Getting Unstuck by Buying a Business

Christian Bateson was miserable, peeling himself out of bed at 3:30 every morning to sleepwalk to his desk at a toxic firm. He was underslept, over, boozed, dying inside. In Christian's words, that was like the darkest hour of my life where I just couldn't see a way out of it.

And I remember thinking, I'm 40. If I can just grind for like another 20 years, just put my head down in grind, then I can retire. Well today Christian is almost five years into ownership of a business.

He bought a construction cleaning company. They clean up the site when a construction project finishes. It did almost $4 million in revenue last year.

It's projected to almost double to $7.5 million this year. And most importantly, Christian has rediscovered himself. Purpose, fulfillment, autonomy.

His life makes sense again now. Regular listeners of Acquiring Minds know that we try to feature a balance of stories here, including the dark ones, the fetal position moments. We don't oversell the dream, but not today.

Christian's story is an unqualified, full throated celebration of our path of entrepreneurship through acquisition. Enjoy. Welcome to Acquiring Minds, a podcast about buying businesses. My name is Will Smith.

Acquiring an existing business is an awesome opportunity for many entrepreneurs, and on this podcast I talk to the people who do it. An SBA loan broker, as opposed to a direct lender, doesn't work for a particular bank. Instead, the broker pairs you with the right SBA lender for your deal based on industry terms risk thresholds, then helps you navigate the process better than many lenders…

Matthias Smith of Pioneer Capital Advisory is. Just such a broker. Matthias worked at two of the country's top 10 SBA lenders. So he's been on the inside of the SBA process and knows well the pitfalls and hurdles and how to avoid them.

He struck out on his own to laser focus on the ETA and search space. Our niche is his niche. You'll see Matthias at all the ETA conferences.

He's closed over 30 search deals since starting Pioneer in May of 2022, including some acquiring Minds guests. To learn more and get in touch, go to PioneerCapitalAdvisory.com or click the link in the notes. Christian Bateson, welcome to Acquiring Minds.

Thank you for having me, Christian.

I'm excited for this interview because you are so excited about this path, the path of buying a business. I don't think it's an overstatement to. Say that buying a business saved you.