No SBA, No Investors: The Liquidity Access Line

Summary

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Acquiring Minds – Episode Summary

Podcast: Acquiring Minds

Host: Will Smith
Guest: Brian Jungles
Episode Title: No SBA, No Investors: The Liquidity Access Line
Release Date: July 20, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Will Smith interviews Brian Jungles, former Adobe account director and current owner of Citi Publications Atlanta – a legacy direct mail advertising business. Brian details his transition from Fortune 500 digital marketing to small business ownership, the unique financing structure he utilized (bypassing traditional SBA or investor funding), his motivations, lessons learned, and his ambition to 10x the business within five years. The conversation gives listeners practical insight into small business acquisition, the value of "buying small," and the realities of "entrepreneurship through acquisition" (ETA).

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Brian’s Background and Motivation for ETA

• Corporate Career to Entrepreneurship
  • Brian spent nine years at Adobe, managing a $34M portfolio and interacting closely with Fortune 500 marketing executives ([06:50]).
  • He valued leadership but sought a more present family life and personal legacy ([10:00]).
  • Realized the corporate ladder—and even VC—wouldn’t fulfill these desires ([11:15]).

“At the end of that, am I going to come out and have built something that can serve myself and my family and leave a legacy or am I going to have a Zoom happy hour, which is what I was witnessing at Adobe for people who'd worked there 35 years?”
— Brian Jungles (09:00)

• Why Acquisition not Startup or Venture
  • No “big idea” for a startup, but drawn in after seeing a friend buy and improve a “boring” business ([12:00]).
  • ETA offers a path to ownership, capital allocation, and hands-on leadership.

2. Search Process and Deal Discovery

• Brian started his search passively while still working full-time—networking, consuming content, and learning best practices ([14:09]).
• Early connection with a friend’s father-in-law surfaced Citi Publications Atlanta—a 30-year-old local advertising franchise ([14:49]).
• Instead of a formal search with scores of candidates, “fit” was prioritized due to trust, legacy, and a strong seller relationship ([16:00]).
• The business is a franchise with a legacy presence and recurring revenue model, focusing on print and direct mail ([19:54]).

3. The Business: Citi Publications Atlanta

• Business Model
  • Direct mail/advertising to local homeowners, especially home service companies.
  • Recurring products such as “Best of Atlanta Card Pack” and “New Movers” programs ([20:00]).
• Size & Structure
  • Revenue: $650–750k historically, $742k in year 1 post-acquisition; targeting $1M ([21:52], [22:22]).
  • No employees; franchisor handles production/operations, former owner focused on sales ([22:28]).
  • Transition of client relationships was highly personal and gradual ([23:41]).

“He'd have something to, you know, as his normal course of business... But he'd bring me along and it was really like, hey, you know, Brian’s on board. I want you to meet him...”—Brian Jungles ([23:41])

4. Owning and Operating a “Job-Business”

• Reality vs. Expectations
  • “I underestimated how effortless that was for [the previous owner] being there for so long... If I simply work five days a week and put in the same effort I was at Adobe, this business will take off. Now I know that's a very ignorant thing to say.” ([26:42])
  • Seller’s long-standing relationships and efficiency (“seller hours” vs. grind as a new owner).
• Change Management & Growth
  • Implementing change required trust from clients and infrastructure (people, process, systems)—not just new ideas ([29:16]).
  • “Attribution-thesis” from Adobe helps, but actual needs of SMB clients often differ ([31:33]).

5. Direct Mail’s Enduring Value

• Large companies still push for direct mail integration because it remains a high-performing channel, even amid the digital/AI glut ([36:26]).
• The “analog revolution” is driven by:
  1. Ad fatigue and AI-driven sameness in digital channels.
  2. Improved targeting and valuable home ownership data.
  3. Complacency among direct mail incumbents ([36:26]).

“There's no spam filter ad blocker in the mailbox. So when you know the questions to ask... we have a really powerful way with advertising that you can feel, hold onto in your home for months.”
— Brian Jungles ([36:26])

• This positions Citi Publications to serve high-LTV, competitive local services in Atlanta as digital costs soar ([42:28]).

6. Financing the Acquisition: The Liquidity Access Line (LAL)

• Why Not SBA or Investors?

  • SBA interest rates (12–14%) and mandatory payments too risky for a small, cash flow-uncertain business ([44:47]).
  • Wanted no outside investors or payroll—feature, not bug.

• Liquidity Access Line — How It Works

  • Collateralize personal/family assets at the bank (stock, 401k—50-60¢ on $1 for investments, $1:$1 for cash) for a revolving credit line ([47:43], [49:47]).
  • Drew $332k on the LAL, added $68k from his Adobe stock sale to pay $400k purchase price ([47:58]).
  • Interest rate: SOFR (3.5–4.5%) + 3% (variable, ~7–7.5% at closing), roughly half of SBA ([49:47]).
  • No fixed amortization—interest-only payments, repay principal at flexible intervals ([50:53]).

“I have a big credit card balance without a solid due date... there’s just a lot of flexibility.”
— Brian Jungles ([51:39])

• This Approach Works If:
  • You have a strong personal balance sheet.
  • You are buying a smaller business.
  • You want low fixed obligations to “de-risk” your first deal ([52:58]).

7. Philosophical Approach: Why Buy Small?

• Hedging Risk on First Acquisition
  • “I see it as a controlled experiment...a way to, in a controlled setting, to learn how much I don’t know.” ([53:47])
  • No employees, no investor obligations, no payroll, no monthly loan payments.
  • If things failed: “I can get back into a corporate role...and just pay this thing down over time...” ([53:47])
  • Trust, legacy, and a proven track record in the local market de-risked the deal ([56:44], [57:47]).

8. The Franchisor’s Role & Franchise Diligence

• Unique Franchise Dynamics
  • Small, high-touch franchisor (11 markets); CEO accessible ([62:46]).
  • Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD) reviewed by attorney for compliance, but recommends more operational scenario planning for others ([63:32]).
  • Unexpected fees, underestimated nuance in FDD ([65:32]).

“Had I done enough planning and diligence to understand all the nooks and crannies of the FDD? No. It just added to the, oh my gosh, here's another thing that I didn't expect...”
— Brian Jungles ([65:32])

9. Lessons Learned, Growth & Future Ambitions

• Year 1–1.5 Outcomes

  • Attrition: ~10%, mainly non-core clients.
  • Recurring revenue strong, renewals up, new annual business added by March ([70:22]).
  • Experimented with political campaign mailings, promising new revenue stream ([72:22]).
  • Targeting $1M in 2026 revenue; sees potential to scale with staff and operations process ([72:38], [73:30]).

• Personal and Professional Takeaways

  • Acquisition far more humbling, demanding, and personally rewarding than anticipated ([59:07], [59:19]).
  • Emphasizes finding and accepting help, not “going it alone” as a solopreneur ([74:09]).
  • “The wisdom and the experience that I've gained has been invaluable. I would not trade it for anything.” ([74:09])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Don't pay for growth that you are going to drive...Look at the business for what it is...”
  — Brian Jungles ([34:15])

• “No obligation to repay a loan monthly and no payroll monthly. I really used that early on.”
  — Brian Jungles ([51:29])

• “The more that I am able to create those systems to let the business perform at a high level without me...the more my brain is opening up to pay attention to the market...”
  — Brian Jungles ([73:30])

• “Community—all wants to help each other. That just, that yields business growth and it yields accelerated development of the business. So just be comfortable and don’t do it on your own.”
  — Brian Jungles ([74:09])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Brian's background & motivations – [06:08]–[14:09]
• Deal discovery & networking – [14:09]–[17:35]
• Business overview – [19:49]–[23:35]
• Transitioning clients & operations – [23:41]–[26:03]
• Growth expectations vs. reality – [26:42]–[35:48]
• Direct mail & industry thesis – [36:26]–[43:05]
• Financing: The Liquidity Access Line – [44:47]–[52:58]
• Why buy small? – [53:47]–[57:47]
• Franchisor diligence – [62:25]–[67:50]
• Year 1.5 results & future outlook – [70:14]–[74:09]

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Closing Thoughts

Brian’s candid recount offers a rare, practical playbook—especially for first-time acquirers with means—on how to buy and run a small business without investors, without SBA, and with an acute focus on risk-adjusted learning. The episode dispels myths of easy growth, upholds the personal side of acquisition entrepreneurship, and is a must-listen for anyone weighing the leap from corporate to ETA.

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Transcript

[Will Smith]

Not the most obvious path to go from Fortune 500 digital marketing to acquiring a direct mail business. But today's guest saw an opportunity that most people miss. Brian Jungles acquired Citi Publications Atlanta, a direct advertising business that has served the local home services market since 1996. The flagship of an 11 market franchise system, it connects local home services companies with Atlanta homeowners through targeted print campaigns. Brian had spent nine years at Adobe managing a $34 million book of digital marketing business, pitching campaigns to Fortune 500 CMOs. What he kept hearing even from the most tech forward companies can this integrate with our direct mail? That signal, combined with the growing analog revolution, ad blindness, online proliferation of AI slop is the heart of his thesis. Listen for how Brian financed the deal. He skipped the SBA entirely and instead borrowed against his investment portfolio via a liquidity access line from his bank. Roughly half the SBA interest rate and no fixed monthly repayment schedule. It's a structure I hadn't heard before, and if you have a material balance sheet, it's worth understanding. Also, listen for Brian's reasons for buying so small One employee, no payroll, no investors and why he saw all of that as Feature not bug Here is Brian Jungles, owner of Citi Publications Atlanta. You know that a quality of earnings report uncovers critical financial risks in your target acquisition. But a Q of E also comes with a significant price tag, so you don't want to kick one off before you're actually ready. In a webinar tomorrow Tuesday, Chris Williamson and Derek Pitts of diligence firm Cane Crossing will show you how to do more of your own lift before engaging a diligence provider in spending money on

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

the Q of either.

[Will Smith]

Among the topics you'll how to conduct a pre quality of earnings financial review, how to assess add backs and common mistakes to avoid balance sheet red flags that deserve closer attention how to build an effective pre Q of E data request and the key information your Q of E provider will request to kick off diligence when you're ready, you'll leave the webinar with a practical framework for evaluating a company's financials before investing in the Q of E. The webinar is don't how to Prepare for a Quality of Earnings Report. And it is tomorrow, Tuesday, July 21, noon Eastern. Link to register is right at the top of this episode's show Notes or on the Acquiring Minds homepage acquiringminds Co. Then on Thursday, we're hosting top SBA loan broker Heather Anderson. We hear it all the time. A smart buyer closes on a great business, then quickly realizes they underestimated how much cash they need to actually operate it. Well, Heather's going to take a deep dive into working capital and its role in entrepreneurship through acquisition, including what working capital actually is and how it functions in a business why so many buyers underestimate their working capital needs how working capital impacts deal structure and SBA financing Common post close cash flow challenges including payroll, operating expenses and how to prepare so you have the liquidity you need from day one. The webinar is Working Capital One of ETA's Most Expensive Mistakes and it is this Thursday, July 23, noon Eastern. Link to register is right at the top of this episode's show notes or on the Acquiring Minds homepage. AcquiringMinds cool. Welcome to Acquiring Minds, a podcast about buying businesses. My name is Will Smith. Acquiring an existing business is an awesome opportunity for many entrepreneurs and on this podcast I talk to the people who do it. If you ask owners in the ETA and search community which insurance broker provides highest quality work, great outcomes and has a practice dedicated to searchers and acquisition entrepreneurs, one name comes up again and again. Oberle Oberle Risk Strategies has worked with hundreds of searchers over nearly a decade and is in fact led by a two time successful searcher, August Felker, which makes Oberle a specialty insurance brokerage for searchers by a former searcher. And if you've got a business under loi, Oberle will provide complimentary due diligence on that business's insurance and benefits program. An easy no risk way to get to know August and the team at Oberle. To take advantage. Check out oberly-risk.com that's O B E R L E- risk.com link in the notes.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

Brian Jungles welcome to Acquiring Minds.

[Brian Jungles]

Thanks Will. Very excited to be here.

[Will Smith]

Brian, you bought Citi Publications Atlanta, a direct advertising business for local service providers.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

The business was quite small. Your goal is to grow it 10x in 5 years. Let's dive in. Can we get some background on you please?

[Brian Jungles]

To begin Brian Absolutely, yeah. So I live in Atlanta. I've got two degrees from the University of Georgia. I had an advertising undergraduate, went into big tech consulting, program management, later into sales and account direction. Um, also have an MBA that I took. I got a few years outside of school in Atlanta, so a lot of time in Atlanta working locally and I can get more into it but really got the bug for ETA around 2023, 2024 and got some inspiration that drove me ultimately to acquire the business.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

Well Brian, give us a little bit more of your career history so we understand where you're coming from, your years at Adobe, et cetera.

[Brian Jungles]

Sure, yeah. So I came out of school, I worked at a digital agency here in Atlanta and so we were supporting some of the big Fortune 5000 in Atlanta, mostly with digital marketing, software implementation services and consulting. I was a program manager, so really learned the ropes from understanding business requirements and what are the businesses really asking of this technology. So that really got me into the tech side. Most of the software we were recommending and implementing was the Adobe Experience Cloud suite of solutions, which is, if folks aren't familiar, it's, it's kind of the go to suite for the, the top companies for enterprises when it comes to digital marketing. We work alongside your Salesforce, CRM and some of the other extensions that you've probably heard of. So there was a couple folks. My boss brought me over from the agency into Adobe, which I was there for about nine years. Grew up through the program management side and consulting side within Adobe and ultimately got went into consulting. And in 2024 I was an account director. So I actually managed a $34 million book of business owning the relationship with the C suite. So that's mostly chief marketing officers, chief technology officers, intermediary between our technology and product teams and all the customer success and helping them realize the value out of their investment. So you know, I always thought going into my career when I was earlier on and especially at Adobe, I, I don't know what path I'm going to take, but I want that C suite title. Like I want to be influencing the business and running the business and as I progress to that account director role, it's kind of the pinnacle of where you can go as an individual contributor. And I got a feel for what that looks like at the top. At the same time starting a family. My wife and I have two girls now and had kind of a values assessment. So all these things are happening at once and I'm actually thinking is this corporate ladder what I want to commit to? What's on the other side? So seeing how that C suite operated, engaging with them personally and then at the same time I mentioned I got some inspiration. So I had a friend who left another company called Clary and bought a local boring business and that really turned me on to eta. Historically I took the bug or that feeling I had inside me as I want to influence business, I want to make capital allocation decisions and I actually looked down the route of venture capital and learned I wasn't necessarily on the right path, you know, to, to achieve a role like that. So I felt. So I always thought, well, entrepreneurship's cool, but I don't have a big idea. So. So how do I channel that? I saw this guy leave the sales role at, at Clary and took over a business and he started turning it around. And what I concluded is, listen, like, I've got a stretch of really hard work in my career. At the end of that, am I going to come out and have built something that can serve myself and my family and leave a legacy or. Or am I going to have a Zoom happy hour, which is what I was witnessing at Adobe 12. People show up on a Thursday and you've worked there for 35 years and. And that's it. That's it. So that turned me on to eta.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

And Brian, when you talk about looking forward and seeing the C suite and it not being appealing to you, is it the Zoom retirement call thing that turns you off or was it much more than that? What didn't you like?

[Brian Jungles]

That was part of it. I also, you know, I, I think about our girls growing up, right? And, you know, just how can I possibly have the lifestyle that it takes as an international company especially? I know those folks actually, you know, they live on the road and I know because I get emails from them on, you know, two o', clock, whether it's a Saturday night transition to Sunday or Tuesday transition to Wednesday because they're in Japan or Australia, whatever it is. And I really like the leadership part of it and the ability to organize a team around a mission at scale and leverage those resources. But I also have a very strong desire now to, you know, if my daughter plays track or volleyball in high school, like being there as well. So this kind of. I saw this especially as I got into Buy, Then Build and the HBR review and understanding more and talking to people in my network, it's like listening. This is not an easy path. This is a very, very difficult path. But the results can be actually realizing the financial and the legacy goals that I have for myself and my family, while also being very present with my family.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

And when you had looked at venture capital for a while, what was it that turned you off ultimately about vc?

[Brian Jungles]

I really liked vc. I had a frank conversation. It was interesting. Adobe had Adobe Ventures army, and I looked the guy up through our intranet and I called him and, and he was like, I can't believe you found me. Like, we're not really doing this much anymore. I was thinking maybe I could just do a lateral Move in there, learn the ropes and go out. And he, and he was just, listen, like, I don't want to rain on your parade, but, you know, if you, there's a couple ways to really get into big vc and it's not really corporate vc, it is. You come out of business school and you go out as an analyst and then you work your way up or you're gonna, or you can be a founder, right, and then grow your company and, you know, you exit and then you enter the VC world. Or he's like, for you, you know, I'm, I'm a program manager at Adobe and at the time, considering my next path. And he's like, you know what I would do? If you really want to commit to this, you need to start a portfolio. You need to place some literal, Literal or figurative, but allocate some capital to yourself and build a resume and a portfolio based on that. And then that's how you get into the world. And it's still going to be very hard and you're probably going to be 10 years later than a lot of folks entering. And so, you know, I did. Life was busy and I said, well, I'm not going to quit what I'm doing now. I'm on a good path. You know, I was, I was rising through the ranks rapidly at Adobe. Everything was going well, by all means in it. So it was a confluence of few of those things that said, it's time, time to shift. The thing that I probably didn't mention, I maybe touched on it. The other thing at Adobe is, you know, I'm in Atlanta. I've been, I was working remote since 2015. They didn't, they have an Atlanta office now, but it didn't open until 2022. So I started in 2015. My boss was in New York. My headquarters were in San Jose, California. I never went, I'd never been to headquarters the entire time. So it felt very distant to me. My clients were in Massachusetts and Chicago, some in North Carolina. That's the closest. And so meanwhile, I've got this great community. I mentioned University of Georgia, especially the business school. Terry College of Business. What an amazing asset to somebody that's involved. I was chair of the Young Alumni Board for a few years and it just felt very separated. It felt like I was building equity in the business community and locally in Atlanta and the passions that I have for my, for the neighborhood. And then my business said, you know, on paper and even by policies that Adobe said, that's great. Do all that stuff. We want you to be involved in the community, et cetera. But it was this effort of involvement here was not supporting the effort of my career growth. And I also saw a big opportunity to marry those things up by working locally.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

So tell us more then about the appeal of entrepreneurship through acquisition. Why specifically that we've heard why you didn't want to continue in corporate, why VC wasn't a fit, why you wanted to control your time, but at the same time really be able to pour yourself into something during the most productive years of your career. Anything more to say about why buying a business was, was the answer?

[Brian Jungles]

Yeah, you know, I think buy, then build and some of these. Learning more about the ETA community really brought shape around this feeling that I had of I think I could do something here as an entrepreneur, but I don't have the big idea. I'm not, you know, sitting here as Mark Zuckerberg in my dorm room. I don't, I don't know what that is, but how cool would it be to, to, to find something? So, so that's when I, you know, I do what I do whenever I'm trying to make a, a big decision is just start tapping the network and ask as many people as I can, what do you know? Who do you know that I could talk to about this whole concept of eta?

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

So tell us some of the parameters of the search and what you kind of went out there looking for once you decided on ETA as the path.

[Brian Jungles]

Yeah, the search was, the search cadence was interesting. So I kind of get my heart set on this path and I start ingesting the content. Like, let's start listening to acquiring minds. Let's read all the books. Let me ask everyone in my network pretty early on, a couple months in, so I'm learning about what does a proper search look like, what's your thesis, how are you going to raise funds, et cetera, et cetera. As I'm doing this and I'm asking my network, one of the first conversations in my network was one of my good buddies said, hey, talk to my father in law. He's been in small business for a long time. He's got a lot of experience. He also left corporate about 20 years ago and so he'd be a good resource. So of course I took a call with him and during that call he said, hey, listen, I've got this business. I know I haven't been putting what I should be into this. It's, I'm ready to move on into, you know, a retirement type phase. And I think There's a lot of potential here. And so I started, you know, I heard them out and that started to progress. That was Citi Publications Atlanta. So at that. So as I'm consuming all this, I'm also saying, well, this is the first, you know, real thing that's come across my desk. And. And I hadn't even launched a formal search. I'm like, learning about what a proper search looks like as this is developing. So I told them, I said, hey, I'm gonna, You know, this. I'm liking what I'm hearing so far, but let's. I need to slow pay this a little bit. Cause I gotta. I can't do myself the disservice of not seeing what's out there. So there was some urgency on that deal. There's some other folks looking at it, which I was aware of. And I engaged with a broker. You know, I'd been looking at bizbuysell the whole time, but hadn't gotten close to, you know, really reaching out, just kind of learning what deals look like out there, what are the multiples that different businesses are selling for. And. And the broker mostly was bringing de novo franchise builds. And, you know, it's really. I couldn't get. The thing that was really tugging at my gut was the relationship I had with the seller and the legacy of the business. In Atlanta, City Publications just started under a different name in 1996 here. So we can. We can say we've been serving Atlanta, connecting Atlanta with local. The local market for 30 years now. And between that and the trust with the seller and the trust that I felt with the rest of the franchise organization and the franchisor, it felt like anything's going to be an unknown. But this is a pretty. There's some safeguards up with this unknown.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

And what about the kind of type of business that you wanted or the size of business that you wanted? Had you defined all of that for yourself yet? Or. It was still kind of amorphous, but when this business, this opportunity appeared, it just. It felt right for reasons that hadn't actually really been defined yet.

[Brian Jungles]

Yeah, yeah, it was a little bit of both. I did want to. And we'll talk about the financing a little bit, but I did want to avoid any kind of major financing, given this was my first time truly getting into. Into business ownership, having a lot of confidence in my ability, given my experience in the. In the educational background. But I didn't know what I didn't know, and that proved out. So I think that was the right path. So I did not consider the other thing I'll say about the timeline is once I had my heart set on it, I couldn't get my mind off it. I also did not assume, I did not calculate time where I could have an unpaid search. So I was working full time while I was trying to do this search in my spare time. I needed to continue to receive that salary and I needed a clean break. And so there's only so much time and effort that I could put into it when I'm working much more than 40 hours a week trying to manage that book of business at Adobe anyway,

[Will Smith]

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[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

tell us more about the business then. Brian, what is Citi Publications exactly?

[Brian Jungles]

Yeah, so you mentioned direct advertising. So Citi Publications for the past 30 years has been supporting Atlanta local businesses in reaching their target market. And that's over time has mostly been through print advertising, targeted direct messages, mail. We talk about direct mail. We've got, we talk about, you know, you'll think of a probably a postcard that you got in your mailbox. That is a lot of what we do. It can be very tailored and targeted and fully custom. Turns out when you're talking to home service businesses, when we talk about who do you want to reach, 90% of them have very similar targeting criteria. So it lends itself to programs that are called shared mail programs, which is essentially, you know, either you create a, you know, all different form factors. One of the things we do is the Best of Atlanta Card Pack. That is a collection of locally owned home service businesses that all come together in like a deck of cards. That's a shared mail program. We also have a new movers targeting New homeowners is a really high value audience. So we have something that goes out every month that targets that group. So that's the recurring revenue. You're in the, the Best of Atlanta card pack. You're in the New Movers. You're in xyz. We do, we do community booklets to certain neighborhoods and those are recurring. So you go, okay, sign up for, you sign up for three, three months, six months recurring, 12 months recurring. And then even, but even on the, what we call solo mail, just a postcard campaign, just like any advertising, it's, you know, you blast that one time and either you hit somebody on the right day or you didn't, they were home or they weren't. So a lot of, even those who work with the business owner to say, okay, what is an acceptable minimum? Where we feel good that we gave this a solid run three consecutive months, controlling for seasonality, controlling for these other factors, or, or even longer if they say, like I want to go out quarterly, you know, we really continue to push towards that sort of engagement because it truly is best for the advertiser to gain the repeat impressions. But then, so that, but it yields the recurring revenue status.

[Will Smith]

Can you give us a sense of

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

the size of the business?

[Brian Jungles]

Yes. So my current, the territory that I acquired historically showed in the finances, between 650, 750 thousand annually in revenue and year one of acquisition held content. So I finished I think at 742,000 in revenue. And this year, you know, I'm planning for growth. My goal for this year is to break a million dollars in revenue.

[Will Smith]

Great.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

And what about employees? Earnings give us kind of the bullet points of the business and paint a picture.

[Brian Jungles]

Sure, yeah. One of the opportunities I saw for growth was that the previous owner had no employees. He actually had no contractors. So he's leaning on the corporate team to execute the advertising. And he is selling and maintaining relationships. He'd been doing this for 20 years, so he had some, and he still had some incredible relationships within the industry, in the market. And so, you know, for him it was, you know, you could call up some folks and keep sales going enough to keep the business somewhat steady. And that's what he had been doing according to the, the legacy model. So that actually was a huge help. And I, I'd say in the transition, when one of the things I talked about when we transitioned was, you know, that's a, that's a big risk, the relationships that he has. Right. Is it a one man business if he's, if he Goes. They all go. And he said, you know, his words to me that I remember when he said this, he's like, these people are my best friends. It would be weird if I was just ghosted on them. And, and he wanted to make sure that the tr. That, that the business transition went smoothly.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

Great. And Brian say more about how he transitioned these relationships to you.

[Brian Jungles]

First couple days in the business, I go, I'm available. He wanted me to get started much earlier, but I, you know, I would. Had to kind of have a clean break with Adobe. Showed up at his house. We go through everything, literally everything. Brain dump. I'm filling out my spreadsheets, I'm kind of connecting the puzzle pieces. And he' one, two or three meetings a day with the most loyal clients. And we'd go get a meal with them or go to their office and sit down and he'd have something to, you know, as his normal course of business. He'd sit down with them and talk about whatever was on the agenda. But he'd bring me along and it was, it was really like, hey, you know, Brian's on board. I want you to meet him, Brian. Tell him about your background. He's going to help us grow this thing. We're going to get back into growth mode and XYZ and, and it all made sense for, for the clients because I knew he's, he's working towards retirement. So, okay, this guy's going to take over. But it was really message, it was his message kind of ambiguously, so it's kind of vague, but the implication was I'm kind of buying him out over time. In reality, you know, he had the cash and I had the business. And I cannot express, express how grateful I am for, for the way that was done. He will still, you know, get somebody call him and he tell me somebody, sometimes somebody did business with five years ago, give him a call and be like, hey, can, can we start something up? And he just formed on to me, poured them onto me. And so I, I still talk to him at least weekly. He is a, he's a great guy. And, and, and so that cadence of introduction and it was funny, there was still no formal announcement, but I just started doing more as I assume more of the relationships. I started, you know, sending out the monthly customer newsletter. I started doing this and to kind of taking the leads. And they said, okay, so like, what's your status of, of the buyout? And I go, yeah, you know, I bought it out. It's, it's mine. Nowadays, he's still involved. He's, he's supporting me. I talk to him. We still talk all the time, but. And so they go, okay, okay, okay. So it gave me time to kind of introduce in a controlled manner, here are some new things, here's some new things. He's still visible. And, and you know, I don't, I don't know how I would have pulled it off if it was more of a black and white, it was him than it's me one day, then the next.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

Yeah, but it was from the get go it was kind of implied that you were going to be taking ownership at some point.

[Brian Jungles]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. It was just an overtime thing instead of, you know, just, just introducing the new guy and dropping the mic.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

So Brian, this was really buying a job. It was a one man business and it was, it sounds like it was a very particular function which was relationship management. That actually even the service delivery, the, the development of the postcards and the graphics work and the mailing, all of the actual distribution of these marketing pieces was done by the franchisor. And so it, it feels like while it is a franchisor franchisee relationship, it was almost like a sales relationship for a business that he was a salesman for the franchisor or for corporate.

[Brian Jungles]

Right. Yeah. And that's one of the things when I look at it and I saw the opportunity, I was kind of adding it up like what are your responsibilities? Let's understand this, this, this and this. Okay. And you know, knowing that the, when you're trying to grow a business versus when you're just getting to retirement, there's a very different level of effort that goes in. So one of the things I remember saying that I always, now luckily I kind of chuckle about was, you know, if I simply work five days a week and put the same effort that I'm putting in at Adobe to this business is going to take off. And now I know there's a very ignorant thing to say, but you know that that's really how it was and it was a little bit. I underestimated how effortless that was for him being there for so long. But, but that's correct. So, so that's how it was painted for me. Now when I get in and understand what growth actually looks like and I talked about my, how I calculated ebitda, there's a, the true story was a bit different. When I understand what actual quality of earnings looks like. So I actually, you know, it, it's, it's required putting the foot on the gas and now That I see these scale up. You've mentioned tax in five years. That requires staffing. Right. So that's a lot of change management. It, it means introducing a culture that's not just in my head, but creating it for the employees and contractors that I'm working with and, and making investments and making bets that may or may, may not pay off. So I really see the, the, the attracting. What I learned is opportunity is, is a lot of work. Growth is a lot of work. So, yeah, that, that's an accurate picture of how things that had been when I came into the, into the business. But it's, it's been an adventure since.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

Brian, you said that he didn't have his, you know, foot on the gas sort of thing. And so he was maintaining relationships but not aggressively trying to grow the business. And so, you know, your calculation is the same as many business buyers. For a business like this, where the previous owner is just not applying themselves like they once did or could. They're kind of resting on their laurels. And if you just, you know, take their 20 hours a week and make it 40 hours a week, you should be able to see a lot more results. On the other hand, the, there's this concept of, of sort of seller hours. So one hour of his time might translate to three of yours. Just because he knows this business like the back of his hand and so, so he just does everything more efficiently. It sounds like some of that crept in as well. Why did your calculation of like, well, if I just put in the same amount of time I was putting in, in my corporate job, I'll take this to the moon. There, there was something there that you'd overlooked. What was it?

[Brian Jungles]

Yeah, well, it's actually one of the more interesting things is market testing the ideas I had. Right. So there's a couple challenges. One, I was, I'm just so ignorant on how exactly the dynamics of implementing some of these ideas would work. I assume some level of infrastructure that's there in corporate and it's simply, I can have an idea and I can roll it out and then the next month it will be live ideas. Take infrastructure where it's technology infrastructure or it's people and process infrastructure, that what, that didn't exist. Um, people. And even on the client side, people have been used to doing it that way for many, many years. So also, you know, when I, when I bring ideas to clients, are they always going to be open to innovation? There is a, there is a period where I'm just getting a hold on things I'M I'm actually having the business in my tracking for the first time under recalculating the costs now that I'm actually having invoices come in and at some point saying wait a second, I thought your costs were this. It looks like they're this that takes up a lot of headspace in focus as I'm learning QuickBooks for the first time. So but on the also on you know, let's say all that's cared for there's a culture when in a business is coasting. There's a culture of expectation for the client that that business is going to coast. And so when a new person comes in and change is introduced, no matter how positive I think that changes even if I come out in my one thing I struggle with is a CMO speak right Fortune 100 C level executive presentation is a lot different than you know, local painter, plumber, business owner presentation on how we're going to deliver value. The language is different. And so that culture shift in myself okay there's actually going to be a time period where number one, I got to understand what the hell's going on here. Then I need to gain the trust of the client base and then I need to understand how to articulate that properly in a way that this market will be receptive. And, and that really took most of the first year before I could I could say all right, let's start putting these, some of these ideas in market. The good news is after I go through all that, a lot of those ideas had changed. I thought based on my experience we could do X, Y and Z and that and instead it's A, B and C. That's actually the things that people need because I had to stop and listen so much.

[Will Smith]

Buying a small business sounds simple. Find a company, due diligence, get a loan close. In reality, you wear every hat just to get the deal done. And then the moment you close, you have to throw those deal making skills out the window and learn how to operate. You shouldn't have to rebuild this infrastructure from scratch and you definitely shouldn't do it alone. That's why Walker Deibel created Acquisition Lab. What started as an accelerator has expanded into a complete ecosystem for acquisition entrepreneurs. Over six years, the lab's 1200 members have acquired over a billion dollars in businesses. The Lab puts everything under one roof. An active community, deal reviews, post close services and a dedicated fund helping experienced operators buy larger businesses. If you're serious about buying a business, come see why Lab members have a 40% success rate. Learn More in the show notes [e-mail] acquiringminds

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

well, what a perfect example of buying a business best practices where you think from the outside you have all these great ideas that everybody else inside the business has slept on or whatever or you're bringing new eyes or a different experience set than the previous owner had and you're going to transform the business or grow the business with all these great new ideas. And then you get into the business and find out that all of these theses that you had won't work for X, Y or Z reason but you and, but your exposure to the business. And now being the owner and living the business for a year shows you where the, that there are still opportunities are just not the ones you thought. But it's just so, it's just such a, it's just such a familiar pattern. Anything, anything to add to that? Because it's, I mean it's almost like business buyers kind of shouldn't, almost shouldn't have ideas. They should, they should maybe see a business where there's a very broad macroeconomic, you know, a macroeconomic thesis there, evidence of tailwinds, a seller who's clearly kind of taken their foot off the gas, but very specific ideas about how you can transform that business.

[Will Smith]

Business maybe don't even waste your time

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

on having those because they're almost certain to, you know, not be the right ones. And you'll learn what the right ones are, but not until you get in there. Or am I overstating it?

[Brian Jungles]

No, I think one thing I would not do is assume growth when you are looking at finances, right. The whole 20 to 40. If I simply put in 40 hours a week then it'll grow. So I can factor that in. I maybe give some leeway into what I see this and I maybe have a question about this line item. But it's not going to be an issue because you know sales are going to increase anyway. Look at the business for what it is and do not pay for growth that you are going to drive. I think that my experience, I'm so grateful for all the lessons that I've learned. But, but I have, I have learned a lot and I didn't understand how much I had to learn. It's another way we talked in the pre call a little bit about how the small purchase was actually how I hedge. Right. You know, sometimes we talk about large purchases, how you hedge against some of the stuff. And it would hedge in a different way if there was a team that stayed on and they could run a system. They had the systems to begin with. But I was able to learn these lessons in a way that, you know, if I underestimated working capital, then it doesn't mean that I'm missing payroll and people are, you know, not, they're not feeding their families that week. So I've learned those lessons on my dime and I just, I feel like I am just miles, you know, with more wisdom and experience than the Adobe career and the NBA and, and all this experience I thought I had, it's been totally humbling and I would just encourage a searcher to expect something like that more than like don't get it, don't. The pride comes before the fall, so don't get too prideful.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

Yeah. Well, we're going to get into more about your point about buying small and, and how you saw that as a hedge here in just a second. But just to close out on why, more on why this business. First of all, it seems like there was great business buyer fit because you had all of this sort of marketing sophistication coming out of Adobe and this is fundamentally a marketing advertising business. And in you knew there was also this, this trust factor because you knew the seller or at least you kind of shared a network. Anything more to say about what it was about this particular business that you liked other and size. And we're going to get to the size in a sec.

[Will Smith]

Sure.

[Brian Jungles]

Yeah, I'll get into. I think there's, there's three converging themes that I saw and have just been a huge advantage for me, number one. So, and before that I'll just brief story. When I worked when I was at Adobe, we're doing these big implementations and managing these, this digital marketing infrastructure and we do this complex customer journey platform and you get all your data, you connect it here, here, put your ads out to digital channel your email or website or XYZ and these big Fortune 100 Fortune 5 companies consistently out here. Can this integrate with my direct mail? And I'd say why, why do you need a dinner? Like why are you doing direct mail? And they'd always say this is one of our highest performing channels. And we'd say okay, yeah, sure. But you know, I thought of it as old school and I had that conception but I still had something on the back of my mind. So there's three themes that I think make it me unique as a great fit for this business that I've seen playing out. Number one is a concept that we call the analog revolution. And this is the pushback and Distaste of just the unbridled progression of technology, especially when it comes to ad tech, ad blindness online, when anyone can create an infinite amount of content and anyone has access to distribution through the social media channels or advertising networks, then there is just a lot out there and it's so hard to stand out. You'll see, you know, I'll get targeted with stuff. It's like I replace my marketing team with this one AI prompt. Okay, well when the AI prompt is controlling everybody, everybody's marketing is going to look the same. So how do we stand out? Meanwhile, the data maturity. I talked about the data that we have access to on homes and homeowners. I this data has come such a long way in terms of targeting. So we basically take all the data sources that you can use for digital marketing targeting and it's layered on home data that comes from public records and deeds and home sales, et cetera. Highly valuable stuff for home services and other people that want to reach homeowners. The part of the, and the third theme that kind of goes into that is complacency in the industry. It is a, you know, not a lot has changed in terms of who's kind of the incumbents in this industry. There aren't people that are coming from the digital marketing side into the print side now. There's a couple of companies that I follow that I think are doing an awesome job that like integrate with Shopify and they'll essentially activate direct mail use cases where it used to be email use cases but now all email goes to the spam filter. Well, there's no spam filter ad blocker in the mail box. So when you know the questions to ask when you have done this sort of configuration and implementation at the C level at Fortune 500s and then you, you after I've taken the time to understand how to speak this language to smaller businesses, we, that's, that's when it really comes down to man, this audience is really powerful and we also have a really powerful way with advertising tactic that you can feel that you can hold onto in your home for months. And when you're ready to act, then you know who to call. That builds trust and it's highly local. And then the complacency I'd say in the industry is when I talk to these clients and then you know, I'm moving from a, and this is what my whole goal all along. Like we're going to move from a order taker vendor to a strategic partner and I'm going to sit down with you, and we're going to understand what exactly are your needs, and we're going to tailor a marketing and outreach campaign to those needs. Um, so a lot of that experience, some of it comes part of my thesis, and a lot of it's been unexpected and, and has played a lot bigger role than I expected to in this new world.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

But Brian, when you had skepticism about direct mail during your Adobe days and saw it as old school and stuff, as probably many listeners do, so what. How did you cross the. How did you change your mind on that to get comfortable around this business? Maybe you didn't have skepticism. Maybe, maybe you were hearing from Fortune 5000 that it, that it really works. And so you had the opposite. Maybe it was the opposite. Maybe I mischaracterized it.

[Brian Jungles]

Yeah, it was kind of like. It was kind of like. It wasn't the opposite. It was somewhere in between. It was. I have an inkling that this is, this is, this works. I just, I don't see how yet talking to this business that sustained for 30 years, that's been through 2010, Facebook, Google, really hyping up the ad marketplace online, you know, Covid, everything else, it's. It's sustained the industry. I mean, just looking at the industry, tam, you know, it's. It continues to grow. It's not at an astounding rate, but, you know, there's a lot of literature out there that not only is it still relevant, in fact, I don't like when people say it's still relevant. It's actually more relevant than ever. And, and when you talk to people and, and have this conversation and they go, yeah, you know what? When I, when I get a postcard and everyone goes, I just throw those things away. All right, well, you get a digital ad impression. Do you even see it? You know, the worst case here is you're. You're walking from your mailbox to your trash can and you're holding something, you get a. You feel it, you touch it. You know, I guess you could smell it. But there is a lasting impression that the brand makes on you. And then the best case, like I mentioned, is that it does sustain. And then the last thing I'll say about that, regarding tam, I actually recently engaged. I had the pleasure to engage with Emory and Georgia Tech, two local universities. Their MBA program did pro bono consulting through one of their, their clubs. And, and they did a growth exercise for me, which is exactly what we talked about. 10x in five years. And I don't have the numbers up in front of Me, but it's, they essentially said the, the market size here is, you know, not an issue. Atlanta has an incredible number of home service businesses that are spending on marketing. It's highly competitive, so they need to, they need to be smarter than each other. And that compared with direct mail industry figures, you know, it's, I don't recall the exact number, but it was, you know, honestly, with that combined with the complacency I mentioned, if there is a guy that's going to be me that goes out and goes, this is not your grandfather's direct mail. We're taking modern tactics to a legacy media and we're going to make, we're going to drop, we're going to make this data driven and we're going to show real change in the numbers that you care about and the KPIs for your business. That's the opportunity.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

Yeah, well, one little side observation, the other thing that we've heard about in our world a lot, Brian, is how home service advertising, of course, has gone all online, all Digital Starting about 10 years ago, but that those costs per clicks have just gone sky high. And so in a completely saturated online marketing, digital marketing, pay per click environment, this is a really ripe moment for you to come in and say we offer an alternative to spending all your money on, you know, Google Ads and Facebook ads and so on, which probably a lot of little guys have been priced out of.

[Brian Jungles]

Yeah, I'd say so. In the, you know, I talk about the, where I didn't think, I didn't know that my background was going to play such a big role. But the attribution part, right. You know, we, Adobe's got a tool called analytics. We had attribution AI. You know, I had, now I was more on, on the sales side, but I had been in meetings with C Suite talking about how we're going to make sense of all this data and price and we're going to attribute exactly, you know, what spend is driving what returns. And so just having that experience at my disposal, when I go in, I can, I can speak the language, I can traverse the entire marketing environment. We're spending this, we're seeing this, we're spending this, we're seeing this. Put it all together. All right, here's where I go next. And it's never, you know, just switch all your budget to direct mail. But it's enough to say, let's start a controlled trial. We're going to take an acceptable budget, we're going to be very specific and measure return. We're going to be very targeted on who your audience is and then we're going to see if it's a, you know, if it's a good fit to continue ongoing. And more often than not, that approach has worked well and driven some growth.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

Brian, let's hear more on what we touched on a minute ago about how you wanted to buy small. You embraced buying small, which is a little bit counter to the conventional wisdom, which is kind of buy as big as you can or buy, you know, a million dollars of earnings if you can, for reasons of stability, for reasons of being able to reinvest, for reasons of higher quality revenue. And the business is likely more durable at that size. The reasons that people have heard many times buying small means a lot more fragility, it would seem in the business itself, but there can be benefits as well. How did you think about it?

[Brian Jungles]

Yeah, I would say, you know, if someone's looking at buying small, the, the leg I mentioned, the legacy, I mean 30 years local reputation just critical to fall back on. So you know, I, I, speaking of the risk, early on I, you know, I did say well, well how much can I, can I afford? You know, I mentioned with the, the full time job I didn't feel that I had a, I had the bandwidth necessarily to open up a funded search to, to raise capital and, and do this full time. So, but I did look at, you know, going bigger than the HBR guide and others kind of assume the, the SBA route. So I certainly looked into SBA and I think it's, it's Live Oak bank that a lot of people use that some, someone referred me to. And you know, I was surprised that the rates, the interest rates were, you know, they were very high. So I think I was quoted, you know, 12 to 14% interest and that was going to be a recurring payment right off the bat. And I had uncertainty on the business cash flow and so I saw that as a significant risk and something that I wouldn't, you know, be able to just kind of pivot out of. So as far as a scope for when I, when I define what can I afford, I'm thinking I'm leaving Adobe. Over time at Adobe they, you know, I've gathered restricted stock units and employee stock purchase program. So I had a big concentration of wealth within the company. If I'm leaving Adobe, I'm going to stop getting those and you know, essentially by betting on myself, I should kind of take some of that money off the table and not bet on a company where I'm not Even working. So I was, I liquidated some of that position. And then we, we went through an exercise of consolidating everything that we could into our primary bank, where we've got our, our, our financial manager overseeing the, the investments and the other things that we had. So that's all combined. So I've kind of maximized the collateral with a bank that we're with and worked with them to open up a liquidity line. So as a, essentially line of credit that I was able to borrow against to get cash with no obligation to repay. And so it gains interest at about half the rate of what an SBA loan would. And I did make a habit of paying that interest every month, but if I needed to skip a couple months because the cash flow wasn't there, then I could do that without penalty.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

Okay, hold on a second here, Brian. We got to unpack this.

[Brian Jungles]

Yeah.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

So you choose not to do SBA because of the interest rates are so high and because of the. It's a, It's a traditional loan. So every month you're going to have to hit that, make that loan payment, you with your current bank, for your personal liquidity.

[Brian Jungles]

You.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

They offer you a line of credit.

[Will Smith]

What was it?

[Brian Jungles]

What was the instrument? Yeah, they call it a liquidity access line. Lal. It's a line of credit.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

A line of credit. And you use that to buy the business. And we actually haven't touched up with the acquisition price is. What is that?

[Brian Jungles]

Yeah, so I, like I said, I estimated about 150,000 SDE. So I was looking for 2.5 to 4x purchase price, which would have been 375 to 600,000. Had the conversation with the owner. He asked for 400,000. I said, that's on the lower end of my range. So there wasn't a lot of negotiation. I mentioned there was another buyer that had not submitted anything official. But, you know, he's essentially saying, I'd like entertaining this other offer too, and, you know, very. Potentially just some sales tactics. But I said, look, it's going to be a leap of faith. Like I've said before, for many respects, this seems like a fair price. So what I did is, so I tapped, I looked Recently, I tapped 332,000 from that liquidity access line. And then from some of the liquidation of my stock that I had with Adobe, I funded the rest of. What is that, 68,000 or so. And then, so I bought the business for cash, and that was a personal loan to the business that now the business is repaying me back and we'll pay down the liquidity access line.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

Okay, so. So the purchase price is $400,000. And you. And so this, I'm going to call it a line of credit. You. How did you arrive at. I've never, just never had. I've never heard of this. So you basically get a line of credit, a personal line of credit for 330,000 or whatever it was, and you use that to buy the business in cash. The terms of this line of credit are way more favorable than an SBA loan because the interest is about half, first of all, huge. And it's not, it's a line of credit. So you're not actually, you haven't taken a loan that you're then servicing with a loan payment every month. You can pay it back according to your own schedule, right?

[Will Smith]

Correct so far?

[Brian Jungles]

Yeah, that's right. So the. There is a calculation based on the investments that I have with the bank that they consider collateral. It's something like 60 cents on the dollar, 50 cents on the dollar per invested asset. So I don't need to liquidate some of the securities or the other investments that I have. But a cash. Cash at the bank is dollar for dollar. So based on the spread of everything that our family had at this bank, they determined the permissible amount. And then the rate is determined by so far, which I'm still not exactly sure what, what that is, is a standard rate interest rate plus 3% spread. So right now that is 3 point so far is 3.6. And at the time it was about 4, 4.5. So 4.5 plus 3 is about 7, 7 and a half was my interest rate at the time. And it's variable, so it's lower now.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

Okay, and your repayment looks like what. How do you repay this money? What's the amortization? How does that work?

[Brian Jungles]

I've set it up automatically to draw the interest. So at least I'm not, I'm not gathering, you know, the total amount is not ballooning as we speak. But I keep the interest payment down. And then over time, right. There is, there's repayment. Right. If I'm, you know, if I've got the cash, depending on the seasonality and, you know, what's going on with the business, and I'll pay down a chunk and a chunk and a chunk of. But, but yeah, there's. There's just a lot of flexibility there. So. So we talk about early in the business. Not no obligation to repay a loan monthly and no payroll monthly. And I, I really use that early on.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

Exactly. So I use the word amortization because this isn't a loan. There is no amortization schedule. This is more like paying down your credit card, except. Yeah, exactly.

[Brian Jungles]

Yeah. It's like I have a big credit card balance without a solid due date.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

Okay. And, and so sorry, say again the calculation for what they would, how much of this cash they would extend to you, how much of this credit they would extend to you is half of what you have with them or twice of what you have with them.

[Brian Jungles]

Invested assets were collateralized at. And I don't remember the exact number, but it was about 50, 60 cents on the dollar. So if I have $10, then it counts as 5 as collateral or 6 is collateral. But any cash that we had with them was dollar for $10 equals $10 into the line of credit.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

Okay. So you had to add some hundreds of thousands of dollars in investments in your account for them to give you this $330,000 of care.

[Brian Jungles]

Right? Yeah, yeah. So the Adobe stock moving over, 401k investment, moving over. Like these are things that I had been contributing to for 12 years in corporate that were now under the umbrella that served as collateral. So I had looked into, you know, HELOC robs everything. And this was just, you know, far and away the, the, the, the best way to access, you know, the cash or, you know, the, the capital with as little dependency on others as possible. So again, just totally betting on myself.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

Yeah, no, it's, it's really interesting. I haven't heard anybody talk about this. Now this is probably something that. This probably only works when somebody has material savings, which you did, obviously, like a balance sheet. And is buying a small, a quite small business. Those two things both have to be true for this to work out. But if you can swing it, pretty, pretty good deal structure, I'd say. Now back to this betting on yourself and the lack of dependencies. So, so say, say more about that. So you wanted to de risk your first acquisition, meaning not have investors, not have stakeholders other than yourself, essentially. Right. So say more about this kind of philosophical approach. I don't think we found you.

[Brian Jungles]

Yeah, you know, I think, you know, part of it was if the business is this small and it's sustained at a steady rate for, you know, this long, then there is a basis there to grow and the upside must be huge. We Talked about the 20 to 40 hours a week thing, so I think that was, that was a big part of what made that attractive. But the, Yeah, I Think the, you know, I had the conversation with my wife obviously early on, and she was incredibly supportive of the whole, you know, what does this look like in 10 or 15 years? Where does this put us in our family and me specifically in my obligations to my career. And so in that sense it's, you know, how do we maximize the, the how to maximize alignment with, with that principle and not open this up to, okay, well, there's something out of my control or that, you know, ends up bringing this down. Or the worst, you know, the absolute worst case scenario is, you know, if this does, let's say this fail, let's say I the, you know, the, the acquisition does not go how we want it to go or down the road. I last a year, I last two years. I decided to fold it up right? Then we've got the loan. I can get back into a corporate, corporate role and get a paycheck and just pay this thing down over time versus being stuck with, you know, how am I going to figure out how to, how to get the rest of this loan off my back? So, so yeah, I think, I kind of think the, the smaller it's see it as kind of a controlled now experiment is probably too simplistic. But, um, this is a way to, in a controlled setting to learn how much I don't know. And I see I really, like I said, you know, how much I've learned over the past year and a half, I now I would have the confidence to go, okay, you know, if I want to do the next one or you know, if I sell this and do the next thing or do an acquisition, then like I've been through this. Let's go big.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

Okay, So I, I may be beating this to death. And it's pretty simple. A smaller business for a guy who has not yet been an entrepreneur, you just felt was of a, A, a bite for your first bite. So no employees to worry about. That's its own piece of business ownership that is complex and difficult. No investors to answer to. No big onerous loan payment every month. The, the, this is going to be a, a small amount of debt because it's a small business and because of this flexible instrument that you have, you're not, you don't have to make that loan payment every month. Unlike a, an SBA loan where there is no room for error. So in all of these ways it was just, it was just, it felt less risky essentially as, as a project, as a next step in your career.

[Will Smith]

Even if the business itself, the business

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

itself might have Been a slightly riskier business than say, you know, a business throwing off a million dollars of earnings.

[Brian Jungles]

Yes, exactly. Yeah. There is no. So if you're considering this, I would say and you're buying especially a one person operation, I would be so strict on the criteria that that business must have just like any we talk about. Right. Documented and proven systems where it can run without that person. So that there's no concern that that of the exit of the owner or and, or even better both is the legacy. The legacy status. Right. That this has sustained and there's something here that you can grow and build. So yeah, I don't think. I think there is certainly all the risk that people probably assume with, with any. Any given very small business is probably applies to. To my situation as well. But I think it was a great confluence of some of these trends that were actually maybe counterintuitive but a lot of it, the legacy, the owner relationship, these are really about. About trust that I saw that those were also de. Risked in this situation.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

Yeah. And now that you've been in it for a year and a half, you closed in December 2024. Now that you've been in it for a year and a half, you feel like already after 18 months as a business owner that you could go bigger next time.

[Brian Jungles]

I, I could go bigger than I, than I did this time. I've also just, you know, it's like the more, you know, the more questions you have. I've been, I've been just so humbled to understand how much there is to learn. So I do not have. In fact, I'm probably down a peg in how much I think my resume made me qualified to run a large business. I think I go step up. I've learned so much about manage, so I've had a lot of luck with offshore staffing. So I have folks that are supporting operations. I've got fractional roles helping here and there. So while it's not a payroll that I have to manage, there is orienting a team around this mission and vision. And yeah, I could, I could take that a step up, but I have no delusions that, you know, I could take over a lot of my clients businesses. Right. Like I'm, I'm serving folks that I have a lot of folks that acquire businesses like I did and they require a renovations company or a fence company or this or that. And we talk about this all the time just, just how humbling that is in, in terms of how much there really is to learn. So I'm very realistic about that ongoing as well.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

And so you had, even though it sounds like you were pretty humble coming in, you, you needed to be even more so. What, what, what has been so humbling about this, this process?

[Brian Jungles]

Yeah, yeah, I know we talk about the fetal position moments. There wasn't anything where I, you know, I said, what have I done? What a mistake. It was like, wow, what am I gonna, what am I gonna learn here? I think the one, the one person operation, you just wear so, so many hats. And I mentioned of jokingly, but I get that first month of just invoicing and I'm, you know, still, I'm still like watching the training videos on QuickBooks. And meanwhile, if I'm going to get any cash in the business, then I need to actually properly, you know, send these invoices. And also I need to do it in a, in a way that honors the relationship that we have. I'm the new guy sending invoices. That's a very precarious situation to be in. And so like losing a day, right, in sales and business development or doing this or that on any given thing that comes up is, is, you know, just I, I think when I especially maybe month 2, 3, 4 in at the end of the day at night, I just been like, you know, man, I don't know how much progress I'm making here. Are we skidding backwards? And meanwhile, there's basics that I still didn't understand in an industry right? Where I saw, I, I assumed the industry I was working in was not, not superior, but maybe more encompassing. Right. Like we're, we're supporting the entire vision of marketing for, for Fortune 500s now I'm doing this one thing for small businesses. But the, you know, like I said, the, the way that a textbook is different than relationships. When you introduce people in the mix, people have expectations, they have different motivations. Some people don't want me to be a strategic partner. They just want to send me an order when they need postcards. And so when I push for that relationship that's. They don't want that. They think they have a guy for that or they're too busy or XYZ and, and, and so setting my own expectations. It's been a big lesson. But I mean, honestly, Will, I think, you know, it's made me discover so much about myself. I've gotten very into, more into my faith over the past year and a half and that's been a huge factor in all this. When you talk about humility and setting expectations and just understanding that Things happen for a reason. When you're going through a hard time, it's because you're learning something. And now I look back and I realize, like, with gratitude, how much I've learned. And I'm so much more fulfilled. And I. And I think if I stayed at Adobe and I did that 35 years and then I had the Zoom retirement party, I would be ignorant to all this and. And I would have never known the better. So we were talking about, you know. You know, I think if there, if there ever. If there are a situation where I moved, you know, took a different direction and the business was on the market and it was going for even less than I paid for it, I would say, listen, the tuition that I have paid for in this experience is invaluable, and I truly mean that. And that's part of the reason, I think the growing the business and the ETA is so rewarding because you can do the thing that we all think we're going to do, which is just take something and make it great, because we have ideas. But the journey along the way, that's a huge part of it as well, that I didn't expect.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

Yeah, that's well put, Brian. We've said this as a franchise. This is an unusual franchise. We think of franchises as, first of all, larger businesses than this franchisor is. I assume this franchisor must have, you know, a handful of franchisees because a business like this is probably only in the major metro areas around the country.

[Brian Jungles]

Yeah, that's right. So there's, I think there's 11 active markets right now, and it is, you know, you need some, you need some minimum threshold of businesses of. Especially in the home services. That's really what the case studies that we have and the experience we can point to. So, yeah, those, those big suburban areas around, around cities is, is really where you can find city publications.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

Okay. And so, so this is a. But it is a franchisor still and all. How did you diligence? How did you diligence? It does a business. I mean, it must have an fdd, even though it's really small. How big is the corporate office? Give it, give us a picture. I mean, again, we think of franchisors as kind of big corporations, and this is not that.

[Brian Jungles]

Yeah, yeah, which I meant, like the, the, the access is, is really great. I'm, you know, tomorrow I'm going in and we're going to sit in the office with the CEO and we exchange ideas. So I've enjoyed that part of it. Now the, the due diligence on the franchisor was very, was brief. Right. So I had legal review of the FDD in my franchise agreement. But the legal review was mostly is this a fair, does this, is this fair does according to industry standards, does the FDD meet all the obligations that an FDD needs to fulfill? So what I didn't do necessarily, which I encourage people to do entering a franchise or relationship, is do some scenario planning. Ask them based on what you've seen. Let's say things go this way or they go this way. What am I on the hook for if I need this help? What does that mean? At that point in the deal, I was, I had my heart set on the business and I was kind of in burn the, burn the boats mentality. Like I'm, this is going to be my thing. It's a, so I have a five year term. This has been my thing for five years. I think I'm going to, I'm going to crush it. Like I'm so pumped and excited to move on to this thing, see what I can do. Attorney says FDD is, you know, up to snuff according to standards. Let's sign it. And you know, it turns out by nature most FDDs are, are very one sided. You know, you look and it's, there's minimal commitments from the franchisor and, and you know, there's royalties and fees and this and that. So what I would do is I, part of setting my own expectations was two months down the road by the time it's, by the way, it's time to pay this fee which you know, I should have been very aware of and you know, it's just, it's a thing. After I was spending all day fighting with QuickBooks and then I learned about that and that hit my expectation. So quality of earnings on, on the, on the FTD and the franchisor is something I'd recommend as well.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

And wait, so the franchise, the franchise fee snuck up on you is what you're saying?

[Brian Jungles]

Not the franchise fee necessarily. So the big fees, the big picture. Got it? This is how it works is what you do for me. This is what I do for you. But you know, anyone that works in a, with a, in a franchise system will say that there's a, there's a nuance when this comes up and you're on the hook for this. It's, it's small stuff but I had not done enough planning and diligence to kind of understand all the nooks and crannies of the fdd and it's nothing that was, you know, crazy. It's just, you know, I wasn't as versed as I should have been. And it just added to the. Oh my gosh. Here's another thing that I didn't expect. You know, when you get a couple months into it, these FD's are long and they're like, okay.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

And so, so the advice for I

[Brian Jungles]

was, yeah, these are, these are, these are very long and detailed documents. So it does deserve the, like I said, the two, I think the two wave of the review with the attorney number one is this compliant. Right. Which is what I got. But then the next is the. Let's actually go through each of these terms and make sure that we take the legal speak and apply it to, as I'm operating this business, what it's going to mean for me and when.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

Yeah, and of course the other kind of famous section of the FTD is, what is it actually section 19 or something where they talk about the revenue, the average revenue generated by all the other territories or locations or whatever it is. I assume that you looked closely at.

[Brian Jungles]

Yeah, yeah. Which everything, everything seemed in line right enough where again, we're going. Okay, I, yeah, I've sat with these people face to face for hours and we've had these, these conversations. We've built the trust and the trust is sustained. So yeah, it was, it was. We, you know, we wanted to get this thing going and want to get in here and start growing it. So like I said, luckily in my case, and the other thing with the local, which I'd stress this even more, if you're looking at a franchise system that is national, PE backed, et cetera, there you're not going to have, number one, the access like I have, where if, if I have an, an issue or a question, I'll bring it to the CEO, we'll work it through it. You know, we, he wants me to grow and I want the system to grow. And what I've learned is that's, that's very unique so that, you know, there was nothing crippling, luckily to begin with. But if there was something crippling, then I've, we have the relationship to fall back on.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

When you were looking at the, the average revenue per territory or whatever, was that in line with, with where Atlanta already was? And I guess this idea of being able to grow your business so much, I mean, when you look at, when you look at the average revenue per location of franchisee, while you expect yourself to be an outperformer and do better than the average. It does anchor your expectations to what's possible here. So if everybody's doing half a million dollars a year or the average is half a million bucks a year, the idea that you're going to get it to 5 million starts to feel, you know, unrealistic that in, in a single territory you can get it there 10 times what the average is. So maybe. So did you have any of that sort of calculus going on? Yeah.

[Brian Jungles]

And you know, that we, I say, I say 10x in five years. That is a little bit of Steve Jobs reality distortion field. So that's not. I, I was. This is not like conservative expectations. It's just saying like I, we are going to change this whole. We're going to shake it up like we are going to build something new together. And that's, that's part of the assumption. And it's, it's a lot of ambition baked in there. Yeah, but. So, yeah, so no, Atlanta is. Was on the. It was on the higher side of. Of average. But it's also an excellent market that only. So my, my territory is very large. My territory is essentially all of greater Atlanta, mostly doing business. If you know, Atlanta between 75 and 85 north. So the affluent suburbs north. There's other pockets that haven't even been tapped yet that I'd have access to. So I have a lot of geographical expansion even within my territory. We've talked a lot about that with the franchisor developing that out. Right. There's potentially now maybe I could, you know, as I build out a team, right. Having a rep, go develop just another part of that territory, these sort of things are on the table. So in the prior owner, he had done a lot of that, but he went from 0 to 1. Well, he went to 0 to 1 with the. After the business was in Atlanta with the new, the new franchise territory. And he had come a long way. He had a lot of recurring. Most of the revenue was recurring, which is great. So I followed that model. You can expand upon that model. And, and then the geographical expansion and then the innovation was the third thing that I threw in there. So, you know, I think all these things together certainly would yield the ability to, to grow past what historical average would be. I saw, I saw this as a unique opportunity.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

Okay, Brian, wrap us up by telling us what you've done in the last year and a half. Revenue is up.

[Brian Jungles]

Yeah, yeah. So the, the turnover rate in attrition was. I was really pleased going from one year to the next, let's say I think we were around 10% and a lot of that was, you know, people that probably weren't going to stick around whether he was, he was there or it wasn't because of the transition. I got to work around renewal time and had, you know, got more in depth into value. Let's, let's, let me help you uncover. Let's have a transparent analysis of this data. We've done a lot more to track actual performance based on, you know, congruency with the rest of the marketing that they're doing to prove what value we're driving for the business. And that helped me with renewals. And I think by the end of March I had booked so contracted the totality of my 2025 revenue. So everything I've sold since March is, is increase in sales and that's mostly on renewal of the annual engagements plus new business in, at annual recurring engagements. And so throughout the year we're continuing to, to build it out. The other thing that I'll, that I'll touch on is the potential for this business in local political advertising. As you probably know, you live outside D.C. direct mail is a huge part of that. So there's an opportunity to expand there. So I've been lucky enough through some, some of the folks I know to find some local consultants and they, you know, they, they talk to me and they go, man, no one else is talking about direct mail like this. And so that could be its own, you know, thing that takes off. So right now that's going to be, you know, that might be up to 20, 20% of the business this year. We'll see. You know, elections aren't till November, so it's still early. But I was lucky enough to support some primary races that, that won. But so very still focused on the home services strategy, driving more value for our current clients and then figuring out how to scale what works best to the broader market. And then, and then on the political side, it's really interesting as well. So lots of exciting stuff.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

And, and where do you, where do you forecast 2026 revenues landing?

[Brian Jungles]

I am, I, I, I'm very conservative by nature and I am confident that we can get to a million dollars. So I've got some people that I'm working with that are going, no, man, we're going to beat this. But I've got a fractional chief revenue officer who's an awesome guy that's doing engagement with me and he's like, nah, we can do more than a million. But that was my stretch goal at the beginning of the year. And here in June it's starting to materialize. I can see that it could be real. So I'll be very pleased if and when that happens.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

And if you make it to this million dollars revenue, Brian, and then you just kind of have a sense for the market overall. Do you feel like now that you're in the business that there is a lot more market share to grab? I mean, could this become two and three million dollars with time and, and you know, building the business and applying yourself?

[Brian Jungles]

Yeah, it's going to take staffing. Like I said, I'm having good luck with, with offshore resources and a mix of fractional people. At some point I need to figure out how to build that sustainably, continue to focus on processes. But the more that I am able to create those systems to let the business perform at a high level without me being hands on with everything, the more that my brain is opening up to pay attention to the market, follow what companies are winning, listen to my clients, understand their feedback and then implement it to iterate on those systems. If I get that flywheel going, then, then yeah, I think, I think the market's huge.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

Any last thoughts, Brian, before I let you go?

[Brian Jungles]

There's been a lot of really scary things in this whole journey but like I said, the, the wisdom and the experience that I've gained has been invaluable. I would not trade it for anything. And I'm really excited about, about the future and seeing where this goes. I would say if you're especially for somebody that's thinking about leaving corporate, one of the, one of the hardships that I anticipated, which I experienced at the beginning was the management structure. The leadership your mentors are built in in a large organization and that's not there when you're on your own, especially when you're a solopreneur. The more that I have said I'm not going to accomplish this on my own community. Let me talk to people, I'm like, let me bring in somebody to do some consulting that I trust. Let me lean on you to do this like let's build this together. There's a feedback in the entrepreneur community. All wants to help each other and that just, that yields business growth and it yields accelerated development of the business. So just be comfortable and don't do it on your own. Work with your connections and they'll help you.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

Great advice. Brian Jungles, thanks for coming on Acquiring Minds.

[Brian Jungles]

Thanks Will.

[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

Hope you enjoyed that interview.

[Will Smith]

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[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

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[Will Smith]

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[Will Smith]

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[Host (Possibly Derek Pitts or Chris Williamson)]

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[Will Smith]

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