Last week’s to-dos were to:

1. Set up a scraper to get contact info off websites

2. Get familiar with Streak

I’ve yet to set up a scraping process, but I made progress on Streak. I’m sending out my my first bulk email as I write this. It’s a personalized email that goes out followed up a couple days later with a second email if they first email doesn’t get a response.

The ops side of the project is coming along, but I want to share takeaways from three interesting conversations I had this week:

• Two talks that make me think

• Very weird business I’m talking to (ecom that sells to gov’t)

Two talks that made me think

I connected with founders/entrepreneurs in two businesses closely related to my BaB (that’s Buy a Biz 😉) project.

Talk #1: Rejigg

Rejigg is cool. It’s a platform to buy/sell off-market SMBs. The founder, Alex, recognized the same problem I found with for-sale businesses. So, they’re trying to build a community (my words) of off-market businesses and high-quality buyers.

I found most of their deals were out of my price range (for now) and are up to $10m in revenue, but still an interesting platform and worth my $100 monthly subscription.

I actually have a call scheduled with a business they listed that fits my own criteria.

The conversation was interesting because they’re trying to build a platform around off-market SMB owners, the same type of owners I’m trying to find.

(He even offered to pay me for a lead [more on my thoughts on that below]).

They raised VC to go after this market, which seems like a mistake, but I could be wrong.

Talk #2: Private equity

I spoke with a Twitter follower who works at a $1bn PE fund. He reached out about partnering to supply the sell-side leads for a community of buyers and sellers that he’s building (has nothing to do with his PE day job).

Similar to Alex at Rejigg, he’s trying to connect off-market owners with a buyers list.

Both of these conversations reinforced something for me:

There’s a ton of value in the high-quality off-market leads I’m sourcing.

They aren’t easy to source (as I found out from my third conversation) and require tons of tender, loving care. But, man, there’s a lot of opportunity here.

Which made me think…

Should I be selling my leads?

I’ve pondered this question a lot this week.

My primary goal is to source and acquire a strong business that’s under-managed.

But what do I do with all the hundreds of other decent businesses I know about?

I’ve thought about including them on this email, building my own database, scouting for hold companies, scouting for enterprises looking for strategic acquisitions, etc. etc.

Monetizing the front-end of my search (lead gen) is tempting, because I would reinvest that cash flow into the business search, which would open up more opportunities. I don’t want to do an SBA loan, so the more cash I can get my hands on, the better.

I haven’t decided what to do. Truthfully, I don’t have enough information yet.

I would love to hear from my humble reader list if you have any thoughts/ideas on this question. 🙂 

Talk #3: Government ecommerce

I talked to the most ready-to-sell, off-market owner I’ve met so far. And it was fun!

Here’s the quick roundup on that conversation:

• 100% ecommerce

• Owned/operated 100% by two Baby Boomers out of their garage

  • In business since 2007

• Sells directly to government agencies (also sells to civilians)

• Wants to retire and go on a ton of cruises

I didn’t expect to be in conversations with an off-market ecom business that’s selling to government agencies, but here we are.

He wouldn’t tell me details around revenue and profit until an NDA is signed (understanable). My guess with the info from my call is that the business is doing high seven figures of revenue.

We hung up from a phone conversation with the understanding that I would sign an NDA and we’d move into those questions.

Then, a funny thing happened.

He texted me: Send me your LinkedIn.

I sent him my LinkedIn.

Email me your resume and references, he said.

My internal reaction was…What?! Lol.

I got a little frustrated in the moment (I’m not applying to apprentice. I’m trying to make him an offer to buy his biz!!!) and I pushed back.

His next response was a light bulb for me.

💡 Here’s the lightbulb:

I’m dealing with a ~70 year old.

In his words, this business is his baby.

I am, presumably, the first stranger with whom he’s discussed the details of his business. He simply wants to make sure he’s not getting scammed, and he’s a little nervous.

Totally understandable… and I actually love that I’m working with a guy like that instead of a seller on Microacquire who takes 3 seconds to use a keyboard shortcut and send me his business’s pitch deck that he had made up on Upwork.

I believe the homeruns aren’t going to be easy, and this was a window into that.

As you can see, I obliged and sent over a couple of references.

I’ll be out this week for minor surgery, so I won’t get much done on the ops side this week. My goal is to start email sequences to 3-5 businesses per day.

Thanks a bunch for reading.

Mike