bunch of conversation.

Rory Tyer: This was in the summer of last year. And I think so, between about August and then we signed LOI at the end of December. And so we, it went pretty slowly for a number of reasons, which I'm happy to talk about. But then we closed at the beginning of May. That's

Jack Carr: amazing. I think that's, I think that's passed over by so many searchers now today is just the idea that, Hey, I need to go pound pavement and walk and talk.

Jack Carr: Network in the community I'm in, or the community I want to be in, and everyone just goes straight for brokers. But those deals end up being very they're very expensive you're paying a lot for what you actually get, and they're difficult they're highly contested, and lots of competition.

Jack Carr: What industries were you looking at? Prior to going down into this specific one, was there anything that you were targeting? So I was talking to someone yesterday about it and I said, man, I used to look at the most random things and yes now I'm an HVAC, but what did you have a genre of businesses you were looking at or what was the sequence?

Rory Tyer: I was working at a large professional services and accounting firm. And for a time I thought about starting my own consulting firm. I looked into buying accounting firms. I had a conversation early on with Patrick Dichter, a lot of people know from social media about what could go into buying a firm.

Rory Tyer: And honestly in like brick and mortar retail I would have told you is one of a few things along with like restaurants and maybe something else that I did not want. Yeah. And I, and looking back now, I think I just had this perception that Either they're getting crushed by e commerce or if they're not getting crushed, they've just got razors and it's a headache to staff.

Rory Tyer: And with the nursery, I think there's some, with a garden center, I think there's some uniqueness where, the most likely person to crush you is going to be like a garden center to big box store, like Lowe's or Home Depot. But what I've discovered and what I've realized as part of the thing that drew me to this nursery in the first place is they're not really competing with them.

Rory Tyer: We're not really competing with them. Like we we're aiming at a little more of a high end experience that doubles down on variety and service and quality. And I looked at, I looked at a, there was this guy who was basically a consultant working with nursing homes and helping them like fill vacancies and get more financially healthy.

Rory Tyer: And he had developed the beginning as of like a productized Zoom course that he would take cohorts of staff through. I looked at a company that was basically a design firm for big wooden trusses and structures. I looked at some plumbing companies. I looked at a brand brokerage licensing company where they, connect products with people, they wanted to license their product or vice versa.

Rory Tyer: Just yeah, a lot of different I took out to lunch, the owner of a really niche construction company in Greenville that I, he was like, did underwater construction. And I was like, I don't know how much more unique this is not just some random general contractor, like there's something going on here that is really yeah I was, I was all over the map because for me, it was.

Rory Tyer: Honestly, a little bit of who talked to me, like I'm willing to learn just about anything. And in my career the firm I was working for was called porn. It was a very large CP firm. And I was doing a lot of consulting and coaching with business owners. So I think when you do proprietary outreach, like I think what stops a lot of people is either they're just not comfortable with cold calling.

Rory Tyer: If you don't have sales experience or in my case, I was comfortable sitting across the table from a business owner. And having to come across, like I understood way more about them and their business than I probably did. And you figure out real quick, the way to do that is just to ask your questions and they'll tell you what matters to them, what's important, and then if you're able to remember that stuff and connect some dots and repeat it back to them, you can become a trusted partner.

Rory Tyer: And so I just leveraged some of that when having these business owner conversations, like I know. I know what pressures they're facing because I'm in the trenches with them dealing with mostly on the people side, but obviously you get exposed to lots of other things too. So yeah, that's a long way to answer.

Rory Tyer: I, I was open to anything, I've heard people say, do you feel like, because I knew I wanted to stay in Greenville, I was like, I've got to be open. And that means I'm going to have to learn. And,

Jack Carr: I think that's a really accurate is a lot of people tried to find industry and location and it's so much harder than being agnostic in one of those two, right?

Jack Carr: So industry, anywhere or location, but anything. And it sounds like you hit that. And with that, though, we talk a lot about going through the motions and not that I wanted to waste broker's times, but do you feel like that kind of outreach and talking about business models and seeing P& Ls and working, trying to work towards a purchase through other industries helped you in the industry you ended up buying in?

Rory Tyer: Yeah, I do. Even just getting to read Sims and then over time you start to develop. Develop a sense for something will raise the flag. It'll either be like, Oh, this, if this is true, this is a unique business or something about this unique, I really like this, or that doesn't quite sound right.

Rory Tyer: That doesn't fit. There's some pattern recognition that you start to develop. I think. Just there's a way to get confident talking to business owners, business brokers, the ones that are good and know what they're doing. Their job is to have an appropriate firewall between you and the owner because they don't want to waste the owner's time.

Rory Tyer: And so learning how to represent yourself and learning how to overcome like very common objections oh, you don't have industry experience or, oh, you're not. You're just an independent person. You're not backed by some fund or you don't already own a company. You've never owned a company before, aside from,

Jack Carr: Because I was taught, I had this, like I said, I was having this conversation yesterday actually.

Jack Carr: And it was a new searcher who's getting out there and he, he's getting his MBA and he's going through the motions and he's I want to buy. And I said, one of the hardest things that you need to start trying to figure out how to overcome is the broker objection or the objection from the bank that says you don't have industry experience.

Jack Carr: Why should we trust you? Why are you, where's your ethos behind this? And so was there anything special that you did to create the website with the searcher and like the goat looking over the mountaintop with the sunrise in the background says we have capital, like all the silly things I always say, was there anything that you did in that realm to help legitimize yourself?

Jack Carr: Like I'm not wasting anyone's time. I really do want to buy.

Rory Tyer: Yeah, no, honestly. And I, part of the. I was searching while working full time. And so I, I didn't want to broadcast so publicly, like I have a website with like my face and stuff on it. So like I made a website in a domain, but initially I had this, I thought I was going to start writing a bunch of blog articles, like about stuff related to business succession and transition and kind of both from a buyer and a seller perspective.

Rory Tyer: And I had this content plan in my mind, like it never panned out. It was really inconsistent. I just so no, I think. The times that it worked, I was able to talk about the consulting and coaching work I had done. So I was able to say here are examples of the ways that I currently work with business owners.

Rory Tyer: And what I have realized is that this has given me a really valuable insider perspective on the kinds of things that I would need to deal with. If it were my business and if it were my team having these challenges. And so as a result, I have a ton of not so formally playbooks, but just like tools and perspectives.

Rory Tyer: And there's stuff that could happen that wouldn't necessarily catch me off guard because I've seen it before. And so in my case, I leaned into that of Hey, I have conversations with business owners all the time. Here's some of the results that I've gotten for them and their teams. And I've just realized I would love the chance to do this with my own business.

Rory Tyer: And then I think it is helpful if you. Can share something that you have learned about the industry. Like you you're not asking questions that some googling could have answered for you, but you're clearly building on some knowledge base. So the formula is something like, so I understand that blank is typically a challenge.

Rory Tyer: What has that been like for you over 12 months? And so like in, in the construction industry, I did a lot of consulting commercial construction companies for them. It's workforce shortage. And it's we just cannot find people. So you bring that up and ask about how's hiring been or like, how's retention or like whatever.

Rory Tyer: And you're going to get an earful in response. And it immediately built some Oh, this guy gets it. And this is a very relevant problem. Yep. Baseline knowledge. If you are aware that it's a business that depends on a commodity in some way for its input and you know that price has been really high, that's like easily locatable information and you should be able to ask it looked, I know this, the price of wood has gone up a lot over the past, whatever, how have you been able to Pass on that.

Rory Tyer: How's that affected your margins? Just those kinds of like category questions. Can, and I would tell, sometimes I would tell, this is reminding me, I would try to model for the broker exactly how I planned to communicate with the seller. So I would say, I would love to get a chance to ask questions about this or to ask a question like this so that they could it was almost a role play for the sake of the broker.

Rory Tyer: This is what it's going to be like to put me in conversation with your seller. I promise it's not going to be a waste of time. And that didn't always work. Okay. A few times it didn't work. It was because they mandated you have a certain amount of liquid funds before they would even open the gate.

Rory Tyer: And they weren't interested in you saying I know a ton of people who invest. Then I know this. They just didn't want them. That's a choice they can make. And then sometimes I just didn't, there were a few off market people where I got through on the phone. And as soon as they heard that I didn't have any experience, they were just like, no, I don't want to talk to you anymore.

Rory Tyer: And in those situations, my thought was, that's not really a me problem. It's a pipeline problem. I need to be finding enough potential opportunities that like some percentage of them, I will result in conversations and some. might go further, like any kind of marketing or sales funnel, like you have to go back to the top and figure out how to make that top bigger.

Jack Carr: That's all absolutely amazing advice, to be honest. Like I said, I had this conversation yesterday and these are the questions that come up and these are the, as a journey, as a searcher and as someone who's potentially buying a business, how do you get past the, The guard, the broker guard that they put up and how do you show you that you are a serious buyer because they get hundreds and hundreds of tire kickers.

Jack Carr: So very interesting. Awesome. So you bought a is so what's the difference between a nursery and in. The garden

Rory Tyer: center. Yeah. Great question. There, functionally I think historically a nursery is a place where plants are like grown. And so a lot of garden centers do have growing operation, which is a very it's just a different business model, different risks, different CapEx needs, different inputs different level of knowledge needed for your team.

Rory Tyer: We are only a, like a retail operation. So we buy and resell, buy it wholesale, sell it retail. And so I think garden center is typically a broader term where you get tools, fertilizers, soils gifts, often, statues, pottery and plants, and that. Describes us. I don't know. I think at some point back in the day, the business was called South Pleasantburg nursery and garden center.

Rory Tyer: And at some point it just got shortened the South Pleasantburg nursery. And at this point, I'm like, we have a decent Google profile and reviews. Like I'm just not interested in messing with it. But I am, one of the things I am doing is going through a rebranding right now. And it was important to me to have a very clear, like visual mark that was separate, right.

Rory Tyer: So that eventually in the future, it'd want to change something about that, that basic visual brand would be able to stay the same, but yeah, there's, I think a lot of people who are nurses, a place where babies get looked after, right? It's where I took my kids when my wife went back to work after having them.

Rory Tyer: Yeah, I think, I don't know that in a lot of people's minds, there's much of a different, that growing aspect of what we don't do.

Jack Carr: Okay. So there's no, no growing, you're buying wholesale and then you're reselling it. Yep. Who's the market customer? So most of the business I've looked at that are in this field have been full blown nurseries and the interest there, for me at least the benefit was right.

Jack Carr: You grow for six months out of the year, they're generally growing some kind of specific product like mums or something, and they sell it all in a seasonality type of a play, almost like any kind of Crop and then you just spend the rest of the year like skiing in Vail and riding off into the sunset though I'm sure it's actually more of a oh crap.

Jack Carr: We don't have money now type of problem that being said Kind of that business model is very simple, right? You grow it, then you sell to yourself. Who are you selling to? Are you selling to landscape architects? Are you selling B2B to, landscape groups or is it all retail customers?

Jack Carr: Mom, pop, Wanda,

Rory Tyer: Vast majority is retail customers. We do get, and so I would say like mid to higher end homeowners and and people that just want. Like you think of somebody who is living in the apartment, right? Like you wouldn't consider them like they're not a homeowner, they're renting.

Rory Tyer: And a lot of cases we wouldn't consider them necessarily a higher end, depending on their income and the state of the apartment. But like they really like plants as a hobby. And so I would say anybody that's a hobbyist that likes plants but residential customers. And then a quirk of this business is because of where we're located.

Rory Tyer: It's really convenient for a lot of companies to just. Come by plants there at Rio and presumably to their customers. So there's a company that does flower beds and containers that they'll come and buy flowers pretty frequently. There's there's several landscape companies that I like know on site.

Rory Tyer: I'll see their trucks, or I know the dude that has his, he's got like a one crew operation. And that's just a fact, in retail, in person retail, your location is so important. And for us, we are the only nursery of any scale that's actually within the city limits of Greenville. And so it's a really easy jump there off point.

Rory Tyer: Because a lot of the people that you want to work with are in or right around Greenville. And there's another, there's a couple other great nurseries outside the city limits in a couple of different directions. But you have to go out of your way to go there if you're near the part of the city where we are.

Jack Carr: Was that a surprise to you or was that a deciding factor when you chose that business? Yeah. Like brick and mortar, they say location, like that's everything. And but at the same time, the niche ness of the business kind of. Would drive some people to your location versus the location itself, but surprisingly it Was more important than you thought.

John Wilson: I will be the first one to be hesitant about remote staffing agencies But honestly Sagan's been pretty great We started working with Sagan a few months ago to place a few more complicated positions inside accounting and hr They had great candidates in a week And we were able to make our hires in under two and a half weeks, which was awesome.

John Wilson: Both of those candidates have now started and they've been awesome members of the team. So we're super grateful. Make sure you talk to Sagan. If you're interested in learning more, go to SaganGo. com. S A G A N.

Rory Tyer: Yeah, I think, we also are known locally for having a really big selection, a lot of variety, and that's a double edged sword because you have a lot of cash tied up in your inventory.

Rory Tyer: And that's some of our ongoing, some of the biggest learning curve for me has around like at a philosophical level, how do you buy? Because I've got buyers that have been doing this for a long time and some of their philosophies are great. Some of their gut field intuition is great.

Rory Tyer: And some of it is not as data driven as I think we could be. And it was only in January, actually during, while we were under LOI, the former owner transitioned to a new point of sales and inventory management system. And so for the first time, I would say we have like very, Reliable and easily accessible data to help make purchasing decisions.

Rory Tyer: And so there's a whole change management process around, like, how do we now use that data to buy rather than just having it be something that's there, but that we don't, of course, not all, data is never, so that raises a challenge. But I think I was surprised I was surprised that.

Rory Tyer: As an example I thought they had a commercial discount or because a lot of nurseries will have Hey, if you're a commercial person, you set up an account and you get some kind of a discount off retail and they used to have one and when COVID hit, they discontinued it. Because, they were like, we don't know where are, they assumed they were going to, everything's going to fall off a cliff, of course, 2020 and then 21 was a huge boon in the outdoor living world, like in general.

Rory Tyer: And so then they just didn't bring the discount back. They just said, we don't have a need to bring it back. The brand is not known locally for, in fact, I did a clearance event a few weeks ago just because I inherited a way more inventory than we need. And I was like, I would like to have an infusion of cash in a season where We don't normally get that infusion because this was at the end of August, which is normally extremely slow.

Rory Tyer: And it was the first clearance event the business had to I didn't fully even appreciate that, but it's such a brand marker Hey, you're a premium brand. We're not known for sales. We're not known for discounts. That was a big surprise. Like I didn't, I sensed it, but I didn't fully understand how important that has been to the margins and that the business has been able to command.

Jack Carr: Yeah. There's so much to unpack there. So I'm. I think I'm not going to touch this point, but like even the fact that the goods themselves are perishable, like having so much cash flow locked up into a perishable good that's, essentially fickle to some extent, right? They could die. The heat wave disease, like there's so much that could go.

Jack Carr: Happened, which I'm sure your hair storm, but yes, in terms of what I want to touch on is more so seasonality. Is this, I would assume there's some seasonality to the business, but do you see winter peaks, summer peaks, what does that look like

Rory Tyer: if I remember correctly? I think it's 70 percent of our revenue comes in between like the end of March and Independence Day.

Rory Tyer: And then you're very, you're pretty dead over the summer. We have some interesting aspects of we sell actually a good number of fountains and we also have a bunch of like water gardening stuff. So water plants, we sell koi fish, pond health and construction supply. So there's stuff that actually during the summer people are thinking about because the water features like a really nice relief.

Rory Tyer: And then there's another bump in revenue in the fall, which we're just getting into now. Also after Labor Day. And then that lasts until kind of up till Thanksgiving, like mid November before Thanksgiving. And we do some, historically the business has not done a whole lot of seasonal stuff because there's another business in town.

Rory Tyer: It's another garden center that has a lot more of a gift shop and they have a, they have a permanent Christmas, and so they go all out on the decorations and the owner historically has just said that there's Me to try to invest in more but we'll do and some reads Some things and then so really after christmas giving until End of march.

Rory Tyer: It's like fairly dead

Jack Carr: Yeah, because I could see christmas being you know a boom with the christmas tree and then the garden set of products that would come from that so We talked about a little bit offline. So one of my favorite Parts of this show is right. As people initially bought businesses, we've asked them, or John in the initial shows, ask them questions.

Jack Carr: And then three years later, circle back, see where they are, how they're doing and ask them similar questions that did it work? What did you expect? What didn't you expect? And it's really fun to, to see the kind of vast differences. So as you've owned the business four or five months now, right?

Jack Carr: You have some big rocks up ahead. What do you see? As the next big step that you're going to take in this business to get it to the next level Assuming that you want to grow that this isn't a lifestyle business

Rory Tyer: One thing is we brought we launched landscape design and installation And so previously we had new team members that would do that stuff kind of their own time and a few of those folks are working like a ton of hours So what it meant is they just got very time and so it's a common to me being Like, Hey, if we brought this in and like their prices were low.

Rory Tyer: And I said, I think we need to raise these prices. And if you're part of our brand. And that gives us a lot of justification and charge me in price. You'll get some of your personal time back. I see like a better career path for you. And I think we can my, my kind of mental models around how I think a customer journey should look and even like, When you communicate things like price and scope to somebody, what should that proposal look like?

Rory Tyer: Like in B2B sales, we're used to putting it, almost too much thought into what is the PDF that we send over that walks through the project? And I'm like, if I put even a little bit of that thought into something that's templated in Canva, which is what we do now, and it's around landscape design, I think that will probably go to a lot of other people who are smaller shops operating the space, that level of thought into what the customer's getting. So that's one thing is I see growing design and installation pretty significantly. I think there are some price. Not necessarily.

Rory Tyer: Some price increases probably, especially in the spring, but mostly implementing some kind of like trade, like variable pricing as an example. So like you, you have a perennial at a certain size and it's Hey, if you buy three or more, there's this price point. If you only buy one, There's this price point, which is like one or 2 higher.

Rory Tyer: And so you're actually subconsciously encouraging people to buy more which improves your turns. It makes it, and it makes people think they spent less money. Oh, great. I got three and I didn't have to get them for that price. They got them for this lower price. Then me, as long as you're protecting your margins on that lower price.

Rory Tyer: You're giving them, it's like a win and so that is a little bit complicated and involves a lot of adjusting things and retagging and creating some new signage to make sure that's not confusing for the consumer, but that definitely needs to happen. And then. Okay, so then so that's like the relative term if I

Jack Carr: yeah, what about marketing like so is it

Rory Tyer: yeah, so that's also happening

Jack Carr: Cuz I can't

Rory Tyer: imagine that

Jack Carr: A lot of the old like the old timer We've done it this way for 40 years.

Jack Carr: I can't imagine they're used utilizing new marketing techniques driving

Rory Tyer: reviews So

Jack Carr: what does that look like for you? What where are you driving that kind of business

Rory Tyer: when we? The new point of sales and inventory system is also manages like maintains customer data a lot better than their previous system did.

Rory Tyer: And so I've retrained all of my, anybody that runs the register to like always ask for phone number, phone number and email. Address as well. And then we, that's connected to MailChimp. So I launched an email newsletter, which we've never had before. And I also launched a, like a membership program called SP club.

Rory Tyer: And I'm experimenting with I'm not giving discounts necessarily as part of the program, which, a lot of stores like, Hey, if you're in the club, you get 10 percent off or whatever. We may do some special occasion discounts for some things, but the main draw for that has been, Hey, If you're in the SP club within 24 hours of us getting a new shipment of plants, you'll get an email and a text alert with some pictures and some information about what we got.

Rory Tyer: And so you will know, if we get stuff on a Tuesday, you don't have to wait until Saturday or call the store and see, Hey, what have you gotten? People do get a coupon on their birthday. That's automated through MailChimp and through the system. And we have a family festival we're doing.

Rory Tyer: So it's another marketing is I'm doing an event. On October 5th with some, like a petting zoo and some stuff for kids and families. Cause one of the biggest democrats in Greenville is young families and with the nursery has not historically tried to lean into that. And there's a ton of stuff you can do there with classes, with creative activities on site for kids to spend their time doing with these kinds of events.

Rory Tyer: And so that, that is part of the marketing plan is to try to do more events. And I would say that, yeah, the newsletter And then I've got a couple of local brand partnerships. Like my daughter's elementary school. We didn't, we sponsored the PTA. So we've got a banner hanging up in the ball field and another local school.

Rory Tyer: I've have a banner in their drive thru line. And we'll probably try to do some more of those just to get, cause I, I run into people all the time. The nurse has been here next year will be the 60th anniversary of it being Greenville. And I still run into people all the time who are like not new here, but they didn't know about us.

Rory Tyer: And so that was, that's part of my thesis for the business was okay, post COVID this industry did really well, the economy shifting I think we may have to fight for our revenue a little more the next five years than they did the last five. But I, one of those tools is doing any marketing at all doing any newsletters at all, doing any local partnerships.

Jack Carr: Yeah.

Rory Tyer: Like doing any. And yeah, so that's some of the marketing stuff that we're doing right now. So when I think about changes, and growth, I think in terms of what are we doing right now? What do I see for the spring? And then there's like a two year cliff. So the two year thing that's coming is I've got several team members who are at or near retirement age.

Rory Tyer: And some of them are some of the like harder worker, more knowledgeable team members. And in some ways I think some of our harder times are potentially in front of us because. I've got this runway that hopefully is a couple of years, but you never know, right? Personal circumstances or health or whatever could change.

Rory Tyer: But I've got that runway to try and document as much as I can and implement just some more standardization around roles and responsibilities and training. Cause it was very informal. There's really no formal staff structure that I inherited. Then the five to 10 year thing is like, I think the trend for in person Retail garden centers is to be more of an experience.

Rory Tyer: So give people more reasons to come more reasons to stay so that you can do a better job of increasing average order value and sending people home with more stuff. And so you want to become more like a destination that people like to meander. And have events and classes accordingly. And that requires a lot of infrastructure investment.

Rory Tyer: The building that I have right now is almost, it's extremely old. Like almost 60 years old. So I can't really change anything without suddenly tripping a ton of local building codes that I'm all of a sudden responsible for. Like we only have one bathroom on an an eight acre property.

Rory Tyer: And so this, for this event that we're about to do, in fact, I need to do this. I got to go like rent, reserve a couple of port a potties just to make sure because people are going to be hanging out longer. But like the five to 10 year vision, I'd like to pay down my loans. At least the seven, a loan much faster than the 10 year.

Rory Tyer: Amortization. If I could do it in five, that'd be incredible. But eventually, someday, what really should happen is the building should be raised and we should rebuild on a different part of the property. That's a little bit more removed from the flood zone so that we can then have the building in one section and all of the parking and the entrance in one particular spot.

Rory Tyer: Because. Traffic foot traffic flow is super important to, shrinkage control and customer experience. And right now it's a little bit of a choose your own adventure when you come onto the property. And some of that is the charm. If you want to come get out of your car and you don't want to talk to anybody, you just want to come park and get out and go walk.

Rory Tyer: Like you're in a park. You can do that. And it's, whether people we dismiss you or we're busy like you may not even get greeted and until you walk by a certain place and that's really not great for, for sales and for customer experience. And so that's the bigger picture.

Rory Tyer: The other aspect of that. It's interesting is Greenville has this really amazing system of trails and greenway called the swamp rabbit trail. And there is an expansion plan to bring the trail along the section of the river that borders our property. And I had a conversation a couple weeks after closing with a guy from the city.

Rory Tyer: And I was just like, I want you to know, I am all in on this. If you guys can find the political will and get buy in from the other landowners along this path to do it. I am all in we'll figure it out. And if we did that. It would create the opportunity for a much more like serving walkup customers business model.

Rory Tyer: Probably with food and drink and maybe some entertainment. And there's examples of other very successful businesses along that trail that, that have done that. And so that's the, I like to dream about what that could look like, so that's like further out. I think the path to get there is just to.

Rory Tyer: Double down on the selection and the service that we're known for and just make sure that there's nobody in Greenville Like it's the population has grown so much. It's projected to continue to grow which is a great tailwind to have for in person retail But you just have to double down on That loyal fanatical core of people that do want to get that text every single time you get plants And then just making sure that like anytime you're doing anything That everybody who can possibly hear about it, hears about it and do newsletter and through, ads and stuff like that.

Rory Tyer: And so we're just at the beginning of that, I would say. And we've seen positive results. I sent out the, that SP club thing. And within a week, I think I had a hundred people sign up. And we've grown our newsletter a lot since, since. But there's just all kinds of little things like, Oh yeah, I need signs in the store with QR codes to get people to sign up and someone's got to make those and that's going to be me.

Rory Tyer: So yeah,

Jack Carr: exactly. I've got to do that. Very cool. I think that you're on the right track. The young business owner, brand new energy is real. I love it. But very cool. I agree with your thesis. I think that's the move for a lot of in store retailers to become an experiential kind of move.

Jack Carr: Very cool. So Rory as you go on your journey, where can people find you, follow along, see these newsletters? What's the spot?

Rory Tyer: Yeah we're revamping our website. So I would say you can go to the website and sign up for the newsletter, but it's not quite there yet. In the meantime, following me on Twitter or LinkedIn is probably just we're retired and there's really nobody else with my name.

Rory Tyer: So you would probably find me. But yeah, I love I, I'm passionate about entrepreneurship through acquisition because so far it has been like a huge net positive for me and my family. And I think I'm giving my girls just a different perspective on what's possible than I had growing up and my parents are wonderful, but they weren't entrepreneurs and this is just, yeah, not something I, either of them did.

Rory Tyer: And regardless of how this ends up, I'm going to show my kids like, this is something you can pursue. But yeah, Twitter, LinkedIn, you can shoot me an email. But those. Twitter, LinkedIn are the best places to get a hold of me if you want to chat.

Jack Carr: Very cool. All right, guys. Thank you for listening.

Jack Carr: If you like what you heard today, go ahead and leave us a five star review wherever you listen, as well as follow us at ownedandoperated. com. Sign up for the newsletter, join the Facebook page, all of the 10, 000 things you can do to interact with us. So appreciate y'all for listening and thank you, Rory, for coming on today.

Rory Tyer: You're welcome, man. Good to talk with you.

Jack Carr: Awesome.

Get more Owned and Operated on YouTube, on Twitter, or with our weekly newsletter.