Acquiring Isn't Always a One-Way Door

Probably not knowing what I know now, I will have done things a little bit different on a negotiation. But taking aside some personal things that happened to me while I was running the business, I think it was a great business. And just looking back, if I could reverse time, I will have bought it for maybe 1.2 and, and then just I can tell you more.

But on the operation side, just be more cautious, build the cash flow a little bit different. But yeah, I will have still about the business. Yeah.

You're going to be less focused on sales actually and more focused on operational efficiency to modernize the business and make it more create operational leverage and more profitable. Even though you knew you were going to probably have to hire somebody else because you were replacing 80, maybe 100 hours of week a week of work between the two owners, husband and wife. As you described their…

They were each working 40, 50 hours a week and you were going to come in and replace both of them. And you know the. We have a concept here that an owner hour, this is like a dog years Thing. Right. Owner hours are actually, maybe you should apply a multiple to them.

So one owner hour equals two of your hours because they've been doing it for 30 years and they really, they can do it more efficiently, faster, you know, with their one hand time behind the back, one hand tied behind their back, so to speak. So you were, you were taking on a big a lot. But what did you see as the opportunities?

Did I characterize it right? Go from there?

Yeah. So I identified that the wife was the one with the know how and actually calling the shots. She was doing the main, the most important part of that company is the way you execute the projects, the planning aspect of it. So she was doing all of that side of things.

So my first six months I just wanted to learn everything from her. Before she left it was an eight week transition, so I didn't have too much time. So once I stepped into that office, we had, imagine it's a showroom.

You walk in and you see tile, you see flooring, you see sample of showers, you see countertops. So it's just a nice showroom. In the front you have two salespeople just in the front.

Phone calls, emails, greeting customers, displaying materials. And in the back they had two other persons doing administrative work. One person was dedicated to do accounts receivable and the other person was accounts payable.

So you have four full time employees in the office doing those things. Just very repetitive tasks. And then you have obviously the lady, the owner doing all the coordination of these people and actually calling contractors, executing the projects.