Rory tyer welcome to acquiring mindes it's so good to be here well thanks for having me Rory you bought a garden center a nursery business and a pretty big one or at least it generates more Revenue than one might think this is an intriguing fun type of business never had somebody who bought a garden center before so let's get into it start us off Rory with some background on you please yeah yeah I think the the trajectory that got me to where I am now started when I was actually in seminary so after college I went to Seminary and studied New Testament studies academically uh at the time my intent was to get the Masters and then go get a PhD and uh a couple things happened over the course of two years I got really burned out academically um when you're in an environment like that you look around you start to realize there's some people who are like very serious Scholars that are going to get into those PHD programs uh and I got some advice from somebody I trusted that they said if you can see yourself doing anything other than getting a PhD and being happy with it you should probably go to that other thing because this is all consuming and I learned a lot about what people can make the the the process of trying to get like a a good tenure track teaching job with actual benefits is just very grueling and I I mean I was doing a lot of other stuff man I was online dating I was I had I'm a singer songwriter I was in a band we were playing around it was outside of Chicago is where the the school was and uh I just looked around and I realized this isn't this isn't me and um a couple things happened kind of in quick succession so for close to a year I ended up getting hired in the marketing department of the school I had done some writing for the student newsletter and they needed somebody to create a bunch of content over like a month contract that turned into a full-time position um and I ended up teaching myself videography uh because they we had to revamp the whole website and do a ton of interviews with our faculty and I got to take that on um ended up meeting an a student who was in the the university system had like an adult finisher degree program and uh I met one of those students and her her dad and uncle owned a small leadership training company and she I had interviewed her for for a video for the school and then at the end she said have you you know are you happy in your job like what do you you know and I it ended up they hired me to kind of revamp their marketing uh and so I did that and also it was a remote job and I had all the video equipment that they were using and so I used it to do freelance videography work around the Chicago area uh also was still playing with my ban pretty actively and um that company they ended up kind of shutting down about eight or so months later due to cash flow issues and they laid off it was a small team but they laid almost everybody off and um and and so by that time my wife and I had thought about starting a family moving away from Chicago and so I ended up um getting an executive leadership position in a nonprofit in Mississippi so I moved from Chicago to Mississippi which uh could be its own whole story in uh cultural intelligence and transition I I helped lead that nonprofit for four years and um I got a lot of leadership experience during that time I you know I was over marketing but really I was helping the CEO who became a good friend and mentor of mine to kind of revamp a very old organization that needed some revamping um during that time that CEO uh and and this is where I started getting introduced to coaching so I do a lot of Executive coaching now and that had been my kind of my career before this um he had worked for this large Global Leadership training company and wanted to keep doing that but in a way that served the nonprofit so we started an LLC that was actually owned by the 501c3 which was a lot of interesting legal gymnastics um and over about four years we revamped The Branding of the nonprofit grew its fundraising efforts and then also I got trained as a coach I started doing my own essentially I became a consultant uh without really understanding that that was the world I was getting into so I got very used to sitting down with senior leaders mostly nonprofits but also small businesses and just kind of articulating back to them here's the challenges I hear you having and here's how leadership and team development can help probably solve some of those challenges and so ended up getting certified as a coach and um eventually kind of developing my own might call it book of business like I got very used to doing my doing everything end to end I would build the relationships develop the program build the contract and execute on it and then try to follow with the client um eventually we separated those two organizations uh we did a lot of change pretty quickly in the nonprofit and I think that didn't go over well with all the board members um and I think this CEO was ready for to go back into that world fulltime and so we separated the organizations I I went full-time doing leadership development and Consulting um that eventually led me I I there's a a very large accounting firm that came to me as a client then needed me to develop like this leadership development series for them they they experienced insane growth they went from having two perspective Partners to 11 perspective Partners they didn't have a formal development program to kind of train them up and so I built that and at the end of that they offered me a full-time job and so I was working full-time for this Professional Services firm um uh up until the point where I stepped away to focus fully on buying this business and so in that capacity I just and and we ultimately ended up working mostly with commercial construction and manufacturing companies and so typically I'd be coaching one or two members of a senior leadership team and organizing some kind of monthly leader development either U on Zoom with group coaching or we would also typically do like quarterly on-sites and so it's a kind of thing we didn't use EOS an example but um a lot of similar conversations similar results with you know trust building and and that sort of thing and so that that has been that had been my world up until about February of this year okay and so why did that world become this world what was the trigger yeah that's a great question so you know we moved to Greenville South Carolina um right before I got offered that full-time role and getting offered that role was eye openening for me our consultancy that I had that I that I had talked about that IID helped found was pretty small and um I when when I was offered this full-time role the compensation was was much bigger and it was my first time being working with a very large organization I mean this this firm was like the 25th largest public accounting firm last year uh and so it it kind of opened my eyes to um I don't know I kind of felt like maybe I've been undervaluing myself and not not trying hard enough like the ceiling is a lot higher maybe than it needs to be and that was that was kind of unlock one um I've always been more motivated by just people and learning than income and when this happened I thought oh interesting I can I'm still involved with people and I can still do this stuff but my income is going up so that's that's exciting it sounds kind of basic when you say it out loud but it was I don't know why it was just it was kind of eye opening to me well then around that same time um Eric pacifi who is the you know on the he used to be anonymous as SMB attorney and he released this first version of his m&a master class and somehow somebody put it into my Twitter feed and um I was fascinated by it like I'd never I knew nothing about m&a I didn't know EA was you know I I was very uneducated in in business and finance don't have an accounting background or anything I mean I've never worked in banking but I just I ate it up I mean I just I read all of this stuff A lot of it was very technical um and so I and then I I followed him and I started following more people and eventually I saw somebody talk about ETA and I saw somebody recommend the hbrr guide to buying a small business and so again this is like a very common theme here but once you read that book I I just remember like I sort of looked around me and realized I can't unsee the world um this way like I there's a there's a different way of thinking about the kind of life I could build for my daughters I've got three daughters uh six and under and um you know my parents are amazing they weren't entrepreneurs um in in the sense we didn't didn't have a business and I just I hadn't I don't know no one had ever mentored or encouraged me to the like I know some people they grow up reading Rich Dad Poor Dad and they have this idea of buy a cash flowing asset I just had not been exposed to that world and so I went through this really Whirlwind I started meeting people reaching out to people on social media and just asking them questions uh and then eventually I started produsing bis byell you know um and and and why Rory why do you think being an entrepreneur resonated with you because a lot of people hundreds of thousands of people will see these ETA tweets these these monster threads that go viral and they don't take action but you did yeah great question the other thing I realized quickly was that um my background being in people and team building and and coaching could be a huge asset to owning my own business yes um you know you even people who are very very skilled in finance you constantly see things like you can't run a business off a spreadsheet yes you know you can't model out having a drunk employee show up to work or or all this stuff and I and I realized I've been sitting one that's a good one right yeah you know you can't you can't account for that in your your your T your Excel tabs and so you know I I realized I've been sitting with these primarily Blue Collar owners of of pretty successful businesses and all the challenges they're dealing with are not really they don't require Finance skills to to deal with now we had a finance team at the firm that would help them with things like job cost accounting construction as an example and and that was awesome and needed but a lot of it was just like how do we don't trust each other like how can we communicate better I can't we don't know how to hold people accountable our hiring is terrible and I feel like nobody wants to work and you get into it and realize you don't know how to write a good job post or where to put that or how to have an onboarding process that gets people to stay and um I just kind of started realizing I'm I'm helping to create I I think a lot of value not just monetarily but culturally like this is becoming a better team to be a part of in part because of what we're doing and what would it be like if I had my own business with my own team to treat like almost like a lab of you know I believe in this stuff I I think it's helpful uh What If This Were benefiting my own business um and and then you know autonomy is important to me I I've been working remotely I should I should say so that helped me in my search I had a lot of flexibility and time and so I I did I worked full-time throughout my whole search process and was very undisciplined very part-time we can talk more about what that looked like when we get there but you know I that flexibility I realized I value that really really highly and the the work I was doing most of our clients are in the mids south Mississippi Louisiana Tennessee um and I had to travel a good bit for for a lot of this a lot of different things and that just got really tiring with three young kids and my wife working full-time you know if my wife wasn't working full-time maybe it would have been different uh in terms of but just the energy suck on the family when I would travel you just you you hate having those conversations over and over and realizing what it's going to do and at some point I realized man if I own my own business and in particular if it was either remote or local to me I just wouldn't have to travel like this and that became really attractive great sure well that makes sense Rory even for somebody who hadn't really been exposed to or attracted to entrepreneurship before the so let's hear about this uh how did you put it half-ass part-time search you go on by cell then what yeah it's not not a model I mean I'm you know I I sort of made time for it as I could um I tried to be I mean initially like so many people do I try to be very open there's some things I thought I didn't want interestingly I would have told you that brick and morar Retail was something I did not want as part of my my my criteria yeah um and I you know I just thought I'm used kind of my mind was look I'm used to talking to business owners about their challenges I know how to approach them and what questions to ask so let me see if I can try to connect with business owners as fast as possible in this search to get past the broker and um and so I had you know a number of fits and starts I mean I met a couple of owners in person that I drove you know actually went to an ETA conference at UVA met almost two years ago now and stopped in Raleigh on the way to meet the business owner I drove out to the coast to meet with another business owner um and you know it was I I kept hitting I kept feeling like I was the dichotomy was these are either businesses that I I don't feel confident are are transactable in the sense of there's just too many holes that the owner's going to going to leave or their valuation expectations are way too high given what I'm learning about how I think I could value business um or um it it just wouldn't it it made me realize oh this is not just not a fit like I just or there's a bidding process so that was the other big deal was realizing I'm going to get in this bidding process I don't have a huge personal War chest and the more I learned about it the more I thought I don't know that I want to take on investors that frankly just seem like a lot of work um and a lot of coordination and I know a lot of people have done that really well and had amazing outcomes with getting on investors but I just started realizing I don't want to be in a competitive bidding process alongside other like peite firms or you know Searchers that have a lot of investors that feels exhausting to me and so some of these businesses look really attractive but I realize I'm GNA have to really fight for it and and have investors and that makes me sound kind of lazy I don't know it was just this it didn't resonate with me like that's not the experience I would like to have trying require business and that's not really rational you know I think um I I don't put this forth as a model for for anybody it was just it did not sit right with me intuitively and with with who I am um and so gradually what I realized was two things one I would like to try to find something proprietary so that I can just begin directly building a relationship with a seller from the very beginning I had high confidence in my ability to both educate on some of this stuff and and be you know the buyer um and then I realized R even hold your thought on part on number two there but even though you were seeing that one of the class even in brokered businesses where a broker has hopefully presumably educated the seller the business owner and seller on the market value of their business you we're still seeing that many sellers had unrealistic expectations even after the broker and so you were going to have to be the bearer of this bad news to the seller if you went direct and they were going to find you suspect because obviously you are incentivized to tell them that their business isn't worth what they think it is because you want to buy it so yeah you know and you're not you're not the person they're going to trust to hear that information from and for the most part and which I understand I mean if you have a broker that you're trusting to educate and run the process for you you know that should be your point person for that I get that I mean the that business owner I met in Raleigh I um I followed up that meeting with a list of questions to the broker in email and I I should have done this in a phone call so that was one learning but I thought I've got some questions let me just put them here and feel free to work through them and we can set up a call and the broker replied back with one sentence he was like we disagree with your assumptions and your questions and we're not going to move forward it was just like and I went back and reread that thing I was like wow did I say something really offensive and it was just I was just asking questions about how did you arrive at this valuation method here's a couple things I'm seeing can you can you talk about this and it was just a it just it was a reaction that made me go oh goodness like I don't want to have that conversation multiple times but in retrospect do you think it was that you a that you were fatiguing the seller with your questions or the broker or that they were basically not realistic about what they should expect from wouldbe buyers like who was at fault there in this particular business I think it was overvalued um I think the owner had an idea in his mind of how the company used to be and of what it could potentially be yeah and um it was a it's a very Project based business I they they they produced a product that I sort of fell in love with when I saw pictures of it and I imagined and this is a really big filter for me was can I be proud to tell my friends of my family and my kids that this is my business and when I looked at what they produced I thought oh my goodness I can absolutely be proud of that these are beautiful um but just the valuation expectations didn't make sense and I think they could tell by my questions that that was that I'm was questioning some of the stuff that led them to that that valuation the major realization I had then had to do with living here in Greenville so the southeast in general is is booming I mean we've benefited from and I'm from Virginia originally um we lived in Chicago lived in Mississippi I spent some time in North Carolina but moving here to Greenville felt you know my wife jokes we're going to get buried in our backyard because we're just done moving and we love it here uh and and I realized wow greenville's growing significantly um and it's projected to continue to grow if I could find a business that in any way depends on our demographics I could probably just be an okay operator of that business and still benefit really well on a five to 10 year time Horizon uh and and so that what I started to do was just drive around and and uh I I started a I created a spreadsheet of businesses I saw that seemed interesting in like any any industry I just if I saw their sign I saw their truck if somebody told me about it I would write it down and I would go look it up I know several other guests have mentioned this but like our public library has a subscription to database called Data axle and so I would look up you know try to find contact information some history in the business and I did a little bit of of of cold Outreach I mean I did some I I paid somebody overseas to build me a list with certain NES codes um I I called a few business owners I had was rebuffed really heartily on a couple um once they figured out that I didn't already own or had no industry experience which I was transparent about because I didn't want to uh you know lie about that or anything um and I had a couple of really good conversations in fact um some of my most interesting leads came from a post I made in a local Facebook group so our neighborhood has a Facebook group where I know there are business owners that live in the neighborhood and so I just made a post I said hey here's who I am I'm looking for a business owner who wants to retire buyer might want to sell their business uh open to some Industries let's talk and I had three leads from that one post and then one of those turned into a very short-term Consulting project where the idea was let's like get to know each other and do some work together and see if it could be a fit and there was a smaller business uh uh with some Revenue concentration but I I really liked it and and and that ended amicably it didn't make sense to move forward but it was a it was a really good learning experience and it was funny that just came from like so my most activity came from a single Facebook post yeah it's super interesting I'm not sure heard that particular proprietary search technique but uh does make sense um and I just want to highlight what you said Rory about just the the growth of the area being an incredible Tailwind for almost any business in yeah in theory and um we we do hear that on acquiring minds a lot in particularly actually in the Carolinas in North Carolina I think I've heard two recent guests talk about that um typically I feel like they they realize that after the fact after they've already acquired their business and they they realize wow being in a growing Market is is really what has helped me along here but you could see at the outset that that was going to be something that would really serve you um yeah but anyway so just again a note for the audience that like buying in a growing Market can be um a giant Advantage as you said Southeast is is kind of where that's happening these days yeah all right great and and Rory what were so criteria were uh local as you've made clear yeah and um what can you give us a sense of like what you could afford what your balance sheet looked like especially if you were not going to use investors mhm yeah and so this is where I I really marched forward on I I would say sort of Blind Faith like we're not you know we we did not have I didn't have a big war chest of savings um you know we we could have cashed out some retirement funds if we wanted to we had a decent amount of cash but I I really just marched forward under the assumption that like I'm going to find one and when I find it I'm going to fight for it and I'm going to find a way to make it work and I and I do think that if you're going to especially when you're searching part very part-time like I was I just I had to believe that that was what was going to happen because there were long periods where I felt like I wasn't seeing anything and I didn't really know what the next step was and that was was kind of discouraging um I just knew the more I kept doing it the more I kept want wanting to do it uh and and so I I didn't I mean you know I I think I had the typical like I'd like to have something at least $500,000 of SD to to not come in from day one and be and feel squeezed um I I knew you know the Consulting and education World actually the only other business I went under Loi was a a consulting firm uh that was working with a particular demographic and had kind of the beginnings of what I could see becoming a productized service that could have really high margins and be really easy to implement um and uh after getting into Loi and having some more conversations I just realized that I had not diligen it well enough there was some there was a key employee who was treated like an employee but was a contractor and that made me nervous because that it's my understanding that liability for that um survives an asset sale so that person could end up coming after me for back taxes if they decided to I don't know that they're or you know for for withholding um and uh and I just realized it it was the kind of business that really should have been like a a mentor like an apprenticeship where you come in partner together and have some transition of equity over time as you learn the business and build the relationships that were kind of at the heart of what made them work um but it was a remote company um and that was really attractive to me uh and so initially I was looking I know B2B Service as well I understand Consulting and coaching education um and and I looked at all kinds of things I mean there's a restoration business actually here in town that I seriously looked at um but I I'll tell you I I reached a point I did reach a point where I was like I don't know whether I'm going to find I mean I don't know whether I'm going to find anything um I I have a lot of interesting ideas about different businesses but there I I when I look back in that time now I have this feeling of like I I would have liked to have felt more locked in on a particular industry uh and I could not find that lock in I just I couldn't find it I felt like I had lots of really good ideas and basic understandings of a number of Industries um you know some stereotypical ones like Home Services were attractive for a lot of reasons but I mean like with Home Services when I I thought of myself running a company am I the person that's going to take a home service company and scale it successfully and and execute it success I just don't I don't think that I am uh and I I kind of floundered for a little while to be honest um I and and so when I in that floundering is when I started trying to do more proprietary Outreach making some phone calls and just saying hey let me scrap my need to find an industry and say this is the word I'm going after and let me just see if I can find a successful business that's clearly local that stands to benefit from greenville's growth and it was in the course of that that I thought to call up the former owner of the garden center and Rory your initial kind of what you perceived as your the value that you could introduce into a small business namely The Bu culture building and the your way with people uh and your enthusiasm for people uh something that many Searchers often run away from or they just grudgingly expect to have to deal with people problems um seems like your Brier patch that wasn't so it sounds like your your confidence in that started to be a little shaken or like you just I guess I'm asking like why did you when considering buying a home services business for example why did all of a sudden you have doubt well oh well maybe Rory is not the guy to buy a home services business when in fact a home services business probably that you know could benefit a lot from the the value that you think you have which I agree with in the people stuff yeah I think two things one I think I kept realizing any broker at home services business has become very competitive and even the ones that um like there's a lot of wise people on on Twitter who have who run home services or pluming companies let's take a plumbing company plumbing company seems so hot and I think for a lot of different reasons a lot of owners get inflated ideas about how much their 250k SD plumbing company should go for like you should be able to get eight times for this uh and and it's it's it's almost like you have the honor as a buyer of getting this at all as opposed to somebody else it doesn't matter what the price or terms are that that's probably an unfair uh generalization but that's the sense that I kept getting and then the ones that I did feel like were fairly priced I I just knew this is going to be a very competitive process and I did not manage to I tried to connect with the owners of a few um local plumbing and hvat companies and just it just did not seem to work I don't know why I just never seem to be able to get them on the phone long enough to try to have a conversation and so but I had the impression the industry you started to feel like the industry wasn't to fit for your personality anyway well and I think I think was paying really close attention to people who are operating these companies and I started like as an example so much of of lead generation for Home Services is SEO um and that's an area I know almost nothing about and and just realized is that the game I want to play yeah like is when I is that because that's the hill I'm gonna have to climb whether I hire somebody for it or just try to do it myself which I really don't want to do um and yeah I don't know I I I just I just remember feeling like this ah it's not for me it's almost I I don't know it's just okay okay um and then just a follow up on your balance sheet so the point was you didn't have a ton of money no to do here so you were really like you said just to be clear like it you were not looking at your balance sheet and saying to yourself okay I'm I'm constrained to this size of business you were just trying to find any business and you were going to make it work within reason sort of thing yeah yeah and I and i' been I'd connected at that point with enough other people in the in the space who said I either like there's a guy that owns a business that I become good friends with who has a father-in-law and he said my father-in-law wants to invest and if you and I do this together in some way he he'll come on and he could make a sizable investment I like I knew at this point if I wanted if I needed to go up and put the flags up and and make the contacts to get investors I could I just didn't find something that was both big enough and fairly priced where I and and wasn't in a huge competitive process that I just didn't want to be a part of which is I mean that's really restrictive all those things I just said right so I'm limiting my own options um and but I just didn't find something that that that missed those and that I felt like this was this is the right one um and and so we I mean we I'll say this plays into our how I ended up acquiring it part of where I knew I was the funds were going to come from was we took out a helck on our house uh and we had like $168,000 in line of credit there and I thought I'm going to use some of that for my down payment or all of it I'm happy to do that um and and just to fast forward I found out if you're going to do that and the lender is okay with that you have to be able to show that you can pay off that loan separate from the cash flow from the business uh and since my wife was working full-time that that would have worked um and we had some cash savings I think I we had my wife and I had a lot of conversations about this I think we felt comfortable committing to somewhere between 160 and 200,000 that we could inject most of which would come from that helck okay okay great well that's helpful uh 150 to 2,000 great all right so the garden center it's on your radar already why is it on your radar and then tell us about your Outreach there yeah yeah well so I mentioned we I've been trying to pay attention like what local businesses seem like they're they're great and we we moved here um in the summer of 2021 and started we I found it on Google the the nursery and we went and we started buying plants from there and when you go on the property the building is is kind of dilapidated like looking I mean it's it's fine but it's also I mean it's a 60-year-old uh Garden Center and so you drive in but then you park and you get out and it's kind of in it's kind of down from the road one whole side of the property border is bordered by the REI River um which I didn't even find out until like our fourth or fifth visit there because it's mostly trees and you're in what feels like a park I mean there's all these big mature trees all around the property there's these big pine trees on the property it's you know a lot there's probably about five acres that are in the main property and so there's a lot of space to walk around and they have a ton of water features and and they like a huge quoi pond and a fountains and it just felt more like a park I think and and when I tell you we we kept wanting to go back there because we got this like intangible feeling of peace from spending time there like I can't put it any differently that we just really enjoyed being on the property and at some point I don't I don't I do not remember why I got this idea in my head but I thought they are doing something right like they they have clearly not invested in a bunch of slick marketing I've seen zero brand efforts by them around town they've clearly been here a long time I I just had the suspicion like this is probably run by somebody near retirement age um and the business seems to be doing pretty well because they're carrying a ton of inventory well well let me say I kind of had the thought either too much of their cash is tied up inventory and I'll be disappointed if I ever get to the point of talking about financials or I'll realize they're able to carry so much inventory in their balance sheet because they're in a really financially healthy situation which which turned out to be the case but either way I mean it's just like a and and I would love to have people come visit because I love it I love getting to show up there for work every day now but um yeah so we just had this feeling of piece and I thought they must be doing something right I love plants I mean I'm a hobbyist but I and and then I thought I would be so proud to show my daughters this place and to have them come to work with me and so like if I had an HVAC company we're out of an office or something I mean maybe one of them could ride around with me in a truck with one of the techs or something but the office is probably not going to be the sort of place that I want to bring my kids and hang out all the time whereas a nursery is just like a giant playground and like a like a Wonderland and my kids are super imaginative and and creative and um and so I just got this idea in my head why wouldn't that be NE I would be so proud to own a business like that I just have no idea if it's financially healthy or not nor do I know whether the guy wants to sell it or whether it's in a condition that I want to buy it yeah um and so at some point I just I sent him an email this was in May of last year so April May and um June are the absolute busiest time you make something like 70% of your revenue for the year in those three months I didn't understand that yeah it's very seasonal and I didn't understand that at the time so I sent the owner an email which he somehow responded to within a couple of days and the email was just like hey I you know I'm I'm learning a lot about businesses locally I don't know a whole lot about what it's like to have a garden center would you be open to being interviewed by me just about what it's like to own this business and you know his reply was sort of short he's like yeah that's fine but right now it's terrible you know reach back out later and so I think I got back in touch in July we got together in either July or August for the first time I talked to him on the phone actually that was our first communication after that was on the phone and I'm just kind of getting to know him a little bit at some point and he's he's a very straightforward guy I I've come to learn which I really appreciate and he just goes why do you want to know all this you know like why why are you asking these questions and I said well here's here's my thing I've been wanting to buy a business in Greenville I love your nursery and I don't know whether it's a business I'd like to own but I'm wondering if you are thinking about retirement because if you are I'd like to at least have a conversation if you're open to that and he said you know if you had gotten to me last summer uh I would not have been but I am now um and and yeah let's talk about that and so yeah I mean it's just he was very Rory let me let me pause you on a couple things the so you said you emailed him and said let me interview you to learn about your business I just to ask you some questions this is a key technique because it got him on the phone and it got you building Rapport so so I'd like to get you on the phone and ask you questions about your business basically y basically I just want to learn like I would love to learn what it is like to own and run this business and I tried that tactic with a few other people I've sent LinkedIn messages I sent some some emails I left some voicemails and no one it didn't work for uh it worked for one other person I got I got a business own on the phone a very Niche construction company locally and I got him on the phone ended up buying him lunch and just asking him a ton of questions and it turns out he was actually already under Loi with a big another big company that out of out of the city that was but but he was as open as he could be without violating his NDA and I learned a lot but that's the only other time that tactic worked and and and was the was the sequence of events the same where you ask questions for 20 minutes and eventually he's like why are you asking me all this did that happen with the lunch with the niche construction business gu yeah you know with that I think I was clear with him on the phone um that this is why I'm calling you and he said look I'm I'm actually already under Loi um it's not a done deal by any means I can't talk about it much but I'd be happy to meet you and talk more about it um and so I mean in my mind I think he he probably liked that I was you know straightforward and proactive and I think in his mind like it's under Loi it's not done and I did learn from him there were a couple of wrinkles in the process uh that that he he had a little bit of uncertainty so I think at that point he was probably keeping his options a little a little bit open I I would not have been the right buyer for that company uh which we figured out at that lunch but it was really really interesting it's when I say Niche construction it's like working on underwater stuff so like earlier in his career he put on a scuba suit and dive down to work on like Bridge pilings and stuff almost died at one point so he stopped putting on the scuba suit it was it was it was a great lunch I have no regrets about that great and then you're you said you're a hobbyist uh you so you have plants or a green thumb or what Ju Just explain explain to us your level of knowledge about gardening because because you know while I I you know I'm I'm very intrigued by this business but I know not the first thing about plants so I just I just wonder is so your your your knowledge and your the fact that you were a hobbyist how what role that played I guess it probably played a big one I mean that's how you got there in the first place if nothing else yeah well I grew up when I was young my my parents had like a small garden in their backyard and um really young and I have some like core memories of like walking through a small corn field and um and stuff like that and so when when our oldest daughter was pretty young my wife and I just decided we would like to plant some things because it's something they can do together with us they can learn about how things grow and how to care for things and then we can grow a blueberries and and uh blackberries and just plant some simple you know vegetables to teach them about that and so we lived in Mississippi we had you know we planted a fig tree that got huge fig trees will get up to like some of them will get like 15 feet tall and wide in two or three years um we we planted several small gardens and it just became like a family hobby that we could really do together um and my wife and I my wife in particular it's like a big stress relever for her to just go work in the garden weed and plant and so yeah it's just something we've always done together when we moved here to Greenville we um the the woman we bought the house from had done a great job in the front beds but the back needed a lot of work and so it's this just been our constant hobby project is trying to plant more and make it nicer and uh yeah we're proud of where it's come so it's a stress reliever just being around plants there's actually a lot of research around this that being outside and being around plants and planting can like lower your heart rate reduce your risk of hypertension I mean it's actually really interesting but that was my level I know no specialized T cultural knowledge but the other thing I should say is my father-in-law until early this year he ran kind of a niche he he would hate to have it called a landscaping business he called it Garden restoration basically in Columbia South Carolina he would go to somebody who had like a big property typically like a widow and she would basically say I remember what this looked like when my husband kept it up it hasn't been kept up in five years since he passed I'd like it restored and so he could go in and know what's native what's not what to prune and how to prune it what to plant and and he had a crew doing that uh and so as I got to know him over the past I've been married over 10 years now and so um you know he'll give us books about plants as gifts and stuff like that and so that it's always kind of been there but know more than a hobbyist level of of knowledge before this MH really cool Rory okay well it it does sound like a great family hobby by the way you're not the first person well I somebody somebody who recommended to me recently that I get into gardening with my with my own daughter so I guess that that's a well and I'll tell you the easiest way to do it they make these grow bags these like black cloth bags with handles you just fill them with soil and you plant right in them and then like we have some on a pallet outside you can put them on a patio it's like kind of contained but you can go whatever you want and it's like a great way to use kids to it just great that that was freak will okay fascinating all right so where were we you are having this conversation with with a seller and he says you know I would be open to it if you if you contacted me last year I wouldn't be but now I am yeah and then yeah and so I can't I can't remember if we had our first in-person meeting where because because there was an in-person meeting shortly after that where I went and sat down in his office and the way the building is constructed there's no closed door offices in the building it's a a little bit unique so his office has a doorway but there's no door on the hinges and there's a cutout over his desk where he's got a direct line of sight to the register and that's just how he's he's he had operated the business for more than 20 years he's just in it all the time you know jack of all trades um he has two children who were working in the business and are still working for me Jim's the name of the the former owner he he walked out of the office and we talked and but one of those it was either that very first iners meeting or the second one where I had told him I don't want you to feel I don't want you to share more right now than you're comfortable sharing but some point I would like to have an idea of what I would be willing to pay for the business and to do that I really need to know what your tax returns are I don't need to see all of them they can be redacted but I need to know those numbers because eventually I'm going to get a loan and that's what the bank is going to look at they're not going to look at anything else and so I came and he had them printed out like the first page redacted for the past I think five years in a manilla envelope my name on it and he handed it to me and I it I remember this moment because I remember sitting in the chair in the office and and I was like this is the moment where I'm going to know whether I want to move forward or not this is going to be really interesting and so I opened I start looking and I mean the business had done extremely well like way healthier than I even thought it was going to be I mean I I maybe thought it was going to make him 300 $350,000 a year and I think the average over the past four or five years is something closer to like 800 850 K SD incredible and and what quickly became clear to me from looking at their turns was that this guy and this jived with this personality he wasn't trying to do anything creative with his taxes I mean he was just making decent money and paying taxes on it which was a huge green flag to me because you can get in a lot of trouble with trying to value a business and get a loan in a business where there have been some creative Tax Strategies employed or dishonest Tax Strategies employed and so I I looked through those tax returns and I said okay and then at some point I think in that conversation he shared with me a number that he had in mind as a value and he was willing to sell both the real estate and the business and he had a number that was in mind for both and he also shared with me that he didn't have them in two separate en ities I know my accountant has told me I should have done that but I haven't done that uh but they're they're sort of both together and I said okay that and and in my mind I thought that seems extremely reasonable I I'll need to I'm going to hold my breath till we do equality of earnings because I want to make sure there's nothing that I'm that I'm not seeing but that just seemed so from that moment I think it was like oh this business he's got a very reasonable price already in mind story so he he had um I think it was between two and I think he said two and a half 2.5 million was the price he had in mind for the real estate which is eight acres oh oh just the real estate sorry no no no no no no no 2.5 million for all of it what 2.5 million for all of it yes and that was inclusive of inventory so at the time we were talking he had about this is the winter so you know getting into fall winter when they have less we have less inventory but I think it he had something like $650,000 worth of inventory on hand and that also was was part of that so 2.5 million for the real estate for the business and for the inventory and all equipment that's incredible and now what why so low I mean that that's a 3X on a business with really solid SD 60 years old and consistent what's the quality of this Revenue despite the fact that it's retail we don't like retail it's very seasonal we don't like seasonal but from he gave you five years of tax returns you said how consistent was this 800 to 850 number yeah that's a great question so it had grown significantly in those five years um it it I saw a rise starting in 2018 it starting going up in 2019 and then in covid it just they went nuts did really really well uh but then it increased the year after Co and it increased the next year after CO as well but not so much and so there was sort of this like new the way I interpreted the history was they've hit kind of a new Plateau um at a very healthy level of Revenue and margin without making a lot of any investments in marketing in um you know a lot of garden centers will if you look at some of the best-in-class ones they invest a ton of money into um making a very slick retail experience so really nice fixtures you know the property is manicured really well they'll host events and classes they'll have like big all weekend events with food trucks and wine tastings and like all this theme stuff they curate a big newsletter they're like investing a lot of money in this marketing and this place had done none of that um and they've been here for 60 years and and so the the kind of P ially developed in my mind was okay they've hit somewhat of a plateau I suspect we're going to have to fight a lot harder the next five years for this Revenue than they've had to fight the last five years but I'll have I'll do that with tools that I understand like brand awareness and marketing um as well as tightening up on customer service and um and and making some Investments and making it a space that people want to come spend more time and hang out not just come and by plans I want to copy out that because a lot of garden centers again they invest in having a cafe right serving coffee and food and having all these like tables people can hang out and they didn't have any of that but my wife and I still wanted to keep coming back and spending time there and so I thought you know I have this vision for what it could be but I mean it's doing great already so worst case scenario we just keep iterating on what is and I I have incremental growth and because I'm not going to have investors I don't have to worry about posting very normal average growth numbers right or or maybe going down you know the the J curve that everybody talks about I know it's going to happen and is happening now um I don't have to worry about being accountable to anyone except for myself my family for that um and and so that made me feel good and why did you just say that you thought you'd have to fight for the revenue harder for the next five years than had for these past five years because Co effects made it easy for yeah so the garden center industry and and in general saw just huge bumps in in sales uh postco and in a lot of them there's a very pronounced bump in 2020 2021 and then a fairly pronounced drop in 22 and then 23 and I didn't see that I saw kind of Plateau um so then that combined with a couple of unique things about this South Pleasantburg Nursery the name so you can see it's on my shirt so South Pleasantburg Nursery yeah South Pleasantburg Nursery so South Pleasantburg is the road that it's on um it is in the city limits of Greenville just at the at the southern end of the city and um so we're the only we're one of two nurseries garden centers within the city limits the other one is kind of a backyard operation run by one guy and he's a really nice guy and he's great I've talked with him but the only other Garden Center is you have to drive between 15 and 30 minutes outside of the city to get to so our location is amazing um and and so and and we're greenville's oldest Garden Center uh which is again not something that I'd seen them kind of double down on in their marketing uh and they had some really knowledgeable still have really knowledgeable team members and I thought okay the the covid effect is it's there because I see the plateau um but and that it's been the only thing driving this because they haven't been doing a ton of marketing but what if I can find a way to turn that on double down on professionalizing you know customer service and just really lean into that we're greenville's like we're greenville's Garden Center we're greenville's oldest Garden Center um you know there are other great options around Greenville and I thought and I've told the team this I don't want us to ever assume that people are just going to keep coming back we can't do that because there are other options even if they're a little further we need to fight for them uh fight for the customer fight for the revenue and and so yeah I think it's just a CO effect that all Outdoor Living garden centers there there was a dramatic rise postco but in a lot of those you see kind of a relatively dramatic fall in 22 or 23 and that hadn't happened and so far this year we're we're a little bit below and and this is again I'm in a big an industry Consulting Group with a bunch of other independent garden centers most people are posting declines year-over-year this year um we are down I think about last I checked it was two or three% Topline uh from last year which the way I structured the transaction and my expectations going in was I'm I'm that's probably going to happen um and so that's not doesn't make me scared yet yeah uh and and just curious why you had the confidence that it it where Revenue was was a new normal so it had spiked it had come down a little bit and then plateaued but that Plateau was higher than it was pre-co so it settled in or so you thought or so your thesis was at a higher level but why uh did you have that confidence that it would stabilize there and not just go all the way back down to where it was pre-co yeah great question I mean look jury's still out right I mean I took over the business on uh like May 3rd you know so we'll see but two things number one the demographics of Greenville so so Greenville is going to grow significantly over the next 10 years and so if we can capture some percentage of those new folks who who want to buy plants that's good for us and just existing Market penetration I felt like and since being there every day I I'm constantly running into people who are like we've lived here all our lives and we didn't know this was here um and and and so those two things convince me hey if we can if we can just double down on letting people know we're here um and double down on capturing demand for the people that are going to keep moving here for the next decade I think we can at the very least maintain you know normal 5 to 10% year-over-year growth um and and potentially much more if if we can double down on simly Creative Marketing and events great okay had you said why you why his valuation number was so low have we gotten there yet three that's three just for the audience maybe maybe I said this indulge me again yeah 3X for a business that does great Revenue although it's seen growth so so that Revenue maybe the quality of that Revenue isn't as it's not super stable um and but what what do you think the value of the real estate was so carve out the real estate for us so his he he assigned a value of $250,000 to his real estate okay um great and uh it ended up appraising for more than double that which was was very helpful to me uh because I mean getting ahead of myself in the transaction structuring but I ended up doing two loans right a 504 for the real estate and a 7A with SBA Loans and uh I was able to put more of the overall price into the real estate loan because the lender was willing to lend in 100% of that appraised value uh which which helps the debt service coverage a bit um but he to to answer your question why so low a number of things that I came to understand number one he got that value from a consultant that he trusted who there there's a system called the value Builders system I don't know if you've ever heard of this system but it's like a it's it's essentially a a platform for Business Consultants and you interview a business owner and there's this dashboard with something like 12 little metrics on it that help to come up with an Enterprise value for the business and these metrics there's a lot of things that we would that would almost be search a criteria like level of management involvement in the business stability you know amount of recurring Revenue versus Project based Revenue um uh a bunch of stuff like that so he had him this consultant run him through this and came up with that number that had been at the time we talked I think more than a year and a half prior so the business had grown a little bit since then and um and the real estate ended up appraising for a little bit more um that's one thing interestingly that consultant came back and spent a day with him as we were negotiating the LOI and did that analysis again and came out with a relatively higher number uh and the sell's response Jim's response was uh well we agreed on a number and I'm going to honor that which is extremely humbling to me like he the honestly if I say the the one the one thing that really caused me to just literally stop looking at any other businesses and run really hard at this was I realized the owner of this business has Rock Solid Integrity he is straightforward he's not playing games he just is who he is he says stuff I mean he would tell me things in casual conversation that honestly reflected kind of negatively in the business and he was just there was not the sense that he was fencing anything or mincing his words and I picked up on that very early and I thought man this is the kind of person I want to have as a partner in this process because anything other than that is going to make the process harder than it needs to be and he he just the other thing I'll say is he had made good money the past five years from the business he felt comfortable I mean when I tell you he he put something like 20% of the business in a Donor advised fund before we signed the LOI so that after the purchase he had to donate 20% of the proceeds into this fund so it could be used for all these nonprofits like that's just the sort of person he is money was not his his main concern and I you've heard people say like that sellers or money may not be their main concern I see people go back and forth like oh they say that but in this case it was genuinely he was so proud of the business his two kids are working in the business and he wanted them to have the best chance of success moving forward um and he just was not personally motivated by money he was happy with the deal that we struck and felt like he just had to follow through on it from a matter of Integrity which I am extremely thankful for yeah absolutely well thank you Jim um really remarkable because what uh sure seems like a screaming deal okay and and I will let me add a couple things to that too so for people I mean you heard me say 70% of the revenue comes within about three months of the year so I think he's also very self-aware that there's things about this business that are hard um the the seasonality is you have to be very good at managing your cash in in the offse I mean all the time but especially when you're not getting the revenue um there's also you know we don't have a lot of outdoor covered um shopping on our property so a lot of nurseries will have all these walkways and green houses and all of our stuff for the most part is outside except for some indoor things in our greenhouse and that means if you get like five or six rainy Saturdays like thunderstorm Saturdays in Spring you might lose like 30% of your revenue for the year and probably not be able to recover it because that the spring is when people are planting that's when they're buying plants and so you hope some of those folks will come back in a weekday but of course A lot of them are working they're not thinking about it and so that's a very real risk um and I think he acknowledged that this is not it's it's just not from compared to other no business is truly easy I don't I don't think except for maybe course creation once you get to a certain point but you know there's no he just he was self-aware about that and I think and he was self-aware about the age of the property you know the fact that there was a there are a number of Staff members who are close to retirement age and so there's sort of a an experience and knowledge Cliff coming within the next couple two to three years at most and he was aware of that and there was no structure on the staff so no management roles no formal organization they didn't do formal scheduling people just sort of decided when they were going to work and and they had a lot of self-motivated people that got the job done but it wasn't structured at all um and I I haven't fully put in a lot of structure yet because I wanted to make sure I do it right uh and he he was self- aware about that stuff and I think that also informed he didn't have an overinflated sense of what the business should be worth well and let's also remind ourselves what something you said at the top which is you you didn't want retail and fundamentally a garden center is a store you're basically buying a Store retail and and we all and so retail is unattractive and Retail is not going to command a lot of multiples a large multiple so while this business kind of feels like something different and maybe a garden center does have enough idiosyncracies to it that it's not traditional retail it's kind of at its core retail consumer you know probably vulnerable to recessions uh vulnerable to the weather in this case so um yeah notr Revenue garden centers there's there's a couple models I mean we are um it's interesting the word Nursery like we're south penberg Nursery I used to think Nursery is a place where plants are grown and garden center is a place where you go buy stuff related to your garden and there's not really a standard way of thinking about that but we're pure retail which in and of itself is a little bit riskier because you're not you you have less control you you in some sense you're beholden to what your vendors have available when they have it available and you need to get I've learned a lot about the ordering process you need to get your orders in first CU there a lot of other people trying to get these flow you know these plants from these Growers and so that makes it even a little riskier because we're just pure retail we don't do any of our growing okay and so wait so to be clear you're a garden center or you are a nursery because it say southberg Nursery I you know I don't know we just I think people tend to use the terms interchangeably uh just as you can get plants we care for and nurture plants and get them to you yeah great all right so you decide you want it you feel really good about of course what the financials raled you feel really good about the seller uh what does it look like to make your offer because I know that there was this was where your own educating you know you're not working through a broker you're going direct y this is again where your education of a seller comes into play yeah so early in the conversation I sent him I found I can't remember even the name of this broker but there's a broker from somewhere in the Carolinas that created a PDF to educate business owners on the whole process of how do you value business and what is it to market look like and interestingly he wrote it in a way where you can almost feel his like he's experienced so many business owners who have an overinflated idea of their business value and he's trying to knock that down and get them to be realistic which I really appreciate and I and but not disrespectfully just that's I picked it up so I sent that to Jim and I said hey you know read this through this this kind of shows how I think about the process we had a lot of conversations about it I um I I really just coached and and talked him along um my the first really big um the first thing that was really important to me was as I said he's got two kids that work in the business so my first first priority was I need to make sure that they're not wanting to buy the business and that or that their dad's not going to change his mind about keeping in the family and so you know fairly early on I sat down at his house with him and his son who would have been really I think the one uh to buite if he was going to and I just shared with him a lot about my vision and it turns out his son has had a lot of the same ideas about marketing and about what the business could look like that I have had and just got really excited about the idea of working for me um and I I met with him one-on-one for a late night not too long after that and kept talking and I told him I'm an open book I said man I'm I'm not independently wealthy I'll if you want I'll share with you exactly how I'm planning to do this and you could probably do it if you wanted to uh and I think he just didn't neither he nor his sister wanted that L how you were going to buy the business you teed up your whole you said if you want to do this instead of me I'll show you how I'll show you how because I don't I I want to be abolutely certain that at some point at the 11th Hour you are not going to um mind you're not going to change your mind or that your dad is not going to find a reason to change his mind and so both he and his sister like I said who are awesome and work for me now uh they they just didn't they they saw the level of complexity require and I think they recognized they they they liked their dad having the opportunity to get you know to have a sale and to benefit from his years of hard work um and uh but yeah so I met I I first step was talking with both of his kids The Next Step was we identified three key employees who have been there in one case for 40 years so the the former owner bought the business from the founder more than 20 plus years ago and that guy had been with him then and then has been with him for 40 years so I I met individually with them one-on-one as a condition of closing uh and then uh there's some language in in the a seller note one of the seller notes that he has about making sure they they stick around for at least a year um and those meetings went really well so that was very important to me because I was like am I going to be able to relate to these guys I mean they're they know so much about plants about the industry they've been in it for so long how are they going to think of me uh and I think I'm still learning some of that but we had a good we had good relationship well I mean in February so we went under Loi in December is that that's kind of where that we we got and the way I got there this was suggested by a friend of mine and I want to say this in case this is helpful to anybody my a guy I know who's bought businesses suggested setting up kind of like a three- tiered option presentation and saying here's three different ways that we could do this one of which is full seller financing and there's pros and cons to that on both sides the pro I leaned into was we don't have to involve banks at all uh and and it can be really smooth and then there was sort of a middle of the way where it was sort of a shared seller note and seller and and um and bank loan and then there was sort of a third way where it was kind of a still a seller note but it was minimized a little bit and uh I I had them over at my house one day um we had actually bought a couple trees that we were going to plant and he brought them over in his truck and then sat down and uh had uh had some coffee or something and I just opened my laptop and walked him through a PowerPoint that I made uh and just kind of explained to him this's how I'm thinking about it and so then I emailed him that PDF and said take some time think about this talk with your accountant uh oh I think he told me he's goingon to talk with his accountant which was a very big scare for me because I heard a lot of horror stories of accountants basically saying No this is a bad idea um but that didn't happen and Rory the presenting the three options was this one of these like on a pricing page of a SAS product or something where you were trying to orient him towards want of your preferred option yes and now I will say yeah so my I mean my preferred one honestly I would have loved full seller financing I mean that would have been that would have been great but I was very clear like with full seller financing you're getting the least cash up front uh uh and and I you know and and so I the middle of the road one uh which this is so often what happens when you see those pricing matrices right where there's a there's one on the far left and the one on the far right is going to be the most work but the one in the middle is like The Sweet Spot in terms of margin and work product and that's kind of how I structured it and that is basic I don't remember I don't have it in front of me I don't remember exactly but that's that's basically what ended up happening and and so sorry that option was that was basically half and half where he would seller finance half of it uh and the bank would Finance the other half and I'd provide some equity and the way that that ended up working out was he has two seller notes one that is on Full standby for five years uh and we actually financed some a working capital infusion into that so he wired me at close six figures of working capital just to help because I acquired it in at May so April is the largest revenue generating month for the business and I missed that whole month because of some delays mostly related to the real estate I learned a lot about buying real estate which I'd never done before um but there are a lot of delays uh and so I missed that whole month he in turn got that Revenue that he hadn't initially been expecting to get and so we built some working capital into that smaller seller note which I don't begin paying back until five years from now um and that was very helpful of the business was that that uh it was 10 or 11% it was over 10% uh because I could have gotten the business with no money down per the sba's uh regulations because it's a note and full standby my lender was not comfortable with that uh but the I ended up putting allowed it yeah yeah would have allowed it but I ended up putting 50,000 down uh which is a token compared to the Enterprise Value that we're talking about so I feel extremely lucky and thankful um and then there's another seller note for I think it's about 40 or 45% of the of the total uh and that's the terms kind of match the SBA 7A terms with the the 10 years and then with the SBA I've got the two loans the real estate loan and the 7A loan great valuation on the business as as we've already said multiple times and then you get these incredible terms as well I like very yeah you know there were a few moments during it where I thought that it was going to fall apart um where he was going to have a conversation or where he was delaying it for some reason and it's yeah did he not come back from his conversation with accountant saying my accountant says no interestingly he didn't bring his accountant into it until kind of late in the process and by that point he was basically telling his accountant here's what we're doing and what he came back and told me was his accountant was mad at him and and I said should be tell me more you know and so this is one of those phone conversations where I'm like okay what are the next words out of your mouth going to be you know like your accountant's mad at you surely you you've worked with this guy for years you trust him more than me surely and nope he it was just sort of he was just relaying to me a fact that the account was mad and I remember I may have been pacing in front of my wife when this happened I'm sure my face looks very interesting but there's a few moments like that where I thought is there's no way like at some point another moment the real estate appraised for more than twice what we had agreed on and I went to him and I asked him very transparently I said it appraised for more it's going to be a separate loan would it be okay if I shifted some dollars from allocating to the business purchase into the real estate purchase because that will help me have I'll just have to pay less debt payments every month and he didn't blink an eye he's like yeah sure or was I can easily imagine somebody else going hey that's great for you but the value of my business is a separate calculus from the value of the real estate so you you know you can figure that out if if you still want both these things but that's just he was just very fair and very just for again Rory you you Shifting the valuation around um was that does that sorry does that affect him did that affect him because ultimately lump is the same yeah it didn't if ultimately the lump Su was the same uh and and that was that was his main as long as my as long as the same total amount remains unchanged sure I'm I'm happy for you to do that I was expecting him to push back you know uh but but he didn't okay okay good and the so the working capital so this was something we we've talked about the seasonality you Miss April so you've got May and June to look forward to and then it's dry for the rest of the year y uh he but he again in a very I don't know if it's generous or just fair-minded way wired a lot of the the benefit of April um so you have this working capital you said to me something really interesting on the preall which is you're you're almost glad that you missed part of the busy season when you bought it oh yeah that's a great so a couple things happened um because of the delays um the one delay that happened and I I worked with Maas the loan broker right you know people know SBA broker yes I'm so I'm so thankful for Pioneer um his his guidance it was just super helpful but he was pushing me he said you need to get the highest line of credit the highest SBA Express line of credit that your lender will allow you to get because it's much harder to get a line of credit post acquisition and so I ended up asking for and getting a $300,000 line of credit which I have safely if I need to use it um have not had to yet and and may not have to uh but it's there and then and then because of the delay like I said the owner was was willing to wire me that lump sum of working capital um and that between those two things things I felt like I entered May in a relatively similar position to the way that I would have entered it but with the additional flexibility of that line of credit um and it gave me the other the other thing that happened that I forgot to mention is I ended up working in the business for about a month before we closed uh so I mentioned there's five people now out of a staff of about 15 who know about this trans you know there's there's the owners two kids and the three other key employees six people and word started getting out and Jim talked to me one day and he said I I just I feel like maybe I should tell them I know some people say don't share this news until it's happening but I just I feel like they're talking about it and so we agreed on a Saturday morning I came in I brought Chick-fil-A or something and uh had a team meeting and he kind of announced it and then I introduced myself and I was very you know we're transparent we said it's not done yet there's still some things to do but I'm going to start coming here because I want to get to know all of you I want to get to know the business much better and um after it was under Loi you had it under this was so we closed on I believe May 3D and this was about a month before that uh in April where and how did the employees react to your your Overture uh this Saturday morning yeah you know I my memory of it is that they were kind of non-committal but warm you know and and knowing that you know that's about all you can ask for exactly I mean I and I you know I I told them I'm not yeah I mean it was a it was a good morning and I spent the rest of the day at there just walking around watching people asking people questions and then from that day onward the other thing that had happened I mentioned I was working full-time I actually got let go from my job my my job got eliminated uh in February so timeline is I'm under Loi in December we're trying to close by March that's clearly getting delayed but then I find out that my last day of employment is going to be February like 17th I think it was and I got a month's Severance but that the way that the Stars aligned that week that my job ended uh is when the quality of earnings report came back very clean and so I ended up going into a month with Severance for my employer and just fully focused on okay the quality of earnings is here that's the last green light I really needed now let's like run really really hard at this and so the timing actually worked out really well I will say we were scraping the barrel of our savings by the time uh you know by the time we actually transitioned in May um but I I don't have any regrets about it it was absolutely the right decision well congratulations Rory Le let's start closing up here with just some Reflections on on it's been to be the owner so first of all tell us I'm I'm just going to spoon feed you this one how much uh of an improvement to your personal life it is that you own a business 12 minutes from your house versus crisscrossing crisscrossing the southeast it it's so nice it's so nice I mean like I you know when you I park in the back and I walk up through the back of the store and there's all these fountains that already turned on by the time I get there and so you're walking through all these plants and all these fountains and it's just like the most peaceful way to begin a day imaginable um the team is just such a solid interesting collection of people um that you know I I have not had to step into the closest to a critical role I've had to step into I would say is like HR and marketing um but other than that and that's partially due to the fact that the the former owner has been there full-time and he's in fact is coming up end of July is when he's done full-time and I'll have him on a Consulting basis as needed uh up until 12 months from acquisition dat uh and we just yesterday had a long conversation there's a few points he's going to need to step back in later this year because again it's so much seasonal there's stuff that happens only in the fall and I didn't get to see that and he's going to need to help transition some people with that but the you know last week I went to the beach with my family and you know the joke in our family is when our kids are there it's a trip not a vacation uh right so it was a trip but I did not I was not worried I mean between the former owner being there and he actually took one of those days off last week actually now that I think about it there's just a solid team of leaders who I would say up until they haven't had formally recognized management roles but they've been living that way and um it has been such a joy to get to know them better and to watch them R the business I have my a couple weeks ago I had my six-year-old daughter there with me for like three days and uh there's a lot of credit to her because she's a great self-managed creative kid but like it's just so fun to bring my kids they're so excited to be there I'm excited to share with people that I have a nursery like I I I tell our team all the time we don't really sell plants I think we help people find joy in and outside their homes and plants are a big part of that but they're not the only part and I feel so good about that that's amazing work yeah yeah and and just going back to some of the the mechanics here the seller who was so in the business like you said uh wore all the hats uh had his office right there in that in that kind of uh ramshackle Shack that you got as your office um but in fact him not being there as much and you you know being the new owner who's not going to be as competent quite yet as you ramp up um it doesn't feel like maybe the business is suffering from his lack of involvement no well I I I I've been telling people close to me I I think our harder times are in front of us you know for a number of reasons we've got like I said several retirement AED staff members who are really knowledgeable very hardworking and um most of them want to work as long as they can and I want them to work as long as they can but I know at some point they're going to not want to work as much as they do and there's a big knowledge transfer challenge that's there uh Jim in particular he used to build ponds for people so he's sort of known amongst our customers as the pond guy he I mean and we sell a lot of pond we have I I don't know that anybody else around us has as many like Niche Little Pond repair products in stock that we have and I don't want to lose that but most that knowledge is with him right now and he's done a great job of creating a bunch of guides and how-tos and explainers and I've been um actually filming him him do some education since I've been there so I'm filming him explaining the properties's irrigation system filming him how to repair sprinkler heads and um how to run the timer and fix certain things and there's more that we're going to do he's going to do some about pawns so that that's a very real Cliff that's coming um yeah and I think he his personality is he is always going to want to be helpful I think he's going to find a lot to do in retirement but he's also G to miss being there and if I really need him for something I I have no doubt that we can make that happen but my focus is going to be that education and the standardization of structure on the team so making sure we have identified openers and closers we have identified zones of the nursery and who schedule for those zones rather than who's just going to be there for the day and and really I have not begun that major change push yet I've really been going slow because I wanted to learn and wanted to and I've made some changes I mean I've improved our signage in the property I'm working on a new logo that uh is going to be awesome and um I've instituted some team meetings which regular team meetings which they I you know I was three minutes late for this conversation because a team meeting rate a little long and just trying to introduce some of that slowly but yeah I do think it's going to be interesting as we get into the fall there's a little bit of a bump in the fall Revenue wise um I it's going to be more challenging in the future I feel like I've I've had a one of the gentler post acquisition transitions that I think people could have and look who's to say long run I might look back and go wow I wish I changed something faster or I wish it had been harder I would have learned more more quickly I don't know uh but for for where our family is and where my kids are right now it has been really really nice and you're in these groups with other Garden Center indep independent Garden Center owners uh and you also had your own ideas about this kind of lwh hanging fruit that he's not doing any of the best practices not doing the newsletter not doing the hosting events on the property um so are all of now that you're inside the business and understand much more about the business are all of those levers as pullable as you thought are are are all these opportunities to to improve the business as real as you thought yeah that's a that's a great question um yes so in particular with local like brand I would say brand awareness things like Partnerships um marketing you know putting a better sign on the street even improving our Landscaping you know it's it's a little ironic the Landscaping at the top of our property with all the road Frontage is is not good and you know even just that sort of thing I mean a lot of garden cers you drive by and it looks like a garden right there out front and and ours isn't that and yet it's done really well so I'm working with the team I just announced to them this morning that I'm going to be getting soliciting input for ideas of what plants they'd like to see up there and I'm going to have one of them there's a couple that do landscape design work and so they'll assign that to them I'm building a little river walk so like I said the REI river runs along the property long long term the City of Greenville has this big Greenway called The Swamp Rabbit Trail and our property is actually on the expansion plan that this is like a 10year vision which could utterly transform the business to have that much foot traffic I don't know if it's going to happen but in the meantime we're building a basic little Riverwalk walk along the river with um that like you could push a stroller on um and you know we'll do an event in the fall just to see how is it like for us to host events I mean yeah the property has one bathroom probably gonna have to get some port-a-potties to support the the foot traffic that I'd like to have but yeah I do think there's a lot of I see nothing but growth opportunity ahead because every everybody that comes for the most part has like a great experience they're like I wish I found out this place sooner you guys have so many nice plans your staff is so helpful and so I'm just like yeah let's double down on that and just get more eyeballs get more balls that's what I'm telling my team I'm I'm trying to get more people coming it's your responsibility to do what you can to give them an incredible experience while they're here because I can't talk to everybody uh and that message seems to resonate and any J curve stuff other than I mean I think you said sales have dipped a little bit but that's sales dipping not not uh new new expenses because you're a new owner and you're investing in ways that the old owner wasn't so what's it what's that look like yes definitely um I hired two people so I worked in the business bus for month like I said and I did a lot in that month I did I ran the register I dealt with an HR sensitive situation uh and I hired I interviewed four people and ended up hiring two of them one of them started before I acquired the business so I was just sort of like you'll get paid you know don't worry um and so the the headcount is a little bit higher my insurance cost almost tripled compared to what the former owner was paying um some of that was the replacement cost in the building was way too low given what construction costs are now um and some of it was they didn't have a cyber policy and we in January the owner adopted a very state of the art Point of Sales system that's that's gerain of the industry and uh we're just doing a lot more online now so I have a cyber policy just little things like that that add up um I've uh given a couple people raises who who really deserved it um I'm I'm not taking a salary out of the business yet which I think it's like in part because my wife is working I am doing a little bit of coaching and Consulting on the S side still which helps and then I have the two entities now one has the Real Estate One has the business and I'm paying rent and you know I'm going to be taxing that money regardless so I I'm kind of taking that as my salary right now um I think the business could afford to pay me a salary but I'm being conservative because I can be right now to try and reinvest as much as I can and really mostly in marketing and the business wasn't open Sundays or isn't open Sundays it isn't yeah and is that something you're going to change I mean that seems like an enormous opportunity and I've come across businesses like that where for religious reasons they're not open one of the days of the week and so obviously that seems like the most obvious thing in the world to to improve sales how are you feeling about that well the joke I make to people is if Chick-fil-A can do it staying uh do what they do staying closed on Sunday I think we could probably find a way to do I think you know the the I'm I'm I'm a Christian I'm religious the the former owner is is a very religious person he honestly says I think the business has been successful because we've honored Sunday we've been closed and and I don't know whether or not that's the case but to to be able to come I mean that that's one of the big challenges of inperson retail is most of them are open seven days a week and you've got to manage Staffing and people all that time but having that rest day for the team uh and for me frankly is really good and so I don't I don't I I think there's a lot of other levers I could pull before I would need to to change that and I I don't intend to I would not I would like to not do that and and that's because of your respect for the staff already kind of being used to that or for your own religious reasons or for kind of not superstition almost like you feel there's something in you that feels like just in your gut it's like maybe I shouldn't touch this one no yeah that's it's a great question it's not not for specifically religious reasons um I do think it is helpful in business and in personal life to have a defined rhythm of rest and so like that is a day that the property can rest from having people all over it it's a day that the team knows no one's ever going to have to schedule the only thing that happens is somebody does come to the property for a couple hours and hand water a lot of plants that need to be hand watered if it hasn't rained uh during the hot season and so yeah I just I rhythms of rest are really important to me a lot of times when I coach people it's helping them trying to figure out what does rest look like for them and how can they get more of it and so I don't I don't want to disrupt that because it's been working so well you know okay Rory anything I didn't ask you anything about the story or about the business I guess let me ask you uh this unless there's something else you want to say if somebody else is looking at a garden center out there uh any thoughts on this industry any any warnings obviously the seasonality would be a big one um you mentioned something about uh you mentioned how not being your own grower um means that you're a little bit vulnerable to a value chain like you don't have you kind of have supplier risk there so what are maybe what are some of the Dynamics that you would flag for people who might be looking at buying a garden center themselves yeah that's a really good question I I mean how they approach and handle seasonality is important um you know this this business is open year and a lot of garden cens aren't they open in the spring they close in the hot summer they open in the fall and then they close over the the deepest of winters and that presents some interesting Staffing Dynamics and challenges and the former owner opted to maintain a loyal staff um now there are a few people that voluntarily cut their hours during the non- busy Seasons which which has helped and if you can find more of those kinds of people that's great but you really got to diligence because if it's a year round thing and your thought is oh I can come in and just close some of these months that they're not they're not profit not making very much money well you're going to decimate the staff and and you're going to you're going to have to just count on having almost a totally different kind of Staff um you know look at the gross margins and and I think the the gross margins as a tip of the iceberg for what is the brand fundamentally and so one of the reasons I was attracted to my Nursery is that they they don't really do sales and so a lot of nurseries will have sales all the time and like you you sort of become known for bargain hunters and bargain shopping and that's not a great place to be it pushes your gross margins way down um it it pushes your owner comp way down as a result and and I knew that I didn't want to be I wanted to be more in the premium product kind of vein and then double down on customer service and quality and um and so I would say look at the brand because if you if if it has been known as a bargain place and you think you can come in and raise prices to improve gross margins you you better have a plan to cycle through a large percentage of your customer base and make sure you're bringing in new people and do the demographics of the area support it I mean people are only going to drive so far for the most part unless they have a reputation for these fabulous regionally attractive events which some people do but those are expensive and they they require a lot of coordination planning to pull off well a lot of branding you have to have a lot of eyeballs on your marketing your newsletter to get enough people to come to make the investment worth it um and which which we've never we haven't really tried and I don't know if how it's going to go for us so um I also think you need to look at you know how many suppliers are they beh overly beholding to too few suppliers uh are they accurately tracking inventory that can be a nightmare um because some inventory I mean how analyzing turns of inventory I mean some of this are just like retail best practices right that yeah that in the garden center world you got a lot of people that are passionate about plants and they're passionate about plant and plant education and Landscaping but they don't have the retail expertise and some of the Consulting groups I'm part of now that's what they're trying to do is to get the business Acumen and and the retail expertise up so that owners can have profitable comfortable businesses have team members who have leadership responsibility so they're not putting out all the fires themselves all the time um so it's really you know quality longevity of the team what is their brand what are they known for in the community what are the demographic Tailwinds of the community uh and what are their margins um is there room for restructuring how you price uh that won't drive people away that can immediately drop some money to the bottom line um and then if if you're a grower I know almost nothing about growing operations I just know it's an additional level of technical complexity state of the equipment you know um uh all those kinds of things yeah yep great Rory and and returning to the fact that this is fundamentally a retail business one of the reasons retail businesses are vulnerable and less popular is of course because of you're constantly competing with Amazon one of the most ruthless competitors in the world is this uh are selling plants basically shielded from that because they're they're hard to buy online or or something maybe where people people want to go have tactile experience of picking out their own plant or how does uh online in the threat or or or Potential Threat of online play here yeah that's a great question there's there are several companies that I've like I get their Facebook ads all the time for buying plants online fast growing trees is one that you may have heard of and um you know I think we're kind of in the early stages of seeing whether companies like that can be profitable and grow over time because to sell to handle all those Logistics and still make a profit you have to bump up the price of the plant a lot and so people are paying like $99 for a blueberry bush that you could get at my place for a lot less and I'm still making you know a 55% gross margin in that plant and so it and and so some of this is people just don't know they see beautiful pictures and they assume that what they get in their mail is going to look just like that and almost never does um you know and and so I would say it's possible it's possible that they could end up making more serious inroads I think what we are going to try is we don't have any online oring right now the website is a relic um so I'm working right now to create that for local delivery and local pickup and so so my thought is I don't need to capture everybody I just need to capture anybody locally who is in around Greenville and proud of Greenville and likes the idea of getting plants delivered to them from somebody that they can actually take the plant in and talk to them about it if they want to um I I would also say I think the trend I'm seeing in successful garden centers is toward being more of an experience so it's less transactional it's more of you want to spend time here there's stuff to do there's classes there's stuff for your kids and that's where I'm headed with the property as much as I can is is to make it experiential where people want to slow down and spend time and have knowledgeable face-to-face conversation um I think in a I think there's an increasing digital back like anti-d digital backlash or uh I think people crave reality Y and being in person and I think especially we're as we're seeing the ongoing effects of device addiction especially in kids and how it's just ruining a lot of people and attention spans and EQ I think more and more people are going to want to get out like literally touch grass touch plants and so my that's kind of how I want to lean into with like this is a this is a healthy hobby it's a passion it's about making things more beautiful it's about doing things together as a family leaving your property more beautiful than it was when you got it I mean that those are the kind of messages we're going to double down and then things like native plants pollinators I just see a huge opportunity for people that want to feel like they're part of something bigger than themselves and it's tactile and it's fun and it's peaceful and I'm hoping that that is enough to saave off the incessant online ads I'm getting from these online uh plant Growers but we'll see it could be a more significant challenge a couple years from now I don't know well Rory everything that you just said there resonated with me and and I think you've just hit the nail on the head as to why I'm intrigued by this business even though as I said I've never planted a plant in my life so I'm not somebody who has the hobby at all and yet I I I find myself drawn to it and I think I think it's for all the reasons that you said just kind of digital fatigue uh have a kid so the idea of doing making this like a family hobby all of that stuff I think I think you're on to something there uh Rory this was a fantastic interview and what a great business what an intriguing business what a great seller lucky you um if people have questions is uh how do you prefer they reach out yeah so I'm pretty active on Twitter it's just Rory Tire um you can send me an email so my it's Rory atsp nursery.com um you can find me on LinkedIn and I'm always happy to chat great well as always audience uh just make sure you've done some homework before you reach out to Rory and ask him for his very precious time he's newly in his business so be aware and respectful of that um but sounds like he's really eager to help thank you for that offer Rory and thanks for coming on acquiring minds great interview thanks will I hope you enjoyed that interview make sure you subscribe to the acquiring minds Channel below we are now publishing twice a week so tons of new interview and stories to come stories that will help you along your own path to acquiring a business