Tracy Alloway

It's not coming back.

So you got to watch the purchase price quite closely.

What's your advice?

You know, like one of the things that I'm aware of over the last 10, 15 years is the rise of like, I think they're called like search funds or something.

You get like some guy who's like an MBA, maybe a Wharton.

They don't know what they want to do.

They raise some money for their friends and they're like, oh, we're going to like go buy this local like pool supply company or whatever HVAC company.

And we're going to like Six Sigma it up and then we're going to make some money, etc., etc.

I think you're probably a god to these people because you have the art of buying companies down as a practice.

Where do you see them go wrong typically?

What would be your advice to these types who think, you know what, I'm going to buy an old fashioned business and make it run great.

Where do you see people go wrong in this?

Most of them go wrong.

Most of them go wrong because they're really not operators.

They're really just promoters.

They're financial guys, and that's fine, but they don't integrate and optimize the businesses.

Now, they can still make money on the spread.

In other words, you see some of these smaller roll-ups.

They buy a

that whether veterinarians or car washes or whatever, and they buy them at single digit multiples.