And luckily I found some great partners who were willing to invest in me.
Acquiring Minds
How to Buy a $20m Business as a First-Timer
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You mentioned the working capital injection. So this wasn't just about the equity to, to, for the, to reach the 10% or whatever your lenders wanted to see and you wanted to put in. Yeah, but this is a working capital intensive business as well.
So you wanted extra room there from whatever was in the business when you were to buy it. Talk us really quickly through how you thought about working capital from the outside looking in.
Yeah, so what I will say is so I, As I raised money from investors, one of they, they, they were the ones who came to me and said look, we would actually like to invest more in this business than you're, you're looking to raise.
We feel like it's a capital intensive business like you said and it would be better for you and better for, for us and better for the business if you raised extra money and had that money on the balance sheet and more working capital. And you know, that was another thing that resonated strongly for me throughout the process was that I never wanted to be in a position where I wouldn't have enough…
I knew how important that was just in the early days and just overall and so when they suggested at that I, I went along with it wholeheartedly,.
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Yes. My search for investment capital was, was, I think a little bit unique in that I didn't end up going out and talking to a lot of investors. The deal came to me right before I attended that Acquisition Lab conference in St. Louis in September where I saw you and I had just found the deal and I knew I was going to be looking to raise money.
And that conference ended up being really focused on raising investment capital and there were a number of investors there. And in fact I pitched the deal to a room full of them at the conference and had some side meetings. And I ended up meeting Grant Hensel of Entrepreneurial Capital there.
And Grant and I really connected and we stayed in touch after the conference and he said, you know, I'm, I'm interested. I'd like, you know, just keep me informed of how it's going. And as I was, as I was negotiating the loi, he was actually very helpful.
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