Acquisitions Anonymous - #1 for business buying, selling and operating - Would You Buy This $3.6M/Year Flower Farm?

Episode Date: September 25, 2026

Bedrock Quality of Earnings — Buying a business without verifying the financials can lead to expensive surprises. Bedrock Quality of Earnings combines experienced Big Four leadership, operator-backed expertise, and AI-powered analysis to help buyers validate earnings before closing. Learn more at https://girdley.com/bedrock.FRANZY - Thinking about buying a franchise instead of an independent business? FRANZY is a free platform built for acquisition-minded entrepreneurs who want to explore franchise ownership without broker bias. FRANZY matches you with franchise opportunities based on your capital, goals, and lifestyle—and includes free coaching from experienced franchise operators. If you're exploring ETA but want a structured, system-driven alternative, check out https://www.franzy.com/ In this episode the hosts talk about a $2 million Michigan flower farm doing $3.66 million in revenue—and debate whether its dominant gladiolus niche, cheap agricultural financing, and automation upside can overcome missing profit numbers, seasonal migrant-labor dependence, heavy CapEx, and a brutal cash conversion cycle. Business Listing – https://www.bizbuysell.com/business-opportunity/flower-farm-operation-with-full-facilities-for-sale-lease/2493118/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/newsletterThis episode breaks down a fascinating flower farm operation in Michigan with a $2 million asking price and $3.6 million in annual revenue. The operation spans roughly 2,850 acres and is described as one of the largest gladiolus-growing enterprises in the United States. It has more than 150 wholesale customers across the U.S. and Canada, with no single customer accounting for more than 7% of sales. The operation also includes approximately 100,000 square feet of facilities, specialized equipment, greenhouses, and access to employee housing. The big omission? The listing doesn't disclose EBITDA or cash flow. The deal gets more complicated once you look at what a buyer is actually acquiring. Some real estate appears to be available separately for approximately $800,000, while other farmland and facilities may be leased. The farm employs 12 full-time and roughly 60 seasonal workers using the H-2A agricultural worker program, creating another major operational dependency. Add heavy equipment, housing, seasonal production, working-capital requirements, and potentially multiple leases, and this becomes much more than a simple $2 million business acquisition. The discussion explores whether USDA financing, agricultural grants, bonus depreciation, robotics, stronger branding, and direct-to-consumer opportunities could improve the economics. There is real upside if the business generates meaningful cash flow and can be professionally managed—but there are equally serious questions around labor availability, CapEx, cash conversion cycles, real estate, and the amount of hands-on involvement required from a new owner.Key Highlights- $2M asking price and $3.6M revenue, but the listing doesn't disclose EBITDA or cash flow—making profitability the biggest unanswered question. - 2,850-acre flower operation with 150+ wholesale customers and production including gladiolus, sunflowers, peonies, and greenhouse crops.  - Major seasonal labor dependency: approximately 60 seasonal H-2A agricultural workers supplement 12 full-time employees. - Complicated asset structure: farmland, nearly 100,000 square feet of facilities, employee housing, equipment, and leases make determining exactly what comes with the acquisition critical. - Financing and automation upside: USDA programs, depreciation, grants, robotics, and creative deal structuring could materially change the economics for the right buyer.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]

Hey, welcome to Acquisitions Anonymous today's deal. Believe it or not, both of the co-host told me, Michael, that they really thought the deal was a good find, and at least one of them was very interested in pursuing the deal for real. Meanwhile, one of us, you could guess who it is because wearing glasses, did not like the deal. So stick around for the whole thing, and you can figure out why each of us thought something entirely different. Here it is. We don't have an auto-percent years anymore. just the plus inventory line.

So today's video is actually sponsored by a company I started called Bedrock Quality of Earnings. And Bedrock is a service for business buyers. If you're going out to buy a business, one thing you don't want are surprises. There are tons of stories out there of people who buy businesses. They get into them in three months later, they realize the numbers that the seller told them, well, they weren't true. In a situation where people are often buying businesses and signing personal guarantees, meaning they're really on the hook to return that money to a bank or anybody they borrow it from, that could be a disaster. So Bedrock is a quality of earnings firm.

There are people you hire that go in and look at the seller's books to make sure what you're being told is actually true. And there's lots of quality of earnings firms out there. What makes Bedrock different is it's the only one that has three things. Number one, a CEO, a guy who comes to us from a big four firm and has been doing quality of earnings reports, well, basically for a long time, his whole career, basically. Bedrock is also backed by people you trust and know, including me. You know where to find me if you're unhappy with their service.

And number three, Bedrock uses the latest technology, AI, and all that different kind of stuff to make sure you get the best results at the best price. So if you're interested, book a call with the CEO Will. You can go to bedrock QOE.com or check out the link in the comments below or the one on the screen. Thanks. Well, good morning, gentlemen. Happy Friday. It's a very happy Friday.

Yeah. Well, Jordan, we're so happy you're here. and it saves me from having to look at Mills's crotch again when he stands up. Glad to help. Welcome listeners to Acquisitions Anonymous. Well, believe it or not, gentlemen, I have a deal. But before we get to that, Jordan, I'd love to give you a chance to give the audience 60 seconds about yourself and Acquisitions Lab. Acquisition Lab.

And then I'll pitch you on this deal I found. Awesome. All right. Thank you, Michael. Great to be here with you and Mills. It's my second time coming on. So thanks for having me back. Love the show.

I'm the CEO of Acquisition Lab. For those of you who don't know, our mission is to help acquisition entrepreneurs throughout their journey. Quick ad on us. There's more, of course, on AcquisitionLab.com. You can check it out. So throughout their journey.

So learning about how to buy a business, we have a community of over 1,300 now acquisition entrepreneurs. For 500 of them have bought a business. We're really proud of that. So it's like a serious community. People are like actually going to go on and buy. business. We have a deals platform. We source deals for them. We have a fund that invests alongside them in deals where they want outside capital and where it makes sense. We have a

portfolio service team that helps them manage the business after they bought accounting, finance, and so on. So we're trying to do kind of all of it under one roof so we can support the same person like throughout their journey, which can be a really long time in buying and running a business. So love ETA, love acquisition entrepreneurship. I bought a small business myself. My partner, Tim Erickson, bought a business. He went through the acquisition lab. Founded really helpful and we ended up combining resources and pulling it together, trying to build a bigger thing.

Anyway, enough about that. I'm excited to see this deal. Jordan, you guys have repeat buyers too, right, in the lab, like not just first-time buyers? We got to get better data on that. I would love to have a specific number for you. I don't, but yes, yes. I mean, sometimes people, you know, buy one business,

and then they end up wanting to buy, you know, doing a roll-up or even just buying one or two more in the same, same space which makes a lot of sense but yeah sometimes people try to build their own like baby berkshire right and yeah uh and buy one and then something totally unrelated which is cool too we usually advise you like don't don't run too fast to buy yeah business in another business and another business before you first stabilize you're signing a personal guarantee with an sba loan so like walk don't run and uh maybe eventually yeah it's it gets addictive once you bought one it kind of goes well you tend to want to buy another one i was told jordan in the pre-show mills like one of the things

I noticed, which surprised me, was we know that entrepreneurship through acquisition is a pretty lonely endeavor. A lot of times you're just sitting there hearing no over and over again for months, not feeling like you're ever going to get anywhere. But what I noticed was pretty cool as I was mentoring a number of the folks in the program

was they were actually making friends with each other, right, and commiserating and had a place to check in, people who are on the same journey, and that's not something that's easy to find. And it's cool that the lab does that. Yeah, that's super cool. All right, let me pitch you guys this deal? I like it already. Let's go. Let's go. I'm in. Mills will run it.

So the only, there is a problem with this deal. I don't let you guys kind of figure it out as we get through it. All right. So it is a flower farm operation that includes full facilities for sailor lease located in Bronson, Missouri, which is Branch County, which is coincidental because except for Michigan, I've never heard. of any of the things associated with this. Bronson. Oh, Michigan. It's not Missouri, Michigan. Is that right? Am I is Michigan? Yep. Cool. Thanks. Thank you, Geography Mills.

Except for Michigan, I've never heard of any of these places. And we have here a picture, Jordan, this looks like a farm with some greenhouses. Is that what you see? You know what I notice is red metal roofs. Oh, flowers. Yeah, there you go. and look at this staff.

This looks like they're real staff mills. Like people here are cutting sunflowers. These all look like migrant workers, which is pretty interesting. And also interesting how they're dressed for cold weather. So I wonder if this is a refrigerated area or it's just cold outside. Could be any of the above. And here's another group of workers there working.

And this looks very manual. I think flowers are, like relative to like more industrialized farming, like corn production and harvesting is not nearly as manual as this. Interesting. Cool. There's a lot of AI robots, robotic companies now coming out, standard bots and agility and a bunch. So I'm curious to see at what point that might change, but probably not for another five years

or so. Yeah, I'm still scrolling through the photos. They have apparently... There's a ton of pictures on this. Photos. Usually there's like three photos, Jordan, and then we'll be like, okay, cool, let's read about the deal. But this apparently is the first listing I've ever seen that number one seems to have been designed in 1991 inside their office. And oh my God, look at this photo of their car. And then they have a picture of every single room in the office. Well, it is real estate. It's a real estate, partially of real estate listing for sale for lease. Yeah, and it was designed in apparently 1985 and not updated since then. And they have a basketball gym.

Oh, they should have led with that. And a workout gym? They have like a workout area at the office and then some pictures. Okay, we're back to the beginning. All right. It's interesting. When I Googled to find it, it comes up on loop net. Interesting.

That may explain the red flag that I'm hoping you guys see to. So, all right, so for this flower farm operation, they're asking $2 million. The real estate is $800,000, and it says it's not included in the asking price. They did gross revenue of $3.6 million, and it's an established farm with a strong wholesale network and expansion potential. It was established in 1971, and it's a 2850 acre flower farm operation that represents one of the largest gladiolis growing enterprises, in the United States. Led by fifth generation growers with over 55% of experience,

this business has built an impressive wholesale network of more than 150 clients across the United States and Canada. They generate an annual revenue of $3.6 million with a diverse customer base where no single client represents more than 7% of total sales.

This risk mitigation strategy ensures stable revenue streams across major supermarkets and florists. The comprehensive facility is about 100,000 square feet and include specialized production capabilities for gladiola, sunflowers, peonies, and greenhouse crops. A modern greenhouse facility built in 2002 supports year-round production potential

and expansion opportunities. As one of the largest operations of its kind domestically, this business enjoys minimal competition in gladiola's production with no meaningful foreign competition. The market position provides significant competitive modes and pricing power. They list some growth opportunities here, new product lines, expansion of sales, leverage existing infrastructure, blah, blah,

the retiring owners are committed to providing comprehensive training and hands-on support to ensure seamless transition and continued success. Buildings, equipment, and employee housing are available for lease, creating a complete turnkey opportunity. It is a rare acquisition opportunity, according to broker. It employs 72 employees, 12 full-time, 60 part-time, and the Ciesel employees are H-2A employees. yells that those are migrant worker visas. Is that what that is?

Yep. Gotcha. I like this for so many reasons. Please keep going. There is more stuff about the construction of the facilities here, but then they also offer 150 beds of employee housing that have been inspected by the state of Michigan. So Jordan, I guess these people come in from south of the border. That's what their pictures look like, and they stay at the farm? Is that what I'm reading?

nice they got a gym they go to basketball court they have forklifts F450 trucks not those F250s or Dodge pickups that you drive mills because these are real Americans dump trucks refrigerated straight trucks semi tractors flatbed trailers backhoe Hagee high boy sprayers

and multiple 80 to 300 horsepower tractors do you want CAPEX we got CAPEX We got CAPX. That's what's going on here. All right. They report some of the stuff here, and the owners are selling

because they are retired. The current owners are planning for retiring. Oh, they have a map here of where this is. Great Lakes, Glads is what this business is called. Oh, did it? Oh, is it they out of themselves? They gave us the address. We're not trying to out them.

But like, if you Google the address, you get Great Lakes Glads. GLA D-S. So this is really far north then. This is up there in the upper. It looks like it's kind of halfway between, hang on, where was it? I had it. Oh, wait, I just assumed out.

It's on the Indiana border. Yeah, it's halfway between like South Bend and Ann Arbor and south of Kalamazoo. Are they only doing gladiolis flowers? They have a lot of pictures of sunflower, so I don't think so. Do you guys know where the word gladiola's flowers? Gladiolis comes from? No. Educate us.

Latin, gladius. Gladiator. The sword. It means sword in Latin. So they're like the sword dillies. That's kind of cool. That is really cool. That is fun.

What does a gladiolis look like? It's a long skinny flower or long skinny stem and the flowers grow like vertically up it. It's a very, I mean, I guess all flowers are aesthetically pleasing. It's very pretty. Oh, this thing. I wonder if there's something about the location, the weather, the climate that makes it particularly conducive to growing gladiolis.

It's interesting, too, that they have 2,850 acres is what they say. And, you know, obviously large-scale farming operations like this do not always own all of the farmland. They lease a lot of the farmland. And what I'm trying to sift through here in this is what you're actually buying, because they, in the facility, they have about 100,000 square feet. And, you know, some of this is office. Some of it is warehouse. Some of it is refrigerated space.

Some of it is greenhouses. On loop net, there's actually like a building diagram that has like square footage by area. But they specify that some of these are just facilities for lease. And then others, like the employee housing building is specifically for lease. It's 150 bed. It's like basically a small hotel or a medium-sized hotel. But it doesn't look like they're selling that. They don't want to sell that.

So really figuring out what's for sale and what's for lease is, I think, going to be paramount here. So if you want the real estate and the business, it's $2.8 million. But I think if you guys, was there something key kind of critical to any business purchase I did not talk about? Well, actually, I don't think that's the whole price. because if it's 2,850 acres, it's worth more than $800,000. So I think there's $800,000 of real estate available to buy, but it's not 100% of the real estate associated with the business. Well, why would they do that?

Yeah. Well, some of it they don't own. So, like, let me share my screen really quick. Oh, okay, so they're leasing some stuff. All right. Yeah. So, like, if you look here, this is the address that comes up on loop. And this is how I figured out that it's Great Lakes Glads.

And it's the same picture that was on loop net. You know, you've got these red metal roofs and some greenhouses and stuff like that. This parcel is only 193 acres, which I mean is also, it's still very large. But if you look around, I mean, these are all farm tracks. And it may be that like, for example, this Wilson LLC, Wilson LLC, Wilson, like, it may be that they're leasing a lot of these for additional production. So conceivably, some of this is for sale. I don't know if on this site, if this also includes the, you know, for lease motel, you know, and things like that. Got it. Mills, very impressive recon.

Wow. I'm going to stop sharing my screen now. So I don't help myself. What app was that that you were using? Landgoyd. It's $9.99 a month. And it aggregates county GIS data. So you can like go to like I live in Richland County South Carolina. I can go to Richland County GIS maps. But then if I go across a county border, I'd have to go to the next counties GIS.

And like I don't even know a county this, I think you said it. But it aggregates all of that. Yeah, take it. Okay. So all right. So let me ask you this. You were making an important point.

And I'd derailed us. Sorry. So you can go back to your time. You're doing a great job today, Bills. Yeah, you just keep it up. Yeah, don't. You're never a disappointment to me. So let me ask you this, Jordan. This list thing, they're kind of missing a key factor, which is they don't talk about whether this thing makes any money or not. And farms are historically one of the most difficult businesses. We've made it incredibly difficult in this country to be a farmer, especially a small one. Like, when you see this deal and there's no profit even mentioned, how do you kind of react to that? How do you think about it? Right. Yeah, you really can't evaluate it. There's just too many missing. I think if you like flowers, you like sword lilies. You don't mind being in Michigan. You maybe have some sort of reason to be in this business. Some sort of competitive advantage. You know about the space or maybe you have some extra distribution that you could bring in a relationship with. I presume they're selling to grocery stores and so on. I don't know. I know they don't have a lot of customer concentration. That's an exciting point. but I don't know how to think about the asking price without knowing the cash flow.

We can't get to a multiple. And then, of course, to this point, we don't know about the lease and what the terms of that are. On the positive side, similar to the business looked at. Last time I was on the show, very different business,

but that came with airplanes, right? So like a flight training school. Here, I'm sure there's a lot of great bonus depreciation to be had in write-offs, not just the heavy equipment and the trucks and so on, but potentially on some new structures as well. So that's positive, but there's not enough information to be able to figure out

if this price is reasonable or not reasonable. Yeah. Well, I wonder if it's one of those scenarios where they've made the decision to be somewhat easy to figure out this business, right? And they don't want their neighbors to look and be like, oh, these guys are making a half a million dollars a year off of this. thing, right? Or I think more interestingly, there's a decent chance, if Mills, to your point, they're leasing the farmland next door, they don't want those people to understand how profitable

their business potentially is. That to me is somewhat explainable, but it also is just like one of the fundamental problems with like, okay, you're giving us enough of the teaser to just know we don't know anything because we don't know if this thing actually makes money or not. It seems to be a huge, huge labor risk as well, right? Immigration and, you know, it's a lot of people they have. So the H2A program is specifically for seasonal agricultural workers. Like H1B is the one that's in the news more because of like large technology workforce. But H2A is, I think, slightly less fickle.

But I think I've talked about this on the podcast before, but got pretty far down the road on buying a right-of-way maintenance business in the southeast. They would clear transmission lines, not like the ones in your backyard, but like the big ones for power lines. And it was started by actually a South American immigrant. And he just had a landscaping business like cutting grass. And he kind of kept moving further up the food chain. And he owned several motels in the southeast in this one specific kind of state for one specific power company. And I mean, they had thousands of miles of power lines that had to be maintained.

But it can be very fickle. They actually had an attorney on staff. This business was doing like $6 million in EBITDA, but they had an attorney on staff to help navigate the H2A process because it's so fickle and finicky. And there's also pinstroke risk. Like Trump came into office and H2A got almost completely eliminated for like a couple years, if my memory serves right. But one of the things you have to do in the H2A process is you have to follow all these steps to make sure that you're not taking jobs from the local workforce.

So you have to demonstrate that you've posted the job on local job pages and like in the newspaper and that you haven't been able to fill your needs sufficiently from the local population and then you can bring in that workforce. But housing almost always goes hand in hand with it because the wages are not enough. And you have to like, in this case, they have 60 people seasonally who are like, I think the growing season, you know, is obviously not during cold months. So that's a compressed time frame in this area of Michigan. But you're talking about having 60 people there for probably like 30 to maybe 60 days of actually harvest season. Maybe they're there for some planting. But the harvest is the most labor intensive. So this is fascinating to me. All the nuance and intricacies of like you're leasing some land, you own some land. You're leasing some facilities. You have short-term employee. I mean, there's a lot that goes into this. And to your point, Michael, like, are they picking up pennies in front of a steamroller? Or is this incredibly lucrative?

And, like, there may be a reason they're not telling us. So I just did a video on the rise and fall of Dairy Queen. I saw it or not. Oh, thank you. Yeah. They're doing incredibly well overseas, but they're, like, almost dying in the United States. Like, they're struggling. Here's a quiz for you guys.

So the United States population has basically gone up about two and a half three times since World War II. We're at 350 million people plus or minus. What do you think has happened to the absolute rural population in the United States since World War II? Like what has happened? So the overall country is nearly tripled. What do you think has happened to the rural population of Americans, people living outside of cities since World War II? How do you define a city? people living within driving distance

of working in the city like a normal commute distance I would my first thought is declined thank you for being particular about your guess any more clarifying questions from the witness

my first thought is declined but then I'm thinking has it stayed flat I'm gonna say it's down I just heard you say down so I'm going to jump on that it's down

down down 50%. Yeah, that's exactly right. 50%. Wow. Yeah, it's, you know, the story of Dairy Queen, at least in rural America, is you're basically selling, you know, you're selling into a hugely shrinking market. And to your point, Mills, like, there's a reason these folks are 100% dependent on somebody

from Honduras coming up on an H-2A visa, taking the bus all the way up, you know, Mexico and coming in the United States to do this job seasonally is. like there's just even if Americans did want to stand in front of a flower processing table all day and cut their fingers on sharp leaves and scissors and all that kind of stuff like there just aren't enough Americans out in the farmland to want to do this kind of work like there's probably not 70 people living within two miles of this farm right and these people hire 70 of them every season one of the biggest risk in entrepreneurship through acquisition is buying a business with fragile systems unclear demand or a single owner who holds all the knowledge.

Franchising approaches that problem differently. You are buying into an established brand with documented systems, unit level data, and repeatable operating playbooks. The heart part is knowing which franchises are actually worth evaluating. That's why Alex Moresniak, former CEO of 2U laundry, built Franzy. Franzy is a free platform that helps acquisition-minded entrepreneurs explore franchise ownership without broker bias. You answer a few questions and Franzy shows you franchise opportunities that align with your capital, lifestyle, and long-term goals. You also get free coaching from people who have actually built and scaled franchise businesses. If you are exploring ETA and want to understand whether franchising fits your acquisition strategy, visit franzi.com. That's F-R-A-N-Z-Y.com. And thanks to them for sponsoring today's episode.

The interesting thing about the agriculture business at large right now is that the most growing and dynamic part of it is the direct-to-consumer model. So like if you look at, you know, beef and pork and poultry production, all the farmers have basically been, you know, know, very, very removed from the customer. And it's all, you know, industrialized farming. Same with flowers in this case where there, I mean, if there's even a thousand acres of gladiolus, I mean, that is insane, the production that you would get on something like that. They're not all being sold within even 100 or 200 miles of where they're grown. But where all the growth that I see in the agricultural space is when like a small farmer is selling, you know, beef direct to consumer.

Because then they're able to capture so much more of that margin. A lot of these like hobby flower farms, they end up monetizing, you know, they're selling at farmers markets. They're selling at like, you know, kind of their own farm stand or farm store. But then they're also doing things that are like kind of agritourism. And they're saying like, we have a wedding venue or you can come here and take photo shoots in front of like our field of sunflowers or, you know, all kinds of things like that. And they've monetized it in a lot of different ways. This business, I think, is probably too large for that. And they've got to, they're locked in to selling to like the industrial farming, you know,

mechanism. And my guess is like these flowers are like ending up in our zip codes, if I had to bet. Yeah. And this is not one of those products like dairy, for example, or beef where people are like going out to the farm store and doing all that kind of stuff. Nobody's like, you know what we're doing today, kids? We're going to go out to the flower store on a farm halfway from Chicago to Milwaukee. It's going to be great. Well, like, we buy like a share of a cow for my family, like, you know, and we stock our freezer and stuff like that.

Nobody's doing that with flowers, you know? Like, I don't need, I don't need an acre's worth. I was just going to jump on that mills because I'm a friend of built this business butcher box at a Boston. Yeah. Crazy successful. I don't know if that's where you get your. I don't. I get it locally, but I've heard of them and I've dabbled in it.

Bootstrapped, no outside capital. And it's, you know, meat from farmers, organic, fresh, you know, monthly subscription right to your door. And but there's some nuance. I think about what makes that work for meat that wouldn't work for flowers. In particular, I don't just want gladiolas, right? I could find, maybe I'd want a flower subscription, but I want a little more variety. Yeah. But you could think about, say, if you were an entrepreneur who had a business like that in mind

and you want to own, you know, end-to-end the full stack, and this could be an add-on. You have something else for daisies and lilies, but that's the vast majority of our listeners, I'm sure are not doing that. They're thinking about, you know, buying a business with an SBA loan kind of thing, whether this would fit. So I would have to think a strategic buyer that's producing other flowers. and other stuff and is already selling to grocery stores and still on, you know, might pay a premium for this.

If it's just, you know, it adds another skew right to their list of stuff they're selling. All sale. So, I mean, Jordan, I think a question for you. You wake up tomorrow and you've inherited this business. You are now owning it. You live in Bronson, Michigan. Two hours outside of Detroit and Chicago. you have to line up 70 plus workers to bus in every holiday or every growing season,

hoping the visa stuff doesn't change. And then you're selling to, it looks like a couple dozen chains of big buyers, grocery stores and folks who are buying your flowers here. On a scale of 1 to 10, how happy are you that you now own this business? you just inherited. And the reason I'm asking is, is this a good business to be in or is this a bad business to be in

before we even start to talk about price? I think the scenario in which this could be a good business, let's assume the multiple is reasonable, three or four X cash flow company. I would want to hire a bilingual GM who speaks Spanish to run the business. I would want to get on that pretty early, which is not my usual advice,

but this is me. And I would want to buy it in a year in which I had a lot of taxable income such that I could do a bonus depreciation, a cost-sex study, a bonus depreciate, and hopefully get out the full amount of my cash contribution. If I'm putting certainly 5 or 10 percent down, but potentially even more, I bet with this business you could get enough first year write-offs that you would be able to save enough on the income that you otherwise would have paid to Uncle Sam that you put into this business. you probably, you know, if you're buying it for two, let's say real estate included and other stuff, it's maybe $3 million and you're putting 10% downs, $300K down. I bet that you could probably get a right off here. I'm just totally guessing without knowing, but of at least that much in actual net savings. So I would look at it that way.

If I can potentially even get this business for free from a cash and cash out perspective due to the depreciation, accelerated depreciation on the trucks and structures and everything else, and I had a GM who could step. and run it, now I'm kind of getting a business for free and maybe minimal about a work, which is always a dangerous thing to say because it's always more work than you think, especially getting it going. If I had that scenario in mind, I would want to go into it with that. And then maybe I'm basically just signing for a loan probably, a PG on an SBA loan. And if I had any distribution edge, then maybe it's attractive. But otherwise on its own,

No, I think it's probably too small and in a tough geography and some risky elements to it. Yeah. Well, is this one you could get a USDA loan for? Yeah. Say more about that. Say more about that. I'm not familiar with USDA loans. Well, this is normally where I go. Heather, tell us about that,

but she's not here. So let me ask the next best thing. Mills, tell us about the USDA loan. The only kind of, I think, tidbit I have to add on this is USDA loans, they are mainly geographically based. It doesn't have to be for ag purposes. It just is typically rural in nature. But usually the AM goes out longer.

I think you can go maybe 20 or 25 year AM on USDA. So it would probably, you know, make your debt service much more manageable. But again, we don't really know what you're buying. and I think best case scenario on something like this, you sign the NDA, and I think from some Googling, this business is listed for sale by owner from Larenda

is what Biz BuySell says. But you're going to have so many strings attached. You're negotiating multi-year leases for your protection to be able to continue to use these facilities that you maybe can't buy or they don't want to sell. And so you're going to be joined the hip with the seller in a lot of ways. I think that it's going to make a lender, you know, probably a little timid.

If you've got multiple different, it's not just like I'm buying one building and one business and leasing this one thing. It's like I'm buying an operating business and I might have 10 different leases on 10 different types of real estate that I think it would be not impossible, but tricky to navigate. So I just asked Claude about it. So there are four flavors of USDA loans. They'll go through a thing called the Farm Service Agency. And it's generally designed for a scenario in which you can't get loans to buy a farm and own it like this from a more conventional source.

You have to demonstrate that you can't get a conventional loan. So there are four flavors of it. One of them is called direct farm ownership. The FSA loans you 600K for 40 years at 6%. you have to have farm management experience. There's another one where the FSA does half alongside a bank, and you can borrow up to $1.2 million. The interest rate on that is capped at 4%, so not bad.

Then there are some versions of this where they let you put down, loan you the down payment if you're a veteran or socially disadvantaged. And then there's a what's called guaranteed farm ownership, which is basically the equivalent of the SBA 7A program for what people use for business buying. but for farms. And that's a $2.3 million ceiling where the FSA guarantees 95% of it for a local bank and the local bank loans you the money. There's also, in addition to those, there's a shocking amount of grants available

through the USDA to promote, like, farmers are dying, you know, and aging out. There's not young farmers coming in. And I've looked at some of them just like on a very small scale, but like there's the EQIP, EQUIP, I think is the acronym for the program. But I mean, you can get like 80% grants for like hard costs, like putting in greenhouses is one of the things. Putting in infrastructure, fencing, wells. Like it's shocking. And these are like, they're grants. They're not even subsidized loans. So there's a multi-layered system that supports agriculture in the United States. So I did a video probably three months ago, four months ago, or maybe a little longer.

It was cold. It was during the winter. I was all bundled up at my cowboy hat on. And I went out to go do the video in front of a farm. And it was a smaller scale farm about the rise and fall of small farmers in the United States. And I told the story about why it was so difficult. And I'm there for like 10 minutes. And I'm like talking to a handy cam like in front of a field.

And this like car like comes speeding at me like 100 miles an hour. like pulls up, hits the brakes, and the window rolls down. There's a lady in there. And she goes, who are you? What are you doing? I'm like, and I'm standing on the right way. And she goes, I go, oh, I'm a YouTuber and I'm doing a video about the right, how difficult it is for small farmers in the United States.

And she said, she goes, you're effing right it is. Roll up her window and drove back to her farm. That's amazing. We're like, wait, wait, can I do a quick interview? Will you comment? Where are you going? Primary source? Well, I don't know.

Between the subsidies and grants, and I mean, it's such an inflationary economy, if you can borrow money cheap enough for long enough, you have 40 years and I don't know, 4 to 6% on a loan, bonus depreciation thrown in. It seems like you're basically getting a free farm. The question is, do you want to do it? And can you not go out of business?

business, right? And I think that's what it more comes down to. It sounds like, farming, you know, farming is those businesses with like the worst cash conversion cycle in the world, right? Like you, and in the challenge with all these small farmers is the government has let the buyers who buy from these folks consolidate. And so it's, you know, it's the opposite of a monopoly is a monopsony where there's only one buyer of a thing. And, you know, I've seen where these farmers are like, cool, well, thanks for investing all your money for the last year to hire the labor, till the land, plant all the seeds, process all the flowers, ship them to us. Good news is, because you're going to keep doing with us and business with us, and we're such

a good buyer, you're giving us net 90 terms. Thank you. We'll pay you in January. And it's just like, ah, the older I get, the more I like net networking, you know, net capital. Positive gas conversion cycle. Yeah, positive gas conversion cycle. I just, I don't know, this, I don't think that this is a very easy business to transition. But I think there is a bull case here. If you, you know, if you are willing to live in this area and you are willing to run a business like this and you are willing to take some risk,

I don't think that this business probably ever triples in size or doubles in size. But like, you could, if it at least piques your interest, You sign the NDA and you're probably talking directly to the seller. You're going to be able to gauge a ton and garner a bunch of information really, really quickly to figure out, is there something actually there? It's conceivable that this business throws off, you know, $750,000 a year, which makes you know, obscenely successful in this area and well above, you know, the median income. But again, it's buyer business fit. Like, are you willing to live in this area and do this? this day in and day out.

And if you are, like, I'm a very hands-on person. I really like going on roofs. I don't just sit in the office and run a roofing business. Like, if you're hands-on and you are into farming and all the things that go along with it, like, there's probably a very win-win deal that could be structured with this seller. That is what piques my interest most. So is this listed by a business broker? No, I Googled this person and she looks like she's on, like she's the treasurer of the school board.

and lives in the vicinity. I think it's a seller for sale by, for sale by owner. Yeah. Thank her for, I'm thankful she makes the flowers up by my wife because I makes my wife happy. So I thank her for her service.

At the same time, like, if she's listening to this episode or somebody sends it to her, this is the opportunity she's missing with this listing, is that younger people want to work on something with meaning, and this is very much a something like, here's your numbers, here's this, here's your very basic business listing.

And there is no bigger why that she is connecting somebody's hopes and dreams for their life as a 25 to 35 year old. There's no story here. There's no why being told. And it's missing such a huge opportunity because that's what this is going to require, to your point, Jordan. It's going to require somebody who wants to live this life, who wants to come in and find meaning and providing these flowers. And you can find meaning in a bunch of different ways here, like everything from helping these people who are the H-2A visa applicants to helping people celebrate their anniversaries. This is a classic

example of, hey, we're going to show you the features, but we're not going to tell you a story to help you sell your thing, kind of listing and marketing. Maybe if Linda Ever lists this episode, so I hear that. But I think if you want to sell this to the type of person who wants to change their life, give up everything, and move out to the middle

of nowhere, like Michigan and do this, you've got to tell a story, you've got to give a bigger meaning, a purpose about how they're making the world better. This is just like, hey, you're buying some depreciating assets and maybe you'll make some money. Like that's not the way to pitch this. We love you. Let me keep making flowers.

I like that. You could have a lot of fun with this business. Obviously, sexy business. Like flowers, you could have some sort of offering for every flower, a number of flowers sold. We give away one or we send a flower to a hospital where someone's in a long term. You could find, you could get a celebrity endorser,

you know, to be a part of this. Everyone loves flowers. You could have some real fun with it. I would want to dig in when you get more financials on the OPEs. I want to understand, I imagine the labor is the biggest piece. I want to understand specifically what are the roles and which parts could be automated through robotics. My humble brag is I invest in the C-round of this. It's coming called Standard Bots, Great Entrepreneur, Evan Beard.

They just raise it over a billion-dollar valuation, but they make robots in America for niche manufacturing. And so could I put a bunch of, you know, standard bots in here specifically for the cutting part? and I could have 20 robots in there. And now I don't need to bring in anyone for that. And maybe I still need people to pick them, or at least for a while longer before robots. This feels like something robots will eventually take on or at least a lot of that OPEX.

And that could be a very meaningful improvement to the business. You don't have housing costs. You don't have all that sort of risk. So I would be interested in diving more about that. But again, there's what the business is today, and there's what it might be in five or 10 years and what parts of the OPEX do you think could be reduced? What's the gross story?

could you create more meaning and a bigger brand and have, you know, maybe a direct business as well, direct to consumer business. That sort of stuff would be a lot of upset. Michael. This is usually where I keep talking, Mills, but since I already put my rant in the episode, I was like, okay, it's time for Mills to talk. What are you going to go, Mills? Amazing, fine.

I think we can close it here. But I mean, this was a great listing on so many different levels. It had like a little bit of everything. Amazing fine. Super. Well, yes, 10 out of 10 for me, but 10 out of 10 guesting from Jordan. Do you guys want to rate the deal and then we'll go to close? Mills, where do you stand on this one? I mean, if I was looking for a business to buy, I would be very thumbs up. I'm like, tend to be optimistic. So like, I want to call Lorinda and have a conversation with her. And her number, you can talk to the seller. Like, as a business buyer, there's no better practice than just talking to sellers. even if it goes nowhere. It's not fruitless. I'll tell you where you'll be talking to her from.

Here's a picture of her office. She put it in the listing. There's the secretary. And they have fresh flowers. There's their office manager. There's her office right there. Yeah. Yeah.

The other one's her husband's. I can tell you. I'm like very bullish on like make the phone call, talk to the owner, like move past the broker, go do a site visit. Like there's no better practice than doing those things. that's the differentiating factor between, you know, I would say experience buyers and new buyers is like just getting past the jitters. Like this would be a really fun business to do a deep dive on, even if you end up passing on it. This picture, by the way, I just double-clicked on it in my

mind, did the enhance thing. Look at this on the wall. There's a Vince Lombardi poster from the 80s, and here on the desk is a bunch of handwritten notes, like page after page of them. It's fantastic. And a rock. I don't know why there's a rock. I don't know why there's a rock. on the desk, but I'm sure there's a good story around that. Jordan, where do you stand on this one? Yeah, I like it. I agree. It'd be a fun one to dive into. I'd be interested to see if there's a staff.

There's someone in an operational COO, GM role, already there, not the seller is retiring, but someone who's basically running or managing the business who could continue to do it. Then you could maybe be a little bit more of an absentee owner with this. And thanks for sharing about the USDA loans. I would definitely want to look more into that and understand grants and how I could drag out the financing over time. There's potentially a situation where you get this business for very little, if not negative cash injection. If you have someone else to run it for you and you like flowers, which a lot of people do, could be a fun one.

I think it's entertaining and it's for real. People are going to keep wanting to buy flowers and receive them in the case of my household. And I think they had me at hello at this shot of their custom basketball gym. It's funny, there's no goal. Like in the picture, where's the floor? The guy who owns this doesn't like shooting. He just enjoys pass. Just dribble exercises in here. Look, I am fundamentally at this stage in life, Mills.

I know you're young. You're still full of testosterone. You're strong. You're virile. You get up on roofs. at this stage in life I am a hugely allergic to high-cap-ex

slow cash conversion cycle businesses and that includes restaurants, mines and farms. So because it's a farm, I'm just going to have to go with my gun. I'm just, I wouldn't even call on this. And last thing I want to do is spend the hours in the middle of nowhere out of Michigan.

Like I just, you own something like this. I guarantee you're having to fly to random town in Detroit, drive three hours because, you know, somebody got injured on a peace of equipment one day. Like, there's just no, or your GM gets sick. Like, I'm just not in. So I'm a thumbs down, but it's mostly a me problem.

All right. Everybody, thanks for being here for the episode today. Jordan, how can people find out more about Acquisition Lab? Thank you, Michael. Yeah, go to AcquisitionLab.com. That would be the best way to do it. Amazing. Well, it's so cool to watch what you guys are doing

and expanding the brand and all the services and becoming a whole platform now. I love the vision. And just exciting to watch. And thanks for coming with us today. And we'll hopefully see you back soon.