From Lawyer to Entrepreneur: How to Build Wealth Through Small Businesses with Sam Rosati

In this episode of the M&A Launchpad Podcast, hosts Feras Moussa and Casey Minshew sit down with entrepreneur, CPA, and attorney Sam Rosati to explore his journey from the corporate world into business ownership. Sam shares how he transitioned into acquiring small businesses, what he’s learned along the way, and why he believes taking bold action is more valuable than waiting for perfect information. 

The conversation covers everything from running a dumpster rental company during COVID to launching the SMB Bootcamp, a program designed to teach others how to buy and operate small businesses. Sam also breaks down how the independent sponsor model works, the role of cash flow in acquisition decisions, and how personal relationships often drive the best deals. 

Whether you’re just exploring entrepreneurship or actively acquiring businesses, this episode offers clear and actionable insights from someone who’s done it all. 

In this podcast episode, we discuss: 

  • Sam Rosati’s transition from CPA and lawyer to business owner 
  • The bold mindset shift required to jump into entrepreneurship 
  • Lessons from acquiring and operating businesses during COVID 
  • How cash flow drives smart acquisitions 
  • The independent sponsor model and why it works 
  • Why personal relationships matter more than perfect spreadsheets 
  • How the SMB Bootcamp empowers others to follow Sam’s path 
  • The emotional side of entrepreneurship—family, fulfillment, and impact 

Connect with Sam Rosati: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samrosati/ 

SMBootcamp: https://www.smbootcamp.co/  

Additional Resources: 

Sponsored by O’Connell Advisory Group – Work with a trusted Quality of Earnings and Financial Diligence partner who focuses solely on business acquisitions. 
Visit: https://www.oconnelladvisorygroup.com 

Access our archive of video interviews on YouTube

Join our Community at the M&A Launchpad Conference – Premier event for entrepreneurs, investors, and dealmakers in the lower-middle market. 
https://www.malaunchpad.com 

M&A Launchpad Hosts Contact – Casey Minshew & Feras Moussa 
Email: info@equitylaunchpad.com 

Looking to buy or sell a business? Connect with the team at Equity Launchpad for expert guidance and hands-on support throughout your transaction. 
Visit: https://www.equity-launchpad.com 

🎧 Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0hiGVZchY8qkBI7cmrpWhT?si=uN-Dcl58ShqCYjOQohgjwA

🎧 Podcast on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/from-lawyer-to-entrepreneur-how-to-build-wealth-through/id1740382586?i=1000713624956

🎟️ Attend Upcoming M&A Launchpad Conference: http://malaunchpad.com/

Transcript

00:00 all right on today’s episode we interviewed sam rosati who basically has a law background and a cpa background
00:06 and we talked about buying your first two businesses kind of right in the midst right before covid right and then ultimately graduating from those and
00:12 going off and buying kind of a much larger business that ultimately ended up growing and scaling much more and so
00:18 really this this podcast is about the journey of an entrepreneur right how it
00:23 goes from working at a company to basically kind of rolling your sleeves up buying your first business and not
00:29 really one but two and then ultimately stumbling forward right and we talk a little bit about that about how it’s about canning balling in getting things
00:35 done and going and shifting to a larger business that becomes that platform that you can then grow mature and really
00:42 build your legacy and your wealth on so casey what were some of your takeaways i mean cannonball that’s it i took that away i mean that is the whole theme of
00:48 the thing it’s it’s get started get done and he also said a thing about goya right just get off your ass and go
00:53 that’s it do it so very very motivating uh podcast a lot of success that sam’s having but not just stopping at one
00:60 business creating an environment a boot camp i mean this is a great one to listen to it’s an ecosystem and so for those of you that haven’t done that
01:06 first business you’re really wondering you know how do i do it what are some stories this is that one for you so sam’s a great guy lots of information on
01:12 this one and it was a really good podcast
01:17 welcome to the m&a launchpad podcast with your host casey and ferris with equity launchpad on this podcast you
01:23 will gain insights on acquiring investing in and selling profitable businesses in the lower to middle market whether you’re a business owner investor
01:29 or spying entrepreneur at equity launchpad we will provide you with the knowledge guidance and capital to navigate the world of mergers and
01:34 acquisitions all right guys just take one second here real quick when you’re buying a business
01:40 ensuring the financial health of the company is critical and that’s where our quality of earnings partner comes in quality of earnings gives you confidence
01:46 in the financials of the company that you’re purchasing it aims to protect your investment and ensure that you’re stepping into a profitable business on
01:52 day one patrick of okonnell advisory group is your dynamic quality of earnings partner he’s here to help you
01:58 buy the right business on your timeline patrick’s entire practice is focused on business acquisitions your niche is his
02:04 niche and over the past decade patrick’s helped more than 200 buyers like yourself successfully purchase and
02:09 operate enduring profitable businesses in fact patrick’s helped some listeners of this show so if you’re buying looking
02:16 for help with the quality of earnings financial due diligence network capital and more head to okonnelladvisor.com
02:22 or just click the link in the show notes hey sam welcome to the show hey guys glad to be here hey we’ve tried to do
02:28 this multiple times and get us together and uh man it’s exciting to finally connect because uh we’ve heard about smd
02:34 boot camp we interviewed chandler last year so you guys got an amazing story over there and so we’re finally glad to
02:40 get sam on the the podcast are you saying that i’m hard to tie down you’re now you sound like my wife hey you just
02:47 told us all that you’re doing i would imagine you’re pretty busy guy that’s just the story of being an entrepreneur man you know it’s always managing the
02:53 spouse and you know keeping uh our heart where we need to keep it going so exactly well thanks for having me i’ve
02:59 been looking forward to it i know likewise and so i think for the listeners you want to give just a brief overview sam on yourself and then maybe
03:05 we can kind of hop into just how you got started yeah so i live here in tampa florida where i was raised um wife who
03:12 we’ve been together a long long time went to school together we have three kids so we’re definitely in the thick of it i wish this entrepreneurial journey
03:19 wasn’t happening while we were in the thick of it personally but um long story
03:24 short a recovering cpa recovering lawyer i thought i was going to be a deal an
03:30 m&a lawyer uh 10 15 years ago that was going to be my entire career and then i
03:35 i got into that seat and i was miserable i was definitely looking up at my bosses
03:42 the partners and thinking “god i don’t want their life.” so what the heck do i
03:47 do now so to make a very very long story short i quit i quit without a job
03:53 actually and just needed a little break and during that little break in the summer of i think it was summer of 16 i
04:01 got stupid lucky and heard a couple podcasts that was the days when like
04:06 traditional search was kind of what you know known a little bit but self-funded eta was very unknown there was no real
04:14 community around it and i pretty much knew like instantly this is maybe the only thing i might be able to do and be
04:21 happy doing so we’ll talk about it but uh and i got to interrupt you really quick do you remember what podcast that
04:26 was cuz 2016 i mean like you said there there wasn’t much being talked about the space so i’m guessing it was almost like
04:32 a random episode on a podcast not even about eta or m&a totally so the names i
04:38 remember because i now still think of them as like the reason i have a career that’s meaningful to me at least is uh
04:45 the folks at chenmark so and james and palmer they were kind of leading the
04:51 charge brent you know brent bore the og and then i think it was patrick onessy
04:57 who was doing some of the interviewing um but you met a lot of these people at the harvard eta so i started going about
05:03 three year about four years ago going out there just you know when i bought my company i had no clue what this stuff
05:09 was called i just was like i’m going to use the sba loan i’m going to buy this business i and then post close
05:14 i was like oh my god what did i just get into and then you start like learning that oh my god there’s trainings on this
05:20 stuff that would have been great to have beforehand oh preach so what’s funny is like i actually don’t think self-funded
05:25 search is a good way to describe what we do this is just good oldfashioned business buying right entrepreneurial
05:31 acquisitions it’s not that fancy people try to make it fancy but it’s not no
05:36 it’s but i i will tell you it does take a lot of skills to you so so for being an m&a attorney right i literally had
05:42 this conversation with my daughter she’s 16 and and she’s a lot like me and she’s you know got very outgoing she’s she’s a
05:48 lot smarter than i am she’s got her mom’s side and i told her i said “i want you to be an attorney.” and i’ve been telling her that since she was 12 and uh
05:55 and i was explaining to her the other day about how many mistakes i’ve made trying to kind of write my own reps and
06:01 warranties or work out deals and like structure them and like you know when you’re because i mean like when you
06:07 think about what you’re doing with your work your attorney your closing attorney is not in the deal with you you have to explain to them what you told the the
06:14 guy but if you would understand it all right so from your side you understand
06:20 at least what you’re talking about in the structure that’s the advantage of that attorney side to the contracts yeah
06:26 actually i want to hop into because i whenever i read the bio sam i was like man this guy’s got the bio i wish i had which is i you know if someone is
06:33 looking to be an entrepreneur whether you’re in high school or college right and you know you’re trying to figure out
06:38 how do you level up and the answer is you have to have some acumen around legal you have to have some acumen
06:45 around accounting and you have to have some acumen around finances right and accounting finance is kind of related
06:50 but really i’m talking about like capital markets right understanding structuring if you have those three skill sets you are ahead of 99% of
06:57 entrepreneurs and more importantly you’re ahead of 99.9% of the reasons businesses fail right it’s not
07:03 understanding if you don’t have those three areas you know competent in those areas you don’t have to be the expert
07:08 but you have to know what you don’t know you can make the right decision you know you come out much stronger in the back end and so sam you know you got both of
07:14 those so you’re in a much more powerful position from not screwing up so i don’t want any excuses yeah the the problem is
07:21 is like 10 years that you go through the process of going and getting those degrees and then going and working it’s
07:28 like was the juice worth the squeeze with the benefit of hindsight definitely
07:33 but you know there’s a faster way to get there i think yeah go do a deal
07:39 exactly and then run the p&l and take care of all the account like get involved like learn all this stuff
07:46 because i i so we have a guy on the recent acquisition we did a kind of a carry with and he rice mba 15 years in
07:53 chemical engineering and literally the other day called me he was like holy he was like they didn’t teach me
07:59 how to even create an invoice at rice you know he’s like this is a whole different world and i’m like yeah
08:05 business and applying what you learn are two different things yeah so to be clear i actually will never forget and maybe
08:11 it’s you know one of those moments in business ownership that you never forget ever uh and you laugh about now that it
08:18 worked out well i remember you know myself thinking i’m this you know kid
08:24 who has a lot of experience you know i’m a lawyer yada yada yada right it’s what
08:29 you lean on to have the confidence to go buy a small business and i walked in first time i’d ever been into a business
08:35 i now own and the the accountant bookkeeper for the the company we bought
08:41 sits me down it’s monday morning and he goes “okay we need to make the opening balance sheet now.” and i look at him
08:47 and i’m like “what the heck is an opening balance sheet?”
08:52 uhhuh and it was one of those moments where i said “oh boy i might have gotten into something here.” but it worked out
08:59 you figure it out right because at the end of the day you can always hire somebody to follow those and i and i bet you in your entrepreneur journey you
09:04 kind of figured that out and i’m surprised you didn’t come across that kind of as in the cpa backing that’s an interesting one because a lot of people
09:10 like they’re like i don’t know what ar or ap is right so at least you know balance is a little bit more nuance
09:16 complicated but yeah i mean i joke all the time like i picked the first major on the list at uf for college but in
09:23 reality i think it’s accounting like if you know the language of business a lot of the other stuff you can figure out or
09:28 hire out but accounting is super important if you’re running a business i think so so hey when i went when i went
09:35 to college my dad said “i’m paying for one degree.” and he was like “i’ll pay for you to go to school and become an accountant.” and i did not fit i was not
09:41 in the right i mean i did not fit into the accounting classes right i’m like you know but it was one of the best advice that he ever gave me because when
09:48 i did get out and start my first business i at least understood some basics now i learned it all i learned
09:54 everything in that first year of starting my own business but i started to connect some of the dots of why accounting is so important and having at
10:00 least an understanding of a p&l a balance sheet and these reports agree and i mean and i’ll i’ll be the first to
10:07 admit having casey as a partner because he has a background is actually valuable i don’t have to like get as involved you
10:12 know my background is tech so i worked at microsoft came from that tech world and you know a lot of times i have to be the one to go dig into a lot of those
10:18 details but having casey as a partner is night and day versus other partners that don’t have an accounting background right because casey you know knows how
10:25 things should flow and he can kind of go get things done in that area and so valuable skills i’m a nerd about it
10:30 right i mean it’s it’s i it’s it’s there’s so many things especially in the manufacturing business so sam tell us so
10:37 you you you you get out you buy this company and uh it sound like and what was the company just for the listeners
10:43 and maybe how that story came about yeah so ended up buying two businesses which i think the whole punchline of the story
10:50 is when you’re an entrepreneur this is entrepreneurship right like call eta whatever you want but it is
10:56 entrepreneurship i ended up getting my hands on two deals and i just assumed
11:02 that one of them would fall apart because when i was searching there i think three deals ended up falling apart
11:08 on me so i just had this assumption i’ve got two under loi one will die and so i’ll just buy the other one well neither
11:15 died and so uh my partner at the time and i just decided well you know there’s two of us and two of the businesses
11:22 we’ll figure it out and so one of them was a roll-off dumpster rental business
11:27 so we we actually didn’t own dumpsters or trucks we were more of a roll-off dumpster broker and so there’s all sorts
11:35 of complications there and that was a great experience and then the second one was a screen door manufacturer it
11:42 building product that’s used almost on every home in the state of florida so that’s that’s what the two were yeah so
11:48 you went for the blueco collar businesses you you went for that that mentality because obviously you heard it on a podcast if that’s what you’re
11:54 supposed to go after right i’d say it was even dumber than that it was uh nothing else we could actually get
12:00 closed at the at a price that we wanted so we it was kind of you’re the only idiots that were willing to buy those
12:05 businesses is what he’s trying to say right hey that’s how it feels right you know whenever you win something you always
12:11 realize you were also the the most expensive person wanting to pay up for that so then you go into this moment of
12:16 like did i overpay right am i buying the right thing so hey my first business was an oil field service business and uh
12:22 that i’ that acquired and uh you’re just not supposed to put debt on those um you
12:27 you you if you want to make a lot of money in the oil business you you know if you want to make a million you start with 10 right and uh my dad jokes with
12:35 me now about it he’s like “yeah.” he’s like “offield services man.” he’s like “god.” he’s like “that’s a tough business.”
12:41 you know what there’s no better way than just cannonballing in i mean i know that there’s a lot of smart people out there
12:46 doing all sorts of analyses around whatever but i worry like there’s a lot
12:52 of people that want to be business owners but like there they have no conviction they don’t really want to be
12:58 entrepreneurs and to be doing things without perfect information and if you’re going to be a small business
13:04 owner you just have to get used to being entrepreneurial making quick decisions having far from perfect information
13:11 there’s a reason they trade for for low prices though so that’s the good news yeah yeah there’s always something
13:16 uncovered and usually um you can find it in the books right you can usually find it in there money never lies we were in
13:23 a real estate meetup for five six years i mean maybe seven years right and there are some people that i swear to god
13:28 would come out to almost every one of them and five six years later still have never done a deal right and it gets to a
13:34 point where you know als is a real thing and it gets to the point where man it’s not about knowing everything it’s about
13:39 knowing enough to just hop in and trust you can solve the rest right yeah and i feel bad right because you know we’re we
13:45 don’t we’re not trying to say that that’s not a good thing but i probably wouldn’t be tire kicking around buying a
13:53 small business if you aren’t sure you’re willing to actually do it because you should be chasing another dream or
14:00 spending time doing something else that’s more fulfilling than sort of lying to yourself saying you’re going to buy a business so so did you finance
14:06 with sba how did you how did you close those deals yep one was sba one was not one was conventional we found a local
14:13 lender to give us money that deal we had lots of structure on like the seller gave us a bunch of uh seller note they
14:20 gave us an earnout and so as you guys know you can’t do an sba loan with an earnout deal so we got a little bit of
14:27 conventional bank debt on that one nice so what happens then so what happens i
14:33 think you told us like this was in 2017 18 i guess it was the dumpster business that did well during co yes so the
14:40 dumpster business is the one that did better they both did well during co but most businesses like those in florida
14:47 did really well during covid so in hindsight even though we sold we did
14:53 good we didn’t kill it i had to still have a job after that which we’ll talk about but in florida i i regret having
15:01 not held on to those two businesses frankly because looking back now even
15:06 though we put money in our pocket and like got a win on the scorecard it kind of goes back to like if you have
15:13 a winner that’s doing well you probably shouldn’t sell it quick just to put some coin in your pocket and that’s what we
15:19 did yeah yeah so that’s a actually great point because one of the things you know being partners with ferris now for three
15:24 years you know he’s got a a buy hold long-term mentality right you want to hold these things i ran across an old
15:30 friend of mine that got me in the bar business um back when it was my first business i opened a bar on 60 great business casey great great idea well i
15:37 was i was down there all the time college graduate let’s open a bar yeah so the guy the guy i knew he very
15:42 successful in the business the difference is i drank he did not so he was very successful at it always ask
15:47 yourself would you rather be the owner or the customer i should have been the customer because i was a really good one
15:52 uh but but in all of that i ran into him three months ago at the airport and i
15:57 was like “hey man how have you been?” and he was like “casey what’s going on?” uh and he ended up buying a really
16:03 amazing he rolled all his small bars into buying one big one uh like a really nice nightclub dinner i mean he blew it
16:09 out um he’s owned it for 25 years and he told me he said “i did not really make a
16:15 lot of money in the first 10.” he was like “but the last 15 have been phenomenal.” so it’s like he just did he
16:22 was giving me advice bumped in this guy in the airport he gave me advice he was like “be a long-term buyer.” it’s
16:27 fascinating it was like it was it was like i don’t know how i ran into him and my wife was like “what he just dropped some serious like lessons on you right
16:34 there.” they disappeared off into the ether never to be seen again well he’s you know flew off on his plane
16:40 there’s your answer uh but maybe sam just to give people context right how big of businesses were they how’d y’all
16:46 grow them i mean what maybe would y’all buy them would y’all exit them just to give people a little bit of reference as to what size businesses we’re talking
16:52 about yeah so let’s see on those first two they were both in it’s getting a little fuzzy but call like 6 to 700 of
16:59 sde or ibida so sub million dollars of earnings so they were small businesses
17:06 they weren’t micro right this wasn’t like a buying a job it felt like it so maybe that’s a different question but
17:13 yeah they were perfect saable deals very small but we also bought them very cheap
17:19 i think both of them we bought for roughly three times earnings maybe three and a half times earnings so very
17:25 inexpensive and in hindsight what we what we all
17:30 should have been doing five to 10 years ago is buying as many of these at three
17:35 to four times as we could because it’s not so easy to find three to four times deals anymore that have any kind of
17:42 quality it’s like the old three to four times is now the new four to five times
17:48 um so both of them had seller notes one of the deals had a forgivable seller note which was great you know just a
17:54 little trick of the trade there one of them had an earnout that was the one without the sba debt and then for both
18:01 of them we raised some equity the dumpster business we had to raise a little bit more so i think we had roughly 10 investors
18:08 um we put money into each of them ourselves but you know not a lot i didn’t have anything at the time so it
18:15 was sweat equity that made us some some you know a little bit of money after that uh takeaways what would be like
18:22 before we jump into your other your next conversation what are your what like what would you say if i had to like give our listeners one big piece of advice in
18:29 that first you know from that experience what would it be well the the like
18:35 global macro takeaway was it didn’t matter how much money we made
18:42 the value of having bought and cannon balled in and run two small businesses
18:49 was priceless and you can go i had been in school forever fancy degrees you know
18:56 you name it i could not be doing what i do today without having owned two little
19:03 dinky crappy small businesses and run them ourselves it was the most valuable
19:09 thing i ever did professionally maybe besides my accounting degree
19:14 dude it’s huge because i mean that’s that’s the best that’s great advice because we we have that conversation we
19:19 do our conference we do our event we talk to people a lot of it’s just about doing like and we just mentioned it a
19:25 minute ago like you sit there look at the sim you can do all this stuff and i’m like well did you talk to the owner after you looked at the sim no we were
19:31 running our spreadsheet i’m like dude just tell the broker i want to talk to the owner i mean like i want to get on
19:37 the phone with the owner as quick as possible i want to get in front of them before i even size the deal i kind of paper it or whatever but i want to who
19:43 am i working with what am i you know what i mean but you learn these things as you get into that like speed of of of
19:49 process stop worrying about all the numbers first go try to put like go meet the person we see that all the time
19:55 though i think it’s might be generational some some form of like the way our my our generation
20:02 uh has a hard time communicating and being entrepreneurs it’s like they want to have all this optionality they want
20:08 to you know have the fancy degrees they don’t actually want to be entrepreneurs and that’s okay not everybody should be
20:15 but you know no i prefer that it makes it easier so whenever we’re the only guys that show up talking to a seller
20:20 like it makes it a much more you know straightforward transaction to get done versus f you know we’ve had sellers that
20:26 tell us like hey i’ve talked to i’ve had 10 zoom calls with 10 different guys you’re the only guys that actually came into the office right like that means
20:32 something so so i look back at this this deal we just closed last month um a smaller deal but it’s a it’s a bolt-on
20:39 for for the bigger deal that we know we’re going to close probably in the next six 12 months and uh i looked at my
20:45 uh the gentleman’s 80 years old and uh you can’t do a zoom not very communicative on the phone so i drove
20:52 two and a half hours once a week i looked at how many times it was almost 20 times i drove down there to have 30
20:60 minute conversations with him because all i could keep him focused was for 30 minutes but i just kept like that’s it
21:06 you know you find a good deal you’re like “hey i’m going to hone in.” but like this guy’s not going to jump on teams we’d spend an hour just getting
21:12 him set up so i have an old friend who’s a master at the art of deal making and
21:17 he says that his trick is the goya approach to deal making which is
21:23 essentially get off your ass and make it happen i still believe in that there you go i like that goya i’m going to take
21:29 that one i like that i took it too man definitely i mean it’s all it’s about
21:34 taking action that’s what about being an entrepreneur is and and so then i guess you know you made those exits you kind
21:40 of regretted them right what and you mentioned you kind of alluded you had a job after that right so what what was
21:46 the transition period look like and what did you end up doing next yeah so co’s you know it’s the end of it’s that weird
21:51 period where co was over right we were all out but we were in that period where
21:57 i had sold the businesses i didn’t have a job i had two kids at the time i think
22:03 so i i didn’t have a job but i needed one eventually right like i i think i was probably in my mid30s at the time so
22:11 and this is probably late 2020 something like that and so i busted on a
22:20 few deals because remember like co didn’t do good things for all businesses so like i had this beautiful edtech
22:28 business that was in the live events business well you can imagine how live
22:33 events did during covid so that deal blew up but what i did is i got really fortunate
22:40 and i met my future partner in what is now the fence business because he was
22:46 running one of my suppliers that sold to us in one of those two original deals
22:52 and so long story short he he came to me and we kind of butted around and came up
22:58 with some ideas one of which was nobody was building big businesses and commercial fence right it was kind of
23:05 like at the time it felt like maybe roofing was 10 years ago you know and it
23:13 got very popular over time but nobody was looking at it so we went out it took
23:19 us maybe six or nine months but we found a platform in commercial fence but the
23:24 big kind of green light or the mind shift mindset shift was i didn’t want to
23:30 run the business anymore i learned a lot from having run the two businesses that
23:37 were my self-funded search experience and so i i guess now in hindsight we
23:43 just ran an independent sponsor platform where the whole the whole idea was we
23:49 were going to buy a bit bigger of a business but it needed to come with a team of people that ran the day-to-day
23:55 so that we could work on the business whether it’s m&a or whatever the special project was we weren’t soaked up by the
24:03 day-to-day knife fights that we couldn’t do other stuff so in september of 21 we
24:10 bought a fairly modestlyssized commercial fence business here in tampa
24:16 and that’s really been what i’ve spent most of my time on the last i guess
24:21 almost four years yeah and and i think you know you kind of hit it on the head
24:26 right it’s the independent sponsor model is about finding something bigger right and really having the time to work on
24:33 the business versus in the business right because every business has its drama and i mean there’s days where i’m in the business there’s days where i’m
24:40 on the business and in the business is dealing with this person’s personal problem oh this person can’t complete
24:45 this cuz this thing happened their parent died whatever right and all of the noise that that distracts from
24:52 versus getting to focus on the rollup and building you know kind of getting that right platform and focusing on hey
24:57 how does the business itself grow beyond just doing what it’s doing right what’s the thing that’s going to move the
25:02 needle across the business and so i think you know sam for for the listeners how big of a business was it and how did
25:08 you guys structure it so just to be fair to my partners and not give too many of the secrets away
25:15 i’ll say it was between 10 and $15 million of revenue so it was what three
25:21 four three or four times bigger than the self-funded search deals i had done a
25:26 few years before that so to us or to me it felt really big it it felt really big
25:33 though because a few things and to answer your second question one is it came with a team that was fantastic like
25:40 they were young they were you could see the growth was coming it’s a contracting
25:45 business so you could see the backlog and the pipeline of work and so it felt for the first time that we had acquired
25:52 something much bigger than whatever my own efforts could create it was a
25:58 snowball already rolling downhill and then i think the second point is we we
26:04 raised a lot of equity the sellers my now partners rolled a lot of equity so
26:10 we didn’t use a lot of debt and so what that meant is we didn’t have a lot of you know cash burden paying down the
26:17 principal and interest so we had a bunch of cash flow so i never had to worry about the debt i was building a bunch of
26:24 cash and it’s a beautiful thing to be able to stack cash when you’re trying to
26:29 do acquisitions because then you don’t have to raise any more equity to go do more deals and that’s kind of what
26:34 played out i mean we did further raise but it was it was a beautiful experience in the early days there lbo’s leverage
26:43 buyouts are not as sexy as one thinks right i mean when you’re when you’re there sexy the spreadsheet
26:49 the equity irs are through the roof but yeah i’ve always i’ve never seen a terrible spreadsheet right it’s like
26:55 i’ve always seen a great performer it’s always good but um but but doing it is different right because you’re always
26:60 playing with your debt you’re always playing with that so having a good structure on that is uh is is mission
27:05 critical so good for y’all to be able to do no having cash opens up a lot of doors right you can you can make bets that you can’t do otherwise whenever
27:12 whenever you’re in a leverage buyout you’re typically having to do the one business plan that you had set and that’s it because that’s all the
27:17 positive cash that you have available to go bet really right and so that’s awesome but you you mentioned one important thing you said so i was going
27:23 to ask you why did the sellers sell then you mentioned they’re your partner and so what’s kind of the backstory there around the motivation to sell and did
27:30 they you know stick around and are they still part of the journey they are very much still a part of the
27:35 journey we’re all in it together we do have a private equity sponsor a private equity partner now because the business got very big and so we decided to
27:42 recapitalize last year but in the early days they they rolled a lot be because
27:49 they believed in the business i i think maybe stepping back a little bit i look
27:54 back and i think we were very lucky to have met our sellers our partners
27:59 because what they were looking for and what we were looking for were exactly
28:04 the same thing we were not we were looking for a team that wanted to do a
28:10 buy and build in commercial fence we wanted a team that could independently run the business and grow it organically
28:17 very quickly obviously right everybody wants that but they wanted the things
28:22 that we brought to the table so they wanted somebody that could execute m&a
28:28 that could source deals close them integrate and build inorganically well
28:34 that’s kind of the only thing i’m good at and the other thing they wanted was an a partner who was industry familiar
28:43 and so my co-sponsor comes from the fence industry and so had a lot of familiarity with the business we were
28:50 getting into and then i think the magic was our personalities fit well and we’re all based here in tampa so in those
28:57 early days like our board meetings happened at like a local deli and it was just fun and we were growing fast and
29:05 yeah i guess i look back on on that period of time and i i am thankful for
29:10 how fertuitous it was because sometimes a lot of this is luck no it absolutely
29:16 is but but let me let me i’m i’m going to phrase that luck because you know i call it labor under correct knowledge
29:22 it’s you know if you wouldn’t have cannonal right you look at all those decision points that you made right you
29:27 would have not been in that situation to find those people true and you also were self-aware enough at 30 at 30 to be
29:34 self-aware enough to say “hey these are the things i’m good at and these are what i’m not good at.” and so you know
29:40 that for me i probably in the last couple years realized a lot of the things that i’m good at and started to
29:46 be able to get out of the way of those things that were probably stifling some of my my other company growth in the time and to get out of the way and find
29:53 those people and that uh you know one of my favorite books is you know who not how and it’s really getting out of the
29:60 way finding somebody that can do it better than you and having the ego to go hey it’s all on you you got it yeah it’s
30:07 true and so it goes to maybe the conclusion is you do have to make some of your own luck but by getting in the
30:14 game you make some of that luck right you get the experiences you build your network you know i don’t know about you
30:20 guys may i don’t know what when you started but my biggest regret would be not getting into the business buying
30:26 game when i was 22 or 26 or you know i think when you have absolutely nothing
30:34 yeah when you have you don’t even have a plot to piss in like you don’t have risk
30:39 because there is no downside and i wish i would have started when i had no downside because then i would have swung
30:45 the bat really hard oh well yeah no oh well i’m the same
30:51 boat man i spent 17 years doing startup man and you’d spend five years to get it up over a million plus and you’re trying
30:57 to chase venture money and man and doing that in houston texas is just very difficult and uh but but hey it made me
31:04 tougher for to be able to deal with a lot of the stuff we deal with every day here you know so no and then you know back to
31:10 the luck thing it’s it’s about luck is just really about having the skills to be able to take an action when something
31:16 an opportunity presents itself that’s really what luck is it’s getting yourself out there but you have to be ready to be able to pull the trigger and
31:22 perform so good point um and maybe just uh sam before we run out of time just to thread it together so you bought that
31:28 business you had the right operating partners you guys are focused on the m&a side right and ultimately you know did
31:33 you guys make a couple of acquisitions before you guys brought in the private equity or kind of how did that piece
31:38 just to you know kind of help because you mentioned that you you brought them in last year so you bought in in 21
31:44 brought them in in 24 so between 214 what did you guys accomplish to get it to where it was private equity ready
31:49 right because private equity is not going to just show up on any business right there’s a lot that it takes to even get there yeah so in the early days
31:55 2122 the business was growing organically very quickly so it gave us
32:00 the fuel to go do a deal so we bought a business in orlando so then we had call it the i4 corridor of florida covered
32:07 but really we covered much more than that because we have traveling crews so we had two locations and then we went
32:14 into tw the end of 23 and we ended up um i think we got three deals under loi
32:21 within like a six-month period and ended up buying another business in orlando a
32:26 really big business in atlanta and another business in phoenix so we made this huge jump across the country and
32:34 then as we had another business in phoenix under loi we realized like we
32:40 were piecing together a big business with like very skinny capital base cuz at this point we had gotten pretty darn
32:47 big and so that’s when we decided to recap right before we ended up buying another business in phoenix and then
32:54 subsequently we’ve boughten i think two more and you know now that’s just our
32:60 our game is to buy more acquisitions and and go build what is going to be a very
33:06 big nationwide business so it’s been fun did the private equity group buy in or
33:11 did they lend to y’all they come in as more private with they bought in yeah so
33:16 they are an equity okay so at the end of the day we and you know
33:23 like there’s the human side to this we gotten really big we were we had to
33:28 start using more debt than we wanted to because acquisitions take equity and so
33:35 and we also kind of owed it to our original partners right they had backed us they took a lot of risk and they had
33:41 been in it for a little while and they had a lot of paper gain so it was a really good time to take some chips off
33:46 the table too so there was a bunch of reasons why we did the partnership but we’re glad we did what a good feeling
33:51 man what a good feeling yeah it was a great feeling awesome
33:58 all right so tell us where you’re at now because you guys got smb boot camp you’ve got a law firm i mean you haven’t
34:04 stopped all right while you’re also still a part of that so tell us what’s what was that jump you’ve actually where
34:10 are you at today yeah so life feels about the same other than now we have partners in the fence business i still
34:16 run m&a for the fence business we’re still growing organically we have the same team with a lot more people so
34:23 that’s still i would say the most important thing i do every day is run
34:28 deals for the fence business but back before i ever got into the fence business we had started teaching
34:36 entrepreneurs or want to be entrepreneurs how to buy a small business because i was getting a lot of
34:42 inquiries for whatever reason it was like that phase where people were learning quickly that eta was a thing so
34:50 um actually in earlier 2021 we ran our first cohort sm boot camp is a three-day
34:55 crash course on how to buy a small business we’ve added support to that so there’s a lot more to it now um but yeah
35:02 we’re about to run our 17th cohort of searchers next week so we’ve seen 300
35:09 entrepreneurs come through i think we’ve seen 60 people close at this point so we
35:16 have a lot of reps teaching people and investing in them to buy a a small
35:21 business kind of like what i did back at the very beginning using an sba loan and you know going in and running it
35:27 themselves so it’s been fun i i love being an entrepreneur so i think awesome you
35:34 can’t lose the fire otherwise you know it’s just a job and then i might as well just you know quit
35:40 yeah well you should buy all of them t-shirts with a cannonball with you doing a cannonball on the shirt a cannonball that’s what they get yeah but
35:48 you guys know the deal that’s what it takes right like becoming an entrepreneur if you’re looking for perfect information and a guarantee go
35:55 get a job yep and that’s okay and and that’s okay there’s nothing wrong with that i agree but it is definitely
36:02 exciting times in the smb space right so it’s i i just think you know i saw it happen in the real estate space i just
36:07 think the space is really just getting going and you know it’s going to be interesting to see just really where it gets to in the next four or five years
36:13 and i think the people buying businesses now to your point and we kind of talked about this before the show sam right it’s hard to find a 3x business it’s
36:20 hard to find a 4x business well you know if you have the amount of people in the space looking and it quadruples and at
36:26 the same time a lot of the baby boomers are starting to taper off too right what happens to multiples do you start to see more of that in real estate we call it
36:33 cap rate compression totally right which is really in this case it’s kind of multiple expansion right and kind of
36:38 what that does and for the people that bought the businesses you’re in a much better spot right if if all you did is just buy a business at a 3x and did
36:44 nothing better or worse than the previous guy but you sold it at a 6x right you you doubled your money and you
36:50 probably did more than that if you levered up to begin with right so totally it just it goes to your point like if you’re going to do it the best
36:56 time to do it is like yesterday and you know the second best time is today completely agree and and that’s actually
37:01 what i talk when i talk to sellers that is my biggest conversation i have right off the bat i tell them that they should
37:06 have sold a couple years ago because i kind of take the reverse standpoint i’m like i’m like you’re not you’re the
37:13 today’s market right you know interest rates are up um you know i go through
37:18 this whole storyline and uh just to get them to start thinking about man you know is there another black swan that’s
37:24 right around the corner and you’re going to still be holding your business looking for the right deal i have this whole conversation because i i believe
37:30 that right i believe that like we are buyers and a very like you’ve got to there’s waters right rough waters and we
37:37 are we are crazy enough to be pursuing these acquisitions while there’s rough
37:42 waters because we believe right we believe in our economy we believe in our country we believe in this whole industry and uh but those sellers have
37:50 to know there’s a reason why they’re selling because they do not want to ride these rough waters right now right we
37:56 don’t know what’s going to happen right we’re we’re every asset class is in a is in a bubble agree is now a good time to
38:04 talk we’re buying the last five years so the point though is it’s almost in
38:09 reverse you can use that with sell uh with buyers which is if you look back over the last five or six years every
38:16 year has had some crazy event we never would have predicted and yet it’s okay
38:23 we still should have been doing this which is like 2020 covid hits nobody saw that coming then inflation rips supply
38:31 chain blows up then rates go to the sky and the economy kind of starts falling
38:38 apart now tariffs it’s like well every year there’s something so you just have
38:43 to learn how to deal with it yep you can’t let the stress keep you going so that’s right all right so i guess with
38:51 that said let’s go ahead and match them all day we can come to one of the smb bashes when you have it all right so the rock
38:58 is where we ask the same the the interviewer the same three questions so the first question what do you like to do in your free time i spend most of my
39:05 free time with my three kids just because they’re super young and we both know they’re not going to be that way
39:11 forever so we spend a lot of time with the kids and whatever time is left over which is usually nothing i play a little
39:19 bit of golf so that’s what i do but that was me last night i was like man the
39:24 kids consumed me all day today and it finally bed and it’s like 10:30 at night and i had an hour of things i wanted to
39:29 do and and so that’s that’s part of life so yeah all right and what is your most memorable moment in your business journey so far i don’t know if i have a
39:37 great answer for that i mean i think back and i have so many memorable experiences but i would say you know the
39:44 times where the the days where we close whether it’s on a a buy or a sell to me
39:50 are so meaningful because they change so many people’s lives and so i i have like a history of making sure deal closing
39:58 dinners still happen i force people to make tombstones so like all of the deal
40:03 closings to me are so memorable and so uh you know they’re life-changing for
40:08 buyer and seller so i got a lot of those that’s awesome i’m gonna i’m gonna take that i’m going to think about that
40:14 that’s pretty cool the the closing dinners i think that’s important that’s important yeah and then last but not
40:19 least favorite tool or resource yeah i figure everybody says chat gbt so
40:24 i’m going to go totally the opposite way and say my notebook where i just write
40:29 down my thoughts with pen and paper because it’s old school and that’s just kind of the way i do stuff all right
40:35 well speaking of notebook and chatbt i have to put it out there so google has a product called notebook lm i don’t know if you know what that is but you could
40:41 pipe in all the things that you want into it and it’ll build a tailored ai agent just for your information so if
40:48 you can digitize all that and just dump it into it it’ll let you start to search that you could look up things and so
40:53 anyways it’s called notebook lm man that’s crazy i got some journals i’d love to scan that that’s awesome that’s
40:59 cool cool all right well sam yeah sam thanks so much for hanging out with us how can listeners get a hold of you you
41:06 can see me on linkedin follow me on twitter and uh that’s about it i try to
41:12 stay at least a little bit active so so dm me on twitter or send me a message on linkedin that’s the best way to do it
41:18 awesome well sam thank you very much we got to see you out here in houston will come out to one of your events here soon so we’ll make something happen thanks
41:24 for doing it boys i enjoyed it thank you for listening to the m&a launchpad podcast if you’ve enjoyed today’s
41:30 podcast and would like to support us please leave us a rating and a review after you listen if you’re looking for guidance on your next business
41:36 acquisition or sale capital to support your next business transaction or to invest in a private equity opportunity
41:42 visit equityaunchpad.com to learn more and to connect with our team if you know of an individual who would be a great
41:48 guest for the show head over to equityaunchpad.com/nominate where you’ll have the chance to refer
41:54 yourself or someone else to be a guest on our show i’m casey mchu and i look forward to talking with you next week

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