A Search Fund Journey to $350m

Today's guest has built a business with a size and scale rare in our world. Jenna Whigham, along with her brother, bought a home care business in the fall of 2020. It was big for a search business.

60Ish million of revenue, 10 million of EBITDA. Well, just over five years later, revenue at Abound Health is projected to exceed 350 million in 2026 and 75 million EBITDA. We hear from Jenna how they've accomplished that.

We spend time on the business of home care, which is a popular target among searchers. Jenna speaks candidly about what makes these businesses so difficult and so difficult to scale. Much of Abound's growth has been inorganic.

They've acquired 14 home care businesses during their ownership and their seller had done seven before that. So while the headline numbers and tailwinds may draw you to this category, tread carefully. There are countless tiny home care agencies across the US that stay tiny precisely because growing is so hard.

Also, don't overlook the purpose of this service, which is to provide care and. Aid to the vulnerable. You can make a deeply positive impact by running one of these businesses.

Well, that mission drew Jenna to the industry and it helps get her through the difficult days. Conversely, running one of these businesses badly can cause real damage to individuals, families and communities. So if you like the category, treat it with the gravity it deserves.

Okay? Please enjoy the candor and journey of Jenna Whigham, president of Abound Health. Today, Thursday, we're hosting a webinar with a great twist on an old theme. Buying a business and hiring an operator to run it is a topic as old as buying businesses itself.

But today's webinar will explore the topic from the operator's perspective. Chelsea Wood of Acquisition Lab will sit down with Ted Bronstein. Ted runs operations for acquisition entrepreneur Tim Erickson.

Tim is a former Acquiring Minds guest who bought an office equipment rentals business. Chelsea will bring her own perspective, having been brought in by Walker Deibel to. Build and run Acquisition Lab.

So together, Chelsea and Ted will explore what helped build trust early between owner and operator, where expectations aligned and where they didn't, what worked well in practice and what didn't the biggest challenges they faced running the businesses day to day and lessons learned about communication, about decision making, about accountability.

This will be a candid behind the scenes look at what it really takes to make the owner operator relationship work. The webinar is the operator's perspective running a business for an owner. And it is today, Thursday, April 9th at noon Eastern.

Link to register is right at the top of this episode's show Notes or on the Acquiring Minds homepage. Acquiring Minds co. Welcome to Acquiring Minds, a podcast about buying businesses. My name is Will Smith.