Acquisitions Anonymous - #1 for business buying, selling and operating - They Want $1.6M for a Marching Band Business?!

Episode Date: July 3, 2026

In this episode the hosts review a niche marching band equipment manufacturer and explore why a seemingly durable business serving schools across America may be dramatically overpriced despite nearly 30 years of operating history.Business Listing – https://www.bizbuysell.com/business-opportunity/established-niche-manufacturer-with-40-year-brand-and-30-margin/2492280/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:Quiet Light Brokerage specializes in helping entrepreneurs buy and sell businesses with experienced operators as brokers. They offer a free valuation clarity call to help owners understand what their business is worth and how to increase its value before selling. Learn more at https://quietlight.com/CapitalPad is a private equity co-investment group for lower middle market deals. Accredited investors invest in searcher and independent sponsor transactions on a deal-by-deal basis, with minimums starting at $25K. Acquisition entrepreneurs with a deal under LOI can raise equity through CapitalPad's single-SPV structure, closing with one partner and one wire. Raise capital or invest at https://capitalpad.comThis week the team evaluates a niche manufacturing company serving the marching band industry. The business produces drum major podiums, percussion carts, uniform movers, and other specialized equipment used by high school, college, and drum corps programs throughout the United States. The company generates approximately $1.4 million in annual revenue and $200,000 in cash flow while carrying nearly $450,000 of inventory. The asking price? A surprising $1.6 million.Key Highlights:- Asking price of $1.6 million on approximately $200K cash flow raises immediate valuation concerns.- Business manufactures marching band podiums, percussion carts, uniform movers, and other specialty equipment.- Nearly $450K of inventory is included in the transaction, creating questions about working capital and SKU complexity.- Hosts debate the long-term impact of public-school budget pressures and declining student populations.- Discussion expands into why roughly 90% of small business listings never successfully close.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]

Today's episode, and Michael Gridley here, giving you the intro to this one, is about bands. And we did something special. Instead of going through a deal, I actually sat down and told some stories and jokes about when I went to band camp. Now, actually, the reality is I never did any of that stuff.

Today's deal is actually in this high school band space. Heather, Mills and I broke it down. It was fascinating kind of where we went with the whole thing, because I think if you want to truly understand how business buying works and where it's broken and where it succeeds. This is a great deal to totally understand that. So stick around to the end and you'll hear from Heather also how things went down and how things are getting funded these days.

Totally fascinating episode. And here it is. 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 line. Hey, everyone. It's Bill.

And I want to talk to you about quiet light brokerage. I was so psyched when Quietlight agreed to sponsor the podcast because I am a customer. I have used Quietlight to sell three businesses. And if I were selling an e-commerce or a SaaS business, I really would not consider anyone else. Like I said, I went back to them three times. I worked with three different brokers at Quietlight. Had a great experience all three times. Even on one occasion, they found a buyer for a business that I just didn't know it was even going to be possible to sell.

So they have pulled rabbits out of their hats several times for me. They've been in the e-commerce and SaaS business brokering game a very, very long time. They really know what they're doing. They have great reach with both buyers and sellers. And the other thing I really love about Quietlight is all the brokers there are former operators. So you can't just show up and go, hey, I'm a lifetime business broker. I want to work at Quietlight. You have to be a former operator.

So they all know what it's like to be in the operator chair. So if you go to Quietlight.com, they have free business valuation calls, which they'll do with you. No obligation. just tell you what they think about your business, what they think it would be worth, and then what you might need to do to kind of get it ready for market. Those guys over there are great, great SOPs, great systems. I just felt like I was in really good hands all three times with Quietlight. So if you're interested in selling your business, especially in e-commerce or SaaS,

hop on over to Quietlight.com, fill out their onboarding form for a free valuation call, and you can tell them Bill or Acquisitions Anonymous, Sentja. Good morning, Heather. Good morning, Michael. So the crazy thing about all this is usually me, Bill, and Mills show up super perky because we're on Central and Eastern Time. And we have to remind ourselves it is 7.30 a.m. in SoCal. Starbucks, free advertising for Starbucks here. Yeah, I have to start extra early because it's the West Coast. But that's the story of our lives. On the West Coast, you wake up and you are already behind every single day. So you have to kind of learn to manage that. that stress. Yeah.

Well, you do have a huge win if you're a sports fan, which is all the other matches are, you know, if you're watching stuff on the East Coast, lots of times you're up until midnight on something for a West Coast game or 2 a.m. It's not even possible. Right. It is a totally different culture. The East Coast is a later,

I think they start later than we do. We just naturally have to start earlier, so we do. But then we end the day earlier. So it's just like we all kind of live on our schedules. But it is a little stressful when you wake up and you feel like before you've even had a, you're not even out of bed and you look at your phone and you've got emails that you feel like you should be returning. The best was when I went on our anniversary trip with my wife. And it was, I think, our 20th, our 25th, I can't remember. They're all, the years are blending together.

And we were in Spain and Barcelona and it's like eight hours ahead. So there was this window where I would wake up But I knew I wouldn't be Full of American email and stress until like noon Yeah And it was so great It was so great That is great

Yeah, it's nice Speaking of great I brought a very unique deal Can I pitch it to you? Yep All right, when I saw this I was like band nerds Band nerds are for us

Speaking of Band nerds Here's Mills What instrument do you think I played, Michael? I think it's a very barbell probability. I think you're either a big guy who they were like, get over there and carry the tuba or the drums, or you're the guy who was walking at the front with a little tiny symbol. Or a clarinet or something like that.

Take a low, yeah. There's no middle ground. I did. I played percussion in middle school, but I never made it a marching band. I quit before then. Oh. But profession, that's cool.

You got a cool instrument. I thought so, but the girls did not. They didn't agree. Not yet. All right. So this is an established niche manufacturer with a 40-year brand and 30% margin, located in Harris County, Texas. Quick poll for the co-host.

Do you know where Harris County is? Nope. Houston. It's Houston. Oh, okay. Yeah, and it's one of the rare cities in the country where the majority of its population is not actually in the city. Houston is a huge city, but a long time ago, they stopped annexing new land. They just said, we're big enough, that's fine.

So most of the county is unincorporated, and that's where people live. So if you hear people talking about a lot of Houston, they'll say Houston, but they don't technically live in Houston, which is funny. Anyway, thanks for listening to my mansplating there. Okay. Asking Price is $1.6 million, and it looks like Mr. Percussion Mills, it looks like they have pictures of some people in the band. It kind of looks like the drum section, to be honest. There's no, I don't see any brass or wind instruments.

So we're on the right track. So Asking Price is $1.6 million. They claim to have $200,000 in cash flow. gross revenue is $1.4 million, and it started in 1996. So my math, Heather, is they're asking like eight or nine times STE? Yeah. Cool. Well, we're off to a bad start then.

We're off to a bad start. Nothing new. Nothing new. All right. This business is a U.S.-based niche manufacturer specializes in premium quality marching band field equipment. known for its rugged, customizable products, including drum major podiums,

percussion carts, wagons, and uniform movers. They have built a strong reputation with high school, college, and drum corps programs across the country. The company serves a focused yet vital segment of the educational and performance arts markets, offering direct consumer service, domestic manufacturing, and tailored product innovation. They are widely recognized as one of the earliest manufacturers of marching band logistics equipment and as the original aluminum podium designer. annual performance has been consistently strong over the years, although 2025 saw a temporary decline due to school budgeting delays affecting the purchasing cycle.

So Heather, before I go into some more of the details here. Sorry, I saw the inventory number. Oh, yeah. Heather, I was going to ask you, so what do these guys do? How would you describe it? I mean, they're manufacturing very simple pieces, but they are very customized to what the marching band uses. So like, I guess the podiums and the, I guess the rack that you hold the drum on, you know, a person has to walk around with a drum and a marching band.

So they've got to have special equipment to walk around with it. I feel like that's what they're making. Am I right? And like percussion carts, wagons, and uniform movers? Like when I hear manufacturing, I think, like, they are doing, like, injection molding or they're fabricating something or they're, like, even if they're buying individual components and like putting them together. I wonder though like how much manufacturing they're doing. They're not,

they don't say they're a distributor. They kind of have more distributor level margins. So I'm very curious about this. It's also like a uniform mover to me seems like maybe it would be more like plastic and metal on wheels, which is different than the. aluminum, the original designer of the aluminum, you know, podium. So I'm curious about like the mediums here. So can I tell you a funny marching band story from my last month? You have one from the

last month. Most people's are like, you know, when I was in high school, you have a relevant one. So, so St. Antonio loves a good party, right? Like you just walk around our town and you'll see, just look at people's body shapes and the amount of body fat we're carrying. You could just see, New Orleans has Mardi Gras. We have a Hispanic version of that called Fiesta, and it's awesome. But one of the things they do is they love parades so much that we'll do a day parade the day before, and then they just run it back again the next night with lights on it. So what that means is by the end of this whole Fiesta thing, the last 10 days,

people are so, the people that are in the parades are so sick of just marching 10 or 15 miles that they're just ready to get it over with. And so my wife and I go to watch the very last parade. It's the night parade. Everybody's super stoked. Like they've been drinking for a week, all this kind of stuff. And there's just band after band after band. And the very first band to come through is the University of Texas marching band, who are excellent. But the one thing that stood out was they were so tired of marching that they were just hauling ass. They went past. at like 14 miles an hour. They were playing super fast. And I was just like, what the hell just have is watching an indie 500 race? But it also just ties to the idea of how much physical exertion these kids do when they're in these marching bands.

They're walking 10 or 15, 20 miles with an instrument by their head. It's pretty impressive. But anyway, that has nothing to do with this deal, but I was like, oh, man, this is my chance to tell my University of Texas Indy 500 story from last month. I think though like it brings up a point that Michael like marching bands are not going away yeah you know this is not like is it a huge tam no does the marching band have the same budget as the football team for University of Texas absolutely not but like it's always going to be there I don't think it I don't think it goes away maybe school budgets ebb and flow like they alluded to but I think there's some staying power here Yeah, and it feels like this business has built like a kit, like that the marching band needs, all of these different things that are not all really the same thing, you know,

movers for the equipment and the uniforms, and then, you know, all the different pieces that they need, and they basically manufacture these little kits like, this is everything your band needs. I wonder if they have e-commerce, but it seems to me that's what they do. They just sort of tailor to everything you might need. So I would add to what you guys were saying, and especially the point, about the durability of the smells. I think there are some local headwinds against this. There's obviously the one that we all think about,

which is there are fewer kids, right? Just people aren't having kids anymore. The birth rates way down. But I think the second thing that's going on is a lot of these marching bands are in public schools, and this is firmly a Republican state, and we just passed things around schools. vouchers and all that kind of stuff, right? They are actively squeezing out things like this from

the budget and they're getting killed because, you know, they're not increasing spent in public schools as well. Like, that's the other part of what's going on here. So there's fewer kids, they have less budget. And there's some, there's some, you know, some examples that aren't going this way. Like my kids, very wealthy school district that we send them to, but by and large, most of these school districts are getting squeezed on money like crazy. They're closed at schools, left and right. It's happening even here in Texas. And you do need a big public school to have a marching band, period. I mean, you can't do it with small charter schools or, you know, homeschooling or any of that.

You do need a lot of kids attending a big public high school to do this. Have you ever heard about like some of the tiny West Texas towns in Texas and how they handle like football and marching band and all this kind of stuff? I've heard about their football, yes. Yeah. It's huge. It's huge. But so for every Midland Odessa, like for Friday Night Lights, there are these little tiny towns, like places you've never ever heard of,

even if you've been in Texas, like Snyder, Texas, 5,000 people. And they have high school. But in order to play football, they won't run a full football thing. They'll run like what I think it's called six-man football. Like there's only six people on the field to play football. But then I've also seen sometimes they'll have like little tiny bands with like eight people in them. It's like, I can get one drum, you get one saxophone, you get one clarinet, you get one little, you know, what you did, Mills, the little triangle. You get the whole thing.

Cal bell, actually. But to your point, Heather, those guys don't have a bunch of budget for this, right? This is for big Houston or Dallas or San Antonio schools with 10,000 kids there, which those do exist. Yeah. And maybe scroll down and show us what they did say about inventory, because I'm still very perplexed. Like, everything we've said so far kind of leans toward a pretty low multiple. And yet, we have a really high one, but they're saying 446,000 of inventory included in asking price. That feels like a lot of inventory for this business.

Y'all, these things are really expensive. Yeah. There's a website called, there's an all-known website called Sweetwater that seems like it's the major e-commerce platform. like just the thing that goes over your shoulders to like hold like a big like bass drum they're like $400 and some of these carts are like $4,000. Wow. So I think they're you know average order value. They don't say anything about in the listing about e-commerce though, right?

No, they didn't. I didn't say anything. I may have found the site, which I'm not going to out, but there's no pricing on their website. I think you have to like call for orders. So I kind of like that maybe. Like there's like a weird kind of fixed distribution model that's not just like we're competing with Yamaha who makes all these like stands and stuff. Like maybe they do more kind of like group orders for school districts or something like that.

Which is a whole other like challenge area. Like I've had friends who've been in this kind of servicing like school orchestras and stuff like that. And it is, uh, it is a mess. And there's like buying cycles and there's politics. there's all kinds of backroom deals going on which kind of leads me to where Heather you may have an opinion on this how this business is being run it sounds like this is somebody who started making this stuff they have relationships with a lot of band directors and the ask is for you to pay eight or nine times earnings to step in and

take a job and replace that person yeah it's the margins aren't even that great I guess That was the other thing. Yeah, this is a buy a job. It's a really tiny business, probably based on relationships that the seller owns, and that makes it not so transferable. And I don't love the margins. And I am not too sure about the TAM and who they're competing with. If there is already an e-commerce brand out there, it feels like that's the way this would end up going. But like you said, there's politics. And within school districts, maybe. they go to their guy, but if you're not the guy, you buy this business, you're the new guy, I think that makes this business a little scary to transfer. When I guess Mills, on top of that, you wanted to talk about this inventory. How are they sitting on $450,000 in inventory, like, and $100,000 in furniture fixtures and equipment in a 10,000 square foot building, which I guess they don't really talk about whether that transfers or not.

I think it says it's included, right? The inventory is included, which makes sense. why the price is so much. So if you back the inventory out of this, it's more like a four times multiple. But they have two turns of inventory, you know, two turns of EBITDA in inventory. Yeah. But I was asking the real estate. Is the real estate coming with this? Oh, oh, sorry. It doesn't look like it. I don't see anything that they own it. But the split-the-teller owns it, which is always the, uh-oh, did they bake in rent in this EBITDA? So you're $198,000 of cash flow. If this seller has not been expensing any rent to themselves, if they own it outright, which is very common, then your ebita is going to go lower when you start paying rent.

So this one is listed by trans world business advisors, which is a franchise, which is a franchise. Does this smell like one of the classic business broker deals where the guy says to the seller or the gal says to the seller? I will list your business. I will win your deal and your listing. By promising you, I will get you, we'll go out to market for eight or nine times, and I think you'll get it. P.E. loves this space.

Like, is that our working thesis of what's going on with how this ended up basically as a listing price and crazy bill? That's mine. And they are hoping the market will teach the seller, rather than the broker, teach the seller what it's really worth. And so you buyer that, you know, you might as well put in your offer

at what you think it's worth, not anything close to what it's listed for, but you will be part of doing the broker's job of educating the seller what it's really worth. Yeah. Which means that you have to disappoint them. Assuming this hasn't been on the market for two years,

you have to go disappoint the seller, look like the bad guy, try not to completely burn the bridge, and stick around if you actually want to do the deal for another months, years, years, who knows, and wait for the market to kind of, you know, marinate them into the right price range. They did say retirement slash health at the bottom of the page is the reason for selling. So if health is an issue, there may be more urgency and that, you know, that whole cycle may happen

faster, you know, if the seller gets a few offers, but they're going to have to come down in price if this is going to trade at all. And I'm sure the broker knows that. This is the unfortunate way so many deals are listed. Way, way, way. I call them fantasy valuations. Just pure fantasy. That's not going to happen.

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a business and need capital, you can go on CapitalPad to be introduced to investors. So the really great thing, too, from the investor side is that CapitalPad takes care of all of the details that can get hairy with small business acquisitions. They handle standardized terms, standardized governance, standardized distributions all up front in black and white. Basically, CapitalPad professionalizes investing in small businesses. And the returns can be really, really good. I'm so stoked they exist. It's founded by my friend Travis, who is a phenomenal entrepreneur in his own right. So if this sounds like something that's appealing to you, if you want to buy a small business and need capital, or if you want to invest in small businesses, go check out Capitalpad.com and tell them that Acquisitions Anonymous sent you.

By the way, we're doing for Bedrock, our new quality of earnings business. We are doing outreach to business brokers amongst other profiles to get a deal flow for them to do quality of earnings reports. seeing the email replies that come back, the funniest and probably some of the craziest ones are from business brokers. Everybody else is super professional, but like... Yeah, they're anti-U-A-V, or they're getting better, but they used to like say, I don't even want to give the...

You're not going to get the L-O-I if you're going to do a quality of earnings. I had brokers say that to buyers. So I can't do diligence. No, not that kind, you know. Okay. We had a guy yesterday who, by the way, had a hat on in his profile picture because I went and looked him up. But he sent us back like a two-paragraph email telling us from all the things we should do differently in our

marketing. And he's like, I'm moving your outbound to trash. I was like, okay, well, why don't you just do that instead of wasting everybody's time? Yeah, that's an interesting. I think if I were a broker, though, and I understood what a Q of, if I took the time to understand what a Q of E does and what it's all about and the fact that all buyers are getting them now. Like almost nobody skips this step, I would want at least a light, you know, scope Q of E. I'd want my seller to get that done before I spent my time listing the business. Will is working with one broker now that won't take listings

unless the seller pays for a sell-side Q-O-V to get done before they go to Marquette. Because they don't want to waste time on it. I like a, I like the, I like the, It's very reasonable if you're selling a $10 million business, to drop $10 or $15,000 for a pre-sales sales Q of E. And the broker is, I think I like it because they're just like, I don't want to waste my time on some deals going to fall apart because the numbers are wrong. It's pretty cool.

And it's like getting a home inspection before you list your house, you can go ahead and do a bunch of things. It reduces a ton of friction in the actual due diligence and sales process because you've already kind of taken some proactive steps to clean things up or address issues or at least have a narrative around them and not like, uh, shoot. I don't know what that is. Can I get on my soapbox and say my pet peeve about lenders and quality of earnings? Is it okay? Please. To have permission?

This is a space. It's a space. Okay. No, no. I'm allowed to do my stupid band anecdote that has nothing to do with the deal, but you're not. But I can't talk about business. No, please. Go ahead. Hello. Okay. So believe it or not, the SBA only requires lenders to look at tax returns. They require the cash flow to be based on tax returns. So, and I think it's a good thing they haven't really forced anybody to do a quality of earnings because that way the buyer has the, you know, they can decide who they want to use. They can pick the vendor. They can pick the scope of work. You know, I think it's better that way. But because the SBA doesn't require the quality of earnings and it require the tax returns, there's a lot of SBA bank. There's a lot of SBA bank. banks where the credit people will not look at the Q of E. So the buyer goes out, spends their own money, gets it of their own accord, it wasn't required by the bank. And it has all these great findings,

and they clean up all this accounting, you know, that was being done wrong, that bad bookkeeping or whatever, has a lot of great information about working capital. And you have, I would say, still probably 50% of the banks that are active doing SBA loans and business acquisitions have this internal attitude that Q of E is not, it's just to verify. adbacks and they don't need to see it. Which seems very short-sighted. Very. Yeah, but I think that's the same thing as business brokers.

It'll eventually change when they get better educated on what it is, why it's important. Done. Off soapbox. Back to marching band. So I have an interesting discovery about this marching band business. I did find it, and I won't out them. It is currently owned by the founder's dog. who is in her 50s.

Wow. And it's, you know, synonymous with their family name. It's like a very integral part, I think, of like their family identity, it seems like. And so she's transitioning the business in her mid-50s. But that's why, like, you know, there was probably like a weird kind of thing that happened in the business when she transitioned it from her dad. You know, like you kind of look at a business like this and go, how has it been around so many years and it's still, you know, just doing 1.3 million in sales. Like it probably,

when she got it, it was probably doing 600,000 in sales, you know, or something like that. But I'm really fascinated by the fact that they don't sell on e-commerce. There's got to be some, I don't know, they don't have 30% margins, really, but they're saying that they do. So like, something in the numbers doesn't really add up. And I think there's like maybe more here. I think some of the margin story may be that they're in the custom products manufacturing business and they have six full-time employees for $1.3 million in revenue. They're doing a lot of work. There's something going on.

Either they're way overstaffed, they're way overpaid, or they're just not able to get much margin, which is also possibly the case. I mean, the people I've known selling into these school bands and stuff like that, you were either making money because you had some backdoor hookup with a band director or an orchestra program director or like you were just scraping by trying to get margin and it's all very lumpy revenue because it only shows up when they have budget to spend on this stuff and very slow so that could be the other part of it or they could just be massively overstaffed to not run very well or it could be both so it looks like they do have skews

but there's too many skews relative to the level of revenue So like they have a 24 inch podium, a 42 inch podium, a 52 that's larger footprint, a 62, a 62, a 6 foot scissor lift. Like that's just the podiums and there's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven different like, you know, parent categories like podiums. So it's conceivable that they've got like a hundred skews and they're only doing 1.3 million, you know, in top line revenue. So like that, to me that makes sense why they have this much image. and it says on their website, all podiums are in stock and they can ship them right away. So I think there's some like very kind of like wholesome things about this business. Like they probably serve the customer very quickly.

The speed to delivery is great. The industry is probably doing that mostly through e-commerce and they're doing it, you know, through kind of a more antiquated channel that maybe is more durable, but also has lent itself to them being the person who takes the brunt of. the working capital needs. This is an expensive way to do things and is reflected in that margin. To me, this is interesting because

every couple of years somebody comes along there like, we're going to transform the business of buying and selling small business. We're going to become the eBay of this stuff. And to me, like you can see every big reason why that won't work in this

one deal, right? You have the broker looking out for themselves by offering to somebody this way over-inflated thing. You've got all of the, so many open questions that are not answered in the listing that somebody would need to know to even value this thing.

Like, you know, and then a seller who's like kind of clueless, right? And it's all those things together is just why it's so hard to create this, get rid of this friction that everybody wants to get rid of. Anyway, I don't know if there's a point to that, but it's just like, oh, whenever somebody comes to me every couple years, they're like,

we're going to become the eBay of business buying. I'm like, look at this deal. This deal explains the entire problem with the whole thing. I did a quick stat one time. I asked Kumo who aggregates listings, what are how many listings, new listings per year of the small deal space, you know, SBA kind of sized. And then I look at the SBA data. What you guys know, I publish every so often on Twitter, it's Freedom of Information Act data, so it's kind of nice that's got real hard facts. And I just compared the two out of all the new listings per year. how many how many get funded

with an SBA loan at least that's a number we know. Obviously there could be some that get funded outside of that, but most of them are going to go SBA.

And it was like 11% of all the new listings. And I throw that out there sometimes just to go like that's the problem is that, you know, almost 90% of the listings

that we see are not going to trade or certainly not in the year that they are initially listed and maybe not ever. And that's the problem. and that there's still brokers willing to take the listings and do this work and put it out there.

And then everybody else spends their time on it. I think, like, solving for that is the issue. Yeah. And I compare it to real estate. Yeah, that's exactly where I was doing. How does that compare to like single family home sales? Exactly. And it's like, it's like, you know, only 10 or 15 percent of new real estate listings don't sell in the year that they're listed.

And in business buying only about 11, we'll say 15% for those non-SBA funded deals will close. So here you have it. Lots of job. If my kids asked, and they don't ask me anything because they're 17 and 20. Well, no, they do ask. Hey, I need some money. They're good kids. But I would tell them, like, go become a commercial real estate broker.

Like, that is the, like, if you want to broker something, like, as a career, don't become a business broker. It's just, like, it is just, I know so many guys and gals here in San Antonio who just make a killing being established commercial real estate agents. And I can do the math. They're taking home a million to a million a half a year. Yeah, they're hustling. They're on the phone. But, like, you compare that to what the hell these business brokers go through. And it's just like, no.

Like, go go take the easy path to make money. There are no bonus points for doing stuff on hard mode. And this is a great example of all business brokering is just that on hard mode. And if I could throw in one more like comparison to real estate, I think that's why so many business brokers take these listings. Because if you're in real estate, you take the listing, you will sell it. They're very high odds. You will sell it.

And people unconsciously bring all these real estate mindset kind of truism. over to business buying that don't belong here. And so I think you have brokers who think the same thing here when the stats are telling us, no, they're wasting their time too with most of these listings. Well, I'm like, what happens if you take a raw land listing, if you're a commercial agent, you take a raw land listing that's in the path of progress and it sits for six months or a year,

it's still just as viable, right? It may not be flying off the shelves, so to speak. Yeah. But if you have a business listing like this that sits for, a year. I mean, the business could be completely deteriorating out from under it. The seller is losing interest. They have health problems potentially.

You could look back at the business 12 months later and it's a totally different business. The dirt with timber on it is the exact same and maybe arguably more valuable. So it is an interesting dichotomy. All right. Well, where do you guys stand with this one? I just want to know

how big is your thumbs down? I didn't even ask you about financing this. because I just... I am not financing it. There's no cash flow left after rent and paying yourself a salary. And I don't want to be the buyer that gets to teach this seller what this business is worth. That's not a good use of my time. So I wouldn't even do anything with it.

Big thumbs down. I will say the one thing I really like about this is I'm curious about their pricing and their distribution strategy. And I bet there's like a good story here. So I don't think I would be the buyer for this business, but that's not to say that if I was searching for a business to buy, I would totally sign the NDA. I would have a conversation with the broker. I would try to get a conversation with the seller, especially if you're in this market. Like, I don't think that there's a deal here, but I think there's a lot to learn from this listing and from the actual business itself.

I think an interesting angle would be somebody that's a band nerd that lives in this community and loves this stuff and would want to. to get into it and make this their career. Like you, you know, there's train nerds, plane nerds, AI nerds, business buying nerds. Welcome podcast listeners. I don't know any of those. But yeah, I think this is an interesting one where it's not going to transact at this level. The seller is pretty stuck.

It's worth being creative as a young person who had some hustle and wanted to be in this community. And the most fun thing you could think about doing is going to the Texas, you know, land leader convention. By the way, do you want to know where they have those every year? Where? San Antonio, Texas. If you go down to downtown San Antonio, we get all the budget conventions where people like drive in, where it's like the science teachers of America. Like, that's who we get here. And they're, they're super nice, but we're not getting like, you know, it's the

opposite of whatever the Wall Street Investment Bank, you know, bank kind of conventions are. But I think there's room in this deal for somebody who wants to go to those things and they love bands and bands as their whole life. They went to band camp. And then just talk to this lady about a creative way to become the owner of this business because, you know, I think it's never going to transact at this type of multiple.

I don't see how it sells. You might have to do the inventory on consignment or something like that. Massive burnout. Yeah. That kind of stuff. Okay, cool. Anything else to add to this one?

Otherwise, I will ask Mills to do our call to action today because Bill is not here. If you enjoyed this episode, which I know you did, half as much as we did, there are over 500 more just like it, some of which we actually enjoy at ACQUAnon.com. You can sort and filter and search to your heart's content. I get out of 10 out of 10. I think you gave Bill a run for his money. Oh, yes.

All right, everybody. See you next week.