Summary:

On this episode we were fortunate enough to sit down with Definitive Homecare Solutions (DHS) Founder, Stuart Crane. With the help of his partner, Stuart bootstrapped their company to a $43 million exit, and split the cash right down the middle. There’s something special and inspiring about the story of their successful company, maybe because of the way they pulled it together makes you feel like you could accomplish it yourself with enough drive and hard work. We cover everything from how the company started (over a little raking of the leaves), how it grew, how the exit came about, and what Stuart’s life looks like now after such a successful exit from the company. DHS was truly a “20-year over night success story”.

MileMarkers:

00:00 Shout out to the fans, AWH, ProKure Solutions, and Max Effort Muscle
02:00 Conquering Columbus Intro Music
03:15 Intro & background on Stuart Crane
04:20 Stuart’s younger days (childhood, family, college, etc…)
07:30 Computer science in the 1980’s
09:29 Any difficulties throughout college?
10:30 Path to Battelle and first job experience(s)
18:00 Leaving Battelle for Impact Resources, and what Stuart learned during his time with Impact Resources
22:30 Why do you think Impact Resources failed as a company?
25:00 Stuart’s first company
26:30 Definitive Home Care Solutions, “a company now 23 years in the making”… and it all started over a conversation with my neighbor, while raking leaves…
31:45 DHS’s first customer (CPR+) and the growth process from there
35:00 Leasing deals, the growth to substantial revenue, and our first employees
39:00 Pricing structure
41:00 Competition
42:15 Focusing on the little details that the customer wanted and the customer needed
44:00 If you want to be the dominate player in the space, you’ve got to be able to handle the big companies
46:30 The $43 million exit! (part 1)
49:00 Two successful acquisitions
50:00 The $43 million exit! (part 2)
57:30 Life post-exit from DHS
01:00:30 Get rolled up!
01:01:15 TV Talk Network
01:05:00 Amazon Echo and Stuart’s life today
01:11:00 Twilio
01:13:20 The focus now is on family!
01:15:00 Shameless pitch to sell Conquering Columbus to Stuart. Quickly Denied.
01:15:15 Spoiler Alert: Cleveland Indians lose
01:15:30 What does “Live Uncomfortably” mean to you?
01:17:30 Final remarks, AWH Plug, Max Effort Muscle Plug, ProKure Solutions Plug, and Conquering Columbus outro music

Links:

Stuart Crane
ProKure Solutions
AWH
Max Effort Muscle[subscribe]