A $800k Business to Start, $60m Portfolio Today

And a lot of opera, a lot of investors believe that to be true too.

So you disagree with that?

And the other factor is I'm a very trusting person. So for the average individual, I would say trusting your life savings in the hands of somebody you met three to six months ago could be challenging. And you know, I, I'm trusting, but I also have confidence in the ability if, if this individual were to leave and were to find a job somewhere else.

And, and I have a trust in the, my ability to, to find someone new. And I think that trust comes from, you know, I've got really good networks, really good people I can draw in and, and help me solve problems. And yeah, we, we've, we've done it before where we trusted the wrong individual and then quickly found somebody to replace her. And, and yeah, worked out really well.

Okay, Andrew, let's just, before we close the Trufone story, hear about the realities of raising money for an acquisition that was too big to take down yourself or friends and family. You were going to have to go out and get real, real lp Money. What did that, what did that look like? Please?

I'll say first just to back up, I guess it was a $42 million purchase price or sources and uses including professional fees for true foam. We're able to get 22 million of that in a mortgage which is 100% loan to value on a 25 year mortgage on the real estate and then a $12 million loan at a very good interest rate. Currently it's at 4 and a 4 and a half percent and a 10 year amortization which…

But that leaves us about eight kind of eight and a half million of equity to raise. And you know, raising a million dollars in equity has some challenges but is, is potentially pretty straightforward raising eight and a half million.

And your first raise presented some challenges especially because no offense to, to your podcast, but I was listening to a lot of us buyers having said things like, you know, if you've got the right business, the right operator, the right valuation, finding investors is easy. And yeah, and, and that, that is probably true in, in the U.S.

although I, I can't confirm it because I, I'm a Canadian investor and, and Canadian, I buy Canadian businesses. But you know, we had a fantastic valuation. The ideal leader in our opinion, a fan, great business with lots of room and you know, a lot, you know, within our networks we, we knew a lot of high net worth individuals especially given my prior role.

I was selling businesses between 10 and 300 million in value and we had a lot of success doing that. So you know, anybody who's selling their business for 80 million has a lot of money to invest and knows the, the results of could be fantastic within those investments. So long story short, raising money was challenge.

You know, we were, we, we went out to our, our friends and acquaintances and, and people who have had a lot of success in business. Number one, we, we had success within people we've actually worked with and, and are close friends. So that was, that got us 70% of the way there.