How to 4x a Small Manufacturer

You know, I want to grow this business because that's what I'm here to do, and I don't want to do it at risk of burning you guys out. And so hiring was going to be inevitable for kind of all of those reasons.

And give us a picture now of the. Of the money coming in or not, or maybe even more money going back into the business. Are you paying yourself?

Yeah, so initially, there was blanking on his name. There was this guy on your podcast that I just listened to. I even reached out to him over LinkedIn, and there was this just insanely relatable part where pretty much on closing day, or I think it was on closing day, the former owner came forth with this list of $15,000 worth of things that was owed to him in addition to the sale price.

Do you remember what I'm talking about? Oh, my God.

Mike. That was Mike in the epoxy business. Yeah.

Yes. Exact same thing happened to me. And again, it's just you don't know what you don't know, and you have no confidence. At least that's how I was.

And so I didn't even think to question this. But literally the day before closing, he walks around the shop and details out all the raw materials that I owe him for because he had paid for those incoming raw materials, even though they were half used. He, like, figured out, like, what their value was.

That is, like, thinking back on that, I'm like, oh, my God, like, how much of a red carpet did I roll out for this guy to walk all over me? That was so stupid. You know, it's an asset of the business, but whatever. So that was the start of. It was like opening my checkbook.

How much did he calculate?

It was almost the same as Mike. It was like 10 or 15 grand. I mean, it was a lot.

Wow.