From Small Acquisition to $30m Industry Leader

I forget what you guys called in the US Vendor take back or seller note. Yeah, seller note. That's right.

So I was like, okay, wow. So you only need to come up with a third, right? Because the other two thirds are covered.

And, you know, if you might like. I had the good fortune. The Toronto real estate market is notorious and it was going in one direction.

And I had a big investment banking bonus one year and some help from family, and I ended up buying a house that just kept going up and up. So I thought, could I leverage this house for my equity piece? Could I? You know, at one point I thought I would partner with my dad and we would be partners.

He would be like the equity and I would be the sweat equity. But I think over time we learned that that was not smart and that we wanted to remain father and daughter first. So he was just a, you know, an advisor on the side.

Um, but yeah, I figured out when, when you go small enough, the numbers are not impossible. Um, not for everyone, but I mean, I was very lucky and fortunate and privileged and, and so I was able to make it happen. That said, you know, I I came with this incredible education and experience and background where, you know, being an investment banking, I got to see some incredible companies and work…

And, and to go from that to buying a tiny little business is very, very different. And I think that is why there's a case about me, because I made so many mistakes, did so many things badly. Because I think what I've learned now is that like the skill sets of running a $100 million business are very different than running a $2 million business.

Right. And the team and the systems and the structure and I didn't have experience with such a small business and it took me a long time to realize the mistakes I made.

Well, making mistakes as the leader of a business is inevitable. So don't beat yourself up too much. You seem to have on the other side just fine.

Thank you very much. Buying a small business sounds simple. Find a company, due diligence, get a loan close.

In reality, you wear every hat just to get the deal done. And then the moment you close, you have to throw those deal making skills out the window and learn how to operate. You shouldn't have to rebuild this infrastructure from scratch and you definitely shouldn't do it alone.