A Peek at an Early Stage PE Play

Hey deal makers,

Welcome to the Better Business Brief, where I share takeaways from:

• running a business I’m building to sell for millions
• my consulting with business owners building to sell for millions
• tips and tricks you can use to do the same

I’ve come to use this newsletter as kind of a combination of an educational platform to share what I’m learning and also as a journal to document what I’m doing. Being a very visual learner, I often learn the most from personal anecdotes, examples, and actual application of concepts so I like to document things in case there is someone that wants to learn from my mistakes and successes. I’ve had a LOT going on in the past month to help progress my personal plans.

So today, in less than 5 minutes, I’ll give you:

?? Where I’m at with the Private Equity Play

?? Where I’m Planning on Going with it

?? How I Plan on Getting There

Here’s where we’re at now:

Currently, we’re in the early stages of a private equity roll-up play, but have a lot of momentum. To be specific, we have what is called a “platform company”, which means that we have ownership in a company that we can use to leverage off of to acquire more. This is an air duct cleaning company, and we have the ability to quickly create licensing partnerships or make expansions ourselves and grow quickly because of some internal knowledge of Google ads and upselling techniques. The coolest thing is that this is one specialized internal home service of very many that exist and are needed by people. The idea is that others we acquire in the future will be able to share from this growing customer base and also be available services when air duct work is called out for, ultimately helping the businesses grow together.

And that’s why it’s important to start with a platform company and form your plans around it. The more that the collective acquisitions support each other, the easier it will be to grow the companies and get great returns, which is the goal.

Another part of it is that it will be easier to raise the rest of the capital we are going to raise since we have proof of concept and momentum already. One thing I’ve learned with a plan like this is that aside from having a great team, the right experience, and a well laid out plan, it’s essential to have momentum to speak for to get people on board. People want to be part of something that has a great growth trajectory and future outlook.

That brings me to my next thing - one thing that’s happened that I didn’t expect but have been loving is that we have recruited a team of interns to help us with the cause. This happened 100% organically too. Crazy. I started posting daily videos showing my process of building on TikTok and Instagram and it has been a huge success from a social media growth perspective, but in my opinion, a bigger success from a recruiting standpoint. I now have a team of 7 unpaid interns set to start within about the next month that are all involved because they genuinely want the experience to help with their future plans. I think this is the coolest thing ever, because the more help we get, the faster we can move.

From a capital-raising standpoint, we have a lot of potential investors picked out. Some have been soft-pitched on the idea, and we are honing in on selection criteria to help us determine who is or is not a good fit strategically for our investors. This is because we do not want to just raise money from them, but also want each investor to bring something to the table that can help with the plans overall.

We also have a very strong set of selection criteria for the businesses we want to acquire. This is important because we need to stay unified across the entire team in looking for ones that support the larger plan. We will only be looking for businesses that are well-established with good growth trajectory and have opportunities available that we could easily use to grow them without a ton of extra effort. We are also looking exclusively for business owners that are willing to maintain part of their ownership throughout the course of the plan, so that we can keep someone in the drivers seat that knows the business and can make sure it’s operating correctly.

Here’s the vision for the future:

We will continue locking down limited partner investors that help strategically until we reach our entire fund amount. We are currently targeting $5 million. We will then use that fund to make a series of acquisitions that support our plan, and create an ecosystem of companies that help grow each other. While we do this, we will be working to integrate these companies with common technology systems and support systems, while maintaining their brand identity and operational capabilities. Once all acquisitions are made and systems are integrated, we will have a nice package of companies that we can sell for a bigger multiple, and we will sell it to someone that is willing to pay a lot of money for it.

Here’s how we’ll get there:

We have 3 core teams that will be operating.

1. One is investor relations. We need to maintain great relationships with and transparency with all investors and limited partners to make sure everyone is happy and supported.
2. Another is our search team. We will have a team of people searching for the right businesses to acquire. This will involve tapping into their networks but also lots of cold outreach. Through these efforts, we will set meetings with potential acquisition targets and explore whether they are a good fit.
3. The last of the core teams early on is the financial analysis team. These people will be creating models and doing deal analysis to make sure everything we are doing checks out financially.

There is more to it than that obviously, but those core 3 teams working together will be the basis of our plan as we move forward. Our interns have been split up across each team so that we have a great level of support. I am excited about the future for this plan, and cannot wait to see how it comes to fruition. More updates to come.

If reading this sparked ideas about how you might like to get involved, or if you still have questions about what I’m doing and how you might be able to grow your business with these ideas, I’d love to talk about it: Grab some time here and we can talk about how I might be able to help.

Be great. Keeping growing and aspiring. And as always: I hope you got something from this.

If you did, share it with a friend who may too, as this is the best way for me to grow it and make this better.

They can even sign up here :)

Happy value-building to all of you!

See you next time for Better Business Brief,

-Brody