When a $2.8m Acquisition Is More Like Zero-to-One

And their dad wasn't really close to a lot of the employees, even though he probably should have been closer. So I think that was okay. They rec. The employees recognized that what we were trying to do was improve the business and the value.

And so a lot of that came down to communicating the vision of where we were trying to go and making sure that they understood the changes that we're making and really listen to them. You know, they like our office, did they like the process that we're. We're putting in place for the employees?

And it's. You can't always do everything that they want. But I would try to really listen to their complaints because I came in just fresh, just not knowing what the sellers had promised or what the employees at least thought they had been promised. Not from the sell, but just in general, like, where's the company going?

What are we going to get out of this? What are the things that we like about this? So I tried to listen to them and make the improvements that they wanted and needed in the company.

And some of those were great. But then as we changed more, some of them didn't work for them. So I had to be really thoughtful about how we made the changes and who we're making the changes for and keeping them engaged while we're making the changes.

So is it a red flag to buy a business with so much family? You thought it was a, you thought it was a red flag, which is why you dismissed it out of hand. Then you went back and decided it was something that you could mitigate the risk of.

But as it turns out, it, it, you feel like it did bite you. Do you feel like that's a generalizable red flag for the audience?

I think so, yeah. Um, I think it probably more often a red flag than it is not. It doesn't mean that you can't buy a business with a lot of family involved. I think you just have to do more diligence, a lot more diligence on their positions, what that means and how involved they are with the business.

Right. Um, and also, one thing I didn't touch on, that I want to circle back to is looking at the resumes of the people that you're buying in the business. Right. So for us, had I known the CFOs had not been CFOs before working at Proven, I don't know that I would have. I would have put a bigger risk to the business.

Right. So you can, you can go buy an H VAC company or a plumbing company. Assume you're. You're buying a company with licensed plumbers, for example. Right. I would do a lot more research into whether or not they are licensed plumbers, how much experience they have, what they've done before, rather than just assuming that the seller has taken care of that.

Because that's not always the case. Right. Like they, it's not that the sellers were wrong, they just had a different vision and they thought that they could build a business by teaching those CFOs how to be a CFOs. Maybe they could have, maybe that's something that I couldn't have do.