Jeremy Weisz 14:17
Yeah. Why and cruisers, for example, and cruisers?
Greg Quinn 14:21
Yeah. So, the whole cruise projects were really those were related to those practice facilities relate directly to new ships that were in the process of being built. So, the pipeline and logistics of hey, you decide eight years in advance that you’re going to build this boat and build out all the facilities around the world that are going to, like support the building of it, but also the operations of it. And all those things like, unwinding all of that or pausing it all is very, kind of difficult, and I think that’s, in a lot of ways that’s what we all experienced the complexity of all than supply chains and logistics and those sorts of things that we got really good at being able to kind of pick up the phone and order something, and it’s showing up a week later. But what happens when you can’t do that, and it can’t show up, and it gets stuck. And like, you’re reliant on this kind of international logistics chain that broke apart pretty quick.
Jeremy Weisz 15:25
I want to talk about the calls you were getting during COVID. And what when stuff started to go down? What was happening, but you mentioned a bunch of international clients, how did you get clients in the Middle East and India, what was the channel avenue for that?
Greg Quinn 15:43
For that, well, the Middle Eastern clients were, that was literally another serendipitous trick trip, a friend of mine had run a business that had done a lot of work over there, and we had lunch one day, and he’s like, you got to come check out this big show a real estate show are there, it’s like, it’s pretty something to see, you shouldn’t like, if you got time, you shouldn’t take a trip over, it’s only a 14-hour flight. And, you know, be fun, and you got to see, like, you know, the city, like in Dubai, it was just like, you know, it’s insane what they’re building, like, you’re just gonna get a kick out of it, how quickly they’re building stuff, and is gonna, so just organizing just okay, I’ll go over and went over with a friend of mine. And we ended up the Ontario government having a series of booze over there selling in the show, and someone dropped out of the last man, and they’re like, hey, we heard you’re coming, do you want to just present at a booth? And I was like, sure, why not. And so we hung up a poster. And literally, I left the show for a three-day show with a partnership agreement with an architecture civil engineering firm in Abu Dhabi to open an interior design office for them there. And a six building 600 unit condominium project in India contract signed.
Jeremy Weisz 16:57
It sounds like a fruitful show.
Greg Quinn 16:59
Yeah, it was pretty crazy. It was pretty crazy. I literally two weeks later, I was on a plane to, to India to, you know, present to the investors for behind this big development. And we helped kind of secure the funding from 12 different banks, just because of the initial design work that we were able to do for the for the suite designs and things. And we were just the interiors, there was a big Singapore architecture firm that was doing a landscape architect from Australia, it was quite a thing. I mean, it all collapsed in 2010, when it just when, it just in the funding dried up to be able to kind of build what they wanted to build. So the whole thing just kind of collapsed.
Jeremy Weisz 17:42
When the pandemic hits, and, you know, they’re building new cruise lines, and things are happening, what was the incoming calls, like, that you were getting when this was all happening?
Greg Quinn 17:53
Well, I mean, the initial incoming calls is just like, pause it all, right, turn it all off. And having been through a couple of other scenarios of business, kind of business winding down relatively quickly. We were very, like, we’ve got a burn rate of, I don’t know, maybe four months of payroll, like, right now, I think our payroll at the time, our payroll was just a little over $2 million. So, we’re burning a lot of people to kind of get paid. And the minute that fi flow is stopping then it’s like, we’re dead in the water. And so, yeah, everything was…
Jeremy Weisz 18:37
You say it so calmly, Greg.
Greg Quinn 18:40
Well, yeah, if you’ve told me, in ‘94, that, hey, guess what, you’re gonna have a, well, this year, it’s going to be a $3.5 million payroll. And guess what you’re gonna have, you got to bill more than what you’d ever imagine you’d make in a year just to kind of cover off everyone’s salaries and, and you’re kind of you’re responsible for that, I would have probably rolled up the tent and said, Okay, well, I’m not really into this, because the original business plan was to pay for rent and groceries and be able to kind of like, and I mean, but at the same time, that’s part of been part of our growth strategy is to really build a team that understands that this is a business but it’s, it’s a little economic engine, that works on behalf of our team first and our ecosystem around us. We specify, probably in the neighborhood of $100 to $120 million a year in products and services on behalf of our clients, and we manage all of that. So there’s a lot of other businesses that rely on us doing a good job to make sure it’s getting running well, and then our clients, our clients are, they’re spending their good money on kind of on things that are gonna help their economic engines. So we need to make sure we’re doing a good job for them. And so having people around, you know, we’ve been able to surround ourselves, you know, as that leadership team in the firm to have people that have that mission in mind that it’s, this isn’t about personal wealth growth necessarily, people have to be able to live and live comfortably and well, and all that sort of thing. But also there’s a, we, you know, instead of just the me in the, in this whole thing, and then that we extends pretty broadly. So, but we really making sure that we’re all taken care of is kind of job one.
Jeremy Weisz 20:36
When you were getting all the calls and people were saying, pause, stop, how did you navigate the company? How did you navigate?
Greg Quinn 20:48
It’s two owners, me and Sherry Crawford, who’s one of the other owners, we acquired her firm, several years ago was one part of our growth strategy, but she’s part of the, kind of the younger management part of the team. So the two of us kind of really looked at each other and said, okay, this is existential, we need to be 100% transparent with everyone to let them underknow, like, listen, this is what we’re up against and here’s what we’re going to do. So this is what we’re doing today. And this week, is where we’re gonna end we’re, you know, this is how we’re attacking this and basically, the senior management team basically, was spent the first few weeks of just okay, what are our options? What exactly is our cash position right now? What exactly is our burn rate? What’s anything we can turn off? That we don’t need? Just where are we at? And, and what, what’s our lifeboat? How much have we got in our lifeboat right now that we can make this work and then, as each week, we and we got everybody together into like, Listen, this is how much money we have, like, and we generally transparent about how the business works, I think it’s always been something that, listen, it’s a sweat business, it’s like, it’s effort in, we get paid for the time and energy that we put in the value in the ideas. But there’s never enough time, and, like, that’s our business is really around productivity. And so, everyone kind of knows that, and, but then just relaying it to everyone to say, okay, this is how this is really going to affect us. If there’s no revenue coming in, this is our problem. You know, this is where our problem is that, and now, in the meantime, we’ve got this downtime…
Jeremy Weisz 22:49
How did people respond? Because it’s a scary thing to them? I mean, it’s the world’s unknown, let alone the company, right?
Greg Quinn 22:57
Well, yeah, and we have people in for demographics from, you know, kind of baby boomers to young Gen Z, so there’s young families, there’s older folks, there is a vast swath of interactive folks, and some people are living in very small condos with their partners, and they don’t have much room to work for to, there’s not enough room for two people to work in that one bedroom condo, and so there’s a lot of really kind of unfolds on a personal level for everybody. And I think, what we really tried to do is create a place the accompany being a place of, hey, this is, we’re here to really support all of you, you know, that, you know, the whole economic engine piece that like, this is what it’s all about, this is about us being resilient, and supporting each other and kind of forging into the unknown, but how do we do that? That’s, that’s our business, we, you know, we look to the future for clients to create spaces for them. So we should be able to create some alternative futures here. And how do we prepare for them so that we know that whatever we’re doing and what we actioning and actually, like, if you’ve got no work to do, then what do we do? It’s like, well, let’s do what we do to kind of make us stronger for the future? A lot of people that, you know, wrote their professional designation exams, we rolled out, we finally, there’s a couple of new software platforms that were like, great, now we have the time to actually some people to take some serious course time and really dig into these things. And so within that first year, really we are able to hold on to everybody. Now, up here that you know that we were the biggest savior was within a few weeks, there were word that there would be some sort of subsidies coming down from the federal government, which at the end of the day, that was and again with the transparent thing where everybody knew that we were on this line. have like a, we don’t know what’s going to happen. And then the next week was, hang on, there’s this hint that there might be some subsidies that this might be a thing. And then by week three, it’s like, okay, this is the little more details, this is what we found out, we’ve applied for these two things, and this is what we’re going to do. And so that really by week four and five, it’s like, we were in full swing of, okay, so financially, we think we can squeeze through here. And so now it’s just gonna be a question of how do we keep ourselves busy and productive and emotionally supported through a ridiculously difficult time. And at the end of the day, the intention was, let’s, let’s, let’s come out of this stronger, which, in fact, is what happened, where the team kind of elevated, what was happening with, there’s so many improvements and things that were going on that, everyone is just too busy to, you know, to work on anyway, before, because we were so busy on projects, that it just seems to be one of the most productive times of the organization, and in the middle of a kind of an ongoing rolling disaster.
Jeremy Weisz 26:11
People are always asking you, I’m sure, Greg, the future of the workplace because you have a different vantage point than everyone else, across industries, across cities, across different types of work spaces. What’s been the shift after the pandemic? And what have you seen as looking forward as kind of more the future of work, because I know, some companies, they’re half and half their hybrid, some, they’ve seen it even more important to be back in the office, some just use it as an excuse to get rid of their office space. So what are you seeing is kind of the future?
Greg Quinn 26:52
I mean, to sum it up, the future is flexible, like, and there’s a lot of driving factors that really determine what a company should really, really do. It depends on what the company does depends on what the other people interact, it’s a lot about the culture, and the work culture, the leadership style, it really is almost an anthropological exercise these days to kind of really get into understand our people communicating, what is the language of that company? What are the customs, and then layering on what is the space, then that is required for those things. And we always start our conversations with clients now, where, listen, there’s, there’s been, there’s been companies that have zero office space, and they’ve never had office space. And companies like automatic that run WordPress, or 37Signals and they’ve always had great books and stuff about, like, their experience about managing a company without space, but then there’s also companies, that they’re still doubling down on space, or they need to have space. So two companies that we worked with, one was a financial trading company, where, yeah, they could all work from home and do the trading, but they like to walk up and down the aisles and yell at each other while they’re doing trades. Because it’s just like, it’s a Wolf of Wall Street kind of style, it’s a culture thing, right? And it’s, I mean, yeah, we could do it, but now we’re gonna, so they actually expanded their office, or another company that is a fruit vegetable distributor in the province where, like, they have to be beside the warehouse, like they have to, you know, they have to, you can’t check on the quality of those tomatoes from zoom. So, there’s a vast majority of workers actually, that are even knowledge workers are in those situations where there’s a physical connection with something they’re doing. So some of those are easy, those are easy ones. But the vast, messy middle of companies, really, that are in some sort of flexible hybrid kind of mode, where people are only in partial times and those sorts of things, that’s the majority of companies and what pre-COVID, we used to do, we would do workplace strategy with folks to integrate a little bit of flexibility into their planning, because companies were filling up their space and they’re like, man, we got like, how do we what’s our strategy to kind of use space in a better way that we just don’t need to have to keep multiplying workstations and things. And we were doing a massive study at the beginning of 2020 with one city just outside of Toronto, where it took about a year to negotiate and figure out to get one department of 40 people to agree to do a flexible work study. Let’s like label and like, we’ll just let people kind of come three days a week and this will have a massive impact if it rolls out but to convince just for like, one department to do it, it took a year. This technology info and all that sort of thing, we literally decided to start the pilot, I think it was like the first week in March or something, and then you know, of course, everything all hell breaks loose, and the hope that we’re gonna throw everybody into the study, and that’s kind of what the entire, you know, the whole continent did, and which what we knew all along was when you start introducing flexibility into people’s lives, you’re giving something that’s pretty powerful, to be able to kind of give time back in a work day, when it comes to computing, when it comes to interacting, and those benefits really start, you know, multiplying. And that’s basically what we’ve seen. It’s like, oh, that that’s what we thought was gonna happen. That’s what would happen in the studies we did previously. But now it’s, they’ve really seen the genies out of the bottle. And one of the fun facts like breathing it pre-COVID, the number one complaint, we start our process with surveys of teams of getting cultural, you know, kind of a culture of temperature, as well as just the practical stuff. Like how far is your commute? What’s your, you know, what’s the worst thing you hate about coming into the office? It’s always a question I love. Number one answer pre-COVID The commute. And in the GTA in Toronto area, the average commute was something like 45 minutes each way. So it’s an hour and a half a day. And across all parts of the city and everything, it just seems to be the same. And so I hate the commute. The fun thing now is when we’re doing surveys now with clients, that people are coming in one day a week, number one thing they hate, it’s the commute still. So even though we fixed their number one complaint, it is still the number one complaint. So when you see these companies saying, Hey, listen, we just come back to the office. It’s like, yeah, but you’re my number one complaint about working there is this thing that you’re making me do now again? And so the why do I have to come into the office is the much more important piece of really understanding the pieces of what people are missing in their individual business cultures of, you know, generally what the most thing people are missing is, I just miss my peeps, I miss hanging out with my worker, it’s like, you know, we have the gang that we go for lunch, and we would do, you know, like, I just they miss the social interaction. Collaboration and technique, like all this technology, things and stuff in a lot of ways for a lot of organizations works. And you can see it in a business as they’re still running. But there’s some of these people to people, things have relationships, and again, it gets into that social, how do people be part of their tribe and their business tribe, and it’s really hard to build this over, only over zoom. And if you go back to some of those companies that never have an office space, they still devote a considerable amount of energy, at least once a year, the entire company gets together, they get together and work teams together. So that there’s time to kind of build people-to-people connections. And so, what we’re seeing is this, the importance of space becomes much more intrinsic to that culture, and that people support, if it’s done well, if you’re just like, I’m a walking around manager, because I don’t think anybody’s doing anything, if unless I’m seeing them do it, then that’s a different, that’s a different business culture. And people are kind of workers are voting with their feet as to what they’re looking for those opportunities, you know, those opportunities where, how’s the work, support me, knowing that I still have to support the work I need to do the work. But how is this a better, you know, kind of equitable arrangement between worker and business?
Jeremy Weisz 34:02
Greg, I’m kind of fascinated by your process. And so we’ll walk through maybe an example of your process because I would think, you start off with this discovery and actually figuring out what people like or don’t like about the culture and workspace and it’s a really foundational place to start and you probably have had some fascinating answers and responses and realizations throughout the world, throughout the left the company and I’m sure companies that work with you get data that they didn’t expect to get I would think when they hire you, like we didn’t realize we’re gonna get all these qualitative data on the culture in the workspace we just thought you know, hey, you’re gonna build like an amazing area so we could be innovative etc. So I want to talk about the process but talk about what are some of the other use a number one, when you serve a commute that people do not like, what are some of the other things on the list?
Greg Quinn 35:05
Well, I mean, sometimes it’s amenity spaces, it’s like, hey, we have a really crappy lunch, right? Like, there’s no reason there’s nowhere to eat my lunch or there, you know, or what, there’s never enough meeting spaces to work in. So, there’s a variance of kind of amenity space that support some of the tasks that they’re doing to kind of put in also personal space. And, and it’s sometimes it’s even, like, that’s where you find out that, hey, the Wi-Fi really sucks in this wing of the complex, you know, and you know, things like the I can’t work on my laptop there, I got to go over there. And those kinds of things. So, yeah, it’s, you get those little nuggets that, kind of become the those become part of the program of okay, this is, here’s, here’s what we need to like, if we’re going to do anything, we need to address some of these issues.
Jeremy Weisz 35:54
Yeah. What did you find? After the pandemic, niches or types of companies coming to you changed at all?
Greg Quinn 36:04
Yeah, like I think, it’s hard not to go through that kind of process where people are like, not re-addressing, like who we are, we are as a business and that sort of thing. I think in particular, like, we worked through DLL Group as a financial group out of the Netherlands, and we did their headquarters here in Canada. And that’s a perfect example of one where we were there with, they were starting their process, just as COVID was breaking out. And they were kind of jam-packed into 30,000 square feet of space, they were growing, so they’re going to be adding another I think, at the time, maybe they had 270 ish people that would be grown to 330 was their projections.
Jeremy Weisz 36:54
And by the way, if people are just listening to audio, we are looking at the video, there is a video piece we’re showing, this is the xdesigninc.com site, you can find out all their stuff, and work here, but we are looking at the DLL office, so keep going. I’m just gonna show as you’re talking.
Greg Quinn 37:12
Yeah, so the initial engagement, and this was really a very much a pre-COVID condition of our businesses very often, you know, I like it, you know, I called us, you know, we were just kind of people warehousing, how many people you have today, how many have tomorrow? What kind of space do you use today, let’s extrapolate that for the bigger number. There’s your square footage. So they already were in the market looking for 55,000 square feet to the house there 330 people. So the engagement started at the beginning with that going while we think we need 55. But now we’re all working remote. And we actually didn’t meet them in person for the first six or seven months of the project, which, you know, this was done in the heat of the lockdowns. And the interesting thing was, as we go through is we basically do our culture surveys and our requirements surveys. So that basically goes out to the entire organization, we do a whole training process, to basically get them to understand what different space topologies look like, and those kinds of activities that it can support. So here’s your modern menu of kinds of spaces you can use. And then from that, from the data gathering, and from the menu of spaces, we start drawing lines together to say, here’s these activities that you guys really do. These are the kinds of spaces that can support those things. And that’s really a function. It’s an activity-based planning kind of process that we stick into this whole journey. And from that, you end up with a menu of okay, well, these are the kinds of spaces we think you need. But then it was coming down to well, let’s really talk about how many spaces and how many people are going to be there. And so we literally started building scenarios of, well, here’s your 55 downs, here’s of everybody’s coming in, but that just is not seem likely. Again, the genies out of the bottle, this is, you know, you guys are working well. But you’re missing, here’s those different things that you’re missing, you know, people are missing the social aspects of working together, they’re missing the fun bits, but they’re also missing the one-on-one management and leadership conversations and those coaching conversations and we’re, you know, we need spaces for those. And there’s still had a bit of operational need, where it’s like, where do all of our financial management we have a lot of financial documents, kind of still physically floating around, we need a place for those to go to. So, the program got really refined, but with the idea that well, how many desks Do we really need? And so, we kept building scenarios. And we had scenarios that were down to 22,000 square feet. And maybe there was at desks, 90 desks, so almost like a desk for every few people kind of ratio. And we were in a workshop with them, and we’ve done different workshops in the leadership teams and the management teams. And so we’re with the leadership team, they’re like, okay. And we go even farther, and we were like, how far do you want to go? And they’re, like, can be chopping under 4000 square feet off? And can we just like, and maybe…
Jeremy Weisz 40:33
That’s a big decision from them from an overhead, you’re really trying to predict the future a little bit, and then a lot of realms for them.
Greg Quinn 40:44
Well, yeah, and so we had to kind of, you know, we, you know, we took, you know, we were like yes, so, we ended up building a space that had 30 desks, so like a one in 10. But the rest of the space is a clubhouse, and they ended up taking 18,000 square feet. So rough calculation of saving a year in rent is around a million dollars. So for a 10-year lease, that was like a $10 million dollar savings. That is, you know, that’s, that’s a hard to ignore piece and a project cost like that, we, you know, we reused a few things, we had to buy some new stuff, you know, the overall construction and furniture and all that sort of thing, we’re probably in for 2.62 point 7 million, I think was the final number, we were a little under budget, where it’s always gonna be like to be just a little under budget. But recreating that work environment for them, and really providing a place where it’s, okay, this is what your future could look like. But it really involves a lot of discussions and a lot of envisioning of, okay, let’s talk about the kind of conversations you can have in this space. And this, is this the kind of space you think you could use. And at the end of the day, there are some spaces that didn’t make it, they’re like, you know what, I don’t think I’d ever see myself in a meeting like that, I don’t think we need that, I think we need two more of those things, right. And you’re a little bit more work. And the work cafe. So basically, there’s expandable spaces that can be multifunctional all over the place. And the other interesting thing is that there’s still a possibility, if the future is if all of a sudden, they do have 100 people show up every day, and they need a desk to sit on, we’ve got flexibility where we can move some furniture around, and drop those desks in, and the flexibility is there without having to pull another building permit, which is kind of a, that’s a fun party trick to do where you, listen, you don’t need to hire us, again, we’ll just do a little furniture plan for them, we even already have that scenario built for them, where it’s like, you just go to scenario seven. And that area can be six more people can if they need a desk, they’re still though over 18,000 square feet, there can still be I think we have 155 Work points. So 155 people can comfortably sit in work in that space. It’s just not at a desk.
Jeremy Weisz 43:10
So it sounds like from the process perspective. Like, it’s a lot of info gathering, surveys getting data, and then from there, there’s training involved, then you kind of set up a menu of options that you go through, and then kind of you assess activity levels in the different places, and then kind of the construction or kind of whatever the build out looks like comes next.
Greg Quinn 43:37
Yeah, that’s basically, we flush the whole thing out in a computer model and plans. So in those cases, we modeled everything that was there was there to kind of say this is not only what it’s going to look like, you know, as a layout, you know, if you’re buying a condo or a house, you can kind of get the little plans, but you can actually, this is what it’s gonna like be like, if you’re standing here, visualize it. Yeah. And it’s, it makes it very easy. And then, yeah, then we just, we have to take that set of 3d plans and turn it into a set of permit drawings and construction drawings and get a bunch of contractors to bid on it and then manage the winning bid to make sure that they build it properly. And they build it on time.
Jeremy Weisz 44:17
Love it. Thanks for walking through that. You mentioned earlier about growth, and really acquisition was a strategy at what point did you decide you are going to grow through acquisition?
Greg Quinn 44:34
Well, about 10 years ago, we really came to a point, we’ve been running the business for 19 years at that point. And it kind of limped along and I always liken it as a you know, they that was kind of like the first couple of iterations of the business was, you know, us learning how to run a business, like we kind of learned on our own dime and There was a moment 10 years ago, where it’s like, hey, if we don’t really ramp up the profitability and the scale of this, either we go to a smaller scale where it’s just four or five folks, we can, you know, kind of, you know, we just, you know, we’re, you know, we’re niche consultants, we can just do our thing. And that’s fine, or we need to kind of, we were kind of in this weird dead zone around 10 or 11 people and it kind of, in our business, he just, you’ve got to either ramp it up, or, or wrap it a little down. And the reality was, the things that we felt we really wanted to do, like, some of these larger projects, we couldn’t do with four people, we couldn’t take on all the interesting opportunities that were actually out there. So, growth has basically become the goal, like, okay, we need to grow, but we need to grow in a resilient and sustainable way. But we need to kind of set our market around, like, we need to be at least 25 people-ish or so. And so we retooled some of our operational things, we became ISO 9001 certified, which is, like, totally nerdy, but like, that really became kind of an operating system of, hey, if we’re gonna be adding a whole bunch of people over the next several years, we all need to be marching to the same sheet music here. And so let’s get organized around this. So we kind of went through and get the bullet to really develop that. And that’s become kind of one of the foundational operating system pieces for us. And then we started going along, and so maybe we grew the first year of our plan was like, oh, that was good.
Jeremy Weisz 46:46
Were you reaching out to firms? Or was there brokers that you worked with to find opportunities?
Greg Quinn 46:52
Well, like at first, we were starting to do just organic, we were just going to grow organically, we’re just going to get more clients hire more people and get going. We got into year two of our growth, and it was just kind of flat from the, it’s like, okay, we grew year one, year two, it didn’t really go anywhere. And around that same time that just, a conversation started with, hey, did you know Mira Calarasi is firm, he’s, you know, he’s, he’s was asking some people if they wanted to buy it, and, and, and there was a hint of the price. And I’m like, oh, that’s like, sounds actually super reasonable. Like, and I should call, I knew Mary like, you know, the community is fairly tight here. And so that conversation word. Yeah. And then literally, our second acquisition was a friend of his that ran a slightly larger firm called intercede that, I mean, we still have clients that are in intercedes that, we haven’t rolled the brand down Calarasi final projects just ramped down in the spring. So we were still running them as a brand, just because we already had contracts that were running. So that kind of happened to that. And then and then we expanded to an office in Hamilton, because we saw that a lot of young folks, and this goes back to 2017, beginning 2018, where we were seeing the young folks couldn’t have be affording to live in Toronto anymore. And so we had, like, that kind of cohort of 30-ish designers that are senior great designers, but they’re moving to Hamilton. So working in Toronto is going to be a problem. Hamilton is just outside of the city. But it’s a fairly large Little Town on its own. So he said, well, if we had a satellite office out there and distributed our office a little bit, then you know, maybe we’d have a good opportunity to maybe pull some of those Toronto designers back into the fold, and they could work from out there. And so, in fact, that’s what we did. And we ended up renting space from another friend of mine, Sherry, who, after renting a space for yours, like listen, why don’t we just merge this whole thing together? And just do this together? And, and, you know, so and by that point, we’re the company that buys other companies now that’s kind of like our thing.
Jeremy Weisz 49:08
What are some learning calls Greg on that, that you take now that you’ve done several of them that you take the next one? That if someone’s like, “yeah, I’m thinking of doing this?” What are some learnings that you had, maybe good things, maybe mistakes?
Greg Quinn 49:24
Well, I mean, I got to say, like, out of the five, like every one of the single one of them and have been successful, like we’ve been like, which is really, like ridiculous ratio, because a huge portion of these, as you probably know, mergers and acquisitions do normally do not go well. Like you see some stats where like 80% of them just fail. And 100% of ours have been great. So knock on wood. I think that the number one things are we’re looking for a cultural fit. So we’ve looked at as many companies, we probably looked at twice as many companies as we’ve actually acquired, so we’ve had conversations of different things for twice as many as the five that we’ve actually acquired. So very often, if there’s not a cultural fit, so if we’re not speaking the same business language, if we don’t think about our, again, it’s a cultural mix, where the way that we think about people treat our people the way that kind of our expectations and accountability that we expect out of people, if some of those different things aren’t aligned on a cultural basis, it’s not going to work. And you can, you know, that that can, generally will come out in a first conversation, where, you know, the intention and the expectation of what this is all about is, you know, it’s not, you know it’s not going to work. And so for us, it was really, being honest about those, those things, and, and also coming to it, like, particularly now, like we were working on one this year, that didn’t, didn’t play out, not for any really horrible reasons. But like, we’re also at a stage where if they don’t work out, like, it’s not, like, we don’t have to grow, we’re not in a, like a kind of this is our number one strategy, this is just really an extra strategy. And I think having it as an extra strategy to just be aware that there is this opportunity where you might have, if you’re in a market of whatever business you’re in, and there’s another player or one of your competitors, or that just getting to that, like, hey, I got to wind this thing down. There’s opportunity, there’s a potential opportunity there to kind of say, hey, like, not only are you helping them line that, that thing down, because you can’t just turn off the light on a business, as you know, like it just there’s, you know, there’s never a moment where it, it’s either it’s a catastrophic end, or it’s some sort of gradual decline, where it just kind of winds down or it’s out of you, you can transition ownership. And so I think, it’s looking for those opportunities that might be there, but it’s not the number one strategy, it’s because we still have to, we still have to be doing lots of business development, lots of lead generation, lots of great, 85% of our work comes from our existing client base and our ecosystem of stuff of partners. So, we continually need to be a good partner for all those people. And that’s the most important thing. It’s just we just got to do great work.
Jeremy Weisz 52:35
I know, Greg, different industries have different ways of calculating valuations. Yeah, how did valuations, we’re going through this, how the valuation is calculated in this industry?
Greg Quinn 52:49
Generally, it’s an evaluation, usually, somewhere between three, maybe, we’ve gone into the high threes on some that, if there’s some kind of valuable processes or things like that, that are like kind of net new to our operation that we would, valuate but generally, it’s a three times multiple on EBITDA.
Jeremy Weisz 53:13
I know, it depends on what the revenue of the company is on what the EBIT as possible valuation, right, the lower ones may have less multiples and higher ones may have higher one. So yeah. I have one that first of all, Greg, thanks for sharing your journey and your stories. I have one last question. Before I ask it, I just want to point people to xdesigninc.com to learn more about what they’re doing. Check out the artwork page, there’s some obviously beautiful spaces that they’ve helped with. So you can check that out. But last question is just resources that you’d like it could be conferences, trade shows, books, people you’ve had colleagues mentors, that have helped you along the journey. So any resources that you have found valuable for you?
Greg Quinn 54:09
Yeah, listen, I think that the number one thing is building a community of other practitioners and business people that are either exactly in your space and or adjacent. And being able to have transparent and open conversations with that group. So again, because we grew up working with other firms and things we kind of, started having these relationships with a whole bunch of different folks and we were able to learn so much, but to do that, you know, if you’re gonna get shared to you, you know, you need to share a lot as well. So, I’m pretty transparent and open with our if anybody asked me my numbers, I’m like, I’m all like I’m our business is wide open to all even there’s a whole bunch of competitors I hang out with that will trade numbers you know, and some yours, we’re cursing each other, we’re like, wow, you did really great. I really got to, I got to do some of that. And so I think that, as a resource that anyone can build, it’s how do you build up that network? And, and I think, and there are lots of great groups to look at, in our, in our space. PMSJ is like his great consulting team out of the states that run out, you know, a great newsletter, you know, there’s some great books. And I think that’s the other thing is just, you know, it’s also reading just even outside of your direct area of practice, like I just finished a book by Andy Grove, High Performance Management that’s like, probably in the from the 80s. But looking at understanding how business works from multiple different places, and even for us, that the reading lessons that we’re sharing internally are, it is also about learning about the businesses that we’re working with, too. So you want to be kind of understand and be empathetic about, okay, well, these are the kinds of things they’re going through, not just about, how do we make our business better, but it’s how do we have deeper relationships with some of our clients to understand what they’re doing? Current big one I’m reading right now is The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek, which I think is like, I think it’s kind of a confirmation bias to his view towards business. But I think, like I feel like that’s always been one of our things of, listen, this isn’t about kind of working to some grand exit for me personally, after you know, so many years, it’s how does this thing become this engine that in a couple generations, they don’t even know who I am and that, like, that’s kind of fun to think about where you create this economic thing that can actually support people’s lives and we send people’s kids to college and people are having babies and people are retiring and like, that’s a kind of you’re, you’re supporting this whole circle of life and I think that Infinite Game really kind of sums up a different mindset about how to look at not just business but just generally as opposed to a win-lose perspective but more of a how do you kind of set this up within a framework of yourself and a business to think about it more in longer term.
Jeremy Weisz 57:07
Love it. Greg I want to be the first one to thank you. Thanks for sharing all of your stories, your journey everyone check out xdesigninc.com to learn more, and we’ll see you next time. Thanks Greg.
Greg Quinn 57:18
Thanks, Jeremy. It was great.
