Buy Well, Exit Better: A $67m Win in 4 Years

But it, it's, it's well worth it for the 50% of the time that, that you get them to share something with you even if what they share is higher than you would, than you would otherwise be prepared to, to offer that's still valuable information and can save you time if they're not anchored in something realistic or, or favorable.

And, but the real magic is when a seller or one of their representatives shares something with you that is even more favorable than you could have imagined or in many cases more favorable than you would have been comfort comfortable offering. So there's no, no way I would have ever put out the idea of a 50% or 60% seller note. I would have been too concerned about offending the seller because…

Exactly. So. And I think that last point is, is, is the, is the point which is just because the seller goes first, if you can get them to go first, doesn't mean it's going to miraculously end in a lower price for you. It's just in the, you know, the chance of a chance that they're, that they have a relatively low number. In fact one so low that you wouldn't have even offered it in mind.

You want to at least give them the opportunity to put that out there. Sure, it's probably not going to happen. Don't get your hopes up.

But, but if not, I mean otherwise like in your case, you, you just, you don't want to lowball anybody. So you don't. And then you never get the opportunity for them to kind of lowball themselves. So really interesting.

Better, better if it's their idea. And you know, I, I would say it's, we've, we've had several situations with searchers, businesses that we've that we've bought with searchers, where the, the sellers start, they go first, they start low and you know, the, the value creeps up or the structure evolves after they've anchored. Perhaps they get advice from a lawyer or a friend who's a banker or…

But still that, that first utterance coming from them really anchors the conversation and. Yeah, and, and goes a long way. All the way through Close.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you for all the transparency, Greg and walking us to the, through the entire structure as well. So you get into smart tours, what do you find? Other than a two lean staff, what else do you find?

We, we found that we had no idea what we were doing. We, we were both, both just finance guys. I had worked in private equity for a couple years.

Dave had worked in investment banking and then private equity. And you know, we really didn't know how to operate a business. We really didn't know how to spend our time what to be focused on, what was noise versus what was substance.

It was, it was a substantial learning curve. We were also, you know, pretty young. I was, gosh, I think I just turned 26 when we, when I jumped in.