Acquisitions Anonymous - #1 for business buying, selling and operating - The Million-Dollar Wine Cave Business Nobody Talks About

Episode Date: June 19, 2026

In this episode, the hosts evaluate a niche Sonoma County construction company that specializes in building luxury wine caves, exploring whether its expertise, reputation, and affluent customer base justify a $2.1 million asking price.Business Listing – https://www.bizbuysell.com/business-opportunity/specialized-subterranean-construction-firm-with-niche-market-dominance/2501226/Welcome 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:Acquisition Lab – Your fast-track to business ownership. Get hands-on support, world-class resources, and join a top-tier community of acquisition entrepreneurs. Schedule your free consultation at https://www.acquisitionlab.com and mention Acquisitions Anonymous!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.This episode examines a highly specialized construction company in Sonoma County, California that designs and builds custom wine caves for wineries, luxury estates, and high-end residential clients. The business generates approximately $3.3 million in annual revenue and $635,000 in seller discretionary earnings, with an asking price of $2.1 million. The company has operated for nearly three decades, employs ten people, and has built a reputation as a leading provider of subterranean wine storage and entertainment spaces.Key Highlights:- Specialty wine cave construction business listed for $2.1 million with $635,000 SDE on $3.3 million revenue.- Serves wineries, hospitality venues, and luxury residential clients throughout Sonoma County.- Discussion on the power of niche positioning and becoming the recognized expert in a highly specific market.- Debate over whether luxury bunker construction could become a natural growth opportunity.- Financing concerns include project-based revenue, licensing requirements, and dependence on referral relationships.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]

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Acquisitions Anonymous. This is the internet's number one podcast on buying, selling, and operating small businesses. I'm one of your hosts, Bill Dallessandro, and today we have a really fun episode for you. It's me, my co-host, Michael Gurdley, Heather Anderson, and Travis Jameson from Capital Pad, and we have a specialty construction company that makes wine caves. Yes, wine caves, It's not wine cellars, but wine caves dug into the ground underneath your mansion or at your winery. So specialized construction. It has $600 plus thousand dollars of SDE. It's in Sonoma County, California, kind of wine capital of the country.

So we're from really interesting dynamics here about whether this is SBA financeable, how we might expand in this business. And we also start the episode with a fun aside from Heather about tariff refunds and how those are affecting small business acquisitions just over the past couple weeks. So lots of fun things to dig into in this episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. Hello, another episode of Acquisition's Anonymous. We don't have 100% beers anymore. And thumbs-downing on just the plus inventory line. Are you ready to take a leap into business ownership but you don't know where to start? Well, look no further than Acquisition Lab, the premier resource for entrepreneurs seeking to buy their dream business.

Founded by Harvard MBA and acquisition expert Walker Dibble, the lab is a lab is, your fast-tracked success in the search diligence and acquisition process. With hands-on support, world-class resources and a community of like-minded entrepreneurs, Acquisition Lab gives you the tools and confidence to navigate every step of the journey. And we're proud to call Walker and Chelsea, the lab's director, longtime friends of the podcast. They're passionate about helping entrepreneurs like you take the next big step. So don't wait to make your business ownership dream of reality, visit Acquisitionlab.com today to learn more and schedule your free consultation. And when you do, be sure to tell them the Acquisitions Anonymous podcast sent you.

All right. Are we doing a deal? Are we just going to talk about AI again? Well, now I just click record. So now we're starting with the BS part of the. This is the BS part. How are you doing? That's why I'm not talking.

Heather, do you have an open clause yet? No, I don't. I know. I'm embarrassing. Heather's not regulatory allowed to have AI in their business. That's kind of true. It is a little different when you're handling people's, you know, confidential information, it's a little scarier.

Like, we use a data room system that doesn't have hardly any open APIs. It's all locked out. Because everyone needs to be, like, audited, who looked at what, when? It needs to be. Yeah, it does. Open claw is really trustworthy, though. It'd be fine. I'll be fine.

Just let it run loose. Yeah, just go. Just go. It surprises me. I have, so I have, basically, my whole team has access to the OpenClau that's running on the MacMany in front me right now with no password no nothing. If you're on our Slack, you can get in. Congratulations, everyone. I just told you how to hack into my entire universe. But it has access to nothing. It's totally isolated. There's nothing really that I can access that matters.

And but like several times when my teammates are like, hey, I want to stop doing this cron job that I do every night. They're like, no, no, Michael needs to tell us it's okay. He's the boss. And I didn't train at that or nothing. It just knows I was the person that created it. So it's like and loyal to be. It has reverence for you. That's cool. The pot father. Yeah. So, not necessarily related to that. I had a question for Heather and SBA question. So if you run a small business, you may know that the tariff refunds have started coming out this week. I have a friend who got to check for $4 million of tariff refunds this week. Now, of course, he paid $11 million of tariff. And so in theory, the other seven should be coming. But Heather, you

You tweeted the other day something I thought that was really interesting is how businesses are dealing with sort of the ad backs and the cash flow. Like, how do you value a business that had a bunch of paid tariffs in the TTM and then just got a huge tariff refund? Exactly. So we're starting to see it in deals, you know, where we look at the ad back schedule and all of a sudden there's this new one there that says tariff ad back. So the idea is that these tariffs are no longer in effect. This is the extra tariff that they were paying. We're telling buyers, you can't just take that at face value. You've got to be really careful.

Look at how much they're getting back from the government and compare it. In the one deal I can think of, the seller is saying they think their refunds should be higher. Like they're wanting to add back more than the government is agreeing to. So number one, don't add back more than the government is telling them that they're getting back because that's your third party check. but also you have to try to understand whether they passed along some of these tariffs in their prices to their customer. Because if you add back the tariff and they passed it along in the price, you're overstating the cash flow, assuming that you're going to bring those prices back down. Or maybe they won't have to bring the prices back down.

There's just a lot to think about because it creates a very dynamic kind of margin situation for some of these businesses. And it's not as easy as just here's the amount of tariff you can add back. I have to imagine if the demand could support the increased price of covering the tariffs, then it would probably stay. Probably. And a lot of businesses are now just getting like, it's Christmas, right? They raise prices. They pass it on their customers.

And now they get that money back, the customers paid for it. And they just get a big check. They're not dropping prices. They're not dropping prices. It doesn't never seem to happen. Thus, I don't understand how people argue that tariffs are not inflationary. I mean, like, you just articulated how tariffs are inflationary. That's how they are.

Exactly. The other thing, though, that's interesting to me from a deal perspective, let's say you're closing on a business this week. And that business gets a check next week for a million dollars of tariff-free funds. Whose tariff-free funds are those? Is that an asset of the business? Like, did you buy the claim on the tariff-free funds? Do you owe that to the seller?

You know, that's a very interesting dynamic. It could be big dollars. It could be, but I think it'll be treated a lot like PPP forgiveness, you know, where it really is the seller. They're going to, and they're probably going to write it into the LOI that that's an asset that they are not selling. They're receivable, you know, from the government on the tariff. But you're right. It could also create a situation where maybe they sell some of it. You know, maybe you could negotiate to get some of the tariff-free fund included in your price as a buyer.

It would be interesting. Well, I know some people were buying the tariff. claims as recently a couple months ago for like 25 cents on the dollar. Yeah. Interestingly, one of the largest buyers was Cantor Fitzgerald, which is Howard Button's bank. I know, crazy. So like, when I saw that going on, I went, tariff refunds are coming. Like, clearly.

If they're buying, yeah, for sure. Quick 4X in under a year. Yeah. Crazy. But yeah, so expect to see that in purchase agreements that. any future tariff refunds are probably carved out and stay with the seller. Probably. But that's still tough, though, because the Treasury is going to remit that check to the company.

Mm-hmm. Right? And that's dicey because the perception is nine-tenths the law in a lot of cases. And, like, can you offset? Like, what if you have claims against the seller? Can you offset them against the tariff-free fund that you now have? This is why order glows. have a job. I mean, all the what-ifs and penciling that out, all lawyer fees.

Caching, caching, co-ching. Yeah. So would you guys like to hear a bit of business trivia that ties into our next deal? Yes, because last week you blew my mind with a bit of business trivia about Sprint. Did you guys know this? Michael, say that one again. That was so good. Yeah, yes. Oh, so the railroads owned hundreds of thousands of miles of right-of-way. across the United States gathered at the time when nobody cared about the Western United States because there's nothing out there.

But what that gave them was a perfect way to create telecommunications infrastructure along those railway lines between all these cities. So Sprint actually, the first three letters are SPR, Southern Pacific Railroad. That's how that got started, Sprint Long Distance. So Sprint Long Distance was spun out of Southern Pacific Railroad because they had the right of way

to lay cables for free all over the western United States. And SPR Sprint is Southern Pacific Railroad. And I thought that was so cool that I called bullshit on Michael. I was like, that's not true. You made that up. And he Googled it live and proved it. He was so violent about it that I had started to doubt myself. I mean, that's like classic.

I was like, I don't know. Like, no way. That's true. But I make up a lot of stuff, but not this one. All right. So if your next bit of trivia is anywhere close as good as that, I'm on the edge of my seat. Do you guys know what a heart stent is? Do you know what that is?

Yeah. Yeah? Yeah. Okay. So if you go through and you have like major plaque or blockage in your artery, they put this little thing in which is like a collapse. The surgeons go in and then they'll run up through your veins or arteries up near your heart where there's blockage and basically they put this little metal mesh in there.

And then they expand it to basically expand the blockage, right? And so if people have bypasses and all that, because I'm like, are you here if somebody gets a stent in their heart? That's that. Okay. So number one, you've heard of that. Huge business. Somebody has a patent on that. And the guy who patented is actually a San Antonio doctor.

Not anymore. Now he's like, okay. So he's made a bazillion dollars. He's like, you know, every city seems to have these like, that guy's a billionaire? Yes. Okay. So it turns out the guy is a huge onophile, a big wine guy. and he supposedly owns, and this is a rumor,

so this is where Bill you can call the BS, but supposedly this is where I'm going from veracity level 100 to, I think so. The rumor is supposedly he has the largest wine cave in either Sonoma or Napa Valley, because he's such a big onophile out there. And today's deal that I brought you is a specialized construction firm that makes wine caves for people.

That's all they do. They just do wine caves. Apparently. Oh, not wine cellars, wine caves. Subterranean, it says. Is this a wine bunker? Is that what we're talking about here, basically? So anyway, okay, so let me put you on this deal.

Specialized subterranean construction firm with niche market dominance in Sonoma County, California. And they have a photo. Here, these look like excavators and this. thing is one of those like pokey things, Heather, that like breaks up rocks, whatever that's called. Bokey thing, yeah. It's a technical term. They got diggers, pushers, and pokey things. It's a jackhammer basically.

Like a, yeah. It's like jackhammer in a poll. Asking prices $2.1 million and seller discretionary earnings, $635,000. And they do $3.3 million a year. This is a specialty wine cave builder with a tenured field team. This specialized construction company dominates a highly technical niche, providing excavation and construction services for below ground commercial and residential projects throughout a major western market, and it's in Sonoma County. With nearly three decades of operation, this business

has built an exceptional reputation serving wineries, hospitality venues, and high-end residential clients seeking custom underground facilities. In other words, these people make wine caves. The company's core expertise centers are creating subteraining spaces, including wine storage facilities, production areas, entertainment venues, and luxury residential installations. Projects range from intimate residential sellers to expansive commercial facilities spanning thousands of square feet. Additional services encompass specialized excavation work, retaining wall systems, utility installations, and architectural finishing for underground environments. Their operational strength lines in Seas and Field Organization, they had dual licensing,

both as an engineering and building contractor. They do safety, yada, yada, yada. They make money across winery projects, electric residential isolations, and related infrastructure work. They have strong referral networks within the wine industry and architectural community, gathering consistent project flow

with minimal marketing investment. Profit margins reflect the specialized nature of the work and limited competition in this technical market segment. There's significant opportunities to grow through expanded contractor partnerships, formalized marketing initiatives, geographic expansion within license territory,

and so on. Current ownership seeks transition after a distinguished career in specialty construction, and will support the buyer transition through training and relationship introductions. They have 10 employees, nine or full-time one contractor. The owner wants to retire. It's located in Sonoma County, California, and the business location is leased and not owned.

And that's about all we know. So, Heather, what do these guys do? Well, they do both commercial and residential caves. And if you've ever been wine tasting in Northern California, you know, some of the higher-end wineries will have like cave storage that they can even kind of take you down into it keeps things cooler i'm curious how much is you know those kind of big projects commercial projects versus residential projects but basically they're they're building an underground sort of basement but i guess it sounds way cooler to call it a cave for your wine storage keep it at the right temperature so do you guys like

i hear the dog whistle throughout this entire thing underground environments luxury residential homes. If I was building a bunker, I would totally permit it as a wine cave. I mean, right? It's the same thing. It has a track, it has electric. I mean,

high-end residential clients seeking custom underground facilities. They don't say high-end residential and clients seeking wine sellers or wine caves. Well, if nothing else, even if that's not true, this is how you expand your market. You now do bunkers and wine caves. Yeah, maybe that's what it is.

bunkers for rich people in their homes and wine caves for the wineries in wine country. Or if the end of the world comes and you have to be in a bunker, it might as well be a wine cave too so you can have fun. I would hope so. Might as well be full of wine. Double duty. I love it. So like this, what I love about this business, this is a classic example of niching down. Like, this is a company that digs holes in the ground.

Like, it's not that specialized. I mean, many construction firms could probably do. this. But what they did is they planted a flag and put a banner on the building metaphorically and said, we make wine sellers, wine caves. This is the thing that we do. We're the wine cave guys. And now they probably get a huge proportion of the calls or when they reach out to a GC or the GC needs a wine cave, they go, we're getting the wine cave guys. And they just win the bid automatically. So I love that. And that strategy works in so many markets. I wonder how specialized it is. is, though. You know, the wine storage industry is highly complex, right? Because this wine can be worth

just millions and millions and millions of dollars. And if there's like, you know, a failure in the HVAC system or something like that, then this can have an impact. So I do wonder about that. Are they just digging the holes and pouring some concrete around it or are they actually like installing the goods? My thesis on this, when you deal with this type of clientele, you're dealing with ultra-rich. wine nerds who want the absolute best to show something off, my guess is that these people have figured out the model to look the part and play the part of the people that deliver you the Ritz-Carlton plus of wine caves. And to your point, Bill, and to your question, Travis,

I bet you if you talk to these people, like they walk in looking like they've walked out of a Ralph Lauren thing, like just like you would imagine somebody would look if they were building wine caves that cost a million dollars apiece. That's my, that's my suspicion here. It's not about any, it's not, there's no other magic other than these people play the part really, really well. I wonder if they have competitors. Is there just one wine cave digging company in Sonoma? Well, I think they have tons of people who could compete. The question is in practice who actually bids against them, who even gets invited to bid against them. They only did $3.3 million dollars in revenue last year.

Is that just three projects? One and a half? Yeah. One and a half. I don't know. I mean, I could see like a, at a winery, you could spend a million dollars on a cave. Right. A big one.

So maybe just the concrete. Have you ever heard the rumor that they're supposedly one of the Google founders has nine homes around the world that are all like 8,000 square foot mansions and all these like amazing places like Bali and Kauai and stuff like that? but they're all identical with the identical setups down to like where the toothbrush is on the inside. So he just shows up and like an identical to everything is there. I don't know which one it is, but that's the room, right? That's weird.

I would do that if I was building. I would exactly do that. I empathize it that a lot. The biggest house in my neighborhood is exactly that. They have a carbon copy in Florida and one in North Carolina. Exactly. Really? Yeah.

Same floor plan. Everything? Everything. So they might not realize where they are in the morning. That's amazing. So you just like, you see him, oh, I'm in my Florida house. Zoom background's the same. Everything's the same.

I mean, I don't know. If you really like where you live and how everything is, like, I don't know. He's stuck in your ways. Sure. I can see it. And probably they all have wine caves, aka bunkers. This place totally has a wine cave, 100%. So I want to point out, and I'm curious what you guys think about it,

they did $635,000 profit as a project-based general. contractor on $3.3 million in revenue. So, Bill, that's like a 20% SDE on that small of a company for a contractor? Yeah. I mean, that sounds good. But like, that's why I think they're, they've kind of niched down and they make better margin. I don't mean to belittle what they do. Like, there are probably some specialized, like they know how to write the permits the right way. They understand, you know, how to put in the subterranean humidifier to keep it exactly right. They understand what the racking is needed. But it's not like proprietary.

It's just they've kind of learned how to do it. Like if you did a couple of these as a GC, you would figure it out fairly quickly. But it's the value is in packaging it. Like, hey, we've got a couple skews, right? Like here's like our small, medium large. Like here's what people generally do. So you want to just kind of buy one and then customize it. They kind of can make it easy for you.

So I'm going the opposite direction than you bill. I think the margins should be higher. it's specialized in rich people goods. This margin kind of makes me nervous for a project-based company. Yeah, I was hoping it would be like a 30% margin or more.

Because your Tam is how big? You know, is this the best year, $3 million? It would be nice to know what historically it looks like, but you know, realistically, you're confined geographically to this synome, to the wine country

area, which is a great place to be, but how many wine caves are going in every year? I would really love to know the number of jobs that they are doing. Are they doing five a year for this, or is this a 30 a year? That really kind of changes the math and the risk profile quite a bit. 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 Vizoccap.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. At some note, if this is four jobs a year, I almost don't think it's saleable. I mean, at that point, it just becomes a hustle, right? I mean, maybe you're a local area G.C. that wants to kind of bolt it on,

but it's not really a business at that point. I mean, I'd like to see, but like, think about it, like, the smallest residential wine cave, 100 grand, I mean, I would think. So that means at most they're doing 30 a year. So they're doing anywhere between kind of 10 and 30. At the lower end, this feels more like a hustle. At the higher end, I probably, this feels more like a business. they've probably got more SOPs. They're more stamping it out. And then you might be able to scale it. You start putting in bunkers, et cetera.

I like it more. They do have nine full-time employees and one contractor, not one general contractor, but 10 employees on staff to do $3.3 million in revenue. And that's such a double-edged sword. On one hand, the owners, not the business, as much. That's great. On the other hand, you have full-time employees

that you have to feed regardless. with a project-based company. So double-ed sword. I feel like this would be better as a division of a contractor that also does basements or something kind of adjacent to this. And this is just kind of one marketing channel that's specialized. And I would want this marketing channel to have a little bit better margin than it does. But I feel like it would be a little safer business if it was that instead of all wine caves. And that's it.

Heather, is this financeable from an SBA standpoint? It's the right size. Yeah, it is the right size. The project work would scare off a lot of lenders. It, I'm sure, requires some licenses. That's going to limit the number of buyers because most SBA lenders want to see the buyer of something like this, at least have a construction background and ideally have some kind of contracting license or be able to get one pretty quickly. So you've got a really limited pool of buyers who could get financing and you've got project works. You kind of have a lot to overcome to get a loan on this. I mean, this is a classic seller financing situation, right? I mean, it's like quasi project workish. It's not that big.

It's specialized. The guy who owns it probably lives in the area. Relationships with GCs probably matter. They're probably getting work subbed out to them. This is a classic kind of go work there for a year by 20% of it a year, you know, and you own the thing in five years type thing. Heather, what's the climate risk in Sonoma? Well, they've had fire problems. Yeah, fire is the big problem up there. Obviously, there was, I don't remember how many years ago it was, but it wasn't that long ago that a lot of the wine country burned down and it is very hard to get insurance in these areas, fire insurance for homes and commercial properties because the fire risk remains really high. So that's one of the challenges. But if you are serving the ultra-rich, I'm sure they've figured out how to

self-insure. It's probably not a problem for them. Are the fires a benefit to a company like this? Could be. If enough is destroyed, somebody has to build it back. Yeah, potentially. But does your wine seller burn? Is that the only part that your wine cave makes it through because it's underground? I don't know. I don't know what happens. I mean the other trend that's hurting here I mean there's two trends right there's there's reduced consumption for kind of high-end luxury second homes

the numbers are not supportive of that my generation especially is not that interested in owning luxury homes when Airbnb is available but the bigger one that scares me is the decrease in alcohol consumption and especially wine like they are all cratering and I'm sure there's still people who are kind of

into wine quote unquote but like does that have an effect on the demand for this business or the ultra rich are going to want this stuff no matter what? I think the ultra rich will still want it. I agree. It depends how much of the company's revenue comes from commercial-based deals, probably. You know, if you're a, if you're a winery and you're starting to fill the heat a little bit, like you don't want to go build a new wine seller, I imagine. This is not a big business. You know, like a lot of times people there go, oh, is it a short?

shrinking tam or this isn't a really growing tam. At small scales like this, like this business could 10x and the tam is irrelevant. It's entirely about kind of micro scale execution and winning against competitors and selling new business and closing that new business, et cetera. And yes, all else being equal, I would like to be in a growing tam because things are easier. I would love to be selling high speed memory right now, right? Because the world just can't get enough of it and that makes everything easier. But this business, regardless of what the tan, if the wine tam is bleeding slowly over the next decade, you could still very much double this business. Well said, we only need to get like two customers. Exactly. A year to tell them. Make some focus.

Exactly. Like if you're selling like candy on the street corner, like it doesn't matter that less candy is being sold. Like you can double your candy stand by just like making a better sign. You know, at some point like it's just business. It's just execution at small scales. If it is relationship-based, how important is the owner here? If people are showing up in their Ralph Lauren clothing, as you said, Gerds, then... If it's the owner, he's Ralph Lauren clothing and he knows all the winery owners and all that stuff, that's different. But, and I think it comes down, Travis, to where's your revenue come from?

If your phone's just ringing from GCs because you do a good work and people kind of know you as the wine seller guy, that's probably more transferable. But if you're trying, if you've got to go hobnob, you know, at all the wineries and all that stuff, you've got to be a certain person, harder.

Also, it seems like a lot of this would have to be with new builds, right? Like, are there many really nice luxury homes in Sonoma that don't have a wine cave already, or a wine,

at least a substantial wine cellar? Hmm, I'm not sure. It does seem like it'd be a lot easier to a new build than retrofit. Unless it's really just a cover up for bunkers, like you said, Bill. Right.

I would expand this thing in a bunkers. I mean, it's the same. And people will spend a ton of money on that. And the rich people in Sonoma would want both. Well said. Exactly. Exactly. You guys.

Awesome. All right. You guys want to wrap this one up? I mean, is this a capital pad? No. It's too small for capital pad. No. It's too small for capital pad, too volatile.

Not enough infrastructure. No. You know, Michael, this reminds me, like, you know how sometimes you'll pass on a deal. You're like, I just don't want to tell people I do this at cocktail parties. I would love to tell people I do this at cocktail parties. There's definitely an inverse relationship between how much money businesses make and how cool they are at cocktail parties. So that's all I'll say about that. 100%.

People want to talk about the nerdy stuff that doesn't make any money. Awesome. This could be a good business. Like if they are kind of known as the experts in doing this and they're probably, you know, you could increase the sales function a little bit, grow revenue. And there's like a brand here and they've got good lead flow and like all the GCs in the area know about them. And you think you would start adding bunkers. I think this could be a good business. If it smells like a business with a brand and replicable lead flow, I like it.

If it smells like a guy who knows a bunch of GCs and like they call them when they need a wine bunker, I like it less. Jim the cave guy. Or Jane the cave guy. All kinds of cool stuff you can get in caves. Yeah. I know Heather, where do you stand? He put a 3PL in a cave or wanted to in Missouri.

Because like a cave is a giant warehouse, right? It was a decommissioned U.S. government document storage facility that they had turned a cave into a warehouse. And then he wanted to like, it was like 400,000 square feet. I wanted to run a 3PL out of there. Wow. Cool. It was in Missouri. Like, it's centrally located.

Like, it was really cheap. It was, like, a third the price of normal warehouse space, because it doesn't have any windows and, like, who wants to work in one? But fascinating. You remember, I think it was one of the early episodes we did of a missile silo for sale, like a decommissioned missile silo, like in South Dakota or something? Yeah. Good times.

Do tours. What do you do with that? Actually, the only thing I've really heard done with it is some guy bought one and turned into a house, and then he got in trouble because he's, started to make meth out of it and like turned it into like a weird sex trap like that's that's all I remember about that you buy a missile silo to make meth come on bathtubs work for that and then like he got control for like traffic human traffic and all this is just horrible it was in Wired or something I've ever read this article it's like

holy crap I'm never going to buy a missile silo it's a good idea that's actually terrible on that note okay Heather where do you stand on this one? I don't think I can finance it unless it was the absolute perfect person. I agree with Bill. It really depends on the sales channel. Where does the business really come from? So I'm kind of a maybe, for the right person, maybe. Nice. I think I heard from you guys. So for the right person, I'm a maybe on this one. I think if you wanted to make your career out, but I'm with Bill, like you got to, this feels like a buyer earn out and not a pony up two million dollars type thing. Yeah.

Cool. Well, Travis, you want to give us an overview? What's going on with a capital pad these days? And then we'll wrap up after that. Yeah, yeah. We're looking for deals with more infrastructure than this, essentially. I think our searcher deal, our minimums 750K EBITA, and for independent sponsor deals,

starting about a million EBITA. Yeah, just we're looking for deals with a fair amount of infrastructure, team in place, a lot more like revenue visibility and whatnot. I don't really want to invest in it unless we can see the, the downside protection there. That's basically what we're looking for. So I guess if you're looking for deals, like if you're an impact,

I guess you can't say this, but in general, I would imagine if you're trying to raise money, capital that is two-sided marketplace, right? So if you're trying to raise money for a deal, you could go there. Yeah.

So, no, but we can say this. Like if you're an independent sponsor or a sophisticated searcher, yeah, if you have a deal under LOI, please come show it to us. Like,

we have more capital. to deploy than we have deals right now. So we're actively looking for it. And for those who don't know, like we're a co-investment group, so like 1,200 accredited investors are part of it. And we just wait for the good deals to come and then pool our capital together and invest in them.

So we write a million dollar checks, two million dollar checks into good acquisitions. That's awesome. And I have invested in a couple deals, and it was a great experience. The good diligence packet, like a lot of information, and you get to meet the sponsor.

From the investor side, it's smooth. You don't feel like you're just wiring money into a black hole. That's what we're trying to do. I mean, we do, and we look at an insane amount of deals for everyone that we do say yes to. Like, it's definitely below like a 5% acceptance rate. And so that's where like we're really hungry for for the good deals, right? Sophisticated sponsors coming in. They've done the diligence. They make it easy for us to like dig in deep. They're good businesses. They're predictable, somewhat boring industries. Like, that's what we're going for. So, super fun. Capitalpad.com.

Bill, would you like to continue your streak as the king of a call to action? All right, call to action. If you like this one, and this was a fun one, we have now 500. We're running up the count. 500 more like it on our website, ACQUanon.com. They are tagged by industry. You can search. So if you want to learn more about construction or you want e-commerce, Travis has joined us

for a couple of those. Or if you want roofing or whatever you're into, we've probably reviewed it on the podcast. There are also quite a few episodes on kind of S-WRour. SBA structuring, almost everything has kind of a loan component to it. How have we structured this deal? Because we've had Heather with us for probably three to 400 of 500. It's about three years now. Yeah. So if you are on the equity side or the debt side, there's a lot of historical content for you. And it is all the cool thing about deals is even if we record the episode three years ago, the way deals are structured and the way they're financed, the way of their diligence is not that different.

So a lot of historical content is still quite relevant. So hop on our website, at ACQU-Anon.com. You can download all of that for free. You can also get on our email list where we will email you the episodes when they come out in case you're not an audio person or your commute is not that long and you just want to scan the deals. Hop on the email list and we'll email you kind of an overview and you can see if you want to listen. So thank you for joining us. Go to our website. We'll see you on the next episode of Acquisitions Anonymous.