What’s the Big Idea?
Taking a Second (Maybe Third) Look at Entrepreneurship
When I looked at entrepreneurship I always saw it through the lens of great idea > startup — either ‘bootstrapping’ or venture capital backed. The great idea never came. My take on entrepreneurship morphed into take an existing idea, only execute better. The idea of a multi-unit franchise was also on a slow burn in the back of my mind. But the high cost of franchise fees and the additional capital required was always a non-starter for me.
Then I discovered entrepreneurship through acquisition (ETA) — the idea that you could find investors to buy an existing business and install yourself as the CEO. You find something with $1 to $2 million in EBITDA, raise 20 percent equity and debt finance the other 80 percent. Voila! You’re now a CEO and banking a significant sum when the business sells in seven to ten years. Leveraged buy-outs on Main street.
A little history.
I did the bootstrapped startup e-commerce thing from 2017 to 2020. It was hard. I started a beard oil brand called Valhalla, which led to a women’s body oil brand called Valkyrie. I did a combination of Amazon FBA and Shopify. Revenue never topped $20k. Clearly this wasn’t enough to leave my full-time job. Did I mention it was a lot of work? I ended up winding down the business and selling the brand during the pandemic.
Next, I took a side gig with Howard Lindzon and his producer Knut Jensen on the Panic with Friends Podcast. I spent 20 months there and learned quite a bit about business, investing and startups. After Howard wound down the podcast, I found myself looking for the next thing.
And you could say it was baptism by fire. I came across Sarah Moore’s story by way of the My First Million podcast. That opened up the wild world of Entrepreneurship through Acquisition, or ‘ETA’ as the cool kids say. And I’m all in. Applying what I’d learned about trends from Howard, this space looked like a massive opportunity based on the demographic trend of 2.3 million small-to-medium sized baby boomer businesses whose owners have to retire at some point. It’s a tidal wave.
Now that I’ve found myself in the ETA space, the goal is to learn as much as I can and help as many people as I can on their journey while I continue mine. And my journey is to search, purchase, and run an SMB here in Tampa, Florida. The trick is to make sure I don’t wind up “buying a job”. Meanwhile, what can I help you with?
