Well, don't let me sink it. Right. Help me. Right. And so that's an interesting kind of self select. I know who's not going to be there for me when I offer even a small seller note.
Acquiring Minds
The Dream Outcome: From $300k to $5m EBITDA
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They don't even want it. Right. Because I know they're out the door, which is okay. But I need to know that up.
Front, laying this point that you really like to have sellers stay in, stay invested. Of course, private equity sees that a lot. They want to see sellers role their equity demonstrates, you know, further skin in the game.
On the other hand, in search land. We do hear. You. You'll hear, you know, 180 degrees different opinion, which is get the seller out. Too many cooks in the kitchen, Sellers aren't going to like you getting in there and making changes while they're still there.
They're territorial about their business, they built this business, etc. So I, I do wonder if everybody's opinion on sellers staying in or not is just based on whether or not they had a good outcome or a bad outcome in their, in their own particular story. But you, you see in, but you see into a lot of search stories these days.
And so I, you have more data to look at. So you do feel like general, you can generalize that.
You like that approach. I like that approach. It's not 100% foolproof.
There are, you know, I've done bad deals, right. I've done bad deals where the seller, whether they intentionally or unintentionally gave me bad info or didn't work as hard when they were in there. Like, it happens. Right. And so you can't predict that, unfortunately.
Right. Like I, I would say that, you know, after looking at hundreds of deals, maybe thousands of deals, I have a little bit of a sixth sense about who may fit, you know, the mold of what I like. But yeah, no, that's always a risk, Will. And you know, I would say that the way we structure it is we don't have to keep the seller.
Right. Like I always have the ability to say this seller is a cancer. We will just pay them off. Right. Because this seller note isn't because we can't afford it.
It's because we're trying to keep them involved in it. And if we, we want the option. Right. Like I'm all about maximum optionality.
If we want to keep them, we will keep them. If we don't, we get rid of them. Right. It's not like it's a, you know, it's not like we're marrying them. It's like, that's interesting, right?
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