Acquisitions Anonymous - #1 for business buying, selling and operating - Why Everyone Wants in on This In-Home Senior Care Franchise

Episode Date: November 22, 2024

Exploring the Business of In-Home Senior Care | Acquisitions Anonymous Episode 349In this episode of Acquisitions Anonymous, we dive into the world of in-home senior care franchises. Our guest, franchise consultant Connor Groce, joins us to dissect a $5M senior care business for sale, analyzing its strengths, risks, and growth potential.📌 Key Highlights:- Franchise Insights: How being part of a national franchise network can help with client trust, recruitment, and government contracts.- Financial Breakdown: $5M asking price, $5.7M revenue, and $1.2M cash flow—does this deal make sense?- Growth Opportunities: The challenges of scaling within a defined franchise territory and exploring adjacent markets.- Operational Complexity: Managing a people-intensive business while navigating regulatory hurdles and payer risks.- We also discuss the pros and cons of government contracts, private pay relationships, and the nuanced dynamics of franchise territories.🔗 Resources Mentioned:Acquisition Lab: Accelerating your path to buying a business. Learn more at www.acquisitionlab.com.VISO Business Capital: Find the best SBA loan for your business acquisition at www.visocap.net.Subscribe 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]

You need some experience, I think, in one of these venues in order to probably be able to even start to underwrite the risk. It is attractive because it's pretty consistent, but there are things you have to think about, like, have there been changes in reimbursement rates in the past? I do mention that it's a nationwide franchise with hundreds of locations and has been around for a while. So, you know, there could be some brand equity there. Is this something that is really beneficial to be part of a franchise? Or is this one of the franchises where you really would just be better off doing it? this on your own. Hello, another episode of Acquisitions Anonymous.

We don't have 100% here. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. This is the internet's number one podcast about buying, selling, and operating small businesses. And today, we have another episode in our franchising series. We are joined by Connor Gross, who is a franchise consultant. All he does is help people buy and sell franchises. So this guy has forgotten more about franchising than many of us will ever make.

know. And this week, we did an in-home senior care franchise. When you think of franchising, a lot of times you think of Burger King, McDonald's, restaurants, et cetera, but all types of businesses can be franchised. So this is an in-home senior care franchise. We talk about the pros and cons of being part of a national franchising system and how a national system for a business like this could actually be really helpful, not just for attracting customers, but also for attracting employees. So I hope you enjoyed this episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. If you do, stick around to the end and then go check out our website at ACQU. anon.com where you can get on our newsletter and we will email you every week with all the deals

that we break down. So I hope you enjoy this episode. We'll see you over there. This episode of Acquisitions Anonymous is sponsored by Acquisition Lab and their team. They've been long-time supporters of the pod and they provide a really great service for people who are looking to acquire a business. So it's created by Walker Diable, who's become a friend, the author of Buy, Then Build, how to outsmart the startup game. So Acquisition Lab is an accelerator with a highly vetted cohort-based educational and support community for people who are serious about buying a business. So a lot of our listeners like you, you tune in every week to our deal reviews, you want to get in on buying a business. You know, you're on this podcast because you're trying to learn

how to buy a business. But if you're not quite sure where to start, acquisition lab is a great place to start. So they exist to help people buy a business and to navigate all those complexities of the process, everything you hear us talking about on the show. They provide a proven framework, tools and resources that support you all the way from search to close. They do it. There's a whole bunch of educational material and support. So if you're serious about buying a business, check out AcquisitionLab.com, or you can actually email the program director Chelsea Wood directly.

Her email is Chelsea at buy then build.com. Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. This is a good one because everybody's all hopped up on candy from trick-or-treat last night. At least I am. I don't know if you guys are. are, but I am, is Friday.

And we have a very special guest. We have Connor Gross here with us again. So Connor, thanks for being here, man. Absolutely. Happy to be back. So Connor previewed in our kind of host chat right before this. He goes, I brought a franchise deal. I think you guys would really like.

And we just said, hit record, hit record. So we have not heard. This is the cold pitch from Connor. So Connor, give us the deal. Tell us what you got. All right. So this is actually in Wabash County, Indiana. which is where I spent a couple of years here recently,

but it is a successful senior care franchise. Linder slash SBA Ready is in the heading. So Heather, we'll get your cross-reference on that. But it has, asking price is about $5 million even. Revenue is about $5.7 million, and cash flow is about $1.2 million.

You want me to dive right into it? Interesting. Does it say what franchise it is, or are we still anonymous here? It does not. It's anonymous. Okay. So what's the asking multiple? Sounds like two X?

So it's $1.2 million in cash flow, and they're asking about $5 million. Okay. So much more X, a little over four. 4X. Okay. Yep. So huge service territory training slash support provided. Highly sought after business model, this is a successful in-home senior care franchise

confirming it to resale. This senior care location is on a solid four-year upward tear, huge business with large long-term government contracts that will transfer with the business as well as a lot of work being done with private pay clients. Solid internal staff and a very well-respected franchise brand with hundreds of locations across the U.S. You would wonder why the seller would sell this company with such an upward trend, but he's owned it for years and it's time to retire. Many active clients and a great roster of high-quality caregivers as well as a trained slash season staff, huge geographical service territory. Finally, this particular location has an incredible

reputation in the community for providing high quality non-medical in-home care. And we think when you dive into this further, you'll agree with that assessment. They have taken the liberty to outline a possible deal structure for us and return on our investment. Interesting. I love when they do the math for you. I love when they do this. It's so good. It's so good we're going to do it for you. Yeah, Mills can see if you're even pencils. Our ROI is going to be 31% in case you were, you're curious. So how they walk through this, they've walked through it on a total purchase price of $5 million, a down payment of $1.5 million. Current SDE, $1.2 million. So they're assuming the amount finances about $3.5. Debt service per year, $580,000. So SDE less debt service, they estimate to be

around $600K. Anyway, so they get into the granularity here, but I'm curious what you'll think. Interesting. So this is, let me make sure I understand the business model. So this is in-home senior care. So this is not a facility. This is, a team of, I would assume, registered nurses in vehicles, maybe their own vehicles, maybe branded vehicles, but probably their own, right, doing a route to do in-home infusions or something, some kind of senior, or just check on you or feed you dinner. I don't really, I can't really tell from the listing. Is that, you all take on it? This is actually non-medical in-home care. So typically what, like, these can take the forms of like two different structures. Either

they're more of like a matchmaker where they're matching people directly up with their client and their client, they're just recruiters, their client employees, the caregiver directly. This, it sounds like they're people leasing. But it's non-medical care. So, and I think that's important, you know, and thinking about how staffing and recruiting works and something like this. And there's kind of a line, right? Like you have skilled in home, that maybe hospice, right, is the highest. Then you have some like skilled in home care, then there's kind of, to me, like unskilled medical, like, hey, we're going to help you go to the bathroom. Like, we'll help you change your clothes. Like, maybe we'll help you, you know, I don't know, can you change bandages? Like, I know there's some different tiers, right?

This is highly regulated. What do you think, Connor goes into the unskilled, like, non-medical. Is this just like house cleaning, like chores, cooking? Or is there, you know, some actual kind of semi-skilled something going on. Yeah, my guess is what this is, this is like a like a CNA, like a certified nurse assistant type level skill set, so where they can do a limited amount of, you know, medical care. But my guess is this is a situation with mainly like elderly individuals or individuals that can't care from themselves. They're not to the point of needing to be placed necessarily into a facility, but they need somebody to be there and to help, you know, with, you know, odd jobs and stuff like that. So I'm definitely interpreting this to be on the lower end of the, you know, the pace scale and the skill set in terms of, you know, different, yeah, different models.

Well, I was going to say, I've looked at a lot of these. They tend to go for SBA financing because of the size. This is actually a little bit larger than what I typically see. This is a good size one. And you see a lot of this level of care. It is kind of like a staffing business in a sense. You know, you're really running the logistics and the scheduling. Of course, you've got marketing too because you've got a certain number of patients that are kind of churning in and out.

But one of the things we think about in financing is the payer risk. Who's paying for this service? And you've got government contracts and private pay is what they're saying here. So, like, the first thing you want to know is what percentage of each and how transferable are those government contracts? You probably also have to consider this as a sloth. stock sale because of the contracts. And that if you go for SBA and you have to do a stock sale, you also, you know, it basically just affects the taxes, of course, but, but anytime you can do stock sales with SBA,

sorry, I got myself caught up there on it. But, you know, I think this one looks pretty good size and pretty solid. I just, you know, curious how they're getting paid, who's paying? Part of me wonders, too, if this is a little bit of a misnomer. Like, if this is Medicare, right, is probably paying. paying for a lot of this. And they're saying we have government contracts. It's not probably like a one to one. Like we have an exclusive contract with Medicare in this zip code. It's probably like we're on a list of 20 vendors who can provide these levels of skilled care for, you know, Medicare reimburse.

But, but there is probably still a contractual mechanism, you know, associated with that that you would want to make sure they probably renew every once in a while and yet. So, and let's talk about the relative quality of different types of payers. Like on one hand, people go, ooh, government contract. Like, let me get the government cheese. That sounds great. But is that really great? Because in the next sentence, they say they have a number of private pay relationships as well. And you go, ooh, wait, that sounds better. That's not insurance reimbursement. So what is it? What would you prefer? It's interesting to me that they list the government contracts first. I mean, that's literally in the second sentence here. And they mentioned that it will transfer with the business.

So I don't know what assurance there is of that. But yeah, it's just interesting to me that if they're trying to, you know, apparently they think that that's what people are going to be most attracted to since they mentioned it first. Yeah. It is attractive because it's pretty consistent. But there are things you have to think about like are there, have there been changes in reimbursement rates in the past? So you have to look at the history of reimbursement rate change. And there's a whole, there's politics to that as well.

But you look at that. And then you look at, you know, what is the future outlook for reimbursement rate change? I know there was a few years ago where one of the banks wouldn't lend into this industry because there had been a big change. And they were worried about what might be around the next corner. Now that's kind of settled and everybody's lending again. But it also tells you, well, maybe another change is around the corner. We are in election season. There's a lot of things that could happen.

So, yeah, government contracts are good and bad. They feel consistent. But when they change, they change all at once. and we call it stroke of the pen risk. Somebody just has to sign something and now your business is completely different. And we're just scratching the surface of this, but like we're talking about two hard dynamics, federal contracts, right, and then health insurance. And dealing with both of those things together, like you need some experience, I think,

in one of these venues in order to probably be able to even start to underwrite the risk. Like when you look at a disruptive political event, as far as health care is concerned, like the Affordable Care Act, whenever that was in 2009 or 2010 or something, do you know what happened to this industry once that happened? Because presumably that increased the amount of dollars that were spent. That's a good point, though, Connor. Stroke of the pin risk is not always negative, right? You know, sometimes a ton more dollars can flow into your industry and it becomes covered

and it's a gold rush in your industry. Sometimes you get lucky. Right. That's what I was trying to figure out is if there was a quick spike after something like that. You know, obviously, there's the risk that can go the other direction as well, you know, as things play out. Yeah, I've seen some diligence providers in the middle market, so they're more expensive, that are engaged when, or it's a health care deal, and they do the entire history of the payment, you know, system for whatever the business does. And it's really

fascinating. When you read one of their reports, they go all the way back, and they look at the politics of it and then they sort of take all of that and predict what you might expect over the next five to 10 years. I think that's the kind of analysis you need to do, whether you hire somebody to do it or you try to figure out a way to do it yourself. But it is fascinating when you look at the entire timeline of something like that. Connor, I think to your earlier point, like where this stacks in the hierarchy of kind of where they sit in the value chain, you know, if this was, you know, skilled nursing care, right? And they have facilities. It's asset heavy.

There's probably a huge debt load on the business. Like that is very durable in a way as long as you can, you know, keep the, the beds full, so to speak or keep, you know, your occupancy high. But big hurdles to entry. On the other end of the spectrum, like you have hospice has gone through hospice services has gone through huge consolidation. And there's a lot of money chasing, you know, those services. But there are some other barriers to entry.

I kind of like that this is almost in that middle ground where, you know, let's assume that they do kind of the kind of leasing, staff leasing model and not just playing matchmaker. I like that best. If you're just playing matchmaker, then there's very, very low barriers to entry. If you were really good at demand acquisition and building a customer acquisition funnel and then just saying, hey, look, I have 100 people who need skilled care at their house in the next 30 days, I think you could probably conceivably find the. providers for that. So I like that if there's some control over the labor, like that whole heat controls the labor, controls the margin, if that's where they sit in this value chain, I like it a lot. I think that's fair. I think that the counterpoint to that is that this sounds to me like a really, a very challenging business to staff and to manage, because when you think

about it, the level of complexity that's added when you have hourly employees that already, you know, could be a hard demographic to staff, obviously. But you're talking about spreading. them out into customers' homes where they're basically serving their whole shift with no direct oversight of a manager. That can be pretty challenging. And I'm guessing that the employee retention is probably not super high. So anyway, that would be the bulk case for the matchmaker model versus the people leasing model. But obviously, you're giving up the recurring revenue to do that. So a point of diligence on this one really is your people training SOPs, you're recruiting SOPs, your ability to backfill, so you would want to be actively diligently

the turnover and the historical success on backfilling folks. Can we recruit when my people leave, or are these people going to leave and I'm going to be up a creek? Which this is a franchise, right? Yeah, so that's where I wanted to go next. So, Connor, this is a franchise. We don't know which one it is. But tell us, like, give us the franchise take on this.

Is this something that is really beneficial to be part of a franchise? What are they likely getting from the franchise network here? Or is this one of the franchises where you're kind of like maybe getting a logo and like a light handbook? And you really would just be better off doing this on your own. Yeah, it could be a little bit of both. Like you said, we don't know exactly which ones it is. A couple of things that stick out to me. First of all, I do mention that it's a nationwide franchise with hundreds of locations and has been around for a while.

So, you know, there could be some brand equity there that I think when you're, you know, when you're talking about something that, you know, these customers, it's a sensitive time of life. And, you know, potentially there's a lot of value to be gained from having brand equity and having some trust there. The other thing where my mind went, in addition to, you know, the typical systems and training and support that, you know, presumably you do get with a strong franchise brand. But the other thing that comes to mind, I've seen this a lot in the restoration space where they're also dealing with a lot of insurance payers. But, you know, sometimes being a part of a franchise system can be beneficial for situations like that, because whether the franchise, you know, at the corporate level, they have relationships with insurance providers that can be beneficial, or if they just have more weight that they can throw around to ensure that everybody gets paid and, you know, those situations happen.

That's just another example of where I think that a franchise could be beneficial here. But, again, we're limited in what we know in that regard. Hi, Heather here. When I'm not breaking down deals with these guys, I'm helping people get the right SBA loans for their business acquisitions. Because when you're buying a business, the best financing isn't one size fits all. There's the best rate, fastest to close, the specific loan structure that you need, or a little of all of those things. That's why my company, Vizzo Business Capital, works with over 30 different lenders to find you the best funding in less time and with less friction so you can focus on the deal. Sign up for a free live Q&A session on SBA loans at VisoCAP.net, then click Zoom sign up in the top right corner. That's V-I-S-O-C-A-P dot net and click Zoom sign up. Yeah, I was wondering, do you think the franchise relationship is key in securing the government contract? Because if this is a federal contract, they may say, hey, can get a lower coverage, I can go to the franchisor and kind of contract with the franchisor and they're a preferred provider. maybe that's a relationship you can't have without a franchise in this case.

It could be. And if they're federal government contracts, you know, it's everyone's, you know, whether it's their lobbying dollars or however that process works, I don't know. But everybody's, you know, their resources is going will likely be better spent consolidated together in a joint effort, you know, between 300 different small business owners, then it would be one person trying to take a little piece of that and move the needle on their own. So that could be a factor as well. And a lot of times, too, like procurement folks, they want to deal with one vendor, right, to the extent possible. And so if there's some collective power, right, where we say, hey, look, maybe they have a niche.

Maybe it's, you know, service disabled veterans or something like that. And the VA says, we really want one person who has nationwide coverage. Well, all of a sudden, the value of the franchisor and being part of that network and all under that banner is, it's pivotal. It's everything. And this is not something that has to come from a franchise. But as we've talked about, I mean, this is going to be a people recruitment systems training business, which, you know, in the right franchise systems, there should be some infrastructure, you know, already built there that you can grow from. But, I mean, without a solid pipeline of people coming in and, you know, a way to train and retain them, that's all this business is. So that's a big factor in my mind.

That's a good point, Connor, because when you think about as a franchisee, what you get from the franchisor, right? you're paying a royalty every quarter or every year, every month or whatever, a significant percent of revenue to a franchisor. One of the key things you expect to get back is brand recognition. And we kind of tend to think of that brand recognition and the national advertising and all that stuff leads to customer flow. But in this case, you would really hope it also leads to employee flow and recruitment flow, right?

And people that search for, you know, job at McDonald's is a thing, right? And then you would hope that corporate McDonald's is routing all those job requests to the proper franchisee in the proper area. And you would hope something like that is going on at this franchise as well, where job seekers are seeing the logo, maybe even looking for a job in this industry and they look for this logo. And they go, oh, that's a brand I know. Maybe they have any openings. So you would hope that this franchisor, that logo, that national brand recognition is helping you both on the customer acquisition side, but also on the employee or acquisition. side. Yeah, and I think the better, the bigger they are, the easier that becomes. So that is what I like about this one. I've looked at a lot of small ones where I kind of tend to worry about that a

little bit more, even if they're in a franchise system. I'd like the size of this one a lot. I will say the numbers they threw out for financing. Here we go. Yeah, a little high. You know, it's a pretty, it's a pretty hefty multiple that they're asking. And what they're saying is, gee, you know, put in one and a half equity. Well, if you're paying $5 million, let's tack on about $500,000-ish for fees and cost and everything that it takes to get a deal done. So let's call it $5.5. Minus the one and a half. So now we're at four that you'd have to finance. That, and there, you know, that is on $1 million of EBITDA, because I'm going to call it $1 million instead of $1.2 because SDE. You didn't round up, Heather. You didn't round up by 30%. You got to take out $200,000 for paying yourself. I hate, you know, you can't predicate loans on SDE anyway. So let's call that a million of EBITDA.

That's four times leverage, $4 million of SBA loan on $1 million of EBITDA. That's too high. So the rule of thumb of today's rates is about three and a half percent max or three and a half turns max. So you're really talking putting like $2 million of equity in or that other half million needs to be a seller note that's on full standby. And that's kind of hard to negotiate if it's a pretty competitive process. So you're probably really looking at like $2 million of equity to make the numbers work here. Or the purchase price needs to come down a little bit. Or that is the other option. Yeah. And it's all about, you know, when you have to put more equity and also it's all about

growth. It's whether you can grow. Now, this is pretty good size and it's in a franchise system, which I think are both constraints to growth most likely. You know, you thought there's macroeconomic talents. I think a really big point. Yeah. Yeah, it's a huge point, right? So that's why I like the rule of thumb on leverage. Let's just figure out the amount of leverage really the most we can get with this amount of ebada.

And then whatever price you're going to pay, the delta is equity. And okay, fine, you can pay as much equity as you want. But then do the math on the equity. It doesn't make sense to put a lot more equity into a deal. that you can't really grow rapidly. So then it's all about your forecasts and really where the levers are for growth. And I see lots of great deals where they do that. And there were great levers for growth and it works out fine.

But when it's already good size and you're in a franchise system, I think, you know, you really have to think hard about your growth opportunities. This looks like a seller who's already taken advantage of most of those. So you might have a hard time. But why, Heather, why are you saying that being big and being in a franchise system, is a constraint on growth? They're in a franchise system, so they've got a territory. And they are good size in their territory, which means they probably already are pretty saturated.

There's probably not a lot left that they can do to grow within that territory. And you compare it to other companies of this size. If you go around and look at listings for other home care, non-skilled home care, you're going to find they're all a lot smaller than this. So that tells you it's large. And we are constrained by the territory that it's, that it's got, you'd have to buy another adjacent territory potentially to get growth. And there may not be one available that's undeveloped. And then, you know, your next option is to buy within the system, someone that might be

selling. And that's really hard to come by that. You can't count on that. So I think- Connor, we haven't talked a ton in the past about like the way territories work. This is your cup of tea. Help us understand just big picture territories in the franchise world. of how, you know, how iron are those curtains, so to speak, between territories?

Yeah, absolutely. And Heather, that's what I was going to say is really, I think that the opportunity here would be to look to acquisitions. And that's a big part of like why I like franchising is because I like franchise acquisitions. It's where I'm comfortable and competent. But, you know, when you, my hang up about something like this is I don't know of, you know, operators and home care franchises that own 10 different units, you know. And I'm not saying, like I'm not saying they're not out there.

but this is not a space where I've already seen a path to scale. And so to me, it kind of starts to mitigate some of the value that I personally see in franchises. But Mills, to get to your point on territories, I mean, typically, if you're signing a franchise agreement, you would sign a franchise agreement that has a specified territory or multiple territories, depending on how they break them out. And you're going to be not constrained necessarily to operating within that territory, but that is what's protected for you. So if you were to purchase two territories, you may still be permitted to go and do business outside of that territory.

But if you don't own it, you run the risk that if somebody else purchases it, then that customer could then become them. And I actually had a deal fall apart one time for that exact reason because, you know, I got into the hood and realized that somebody else had acquired, you know, the adjacent territory. And I was going to take a hit on the revenue. And is that typically like zip code driven, right? Or it's not as large as like a metro statistical area. It might be zip code by zip code for most franchisors. Typically, yes. And typically they're going to divide it by zip code, but it's going to be based on populations.

You know, sometimes you will have groups that will try to keep, you know, the entire metro area to be contiguous. And they'll structure it, you know, more roughly. But zip codes is the most common metric. Services kind of create a different dynamic there. And I've heard franchisees talk about this. Like, obviously, if you got a five guys franchise, like it just is what it is. And you want some protection that they don't put. a new one in two years, like three blocks away.

But on the home services side, if there's not, if it's especially a less mature franchisor and they don't have like a central call center, you know, or something like that, your phone might ring and it might be somebody who's 45 minutes away and they're outside of your, you know, technically defined geographic area. But as long as you're getting the call, you can go, as long as there's no conflict. So services creates a different dynamic there than more brick and mortar kind of focus, whether it's QSRs or something. And that's why it's so important, you know, if you're looking at a franchise to think about

community alignment and think about, okay, if there's a, you know, what is going to look good on Google and what is going to, you know, what's a name as far as, you know, the name of your location is concerned that's going to be big enough and attractive enough where people are going to call that knowing that, you know, it's yours. And, you know, in my opinion, it's always better to protect a little bit more of the market and potentially even own the whole market for that exact reason. Give an example of that, Connor. Be specific.

so people can understand. Yeah. Yeah. So I own Shine of Raleigh, for example, which I was the first one in Raleigh. So that's the name of my location. But somebody else just recently bought Shine of Holly Springs, which is like a suburb that's south of Raleigh. So that's going to start to be a dynamic there where it's not the end of the world. We'll kick them some business when they call our phone number.

But that's an example of there where the naming is actually going to have an impact on where customers are directed. Yeah. So like if you were based in Boston, you would be better. to name your franchise, you know, franchisee of New England rather than franchisee of Boston because you're going to grab a larger area in the mind of the consumer, even if your actual territory is not that large. Yes. Now, you have to, you know, you have to get that approved by the franchisor.

So if you're only going to buy one territory in Boston, they're probably not going to let you call it, you know, X, Y, Z of New England. But, you know, depending on how much territory you, you know, you choose to acquire. Yeah. That's a good point. You bring up a good point, which may be a good point for us to end on Connor, is, you know, we talk a lot about buyer business fit. And part of the, you know, every buyer's journey is I've got to make sure the seller likes me. So that's a dynamic here.

But also, I've got to make sure the franchisor will give me the thumbs up when it comes time to get their approval. You know, we don't know anything about this franchisee or this franchisor, but I'm just thinking about that as an added layer of complexity for something like this. this, you know, you've got to win multiple parties over, so to speak. You do. And I don't even think about it necessarily in terms of winning multiple parties over, but it's just ensuring alignment, you know, like it's a mutual evaluation, you know, when you're looking at a franchise just to make sure that it's a good fit. And I think sometimes what people neglect, you know, we don't even know we could look deeper into this thing and realize that they don't even allow for multi-unit ownership. And so, you know, if there's somebody

who has the desire to scale something, then frankly, I'm not concerned with what the Deelect economics look it look like here. If they're going to cap your scale below, you know, what your expectations are, it's not worth it. So those are just, yeah, some variables you have to make sure that fit when you're talking about franchises. Let's let's kind of weigh in here. Thumbs up, thumbs down on this. We sign the NDA and get a book or too hard pile. We'll let we'll let Heather go first. I would get the book and I probably would offer less than five million. Very important point. Very important caveat. All right. Connor, what do you think?

I think I will write a check for Heather to operate the business. I do not want to operate this business. I think that the space is interesting, but this is a people business. And I mean, I'm a people person, but it's just, yeah, this is a very people-intensive business. And I would also have concerns about how tied this is to the seller, depending on how involved they are in it and how, you know, how frictionless are. are those relationships going to carry over? So I don't think I'm the right operator, but I do think the space is interesting. Yeah, that is just something about this whole, the whole senior care space is that it's

such a big market. It's growing. There's such a need, but the businesses are so hard because they're at the intersection of people management and regulatory casher and regulatory nightmare as well. Like, it's just, it's hard. And an aging client, like, you know, population. So we've been helping a couple folks in our office navigate some health insurance things. And it's like you're a 72 year old roofer who doesn't take any prescription medication and we're trying to help you navigate your social security benefit.

Like you just put all those things in a pot and it's a very difficult mix to to work with. When you say, hey, I need to send you an email to schedule your appointment and they're like, I don't have an email. You know, that could be right, a lot of the clientele here. Right. Yeah. And that's the reason for me, I'm a lot of. out. I actually don't think it's this specific business. In fact, this looks kind of better than average in this category. It's just, this is in my too hard pile. Like, I want to play easier

games than this. And for that reason, I'm out. So, last one, Mills. Yeah, or nay. I'm, all right, in that case, there's no competition. I'm signing the NDA, fast tracking the LOI. I can't wait. No, I don't, I don't know. The, the curious part of my brain really wants to know more about, you know, the franchisee, franchise or dynamics, you know, are there adjacent territories that are up for grabs? You know, I don't, this geography is not that appealing to me because it's just too far away. But if it were in my backyard, I, there's a lot more kind of bullish, you know, thoughts that come to mind about I could probably find somebody who knows the space, knows how to navigate it, understands the complexity of it. Geography is a big, big, big, uh, wait for me.

All right. Well, let's wrap this one up here. Thank you for listening to another episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. And thank you to Connor Gross again for joining us to talk about this franchise deal. If you liked this franchise deal, we have done other franchise deals and we'll do more in the future. So if you go to our website, ACQU Anon, aquaanon.com, we have all of our past episodes tagged by industry. So if you like this franchise deal and you're looking at buying a franchise, you can listen to a whole bunch more episodes about franchising. On our website, you can also get on our email list. And we will send you. notifications when we do more franchising deals. So you'll never miss an episode. So thank you for

listening today and we hope to see you on a future episode of Acquisitions Anonymous.