These past few weeks have felt like a blur. - Back to back fundraising calls - Pushing forward with DD - Building out IT sourcing pipeline But, it looks like we’ll have fundraising wrapped up by Oct 15th and closing on Nov 1st 🤞🏼 How about you guys? Are you wrapping up the week on a high note?

One of the things I love most about this community is the accountability aspect, so I have decided to lay a lot on the table with this post. The Ugly: My search progress has totally derailed over the past couple weeks. Catastrophic flooding in my condo building has left my wife and I displaced from our home, and paying out of pocket to bounce between AirBnB’s while we battle it out with renter’s insurance (USAA has been surprisingly disappointing). Our Landlord has also criminally mismanaged the process and rather than engage a legal battle, we are just fighting to be let out of our lease. The Bad: I have not juggled the displacement with my search the way I’d hoped. I can make excuses on bandwidth due to the circumstances (condo hunting, moving arrangements, etc), but the fact of the matter is, life emergencies like this will inevitably happen. When (not if) I become a business owner, the business will still need running on the day-to-day regardless of life circumstances. My business’s bottom line won’t care about my personal emergencies, so I need to hold myself to a higher standards when things turn chaotic. The importance of juggling personal life and work has made itself abundantly clear from an operations perspective. The Good: This unfortunate situation reveled some sectors in my area that I hadn’t previously considered. Water Damage Mitigation services, Air Quality Testing, and Mold Remediation have all caught my attention. Local and state codes require certain standards of dealing with damage which creates both demand and a sticky customer base. I had the pleasure of networking with some incredible operators, had energetic conversations on operating local service businesses with quality owners, and I’m looking forward to staying in touch with the individuals this unfortunate event put in my path. Wishing I had more pertinent, motivational, and tactical progress to report, but this is the reality of my past 1.5 weeks. This is my attempt to supplement to supplement my recent dip in performance with raw authenticity. Seeing everyone continuing to get after it has been great motivation to lock back in.

Hello everyone, I've been very quiet as I only came across this community while already conducting DD on a (very) small business. We closed yesterday. The business provides online tutoring for high-achieving students entering their final two years of secondary school (in Australia). It's small, but profitable, with excellent margins due to its business model of simply connecting and facilitating contractor tutors with students. I call it "Acquisition Zero" because myself and a business partner intend to make a series of acquisitions, but deliberately sought out a small one first. It forced us to go through the process of drafting each document and checklist, conducting DD, and working with advisors to close the purchase. When we come to "Acquisition One" and onwards, we'll be better prepared and more knowledgeable. With some time, we'll be able to see whatever we missed during DD to inform future purchases. Today, I'm sending out new contracts and a code of conduct for staff, and organising my week to achieve handover between the seller and I. I'm happy to further discuss what I've learned as I get my feet under the desk and discover the skeletons in the closet. Chris.