Boring Money

David Heacock
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Boring Money is for the people quietly getting rich the unglamorous way. Hosted by David Heacock, founder and CEO of Filterbuy, this podcast covers boring businesses, acquisitions, cash flow, EBITDA, tax strategy, fixed income, and the real mechanics of compounding capital. Built for operators, investors, and business owners who care more about long-term wealth than hype, headlines, or status.

  1. 1 dag geleden

    He Makes $185K/Year as an Electrician. I Told Him He Can Do $1M Next Year.

    Ron Butler spent eight years at one residential electrical company and didn't want to leave. He asked them to match a $100K offer he'd gotten elsewhere. They couldn't. He pitched them on starting a service department instead, four guys, he'd out-earn the whole shop. They didn't bite. So he took the other job. Day one he walked into a branch running on chaos. Day two he called his CPA and asked whether $60 or $70K working for himself, after the tax treatment, would match the $100K. She said more than match. Day three he told them it wasn't a good fit and left. He had just bought a house and had no real savings behind him. That was 18 months ago. Top Notch Electrical Services did $131K gross in its first year, $91K net, and he's at $185K over the last twelve months. All of it word of mouth. He has never spent a dollar on marketing. Nine contractor relationships, built by getting up at 7am, putting on a company shirt, sitting in a coffee shop, writing down 20 or 30 numbers and calling them. He came in planning to hire his first full-time employee. I told him not to. We break down: Why the employee is the wrong hire: his ability to deliver the work isn't the constraint, his pipeline is, and every dollar he has should go into fixing the one that's actually broken Why he's the bottleneck. Every site walk, every invoice, every job runs through him, so the hours that would build a pipeline get spent doing the work instead The case for deliberately earning less this year: 1099 out jobs he could do himself, accept the lower margin, and put the freed-up hours into relationships The idea I'd chase if I were him. Pull every permit filed in Austin, see which contractors have real repeating volume, and go get in front of those specific companies His first job was a $20K remodel in a $3M home that he'd turned down and handed to another electrician, and the client asked for him back Why he walked away from $30 Thumbtack leads even though they were working, and why I think that was right at his stage Why three years to a million isn't ambitious enough, and what the 12-month version looks like: nine contractor relationships to fifty The out-of-state licensing question, $20 to $30K a year to be a master on record in another state, and why I told him I'm not equipped to advise him on it Ron's slogan is "confidence is competence." He passed his master electrician exam first try, at 26, when the four masters he knows averaged five attempts between them. That trait is why the business works. It's also why he wants to do every job himself, and it's the thing that caps him at $200K if he doesn't let it go. He asked me for a realistic timeline to a million a year. I said twelve months. I don't think he expected the number to be that low.

  2. 1 sep

    He Got Fired Twice and Slept in His Car. Now He Does $450K Cleaning Floors.

    Justin Campbell got fired from a management job at TGI Fridays, moved back home into the room down the hall from his grandmother, and started taking $50-a-day temp shifts. The job site was far enough that he slept in his car outside it rather than risk the morning drive. One evening a guy from the commercial floor care company next door knocked on his window and asked what he was doing out there. He offered him steady evening hours. That knock is the whole origin story. Four years later Justin was the youngest director of operations that company had. Then an outside sales team came in, the tenured managers started getting cut, and he got fired again. He started Midland Floor Care off temp-work money, renting equipment from Home Depot one job at a time. Fifteen years on he's at close to $450,000, 98% commercial, three full-time people plus temp labor he flexes by project. A buyer has already approached him. They want a $4 to $5 million company, so that conversation ended quickly. The gap between those two numbers is what we spent most of this episode on. We break down: How he got his first commercial client: he noticed the floor while checking out of a Massage Envy, asked who was doing it, and the owner happened to be in earshot. She kept opening locations and kept bringing him with her Why residential paid him the same day and commercial pays net 30 to net 120, and what that does to a business funding its own growth What the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program actually gave him, which was not the grant he thought he was applying for Why he thinks his next hire is a general manager, and why I think that's the wrong one The hire I'd make instead: take a salesperson who already sells to his customers, pay a higher commission than feels comfortable, and fund six months of ramp The financial model you build before you go recruiting, or you end up with someone pricing work below cost and earning commission on it Why one good salesperson is enough to double a business this size Justin is also the first guest I've had who actually did the thing I keep telling young people to do: skip the debt, go work inside an industry, then start something in it. He just didn't do it on purpose. And the last thing I told him is the part most people skip. You keep looking for the next solution when the answer is in the doing. There's no magic bullet. Go make it work once.

  3. 25 aug

    He Bought a Couple 3D Printers for Fun. Now He Has 105.

    JT McCord spent eight years as a software engineer outside Columbus, Ohio, making $150K a year and stashing 30% of it. COVID sent him fully remote, and he bought a couple of 3D printers for the basement with no intention of selling anything. Three years later he runs 105 machines out of the bottom floor of an old salon. First year: $50K. Second year: $400K. He's at $400K again halfway through 2026. The part that got my attention is how he got the machines. One gaming grip listing on Etsy caught fire over Christmas. At the peak, 95% of his revenue came from that single product, and he financed 16 printers off it. Today that listing is less than a quarter of a percent of sales. The business that grew on top of it is the real story. We break down: His actual revenue mix: own catalog, B2B rush jobs, and printing capacity sold to other people. One of the three is a trap Why print-on-demand fulfillment caps him. Quote a customer, and they do the math and buy three more printers instead. It's already happened to him Amazon versus Etsy on the same listing in the same week: 45 units against 6, at triple the fees. You can't skip Amazon The co-founder split with Cameron, the C in JC. What a pre-agreed valuation saved them, and why JT still says get a partner and still says avoid giving them equity Why he hasn't replaced the $150K salary yet, and what he's actually paying himself Where I'd put every dollar: a full-time designer, evergreen products that solve a real problem, and the influencer playbook to move them The little 3D-printed frog he drops in every box, and why customers keep photographing it JT asked me how to turn this into an exponential equation. He's a process guy who wrote the software to run a hundred printers without knowing what's on any of them. That's not what's missing. What's missing is the creative side and the distribution side, and those are two halves of the same problem.

  4. 18 aug

    He's 22 and Took the Family Business to $1M a Year. He Pays Himself $400 a Week.

    Matt McCrink is 22. A year ago he graduated from Auburn and walked into his dad's business — a third-generation operation brokering custom plastic and rubber components for manufacturers. For two decades it had been doing about $50K a year in profit. Basically a side hustle. In the twelve months since Matt joined, revenue went from $380K to over $1 million. I brought Matt to New York to understand how he did it, and to push him on what comes next — because when I asked him what he's actually building toward, he couldn't say the number out loud. We got there. We break down: How fixing a paper-based supply chain — they were a full year late on orders — unlocked the growth Why the family handshake deal needs to become a real agreement before the value gets created, not after The $10M and $50M goals Matt was embarrassed to admit, and why committing to a number matters Why his Facebook ads experiment is a waste of time, and the customer visits he should be making instead The distributor playbook: find the component fifty manufacturers all use, buy in bulk, hold the inventory, charge for the service Whether to kill the break-even manufacturing side of the business Matt committed on camera: $2 million in revenue a year from now. We're having him back to check.

  5. 11 aug

    He Owns 36 Auto Repair Shops Doing $50M a Year. He’s Never Fixed a Car.

    Brian Beers has never fixed a car. He owns 36 Midas locations across Philadelphia, New Jersey and Allentown doing more than $50 million a year—with a CEO running the day-to-day, mechanics earning $5,000 in a week, and a business that runs without him. His dad became a Midas franchisee in the 1970s. Brian joined after college in 2010, writing service tickets, knowing nothing about cars. Six years later he and his brother put in $67,000 each, borrowed the rest, and bought two stores from a retiring owner at roughly 2.5x cash flow. That snowball became 36 locations—32 of them through acquisition. Most people who buy a franchise buy themselves a job. I wanted to understand the difference between those people and the franchisees quietly making private-jet money. So I flew Brian to New York to break down exactly how the model works. We break down: How Midas economics actually work: the $15,000 franchise fee, the 10% royalty, and what you actually get for itWhy buying existing stores at 2.5x cash flow beats building from scratchThe “hero versus architect” transition, and the stair-step approach of trading income today for freedom laterWhy closing at 5 p.m. and staying closed on Sundays became his best recruiting toolWhat separates a good franchise from a bad one: the Subway problem and the Chick-fil-A trade-offHow to actually do diligence: Item 19s, FDDs, and calling franchisees at the top, middle and bottomWho should not buy a franchise, and why $10,000 is not enough to startThe liquidated-damages clauses hiding inside franchise agreementsHow his brother used AI to build a business intelligence system that tracks every store, every mechanic and every phone call in real timeMy assumption going in was that most franchisees buy themselves a job. Brian did not change my mind. He showed me what the exceptions do differently—and it has almost nothing to do with the brand on the sign.

  6. 4 aug

    He Built an $11M Business in 5 Months. I Told Him to Stop Growing So Fast.

    Gustavs has built one of the fastest-growing businesses I’ve seen. In the first five and a half months of the year, his greenhouse company generated $11 million in revenue. He believes it can reach $50 million—and possibly even $100 million—before the end of the year. But rapid growth has nearly destroyed him before. Gustavs grew up in Latvia after the fall of the Soviet Union and began his career as a freight broker. He became the company’s top salesperson, launched his own logistics business and grew it to €3 million in annual revenue. Then a customer failed to pay a $200,000 bill. Cash tightened. Vendors lost confidence. Revenue collapsed. Within six months, the business was bankrupt. After trying to run several unsuccessful businesses at once, Gustavs discovered e-commerce and realized that an online store could turn his personal sales ability into a repeatable system. In early 2024, a friend introduced him to a greenhouse manufacturer in the Baltics. Gustavs built a website, launched ads and received his first $2,500 order within three days. The company reached $1 million in sales within its first 100 days. Today, the average order is approximately $4,600, the business is selling millions of dollars each month, and Gustavs is racing to build American warehousing, shorten delivery times, increase production capacity and expand into new product categories. That is where our disagreement begins. Gustavs believes speed and product expansion are necessary to win the market before competitors arrive. I believe his pursuit of $100 million in revenue may be creating unnecessary complexity—and placing the business in the same fragile position that caused his first company to fail. We break down: How Gustavs went from bankruptcy to an eight-figure e-commerce businessWhy preorders can turn customers into a source of working capitalThe danger of confusing revenue growth with business strengthWhy faster delivery can dramatically increase e-commerce conversionWhether he should expand his catalog or concentrate on a few hero productsHow limited working capital should influence inventory decisionsWhy production capacity may be a solvable constraint rather than a permanent limitationThe tradeoffs between European, American and Chinese manufacturingHow a strong consumer brand creates leverage with retailers such as Home DepotWhy building a B2B sales team too early may distract from the real problemHow Filterbuy operates at more than $300 million in annual revenue with relatively little working capitalThe difference between removing limiting beliefs and ignoring legitimate constraintsWhy entrepreneurs routinely overestimate what they can accomplish in one year and underestimate what they can build in a decadeThis is not a conventional interview. It is a candid operating discussion between two entrepreneurs with very different approaches to growth. Gustavs pushes back on my advice, I question nearly every assumption behind his plan, and we work toward the actual constraint limiting his company. My central argument is simple: focus is not the enemy of ambition. Frequently, it is the only way to build something large without making it fragile. Move as fast as you can—but build the foundation on rock, not sand.

  7. 28 jul

    He Makes $10M/Year in a Business Everyone Ignores

    Daniel Morris started with no money, a borrowed £10,000, and a cleaning business that charged roughly £12 an hour. Today, CanDo Laundry Services generates more than $10 million a year, operates three factories, processes over half a million items every week, and employs more than 130 people. But this episode is not just the story of how a 19-year-old university dropout built an industrial laundry empire. It is a real-time strategy session about what Daniel must do next if he wants to turn a successful regional operator into a $100 million company. Daniel explains how he began cleaning houses himself, added laundry as a small upsell, and accidentally discovered a much better business after a wedding venue needed help processing its tablecloths and napkins. That single customer introduced him to recurring revenue—and eventually changed the entire direction of the company. We break down how Daniel: • Started a business with almost no capital  • Used a storefront to build trust with residential customers  • Turned a small laundry add-on into a commercial textile business  • Entered the rental market without owning the machinery or inventory  • Designed a cash conversion cycle that funded his growth  • Built an in-house industrial laundry after his largest supplier cut him off  • Applied lean manufacturing principles across the company  • Developed an inbound and outbound sales engine  • Completed three acquisitions  • Identified 50 potential acquisition targets across the UK  • Plans to consolidate a fragmented $1.5 billion industry The most important part of the conversation comes when we examine Daniel’s plan to grow CanDo from $10 million to $100 million in annual revenue. Daniel initially identifies capital, people, and acquisition opportunities as the biggest obstacles standing in his way. I disagree. Capital can be found. Operational problems can be solved. Infrastructure can be built. The real constraint is convincing the owners of roughly 50 independent laundry businesses to trust Daniel enough to sell to him. That changes the strategy completely. Instead of broadly trying to become more famous, Daniel needs to build his reputation with one very specific audience: the owners of the companies he wants to acquire. We discuss how he can position CanDo as the operator-led alternative to private equity, preserve the legacies of family-owned companies, offer sellers cash upfront, and give them a second financial opportunity through equity in a larger combined business. We also talk about why larger businesses often receive higher valuation multiples, how rollover equity can align buyers and sellers, and why Daniel’s ultimate $100 million vision may be more achievable than it initially appears. This episode covers entrepreneurship at every stage—from doing the work yourself to building factories, managing capital intensity, acquiring competitors, and reverse-engineering a future exit. It is also a conversation about founder motivation. Does Daniel actually want to sell his company, or does he simply want another game to play? Some entrepreneurs love operating. Some love making deals. Some love building and selling. Others want to collect durable, cash-flowing businesses and hold them forever. Understanding which game you are really playing may be more important than any growth tactic. Topics include: 00:00 – Building a $10 million laundry empire  00:47 – Balancing work, travel, and family  03:02 – Inside CanDo Laundry Services  04:13 – Dropping out of university at 19  06:55 – Starting with residential cleaning  09:40 – Adding laundry as a new service  11:39 – The wedding venue that changed everything  14:44 – Cracking the textile rental model  17:54 – Using the cash conversion cycle to fund growth  21:39 – Scaling logistics and focusing the business  23:42 – Daniel’s early door-to-door sales strategy  28:02 – The supplier that suddenly cut him off  31:04 – Building an industrial laundry in-house  33:20 – Applying lean manufacturing principles  34:24 – Inside the company’s $10 million operation  35:03 – Building an inbound marketing engine  38:04 – Evolving the outbound sales strategy  39:29 – Unit economics and the barriers to scaling  43:44 – Daniel’s acquisition strategy  47:35 – The plan to reach $100 million  51:42 – Identifying the real constraint  56:27 – Structuring acquisitions with rollover equity  1:01:07 – Founder motivation and knowing your game  1:06:27 – Closing thoughts Daniel Morris is the founder of CanDo Laundry Services, a UK-based textile management company serving the hospitality, medical, and industrial sectors. This is Boring Money—the show about the unglamorous businesses, difficult decisions, and operating lessons behind real wealth creation.

  8. 21 jul

    He Built an $8M Manufacturing Business… But His Real Dream Is Something Much Bigger

    Every entrepreneur eventually reaches a crossroads. Do you keep scaling the business you’ve already built, or do you use it as the foundation for something even bigger? In this episode of Boring Money, I sit down with Christian, an entrepreneur who started in hazardous waste management with zero industry experience, survived a near business collapse, reinvented himself through manufacturing, and built an $8 million company in one of the most specialized industrial niches in America. But the conversation quickly becomes about something much deeper than paint booths. Christian has a much bigger dream: building a modular construction company capable of transforming affordable commercial buildings. The problem? His current business is pulling him in a completely different direction. We unpack one of the hardest questions every entrepreneur eventually faces: Are your daily actions actually moving you toward the life you say you want? Along the way we discuss: • How Christian recovered after almost losing everything because of cash flow.  • Why owning your supply chain changed the trajectory of his business.  • The difference between building a growth engine and building a cash-flow machine.  • Why more revenue often creates less cash.  • The hidden cost of chasing growth before your systems are ready.  • How recurring revenue can completely change a manufacturing business.  • The importance of identifying the single biggest blocker standing between you and your goals.  • Why focus—not talent—is often the deciding factor between entrepreneurs who build something extraordinary and those who stay stuck.  • The uncomfortable question every founder eventually has to answer: What do you actually want? One line from this conversation has stuck with me: “When you say you want one thing, but all the actions you’re taking are in a different direction… what’s the truth?” If you’re building a business, wrestling with competing priorities, or trying to decide what the next decade of your career should look like, I think you’ll find a lot to think about in this conversation. As always, thanks for listening. If you enjoy these conversations, please subscribe and leave a review—it helps us reach more entrepreneurs who are trying to build something meaningful.

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Boring Money is for the people quietly getting rich the unglamorous way. Hosted by David Heacock, founder and CEO of Filterbuy, this podcast covers boring businesses, acquisitions, cash flow, EBITDA, tax strategy, fixed income, and the real mechanics of compounding capital. Built for operators, investors, and business owners who care more about long-term wealth than hype, headlines, or status.

Informatie

  • Maker
    David Heacock
  • Jaren actief
    2026
  • Afleveringen
    22
  • Beoordeling
    Expliciet
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Boring Money
  • Website van aflevering
    Boring Money

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