Sparking Success with Aaron Opalewski

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (00:00.16)
Welcome to Sparking Success with Aaron Opeluski. Aaron brings you conversations that spark innovation, cultivate leadership skills, and pave the way for your business success. In each episode, we delve into the dynamic world of business and leadership, exploring strategies, insights, and success stories that fuel your professional journey. Welcome back to Sparking Success. My name is E .J. Swanson, and I'm here with Aaron Opeluski. Aaron, how you doing today, man?

How are you? I'm doing good. It's been a full day of a podcast filming all those type of things. I feel like we're getting in a great stride with both, you know, the Spark companies podcast that if you haven't had a chance to check that out yet, you know, Aaron obviously is the CEO of our companies and we have a podcast dedicated to that as well as a sparking success here where Aaron dives in.

a little bit deeper and talks more from the CEO aspect. And today I think we're going to talk about something that not only am I thankful for, because I'm a part of one of these things. I'll try and keep a little bit of tension still out there, but also the aspect of this has been a huge part of the success that you've been able to spark over the years. And that's talking about vertical integrations. And Aaron, I know that this is something that people have heard of over the years.

you know, their business practices, maybe they learned about it in school, maybe some of their business partners have, you know, had vertical integrations. But talk to us a little bit today about what vertical integrations are the theory behind that. You know, for me, and I don't, I guess maybe I'm off on this technical definition, but when I think vertical integrations, I'm looking for things that, you know, we can either, that we're paying for, you know, outsource that we can bring in -house.

Or in our version of that, it could be in -house in one company, or it could be a new company in the portfolio now. Got it. Okay. It's kind of either or in both. Okay. So what for you helped kind of spark this, develop this within your mindset of being a CEO, your mindset of being a business owner?

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (02:16.078)
Well, you're looking for ways to drive efficiencies within the business, look for opportunities, you know, and, uh, you'll probably get into it, but as, as our company has grown, right. It's part of it is seeing unique abilities that people have. Yeah. Um, or areas where you're struggling with vendors, right. And you believe there's a better way to do it. You see some of the issues and know how you would do it differently. You start to learn about that. Um,

Maybe through some mistakes, you know, over periods of times or things that you don't like the way they go. And it doesn't mean that you should do everything, but as you're building up some of that, like data and experience, I think there's opportunities down the line to look at that and say, Hey, do we, do we bring any of this in house? Got it. You know, again, in our instance, like, could this be a company down the road? Right. We have instances where we bring it in house, get it to a certain point, and then it may.

expand into its own, right? So that's how I look at it. You're looking to drive down efficiencies, lower costs, create leverage, create additional revenue centers, into those things. You can bring it into your culture. That can be great. Also could take you off focus. So like a lot to get into on the top. Yeah. Talk about, um, the two of those things there for a second, creating leverage.

and then how it can take you off focus as you go with vertical integrations. How does it create leverage for people and why should they be thinking about it that way? Well, if you do it right, you have the ability to maybe create a new revenue center or cut costs or both. Create opportunities within your companies for people that think, man, they have this skill set.

but we don't do this. In some of these instances, maybe you do not do this and maybe they own it. Maybe that's their opportunity to grow with inside your organization or a bond. So those are, you know, it's sweet spots for it. And then sometimes as people do this, as they get into, let's just call them passion points of their own. Maybe they go for a vertical integration. That's just something they're really passionate about.

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (04:32.718)
but it doesn't add to their business. I think both of us have seen that happen over the years with different people. They get really passionate about a hobby or something like that, and they start, they attempt to bring in a vertical integration with it. How, when people don't choose the right vertical integrations, does that then knock them off course? Well, I think if you choose the wrong one, or I think it's...

You could choose the wrong one. I think less people choose the wrong one and instead they do it at the wrong times. Okay. Including us. Like there's some of these scenarios that I think maybe we did at the wrong times. Good ideas, wrong time. Got it. Cause it all comes down to execution. Yeah. Timing is super important. So for me, you know, it's like we're making these episodes. Like what would I want to hear? Yeah. What would need a couple of years ago, fighting value and now would be the timing in when you do some of these things that's vital. And.

We'll give away some tactical stuff on that. I've been at, I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I think timing does obviously plays into all different areas of business. But as you look at timing with vertical integrations, do you look at those when you're on the top? Do you look at those when you're on the struggle? Tell me more about the timing and why that's so important. What you've learned in that.

from our experience, right? And we're still learning every day, but I like to look at finding leverage points as we're having success. And it's like, hey, what's our core competencies? And as we're doing really good at those and for us, like a key time in this, like we were talking about this yesterday in a training, we're talking about crossing the next igniter. And some of the things that...

that we have options to look at doing. And instead of just talking about that, like, oh yeah, we have these options to do this. We're communicating that more as part of the next NIDR cross. Yes, we want to cross the next NIDR because it's going to help us drive towards the mission. It will create more promotions. It will help people earn more income. The company will grow to another level, which if doing that right, will create more income generation.

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (06:50.158)
And for the company as well too. Cool. But like, what else? Well, hey, you know, these other things that we're talking about that we're going to do in the future, like when we cross that, we get to look at doing so we can not do all of them. We may do all of them. Right. Like it just depends. Like, but we're going to be able to pick like kind of our next steps in the big mission. And what do we add on? We got that. That's like two points for us. So I look at it that way now, like get really good.

at what you're setting out to do. As long as you're doing something that you're like, if you're not good at it already, maybe you need to evaluate that. Right. What makes you really good. Cause if you're trying to do too many things that you're not good at, I think you just dilute yourself more. Got it. But as you get really good and then maybe you stack up some other skills or experiences, that's where I find a lot of fun in the, like being entrepreneurial on like, okay.

What can we do to drive down costs, create more revenue, create more opportunities for people, potentially do things in a different, innovative way than other companies are doing and ultimately create more leverage. Got it. Got it. Okay. So, yeah. So, so timing obviously is, is key in this. Share with us some of the practical things that you've learned within the timing of these over the years. Well,

You know, there's different points when you can do this stuff. Like we've done, like, let's go to the example real quick. We'll get more tangible on like maybe timeline. So if you looked at Austin last year, so some, some key things have happened, you know, in 2022, we crossed our igniter, like our Superbowl, right? And remind everybody what an igniter is here at Spark companies.

It's like our objective for the year. It would be like the equivalent of winning the Super Bowl that year. And they expanded as we grow. Harder to reduce each one that we cross. Like which one's the best one? The next one? But, you know, each one has meant more and more to me because I feel like each one has been harder to accomplish and achieve because it's taken a bigger team, a more focused team.

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (09:15.686)
And we'll focus on delivering while for clients at scale or whatever scale looks like now in the moment. So, but as we cross those things, like, okay, like this last one was big for us because it moved us to a new stratosphere of like gross profit production. Right. And so within that, you know, I think if a company is doing, you know, a million dollars in gross profit,

let's say they're profitable on that. Well, that's probably a good salesperson, like the entrepreneur. And that's what it is. Maybe another couple of people on the team or maybe even less than that with technology. It depends on the business. From a service business standpoint, let's stay there. A three million, and we're going to do an episode on this. I'll go quickly. A three million, okay, I'm starting to maybe put...

a little more of a team behind it. It still could be that one person that's either generating all the sales or is the main rainmaker. You got a couple other people starting to do account manager, you know, do some other stuff. Yeah. Some ops. Well, then you move towards like, okay, now we're going to go after 10 million in growth sprock. Okay. And okay. Now we got to have some other people that are good at this too. Can't just be that bad entrepreneur. Now maybe the entrepreneur is one of those people.

Uh, but if that's the case, then you got to have some other good operational people to start leading others and bring them up to speed. Maybe there's a transition where, uh, that owner or president or CEO or whatever it is, they, they move out of that wall, which is its own challenge within that bucket. Right? Well, it's when, to me, when you cross that $10 million line in gross profit, now you've built a team.

of talented people, most likely, at least in my experience. Right. Okay. This might be a good time to start looking at doing some vertical integrations. Got it. And then within that, like, okay, like, do I think you'd go out and try 15 things at once? No, I don't. But think that's, that's the time that I'd recommend really starting to drive down the next. I think you got a lot of meat on the bone with your, the core of what you're doing.

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (11:38.574)
at the 1 million, 3 million, and 10 million level. And you still do after that, but I think you learn a lot about working with vendors, about things that work well, things that don't work well. You're building this team, right? And they get some of that unique, you see some unique things that people can do. And when you mix all that together, you probably have some opportunities to start driving some things that look like some form of vertical integration.

doesn't have to be a company, it might just be as simple as you start to do some stuff in -house that you are outsourcing. You're probably doing some of that from 3 million to 10 million anyways, but you can look at it like, hey, what could we do this with? And do one a quarter or one a year, whatever it may be. Yeah, now I know in past episodes we've talked about different service lines and things like that. Maybe somebody's jumping in on...

just this episode right now, this is the first episode they've listened to. For you, there's a difference between service lines and vertical integrations. And what I mean by that is it's not just, hey, we are really taking off in industrial versus light industrial, or we're really getting into heavy machinery versus landscaping, whatever their business is. That's different.

than a vertical integration, correct? Yes, I would think so. I'd get it more like, hey, let's use Bolt as the example. It's been a big one for us. So we're doing outsource marketing, social content, and we loved who we were. They did a great company. And that was a season of the business. We knew at some point we wanted to, we had a vision to bring that.

internal in some capacity. And it was like, okay, do we bring this internal and house it through Talent, which is the biggest company, you know, through establishing the portfolio of companies. It's another way we're able to get leverage on doing this because we were able to actually build out a client base or what became Bolt. But Bolt started instead of, even though we're going to be doing, you know, external client, you know, that's going to be part of the business.

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (14:02.318)
where we started that business is internally. And we like doing that. We've done this with other vertical integrations that we've done where we start internally and we're our own customer. Customers within the portfolio of companies. We get good pricing. We use that and we get great practice for that vertical integration. And then when we get really good at that, we can take that to market. And I think if I can on the other side, I know I'm...

really play the host here. But if, if I can for a second, just talk about this from the other perspective as the integrator of that, that vertical, there's a couple of key things that, that I've learned within this that not only you've taught me, but other people that, you know, are a part of those vertical integrations here, you know, that you lead that I think is, is really key to point out. And you just hit one of them. One, it gives a little bit of an on -ramp, right?

It gives an on -ramp to, you know, get all the, the SOPs, the procedures, all those things in line, ramped up so that when you bring it to market, it's, it's a really great product. And, and we've been able to do that, not just with Bolt as we now launch out into the market, but also in other areas. And I think those business owners that are out there, other CEOs, other leaders, you know, other entrepreneurs, that's one of the things they, they need to.

to really in my perspective hold in on because it gives them that opportunity to make sure that when they go to market that it's a really great product because the hope of this not only is to have the right timing but as you say, it creates more GP, it creates more leverage within your businesses, it gives you the opportunity especially if you have the same mindset that you do is helping people grow and you know,

creating those opportunities for growth that people can have. And I think that's a major takeaway from the other side that I've really learned in this, that it does create even more leverage. The timing is in on that. What else would you add to the timing, or how would you help someone identify that it's not the right time to do a vertical integration? Well, if you're missing those targets, you know, we work off like a gross profits trade, right? So like if we...

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (16:28.942)
don't reach those igniters or we're off our gross profit strategy, or we were struggling on core competencies or things that we've already rolled out, it would be time to either hunker down and work on getting better on those things that we already have set up, right? Which is probably the case. Or if we're, you know, truly struggling in an area, like we try, you know, implement something, or we have things set up and something's just like,

going south, like, well, should you be doing it at all? Right. You know, but from a standpoint of like when should someone start vertically integrating, well, if you're struggling with what your core business is, and what I mean by struggling is like you're struggling to grow it or reach your targets that you have set as like key objectives to reach like as next steps. I don't believe that's a good time to vertically integrate because what you're doing is adding complexity as it does add complexity as this.

It can be efficient and it could be effective and it can ultimately be a good thing and create opportunities for people, but it will create additional complexity within the business too. And if you're not, like nothing's ever perfect, right? But if you're not moving things in your core area as well, like the last thing that I would recommend doing at that time is add more complex. Yeah, it's like that illustration.

already. Yeah, you need to, if anything, you need to look for your opportunities to lower the complexity, lower the bar on how to cross over the success line, you know, and then work from there. Start to compound that and build up to that, right? But like when something is just not going right, throwing, you know, more people at a situation that isn't going right or saying, Hey, I'm going to disservice.

isn't going well, so let's add this, this and this. That's not what I'm talking about here. That's what I recommend. I know when we've done that in any capacity that hasn't worked well for us, I've had to look at that and say, hey, you've diluted yourself or you've put yourself in a situation where it was already going fast for you and you've ratcheted it up. And now like, if you don't get like,

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (18:54.862)
this going, you're gonna be off track. Yeah, you're gonna have a double down. We've heard the illustration and probably seen it, you know, in some of our friends or that type of thing that like their marriage maybe isn't going great. And they're like, let's have another kid that'll fix it. And it's like, actually, maybe it could, but in a lot of times that's like, oh, that just puts so much more complexity. That's the first thing I thought of when you said it's like, hey, let's fix the first thing first and then go from there. This up is, you know.

episode isn't on marriage, but, um, you know, that, that just, you know, immediately popped into my head. I think that the timing, you know, as you've shared is, is key. Um, is there a percentage of GP that you're over that you would say is safe to really start thinking of this? It's different for every business. It's a whole episode, which I think I'm not doing, but you know, most businesses from a gross profit to like net income.

standpoint, if they're operating well, are between 15 to 35 % on that gross profit to the net income. Now, we're in Detroit in automotive country and in mature industries and in some industries, that would be a really high margin. It's actually lower. Well, this stuff's even more important because you've to drive down on what you're...

doing well, if you get off track with that and your sales decrease 25, 30 % and you're on a lower margin business than what I just said and could really start to go from green to red pretty quick. Got it. You'll see that at mass scale within some of the bigger auto companies. It's like, man, they just lost a crazy amount of money, right? And then in the good years, you see like, oh, they made a crazy amount of money. Like the...

the volume is so high and the margins on that stuff is pretty thin and that's like getting open. That's at a mass scale. Right. You know, I think something else just popped into my head and I hope it's okay to take it here. As you go and you look at the timing of a vertical integration, from the CEO's perspective, how much of your time do you think is valuable to be

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (21:17.934)
starting that and oh I saw the smirk so I hope I don't know I don't know if it's good or bad that I went there but it's a good question but when you start a vertical integration from from your practice or what you've seen be successful or not how much are you diving into that vertical integration in the CEO spot and if if your wisdom would tell you as you're starting it where where do you feel like you need to be at in that leadership position as you roll that out?

So that totally depends on where your team is at. Okay. If you built up a great team that handles most of the day to day and you have clear communication lines on who's anoying more the day to day and the CEO is out of a lot of the day to day functions or the leader out of the day to day functions. I think that frees up.

more of your time for some creativity on, you know, I wouldn't spend all your time on what I would do as like projects. Yeah. But you, you might have some time to allocate to that. Got it. And you may do that, you know, like key initiatives that move the business forward, keep it forward thinking, um, set it apart from competitors. Like that's a sweet spot. You know, I, for me to be in a sweet spot with that, I, you don't,

I wouldn't put a percentage on it because I think it changes as different things come up within the business. Like you are the number one problem solver. Yeah. So as like, I can sit here and I don't know, I feel now coming from where we started to where we're at now that I, I'm still here day to day. I'm involved in the day to day, but knowing from where that was, when I was making the recruiting calls,

calling the clients, doing the payroll, doing the financing, doing the invoicing, opening the mail, to where it's at. Now, I look at myself as like I am relatively removed from the day to day. I'll talk with our leaders daily and are responsible for the day to day. But I'm in a spot now where at most times I'm able to spend 25.

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (23:40.942)
percent or so my time I'm being creative and full. Okay. Yeah, that's great. Like doing, but there's seasons and moments where that's not the case and things come up, but I got to put that to the side. Uh, also, you know, you look at like the overall, like, okay, if I'm working on something, it's a smaller project and it's, you know, let's say it's a million dollars in gross profit. Like, like, yes, I may spend some time there.

but we'll probably have other people lead that. And I'm maybe involved at the beginning or within points or a part of driving things on it. I may sit down on some meetings with that, but if that messes something up, you know, I got to watch that. Whereas like, okay, if that messes up one of our business units, if I'm not looking at or spending enough time with the leaders or making sure things are going well in one of our areas, that's like a $5 million business unit.

Well, that would be problematic. That would then be a miss. Yeah. So a lot of it comes down to rhythms and how the team's performing. And if we see issues, and even when we don't, I think sometimes the best time to really press down, challenge, look at things is when things are going well. So you want to be there to be a problem solver, step in where you need to course correct things.

But I don't want to like, if something's doing really well, I want to still, like that's probably when I'm actually going to come in and challenge the most out like pushing in growth. Cause that team is confident. They have momentum. There's just good things happening. It's a great time to like focus in on some of the, you be humble, crave improvement. Like, Hey, like you guys are killing it, but like there's another gear. There's nothing. Yeah, I got it. Huge industry. You know, we're talking about.

hundreds of billions of dollars and we have, we're a speck of dust in the market. But we have the ability to make skill sets here to continue to serve more people and what we do and do a good job of them, bring more people. Like you guys could double the size of your team and look at all the great stories you have on your team. What does that mean for the people on this team and the people you could bring into this team that is double its size? Yeah.

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (26:06.222)
So, sorry if I got off. No, that's really good. That's really good. You know, one of the things that I think sets this podcast apart, and I listen to a ton of podcasts, I know you do too, is we've said in the last, are you? I still listen to a few, but I'm, I think you need to be careful that you listen. Yeah. And you know what? It's unique even that you say that because I don't listen as much for

Uh, specific content. I listen now as a, uh, a host on multiple, um, podcasts, you know, that's part of our business model model here, as well as the aspect of like, what are they doing? How are they? So I'm more listen to like the production side of it. Yeah. But, but I think that's, that's good. And here's what I was going to say about that. I think one of the things that sets sparking success in your podcast, apart from other people.

is we don't do theory. We talk about things that work and things that didn't. So let's, there's a reason we're not talking about what to do when you cross over 30 million in gross profit. I can talk to you about that in revenue. I'll tell you your revenues are relevant in my opinion, compared to your gross profit. Gross profit moves the business or allows you to set up to move the business, right? Yeah. know, we'll cross that point, episode on that, but I'm not going to sit up here on something that we haven't accomplished yet.

And start to talk about it because I don't have the experience or I'm talking to you, like whether it's right or wrong and someone has a different opinion. Like there's probably other ways to do what we're saying. Yeah. They're absolutely. Okay. So let's. Well for us and what I would recommend to myself five years back, you know, what we were trying to achieve is. Yeah. Let's get in. Let's get into that because there's things that you have seen work and things that you haven't seen work. Let's talk.

Um, beyond what some people may think of theory and let's talk some practicals here. Um, let's talk about some of the vertical integrations that you've seen happen here at spark. Um, you can either share the examples of those or things that you've seen work specifically and things that haven't. I think where we've got ourselves in trouble with that would be around the timing. So we tried to do that below 10 million in gross profit. Okay. Even in, in some of those things work, but.

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (28:33.806)
The kind of one -two punch on this would be where we got outside of our core competencies too much. Okay. So, where did we win? What worked? What's working right now? All the stuff we do without giving everything away. Yeah. You know, what we're doing. Okay.

Uh, what we're doing on the operational side, what we're now doing on the consulting side, uh, at these levels, uh, for other businesses, uh, based on our experiences and us overcoming adversity and learning from our failures. Um, that's where it's worked. And where it hasn't worked is when we've stepped too far outside of our core competencies, cause we saw the opportunity to do something, but we really didn't have the skillset. And there's so much stuff to do. What am I going to do?

go do learn a whole, no, like even within these seven businesses, like what, I am not figuring out how to edit videos. I don't know anything about that. Like that's literally why it works. Like that's a unique skill set thing. That's something that you bring to the business and to the companies. And if I was sitting up all night doing that, I would be missing calls and I wouldn't be doing

what I owe to the people that I talk with directly every day and to the stuff that I oversee, I would be too deluded. That's not my sweet spot. Right. OK, so one of the vertical integrations that we have here is HR services, correct? It's something that a lot of us right now are super pumped about. I mean, I know you're fired up about it. I'm fired up about it.

Yeah, what, you know, like I think it's, it's great. So that's a, um, you know, a vertical integration for us here at spark companies that has, um, that has really taken a whole, it's gaining, gaining traction in that the timing seems to have been right. We had some key core people within it. We noticed that we could do, you know, uh, an awesome job at it with the right pricing. We can not only help our clients,

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (30:50.734)
Talk more about that. Without throwing the baby out with the bathwater, what can you tell us about that vertical integration and how you see it being successful and how it's been successful thus far?

Well, I don't know that I would deem the HR services specifically like a vertical integration. I look at that as an evolution. Okay. We took what we learned. You know, one of the things about the staffing industry is that you got people that are good at staffing, good at client facing, good at talking to clients. But, you know, a lot of us in staffing are good salespeople, really ops people. Okay. It's one thing to...

to do this. I think this is another thing that you see in that like, you start to see it between one and three million in gross profit and staffing companies and definitely between three to 10 is like part of it just building out an ops team. Yeah. So one of the unique things that we offer to our portfolio companies is the ability to have a centralized ops team and take the dynamic out, which we believe in has.

helped us facilitate faster growth on those levels because we can focus on the core competencies that those leaders are good at, right, and the teams are good at, which is recruiting, buy -in basing, talking to people, putting them to work in better opportunities than they were in, and not having to focus on the comp, the compliance, the onboarding, the invoicing, all the stuff on the cash collection.

the line of credits are told. But all that stuff that the team would have to figure out, like, well, we have that on a centralized model, and that's something that we deploy for all of our portfolio companies, and that's worked really, really well. You got that, and then we employ over 3 ,000 people last year, over 3 ,000 people, and I believe it was, I could be misspeaking, but 27 states.

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (33:01.678)
out of 50. Yep. And so it puts us in a unique position where we understand compliance in a bunch of different states. Yeah. We've learned about that, you know, somewhat through mistakes. We're not perfect on matter. Never had a penalty or a fight. Like you learn, but that's a lot of volume and state wise, right? And then a lot of volume in people, like a people amount. So.

You know, we're able to, like, we're doing things within that, within our ops team and how we onboard people that, like, other companies just haven't experienced. So if they're going to a new location or they're going through hiring waves or their HR team has, you know, a lot of roles within HR seem to, they need to rehire every two to three, no more than five years, just a natural progression within the role. Okay. Well,

because we do this in so many states and at such high volumes and in different sectors and skillset levels and all this kind of stuff and work in on the comp and on the benefits and like we have these, we've done reps and all these things, so many reps. Well, when a company of 50 needs help in this, like man, we do that every week. Like the whole, like we're doing, I mean, well more than that every single week. I mean, you saw how it was a week,

Oh yeah. So like, I mean, we just had hundreds of people. Right. Right. Um, and that's just what we're doing here, local in this area. That's not even across, across the country. I don't know if you heard Kevin, you know, from our national. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, talk about, I don't know his exact number, but with some more over a thousand people already on their program this year. Yeah. Uh, and again, that's their program alone. So think about all that. Right. Like we're doing a lot of that. Yeah. That puts us in a position.

to certain people. Great. There's instances where this is a lot like this is a serious thing that you want to do. Right. We're doing it at such a high pace volume and scale compared to most companies that we've seen a lot. Yeah. Come in and step out and consult guide, do portion.

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (35:17.454)
Okay. I feel like I don't want to leave anything on the table here. What else within this vertical integration, you know, thought process, why people should be doing it, why they shouldn't, do we need to know? Is there anything else out there in your head right now? In my opinion, we covered the bulk. We got the balance. I hope like if we did this again in another two, three years, then I have more to say on the topic. Yeah. More within it. Yeah.

I feel like we covered the bike we could go into low nuances and stuff right that we covered the main stuff here. Yeah well I you know I'll just wrap up with this today one thanks for taking the risk on bolt as one of your vertical integrations I think there are great things ahead I'm humbled blessed to be a part of this and as we you know look at at this and expanding it in and those type of things there's just you know great.

great, great upswings that I've already seen happen. And as we have both for me and our team here at Bolt, specifically, as well as the companies that we work with, it's been awesome. It is a risk versus reward. And I think today you shared some of the key things that people need to evaluate, both for the positive within vertical integrations and...

The keys to the timing within don't misstep on this. It'll hurt a lot more than you think it will. It can really sideline you, really take you off the rails. And maybe for you who are listening today or watching today, you have more questions about vertical integrations. Hey, just go ahead and drop them down in the comments section. Shoot us as you look at the show notes, some of the different things, because we'd love to interact with those. We'd love to...

a talk through those with each of you. And, you know, we talked today about a number of different things. You probably heard the excitement from Aaron and I, you know, talking on that, that 1 million, 3 million, 10 million, you know, aspect. We're going to talk about that in, you know, over the next couple episodes. And that's a little teaser for all of out there. Make sure you're subscribing because we are putting out relevant content for each of you CEOs, entrepreneurs, leaders out there within the business world.

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (37:41.678)
And we too want to have you be sparking success in your day to day life. Aaron, thanks so much for the wisdom that you shared today. I hope each of you out there have an awesome day. Thank you. Oh, we done? No, we don't have to be done. Well, thank you. I mean, that goes the other way too. You took a chance on what we're doing and believe in the mission and the vision of what we have going on. And so thank you to you for that. Something that we're, I don't take it lightly.

Yeah, by all means. And like, that's what motivates me is for the people that are believing in what we're doing and what we're going after, what we're building together, that I owe it to give it my all so that we achieve their igniters and their big goals and dreams. So thank you. Yeah. One thing that I'd say, just I'm thinking about this. Yeah, hit it. Just to put this in, you asked me if there was like something else on this. So if I put it in a different way and almost like a sentence, two sentences. Yeah.

It would be...

I would not look to do a vertical integration to try and like fill a gap or a hole on something that's not working. I think I would recommend that you focus on fixing that thing. Like you don't do it as a band -aid. I want to fix whatever needs to be fixed. I'm not doing this as like, oh, this isn't working. So let's do this. Like, no, I need to go fix the core parts of my business if something isn't working. But when those things are rocking and rolling,

I see opportunities for improvement in some of like, that's the sweet spot. Yeah. Is when things are, are progressing in the right way, you have momentum and can visually see where you can make improvements or you have new capabilities and improvements matchless two together. Like that's the time. So I think another thing that is a mistake that we've made is at times worth it all. Like this is not going well.

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (39:41.454)
But we could do this and it's like, again, maybe that was a good idea, but wrong timing. And then now we got this new thing that we're learning on and we're not going to be perfect bound. It's going to take time and it's added more complexity. And you got this other area that's not going well. And now your time's still little on fixing that because you had something new. So yeah, that's another way to, to kind of look at like, should I do this or should I not do it? Well, the question, if I was consulting with a company.

Well, why do you want to do it? Yeah. What's the season of the business? Oh, this isn't working. I think I should. Well, do you feel like you should stop doing this thing? No, no, we got to do that. Well, do you think it's the right time to add more complexity if this isn't going well, or should you work on focusing on fixing this? And I more than not, like, that's probably the right answer. Yeah. Even if that means we have to go through some tough...

things, have conversations that we don't want to have, get back into things that maybe we weren't doing that now we need to do like, like maybe less than optimal things, you know, that need to be done. But that's what it's a, you know, so, I hope that'll. No, that's, that's awesome. And, and that's why you listen to the entirety of an episode folks. Um, because that, you know, all of us have those moments where like,

Oh, hold on. Let me say that. So again, thanks so much for tuning in today. Aaron, it's always great.