Acquisitions Anonymous - #1 for business buying, selling and operating - Railroad Infrastructure Services Business Review

Episode Date: June 12, 2026

In this episode, the hosts analyze a railroad telecom infrastructure business generating $1.5M of EBITDA and debate whether its specialized certifications, railroad relationships, and fiber buildout tailwinds make it one of the most attractive acquisition opportunities they've seen in years.Business Listing – https://www.bizbuysell.com/business-opportunity/specialized-telecom-engineering-and-safety-services-25-year-niche/2496836/?utm_source=bizbuysell&utm_medium=emailsite&utm_campaign=shtmlbot&utm_content=viewdetailtextWelcome to Acquisitions Anonymous – the #1 podcast for small business M&A. Every week, we break down businesses for sale and talk about buying, operating, and growing them.Looking to build a professional website in minutes? Try Wix: https://wix.pxf.io/c/6898629/3115214/25616?trafcat=templateHubSpot is the backbone for how businesses scale without chaos. Try them out here: https://go.try-hubspot.com/OeG9VrSubscribe for more episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@AcquisitionsAnonymousPodcast?sub_confirmation=1Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.acquanon.com/newsletter💰 Sponsored by:Viso Business Capital — Get the right SBA loan tailored to your acquisition needs with Heather Endresen’s firm. Sign up for a free live Q&A on SBA loans at https://www.visocap.net and click “Zoom Sign Up” in the top-right corner.FRANZY - Thinking about buying a franchise instead of an independent business? FRANZY is a free platform built for acquisition-minded entrepreneurs who want to explore franchise ownership without broker bias. FRANZY matches you with franchise opportunities based on your capital, goals, and lifestyle—and includes free coaching from experienced franchise operators. If you're exploring ETA but want a structured, system-driven alternative, check out https://franzy.com/ This week on Acquisitions Anonymous, the hosts review a specialized telecommunications infrastructure engineering business serving Class I freight railroads and major wireless carriers across North America. Located near Fort Worth, Texas, the company provides railroad right-of-way engineering, telecom permitting, construction management, railroad safety flagging, wireless coverage analytics, and infrastructure services. The business generates approximately $4.8M in annual revenue and $1.53M in EBITDA, with an asking price of $6M.Key Highlights:- $4.8M revenue business producing approximately $1.53M EBITDA offered at a $6M asking price (roughly 4x EBITDA).- Operates in the highly specialized niche of railroad right-of-way telecommunications engineering and infrastructure services.- Revenue grew from approximately $1.2M in 2023 to $4.8M in 2025, creating both excitement and diligence concerns.- Serves major railroads and wireless carriers while managing analytics across tens of thousands of miles of railroad infrastructure.- Hosts identify employee retention, relationship transferability, and customer concentration as critical diligence areas.Subscribe to  weekly our Newsletter and get curated deals in your inboxAdvertise with us by clicking hereDo you love Acquanon and want to see our smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel.Do you enjoy our content? Rate our show!Follow us on Twitter @acquanon Learnings about small business acquisitions and operations.For inquiries or suggestions, email us at [e-mail]

Welcome to Acquisitions Anonymous. Today's deal came out of left field, actually, into my inbox from Biz Buy Sell, who sent me an email right before the episode, and the deal was so good. I said, guys, we've got to do this one. It is a deal here in Texas, priced it four times earnings, and there was a moment towards the end where you'll be surprised where this went. We actually found somebody that we think should do this deal, and you can see what happens next. All right, here's the episode. Hope you enjoy it. Hello, another episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. We don't have 100% beers anymore. And thumbs downing on just the plus inventory loan.

Hi, Heather here. When I'm not breaking down deals with these guys, I'm helping people get the right SBA loans for their business acquisitions. Because when you're buying a business, the best financing isn't one size fits all. There's the best rate, fastest to close, the specific loan structure that you need, or a little of all of those things.

That's why my company, Vizzo Business Capital, works with over 30 different lenders to find you the best funding in less time and with less friction so you can focus on the deal. Sign up for a free live Q&A session on SBA loans at visocap.net, then click Zoom sign up in the top right corner. That's V-I-S-O-C-A-P.net and click Zoom sign up. Heather, happy Tuesday to you. It is Taco Tuesday and Cinco de Mayo all in one day today. Taco Tuesday, are we about to have some changes in foreign policy? Oh, wait, this is no politics jokes. No, no politics. Mexican food only, please. Taco Tuesday is good. It's good stuff. Or what we call every day, taco every day here in San Antonio. That's true. We love a text

mex food. I'm going to the most overpriced Mexican restaurant in Orange County for dinner tonight. What's it called? It's called Javier's. Anybody that's been to Newport? Beach will know it's more for people watching it's more the kind of place you go to see people what kind of people go you know the typical the cliche orange county like housewives of orange county type often is there big hair sunt hair big personalities fancy clothes that kind of stuff ozempic probably a lot of ozimic yeah they're not eating as many tacos so it's not good for business i don't thing. There is a bunch of talk where, like, food, I don't know if you've seen this doubt,

where food freight traffic is like way down. Yes, they did see that. People aren't eating as much food. Dear America, do your job. Get fat again. Well, it was like, it was staggering. It was like 850,000 truckloads of food less than, you know, normal levels before. That's a lot of wasted food that we were consuming.

It's unbelievable. All right, speaking of freight, a deal showed up today. Sometimes, you know, the universe opens up for us, and it just emails me a great deal. And today it did. Because I get the Bizby-Sell daily newsletter, and they sent me this deal. They're like, you should look at this, Gurdley.

They also sent it to a million other people, but I was signed up for it. But we're special. We're special. Yeah. So here's the deal. Let me pitch you this. So it's in Parker County, Texas, which is in west, that is basically west of, due west of Fort Worth, I believe. It's where Parker County is.

And the picture has basically what I kind of imagine an old-timey railroad looked like back of the 1800s going through some mountains. So I don't know where this picture, but it does tie to the deal. So it's from Bizby Sale. It is a specialized telecom engineering and safety services business. that is 25 years plus in a niche in Parker County, Texas, west of Fort Worth. There's a picture of a Choo Choo Train. That's my expertise. It's a Choo Choo Train.

The Askee price is $6 million. It was established in 1999, and they have an EBITDA of $1.5 million on gross revenue of $4.8 million. So basically, they're asking four times EBDA, is my math right there, Heather? Yeah, roughly. That's right. So it is a specialized infrastructure services provided with a 20-year history of profit-a-bill. They forgot the illity. It's just misspelled.

Profit-A-B-I-L. P-R-O-F-I-T-A-B-I-L. The company is a highly specialized telecommunications, infrastructure engineering, permitting construction management, and railroad safety flagging firms serving Class 1, freight railroads, and Tier 1 wireless carriers across the United States of Canada. Founded prior to 2000, the company has spent over 25 years building a defensible relationship-driven platform in one of North America's most protected niches.

Sub-surface telecommunications engineering within railroad right-of-ways. The company delivers mission-critical services that require years to qualify for and cannot be replicated quickly by new entrants. 2025 represents a breakout year. Revenue reached $4.8 million with adjusted EBDA of 1.5 $3 million and a 31.5% profit margin. It's the company's strongest financial performance in its history. Okay, well, Bill is here. Hey, Bill.

I'm here. It's like the bad signal. I started talking about a good deal and you like a peer. That's so far so good. I'm into it already. Tell me more. Yeah, yeah. Well, Heather, okay, how would you in plain us Gen X English, how would you describe what

these guys do? Okay, they're doing underground cabling, I'm guessing, in the railroad, along the railroad line, in the railroad right-of-way. So they somehow can use that land to, I guess, it's internet type wiring, cabling. I'm not exactly sure. Telecommunication, so I'm just thinking it's fiber optics or its wire for internet. I think there's telecom along the railroad right-of-ways, and then that also ties into wireless carriers as well. Fun business trivia for you guys.

Do you know why Sprint is called Sprint, the telephone? No, why? What are the first three letters? S-PR, Southern Pacific Railroad. Really? You're making this up. No way. You're making this up.

This is like one of those crystal ball things. No way. Clod the hell out of that one, bro. No way. Like next year you're going to tell me. They started on lay fiber and they got it into the stuff. This is like the meme with Charlie Day and like all the strings. And he's like, and that's why.

And he came out of the railroad and then they called it sprint. Like here's how it's going to work. I'm like, I'm like 98% sure this is true. But if it's, it is true, I'm going to be like, yeah, I wasn't joking. If it's not true, that I'm going to be like I was joking. So. I'm sitting myself up for Can't Luce. But yeah, it's one of the weird byproducts of the railroad stuff is, you know,

the government was so anxious to let railroads cross the United States. They just basically gave people these right-of-ways that are just like channels across the United States. And, you know, one of the things they discovered was there was other stuff that they could do with this railroad land besides just have rail on it because it's a 200 to 500-foot-wide easement across. the entirety of the United States. And one of those things that you'll see running through a lot of that railroad land is also telecommunications, buried fiber and that sort of thing.

I see. So these companies already had big easements clear across, and if you want to run telecom infrastructure, that's also what you need. So they just put it in the same easements, thus bypassing all of the permitting, all of the arguing, all of the town halls, etc. Correct. And so what I think these guys are doing is they're doing a combination of

for the railroad, like they have all these communication lines that are going and there's all those little signals and stuff that are there for the railroad to tell the trains to go faster, is lower, and then there's a bunch of how that telecommunication also interfaces with nearby cell phone towers

and different communications infrastructure. And I think these guys do that telecom maintenance stuff for the railroads and then make money also from working with the wireless carriers. How interesting. I love this already. How fascinating. You have more, though, Michael. Tell us. But there's more. There's more.

Rare barrier-protected niche, railroad right-of-way certifications, M-W-O-R-S-E-Rail qualifications. I don't know what those are, but they sound amazing. And 25 years of class one relationships cannot be bought or built overnight. Accelerating growth, 1.2 million in 20203, 2.3 million in 2024 and 4.8 million in 2025 with consistent EBITA margins of 20 to 31% across all years. They are first mover on in-track 5G and 4G coverage mapping sole operator of carrier-specific coverage analytics for over 32,000 miles of class run track for Verizon AT&T and T-Mobile, RT-Mobile, fully integrated vertically differentiated service model outside plan engineering, EIC flagging, construction management, permitting, and wireless analytics under one roof.

They have nationwide operations with active project experience across the continental United States in Canada, including environmentally complex and geographically demanding corridors. They have a 22-person team of W-2 employees and 1099 contractors with irreplaceable domain expertise. The seller is willing to support for six to 12-month transition period to ensure continuity. It is ideal for strategic buyers in the telecom engineering space, railroad infrastructure, or fiber 5G, PE groups pursuing buy-and-bill strategies and enduring services, and operators seeking a cash-flowing, defensible platform with proven growth. I love how this ideal for Bill is like, this is great.

great for everybody. Do you have money? This is a great business for you. Ideal for somebody with a lot of money. Yeah. All inquiries handled through Sunbelt business brokers of Fort Worth, NDA required to receive SIM and financial work board. Contact Jake Wazzeritsky, CMSB, or Daniel Hurtado, CPA, CMSB. If your name is Bill DeLessandro, you can call this special hotline, 1-800-Bis buyer.

Love it. And you'll go right through the broker. I love it. Yeah, I got Jake on speed dial. Oh, there's even more. There's more. Wait, there's a teaser. Oh, no. I'm not logging in. I ain't got time for that.

Okay, this is actually helpful. Will you read the competition and growth and expansion sections? Yes. This company, well, I think this will also prove what I was right about what they do. This company operates at the crossroad of two of the most active infrastructure investment cycles in the country right now. National Fiber Optic Buildout and Railroad, modernization. Federal broadband regulation has at least billions in fiber deployment funding driving sustained demand for qualified contractors who can engineer and manage complex projects,

especially within constrained railroad corridors where few firms are authorized to work. At the same time, Class 1 railroads are under mounting pressure to modernize communications infrastructure, including positive train control compliance, IoT integration, and expanding wireless connectivity are all driving long-term recurring revenue pipelines. This is not a business a competitor can replicate overnight. To work within railroad rights away, a firm must hold MWOR qualifications, e-rail qualifications,

independent high-rail operating capability, and a documented safety record built over years of class one project performance. I like that, assuming it transfers. Scale the five, you can grow and expand it by scaling the 5G and 4G coverage analytic service line. Demand for rail corridor or wireless connectivity is accelerating. The company is already the sole operator at the scale, expanding care relationships and route miles is a direct revenue lever capture,

the fiber buildout wave. Oh, man, there's a bunch of other ways that thinks you can grow. And there's a lot of words in here. Yeah, good job, Jake. Yeah, all right. And in Parker County, Texas. So I do think, Michael,

there's a little bit more than just pulling fiber because they keep nodding to, like, train telemetry and seeing IoT and, like, communicate, like actual communications, from the trains. So I do think there is a degree of making sure that if you're on a train and you have a cell phone, I mean, metaphorically, this is more if you're, you know, the computers on the trains have cell service the whole way, right? And you can know where all the trains are. You can know how fast they're going. You can receive telemetry and metrics and statistics from the trains and the engines and all those things. So if you're a train operator, you need data connectivity. Well, that's convenient. You have fiber in the ground. along your entire track, but you need to, you know, put 5G antennas along track.

So I do think there's some of that. It seems like these guys are probably more of an engineering. We can do whatever you want. The real moat we have is we're the techie guys that are allowed to step into these easements and design projects. It seems to me like that's what they've got. And anything you want to do inside that easement from kind of an IT perspective, we can do.

my buddy has one of these, but for power generation plants, it's a really good business to be in. Heather, Heather, you're going to say something? Well, if, where's the demand coming from? I guess is my question. Like, who's really, this $4.6 million in revenue? Is that mostly coming from the rail ways, you know, from the trained companies themselves, operating their own, you know, their own network? Or is it wireless internet that's being put in in these rural areas? I'd love to know sort of the mix of where the revenue is coming from and what, so I could get a feel for the demand, the long-term demand for what they're doing. Like, have they already built most of this out or is there a long way to go, you know, to keep building? And then I always think about this when I think about wireless internet in rural places. What about competing with Starlink? And, you know, does that change the game enough or eventually to make the underground cabling maybe, less important or relevant. Yeah.

Well, so I think for question A, what they say here is they service the Tier 1 freight railroad, so that's Union Pacific, SPR, and a couple, you know, there's been tons of consolidation in the space. So they service them, but then I think there's the Tier 1 wireless carrier, so AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon, right? And so what I think happens a lot is the T-Mobile, the T-Mobile. of the world have towers on the right-of-way of the railroads. And then so these guys service both the railroads and also the Tier 1 wireless carriers

because the Tier 1 wireless carriers can't do their normal stuff because it's a railway. You have to do special stuff because it's railroad. So they have to bring these guys in. Yeah, so I think they have two types of customers. But I think you're kind of hinting at one of the things we need to be careful about here, which is how much customer concentration is there? There's not that many railroads, and there's not that many cell phone folks, which has me, like, kind of 40.

Well, that's, that's, that's, it could be worse. Yeah. It'll be worse. Yeah. I mean, they may have two customers. It may be Verizon and AT&T. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So I did. And something grow up demand to increase. That's what, that's why I'm wondering what that was, because they made it really clear, 25 is their best year, which is always a little scary, oh, you want to sell the business on the best year, okay. I wonder what the prior years looked like. But I'm more wondering what's driving that growth. And is it something that is going to continue? Yeah, I mean, what's going on? This business has four X, literally, from 2023 to 2025. Right.

You know, I would try to sell it too if I were to sell it. You know, it just so, it just makes all my spidey senses go off when a business suddenly takes off like a rocket ship and then they want to sell it. Mm-hmm. They claim the real industrialization of America, including the fiber optic buildout and the railroad modernization, are two massive tailwinds. There's massive buildout going on. If that's true, I love it. Yeah.

It does say retirement. Well, I can retire also at 40 years old. You know, if you're going to write me a huge check for this business. Whatever, yeah. Selling you this business will cause me to retire. Okay, before we come back to this deal, I did talk to Claude. And Sprint originally stood for Southern Pacific Railroad internal networking telecommunications. That was the full acronym.

Wow. They started in 1959 building a microwave radio system for their internal communications. By the 70s, they started to lay out different lines across their stuff, and then they sold it in 1983 to conglomerate GTE. Wow. So it is Southern Pacific Railroad. That's right. That makes me understand the business better. It does.

Yeah. Okay. So the railroads grew into kind of the original wireless carriers. Yeah. Or at least sprint on the sprint side. Interesting. It's a network to carry physical goods and digital goods. Makes sense.

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You also get free coaching from people who have actually built and scaled franchise businesses. If you are exploring ETA and want to understand whether franchising fits your acquisition strategy, visit franzi.com. That's F-R-A-N-Z-Y.com. And thanks to them for sponsoring today's episode. I got to look it up, but I read about it a number of years ago. There were also, like, they got mineral rights, too, underneath these railroad lines. So some of them were generating massive amounts of, like, royalties from oil and stuff like that.

And then there was another one, I kind of remember what the, there was, There was a couple of small independent public stocks, and I think Warren Buffett did one, like back in the 60s, that were basically just like, hey, we're sitting on 15,000 miles of railroad right away, and that was the whole business. And they were trading like below book value. Back in the day when Warren Buffett or whoever could just like go find

nickels that cost a penny in the stock market back in the 60s. There was some story like that. I got to look it up again. All right, so is this one of those ones that we should just like stop recording now? So somebody could get the Sib? Yeah. I mean, it's so it's been around since 1999.

Yeah. It grew to $1.2 million over 20 years. Mm-hmm. And then it took off to $4.8 million over three years, two years. Obviously, that's your primary diligence point. There is a little, and this does happen, you know, stroke of Penn benefit. You know, stroke of pen and a ton of federal funding. and purchasing comes into an area and the contractors can't keep up.

That absolutely happens. I think if that's what's happening here, you are pretty quickly getting into a diligence on the durability of that government funding. This also strikes me as a great risk-sharing deal, where you could structure something whereby if this falls back to $1.2 million, you're covered. But if it keeps cooking to $10 million, the seller participates in that a little bit. You know, it should cut both ways if the seller is going to share some risk here.

And he should be able to get more than $6 million for this thing. You can do that only if you don't get an SBA loan because the SBA allows you to protect your downside risk, but won't allow you to give the seller upside, which is kind of crazy. But that is the way the rule works. So if you have to strike a deal that's kind of SBA size, which this one kind of is, or it's close to that, and you want to give the seller upside, you can't. unless you can find some other way to finance it. Interesting.

Can I, let's say we crush it and I pay off my SBA loan? Can I structure something whereby it doesn't kick in until the SBA is paid off? Most lenders would say no. That it's still just working around the rule and they will reject it even if it only happens after the SBA loan is paid off. So the SBA, for whatever reason, doesn't want a moving target on the purchase price. Unless it's down, which... Yeah. Unless it protects them and the seller or the buyer, but not when it rewards the seller.

Hmm. Yeah. Is there a fraud reason for that? I mean, what is this just a dumb government rule? Or is there a dumb government rule here because someone did something? It's a probably somebody did do something. That's usually the beginning of all these rules. I don't know what it would have been. But I think it is a little bit of a dumb government.

government rule, they don't, they don't want anyone having upside. They almost don't want anyone having upside that doesn't have a personal guarantee on the line. And they just, they have these rules about 10% equity and they say, well, if the, if the real purchase price is going to grow potentially a couple years from now, how do we know what, that we met the 10% rule? There's a lot of kind of weird reasons for it. But nonetheless, it is there. I see. It probably just went, too complicated. Yeah, right. Makes everything else too complicated, right? Okay. Interesting. So you might have some challenges if you use an SBA loan. Besides that, Heather, if I didn't need to structure upside for the seller, can I use an SBA loan for this business? Yeah. I mean, I think this is a perfect size. There's an engineering service company. There's no exclusion there. No, there's no exclusion there. I mean, you know, there's credit concerns that a bank might have about customer concentration and the contracts and all that good stuff. But if you could get a lender, a bank comfortable with that, this is.

looks perfectly eligible for SBA. And it's a good size. I mean, you could max out your SBA loan at $5 million. And as long as you can cover the difference between the five and the six and your transaction costs with equity or a little bit of seller note, this could work. A nice SBA deal. Okay. You would not get, what's it called, qualified small business stock because this is a

services business, I think. It's an engineering business. Yeah, I think that's correct. Yeah. So, I mean, minor tax downside, maybe not minor. Real tax downside. If I'm assuming, I think we just kind of, I don't know what any of these certifications are that Michael read, the alphabet soup of certifications this company has. But we've got to assume, if those don't transfer, there is no deal here, obviously, right?

Right. Now, they did point to a team of 25 people. Was it something like that? Yeah. They said 22 people, I think, and then, you know, class one relationships that cannot be built or bought overnight and the team can't be replicated overnight. It's funny, I hear that and I go, if they leave, you're screwed. Yes, you know. That's the other side of that, right?

You've got to lock the people in. And then, yes, it's got 25 years of class one relationships, but you are new, right? Yeah. Imagine you've been working with a company, you know, a counterparty for 25 years. and some new guy shows up and goes, hi, I'm the new guy. I don't know anything about railroad corridor engineering, you know, but it's totally fine.

We have a 25-year relationship, right? Yeah. Yeah, you can see how that's a little iffy. Right. How transferable are those relationships? And sometimes the question for a lender is, who owns them? Is it the seller?

Who's the guy that they've been relying on? Or has the seller already let the team be the guys that pick up the phone, the guys and the gals that pick up the phone and are more owning the relationships at this point. That would be a really important question to ask. By the way, these certificates sound like BS barriers to entry to me. I just Google both of them, and they're just like a safety training program

that an individual goes through if they want to work on a railroad right away. I think it's like day one, do not stand in front of train. Day two, see day one. You don't put a penny on the tracks. If train is coming, get out of way. So then it probably comes down to the 25 years of class one relationships, the credibility that they can probably bid on these projects and win. They're probably the de facto supplier.

I would think, Heather, to your point about customer concentration, it's possible they have two customers, but they know these, how many miles of track did you say, Michael? They've 32,000 miles of class one track. it says they're the sole operator of carrier-specific coverage analytics across 3,200 miles of Class 1 track. So, you know, I wonder how defensible that is. You know, if you've got 32,000 miles of track kind of locked up

and T-Mobile needs to maintain them and you're the only guy that does it, that kind of mitigates your customer concentration risk a little bit. Yeah. I mean, what I know about, you know, to say the kind of parallel engineering firms that do power plants and all that kind of stuff is a lot of times there's just like one like you're the only one in Texas like there's nobody else because nobody else there's there's not enough business or scale to have more than more than one and there's not enough to have zero or there's too much to have zero if that makes sense like and and your only barrier

to grow because every one of these big vendors just comes back to you over and over again you're only barrier to grow and make the business bigger is can you recruit the people to work in it? And like there's just not enough engineers who know this stuff to help these firms grow. I would be shocked if these guys weren't at 150% not if these guys were not at 150% capacity across everybody in the company with this level of growth. I bet they haven't been able to keep up the hiring. Yeah. And the margin sort of tells you that too. They bragged about the 31% margin, but is that really sustainable?

to your point, if they grew and barely kept it together with the team that they've got, they probably need more people. I mean, it seems like a really great technical business. Your challenge here is maintaining the continuity of relationships and the continuity of employees. If you can do that, and if there really is a whole bunch of government funding here that requires us to build out fiber, maybe you've got a nice tailwind. This reminds me, Michael, I'm trying to remember who I was talking to. Who do we know that bought all those rural wireless internet providers? Do you remember who I'm talking about? Anyway, a mutual friend whose name I can't remember, and maybe I shouldn't say, bought a whole bunch of rural internet providers or was looking at that industry.

Oh, Xavier Helgeson did. That's right. That's right. But hilariously enough, he's not the only one I know. I knew three guys that did it. Oh, that's why the blank look. Which one is he built by? I was like, I wonder which one he's talking about.

I looked at lots of deals in that space, actually, myself. Yeah. Well, it kind of reminds me of that, right? And that was one where there was all this federal funding to like wire up rural America, right, with internet. And when you actually look at the economics, it was dumb. It was like $100,000 per house or something. and you could have just bought them all a Starlink Terminal. And I think a lot of those funding programs dried up

because they were really stupid. And so I would be interested to kind of figure out what happened there with the rural wireless internet providers and figure out if it rhymes with the fiber build-out subsidy that they're referring to in this business. So the interesting thing, so I go out on my bike a lot into rural, rural Texas way outside of where they have wired internet. And you used to, like five, six years ago, you go out and there'd be tons of signs where

like wireless internet. And they were selling you that internet on the tower thing that we're talking about, which had line of sight. So if a cloud came in, it stopped working. And now if you go out and you do the same areas, they're still not wired internet underground. No cable modems, none of that kind of stuff. But what is out there is people selling you Starlink access. And you're doing Starlink access is there. And then there's a few of them who will sell you AT&T like MiFi's, right, that'll sit in your house. And everything I've heard is the people that rolled up those things. And I don't know anything about Xavier's situation, but in general, the few anecdotes I've heard is like any pricing power just went out the window for them with

Starlink and the wireless carriers trying to come after that business. So that's what I know. it seems to have gone from massive tailwind to massive headwind bill. Because of Starlink, but is the government funding still there to spend $100,000 per resident to build out all of the backbone for it? I mean, if we're talking about all those telecom bills that were part of the, you know, the Biden era and stuff like that, like the money hasn't been deployed. I think it's all been, I think it pulled it, they pulled it all back. interesting. Yeah, that's the news articles I read. Yeah.

That could be the reason this is selling. Yeah, look, I mean, who should buy this, Heather? It seems the guy basically, the broker lists, everybody should buy this. But, I mean, one person they don't list is the, hey, buy this and be an absentee owner person. Like, that seems to be a non-starter. So I'm sorry, Bill. Oh, man. Yeah, you need to live wherever this business is.

really tell us where it was, did they? But I think... Yeah, it's in Weatherford, Texas, which is west of Fort Worth. You said west of Fort Worth. Okay. You do need to be there. And I think you need to have a little bit of an engineering background. I think lenders would have a really tough time if you don't have something like that

because there's a lot of technical expertise here. And then you have to diligence where the demand is coming from for these services and what the next five years really looks like realistically for this business. But someone with a little bit of an engineering background could pull this off, I think. I would be very interested to learn more. I mean, maybe you're moving to wherever in Texas this is. Michael, do you know where this is? Yeah, Weatherford, Texas?

Yeah, west of Fort Worth. Okay, so that's a nice place to be. It's actually really pretty. But it is nice, right? Yeah, it's really pretty. It gets dry, but it's a really pretty part of Texas. There's just kind of west of the line of Dallas down to San Antonio's, there's a lot of pretty country out there. Not a lot of water, which is why most of the people live the line kind of

Dallas to San Antonio East. And the population gets really sparse out west, but it's a nice drier part of the country to be in. As you work further south, that's where what they call the hill country starts, Fredericksburg, Kerrville, all that kind of stuff. Brownwood. There's some pretty stuff out there. So you may need to move there, but it's not a terrible place. If I were willing to move to Texas, I'd be looking at this deal. Very interesting. We would welcome you with open arms bill. As long as you move to Dallas. Not too close, but close enough. Not enough room in Texas

for both of us, Jared? That would you say? There's a lot of space here. But I just have to move to West Texas. You're going to be in the nice part of Texas. I have to be out in the, like where Bezos is building that forever clock or something way out in the middle of nowhere. I think, I don't think people

appreciate how empty a lot, a big portion of Texas and America is. People really don't have Like, every time people are like, we can't welcome any more people. We're out of space. I'm like, you just need to go 30 minutes west of Austin. And it just starts to be a whole lot of nothing. So for 10 hours until you get to El Paso.

Anywho. Do we know what there is there? Trains. Lots of old. Train tracks and railroad. So, and right of ways for you to put in fiber optic cable with government funding. One of my buddies was for years. He was a unionized train conductor for Union Pacific.

And I was like, oh, that's so awesome. You get to drive trains. This is his job. Wake up in the morning, ride from San Antonio on the same train every day to Houston, get in another train, ride that train back to San Antonio. He's like, I could tell you every inch of that run. He did it for 20 years. he couldn't retire fast enough

but he just I mean I bet he plays a lot of games in his cell phone like what do you do you just sit and make sure nothing breaks right you got to watch the trains watch the tracks watch the train make sure safety so he yeah but it's actually really interesting

those trains are he described them as very antiquated so they're old diesel trains a lot of them from the 60s and 70s most people who are conductors driving the trains end up physically broken and he had a really bad back,

and he retired like at 55 because he couldn't do it anymore. Interesting. Yeah, rough job. Rough job. All right. Cool. You're going to get the send bill?

I can't move to Texas, and it's not a remote business, but otherwise I would. I like it. The valuation is reasonable, 4x. I mean, it's 4X on some serious growth, so you have to underwrite that.

But it's not crazy. He's got 22 people, which tells me there might be a management layer there. which I like. There's a lot to like here, and it's reasonably place. So shout out to Jake. Whoa, I can't pronounce that. That's a Polish name. Wurinsky?

I mean, so shout out to Jake, because this seems like a good listing. I also am impressed by Jake. So Jake here is a Sunbelt Business Broker, which is a franchise, and the, let's just say, the quality of Sunbelt Business Brokers ranges massively. But I got to say, just even from reading this teaser, Jake sounds like he knows what he's talking about. Right? I mean, he's a really good job.

He did a really good job. He has the right kind of buyer profiles. He knows that there are some private equity groups doing buy and build strategies and engineering services. I mean, he's got, he knows about the fiber 5G. At the very least, he's interviewed the seller competently, and it's come through in the teaser. So I appreciate that.

Yeah. Heather, you know anybody that would want to do this one? I actually do. I literally just wrote down her name. She is searching in Texas. She has an engineering background. And I just wrote her name down for this listing because I think she would be very interested in. She would be a good fit.

So, yeah, I do. That's amazing. That's amazing. Okay, well, the magic of the pod. Yeah. Very cool. All right. Well, any closing, where do you guys staying on this one?

Bill, thumbs up, thumbs down. I'm thumbs up. I like it. I'm very interested to learn more. I mean, this is kind of one of those quirky edges of the economy that I love. I want to learn more about it. Yeah, I like it too. Heather? Yeah, totally want to see more.

This is a good one. By the way, since I'll stop sharing now, you guys, when you have a chance, you should look at the deals my open claw is surfacing. There are some bangers in there. They are really good. Check out that spreadsheet when you have a minute. So, dear listeners, we have a spreadsheet

where we track deals that we can do on the pod. And so I have my open claw AI every night going out to find one interesting deal. that would make for good radio. And it's been pulling out some words of like, and it's like telling me why it's a good one to cover on the podcast too. It's like trying to get bits of be to do the deal it finds. We'll do them.

So keep listening to the pod. And we will, will we admit when your OpenClaw found it or we'll just pretend that we found it. Oh, yeah. I mean, there's people that these people go around. They're like, oh, I didn't use AI on that. I did it. If I use AI, I'm telling people, I don't care.

Like, I don't know why I hide it, you know. Whatever. Nice. Cool. Do you want to get people a call to action bill? You're so good at them. Oh, yes. Okay.

So if you guys like this, there's 500 weird businesses just like it. We are over 500 episodes now. If you go to our website, ACQU and on, you can download all 500 of them. You can search by industry. So if you're into e-commerce or construction or software or roofs or railroad right-of-way telecom, we've done almost everything on the pod. You can also get on our email list at ACQU-Non. And we will email you little summaries of the deals.

So if you don't have 30 minutes twice a week to listen to the audio version, when you're more of a text-based person, we'll put in your inbox. So go to our website, hop on our email list, and we would love to stay in touch with you in those ways. If not, we will see you back on the audio airwaves for the next episode of Acquisitions Anonymous.