Yeah, no, no, definitely. And you know the, the narrative that you tell people when leaving the industry, you obviously start justifying your decisions and then, you know, if it doesn't work out in a six months to a year from now, you're going back to those same people and saying, well, you know, I got ignore what I said before.
Acquiring Minds
Buying $1.5m of Earnings Without an SBA Loan
Excerpts · 304 segments · ~1:22:52 long
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Exactly, exactly. Okay, so after these two years, pick us up in the story.
Cool. So the Stos deal didn't end up happening. The business was somewhat exposed to multifamily and in that environment, with rates increasing post Covid, that made that period pretty difficult and some headwinds. And so there were various reasons including valuation and so on, that that caused that deal to die.
And at that point, when that wasn't on the table, I think the seller and I both looked at each other and said, well, let's part ways. And so took a step back from that. That was April. It was the day of my birthday in 2025.
All time low. And this is kind of where my point around tempering your expectations going into this, when you do go and work in a business to try and acquire it over time, temper those expectations. Because April 8th hit my birthday and my dream of everything that I have left in San Francisco for acquiring this business was a failure. And sure enough, you and I can sit in hindsight now and you…
Great. But in that moment, you rock. You're rock bottom. And I obviously mean that with respect because rock Bottom means very different things to various people. But, you know, the dream didn't work out.
I'm a failure. Where do I go and find a new business now? Right? And, you know, you speak to enough searches, and you know how difficult it is to find a new business to check all the boxes. The investors that I had been warming up for the transaction, I had to go back to two and say, hey, well, this deal didn't work out.
And without the right mindset, all of that is a failure. Going back to investors saying this didn't work out in the one perspective is you have now burnt goodwill because they are now questioning your judgment because you told them this deal could happen. It didn't happen. So all of that is negative.
Obviously, in hindsight, investors aren't as binary. They see it as a positive. You learn something and you pick up those experiences and you take it to the next one.
And so I had luckily built a relatively good network with searchers and people in the industry, especially in the trades. And obviously that's by virtue of spending those two years. You start to get to know people, and you also have the opportunity to meet business owners without the guise of acquiring them.
And so I picked up those relationships and through a searcher who had not been able to close a deal with Copeland at the same time, his deal fell apart with Copeland. And so him and I reconnected over coffee, and he said, well, my deal died. And I said, well, at this point, I've got nothing going on.
Would you mind if I had a look? And so that kind of kicked off the Copeland process.
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