From Software to Concrete Cutting (and $1.4m of SDE)

Today's guest did not want to return to his corporate path as a software executive. At age 52, Tom McCormick was coming off a stint as the general manager of a PE owned software business that exited. He had enjoyed the autonomy of the role after having so much control over where a company went and what they did, said Tom.

Going back to kinda the pride swallowing role within a larger machine really didn't appeal to me. So when Tom read buy, then build, it was a parting of the clouds. Tom bought a concrete cutting and coring business, opposite end of the spectrum from selling corporate software.

And boy, it's going well. Not explosive growth, but the transition was successful. The business is stable and Tom is improving it incrementally.

Sensitive to how change needs to be digested by the two decade old organization. We spend a lot of time on Tom's deal structure. Listen for how a little reframing with the seller moved the transaction forward where it would otherwise have died.

His adaptability here may be why today he's owner of a business while some of his would be business owner buddies are five years deep in their search. Here is Tom McCormick, owner of Quality Cutting and Coring Regular listeners of Acquiring Minds will have heard the phrase quality of earnings or Q of E countless times. But do you actually know what a Q of E is, what it includes,.

Or how to interpret it? Well, in a webinar today Thursday, Max Lummis and Travis Sadler of due diligence firm LCS will break down the key components of a quality of earnings report.

Among many topics, you'll How a Q of E analysis reveals a company's true financial story what makes revenue real, repeatable and sustainable how adjusted EBITDA helps identify a business's actual earning power, common balance sheet risks that can create costly surprises for buyers and the role of working capital debt like items and closing adjustments in a transaction.

The webinar is understanding a quality of earnings, what's included and why and it is today. Thursday, June 18th noon Eastern. Link to register is right at the top of this episode's show notes or.

On the Acquiring Minds homepage. Acquiringminds.co Welcome to Acquiring Minds, a podcast about buying businesses. My name is Will Smith.

Acquiring an existing business is an awesome opportunity for many entrepreneurs, and on this podcast I talk to the people who do it. 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. That's why Walker Deibel created Acquisition Lab.