$20m Net Worth After 25 Years Buying Businesses

Yeah, yeah.

But because of those, those kicks in the rear end of, of losing a big customer or big economic downturn hurt. So we've, we've kind of grown it and I'm actually just the, the wife this morning. I'm like, hey, we need to add two salespeople.

Right. I'm buying it on its own merits. If I get in there and grow it, that's great. But I never go in with the intention that I'm going to grow it.

Right. Because a lot of people in my, in my thought process is they think they're smarter than the seller. Yeah, well, the seller is an idiot. He, he didn't even graduate 10th grade and he hasn't been doing the marketing.

His website's not up to date and he's overpaying his crews and he pays. He doesn't have enough salespeople. You're going to the thought process that you're smarter than the seller, you're going to get in a lot of trouble.

Right. I don't care if you graduated from Harvard with an MBA and the seller, you know, drop down in fourth grade. That seller is smarter than you in that space. And don't ever go with the intention of you're buying on hope or you're buying on the thought process is you're smarter than the seller.

If you do that, you're going to go bankrupt really quick. So if you want to implement things to grow it, post, but you don't buy on that expectation because you're going to overpay for the company.

Well, Paul, this is going, this is a total hot take of yours right here because so much of this podcast is devoted to talking about, thinking about and talking about the untapped potential in a business that an entrepreneur might buy. So a lot of this is in fact about how exciting it is that somebody's retiring. Maybe they've been resting on their laurels.

Not that were smarter than them, but maybe they just new eyes, new energy, maybe more risk. You know, a 35 year old buying a business is, is, is more risk on than a 65 year old who's, you know, starting to harvest rather than, what is it? Harvest rather than hunt or harvest, rather than plant seeds or whatever.

They're in harvest mode. So, so we hope, we certainly hope. A big part of ETA is that they're is growth to be tapped in these businesses that the, that the seller, the previous owner wasn't taking advantage of for whatever reason. Right, so it sounds like you disagree with that entire.

I don't necessarily disagree with that. Thanks for making me clarify. This is there's a lot of people that were overpay on the purchase price because they think they can grow it, buy it and value it based off of what it's worth today.