he first business that today's guest bought did under $300k of SDE.

Which is small for a single acquisition entrepreneur, let alone two.

‍But Joe Wechsler bought the home care agency with a partner, making those earnings thin indeed.

The business was also a falling knife, as Joe put it. Small and troubled — not a great combination, but Joe and his partner were able to save it.

Now despite buying very small, Joe was not intending to buy himself a job. From day one, his vision was to acquire a portfolio of businesses.

And the playbook would be to avoid buying a job and to give himself the capacity to buy yet more businesses.

Which is not a new concept. In fact it's probably exactly what many of you aspire to do.

But it's so much easier said than done. So I press Joe throughout our conversation on how he did it.

Now to be clear, he did have some advantages.

‍His balance sheet for one thing. Joe had enough liquidity that he didn't need to extract earnings from his acquisitions in the short term and could reinvest them instead.

Also, his consulting experience. So often acquisition entrepreneurs are worried if they don't come from a finance background. After this conversation you may wonder if it's actually the consulting background that is most valuable of all.

Joe bought 3 businesses in his first year-ish as an acquisition entrepreneur, in the 2020-2021 time frame.

Eventually his model evolved, and today he and 4 partners run a fund that looks more like traditional private equity.

‍We hear about that evolution and why Joe landed on the model he did.

Listen for how he and his partners structured their fund, which is not the conventional "2 and 20" model. Their structure is designed to enable longer hold periods of their acquired businesses and earlier cash distributions to their investors.

By the way, that first acquisition, the falling-knife home care agency? It has doubled to $2m of revenue. Joe's involvement is very low at this point, and with net margins north of 25%, it has become a great business to own.

Here is Joe Wechsler, SBA acquisition entrepreneur, now general partner at Blueline Ventures.