It's Marketing's Fault

The first investment we made was in a towing company. And how we knew that was the right individual was we had a conversation about why he was interested in this particular business, what he wanted out of the transaction. And there's certainly financial gain when you're acquiring a business. You wouldn't be taking the risk. You wouldn't be PG-ing debt. You wouldn't be doing everything that you need to do in order if there wasn't a financial return. But if you're doing it only for the financial return, I think you're going to be sorely mistaken and unhappy. And the first thing out of his mouth was, I want to drive the tow truck in the Main Street parade. And what that means to me is, he wants to be part of the community. You know, we talked about building Main Street, that's building Main Street. That's, you know, he wants to drive the tow truck in the Fourth of July parade. You know, that's pretty cool. That's being part of the community. That's building a local economy. So when people send their dollars, people invest with us. It's not going to the coast. It's not going to New York businesses or San Francisco or anything. It's going to Toledo, Ohio. I think this business is out of Richmond, Virginia, or my business is in Charlotte, North Carolina. It's middle America. It's Main Street. And that's what I love about this. And to a person like It's Marketing's Fault, the podcast where we discuss how to do marketing the right way. I'm your host, Eric Rutherford, and I am thrilled today because I have with me Kevin Biebelhausen. He is an investor and a business owner. He frequently consults on digital strategy and operations. He is a sought-after conference speaker, frequent podcast guest, and author. Also, he is the author of Capitalism for Humans. Make sure to check it out on Substack. I'll make sure the link is in the show notes. Kevin, welcome to the show. Thanks, Eric. Happy to be here. It is my pleasure. Now, we're going to get into small businesses. We're going to get into marketing. We're going to get into a lot of good stuff with Fruition Capital, but we got to start with opera singing, right? We just need to start there because I know for everybody listening, you're like, where does opera come from? But it absolutely has an impact here. So what did you learn from studying and performing opera that helps you in the You know, at the time, it's funny, things kind of come full circle.

You know, I started out, you know, so I have two degrees in music. I went and I got a bachelor's degree in music and vocal performance and gigged around for a little bit and then was able to, you know, I was on scholarship there and then got a scholarship and assistantship to go to university and get my master's degree and kind of sing and go and do auditions and try and do local gigs and everything. That's fine when you're obviously young and you don't have a lot of expenses and you kind of think you've got the world by the tail. It's very hard to make a living in that. But I'll tell you what, man, I learned a ton doing opera and music performance. As a business owner now, looking back, I can see so many of the seeds that were planted. Specifically, as a musician, you are the CEO of your own career. And that's much the same as if you're an entrepreneur. There's no difference. It's just how you're applying your trade. So when I was... I would have... You have marketing efforts.

You have You have technical work that you're doing. You are collaborating with people. I mean, there's all kinds of stuff that, you know, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, it's all the same. Those skills are so translatable. And so I found that the transition from music into business, so I ended up getting a corporate job in healthcare and spent the majority of my career in healthcare. and mostly in the technology function. And I was able to make that pivot because of the collaborator skills that I had learned in music. And I started in sales and then kind of worked my way into technology. I wasn't afraid of getting into complex subjects. So for instance, like when I took a job at a healthcare software company and was able to teach myself, you know, Linux systems, SQL databases, things like that, because I mean, I had taken geez, at that point, you know, how many, how many semesters of music theory that, like, if I can, if I can get through, you know, Shakirian analysis, and all this really difficult, you know, augmented six chord nonsense, then I'm pretty sure I can figure out how relational databases work. So it really was just, you know, we're talking before we even started this about the, the, the, generalist versus specialist. I kind of enjoy really being that generalist and being able to tackle a lot of different topics using the same kind of skills that And I think that that is so, so true. Like if you can do music theory, oh my word, if you can do like heavy duty music theory, you can do anything. Like you can do anything because some of that stuff is, whoo, that's, that's, that's heavy duty, but kind of in the same boat though, you know, I have often heard and seen, the benefit of music and math or music and systems, like they work in tandem to almost make each side improve as you work on both of Yeah, that's so interesting that so certainly music and math are related and people talk about that often. And I think one of the pet stories that people tell are, you know, when IBM was recruiting a lot of software developers in its early days, well, there weren't a lot of computer science departments. What departments did they pull from? Math.

music, you know, harder sciences, you know, but it's just always interesting when you look at, you know, the people that they hired. They hired a lot of musicians because of the ability to digest complex information and synthesize it.

The systems piece is also incredibly interesting and something that I might explore more because you're 100% right. You know, all music has a form and a structure to it. And in my current business now, I'm running a textile company. And I often talk to my designers who are musicians of a different flavor, artists of another kind, about the beauty of creativity that comes from being within a structure. You have constraints. And the real magic comes when you're able to work within those constraints and create something beautiful.

And whether it's a price point that we're trying to hit in our current company, or whether it's a specific market that we're trying to sell into, whatever the constraint is. In music, it's, you need to do Sonata, Allegro form and it needs to be this pattern. And here's what the... Here's how many measures the part A has, and here's how many measures the secondary theme has. It's very true. I think the true genius of somebody shows up in how they work within And I think that's so true. I think when I was younger, I didn't see the benefit of constraints, because I was arrogant and I knew everything, obviously. And so then I went through the school of hard knocks and experienced what that's like. But constraints really focus you. They give you that sort of they give you the boundaries to work in. So whether you're programming, whether you're doing textiles, because again, you're talking patterns, you're talking texture, you're talking a variety of different things, price points, all of that. You've got supply, demand, you've got anchoring, you've got all these fabulous layers that you can do. So I love it. I do. Let me jump in then and ask, because I want to get into small businesses as well, but first let's talk about fruition capital. What Fruition capital is an entity that we formed. It's a fund that we look to use to invest in small business acquisitions throughout the U.S. So how this whole thing got started was, as I just mentioned, I own a textile business. Well, I didn't start the textile business. I bought the textile business. So I'm what they would call a corporate burnout.

So as I did my music career, and then I did my normal corporate career for about 10 years, well, 10 plus years. And then after I got burned out after COVID, I was working in healthcare and technology. So technology in COVID was obviously very critical because we were all in a virtual world. So it was stressful, difficult. I ended up having my own health issue because of COVID. So it was time for a change. And I had always wanted to own my own business. And I was obsessed with this idea of buying a business. Because you hear so much about the risks of a startup, and oh, how many businesses fail. And I really liked the idea of being able to take over somebody's company who's a retiring entrepreneur, like the guy I bought from is in his late 60s. Retiring entrepreneur, immediate cash flow in the business, and sort of this nice platform that you're able to write the ship a little bit, get it looking the way you want it to, and then scale it. And there's now a whole ecosystem that has popped up around this idea. But in 2017, there wasn't a lot of information. I found the Harvard Business Review Guide to Buying Small Businesses. That's a very SEO title. And I fell in love with the idea of... I read about this guy buying a port-a-potty business.

I'm like, that's the coolest thing. I want to do that. I don't want to be creating the next dating app or building a social media site or doing something in Silicon Valley. I want to own that business. Everybody needs that business, right? So I really liked that idea. And textiles, far cry from port-a-potty business. I still had to put my little artistic spin on it. and get back to my music roots. But yeah, I bought this company utilizing the same framework that we look for at Fruition, which is basically going out and using an SBA loan, which is the Small Business Administration. So it's a federally backed loan. And then I raised equity from investors, and then was able to acquire this business and be the majority owner. Fruition Capital is basically the equity side of that equation. So we pull money from investors, just like any kind of private equity fund.

And we invest alongside entrepreneurs who are interested in owning their own business. And then we take a piece of the equity, obviously, for our investors and cash flow and everything like that. So the thing that I'll say that makes us unique is that we're playing at a small end of the market. So typically when you, I stay away from the private equity lingo, because that kind of calls to mind a much larger, more rigid, more corporate identity. And we're in Main Street. The business that I bought, it's not a huge business. These are micro, micro, micro cap businesses. We're talking $10 million in under in revenue. So large enough, certainly for a single person, but not private equity, not good targets for private equity that will come in with a ton of capital. So we're really looking at businesses that are between a million and $2 million in EBITDA. So proxy for cash flow and to be able to invest alongside highly qualified entrepreneurs who are coming into this space from from everywhere at this point. They're teaching it at business schools. They're teaching it all over the place. If you spend a few minutes on the internet looking at entrepreneurship through acquisition, you're going to turn up a ton of stuff. So it's actually a really exciting time to be part of this ecosystem that's grown so much since I got into it in 2017, 2018. And that's where Fourition is at its best, is that where we are one of one of the first funds in this space focused solely on the lower middle market and helping sustain legacies of these main street businesses by pairing them This is fascinating. We could go way down a rabbit hole here, and we might still, it's early. But the The way you're looking at this, I like how you're talking about main street businesses. The port-a-potty is awesome. Everybody needs a port-a-potty. Whether you want them or not, you need them. That's right. Textiles, you need them as well. It's on the lower end of the spectrum. In terms of cash flow, I mean, in terms of total revenue, but still very viable businesses. So when people approach this, is this where they're looking to buy something and just build it for years? Are they looking to buy and build it for three or five years and then turn around and sell? How's It's a great question because typical private equity and when I would go up against private equity bidders and businesses, I would always kind of bash them because they have a reputation of flipping businesses. So you come in, you run it for five years, you kind of squeeze all the juice out of it, and then you flip it to the next private equity company who will put a bunch of debt on it and just wash, rinse, repeat. And there's been Countless number of businesses that have gone through that process, a lot of them haven't survived because it's traumatic on the business to do that. So I say all that to say, we have a really long term, and our entrepreneurs, our sponsors coming in have a very long term vision for these businesses. I've not, we've not invested in one entrepreneur who had the flipper mentality to use to borrow from real estate.

You know, everybody, the first investment we made was in a towing company. And how we knew that was the right individual was we had a conversation about, you know, why he was interested in, in this particular business, what he wanted out of the transaction. And There's certainly financial gain when you're acquiring a business. You wouldn't be taking the risk. You wouldn't be PGEing debt. You wouldn't be doing everything that you need to do in order if there wasn't a financial return. But if you're doing it only for the financial return, I think you're going to be sorely mistaken and unhappy. And the first thing out of his mouth was, I want to drive the tow truck in the Main Street parade.

And what that means to me is he wants to be part of the community. When we talk about building Main Street, that's building Main Street. He wants to drive the tow truck in the Fourth of July parade. That's pretty cool. That's being part of the community.

That's building a local economy. So when people send their dollars, people invest with us. It's not going to the coast. It's not going to New York businesses or San Francisco or anything. It's going to Toledo, Ohio. I think this business is out of Richmond, Virginia, or my business is in Charlotte, North Carolina. It's middle America. It's Main Street. And that's what I love about this. And to a person like I love that. And that's good to hear. Cause that was kind of one of those, I was wondering how, cause again, private equity, you know, it's get in, get out, make, make what you can as quick as you can. But also it seems like two different things I've read.

It seems like there are more and more businesses sort of in, in this area where you have people getting, they've, you know, entrepreneurs, they're getting to retirement age. I mean, are there a lot of businesses out there or is this just like a Oh, sure. Yeah. I mean, the sort of marketing buzzword around it is everybody calls it the silver tsunami. There's potentially a couple trillion dollars of wealth that needs to be transferred in over the next decade because a lot of these assets are run by baby boomers who are retiring. And now, do I think that all of that entire value will transfer? No. Most of those businesses will close because they're solo operators. They're more like Yeah, they're sole proprietor type businesses. So the number is often overblown, but there's a ton of opportunity. These businesses that are out there, there's plenty of businesses that make under $10 million or that do top line $10 million or under and have good, profitable, consistent cash flow. And it's becoming more competitive as more people are interested in this space. But there's still meat on the bone. It's still early. And it's one of the last markets that's inefficient. It's kind of still the Wild West. And you have an opportunity to invest and make some pretty incredible gains through these small businesses. Now, of course, there's risk associated with that. But that's kind of where the beauty of the fund comes in, where when I raised capital for my deal before Fruition existed, I was taking checks that were individually invested into my business. So all of their capital was in my company. With a fund, you can give me the same amount of money and I can spread it over 10 businesses. So you have much more diversification within the fund than you would if you just wrote an individual check to somebody. That's why we wanted to do this. It's because it was such a better deal for both the entrepreneur seeking capital and the investor who doesn't necessarily... Who can basically just put their diversification on autopilot and That's huge because that, I mean, that's a, that's a really hard thing about investing in that capacity is like you say, you write a check and you give it to somebody and you're like, I, I think they have what it takes to make this business work, but Very important. And the thing that's... There's, I think, two defining features.

There's probably more, but two that are coming to mind right now as to why this... It's a good transaction for everybody involved and why both sides have some skin in the game. So if a sponsor brings a deal that we invest in, that sponsor is personally guaranteeing millions of dollars in debt. So they better be reasonably confident that they can make this deal work. And they're going to be the main owner operator, they're going to be the one in the CEO seat making the decisions. And of course, reporting to a board that will have a seat on but they're the main person. And the other thing is like our investment, they're all cash flowing businesses from day one. So instead of, compare it to venture capital, where if anybody in your audience is familiar, I mean, you send them a check, right? And maybe in seven years, you'll see a return. But you don't get cash distributions. That's not how it works. They keep all the money in the fund and then there's a liquidity event. Somebody goes public, somebody sells to a larger strategic, whatever, and there's a liquidity event and cash comes back. We distribute cash annually. because our businesses kick off annual cash, because they're profitable.

It's a completely different model.

And so we've attracted with the beating that the technology markets have taken over the last 18 months or so, we've picked up quite a few people who are looking to greener pastures, commercial real estate, venture capital, things that have struggled. They're starting to look into small businesses like I think this is a pretty interesting burgeoning asset class for us to consider. So we found a lot of success there talking with venture capital and commercial Wow. So they come to you, they say, Hey, I want to invest in your fund and then you works it out. So they were, that's on the investment side and then you have other people coming to you saying, Hey, I have found this business or I think this business has potential. I'm looking for funding. And then you, you just, you got it. Yeah. Two-sided marketplace. I love it. I love it. And then, so what is the hardest thing to teach people about small business acquisition? Because I got to believe, even though it is becoming more popular, It's still not on a lot of people's radar. Some people think it's a small business. It's not going to make any money. I'm going to be, I'm going to be working 80 hours a week and I'm going to be making less than minimum wage.

Like what's the hardest thing to, to There's, there's two, there's, there's a, there's an answer for, for two different audiences. The answer for somebody who's buying the business is, um, We get a lot of people who are interested in buying businesses from finance backgrounds. And if you have a finance background, you've probably had a lot of deal experience. You may have worked in investment banking or private equity or some finance function. And so they kind of know how to put a deal together. But they've never really managed people or operated a business. They've seen spreadsheets. They know what the P&L should look like. They know what the balance sheet should look like.

But they've never had a closed door meeting with an employee and had that kind of have that heart to heart type meeting. They don't know what it takes on a day-to-day basis to be essentially the CEO general manager. So getting that perspective, that's why I like the story I told before with driving the tow truck in the parade.

That's the right attitude to have. So, when I get those guys who think about it more as a financial transaction, you're really trying to show them the other side of the coin like, I'm not sure this is for you. If you want to make a ton of money, there's other ways to do that and not put yourself in $5 million of debt to go buy this business. So that's on the buyer side. On the investor side, it's simply the fact that people don't know this exists. It's very new. It's been a very opaque market. Until recently, there haven't been investment funds like ours that have popped up to serve this specific market. Frankly, because the juice really wasn't worth the squeeze for some of these larger capital allocators like these private equity firms, they were focused on the bigger businesses because they could raise all the... But private equity has become less efficient over time. It was funny. I was looking at a chart where you could see how much leverage somebody would use in the 80s. And that was the main driver of value. Basically, you just put a bunch of debt on a company and wait. That's not what they do so much anymore. They don't lever it up as much. It's more about creating operational efficiencies, which is fancy for cost cutting and streamlining operations.

But that's still true in the lower middle market. You can put a bunch of debt on a business. And through the SBA, you get a 10-year term note. And so you get access to a leverage profile that otherwise you wouldn't have that provides awesome returns to investors. So it's a really nice asset class that's only getting more popular because people are starting to see as they become aware of it.

And that's kind of why I'm doing some of these shows, right? Is to tell people that, hey, this is you know, this is an option for your portfolio if you're interested. It's an option as an entrepreneur, if you want, you know, if you need access to capital to go out and buy a business, or it's an option as an investor. If you just want to invest back into Main Street, You also mentioned just the general inefficiencies that are part of this. Is that just from, I mean, it's Is it just the whole process? Is it finding businesses? Is it the financing?

Financing has gotten a lot better, but it really is, it's a lot about finding a deal. And I mean, a perfect example is... So every deal that you look at, and there's marketplaces, there's BizBuySell, there's... And then there's all the brokers. There's national brokers like Transworld, or like VR, Viking. There's a couple names that people may or may not know. It's not super important. It's just that these are all non-associated entities. And they've all got their own way of doing things. And you might...

You got to sign an NDA for every business that you look at. Here's just one example. Well, that NDA could be 8 pages long sometimes with onerous terms in it. But it's a different NDA for each deal because you're looking at how many different brokers. And so there's no one real platform to manage it all. It's very... It's just... It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of time to go through all that stuff. And if you're one person, It's very hard to do. It takes somebody who's pretty much dedicated full time that maybe even has some overseas help with a lot of the administrative work. So really, it's more about the access to the deals and finding a broker who is worth their salt that you can actually work with. A reasonable seller, somebody that doesn't want public market valuations for a business that does less than a million in EBITDA. They think they can trade at 30 times and like, well, that's not the way this market works. But their accountant told them that 10 years ago. So that's what they think is normal. It's a lot about education. And yeah, we find ourselves doing that pretty often. And candidly, I'm working on several deals right now personally. And that doesn't change even though you've acquired a business and you're looking at the next one. You still got to re-educate people. You still got to go through all the steps in qualifying the business and slogging through all the paperwork. And you're dealing with people, right? People can be, people are inefficient. You Well, it seems like as just having to validate every offer, like every offer isn't a good cashflow opportunity. That's right. Right. So you really have to do the validation. So you might look at 10 or 20 and there may be one that, and so I don't know. Yeah, you can feel like you're spinning your wheels for sure. And it does get frustrating for people, especially, you know, when they submit offers and then they get outbid, but they're outbid, you know, they submit five offers and they're outbid on every single one. I've seen it happen. And God bless those people that continue kind of pushing forward. It's tough to get that close so often and to just not make contact with the ball. You just kind of keep swinging and missing. And that's just getting the deal under what we call LOI, letter of intent. Then you have to actually get to close. That's a whole other thing, right? Then you actually... It's not just kicking the tires.

It's opening up the hood and taking a look at the engine and looking at all the maintenance history and everything that you... Just like you're buying a car or a house or whatever, you're doing the same thing with the business and spending cash. And oftentimes, deal will blow up and you'll be out the money. So there's But it sounds like on the, on the other side, it, there is the opportunity to, to do some, you know, to acquire a business that you like, that you want to be engaged with that helps a local area.

Um, you, you mentioned earlier too, about this idea of, and I've read some about too, just this idea of, operational efficiency, where you're going in and maybe they haven't updated anything in 20 years, 25 years, they're still using DOS for whatever they're, you know, they're, they're bookkeeping software, you know, I mean, it's, it's a, do you have a camera in my office?

out there? Because that's exactly... Yeah, that's exactly... It's 100% our situation. So we're working on a system that was built in the 80s.

And we're going through... So in the intro and everything, you talked about digital operations and strategy. Yeah, that's a huge part of operational efficiency. Getting some tools in here so we don't have to do everything so manually. Our accounting until the middle of last year... So I bought the business in January And by June, we had transitioned to QuickBooks. But before that, everything, all the accounting was done manually. It was dumped out of our old AS400 system and manipulated in Excel and done manually. And for a business that's doing, let's say $10 million top line, a lot of transactions, it was a huge beast for any bookkeeper to keep up with.

Um, so yeah, I mean, you're talking all month just to balance the Yeah, it's a it's a good it took over two weeks for sure to close. For sure. Yeah, oftentimes longer. Yep.

Yep. So that's just a little taste.

That's why it's a market that you can generate a lot of upside in is because you can come in and you can spend a little bit of money with a little bit of know-how and you can implement these systems. And all of a sudden, your employees are free to do higher level tasks because you've removed sort of the lowest rung of tasks that they have to do. And you've just automated it or you've made their life easier with Well, and two, it sounds like, and I'm sure there's some education that goes with it as well, because as you make it more efficient, it's not like you're removing headcount. As you said, you're just letting these people now work on things that matter more. Yeah. As opposed to, I have to run for three days, I'm running spreadsheets. Or I'm copying, it's Important stuff, stuff that only they can do that only.

Yeah. And so I steal this phrase from healthcare. I think it applies pretty much to everywhere in life, but especially in business ownership. Like I want people to be working at the top of their licensure. Which means as a physician, I want you to be doing things only a physician can be doing. As a nurse, I want you to be doing things only a nurse can be doing. And then we have ancillary support staff to do the other things that we don't need, that are lower value tasks.

And somebody else can do that. So we want you to be operating at your highest and best level. Same thing in operating a company. You want people to be... You don't want them in the... Not in the weeds, but dealing with menial, repetitive tasks that can otherwise just be automated or even offshored. If you bring on an offshore resource, they can take away a lot of that burden until you're ready to automate it. But that's 100% right.

So then you're gaining efficiency. Do you also then have to figure out how from a sales marketing standpoint, how to. to market the business better or are they because they are sort of main street businesses? You've got, I don't know, a 30 year track record, like everybody knows who they are. Is Well, now we can turn this into a coaching session because it's something I'm going through right now. I mean, seriously. So, I mean, the answer is it depends on the business that you buy. So it's very common right now for people to go in and buy home service businesses. So think HVAC, plumbing, electrical, pest control, that kind of stuff. Those are very popular. Those businesses you can run Google Ads for. You can do review campaigns. You can do cold calling. You can hand out leaflets. You know, there's all the sort of like blocking and tackling of basic marketing there is applicable. For my business, we're more in the second camp of what you said. It's like we've been around for 25 years.

We're completely B2B. Marketing looks a lot different for my company than it does my friend's HVAC company. It's a different clientele. He's going direct to homeowners. I'm going to businesses and I'm a supplier for businesses. So it doesn't make sense for me to go out there and like, and market in the same way as one of my customers down the line would. We're selling to different people.

So we're actively working on that right now and how to market as a B2B, very far up the supply chain entity. It's difficult. It's It is. And that's a whole different, I mean, that's a whole different creature. Because like you say, HVAC, any of those, it's direct to consumer, but B2B is different. It's all about, I mean, you get some SEO involved, you get some content involved so that people who are looking You're speaking to buyers, you're speaking to executives. It's a different level of information that you're trying to communicate. You're trying to communicate speed, quality, efficiency, It's kind of authority building, right? And just kind of reinforcing the reputation of your business. So we have a great reputation, but we didn't have any real I mean, we weren't doing any marketing at Heritage Fabrics, the business I bought. So I started doing a little bit of social. I started doing... We're trying to write some content out there to just draw people to the site that I built to let people know that we're moving into the next phase of the company and that we've been a partner for 25 years and we're going to be a partner for the next 25 years. And here's what that looks like. And you can rely on us for design design guides, you know, uh, you know, color, uh, color advice, you know, bringing new products to the market, things like that. Um, but yeah, I found it to be more, it's a little bit more like building a personal brand, you know, it's more authority. You It is. So just one tangent question. I know you said you're there in Charlotte. Do you, are you selling outside the Charlotte area? Are you regional? Like I didn't know who, like where your footprint is.

Yeah, we're national actually. We sell some international, but maybe 5% of our business. Yeah, we're mostly in the US, a little bit in Canada, then a little bit in Europe and Okay. That's awesome. Because that's a whole... I mean, if you're only like the... the record company, that's a local thing. That's a very local thing. Whereas you guys, it's You're 100% right. I've had that conversation this week with somebody who was interested in, they were comparing two businesses. One was a service business that's geographically restricted and the other was a business that had a national presence. One isn't right or wrong, it's just what do you want out of this company? Do you want to be the player in a geographic region or do you want to have a bit bigger of a sandbox to play in and be more of a national player? Just And it, and it very much sounds like just exactly what you were saying. It's building that authority. So as, as these people buy these businesses, they have the opportunity to really build that, that business brand and take it beyond what it was. Not because it was bad. It was great. But now it's like, okay, we're just going to move it into, I don't know, Yeah. If you buy it and you don't have a plan for it, I'm not sure why you bought it. You're planning to do something to it. And usually people that are buying these businesses, they're a little bit more what you call digital natives. They're people in their 30s or 40s, sometimes late 20s that are coming in to do this that aren't afraid necessarily of some of the technology that that older folks may be. They didn't need it. It was working the way it was working, so why would they change it? Why would they rock the boat? Me coming in, there's a lot of things I look at, like, why would we do it that way? Well, It was making money. Why change it? But if I want to go a certain place, if I want to grow to a certain level, there's a certain kind of ceiling that the business has just by way of systems and tools that we have. We can only get so high before we kind of break capacity. So we have to change some things in It's true. And really that kind of ties into I can see, especially for business buyers like yourself, for people wanting to do that, having that sort of a non-financial background, opera singing, theater, English, whatever it is, like bringing that to bear, and even working at a bunch of different industries, that seems to, I mean, that would, honestly, that's a strength versus a I found it to be. Like I said, I spent time in music. I spent time in healthcare. I consulted for a couple different industries. I've done consumer electronics. I've done food and beverage. And then I went and got my MBA. So I've dabbled in a bunch of different things. And I feel like that's made me an overall better manager and leader. Because I can see... And also, I've been an employee, obviously, for most of my career. And so I can identify and relate to employees that are out there that... Somebody who has been a business owner for a long time that you can forget. You forget what it's like to... What happens if your paycheck is delayed by a couple days? What happens if I just had an insurance company come back and say, oh, we weren't deducting enough from this person's check. They didn't sign up for XYZ. It's supposed to come together. So now we're going to have to take more money out of their check. Well, that's a conversation that we need to have.

And how do we do that and keep the employee... It's not a lot of money in my mind, but it could be to them. I remember. I remember what that's like. It wasn't so long ago. So I think having that experience too, where it's not like I'm the second generation owner.

I didn't inherit the business from my father or anything like that. I think that my employees here have enjoyed the fact that it it makes a difference. Like when, when you know, in like when health insurance goes up every year and you felt that pain because health insurance went up maybe more than like health insurance. And, uh, it went up more than maybe you raised it. And, you know, so it's, it's like, those are real, those are real things. And, uh, it, there is an identification that with, with people that, Yeah, I'm sure a lot of, I'll say a lot of entrepreneurs, maybe not, maybe not, that's a wrong word, but maybe business owners who have never, like you say, been an employee, if they've never had a, you know, if they're not Yeah. I can see it. I'm in an industry in textiles that's had a lot of generational businesses, multi-generational businesses. There's businesses that we work with that's third, fourth, fifth generation. The kids grew up in the business, the cousins grew up in the business, and so they don't know anything else. I'm painting with a very broad brush, but it's reasonable to assume that they've never had a situation where they're worried about making a rent payment or a mortgage payment. That's not universally true, but if you're an employee, you certainly know that you've worked with people who have had that issue, if you have it yourself. Yeah, As we're beginning to wrap up here, one takeaway you'd like to leave listeners with, it could be either about buying a business or investing, any Yeah, I think it's important for everybody.

And I kind of glossed over a few things coming through a health issue. It wasn't a small health issue. I was supposed to have a heart transplant after COVID when I was 30. And that's kind of what spurred me to take an interest in actually achieving my dream of buying and owning and operating a business. I had wanted to do it for a few years before that and kind of just kept delaying. And if I'm going to leave something for anybody listening here, it's that we only have so much time and you're doing yourself a disservice and cheating yourself if you're not actively pursuing something that you really, really want to do. This is the first time in my life where I've been able to wake up and I think I could be doing this for the next 20, 30 years. I've never felt that before in any job I've had or anything I was doing. Now I feel like even if I have a terrible day, my terrible days now, there's a lot more stress, there's certainly a lot more at risk, but I'll take my terrible days here versus what I was doing some of my best days in previous roles any day of the week. And I think everybody deserves to have that experience. I really do want that for anybody listening. That's why I'm passionate about the fund is because, yeah, it's great to raise capital and it's great to have investments in all these businesses.

But I care a lot about the entrepreneurs and the sponsors who are buying the businesses because I know what a life-changing opportunity it is life changing opportunity. That is something if you're listening, life changing opportunity is not something you often hear. So I would encourage you to, to think and really kind of ruminate on that. Kevin, for people who are listening, who want to know more about you, want to know more about Fruition Capital, where would Easiest place, I'm pretty easy to find online. Not many people have my last name. You can just go to biebelhausen.com. You can find all my links to socials. You can find newsletter and then links to Fruition Capital are also on that site. But yeah, I mean, I'd love to hear from anybody who's interested in buying a business, interested in investing in business, interested in small business in general. And I'm sure your audience full of marketers would be happy to kind of tap into this community too because we're always looking for more service providers and things like I love it. So yeah, so everybody listening, we're going to drop all that in the show notes. Make sure you check it out. Definitely look at Kevin's info, Fruition Capital. Kevin, this has been a ball. I've had fun. I love the subject and the area. So this