I started building my off market proprietary search funnel and all that, meeting lots of business owners in the trade businesses. Very soon I realized that I just wasn't built for managing a blue collar workforce. I feel like most of my query has been in white collar and I think that just the idea of managing a blue collar workflow just doesn't compute to me. I don't think I would be doing that…
Acquiring Minds
The Entrepreneur Awakens: Pivoting from Tech to Ownership
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A lot of people feel that way, say that, but one exception is people who might be coming from white collar environments but grew up in a blue collar family, then, then they feel like they would be at home in a blue collar business. And I heard you say earlier that you come from a blue collar family. So did that not. You didn't have that translation of culture there, your blue collar family to…
It's a spectrum of blue collar family where I think on one side there will be blue collar families where kids are very involved into the family business. Right. My dad was a contractor, so but he's more on the other side of the spectrum where like my dad wanted his kids to have nothing to do with blue collar stuff. Right. He did his best to keep us out there.
I think in his mind like, you know, his mind would be like if the kids, you know, going to like, you know, the good paying jobs, being a white collar, sitting in the office, that would be like his dream. Right. Okay. So I think he kept us, well from just touching anything on his business. So yeah, so yeah, I wasn't like exposed to the working world blue collar that much.
So yeah, I just wouldn't see again. My skills are you know, thinking about three businesses. You know, obviously I could be you know, doing lots of the back office automation improvement processes like that.
I think that could be helpful. But the actual work itself I just didn't find myself having lots of value add for the fulfillment of the service if you will. Yeah. So very soon I kind of pivoted to more white collar based businesses, staffing agencies, marketing agencies and home care agency things like that.
I think that I see more, more opportunities for my experience to also optimize the fulfillment part of the service. Right. So I felt like it was a better play and it's going to be suited more suitable to my skill set.
Sure. Well, business buyer fit is something that we, that, that every, every searcher should be paying attention to. Yep. And you were the geographic constraints. You wanted to stay in Seattle.
You when you joined Coinbase, Coinbase is based in the Bay Area but you stayed in Seattle. Do I have that correct? Yeah. Fully remote. Fully remote. And your. But th. This business was going to be.
If it was blue collar, I assume it was going to have to be local. Yep. White collar it could be. Well I've already given away that you didn't buy it locally.
But what were your geographic constraints? If there were any. And what about financial. What were you comfortable buying up toward?
Yeah, yeah. So starting off. Yeah with the geographical constraint I wanted something in Seattle for sure. Well the greatest Seattle area.
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