No SBA, No Investors: The Liquidity Access Line

I don't, I don't know what that is, but how cool would it be to, to, to find something? So, so that's when I, you know, I do what I do whenever I'm trying to make a, a big decision is just start tapping the network and ask as many people as I can, what do you know? Who do you know that I could talk to about this whole concept of eta?

So tell us some of the parameters of the search and what you kind of went out there looking for once you decided on ETA as the path.

Let's read all the books. Let me ask everyone in my network pretty early on, a couple months in, so I'm learning about what does a proper search look like, what's your thesis, how are you going to raise funds, et cetera, et cetera. As I'm doing this and I'm asking my network, one of the first conversations in my network was one of my good buddies said, hey, talk to my father in law.

He's been in small business for a long time. He's got a lot of experience. He also left corporate about 20 years ago and so he'd be a good resource.

So of course I took a call with him and during that call he said, hey, listen, I've got this business. I know I haven't been putting what I should be into this. It's, I'm ready to move on into, you know, a retirement type phase.

And I think There's a lot of potential here. And so I started, you know, I heard them out and that started to progress. That was Citi Publications Atlanta.

So at that. So as I'm consuming all this, I'm also saying, well, this is the first, you know, real thing that's come across my desk. And. And I hadn't even launched a formal search. I'm like, learning about what a proper search looks like as this is developing.

So I told them, I said, hey, I'm gonna, You know, this. I'm liking what I'm hearing so far, but let's. I need to slow pay this a little bit.

Cause I gotta. I can't do myself the disservice of not seeing what's out there. So there was some urgency on that deal. There's some other folks looking at it, which I was aware of.

And I engaged with a broker. You know, I'd been looking at bizbuysell the whole time, but hadn't gotten close to, you know, really reaching out, just kind of learning what deals look like out there, what are the multiples that different businesses are selling for. And. And the broker mostly was bringing de novo franchise builds.

And, you know, it's really. I couldn't get. The thing that was really tugging at my gut was the relationship I had with the seller and the legacy of the business. In Atlanta, City Publications just started under a different name in 1996 here.