From SBA Loan to High 8-Figure Exit

And so like I started off, like I said, local, looking at manufacturing and machine shops and looking at companies a little bit larger.

So I had folks that I had previously worked with and known in the industry that had expressed interest in being investors because I, I really didn't have much money. When I decided I was moving back to Seattle to search, I had bought. This is a funny story.

It was a three bedroom, three bath townhome just north of Seattle. And there was a Obama had this tax credit for first time home buyers. He got this like $10,000 tax credit.

Yeah, I remember it cost. My down payment was like, I did an FHA which was three and a half percent. My down payment was like 15,000 bucks and I got 10 of it basically back.

So I put, you know, and call it five grand down. Two best friends moving with me. We're all paying 700 bucks a month in rent.

My mortgage and everything is covered. Well, you Fast forward to 20. I started the search at the end of 2016 and I ended up closing on the business at the end of 2017.

So it was, it was just under a year. But in the meantime I knew that I needed cash. So I sold the townhome and I sold it for 595,000 bucks.

So I, I, yeah, I walked away with just, you know, call it $300,000. Turning five grand into 300 grand. Yeah, yeah, maybe that's the Episode that we should talk about.

Yeah, it was quite a return. Yeah, no, it was a great return. Great return. Right. And so, so I was using that, I knew I had that to put in as my own equity into whatever opportunity buying in terms of it evolving.

I had first started out with larger companies with people saying they were interested, but as time went on, I was thinking, I was like, man, first of all, there's a lot fewer larger companies out there. Like looking for a company with 3 million of EBITDA, 4 million of EBITDA versus 500 to a million. It's, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's a fast, fast difference.

Your pool of opportunities, if you look smaller, are much higher. But I had, I remember looking at a pallet company and giving them a, an LOI for $26 million. I didn't have 26. I, I didn't have anywhere.