oday's guest started buying businesses about 10 years ago.

And today the portfolio that Andrew Blazenko has acquired generates $60m of aggregate revenue and $12m of EBITDA.

‍But Andrew started small.

‍His first business was a building exterior cleaning company doing less than $1m in revenue, about $250k of SDE.

‍He bought that one as a side investment, while keeping his day job.

Flash forward, and in late 2024 he closed on a $19m manufacturing business plus $22m in associated real estate.

So can you can see the trajectory here.

Now, though the size of the businesses Andrew acquires has changed dramatically, one thing has remained constant: his dependence on operators to make his acquisitions go.

Andrew's playbook has always been to pair operators with businesses.

Which is nothing new, really; private equity does the same.

But Andrew didn't start as an independent sponsor doing deals in the style of PE. He started as an acquisition entrepreneur like you.

And though the conventional wisdom, and even what we preach here on Acquiring Minds, says that you should not expect to just install operators for your first acquisition — rather, you should expect to be the operator — Andrew was installing operators from day one.

It has worked well for him, and we unpack it.

Here he is, Andrew Blazenko of Eterna Equity.