Taking a Single-City Acquisition Nationwide

So that was kind of a. Speaks for itself. But the, the other one where because the traditional search fund model pays you and gives you additional budget to execute the search to spend on deal fees that gave you, you, you recognize going into it that that gave you the latitude to not have to nickel and dime your own every decision to. About visiting a company, hopping on a plane, visiting a…

I'm not sure I've, I've heard that expressed, but it's, it's a good point. You, you recognize that having a little bit of capital to spend on the search would probably enable better decisions by you.

There's a lot of diligence things that need to be done. But that's, that's the like one thing that needs a. Really needs a good third party to do.

Um, but yeah, so like some examples during my search I, I was really looking broadly at B2B recurring revenue services businesses, you know, really non software. Right. And that's extremely broad. Right. How do you narrow that down?

But like some examples. So I ended up searching located out of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. So my, my spouse happened to go to, you know, grad school right after me and, and was there for public health school.

But I looked at MSPs and waste disposal companies on Long island and I looked at a cattle scales and calibration company in Oregon, in rural Oregon. I looked at a plumbing company in Orlando and these are all companies I visited. You know, I had financials in place.

We seemed like we were in the ballpark on structure. And I went to visit for owner meetings, you know, in addition to ones in North Carolina or Atlanta or D.C. or Kansas City, et cetera.

I mean the, the list goes on and on and I was not afraid to go do those. You know, spending your budget wisely and you know, frugally is always important. And I was staying at, you know, whatever the priceline hotel of the moment for all these trips.

But I didn't hesitate once I knew that these could be a fit. Basically, hey, is this qualified? Do I have financials where it's in the right size range?

Does the owner, you know, likely in my ballpark on valuation. Right. Like not like 15 times EBITDA or something. That was never going to work.

So once those were checked, I was on a plane because meeting the relationship or building the relationship with that seller is absolutely critical. And most of these were proprietary deals. There were a few brokered ones, you know, sprinkled in there.