Comfortable Concentration for a $800k SDE Business

We're at dinner and talking to my wife about the Laundromats and she's like, you know, it'd be great if there were other types of businesses that you could look at. And I'm like, you mean the ones we were looking at, you know, before, before Gavin was born? And she's like, yeah, I was like, I was like, yeah, there's plenty of them out there.

You know, there's a whole website of them. And, and so that was kind of my acceptance that she's like, okay, she's, we can go back into this now. And so we, so I re, you know, started my search. In the fall of 23.

Buying a $10 million business as a first time self funded searcher. The Pioneer team has closed more than 100 SBA loans averaging timelines well below industry standards. Founder and owner Matthias Smith and COO Valerie Stash bring over two decades of SBA lending experience.

Matthias and Valerie have a full bench of analysts and associates who work your deals with them. A true deal team. Not just a single point of contact. Visit pioneercap.com or click the link in the notes. So you turn back to biz by sell.

I turned back to biz by sell. You know, I'm reaching out. I'm doing everything that they tell you to do.

Reach out to brokers, you know, evaluate deals, get the reps in. And I, and I knew this. I think the, the experience from real estate translated really well here because with real estate, you're just evaluating property after property until you can get, you know, the numbers to work and pencil out to the way that you want it to.

And, and so, you know, I was kind of doing the same thing here with, with the businesses. You know, I had my, my criteria. You know, I, it was definitely a geographically constrained search.

I wanted to be within 45 minutes of where I live, preferably 30. You know, I'd worked from home for five years, so a commute didn't really sound that interesting to me.

You're in North Central Jersey.

I'm in North Central Jersey. There's a lot of, A lot of traffic here. I think the only other thing I would say, like, you know, I would say size was I was looking for around 400,000 in SDE EBITDA margins, around 20%.

You know, based on what I had heard from other guests on the podcast and other, other mentors and people that are smarter than me, and then, you know, multiple in that 3x range. And then the other, I think key X factor was, you know, the business buyer fit. Did the business that I was looking at play to the skill set that I have?