J.J. Levenske
speaker
141 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jan 2025
J.J. Levenske’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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And then we had some other names and we voted on it. And at that time, I think there were five of us. And so we said, let's stick with Blue Wave. Well, then we went to get the domains and the URLs and all that stuff. And the B-L-U-E spelling was taken by, I think it was like a kitchen remodeler and a sailboat. One was in California and one was up in Spokane, Washington.
And so we looked at each other and we're like, do we dare take the French spelling of blue? And we're like, let's do it. Let's try it. Okay. No lie, first eight weeks of existence, worst effing decision we've ever made in our lives. No one knew how to find us. Like Google, we don't come up anything because who's got the French spelling?
Nowadays, it's the best marketing play I could have asked for, right? Because people go, what's the significance of your name? Well, Tommy, if someone asks you about you and you get to tell your story, guess what? It makes it personal, right? Then the business transaction part becomes almost inconsequential. It's like if they can get to know you and what you're all about, then...
You're being humanized. You're not commoditized anymore. And I could have never planned that. So I tell people the story all the time is that was the best dumb mistake we ever made. Yeah.
Yeah, all of it. So let me go to where, you know, what's, what's the ethos of this podcast? And that is, well, JJ, you're a commercial general contractor. What are you doing on home services podcast? So about three years ago, I had to look at myself in the mirror, much like, you know, a lot of the things that you talk about when you do your freedom events and a lot of your podcasting.
is what defines you as a leader, an entrepreneur, and all those kind of things. And guess what? We're usually the best visionaries, but we're also the worst bottlenecks in our companies, right? So I had to make that decision. I looked at myself three years ago and said, I need freaking help. So I went to an executive retreat. up in Utah with a Navy SEAL guy that I knew and three other CEOs.
It was the most profound week of my life. It turned me upside down. And it basically made me realize that, A, I've probably been on the spectrum my entire life, probably a high-performing form of Asperger's, that I can see things, but I do a terrible job of communicating. In other words, I can see the vision of a company. It's just hard for me to...
disseminate and authenticate it back down to troops and stuff like that. So I used to get frustrated. So I came out of that going, okay, I got to go hire some really good people. And the first thing I did was, and you've talked about this before, I went and found the best CFO that I couldn't afford. Notice I said couldn't afford. Yeah. And made that decision.
And in that negotiation and in that thing, he and I decided that it was collective. We wanted to diversify our business to grow the enterprise value of Blue Wave because A, the margins in commercial general contracting are not attractive. They're not. They're low. They suck. Give me an example. 2% to 3%. Yeah. Right. And if you put anyone else on the show, that's where you'll be.
So think about it. You got to do $100 million to make two to $3 million to just reinvest in your business, not including the risk of what happens if you have to have to call out on one of your bonds or something. And no one will admit it, but the going rate for bidding is you're somewhere 4% to 7%. But by the time you take out your SG&A, you're down to 2% to 3%. And that's pretty typical.
Pretty typical. So now you understand why the big, large general contractors, if you look at them, the only reason they're successful is they've been in business 20, 30 years. And they just keep, you know, once you get big enough, then they self-insure, they self-bond, and you do other things. They find a point here. Yeah, and you reinvest.
investing in assets at that time, you know, as far on the balance sheet and the P&L. Okay. So where I was going, well, is that Mark and I said, he had a passion for it. And I said, and I agreed, let's bring MP&E, mechanical, plumbing, electrical in-house, and let's do it not only to increase enterprise value, but let's also do it as a value add to our customers.
Because in general contracting, those are typically some of your three biggest contracts. And they can also be your three biggest pinch points. Well, if we're controlling our own nest, Then we have no excuse. If we perform well, we're a hero. If we screw it up, then we're a zero. But at least we can control it. We don't have to rely on partnerships anymore. And so that's what launched it.
And we're now a little over two years into that wallet share type business attitude. And it's just within the last six months that it's finally skyrocketed. And just before we came on there, I told you we made our first acquisition of a plumbing company in San Antonio. And we're excited just to grow it. A commercial. Yep. Well, no. Great question, Tommy.
In our general contracting, we're only in commercial. On our mechanical, plumbing, and electrical, both new construction and service, and it varies, you know, we try to diversify. But no, that is residential and commercial. Huh. Yep. That's awesome. You know, it's much like Al Levy. He's got, you know... He's my main mentor. Yeah, you know, it's his story, but different. Yeah.
Well, just like you, you might as well tell it all. And that is when we sit around our private table where our target is 500 million a year with a blended EBIT of, you know, you're looking at somewhere 20 some percent. It was just achievable if you look at all of that through service and new construction.
And our goal, right, wrong, or indifferent, is we look at instead of doing big penetration in single markets, having kind of a cross-branded thing in multiple markets to take out the sine wave so that if Phoenix collapses, will Houston still be sustainable? If Jacksonville collapses, is Atlanta, will the sine wave kind of just even itself out? Right.
and much like what you did we'll definitely entertain probably a strategic private equity sponsor yep and um only so that against making up numbers let's say if there was a 50 to 75 million dollar infusion or somewhere in that range does that now allow us to go from two to three hundred million up to seven or eight hundred million you and i both know those companies love that kind of growth attitude and if you can lay it out on paper in the pro forma
which we've built the business plan already. They're like, yep, those numbers. But just like you, I'm not in any big hurry to sell. I'm in more of a hurry to take that investment and grow it to something even better.
Well, and you hit the nail on the head as... I have the empathy of the blue collar type thing because that's the way I was raised, right? And when I look at what you're doing, what we're doing is we're creating jobs and lifestyles for people. And like your book in Elevate, when you talk about how You've created a plan where if they want to be a millionaire, here's how you get there. Go.
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