oday's guest had had a long career in corporate.

An aerospace engineer at Boeing who eventually became a manager and after that a strategist, Mike Dey ultimately decided it was time to step off that track.

The decision came during Covid, and as you'll hear, there were a number of factors.

But in some ways Mike's story fits a familiar pattern:

He realized he didn't want the life that those ahead of him on the corporate ladder had, and at the same time he just craved more freedom.

Enter: entrepreneurship through acquisition.

Today, Mike has owned American Spray Technologies for over 3 years.

AST is a manufacturer of texture spray machines used in new home construction that does north of $4m a year in sales.

One of my favorite themes of this interview with Mike is risk, how he thinks about it, how he mitigates it with real estate, how he correlates it with the price of a business.

Also listen toward the end where Mike helped me do my job, coming to the interview with a few key learnings from his journey that he wanted to share with all of you.

We cover a lot of topics here, big & small.

Enjoy this interview with Mike Dey, owner of AST.