How Was I Supposed To Know That?
How Was I Supposed to Know That? is a business podcast hosted by Bernard A. Williams that helps entrepreneurs and business leaders avoid costly mistakes by learning from experienced professionals. Each episode explores legal, financial, operational, and growth-related topics through candid conversations, practical advice, and real-world lessons that every business owner wishes they had known sooner.
How Was I Supposed To Know That?
How To Value A Small Business Before You Buy
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Most small business owners dream about the day they sell, but the market doesn’t care about dreams. A company is only valuable if it can be verified, financed, and operated without the founder holding everything together. That’s why we sat down to talk about acquisition entrepreneurship, the buy-side path that flips the usual startup story and forces you to think like a buyer and a lender from day one.
Bernard Williams, a small business owner and attorney focused on helping companies grow and plan for exit, and I’m joined by Ben Smith, an acquisition entrepreneur who left a long career in IT consulting to acquire a logistics company. Together, we unpack what buyers actually look for: clean financials, realistic EBITDA, smart valuation multiples, and enough cash flow to cover overhead and SBA loan debt service. Ben shares how he modeled 40 to 50 opportunities, narrowed them to a short list, and learned to watch for hidden owner expenses that inflate a profit and loss statement.
Then we get into the part that rarely makes it into “how to buy a business” checklists: people, culture, and customer trust after closing. Ben explains why he wanted the sellers to stay on for a transition, how core values guide hiring and firing, and what happened when experienced staff walked out the door and service quality slipped. If you’re considering buying an asset-heavy business, we also cover a key risk most first-time buyers underestimate: fixed asset condition, maintenance cycles, and surprise repair costs.
Listen, share this with someone thinking about a small business acquisition, and if you found it useful, subscribe and leave a review so more buyers and owners can find the show.
Welcome And The Exit Problem
SPEAKER_00I think hi welcome to Hell Set Post. This is a podcast dedicated to talking about the ups and down of small business ownership from the perspective of what is small business owners. My name is Bernard Williams. I'm a small business owner myself, a small business attorney and the founder of a company called Company Capital LLC, which is a law firm that focuses its efforts on supporting small companies as they grow to scale. A large part of my practice is focused on the exit part of operating a business. And there are many entrepreneurs who are very anxious and very excited when it comes to the idea of selling their company to a third party. They're looking for that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Unfortunately, for many of those same small company owners, they find that when they put their company on the market, there's just not worth what they expected that it would be. Or even worse, sometimes that there's no market for their company at all because that company just is not selling. So I'd like to talk more about that today. And who better to have a conversation with than someone who uh who focuses on acquisitions for Lib? He is an acquisition entrepreneur. Uh he's a good friend of mine, and I'm very happy to welcome into the studio today, uh, Ben Smith.
What An Acquisition Entrepreneur Does
SPEAKER_00Welcome, Ben.
SPEAKER_01Hey Bernard, how are you? And thank you for having me on.
SPEAKER_00Uh doing very, very well, and it's great to see you. Uh so um Ben, I I introduced you as an acquisition entrepreneur. Uh Ben, a little bit about what that term means and um and what your day-to-day is.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, sure. So acquisition entrepreneur, uh, I wasn't familiar with that term uh until about a few years ago. And maybe just to give you a little backdrop uh to my journey, uh, that uh pretty much I spent my professional career in IT consulting. Um and then I decided that I wanted to do something else. Uh, you know, and for whatever reasons, crazy or not crazy, I decided to acquire a business. And through that process, uh that's where I learned about being or what it meant to be an acquisition entrepreneur.
SPEAKER_00So you started out in in in corporate America and doing doing IT work, right? That is correct. And so what was it about entrepreneurship that the first appeal to you?
SPEAKER_01So I what it was. I mean, I think there there was a combination of different factors, and I think anyone going into this space really they really need to understand the quality of life that they want to have, uh, the uh family factors that factor into your decision, right? That uh there were some things that I wanted to have in my life that just weren't available, like you know, that I wanted to have more flexibility, uh to have more time available to my family, you know, that I had spent 20 years traveling on the road, you know, anywhere from one to three weeks a month, you know, and that was my life and that was my family's life. And after you do it for a certain period of time, it's like, okay, you know what? I need to figure out something different to do. Uh, I spent most of my time in the manufacturing, logistics, warehousing, uh, vertical space, uh, as well as aerospace industry. And uh and it just came to a point where uh I wanted to be home uh more often uh than not, uh, but yet I still wanted to have uh an income stream. One, two, I wanted to have a financial asset that could continue producing income for me, even when uh I was not working full-time.
SPEAKER_00Right.
Why Buy Instead Of Build
SPEAKER_00That makes a lot of sense. Uh, and uh so as you're going through this process of deciding that entrepreneurship uh would satisfy a lot of those goals. And did you consider going into business doing IT?
SPEAKER_01No, no, it's a great question. I did consider that. And so the other thing that I had to think about was time, right? You know, my time frame. Uh to build out an IT practice, you know, as a solo independent IT consultant, yes, all well and good. Not a problem. But now when you try to build out an IT practice, like you know, that's a little bit different story. And for the space that I work in, um uh there are uh there are a number of people who do the work. The problem though is that they're all employed, one in one way or another, working full-time or working as independent consultants. So then I would have to deal with the situation of trying to recruit other consultants to work like you know on the projects that I might be able to uh obtain. So when I thought about that, uh I thought, you know, thing that happened was that okay, okay, you know, I think the next best thing for me to do is to acquire a business. Now, that being said, I uh had a friend or two that have been through that process. Uh, and I did have discussions with someone, uh, around what that process looked like.
SPEAKER_00Um sorry, the process of buying a business?
SPEAKER_01Yes, the process of buying a business, uh, yes.
SPEAKER_00So you had conversations about what that process would look like.
SPEAKER_01Um, I sure did. Um, yeah, you know, uh, but in addition to having those conversations, right, that was just not enough. So in my journey, I spent about uh almost a year uh kind of going through um and figuring out and actually uh participating with another organization uh that had a high focus on uh being an acquisition
Training Program And Search Setup
SPEAKER_01entrepreneur. And in that process, it took me through everything from A to Z, starting with who am I as an individual, right? You know, what am I what are my reasons for this? What are the demographics that I want to work with? What are the geographical locations I want to be in, right? Through what types of industries do I want to be in, and why do I want to be in those industries, right? What are the pros and cons of those industries in the acquisition process? Then moving into the whole financial modeling component of how do you know you're buying something of value and what is that and what is that value worth on the open market, right? Not what a buyer or seller may think it's worth, but what is it really worth on the market uh with also understanding that the bank is financing the deal, so they also have to see the value uh in the deal as well. And once you kind of get through, uh once I gotten through that financial modeling process in this program and then taught me about letters of intent, you know, uh what do I do now in the in the actual you know acquisition process that once I'm committed to a deal.
SPEAKER_00So you spent a whole year alerting the process and participating in this program to prime you uh for what it would be like to actually participate in the process. Um was it a classroom experience?
SPEAKER_01Uh it wasn't a necessarily a classroom experience. It was more of a cohort experience, maybe classroom, but more of a cohort experience, uh, where there was a a standard methodology uh that we would go through. We would meet weekly to discuss the material and so forth.
SPEAKER_00Great. Uh so uh so at the end of the year, uh what happened next? Did you did you identify a target company through the program or uh right?
SPEAKER_01So after about a year, that's when I started actively looking, like you know, for uh potential acquisition targets. Um in that process, I got connected with a number of the uh broker sites uh that are out there, um, setting up my alerts of hey, if it's in this geographical area, EBITDA is in this range, pricing is at this point, uh, send me the alert and let
Deal Filters And EBITDA Explained
SPEAKER_01me take a look at it. All right. So uh I went through a number of those, uh, looking at those deals uh on the different types of different brokers.
SPEAKER_00Sorry, man. Let me let me interject here for um let me ask you to define EBITDA uh for uh uh listeners who may not be familiar with the term.
SPEAKER_01Right. So earnings before income tax, depreciation, amateurization, uh, which is basically that profit number uh before you get into depreciation, amateurization, and so forth on your PL.
SPEAKER_00Uh so um so go back to your story, you've you've you've graduated from uh from from this program. Uh you are you're now um looking through broker sites, you know, trying to identify uh target companies that fit your criteria. Yep. Um talk a little bit about about that process. Were you finding was there a lot out there that fit your criteria? Was it slim pickings?
SPEAKER_01What are the you know what? I mean, I think there was a fair amount out there. It was just a matter of trying to find the thing that works right for you, right? That uh part of my initial uh criteria, like you know, so kind of coming out of this program, right? You you figure out, like, you know, well, what's my what's my critical criteria for acquiring a business? Yes, the EBITDA number, um, also geographical location. Um also uh, is there someone in the business, right, that can facilitate day-to-day operations, which was very important for me? Uh, lastly, uh, from uh from the seller perspective, you know, would he or she stay on board at least for one year, you know, to mentor me through this process to help me understand the business even deeper and so forth. Right. Right. Um, but initially, uh, what I had to figure out was to understand the financial modeling behind it, right? So I spent a fair amount of time looking at uh different uh business perspectives
Multiples SBA Loans And Cash Flow
SPEAKER_01uh that identified at a high level on the PL, you know, all of the revenue streams, expenses, and so forth, and plugging those numbers into the financial model, right? Saying, okay, now that I know what this financial model looks like, okay, what's going to be the multiple that I'm going to pay for this business, right? Um, based on revenue. If you're on revenue, you know what, your multiples of buying a business might might be starting at four or five. If it's under five million, your multiples might be somewhere between two and two and five or two and four, right? And we're talking about multiples of EBITDA, right? And that's why that EBITDA number uh is very important. And then once you kind of work through that process, now you got to start looking at, all right, how am I going to finance this? Right. And in my situation, uh I was financing through an SBA loan, right? And so now you got to take into account, okay, those additional expenses, like you know, that SBA expense, right? You know, uh that you have every month with that payment, you know, how does that impact the numbers, right? Am I going to see a return? You know, you still have to pay yourself, like, you know, you got to factor that in, right? Uh, so there are different components that that you need to be aware of, like, you know, when you're doing your financial modeling. Um, and one other thing that's very important, you know, that when you kind of start looking at other people's PLs, right, you really start to get a good view of how people manage their business, right? That you will find PLs that are out there where business owners are running a tremendous amount of personal expenses through their business. Right. And in that cell, and that and in the acquisition process, you really have you have to be able to delineate what are true business expenses versus owner expenses, right? Because they're going to try and you know put that into the value of the business, and you got to be able to say, no, that is not a value add in this transaction.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_00So um, PL again, stands for profit and loss report. Uh part
Owner Expenses Hidden In P&L
SPEAKER_00of what you do during the due diligence process is you you you go through that with a fine-toothed cone to see exactly what you're talking about, right? Whether there's anything that uh might cause evaluation to be misleading.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. Uh, and one of the things uh that that I did go through, I did go through a financial due diligence as well as a legal due diligence. And so on the legal due diligence side, that you're well aware of, you know, matter of fact, you did one of those for me. Thank you. Right, um, is you know, are there any uh critical legal issues surrounding the company with liens, you know, or lawsuits or any type of litigation that's out there uh with patents, like you know, or trademarks or patents or anything like that, you know, because you want to be aware of that, you know, before completing the deal. And then on the other side of the financial due diligence, it's really uh in that process, uh, what I went through was that we pulled three years of PL or profit and loss statements by month. We pulled all of the invoices by month, um, and then we pulled all of the bank statements for a three-year period.
SPEAKER_00And then I'm sorry, Ben, when you say all the invoices, do you mean all the literally all the all the bills that were sent from the company to to their clients?
SPEAKER_01Yes, any revenue generating invoice.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_01You know, so invoices, bank statements, PLs, and so forth. And it's a it's a lot of paperwork, it really is, right? And so we went through the process of matching up every month just to make sure, right, that what was being reported in the financials was was truly indeed what it was. And what in my particular scenario, what we found on average there was a plus or minus 3% variance every month over a three-year period. So, so from that perspective, you know what? I thought pretty good about that, right? So that's that's part one of the financial side of things, right? Part two of the financial component here is how does the bank evaluate evaluate uh the uh the potential deal, right? So uh, and then with respect to that, I'm giving the bank my financial due diligence, all of that documentation, right? As well as the tax returns, right? So you got to get three years of tax returns. And really what the bank is starting to look at, one, is that do the financial, the financial due diligence report match up with tax returns? Okay, is there are they aligned, right? That are we seeing revenue here, you know, in one report and revenue down here in another report or on the tax returns, you know, is there a mismatch, right?
Due Diligence And Bank Underwriting
SPEAKER_01Uh so uh that was very important uh in the process as well. And then once we kind of got through that, we were able to one get to doing the initial um valuation, right? That I did do my own independent valuation of the business, and then the bank, you know, for their underwriting purposes, also wanted their own valuation with their independent third-party um uh provider uh with respect to that. So so that was kind of the due diligence that that one goes through in the acquisition process.
SPEAKER_00So the you said that you did your own valuation. Uh, do you mean literally that you yourself, Ben Smith, did it, or that you hired a third party?
SPEAKER_01No, no, I I hired a third party, right? Um, because one of the things that that you do have to realize is that, you know, now I've seen acquisition entrepreneurs who don't do any due diligence at all. You know, I'm just like, okay, you know what? If you understand the numbers that well, God bless you and more power to you. Um, but but there is an expense that's associated with this, right? So so you do need to be prepared from that perspective, right? To understand, you know, that there is a cost to doing this analysis. And and I think it's a cost well worth it because you don't want to invest 100,000, 150,000, or take on a million dollar note and then find out after the fact that, oh, you know what, the company's upside down.
SPEAKER_00Right. Right. Um so as you're going through this this process, um, and I appreciate you breaking down the different elements of due diligence, the the legal side and then the different phases of the financial side. How many companies did you did you go through that process with uh as you were deciding on the ultimate company to acquire?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I probably did the financial modeling probably on about 40 or 50 companies. Wow. Just because I wanted to understand. Right? I needed to understand these numbers inside out, you know, because it's not only my financial investment when you do something like this, it's your family's financial investment. Sure. You know, so so you really do need to be quite aware of that. Uh and then ultimately, um I it came down to three companies. Um, and the first two, like you know, from a financial perspective, I mean it met all of the criteria. Um but they were uh one was an electrical contracting business and the other one was an HVAC uh business.
Licensing Risks And Choosing Logistics
SPEAKER_01And one of the things that I learned is that when it comes to business licenses, right, it's another component that you need to be aware of that if a bank is going to give you X number of dollars, they want to make sure that you can run that business. So they're looking for a key employee andor co-partner or co-owner that has the appropriate license uh for that particular industry, right? Um and one of the things that I didn't want to do was to be connected to a key employee uh that had the master license, right? That saw that would resolve the bank's questions, right? But now I am really handcuffed to that individual, you know, for for some time until I can get the license or get in place an individual, you know, that I feel comfortable with. Right. So once I went through that process, I was just like, all right, that's not that's not going to work for me any longer.
SPEAKER_00Is that how you narrowed it from three to one?
SPEAKER_01Uh yes. It is. And then on the one that I did acquire, uh, it met a number of the criteria that I was looking for. That the husband and wife were going to stay on for a year post-acquisition, had a key employee who was now my operations manager that was going to remain with the business. Um, from a financial perspective, um the bank was very happy to see how the financials uh track against tax returns. Uh, they were very happy about that. The other uh key point was cash flow, right? That it is a logistics business, so it's all about cash flow. Can the bit can the business generate enough cash flow to support overhead as well as bank payments and debt service? Right. So that's a big thing that you need to figure out in your financial modeling, is that if I take over this business, can the debt service be serviced with revenue? Right. Um, and then the other thing that I really liked about the business was that was that their fine their financials were very clean. There was not a lot of you know extraordinary or expenses that were being run through the business that you know that would cause any concern, right? Like, you know, so uh so that that was another another good positive sign about it. Uh, from a valuation perspective, the valuation came back higher than the purchase price of the business, which was another positive around it as well.
SPEAKER_00That's interesting. So what did the did they try to change your purchase price when the valuation came back higher?
SPEAKER_01Uh no, they didn't because one one, I didn't apply valuation that I had done, right? Because I did it at my expense. And the bank, like you know, when the bank does their evaluation, that's an expense that gets factored back into your loan. Right. That is an expense that the bank says, hey, yeah, we did it, but we're gonna charge you X number of dollars for it, right? So it becomes part of that, and I'm not required to give that valuation up.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. That's that's great. And I'm sure it gave you that confidence though, that that that they might have wanted to uh to know that you were getting a good deal.
SPEAKER_01Right, exactly.
SPEAKER_00Uh so um so you you mentioned a couple of times it was important to you that to identify uh an opportunity where the where the owner would stay on for for a certain period of time after the The uh closing uh smooth things over and to help with operations.
Keeping Sellers For People And Customers
SPEAKER_00Um let's expand on that a little bit a little bit. And and the reason that I um that I want to raise it is that a lot of people in your position would want the exact opposite. Um a lot of people would want the owner out of there because they wouldn't want the influence behind, uh they wouldn't want the the interference, uh, they want they'd want to just run things their own way, that maybe they wouldn't even want the expense of having a pay owner. Um can you talk through the the the decision that you made that you want to have the owner stick around regardless of what target you want it by? And I know how that wanted playing out.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, sure. So um so when you acquire a business, and and one of the things um that uh one one or two things that are very important. One is understanding the people component, right, to to acquiring a business, right? That uh the current employee the existing employees have been working for someone for five or ten years, whatever that number is, and now you have someone, a new face coming in. Hey, I'm going to be doing this, right? So from a people transition perspective, um you know, they they help facilitate change, right? That you're able to have that conversation with the owner, right? Uh discuss it, how should it be um delivered to the employees? And then when you have that owner that is standing there side by side with you, you know, supporting that effort, you know, that makes that process a little bit easier, you know, when you're dealing with the component, with the people component. The other side to that is that I used it as an opportunity for um for the owner to walk me into key key customer accounts and introduce me and sit down and have conversations and talk about what the transition looks like, so forth. So that was very important uh as well.
SPEAKER_00And uh if without getting into anything confidential or any specific numbers, uh um were they incentivized to help with that transition?
SPEAKER_01Uh no, not really. Uh, you know, that uh we had identified a uh post-acquisition uh base salary, you know, with no bonuses or anything like that, uh, and so forth. So I was good with the number again, put it into my financial modeling as well, right? Like, you know, again, another lack of a better term, debt service that you need to make sure that you can cover.
SPEAKER_00Right. Okay. Uh so um so you went through the the the entire process once uh and uh you became the uh the the owner
New Owner Culture And Core Values
SPEAKER_00of a uh of an entity. Um what were the first what was the first month like of a boon and this new company video to work?
SPEAKER_01Oh man, there was a lot of uh excitement around it. It really was. Um you know that uh it so from my IT background, right, I'm very accustomed to going into businesses and and meeting people and understanding businesses and understanding people, you know, that's just part of of like you know of my makeup, and that's what I do have done for a living for such a long time. So that wasn't a major issue, right? It was uh not an issue, but you know, that you're getting to get you're getting to know people at at a different level, right? Like, you know, as a consultant, like you know, people know that you're paid and you're here and you're doing a job, right? So it's kind of a forced relationship to a certain degree, if you want to say that. But when you're the owner of a business, you know, you you you really have to take a different tact, right? Because these are people that support you and you're supporting them, right? You know, uh, and it's just not always about the financials, right? Like, you know, of salary and things like that. It's about building a quality of life and a culture, right? That people are have been in one culture and now there's a new owner, and the culture could be different, right? Um, and so one of the first things that I did uh was that uh we sat down, you know, and uh and I presented, like, you know, talked about the core values of the business, you know, that hey folks, this is what we do, right? Like, you know, that and these core values were really established based on my conversations, you know, with the previous owners, as well as some some of my own personal uh viewpoints as well, right? Uh and and it was very important to get that buy-in, you know, on those core values, because that impacts everything that we do from a culture and people perspective, right? That that if you're not uh working with integrity and honesty, you know what we we really have a problem, right? Like, you know, so um so so from that perspective, uh that's kind of really what the first few months were, you know, uh from a people perspective and in the transition. And and for me, it was just really trying to absorb as much as possible about the business. You know, I mean, I have been around the logistics business, you know, transportation business for a career, but it's a different being on the consulting side versus being in the actual day-to-day execution of that business, you know, at the owner level, right? Like because as a consultant, yeah, you get to do your thing and and just walk away, right? And just leave the the people and culture issue to the management team. But now I'm doing both.
SPEAKER_00Now you're the management team, right?
SPEAKER_01Exactly.
SPEAKER_00Um, so um so at over time the juror rolled vis-a-vis the the the previous owner change.
SPEAKER_01Um yes, it did. Well, the the previous owner was really an owner operator, right? And I had no intentions of being an owner operator, right? It's not what I wanted to do. You know, then if I was gonna do that, I might as well just stay in consulting and just call it a day, right? Um uh so for me, um you know, it was really more around, you know, trying to put systems in place or the processes in place uh to help me understand the business and to to help uh my new operations manager to understand the business, like you know, office manager, new office manager to understand the business and so forth. So, really that's kind of what what the first year was all about for me. Um and uh
Labor Losses And The 90 Day Fix
SPEAKER_01and then you know things happen, right? So over the course of probably the first 18 months, I had three or four guys uh that left the business um for for various reasons. And you know, Covered Wagon basically we deliver high-end custom cabinetry in the Northeast Corridor, right? That's what we do, right? We're not delivering uh Lowe's or Home Depot cabinets, right? We're talking about everything that is pretty much custom made, you know, to order. So there is a very specific way that you you manage those cabinets, the way that you deliver, right? And when you're delivering a hundred thousand dollar kitchen or two hundred thousand dollar kitchen, uh that customer has certain expectations, right, around how that driver or how that delivery team is presenting themselves and talking to them, right? And how do we, you know, respond back to them via email as well as phone calls and customer service and so forth. So I had about three or four guys that were very experienced, uh that have been in the business probably for about 10 years each, right? Like, you know, so now I got about 30 to 40 years of experience walking out the door, and now I got to figure out how to replace it, right? Uh and this uh is a very key learning experience uh is that you hire and fire to your core values. Uh we spent a year hiring folks um because you know what, it was very hard to find labor, and we were taking uh chances on people, and probably those four or five people that we hired in 2024 uh are no longer with us at all, you know, and and there was an impact to the business, uh to our customer services, to our damages, and so forth. So uh that was very impactful, and that is very critical uh that someone going through this process that they understand, you know, what's the skill set, right? Uh that that's required to execute uh what you're looking to do on a day-to-day basis.
SPEAKER_00Right. Um yeah, the the culture is so important, that the people element, they business is so important. Uh yeah, coming in as the the new boss uh when there's already culture that's been in place and there's already implicit core values that have been in action, even if they were never written down. Right. It's gotta be a challenge, and it must have been very purposeful on your part to instill this new culture and to make sure that the uh the company did buy into their core values.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and it was pretty interesting, like you know, that in that 2024 year when we were hiring people, my operations manager, you know, he'd be like, Hey, listen, are we hiring to our core values or not? You know, we would have those conversations.
SPEAKER_00It's a great stuff.
SPEAKER_01Right. It really, yeah. It was it was it was an interesting time, but at the same time, I mean, it was a very difficult time. Um, it got to the point where um he had to go back out on a truck. I got on a truck for about four months, picking up cabinets, delivering cabinets, you know, up and down the east coast. Um, we had two of our largest customers to say, hey, listen, you know what? We got some major issues here, we need to fix this. And at that point, I was like, all right, folks, listen, give me 90 days and we're gonna turn this thing around. And I said, I'm gonna call you on the 90th day, and I want you to give me your honest feedback. And I called both of those customers on the 90th day, so up to my word, and they were like, Thank you. Uh, we really appreciate the turnaround. And this is the company that we are accustomed to working with.
SPEAKER_00That's great. Great to hear that. Uh I'm I'm sure that um riding around physically uh dropping off boxes of cabinets was not what you envisioned when you uh when you did this.
SPEAKER_01No, no, I I didn't. Uh but you know what they gave me a new appreciation for the work, you know, and what we do and how we do it.
SPEAKER_00Was there anything else that's that's surprised you about acquiring an existing business?
Asset Surprises Final Advice And Contact
SPEAKER_01Um, I so from the acquisition perspective, um, you know, depending on the type of business uh that you're going to acquire, uh, I would definitely say uh if you're looking at a business that has heavy fixed assets, equipment, machinery, transportation, things like that, uh, make sure you understand uh where they are at and their repair cycle. You know, how much uh runway do you have with those assets, you know, uh in the business? Uh that was something that maybe I took for granted, right? Um, that uh probably about a year and a half in, you know, what we had some heavy uh maintenance and repair uh expenses that were unexpected, along with labor issues that were unexpected, you know, it was kind of the perfect storm chaos that came up, you know, and there was a number of sleepless nights around that. So so make sure you under so so for individuals, make sure you understand what you're buying, right? You know, and if you're looking at a business that that's heavy on the fixed asset side of things, you know, pay someone to come in and evaluate those assets for you. You know, it's it's worth the expense because you rather go 25,000, 30,000 out of pocket than a million dollars out of pocket.
SPEAKER_00Makes a lot of sense. Uh any other part in words of wisdom for somebody who may be interested in becoming an acquisition entrepreneur?
SPEAKER_01Um, you know, do your due diligence. Like, you know, make sure you know who you are as an individual. Uh be prepared uh to step in, you know, day-to-day operations, uh, if need be. You know, some acquisition entrepreneurs don't want to be owner operator, right? I chose, I didn't want to be an owner operator, right? So now I have to account for the financial component of paying an operations manager maybe above fair market value, you know, an office manager above fair market value because I want them holding or handling all of the day-to-day details, you know, uh, and let me work focus in on strategic component of the business, right, versus the daily operations of the business. Um, you know, and um be true to yourself, right? That is not like you know, that you this is not something that you step into lightly, right? It's a very serious um step that you take in your life um from a financial perspective, from a family perspective, uh, and just like you know, your own health and well-being.
SPEAKER_00Sure. Yeah, yeah, well said. Uh if anybody wanted to reach out to you or get in touch, uh, what would be the best way to do that?
SPEAKER_01Uh they can get in touch with me at ben.smith at cupboardwagon.com. That's c u p o ar d wagon, w a g o n dot com. Um just reach out to me, and I'm more than happy uh to have a conversation with you. If if you're going through the acquisition process or you're interested in that process, give me a call. You know, shoot me an email. More than happy to help the next entrepreneur and or acquisition entrepreneur.
SPEAKER_00No, that's awesome. I appreciate it. I'm sure all the listeners appreciate it as well. Um, don't blame me if you get flooded with calls. Um you put it out there. Uh but in off seriousness, this has been great. And I know that I've learned a lot, and I'm sure that a lot of people have learned a lot uh during this podcast. Um want to thank you for being here, Ben. Um my name is Bernard Williams, uh, and this has been another episode of How's Nice Person.
SPEAKER_01Thanks, Bernard. Appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00Uh thank you. Thanks, everyone.