Buying a Business to Balance Ambition and Kids

I'm like, are you really? This is a lot of work, but what am I going to tell you? And it's because they change cos.

And when you've got a change like that, the first thing they want to do is slash cost costs. And of course, it was a big cost. It's four buildings, 400 planters probably, you know, compared to other things that they were paying for, it was peanuts.

Well, that's just a, a fantastic accomplishment. Customer concentration of 20%, losing it. But diligencing that item, it's a 30 year old relationship.

20% is a lot. But you think that it's, it's just an ancient relationship, very steady. And in fact you do lose it and you rebuild to, to that 20% and more back to above what you bought it at. Revenue wise. Your last learning is also going to dovetail into my question about how you do the work.

So your last, your last learning here was what you call the product quality ambiance.

Yeah. So when you buy a business, either service or product, you need to make sure that what you're selling is really worth what you're, you know, selling. So it's easier to think about with a product. And this is actually an anecdote that comes from someone else that I know.

Like let's say you bough a business that sells shampoos and when you do your diligence, you see that only 10% of customers are actually returning customers. That means something is wrong with your product. Right. Like, why would just 10% of people decide your product is good enough for them to buy again when it's something so easy as shampoo?

So in services it's similar. Like would people call you again? Do they want to stay with you?

Are you offering a high quality product? And that's really, really important I to have. And so when I was buying this company, I was not knowledgeable enough to gauge the quality of the product, which were how the plant should look, how the installations should look.

I just didn't know enough to look at a plant and be like, this plant looks beautiful, it's healthy. And so I bought the business and I never asked the seller to change any of the plants. And then as I started hearing complaints and stuff, I started learning what people see as good versus bad and looking also, you know, once you do this business, you're looking everywhere and you see plants…

So now as I go to buildings, I'm like, oh, look at that, look at that. And so I start comparing. Now I have a much better feeling of like, what quality is in my business.