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

So could we remove that? And I said, no. And they said, your offer is good for 10 days. Can we extend it to 45?

And I said, no. Right. I knew I was the only one with an offer on the table. Frankly, I was hoping for some sort of edit and response. But I don't blame the broker.

So were you negotiating there, Tom, or were you. Were your nose hard nose?

I was positioning. Right. So it wasn't hard nose. I would never do any of this. But it was. I know I'm ahead of the other two investors they were talking to.

Why would I agree to anything that makes their life easier at that point? I would love for them to agree to what I put on the table, and if they agree to it now, we can go forward and close. I don't want them, frankly, to talk to other investors and get further down the road with them and get outbid.

So I had no intention of changing my offer at that time. I sent it to him. He said, great, I'll talk to my sellers then. Thank you. And he called me back later and said, we're going to pass.

Right. So we think we can get somewhere else with the other sellers. We want to at least follow that process through or the other buyers, you know, so we're going to move forward and we're not going to respond to your loi. And as much as you're not supposed to get emotional about these things, right.

You're just supposed to move to the next deal. It was eating away at me, right. I looked at other businesses.

I went through probably a half dozen other ones that I looked at seriously but never wrote an offer on. And then after about five weeks, I wrote the broker an email just thanking him for working with a first time buyer. And if he comes, you know, I'm sure you have your buyer at this point for this business, but if you ever come across something else, please keep me in mind.

And he called me back right away and said, I'd like to meet. I talked to the sellers, let's get together after the weekend. Right. So I knew that to be a counter, I spent the weekend spreadsheeting everything from 5.8 to 6.8, trying to figure out where they were going to come in and how I could possibly get comfortable with it.

And, and we sat down on Monday and he said, you're at 5.8. If you move this to 6, we can't do the seller's note. Right. We gotta figure out something else and we would move forward.