Key Points From the Interview
oday's guest did so many things right when he bought a landscaping business.
In particular, Jed Morris interned at the business for 6 months before proceeding to buy it, a fantastic way to derisk in acquisition if you can swing it.
Then, when Jed got into the seat as owner, all these other local owners approached him to buy their businesses, a pattern regular listeners will recognize and one we generally welcome.
All of a sudden, after months and months of starving for leads on a business to buy, Jed is swimming in them.
He has a line of sight on buying his way to $10m in revenue.
He moves forward on a second acquisition with a vision & sound strategy.
And within a year, the whole project collapses.
Jed, with a wife & two young boys, has to sell the house and move his family in with his brother, who lives on the other side of the country. All in, he's lost $750k, and that excludes the 6 figures he still owes.
You will be struck by his posture in the face of such a setback: leaning forward.
I'm continually inspired by the resolve, humility, and wisdom of Acquiring Minds guests who go through a failure; Jed is no exception.
Now, that's Part 1 of the interview — we're not done yet!
After this experience, Jed starts connecting with other searchers who've gone through their own business acquisition traumas.
A couple dozen of them.
And he organized the patterns that emerged into key data points that he shares with us today.
What percentage of deals fail for X reason, what percentage for Y.
It's such valuable work, and I hope we collectively make his upcoming book required reading for the new searcher, right alongside Walker's and the HBR Guide.
Here he is, Jed Morris, buyer of 2 landscaping businesses and soon-to-be published author of Buyer Beware: Lessons of Real Business Failure.
