Tim Erickson welcome to acquiring minds thank you happy to be here well Tim you are a zero to one entrepreneur who spent over a decade building a VC funded startup that you started from scratch and today you have come over to the dark side or maybe I should say the the Light Side the bright side with the recent acquisition of a small business a small business that I myself had seen on Biz Buy sell asked for the Sim but was told was already under Loi and now I know by whom so let's get into it Tim as always let's start with some background on you please absolutely so uh thanks thanks for having me I have a long time uh listener um but yeah I started my VC back company called zagster uh back in 2007 coming out of undergrad in in Philadelphia uh we were the one of the first companies to bring bicycle sharing uh to the U.S market uh way ahead of our time uh but uh ended up spending a few years in in Philadelphia trying to get it off the ground live the the zero to one and took three years of making no money eating Ramen uh and trying to get something that that I believed in off the ground uh we ended up uh moving up to Boston to go through the tech Stars program uh which was really if I look back the pivotal point in the in the business where it started to to accelerate and ultimately went on to raise over 40 million dollars in Venture Capital uh we grew the company to hundreds of employees with 250 Bike Share programs in 35 states around the U.S and then ultimately sold the business to one of the e-scooter companies who wanted to use our Nationwide network of operations team and our city and University contracts to accelerate their entry into the market so went through the the full life cycle of a VC back company all the good things and the bad things and uh came out the other side and uh started to look at what to do next and you so you said you started in 2007 that business and exited in what year was it uh 2020. so a 13-year run good for you 13 years before this quite a run okay um 2020 exits and if I may was the exit you know of stratospheric Silicon Valley exits get rank it for us I know you don't want to give us a number but give us a sense of what it did to your life uh post acquisition uh it wasn't a huge uh windfall for for me personally I I still have uh stock in the the company that acquired uh me but it's uh private still privately held so I hope one day that uh that'll be worth something but you know ultimately uh investors were pretty happy with the with the outcome and uh you know I we were able to help the the company that acquired us a company called super pedestrian uh accelerate and uh go into cities like Paris and London and uh major cities around the world with with our operations team fantastic and and so with zagster consumer facing I mean might people in the audience have have used your bicycles and know the brand yeah so we were a b to B to C brand uh so we would sell to cities and universities corporate campuses around the country so we did everything from that big universities like Yale Princeton Duke and the Ohio State uh to smaller mid-sized cities like in Albuquerque or Rochester New York and then we did a ton of corporate campuses like General Motors campus uh outside of Detroit so yeah there's a there's a good chance that you might have seen our bikes or used them around the country oh really cool well that's not the last we'll hear about zagster I'll be I'll be um referencing that story a lot as we go here um okay so we're up to 2020 now you exited in covid did covid play a role in that timing or would it have would it have happened anyway so the the market had shifted uh you know we were growing 300 year over year having an amazing run for for many years uh uh leading up to to 2019 and 2020 uh those years the the scooter programs came in the if you remember the Chinese doclist Bike Share programs came in and uh those companies had raised literally over a billion dollars uh none of them are still in existence today they all blew through all that money and uh never really made it anywhere uh and so we were coming off of uh you know two major industry shifts and so uh our investors were B2B SAS investors and our business model was B2B and recurring Revenue uh until the market changed and so in 2019 uh we started to uh to look to get acquired uh and use our operations team as the as a thesis for selling to many of the companies that didn't have any uh operational uh backing yeah well when you talk about those those Market entry or kind of disruption to the market the scooters and the dockless bikes obviously we all know or anybody who is paying attention scooters I mean what a what a remarkable story that was I mean just absolute white hot hype uh and kind of trendiness and then just utter collapse I don't think it's since Groupon that I that I saw something go up so quickly and back down so quickly on the other side uh you still see some scooters around but not many not many at all and then the dockless bikes I'm not even I'm not even sure I I I was aware of that Trend give us 30 seconds on on both of those just kind of as somebody who is playing in the space how how you how you observe those trends yeah so historically in the U.S bike sharing programs were really considered more of a public transit type application so cities and universities and corporate campuses would fund these programs so that there was additional Transportation options for uh their constituents and so you know that was the market that we were playing in and we had you know really great long-term contracts and recurring Revenue there and then a handful of companies came out of China who sort of flipped the model on its head and said let's just put the cheapest bicycles out there as possible uh we will not charge the cities we'll not even work with the cities we're just going to do it without any permits uh and those guys Uber style yep those companies uh went on to show on paper stratopheric growth uh which you know now that we've all seen the sort of up and down realized that it wasn't actually true uh and so they tried to come to the US and sort of flip the model uh go after our customers and say hey you've been paying for this Bike Share program now we're going to give it to you for free but then they launched in places like Dallas where they put like literally tens of thousands of bikes that were just piling up on the street corners because they didn't lock to anything there was no coordination with the city and so ultimately all of those programs uh went away and you could actually go around the world you could still see a lot of those bikes saw one here in in Puerto Rico where I live the other day riding down the street I've seen it in you know Asia the Middle East those bikes are just around around the world uh still being utilized without their technology today and so do any um dockless bike programs still exist I mean I'm sure there's got to be a handful around but are they is it effectively a defunct model altogether because the scooters still exist just in a shadow of its former self yeah I'm not aware of any uh at least in the U.S any uh there are no individual Bike Share companies that are that are dockless still uh many of the scooter companies got their start in dockless and then moved to scooters and so some of them still operate some of those programs but the traditional docked based Bike Share programs that you see in like New York and Boston uh you know are all still thriving but because they follow the model that we followed which was this is a public transit public good uh and you know they work a lot with the with the city with long-term contracts really interesting well um again Tim congratulations on on being so early in a in a space having that um foresight and that vision and sticking with it for 13 years it's 2020 you've now exited that business and how do you get the idea of buying a small business tell us about that evolution yeah so it honestly uh it took a little bit to to get there and took to 2022 to to Really solidify that that Vision but um yeah I've literally worked every single day since I was 13. uh what worked all through college uh while going to school full time and then immediately coming out of undergrad founded zagster so I've literally worked every single day uh uh from uh for the last you know 20 30 years uh And So It originally moved to Puerto Rico from Boston after we um the the acquisition was going through uh really wanted to get out of the Boston Winters spend a little bit of time down here and then it turned into well if you're gonna go for a few months let's go for a year and you know three and a half years later I'm I'm still here in Puerto Rico and loving it but I 20 20 21 I uh spent a little bit of time trying to figure out what I want to do with my life I worked uh and did a couple of Consulting opportunities and ultimately uh I did a uh Consulting gig with a friend of mine uh who had uh come from the VC space uh worked as a vpa product at a friend's company and then ultimately he went on to buy one of those van rental companies uh there was like 13 14 person passenger van companies uh where you can't get it from hertzer Enterprise uh I did a little bit of work with them and I was fascinated by the concept he ended up buying a whole bunch of them and rolling them into to the platform and he was the one who ultimately gave me the buy then build book and uh started my process to look for a company on my own and so it sounds like if he gave you buy then build the Bible in this space or one of the two or three Bibles it sounds like he also kind of came via learning about search and read the read the books and and so on well you'll have to introduce me Tim he sounds like a great story as well yeah that's great so so you see his success you're fascinated by what he's doing by the business itself you read by then build and so is this is this the uh proverbial light bulb moment and you're off you're you're dead set I'm doing this or was there more Evolution to come as to you know actually making the decision to proceed yeah so that was early 2022 when I read the the book around Springtime and ended up spending the entire summer at literally reading every other book I could find I listened to every single one of your your podcast actually uh while doing some hiking I've literally uh listened to every single one and uh by the end of the summer I came back absolutely it came back thank you I came back to Puerto Rico and uh decided September 1st to start full-time to look for a business I went through the acquisition lab uh which I was really looking for a community of other Searchers who were going through the the same thing I was to to have a uh some some calmer heads in that uh I had that in the the Metro Capital space and and found it you know hugely valuable so wanted to find something similar I went through the acquisition lab to help accelerate the beginning of my search it's a September coming out in October and and started looking for for a business full-time let's um Linger on the value of community for a minute um listeners will know that the acquisition lab is a sponsor I also went through the lab uh friends with Chelsea in in the gang over there um so uh full full disclosure there but the value of community is something that comes up again and again actually although I I haven't spent too much time talking about it so let's do that I I actually going back to zagster when you mentioned techstars and that I I think you mentioned it or maybe it was on our pre-call you said that zagster really finally kind of got product Market fit or started to accelerate started to really take shape as a business at during and after techstar something happened at techstars correct that was the catalyst yeah so techstars is a three-month accelerator program for uh companies that are on the Venture Capital um uh path and what they really do is help companies that already sort of figured out their product and figure out some early customers and they help them uh help us really accelerate and move faster get more customers and then go down the path of uh fundraising from from Venture capitalists so I I went through that program in uh the winter of 2012 with with zagster and you could literally pinpoint that um that time frame as the the beginning of our massive growth our ability to actually raise Venture Capital to to fund the the type of business that I that I wanted to build uh and so when I started looking to buy a business myself was looking for a similar community of people that were going through this yeah so so you were in your own mind kind of referencing your techstars experience uh and and looking for some sort of parallel in this space absolutely absolutely and and and then so did you find this is uh this is going to be a bit of a softball for my sponsor but did you find that the value of the of your comrades and of that Community uh gave you what you wanted I mean you know we can't overdo the parallels here techstars is very different it's at a different space than than the acquisition lab in the acquisition space but um talk about what it was like actually having comrades as you went through this and to be clear that the acquisition lab does not sponsor me it's I'm speaking freely on my end but thank you good clarification it was was very happy that I that I went through the the program I mean I think the the month-long cohort is really helpful to uh accelerate your search and probably cut what would have taken me three months uh I got done in in four weeks which you know as you're if you're doing a full-time search it's actually extremely valuable to you uh but I think where the real value comes in after that was the the slack groups and the uh monthly uh bi-monthly uh calls where they go through uh deal reviews and then uh the weekly office meetings as I was going through my search and then I was going through diligence on the the company that I ultimately bought uh just having those resources was just so so valuable for for me uh and you know I now regularly give back in in the slack groups and and others that are earlier in their Journey so uh it's the same sort of mindset that the tech Stars have giving first uh you know so many people help me and I want to make sure that I help others as well fantastic thank you Tim and yes to be clear I I found you completely independent of of the lab so this is this is a totally just between will and Tim talking here um all right okay so you're in the lab you've consumed a ton of a ton of information on our pre-call you called it your summer of learning uh you really just consumed as much as you could hit the books as hard as you could tell us about the search itself what are you doing yeah so I ended up doing a pretty broad search I initially looked at everything in the 750k to 2 million ebitdar sde range uh anywhere in the US that was SBA qualified uh and so because I was doing this full-time I really spent the first four weeks getting out of the acquisition lab building up my my pipeline I contacted literally every single broker on the ibba list I signed up for every mailing list and uh even built a couple little tools just just for me to do some scraping and others to get all of the uh all the uh the uh hostings uh all in one place so um you know uh pretty efficient on that I even ended up using HubSpot to track my search I've got a YouTube video uh that I walk Searchers through how to how to set up HubSpot for free to better manage your your search so I happen to link the to that in the show notes if that's awesome yes yes please uh and so yeah it started just full time and I would look at I don't know probably close to five six hundred uh deals a week and you know you end up digging into only one two or three of them a week and sort of ending the week with uh most of them not not being a fit for for various reasons but I ended up finding a handful of ones that I that I really liked and gave two Lois and then ultimately landed on the business that I bought Tim this I mean so you really blanketed the US with you know your Outreach to Brokers so it sounds like you were doing strictly brokered but you were but you were doing very wide broker Outreach and you're in Puerto Rico so first of all explain that what if you had found a business in Washington state you ultimately found a business in Maryland by me um but um but anyway both of those are playing right away so how are you thinking about that yeah so I was um looking for businesses that I could ultimately move towards a um a work from home or work remote model uh and so you know at zagster we had literally hundreds of people working for us in 35 States so it's very comfortable with you know one travel I spent like two weeks of every month on on the road while I was running zagster but two most importantly it's the you know checking processes to be able to run a company where people are not physically in the same office every day so I was looking for for companies that could fit that and I was willing to move to uh whatever City that that I found it in for you know six months nine months whatever it took to ultimately uh move the company to a remote first model so that that's what I was looking for and you know the business that I that I found operates around the the country happened to be headquartered in Maryland but uh since covid all of the admin staff uh work from from home so it was ended up being a perfect fit for me and Tim when you say uh well I'm going to want to spend quite a bit of time on you know your comfort with having so many remote employees because um having employees at all is daunting to a lot of people listening let alone remote ones uh and you're and as you said you're very comfortable with it so we'll get into that um but first when you say you were looking for a business that that was either already remote or could be taken remote what it what is that um leave what is that what kind of businesses does that exclude because that doesn't I mean you're perfectly happy to do a very physical business as long as there can be remote managers in place to to to to manage the the various satellites around the country so so what kind of business could not be ultimately done with Tim man you know running the whole thing from Puerto Rico yeah I think any like manufacturing which was not really something that interests me I would look at manufacturing companies um because I was curious but I really just never got excited about it and I think it's mainly because I think my skill set um is really in the the sales and marketing and go to market strategy versus the um you know really digging in and worrying about the nuts and bolts on the operation side I usually work with a with a partner who has that mindset when I even at zaxter I had that uh so you know I think it excluded those types of stuff but honestly I I think most companies that don't have a physical storefront uh and you know aren't manufacturing something in a facility could ultimately be uh run remotely and I I think you know as you we kovid showed that most of these companies can be run remotely and so I think the the timing for me being in Puerto Rico made a lot of sense I also looked in Puerto Rico and still looking for opportunities in Puerto Rico but there just isn't the broker Network in Puerto Rico that there is in the US and so I I think maybe long term I could find a really great opportunity here but it's definitely old school you know proprietary search and uh spending a lot of time uh meeting with people so building up sort of a longer term pipeline so a quote unquote Blue Collar Services business where you have people in the field a landscaping business or an HVAC business those do qualify because ultimately those people are not in the office anyway they're out in the field and so you could even if a business like that has kind of a headquarters that where people are checking in the crews are checking in every morning you or the operator manager is there something like that you envisioned could be evolved into a remote business remotely operated business absolutely I actually looked at a um a landscaping business in Maryland I'm not sure why I got a whole bunch of deal flow in Maryland but I I did and uh ultimately I I didn't like that particular business because of the Dynamics that they had with their uh customers and how the the owner was really going to like all the HOA meetings and so I felt that it was very difficult to um to replace him being remote I think it's a great business and if yeah I was in Maryland I probably would have bought it but uh it was just one where I felt that particular Landscaping Company would have been difficult to to run remotely but you know if I had gotten into the Landscaping space I probably would have looked at uh buying landscaping companies up and down the East Coast uh and so I'd have to make sure that those could run remotely um or at least have a you know operations manager in place in each market checking in with me well I'm so eager to hear again about your comfort with this Tim and but just a quick thought I mean this just feels to me like the what is the expression where we um set we're self-limiting because I for example I'm like I could never like if when and if I buy a business it's you know I'm going to be there I'm going to be in there I frankly don't have the confidence to buy a business even at you know two hours away let alone up and down the East Coast when I'm in Puerto Rico um because you know I just uh think that you know I'll need to be there and and I and I do think that that's the best practice but I'm looking at you who has so much comfort um with a model like that and it's you know it's largely thanks to 13 13 years of experience running a business like that but the point my point is that like you know maybe I should think bigger and maybe I should just you know think like Tim already thinks and because it is possible and I'm kind of just many of us are just kind of self-limiting that that we we say oh no we we first have to maybe one day I'll get there but first I have to be physically in the business that I buy and operate it that way in person um at least in the early years I don't know any response to that yeah I mean I I think this is why my background in running a VC back company was so valuable to the space and and why I'm seeing others uh with that similar background uh starting to to come into the to the ETA space uh you know I I came out of undergrad I I was founding my last company I had zero you know business operating experience uh uh prior to that and you know the the good and the bad of the VC model is that it forces you to think really big uh it forces you to to move really quickly and do things that are uncomfortable and you know I probably wouldn't have done if uh if we didn't have the pressure to to grow big and grow fast uh and so you're forced to learn that stuff and now it became second nature to me I mean I never thought of it as running a remote company um and you know we did have a headquarters in in Boston but you know most of our employees were we're not at headquarters they were they were out of the field so um you know just over time learn learn to do that and that's the the lens that I took when I when I did my search and I was looking to you know find an entry point into the space but I was gonna buy I plan to buy multiple companies um probably now in the equipment rental space because that's where I ended up uh and you know the likelihood of them being in a location other than Maryland is pretty high and so I knew from the beginning that I needed to to find a way to be able to uh uh be able to essentially work remotely and run it uh not not physically on location yeah man I love that Tim just the the bigger vision and and how the kind of the VC land was training for for that that's great we can we can all learn from that okay let's so you you uh and so okay so tell us about the the discovery of short-term copier yeah I uh when everybody tells you whenever when you're searching the general uh feedback that you get from people who have searched and successfully acquired a business is that you need to go out and you need to talk to Brokers you need to create this uh the search and you know it sort of look at Biz by cell but ignore it you'll probably find it somewhere else uh you know ultimately I found lots of other companies and companies I dug into a past for other reasons and the broker network uh direct broker Outreach but uh ultimately I was I always still looked at at Biz by cell and and one day I saw this uh copier company pop up and I'm like what is this how is there still happier company out there uh and I'll be honest I was pretty skeptical uh at first but I requested the the Sim like I usually do in anything that sort of catches my my eye I just want to move quick see the Sim see if it's interesting and then make a decision to dig in or not and you know as actually there was no sim available uh so they didn't put together other a SIM for this business they basically just had the uh the listing on on this by itself so I ended up talking with the the broker we had a good call and uh after I got off the phone with them I started seeing a lot of the similarities to zagster um this company uh short-term copier they rent copiers uh and printers on a short-term basis for events uh and uh legal War rooms around the country so they do the Super Bowl every year they do they work with all the major law firms when they're doing they're traveling to cities to uh for for big legal cases uh they do burning man they do all the U.S embassies and they're the embassy events in uh in DC and as I I started digging into the to the business I just saw a lot of the parallels to zagster they operate out of self storage units around the country they have a lean team of a you know a person and a van and a warehouse and some equipment in the cities that they operate in and most importantly they're ready the largest and only Nationwide a company that owns their own equipment doing this in the in the space so I started digging in I just got more and more excited every time I uh I talk with anybody about the business so much to to react to there Tim I love it first of all a business that can claim Burning Man embassies and the Super Bowl as as customers I mean what what like if you if you said to somebody guess what type of business has all three of these as customers good good luck coming up with the answer that's amazing let's get also the the obvious out of the way uh aren't isn't aren't printers dead isn't printers dying isn't everything electronic and that as I know from our pre-call was also your your first you know your reflexive uh approach your kind of reaction to the business so address that please yeah that was my main concern if it was any other industry I probably would have even more excited but uh that was my main concern and this is actually I brought it to the acquisition lab uh I went to the to the bi-weekly call with with walker uh where we review uh the uh different uh businesses that people are considering and or have under Roi and I literally asked the group I'm like I'm really excited about this deal but am I crazy and uh literally Walker put up a poll and zoom and asked the group if I was crazy and I think it was like 95 said no so I think that you know that gave me the confidence that my my gut was telling me this was really interesting um you know I had this reservation around you know is this dead and you know as I started talking to more people understanding the the client base I got comfortable with it because I found that uh this these are their servicing customers that I can actually see uh going fully digital and I kind of got comfortable with it that most businesses that could go paperless have gone paperless now but like we do a lot of filming uh Film Production so like we do a lot of Netflix series and others uh and they print out all the the uh scripts and everything on on site at the Super Bowl they've got media kits all this stuff like all this stuff is is uh you know just easier to to have uh you know printed in front of you on paper and also 50 of the revenue comes from law firms uh and their court cases and could you imagine like sitting in court with a you know lawyer being like oh sorry my iPad rebooted you know when they're trying to argue a case like I just didn't see that that changing and that's ultimately what gave me the the Comfort to move forward you're now the third interview maybe fourth of somebody I've had about a printing related business and and yes there was a big decline when digital came in but like a lot of that decline has already happened so wherever paper is persisting in whatever context there are like the ones you just described like it it's if digital we're going to eat that it would have already eaten that so those those use cases are are pretty secure for the for the future um okay and so this thing Tim about there being no sim is that because why is that and why and and why is that not a red flag I mean I I know the answer is basically the more you learned about the business you the more you liked it but it just feels kind of like my gut is like well if they if there's some Link in the chain here that's really unprofessional maybe it's just the broker or maybe it's somebody at the business but it just doesn't feel if whoever is on their team delivering this business to the market if they can't get their ducks in a row to put together a Sim there probably other many other places under the hood where there the Ducks are not in a row as well your thoughts your reaction yeah I think it was definitely concerning uh and actually I I called the broker probably two or three times before I ultimately got a call back and of course it was like you know five o'clock on a Thursday while I was driving uh but you know ultimately got some of the information from what I understand they were in the process of putting this in together I think they put it out uh on this Buy sell sort of prematurely just to test out the market or maybe they thought it was going to take a really long time to sell so they just wanted to get it out there and and start building leads but you know my IMO and and what I recommend to others that are that are searching is that you know especially if you're doing this full-time I I was aggressive if I found something I liked I probably contacted the broker within hours of that listing coming onto the to the market um I generally did that over email and if I didn't get a response within 24 hours I was calling them and you know I was very quick to to get the SIM and review it and see if this was something interesting or not and I took the same approach here I I don't remember exactly how long it was on this by spell before I I called them but I'm guessing that it was uh pretty quick based on that you know his delayed response I think maybe even he was over overwhelmed by you know the interest in it well Tim you you uh you have some sales uh background there uh that you're bringing to Bear also by the way that is why when I reached out to said broker he said sorry already under Loi because somebody was it was out there acting really quickly on this on this listing um actually but I want to get more uh bullet points on the business Tim but but um a question before we get too far away from it on this technique that you had to kind of blanket the broker sphere the the national broker sphere reaching out to effectively every broker in the country um to do this Nationwide search uh you you bought your business relatively quickly so I guess the answer is yes it did work but did you um do you recommend that to others in retrospect is there anything you would tweak about that approach talk to me about the results that the fruit that bore did not yeah I was fully prepared for a two-year long search so you know I'd prepare my wife for that I'd prepare myself for that I prepared financially for that I was fully prepared to you know be the on the the sort of worst case scenario of people search which is you know going out 24 plus mugs so I was fully prepared for that but you know something I learned early at zagster was I I probably spent a couple of years doing sales wrong and doing sales wrong is you know occasionally reaching out to people not having a coordinated uh campaign not having a full list of people that you want to Target not really thinking through it and just sort of ad hoc doing that and until uh you know I went through Tech Stars and then ultimately ended up working with some really great um sales professionals that that helped me refine that I I learned how to essentially run a sales process and that's what you're doing in a search you're selling yourself and you're selling your capability to to close on this deal and so it's important to act that way and so you know I spend a lot of time up front sort of preparing my list preparing my materials and then you know once I had all that together I blanketed the market really quickly and that's I was able to get um you know really get my deal flow up and running with it within 30 days of starting my search well we don't have a time to go through everything you learned about sales in a sales process and techstars but what I'm hearing is essentially like you said it was kind of like ad hoc kind of you know not very structured and later it became like the the refinement was becoming very structured having all your materials going out aggressively talking to everybody as quickly as you can and then I assume your follow-up is just extremely tight the moment you see something or you get a you know a response back you can pounce all over it you've got materials at the ready uh and it's just kind of it's very systematic and uh aggressive and by aggressive I don't necessarily mean like you know aggressive sales but like Fast follow-up moving quickly goal oriented not kind of like you know getting around to it yeah for sure that's exactly how I'd recommend people doing their process and you know it's also a really great skill set to learn because you know ultimately at whatever business you buy even if you have a sales team that's the the leader of a small organization like you've really gotta uh Drive the the sales and the sales process and the organization so I think it's a skill set that you know yes even if you're only buying one business might seem silly to learn but I think it it's it's transferable to to the business that you're buying and I'm implementing a lot of the same strategies with the with the team now to uh to grow the business because historically uh they didn't do any real Outreach uh they've done all their businesses to come through word of mouth and inbound and now there's a real opportunity to develop a great strategy and go out and grow this business using those same techniques cool well we're going to circle back to that the okay back to the business uh short-term copy and the name of the business is short-term copier the name of the business is a short-term copier yep uh can you give us a sense of size both um I think maybe you told us the city's the number of cities but in terms of its locations and then also any Financial metrics yeah so they have the the capability to operate in in every major Metropolitan Market in the US and and that was something that really got me excited given my uh my background operating companies around the uh operating a company that has uh staff around the country uh they were doing in 2022 about four million dollars uh in revenue and just under a million dollars in an sde or adjusted ebitda um that being said the prior two years before that uh kobit really uh took it took a hit on this business uh their revenue in 2020 uh in 2021 was about half of what they were doing in 2019 and ultimately did in 2022 and that's because half of their revenue came from events conferences the other half came from legal which actually didn't really see any sort of uh decline during that that time so you know what kobit was really difficult for the business but what it did to the business when it got through it is that they had a lot of smaller Regional local one city competitors that were renting equipment prior to covid but most of those ended up getting killed off so 2022 was their best year from uh from revenue and and profitability standpoint and I we're on track to to beat 2022 in in 2023 even though I only purchased the company halfway through through the year so uh really excited about the the growth opportunity here and and you know the the pricing power and operational efficiencies we have as being the the largest in the US yeah yeah that's that's amazing Tim and in a great size of for a business to to buy even if you didn't have aggressive plans to to grow it which you do but it's a great it's a great size business to buy almost a million in sde in a normal non-coveted year uh is you know kind of The Sweet Spot that we all that we all would love to find uh and on Biz by cell the and they listed on Biz by cell is less than that as I listed it um I think October of 2022 uh and they were actually pretty conservative on their their estimate for what they thought 2022 was going to do for the year and they actually under listed it at like 700 or or something along those lines but the company ended up doing uh over a million dollars in Evadale by the end of the year wow uh Tim I have a screenshot of the old uh Biz by cell listing um because that's also still up there I don't think they ever took it down you're kidding wow or maybe it is yeah maybe it is maybe I I took the screenshot even after um you acquired it um but yes the ebitda was listed listed at 700 cash flow at 8 30. um so the fact that these local competitors who were smaller didn't have the footprint they were maybe just in a single City these single or double City competitors didn't survive covid does that mean that this business model only works at the scale uh of being in multiple markets like you are I think in normal times you could have a local competitor and and most of them weren't exclusively renting it on a short-term basis most of them did long-term leasing of um copiers and printers so you know if you have an office space and you you need a copy or printer most people end up leasing it for a three or five year basis and so a majority of the the local competitors did that and then they with some of their excess inventory would occasionally do these short-term rentals but it's actually a completely different business model the long-term leasing they might not even touch the equipment they you know go out their sales organizations they they find companies that that need this and then they have a relationship with sharp or one of the other copier providers and then they put it on site and it sits there for you know three to five years and they do a little bit of service uh the with with short-term rentals it's a completely different business that these machines aren't meant to be moved around they're meant to be put into place for three to five years and and sit there so you know know it would take special handling to to do that and there's actually companies that exclusively deal with shipping long distance copiers because it's so different than you know being able to put it on the back of a UPS truck or a freight truck so it requires special handling and so a majority of the the local uh people doing this just did it as a as a side hustle essentially if they had some extra equipment but but really weren't doing it well and when covet hit and everybody had to streamline a lot of them just cut that business uh or went out of business because so many of the you know companies they were leasing to no longer had people coming in the office anymore so you know there was a lot of things that that disrupted there but but ultimately it made this company stronger so I think you can have smaller companies on a on a regional or city-wide level but yeah I think what we get at with this scale is we you know can get uh used equipment at a at a much better price and you know customers prefer us because if you're a production company doing um you know production work all around the country you want to deal with one vendor instead of having to you know deal with 15 different vendors in 15 different cities and so we get a lot of uh you know repeat business from uh companies that just deal uh in in multiple cities yeah super cool on this point about repeat business and in contrasting it with the the model you said of the of these quote competitors who weren't quite competitors because their model was different but it does sound like the benefit of those models was that they were more contractual the revenue was more contractual whereas in your case I mean it's in the name short-term copier um to what extent do you have contracts or any sort of pure recurring Revenue as opposed to repeat or reoccurring Revenue most of this business is is job Revenue but it is uh you know their top 20 our top 20 customers represent like 50 of the the business so it's a lot of repeat um uh with customers but not on a recurring basis that being said the the company did do some month-to-month rentals uh where they were recurring and so this would be like a construction trailer or um you know a temporary office that might only be there for 12 months that need to have a copier and a printer and so rather than going to a leasing company that's going to charge require them to sign at least a three-year lease agreement uh they work with the with our company to to to essentially lease it on a month-to-month basis at a higher price point to compensate uh so that's actually a growth area in the in the business and you know I think would for me give a lot more Comfort having some recurring Revenue versus being solely job-based the transaction itself health so the business was selling for according to this screenshot of the biz by cell listing I have here about three three million dollars yeah so for 2.7 million 2.7 okay so if you're if your cash flow is at roughly a million granted that was only the most recent year that wasn't the last three years but um that's a sounds like a really good multiple to me less than three yeah I I I was prepared to pay three to four X on on the business I was looking for not not particularly this one I think this one um you know it required a certain type of buyer uh that you know happened to have my background of operating a company around the country in the in the sort of rental space uh and so you know and just given that it was in The copier and printer space I think saw lower lower multiple so um you know ultimately I I think I got a great deal on the company and I think that the seller is happy so I think it's one of those uh uh deals where it was a win-win yeah well and yeah you make a good point that the the business buyer fit here is is through the roof I mean you really you really tailor-made to to run and grow this thing Tim But but so that's interesting do you think that it actually was an unappealing business to most who would have stumbled across it I mean I was interested in it and I don't I don't have 13 years at zagster it seemed like a pretty appealing business to me yeah I don't think it's unappealing but I think you know a lot of like any founder including myself when I found in my VC back company you want your company to to you know live on your legacy to live on and you want it in the hands of somebody that you believe is a perfect fit to take it to the next level you know obviously sellers want to get out they want to retire and you know they're going to sell regardless but you know and I think most Sellers and having been in those shoes want the company to end up somewhere where you know their legacy is going to move on and grow and I I think that you know I felt it was a perfect fit and the sellers thought it was a perfect fit and you know I think even if I there was this is just my guess but even if there was offers slightly higher than mine I think the seller would have gone with me and the seller motivation was retirement yeah he wanted to retire before coved or around Cove at time uh and obviously with the business uh taking such a big hit he needed to show the rebound uh before he he sold the business but he was at retirement age he'd been in The copier space for 25 plus years maybe even longer uh and you know was just just ready to to move on so uh yeah he was he was amazing at the transition uh he helped in the first 30 days just ran the business as he did before because he did a lot of the uh sort of order taking and inbound sales work and so you know as I was learning the business and just getting through the the transition period he did a phenomenal job there uh just keeping the business running with with no issues so you know you hear some horror stories of sellers who like don't show up the day after the transaction or you know are aren't helpful and and you know in this case I I have to commend the uh the the seller he did a phenomenal job of transitioning and get it up and running for me to take on and to I think we've already said it is based in Maryland just just here just right outside DC right yep so it's in um uh yeah Columbia Maryland Laurel Maryland area so between DC and Baltimore and as if it's not already in case it's not already clear this is not a business that you were going to eventually take uh to being kind of remote first or remotely run this was that was very much already uh the case for this business happily um and when we first talked for the pre-call you were actually at the Maryland location but headquarters of this business is is quite um Spartan I mean there's not a lot there right tell us about what headquarters looks like headquarters is a sub-rented uh warehouse space in in Maryland uh and Maryland is there DC and Baltimore are their largest are our largest market um around the the US and it's mainly because they historically were uh were based there but also the DC and in particular provides uh uh you know a unique opportunity with all the embassies and events going on and uh lawyers legal lawyer cases and all of that so you know it is our largest facility and one of the only facilities where we have multiple people in the in the market uh but there's really no office space area um it was it's mainly just a warehouse with a with a break room uh so you know we I had all the staff that were working remotely because most of them most of the admin staff for uh actually all of them were based in Maryland so I had them come in for a month uh to just meet face to face and spend time together and learn the the business but you know ultimately uh after about six weeks uh uh I I left I'm back here in Puerto Rico and been running the business remote ever since and these folks in Maryland how many are actually in Maryland uh so there's eight people in Maryland four of them are delivery drivers or technicians and uh four of them are uh sort of back off this uh staff and so you say as new owner you said I want everybody all all the Maryland folks to come in to the Columbia Laurel um office for a full month yeah I guess I guess the drivers and the field crew would be would check in in the morning and then just go back out so we're talking mostly about four people being in the office and um just just for people imagining themselves you know in in the authority they do or don't carry on day one you know asking everybody to come in you know they're used to their you know working in their pajamas from home and then the new owner and boss says I want everybody in here you know five days a week for the next four weeks you know we we keep seeing headlines about all of the tension between employers wanting employees to come back to the office and of course employees not wanting to you weren't making you weren't making a secular change this was just going to be temporary but still it was an Ask um anything to share there about your management style or is it just you just mandated it and and it happened I believe in being really honest with uh with employees and I think you know if you look back at at zagster right uh I try not to be top down in in my management style uh obviously I asked everybody to come in here and I explained why it was important and you know I think the fact that I didn't live in Maryland and I you know live in Puerto Rico and my intent was to continue operating the company remotely made them feel comfortable with it because they knew it wasn't going to be you need to come in for the for the foreseeable future uh it was a it was sort of time box but you know some people had like a uh literally an hour and a half commute each way uh to come in so I felt bad asking for it but I think everybody by the end of the month agreed that that it made a lot of sense it created that camaraderie you know we were able to go out and have drinks after work and you know spend a little bit of time to get to getting to know each other and being able to bounce ideas quickly off of each other before that you know we went back to our remote first uh uh cycle but I actually think the company works better remotely uh uh in in this case I think you know people were used to being in their own house and having to call and uh when we were in the office there was almost too much collaboration going back and forth and uh you know harder to find some quality time to to work so yeah I think the the it just goes to show how much you know culture matters and the culture was working remote and that's that's how it operated does and do you given that it is basically a fully remote business already including even kind of at the management level do you envision going to Maryland every X number of months or is that not even really necessary yeah I would have spent time with people face to face and you know I knew I'm moving to Puerto Rico that you know and not having office space that the advantage to that is that I can use the budget that you would spend on on office space to spend more time being out in the field and this is exactly what I did at zagster I learned more by going out uh and spending time with our drivers and our mechanics uh in the field about you know what customers were liking what they didn't like uh then I did sitting sitting in an office and so you know I'm glad we don't have an office in Maryland because the the old owner there's some employees he's never met face to face uh and you know I want to I want to make sure that I'm I'm spending that time in the in the field with the the people that who are actually delivering the value to our customers excellent well uh so let's talk a little bit more about um managing a national operation the kind of probably the first fear of somebody who says to themselves this is not possible or not possible yet I'm not I don't have the managerial experience level or whatever would be would be the point of failure at each of these remote locations so I'm not sure you said it but in many of your cities you basically have a single human on the ground right like a guy a truck and a storage unit is that right that's generally the model yeah and so what does it look like when you have a problem with one of the people or yeah or they quit um are you just out of commission in that City I mean that's not a lot of um that's not a lot of uh what's the word I'm looking for capacity or a lot of room uh for error there now there are some some of the largest markets like in Orlando or Miami um we do have multiple two people in that market so there is some some redundancy there but you know I think what what got me comfortable with this and got me excited is that in addition to the markets where we have our own staff and we have our own equipment and we have our own Vehicles there's actually a lot of markets that uh can't support that but we still operate in through Partners so like I'll give Boston as a great example Boston where I lived uh you know there's probably three or four months of really Prime uh sort of event time in the summer and then the rest of the year uh you know events aren't aren't as as prevalent there and so it's really not a market that can support uh full-time uh people on an annual basis so we have a really great partner there who is a copier dealer on a long-term basis never wanted to get into short-term rentals or deal with that uh who stores our equipment uh and then when we have jobs in Boston uh will deliver the equipment and drop it off so we already have this capability to essentially Outsource and and partner with with people to do a delivery and sort of tech service and market so uh and we even in markets where we have our own staff if we've got five deliveries on the the same day we'll end up pulling on one of our partners there to give us extra capacity so you know I I feel comfortable with with getting my head around this and that you know even if somebody were to quit and uh uh in one of our major cities that we typically have a partner there that helps us out on busy times that we could we could use to at least keep the the lights on until we we found somebody more permanent okay great uh and and what about uh the quality of service and and how do you ensure that uh being so remote and having so little face time or um you know being able to look over the shoulder of somebody in your La Market yeah again this is where I can pull on my my zagster experience because we have the same thing we had bikes in 35 states around the US that needed to be maintained and you know we weren't going to fly somebody out every time something the flat tire happened in a market so what we did at zagster was we developed a mobile app for the the mechanics that we used to to dispatch mechanics and have them take pictures of the work that they're doing that uses GPS on the phone to make sure they're on site and so we use that as a as a quality of service metric and then we'd also if if you know there was an issue with the bike and then uh you know it was supposed to be fixed and three days later somebody reports the same issue with the bike or another issue you know we can use that data to be able to determine that we needed to to make a change in that market or coach in that market so uh right now that the company has been operating with with basically no technology in that realm uh and has been doing it through you know text messages and emails with with PDFs to their to their drivers and one of the first things that I'm working on implementing now is a basic green Erp software that is built for the event management space that's going to allow us to have a lot of that same functionality that we we built with the with zagster for our mechanics so that we can you know have some more visibility into what's going on in the in the market so again this is where you know just me being comfortable with with operating with with people very similar in that role uh makes it work and I think you know to me my management style is I'm gonna I'm gonna trust you and I'm gonna you know provide uh guidance for you and if you know you meet that then we're all going to celebrate and we're going to treat you really well and if if not then you know we'll we'll have to make a a change or you know do coaching or whatever it is to make sure that we can we can achieve that great Tim now some of the other kind of attributes of the buyer business fit here was not was not simply your deep expertise in running a you know a 35 City operation but in your marketing and sales um Acumen we've already touched on the sales a little bit but you saw a lot of opportunity in this business to ramp up marketing and sales you've already touched on some of it but let's dive in what else did you see there yeah what I saw and got me really excited about this is that the company was doing the metrics that I that I walked to you through uh without really doing any outbound sales in the last maybe even decade um you know they had built the name for themselves in the space uh as being a reliable service partner that could operate around the U.S uh and so you know a lot of their business is is repeat business uh also I I their the website is a priority for for me to change and it's a project that I'm working on now but even given the their current website if you search for short-term copier rental and put any city in the U.S it's going to be you know number one two or three on on Google they just we own this Niche uh and so that that that got me really excited because without really doing any of the efforts that I know I can bring uh to the company um the the company's doing really well and so so I I have I you know I'll I'll Mark A Line in the Sand now but I I believe within three years I could easily double this business uh and so uh that you know I'm working on putting the the strategy in place now to um to lay the groundwork for that to happen a perfect segue to my next question so so how you're you're telling us all of the kind of um untapped assets assets of this business but what exactly does your your three-year Playbook look like to double the business yeah I think we work with a lot of the largest law firms in the in the country but there's actually a lot of uh customers that work with uh essentially middlemen ultimately they end up getting our our equipment but they're working with uh with the middlemen uh who are providing you know Logistics uh for litigation uh and so you know I think sort of Step One is uh being able to work um be able to have the web presence so when somebody's looking for us that they understand that you know booking direct like booking direct with Marriott or one of the hotel chains is going to give you you know sort of extra perks and give you the best price so yeah I think that that's one area I I think there is a a lot of opportunity for um uh for for growth in a couple of the sectors that we're in I think construction is a is a big one for for us uh uh I think you know it's an area we've done a little bit in but you know there's going construction trailers there's we have a contract with FEMA uh you know we're at all the sort of sites when you need to set up temporary offices and so I think there's growth there and I think there's there's don't want to tip my hand publicly yet but there's some uh additional equipment that I think we could add to um our Fleet uh that would complement what we're we're doing today so I think all of those combined make me feel very comfortable uh saying that I could double this business and that's what a 33 year of year growth and yeah when you're in the Venture Community you're if you did that on a yearly basis you you wouldn't raise your next round of financing you know you'd have to be in the 100 200 300 year of your growth so you know I'm taking a lot of those same playbooks and pressure and and mindset uh to to this business to grow it mm-hmm well I I want to we're going to return to just this transition from zero to one to one to ten businesses uh the but just a repeat something you said or clarify so right now it's a short-term copier short-term copier and printers I think you said that actually pure printing as opposed to copying is really where the business is um but there's an opportunity to provide other equipment as well in in the in these contexts that you're serving or could grow into serving construction legal War rooms movie sets um these these these contexts need other things Beyond just paper yeah I mean at the end of the day when you take a step back our our customer is somebody who needs a temporary office and that office could be added event or a conference space it could be a construction trailer it could be a movie set but essentially it's a um it's a temporary office and so you know there's lots of other things other than printers that you need in a temporary office and you know I think there's there's some other niches that I think we could provide there we actually do a big business in shredding after all these legal cases and you've got all these confidential documents and in court uh you know where do they all have to go they they ultimately need to be shredded so we do a lot of work with with shredding um we just kind of naturally got in there because our customers were asking for it so we actually have started to you know really uh sort of promote some of that stuff we're going to start promoting some of that stuff that we had been doing anyway um but you know haven't really been put front and center to other customers to know that we do it yeah I love that Tim that's that's such a um Punchy and bigger Vision uh re-characterization of the business from short-term copier to basically temporary office that is uh a better encapsulation and a much a much a much bigger Vision really nice the so the goal is doubling in five years you you three years sorry three years yeah sorry yeah three years right doubling in three years uh you're calling your shot here and what about what after that so one of the big differences in in VC Land versus this space SMB acquisition land is a lot of people buy a small business with the idea uh that it's a a permanent acquisition or an indefinite acquisition is that how you're thinking about it are you thinking more uh like a VC would and and there's probably an exit at some point I I think um not to be honest the the answers I'm not exactly sure I I think that this is something I'll probably end up holding for for a long time I ended up bringing on an operations manager uh who had worked with me uh at zagster who worked for the acquiring company for three years and then uh when I when I signed the LOI I approached him and uh uh got him to commit to coming on board so I have somebody who can really run the the day-to-day operations of of this business while I focus on the the sales and marketing and sort of the growth side that I that I know I can do really well uh you know ultimately you know as as we get the systems and processes in place for the new sales uh push you know that's something that I could I could transition off my plate and look at other uh Acquisitions I've also started uh investing through the SMB fund uh into other acquisition entrepreneurs who are looking to buy businesses uh using SBA Loans but that need help on that down payment to uh to accomplish the uh the acquisition so we've talked about the VC stuff a lot you you know you what you just said that or what we just said that in um that there's often kind of an exit baked into the expectation uh and a VC funded startup uh VC funded startup taught you uh just about kind of thinking bigger or it was just kind of expected to think bigger higher growth moving more quickly um on the other hand we know all the drawbacks as well starting from absolute scratch is is very difficult for three years you were kind of living on Ramen sort of sort of thing it took a long time to get any traction at all um anything about the contrast between these two these two entrepreneurial paths that we haven't touched on yeah I think actually when I when I became public uh on LinkedIn and Twitter and some of the other social media places about my transition to Eta from the the VC side I ended up getting a ton of people reaching out to me and I probably take at least one to two calls per week uh with somebody who is either a Founder an early employee at a venture capital backed startup who are now thinking smaller and thinking about getting into ETA and I think what we've seen is uh in my opinion a big shift in uh in the VC land when I started 2007 the VC landscape was it was actually pretty small a place like Boston might you know had 10 BC firms and now there's literally hundreds of them and the goal posts have changed significantly where if you can't show a viable path to a VC that you could be a a unicorn or a deck of corn uh in the next you know three to four years then you're not able to raise Venture Capital anymore uh and so I think that the the goal post have moved so far out and the likelihood of success for a founder of a startup is so much less than it than it was before financial success that I think a lot of people are rethinking that as a path I'm so glad that I went through it and I'm so glad I did it at the time in my life you know coming out of college and had really nothing to to lose to do it and I learned a ton but you know having spent time in ETA like I'm gonna make more uh at short-term copier in the first 12 months of operating this this business than I did probably in three years the last three years of uh of operating zagster I mean at the end of the day you're when you raise that much money 40 million Venture Capital you're an employee of the company you have no control over your your salary and you know the the investors want to keep your salary as low as possible and try to put the carrot of equity uh being worth something someday in front of you so you know I think a lot of people are starting to to see that and uh you know I think the skill set that you can bring with all the tech that uh we use that at zagster is you know such a perfect fit for these smbs that are even further behind than uh than than than the rest of the the country on implementing technology yeah well what about Tim the the other kind of giant contrast between these two worlds which is the glory of the of the business we here in SMB Land We affectionately call these boring businesses um but they they are pretty utilitarian you're not uh bringing something brand new into the world um like like you were with zagster um and and that is one of the draws for VC style entrepreneurs and in Tech in general uh and I think as I recall from our pre-call you too had said that 10 years ago you probably would have you know raised your eyebrow at a buddy buying a short-term copy or business and now here you are so so address address that kind of qualitative difference yeah I wonder if it's uh you know might be age or just mentality but you know yeah coming out of college like you know I I wouldn't have changed what I did but you know if I could have gone back and done a different company I probably would have bought a boring business knowing knowing what I know now um but you know coming out of college and you you know reading TechCrunch and you're sort of seeing all this world of like you know everything growing so quickly and you know people becoming the next Mark Zuckerberg you know that that happens to like 0.001 of people who go down that path and you know I think you get you sort of get sucked into it and it's uh I was certainly sucked into it and you know I I honestly believed that we were going to be a unicorn yeah I I believe we've got further than most companies do uh on the VC path but you know I fully believed I was gonna it's gonna be a unicorn I said I drank the the Kool-Aid and you know it came I would say crashing down but certainly didn't uh we never became a unicorn uh although others in our our space did but their their market cap is uh lower than what our last valuation was that at Zaxby before we sold so uh you know I I think that boring is the is the new sexy in my opinion I think you know it's the new opportunity and I think that you know to me the ETA space today feels like the Venture Capital space in 2017 2018 2019 sorry it's 2007 2008 2009 sort of the early days uh and you know a lot of collaboration and you know sort of realistic expectations and I think the VC land became too sexy and you know most VCS aren't going to live up to uh uh what they promised their their own T's on returns because you just can't find that many unicorns so I think we're good right my prediction is we're going to see a ton of people uh both investors and operators move from the VC space into the ETA sort of PE space well we're already uh hearing a lot about how there's a lot of Searchers search has grown a ton it's hard to find a deal it's competitive to find a good deal so that might only get uh more acute here in the next few years if your prediction comes to pass um Tim anything that we didn't get to that you want to say love to do a little shout out for the SMB fund if you're hoping to chatting about that go for it yeah let's see so yeah you mentioned that you're you're looking to invest uh other in other Searchers deals tell us about that yeah so I as I was going through the acquisition lab and and talking with other uh people uh Searchers who were starting their search I I found a lot of really great operators uh Searchers who were thinking in my opinion too small uh and solely thinking about what they could afford for a business and you know let's let's say uh that you're looking at the top end of the SBA range and you're looking at a at a company in the five or six million dollar Enterprise Value the amount of uh down payment you'd need if you were doing the 90 SBA loan uh is 500 or 600 000 and for me coming from the Venture Capital space where I've raised 40 million dollars and even my first round at zagster before I raised VC dollars uh was was close to a half million dollars uh you know the the thought of raising that kind of money it didn't phase me at all but totally understand if you don't come from that world that it can be very daunting to start that process so what I what I put together is we're calling the SMB fund uh it's essentially mimics a Syndicate Angel group that invests in the VC world but in ETA and we take minority Investments uh into uh companies that are being acquired by Searchers using SBA Loans and we can put up to 100 of the the down payment so in my opinion I think that if if you're searching for a business and going down the SBA route you should find the best business possible and uh if you're you know don't have the the capital to put down that hold down payment there are options out there uh to to be able to support that acquisition and Tim how do you uh address if you're if you're prepared to put in a hundred percent of the down payment uh or the equity injection on behalf of a Searcher um how do you address in your own mind the risk related to wanting them to have some skin in the game most people don't have half a million liquid that they can they where they could you know inject into their own deal um but if they have you know but it's good that they have some money if for no other reason that they're putting something at risk yeah I mean I I think we we generally have not we have not done any deal where we put 100 in and I think that would be a case-by-case basis for a Searcher with a perfect fit who doesn't have a you know the balance sheet to really put anything meaningful into the to the company uh but you know we we want the Searcher to have sunscreen in the game they're obviously still taking the the personal guarantee uh through through the SBA so obviously they they have some skin in the game but you know if you're sitting on Capital then we certainly want you to to put something in meaningful just like a VC would uh you know I came out of undergrad with you know negative money a negative net worth um and so investors didn't expect me to put money in but uh you know if I had been sitting on a half million dollars and I wasn't putting any money into uh into into each of the rounds then I think that would raise a red flag and I think it would do the same thing here and Tim this is you had said that what you witnessed part part of your thinking around SMB fund is something you witnessed as a dynamic in the acquisition lab that that your comrades were maybe thinking not big enough so your point here is to also enable people to buy a bigger business elaborate on that why how are they thinking too small why should they buy bigger elaborate please yeah and actually this is where your your podcast helped me in my own Journey even before going into the acquisition lab when when I started my thought process around ETA I thought let me just start small uh and you know let me I don't know exactly what the numbers were but maybe by you know a 300 000 ebitda business and just sort of see if I like this whole acquisition thing and after listening to a lot of your podcasts and talking to a lot of other people I realized that it it's actually riskier to buy a smaller business and so yeah you're taking on a bigger uh you know personal guarantee and a bigger loan but the reality is is that you know if no matter which side of the business you buy the SBA it pro if it fails you're going to go bankrupt it doesn't matter if it's two hundred thousand dollar even a business you know you bought for a million bucks you probably don't have a million dollars in the in the bank so you're probably going to go bankrupt and so you know that to me was well I should buy the biggest company I could find uh because the larger the company the more customers they're going to have the more employees that they're going to have and the more likely it is going to be successful and so you know when I saw people in my own cohort uh you know only buying something small but wanted to buy something bigger or found a really good company I was just like well why don't you just raise a little bit of money and you know it was me being naive coming from the DC side it's it's you know becomes a little second nature to me because that's essentially what my job was to CEO it's to it's the fundraise um and so you know put together the SMB fund because at the same time I was hearing from my uh old investors that were backing me and people in my network uh when I announced that I was going into ETA they're like well you know I would put money into your deal like are there other deals like this or how do I get involved with these Searchers and so the light bulb hit that you know you've got this two-sided Marketplace of Searchers and investors they all exist in the world but there really hasn't been a great uh way to to combine them outside of you know search funder or just posting it and taking a whole bunch of meetings so the SMB fund we can uh you know it's individual and investors putting money into the to the deal through a an spb that we set up but it allows a Searcher to come to one place uh and get the the full down payment rather than having to take you know 100 meetings with uh with some dentists and doctors coming off of search funder and and collecting ten thousand dollar checks here or there and how many deals have you invested in to date Tim all right so if we've done two deals today uh and we have a pipeline of over 250 Searchers that uh are at various stages of their their search process so you know given that the average uh search takes uh close to a year uh I think by the end of this year we're going to see a significant increase in uh uh in deals coming in but my goal is to to do uh one to two deals a month um uh by the end of the year well something you just said there Tim about how you know coming from the VC world the idea of raising money is just kind of part of it you know really not something very daunting to you and really anybody who has raised money is just one of those things that you learn how to do and you develop contacts with investors but it's something I've spent some time on in the last few months to kind of try to illuminate that because if you never have raised money it is indeed very daunting and most people kind of quit before they even attempt it they just kind of think well that's for people who are connected or people who know what they're doing that's just not for me they don't um they don't really um kind of even want to approach it um but uh people should be more open-minded about it and recognize that if you can learn to do a deal uh the deal itself you can certainly learn to to raise money Tim this has been great uh if people want to reach out how what's the best way what's how do you prefer people contact you uh email is probably the best at Tim SMB dot fund or Tim at committed dot Ventures a lot of fun Tim Erickson thank you for coming on I love the contrast between your your very long uh zero to one experience and you've hit the ground running hard here in in SMB acquisition land what what a cool story so um look forward to having you on three years to the date uh to see if you uh if you if you got that if you if you doubled it like you called like you said you would I'll probably have you on sooner tip sounds good I love I love a good goal thank you sir all right 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 interviews and stories to come stories that will help you along your own path to acquiring a business