“When You’ve Reached a Crossroads” | Bo and Dena Thomas’s Potomac Experience

It was kind of the perfect storm. The valuations are at their highest, taxes are going to go up — they’ve got to. We knew that we could take advantage of that now. If not, we knew that it was going to be about another 10-year cycle. You know, taxes do go up. To where we’re thinking, I mean, you would have to pretty much double the business to get the same amount. And so that sounded like working for 10 years for free to me, and that didn’t sound very appealing.

I hung drywall with my family, you know. It was like, there’s got to be something better than this. A friend of ours that worked at Advanced said, “Hey, we’re looking for technicians.” I went from hanging drywall to crawling houses. That’s kind of how I got started in the business, and worked every position, worked my way up.

And then Dina had purchased the South Carolina side from Jeff, and she needed a designated certified operator, so I came over to help her. And then we ended up getting married a year later.

So I didn’t know that this is how you all met — was Advanced. I thought y’all were married and then Advanced. I mean, how did we get from there to getting an email in November, like, “Hey, let’s have a conversation”?

Paul’s the guy that you call when you’ve reached a crossroads and you can’t decide if you want to sell the business, if you want to keep the business, if you want to die in the business, or if you want to watch all the things that you’ve done throughout your life and grown this business — what it can do for yourself, your family, and the community.

You can leave the legacy. And, you know, you cannot see all the stuff that you want to have happen, happen. Or you can cash out, basically, and then you can actually see it put to work. You can actually see that done while you’re still alive, rather than waiting until you’re dead. That, on top of the tax implications that are going to be coming up next year, just made this seem like the really right time.

And let’s face it, all business owners are going to exit the business at some point. Whether it’s the way that you want to go out or not is really what’s the difference. It just came down to be the perfect time. And we’ve worked with Paul over the years on different things. We always knew that if we decided to sell, it would be with Paul.

So what’s the family dynamic look like? What are y’all find yourself doing? You mentioned charitable contributions, or charity?

There’s different things that we could do, but we’re not sure yet. I’ve often wondered what we’re going to talk about, because we only talk about the kids and business pretty much at the house. The kids are moving out, they’re going to college, and we just closed on the business. So I was like, “Man, what are we gonna talk about now?”