One of the hardest constraints on buying a business mid-career is that the business earnings have to service the debt, fund reinvestment, and still pay for your life.

And if you've got a mortgage and a family, your life is expensive.

‍But start buying businesses early enough and that constraint mostly goes away.

‍Brendan Guerin was a few months out of college when he and three friends bought a dog daycare outside Chicago in December 2020.

It threw off only about $200,000 of earnings, split four ways.

None of them took a dollar out, and all four kept their day jobs.Today Brendan is the full-time CEO of a six-location pet care company across Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana, doing north of $5 million in revenue with over 100 employees.

Listen for the margins in the dog daycare industry, which are way better than we're used to hearing on Acquiring Minds.

Part of that is the model: Brendan buys the real estate along with every business, and he explains why he won't do a deal any other way.

Also listen for his posture toward the private equity money now pouring into dog daycare.Where the consolidators standardize, Brendan has run the other direction — same names, same teams, same connection to each daycare's community.

That has become the reason that these days sellers call him.

‍Here he is, Brendan Guerin, CEO of Argos Partners.