Ep 338: Growth By Acquisition Mistakes To Avoid with Michael Vann

What are the risks of buying too many businesses too fast when you're growing your company through acquisition? Hi, I'm Jaryd Krause. I'm the host of the Buying Online Business podcast.

Today, I'm speaking with Michael Vann, who is the president of the Vann Group, which is a family-owned firm that provides strategic consulting and transactional advisory services for privately held businesses. Now, they've got over 25 years of experience, and Michael helps owners scale.

They plan for succession and maximize value for exiting. He's also a principal at Eaton Square, which he talks about at the end of the podcast, and he's advised on helping people with deals up to 50 million across different industries like manufacturing services, construction, hospitality, and even some online businesses as well.

He's also the co-author of Buying Out the Boss, which is a high-performing value book, and he frequently speaks on building value in businesses and transitions. And Michael lives in South Headley, Massachusetts, with his wife, his two daughters, and one of his parts.

Now he and I talk about how he got into M&A and how it was a mistake, how he sort of fell into it, and what he learned through big corporate, and then doing that in the family business. We talk about how he helped companies or helped people build companies by buying other businesses.

So, growth by acquisition. We talk about the difference between people who do this strategically and the difference between those companies, and how entrepreneurs do it, typically, most entrepreneurs do it, and how entrepreneurs do stuff this up. And if you're an entrepreneur as well, what not to do and what to look out for.

We talk about how to buy the right company in the right way and how to set up your company to be able to buy a business and absorb it and take that business on in a way that things don't just break and you destroy both assets. You build one large, amazing one.

We talk about the risks and the ways that you can do that in a linear fashion and mostly about the planning. We talk about how to plan for not just the acquisition, but also valuing the business, where sellers get it wrong, and then planning for exit to be able to make that exit in the future.

We talk about who's buying the business when you want them to buy the business, and how you create that or build the business or the company into such a structure that your competitors or your buyer says they cannot buy it because the risk of them not owning it would be so great.

There's so much value in this podcast episode. That's just a few talking points that we cover. Of course, we talk about buying businesses. If you haven't got my due diligence framework, it's helped people save millions of dollars and make millions of dollars through acquisitions.

You can get it for free. Go to buyingonlinedusiness.com for our free resources. Also, I work as a buyer-side advisor. I help people find deals, buy them, and structure negotiations through to the acquisition for my buyer-side clients. If you're interested in that, please just reach out.

This is for people who are looking at anything from mid-six figures to eight figures. Enjoy the pot. Speak to you soon.

Michael, welcome to the pod. Thanks for your time.

Thanks for having me. Looking forward to it.

Absolutely. So, M&A, how did you get into M&A? You've done a bunch in banking, right? Yes. And so I got into M &A sort of by accident. First job in corporate right out of school was at a Fortune 500 company, and the division I joined was doing an acquisition. So that was like the first thing I got in.

I was in a kind of controller-type role. And so I got involved in that side of it. And then when I left corporate, I came back into the family business, which is accounting and tax practice, and had a small consulting firm. And my father had always been very, very acquisitive in his own right and buying and selling businesses.

So that was sort of like, here, you can do this. I sort of like got my toes wet in it. And then I started having clients who were like part of their growth strategy. Well, we're going to go do an acquisition. Can you help us with that?

And of course, when you're not making any money, like, absolutely, I can do anything, anything. You want me to stand on my head? I'll stand on my head if you're going to pay me.

And so we started learning the acquisitions that way, doing some stuff out of bankruptcies and then searches and then representing on the buy, on the sell side. So we just have to learn them from the ground up.

Right. Cool. Well, congratulations on, you know, it's funny. I got into acquisitions by mistake as well. I just tried to start businesses sucked at and thought maybe I could buy something that's passed that 90% value rate, it just led me into what I do now, both buy and sell side.

So you started on the buy side with Incorporate, and then you started helping clients in the family business with the buy side as well, is that right? Yes. It started in the strategic planning, classic management consulting stuff, and so you're helping companies with their growth strategy, and inevitably, acquisition opportunities come up.

How does that come up? Because in the online business space, people who start e-commerce businesses, start online businesses, they're not thinking about growth by acquisition, more so than they're thinking about how do we just increase their ad spend and how do we make more money through more marketing channels, just add more marketing channels.

How does knowing when you've been doing your taxes and returns and growth consulting, how did it lead to, okay, we could grow by acquisition, and maybe just explain to the audience how businesses can grow by acquisition and why it makes sense to do so.

Sure. So I think what happens, and we'll call it the offline world, is there's a very focused effort, and we're going to build a company. Not building necessarily revenue channels. We're not building brands. We're building a company. And as we're doing that, we're looking at what opportunities can come up for us. And a lot of the acquisition opportunities you see are happenstance.

There's a competitor who is getting ready to retire, and they approach you and say, Heyy, you guys would be a good fit for us. Do you want to talk to us? Or the first one that I did on my own was a bankruptcy situation. And it was the customer of my client who said, Our service provider is going out of business.

We need you guys to buy them. And my client was like, Okay, we've never even thought about that. We're barely getting by ourselves. How do we do it? So to me, it becomes very opportunistic as a growth channel.

And we always look at there's organic growth and there's inorganic growth. Organic is what you're talking about, then more money in sales, and those types of things. But the inorganic with those acquisitions are alluring because, well, if you want to add $2 million, $3 million, $10 million in revenue overnight, buy a company and the cash flow with it. So the same reason you talked about, like, yeah, it's gotten tired of failing with some of these companies.

Let's go buy something that's already there. Same mindset. I can get into a market, we can buy people, we can buy capabilities to add to our capabilities, and build our company. And that's really what starts the acquisition process for companies. Then they get addicted to it.

Yeah. Why do they get addicted to it? Why do you think that is? Because there's such an adrenaline rush with deals. And then so you've got all this emotion, and then you see like the shit. It's like anything else you want to buy. It's something you can't have, you want.

And then if you get it like, okay, well, now I want that one too. And so, because they add to it and add value, and they love the idea of doing deals. Like I've never met a very few CEOs who are growth-oriented, who don't love the idea of acquiring companies.

Yeah. You know, because it's just, yeah, we've done this. Yeah. And we can do deals. Yeah, exactly. And it's, there is a thrill in the chase of getting it in the negotiations and closing the deal. It can be.

There are a lot of emotions on both the sell side and the buy side. There's just a lot of work that goes into it. And then when you do close, you realize that you're buying out market share, right? Like your customer at that time was like, or your client, sorry, was like our competitor came to us and said, you need to buy us out because I don't know, it that they were not doing so well or why was that the case?

It was they who had run the company into the ground. So it was kind of not to bore you with the history, but it was, you know, a kind of private equity roll-up and acquired a bunch of these service companies. And we're working on a big fortune, 100 companies for that part.

And all the classic things that go wrong with roll-ups with private equity that don't know space, it failed. And so now you've got this really big company, like, one of our key service providers is in bankruptcy court. You guys are in all our other facilities. We need you in our facility. Go buy it. So that's it, how it came together, that first one—an amazing deal to just stumble into as well, like a bankruptcy.

Bankruptcy deal where you have a lot of the acquisition on your terms, isn't it, as a buyer? Well, it's on the court's terms, which makes it interesting because you're not dealing with a seller necessarily, you're dealing with a trustee in the bankruptcy court situation whose objective is to, like a seller, is maximize the value of those assets, but for the best interest of the creditors rather than the owner. So there are some differences in how that gets done.

You're doing an acquisition, can negotiate a letter of intent, and you get a period of exclusivity. You're dealing with a bankruptcy court. They're not giving you an exclusivity period to do this. You've got to kind of put your arm together while everybody else is trying to do the same thing.

Right. Yeah. So I want to come back to you. Be tense. Yeah, it can be tense. Want to, a lot of deals are. I want to come back to the online space you mentioned, a lot of people do.

Just think about how we get more revenue streams and how we build out this primary business? Revenue streams, traffic streams, all that sort of stuff, versus what you said, is like the goal is to build a company. And that's what I hope they will do now, as well as building out holding companies.

Where do you see people's limitations or thought process, the limitations in their thought process, around building their business bigger without acquisitions? And then when they do get into acquisitions, where do you see their mindset become limited in how to build a company like a holding company or black?

Yeah, have a theory that acquisitions should be you and far between for most companies. It's like anything else. You should be very, very selective about what you're buying. And if you think about it from the context of a private equity group and their stats, let's say they look at two or 300 deals to get to one deal.

Now flip that to our side of the world. And we've got entrepreneurs, we're buying companies like they're trying to be like a one-to-one. If I look at it, I'm going to buy it. The kind of set that those equity groups have, a better fit for our thesis exactly. We'd better understand exactly how this fits, what we're going to do with it, and why this is a good acquisition to add to our platform.

So they're very, very intentional about it. And so that's why I think if an entrepreneur were starting to grow, through do we sell more of what we're selling to our customers? What's the bigger picture here that we're trying to pursue?

And if you've got a good strategy in your mindset about what you're trying to accomplish, you're going to do fewer acquisitions. Right. So to give an example, say you have an e-commerce brand selling surfboards and you realize that you've got the market and you're selling a lot of surfboards, but what's the product and service that people need either side of buying surfboards?

Maybe they need some coaching. So maybe then you become very strategic and look at how you can buy a company that teaches people how to surf, right? Right. Then maybe a different type of coaching business that teaches them to go from like beginner to advanced.

And then maybe you have something that board of surfboards, they're doing the training, they're doing the learning to surf, but they're not, their body are not as fit or healthy as maybe they need to be. So you add in another business that's like a training, like a personal training workout just for that specific niche, right?

Yep. Exactly. And that's a great example of a very strategic look at what I can sell more of to my customers. Then, on the other side, your customers, what can I sell more of what I have to? And so that combination of, I've got a community of people who buy surfboards. What else do they need?

Okay. Now, what companies can I bring in that are going to sell more to those people and will buy more of my product at the same time?

So it's a great strategic approach to it.

Yeah. And those are the things that we like to do with clients. Okay. If we're going to go, if we're going to expand this way, like there's some tools in my hands like this, know, horizontal versus vertical, what else are we going to do?

Mean, yeah, no, I meant vertical, whatever things that we add into that customer base, versus, no, it's had six different customer bases with six different product categories. Yeah. So can you give us an example of where entrepreneurs have gone wrong at looking at, they've found a business, let's buy it. We've found another business, let's buy it.

Where it becomes challenging to integrate that or run that in parallel against the primary company. Have you got some examples just so people can understand what to look out for when they're thinking about I want to buy their first business?

That's what most people are here on this pod listening to. And then, well, now it's the option not just to grow it just with marketing revenue channels, but let's buy something, but let's not make mistakes. What are some of the mistakes entrepreneurs have made? Because like you said, we can be go, go, go.

Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of times the failures come in being overconfident in our abilities to assess an opportunity and then see the risks. And I've been guilty of it myself with some of the things that I've bought as acquisitions, I need to have that same lens.

How does this add to our value of what we're doing? How acquirer that we go, oh yeah, that's a no-brainer. Like those guys didn't know what they were doing. And then we get into it and like, really screwed this one up. And it's not that, but it was the confidence in looking at things and not, you know, not being more, even more critical of what takes that company work versus why it isn't working, depending on the scenario.

So those are big things to me. And I think when you get into it, particularly when we're, I guess, maybe we're dealing with companies with employees, it's the cultural aspects of it. When those people, you kind of assume that they're going to embrace your culture and the things that you bring because we're going to do all these great things.

But there are all these hidden legacy costs with existing companies that you may not necessarily see, you may gloss over when you're doing the acquisition. And I got to have a client whose kind of thought process today is like, we're going to acquire a company, we're going to lose 30% of the customers, we're going to lose 30% of employees.

And that wasn't their mindset when they were doing, started doing acquisitions five years ago. It's just that repeated that process that they've noticed that they continue to have these failures, no matter how good they get at the acquisition in the due diligence, they still end up with these things.

So it's changed now, you know, they're more intentional about what they're looking for, but they're also more conservative on their valuation and their cashflow models going forward. Yeah, absolutely. What it takes to run that company. Let's talk about that cash flow.

You've helped people on both sides, buy and sell bills up to 50 million. What type of financing do you help people get above, and how do you help them get financing above that five to maybe eight million that the SBA can do?

Yeah, I mean, those are in those situations, almost not looking at individual buyers anymore unless they're very high net worth. Like, so you're going to have to almost go like the independent sponsor route where you're starting to talk to family offices and you're talking to a group of investors, you know, similar to what the entrepreneur acquisition, the search funders are doing, but at a much different scale when you're talking about those size companies, you know, and you've got to put together a really good capital stack and you've got to have the strong track record for it to be able to walk into whether it's a family office or a private equity group or these groups are very high net worth individuals.

It's a good explanation because it's funny that people will be like, let's just buy something for X amount of like a 10 million, $20 million deal, and they don't have runs on the board. How are they going to raise funds? It's just not realistic. Just because you read it in a book or heard about it podcast, it's worth building up some confidence in yourself to build up a track record, to be able to then go build out a network, to be in those groups and raise those types of funds.

Yeah, you have to start small. It's kind of one of the things that drives me nuts a little bit sometimes with some of the entrepreneurs for acquisition, you know, have never run anything, they've never bought anything. And then they come in and say, well, it doesn't have a million and a half, $2 million.

And if it were not looking at it, well, as my client, if I'm on the sell side, I'm not having a lot of confidence in you because you don't have that track record that you know anything, much less the concern of can you raise the money? So there's some value to sometimes starting at the lower scale and then building up and then going towards those larger deals.

The other side, too, is when you get to those larger deals, you need real dollars. You're not buying it three, four, three, four multiples. You're competing with guys who have all cash who are at five, six, seven multiples. So you've got to have it, you're competing with them. You've got to prove that you're a good buyer at that size.

Yeah. And it's hard.Showcasing your entrepreneurial experience is pretty important, too. And what I like to teach is how to become an attractive buyer. So sellers go, okay, this is the type of person that would run the business the way I would like it to be run. And versus somebody that might call it 50% of the team, right?

Taking over, particularly if there's going to be seller participation, which we see in a lot of the lower market deals, is, and if it's an SBA deal, it's got 10, 20, 30 % of seller participation. So the buyer has to tell a really, really great story and demonstrate knowledge and confidence to that owner because they're going to be skeptical. Yeah, absolutely. Can you give us an example of a business?

So you do offline, mostly traditional offline businesses, but you've helped scale some online businesses. Before we move to the scaling of online businesses, will you be able to share an example of how you helped somebody buy their first business and then grow by acquisition, and what sort of business model that was, and what company you guys had built, and what those acquisitions looked like as well?

Yeah, so a good one is we had one in the insurance space. And you know, anything, the insurance markets, particularly here in the US, they've blown up as far as multiples and everything else. They used to be kind of sleepy themselves, for two times revenue would be amazing.

Now they're selling for like 15 times. Some of them sell 15 times. And the premiums have gone up massively in the last four to five years anyway. Oh yeah. And private equity is it. But we had a company that you helped to acquire the first one, and we spent a lot of time fixing the company, you know, even though it was insurance and post-acquisition post and getting a position.

So now, when it starts to have acquisitions, they're very smart about what they're acquiring, and they don't acquire too big. You know mean? So they acquire groups that are of a reasonable size where they can absorb them. And they're smart about how we go about that.

So now we've done several acquisitions over the years, and it's been a nice incremental growth without a lot of pain to it. Amazing. And so what are the things that you need to do to sort of prime that foundation to build upon with multiple strategic acquisitions, like in terms of fixing post-sale, post-purchase?

Kind of the two that jump out at me are the company culture. Do we have an aligned group that is growth-oriented, that's at our core values, that understands the business, and is aligned to what we want to do? Because when we acquire something, we've got to integrate it.

And if we don't have a team that's running cohesively and aligned, that acquisition is going to be a disaster. The other thing, it's always the lesson learned is, okay, well, what does that integration process look like? The systems, the things that we do, how are we going to bring in board this new group of customers, this new group of teams into our organization?

What does that look like? Those are two big areas. Do we have an acquisition playbook? This is what we're going to do day one. It's pre-acquisition, during the phase, and post-acquisition. How do we do this? And that book is constantly being revised because you learn something new every deal you do.

So those are key things. It's the other one, too is very, very strong leadership teams that are a necessity.It's up to the owner; it's going to fail because they're already spread. So most of our owners are great visionaries, and they're great with the idea, and let's go do this. But they're not in nuts and bolts in the weeds type of things, which is what you need to do to be successful with acquisitions.

Yeah. So are you talking about having a solid CEO that has capacity, a solid COO, and a CFO? So the CFO and the CEO are probably going to come first, and then it's going to have to align with the COO. And is that the sort of leadership team that you're talking about?

Yeah, but it doesn't even necessarily have to be at that level because a lot of the, you know, we're dealing with lot of small companies, no one really may own the COO role or be a true CFO they're a really strong controller and they've got a really good operations manager and they probably have a pretty good sales manager and those three or four key place people in place and they probably have someone, you know, he's either leads customer service or leads people operations that are critical to making those happen.

So they don't have to be like that corporate level, but they've got to, they've got to have enough of that ability to think at those levels. So, which is easy, but you need really strong, strong people who get what you're doing, buying a division, or are capable of executing. Yeah. And would you say, for example, have some level of incentive for the operations manager?

Because like you said, we're talking about businesses that are probably doing anywhere from one to three mil, right? Like you said, you might have a fractional CFO, and you might have an operations manager, and then the owner slash CEO, probably what it's going to look like at a higher level.

Would you have the incentives for the operations manager on onboarding a new acquisition or equity play and stuff like that? What does that look like? Because that's where my head goes.

Yeah, no, typically there's, you, so I guess separate the equity aspects from the comp aspects, right? So most companies that are at this size, equity is sort of taboo.

You know, our owners don't necessarily like to give it up unless they're, unless they really, really have to. And I usually advise our clients to give up equity, but let's do some things like phantom stock, or let's talk about a bonus structure and tie it to, you know, a significant portion of your base salary.

If you hit these certain measurables related to, you know, this acquisition, you know, to get them aligned on into that piece. Yeah, absolutely. I like that. The bonus model is very, very good because then you have them integrated, and then from there build on top of what hit those revenue marks or those net profit marks.

I'd prefer to go for net profit over revenue because it's easier for them to spend a lot of money to get to those KPIs, but net profits are better management for sure. Yep, definitely. Love it. And what sort of things have you done online, like what sort of online businesses have you worked with to get different levels of growth? What business models were they, and what were some of the things that you've learned that have worked and not worked to help those businesses grow?

So yeah, so I've worked with a couple of different models and they've all been, you know, some interesting ones. So several were in the know, direct space via Amazon. So PurePlay Amazon sellers.

And, you know, when you're working with those, it's not really about the, it's about the challenge about, you know, what are we doing from a product standpoint? How are we getting our first page placement?

Stuff beyond my strategic level, but it's talking about, well, where are we going to take this product level? Where do we need to get the cash flow from? Because the goal with some of these has been to flip them, build the cell model, and let's go do the next one.

So strategically, it's always been looking at, right, what do we need to have in place to maximize the value on this exit? And so we had one client who was focused, if I can't pack the product, I'm not getting into it, because I know it's going to get knocked off.

So very, very intentional about putting the time and the resources into design, the patent protection, then owning Amazon as much as you could was very successful with those strategies. And then we'd roll out, we talked about, all right, how do we capture more? What products should we be rolling out?

What other things should we be doing? So, certainly had one of those. We've had some like, know, Shopify, you know, types of, you know, been more direct consumer that way than playing with the Amazon piece. And then it becomes about what other channels we're doing? Should we be looking at bricks and mortar as an avenue for us as well? What are those things?

And then we've had another one that was, I would call it more of a traditional company in that it had its online portal, but it was also selling through distributors. It was building out that network, and it was very different because it was building communities and the branding and that side of it versus, well, we're not just building a sales channel.

We're building recurring buyers who are buying us because we're this company. Not just the cheapest price or the one with the best reviews on Amazon. Yeah, absolutely. You know, when building that company, you're focused on, okay, how do we build those values into it?

How are we building our customer service teams and those things because they mattered more? Yeah. So this sort of growth consulting and work that you're doing is mostly to get them ready for an exit, right? Yeah. And that exit could be anywhere from a year to 10 years from now.

Yeah.

So it's a question of what timeframe you're looking at? But it's usually one of the first conversations we have with a client: what's the end game? And what is that endgame? Because you're going to build a company differently to grow for an extended period of time, versus you are going to transition because the risk factors and the things that you need to get better at are different, prepping for exit than they are.

We're going to continue to grow for some time. Absolutely. So say, for example, their goal is 10 million exit in three years, not knowing where they're starting a, versus a, say, they've started both starting at the same point versus a 15 million exit in 10 years.

It's going to be a different growth strategy to get, and the business model is going to depend on it. What's out there in the market to get the multiple that you're satisfied with? Yeah, exactly. It's more about what the target is. How do you work your way back on the target in that timeframe that you have?

Exactly. When you're building, you know, when I say when you're building a company to grow, you're building it for yourself. When you're building a company to sell, you're building it for the next owner. So you have to think very critically about, all right, if we make this, if we make a decision, how does this impact the next owner, and how does it impact our value going through?

Because I may, I may say, you know what, we love that new market. Let's go into it. But you know what? We're spending an exit in two to three years. We're not going to see the ROI on it. Don't do it. But let's do some foundational work or something so we can tell the next owner to look at this opportunity here that we have, right?

And that storytelling process. So, it's a different mindset shift for a lot of owners who think in those terms of transitioning, because it's now not about what risks am I willing to take? It's what risks don't I want to take? This is different. Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, like making the business far more attractive to the new owner.

And you can even have a goal of who is the, who are we selling it to? What does the business need to look like for them to say, We can't not buy it because the risk of us not owning it is too high, which means you can typically get a good price if you build it exactly for what they want.

Yeah, and that's one of the big problems we come across when we're trying to work with our clients, and the edge game is who the likely buyer is for your company. Most, so you probably heard the stat that no one actually can validate that only 20% of listed businesses sell. And so we go, okay, that sounds good. It sounds reasonable. And I'm not going to doubt it if you take the whole universe of that.

But like, if you get into some of the studies, and they'll go, well, why don't they sell? It's usually over half the valuation issues. So 50 % of companies don't sell because there's a valuation gap. And that becomes because our seller has no idea who their buyer is and what the buyer's motivations and behaviors are.

If I've got a, you know, I can't expect that if I've got a company with a half million dollars in EBITDA, I'm going to get multiples from a private equity group that's buying three or $4 million.

You have business owners all the time who think in those terms. I had one on the phone this morning. So what do you think it's worth? Said, I know. I haven't looked at it. Said, well, one guy told me it's seven times revenue. That'd be great. But you're selling installation, and you know, that type of stuff.

That's not going to be that type of thing, but that's what you're dealing with as a buyer. You have these very uneducated sellers sometimes. That's a good question. Like in traditional businesses, are you valuing based on revenue, because when somebody says to me they're valuing something based on revenue in the online space, what I say is it's got to be a software startup that people are buying projections basically.

There's a small portion of people who will value businesses based on revenue. If you're buying an online business, please do not do your valuation based on revenue alone. Net profit is only 1for 2 months. Also, make sure you see the taxes that last for whatever number of years that you feel comfortable with.

What's it like with a traditional business is, know, when somebody says, I could get seven, somebody told me seven times revenue. Is that not normal as well? Yeah, I just tell them to tell me that, and I go, No. Yeah. You know, it matter of fact, like, no, you're wrong.

Whoever told you that is wrong, because you're you're valuing ultimately based on EBITDA and the confidence level that someone has that that EBITDA is going to continue to grow and be there for years, five years down the road. And the revenue guys always, what I've noticed with a lot of industries, when they become hot early on, like they're emerging industries, IT was like that for a long time.

Everybody buys in multiples of revenue. And well, it goes for one-time, two-time revenue. But as they start to mature, it starts to now come into even multiples, and they look like normal companies. In the cannabis space here in the US, early on, those were selling for multiples of revenue.

Today, you know, if you can find a buyer, they're selling for multiples of EBITDA. Yeah. So, you know, cash flow from operations, whatever it is. So all these high-growth industries start revenue with, and they become down into more normal, you know, ranges of cash flow.

Absolutely. It's a really good point. I was speaking to somebody in our outreach team, where we were just onboarding somebody to purchase a business. We're doing some outreach, finding off-market deals. And the outreach guy was like, What about these types of business?

Like I mentioned, a few different industries and business models, and niches that I like and why, which are evergreen. I won't share the juice on the pod, all the juice on the pod, but use your intelligence, guys, based on what I just said there. And then he mentioned, what about these types of businesses, were pretty businesses that were in the hot right now.

We're talking AI, they're talking, like you said, cannabis was one, and it's great. It's a fad, but my clients don't want businesses at a high multiple because it's a sexy subject at the time. They want to buy these businesses and own them for a long period of time. We want something, and it's been popularized by a boring business.

I'm talking not that a boring business, but just like a pretty evergreen niche that people are going to, an industry that people are going to use forever. They can't go without. Versus like something hot because it's skin, you can buy it. Then, I mean, I've had people who have been in the NFT space.

Right. Builds up like how to NFT business and I were helping them grow the business, and then crypto just died through COVID. Oh, sorry. Was it 2022 or something like that? It just, yeah, it was no traffic and no money and just struggling.

And it's a shame to see. Yeah. No, we saw that with a lot of, you know, the online businesses too. Yeah. You know, so many, there were so many transactions during COVID and post-COVID.

And I saw some, you know, I consulted with a few of them who just got hurt because they bought, assuming that the hockey stick was going to continue. Yeah. I'm not recognizing the numbers looked like in 2019 for those businesses, or that wasn't the new normal. Were congratulations.

If you owned it, you made a ton of money. Right. It's your multiples; your revenue is coming back to normal. And a lot of entrepreneurs, I think, got hurt because they were buying businesses based on 21, 22 numbers.

Yeah. I had somebody come to me in 2022 with the business, just had hockey stick growth, and I was selling things in the medical space that were related to the pandemic. And it was just wild. And he wanted me to sell the business. And I said to him, Look, I can't sell this business because nobody's going to want to buy it with where it's headed now. Like where it's been heading in the last six months, I've realized, oh, it's not going, but we need to sell it while it's still got some revenue. Yeah. People are smarter than that.

Yeah. Michael, thanks so much for coming on. Appreciate you. Where can we send you groups to find out more about what you're up to?

So you can find a couple of spots. You can certainly find this on our website, which is vanvann-group.com. And that's got a lot of information on our M&A practice as well as our growth consulting, those types of things. And then the other area you can find this is Eaton Square, Eaton, E-A-T-O-N-S-Q dot com.

That's the M&A group that we're involved with. That's originally out of Australia with the global operation. It gives us, working with Eaton Square gives us like a reach that we don't have when we need to be, when we're just local, right? So we need to find international buyers. We've got areas where we need different expertise.

We're able to tap into our team at Eaton Square. So it's been a great relationship for us because we can be local and small when we need to be, but also big when we need to be.

Love that. Awesome. Well, congrats on what you've done, what you've built, and what you're going to do. And yeah, thanks so much for coming on. Everybody's listening.

Thank you for listening. I'll speak to you guys soon.