$60m Roll-Up That Started With an SBA Acquisition

About the same size. Well, so if you think about it, we had an SBA Express line of credit going into the deal.

So we had a cushion there that we wanted to make sure that we had given. The two of us were going in at the size, and we also had a working capital opportunity that we knew was significant. So, you know, between the working capital opportunity, we were able to put free cash flow on the balance sheet.

So we actually had a nice bit of firepower to go and do another deal. And so we were able to leverage that with a down payment and a seller note over a period of time to acquire that business. So we were able to nearly double up in size within 10 months.

And that gave us quite a nice cushion from a cash flow perspective. And we still retained some of that cushion that we had. So that gave us a lot more room after nine or 10 months.

And then with that cash flow, we were able to generate and do another deal about nine months after that. So. So within 18 months we've done two more, all, all from cash in the balance sheet. And we leveraged an SBA loan for, for the third one because we were in a position to do that.

So we were able to, you know, it was very important that, that free cash flow generation that we got early in the process, having that cushion allowed us to be able to do that second deal. Yeah. In a short period of time. Yeah.

And that was faster than you expected. I assume you weren't thinking that you'd be have 300 acquisitions under your belt in the first 18 months or maybe. No, and it probably was faster than we expected.

Like we had a thesis, but we had to go in and figure it out and it kind of became opportunistic. We had someone in the space, a coach that, that was working with us that was specific to the space and he had someone in his network and they were in an acquisition process and he thought an introduction would be helpful right in the middle of that process.

And we were able to beat out the other vendor in that process as we had a very good relationship very quickly. You know, he liked us, we liked it, we liked him, and it was really, really, really good fit. And all the deals subsequently came to, you know, tip normally through those industry type connections.

It's so much easier to do deals when you're in the space. Yeah. And people, it's easier to have those conversations with owner operators because you have a business and you're operating business. Absolutely. Bond on that. Absolutely. It's such an important pattern that comes up again and again.

And what about the. So financially we understand how you pulled it off, but what about just like. The. You know, your attention span, your ability to juggle a second and then third business, how did you think about that? Because it, you know, it feels like you probably hadn't Even finished digesting that first acquisition.