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

Okay, so let's quickly hear I said we're going to do two and a half of your acquisitions. The half one is going to be this first business. We'll just give it a minute.

But.

Yeah, good question. And you know the thing that draws me is the fantastic returns that I was seeing, buyers that I was dealing with were gearing to make. You know, I did all the financial modeling for the sellers and you could forecast what a buyer would return.

I was in the business of selling businesses. And so I, I wanted something like what my parents had on the side, which is they're investing in, in real estate. They'd buy a home, they'd make it into, they tear it down, make it into a triplex and, and you know, live comfortably off of those, those rents in addition to their, you know, regular jobs.

My, my mom was an accountant, my dad was a professor. So.

So did you envision doing this as a side thing only, at least initially.

Initially, so I could figure out the finance piece, the valuation piece, the structure piece. What I needed was somebody willing to quit their jobs and go run these businesses. And so a friend that I studied the CFA and CBV with happened to also be looking for, for businesses.

And so while we were studying together, we shared our notes and in his case he did what we call now the proprietary outreach method where, you know, he is actually the CFO of private business that he wanted, a part time CFO of a private business that he wanted to acquire while working full time at a commercial bank.

And you know, his intention of doing this part time CFO gig was he would be the first in line to buy the business and he knew that the owners wanted to sell. You know, I was telling him my method is always, you need, you need options in this game. If you've got one prospect that you're looking to buy, you're unlikely to transact because business owners have their own idea of who they want to go…

And, and, and that's what resulted is, is they did want to sell. Eventually him and I put in a bid and you know, we, they went with somebody who they thought was a better fit. So that hurt a little bit.

But you know, again, I was probably looking at six or seven and we had six or seven opportunities to, to put an offer in on. I think we put three offers, got one. It was called Knightsbridge Property Services.