JOEL ANKNEY, Attorney, REVEALS Secrets to Over 100 SMB Acquisitions!

 Summary

In this episode of the Top M&A Entrepreneurs Podcast, host Jon Stoddard interviews attorney Joel Ankney, who specializes in business acquisitions. They discuss the importance of having legal counsel throughout the acquisition process, the nuances of letters of intent, and the challenges that arise post-closing. Joel shares insights on asset purchase agreements, due diligence, and the growing trend of online business acquisitions. They also explore the complexities of seller financing and the implications of government contracts in M&A transactions, as well as the challenges faced by baby boomers looking to sell their businesses.

Takeaways

It's crucial to hire a lawyer before signing any documents.
Letters of intent can be used strategically to lock in deals.
Post-closing relationships can be complicated and require careful management.
Asset purchase agreements are vital for protecting buyers' interests.
Due diligence is essential for uncovering all business assets.
Online business acquisitions are on the rise, requiring specific legal considerations.
Seller financing is common but comes with risks for both parties.
Government contracts can complicate the sale process significantly.
Understanding the difference between asset and stock sales is critical in M&A.
Many baby boomers struggle to find buyers for their businesses.

 Watch the Interview:

Jon Stoddard (00:02.542)
Hey, welcome to the top &A Entrepreneurs Podcast. My name is Josh Stoddard. I have a guest is Joel Aikene. Joel is an attorney and helps buy businesses. How you doing Joel? I'm doing great. Thanks. You pronounced my last name perfectly. Thanks for I had a little coaching. So thank you. So Joel, the first start is and how I found you is, you know, I buy a lot of books from Amazon and your book came recommended. I bought it. Here's the deal.

Pretty awesome. It's from an attorney writing about business books. And I'll tell you, I don't know if you had help writing this, but everything you wish a lawyer would tell you about buying a small business, but that is a perfect headline. thanks. I appreciate that. Yeah, we, I wrote it all by myself. I didn't have any help, but self published it. And it's been awesome. It's been a great resource. And a lot of people have

have picked it up and I've really enjoyed interacting with a lot of people as they've talked to me about it. Yeah, that's cool. how many of is this your primary business or let me just start asking this how many business buying acquisitions have you been involved with over the year? You know, I should keep count, but I really don't. I know when I was a young attorney at a large law firm, some attorneys kept what they call deal sheets where they just kept a list of all the deals they've worked on and

I've never done that. I'm you know, I've been practicing law for 30 years. I've been in the &A space for about 27 of those years. And so I mean, maybe a couple hundred deals. And I'm talking about being on the buy side and on the sell side. I'm on the sell side quite a bit as well. And the the buy side.

I have to ask you about the buy side because I'm a buyer and maybe most of the people in my group mastermind are on the buy side. So let's kind of talk about that where what is, what's the overall theme you see really important to have? We all know that it's very important to have your deal team six set up. That's an attorney ready to go. Not after you purchase it, but attorney that you have a great relationship before you go out there and say, Hey, I got this deal.

Jon Stoddard (02:29.454)
Let me show you some things. What's the important That's a great question. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. All right. A lot of people ask me, when in the process should I hire a lawyer? When should I get a lawyer involved in my acquisition process? Sometimes I have people who engage me right before the closing. They call me up, all the documents have been signed. Can I help them close the deal?

Other times I have people who engage me at the very beginning of the process when they're just saying to themselves, we'd like to buy a company. We haven't targeted anybody yet. And really what I tell people is hire a lawyer before you sign something and before perhaps you take a risk on. So if you're going to do a letter of intent or a term sheet or something like that, hire a lawyer before that.

so that they can at least look it over before you sign it. And I've got, you know, horror stories about letters of intent that were signed when they didn't really reflect the deal or where they said, you know, they were entirely binding or things like that. A lot of people that I work with don't sign letters of intent or term sheets. And so, you know, really when we're starting to talk about the, you know, the fine points of the deal and we're ready to put

and the paper, I think you need to have a lawyer involved. Yeah. Let me ask you about that deal where they asked you to, you brought you in right before they signed the LOI. Did that deal work out? Because that one always, that would scare me because if, if I was, you know, my process is if I look at a deal, I have a really good relationship with the seller.

and we work out the terms of the deal, every point, you know, verbally, whether it's Zoom or over the internet, and then transcribe those to the attorney. That would scare me if I, like, I'm going to work this out by myself and I'm going send it to an attorney, just sign off of it. I mean, that would scare me a little bit. Well, I think that, you know, my role can vary in that process, but

Jon Stoddard (04:52.686)
You know, I've had people who have signed letters of intent because they downloaded something off the internet or they, you know, I had a client that I worked with over the course of a couple of years where we had a number of failed acquisitions. So, and they just started to take the letter of intent that I drafted for the last deal and use that and draft their own letter of intent for the next deal. You know, fortunately,

when they, even though they sign those, that letter of intent, a lot of it is non-binding, fortunately. And so when it came time to put the purchase agreement together, I was able to come in and say, okay, you know, I know the letter of intent says this, but that's not really what you guys meant. That really doesn't pertain to this particular deal. So, you know, I'm just pointing out to you that when I draft the purchase agreement, I'm going to put in something a little different on these couple of, you know, different deal points.

And nobody was upset with that. And so, you know, that all seemed to work out just fine. Yeah. Let me ask you question about the LOI. Do some companies or buyers just use it as a preemptive strike to lock up the. So that, you know, hey, I'll, you know, I'll edit the LOI at a later date because it's non-binding. I just want to lock them up, tie them up.

I don't know that I've ever had anybody express that to me in that direct of. Well, wouldn't say to fire, of course. Yeah, but I mean, absolutely. mean, I just I'm working on a small acquisition where I'm representing the seller right now and seller who's getting ready to retire. It's a health care practice. And but but it's being the potential buyer is a corporate

health, you know, national corporate health care company. And so they have a very kind of systematic process that they use. And certainly their kind of anxiousness to get a letter of intent in place is so that they can lock my guy up because he has had a number of potential suitors. And so they wanted to make sure that they got him, you know, on board with a letter of intent so they could, you know, he'd have to tell everybody else to go away.

Jon Stoddard (07:17.389)
So I've seen it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, to me, that's we I was looking at a IT company really profitable. It was doing five million a year with 2.4 million in EBITDA. Very profitable. And a equity firm came down, normally not in their criteria, but they love the profit so much and the the customers that he had that they were really willing to make a deal. Now, they sent him a letter of intent.

She's like a preemptive strike. He just wrapped them up. I told the owners, why do you keep showing this to me? They want you to work 40 hours a week on this business. And you said you want to leave the company and go to another company. Why are you using it as negotiation leverage against me? Anyway, we went with them anyway. So I don't know what the deal was when they worked out with them. Yeah, that's interesting. And I think you bring up a really good point, too, is that

you know, a lot of sellers might have choice about who their buyer is. so part of the process from a seller's perspective is to try and figure out what the best fit is, know, who they're going to best fit with when they sell. Because it does make a difference post-closing. You know, I've certainly, I mean, I, back in 2000,

I guess 19 I sold help somebody sell a local company here, a pretty good size company. mean, most of my deals are, think what a lot of people would consider micro deals. I like to call them Main Street deals. mean, you know, this company that I helped sell was in the $2.5 million sales price range with another maybe $2 million in real estate for the building that they own. But

there was a significant post-closing compensation package built in for my, the founder of my seller. And within, you know, three months after closing, it was a disaster, just a complete disaster. And then we spent the next maybe nine months negotiating my, my personnel. So, yeah. Why did they negotiate that? That's, I mean, I get that you're, you're trying to

Jon Stoddard (09:34.867)
appeal to the desires of the seller to get them signed on to buy the business. But if the business can't support that in cash flow, how are you going to do that? mean, yeah, well, in this situation, it was really more of a conflict of personalities. And so the cash flow was there to support it. the the you know, my my seller

felt that the value of the business was much more than the purchase price that the buyer offered. And so the buyer, you know, threw in this post-closing, I mean, it was like a five-year post-closing package, which is really lengthy to, in my experience. But, you know, was a combination of W-2 compensation and 1099 consulting compensation later on. But there was a significant conflict in personalities and

That's really what kind of tore the whole post-closing relationship apart. And then it was just a matter of now my client, mean, so, you again, the buyer was trying to work with the seller to, even though they didn't want to pay that particular purchase price, they thought, well, if we can give her some post-closing compensation and get something in return, then that makes her feel like she's getting more value for the business. yeah, it was just- Price and terms. Yeah. Yeah.

So what happened there? Why did she change her mind about what the valuation she thought it was after she sold it? Not really. mean, again, was the business was purchased by a larger company. she just felt like, again, a difference in opinion about how the business should be run. Of course, the new buyer wants to come in, wants to integrate the

new company into their larger system wants to, you know, change the way things are done, change the way management is handled, things like that. And she just had a, again, disagreement with the way that they approached a lot of that. And it just created a lot of tension. And so what we did was we simply negotiated a settlement of all that post-closing compensation and, and exited her out of the business. Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (11:57.279)
She didn't own the business anymore. It's a bigger company, actually. That's correct. Right. Yeah. That's interesting. I got the financial. That's interesting. So where? Yeah. That's funny. Even though she doesn't own the business, guess, I guess, you know, if you built started a business from zero and it's your baby, you have some emotional ties to it that are difficult to extricate yourself from that.

you know, it could cause problems. How do you predict that in the future? Is that in, do you write that into the representatives and or warranties or like in the event that we don't get along after two years? How do you get out of that? How do you write that? Yeah, I mean, we really don't write it in. Frankly, I think that I really counsel if I'm representing either side buyer or seller, you know, I have

When I was much younger, I would try and figure out how to get, you know, skin that cat. But the more deals I've done, I really counsel people against that. You know, once, once you've sold your company or once you've bought a company, get the founder out of there. Don't, don't let the founder hanger. I mean, I've had situations where buyers have bought companies and the founder comes in every day, even though they have no employment relationship or consulting relationship. just.

are so used to coming in every day that they still come in, they walk behind the counters, they go in the back offices, and it just creates a huge amount of tension. so, but you do kind of, in my experience, we've had to walk some tightrope sometimes because again, we're trying to maybe pull some additional cash out of the deal from the seller's side. And a lot of times people will say, well, that makes sense to maybe

set up a post-closing consulting agreement so we can get some services from you and get some cash out to you as well after closing. But I don't like it, frankly, and I'll tell my clients that. it doesn't happen. doesn't even like that, right? If you were to get an SBA loan, they said that the previous owner is out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have a story, a family friend that owned a water company. They sold it. And the owner

Jon Stoddard (14:24.695)
getting up there in age, I think like 85, 90. I mean, he kept coming to the office and very disruptive because once you get a little senile and maybe a little dementia, you just get angry. And he was just being a jerk to people. And until the point where they couldn't figure out how to not get him there until the family actually took away his license to drive to work. So, Wow. Yeah. That's that's, but that's a really interesting story, because it really

brings in the perspective that we're not just working with numbers and contracts and things like that. We're working with people. And we have to be sensitive to those interpersonal relationships as well and make sure. I tell people I can draft just about anything into a contract. But if you don't get along or if you've got problems, all my contract is going to do is become the basis for a lawsuit. It's not going to like

keep people out of the business and things like that. I mean, you're have to work through all that. It's tough. Yeah, I you know, the more that I think about it is really important to have new blood onto it. Because if you just look, look, we want to 10x your business, but whatever got you to where you're at, it's not going to get you there with you here. So we need to educate ourselves from that. Right.

That's interesting. Hey, so you've got a lot of this business. Where would you focus the most upon when you advise people on is it due diligence or, or writing the letter of intent or the asset purchase agreement? I'd say my focus is on the asset purchase agreement. I mean, that's where I bring the most value to the table, I think, because I've done it so many times, I've seen so many different flavors of deals. And hopefully,

part of my drafting process are the questions that I ask you about the deal. And that way, you know, the answers that you give me will help me figure out what we're going to put in the contract to protect you. So are you prepping the buyer with questions he should ask or to have the seller provide documents in the upload in the drop box or whatever that vault is? Yeah, again, it's

Jon Stoddard (16:43.213)
Probably a little of both. you know, I am.

you know, based on, you know, depending on the industry that the business is in, I'll be aware, like, for example, over the last maybe a year and a half or so, I've helped people either buy or sell some online businesses. And, you know, a lot of people don't realize that there's a lot kind of under the covers on a lot of intellectual property issues under the covers for an online business. And so

You know, I'll ask about that. I remember we did a deal last year where I was representing the buyer and the, you know, I kept saying to the buyer, okay, you're buying this online business, but do they have any registered trademarks? No, they don't have any registered trademarks. Well, I get on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's website, do a quick search, find out there are three registered trademarks. So we just need to make sure that we understand what all the assets are. I mean, they had

They thought there was just one domain name. There were really several domain names. There was not just an English version website. There was also a Spanish language version website. So by asking the questions, I was able to make sure we understood, you know, we were able to put in the contract and make sure we were getting all the assets that we needed to run that business. If we had just gone with the first draft of the asset purchase agreement, none of that stuff was referred to at all.

So is it was the buyer neglected to mention that that they have a Spanish language translation or did they are you supposed to ask or I know it's a it's a you know, it's important for both parties to be honest and transparent and full disclosure but. No, I think honestly I think that the seller was aware of most of the stuff like the Spanish language website.

Jon Stoddard (18:46.817)
But the seller's lawyer wasn't aware of it. And so it was only because I was representing the buyer, it was only through my questions and my kind of research that I was able to identify intellectual property assets that were pretty easily identifiable. But I just had to make sure I asked the right questions. My buyer wasn't really aware of those things, didn't even know the right questions to ask.

Yeah. So what do you see? mean, that is a big business now is buying e-commerce online businesses. I mean, what are you seeing as a consistent trend of people like that you have to uncover? It's like a unpeeling onions, right? To find something. Yeah, absolutely. mean, and like you said, you know, some of that takes place or hopefully would take place in the due diligence process.

A lot of times my clients don't really involve me as much in the due diligence process, partly because I think they're just trying to save on legal fees. And a lot of times because they feel like they've got the right questions to ask. And that's okay. I mean, I don't think that's a terrible issue to deal with. But again, by the time we get to the asset purchase,

drafting phase, asset purchase agreement drafting phase, whether I'm drafting or whether the lawyer on the other side is drafting. There are certain questions that I'm going to ask my client, things to make sure that they're getting the assets that they think they're getting, that they're paying the price that they think they're paying or getting the price that they think they're getting, that it's being paid the way they think it's supposed to be paid. that they're getting the kind of promises, the reps and warranties.

that they think that they're either going to get or give depending on what side they're on. So again, a lot of my role in a deal is not just necessarily as a lawyer, but it says on my law license that I'm an attorney and counselor at law. So I spend a lot of time coaching or counseling my client through the process as well to make sure that they're protected. Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (21:09.387)
You know, we, my mastermind group, but we look at it as before you get the asset purchase agreement is make sure that the there's a kind of a pre conceptual agreement that you do face to face and or zoom call that all the points are there. And then they move to LOI. And that's just, you know, that is drafting exactly what we talked about. Is this what we talked about?

It's like it's a yes or no. And then they move that to the asset purchase agreement if somebody says, okay, let's buy it. But what happens if it just

What do you do to hold back? What are the points in there for you to hold back if it's not represented in the warranties, reps and warranties parts of it? What do you protect the buyer from or give them? Like I know you could put some in an escrow or you just call the deal off. What's the, what are some other ideas? Well, I mean, again, if I'm representing the buyer,

I want the seller to make as many reps and warranties about the business as I can squeeze out of them. Every part of business. Yeah, I mean, that's my ideal, right? On one end of the spectrum, I want 10 pages of reps and warranties about every aspect of the business. Inventory, cash flow, balance sheet, financials. Yeah. Yeah, I want it all. want it all. And from the seller's perspective,

A lot of sellers are like, hey, this is an as is deal, right? So they're all the way at the other end of the spectrum. you know, and there are a lot of factors that come into play. Purchase price, you know, I just helped the client buy a fairly significant high profile business that we just closed on last week. you know, the purchase price was

Jon Stoddard (23:11.693)
was essentially the price of a luxury car, not even an expensive, a high-end Mercedes or something. So the purchase price is really low. My client is getting a real kind of vibrant business. And so when the seller said, hey, this is as is, we said, okay, fine, we'll take the risk. We'll take that risk. The only reps we want are that there are no liens on the asset.

And once you tell us that, we'll do the whole thing as is. And if there are liens on the assets and you discover through investigation, that what do you say you hold back in what in escrow or what? I mean, if I find that there are liens on assets before we close, then you know, I'm just going to tell the seller right up front, we found these liens. And when we disperse the purchase price proceeds,

we're going to disperse X to pay off the liens and the balance will come to you. That's it. We're not going to let them hold the money. Is there like a deduction in the purchase price also or optionally? Well, I mean, I guess you could look at it that way. It's not really a deduction in the purchase price, but in that kind of a situation, I would put together a simple, they call it all different things, a settlement statement or a closing disclosure.

that shows where the flow of money is going to go. And I have the seller sign off on that at closing so that they know, even though the purchase price is $5 million, we're going to take 250,000 of that right at closing and give it to the bank to get rid of the lien and they'll get the rest. If you see a business that's an online business, it's just like purely cashflow online and they got real estate. Do you separate that? I've never bought a business

with real estate. It's all online. I mean, I don't know a lot about that. So yeah, I mean, that's a really good question, because typically, even whether it's an online business or not, those are two separate deals. So you're going to have an asset deal. And then you're going to, if you're going to be involved in the real estate, you would have a real estate deal.

Jon Stoddard (25:35.237)
you know, like, like you, I mean, even this last year, I helped somebody buy an online business and, but the seller had leased space, they didn't own it, but they had leased space. And we just said, Hey, we're not taking the lease. You know, we're not, we don't want any of that. You're to have to figure out what to do with that yourself. And so we just bought the assets out of the business and they had to handle the real estate later. We don't, you know, we don't even know what happened.

Yeah, let me ask you about your experience with like an asset sale versus a stock sale. Have you ever worked with an OTC company or a public company? You know, no, mean, well, when I was I spent the first 12 years of my career at some very large law firms. Yeah. And so some of the clients that I represented, were institutional clients of the law firm. They were Fortune 100 100 companies. They were public companies. So

So yes, in a kind of an indirect way, but not since I've been out and have my own. And you recommend an asset sale for most of the stuff, right? So that you're separating the liabilities? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if I'm if I'm on again, if I'm on the buyer side, I'm I'm definitely pushing hard for an asset deal to just leave the liabilities with the with the seller. Interestingly, I'm in the Virginia Beach, Norfolk,

Hampton Roads area, our primary, one of our primary industries here is the military. yeah, big DLD stuff. Yeah, yeah. So I've represented companies, consultants, know, defense contractors who have sold their businesses. There are certain situations where you got to do a stock deal. Like if I'm selling a company or if I'm buying a company that is, you know, their primary assets are contracts that they have with the government.

Yeah, let me ask you about that. Sorry to interrupt you a bit. Yeah, that's what it comes into play is why you buy a stock sales because if you have a DOD contract or a government or university contract, there's long term contracts. Right. Not only that, but they have they have terms in those contracts that say that they're non transferable, that they're non assignable. So if you if you try and sell the contract itself as an asset, then

Jon Stoddard (27:58.697)
it's going to be terminated. So it has no value. So you have to buy it as a stock and not an asset. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I mean, we try our best when we're doing a stock deal like that to still have some robust indemnification provisions in there and to make it, you know, try and delineate between pre-closing liabilities and post-closing liabilities and who's responsible for what. But, you know, I think I say to my book that

an indemnification is only as good as the financial strength of the seller, right? If the seller doesn't have any cash after the deal's over and you try and make an indemnification claim against them, well, it's like trying to squeeze blood out of a stone. You you have the contractual right to do it, but they may not be able to, you know, they may be judgment-proof. And so you're not going to get anything. the, I'm just curious on this, I haven't seen it.

Do you have to, as the buyer and the seller, does the seller have to notify the government that you're going to sell the company and can they have up or down veto vote on a sale to a new owner? Yeah, I mean, I've seen, I think the short answer is typically, yes, you've got to let the, if there's going to be a change in control. So in other words, if the buyer's buying 51 % or more of the company,

I mean, I would, as part of the due diligence, I would look at the government contracts. But I think generally speaking, you're going to have to notify the government and they're going to, whether they have up or down, I think they're going to want to vet the buyer. They're going to want to see if their financials, they're going to want to know who they are and how they're going to fulfill the contract. But I haven't done a lot of those deals, but I've done enough to know that it's a different animal.

Yeah, would that have to be in the asset purchase agreement, that whole clause there? Well, yeah, in the stock purchase agreement, we would want there to be a contingency section that says, you know, the deal, the closing is going to be contingent on us getting whatever approvals we need, including, know, if there's government approval required, we're going to want that make that a contingency to the to the purchase. Yeah, the reason I'm bringing that subject up, I'm a veteran and I know a lot of that.

Jon Stoddard (30:21.569)
there's a lot of veterans in my mastermind group. So they go after these companies that have contracts. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Around here, we end up having, I mean, I don't know, I've represented a handful of companies that are run by former special forces operators. And, you know, they do a lot of consulting work, a lot of training work with the Department of Defense. And so they have, you know, lucrative contracts, but

But like I said, can't really, you if they want to exit their business or, or a lot of times what I see is a smaller group, a smaller company being acquired by a larger company. You know, we, we just have to make sure we do it the right way so we don't hurt those contracts. Yeah. Do you ever work with companies where there's a lot of seller financing? And I'm just curious about the problems that arise from seller financing. mean, like

Sellers don't want to be in the loan business, but it's sometimes essential to get the deal done and the seller takes finance. Yeah. I mean, I would say probably 60 to 70 % of the deals I do have some sort of seller financing involved in them. what are the characteristics of that where you want to make sure the seller understands really clear, like if

buyer takes over the business and can no longer pay to sell or financing what happens. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. You want to make, mean, it's not the best position to be in, but like you said, sometimes it's the only way to get the deal across the finish line. and that debt's not in first position. It's usually in second position to like an SBA or financing. Absolutely. And especially if you've got the SBA involved, I'm doing the deal right now where

I'm representing the buyer who's going to finance most of the purchase price with an SBA loan, but there is some seller financing as well. And the SBA typically requires that this seller not only take a second position, but also take what they call a standby position where they, the seller can't be paid under their promissory note until the SBA has been paid off. So if it's a five year term on the SBA loan,

Jon Stoddard (32:42.913)
typically the SBA is going to have the seller sign a standby agreement that says, I won't collect any money for five years or until the SBA loan is paid off and then I'll start getting paid after that. so yeah, I mean, I have, I mean, you you run into situations where you might have a seller who's 75 years old. And if, if he or she's got to stand behind in a second position and also stand by on an SBA loan, they may not.

you know, they may be 80 years old before they start getting paid under the. No, want the money now because I might not. I might be room temperature tomorrow. So well, and even frankly, in one situation, I can recall, you know, the seller, I represented the seller and he was very, and it was almost those exact ages and stuff. And I said, well, you know, you're either going to have to go out, you know, just terminate this deal and go out and find another buyer or.

close this deal and just accept the fact that you may never see that money. Was that a hard pill to swallow there? Yeah, it was, but he wanted out. he swore. I got a question for you about that. You know, the baby boomers are aging group and there's $12 trillion worth of businesses, whatever that number is. Are you seeing more and more of that? The you know, these people that have started this business running for 20, 30 years trying to get out. Is that what you're seeing a lot more of?

Not really. mean, frankly, and I don't know why it's not that, but I mean, I see baby boomers who want to get out of their businesses, but don't know who to sell them to. They can't find a buyer. I think that's a bigger issue than, you know, am I seeing a high volume of those kinds of deals? What I'm really seeing is a higher volume of people who are at the end of their careers. They want to exit.

but they can't find a buyer to buy the business. Yeah, that's actually a problem because you look at a lot of these businesses, know, like five million, $15 million businesses, there's only one buyer eligible. Like that it's interested in doing that business because they might be in Ohio. And you know, it's a manufacturing business. It's as unsexy, you're working with blue collar, whatever it is, it's made the owner wealthy, you know, in a high income, but nobody's, it's not marketable to somebody that's like,

Jon Stoddard (35:01.567)
I can buy an e-commerce business. There's 40 out there and I'll get this X multiple on it. Right, right. Yeah, that's a really good point. mean, it's a lot of the baby boomer businesses are, they have the personality of the founder, of the owner. Yeah. And they put so much sweat. I mean, I have that family experience where my father built a small business and put a lot of sweat equity into it. And it was...

It was not a big business, but we tried to find, we had a couple of employees who we thought were going to purchase the business and they ended up deciding not to. And so my dad just shut the doors one day and that was the end of it. Just shut it down. And how much was that doing? What kind of numbers? I'd say in its heyday, again, not big, but maybe 2 to 3 million a year.

And there's a lot of people I know that if they were just new about this, hey, man, you could step into a business right now and doing two to $3 million. Right. And here's process. The guy built it up because it costs twice as much. doesn't twice as much energy and emotional, you know, ups and downs of starting a business than buying a two to $3 million business. Right. Right. Right. Well, your follow up question should be Joel, why didn't you take over your dad's business?

It was an attorney. Maybe it doesn't work. Well, I wasn't at the time. Well, I was when he shut it down. I worked for him all through. Anytime there was a vacation or summers or things like that, off and on, I would work for him. And I worked for him after I graduated from college. I just didn't have the same skill set that my father had. And so I realized I should go. like doing.

deals, but I should go to law school and maybe try that. And I've been, I've been okay at that. I'll tell you a perfect story. It's like I wrote to high school where this is a long time ago, his dad owned the packing plant in Wilcox, Arizona, really small town. goes, man, I am not killing cows every day. I'm not taking over the business. Like it's just nasty. It stinks. It's bloody, blah, blah, blah. And perfect example of that right there. Yeah. Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (37:17.518)
Hey, well, that's great. mean, I've taken a lot of your time and I really appreciate that. Joel Aikene, he's got a book. Here's the deal on Amazon. Get it. Let him know he's on LinkedIn. So thank you so much, Joel, for taking time today. Yeah, John, thanks for having me as a guest. I really appreciated it. All right. Take care. OK, talk to you soon.