I'm just asking myself, like, to what degree other of my guests, other searchers really try to, to learn the industry that they buy into. We all recognize that there's something inherently crazy here about buying, you know, a skilled trade business and not knowing the trade at all. And then we all expect of ourselves that we'll learn some, to some degree, you know, what we need to.
Acquiring Minds
From SBA Loan to High 8-Figure Exit
Excerpts · 498 segments · ~2:09:34 long
Short excerpts only — hear the full conversation on the publisher's site.
But I just get the sense from you that you leaned into that maybe more than other searchers to really just. Just learn as much as you could. And while that all seems great, I mean, it does seem just like a.
Like a. Just a positive. Was there not some kind of voice in the back of your head from maybe your private equity time that's like, you know, at some point, I'm probably gonna exit this, or I should be, you know, I should be above this. In some way or, or. Or not at all? Not really for me. I mean, my first year, I made a million bucks. It was 880,000 bucks was what I took home my first year.
And I was like, this is more money than those guys are making, right?
Like, especially at, like, lower middle market firms. Nobody's making a million bucks there. My path to making a million bucks at a private equity firm was years away.
Years away. And then you keep fast forwarding time, and it's like, next thing I know, 2 million bucks, 3 million bucks, 4 million bucks. And Rick and Royce, during ETA, back in my time there, they had this chart, and I've talked to them about it, and that did resonate with me that it's just like the equity value that you start to create.
And the, the income that you can generate in real time, it just, it just surpasses if, if it's going well than what you then what you generally can make within private equity. Right. Obviously, there's, there's folks. Steve Schwarzman Billionaire Like, I'm, you know, obviously, I'm not saying I'm at that level, but just saying, you know, you.
As time went on, I was like, this is great. And this is providing me a lot of opportunity and flexibility. Right. That for me, when it came to selling, I.
I actually started leaning away from any interest in selling because I was like, man, the amount of money you would have to offer me is just going to have. Is going to be insane. Because when I sold, I was 38.
And when I met with the buyers, I was very honest with them. I said, I'm only here because of the amount of money you guys are offering me. This business is not a problem for me.
This is not. I get it. I know the team. I'm. Everybody at that company knows me for the most part. We had 125 employees. I probably knew 115 of their names.
Like, I, you know, and so it's like, I've got this, this loyal, like, army of folks going to bat for me every day that there's nothing for me to run from here. So. Yeah, yeah. And you're making five.
Want what comes before or after? Hear the full episode on the publisher's site ↗