No SBA Loan and $75k Out of Pocket

And came out of that really confident that I wanted to do a search and buy a business, and also that I wanted to do a traditional search fund.

Right, let's. Let's pause there. Megan. This is great. So you must have been super psyched to learn about ETA when you got to Darden, because you had the notion on your own that you wanted to maybe buy a business, and you were attracted to just small business in. In general. And come to find out, as you said, there's this formalized method of doing it that has a lot of energy around it and that…

In the class ahead of me. Um, and I said, what are you, you know, just making small talk what are you gonna do after you graduate? And he said, I'm gonna do a search fund.

I'm gonna. And I said, what's that? And he told me and I was like, that's exactly what I wanna do. I just didn't know it existed.

Mm. Yeah.

How great. Okay, so you decide to do the traditional search path. Why?

Yeah, so I, you know, I liked all three of the models. I had interned with a single sponsor backed searcher, you could call it an accelerator. And I really liked them.

I liked this idea of self funded, even though it was a little scary to me. But, but for the traditional model, I think ultimately the financial security of it felt like less of a risk. And I also, I had no deal experience or, you know, I had, I had an operational experience, but I didn't have the other side of the table on the investor side.

And I really wanted to learn more about that and do that part of it really well. And so I wanted to surround myself with smart people, a diversified group who could guide me and mentor me along the way. So I also liked, after interning with Botanical Designs, that was a larger company, I think There were about 60 employees at the time.

And I liked the idea of buying a larger business. So for all those reasons, I went the traditional path.

Well, one of the reasons that people choose traditional search is because the investor capital is for the investor capital and all that that enables. But they don't love the idea of having investors. But you actually embrace that.