Kevin Tawil

It eventually led to a partnership between Jim and I. Near the end of his year of writing cases was about the time that

I had surfaced two potential transactions and Jim and I talked about them.

We decided we're going to do this together in that I would pursue one transaction, he would pursue the other.

And if one fell apart, that person would come back to the other transaction.

Or if we both ended up buying these companies, then we share some equity in each one.

At least that was the idea.

And he raised his fund at that point.

No, he actually didn't raise the search fund.

We leveraged my search fund.

We started doing diligence on each of the companies.

Mine was a small HMO based in Miami that focused on the Cuban community there.

And Jim had Road Rescue, a small company.

Motor Club, our roadside assistance company based in Houston.

And we did diligence on each.

Just as Jim was about to start raising money for the acquisition of Road Rescue, my target fell through.

It wasn't that the seller had misgivings.

The reason it fell through was I went to Miami with one of

My investor's Billy, and we spent a half a day with the seller, and then we went out to Joe's Stone Crabs in Miami, and Bill was very impressed with the seller.

So much so that later that evening, when he and I conferred together about the transaction,

Bill's opinion immediately was, no, let's run away from this deal.