The Turn: Blue Collar to Billions

Growth can be a silent killer if the systems underneath it crack. When a business scales too quickly, top-line revenue might skyrocket, but profit margins and operational standards can easily collapse into chaos if the foundation isn't set. In our second episode with Cory Brymer, who bootstrapped a fiber optics infrastructure company from zero to $50 million, we unpack the brutal reality of managing hyper-growth and eventually exit...

Being a penny-pincher works on day one, but it will inevitably choke your operations as you scale. In a landscape where well-funded competitors are constantly trying to poach your best people, knowing how to properly structure compensation and upgrade infrastructure is the difference between stalling out and breaking through. We sit down with Cory Brymer to dissect how he bootstrapped a technology infrastructure company from minimu...

Selling a business isn't just about a clean balance sheet; sometimes, the dirt sitting underneath your warehouse dictates the terms of the deal. With private equity pouring unprecedented capital into the blue-collar sector, understanding how to strategically position both your operations and your real estate has never been more critical for founders. We sit down with an industrial commercial real estate expert to break down the hea...

Tying your entire personal identity to a company is the fastest way to lose yourself when the business is gone. In a market where founders are constantly chasing the next revenue milestone, knowing when and exactly how to walk away is a rare, necessary skill. We talk with Jonathan Sherrill about his journey from getting fired by a private equity firm to bootstrapping a manufacturing business built strictly for a strategic exit.

We g...

Stagnation is the silent killer of middle-market businesses. Scaling past the $40 million revenue mark requires a fundamental shift in infrastructure and leadership mindset that most owners simply miss until it is too late. Greg Hirsch joins the show to share his expertise in buying mid-sized companies, breaking through their growth barriers, and engineering highly profitable exits.

We sit down to break down the exact playbook for a...

Phil Cooper joined the family pest control business in 1984. He got handed the title of commission-only door-to-door salesman, and went to work. His brother wanted nothing to do with pest control — he hated the pesticides, hated the smell, wanted to be a scientist. Phil restructured the company so his brother could come back as an entomologist instead. That decision became the thing that eventually attracted Terminix.

Phil's d...

Chris Lee's mom called him with a U-Haul in the driveway. He'd already accepted a job in Little Rock. The U-Haul went to Texas instead. He joined his family's landscape company — Earthworks — when it had 25 employees, an answering machine, a pager, and no real systems. His stepdad was a brilliant operator who couldn't tolerate people. Chris was the opposite. He liked people. That turned out to be enough to start somethi...

Seth Zeller's dad and uncle started an electrical contracting company in the early eighties on a handshake and a work ethic. No succession plan. No operating agreement. Just family, and the assumption that family would figure it out. When five second-generation Zellers entered the business, that assumption got tested. Hard. Seth pushed the envelope — bought out the first gen, took the reins, grew the business from $7 million ...

What if you got exactly the number you dreamed of—and it was still the wrong decision? Danny Namerow built Farryn Electric from scratch on lessons his electrician father taught him the hard way: diversify, don't work for builders, and never let one client own your business. He pivoted to service work, adopted flat rate pricing, built a tight crew of six, and watched his margins soar. 

Then a private equity firm called thr...

Jay Maier started a tree service company in Rochester, Minnesota at 29. No business background. Parents were educators. He paid himself $36,000 a year on $180,000 in revenue and reinvested everything else into equipment and people. He scraped, clawed, and grew—slowly and conservatively.

The real shift came around 2005 when Jay stopped doing the work and started developing the people who did it. He realized his best value wasn'...

Jerry Schill spent 20 years building a landscaping business with his brother. Design-build, residential, creative work—chasing every shiny object along th way. But then they split. 

Jerry took the maintenance side and rolled back to $3 million. He'd admit that he was scared. But he got laser-focused. And from 2012 to 2019, he took the business from 0% recurring revenue to 93%. 

He ditched residential entirely, built a...

Tony Mallinger joined his family's roofing products manufacturing company in 2001. His dad bought it in the late eighties for about $2 million. By the time Tony led the first sale in 2020, it was doing $62 million. Four years later, after two acquisitions under private equity, they sold again—for $410 million.

But this isn't just a growth story. It's a family business story. Three brothers, a father who wanted to treat everyon...

Bryan Carruthers started his first company in the middle of the 2008 financial crisis, right after college. A tiny consulting firm called Consilium. He sold it to a publicly traded business a few years later. Then he went the private equity route—got backing, bought a 15-person shop, and built it into a national $50 million EBITDA business in under five years. Then he sold it to one of the largest consulting firms in the worl...

Chris Meyer didn't stumble into entrepreneurship—he trained for it. Two and a half years at Ernst & Young, 400 business plans reviewed, and a clear list of criteria for what he wanted. In 2006, he found it: a $5-6 million materials company called Mintech that specialized in turning industrial byproducts into construction and environmental solutions. He was 27, had never worked in the industry, and put everything on the li...

Tom Heaviland bought a one-truck landscape company with his dad in 1985. They each put up $11,000. Thirty-five years later, he sold it to BrightView—the largest player in the industry—for millions. But getting there wasn't linear. He lost his biggest contract overnight when a developer pulled out. His dad died suddenly in 1997. And for seven years, he was stuck splitting everything 50/50 with his stepmom who even didn't...

Kris Birch started working in his dad's lawn and snow business in 2005. Fifteen years later, he sold it to a national brand. The deal looked good on paper, but within a year, most of the team was gone and the business had been absorbed into corporate machinery. When he finally walked away, he discovered something important: he'd already started building his next company.

But Kris’s story is a little different because most foun...

Today’s guest is Adam Mopsick. Adam started a construction business in Miami in 1996. Twenty-five years later, he sold it to private equity for life-changing money. The 2008 recession killed his GC business and forced him to reinvent, building an owner's rep firm from scratch that grew every quarter for six years. When he finally got the exit everyone dreams of, he discovered the hardest part wasn't the deal. It was figuring ...

Welcome to The Turn.

Host Kory Mitchell sits down with blue-collar business owners who've built something real—businesses like HVAC, landscaping, pest control, tree services, roofing, and construction.

These are honest conversations about the challenges, the lessons, and the moments that changed everything. Not M&A theory or deal structures, but the real stories from founders who've scaled and sold. The challenges ...