Founder Mode for ETA: $6m to $25m in 3 Years

Today's guest is all about bringing founder mode to his acquisition. Isaac Zimmerman acquired Jay Blanton, a plumbing business in Chicago. Isaac intends to spend years, decades maybe, building his life's work in this industry.

I thought this vision was compelling, so much so that I talked about it in a recent speech at the Southeastern ETA Conference at UVA, where I said essentially the following. This concept of founder mode is borrowed from Techland from a talk given by Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky.

The idea is essentially that as founder of your company, resist the conventional wisdom of delegate, delegate, delegate, that you should put great people in management positions, then get out of their way. Instead, you should sweat the details and be engaged more actively, more deeply than our notion of what the ideal chief executive looks like. Founder mode was controversial.

It kicked off debate across Silicon Valley. But agree with it or not, it's a useful concept, particularly in ETA, where the holy grail is often taken to be building the business into one that runs without you. On Acquiring Minds, I too celebrate that outcome.

But there is something to be said for pouring yourself into the business you buy, for completely identifying with it, rather than trying to figure out how you can extricate yourself as quickly as possible. You might characterize these dueling orientations as the private equity approach versus the founder approach. As you'll hear, Isaac falls squarely in one of those two camps.

Which one resonates with you? Here he is, Isaac Zimmerman, owner of Jay Blanton. Regular listeners of Acquiring Minds know that blending ETA with franchising can be a powerful combination.

Connor Gross is an expert on the topic, and he returns for a webinar on the ABCs of actually executing an acquisition strategy within a franchise system. Topics will include how to source off-market deals as an outsider to a system or as an insider. How franchise diligence differs from independent business diligence.

The flywheel effect of franchise acquisition integration. and capital raising in exit strategies. The webinar is the ABCs of Franchise M&A, Deal Sourcing, Diligence, and Integration.

And it's this coming Thursday, October 2nd at noon Eastern. Link to register for the webinar is right at the top of this episode's show notes or on the Acquiring Minds homepage, acquiringminds.co.

Thank you.

Welcome to Acquiring Minds, a podcast about buying businesses. My name is Will Smith. Acquiring an existing business is an awesome opportunity for many entrepreneurs. And on this podcast, I talk to the people who do it.

If you ask owners in the ETA and search community, which insurance broker provides highest quality work, great outcomes, and has a practice dedicated to searchers and acquisition entrepreneurs, one name comes up again and again. Oberle.