How a $30M Exit Sparked 6 New Businesses

This week, I sat down with Nik, host of the Nickonomics podcast, who spent years building a home health, home care, and hospice business that grew to $12 million in topline revenue before he sold it to a publicly traded company. A couple years back, once his group of businesses was doing roughly $30 million a year, he decided the timing was right and sold off the majority of his holdings.

Since then, alongside his best friend and business partner Chris Kerner, Nik has been putting money and energy into a string of wildly different businesses, a Bitcoin mining hardware company, a tree trimming business in Dallas, a couple of RV parks, a healthcare tech startup, and a marketing agency for home service companies. Some of them worked out. Some of them, in his own words, were mistakes.

We covered what a home health and hospice business actually does, the M&A math behind selling a healthcare business, the partnership framework he uses with Chris, and why he thinks human to human service businesses are about to become more valuable, not less, as AI takes over.

The Key Takeaways

Below are the most essential insights from my conversation with Nik that you can apply to your home services business today.

1. He Sold the Majority of His Businesses Once the Timing Felt Right

A couple of years ago, once Nik’s group of companies was doing about $30 million a year, he decided it was the right moment in the market to pare things back. He sold off the majority of his holdings and started paying closer attention to social media out of curiosity, which eventually led to his own podcast, Nickonomics.

“A couple of years ago, I started selling the majority of my businesses, cuz we were doing $30 million a year and just decided it was time at the time in the market. So we paired back a lot of things and I started getting into social media cuz I was curious what was going on, and here’s where we are.”

— Nik

2. Home Health, Home Care, and Hospice Are Three Very Different Businesses

Nik broke down the elderly care space into three distinct buckets. Home health sends nurses and physical therapists into the home to help someone recover after a fall, surgery, or illness. Home care is non-skilled help like bathing, light cleaning, or companionship. Hospice is for people with a terminal diagnosis who are not trying to get better, but to exit life gracefully. Home health and hospice require a clinical license, while home care does not.

“Hospice is unfortunately you’re dying, you’ve got a terminal diagnosis, and we want to help you exit this life gracefully. We’re not trying to get you better, we’re trying to help you exit life gracefully.”

— Nik

3. A Twin Sister’s Care Needs Shaped His Entire Career

Nik’s path into healthcare was not accidental. His twin sister was severely developmentally delayed growing up, so clinicians were constantly in and out of the house. That early exposure taught him the value of healthcare delivered in the home, even though he knew he could never be the clinician himself since he faints at the sight of blood, which is what pulled him toward the administrative and business side instead.

“I grew up in a household, my twin sister was severely developmentally delayed. And so we always had clinicians coming in and out of the house. I knew from an early age the value of healthcare in the home. I also knew that I would faint at the sight of blood.”

— Nik

4. The M&A Math Behind a Home Health and Hospice Exit

Nik built his home health, home care, and hospice business up to $12 million in topline revenue and eventually sold it to a publicly traded company. He explained that the M&A market for these businesses is strong because of the aging population and steady government payer sources like Medicare, and that deals in the space typically trade between 0.5 and 1.5 times topline revenue, or three to six times EBITDA depending on size.

“For the most part, I would say they trade anywhere between 0.5 and one and a half times topline revenue and anywhere between three to six times EBITDA, depending on the size.”

— Nik

5. Six Unrelated Businesses With Chris Kerner, and a Lesson About Focus

Alongside his business partner Chris Kerner, Nik has built or invested in a Bitcoin mining hardware company that hit $10 million in revenue in three months before fading over three years, a tree trimming business in Dallas doing high six to seven figures a year, a couple of RV parks they later sold because neither of them was paying attention, a healthcare tech startup that helps identify diagnoses earlier, and a digital marketing agency called Repeat Leads that helps home service businesses find customers through underused channels like Reddit, Facebook groups, and texting. Looking back, he admits chasing all of it at once was mostly a mistake.

“You’ve developed this core competency, for me, healthcare. I’m better than probably 99% of the people in the world at that core competency. I can make a ton of money at that core competency… and I want to pivot out of it. Honestly, the last two and a half years, in my opinion, has been mostly a mistake.”

— Nik

6. Good Partnerships Need Trust, Diversity, Humility, and Clear Equity Upfront

Nik shared a framework he uses for every partnership: trust first, then diversity of skill set and perspective, then humility, communication, shared goals, and a clear equity split agreed on before anyone starts working. He told a story from when he and Chris met as missionaries in Hungary, where an unspoken assumption about sharing a watermelon turned into a real argument, all because they never talked upfront about what was actually shared and what wasn’t.

“Never enter a freaking partnership thinking, ‘Oh, we’ll figure it out.’ Decide it up front. Be very clear upfront.”

— Nik

7. AI Is Lowering the Cost of Testing a New Business

Nik pointed out that starting a business used to require buying equipment and going door to door with no idea whether it would work, and the cost of failure could run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now, anyone can use AI as a personal assistant to think through their skill set and test whether a business idea fits before spending a dollar on it, which he sees as a genuine game changer for aspiring entrepreneurs.

“I think using AI as your own personal assistant to give you insights and to ideate with is a total game changer as far as I’m concerned.”

— Nik

Looking Ahead

Nik’s biggest bet going forward is on businesses that require a real person to show up, meet a customer, and do the work face to face. As digital work gets cheaper and easier to automate, he expects the reverse to happen with real world, human made things and human to human services, becoming more valuable, not less.

“The ability to go and meet customers and talk to them and sell them and have a face to the name, I think is just going to become even more powerful. So I love human to human services businesses.”

— Nik