Episode 235: Alex Bridgeman (@aebridgeman) is joined by Chris Hoffman (Chris-Hoffman).
My guest, Chris Hoffmann, is the President and CEO of Hoffmann Brothers, a home services business based in St. Louis. Hoffmann Brothers have scaled from $10 million in 2015 to over $100 million in revenue in 2023. We talk about how that journey happened, their experience building executive teams, investing in people through a training university they started for ongoing training, and investing activity for home services today.
We also talk about what perpetual non-private equity ownership enables them to do, including their unique strategy for managing cash investments and liquidity as a growing family office. This was a ton of fun for me and I hope you enjoy this conversation as well.
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Learn more about Alex and Think Like an Owner at https://tlaopodcast.com/
Links:
Topics:
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:39) - Hoffman University
(00:06:27) - Enabling scale and revenue growth
(00:08:56) - Differences in PE-backed company structures
(00:12:26) - Retention and morale-boosting tactics
(00:15:59) - Leadership team composition
(00:19:17) - Surfacing high-performers & evaluating management teams
(00:26:53) - Using Search Firms to find talent
(00:28:26) - Choosing an Executive Search firm
(00:31:31) - Financial sponsor interest in the HVAC and Home Services market
(00:34:16) - Reasons Consolidators are failing
(00:36:41) - Debt, Public Equity Strategies & Fund Investing
(00:46:01) - Goals for the family office
(00:47:48) - Building new locations from scratch vs. acquiring existing companies
(00:53:38) - Acquiring a school
(00:56:53) - Changing strongly held beliefs
(00:57:55) - Chris’ favorite business
