And so you look for businesses where the weaknesses are. The are, are those that you can fix. And so it sounds like there was a nice juicy long list here.
Acquiring Minds
60% Concentration That Killed an Exit
Episode
Excerpts · 620 segments · ~1:49:21 long
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05:02 Background: finance to search fund11:05 Fundraising and finding the deal14:39 The salon POS business26:23 SaaS conversion and deal terms33:48 Building HQ and team in Minnesota45:15 Growth and POS market getting hot55:16 Going to market, buyer walks1:01:31 Whistleblower, lawsuit, settlement1:26:13 Buying back software for Zenoti1:30:02 Lessons and searching again
You just had to figure out how to prioritize them. That's right. Great. Okay. Returning to then your ownership. So you agree with the investors that to do this deal you have to take it from a remote business to a hybrid business where there's some had some physical headquarters. Carry on from, from that point.
Sure. And so basically I moved to Minnesota because Supercuts was based there. And I said look, I want to be spend six months here. I'm the new guy. This is really important obviously the customer concentration.
And I decided to sit there and I moved in January of 16. So I moved from Culver City, Santa Monica, 75 degrees to Minnesota. January, I think it was January 14, 2016.
So it was a 95 degree drop in that three hour flight, four hour flight. It's very cold and you know, well, I live in Boston. Minnesota is a different, it's a different beast.
And I didn't know a soul. Um, you know, so I, I but I Moved there. And I was like, look, I'm gonna make my relationship.
And then the way that I thought about it was I would take a protractor and do a two hour flight outside of la. Cause that's where I'm from. And somewhere in that arc would be where I put the headquarters.
But for now, let me just go meet the people of Regis and Supercuts and like, you know, learn the business and all that. So I ended up doing that. And then I think it was maybe May of 16, the board asked like, hey, so where do you want to put a headquarters?
And I don't know if you've ever been to Minnesota in May, but it's, it can be beautiful. And so they got me on the right day, right time. I started making friends.
You know, I was playing in a baseball, a men's baseball league, a 35 and over group. And it was, it was just beautiful out. And I was like, here's great.
You just forget about the winter. And I just said, here, here's great.
And I just decided to put the headquarters in Minnesota and I started networking and talking to people and finding a space and you know, we had some dingy little thing that I paid maybe a thousand bucks a month on the high end, but with the promise of tenant improvements and fast forward that story, it turned out to be one of the most beautiful spaces I ever paid for and had for nothing. And…
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