Acquisitions Anonymous - #1 for business buying, selling and operating - Would You Buy This 80-Year-Old Manufacturing Business?

Episode Date: October 9, 2026

Inzo Technologies — When you acquire a business, you inherit its accumulated IT and cybersecurity problems too. Inzo helps acquisition entrepreneurs evaluate technology risk during due diligence and manage cybersecurity, IT, and voice after closing, including a complimentary IT risk audit of your target company. Learn more at https://www.inzotechnologies.com/etaMercury - Thanks to Mercury for partnering with me! Mercury gives founders powerful banking, cards, and financial tools built to help businesses operate smarter. Learn more and get started at https://mercury.com/ 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/In this episode the hosts talk about an 80-year-old Massachusetts precision gear manufacturing business listed for $1.25 million, debating whether its thin margins, aging equipment, and hidden operating costs make it an acquisition nightmare—or a rare opportunity to take over a business with almost no money down.Business Listing – https://www.bizbuysell.com/business-opportunity/premier-new-england-gear-manufacturer-with-80-year-legacy/2486508/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/newsletterWould you buy an 80-year-old manufacturing business for $1.25 million if its actual cash flow might be close to zero? In this episode of Acquisitions Anonymous, Michael Girdley, Heather Endresen, and Bill D'Alessandro are joined by Jordan Eagle, CEO of Acquisition Lab, to evaluate a family-owned precision gear manufacturer in Massachusetts. Founded in 1946, the company produces custom gears, sprockets, splines, and machine components for industrial customers. It generates $1.8 million in annual revenue and reports $275,000 in seller's discretionary earnings (SDE), with $500,000 in equipment, $100,000 in inventory, and a $650,000 property available separately.But the numbers raise serious questions. Heather breaks down how owner compensation, potential rent expenses, and ongoing maintenance CapEx could dramatically reduce the business's actual cash flow. Bill examines the risks of moving aging CNC equipment, unpredictable job-shop revenue, and AI-powered manufacturing competitors that could produce custom parts faster and cheaper. The hosts also question customer concentration, the importance of the retiring owner's technical knowledge, and whether this business could realistically support SBA acquisition financing.Key Highlights:- $1.25M asking price, $275K SDE: An 80-year-old Massachusetts gear manufacturer generates $1.8M in revenue, with $650K in real estate excluded from the asking price.- The hidden cash flow problem: After adjusting for owner salary, potential rent, and maintenance CapEx, the reported earnings could shrink dramatically, potentially approaching zero.- $500K in equipment and major operational risks: Aging CNC machinery, an eight-person workforce, and specialized manufacturing knowledge create serious transition and capital expenditure concerns.- AI disruption in precision manufacturing: Faster quoting, automated design, and technology-enabled CNC competitors could threaten traditional job shops that fail to modernize.- A creative acquisition with little money down: Jordan suggests a sweat-equity partnership where an entrepreneur takes 40–60% ownership while the retiring seller retains equity and potentially earns rental income.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]

Welcome to the podcast today. We are now a new podcast. We are Acquisitions Anonymous, brought to you by and powered by Acquisition Lab, who is our new title sponsor. I'm Michael Girdley, one of the co-hosts and co-founders of podcast. Today we had Jordan, who is CEO of Acquisition Lab, join us, and we went through a pretty amazing deal that I think you'll enjoy. And it turned out, I liked it, and everybody else hated it. So stick around, and you can see how it all ended up. And yeah, it's kind of a magical thing that I wasn't a hater on the deal and everybody else liked it. So here's the episode. I hope you enjoy it. Acquisitions Anonymous powered by Acquisition Lab. We'll say, Acquisition Anonymous. Hello, another episode of Acquisition's Anonymous. We don't have 100% beers anymore. And thumbs downing on just the plus inventory line. When you close a deal, you inherit the cyber and IT problems that have been piling up for years. Inzo Technologies, that's INZO, helps acquisition,

entrepreneurs evaluate technology risk during due diligence and manage cybersecurity, IT, and voice after close. CEO Nick Acres acquired Inzo and recently led the company through its first ad-on acquisition. He brings a buyer-operator's perspective to what needs to be uncovered before the wire and stabilized once ownership changes hands. Inzo offers a complementary IT risk audit of your target company to help surface the biggest risks in plain English and deliver a 30-day plan to reduce exposure and lower the risk of downtime. Visit enzo Technologies.com slash ETA and mention acquisitions anonymous. That's I-N-ZO Technologies.com

slash ETA. Hey, guys, I have some personal news for you guys I want to share. I want to decide it to change my name to Michael Gaird-Lay powered by Acquisition Lab. Oh, I love it. It's on my first certificate. I love it. Well, you know, it's interesting that I'm also renaming my firstborn son to Joey Alessandro powered by Acquisition Lab. We're just joking because we are psyched to be joined by Jordan Fleigle from Acquisition Lab today. Our newest headline sponsor for the pod, we're so psyched about this partnership.

Acquisition Lab is the place to go, kind of the center of the ETA, entrepreneurship through acquisition ecosystem. I mean, Jordan, how many folks are you run through the lab now who have actually bought businesses? Hundreds? Over 1,300 that have gone through the lab and over 450 that have bought a business over the last six years. That's awesome. So it's a co-orded program, teaches people how to do it, connects you with diligence providers, helps you source deals, evaluate them. It's just been, the A-Lab guys have been very successful for a long time.

So we're psyched to deepen our partnership with them. So as part of that, Jordan's going to be joining us some more. on the pod. So nice to have you, man. Likewise. Thanks so much, guys. Excited about this. This is fun. And we did find out another reason to like Jordan. He's a huge San Antonio Spurs fan. Yes, yes. Brutal last finals there.

But yes, loyal. I was so glad to people. We're packing up against us, Heather. We're going to have to recruit some non-Texas people. That's right. Heather will support the Orange County NBA teams. Go, Orange County. We have no sports teams.

All right. But Gertley, you brought us a cool deal today. Yeah, yeah. So this is an interesting one. It's in Massachusetts, which is nowhere near Orange County. That's basically the opposite of Orange County. Would you say, Heather? Exactly the opposite.

Correct. Yeah, I can't think of anything similar, except they're both in America. All right, it is the premier New England gear manufacturer with an 80-year legacy. So if you're interested in something, Lindy, This may be it because they've been around for 80 years. It is small, relatively small.

They are asking $1.25 million, and it is so small they did not put any pictures on the listing. So there you go. Cash flow measured as STE is $275,000. Gross revenue is $1.8 million, and there is real estate worth $650,000 that is not included in the asking price. It has been around since 1946. So my math is, yeah, 80-year history right after the... the war was when this was started. Wow.

Tell us more about it. Yeah, let me tell you some more about it. So the business description, this New England-based custom gear manufacturer has been family-owned and operated for nearly three generations that will proudly celebrate its 80th anniversary in early 2026. It has earned a strong national reputation for precision workmanship,

dependable lead times, and responsive service, generating recurring revenue and steady referrals from long-standing OEM and industrial customers across a broad range of applications. The company specializes in custom manufactured gears, sprockets, splines, and related machine components built to extract customer specifications. Its proven track record, deep technical expertise,

and reputation of quality may get a trusted supplier to customers that demand tight tolerances and reliable delivery. This is a rare opportunity to acquire a turnkey, precision gear operation with modern systems, season staff, and meaningful growth potential. Heather, before I go deeper into some of the numbers on this, in one sentence, what would you describe this business as doing? What did they sell to whom?

Well, they're making gears for other larger manufacturers. They are a manufacturer for manufacturers, is the way I look at it. Industrial gears and things of that nature that are custom built. And you've got to have some good engineering background, I think to understand that because everything is to exact customer specifications and that's probably their moat is quality. This episode is brought to by Mercury, banking loved by over 300,000 entrepreneurs.

If you watch my videos before, you know how much I love partnering with Mercury. I've been using them across my businesses for years, so whenever they launch something new, I pay attention. And this one is pretty exciting. It's called Mercury Books and its accounting software built directly into your Mercury account. As a business owner, one of the most frustrating things about bookkeeping is that you're always looking backwards. By the time everything is categorized and reconciled, you're looking at what happened weeks ago. Mercury Books changes all that. Transactions can be automatically categorized

and reconcile as they happen, and you can pull an up-to-date P&L cash flow statement, our balance sheet, and a click. So instead of waiting to understand your business, you can see where it stands today. Check out Mercury Books to learn more. Mercury is a thin tech company, not an FDIC insured bank, and banking services provided through Choice Financial Group and Column NA, members FDIC. Yeah, they're not making, you know, a 10,000 of them. They'll probably make five or 20 or something like that. Exactly right. Yeah.

Yeah. Perfect. A perfect five rather than 5,000. Right. Tight tolerance. What's interesting is I don't see the word aerospace in here. Did I miss it? A lot of these businesses are aerospace.

Yeah. Connected. Yeah, I didn't see aerospace in here. This feels to me, and when I started to read this and see this deal, I was like, I thought a friend of the pod registered, Zeller, who has rolled up a lot of Don Ferris Foundries across the U.S. And one thing he told me, which was fascinating, was that most of his machinery that he uses in his foundries to make custom parts for other manufacturers and folks, is most of that

machinery doesn't get manufactured anymore. In many situations, some of that stuff is 60, 70, 80 years old, so people come to him to build parts for these things a lot. So that's where my head went on this is like, you go across Massachusetts and the Northeast. There are tons of 80-year-old machines running inside of places. And I bet you can't get parts for something. You come to somebody like this to get a new gear or a sprocket or whatever. Yeah, I think you're right. Just based on where it's located and the fact that aerospace wasn't mentioned, that's probably right. This is the place you go. So it's sort of the bleeding edge instead of the leading edge, right? This is the kind of business that's sort of taking care of the old,

you know, stuff that's going to eventually go away, I guess. I mean, in 80s. years, they're very small. So maybe they were bigger at one time. That's what I'm going to guess, is that, you know, there was a peak somewhere back there, I don't know, maybe decades ago, and that the business maybe has just been slowly declining to the level that it's at now. That'd be my guess. Oh, I would hope not. I mean, awfully small for 80 years old. It is. That's true. Yeah. Cool. Jordan, any comment for me before or so to read the numbers around this deal? I'm from Massachusetts, so I already like that about it.

I'm not a gear guy, so I'm probably out on category, but let's stick into them. Cool. So they're asking $1.25 million. Cash flows $275 on, and they do that on $1.8 million in gross revenue. So the inventory, they have about $100,000 in inventory. So I assume that's some stuff where they overmade certain parts for some customers and are sitting on inventory they'll sell later but also probably raw materials they have five hundred thousand dollars in furniture's fixtures and equipment so there is probably just like the red seller business

i'm guessing there is a lot of you know cnc type stuff that they have in here and i can tell some more stories about things i've seen in the cnc world here later in the pod they have eight employees seven are full-time and one is part-time and the operations are housed at a nine thousand square foot family-owned manufacturing facility located on a one and a half acre in dunds. industrial zone property. The building is available for purchase or lease under separate terms. It offers sufficient floor space for new CNC equipment and future production cells, flexible layout for efficient material flow from raw stock through machining inspection and shipping, and an ample parking and yard space suitable for delivery storage and expansion.

Let's see here. This next paragraph, they talk a bit about just stuff that's already here, proven track record, rare opportunity, all that kind of stuff. there are some opportunities here listed for growth and expansion. You could add precision gear manufacturing to its capabilities, secure, reliable domestic source for critical gearing and related. This just looks like AI gibberish here. So the owner is planning for retirement after decades of leadership and is open to remaining active for a defined transition period.

The hands-on support will help maintain customer confidence, transfer technical, and tribal knowledge, and ensure a smooth handover of key relationships and processes that the owner went out because they are retiring. So what questions come to mind about this deal? What would you want to know first as you start to look at it? I want to know who the customers are. I mean, that's, it's not aerospace.

So, like, aerospace is really interesting because there's a whole ecosystem, these little CNC guys that make the screw that goes in the platform that holds up the seat of the 737 or something, you know, like tier three suppliers. And they can be very sensitive to whatever program their screw rolls up to. When that program, like if they stop making the 737 and they start making the 737 dash 2 or whatever, and they don't need the screw, their business can go away overnight. But as long as it doesn't happen, it can be very sticky.

But then there's these other kind of type of CNC machine shops that are kind of more job shops. Like it's whatever comes in, this gear broke, I'm down the road in Massachusetts. and can you, here's the pieces, can you make one? You know, it's this old machine that's not been used. Those are a little bit tougher businesses because you don't have that recurring, kind of predictable program-oriented revenue. So that's my first question is, who are they building these for? Is this a job shop or is it like they're building a gear that goes into something else

that is much more predictable kind of B2B repeat revenue? That's my first question. I have a question about cash flow, of course. I have two concerns. One of that, it's 275 SDE, which I always say, okay, let's take off 100,000 for owner's salary. So now 275 is 175. And I'm concerned that rent might not be expensed in there because they've owned the building for a very long time. They probably do not have any debt on that. And what's very common in cases like that is they just don't pay rent. They don't expense rent. anymore. They have no need to. So if the 175 after salary doesn't have rent, and it's not a very expensive building, so I don't know, maybe it's $50,000, I don't know, I don't know what the annual rent would be on that. I haven't done the math. But that 175 could easily turn into $100,000 of cash flow. And this is a, this is a pretty complicated business to run for $100,000.

Yeah, Heather, you hit it right on the nail on the head there. where I was going with it, it's very, very thin. So my first thought is that if you really wanted to buy this, maybe it's a seller financing deal. So you at least started signing up for debt that could, you know, bankrupt to you. The second thought I had is maybe you could buy the real estate and maybe that I'm not sure that they listed at $650,000. I'm not sure that they listed at $650,000. I'm not sure if you were to take out a loan and do an SBA thing, right? Heather, it could be maybe a 25-year loan, depending on where you get the purchase price to and that could at least make a small payment,

but any sort of debt on a business for this kind of cash flow, this low-level cash flow would scare me, I think. Yeah, I don't think it's a short-dain debt. Yeah, it can't, yeah. So you're thinking it's solid financing? Yeah, or, you know, this is the kind of thing where there's a manufacturing, you know, set up here. There's equipment, and there's some know-how.

This might be good for someone who is manufacturing something similar, you know, a strategic buyer of some kind of, but I think this would just, what it's striking me as is just something very tough as a standalone. It's got to be absorbed into some other operation where there is some synergy and maybe some, you know, sales channels where they could realize some of those growth opportunities. The thing that's tough about this, I mean, you've got a half a million dollars of FF&E, which is CNC machines. This business is also 80 years old. the thing you've got to know about any kind of cap-x intensive manufacturing business,

they've got old machines, right? Very often, if you try to move those things, if you take them apart and put them back together again, they never turn on again. So it is very possible that you cannot move this business. So then I've got to live nearby. I need to know a lot about the lease on that facility. you know, it's very, it's much riskier than you might assume to move a manufacturing business,

especially an older one. And you just brought up CAPX. So I took off a salary and I took off probably rent, but we also need to take out maintenance capX. I did a little webinar last week and I said, if someone can show me a SIM where the broker has added back depreciation but also deducted maintenance CAPX, please show it to me so I can give that broker and a warrant. for being the first time I've ever seen that.

So they always add back the depreciation, but they never go to the next step and deduct maintenance CAP-X. And so that's probably a deduction here too, unfortunately. In fairness, I think John Malone invented the EBITR metric to hide his CAP-X and focus people on just the earnings, right? So that's what the metric does. That's right. That's right.

You are good on that history point. But, you know, like every time we're looking at a business and we're looking at, at SDE and there's maintenance cap X, you know, you've got to take out salary. Now you've got to take out maintenance cap X. And in cases like this, you've got to take out rent. And like here, I think you're going to end up pretty close to zero. The other risk, even if you get through all that, which I think is it's surmountable is, I think key man, rest of a really small team, eight people want to understand what role

the seller is playing and, you know, how critical some of those folks are on the team. you afford to lose them. It's just anytime of a really small team and a kind of precision business, that's something else to be mindful of. Heather, is there any price of which you buy this business? Me, no.

Mainly because if it's got CAPA, if it's manufacturing, it's already so complicated that I want really good margins. You know, if I'm going to look at something that's expensive to run and complex, like manufacturing and especially heavy manufacturing like this, I want really great margins and we don't have those here. We have really low margins, actually.

Even let's just take 175, what did they say? Is that 10% margin on a million eight in revenue, right? It's 15% margin. 15% margin. 4.5x for the business. Well, it's 15% if you count the SDE, but if you take out a salary, it's 10%. Yeah.

Yeah, if you take out a salary in rent, it's really tough. It's not down to 5% or 3. Yeah, just the margins are just thin. And you'd think if you're doing a customized product that maybe can't be found anywhere else, the margins would be better. It could be just a pricing problem. I mean, there could be opportunity there if someone really looked deep at who the customers were, to your point, Bill, and how critical these parts are. If they are really replacement parts, it can't be made anywhere else or found or

bought anywhere else, you'd think the margins would be better. The other thing that I'm interested in in this whole industry is AI and automated manufacturing, right? Because for a long time, you really needed shops like this, right? Where you could bring your gear, you could bring your spec. They would do a CAD design of the gear that you needed or the specific metal bit that you needed broader than gears, whatever. And then they would cut it for you kind of one-on-one or, you know, 20 of 20 or whatever, and that was really needed. But that, the AI now is so good at 3D design that the, now, I don't think it oblivious these businesses because I don't want to own the CNC machine.

Like there's a CAPX, you know, know how to operate it, have a facility with it there. But I worry mostly about being outcompeted by other CNC shops that can turn parts faster, cheaper, and ship them to you, because that's a huge part of this industry is being fast. Very often cheap is actually not a big part of it because if it's a gear and your whole machine is down, I don't care if it's the $10,000 gear, I got to get my machine going again. So speed really matters. And I think AI is going to enable a lot of speed in this industry. So one of my places for diligence here would be how tech forward this business is or could be made to be pretty quickly? Well, I've learned from some of my clients that there's already, and this has been a few

years ago, platforms like that where basically AI finds your customer and gets the specs and says, here, we've got these projects out for bid to the machine shop or the sheet metal shop. And basically, they're becoming a sales channel for them, doing kind of what you're saying. So, yeah, that's interesting. But then if you're letting a middleman control your sales, you know, that's probably, and you're bidding on the jobs versus everybody else. What is that going to do to pricing? The margins are going to come down. So I think that's a really good point on any manufacturing like this.

Something to diligence for sure. That's a really good one. I mean, you have to ask that question with any business in 2026. How is AI, how is AI disrupting or enabling this business? And the thing that people don't think about is if AI is enabling this business, that is not necessarily purely good because what it needs, means is you need to keep up with the Joneses. Because it is enabling your competitors. So you need to be really confident that you can kind of keep up with the times, which is a huge opportunity, right,

to modernize businesses and grow them and use AI to scale. But if you don't do that, and your competitors are anti-enabled, they're going to eat your lunch. Hey, everyone, it's Bill. And I want to talk to you about Quiet Light brokerage. I was so psyched when Quiet Light agreed to sponsor the podcast because I am a customer. I have I've 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, Sensha. Do we think this business has tail wins or headwinds at this point? like tailwinds meaning the world is making this business easier to make money with in the future headwinds meaning it's going to be getting harder to make money with in the future the reason i ask is like there was a massive push from government currently to try to reindustrialize america to varying degrees of success like does that help this does that hurt this like what are the other things going on in the world like should i be optimistic about this business future or pessimistic

what do you think jordan i'm curious uh well Berkshire Hathaway bought a decaying manufacturer in Massachusetts, and it worked out okay for Warren Buffett, Charlie. So I wouldn't go near this. And I just don't think I'm sophisticated enough on gears to be able to weigh in. But one thought I had, Michael, I know you've oftentimes partnered with folks who are talented and junior coming up in their careers to build businesses, This just strikes me as a deal.

You're all the time of the acquisition level. How much money do I need to get into ETA and to buy a business that's worth buying? And this strikes me as a deal that someone shouldn't buy, but this could be an opportunity for someone local in the area who's interested in the category to be able to just partner with the seller. If seller wants to retire, okay. You know, I could just basically take over this business. Maybe the seller retains a little bit of equity in the interior on the real estate

and now they're getting rent on the real estate. You know, I don't think you have to bring any money to this. I think if you were ambitious and you went to the seller and said, hey, give me 40 or 50 or 60% of the business and you keep the rest. And, you know, you can go to Florida by a boat and retire. I think that'd be pretty attractive opportunity, probably something the seller might go for if they don't succeed in getting someone to pay for it. So this just strikes me as one of those kinds of opportunities where you could,

you know, get going and owning and operating a business with very little cash. and learn so much from doing it and get ready to buy the real business you ultimately want to buy later on. I know a guy who did precisely that. In my mind, I call that the Delisandro because Bill recommends it a lot for these businesses that can't be sold.

But I know a guy who did exactly that went into a business without a lot of transferable value to it and went to the seller and basically over time did two things, bought out the seller totally, who is now super happy and retired. but also like 10x to the profitability of the business

and like recently bought a plane. So like it's going really good for him. So that structure can totally work. And I think it's, you know, if you're willing to put in the hard work as the entrepreneur and you can sell yourself to somebody like this a structure the right way, like I think you're exactly right, Jordan.

That's how this business will transact. It's not anybody buying it is not going to be doing that. Is this for sale by owner or is this an actual broker listing? I think it's for sale by owner. It's for sale by the owner. And he does not have a good by sale profile. So I think this is the owner. Which is interesting because sometimes there's a lot more behind the teaser when you

sign the NDA than what it appeared on the teaser since they're not professionals putting those together. Maybe they did something wrong. Maybe it looks better. Maybe it looks worse. It is funny when people have common names. Nobody else is Michael Gurdley, by the way. So all the past is posted.

But yeah, Tony Fiori owned a gear shop. And if you're watching on YouTube, he was a pitcher for the American League twins. But now there's going to be another TOR, Tony Giori. Anyway, sorry, I'll keep my dad jokes to myself. Try it. Well, you know, there's no other Michael Girdleys because you've disappeared them all. Is that why? There's no more Michael Gurdley's anymore.

That's right. It's Michael Girdley powered by Acquisition Lab now. It's one of one. All right. Anything else on this deal? I love where we ended up on this one. This one is perfect for somebody who wants to get into a business like this, wants to hustle, and I think you guys are exactly right.

It wouldn't surprise me if a year from now there are no buyers with cash showing up for this deal and somebody with sweat equity coming in could do really well. So I like it for that. For all the other reasons we talked about, I don't know any reason manufacturing is growing in Massachusetts. Like, you know, I'm lukewarm. But in terms of structure, I love it. So I don't know what you guys think.

I think this industry, like, there's so many of these in the United States, these like small machine shops, C&C machine shops. I think they range in from being a totally unrequirable to amazingly interesting. depending on the competitive positioning, the each individual business, the programs they sell into, the financial profile of the business. So I'm certainly not bearish on this category. I just think this category is big. There's a lot of targets. And there's a giant, it depends,

in this category. Like if this is contracted revenue on aerospace programs that are going to be around for a decade plus, or, you know, highly technical, or they're selling in to, Ford or something like that, and it's got an aging owner and it's got a million bucks of EBITDA, you know, potentially very interesting. This one, I think, probably a little bit more job shoppy, smaller, not aerospace, probably less interesting. Heather, Jordan, what do you guys think? I'm thumbs down. Not a big surprise. Womp, Womp, Elendra hates it. That's my job, doing my duty. Heather, what would this have to look like for you to like it?

Would you like an equipment heavy, lindy, 80-year-old manufacturing business in a different scenario? If much better margins, you know, 25% margins I'd be hoping for here, a really experienced buyer, and, you know, actual cash flow that's got all those things taken out, CAPEX, you know, the cash flow that we're looking at to service debt is a conservative cash flow after all the real expenses. and again, still, a buyer who knows the industry and has got some kind of manufacturing background. Yeah. Yeah. Jordan, have you seen anybody come through A-Lab and buy a business somewhat like this?

You've seen a lot of specialty manufacturing can be great. But, you know, we don't generally recommend you should buy something with less than 750K SDE. There's just not a lot of margins for error. You're at best buying a job, as Heather walked through the numbers here. I don't think you're even buying a job if you buy this business. So, no, I think this is one that, you know, someone that's just going to be given the company or maybe the employees can take it on and, you know, split the profits and something like that.

And, you know, but, yeah, we want just too small, too niche. I think not a growing, likely growing space. So a lot of concerns. Yeah. All right. Well, I do think this category can be cool. probably not this one. As you said, Jordan, a lot of people buying, especially manufacturing, can be a great category, maybe not this one. Yeah, and Heather, I think one of the segue into you talking

about your business real fast before we close, like this is a great way that somebody can work with somebody like you when they see a deal like this and you can just be like, oh, hey, like you're not getting a loan on this. So go back and restructure it. Yeah, that's what we do every day is we help buyers search more efficiently so they know how to spot something that's just, not going to work and toss it back in the pile. Yep. And Jordan, can we ask you to give the elevator pitch for people to sign up for Acquisition Lab? Yeah, it's really involved.

I mean, since 2019 got going as a community for serious acquisition entrepreneurs, support each other, have access to advisors, daily deal reviews, the officers. We have all of that and more, sort of provide community and support as you're looking at deals. We have incredible partners at the lab, including Heather, who works for really closely with lab members, which is great. We also have a deals platform now that we're launching, so source deals. We have a fund. We have a $20 million fund, so we'll invest in the best deals that our members find.

We'll want a minority piece of the business, passive minority investors, half a million to $2 million per deal. And then we have a portfolio service team. So once you bought the thing, we'll do accounting, finance, staffing for you on the back end. So the idea, Mike, is like support acquisition entrepreneurs throughout their journey. from learning and being part of a community and we have events. We have quarterly meetups now in 29 cities across the country. We're checking out at an annual summit and all that.

Help you find the deal. Help you fund the deal. Help you operate the business afterwards. This is a really, really, really hard thing to do, as you guys know so well. So we're trying to make all the different steps, the journey a little bit easier. Well, you know, strategically just kind of looking from the outside as somebody who's in the space, what you guys are doing of bundling all of this together to be, you know,

an ecosystem in a box for people. I think it's so smart. Everything has been all a card up until these days, and you guys have created something really magical. So excited about it for you. Thank you. Thank you. Work in progress.

But we're getting there. I appreciate it. Let's wrap it up. You guys like when I do the CODA, huh? So thank you for listening. If you like this one, we've got almost 500 more just like it. Thank you for joining us, Jordan, from Acquisition Lab.

This is sort of the beginning of a new era of the pod with ALAB as title sponsor, which will be very exciting. but go on our website, ACQUAnon.com, you can filter by industry. If you're into CNC machining or franchising or e-commerce, you know, whatever your bag is, we probably talked about it. So go on our website, you can filter by category. And if you're interested in getting serious about buying a business, check out Acquisitionlab.com for a whole bunch of resources that will make you more successful in doing that.

So with that, thank you for listening, and we'll see you on the next episode.