oday is an update episode with a guest whose first interview has become part of the Acquiring Minds canon.Jeff Homer came on in May 2024 to tell the story of buying one music school in Louisville, Colorado — just half a million dollars of revenue — and turning it into a platform of 40 schools.

That episode was called Art of the Roll-Up: 40 Businesses in Four Years. (Link in the show notes if you haven't heard it.)

Two years on, Ensemble has 130-some locations across music and dance, plus a set of adjacent businesses: instrument rental, dance competitions, curricular products. Schools are now only about half the company.

Last year Ensemble crossed $100 million in revenue.

Jeff expects to grow 50% or more this year.

And the return for his earliest investors is measured in three digits: over 100x.

‍Numbers like that invite the obvious question, which is what any of it means for the rest of us.

‍So Jeff and I spend the back half of the conversation on exactly that: what's generalizable about his story and what isn't.

Listen for his framework for spotting an industry that will reward this strategy. And for his argument that you have to go live inside that first small acquisition — that the immersion is what makes everything downstream possible.

We also get into a model that's taking shape which puts this path within reach of acquisition entrepreneurs, not just private equity.

Consolidation used to be PE's domain. It's now emerging as a real alternative to the SBA-financed self-funded search.

If you want to understand how one of these works under the hood, Jeff is hosting an Acquiring Minds webinar next week, Tuesday September 1st, on exactly this: Financing for Roll-Up Entrepreneurs. I've seen the slides; it's an incredible primer on this approach. Register at the link in the show notes, or on our homepage.

Welcome back to Jeff Homer, founder of Ensemble Performing Arts.