ou might recall my interview with John Murphy, from April.

John bought a painting business in Michigan, but before he did, he got very close on a fencing business.

And during that failed acquisition, he succumbed to a dangerous temptation when buying a business: he set his heart on it, fantasized about running it. When the deal collapsed at the 11th hour, he was devastated.

Well that very business is the subject of today's interview with Kirk Olson.

Kirk and John were real estate partners and searching for businesses to buy, independent of each other but at around the same time.

Well the sellers of that original fencing business still hadn't sold — as you'll hear, they were rigid & difficult — so John put Kirk in touch with them so that hopefully Kirk would have more luck closing the business than he had had.

And Kirk did. It took the deal dying once, but he finally got it over the finish line.

He was the fifth buyer who'd taken a run at the business. (Like I said, difficult sellers.)

He's now 7 months into his ownership of Mike's Fencing, and we hear many of the themes today that you yourself can expect to encounter should you buy a project-based trades business:

  • Cash flow (of course)
  • Learning how to cost a job and pin down gross margins
  • Putting in tech
  • Improving digital marketing
  • And, the anxiety that comes when sales are dropping and you don't know why

Please enjoy this interview with Kirk Olson, owner of Mike's Fencing.