What I’d Spend My Money on If I Was Conducting a Search Right Now

This Week in ETA:

• Searchers: Tons of people want to sell you stuff, but preserving liquid capital is crucial. When I was searching, the only things I thought were worth investing in were: [1] sources of deal flow (memberships to business listing sites, etc.), [2] traveling to meet sellers that we thought were likely to go under LOI with us, and [3] essential partners once we were under LOI, namely our lawyer. (I would have paid for a QoE as well had the business’s financials not been extremely simple).

• Investors: Following the article I wrote with Riley Katz on choosing entrepreneurial investors, I made a video to dive deeper. The empathy piece is the biggest - having investors who understand that growth isn’t linear, who know that company culture directly impacts financial returns, and who want to roll up their sleeves to support you when adversity comes, is everything. I’m guessing most investors reading this take a similar approach; feel free to share this video with searchers to show why you bring more to the table than a purely financial investor.

Featured Off-Market Deals

Brought to you by Deal Prospectors

This week, we’re taking a pause on sharing off-market deals. We are working to source larger deals that fit a broader number of our subscribers’ deal box. In the meantime, check out the 13 listings we’ve shared thus far and make sure you didn’t miss one that could be a great fit for your search.

Plus:

• You’ll continuously hear me say that I think old-fashioned, cold outreach is super underrated in the self-funded search community. This post highlights why in-person networking may be the differentiating factor that gets your deal done.

• We’re entering Q4, and according to Matthias Smith at Pioneer Capital Advisory, the best practice for those hoping to close an acquisition by end of year is to have entered underwriting by October 1st, 2025. The post I linked above is well worth a read - it highlights practical and hard-won advice about the weighty but worthwhile debt of a Small Business Administration loan.

Question:

Hit reply and tell us - Which support service has delivered the strongest ROI in your search?