It's easier to buy revenue than create it. This observation is at the root of entrepreneurship through acquisition and it had a life changing effect on today's guest. Devin Fitzgerald had a choppy upbringing, but his grandmother was a strong and steadying hand. And now, as a business buyer and owner in his 30s, Devin's home health group is named for her. For Ruth Miriam Lang, our ML Service group is comprised of two home healthcare businesses that Devin acquired. One that was doing 1.1 million in revenue, the other that was doing 3.9 million. Both of these businesses were in decline when Devin bought them, and we discuss why he proceeded with buying turnarounds as his first acquisitions. You'll hear how his commitment and sense of mission enabled him to push through that challenge and many others. But to be clear, it's not just mission and commitment that motivate Devin. He's having a blast building from nothing to something to something more. As he puts it, walking through the halls of his home care agency is. A dream come true for Devin. As for those numbers in the headline, he doesn't say it in the interview, but Devin told me offline that the total cash into his first acquisition was just $50,000, all of which came from an investor. The second acquisition required no equity infusion because it had the same NAICS code as the first, so that $50,000 was the only equity Devin needed to acquire his way to a business doing $5 million in revenue. You can see that he took to heart that sentence about buying revenue versus creating it. Here is Devin Fitzgerald, owner of RML Service Group. You know that the SBA loan is a powerful tool to unlock your ability to buy a business, but it can actually unlock the ability to do an entire roll up. We're going to dive into how that looks in a webinar this Thursday with SBA loan broker Heather Anderson entitled How to Use an SBA Loan to Start a Roll Up. The webinar will be co hosted by an entrepreneur actually doing it, Brian Boland of HTL Freight, A3PL and Freight Solutions company that began with an SBA financed acquisition. So come learn the theory and see the practice of using an SBA loan. To start a roll up that is. This Thursday, May 22nd noon Eastern Register at the link in today's show notes or on the Acquiring Minds homepage. A Acquiring Minds co. See you there. Welcome to Acquiring Minds, a podcast about buying businesses. My name is Will Smith. Acquiring an existing business is an awesome opportunity for many entrepreneurs and on this podcast I talk to the people, people who do it. Running payroll, paying your bills, closing your books, and producing financials. These are critical tasks every business owner must do or oversee. But spending time on them distracts you from the leadership in growth work you want to do. So let system 6 do it for you. Owned and led by a former Searcher, Chris Williams, System 6 is a leading outsourced finance team for hundreds of SMBs, including over 50 searcher acquired businesses. Chris, Tim and the System 6 team understand firsthand the challenges, the opportunities of jumping into a business as its new owner. So whether you own your business already or have one under LOI, talk to System 6 about how they can give you time back and improve your financial operations. Mention Acquiring Minds and they'll provide a free review of your books and Financial Ops, a $500 value. Check out system6.com, link in the show notes or email helloystem6.com. Devin Fitzgerald, welcome to Acquiring Minds. Great to be here. Thank you. Devin, your story of buying businesses, I would call it very personal. There's a lot of motivation, a lot. Of purpose underneath this path you've chosen. We're going to hear all about it. Let's start with the end of the story. Just give us the bullet points on the businesses that you own today, where you are today, and then we're going to rewind all the way back to childhood. So where are you today? What are your, what does your business portfolio look like? So today we have two home healthcare agencies, both located in Massachusetts. Combined revenue is about 5 million EBITDA and the industry tends to be 17 to 23%. We're right in there, right in that range. Great, thank you. About 100 employees take care of 300 patients, more or less. Excellent. And so you said two agencies. So there's been two separate acquisitions. That's right. So that we're going to work our way to how you got there. Let's hear a little bit about going all the way back. You are a very driven person, really dialed in. You buy your own account, think about business 25 hours a day and work intensely hard. Childhood might have been, this might have been a reaction to childhood. So what was that like? Yeah, I think that's very fair to say. Childhood was chaotic. To put in one word. My life could have gone in maybe a hundred different directions, 98 of them horrendous. Just a lot of substance abuse, kind of domestic violence. Just a very unstable kind of household that I grew up in. Luckily, I had a guardian angel for whom my company is named, my grandmother. So you Know, her house was more or less a sanctuary from my normal environment. She was able to keep me on the straight and narrow, keep me anchored on the right path. Really encouraged a love of reading, studying as hard as possible in school, doing well in sports, just kind of the ability to plot out a future where I'd be able to contribute positively to society, which wasn't really guaranteed. Every day was a struggle, more or less. So I knew kind of early on that endurance would be really important in life. And it's kind of a hard pill to swallow, especially when you're young. Instant gratitude's a beautiful thing when you're young, but I knew kind of there'd be a long journey to get to a place where I could, you know, be proud of a life I live. And my grandmother was really, you know, the light to light that path for me. And when you say that 98 of the other of the hundred paths your life could have gone could have been ended in a bad outcome. Were you at any point going down these paths? Were you. Were you, you know, getting into trouble. At any point in your life, or. Did your grandmother's message of work hard, read, study? Were you always heeding that, that message, or did it take a while? Yeah, I wish I made it easy on myself and on her. I would say I was maybe adjacent to all of the negative paths or maybe, you know, a half, half step in, but never, you know, never arrest or anything like that, but always, you know, close enough to it that it was. It was a threat, it was a real fear. But, yeah, just dealing with the. With the kind of household I grew up in, the environment I grew up in, you know, I acted out quite a bit. You know, Tasmanian devil is a common way to kind of phrase how I was acting. But getting in trouble in school all the time, like always in the principal's office and, you know, just making mischief, because that's kind of. I saw a lot of mischief around me and I wasn't happy about it. So it's kind of how I reacted, I guess. And so where do you think. Where or when do you think that you. You really did dial it in and became serious and motivated and stopped getting into mischief? Yeah, probably about 20 or 21. I played football my whole life. I had an ankle injury in college, broke my. My leg, my ankle. So, you know, my outlet at that point in time was exercising and lifting weights and running and all this stuff. But once that was taken away from me, I knew I had to figure out something to do with the the energy I still had, I began meditating and doing yoga, and that really was a life changer for me. It. It gave me a great path for which to kind of express my energy and calm myself down. Gave me an ability to concentrate a little bit more. So probably that's when, you know, everything started to turn a little bit. My first ultimate goal in life was to make it to the age of 30 without being arrested or institutionalized or getting a bunch of girls pregnant. Full disclosure, when I woke up on my 30th birthday, my hands went up, I screamed yes. Like, I knew I'd made it. So I knew basically that, you know, not that success was guaranteed, but that, you know, I had an opportunity to really fulfill my dreams and do something great in life. And how old are you now? 38. 38. And the Tasmanian Devil to meditation path is striking because you come across as a very collected, calm person now. So is this a. Is this a testament to meditation? Should we all be returning back to our meditation couches? Yeah, it certainly was. Totally changed my life in the best way possible. Trying to advocate for it to, you know, people close to me at all times. But it's a. It's a massive commitment. It is extraordinarily difficult. I spent many, many hours practicing, many frustrating hours, really. But I knew once I got a taste that there was like some level of calmness and some level of peace that I hadn't encountered before, but I always kind of imagined existed from reading certain texts and things. Once I got a little taste, you know, I was totally sold on it and could sell out myself into it. Okay, so you're 38 now what? Quickly tell us whatever relevant about your career after graduating to. Up until you chose this path to buy businesses, what were you doing? Yeah, my priority was really studying meditation and yoga. So my career was. I worked for a family business. They had a restaurant group. When I graduated college, they had three locations of a quick serve Italian place. Then an idea to expand the business. Knew they needed kind of an operations team to do that. So I got to basically create that team. It gave me a lot of autonomy, which was terrific. And it was a really creative position, which is also great. So we expanded from 3 to 14 locations over 10 years. I call that really my boots on the ground mba. I understood what it takes to run a business, to deal with people, to deal with unexpected situations, unwanted situations. It really wasn't a glamorous position at all. So I got to see, you know, the dirty work it takes to get, you know, A business up and running and functioning. And did you help. Did you help turn on a bunch of those expanded locations? Where was it basically your role to get some of those launched and running? Yeah, exactly. So, you know, the operation side was really whatever needs to be done. It's like a family business, so it's kind of like, you know, whatever you can do, do it. So that was really it, just being on call 24 hours a day, basically. Yeah. And. Sorry, how many years was that? That was about 10 years. Okay. Well, yeah, difficult and gritty, but wow, what perfect experience for going off and then buying your own small business. Absolutely agree. Yeah, yeah. You know, kind of depending on the kind of business you buy, you might have to get your hands really, really dirty. I was really used to that and had no qualms about it. I understand that you can, you know, there's a lot of arbitrage when you're dealing with the stuff that no one else wants to deal with. If you do it well, then the opportunity can be really terrific. That reminds me of a. Some. I can't remember where I heard this, but sometime in the last year, somebody characterized small business as basically whatever some given small business does, it's basically solving a problem that nobody else wants to solve. So when we talk about how difficult these businesses are, it's almost. It's almost intrinsic to the businesses. If they. If they weren't difficult, people be doing these things on the, you know, themselves, but that's why they pay other people to do them. So it's sort of an inescapable fact that they're all. They're all going to be pretty hard. But, you know, so often what people struggle with who are sitting in your chair now is that they're coming from a corporate environment and they haven't been exposed to the. To the dirty. The dirty, gritty, human problem world of small business. And you were. You had a lot of exposure there, so that's great. Okay, and so how did that chapter of your career end and the business buying chapter begin? Two sentences really kind of changed the course of my life. The first was, it's easier to buy revenue than create it. And the second was in regards to the population shift, the demographic shift, and taking place right now in the country, how there's more businesses for sale now than at any time in the history of humanity. So both of those seem quite obvious. That math really made sense to me. I didn't see a great future with the work I was doing with the restaurant. Maybe no opportunity for equity So I figured I had to do it on my own. So it was coming up to my 35th birthday, I really had a decision to make. I said it's either now or never. So I chose now and really glad I did. Where did you hear these two sentences? Just social media or something? Yeah, probably both random YouTube videos. Honestly, I can't remember, you know, what person spoke these words, but I registered them. Yeah. And so with anybody in your network buying businesses or. This was basically became an exercise in YouTube University for you, kind of autodidactically learning on. Totally on your own. Yeah, absolutely. Autodidactically learning. Even, even some of my family members who were in business, I had mentioned them, you know, what I was thinking about doing, and they, you know, didn't really understand. I'd explain quite a bit. It just seemed like a somewhat of a foreign concept to the folks kind of in my network, my close network. Great. Well, tell us more about your journey down the rabbit hole and how you taught yourself and what. How the search started taking shape. Yeah, I think my. I'm not trying to outsmart anybody. I really like to. To break things down to the first principles, the simplest kind of terms and things and, and really focus on what's obvious. So I know that to. To buy a business, there's certain math that has to work. If you're going to go the small business route with sba, you likely have to put up some amount of money, but the most important thing is that the cash flow will cover the debt service on the loan you're taking out to buy the business. So I, I understood that, you know, kind of obvious equation. And then also the fact that you can bring in some seller financing to enhance the cash flows and you can get really creative with things in negotiations. So a lot of watching YouTube videos, but ultimately that doesn't really substitute for actually making calls to business owners, talking to business brokers, and just like doing the work. I think maybe my philosophy is that it's. It's a numbers game in a sense that, like, volume makes a difference. So if you just, you know, practice makes perfect, keep calling folks that may be potential sellers of businesses. Eventually you'll find, you know, the, the kind of series of questions to ask to get you the responses you want in the amount of time you'd like. A lot of it's about saving time if you're going to be, you know, doing all this work. Right. They say time is money. Time is probably more important than money because you can always make money, can't make time. So I did a really old school approach. It wasn't high tech. I mean I had a list of folks not even on spreadsheet. I wrote them by hand. I knew what industry I wanted to focus on, unlike what I've come to understand is the search front space and the ETA space. I wasn't aware of this industry when I first started. I just knew I wanted to buy businesses, home healthcare businesses. And so really, you know, smiling and dialing, I heard basically, you know, 2,000 cold calls do you get successful? I didn't track how many I made. It was a lot. It was a lot. And so were you using Biz by sell or some other platform to look at for sale deals? Or were you instead just using Google Maps to find all the home health care businesses you could and calling them and trying to get in touch with the owner directly or accommodation? Yeah, it was a combination. I started initially with just proprietary and then eventually realized, well, there may be, you know, some diamonds in the rough on biz, Buy, Sell and like sites. So I also incorporated those and those ended up being, you know, fruitful for me in the end. And when you say hundreds and thousands, were you willing to move anywhere you're in Massachusetts, Were you just calling in the region or were you, were you calling and willing to move anywhere if you found the right business? So I was calling in the region, I think. Willing to move everywhere. I think that's true, but not initially. I wanted to get something local to. Start and there are that many home care home healthcare businesses even in a single region. 300 in mass, I think when I was looking. Oh wow. So there's home health meant home care. I wasn't picky about kind of which one was first. You know, one is skilled and CMS certified and one is unskilled. So I was calling everybody. The team at Aspen HR recently published a short white paper targeted at searchers Entitled A New CEO's Guide to Human Resources. It lays out the key items you should be thinking about as you transition into CEO and owner of the business you bought. The link to download it is in the show notes. Aspen is a professional employer organization or peo, run by a searcher for searchers Search fund veteran Mark Sinatra runs the company which provides HR compliance, flawless payroll, Fortune 500 caliber benefits and HR due diligence support for your acquisition, all for a fraction of the cost. Go to Aspen HR.com or contact Mark directly at Mark Aspen HR.com. And you had said, Devin, that you had decided on home health, home Health care as the industry you were going to target. Why? Why? And not because you had read that, you know, the, that it was a, that it was a particularly good industry for a searcher. There must have, there was some other reason. What was that? Yeah, so as I mentioned before, my holding company is named after my grandmother. So it all goes back, it all goes Back to day one. She, she was a lifelong nurse, 62 years in the career began in World War II as a first lieutenant in the U.S. army in the South Pacific. She was also a founding member of the American Nurses association in Massachusetts. So complete legend of a human being. So it's kind of confluence of forces where I can honor her, you know, kind of continue her legacy of caregiving and, you know, personally what she meant to me, just really, you know, make her proud on that front. Of course, the industry's growing quite a bit, really fragmented. So, you know, it should be some buying opportunities for folks who are interested to work hard on that. And then kind of the third leg that didn't really appear until I bought my first business was this might be true for all industries. You know, there's not a lot of well developed culture I've seen in the small businesses I've looked at. And so I think there are basically offices across the country with untapped talent that could immediately impact the business for the better. You know, literally just a matter of asking the folks who perform the tasks on a daily basis, like, what tasks can we eliminate? What can we make faster? What do you like to do? How can we get you to do more of that? Let's eliminate some of the stuff you don't like to do. How would you grow the business? How would you not grow the business? Like, what should we be avoiding? It's just a treasure trove of information from all these folks. And if you engage them, they're excited. They really like it because at least in my case, they were not engaged like that before, so they feel like they can contribute. So folks here, you know, Muhammad Alasmi, Melissa Gomez, Ralph St. Phard here in Worcester, they've been terrific in helping us, you know, build out this business and what we want it to look like. Nina Brockton, Anna Fernanda Santos, Shakira Fisher, Kehlani Fisher, Ruth Rodriguez, Sony Nelson. I mean, these are terrific people to work with. So, you know, it's been a wonderful experience so far, just bringing kind of all these different forces together, putting the minds together and then seeing where we can take it. Well, I, I want to turn our attention back to that and, and a little bit Devin, and hear more about how you, how you've engaged them to, to grow the business and improve the business and create culture. Really interesting insight that it seemed that you think it's. It's almost endemic to small businesses, or at least small businesses in this category, that the culture is really wanting in so many of these agencies. You had said that when you were going through all of this cold calling of sellers, proprietary search, that you learned the words to say over time to get the information you wanted. Can you elaborate on that? And, and what was it that you learned? Or maybe what were, what were some of the key phrases that you landed on that really got what you wanted? Yeah, as far as magic spells, I'm not sure if I can share those now. I'm not sure if they exist. But really it's just a practice of, you know, getting to understand folks concerns. Right. And everyone's different. But if you can put yourself in someone else's shoes, you know, if they've worked on a project for 20, 30, maybe 40 years, they spent all their time and effort on it. You know, it ends up being a very personal experience. The first business we went to buy ended up basically the deal dying the day we got a term sheet from a bank because of a personal issue the seller was going through. And it kind of came out of nowhere, but that kind of let me know that's how it goes sometimes. And of course, you know, I knew that intellectually, but until you experience it right, it's just everything's a statistic until it happens to you and it's 100%. So just having those experiences, going through them, engaging with folks, I would say it's more maybe of a rhythm than, than, you know, a magic phrase that you just get more comfortable with and, and understanding how you can help yourself and help other folks when it comes to a transaction. And so it's kind of like call after call after call. You just build a knowledge base and a confidence of talking to these sellers that can be sensed on the other side of the table that you're a serious person who knows what he's talking about, who's really interested in doing business. Um, so it's kind of just generally you, the way you present improved a lot over time. Certainly that I think also you develop thick skin, which is really helpful too. If you're making cold calls, you're gonna get some people who are not pleasant on the other end. That's a good thing. At the end of the day, you gotta Be tough. Tough and personal. So and so you. But you actually found the business not through this method, but through what? Biz by Sell. Biz by Sell. Yeah. Found the business. The first acquisition an hour after my previous deal died at the, at the term sheet level. So it was an intense day. Should we hear is there something to say about the, the deal that died? Is there something to learn from that for the audience? Well, you can, I think George Washington has the quote, you can do everything you can to deserve success and still not get it. Which I think is wonderful because that means in life you have to stay on your toes and it ain't over till it's over. And why did that deal die? It was a personal issue, kind of family issue on the seller side. So something happened, an event happened that caused them to not be able to transact with you. Exactly right. So there you are, discouraged but persistent in the same 24 hour period. And so after that falling through your fingers, you fire up is by self to see what else is out there. And lo and behold, there is another good candidate that you pursue. Yeah, yeah. So literally like went down to a knee. Felt like I got punched in the stomach when I received the email that he was going to kill the deal. I don't think I was down there for too long, but maybe time froze, who knows. But once I stood up, paced around the office, you know, a few paces, few rounds, and then went back to the computer, furiously on the keyboard, scanning biz by sell, you know, with as much energy as possible, and found something that could be, you know, a viable candidate. The quick napkin math looked like it could, it could cover the debt service with the cash flow, you know, so immediately reached out to the broker and got the ball rolling there. And just before we hear about this business, I want a little bit more on the gut punch. So how long had you invested in that first deal that died at the finish lines? Eight months. And how did you pull yourself up from the, the gut punch just for anybody else who might experience that? Is it, is there. Was there any magic, magic you did there or was it just what choice did you have sort of thing. What would you tell somebody else who's, who's who's also doubled over on the floor having lost a deal in eight months of their life? I was enjoy this. It's gonna happen, it's gonna happen again. Get up and keep going. This is the story that you'll tell on a podcast one day. So these are the, these are the, the notches in your belt These are the stories that make a career. Amen. Great. Okay, so, so tell us more about this, this business that you found on Biz by Sell. Yeah, give us, give us some statistics. Where was it located, what type of home care, et cetera, please. Yeah, great. So it's a skilled, skilled home care agency. So CMS certified, it's located about an hour drive from my apartment. And it was more or less, I know in tech they have minimum viable products. So it was like the MVB minimum viable business, more or less. So it's tiny, doing about a million. Top line again, the EBITDA. You know, I think that was 23% on this one. The ask was 600,000. So fairly reasonable ask, you know, multiple on the EBITDA. But of course, you know, not necessarily a well developed business. So I just tried to learn as much as I can. The financial diligence checked out. So just came in to observe the operational diligence. They ran the business very conservatively, meaning they were never going to be in trouble of any compliance violations because they basically ran the business to make sure that they would not ever come close to anything that could be considered a compliance violation. So that gave me quite a bit of assurance that it would be a good business that we could grow. But I also knew that it was going to take like an extraordinary effort to get the wheels turning the way we wanted them to. Why? Because, you mean because it was so small or because so much needed to be corrected or all of the above? Yeah, so I guess all of the above. I wouldn't, I wouldn't say maybe corrected, but enhanced. The business was just run in a certain way. It was run as a lifestyle business for the sellers. And so that's the mold from which it was, you know, grown into. And that's what it was. And it was a passive entity that kind of was designed to make this revenue and more or less this, this amount of cash flow and hunky dory for the folks who were, who were operating previously. But of course we like to see what we can do, see what, what potential we can reach. And so it was a million bucks. You said 23% margins on that. So call it a 200 to $250,000 STE business. Yes. SDE ended up being a bit higher, a little over 3, 310 was the three year average. Oh, okay, okay. And so on the smaller side, I don't know how immersed at that point in your story you had, you'd become an ETA content and you know, the literature and the Scene. But we would consider that on the quite, on the small side, you were. How did you think about that? Did you have a too small floor in your mind? I guess this would have been it. It was definitely, no doubt about it, a small business. My thought process was, you know, buy one to get in the game. Yep. And then just buy more. I always wanted to buy many, many businesses. So I figured, you know, we just have to get in the game. Especially after eight months, kind of, I guess down the drain, you can call it. Ultimately it was, I just felt, I felt the pressure to get in the game and, and start building. And when you had a $300,000 SDE business, what did you envision paying yourself, at least in the early days of that business? And is it in fact what you pay yourself if you could share? Yeah, I was hoping I could get 100k out of it eventually. I did get to that, but I didn't take a salary for the first five months maybe. Wow. Yeah. So you, so you had, and then your own financial picture was, you must have had. Well, I don't know. Did you have savings? Were you going to use investors for the, for the down payment and transaction costs and the not foregoing salary while, you know, for that first five months. What, how did you, how did all that work? Yeah, so I had one investor for my board of directors who helped with the equity injection. And then I did raise some money from friends and family just to kind of help with the closing costs and things didn't have much personal savings. So it was a very intense time. Back against the wall. But, you know, I think that brings out a little something special in life. Great. Okay. And, but your ownership of the business was going to be well over the majority owner. I, I, I'll assume 70, 80 to 80% even with some outside capital. That's right. Okay. MVB minimum viable business. I love this. I'm, I'm so using that from now on. That's great, Devin. Okay, what can, what can you tell us about this transaction? Is there something to, to tell us or learn from in your transaction of this business? Yeah, again, it ain't over until it's over. So we plan on closing in June, the final Friday of June in 2023. I forget the date specifically and things look great. We're heading down the path to closing. Train was moving. But that Monday I got an email from the bank. So, you know, it was a group of three sellers, basically three partners. One of them was in the middle of a divorce proceeding that was not Disclosed which may pose a problem with division of assets. You know the sale of a business and one owed 140,000 in back taxes to the IRS. So with an SBA loan, government's not going to fund the loan unless there made whole prior to one of these. Sellers and owners of this business owing personal back back taxes of to the tune of 140 not nothing. But that was going to be a, a, a the SBA was not going to, was not going to issue your debt your loan until that person paid their back taxes. Absolutely. For some reason maybe this is going to be obvious to people for some reason that strikes me as surprising and frustrating. Anyway, carry on. It was both, no doubt about it. But again just like you know, just problem solving mode. How can we solve this? How do we, how do we deal with this thing now? So again we're, we're anticipating closing June end of June. We ended up closing the first week of September. So I like to, I usually like to have fun during my summer times, but I wasn't really afforded that time around you know just some problem solving mode the whole time. And, and of course there was still you know, added uncertainty with these, these stipulations that popped up. So it was pretty stressful. Could you, can you share how you solved any of those problems? Well, just communicating with everybody asking how do we solve them? The divorce ended up, they, they canceled the divorce proceeding just to do the transaction first which was like again, whatever it takes. Okay, thank you so much. And then for the back taxes, you know, the gentleman had the, had the funds. It was just a matter of releasing them and then getting confirmation that they were released, released to the right party and received. There was, I don't really remember the details, you know, repress some of these memories, but there was some issue in getting confirmation which ended up, you know, delaying the thing from August till September. Of course, you know, term sheets have a 30 day window or approvals I should say once you have the underwriting it's like a 30 or 60 day window. So we had to get it like reapproved and then reapproved once again. But that was going to be the final reapproval before I had to be submitted entirely for underwriting. Again, the walls were closing in and clock was ticking. Sweat beads were forming and dripping. But I think again, what was your. Dynamic like with these three sellers? I mean that, that's an, that's quite an unusual situation. Were you project managing them and just like you, you know, using as much kind of what would Be the kind of, you know, a light touch. And I don't know. What were you. What did that process look like? Project managing is a good description. Calling, texting, emailing. I really dealt with one. One seller was in charge of the transaction, so with a hundred percent of the time, basically, until the sale went through. And so even randomly, one time I drove out to the office and just came to visit in person and just say, listen, I just want you to know I'm still committed to this. I know we're, you know, going over some speed bumps now, and it kind of looks uncertain, but we just have to keep our eye on the prize and keep going. You know, I gave her a hug, and we just kind of shared the moment of misery that we were experiencing, but also just remembering to stay focused on where we all wanted to go ultimately. After. After the sale, she had told me, you know, in private, that at that point, they. They said, we'll leave it up to God. Whatever happens, happens. But they were just so exhausted from the whole process. So, Devin, it sounds like with this seller, you had really kind of gotten on the same team as her. You were. You were both aligned in wanting to get this transaction done. And so you kind of express your support at the frustration of not being able to get the transaction done. And that support really gave her more energy to keep pushing. Sounds like. I mean, I guess what I'm saying is to. To hug a seller that you're on the other side of the negotiating table with is unusual at that point in the story. Yeah, I think it. I think it can't be considered unusual. You know, and an idea I came across that I find really helpful in these situations is that, you know, the. The person on the other side of the table is not the adversary. Right. The transaction. The situation is the adversary. It's the. The situation is preventing both parties from getting where they want to go. And so it's really about turning that prevention into the actual pathway. And if you understand you're both on parallel paths aligned to the same goal, then just reconfirming that. I think, you know, that personal touch makes a big difference. I think it certainly did in this case. Yeah. Yeah. And. And I love that. And also that you went in person to see. To drop in and kind of just reaffirm your commitment to making this happen must have gone a long way as well. Whether or not it resulted in a hug, that was a. That was a great move. Yeah. Okay. I think. I think so. So you work through all of these issues, and the Transaction closes. Anything more to say about that? That transaction? No, it was a great feeling the morning, driving into the office as the owner. Um, it's nice to, you know, see the. The work. Bear fruit. But, of course, the work was just beginning. Right. So, speaking of fruit. What? Tell the avocado story. Oh, yes, the avocado story. So, again, as far as developing a personal connection with. With the seller, I think it's. It's. It's everything, basically. So I had heard the seller was going to move back home to her native Kenya and start an avocado farm. You know, one of the questions I asked once we began negotiating, you know, what do you plan to do with the rest of your life? She was still fairly young, so she told a nice, heartwarming story about going home and. And kind of living the idyllic farm life. So when it came time to negotiate the actual purchase agreement, I had brought an avocado in my pocket, in my suit pocket that day. And as we're kind of discussing everything, found an opportune time to hand the avocado to her. Told her it's kind of, you know, a gesture toward her achieving her dreams. And also I'll be achieving my dreams with this transaction. So we're both, you know, on a great path, just a little momentum, but I think it meant a lot. You know, she texted me on my. On my ride back that day just to say thank you again. And the office workers, after the transaction went through, kind of retold the story from their perspective, and they said she was over the moon, and it really made a big difference. So, yeah, I just think it's important to, you know, as adversarial as these things can get, it's just important to remember it's just, you know, two parties that want to achieve their goals and dreams ultimately, and it can be very personal, and you can't forget the people involved. Yeah, it's such a great gesture, Devin. And also it's a good reminder that one of the. One of the best practices here is to understand what the seller wants. It's very easy for us to just get myopically focused on numbers, but I've had a number of more experienced people in your seat talk about how the first thing they ask is really, like, what is the seller's. Why in the transaction, it's usually not about a particular multiple or dollar number. It's about something they want to do next and. Or put the money toward. And understanding that, and working back from that is far more productive than trying to, you know, squeeze each other on multiples sort of thing. Oh, totally, yeah. Because ultimately a transaction is going to get done. The differentiator is, you know, how, how personal can you make it? How much can you show the other party that you understand what they're trying to accomplish and that you can help. Get them there's looking for an SBA loan to buy a business. Then meet Pioneer Capital Advisory, your team for getting an SBA 7A loan quickly and at great terms. The team at Pioneer has closed 81 SBA loans in just the last two and a half years, with an average close time well under the industry standard. Founder Matthias Smith and General manager Valerie Stash bud both have 10 years of SBA experience and know the process cold. There are three analysts at Pioneer who build you a lending presentation that speaks the language of the bank's underwriters and gets them to yes, two account managers to guide you from underwriting to close as fast and smoothly as possible, and two sales associates ready to walk you through the Pioneer Capital advisory process. That's nine people at Pioneer, a real team to get you where you're trying to go. New owner of a business. Go to pioneerCapitalAdvisory.com or click the link in the notes. So maybe now returning to the transition, getting in there as owner, operator, tell us what you will about what those early days, days and months were like and then maybe also circling back to how you engage the staff to ask, you know, for their input and feedback. Yeah, yeah. So first and foremost with these businesses you need a clinical manager that has a certain licensure coming from outside of healthcare. I did not hold this license, so I had been interviewing folks for a number of months to fill the role. I think I reached out to 221 people on LinkedIn, had interviews with about 12 folks and second interviews with about five folks. The person who ended up hiring Ralph Saint Fart, the moment I met him, I knew that we were going to be great partners for a long, long time. We just hit it off really well. It's a thoughtful person, like brilliant and extremely hard working and driven. So this is someone I can get along with and I think someone I can do great things with. So I was extraordinarily excited to bring him in. There was about a month in between his entering the business and the purchase of the business. So at that point it was really just about engaging the staff in these businesses. You know, in the offices you have the admin staff and then you have folks out in the field performing Caregiving. So, you know, you're with the admin staff often every day. If you're in the office, you'll be there with them. The caregiving staff is much more low touch because they're, you know, they're mobile. So sometimes they'll swing by the office for supplies. But mostly it's kind of, you know, text based communication with them or phone calls. So I knew basically that I had to. I've had two staff members working here for four years. Every day they know more about the business probably than anybody else. So I just kind of, you know, I sent an email. List of questions, some general, some specific, some. Tell me about you. What do you like to do? Getting to know them as co workers as we'll be side by side battling every day to fight for our dreams. And then specific questions about, you know, give me a list of the tasks that you do every day. Circle the ones you like to do the most, put a, you know, a minus sign next to the ones you don't like to do. And then it's really just how do we find ways for you to do more of what you like, for you to produce more for the business rather than just process things. They were, you know, trained to be processors, keep the business running as it was. I told them we're in growth mode from now until forever. So we have to really find ways to improve our processes so that we can basically automate what we can and really use our minds for creative and productive work. They responded really well. They were, they were young folks in their 20s and 30s, so they were ready to go because I brought a lot of energy every day. Still do. Hard not to. I'm walking down the hallway and I just get fired up. Like achieve the dreams again. Are you kidding me? This is a dream come true. Other little things like, you know, play your favorite music and turn it up as loud as you want. Like it's not going to disturb our work with what we do. If we have meetings, we can turn it down. But just really trying to change the culture, make it a place that people want to be. You know, I'd heard previously that they didn't want to be here. Imagine that they would pull up the street, see the building and want to turn around and go home because they just didn't feel good about what they had to do, who they had to work with perhaps, but of course got to pay the bill. So, you know, I've been an employee before. I, I can relate to those feelings. It's not great, but I Think it really ends up being, if you get people excited about what's going on, you can unlock kind of creative potential. And that's the way I was really approaching it. People are so dynamic. There's no, I think, formula for dealing with folks. I think you got to meet people where they are and it really helps to be right. Two years, one mouth. So listening goes a lot further than talking, I think. So they're kind of the. It sounds like it was a low morale agency before you got through. Fair. Yeah. Okay. In this, in this current situation, like the building manager more or less was the guardian angel for this transaction because they were working on letters of resignation leading up to the sale. They weren't aware there was a transaction happening. Oh, they weren't told until an hour before I walked in the office. It had been sold. And it was a big part of the reason for the coming resignations, the low morale. Because leadership. You said this was kind of a passive lifestyle business and leadership was kind of checked out. Was it, was it the lack of leadership or was there or. Or was there some darker reason that people were so unhappy? Yeah, nothing super dark, I think. Lack of leadership and lack of, you know, vision for the future. Like they couldn't see where they would be in a year or two unless it was in the same exact spot. And hard to get excited about stagnation. Yeah. You know, of course, Devin, in, in our world, one of the central questions of a transition is like, how much change, how soon? And it sounds like you were perfectly confident going in there and making changes quickly, both just in terms of vibes and just asserting who you were and, and the type of leader you were going to be and the direction this, this agency was going to take. Anything to say on that, how, how decisively and quickly you, you went in there to make changes? I would say if given the opportunity, I would slow play it more. However, it being an mvb, we didn't really have the opportunity to slow play it. The business we bought was declining over the past three years. And, you know, I know in order at least to stabilize it, we had to kind of move quickly and make some changes. And again, I can't overstate Ralph's impact on that front. The way he saw things as a clinical manager and operations manager. We changed the technology. I think two months in and this was like fairly painful. I think it can be extraordinarily painful, but I just told everybody, we don't really have time to lick our wounds. We just have to keep moving forward. And I Think, you know, I was fortunate that it was such a vibe shift, as it were, from the previous ownership that the office staff was willing to kind of see how it played out. And you know, I'm enthusiastic every day and I'm certainly, I will never ask anybody to do anything that I'm not willing to do myself. So I showed them this isn't necessarily a, a boss employee dynamic. We are working together and we'll thrive by working together. So that's kind of the tone that was set. So it was uh, fairly easy to get buy in on that level. Also, like just team building things in here. We do planks every day in the office. Like, like exercise planks. Um, you know, we just implemented that we're all young people, keep our energy levels right. We'll do face max just like things to make us not forget that we're here working together and working for something great. Um, I just think that was never present before. I think it was just kind of. Everyone was excited for their lunch break and for their weekend and for any holidays. And that was really all that was exciting in the business from an employee perspective. Yeah, you know, it's interesting, Devin. It's kind of like, I mean I, I would not tell people that they should go buy a turnaround or a business that's on the decline, but there, it does seem like there might be a pattern to note here that if you do buy a business that. Where morale is low or it's in decline and people are resigning, the one positive about that is that you can, everyone gets the change needs to happen so you can come in and make changes quickly because, because the employees understand it's absolutely necessary. As opposed to when you buy a healthy business, people are more like, hey, don't, don't rock the boat. Hey, we got a good thing going here. Hey, who does he think he is? It's like on the. When things are declining, everyone is like, okay, something's got to change here. And so you, it gives you all this latitude to come and be that change quickly. Yeah, yeah, I think that's absolutely true. And just by the way is as from the outside looking in, considering buying this business, you were not scared off by the declining revenue. It's not a. You had to get in the game. You had to get in the game. You had to like, just had to get in the game. You know, I had been working, I started in 20, 20, 21, you know, putting a board together, starting to make calls. So it'd been many years up until this point. Just working. And I just. It felt time to get in the game, to kind of get to that next level, build that base from which to launch this rocket that we're on right now. And hard work. I have never been scared of it. I hope every day is a. I'm better when it's tight. I'm better when the stress levels are high. I just perform better. I always have, even in, like, sports and like the crucial moment. I just always kind of turn it on when it has to be turned on. So for me, it's like, it's a beautiful thing. It truly is a dream come true, you know, I know I was going. To ask you about that. Devin, when you, when you walk down the halls of this small, frankly struggling agency, at least it was then, and you. And you're saying this and you're kind of just like, this is a dream come true. Say more about this. Why is it a dream come true. To be working in a home care agency that is struggling? Yeah, just the autonomy, the ability to, you know, forge my own destiny, basically. I tell a lot of people asking about running a business, owning a business, what's it like? And for me, one of the best things is I get to choose who I get to work with every day. Like, this is like, unbelievable. Such a gift that I get to select the people I interact with. And we get to work and bring our best every day toward. Toward our own goals. And we try and really show the folks that we're working with every day, like how their personal goals align with the organizational goals. This is like a machine for all of us to. To achieve our dreams. So even if they may look not as close as we'd like, we're still working towards them every day. And we're. I told them, like, we're the team to do it. Like, it's on us right now. So bring your best every day. We put a vision board up in the office. I told everyone to send me some pictures, we'll throw them up there. This is what we're working towards. So, you know, it's. It's easy to remember. And we were able to push each other and lift each other up and really, you know, accomplish some good stuff. And Devin, what year was it that you acquired? 2023. So you kind of started the process in 21, and you closed in what month of 23? September 23rd. Great, Devin. And so you've done a second acquisition, but. And I want to hear about it. But before we get to it, anything more to say about the Transition your. First year in the business. We've talked about how your, you brought new culture, how you, you know, got the team excited again. You touched on the software change, which was maybe a little aggressive, but you had to. Given where, where the business was. Anything more to say about, you know, this first year and basically a declining business. And in your, in your, in your first year as an owner. Yeah, it was kind of a blur, honestly. At the same time. Right. Trying to stabilize the business and then actively acquire another business. So I think about business 25 hours a day because I have to. There's just so much going on. Yeah. But I mean, I enjoyed every moment of it. It was definitely an extraordinarily stressful time for me personally, but that's because I put a lot of pressure on myself. I wanted to get another acquisition done, and I just want to do my best with everything I do and be as focused as possible. You know, it's in my mind, it's embedded deeply in my mind that those who stay focused the longest win. So I was really trying to, you know, bring everything I had every day, you know, and building this platform. Basically, we didn't buy into a platform. We had to buy something that we could build a platform from. So it just took a lot of concentration and a lot of effort, a lot of focus. But I would not have had it any other way. I feel way more confident, way more evolved in how I understand the business itself, in much, much more clear about the future, what's possible, and how we can go about achieving our dreams. Is there anything. One thing that said about home care and actually a lot of the businesses that people in your seat now buy is that demand is not the problem. There's plenty of demand. It's just the operations to service that demand efficiently. So is there anything to say to the audience who, you know, the conventional wisdom is don't buy a declining business, especially if it's your first time. Don't do a turnaround, especially if it's. If it's your first time. But you dove in head first and by the end of the year, the business wasn't declining anymore. Right. You'd arrested the decline and it was even starting to grow. Remind me the numbers. Yeah. Up one and a half percent from the year prior. So a little uptick while really making the business stronger. Right. Trying to build in the integrity, build the platforms, bringing in the new software. So it was kind of a, a lot to manage, you know, kind of many plates spinning. You just stay focused on the goals. I Think that's the only way you can. And what, what were the things that you changed kind of. I mean, we're not going to have time to go into all the levers that you pulled, but were they basically once you kind of fixed morale and got everybody excited about the new direction, where they kind of obvious things, you know, just with your attention because now you were living and breathing this business where previous owners had been checked out, were they kind of just obvious things and it was a matter of getting everybody and you work rowing in the same direction and just kind of knocking them off the list. And with that, the business started, started improving, it's improving sort of thing. Absolutely right, Yeah. I mean, it's not rocket science. We are building a rocket, but we're just doing it in the most obvious way possible. It was literally just, okay, this business is here. What are the obvious levers to pull as far as, you know, partnerships with folks who can give us referrals. How do we get more ingrained in the community and how do we make best use of the talent we have? Great. Okay, so you wanted to. So another, actually another point on buying a quote unquote turnaround or a declining business is not only don't do it, but also be patient in buying business number two. If you have aspirations of a Holdco or doing a roll up or acquire, acquire, acquire, acquire, be patient with the first business, figure it out and then move to business number two. That's something that I say just from seeing so many people in your seat who learned the hard way. But it sounds like you got that first business and were hot and bothered to go get business number two. So, so talk to us a little bit about where you got the confidence or what was that sound on your part to, to, to run, to race to get business number two, not yet having, you know, business number one for a year. Talk us through how you thought about that and, and am I wrong? And my advice to people to, you know, to take time to absorb business number one. No, I think your advice is terrific. I wouldn't advise anybody to buy a turnaround business or a business with declining revenue unless they felt they had an edge, an angle from which to kind of turn that thing around. I probably wouldn't advise someone to immediately look for another business. I mean, within a month I was visiting other businesses in other states. So I mean, but I always had kind of this, this plan in my mind, like I want to buy a bunch of businesses. And so I had, I had time and energy. So I just Tried to put it to good use. You know, operating out of inspiration, not desperation. Also, conventional wisdom maybe isn't always appropriate. So you got to know yourself. Well, one, one of the things that we, it's already we've talked about in this interview but that we, we really talked about in the pre call was like how you are purpose driven and how that can be very clarifying. You can, you know it. You have doubt, right? I'm putting words in your mouth. You'll correct me, you have doubts, but maybe they don't. Not you the way they would the rest of us, because you are. I think the way you put it was it's binary. You are just going to do it or fail. But. Right, it's. And, and so that just kind of gives you a clarity of purpose that allows you to, you know, kind of just push through. I don't know, you, you put it, I'm putting it words in your mouth. So please, you try help me out here. Yeah, that's exactly right. So you know, with everything I'm doing, like I said, it's this confluence of forces. So ultimately it's bigger than me. I am a conduit for the, the energy and the strategy, but it's, it's much, much bigger than me. I just have the ultimate privilege of being able to lead, lead this thing, lead this operation. So you know, if I ever feel tired or frustrated or the doubts, you know, the doubts never stop. Probably no matter how successful you get, the doubts will never stop. But you don't have to pay attention to them. You don't, you can shut them down and just keep driving forward. And yeah, as I mentioned to you, it's. I look at it in a very binary way. That's why business is beautiful because either you do it or you don't. You succeed or you don't. And if, if kind of everything's on the table in that sense, then there's certainly one outcome I would prefer over the other. So I'll do everything in my power and, and maybe I'll get some extra power too to make sure it gets done. Great. Well then tell us about the second business that you did buy and how soon after closing on the 1st was it that you closed on the 2nd? Yeah, so we entered LOI on the 2nd in February of 24 after closing in September 23rd. As I mentioned to you earlier, not trying to outsmart anybody, it was very obvious to buy this business next. Almost the same business, you know, service lines that they produce, the same payers that pay for the services. It's just in a different area of the state. It was bigger, more meat on the bone. So we were really excited, this team internally that hey, we'd get exposure to this business from a different perspective in a different area. They're bigger than we are. We can definitely learn some things from the second business to add to the first. And if we're lucky, there'll be some cross pollination the other way as well. And there actually, there actually has been both ways, but we went into Loi in February. We didn't close until December 23, 2024. So it was a full year effort to get this thing closed. Why so long? You know, due diligence took a bit of time. Sellers maybe weren't super organized as far as getting documents, but they, they, their effort was terrific. Devin, we're, we're wrapping up here, but I want to. So both sellers you bought from were burnt out. We obviously hear and see in you somebody who's just a font of energy. So that's not going to happen to you. But if you can empathize with the. Listener who might be considering a home care business, a home health business, and are hearing that, that it's an industry that does burn people out, what would you tell people that they need to be wary of in terms of the, the realities of operating a business like this and how burnt, how it can just burn people out? Well, I think the culture is perhaps the biggest part of that. If, if you know, you're coming into a space every day and of course everyone has good days and bad days, but if the bad days are kind of emphasized and it's, it's kind of this insidious, subtle way, I think that, that cultures can turn, you know, unhelpful. I think it's really important to be clear in communicating with the folks you work with what the North Star is on good days, on bad days and on ugly days, that no matter what happens to any of us personally or any challenges we face in the business, and we're going to face challenges that we still have to stick to our guns and continue the path we're on. Of course, be flexible. If, you know, another path emerges that still gets you to your goal, but it's really just about being focused. And businesses are just problem solving machines. Like that's all they are. We're just here to solve problems. And so you have to be, I think, truth seeking and problem seeking and confident enough that you will be strong enough to solve or fast enough to solve or flexible Enough to solve whatever comes your way. It's. The mud's always going to be slung from different directions. You just want to make sure it's not slung internally. I have to believe a lot of your leadership, Devin, comes from your experience as an athlete. Totally. Yeah. I was fortunate enough to go to all boys school with a, with a strong football pedigree in high school. So that energy is just super infectious. Everyone was, you know, working toward the same goal, working really hard. You'd be in the gym at 5:30 in the morning, grunting with your teammates next to you, just, just putting it all out there every day. I found that to be like, really exciting and, and thrilling and fulfilling. So it's more or less the same approach now. Yeah, I bring the same energy. One last mechanical question for you, Devin, and then we'll wrap up. The second acquisition was also with sba. And if you buy a another business in the same Naics code. NAICS code, you don't need to bring equity. You can do a hundred percent financing. Tell us your experience here and if I got any of that wrong. Yeah, you were totally right. This is, this is a recent gift from the heavens. I think it was announced in 2023 and maybe 2024 was the first year that it was kind of operational. But it's exactly right if you have a business in the same NAICS code. So same industry, basically. And there has to be some type of geographic similarity. I'm not sure exactly what, how they, they measure that radius or what have you, but it's got to be, you know, close enough that you can drive to. I think basically these businesses are about an hour apart from one another. So it kind of checked those boxes and, you know, truth seeking and problem seeking. So there was a truth that this new SBA product existed. It's applicable to my business. I found a target that kind of fit into the mold. So we push it and pushed it hard. This may have been one of the reasons that the process through the bank took so long, because it was a new product, so folks didn't know how to handle things. That didn't really generate any sympathy for me. I'm trying to accomplish my goals. I don't really care about that, but I think that that may have been the case. So between these two businesses with a collective revenue of about $5 million, you actually were able to, going back to one of the sentences that changed your life, you were able to acquire $5 million a year in annual revenue for the, the equity, the down payment that, that you bought just 1.1 million of, of revenue for, in other words, for that first transaction, the additional 3.9 million in revenue, you didn't have to bring any more equity. In other words, you didn't have to lose any, dilute your ownership at all to get an additional $3.9 million of revenue. That's right. Yeah. It's a beautiful thing. And how much do you have Left on your SBA cap of 5 million? 2.2. And are you looking to do more acquisitions? Are you, are you, are you slowing down a little bit? I mean, I, I know you are medium and long term, but, but imminently, are you looking for acquisitions imminently? We're working on really strengthening both these businesses, strengthening our integration process. Yeah, we're learning what, you know, there's a lot of redundancies, even though there are two separate businesses with two separate tax ID numbers. We're looking to see what we can automate for both businesses, kind of building out that management layer so that for future acquisitions, we can run the playbook we have built now. So we're consolidating, kind of integrating now, I'd say for another couple months, but it's really hard to take my eye off of future acquisition candidates. I think the approach is going to be, in the wise words of Charlie Munger, I believe it was that we'd rather pay a fair price for a wonderful business than a wonderful price for a fair business. So we've gotten our hands dirty. We can take an immature business and make it more mature and professionalize it. And so we would prefer not to have to spend all our time on professionalizing the businesses and look more on just straight growing businesses. So, so to your Munger quote, because both of the business businesses you've acquired were basically strong prices for fair businesses. They were declining businesses. They were arguably, not to insult your staff, but they were low quality businesses. These were businesses that were in decline, and you figured out how to turn both of them around. You're, you're learning still how to integrate two such businesses. But it would seem like for all the toil there, that you'd want to repeat that playbook, especially since you could really get like, businesses for very low multiples. You're probably, you know, you've now developed this industry expertise of turning around declining home care, home health businesses. That is a, that makes you a very, very strong buyer in this market for assets like that. And you could probably buy them for, for very low multiples. That's not, that's not appealing. You rather go for higher quality businesses that will command a higher multiple. I really, really love a challenge. I really do. And so I know I can do this and we can rinse and repeat it so we can always. That's always an option for us. But part of my life is really seeing what my potential is, what I'm capable of, and so we're always going to aim higher. Devin, what is the name of the business and your grandmother? RML Service Group Inc. My grandmother's name was Ruth Miriam Lang. Ruth Miriam Lang. Beautiful. Anything that we didn't get to Devin that you wanted to share? No, it's just exciting. Going from nothing to something to something more has been incredible. I'm excited to keep growing and you know, every minute of the day. I find this work fun. I find this work fulfilling and I am absolutely willing to fight for it. Beautiful note to end on. If people want to reach out, we'll have your LinkedIn in the show notes. Is that the best place for them to do that? Yes, that's the best place. Great. Devin Fitzgerald, inspirational story. Congratulations on your success so far. Much bigger things in store, no doubt. Thanks for coming on. Well, thanks so much. This was a blast. Hope you enjoyed that interview. Don't forget to subscribe to the Acquiring Minds newsletter. We send an email for every episode with an introduction to the interview, a link to the video version on YouTube, and soon, key takeaways, numbers and more essentials from the interview. For those of you who don't have time to listen or watch it, subscribe at acquiringminds Co. You'll also find all our webinars there on the website. Both those with we have coming up and recordings of past webinars. At this point There are over 30 webinar recordings, a wealth of information on all the technical nitty gritty of buying a business. Acquiringminds Co.