American Dream Achieved
IBA, as a fifty-year old business brokerage firm serving the entrepreneurial community of the Pacific Northwest, has been uniquely positioned since before the American Bicentennial celebration of 1976 to witness and hear the stories of thousands of people who have lived the American dream through entrepreneurship creating beloved businesses by employees, customers, and communities while finding personal fulfillment and financial prosperity through execution of their ideas, hard work, perseverance, and ability. In an effort to share these stories heard throughout the years by our team of business brokers, who are commonly regarded as the “best listeners” in the M&A industry, IBA has retained highly regarded writer, Nesha Ruther, to tell their stories. It is our goal to share one story a month. It is our hope that you will find the stories as inspirational and motivational as they are to us and the buyers who bought the businesses in IBA facilitated transactions in Washington, Oregon, and Alaska.
The Story of Dylan Wentworth of Ertell Electric
By Nesha Ruther
Dylan Wentworth’s career as an electrician began in the unlikeliest of places: a production job at Nike. “I was working your typical Monday through Thursday, twelve-hour night shift, and I heard someone to the side of me talking about being an electrician and how much they make,” Dylan recalls. “I heard where to apply for the job and found it downtown based on the description, and I applied for an apprenticeship.” This serendipity was the beginning of a long and successful career in entrepreneurship.
At 20 years old when Dylan began working as an electrician, he was an ideal candidate. Dylan had joined the military while still in high school and served in the reserves while working other jobs. He had an analytical mind that his military experience had sharpened and honed. He was also skilled at memorization and absorbing information. “I probably could have been a lawyer,” Dylan reflects. “I had the mind for it. But that was not in my future. I knew it was going to be something blue-collar and trades-based. And I had this natural aptitude for electrical.”
Dylan also understood the importance of financial stability from a young age, largely because it was something he’d never had. Originally from Hillsboro, Oregon, Dylan was the oldest of six boys and had been placed in foster care when he was twelve. “Because of that I was very determined and I had a strong work ethic. I had the perspective of being the one to turn things around generationally.”
Dylan not only wanted to be financially stable himself but to bring his family with him. He understood that he was carrying the future of his family on his back. “We all had it tough,” he says of him and his siblings. “About half of them have been incarcerated and none of them live with my parents anymore. It was just one of those kinds of childhoods. But that was why I joined the military and was always working or going to school. I knew that if I stayed busy and kept driving forward, the odds of succeeding were better than not.”
These experiences had left him diligent, hardworking, and perhaps most importantly, ambitious. “It wasn’t so much that I wanted to be an electrician,” he admits. “But I knew adamantly that I wanted to be a business owner and this was my vehicle for that.”
This desire to be an entrepreneur came from Dylan’s grandmother. “I remember one Christmas morning; we’re setting up plates for lunch. I don’t know how we ended up talking about it but I vividly remember standing next to the oven and my grandma saying, ‘Dylan, you’ll never get rich working for somebody else.’ it always stuck with me,” he says. “From that point on I knew I wanted to be a business owner.”
Early into his electrical career, Dylan became friends with an electrician named Marshall. Marshall had his license and had started his own company, but didn’t have any clients. Dylan on the other hand, was still in his apprenticeship but had accumulated a significant customer base. Each had something the other needed. “I told Marshall, give me half of your company and I’ll bring you business. So, I became a 50/50 owner in a company called Bailey’s Electric before I even became a journeyman,” he laughs.
With Dylan’s network of clients, Bailey’s was an instant success. But as time passed, he began to have doubts about his relationship with Marshall. “I realized after three years that we didn’t see eye to eye on our appreciation for customers,” he says. “Marshall was a really nice guy, but I valued clients as if they were family. I would go to their daughter’s quinceañeras. If a client had a problem at their house, I would take care of it even though most of our work was commercial and industrial, not residential. I would make sure their equipment was running even if it was a Saturday at noon or a Tuesday at midnight. It sounds like a stretch, but it wasn’t. Marshall didn’t have that same attitude.”
Eventually, Marshall bought Dylan out of the company and Dylan struck out on his own. He had his license and his business experience. There was just one thing he felt he was missing, in Dylan’s words, “a personality.”
“Okay, I had a personality,” he clarifies. “I just didn’t know how to direct it. I am a bit of an introvert and sometimes struggle to interact with new people. But when I first began my apprenticeship, I became friends with a man named Todd Ertell. Todd is a magician with people. He could insult you to your face and you would love him for it, it’s so impressive. He’s very warm and you always want him around. He’s also one of the best electricians I’ve ever met. As we became friends, I studied him, emulated him, and learned how to build relationships with clients.”
When it came to starting his own electrical company, Dylan knew exactly who he wanted at his side. In January 2008, Dylan started Ertell Electric, giving Todd 50% ownership and the name of the business. “We were working primarily in Western Washington County and Todd and his name had a very strong presence with our clients. I also didn’t like being in the forefront, I didn’t want the name, so that was a win for me to do it this way and show this person that I appreciated him,” Dylan says.
In 2010, after experiencing some personal hardships, Todd Ertell decided to leave the company, but it remained a family business, with both of his sons continuing to work for Dylan. “I love him to death,” Dylan says of his old friend.
While Ertell Electric started small, it began to steadily grow year after year. “It was probably the worst possible time to start a business,” Dylan laughs. “We had a shoestring budget, but I knew our client base, I knew our employees, and I could forecast well enough how much we would have in future cash flow.” As the business grew, so too did the community Dylan had cultivated. “I had the privilege of seeing people come in, work with us, graduate from school, get married, have families. I even performed a wedding for one of my employees. It was a big opportunity for me to grow myself and to see everybody grow around me.”
When new apprentices were hired, they found such a supportive community and workplace that they often remained through their entire four-year apprenticeship and never wanted to leave. “I kept accumulating people organically,” Dylan says. “I’d go from six people to eight, eight to 12, to 16, to eventually I had about 35 employees.”
Dylan’s growth may have come relatively organically, but only because he built the infrastructure that allowed it to be so, and in those early years, he was building it all himself. “I had no social life. I slept maybe three or four hours a night. I would wake up at 3:00, 4:00 in the morning and lay out my guys, order their stuff, and then do my job, and then do the billing because I didn’t have a bookkeeper,” Dylan says.
It’s easy to romanticize the work ethic required to be an entrepreneur, but Dylan knows firsthand that it comes with sacrifices. “I had to compromise a lot of things. Growing the business cost me a marriage,” he says candidly. “I wasn’t prepared and I should have been more aware of my situation. It wasn’t responsible for me to be married at the time and I didn’t have the best relationship with my daughter at that time too. I regret those things, but looking back, I had to do certain things to get to where I am now.”
At 27 years old, Dylan found himself running a company in which clients were giving him huge contracts, he had people who were twice his age working under him. The pressure he felt was astronomical. In that situation, all Dylan could do was give the job everything he had and learn from his mistakes. “I learned a lot when things didn’t go right. It’s easy when things are looking good but I believe the true color of a company comes out when shit hits the fan. When things don’t go well, how do you react? How do you fix the situation? That’s a fundamental thing I always looked for. I hate to say I looked for those opportunities because I didn’t want things to go wrong, but I always learned from them,” he says.
The same commitment Dylan had shown towards his clients: making himself available and being involved in their lives, he also showed to his employees. “I was always very adamant about knowing what’s going on with their families, where they’re at in school, everything. I took it very seriously that my people were trusting me to allow them to pay their mortgage, pay for their food, and pay for their car. Over the years I’ve bought people cars, I’ve paid medical bills, I’ve paid for funerals, I’ve performed weddings. I’ve been to their children’s births and graduations,” he says. “It’s a privileged situation to be able to watch people develop and it came from my belief in taking care of my clients and taking care of my employees. Because if I don’t have either of those things, I don’t have a business.”
Sometimes, this meant Dylan went weeks without paying himself. It meant leveraging every credit card and putting himself in a precarious position. “But I never missed a paycheck to any of my guys, ever,” he says adamantly. “I knew if I took care of them, they would take care of me.”
This dedication to his employees yielded another benefit: a steady stream of talent who wanted to work for Ertell Electric. “I’d say the majority of our workforce came from firsthand referral. Somebody who worked for us would tell somebody else and that has so much more merit than we could convey in a cold call or finding someone off the street,” he says.
Despite the influx of potential employees, Dylan understood the importance of keeping his team agile. “One of the reasons I was successful is because I always ran very lean in my overhead. I had one person doing office management and one person working warehouse. I worked the snot out of those guys but I incentivized them well. I also did a lot of the work myself. I ran the shop and I ran projects and did about 90% of the work.”
When it did come time to hire new people, Dylan believed in prioritizing team fit over experience. “I always made sure I hired people that had a good personality and weren’t toxic,” he says. “Obviously when you first meet someone, you’re going to get smoke and mirrors, but the rubber is going to hit the road the first two, three weeks on the job and you’ll know who they are. My attitude was always, I can teach you anything, I can train you to do the job, but I can’t make anyone have a good personality and fit well with the rest of the team.”
Dylan also believed in cultivating a team with a diverse skill set so they could provide their clients with everything they needed in and beyond electrical services. “Some people’s only experience is running pipe conduit, pulling wire, or making up receptacles and lights. But at Ertell, we do a holistic approach from cradle to grave. We’re helping the client order their materials, knowing what they need, how to get the right components, how to make up HVAC equipment, electrical motors, or industrial controls,” he says.
“This goes back to taking care of the client, they trusted me and so I wanted to do everything we could for them. ‘If there’s a problem, I’m going to fix it. I’m your electrician, I have the keys to your building. I know your alarm codes. I’ll be there tonight don’t worry about it; we’ve got it covered.’ That’s what I tried to build a business around.”
As Dylan’s team grew and he cultivated relationships with employees he trusted, he was able to outsource some of the work that he had previously done himself. “This is where I relied on my military experience. I had worked my way up in the echelons and was a first sergeant so I had to learn how to delegate,” he says. “Instead of project managing all the jobs, I got people that I trusted and people who were very successful at their jobs. I knew everything would be okay, and I could assure the client everything would be okay because I had groomed them to take over those jobs and prepared them for those situations.
Another strategy that was critical to Ertell Electric’s growth was that Dylan refused to accumulate any kind of debt. “I knew from the moment we started that I didn’t want to have loans. I didn’t want to pay interest to anyone,” he says. “I bought my first vans in cash, and they weren’t great, but after a while, we leveled up. I bought my own suite in a business park so that I didn’t have to pay a lease. It took me two-and-a-half years to pay off that suite and then I never had to pay anyone for it ever again. It allowed me to feel in control of my situation.”
Electrical equipment is extremely expensive, which is why many companies will rent it for thousands of dollars a month. Instead, Dylan would patrol auctions looking for the equipment he needed at a discount. This not only gave him peace of mind and kept his overhead low but also gave his business a flexibility larger companies did not have. “I had liberties that I could exercise that bigger companies couldn’t and I could beat the pants off them in price while still making 30%, 40% margins,” he explains.
While he may have had to pay for these things out of pocket in the early years, it paid off in the long run, giving Ertell Electric flexibility and agility as well as the ability to keep their prices shockingly low. “That was my philosophy. I’m going to buy everything and own it outright. I’m going to save money while still taking care of my guys and taking care of my clients,” Dylan says.
This philosophy served him well for 15 years, from 2008 to 2023, when he sold the business. Originally, Dylan had wanted to pass on Ertell Electric to Todd Ertell’s children, who had continued working for him for many years. “It was a bit of a heartbreaker,” he says. “I’ve known his son Joe Ertell, and Joe’s wife Keerstyn since they were 12 years old, we’re very close. I had wanted to phase myself out of the business and sell it to them. Keerstyn had been doing our books at that time for 12 years and there’s nothing she doesn’t know, and Joe is very capable, so I intended to sit back and let them run it.”
Unfortunately, the pressure of the business was intense for Todd’s children and they chose not to inherit the company their father had helped found. At this point, Dylan had established the mindset that he was selling the company and settling down. While selling a business can often be emotionally challenging, like sending off a child to college, it can be just as difficult to have that child suddenly move back in once you’ve made peace with their departure.
Additionally, the 15 years of physically and mentally challenging work had begun to take its toll. “I was also experiencing a lot of stress,” Dylan admits. “My blood pressure was through the roof and I needed to step away for my health. I want to be a great husband and I want to be a great father and grandfather and I needed to start diverting some of that attention towards myself and my family.”
This proved a monumental crossroads. If he stayed on, Dylan knew he could grow the business to new heights, but he had paid the cost for this growth once before and wasn’t sure he wanted to again. “It was a pivotal time. I could step away or I could build this thing and double my manpower. I knew I could do that but it would be another 10 years of my life. So, I decided to appreciate what I had already done.”
Throughout his career, Dylan had developed a network of connections that allowed him to have a guy for just about anything. “I’m a guy who has a lot of resources,” he says. “If you need something done, I know a way to get it done, except when it came to finding a business broker, I had no one.”
He turned to the internet and began looking through potential options but was largely unimpressed. “I emailed four or five other companies, and I just wasn’t happy. Their websites were horrible, they wouldn’t respond to my emails. It was demoralizing.”
Finally, he found IBA. His largely unfruitful search had left him a little skeptical. “I wasn’t sure if they were for real,” Dylan says. After contacting IBA, he was connected with business broker Joseph Hollcraft and knew immediately that IBA was different. “Joseph was incredibly hard-working and was very knowledgeable. I wouldn’t have traded the help I got from IBA for anything, it got me exactly where I wanted to go.”
Joseph connected Dylan with Midway Mechanical Services, who were interested in buying the company. “Midway was very diligent, every nook and cranny was explored and no stone went unturned. It allowed me to trust their professionalism,” Dylan says.
Midway also had the most experience and a repertoire that made them familiar with Ertell’s type of work. “Ertell was probably their 13th or 14th acquisition. And even though we were their first electrical company, they had acquired HVAC and refrigeration companies that we would often see on job sites. I knew that they knew our type of work and we were speaking the same language,” he says. “I knew we would be a cohesive fit in that regard.” Within 10 months, Dylan had sold Ertell Electric.
Since retiring, Dylan has kept busy by traveling to Europe, dropping his son off at college, and indulging in an assortment of eclectic hobbies that include (but are not limited to) learning Bulgarian and preparing for a regional pool competition. Always in need of a new challenge, he is also learning to fish for salmon and steelhead. “I’m striking out every time, but I don’t care,” he laughs.
When asked if he feels he has achieved the American Dream, Dylan pauses. “This is an interesting question because we all dream differently,” he says. “When I was a kid, I dreamt of not having welfare Christmases and shoes that were wrapped in duct tape.”
“I didn’t want that for me or my brothers and kids. I was a foster kid and I had to make the most of what I was given. I joined the military to pay for my schooling, I worked two jobs while being in the reserves. When I wasn’t working all those jobs, I was a business owner working the same number of hours anyway. So, I think for me, the American Dream is being able to recognize a window of opportunity when that window is open. I was able to find the vehicle for achieving my American Dream just by eavesdropping on a buddy of mine at Nike at 3:00 in the morning. He described a building in Portland, and I drove around until I found it.”
While Dylan never dreamt of being an electrician, he dreamt of making a different life for himself and his family, and through entrepreneurship, he was able to make that dream a reality. “I’m just glad that my family is cohesive now. We had a couple bad generations, and that’s life but that’s not our life anymore, so that’s the American dream for me.”
Nesha Ruther
Nesha Ruther is a writer and editor from Takoma Park, Maryland. She received her BA in English Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin Madison, where she received a full tuition scholarship through the First Wave program based on academic and creative merits. She was a 2016 Young Arts winner in spoken word, a 2016 winner of the DC Commission of the Arts Larry Neal Writing Award, a 2017 winner of the Mochila Review Writing Award, which was judged by Nikki Giovanni, a 2020 winner of the University of Wisconsin’s Eudora Welty Fiction Thesis Award, and a 2022 Tin House Winter Workshop Participant. She has been commissioned to write and perform for the National Education Association, and has had work published in NarrativeNortheast, Angles Literary Magazine, Beltway Quarterly and more. She currently lives in Cincinnati Ohio, is a Lead Writer at Bond & Grace, and a co-host for the podcast Lit Talk (https://www.bondandgrace.com/the-lit-talk-podcast).