The Contrarian Bet on a Digital Agency

I would say this ended up, yeah, I would say this ended up being, you know, your classic either win win or lose lose. Because I think the seller thought he should have sold it for more. And I Thought I should have bought it for less.

And I was arguing the past numbers and he was arguing the, the growth numbers. And frankly, I think the ultimate sale price was, was pretty fair because of that. But yeah, so if we're looking at, as you said, we'll get into the, what is sort of the provable numbers, right.

If we look at the run rate of 2025, I think I got a pretty darn good deal. And, and so that is where it just sort of came down somewhere in the middle.

So by run rate of 2025, you mean that where revenue was the moment you bought it? If it held there through the end of the year, that's what it would. That's the run rate number.

That's right. Right.

So as long as it didn't decline, you got it. You, you paid a pretty solid multiple. I mean, you got a great valuation. You felt.

That's right. And, and there were reasons why it, it might have. Well, there are all kinds of risks to it. But, but there was also seller, you know, had, had founded it, grown it for five years, was the only man for three of those five years, and then still a pretty key man up until really up until the end on the sales side and up until six months before on every other side.

And so there were reasons to believe it would dip. But, but I paid a price where, you know, even if it took the dip, I felt like we could, we could grow out of that and, and still be fine.

And you actually didn't love the remote nature of your E. Com businesses. And yet you. So this, that was something that was a feature of this business that you simply were willing to overlook. Yeah, simple as that.

It's. It's as simple as that. I think I still, you know, I'm having an existential crisis every day of do I want to go all in on this or look for more acquisitions? And a lot of that is I still would love to own a local business and be able to see my workers every day and take them to lunch a couple times a week and, and have that, that in person experience.

But the, I would say if this agency had been based somewhere far away from me and the majority of our employees, I should be clear are, you know, we're spread globally, but there are several here in Colorado, who I've been able to meet a few times. I met the seller during due diligence in person a couple of times.