Financial Discipline: Get Better, Not Busier with Doug Higgins

Man, your timing is crazy just with what 2025 looked like, what Q1 2026 has looked like.

The industry is in an interesting inflection point right here.

25 was definitely a challenge.

Where are you seeing on the positive side of things? Where are you seeing operators doing a good job despite all of these challenges? What kind of bright spots can you point toward for us?

Yeah.

You know what I love about this industry? And I don't want to say it's special to this one.

I just think it's the reason why I wanted to get out of corporate America and get into entrepreneurship.

There's a group that I know that...

they have the way they do their collection of the like deposits and like they bring all their jobs into their central office because they're not paperless is they have their calibration guy driving around every day.

And so he's picking up finished ROs in folders and bringing them back.

And that's like, That is awesome to me.

I mean, as a financial guy, I'm like, okay, we've got an opportunity here.

But I respect the fact that you have to make it work sometimes.

And entrepreneurship, and I'm learning that now in my own practice, is sometimes you just got to like, hey, there's point B, here's point A, like bridge the gap.

Neat

solutions, man.

You know what I mean? Let's get creative here.

Yeah.

And that's what I...

I have seen more of that in the last several years.

And it is exactly why I'm here is because I love that.

I was bored sort of watching this paint dry and it's the same thing every day.

This is fun because it's like... oh, man, you know what? I can help you with getting, you know, that's a great solution and you solved it.

And now let's evolve that to the next level.

And there's a hundred examples of that, Cole, right? In every operation that has grown over time and evolved over time, they've solved problems as best they can.