We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Brian Gallagher a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Brian, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

Gallagher Stump Removal was started by my father as a side job to make additional money for our family in 1988. Over the course of 30 years, the business evolved from doing a handful of direct to consumer projects for homeowners on the weekends to working directly with tree removal and landscaping companies as a full time career. However, despite the increased work volume it was always a single person job rather than a multi layered organization. When he was nearing retirement, I approached him with the idea to scale Gallagher Stump Removal into a multi-crew business that would be the go-to provider for stump removal for homeowners, businesses, contractors and government municipalities in Southeastern Pennsylvania. At this point I had just graduated with my MBA from UCLA Anderson and was working as a general manager at a dialysis facility in Southern California. I knew that my skills and experience from both this position and my previous military career would translate well into this entrepreneurial venture, but I hadn’t been involved in the family business since working with my father during the summers in my early teen years. I decided in order to fully evaluate the potential of the business, both operationally and financially, I would have to spend a year working within the business, collecting data points, and evaluating processes to determine whether the business was truly scalable. After many discussions with my wife I made the decision to move back to Pennsylvania just three months after getting married to join the company as an employee to beta test how adding an additional crew would affect the P&L and operations of the business.
Over the next 9 months I collected extensive data around job completion, route efficiency, marketing ROI, expense management, and various other KPIs that would help inform my decision on whether I could truly grow the business. In the end, the numbers made it clear that the potential was there for true growth to turn Gallagher Stump Removal from a job into a business, and in October 1st of 2022 I acquired the business from my father and began my journey as an entrepreneur.

Brian, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I grew up in a small suburban town of Philadelphia and spent the summers of my teen years working with my father as a one man cleanup crew for his tree stump removal business. Following high school, I went to the United State Military Academy at West Point where I majored in economics before serving 5 years in the Army as a Field Artillery Officer. My time in the military taught me a lot about time management, work ethic, attention to detail and thorough planning. Most importantly, it helped to develop my leadership and management skills and drove home the importance of building a strong culture within the units I led. I knew that these were all skills that would help me to be successful in the business world, so following my time in service I made the decision to pursue my Masters Degree in Business Administration. I had always envisioned myself working in the corporate world before pursuing an entrepreneurial venture, so after graduating from UCLA Anderson I entered the healthcare field as a General Manager at an outpatient dialysis facility. The skills I developed in the military helped prepare me for the rewarding career in helping patients and employees alike navigate treatment during the pandemic. However, it also showed me that I had the skills and adaptability to face adversity and grow a business on my own. These two pivotal experiences helped drive my decision to acquire my family business, Gallagher Stump Removal, and scale it to the next level.
Our business provides tree stump removal services for homeowners and businesses using specialized stump grinders that turn tree stumps into mulch. Removing stumps not only improves the appearance of properties, but also reduces pest infestation, removes obstructions to lawn care, and allows for other projects like sidewalk, pool, and patio construction to take place unimpeded. What sets us apart from other companies in this industry is our exceptional customer service and speed in job completion. We typically have a one week turnaround from the time we receive a call to the time we complete a job, which allows homeowners to achieve the end result they are looking for faster than expected and our subcontracting partners to close out work orders and collect payment faster. I am most proud of our ability to surprise our clients, whether it is from our affordable prices, our quality of service, or simply how easy and efficient the process was to get the end result they were looking for.

Let’s move on to buying businesses – can you talk to us about your experience with business acquisitions?

Gallagher Stump Removal was the first business I have owned and managed, and I acquired the business as an asset sale from my father. I made the decision to acquire the business after 9 months of due diligence where I worked as an employee to test its scalability. During that time I had access to every aspect of the business, ranging from the operations themselves to the financial statements of the business. After I was able to answer all the scalability questions and exceed the KPI’s set in place to measure success, I felt confident in my ability to run and grow the business so we embarked on the acquisition of Gallagher Stump Removal. The process was relatively smooth, starting with hiring an outside firm to value the business, establishing an LLC that would purchase the current business, working with a legal and accounting team to ensure all the proper paperwork and payment terms were ironed out, and ultimately ending with me taking over a few months later.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

Purchasing a business is not a small endeavor. In my case, I had some time to prepare for the acquisition since I had arranged for an initial trial period with my father to evaluate the business prior to making the final decision on whether the move forward with the acquisition or not. During that time I was working as an employee of the business and saving as much of my paycheck as a I could each week to go toward the initial down payment. I had money saved from my past jobs as well, but knew that the first few months of operations would likely have some unexpected startup costs so I planned to use these savings for that purpose. The payment structure I agreed upon for the acquisition was a 25% down payment with a 4 year monthly payment plan to cover the rest in addition to a monthly rent payment for the workshop that housed all of our equipment. During my evaluation period it was clear that incoming revenue would be able to cover the monthly payments for both rent and the acquisition, so my main focus was to come up with the 25% down payment. I had purchased a condo in Hawaii while I was stationed there with the Army in 2014, so I made the decision to sell that property and use the proceeds to put toward the down payment. Luckily, the proceeds from that sale totaled the exact amount I needed for the down payment, which allowed me to finance the acquisition without having to take on any outside investment.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://gallagherstumpremoval.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gallagher_stump_removal/#
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gallagher.stump.removal