Acquiring Isn't Always a One-Way Door

This isn't something where I am locked in Forever. And I, and I said to you that I thought generally people considering buying small businesses should treat it as something they're going to be locked into and there is no undo button. Talk us through your thought there and what you actually found.

I mean you, you were able to find a seller. Am I wrong to tell people to treat this as a, as a one way door?

You know what searchers are looking for because you were looking for that very same thing, you know, before. So you know just how to position your company to, to, to be presented on that, on that way. Right. Maybe it's not in, in terms of the cash flow, but it's in terms of, of what the company is, what they represent and what that company can bring to a table to someone that wants to be in that…

So during my time in residential remodeling, I saw a lot of companies going bankrupt, going out of business, a lot of big players, a lot of our vendors that sold those countertops or flooring, a lot of companies were going out of business or bigger players just doing a lot of Marius acquisitions just because it was, it was just a tough period. So I use a lot of that data to present the company in…

This is who we are, this is how much money we're making, the company has, plus 30 years in the industry. You put those things together in a nice memorandum in a nice business by sale profile. And I did got a lot of attention really quick.

So I was just a bit shocked. But I probably invested five to 10 hours just putting all of these things together. And then from there it just took off. I had no issues finding, finding someone.

And these people expressing interest in your business were other searchers?

Yeah, I'll say half have private equity groups, solo searchers, but mainly groups that wanted to acquire companies in the services sector. In Texas, a lot of just mergers and acquisition companies approach me.

And do you feel like from all of those, Lois, that you received that they were strong offers?

I think nowadays the way an SBA loan works, they want to see some sort of assets rather than goodwill. Right. Something that they can, they can put their hands on in case a business goes wrong. Right. Which in terms can be land, equipment, etc.

So yeah, the hard part was to get funding. You know, again, if you're buying a business that solely relies on, on their, their reputation, their goodwill, then it's going to be more challenging to, to sell the business for the, for the multiple that it deserves. Just because you have that, that risk aspect of it with whoever is going to lend you the money, either a bank or, or, or you know, a…