One of the classic pitfalls when buying a business is mistaking what is essentially a glorified job for the owner for an actual business. Case in point, today's guest Tato Corcoran bought a manufacturing business, but one that the owner had optimized for his own comfortable lifestyle, to the detriment of everything else about the enterprise.
Acquiring Minds
How to 4x a Small Manufacturer
Excerpts · 543 segments · ~1:44:32 long
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When Tato took the keys, the business was doing just $400,000 in revenue, employed three people, hadn't maintained equipment, and hadn't raised prices in close to a decade. And oh, by the way, Tado knows nothing about manufacturing. For the first four months of her ownership, she cried on her kitchen floor every day.
Well, 18 months later and Tato has more than doubled revenue. 2023 closed with over a million dollars in sales. There's a lot of detail in this episode.
Tado shares everything, but let me call out a few to listen for how she used snail mail campaigns to reach owners during her search, how the value of the business's real estate factored into her risk analysis, and how she finally cracked the code on hiring Buckle up for this adventure with Tato Corcoran, owner of Brandt Molded Marble Quick announcement everyone.
An event you should know about In May, the M and A Launchpad conference is bringing together searchers, experienced business buyers, owners and private equity investors for one day to go deep on buying businesses. Walker Deibel, author of Buy Then Build is one of the keynotes, and 30 other experts will be on hand sharing their expertise. It's happening May 11th in Houston.
The organizers are running a promotion just for us. $200. Off with the code acquiring minds. Go to malaunchpad.com and use the code acquiringminds.
All one word or use the link in the show. Not. Welcome to Acquiring Minds, a podcast about buying businesses. My name is Will Smith.
Acquiring an existing business is an awesome opportunity for many entrepreneurs, and on this podcast I talk to the people who do it. What do the following Acquiring Minds guests all have in common? Doug Johns, Morley Desai, Tim Erickson, Chirag Shah, Shane Ursum.
They all went through the Acquisition Lab, the accelerator in community for people serious about buying a business. But they represent just a sliver of the Lab success stories. The number of deals across the lab's cohorts now stands at over 120, with over $300 million in aggregate transaction value.
The Acquisition Lab was founded by Walker Deibel, author of Buy Then Build, the book that introduced so many of you to the very idea of buying a business. The Lab offers a month long, intensive, almost daily Q&A sessions with advisors, live deal reviews with Walker, Deal team introductions and an active community of serious searchers. Check out acquisitionlab.com, link in the notes or email the…
Chelsea buy then build.com Tato Corcoran, welcome to Acquiring Minds.
Thank you. I'm so excited. Thank you so much for having me.
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