SMB Owner and Investor. Currently growing a manufacturing & installation company and investing in others. Continuously learning and improving.
Georgia
Joined June 2021
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In late 2020, I bought a biz that:
had no recurring revenue;
had negligible ebitda;
w/ high day-to-day owner involvement;
that was project-based;
and capital intensive;
with a poor culture;
in a highly consolidated industry;
that I knew absolutely nothing about;
and was only the 2nd deal I looked at;
as a first time business owner;
and I didn't do a QofE.
The business has grown significantly (top and bottom lines) since I bought it, but more importanly, it has been extremely fulfilling.
While I would never recommend that cocktail to anyone, you can make businesses that have unfavorable characteristics that everyone poops on work if your initial thesis is right, you find a couple of people that care deeply and treat them well, and you find a couple of good partners/vendors (I found a couple on here).
There's also a lot more juice to squeeze on these types of businesses and you should accordingly pay a much lower multiple.
MarkMagaro retweeted
Voter ID or we don't have a country
🚨HOLY COW🚨
THE MOST IMPORTANT VIDEO OF 2026
@JamesOKeefeIII did an undercover operation to expose Minnesota’s corrupt vouching system.
According to law, 1 registered MN voter can vouch for up to 8 persons — those 8 people do NOT need ID.
👉“You are the ID,” an Election Day Worker told O’Keefe👈
Dressed in a niqab, @camhigby showed that a transgender Muslim woman can easily be vouched for as a faceless voter without ID.
There is no record for persons being vouched for.
There is no system in place to stop 1 registered MN voter from vouching for 8 persons at multiple precincts.
There is nothing to stop the vouching system from being abused.
This is a constitutional crisis.
Pass the SAVE America Act!
‼️SEND THIS VIDEO TO EVERY LEGISLATOR YOU KNOW IN AMERICA‼️
On a recent call with a business broker "I am absolutely not afraid that the 2025 numbers are down. 2026 is going to be a great year."
A couple of months ago we had to call an ambulance for my daughter. Just got the bill. $2182.68 base rate; $597.76 for mileage (16 miles); and $189.80 for an EKG monitor ($189.80) = $2970.24.
I'm getting hosed here right @AMR_Social ?
Those of you who own small businesses and offer health insurance to your employees (and pay 50+%) - how are you dealing with the crazy increases this year? What do you do if you've got a couple of high risk employees whose conditions are significantly driving up rates? Help please.
Glad I finally got up to Greenville to see my buddy @RoryTyer and his beautiful nursery. I’ve followed Rory’s SMB journey for a while now and I’m pumped to see him thriving!
One of his employees shared with me that Rory is a great boss. Never had a doubt about that!
Unsolicited advice: if you get a gut feeling that a potential client is going to be an enormous pain for you while you are scoping the project, strongly consider giving up the projected revenue and profit and do not take the project. Your profit will likely not end up as projected and you will spend a lot of time dealing with that client.
Additionally, remember that ARGUING WITH AN IRRATIONAL PERSON IS ITSELF, IRRATIONAL! A trusted sub-contractor texted that to me today. And yes, it is directly related to the situation above.
MarkMagaro retweeted
Hey @TonyAnnan1
I have a kid we need to offer a scholarship to:
He is a Sports Illustrated top 20 player
Team of the year for ENCL
Just named an all American
Coming from an alum who wants to help, dm me if want more info
Spurs up 🐔
One of those mornings where several nasty issues hit my business seemingly all at once. I'm right on that edge between saying "f it, it's not worth the stress, just sell this damn thing" and telling myself to "suck it up, quit whining, and deal with these things like a competent leader"
Commercial auto policy renewal quote went up 60% from last year. No accidents or anything like that. Anyone else experiencing this?
MarkMagaro retweeted
Doubling down on this reply of mine in case more people need to see it:
I bought my business from a seller who hadn’t really realized he was ready to sell until our first conversation crystallized it for him
He at least had a relationship with a consultant who’d helped him understand the concept of enterprise value and what about his business was good and not good in the eyes of a buyer. Many business owners do not have such a relationship, and have no plan
If you are a proprietary searcher struggling with feeling motivated to make the call, or dealing with fear of hearing no, two things:
First, the only way out of that is through. Repetition begets mastery
Second, reframe this to yourself: you might be the first person to tip the scales toward that business owner actually being motivated to start making a plan. Whether or not that plan involves you, that’s a really powerful influence to have. You are giving a business owner a chance to figure out one of the most important things they’ll ever need to figure out, and that’s pretty awesome.
Hopefully that helps motivate somebody
This is an under emphasized aspect of acquisition entrepreneurship IMO
When I first started cold calling business owners it felt really presumptuous; who was I and why did I have a right to think they might want to talk to me about selling the business? I reframed it to myself this way: I might be the first person to get them really thinking about one of the most consequential moments in their lives. Many business owners just don’t know what they don’t know and even if they don’t want to sell to me, I might change a trajectory like this just because I brought it up. People shouldn’t underestimate how many business owners have zero succession / exit strategy
Anyone else getting completely hounded by transportation companies this week? By hounded, I mean at least 3-4x more than normal?
MarkMagaro retweeted
Everybody knows that systemizing your business is the key to scaling.
And they're right. However, it's a big fat catch 22.
When you're small, the owner needs to dive deep into the depths of their brain to uncover all the nuance to what they do.
Then, find an easy to access/organized place to document everything.
Then employees need to be trained and held accountable to the new written standard over and over until the culture is redefined.
What people don't discuss enough is this wears down leadership.
You're frustrated because all other responsibilities you have take a back seat when you're busy documenting SOPs.
However, you will never be able to grow without documenting SOPs.
It's a necessary evil to growth.
To better display the time investment of systemizing, here's what I did today.
We took on a new customer who we only make doors for. The packing process is vastly different from assembled cabinets.
So I went down to the shop to create a standard to train employees on to ensure efficiency and quality.
I wrapped, packed, and palletized 12 doors while documenting photos to later create an SOP.
I also recorded a video for training purposes.
I then banded everything to a skid and figured, why not make an SOP on how to use the bander as well.
At the end of the day, it took 8 hours for me to pack, standardize, document, create the SOP, store in Notion, and print QR codes for the shop.
Had I just needed to pack the parts with everything kept in my head, it would have taken 1-2 hrs max.
It never feels like you have time. And you don't. You have to make it a priority.
Now this task can be delegated to anybody and I'll never have to do it again.
That's the magic of SOPs, but man does it suck spending all of that time creating one for the first time.
For perspective, there are hundreds of tasks like this on the shop floor alone that could benefit from an SOP.
Don't even get me started on the office.
I believe this where the difficult feeling originates from while bootstrapping growth.
You hit glass ceilings where you still have to do everything that got you there AND you have to do everything that will get you through it.
Here is how the banding SOP is displayed in the shop via QR code.
MarkMagaro retweeted
The absolute quickest and best dissection of the Ham@s-leftist alliance that you have ever heard.
xitter.cf/Sarit2024/status/18242…
Friend is under LOI and just received recent financials. $1.15M in rev for '23, but only $400K so far this year with $480K in the pipeline.
The seller is ready to retire & says drop off is b/c he basically stopped going after new work. Friend is obviously concerned & broker is not happy. He still thinks its a good biz with an opportunity that matches his skillset.
What's the play?
MarkMagaro retweeted
The curious case of @DouglasKMurray - you can’t say about any of his speeches that “this is one of his best”. Because they are all the same - champagne&caviar for brain and soul.
His latest in Paris - with captions.
On Antisemitism , what else these days ?…
A friend is about to go under LOI. 2 different lenders told him a QofE was unnecessary bc he’s using SBA debt.
Thoughts? @ElliottEHolland @ConnorAbene @BoilerPlateCPA @SBA_Matthias