Good Bones: Saving a $3m Business in Decline

So like, you know, one of the, I actually do believe one of the best skill sets for me in life today is not only can I articulate or, you know, sort of, you know, consider I can think of a vision, but then I can actually build a lot of, I can rally my folks around that vision and actually, you know, motivate them and push them hard.

Tennis, track, you know, sort of a 100 meter sprinter and a champion growing up and, and golf. You know, I play a lot of golf and like, you know, I spend a lot of time playing alone, but I like to meditate. I like to come back and sort of like, you know, spend a lot of time myself.

We'll get into it now. So epi, Color Space, this company, this transaction came to me, it's a textbook proprietary deal and the founder, the Original founder of the business told me that this was somebody who started the business in 1989, acquired dozens and like, you know, almost like, you know, like, you know, 40, 50 companies in that space or related space and then sold it to a big private…

So the founder cashed out and then finally that whole business collapsed. The group collapsed in the dot com bust. And then the main operator, who was the main operator of the entire group went back to the founder who is, you know, quite wealthy and basically took money and the operator came in and now was the majority shareholder and the original founder was a minority shareholder and then they…

But the business was a good business so I agreed to buy it because it was basically an inside deal and I had an insider who had basically known the business always on the cap table with me as a partner.

I'm an investor in it. Right now I own like, you know, almost 25%. Let's buy this business.

You become the front and you own like, you know, a certain amount and I'll own a certain amount and these are going to be the deal terms. The deal terms were amazing, like, you know, off the charts amazing. So I, based on all this stuff, I didn't really do a full blown due diligence as I normally would and I was quite pressured to sell.

And also at a personal level, I'd gone through a lot of changes at that time. My dog, who was my partner for like, you know, 14 years had just passed away. So I was still in the shock of all that.

And then from 2003 to 2023 you had the operator who was running this business now, wanting to retire and wanting to sell the business. So the founder called me and, and the founder knew me as somebody who basically had a good run with Circular Life and said, look, there's a business here locally, I know you're back. I know this business in and out.

Okay, hey Matt, let me, let me pause you and just. You were searching to buy a business at this time?

You know, I was searching sort of in a, in not, not all, you know, it was a part time search that I was running. I was, I was, I, you know, I had come back after Circular Life. I was an LP and a GP in a private equity fund which was investing in other businesses.