Well, we're, we're going to close out here with hearing about the future and what you have planned. But one, but one question before that. You have found what happens so often with my guests where it's so hard to get deal flow when you're an outsider looking in, but once you're in, I.
Acquiring Minds
Started Mid-Career, Grew to $38m in 3 Years
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E. After that first acquisition, deal flow becomes way easier. You're a perfect example. Say, expand on that please.
Yeah. It's funny I mentioned, you know, during my time at Babson the second time around, you know, I met some other professors that, that were invaluable to me, you know, during research. And you know, one of those guys, I never, never was a student in his class, but another one of those guys was, was someone that was kind of a searcher. He was an executive at a company left, you know, bought a…
And I'll never forget he said to me, you know, Shaun, the first one is the hardest and your credibility skyrockets, you know, once you own one business. And I would agree totally with that statement in that, you know, so many more people are willing to talk to me or were willing to talk to me once we bought Mitten. But before that, like, you know, the second company we bought was one of my…
I had kind of a, a list of a hundred businesses in that, in that list of 29,000 that, that were kind of ideal targets for me. The second company we bought was on that list and I had, you know, called them a couple times. I had even like FedEx them, you know, some material on me and I didn't do that often.
There were only two companies that, you know, didn't really respond to my outreach. So I, you know, I tried, you know, reaching them in other ways. And I noticed the day I updated my LinkedIn after we bought Mitten, he was the, the owner of that business was looking at my LinkedIn and I connected with him, sent him a note, hey, I'd love to get together for lunch.
And eight days after we bought Minton, I had lunch with the owner of Frank Merkin Products. And that's when we started the negotiating process. And so I've seen firsthand where your credibility goes up, you know, once you own a single business.
And so, yeah, you know, our pipeline continues to get bigger. You know, I looking at deals that, that bankers bring me, which happens a lot more now that you own a business, you know, the right types of deals. But I'm also, you know, continuing to create my own deal flow and conversations that I'm having directly with, with sellers.
You know, even, even a lot of the companies that I was talking to during my search phase, I continue to talk to those same folks and hopefully a sale is something that will happen in the not so distant future. And the third business we bought, Flynn Mar, the seller of that business was somebody I was talking to or I started talking to during search, during my search.
And so almost three years to the day of the first time I called that guy, we bought the company. And so the search has, has helped me, you know, post acquisition as well.
Well, for the owners that didn't know you while you were searching, you've, you've just got this credibility, you're in the industry, you're a counterpart to them, but for the, for the owners that you contacted during your search and then they, they can see this trajectory, that not only did you get yourself into the business, into the industry with an acquisition of a first business, but that…
I mean, it's really quite, for, for just some random guy out there trying to, emailing me about buying my business to have to, to him actually having done it three times since I got, you know, since I got that phone call and email from him, pretty impressive. It's got to make quite, quite a, quite an impression.
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