Tyler O'Connor thank you for joining me today on acquiring minds Tyler you're the owner of bird Golf Academy a golf school so it's a really neat business even for those of us completely ignorant about golf but for people like you who are golf enthusiasts I imagine it's a dream so this is a great story uh one that I think is going to cause a little bit of Envy because quite a bit broke your way during this acquisition but we'll get there start us off Tyler with some background on you oh thanks will well first off let me say it was a pleasure to be on your podcast I've been listening to you since I got into the world of search and um it's been a it's been a real um it's a great tool for me as a Searcher and I certainly recommend everyone else to listen to this as well so anyways uh thank you myself um I kind of come from an entrepreneurial family my dad was an entrepreneur and I knew that I always kind of wanted to get into this space and do my own thing I think everyone's dream is to be their own boss my background um I I did my undergrad at Arizona State University and immediately commissioned as an officer in the Army and it was an active duty for six years with a couple deployments to Afghanistan a stint in Washington DC when I got out of the army I finished my I did my MBA um at George Washington University and immediately went into kind of government Consulting from there and funny enough my concentration during my MBA was entrepreneurship and sports management I you know this now years later it's funny how things kind of come full circle and those two are actually kind of relevant um you know unlike the my bachelor's degree in political science so yeah I did uh I was in Consulting for about four and a half years and I think by the end of it I was quite quitting before quite quitting even was a thing I was just so bored and not interested and was kind of I thought that I had built up the necessary skill set to kind of go out and do something on my own and that's that's when I started looking for a business now Tyler I recall you not being that familiar or familiar at all with the idea of search search funds what have you and you kind of hearing about it kind of overhearing a conversation at a conference or something how did you discover search yeah that's right I was at a work conference and I was talking to a couple guys that were frankly they were a lot younger than me and they were getting ready to go into business school and they were talking to me about the traditional search fund model and how they were going to go do this and then start a search fund and someone was going to you know pay their salary and that's what a traditional search fund is I think that folks that listen to your podcast probably know what that is um and I started asking questions well what if I wanted to do this myself and they said yeah that's called self-funded surfing and um all these light bulbs started going off in my head immediately and I got back from this conference and I was so energized and so excited and I immediately kind of went to my wife and I said listen I've got I've got a plan I've got a road map I know how to do this I know the steps involved um and I want to do this and that's kind of what started my half I think that you know for for people that are looking to do this it's fun to say I'm going to do this Sunday I'm going to do this Sunday what you really need is a road map or you need a plan you need someone to show you the necessary steps to get there and that's what these guys did for me with this conference was they they told me listen there's a way to do this you don't have to be the next Steve Jobs you can go and buy a business and Be Your Own Boss right away yeah yeah and was this conversation over a lot like a single conversation over lunch or was this a a longer conversation because the way you're making it sound is like they really you know kind of laid it all out and there's a lot to lay out there it was like one of those like work happy hour events and you know we were probably a couple drinks in and so I was asking all kinds of questions and you know what turned into like a conversation over a beer ended up being a two two and a half hour conversation followed up with uh emails with um all these hbr studies and things of that nature so um yeah that's kind of how it kind of came to be and you went on to to read the books I imagine and of course check all those boxes yep absolutely yeah the hbr and and buy them build uh those are like the Bibles I tell everyone that is interested like these this is where you start um and you know read those right away immediately and um and started to kind of get educated between those books different podcasts like yours um I'm a huge advocate for the the Twitter Community because you know you don't even have to participate just by following and reading these tweets that these professionals and these people are putting out there you're gonna see ideas that you didn't think of different strategies that you didn't think of and now you can kind of come back to that and be like wait a minute I saw something where this guy put a deal together and he used very little little none of his own money to buy a business and just kind of being in that space you're going to see things that you wouldn't have normally thought of yeah for sure uh I second your your enthusiasm for SMB Twitter the so so where where are we now so you've come back from this conference you're already you're already kind of disillusioned with your Consulting career uh or current job at least um what year is this and what happens next uh this is this year so you and I are talking on December 19 2022 this was in end of end of February beginning of March 2022 uh so about nine nine ten months ago um I came back from this conference and I knew the kind of the first step was figure out how can I quit my job and start searching full-time um and probably the hardest part is like how am I going to convince my wife to let me do this as you can imagine like you know we we had a pretty comfortable lifestyle I had a very comfortable salary and we were accustomed to like I said a certain lifestyle and so to convince my wife that let's give this up and go buy a business because you know my argument to her was that I've always wanted to do this I will always want to do this be an entrepreneur we don't have kids yet let's do this now before we have kids we're very stable um in our professional lives or in our financial um you know lives so we can we can afford to take a risk right now because once we have kids it's probably not going to be the case um and once I got her on board and I kind of showed her the path I said listen this is the plan this is how we do this this is very tactically how we do this um she came around and um and then once once she was on board with the idea the rest was the rest was easy and was the perceived risk just in in striking out on your own and becoming a business owner and all the all the obvious risk that that entails or was it and or was it the time the time of your search where you weren't going to have an income and you were going to be depleting savings until you found that business yeah yeah the perceived risk was giving up a salary to go full time we had at the time two mortgages um and so how are we going to financially make this work um without having a salary and so what I decided to do was sell our we had an investment property in Phoenix Arizona we were going to sell that and now looking back we literally sold at the top of the market for Phoenix Arizona I mean so many things of this story is just like so Kismet or you know it's amazing all this came together when it did look just call it good luck yeah honestly and um so we literally sold at the top of the market we've got this cash from the sale of the house that is going to finance um our lifestyle for the next two years you know we're going to do 24 months to find a business and if that didn't work the plan was to go back into Consulting um and were you going to reduce your spending your personal spending household spending and during those time during those two years yeah absolutely I mean the good thing was like if you take if you're a W-2 employee and you look at your paycheck and you see that you have all this money going out for in your taxes and your FICA and your Medicare and your Social Security and and then your 401k contributions and your IRA contributions and then but if you're paying yourself you don't you don't have that you know so if I'm just paying myself for my salary I'm not paying taxes on that so I was kind of able to show okay this is what we take home every month from our W-2 well this is what we would take home if we were living off of our savings and the the difference was almost minuscule basically what I was telling my wife is like listen our you know your day-to-day lifestyle really won't change that much you know we'll cut back on a couple vacations here and there uh yeah but generally speaking like you know we can do this based on the amount of money that we have in the savings and um and you know basically following this formula so so it's like if let's say you're making a hundred grand a year in salary um to to replace that your actual take home what goes in your pocket in from your savings maybe in your savings you only really need 70 grand yeah yes to that hundred grand on your W-2 exactly yeah you know and you're you're basically what you're what you're giving up is the 401K contributions you're giving up your IRA contributions um every month but in this in the grand scheme of things you know one or two years of Ira contributions in 401K you who will hopefully make that up in the equity in your business down the road once you find something yep sure okay so we're in March march-ish when you when you do this yeah uh it was yeah it came up um right around March we kind of once once my wife had agreed uh my next step was to kind of start that that the Tactical steps of becoming a Searcher you know you get your email you get a website set up um you know you just kind of start reaching out to Brokers I did an LLC for my search looking back I don't know if I really needed one I think it's kind of 50 50 on that if you're gonna do like this long prolonged search it's probably a good idea to have one um but uh yeah once once we set that up it was kind of Off to the Races and okay you were gearing up for a long search I mean as as long as two years um and and so you you were kind of mentally prepared for that but it so okay so tell us what happens as you as you start searching and right and that kind of fateful quick search that led to something amazing yeah this is this is actually kind of the fun part and um now as I look back on it okay I had a very specific plan this was now we're we're at March right my wife is on board we're going to do the search thing um I had some military commitments that I had to do because at this point I was in the Army Reserves and that's a that's a story for another time but I had some Army commitments in July that I had to do the plan was to kind of get everything set get my uh LLC going get everything ready and then go do my military commitments in July come back quit my W-2 start full time in July um and now we're in April and I'm just kind of you know every night you know you're kind of looking at this by cell or you're just kind of browsing and seeing kind of what's out there and I happen to come across this golf business and I had I had I had seen some other things too I sent out some feelers to Brokers got some Sims um looked at like some construction things and obviously like every Searcher wants the HVAC company right I mean that's like that's that's the dream and that's kind of what I was looking for and every time I told someone that I was going to quit my job and buy a business I would always use the words like I'm gonna buy a boring business and I'm gonna freaking love it you know what I mean and it's Easter weekend I said Mom I'm going to quit my job and I'm gonna buy a really boring business and I'm gonna and that's what I'm gonna do and I thought that she would say you know you know you've got this great job you've got a stable uh income are you sure you want to do this but it really wasn't like that she said Tyler you've always been successful in everything you've done just do something that you're passionate about and don't do HVAC and don't do you know small manufacturing or whatever and I had never even thought about that I had never once thought like let me do something that I really love so I get back home and it's a Monday night at like 10 o'clock at night and I'm on bits myself and I just happened to let's just do a search in the golf industry I loved golf let's just see what's out there and it was a lot of golf courses and and real estate for sale fail and then I I happen to see this this golf school no picture very brief description of the company uh and so I emailed the broker I said let's just see what this is and again this is this is well before I had planned to go full time in the search this is this is back in April we weren't planning on going full time until July so I get the sandwiches this is you just poking around Biz by cell yep on the heels of a conversation with your mom who is like hey I endorse you quitting to buy a business but don't buy something boring buy something that turns you on and you're like okay let me let me let me just see what's out there and yeah exactly and if you would have told me like you're gonna buy a business in the golf industry like that's like me telling you I'm gonna be an astronaut when I grow up like okay cool like I I know you love the golf but like let's be real here um and come to find out golf is like this like lucrative industry so uh yeah we started talking to the broker and things are just looking like really really good I mean we've got the financials I see this like massive uh Tailwinds in the industry and the numbers from 2020 to 2021 1 to 2022 practically doubling year after year in 2022 is projected to be this like banner year for this company right and um they were going to do mid to low seven figures in Revenue uh so I I was really excited but at the same time I kind of knew well all the stories I hear about Searchers It generally takes three Lois to that's kind of the rule of thumb is like you know you'll get you'll close in your business on your third one it's never the first one so I was waiting for um the house of cards to fall I was looking for waiting for the red flags to show up and every time I saw something that may have been a red flag it actually was the opposite it was almost a moat and it was almost like this is a pro not a con yeah and can you can you give us an example of one of those Main golf course that we used accounted for a significant portion of the business and to me um I thought that that was a um obviously like you know like uh um if you have all your customers in like one segment or you know that's a risk you know because what if you lose that one golf course and you lose like this the all you know let's see if we can chunk up your business so I thought well if we lose this one golf course now we're gonna really be in trouble but it's not really the case like the it's in the golf course's best interest to have us there because we're bringing in this one golf course we're gonna bring in over a million dollars of revenue for them between hotel rooms spa packages restaurant tee times they want us there more than we need them so if we would have lost that golf course you just go to one right down the road and say Hey listen I just brought these guys a million dollars a year do you want this business so it it really wasn't because they're also a vendor they're not they're not a customer right the golf courses are your vendors yeah okay yeah you're paying exactly yeah yep yeah yeah well Tyler let's back let's back up a little bit just to unfully understand the business more um yeah so so what did you find on this Biz by cell listing and once you got the Sim like what's this business all about so the business offers three four and five day golf schools one-on-one and two-on-one golf schools at these beautiful Resorts and beautiful golf courses all around the country 20 Plus locations from Florida California Arizona Vermont Pennsylvania Oregon you know all over the place and there's a stable of uh you know 14 15 now 16 instructors uh that travel around and they do these golf schools um and uh they were doing in Revenue projected for 2022 was mid to low seven figures in revenue and um the profitability and was roughly 30 to 35 percent um a profitability coming off of that of that Revenue number so that's a low to mid yeah low to mid seven figures so let you know let's go I don't know anywhere from whatever three to six million let's call it in revenue and then 30 35 um margins so that's a not only is it a you know in your the industry and in the sport that you're so passionate about but that's a that's a size of a business that is really hard to find for a Searcher I mean that's uh you know that that by by my math that you know that gets in gets you to you know just below or just above a million bucks in in ebitda so that's yeah that's what we're all looking for it's important note that obviously the SBA will loan on tax returns right so remember where we are we're back in April and May of this year and this is this is projected for 2022. this is It's a see it's a cyclical business so we knew at this point roughly what 2022 was going to be but I couldn't depend on that number when I went to the SBA because they're just going to tell me okay well show me the 2021 numbers show me the last three years well when you go back can you look at 2020 uh 2020 when they had to shut down operations in the middle of their busy season and 2019 was nowhere even close to what we're doing in 2022 I mean if you were to use those numbers there's no way that we would have gotten this deal done so the the seller wanted to to sell the business based on the value of the 2022 sales which I completely understood but I had to kind of I had to be creative in how we were going to structure that get him a number that he was comfortable with and try to incorporate the 2022 while still protecting myself and still getting a number that the bank was going to be comfortable with using the previous financials that were that we were going to use the tax returns on well I mean that's the thing Tyler is that yeah the SBA I mean you doesn't like actually to see doesn't like to finance business that are seeing a ton of growth uh because there's there's less predictability there and while that can be a drag it's also can be a good backstop because it should force you the buyer to ask yourself like well yeah I mean is this is this growth um you know an aberration or is it sustainable and when's it going to stop and and you know especially the growth you're seeing doubling year over year um so how did you get comfortable with because it sounds like you were comfortable you just felt you needed to convince the SBA how did you internally in your own mind get comfortable with this you know that you're going to buy a business whose valuation is based on you know future earnings this coming year right well I I think that my personality just who I am I am willing to accept a little bit more risk than some other people would generally speaking so I kind of was okay with it myself I like I said I golf all the time I'm um I'm you know I I saw what the industry was doing and how covid gave this gave golf a huge bump um I didn't think that was going away anytime soon so I was kind of okay with it the way that we talked to and talked to the bank about it was that we did get a QV a quality of earnings and for those who aren't familiar with that that's basically it's kind of like an audit but not quite as in-depth they're basically confirming the ebitda of the business of what's being reported so it's their job to go in and say yes this business is doing the amount that they have reported on um and and that was done by a third party so once the QV was done then the bank was a little bit more comfortable we saw what the trailing 12 months was for 2022 we had a really good understanding of what the year was going to end up at uh and once we had that we were kind of able to go to the bank and structure a deal that actually worked um okay and I and I want to get into that a little bit but a few more contextual questions on the business first of all um cash flow cycle of this business is awesome right because the the students pay up front and then all of your expenses are paid later right so that's good um the you know you're talking about the doubling year over year and if you look back at say 2019 like revenues are way less than you're projecting for 2022 and basing your valuation on um how old is is this business it's over 20 years old so started in 1999 first school was sold in 2020 so uh yeah it's just then then the seller's life work he's done a fantastic job building this building this company up for over 20 years all across the country some of these instructors have been with the company for um for for so long you know 17 20 years um you know and that they've had more they've had more employees they've lost more employees due to death than they have to quitting or firing anyone you know so when we look at like the turnover of your employees I would much rather have something like that than something in Tech where they're gonna go to Fang when they get a when they get a an offer that's in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for a salary and you have so much turnover so that was kind of another one of like the red flags that I that I saw was these these instructors um you know what happens when you lose one or two of your instructors well frankly like if you look at the history of the business they don't leave um and you know we take care of them the salary of a PGA Pro I think nationally you could probably look it up they're the average salary of a teaching pro is probably somewhere in like the 60 the low 70 000 the number range we have some instructors who will do so many schools this year they'll make over a hundred thousand dollars this year you know so they can make the money they're all independent contractors they work as much or as little as they like um and so one once I realized that that wasn't quite a red flag either that made me even more comfortable with it and and the red flag to be clear was was also that the kind of the average age of your instructors is you know maybe approaching more approaching retirement at least more so than you might you might be comfortable with at first glance yes um it is uh they are on the older side but um now that I've come to work in this business for six months or so the majority of our clients are of that age they're retiring baby boomer Generations who they want to get out and play golf I have more people ask me how old's the instructor we want someone older you know than anyone asking for younger so it's that's another thing that's like okay well we're okay with this because um their older themselves they want an older instructor and we have more than 50 of our business comes from repeat students because they have developed such a great relationship with their instructor yeah yeah and Tyler so about just going back to the growth in the age of the business so you know it sounds like an uh like a 2022 this banner year really impressive business but um was it a pretty small business for the 2010s and early 20 teens because you know if it's doubling year over year you know if you divide 2022 by two and then 20 you know 20 21 by two you get to a pretty small business pretty quickly so you know did you have insight into those financials and just yeah kind of kind of um 20 year old businesses can can that's a long time so how did you get how did you wrap your head around like the age of the business and the size that had it had grown to over those 20 years oh yeah I mean absolutely you know back um in the earlier years you know I have numbers going back to the formation of the company and you can see year over year the number of schools that they're doing so by no means was this like uh booming operation for the past 20 years and this guy's sitting on Millions dollars it's not like that you know the seller there were years when he wasn't paying himself at all and he was taking all this risk you know it's very much like a startup you know it took a while to get where he is now there were years where uh the business really suffered and one example of that I think was in the early um teens Google had changed their algorithm and they were basically blacklisted from Google search and they had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to undo that you know so they saw a huge drop um and that's a risk that you know business owners need to be willing to accept um and and kind of have a plan to get through yeah yeah um okay and then last question on the business itself so you as a golf golf Enthusiast was this are there like a lot of businesses out there like this where did you see this and you were immediately familiar with like oh yeah I've seen courses like this for sale I understand this business just like immediately or is this kind of some Niche that even somebody who's who's an avid golfer like you you know it's like kind of like news to you that such a business existed no I mean I had taken golf lessons you know from individuals before uh so I always knew that this was a thing I always thought that the golf instructor was paired to a certain golf course and that is very much the case um and there's big names out there um um like uh Jacob's school or the Pell short game or um uh Butch Harmon school out in Vegas so you have some of these big names in golf their instructors and those schools are tied to those individuals um so I I certainly knew that that these were out there but the beautiful thing with this one is that you know there's there's 20 Plus locations around the country we partner with the golf courses we have if you were to look at the resumes of our instructors you know you could put up put us up against any of these schools and I think that you know we would have a you know our Bona fides would would match up with any of those big names hands down we've got we you know former uh major Champions you know the real real professional instructors and so some of these instructors would be brand names again for people who know the sport of golf if you're old enough yeah if you certainly remember them playing on tour yeah okay great okay uh so and one other question for you Tyler because it does seem like just a great business why do you think that nobody else had scooped it up why hadn't he sold to one of his competitors you know it's it's I mean there's also there's the remote angle you know he's he's Diversified across all these different courses all these different markets uh lends itself very well as you said you know huge Tailwinds in golf because of kovid like it and and just great cash flow so it seems like there's everything to love about this business and yet it was just sitting up there on Biz by cell why that's a great question and um I wish I had like a hard and fast answer for you but basically what I can tell you is that I know that they had you know between 25 and 35 people reach out uh for the Sim sign ndas um but the seller told the broker you know anytime somebody kind of came close he said no you know what I really want to sell to Tyler um and we just kind of developed this relationship over time where we became comfortable with each other he didn't want to sell to a big management company like a Golf Tech or a Troon or whoever I think he wanted to kind of keep it personal you know you wanted to sell to an individual a person who would take this this company forward for the next 20 years not necessarily a corporation so I think I had that going for me um he he appreciated my background he appreciated the intensity and the love of this business I found this business I absolutely loved it I when we were waiting we weren't exclusive when when I had the LOI signed we were not exclusive until I had the letter of commitment from the bank the bank would not give the letter of commitment until we had the the Q of E Done Right to confirm the the ebitda so that was about um two months between the LOI being submitted no I'm sorry about one month about 30 days I was so nervous so nervous that someone else was going to come in and take this deal from under me after I had put out all these deals costs you know paying for the QB paying for the lawyers paying for all this stuff out of pocket someone could have easily come in and given him offered him full price and he just you know see you later Tyler and I'm out of the money I I I stayed up nights sweating thinking that was going to happen thankfully he never did yeah and how much how much had you invested at that point what were your deal costs at that point just to give people a sense um what this feels like probably close to 20 grand uh I think I was probably committed um roughly I don't I don't recall exactly the the one awesome feeling was when I paid when I bought the QV uh we did pay half up front and then half when it was finished and so at this point you know we were selling the investment property to pay for all this and I had all this money coming out of the bank account to like you know painting the house and listen to how you know all this all the costs associated with selling a house and then buying a business at the exact same time and all these so anyways fast forward the Q of e guy comes back when I'm about to write this check when it's all done and uh emails me says Tyler I normally wouldn't do this uh but this is a golf thing how about you save your save the money and give me a golf school once you guys close yeah and I was I was elated I was like oh my God you know at this point I kind of knew that like the the stars were aligned I immediately you know I was like hell yeah absolutely man oh that's super cool and just just the fact that you know he was willing to do that also kind of told me hey I've seen the numbers of this business I I believe in it it's going to be around he's not going to go out of business he's going to get his none so at that point I was so energized I was so excited and it saved me a couple thousand dollars uh at the time when cash flow was was really something that was on my mind has he booked his has he booked his uh course yet he he took his lesson uh I think it was uh late last month and we spoke afterwards and he had a great relationship with the with the pro and uh you know we wanted to take care of him as best we could so he really enjoyed himself yeah awesome awesome okay so let's just get into the mechanics of the deal a little bit so you just alluded to uh not offering full price and finally getting the bank on board I know you had investors involved so lay all of that out for us okay um so we originally proposed the deal with 15 seller financing and then there were a couple other things involved on top of that like 100k for like non-compete and consulting fee for the first six months My Equity injection was going to be about 400 000 uh and then the SBA was going to cover everything else so the SBA uh I don't know what whatever that came out to be 75 or something like that um and then the working capital we would figure that out later what ended up happening was we we got everything done everyone was on board we had to change the non-competes the consulting fee and kind of wrap that up into the seller finance bits um and by the end of it he ended up with roughly oh 20 of a seller note and part of that was a seller standby note and I'll get into that here in a second um so by the end it was roughly 20 seller financed uh 75 with the SBA and then I came up with the other five percent okay and your 400 Equity injection was that all you Tyler out of his pocket or did you you had Equity investors I had I had investors um I had well we originally were going to go with the myself and four other guys and we ended up with myself and three other guys uh the fourth guy was he was going to come in with a with the the most um 175 000 and for in exchange for that I was going to give him something like seven and a half percent equity that's not necessary that's not necessarily what the math kind of works out too but I was going to give him extra because he was coming in with the most money so you know here we are I've got all the money lined up I've got all my investors lined up the one guy who's going to come in for the most uh is going to invest through his um self-directed pension plan because he's an entrepreneur he owns a very successful business himself he wanted to get involved in the golf game good friend of mine we met on the golf course um and the bank is telling me okay this is fine this is good we're going to close we're about to close on a Friday and it is now Thursday the day before the now the Wednesday prior day before that the bank or I'm sorry the FED had just raised rates so we're like I got to get this thing done you know the banker calls me on Thursday and he says listen this deal if we go if he invests through his pension fund not an individual his pension fund it's going to have to go up a higher level to like SBA proper to get approval or whatever you know so and he's like you don't want to do this this is going to open a whole can of worms this deal might not gonna get done and I was like and I'm thinking to myself well the FED just raised rates we're already razor thin on on the debt coverage and everything like that if we have to go back and get this reapproved there's no way it's going to make it out of the approval committee so I had to call this investor who was willing to stick his neck out for me and you know and put his money on the line and say listen I'm I'm sorry I cannot take your money and that was a really difficult call to make um but he he understood I told him why I said you know it's frankly it's just not going to happen if we if we use the pension fund money so here we are 24 hours before the deal is about to close I'm actually driving I live in BC I'm driving down Rock Creek Parkway I'm coming up next to the Kennedy Center I've got the Lincoln Memorial on my left hand side I called her broker and I tell him I'm kind of keeping him in the loop I'm like how I'm financing this thing how we're doing this and I telling the situation I said listen the bank is not going to accept this guy's money I've got to come up with 175 000 um here's what I'm willing to do we're going to take we had already worked out the working capital I said let's go back on the working capital number um and if the seller will take this 175 000 as a second note on standby to on stand right at SBA loan then you know we can possibly make this thing happen and um and by the way now that he's going to do a second standby note I get to keep that extra seven and a half percent equity and I get a call back 10 minutes later yep yep I get a call back 10 minutes later and say okay you know the seller's on board um with with that and uh and so so blessing and discuss huge blessing in disguise huge huge blessing in disguise and I think that that just kind of comes back to the fact that the seller and I had such a good relationship together and he was willing to work with me he wanted me to be the owner we were going to figure out a way to do this together um he knew I wasn't trying to screw him I would certainly never try to screw him over um and vice versa um and by the time I got home and the deal was was basically back on track that's amazing and you were 7.5 percent you know richer yeah in the in the black yeah and so and so Tyler just give us a sense um I don't usually get into this but I think it would be helpful for people like so 400 000 Equity now I guess it's down to what three 175 so it's 225 225 in equity and um and as split between you and two others Yeah well yeah I I it's it's kind of tricky it's kind of confusing so is 225 total coming in for the cash injection um and the one of the guys was 75 000 another guy was 50 000 and then the third guy uh one of my very good friends my college roommate he was going to come in for 50 and I was going to do 50. but he is involved in some real estate in LA and he's doing this renovation on his house and you know he he's got to pull the money out refining all this stuff right so he didn't have the 50k liquid but you know this is like one of my best friends you know I want him in the business with me I want to I want to make all these guys rich and we're going to get rich together and we're gonna do this is the first of many deals that me and my buddies are going to do together so I wanted to find a way to make this work so I was going to come in with my50 I fronted his 50 000 so now I'm technically in for 100 but he owes me the 50 back um and he's a partner in the deal you know like I think that's such an important thing for Searchers to understand is like yeah you can go out and get get investor money but at the day it's so much better to do with like your buddies man like let's make each other Rich you know and uh and like I said these buddies of yours are these buddies of yours business people and entrepreneurs I mean I'd love to make my buddies rich but I also you know you know you want to bring in people into your deal who can add value other than just cash one one guy uh is very successful um he works for um like a he sells cyber security tools but he's also invested in a food truck in San Diego and they're about to open a um a brick and mortar so he's had success there another guy actually does he's a director of M A for an insurance company um on it's a a publicly traded insurance company he's the director one of the directors of M A for them so he's he does deals like this all the time um and again like you know having him look at the look at the numbers and getting comfortable with it just kind of reaffirm that this is a good a good business and then third guy the the real estate dude he um obviously is buying and flipping these houses in LA and uh and um but you know it's it's like I said it's more important to me to have buddies in your corner who are going to look out for you you're going to look out for them I would I want to I want to make them successful they want to make me successful let's have a beautiful relationship and this is kind of the first of of what I think will be many that's great teller I love uh I love that approach I love the long-term nature of it the and yeah just think you're just thinking like this is the first of many this is because I think a lot of a lot of searchers I mean most searches are of course long-term oriented I mean they're buying businesses that are are going to be you know have 10-year loans attached to them they're they're thinking about these things in in terms of years for sure but um I just love how you see your career as as doing multiple deals over the span of your career and um and and bringing in kind of people that you'll you'll will participate with you on that so quick math if the business sold for low to mid seven figures and you know you your original 400 000 in equity uh you were gonna originally have 400 000 in equity and so knowing the SBA that could be I don't know 10 15 um let's call it yeah I don't know three to five million dollar sale in that range two and a half to five six million dollars um you and ultimately yes you're lending your friend fifty thousand to get into the deal so you outlaid a hundred thousand but at the end of at the end of that just to net it all out Tyler brought fifty thousand dollars of his own money to the deal plus your deal costs and so what were your all in Deal costs oh boy um now you're really testing me I have no idea probably between uh probably around thirty thousand okay all right good enough so forty thousand dollars yeah go ahead yeah I don't I guess if you include the SBA fee it's probably closer to 100 let's call it eighty to a hundred thousand dollars to of your own cash to acquire a business that let's call it a you know two and a half to five million dollar business so anybody listening to this is already going to understand the compelling economics of acquisition entrepreneurship but um I just wanted to call it out that here we are again and and what percentage the equity that you've you've given to these your other buddies and investors in the deal what percentage will you did you retain of the business just over 90 between 90 and 91 so they own 10 basically great so your your 90 90 owner of a business that's worth three to four million bucks um and you had to bring 100 Grand to 100 Grand ish to to this transaction really really uh really remarkable Tyler you had told me about you actually did a the pursuant capital boot camp yeah in Tampa with Sam Rosati and his and his gang um talk about that and about the folks you met down there who will be some of whom will be familiar names to the audience yeah so I had seen the deal Sam had posted this thing on his website or saw yeah I think at the time I saw his website and I had it sounded great I mean I was in at the time I was in the very early stages of searching so I wanted to sign up and again it goes back to that education piece how are you going to educate yourself on how to do this um I knew that if I went to this thing this this boot camp it's just three days they're gonna walk you through step by step exactly how to do it you're gonna meet the key players that you need to know you're going to hear success stories of other guys how they did it highly highly recommend this program I met my banker there I met my QV guy there I met um you know all these different people that I ended up using for my lawyers so and and then also you get the the added benefit of being in a cohort of other guys that are doing the exact same thing that you are so you can bounce ideas off of each other uh we have a group on LinkedIn that we share uh deals and Sims um and it's it's it's relatively you know it's not crazy expensive so if you were interested in if you're in the early stages of search I highly highly recommend getting involved in that boot camp you're going to meet your entire deal team um and not to mention you know other investors or whoever at the same time but in fact you're you didn't use any of the investing Capital available to you via pursuant you you raise your own money from your friends okay and do you want to call out any of the any of the names there the the lender qiv people legal team your feel free if you you'd like well yeah the first guy you got to call out is is my lender Bruce marks um uh and uh First Bank of the lake the the dude is phenomenal um he did such a great job met him at the um at the boot camp and I was able to kind of walk him through the deal in person and frankly I don't know if he would have done the deal if I didn't meet him in person and kind of showed him my thinking he's not a golfer so he didn't like understand or he wouldn't have known about the Tailwinds but just being able to be there in person and meet with them and show him and having him he always says you know you trust the jockey not the horse so being able to show him who I was I think really really helped um and you know shout out to Bruce go go to Bruce for your SBA banking needs yeah great great okay uh one of the of the other players in your deal Tyler that you told me about during our pre-call that was really helpful to you and you've already hinted at it was was the broker and I just want to give you an opportunity to talk about that a little bit because Brokers are often you know a little bit beat up uh as a category uh probably unfairly but great Brokers are great for a reason tell us about that he he threw the biz by cello we started communicating when I found the deal and I emailed him and uh just kind of right away we really hit it off and he normally deals with buying and selling golf courses not necessarily a golf company like this um but regardless we were talking multiple times a week so by the end of the deal we were kind of joking that the broker was almost my more of my Broker Than the seller's broker now obviously that's not the case but that's kind of the relationship that we had um we and I don't know why Brokers get such a bad reputation because I had such a great experience um with this guy and um and once we closed the deal you know we kind of had one last call over the um over the phone as I was at the airport going to meet the seller and he said well you know what I'm going to do now I'm going to go out and look for all the different golf schools that are for sale so um I'm hopeful that that's that's going to be a relationship that I definitely keep around and not to mention you know he's got context at all these different golf courses around the country so when I'm ready to get into new markets he's gonna be my first call yeah for sure another thing I wanted to to highlight is as we covered like you weren't kind of really really like ramping up your search you were just kind of doing a off-handed like oh let me see if there's any golf related business on Biz by cell um and so I want to tie in something that Jesse sundquist who was on a couple of months ago said which is like just start your search a lot of Searchers like put all the pieces in place and the LLC and and make the website perfect and the brand name and this and that and and while some of that as you said like you go 50 50 like LLC like yeah could could have some value but maybe not um so not to say that you shouldn't do any of that but there is a an inclination and I've heard it from others than Jesse where to just like over prepare and rather than just like start start requesting Sims start talking to people um and in the way your deal came together I feel like is a really good example of that because um you kind of weren't expecting to really get going and all of a sudden you find your swept you find yourself swept up in an acquisition that is a total dream so can you weigh in on on on Jesse's exhortation to to uh to Searchers to not over engineer their search no I agree 100 I mean it I'm I'm chuckling to myself because like as you say that I remember the first couple emails I had with the broker I was sending it from my personal Gmail and then you know a week or two into the deal and now I start sending him emails from like my my Searcher email you know uh Camelback Capital LLC so and he's like what email am I using here I was like okay we'll use the LLC one and it just it just gets back to the point like don't wait like there's no why wait get it done now one of the things that I see on Twitter a lot is like I think some of these guys think that being quitting your W-2 and becoming a Searcher is like that's it that's the end I've made it it's not like it's not you're not even close like the goal is not to be a Searcher the goal is to be an operator right so you should you gotta you gotta just get through it man um you should want to be the Searcher for like the shortest amount of time possible uh but like don't there's no reason to wait just get into it get started who cares about your what email or what your website looks like if you see a deal you like you got to go after it yeah yeah and any thoughts on Biz by cell given that that's where you found this deal and it turned out to be just such a such a strong one but that that original listing sure didn't Inspire confidence but you you kind of you kept you kept pressing ahead any thoughts there I mean I had a very limited experience I mean I this was like one of the first deals that I found I didn't even really get into some of the other um places where you could where business services are listed uh so you know all I can say is I had a great experience with Biz by cell I encourage you know other people that I talk to I say one of your first things to do is just to kind of get on there and thumb around see what's available see what kind of prices there are different multiples things like that so uh great experience business highly recommend great and as we wrap up here Tyler just tell us what it's been like post acquisition how has the transition been how did the these instructors who'd been working with the with the founder for some of them 20 years 17 years how is all that gone just tell us share with us what you can yeah I know uh the transition's been great I mean the we've got the office staff in Arizona we were able to hire a couple additional um operations folks as well um we brought in um another instructor for for this year so business is ramping up it's great we didn't lose anyone we were able to give everyone um bonuses this year and an increase in their in their rate their instruction rate so being able to kind of provide them with that uh has been phenomenal it's been excellent one of the more difficult things um that just happened right less than we closed on August 8th um and less than three weeks later I was on an airplane to come to Arizona to go to our biggest golf school um and my brother had just died and so here I am this brand new owner of this business I'm trying to run a business here and um now I've got this like this catastrophe in our family that I'm um that we're working through first thing one of the first things I did was call the seller and I said listen this just happened and he was just I mean the wave of emotions at times literally like I had just found out um and I spoke with him then within a couple hours and he basically said Tyler don't worry about a thing just go be with your family I will keep keep the business going um I'll stay on basically I'll stay on and you just take care of your family and we'll talk again in a week or however long it was and I'm like I'm so grateful for that and like I said I just had such a good relationship with him that he was willing to do this I feel not only because of that because of many different things when when with the deal and the financing and everything like that but that especially I I owe him more money than I could than than the the sale figure represents if that makes sense like I I feel like I owe him so much more and we've got such a great relationship even to this day uh we still talk and um I bounce ideas off of him all the time and I'm glad that he's been able to retire and he took a vacation to Hawaii and I'm I'm just so happy for him he's happy for me and uh and the transition's been great and having him help me with that was just a blessing that's yeah that's just wonderful um what a what a harmonious relationship the guy sounds great and the have the 2022 projected numbers uh come to pass uh they are very close they I would say they're not quite as high as what we initially projected um but probably within the margin of error I would I would say um yeah and I the only other thing that I would that I wanted to point out I just thought of is the seller you know they always there's this big saying or joke or whatever you want to say in SMB space is like you buy a business where they're using a fax machine and then yeah you know you go by that like that's like almost like literally what what this the seller was he had 15 instructors and he had big butcher block uh calendar paper calendar and he would Mark out the three four five day schools with colored pencils and each instructor got a different color pencil and that's how he's keeping track of four million dollars worth of sales and he's doing this he's selling schools over the phone and I just thought to myself like there's got to be a better way to do this so that was like one of the first things we did during the transition was kind of start to um digitize and automate some of these things and it's really been working out well it sounds like he was at least a little bit online Savvy given that he got hit by Google back in the early teens yeah so the web has has been instrumental to his business um from at least you know 10 years ago between that and having him like um take pictures of like the closing documents and sending them to the bank with his signature it's uh we'll meet somewhere in the middle yeah yeah and uh what is 2023 looking like and what do you see the growth potential for can can are there States or or golf courses where they're you know new Resorts new golf courses new States um and you can just very kind of incrementally and build the business that way or what yeah so in terms of the growth I think there's some things like internally that we can just do with our existing operations you know for example you know he the the seller would set um the prices for the school for the whole year and that's done in October so the 2023 prices were done in October but there's no reason that you should have a School in Phoenix Arizona in August be the same price as it is in March and what I'm talking about is dynamic pricing so yeah one of the first things that we're doing once we launch our new website is to incorporate some Dynamic pricing um and that does two things obviously it helps our bottom line but it also provides our students if they want a cheaper option well guess what you know if you're willing to work with us on the dates and go during a slow period I can give you a better deal on your golf school yeah and that that helps everybody you know so there's internal operations things that can that we can do to kind of increase our bottom line there's other markets that we can get into we really want to get into um uh Texas um uh Napa uh Tampa there's a couple other domestically and then third uh one of our instructors is is coming over from England um he did some schools here last year um but this family is from from England they're making the move January so I think that you know long term I would love to kind of expand internationally you know the home of golf Scotland I mean England come on like Great Britain just um there's tons of Great Golf out there um and then third or kind of another long-term project I see is um there are so many golf apps where with golf videos of your swing and your instructors have these portals and we use a lot of that each instructor has uses a different app because the students get video analysis with their with their their school but they're all different so we can kind of consolidate that and kind of create our own app and you know that's free for the students for however long but then if you get the premium option you know you're going to get access to all these golf instruction videos you want to hit a high chip load chip you want to hit a draw a fade cut slice whatever um you know then you can go to this app and it's like these are common in the golf industry you know we we can we can incorporate those into our business and um so long term I think there is a lot of room for growth um I'm really excited about it and you in terms of the remote aspect of the business you're you have I mean you're connected to Arizona anyway and that also happens to be where you have this really big this this vendor that represents 40 of your where forty percent of your courses or at least Revenue comes from um you're still based in DC so talk to me a little bit about the remote nature of it and how you're managing things and yeah yeah so uh my wife works in in government and she's a lobbyist for a um for a non-profit veterans organization and so that's kind of why how we ended up back in BC um but the remote the remote factor is really special I mean it's just looking looking it was just an added bonus that that this business could be run remotely it wasn't necessarily something I was looking for originally but once I found it it was like God this is awesome you can kind of live wherever and um I think eventually down the road you know my wife and I will pick out a location that we both really love uh when the business is able to kind of support um support both of us uh and you know we'll move to wherever the hell we want to live and that's where we'll run the business from and um I'm really looking forward to that um yeah and and in the meantime you'll be able to expense all these incredible trips to you know pursue your favorite hobby I'll tell you what uh when we were doing the due diligence we were looking at the depreciation schedule and uh the seller had an Odyssey Putter on the that they were depreciating a Putter and you know immediately my mind just like starts going crazy like oh my God I can depreciate my golf clubs over so many years and I you know so there's so many you go to these like gorgeous Golf Resorts and they you know we bring them so much business so they're willing to um kind of comp the rounds and they take such good care of you and being in an industry that you love obviously and having those little perks uh is not it's not a bad thing what what an acquisition Tyler it just it just seems like a slam dunk on on many levels just just numbers wise I think it would make many Searchers salivate but then all of these additional benefits the remote nature of it the fact that it's in your in your passion right down the middle of your passion um done the Fairway of your passion I should say yeah there you go um I mean it's just uh yeah and um it's growing a lot of a lot of obvious ways to grow the fact that it was your first Loi um the fact that you know you you basically start to finish this was a what four six month process uh just really uh really a slam talk so congratulations Tyler it's um yeah I'm thrilled for you yeah how can people get in touch with you if they want to follow up Tyler at birdgolf.com that is probably the easiest way to remember it um you know I'm also on LinkedIn and everything but uh I'm I'm certainly willing to to help and Mentor anyone who's interested in it I mean I'm I've just done the one it's not like I've got a whole exit or anything like that under my belt but I can certainly tell you about my experience um I've have one guy that I mentor and I showed him the book uh the Harvard Business Review Book and he's gone on to purchase a franchise um I've got um some other folks I've been talking to in just this morning I had another buddy of mine reach out and he's um he requested his first SIM from a broker this morning so um I'm happy to to answer questions and Mentor those who are are looking for that my only ask would be that you know you read the hbr book first and the buy them build and you get on Twitter and you start following some of these people that in the SMB space you listen to these podcasts and uh if you do that I'm more than happy to help you along your journey cool and you're also active at least somewhat on Twitter what's your Twitter handle TM in the DM there you go that's right that sounds familiar very good hit me up Tyler yeah thank you very much for for coming on acquiring minds congratulations again what a story what an acquisition and look forward to checking in with you and in a year seeing how things are going thank you sir thanks will appreciate it man 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