Episode 2 - Jeremy Sacker, 3 times founder + buyer

Guest: Jeremy Sacker, three-times founder who bought multiple businesses

Host: Andrey Kolesnikov, co-founder of Steersman Company https://steersman.works/

Interview topics/content:

• DeSoto Distribution - how it started

• How do you promote the Deejo knife sales in your market as a US partner of a EU company?

• Dealing with freight and import complication - tariffs, customs, etc

• Criteria and process for acquiring a business - searching, letter of intent, due diligence, financing, necessary help

• Dealing with risk in acquisition - what went wrong and what to look out for

• Rebuilding life after a business failure - fear, loss, coming to terms, moving forward

• An outlook on taking risks - potential of the outcomes

• Entrepreneurship and life, family, friends - commitment, risk, and family support

• Acquiring vs starting a business

• What criteria would you have now if acquiring a business?

• All the people who help along the way

Interview transcript:

Speaker 1 (00:00.366)

Jeremy: Hey, Andrey.

Andrey: Hi, Jeremy. I think professionally, basically, you have done a lot of different things. So you worked for big companies, you worked for small companies, and then you also founded the business, at least one business that I know of, and then you also acquired a business. So it would be very interesting to learn about your acquisition and the purchases primarily. Yep. No problem.

Jeremy: Great.

Andrey: So to start off, do you have a favorite role, a favorite time in your professional career that you had and why was it your favorite?

Jeremy: I would say that that actually is probably now. So I've done a lot of things in my career, had a lot of experiences. But about 20 years ago, I did some consulting. And I figured that that was going to be what I did when I retired.

And fast forward, I thought that I was going to be doing that in about another 15 years, but I'm doing that now. So I have a very multifaceted role basically today in the things that I do. And I'm so basically doing my retirement job now.

Andrey: So you're involved in like three different things at the same time and that's the kind of the favorite part.

Jeremy: Yes, it is. It absolutely is.

Andrey: So you like a variety of things, wearing multiple hats at different times, that type of thing.

Jeremy: Yeah, I'd like to be, you know, I guess I would describe it as I'd like, I like to be in the weeds, but then I also like to fly high and in being able to switch between the two is a lot of fun to me because you, keeps you grounded.

Andrey: All right. Also, I guess, keeps you always learning. You need to keep learning new things. Like you said earlier today or a few days ago, you were doing bank reconciliation.

Jeremy: Yeah. So I have, I mean, I have three bank accounts, right? I have, basically have two companies that we're running right now. I one that's consulting. So it's not a lot of activity in that one. And then we have a distribution company, which I have two bank accounts for that company as well. So yeah, I did three bank recs today.

Andrey: Well, okay. So from being an accountant to CEO to, I guess sometimes you also are maybe once in a while an inventory person too, right? It's really everything.

Jeremy: I literally do everything, more on the transportation, the logistics side, but sometimes yes, inventory as well. Yeah. Imports. I mean, everything runs a gamut. It's fun.

Andrey: So the company you started, well, you started and you're running it with your wife, right? So it's a family business, like the true family business, disorder distribution. So you represent a European brand, right? And basically all of their sales, all of their business runs through you pretty much. So how did you start in this? How did you get introduced to these people from this European company? It sounds like it's kind of a chance.

Jeremy: I actually met them through a former customer of mine. So I used to run a warehousing company or division of a warehousing company at like 150 clients. One of my customers was a company called Damon, which was a camera bag company and a guy by the name of Rick Olson was the general manager of that company. And we stayed in touch over the years.

And he called me up one day and said, do you know anybody who would like to do a, distribution for a startup? And I said, no. And he said, well, how about you? And I said, no. And then he entered, he convinced me to come down to Phoenix and meet the owners of, of DJO, which is the company that we, we work with. they're from, you know, two, guys from France and.

The moment that I walked in the door and I saw their products, I knew that I wanted to be part of this because it's really, really cool stuff.

Andrey: So the products, they're primarily kind of like gifts and impulse buy items. If you think about it from a business perspective, I guess, right? They're collectible or like soothing your knives with in greetings. So how do you feel about marketing this type of product? Right? So you represent a brand here. So you sell primarily to resellers, but your final customers are end users. How do you approach marketing for this?

And who do you actually market to? Do you market to the resellers or to the end users?

Jeremy: So, so Rick, my part, the, the, the guy that got me into it, Rick, his team really is the sales end of it. And we do all the back office. So we do the invoicing, the collections, the pick pack ship inventory, but, we're very involved in the sales and marketing as well. mean, we, we basically. We support. Yeah. We definitely support them through that. So the selling for us is basically we, um,

Andrey: You go to all the shows and everything.

Jeremy: We have manufacturers reps that we work with around the country. And, and we have a team that, goes and finds those reps and signs them up and, know, and teaches them. but then we go to shows, right? We go to gift shows. There's several shows around the country. There's two main ones, ones in Atlanta, ones in Las Vegas. And we, we have a nice, very nice booth and you know, we sit there for two or three days talking to retailers.

Our biggest customers are our biggest areas, let's say our tourist areas. So we sell a lot into Alaska as an example. You know, it's all the cruise ships when they stop, the people go off and they they find souvenirs that they like. And and we do really well there. We do really well at the national parks as well.

Andrey: So it's primarily because you engrave the items with the local engravings, right?

Jeremy: Yeah. So they'll do a custom design and sell those in their retail store. Yeah. So we have standard knives. We have 200 standard SKUs that we have here in the United States, but we also are the largest custom market for Dejo. We do more custom knives here than they do anyplace else in the world.

Andrey: Makes sense. And then from the standpoint of this business, You're basically import the product from Europe, right? So right now we have some stuff going on with tariffs. So things are volatile and I guess extraordinary, right? it's hard to really prepare for that. And I understand that might be hard, but are there things that you do in general or that you have been doing as a normal part of business to safeguard your operation from volatility, from unknown factors, from problems basically.

Jeremy: So, the tariffs really haven't affected us as far as, know, impacting the tariffs directly are not really impacting us. What's impacting us is the turmoil in the marketplace because of the tariffs. So what I mean by that is there was a big push to try to pull in inventory before the tariffs went into effect.

And that caused a lot of delays in the supply chain. Then all of sudden you have the rules are changing. So now the customs officers are looking at things differently and it's things that they're not used to looking at. So it's just a lot of delays. So what are we doing? We're really, trying to use other methods to bring in products. as an example, you know, maybe smaller air shipments and we do have ocean, we do ocean, we do air, like pallets of air shipments and then we do parcel air shipments. So trying to mix and match those and trying to just keep our inventory, you know, inventory flowing all the time is really what what the secret is. So and the other thing we're finding too is that it's better to control the logistics from here in the past, the, the, they've been controlling that from France. And that is, that's difficult because, know, the, shipping company is trying to work with France to clear up customs issues and they don't always know the right answers to the customs issues in the United States, but they don't, the shipper doesn't necessarily want to talk to me or us because we are not the shipper. So we're trying to flip that as well and take ownership of that shipping process to make it a little bit cleaner and easier just because of all the turmoil that's happening.

Andrey: It makes sense. I've heard that, well, I've read in the news and some articles that tourism into the United States is dropping. Are you seeing anything in that regard? Because you sell to touristy areas, right? So it's kind of possible for you?

Jeremy: I don't think we're going to see that for a while because that, you know, the, companies that we, that we work with, they're buying inventory. Their season hasn't started yet. Their season really doesn't start until May until now, but realistically it doesn't start until Memorial day. So we're not going to see that probably until later in the, in the summer when they're doing the reorders.

Andrey: So even if it affects you, then you just don't know about it yet. Right. Makes sense. And then for the business that you acquired, switching to that, how did you go about that? What was your search process? What was your criteria? How did you decide what you were going to get? That's a big decision.

Jeremy: Yeah, it was a very long and arduous process. I actually bought three companies, through this whole process. The first two I bought with, with partners and, and it just, it just wasn't a great fit, like for me personally. And so, you know, I was able to sell to my partners and, and move on and keep trying basically, but I looked for a 10 years.

Andrey: So you were in this search for 10 years?

Jeremy: Yes, and I looked at a lot of, a lot of companies I evaluated. I would say I probably evaluated well over a hundred companies and I visited probably, you know, 20 and, finally found one. but you know, the, thing that I guess that I was looking for was something that was, where I could use my, you know, my experience and make sure that, that I could add value to the company moving forward. And I thought I found that. And so in that company.

Andrey: So you were specifically looking for distribution, manufacturing, or what was the criteria, if there was a specific hard criteria for you.

Jeremy: Definitely distribution and manufacturing were the two that were the two front runners. Absolutely. Something that, that maybe had a little bit of, of e-commerce as well. More business to business than business to consumer. But, you know, those, that was kind of my criteria.

Andrey: Why that specifically? not something with a service component or something else? Just familiarity,

Jeremy: Familiarity really it was what I was more comfortable with what I was familiar with. Yeah.

Andrey: Okay. And then what were some companies that you turned down in the process? Were there some decent candidates that you looked at but you decided against?

Jeremy: Yeah. there was a service company actually that I was very close to acquiring and, and, it was more on the, actually it was more on the construction side and you know, it was, it was more about the, volatility of, and the unpredictability in the, in the contracts. So, you know, when you have a, when you have a service company, when you have a construction company that, that is dealing with contracts and their, in this case, was government contracts mainly that they were doing. They were doing government work. And so, you know, when you'll have all your eggs in one basket, that's, that's a little scary.

Andrey: Okay. And then for your process for the acquisition, how did it go? Could you describe that? So it would be due diligence and the contract drafting and actual loan documentation and all the other steps. How did these things go? What was the timing for these when you actually...

Jeremy: Well, I think the first step obviously is, you know, evaluating the company and see if it, if it makes sense. And if it does, then you do, then you do a letter of intent. So the letter of intent basically just says, I mean, I'm very interested. And if everything works out, then I'm going to pay X for this, for this company.

Andrey: Did you have to put some money down when you sent the letter of intent?

Jeremy: In this case, yeah, I think it was, but maybe a couple thousand dollars. It wasn't a lot. So then the next step is yes, like you said, due diligence, but also trying to line up financing. because financing takes a long time, so you need to get started on that as early as possible. that was the next step was due diligence and financing. And those kind of went in parallel.

Andrey: How long did it take?

Jeremy: You know, this is during COVID. So, it was kind of a weird time and actually there were fast tracking stuff. So we got done in, in 60 days, which was pretty fast. Yeah, maybe too fast. You're right. Yep. So then once you get the, the, the due diligence and go through all the financing steps, then obviously, you know, then you've got, you've got to start your company, look, you know, get your insurance, get, get everything lined up that way.

Andrey: Did you buy, you bought assets or you bought the company?

Jeremy: In this case, I bought the company and the reason we did that was because of contracts and, not wanting to have to read contracts.

Andrey: And then for when you were looking around, you said that you looked at 20 companies, right? So for this one, did you visit them before Letter of Intent or after?

Jeremy: Would have been after.

Andrey: It's after, right? So basically, when in your whole process of acquisition, you visited 20 companies, so you basically filed 20 letters of intent in the years? No.

Jeremy: No, definitely not. It depends on the type of company you're in and kind of the process. mean, everybody that's selling companies maybe does it a little bit different and every seller, it does it a little bit differently as well. So you might be able to get to go see the company before doing a letter of intent. And then some cases you might not. It really just depends on how asset intensive the company is.

If the company has a lot of assets, you're probably going to go visit them first. If the company is very light in assets, then it's not necessarily needed to go visit them before you do your letter of intent.

Andrey: Basically just to inspect that the physical stuff is there. Is that the idea?

Jeremy: Exactly. Yeah, you want to see the serviceability, know, cleanliness of the facility, all of that, all of that stuff.

Andrey: What type of help did you get along the way for this? I guess what type of people and who was the bank that helped you out? How many times did you have to apply for that loan?

Jeremy: So I guess we went through probably three banks, think three banks before we found the right bank. you know, attorneys definitely had a, had a really good attorney helping me. then, you know, and sometimes accountants as well can be helpful, but, but a good attorney is invaluable in the, in this case.

Andrey: I know that in the end this acquisition was not a successful one basically. In hindsight, it's clear what you should have done in this particular case. But do you have suggestions on, I guess, general approaches to catching problems with an assumption that the problems are going to come from a place that you didn't check, there are the unknowns that are going to bite you in most cases, right? Because these are the factors you didn't consider. How do you even approach that? What can help?

Jeremy: Like, you know, some of it is, about comfort level, right? It was, you know, in your gut. Does everything feel right? In this case, if I look back, I would have said, my gut told me that this wasn't, this wasn't quite right. So in, in the second thing I would say is that in my case, customer concentration was an issue. Now I was selling through a marketplace, right?

And then we'll just full disclosure, it was Amazon. So the the issue with with Amazon when you sell a lot through Amazon is you don't own those customers. Amazon does. You may think you do, but every communication goes through Amazon. So you don't own them. What you what you own is basically the product that you're selling.

Andrey: The listings.

Jeremy: Yeah, that's it. And so, you know, when you're, and so that's what fell apart, you know, that I, ran a foul of, of, of Amazon and they just shut us off.

And, and so when you looked at it you said, well, my customer concentration, didn't have one because I was selling to consumers. Well, the reality is I did, and it was Amazon. And so when we had a problem with Amazon, they just shut you off for any, they can shut you off for any reason they want. They just say, Oh, you're, we don't, we don't agree with something you're doing. Boom, you're done. And trying to get ahold of somebody to.

You know, to rectify that situation is, is impossible. They don't have phones. So, so I guess the whole point of that is that, you know, in hindsight, if you do have a customer concentration and it's a big company, that's bad. That's really, really bad because you're not dealing with people anymore.

Andrey: You're dealing with an organization.

Jeremy: You're dealing with an organization and that organization may or may not have, you know, a way to like have a reasonable conversation with them. Right.

Andrey: Yeah, that must have been a devastating thing, I guess, when you you acquire a business and it wasn't a small business, it was a fair size. and then just basically just fell off a cliff completely. So how did you cope? How did you cope with this? And what did it take for you to, I guess, kind of rebuild your life? Because the loan payments, they stay, right?

Jeremy: We were doing $15 million a year.

So, yeah, I mean that, so I had to file bankruptcy, right? So the, um, and you know, my whole life, I like had no blemishes on my credit. Like I had almost a perfect, my, my wife and I had almost a perfect credit score. And then all of a sudden you go through bankruptcy and the bankruptcy has nothing to do with your personal, with what you did personally, but unfortunately I had a personal guarantees and we had to, we had to do that.

But I will tell you that there were two times in this, in, this, um, don't know, time of my life where, um, I felt really free and felt like the burden was off of me. The first one was, uh, actually when it happened, because I was so fearful of it happening.

That once it did happen, once Amazon did shut us off, it was like a burden was lifted off my shoulders. It was very freeing. But then the next step is you step into this fact that how am going to make my loan payments? What are we going to do? And we actually fought for a year. actually did, you know, made it for a year, a whole year. And then, but the second one that was most freeing was, I woke up a Saturday morning. I was leaving. was going to some show, and with my father in law and I sat down on the edge of the bed and I looked at my wife and I said, I think we need to file for bankruptcy. And she looked at me and she said, it's about time. She's like, I thought we should have done it a year ago. I'm like, well, I wish you would have said that a year ago, but, that was very freeing for me as well.

So, but at the end of the day, how I coped with it - I actually met a guy by chance on LinkedIn that was kind of a coach and a guide, a guy by the name of Clay Green. And he actually taught, taught me about being aware of, of myself and also about, really just understanding, just putting life in perspective. And one of the things that, you know, and I'm a glass half full person, so this, this really kind of hit home for me really pretty easily. But he said, you know, when you think about it has, how is, how has your life gone? Right? You have ups and you have downs, but at the end of the day, what happens? It's like everything always works out perfectly for me.

And so when you put it in that perspective, it's like, but I'm still, I still have my health. I still have my family. I still have, I still have everything.

Andrey: All the knowledge that you have, you go back to working a job that pays you well and just rebuild, right? Yeah.

Jeremy: Exactly. And so everything works out perfectly. And, it's true. And so you, you've got to put it in perspective and, and move forward. And, and again, it is about the knowledge, right? It is about the learning because that's powerful, but you know, cause it's amazing. We repeat history all the time. And, that's because there's so much information out there that we can't hold it all in our head.

And, you know, we can't know what book to go look at, unfortunately. So we do have to keep reliving history, but.

Andrey: It is what it is. I follow this guy who founded this restaurant chain called Protein Bar. It was founded in Chicago. I met him once personally because of Steersman. He was in a different company he was already running by the time and they were making coffee. In any case, it was a brief meeting. We just discussed this ERP system and that was it. About a year ago or so, I came across his LinkedIn profile and I started following him. And he talks a lot about his experience founding businesses and his ups and downs, I guess you could say, with businesses. And one of the things that he mentioned that I think was really interesting, it was this decision-making, I guess, in a way about starting the protein bar, because he had a good paying job, like a nice corporate job paying a ton of money. the way he phrased it was basically that he had this idea to open this type of restaurant that was selling really healthy foods. The way he described it is that he could basically not try it. And in that case, well, you know, there's not going to be an attempt. He would just keep doing his job that pays him a lot of money and, you know, be content or maybe kind of miss out on this amazing opportunity. Or he could try it and then, sure, put the personal guarantee and put the house on the line and everything. And then if it didn't work out, well, file bankruptcy, lose the house, go back to the high paying job. And a year later, you're back to where you started basically. And then if it did work out, it would be an amazing life-changing experience. So it made it an obvious choice to go for it from what I understand.

It's an interesting way to look at it. And I think that it takes a proper mindset to actually go for it because a lot of times, yeah, the mindset is different. It's more like, how do I not lose what I have? Instead of just accepting risk and accepting the possibility of losing things for the chance of gaining so much more and understanding that sure, even if you lose it, it's not the end of the world. I guess, of course, it's different for different people. For some people, it is really the end of the world, I guess. You know, if it's somebody with three kids, you know, and then they have a lot of bills and things like that. Yeah, you can't really risk too much. If you don't have a lot of money saved at least. But for some people, the risk is worth it. So it's just, it's just some comforts that you lose for some time, and then you're back to normal life, even if things go wrong.

Jeremy: And I think the way where, what you just said, one of the things that would, I would say is do it early or do it late. Don't do it in the middle, right? Don't do it when you have three kids and you're in that turmoil that, you know, that could affect, it could affect your family, right? But if you do it before kids, or if you do it, you know, when your kids are a lot older or your family's more settled, it's definitely a little bit easier, let's say, to deal with a big problem, to deal with something catastrophic that happens.

Andrey: Yeah, you just need to go safer. If you go for something, you need to go for something where you're a lot more certain.

So and then for your experience, how do you look at entrepreneurship? How do you feel it affected your life, your friendships, your family? Was there an effect? Because your experience was both positive in the company that you started and negative in the company you acquired. So basically there were these huge swings. So I mean, as you mentioned yourself, so when you kind of proposed to go for bankruptcy to your wife, she said that it would have been good to have done it earlier. So I guess you had some unspoken thoughts there between the two of you. How do feel this experience, I guess, affected you guys?

Jeremy: I actually think it, for me, it was, it was very good because, it, it got me to think more about, it may be be closer. I'll say, don't know how to say closer to my wife. It was, I've learned a lot more about, you know, I mean, we were married 29 years at the time, right.

28 years and it was, and yet, you know, I've learned so much about my wife and I've known her since I was 10 years old. So, that was something, but also I think that, the other piece of it that I learned out of this was as we, you know, as we progress forward, I learned a lot more about, about her because I, I asked her to help.

So we had DeSoto at the time, at the time of the bankruptcy. And so when we moved over to, when we kept it and moved it, I asked her to help with that company. And then she kind of just took over and I had no idea, you know, and I, to this day, I'm like, I wish I would have known that, that her, I knew she was type A. But I didn't know how much that was such a benefit to the organization, to, to DeSoto. So she is, you know, she does all of the, the inventory, she pick pack ships. She does all the invoicing. She does all the customer service. And because she is such a perfectionist, it, it works. The problem is that she's only one person. And so how do you grow it? When you only have one person that doesn't want to let go. But still, I learned a lot about her throughout this whole process, which was great.

Andrey: And then what would be your suggestions for others that might consider being an entrepreneur that have a family? What do you think they could expect? What do you think is normal to expect? what do you think is normal to, I guess, require in your relationships or your family? Because I think that it's kind of like when somebody decides, okay, I'm going to be, I'm going to try this business. I'm going to go for it. It's like a long-term commitment for pretty much the whole family in a way. What would you recommend for others?

Jeremy: That that's exactly the point right there is, is it, it is a commitment. And there are so many things out there right now that, so many advertisements and that you see in posts on LinkedIn and posts on Facebook about how easy it is to start a business and to run a business or acquire a business. And, and I just look at this and I just shake my head because the reality is when you, when you own a business, it's not nine to five. It's 24 seven. It's if you can't make payroll, you know, you're, you're up at night trying to figure out what am I going to do? How am I going to do that? Who am I not going to pay in order to be able to, to make payroll? Because that's the one thing that you never want to miss.

Don't believe all the advertisements that are out there about you can get rich quick by just acquiring a company or starting a company because it's not, it, it's not that easy. You are, it's, it's almost like having a child, right? It's you're committed and you're committed every day.

Andrey: With acquiring too, it's also like the thing you got to start with is just not ruining it right away when you acquire it.

Jeremy: Exactly.

Andrey: And then from there, you got the payments. So basically, it's not only about not ruining it, right? Because you come in with a fresh view, start changing stuff, and all of a sudden it turns out that, your idea wasn't exactly right. That's the risk. But also because of payments on a loan that you'll probably have because you probably acquired with this SBA loan or something like that.

You also can't even have a little bit of a downturn. Well, you could maybe afford a little bit of a downturn, but if it dips more than 30%, you're also in the red and you're in trouble right away.

Jeremy: That's very important. And I think that one of the things that I even see, cause I work with a lot of business owners today, even, you know, in my job every day, people don't, know, a lot of business owners don't understand that, that they don't understand the cashflow part. They understand, I'm making money. My profit and loss statement says I'm making money, but there's a, there's a other side of that story. And the other side of that story is you have to collect it.

If you don't collect it, what good does it do? Right? If you're growing too fast and you're spending money faster than you're collecting it, that's just as bad.

Andrey: Even if you grow basically, so you're growing good and profitably, but you pay your vendor right away or net 15 and your customers are these large customers, right? Because you get one large customer and they could make a business, but then they pay net 60. They start to do volume and all of sudden you suffocate.

Jeremy: Yes. Exactly. So, you know, I came up with, I was sleeping one night. woke up and, had this idea, you you, you clean your car before you sell it. Why don't you clean your business? People wake up and they say, I'm just going to go sell my business, but they have no, they give no forethought to what it means to sell their business. And you really have to have a clean business and it's cashflow.

You have have leadership. You have to have people that can run the company without you or some way for the new owner to run it right with that without you. You have to have earnings. You have to have good earnings. You have to have assets that you can make money with. And you also have to have a story. You have to have next steps. You have to have a story that that, that, person that's buyer buying your company can see themselves in and see themselves as part of.

Andrey: Right. And then also hopefully that story would play out truthfully as well in the end. So I've never done an acquisition, but I've started a few businesses and I'm definitely familiar with these things, you know, the payroll and the sleepless nights and worrying about that. We've had our ups and downs. mean, in our beginning at Steersman, it was really hard. It took us multiple years to get to, well, being able to pay us livable salaries, I guess you could say, right? Which I think that maybe it's, well, maybe we did something wrong, know, maybe we should have approached things in a different manner, but that's in the past, so that's behind us already. there were, we also had a partnership falling out, which was basically a disaster. was very hard. At that time, it was especially stressful because we basically, we didn't have any money. We were hoping that we would start getting traction and then well, but then we didn't have money for payroll. So it's kind of like for a few months at that time, I was getting like four hours of sleep per night, waking up and thinking, okay, how are we going to resolve this issue? But also how am I going to resolve the payroll? like, do I need to go ahead and put another $5,000 into the company to actually pay or not. What do I do? Do I lend more money? But then we have this partnership problem where, you know, I basically might lose the business and then there I am injecting money only to go ahead and lose it in like a month. sleepless nights and trouble was definitely a thing.

And this whole thing with family supporting you, I think it's huge. So, luckily my wife supported me. So we kind of stuck through it. We were just, well, broke for a while, I guess you could say, right? So, but I think it's a fairly standard situation for entrepreneurs in their beginnings. You start a business and you're broke for a while. You sleep on a couch somewhere, sometimes even, right? I was, I got married when we were, after we started it. So I guess, in the beginning, I could sleep on a couch, but later on I was already married. that wouldn't have really worked out so well. But I guess even Elon Musk, even he did that type of thing where when they were doing PayPal, he was basically kind of like almost homeless or something like that. He was just sleeping in an office or at some friend's houses. It's an interesting thing because I mean, I read his biography, so I've read about it, but otherwise in the news or anything like that, that's not the thing that's talked about. The part about entrepreneurs, it's all about: make bank, buy a business with no money down, you know, that type of thing. You know, as long as it's cashflow positive, look - it's like printing free money for you. And then you just don't need to do anything, or minimal stuff. It's not my experience. And I hope that at some point I will come across that experience.

Jeremy: We all do.

Andrey: but we will see if it actually happens, I guess.

So with your experience, with your ups and downs, are you still up for doing another acquisition? Do you think that it's something you would still entertain at some time in the future, buy another company and run it?

Jeremy: Maybe. I think I'm, to be honest with you, I think I'm more of a startup guy now than I am an acquisitions guy. I've, I've actually, had the pleasure of starting three companies and, thankfully all three of them are still, still around.

One of two of them, obviously I'm still a part of, so, that's really, that's really good. That's really nice to see that. And, you know, it's, I think it's a, it's a different experience when you start a company versus acquiring, you know, you, you see it from the very, you know, from its infancy, right. All the way through to whatever it becomes, and a lot of startups fail. And, and like I said, I feel really fortunate that, you know, the three that, that I've been a part of are still around. And one of them is 12 years old. The other one's probably 10, you know, and now DeSoto is coming on three.

Andrey: So I think it's also a very different skill, right? Starting a business versus what you need to acquire a business for, well, unless you acquire a business for like $50,000, you know, that's basically, it's almost the same as starting a business because it's so small. But if you're acquiring a business for anything north of, I guess, a million dollars or something like that, where it has a team, I think it's quite a different skill set. Well, I think its a different skill set to get from nothing to a million or a few million dollars in sales, compared to going from maybe like a million or $2 million sales into $10 million of sales, where there's a team and management and something like that, it just seems like in many cases, the people that could do the one cannot do the other and vice versa. I guess I'm in a position where I need to learn the second.

I've started also a few businesses and I really like that. It's nice, it's exciting. I have ideas and I want to bring things to reality. But it's been very interesting, this experience of actually learning to go into trying to break through into a larger business. Because if you don't break through it, then the business has low value because it's, well, there's, I guess, there's you or a few key employees and then you build a team around it, but it's very much kind of tied around some kind of key individual. trying to move beyond that into the business running by processes and procedures and just sustain itself. It's really hard. I'm guessing it's not, maybe it's not very hard for some people. But the learning of it has been hard for me. I'm hoping that we're getting there, but I guess time will show.

Jermey: Yeah, it will. I think that they always say that businesses go through plateaus, right? And there are kind of plateaus. It's kind like the 80-20 rule, Where they always say that 80 % of your revenue comes from 20 % of your customers.

It's kind the, there's kind of that plateau rule too. It's where, you know, companies get so big and then they hit that plateau and it's really hard to get off that plateau. And then you get off that plateau and you get to the next one and you know, and how do you, how do you move past those plateaus? That's, that's the secret, right? And that's where really successful entrepreneurs figure that out.

Andrey: So then in your case, guess, since you said that maybe you would entertain another acquisition, so what would be your criteria now? Knowing what you know now, how would you do this different?

Jeremy: Yeah, I'm looking for that, for that thing that, all those advertisements say, right. Cashflow and do nothing. I always say if I find that I'm, I'll be the buyer.

Andrey: That's the criteria, right?

No, I think it is, you know, I think for me going forward, it's all about seeing the, the opportunity, right? Seeing a business that is, that is poised for growth, they need a spark. And so, you know, and what that is, I don't know. I think that, you know, the distribution world has changed so much. There's so much more direct to consumer. And I've been fortunate enough to be involved in a lot of direct to, you know, consumer distribution in my career. And most recently, you know, it's, it's amazing how bigger products are now becoming direct to consumer. mean, you can order, you know, a couch from Wayfair and have it delivered to your house. You couldn't do that a few years ago. You know, and it, and so it's creating a whole new, it's creating an interesting,

It's not a new business, but it's a growing business in that home delivery market. Right. It's just, and it's such a, a fragmented market, you know, so there's things that like that, where I look at it and I say, you know, Amazon kills it and, know, and UPS and FedEx and those guys, you know, they got the small stuff down, right. But nobody has the big stuff down.

And it is, you know, it's such a hit or miss. And that's the kind of thing where I look at and I say, that's an opportunity. And how do you solve that problem? So that would be the kind of acquisition, you know, I'd look for a big problem that's needs solved and you can figure it out.

Andrey: But with that type of thing, I would feel like that just requires so much money investment. You can't just acquire, it's not a small business that does this. This is a massive business with a billion dollar budget or something like that.

Jeremy: Unless you can solve it with data. That's, that's the other side of it. And I've talked to some people about that, that have this idea of solving it with data. You know, you look at Uber, right? Uber freight. They tried, they thought that they were going to just take an Uber app and then start moving freight with the Uber app and it didn't work. But who's to say, who's to say that it wouldn't work now or it wouldn't work in five years or two years because.

Andrey: Something might change. MySpace didn't really survive, but Facebook is doing great. So it's kind of the same similar thing in here.

Jeremy: I was listening to a comedian or I was listening to somebody the other day, maybe it was a comedian that would that matter. But what would the important part was I used to go to Blockbuster and get all my movies. And there was this, this little fledgling company called Netflix that would send it to my house and Blockbuster. They didn't figure it out fast enough.

Andrey: Mm-hmm, didn't acquire Netflix. Right. Exactly. probably could have. And the Netflix people would have been very happy to sell for like few hundred million dollars. Yeah. Didn't happen. But it worked out good for the Netflix guys anyway.

Mm-hmm. I see. And then for acquisitions, well, I guess maybe not even only for acquisitions, but for starting something new or acquisitions, one or the other. Do you think that there would be some organizations or I don't know, people that you feel like you would work with if you went for something? Like the attorney you said that you thought that your attorney was really good.

Jeremy: Yeah, you know, that is one of the things that, that I've been really fortunate in my, in my career to meet a lot of great people. And, and I, do that, I do that today, right? I do that every day is looking at, at the people that I've met over the years and using them, you know, as resources when, when I have a question, when I need it, you know, I'm not the expert in everything. can't be the expert in everything. Nobody can. So, you know, reaching out to those people that, that, that know, right, or have lived that, or have that experience, um, or have that training, you know, reach out to them. Absolutely.

I'm not that much older than I was when I did the acquisition, but I think I'm that much smarter in that I would be smarter about using those resources and help trying to reach out to those people.

Andrey: Yeah, talk to more people basically. I see. It makes sense. I think that it's a thing that comes with experience, right? It's like, if you haven't been burned, then you feel like you can handle it. You're smart. You're capable. You could handle this. You don't want to bother people and everything. But then, well, if you have a collective intelligence, trying to help you then there are just so many more perspectives that could be there, right? They just might know something that you didn't think about and for them it's so easy. Whereas for you, it's just, it's not an insight that you have and you miss it.

Jeremy: You can't know everything. Like we said earlier in the conversation, the, the human brain is not, doesn't have the capacity to know everything. And you don't even remember everything that you've learned. And you forget things. And so why, why try to do it alone?

Andrey: Yeah, I've talked to another, one of my other interviews that I've done. He specifically pointed this thing out that a lot of people helped on their way, right? So they started a company and they've been growing. well, a lot of the growth has been thanks to just people that they met along the way deciding to help, you know, and not even close to everybody wants to charge money for it or anything like that. Some people just, they just help out. And then for them, for the person that helps, that help is basically very easy. It costs them almost nothing, but for the receiver, it's basically just a lifeline. In some cases, it's a thing that they wouldn't have survived without. And the only way to get that is to, I guess, cultivate these relationships and be grateful for, I guess, knowing people, right? So being nice to people, not burning bridges, you know, because you never know who might be able to save your ass at some point in the future, right?

Jeremy: Have you ever read the go-giver?

Andrey: No, I don't know what is that.

Jeremy: I always call it, I like to call it the little golden book of business books. It's a very short read. It was written by a guy by the name of, Bob Berg. And basically what it is is that, it's kind of a parable, but the long and short of it is that you should always look at a situation as you want to give more than you receive.

And you also want to give without the expectation of receiving. that's how I think that's one of the things, you you asked earlier what some of the things that I've learned, from, you know, from this situation or, or what I've realized maybe, and it wasn't necessarily from this situation, but I realized over the last few years that, I was always a giving person, you know, that, that wasn't, but, but I look at it a little bit differently now.

You know, at a little different lens. I want to give, I want to help people in the things that I do every day without the expectation of receiving something in return.

Andrey: Makes it easier and smoother then, right? Then you just enjoy helping. you keep living your life. And then sometimes it comes back to you. It makes a lot of sense to approach it that way. I agree with that perspective.

Jeremy: Yep.

Andrey: Well, let's maybe wrap up our conversation then. I think it's been about an hour or so. Yeah, I enjoyed it. Thank you

Jeremy: It's a quick hour. Thank you.