Acquisitions Anonymous - #1 for business buying, selling and operating - Should we buy this Ambulance company? - Acquisitions Anonymous episode 152

Episode Date: December 23, 2022

Want to receive this listing in your inbox? Signup for our weekly newsletter:https://www.getrevue.co/profile/acquanon-----Michael Girdley (@Girdley), and Bill D’Alessandro (@BillDA)talk about an established ambulance service. We investigate how this service differs from the conventional ambulances provided by hospitals. We also dig into this business’s location to understand its significance in this location. We will also determine whether this item passed the Private Equity Test, which customers are the most crucial to this transaction's success, and discuss how the business relationships outside the United States are distinct from those within the country. -----Thanks to our sponsors!CloudBookkeeping offers adaptable solutions to businesses that want to focus on growth with a “client service first” approach. They offer a full suite of accounting services, including sophisticated reporting, QuickBooks software solutions, and full-service payroll options.-----Show Notes:(00:00) - Introduction(00:20) - Our Sponsor is CloudBookKeeping(01:48) - Catch up with Mike and Bill(03:44) - Deals and Financials: Established Ambulance Service(05:16) - How does this business work?(06:58) - Where is this business located, and why is it important?(10:30) - What do we think about the financials?(12:55) - Why has PE passed on this deal?(15:54) - Who are the most important clients for this deal?(16:33) - What is Girdley’s #1 tip to learn about an industry? (18:12) - What is Bill’s advice for people interested in this deal?(20:28) - Why does the IRS try to ban country club memberships as business expenses?(22:06) - How are business relationships outside the US different from inland?(27:46) - The tricky Costa Rica listing and the “Ditch Risk”-----Additional episodes you might enjoy:#151 - Should we buy this Pot Business Credit Card Processor?#150 - Let’s buy a medical staffing business #149 - Is this car spinner business a good side hustle?#148 - Growth Marketing explained: Shopify Superfood Greens Brand with 40% subscription rate w/ Baller Jesse Pujji#147 - $9.6M EBITDA Florida Armored ATM Services Business#141 - A very profitable B2B Internet Business in the Petcare Vertical#140 - Let’s SBA the heck out of this deal - with Special Guest Heather EndresenSubscribe to weekly our Newsletter and get curated deals in your inboxAdvertise with us by clicking here Do 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]

All right, welcome back to Acquisitions Anonymous. We have a banger of an episode for you today. Bill and I went through an ambulance company located in somewhere around McAllen, Texas, down by the Mexico border. We went into a lot of cool spaces around this one, and I think you will have as much fun with it as we did. Here is the episode, and let's go. Hey, Michael here, want to talk to you about today's sponsor for the episode, which is cloudbookkeeping.com. So cloud bookkeeping is actually run by my neighbor, Charlie, so I've met him in person and can attest that he's a real human being and a good person. And what cloud bookkeeping does is offer a full suite of bookkeeping services all in the cloud

for you around QuickBooks and other technologies that you're using as a small business owner. So if you're interested in getting the bookkeeping part of running a business off of your plate and focusing on running your business, Charlie and his team are one to call. They can put together a bunch of other stuff in terms of helping you manage and grow your business besides just bookkeeping, sophisticated reporting, definitely helping you get your QuickBooks online set up in the right way, and a number of things around payroll as well. So definitely know them and recommend them. If you want to find out more about Cloud Bookkeeping, you can go to their website at Cloudbookkeeping.com,

reach out to Charlie. I know many of you have and see if he can help you. make running your business easier and more fun by letting them help with a lot of the bookkeeping solutions. And when you call, mention this podcast, it would help us and help Charlie know that we're supporting him as well. So thanks a bunch and cloudbookkeeping.com as the sponsor for today's episode. Bill, how are you today, man? I am very good today. The weather is not good here, but I don't know. I'm having a good day. Do you know what made my day? I will tell you what made my day. we got a really nice letter from somebody about our domain name episode that we did last week.

Can I read you some of it? Yes, let's do it. I want to read it because they're kissing our butts. Anyway, it's written to Mirko and it says it was a great episode and one of the more informed takes on the business I've heard from people outside the space, which I think is him calling us dumb and smart at the same time. I mean, that's basically the podcast tagline, right? in like semi-informed takes from people outside your space. So he says, I've been in the domain aftermarket since 2007 and a bear in it since that

amount of time as well. And I took a lot of heat for it at the time. And then a lot of the dynamics I said were coming came to play out. Example, one of the guys mused, how does generic and premium come in the same sentence, blah, blah. So you go through some of this stuff here and kind of explained some of the things we did, which I thought was good. One thing that they talked about, you know, this business had 290,000 domain names or whatever,

it would cost $2 million annually just to maintain the registration of those domain names. So that's like one of the things we didn't really talk about. Like there's a background level of cash flow. You have just, you know, basically to maintain these things and make sure they don't expire. So really was pretty cool. Yep. Yep. I love to be told I'm smart.

And we know we're talking about. So, yeah. So listen on for some more semi-smart takes. on this episode. Well, that's the deal we have today, which I'm pretty excited about, is this ambulance deal. And you and I proceeded to say, man, we don't know anything about this. And then we both started talking about interesting facts we knew about it. So it's going to be great.

So do you want to go ahead and start reading this one? And let's dig into it. Let's take it away. I think this category is really cool. So the business that we're going to talk about today is an ambulance business. It has been established for over eight years and can provide services to patients with insurances that include HMOs, Medicare, Medicaid, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Etna, and all. An EMS service operated as a business company with great business systems.

It's operated by a president and the owner helps to only add new accounts such as doctors, etc. An absentee owner available as the company has policies and procedures and process in place, great opportunity for owners out of state, out of town. Same management has been placed for five years. You don't have to outsource billing, which apparently also saves you 5%. it says the cash flow has been consistent. They will give you nine months of transition services.

So just to take a step back here, what this business does, and I think probably people don't realize this, when you call 911 and an ambulance shows up, sometimes that is from the hospital, you know, it's owned by the hospital. Sometimes it is a contracted ambulance that the hospital dispatches. So that is kind of one use case for ambulance is like, I need to go to the hospital right now. but there's also a ton of other use cases for ambulances like I'm on a ventilator, but I need to move to a different hospital, you know, or somebody who is sick in the hospital needs to move or needs to go to a different

hospital to have a test or imaging done and then come back to where they are, someone who is in their home, they're stable, they need to be transferred to a hospital. There's all these kind of non-emergent cases for emergency for ambulance as well. And almost all of those, the non-emergency stuff, is contract. So that's what this business does is it's basically like a really expensive taxi or a really expensive Uber but for ambulance.

So that's what this business does. Just a couple more facts about the business. It says they own building, which is not for sale, but they will give you a favorable lease contract for a new qualified buyer. It has six ambulances, which are in good working conditions and they have a mechanic on site. It says market competition and expansion. Competition is high. However, we are established and have a good network of physicians and helped politically. We can be in the top five EMS services in the Rio Grande Valley with higher probability to be even more.

This will secure long-term work. Our sales and marketing involves having professional marketers in our company, a sales manager, medical directors who are highly influential and future hospital contracts. Wow, there's a lot in there. Let's come back to that. Some stats about the size of the business. It does $1.1 million a year of revenue and about $250,000 a year of net profit slash cash flow. And they want $650,000 for it. So only about $2.5.x for it.

So $650,000 for $250 of cash flow. It says they've got $125,000 of FF&E, which would be furniture fixtures and equipment. I would have assume that would be the ambulances. But ambulances, I mean, if you divide that by six, which is how many ambulances they have, that would be like $20,000. I got to believe in a fully cooked out ambulance. It's got to cost way more than $20,000. So I don't know if they're going to want you to buy that.

I don't know. We do need to talk about where the Rio Grande Valley is. Maybe it's the first stop to talking about this. And if you know much about the Rio Grande Valley, it's not out of that crazy of an idea to think that they could be $20,000 in ambulance. It's just like glorified band, basically. Yeah, it could totally be. I mean, so the Rio Grande Valley is the area down where like Brownsville, McAllen, like, it's all the way down at the very, very tippy tip of Texas. And so, have you ever been there, Bill?

No, I have not. It's really interesting. It's kind of there in a city of Laredo, which is also on the border. Like, they are the closest you can kind of feel like you're in Mexico without being in Mexico. and like there's a ton of bleed over and like people have families on either side of the border like that's exactly kind of the environment we're doing like every you know my family and we've done business down there in the past it's kind of like doing like you're like half what it would feel like to do business in Mexico if that makes sense like all the things you've heard about

the Mexican the Mexican business climate it happens down in the Rio Grande Valley and like this guy talks about it here he's like because we have a good network of physicians and have helped politically, we can blah, blah, blah. Like, there is such a level of, like, old boy network, like, in the Rio Grande Valley. Like, that's the first thing that, like, stuck out at me about this listing is like, oh, that's what's going on with this deal for sure. So this is where it's, like, kind of like half United States, half Mexico, like the

laws only kind of apply. Is that the area we're talking about? They definitely apply for sure, for to some extent. You know, and there's different versions of the law. Let's put it that way. But there's also like, wait, different versions of the law? Yeah, you know, that's how the law works. It's all how you read it, you know, and which laws get enforced and all that kind of stuff.

You know, I kind of think about this. Remember when we did the wireless deals in Chicago and you and I were like, uh-uh, like not going to deal with that? Like, it's not full on corruption, but it's like this just level of dysfunction where a network, a network and the personal relationships that everybody, has, in my experience, trumps a lot of what's going on from a rule of law standpoint, right? It's not all above board. There's a lot of backroom, smoky kind of things going on. And you're just like, wait, how did that happen? Well, I'll tell you it happened. Like somebody donated to somebody's political campaign. They called this person. They went to high

school with this person. And that kind of stuff happens. And so it's the same, like, this is one of those places where, like, you told me to go to business in Chicago. I'm going to be wary of a lot of business of Chicago, just like I'm going to be wary about waltzing into this market, if that makes sense. Yeah, you make a good point. Like, this is not only true of ambulance businesses in the Rio Grande Valley, right? There are plenty of businesses, and you seem a lot in construction or like anything where like big contracts are awarded, where it is very much about the relationship of the owner that

currently owns it. And he's, you know, goes to the same country club as the mayor. And he's totally wired in and he donates to all the right charities. all that stuff. And suddenly you walk in and you're the new owner and you don't have any of that. And there, you know, there's the guy who donated the second most to all the right charities who didn't get the contract. And you walk in and guess what? When your contract is up, you're not, it's not getting renewed, right? It's going to the second most highest donor at all the right charities. And you can really easily miss that during diligence. What, how do you think about,

okay, so numbers wise here from just us thinking about typical multiples if we look at stuff. So they're asking $650,000 for a business with, let's say, $125,000 in equipment. And it's generating $250,000 a year in cash flow for the owner, right? So net of the FF&E, like this is priced at like two times earnings, two times cash flow, right? How do you think about that price? Is it high? Is it low? I think, I mean, it all depends, like let's throw out for a second.

Like, is this contracted revenue? Like, is the revenue all going to disappear as soon as I own it? And good old boy doesn't own it. But, like, throwing that out for a second, like, this seems pretty cheap. I mean, we looked at, we looked at another one of these deals that the only reason we didn't feature it today was because there wasn't a lot of information. But it was another ambulance service in the Midwest. That one had $2 million of cash flow. And they wanted $10 million for it, a 5x multiple.

And I thought that was honestly reasonable too. I mean, if you've got contracted revenue with hospitals that is semi-recurring is probably big margins on this stuff, right? Because half the time you're just faring somebody across town and you're billing insurance. So who knows what you can bill? I've got to think this is a good business that I think should trade for more than two times. Yeah, so there's something going on here. I mean, I think this is one of the first times, you know, you look at this market competition thing where somebody said competition is high. I've never seen a teaser out of 150 episodes, so 250 deals we've looked at.

I've never seen a company come right out and say, like, we're in a highly competitive environment. And then they try to explain how they're slightly differentiated, but it appears the only differentiation they can tell you is we have good relationships as the owner, which has me really worried about the amount of kind of transferable value here, you know? Yeah. I mean, this seems like that the owner is wired in. And they're like, and either the owner is wired in, that's why they've gotten as much as they have, or this could be read as if only we could help a little bit more politically, we could really get some contracts, which that is also not a, you know, business environment you want to come in there where you're like, in order to grow, you have to bribe public officials. What? Yeah. No, thank you. Well, I'll do whatever it takes to be my family, but, you know, I'm not going to knowingly get into that stuff. So the other thing I know about this ambulance industry is, so I knew a guy once who.

owned one of these. And the reason I knew him is because I was raising capital and he had a bunch of capital. So what does that tell you about, you know, owning ambulance service companies, right? And he had rolled up several of them. So I think, I'm pretty sure this space has been private equity rolled up fairly aggressively over the last kind of 10 to 20 years. And there are, there are definitely some chains here, you know, some regional or maybe even national ambulance chains. I would think you've got a lot of leverage, you know, at least in the North and South Carolina area, our big hospital chain is Atrium Health, right? I would imagine that Atrium Health operates across three or four states. Like, they don't want to sign ambulance contracts, you know, in every single

local market. They would really love to go to one provider who operates a fleet of hundreds of ambulances around the hospital system's entire footprint, and they can just have one number to call. So I would imagine there are probably significant opportunities to scale and roll up, but I think you're probably going to pay decent prices, like that one with two million of you, but da, they are asking five times, and I bet they would get it. Totally. What's interesting, I mean, I think you can kind of paint the picture of how this business has been run.

You know, there are a lot of people down in the Rio Grande Valley who you look up and they've got like nine different, like they were, that was a. community where like the nine different side hustle business model was totally like a real thing. Like I remember running into a family there that A, I got to know them because they were in the fireworks business, but they were, that was just a sideline for them. Like they were in the fireworks business. They were in the snow cone business. They had like three contracting companies. It was like just side hustle city of these people just like putting together three, four, five, six different things. And it's interesting when you look at the reason for selling here,

you know, you can start to put it together, right? It says reason for selling other, business interest. Well, okay, so, you know, this is clearly something that this guy went into. He probably got a couple, you know, cheap ambulances in. And now you're in a situation where he's got other stuff going on and this thing never really grew. And he ran face first into what are likely all these national chains. So it's unlikely that, you know, you or I as a buyer are going to be able to break through that bill. I think, you know, just like you talked about that dynamic where the big payers, the hospitals and stuff like that, they want a big national professional chain. They don't want, you know, Mike Gurdley's, like, eight-year-old, eight-year-old van service with some beat-up, like, ambulances, you know, carting people around. So you're, you're going to be stuck here picking up the scraps, and it feels like getting beyond that it's going to be pretty tough. I mean, I think it depends on your market. Like, it could be that there is no regional hospital chain in the Rio Grande Valley. And you've got kind of one-off hospitals, which are fine to contract with one-off ambulance services, which actually, you know, brings the minor risk.

other industry that is getting rolled up by private equity like crazy is hospitals. So if you've got like some customer concentration here, which you probably do, I mean, I bet you've probably got some nursing homes, retirement homes type stuff and physician's office as clients is. But I, but I got to believe your local hospital is your most important client, period, right, for a business like this and probably a large one. If your local hospital gets rolled up, you are done. I mean, the first thing they're going to probably do is try to put it on the master ambulance contract, assuming that there are national competitors in your area. So I don't know how you underwrite that risk, but that definitely is one.

Yeah, I mean, one thing I do, you see that risk, and they do have at least a good spread of those things, right? They list the different ones that are in there. And, you know, the medical services, I think, are at least for that, you know, being outside of a major metropolitan, like the Rio Grande Valley is at least okay. And there's a lot of professionalized kind of hospitals down there. You know, I do think one of the things I like about this is the guy has already built it as a guy or girl or whatever person is running this. But anyway, let's say the person owning this business has set it up in a way that, you know, they've already set up a president running the thing.

And this person appears to be absentee. So it's not like it's a situation where you're going to have to go in and, you know, run the business. But it does say here, the owner generally just manages. the relationships through talking to doctors and et cetera, et cetera, to get them to send him business or her business. I think just is doing a lot of work there, just manages the relationships. That's like the most important thing.

Yeah. So that's, you know, in the end, I think we ask a lot, like what is going to be the thing you buy when you buy a business? And especially how much of that stuff is not replaceable or easily, you know, replaceable. And right now, the main part of value in the. this company appears to be the owner's relationships with these doctors and the referers. And if the owner goes away, like, how do you as a new buyer replace that? Like, are you going to move down there and join the country club in McAllen or wherever this is? Or are you expecting it all just to continue?

And right now, it's not really clear looking at this how that happens. And that may be why it's priced at two times. Yeah, maybe so. I would, I'd be interested to look at if I was, if I was interested in this sector, which I think some searchers probably are and people are, what I would want to do is look at a bunch of them and start to get a sense for what makes a good ambulance transport company and what makes a vulnerable ambulance transport company and then start to see if it's reflected in multiples. And then obviously your goal is to find a good one that is priced like a bad one or just find a really good one and pay a fair price for it. This, I mean, this reminds me of my number one tip if you want to go learn about an industry is just start down the process of

trying to buy a business in that industry. Like, like I learned, you know, I've done a lot of software transactions. I've done, you know, retail type stuff as well. And like invariably, I learned the absolute most when I went to go actually just try to buy a business there. And the reason was is through this process, like I would do so many management calls where I'm talking to the other side. And this is somebody who's been an expert in this business for like, could be 10 or 15

years, right? And they're selling this company. Like, who do you think knows a lot about how this business works? Like, nobody more than them, not some Gartner expert, none of that kind of stuff. No, no research report. Like, no expert network, like the guy who's been running that business for 15 years, day in and day out, and that's all they thought about. Like, you can learn so much just asking them about how their business works, where they see it going, how they think about it, who these other players are. Like, five or six of those calls, and I'll feel like I have the entire dynamic of the market, like super well put together. Yep, yep.

And looking at this one, which we think we suspect has some potential issues, it's also smaller generally, right? This is only a 250K cash flow. The other one we saw is $2 million in cash flow, almost 10 times the size. And comparing and contrasting those would be pretty interesting. The other one I should have mentioned also says it has seven locations. So they probably got more of a geographic footprint. You know, that probably matters when you're thinking about you're shuttling things from here

you're there. You're in the people logistics business. And not only that, you're in the urgent people logistics business because it's an ambulance. So like, I need an ambulance. Like, if it's an hour away, that doesn't I help me. You know, business like this, it all comes down to quality of revenue. Like, where, where's that revenue coming from? Who are the referrals, health sustainable? I mean, we know there's going to be ambulance needs, right, forever and ever. You know, and do you have a, what kind of contracts do you have? Who does it take to keep, those doctors, keep sending you stuff? And if it takes, you being at the country club and buying people drinks.

You got to just know what you're buying, right? And what it's going to cost you to keep that revenue stream going. I think this is why, like, I think every couple of years, the IRS tries to disallow country club memberships as a business expense, right? It's like a classic, like boondoggle, like, really the owners running the country club business, you know, country club membership through his business. And in a lot of cases, yes, it's a boondoggle. But in some other cases, like if you need to be awarded government contracts or large

private company contracts. Like, you got to be playing golf with the guy who runs a large private company and get that contract. It can be legit. Yeah. Well, I don't know if you saw, but, you know, I'm a San Antonio Spurs season ticket holder here. And one of the things that changed, I think, in the Trump tax cut, like in 2017, 2018, is they made it very difficult, and this is all paraphrasing, but they made it very difficult to write off season tickets and boxes and all that kind of stuff for professional sports as business expenses. It became much more challenging. And, and, like, I saw an immediate drop off. Like, after that went through, like, I've been doing it for five or six years. After that went through just, like, the number of people schmoozing at those

type of events and bringing in clients, like, it just felt like that plus COVID, it went off a cliff. But it's the reality of how business gets done. And I don't know, have you ever looked and talked to people about how kind of odd business is in the United States compared to how it gets done, say, in Europe and some of these, like, other Latin American countries and stuff? See, I would assume that the other places, the Latin American countries, are more corrupt and, you know, favoritism and that we were less. Is that not what you're saying? Well, yeah, I mean, I'm not even really talking about corruption.

Like, like, for example, like, you know how we'll go in America and we'll go, like, sit down and actually discuss business over lunch? like that would just be part of what you do. It's like, hey, five minutes of pleasantries, then we get to business and then everybody like goes back to their office. Like, like there's other countries. And I'm trying to think about which one particular is going to talk about. But like, you go to Spain or Italy.

And this is all come from my Spanish tutor, by the way. And she's like, no, no, here's how it works here. Like you have to go to the parties first. Then everybody goes to the party, they hang out. Then you talk about business. So like a lunch situation, like, like she described it. if you go to like a French business person and like you try to actually talk about like business over the food like it's like super rude and like Americans just don't know how to deal with

it because we're just like yeah you just eat food and you know you shovel you show and you get right to it right yeah but like you go to these other countries and it's like a disrespect to the food and to the food culture and to the other person to be like let's talk about business like you just don't do it the Asian cultures can be very much this way Japan and China can be very much this way. If you just come in guns blazing as the American and you don't ask about their kids or their family or get to know them, like, there are some of those cultures where, like, you got to like become friends and you don't get to mention business like for the first couple months. It's very excruciating to an American. It's super bizarre. And I don't know if you

know, you know, Michael Wilson on Twitter, you know, his, he imports a lot from China for his Amazon on business and like one of his best friends is his supplier in China. He's worked with this guy for going on a decade. He was in the guy's wedding. You know, it's just like like I think, yeah, I think it's such a rarity in at least our generation, right, Gen X millennials to be like, okay, well, we're going to be, you know, like, I'm going to invite some business associates to my wedding. Like, it's just such a different, you know, it's just such a different business culture. And nobody even really thinks about like that being, you know, that being different in other places. We just have our American way of doing stuff.

And then you go to their place, you're like, oh, like, I guess there is a different way of looking at all this. Well, you know, like the big knock, I wonder how this interplays because like the big knock on Chinese business culture is like in America, like there's like kind of some business ethics generally. Like you don't like rip off somebody's product design. Like we have intellectual property protection laws like all kinds of stuff like that. The Chinese business culture is very much like, if I got one over on you, shame on you. Not I was unethical. Right. So I think a lot of times Americans go into China specifically and start doing business, like assuming that if someone gets one over on them, it's unethical by the person doing the getting over. But in China, they see it as like you should have been watching your six, like you'll do better next time. Right. And I wonder, though, if if that's part of the reason their culture also emphasizes so much about kind of building the relationships and the friendships because you might be less, you know, after a long-term relationship, you you might be less willing to screw over your friend.

But if it's purely a business transaction, they will get one over on you in a second. Yeah. So there was, I was in China, I think it was like 2006, 2007. And we were there for fireworks stuff. And so we went in and one of the brokers we were working with was out of Hong Kong. And we were with him for the day in mainland China, like touring factories and stuff. And the guy, the Hong Kong guy took me aside.

And he said, you know, like there's actually a very different generational approach to business based on when you grew up in China. And he pointed out like a couple people. He's like, look at that guy right there. And at the time, these were like 55, 60 year old men. And they would wear like kind of the Mao style suits, you know. And what he told me was he said, he said, those are the people that grew up during the culture revolution. And like they'll sell you out for a nickel. Like they don't, there is nothing, there's nothing relationship oriented about them because when they grew up is an entirely an environment in which the whole world was changing and everything was transactional. You were just trying to figure out how to eat. And, you know, under all the changes of Mao. And, you know, he said it's changed a bit. But like, his point was a lot of that kind of behavior, he said reverberates back to today. And especially with that generation, he's like, I just don't do any business with anybody of that generation. And at the time, it was like males.

55 to 65. He's like, I don't, I don't even deal with them because I know, I know what they're going to do. They'll sell me out for a nickel. I was like, wow. Yeah, I was like, well, like, that's cool. And he was a Hong Kongese guy, so, and they have a different culture and much more westernized and stuff like that, but just, it was one of those just bizarre things. And in the end, like, why, you know, I, my wife and I, like, we invest so much in our kids going to visit, like, these other countries and, like, experience these other things because, like, mean, that gives you so much perspective when you do something like that, right? And just you just go there and be like, oh, wow, like, look how the rest of the world lives

compared to, you know, some of the things we have going for us and don't have going for us as well. Yep. Yep. You got to, if you're going to do business in different cultures, you better understand it pretty deeply. Or you're coming back to our old friend ditch risk with our casino in Central or South America. So for those of you that don't remember this, it was about a year ago, we did a deal, that it was listed as a casino in Costa Rica. And the whole time, me, Bill, and Mills are like, yeah, casino in Costa Rica or like, do the casino stuff. And what was bizarre about the listing was the listing had, we looked into the photos, and it kept talking about the casino and the hospitality of the place.

And it was like, oh, okay, well, cool. And, like, we kept going through the photos. And they only had one gambling table. And I was like, this is the weirdest casino. I wonder if that's just the way they do it. They have one blackjack table and that's it. But then they had like 85 pictures of bedrooms. And I was like, what is going on here?

Turns out it was not actually a casino. We got a message later. It's like, guys, that's not a casino. It's another vice. It starts with B or P, one of the oldest professions. And I was like, oh, man, like, you know, you can learn a lot. But in the end, that was our big problem with buying a casino in Costa Rica, which actually wasn't a casino.

It was, oh, like, how does that? do I know if I get into something like that, I'm not going to end up in a ditch somewhere in the Costa Rican jungle. And you don't really know. I think that's the big problem. Very possible. All right. I think that was a good one. This ambulance business, interesting, but it kind of highlights the risks of doing business in certain geographies as well. Yeah. And I think also the opportunity, like if you're going to go look at a new space like this, like go look at 50 deals. Talk to 15 or 20 owners. And I think that's how you're going to really understand in the market. And you know, you can start to ask kind of the questions we're asking and then

go from there to figure out what you need to know about it. But not if it's rocket surgery. Like you could just talk to people and ask a lot of questions. Like I'll go in and I'll just tell people like, I'm really dumb about your industry. Could you tell me about it? And then like they'll treat me like I'm five. And suddenly after like a couple months, like I know everything about it. It's pretty amazing. Well, I know this is true. I mean, I'm guilty of this. I think many business buyers are guilty of this. Like you really want to sound smart. You know, like when you come in and you're learning about a business, there is this compulsion to sound like you know what you're talking about and that you're familiar with their business and their industry.

But that is the exact opposite position you want to take. You need to take, Michael, as you said, the I'm a dummy explaining to me like I'm five because that's how you learned. Because like this guy, he is your tutor. He's owned a business in this industry for 15 years. He knows way more than you. Like, shut up. Let him tell you.

Half the time he'll blow his own foot off mistakenly, right? And reveal too much. Like shut up. Listen. That's a good place. to leave it. All right, man. Oh, so we have a call to action today. If you've made it this far and you thought today was entertaining or you think we're just nice people or you feel sorry for us, please open up your podcast app, write a review for us somewhere between one and five stars,

ideally five stars. By the way, I was so pissed, Bill. I don't know if you saw it, but we had like 140 reviews. Some jackass went in there, gave us a one-star review. So we went down to 4.9 stars. Like, people need to get a hobby. Please. Please. Yeah, my mom's going to be pretty mad that we're no longer perfect but 4.9 I'll take it. Reviews will help. All right everybody, catch you later.