oday's episode is a re-broadcast of a panel I moderated a couple weeks ago at SMBash, the conference for buyers & owners of small businesses.

The idea for the panel was this:

You hear from a lot of acquisition entrepreneurs that they raised money from investors to buy their businesses.

But if you've never done that, recruiting strangers to wire you tens, even hundreds, of thousands of dollars for your acquisition...well that probably seems mysterious at best, completely unrealistic at worst.

But it's not.

You'll hear one of the two panelists, Kevin Bibelhausen, talk about how he did purely cold outreach to gin up investor interest in his deal — and successfully.

He raised $800k for his acquisition over just a few weeks.

You'll recognize the other panelist, Kaustubh Deo, from my interview in April.

Kaustubh was more experienced in the ways of raising money, coming as he did from the world of private equity. And you'll hear how thoughtful he was about a few of the key questions when it came to pitching investors.

So between the two of these entrepreneurs, you'll get a strong sense for what this process of raising money looks like, what it feels like doing it for the first time, and what best practices are.

Hopefully it will leave you with a sense that you don't have to be some connected finance dude to raise money from investors to buy a business.

Indeed, the trick is not finding investors. Turns out that's relatively easy.

The real trick is finding the deal — the worthy business to buy. But, you already knew that.

Also, you'll hear Kaustubh & Kevin refer to an investor list. That list is linked in the notes.

Finally, you'll hear some names mentioned — Sam, Tony, Lisa, Mike. All those folks' LinkedIns are also in the notes.

OK, please enjoy this recorded session from SMBash with Kaustubh Deo, who bought a tree trimming business, and Kevin Bibelhausen, who bought a textile wholesale & distribution business. 👇👇👇

No video today, just audio. Listen on: