Acquiring a $7m Niche Marketing Agency with 50 Employees

And, and it's a small world. I mean, you know, you'll hear big city people talk about how, oh this, you know, Manhattan is just a big village, you know, and, and if you're aggressively networking out there, you'll, you'll, you'll, that world will get small real, real small, real quick. And so I just would imagine that being the case here as well.

And so I was just kind of trying to pick it what it's like to do proprietary networking forward searching in a smallish city.

But that, yeah, that would be the downside, you know, the kind of quote unquote, smaller pond. You know, if other folks are searching, you know, you could and do bump up against that. I, you know, definitely thought the proprietary pathway was going to be the core pathway for me.

You know, did I beat around the bush too much? I ended up finding my opportunity through a broker. But what I did like about a proprietary search in a somewhat smaller market is you could be really targeted with your networking.

You know, you can go directly to kind of the classic lawyers, accountants, bankers. And, you know, because it's a smaller market, you know, they may have a better pulse on who may be considering a succession plan. I also found insurance brokers were another probably piece of the pie in terms of networking, that they also have a really good pulse on their clients and who might be thinking about…

So several leads came in from that route. And then I loved that I could. As I developed a relationship with an owner, I could take them to lunch and get to know them.

And I had a very specific strategy with lunch. I had a go to Spot Fisher's Grill. It's kind of a dive bar.

Um, always picked up the tab because it never broke the bank. Never wanted to kind of put that onus on the owner. And then I always wanted to watch his or her cell phone because that was a big tell to me about how involved they were in the business operation and one.

One owner in particular. I mean, without fail, every time we got a meal, his phone went off. And so I knew that if I went down that route, you know, I had to have a plan to, you know, how I was gonna involve myself in the way that, you know, he had with his business.

And the owners that you took out, did you find that getting an audience with them was difficult? I would imagine in a smaller market, it'd be easier just because, you know, interested, you know, And I just feel like a smaller market, people are going to be more receptive to a stranger saying, hey, let's get lunch.

Yeah, that's definitely right. It was somewhat easier to get that initial meeting. But I think the piece with proprietary, which is always a challenge, is you don't have the quarterback kind of helping to mediate the conversation and to push things along like you do when you have a broker involved.