The Flywheel of Buying Businesses in a Single Region

So, so how do you think about the ceiling on this? It's a great question. It's something we think about the, there will be a limit. You know, as they're, as they're in, as in all markets.

There is a, there is a ceiling on the ability to be able to deploy capital. And so how big is that ceiling right now? From what we see, there are more deals that we could invest in than we have CEOs were backing.

Not including Grand Rapids in southwest Michigan, there's 5,759 baby boom owned businesses that employ 72,000 people and 13 billion in sales. So let's market size that, so if you say, if you say 5,000 and you got 10% of that would be 501% of that, you got to 50 and even cut that in half and you got half of 1%, you got 25. That's, that's still a pretty significant. And we're not, that's, we're not…

Right? We're not talking about Grand Rapids. So there's the, the opportunity here is, is significant. So when, when everybody's like ah, Silver Tsunami, it's, it's in our experience that's, that's true. And it's big.

So I'd say it's, it's limited in size. It's also limited in time. This baby boom movement is temporal.

I mean it's, it's not going to be all once. At some point that transition ends. So our, our sense is that we're still going to be able to do two to three deals a year at the size that we're looking at for the foreseeable future.

And at some point that, that, that could run out and, and we're going to cross that road when we, we cross it. But that's what we're thinking about it right now. Doug, people will be shocked that you feel that the bottleneck is actually searchers, not businesses.

As you, as you just did the data for us because so many people listening to this will be in a search and will be getting nowhere and being out competed and being really frustrated by the inability to find a business to buy.

So interesting to hear that you're just got so many opportunities but not enough searchers. So I guess I'm just calling that out. Call Doug everybody if you want to live in Grand Rapids or somewhere in.

Western Michigan or West Michigan. Yeah, I mean, and some, I mean I can think of a few offhand where we're, you know, there's not a, not a great fit and you know, and, and some of these are, are opportunities that are going to take some work and they're going to be long term plays that you're going to really, you're not going to get rich fast with us.

And that's, that's just the way that that works. You're not going to exit in three to five years. And you know, we, that's just how we're doing this and we're incentivized to, to do that as well and to think long term.