Buying for Brand (Then Growing 4x)

I had actually stayed as a guest with them all the way back to like 2012 and they were on my list of, of target businesses.

And, and so you had done some cold outreach to property managers in this world. Some, probably many you didn't know, but this one you actually happened to know you had been a customer.

And again, and I'm coming to it for you now from the perspective of brand, this is a great brand. These homes are phenomenal and every home that I ever stayed at with them was a plus. And you know, my, you know, from my viewpoint, it felt like there wasn't a ton of infrastructure there that became, you know, even more clear as I got into the business and under the hood.

But it felt like there was a lot of opportunity to do something with that kind of, of company and that kind of portfolio. So, you know, I was thrilled when it came to fruition and I had the opportunity to make an offer. I was bidding against, you know, much more institutionalized businesses, but my pitch at the time was I love this brand.

There is, you know, huge opportunity with this name to do something fantastic and these other buyers really are just going to take the portfolio that you have and roll it into their platform, which, you know, ironically is now what we do with our acquisitions, but it's under the Red Cottage name and, and I still do feel as strongly that the brand we have really supports the kind of growth we want…

To tell us more about the business, the bullet points of the business, metrics around it.

So at the time that we found it, it was doing, you know, about north, just north of a million bucks in revenue. It had mid six figure ebitda and I would say that it was a cash rich lifestyle business that was under invested.

And, and when you say so, wow, those are great margins, mid six figures on just Over a million bucks in revenue. Are those margins as good as my math is?

Okay, they were great. They were great margins and you know, and then that was reflected in how we valued it. But at the same time it was very clear that that was not going to get us to where we wanted the business to be.

Right. If you had removed the owner three years ago from the business, it would have fallen apart.

And how many employees it was the owner plus how many employees plus two employees.