In this episode of the podcast, we have as our guest Scott Berman, the owner and founder of Florida Window & Door. His company covers the entire east coast of Florida from Jacksonville to Miami. In 10 years of being in the business, he’s grown his company to over 250 employees. We touched base for a bit on issues he encountered with recruitment and solutions he implemented to grow his team to that size. For the rest of the episode, we talked about the acquisitions he made, the process, and how it led his company to grow exponentially.
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00:21 Introduction of Scott Berman of Florida Window & Door
01:31 Overview of Florida Window & Door
- What his business does
- His subsidiary companies and what they focus on
02:37 How he got into the business and the start of Florida Window & Door
- What he did before in Ohio and selling his first business
- Struggles in starting a window business in Florida
04:17 Differences of window business in Ohio vs. Florida
- Licensing and regulations
- Work ethic and work force
05:12 Challenges in keeping employees long-term
- Differences in the workforce in Ohio vs. Florida
- Issues and problems caused by shortage of labor
07:45 Why Florida Window & Door was successful from the beginning
- The one thing his business did differently
- How he navigated the problems in recruiting
09:05 How he built up a team of 260+
- Advantage of continual recruitment
- Suggestions for recruiting if you’re a smaller operation
- Why they’re not hiring people from the same industry
14:10 Working with subcontractors for installations
- How they manage working with subcontractors
- Standards for subcontractors
- How they get subcontractors to work with them as often – pay package
17:11 How he acquired some other businesses and the deals he made
- Why his philosophy from the beginning is to make the company get bigger and bigger
- How a production/manufacturing issue pushed them to acquire another company, the Indian River Glass
- How acquiring their second company, Central Window, gave them a new geographic distribution
- Differences in both deals
23:06 Upsides of both deals and lessons in acquisitions
- Why he chose to buy another company instead of opening another office
- What kind of buyer he is
- How he considers a new deal
24:54 Advice for someone looking to grow through acquisitions
- Most important things to know before the acquisition
- Red flags to look for in companies
- What he looks into in a company and why he interviews every employee
29:39 How to know if an acquisition is the right decision for growth
- Things that you have to decide on when acquiring another company
- Why he lets his company and subsidiaries compete against each other on purpose
31:26 Overlaps in all companies
- What aspects are overlapping among all 3 companies or their corporate departments
- What they do to manage corporate departments
35:27 How he structures the deals
- Why he chooses a hold-back
- How he structured his previous deals
40:46 Challenges of dealing with business brokers
- Why you should be equitable to both sides when negotiating a deal
- Why you should buy a company for the people, not the owner
42:55 Scott’s plans for the company in the future
- Vision for Florida Window & Door for the next 2 years
If this episode helped you in any way or gave you rich insights on acquisitions, leave us a review on iTunes. For any questions or further discussions about this episode, join and post on the Facebook group linked above.
