The $60k Acquisition that Grew to a $77m Exit

Some uncut gem for the, for the lesson for the audience and finding some similar uncut gem today that has incredible potential because this, this, this pattern still exists where guys got a small trades business and he's barely holding on. His phone is blowing up constantly, he can't call him. In fact, you hear a lot about small businesses, small kind of home services businesses that they don't…

So was there something, some special ingredient here that made it so powerful? Or in fact, could this model be repeated today in 2025 with a like business that some searcher stumbles upon? It's a good question.

You know, it would be too small. And yeah, you're right. And it wasn't an overnight success like it, we took three steps forward and sometimes five steps back and it didn't happen in three years.

It was a decade long journey of years where it wasn't working well. So it sound, it all sounds great to look at. I mean I had had hair when, when we did that transaction.

You know, it was, it was, it's always harder than you think. And I, I don't know if I would do that again. I mean the, I, I, I'm speaking out of both sides of my mouth because I'm, I want to buy larger businesses now because I'd, we're looking back, it's, it's a lot easier to own a smaller piece of a much bigger pie than to set somewhere and go through the pain that we went now.

It was fun, we had a great time and it was, it was interesting to see but there were some scary times in that business as it grew too fast and, and so I don't know the answer to that. I, I do believe there are, the stars are aligned for us. Like it was a highly fragmented industry.

It was this niche environmental space that was gaining in popularity. People were starting to figure out they were actually law right when we were buying it. There were, you know, laws changing where, you know, realtors had to test for radon in a real estate transaction.

So I, I think the, there were. Tailwinds there then Then there. It really was a moment in time.

Yeah, it was. It was. There just one. There was no large national players at the time doing it. And so we thought we were. We were on to something.

We found something that was incredibly niche that lots of people didn't know about, that was the second leading cause of lung cancer, right behind smoking cigarettes. So it was. And there were other things that had happened. People were, you know, they were threatening.

There was some legal issues for Realtors not declaring that there was high radon levels in a real estate transaction. So the. The industry was starting to change to say, we've gotta. We've got to start doing this.