Let me give it to you straight.

I’ve talked to hundreds of people who say they want to buy a business.

They’ve read the books. Taken the courses. Some have even dropped five figures on masterminds.

But they’re still stuck in analysis paralysis.
Or worse—chasing unicorns that don’t exist.

Meanwhile, Jackie Hirsch—my guest on this week’s episode—has sold over 400 companies since 1998.

That’s not a typo.
Four. Hundred. Closed.

She’s seen every buyer mistake in the book.
And she doesn’t hold back.

Here’s what we get into:

• Why most first-time buyers are nowhere near ready—even if they think they are

• The exact documents, questions, and signals she looks for before she takes a buyer seriously

• The truth about adbacks, quality of earnings, and how banks actually think

• What brokers say about you after you get off the Zoom call (if you're not prepared, it’s not flattering)

• What she tells sellers to sniff out flaky buyers—and why culture fit matters way more than your Ivy League spreadsheet

This episode is the roadmap I wish every searcher had before they sent an LOI.

📌 Watch the full breakdown

Listen to the show: 

Chapters 

00:00 Introduction to Business Brokerage and Jackie Hirsch
03:01 Jackie's Journey into Business Brokerage
05:58 The Importance of Using a Business Broker
09:00 Common Mistakes of First-Time Business Buyers
11:58 Understanding Financials and Due Diligence
15:01 Navigating Seller Motivations and Cultural Fit
18:07 The Role of Adbacks in Business Valuation
21:10 Quality of Earnings and Its Importance
23:53 Market Trends and Buyer-Seller Dynamics
32:06 Navigating the Current Market Landscape
35:07 The Importance of Buyer Preparedness
39:14 Understanding Business Ownership Dynamics
40:51 Challenges in Long-Term Deals
46:04 Investor Expectations and SBA Regulations
49:08 The Shift Towards Online Businesses
56:13 Reflections on a Long Career in Business

Transcript

Jon Stoddard (00:00.748)
Welcome to Top &A Entrepreneurs. Today my guest is Jackie Hirsch. Jackie is a broker in Florida. And I gotta tell you this, she sold over 400 companies. So she's probably got a little stories there. She got some myths to dispel. So welcome to the show, Jackie.

Jackie Hirsch (00:20.808)
Thank you so much, John, for having me. And there are no myths in Business Broker. John, I what you're talking about. Everything that you hear on the internet is true, totally true.

Jon Stoddard (00:25.986)
No, no, no. It is, it is. You could buy a business, no money down, right from a business broker. Is that right? Yes, you can, I hear that.

Jackie Hirsch (00:33.086)
Okay, I did do two of that last year, but I don't like to tell people that. It does happen, but you have to already own something with the same NACE code, and that's how you do that. But otherwise, it doesn't happen. I know. Don't call me.

Jon Stoddard (00:44.856)
Yeah, you just opened up a can of worms there. All right. Yeah. Don't call her. All right. So go all the way back and what drew you into business brokerage?

Jackie Hirsch (00:56.542)
You know, this is so funny because, you know, I've been doing it since 98. So you and I have been around since then. 98. Well, it's like, you have to look really close, but the wrinkles are there anyway. So thank God. I answered an ad in a paper. You know, I had graduated school and this broker was trying to grow his practice. And so he was advertising for business brokers. I was hired.

Jon Stoddard (01:00.174)
98. My kids already been 90, 90.

Jon Stoddard (01:09.666)
I've got the filter on, you're good. Yeah. Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (01:24.542)
He hired four people pretty much anybody who wasn't a criminal with a pulse who happened to have a real estate license the state of Florida and I just started and everybody in the office made fun of me and Didn't think I could do it because I was literally more than half everybody's age. So it was pretty unpleasant Yeah, I was 22 and it was I mean it was super unpleasant for like a while and then I started my own shop at 26 because I it was just time

Jon Stoddard (01:40.526)
because it was a male dominated thing. Yeah.

Yeah. And it-

Jon Stoddard (01:51.566)
Yeah. And it's a hundred percent commission. If you joined in, was it a hundred percent commission when you did it? And yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (01:54.173)
Yeah. Yep. Yep. But of course I got paid a little bit less, you know, as a woman. It's always, it's always nice. Yeah. Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (01:59.97)
Yes. Really? Hmm. Hopefully that's changed since then because you chan... Yeah. Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (02:05.83)
believe it would have. Yeah, I believe it would have. But yeah, it was a I could not see they're like, No, you're too new. But then other people that would come in, they're like, Well, they used to do that. So, you know, it was interesting.

Jon Stoddard (02:17.304)
Yeah. All right. So tell me about the first deal you ever sold, how long it took and like, were you eating Top Ramen before it closed and like,

Jackie Hirsch (02:24.446)
Ha

Jackie Hirsch (02:28.456)
Yes.

Yeah, it was really, you know, at 22, you know, not everybody wanted to take a chance on a 22 year old. And maybe I didn't look 22, but I didn't have as much knowledge. And the first business I sold was a video recording camera rental business. OK, so a VHS camera that had a big honker tape that you'd stick in. They would rent those to theme parks who were kind of laying out ideas or laying out buildings. And then they'd

Jon Stoddard (02:53.72)
Yeah!

Jackie Hirsch (03:01.01)
take them back or if they had a project, they'd kind of do a mock-up and film it and then have that film and discuss it at meetings. And the buyer bought it just to get the vendor number into Disney. So I've sold a number of companies into Disney. We're selling one right now, a commercial bakery that just bakes specific products for Disney, multiple departments, because Disney has 2000 plus business units. So they might bake into, you know, 30 business units. And so it's

actually different customers and the bank recognized that. So that was the first deal I did. It was owned by two women. Super unusual. I mean, just the whole deal was unusual. And then the rest of the deals after that were, you know, I started with restaurants and cafes, then large retail, then got into manufacturing, which I loved, and construction. And I really stay a lot with business services, manufacturing and construction. That's most of my deals and that's what I love most.

Jon Stoddard (03:51.148)
Yeah.

Yeah, I want to just key on that Disney stuff. So did they buy it? They bought it just to get inside Disney and did they keep the business running or just keep it afloat to have that first intro inside?

Jackie Hirsch (03:56.476)
Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (04:00.306)
Yes.

Jackie Hirsch (04:04.872)
Yeah. You know, I remember the guy at the time and I don't have his contact now. This is 26 years ago. The guy at the time owned multiple companies and one of the companies he was trying to get into Disney but didn't have a vendor number. And Disney has changed their process over time. But at the time getting a vendor number was very meaningful and difficult to get because businesses, you Disney is often trying to do business with fewer people, not more people.

Jon Stoddard (04:12.387)
Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (04:33.274)
So it's really just by need. And they ran it for a period of time. It was 1998, so VHS wasn't around for that much longer. I suspect that it was worth the money he paid and the quickness and time to get in. Think about the time savings. What's that worth? Yeah, correct.

Jon Stoddard (04:52.738)
Yeah, you'd have to go through approval process like getting into Walmart, getting your products on a shelf may take a year or more. Yeah, that's an interesting idea. And I think that other GovCon businesses do that also. Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (05:06.814)
Yeah. When you have a cage code, it's often much easier to do a stock sale or if you have any of these, you know, have the DUNS number, you have a cage code, you know, you have all these other certifications like ISO 9001 or all of these different things. You know, it's easier to do a stock sale and get in than to apply for those from scratch.

Jon Stoddard (05:29.154)
Yeah. So you and I talked this before we got on and I coach all my students, anybody come to me, anybody talking to me on LinkedIn, say, go, if you're, this is a first time business buyer, go to a business broker because three thresholds have been met. One, it's a motivated seller. Two, they have a starting price. That's not always the price you get. You could get lower or pay higher. But three, and they also have all the financials ready to go. The business broker does a lot of legwork.

to getting the business together to present, to make an offer. So let's cut to the chase. Why from your 400 sales, why should first time business buyer go through a broker to find deals?

Jackie Hirsch (06:11.934)
You know, I always think this is so interesting. Of course, the buyer who's never owned anything thinks that they know everything. And it depends upon what your scholastic background is, but some of the schools, really, they know even more than everybody else. I find that fascinating. And it sometimes takes me time to get those buyers on board. Like, hey, let's just say hypothetically, I might know something, because I've sold 400 companies. I've owned other companies myself. I've started.

sold companies, I've started myself, I've had to close a company, so I've had a loss. I've also purchased companies. So let's just say I might know something, even though you've never done this, right? So sometimes it gets to that level, but the reality is a seller that signed up with a broker is at least in the mindset that they're definitely gonna sell. If you walk along and you knock on Bob Smith's door and say, I'd like to buy your business, he's like, you know, I've thought about that. Maybe I would like to buy a business or sell my business.

Jon Stoddard (06:46.392)
Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (07:07.806)
But the reality is it might take him time. He might not agree with your valuation. I had a call today with one of my sellers who wants 10 million and I think it's kind of closer to eight. So we're having a discrepancy and we're going through where we think it is. It is, but at least it's close. There are buyers and sellers that are just not realistic at all. I feel like...

Jon Stoddard (07:22.048)
It's a couple million.

Jackie Hirsch (07:31.359)
he's gonna, we're gonna do a pre-sell side QV to kind of sort out some of the stuff and we might get close and might end up at nine. We might go to market without a price, but most sellers have no clue what their business is worth. And this seller was, you know, under the impression that he could get the number he wanted because it's the number he wanted. So, right, that's just kind of what I want. Right, right, right. Over 30 years.

Jon Stoddard (07:50.648)
Yeah, because I just like, it's out of my gut feeling. Because all the work I put into it or because all the money I put into it or the hours or whatever it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (07:59.923)
this is what I've spent and this is what I've committed and I have fed these people and guided these people and I've handheld these contracts and these customers. But my numbers are what my numbers are. And sometimes we can go more. There are times when I run a structured process that it can be, you know, six, seven, eight, multiple, right? I'm not getting, you know, nine and 10.

on any of the stuff that I have at this point, but those happen too, even for smaller deals. It just depends.

Jon Stoddard (08:30.872)
Yeah, I'll mention this because I came across a broker selling a SaaS business that does in the jewelry industry. And it also does AWS or hosting. So I don't really know all the mechanisms for how they monetize it because I didn't go past that SIM, but it had like an average $900 to a million dollars per year in net income or EBITDA.

They were asking 12x.

Jackie Hirsch (09:03.966)
If it has a really, I don't like this word, but if it has a really sticky customer base, then yes, that is possible. Like sticky, just reminds me of like something gross on like a restaurant table. it just, but if they have a customer base, cause there is a jewelry store that I was selling and they use this certain program and they've used that program for 40 years.

Jon Stoddard (09:25.592)
Yeah, it is very sticky according to what they say. However, the total addressable market, if you're new customers, there is just not enough jewelry places that would buy a SaaS. it's probably, my guess right now it's tapped out, but that's just my assessment.

Jackie Hirsch (09:43.048)
Yeah, I mean, I think of, you sometimes I do think deals like that, if they were really good, they get snapped up so fast you don't see it.

Jon Stoddard (09:50.284)
Yeah, I had the conversation with the broker and he actually asked me, so what do you think it's worth? And I said, well, for me, it's only a six X. So I do six X on a million dollars, but I can't do 12 because it'd me forever to pay it off. Yeah. Cause I can't grow it unless I have other products to move with her. anyway, what's one of some of the biggest mistakes that you see first time business buyers make when they try to go direct to seller or just like right through the broker, they come to you and.

Jackie Hirsch (10:00.786)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (10:20.322)
We talked about this, you know, knowing these guys that we're teaching, they're no money down, no money out of pocket. That's the huge mistake, but yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (10:29.264)
You know, I think that a lot of people don't have a great accounting background. So that's number one, right? And a lot of buyers don't really understand the mechanics of accounting and how that works. So they're not able to properly diligence a business, even if they see something pretty decent. They don't really understand how much working capital they'll really need. They don't understand how they're gonna have to mitigate risk. They don't understand if the staff is being underpaid, right?

That's a real risk. you acquire something and the staff is being underpaid, you realize you have to bring them up to market. And that is the time where the staff is like, gosh, there's a new owner. Should I look around for another job? They get nervous, but they don't get nervous if they're being paid well. Sometimes there's insurance risk, right? If you're somebody's mod score, that's when they have workman's comp and that's the score that you get depending on how many incidents you report to the insurance company. Like if somebody

passes away in your company, that can really severely affect the mod score. And so that's done in arrears. And so when you go to the next year, your insurance can double. And if your insurance is 100 grand a year and you're now at 200 grand, do you have enough space when you leverage that deal at 90 % to make a go of it? So there's certain things that they're not diligencing. Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (11:42.531)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (11:52.142)
So let me interrupt you on that. when do I check, when does somebody check on that for when the insurance rates reno? So this is just a contract we need to check on, right? Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (11:58.865)
Well, yeah. So during due diligence, you need to get the stop losses. And there's a company in town, I don't know if you know them, but a new co-risk Andy Harbitt and, you know, Andy Harbitt runs that. Yeah. They should definitely be on your podcast and Josh, Mr. Josh Fro on, on Twitter, but they, have a company and you know, that's something that they do. And we teach, you know, at the, at the bootcamp when, you know, I told you, I'm part of Sam's SM bootcamp.

that people need to diligence the insurance. They need to diligence and do a quality of earnings. They need to look at legal. They need to also look for lawsuits. They need to do a background check on the seller if they can. Really part of the diligence and it's onerous and it's hard. And I think a lot of buyers don't do those things.

Jon Stoddard (12:45.966)
Yeah, can I key on the financial part of it because I spent six years at Intuit. So I saw thousands of financial report cards through QuickBooks, but I do notice that a lot of people come in here and they can't really read an income statement or a balance sheet. And they can't tell what it means like cash run or cruel, or if the books are balanced. How do you even check that, right?

Jackie Hirsch (12:51.986)
Mm-hmm.

Jackie Hirsch (13:14.302)
Well, you can ask for reconciliation of bank statements, but you have to tie things back. In construction, one of the diligence items that we did for a deal is the quality of earnings company will tie the PO to the invoice, to where it came in the bank and where it all cleared. And when the job was finished and was inventory allocated, was job cost allocated, actually how much labor was allocated towards that job. So you could kind of...

Jon Stoddard (13:32.014)
Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (13:42.621)
really see the true costs of things. And that's not easy to do. It takes time and really great companies do that. And a lot of companies are not, you know, are not run by gap principles. And it's funny because sometimes buyers say, well, I do not believe that this is a gap principle accounting. And I just start laughing because it's a small business. So that's correct. Most of it's not gap principles. So that's why you do need to do due diligence and have, you know, either a quality of earnings light or

really sit down with the bank statements and reconcile and that you can do in QuickBooks have these. Was there an actual year end and does it tie into the tax trends? I can't tell you how often that QuickBooks P &L does not tie into the tax turn at all.

Jon Stoddard (14:26.158)
No, it's not. I mean, it's like the story that I now tell to people is like, okay, I saw the SIM, it's doing $300,000 according to SDE. We looked at the QuickBooks files, it's a different number. We looked at the tax returns, it's a different number. And there's different objectives to each document. I said, the only way we're gonna really see was like, if we look for the bank statements, just ask for 12 months of bank statements. And I go, oh my God, this is throwing off 570,000 a year.

Because she's using it for her personal bank account.

Jackie Hirsch (14:58.6)
Right, and we see that a lot. I was just telling one of my sellers, there was a deal we did a couple years ago where the seller put, they built a boathouse for a quarter million in the cost of goods on the balance sheet. So that was a quarter million that could have gone straight to the bottom line at a 4X and it didn't. And so it took us another year to bring that to market just to kind of mitigate that. We did share that that's what it was. He did have the receipts, however,

Jon Stoddard (15:01.077)
Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (15:28.126)
the bank won't accept it, right? And so we need ad backs that the bank can see clearly and accept. And so a lot of times they don't accept those widget-y ad backs that people do. It was a nice boathouse. You could live there. It was very nice. Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (15:29.998)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (15:39.096)
Yeah, me ask you about that. So you explained that narrative to the underwriters and they just said no? how was that conversation?

Jackie Hirsch (15:50.195)
Yeah, yeah, of course they said no, it's a construction company and they have it separated out in cost of goods that that's where that went. And you can kind of see it, but you you're still using construction materials. So it's really hard to just confirm that yes, all of those construction materials and all of that labor when you're buying construction materials, you're using construction labor, all of that, all of those items went to that boathouse. Now we saw a picture of it. We saw the receipts.

we saw that they only used one vendor, but the bank would not accept it. And so you have to, know, and then there was another deal I did where they paid their kid who only worked a few hours a week in the business, but they paid him six figures and he lived in a different state and the bank just would not accept that because he was doing some work for the business online. Yeah. So sometimes they just, and depends upon the bank as well.

Jon Stoddard (16:24.439)
Interesting.

Jon Stoddard (16:38.602)
Online or something or something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. so it's probably a pretty good idea to have a relationship with the people of the bank. I would say. Yeah. Yeah. Let me ask you about the ad backs. Let me ask you about ad backs because I see a lot of, business brokers and they'll just put the seller doesn't know a lot about ad backs or adjustments. And so the

Jackie Hirsch (16:53.862)
It helps. But you don't know, you can't control which bank.

Jon Stoddard (17:12.526)
The broker just goes, here, let's add this back, add this back, add this back. But it's pretty easy to go to Chetu Pithit and go, is this a legitimate ad back? And go, no, or it's questionable. Why do they do that? I know that why they do that to put another multiple on a bigger number and it looks bigger and that's a starting point, but why? Is it only sophisticated buyer goes, no, that's not a legitimate ad back. It's gonna be there next year and it's not gonna add cashflow to your bank account.

Jackie Hirsch (17:40.009)
Right. You know, this is a great example. There's a school I'm selling and I'll be selling a chain of schools, but there's a one unit and they received a grant for a couple hundred thousand, right? So it's in other income. Well, I took that out, right? I said, did you receive a couple hundred thousand every year? No, no, every now and then. Well, I'm subtracting that out. But that's a lot of income to just subtract out, but it's not real income that the business is earning.

And so I don't feel like that's accurate to have then generate through the multiples. And most brokers would leave that in. And that's not what I do. So the other thing is sometimes you have a husband and wife team and this is kind of the funniest. And I'm laughing when you're mentioning what brokers do, because this is my competitive edge. I don't do this type of stuff, right? This is how I've done so many deals and this is why I get referred so many to, you know, I get a lot of seller referrals. Like the seller refers me to another seller.

or attorneys on that deal refer me to their clients. I forgot where I was going, but anyway, that's, yeah.

Jon Stoddard (18:43.022)
The ad backs and let me kind of ask a different question about depreciation that you'll see in an ad back. It definitely is a legitimate ad back accounting wise. However, it's a non-cash event. It doesn't add to cashflow. Doesn't add extra like, oh my God, it's added, you know, a hundred other hundred thousand dollars to cashflow that I can use my bank SBA loan to go tech. That's not really true.

Jackie Hirsch (19:10.554)
So you have to look, and this is where we get into normalizing the balance sheet, which a lot of brokers don't do in addition to just doing ad backs on the PNL.

One of my sellers has an F450. They bought it and expensed it through the company on the P &L and they can do that. And that is real depreciation that somebody is not gonna have. And you can add that back. So now let's talk about real items that are on the balance sheet. Let's say you have equipment, you purchase new equipment and you write off a bunch of depreciation cause you can accelerate it.

but you have like three year old equipment that's still in really good shape. I do think that there's a portion of depreciation that can be added back to the P &L if it's in the P &L under depreciation or normalized in the balance sheet. So I think that it just is case dependent. You have to understand what is in the business. And a lot of times brokers don't dig and see what that is. know, accelerated depreciation that happens, you know, the first three years for sure. I think you can add some of that back. And then if somebody gets a new

Jon Stoddard (20:09.955)
Right.

Jackie Hirsch (20:21.278)
A buyer is going to get a new depreciation if they have an asset sale, resets.

Jon Stoddard (20:23.936)
It resets, at the asset value of the used, like a CNC machine, I buy it brand new. It's a million dollars. It depreciates over five years, but it resets at the value of that. That's why you should do a quality of earnings.

Jackie Hirsch (20:28.35)
Right. For a million bucks, yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (20:41.402)
In my opinion, and that's one of the reasons. And then the other thing is if there's a stock sale, I know that Kevin Henderson or Eric Pesafici, they would recommend that you would do like look and see what the structure, the legal structure of the business. But you do a 338H tax selection to bring up the basis or you have to do an F reorg if they have maybe an S Corp that the business is in so that a new entity like the EIN number stays the same, but it allows them to buy it with

a stock sales structure, right, but treated like an asset sale for tax purposes.

Jon Stoddard (21:16.966)
that's interesting. So you're still buying the app, the business as an asset, but you would buy that as a stock sale for that. Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (21:24.114)
Right, and you can still treat it as purchase. So there's ways around that to mitigate some of the, it helps the new owners tax depreciation structure.

Jon Stoddard (21:28.899)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (21:37.742)
Yeah. Can you tell me about that? I'm going to sidebar questions about that quality of earnings light. What are we talking about there? Yeah. Versus a quality. I know the quality earnings on a, you know, $30, $60,000 price tag for a mid-market company that actually calls customers, goes, how long you going to be ordering from this company? Which is completely different than what a quality of earnings light. Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (21:45.618)
Yes.

Full Ream.

Correct.

Jackie Hirsch (22:02.014)
So equality of earnings light is really kind of exactly what you think it would be. What happened was my understanding in Sam Rosati's bootcamp is they kept saying, hey, know, our searchers are getting hammered and not finding some of these things and we need equality of earnings, but they can't pay, you know, 50, 60 grand. So what can we do? And so I know that Hollywell started equality of earnings light. know that LCS Max Limas's company, he also does this, but they offer equality of earnings light.

that allows a smaller version. It's like a smaller version of the full thing where they'll spot check different things. So one of the deals that we did, I had a commercial glass business. They would do commercial glass for small businesses like Tesla dealerships and stuff like that. So they would do the glass. so they would take like 25 jobs and like match it over three years. Like, and they would again match the PO to the invoice, to the cost of goods, to the labor. And then

close it all the way out through the bank statement. Where'd the money come in for that job? And when you do that, you can really see what somebody's accounting is like. It becomes very painfully clear. And that business passed with flying colors. They were really phenomenal. They exceptional accounting, exceptional bookkeeping. For a construction company, was just incredible. And you know, they were doing, you know, sub 10 million, but it was a great company in Florida. It was just a regional, you know, company in Florida.

Jon Stoddard (23:20.962)
How big were they?

Jon Stoddard (23:25.516)
Okay.

Jon Stoddard (23:30.242)
Yeah, it makes it lot easier to sell if the books are reviewed or audited. yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (23:33.064)
Yes, does. Well, they weren't reviewed or audited. They were just great books. And then they did the quality of earnings. They were not reviewed and audited. I very rarely see reviewed or audited financials in the space, let's call it sub, yeah, sub 20 million. I don't see that stuff. Like somebody recently asked me for audited financials and I about fell out of my chair laughing. It's like you're in the wrong business.

Jon Stoddard (23:37.399)
Jon Stoddard (23:44.617)
SMB Space, yeah yeah.

Jon Stoddard (23:53.038)
Really? Yeah. So it was like, I always set this scene that goes like, remember, and when you get these books from these sellers is you just got to set the story of like, when they started, I got this little idea or I left my HVAC company, I'm going to start it myself and then I'm going to do my books myself until I turn it over to my wife or turn it over a bookkeeper. And then it's just compiled on top of each other years and years go by. And you know, it's not exactly gap processes in place. Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (24:21.948)
No, but you know, I've seen some amazing companies like that. And it's the companies like that that I love the most where they started with nothing and they just like build and build and build. But then, you know, there's a lot of psychology in those deals. you start, know, somebody's had this business for 40 years and they grew up in a trailer, like literally a trailer with no shoes. And then they're a multimillionaire and they were already a multimillionaire, but they didn't receive a multimillion dollar check and.

Jon Stoddard (24:38.318)
Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (24:47.262)
I have a lot of times where, you there are people that cry in my office. There are people that are really freaked out by the whole thing, like who am I and what am I doing and where am I going? to, they've always had this vision of what wealthy people are and who they are and they're not that type of person. And I see that a lot. And so we have a lot of conversations, you know, like what that means, like you're still that same guy, whoever you want to be. You can be that guy that was that guy in the trailer. You can be the multimillionaire guy and those guys can.

coexist together in that same body. And so sometimes I have to give my sellers books like during the deals, you know, hey, maybe you should read this and you know, we really do a lot of, you know, like fear by Thich Nhat Hanh. It's a Buddhist monk, but fear by Thich Nhat Hanh, know, fear Thich Nhat Hanh. That's like one of my favorites to give sellers, buyers, my friends. I've, you know, given that to a lot of people. I think it really just makes you kind of step back and

Jon Stoddard (25:24.418)
Like what? What books? Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (25:35.79)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (25:43.096)
Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (25:44.038)
and have a slightly different perspective. Sometimes when you're so in it, you can't see what's going on. You're like in the chaos. So let me step back and say, okay, it's really not as chaotic and crazy as I thought.

Jon Stoddard (25:56.632)
Yeah. How do you see when a seller comes to you or you reach out to him, you ask him like, are you motivated to sell? How do you decide that really, really they're going, okay, they're going to sign this and they're going to sell and they're not going to get all the way to the end of the altar and go, change my mind. And I'm sure that's happened to you. Yes.

Jackie Hirsch (26:16.296)
You know, John, I love this question. It has, it has. I love this question. You know, I tell people sometimes, diligencing a deal is like, diligencing a spouse. You'll never know everything before you get married. You just won't.

Jon Stoddard (26:30.282)
look at that. You got to pass this bill until you figure out what's in it. Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (26:34.088)
I didn't say that, I didn't say that, but like, you just can't diligence everything. The bill was created by somebody, and I guess you could say the person was created by God, but like the reality is like, you just don't know everything and you can't predict what's gonna happen. So when you're diligent in a business, you'll ask things like, what are your day-to-day tasks? know, how do you feel about this? Have you tried this? You know, what are your thoughts on this? Maybe it's something that they've tried before.

Jon Stoddard (26:41.464)
Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (27:02.76)
but I think a lot of times people really don't take the personal part of the business into consideration and how personal the business is. And their personal relationships with the staff or their customers. And I'm not saying that they're going to barbecues at each other's houses all the time, but they have a personal relationship. Like they've seen, there was a business that we purchased and the seller had been using the same printer locally in town for 24 years, had never met them.

We were shocked by this, just absolutely shocked. And you don't really understand those relationships. We didn't understand that relationship until we owned the business.

Jon Stoddard (27:40.92)
Yeah. Let me ask you about that because that's like every business seller creates their own culture and it's usually around their personality. Can you tell if a buyer aside from the skills or they don't have the money, but their cultures are just not going to match. I it's easy to say like, you know, the guys from the black rifle coffee are not going to be good for promoting on a liberal news channel. Okay. Not a fit.

Jackie Hirsch (27:56.4)
Mm-hmm, yes.

Jackie Hirsch (28:08.636)
Agreed.

Jon Stoddard (28:10.509)
Right?

Jackie Hirsch (28:11.294)
That's actually some good coffee. So, I had this meeting one time and my sellers were from Iowa and this guy comes in from Brooklyn and just starts like firing away questions. And I could just see my sellers faces. Like I could see them want to shrink and go under the carpet and run away. And we had to finish this meeting. I still think about as one of the worst meetings I've ever had. It was such an extreme culture clash of how these people.

operate. Yeah, that happens all the time. And then there was another, there was a searcher that came into a deal. And he comes into this deal, he went to a fancy Ivy League school, and he just like sits down and starts grilling them on ratios and terms and percentages. And I knew this and I mean, just it was awful. And my sellers were like, we never f and want to see that guy again, like ever.

Jon Stoddard (29:00.654)
Let me pull out my spreadsheet, I already cut my mouse, don't have it, yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (29:10.886)
So that happens too and but what was funny is the buyer was like, I think it went really well. I think they really liked me. And they're like, we hate that guy. Like we hate him. And it was really insightful. know, I think a lot of people are not always self aware when they're in this process. And you ask like sellers when they get to the finish line, are they definitely gonna afford? You know, people are people and

There's a lot involved in selling a company and I don't fault anybody who gets to the finish line and they don't want to go forward.

It's a reality. It doesn't happen often to me at this point, but it does happen. And it happened on a deal last year with me, the seller, we had great offers and the seller said, I'm getting a divorce. I was like, ooh, okay, so.

Jon Stoddard (30:04.214)
Was that known before you signed the paper or after?

Jackie Hirsch (30:06.914)
it was, he mentioned that things weren't going amazingly well and it just went that direction. what I do know is that the spouse has been through four attorneys. so things are difficult and so we will revisit. Yeah. Yeah. And that's just what it was. And so, the business was going well. there's a little bit of a dip, cause it distracts people when they're getting a divorce and things aren't, they're not, you know, a plus game at that point. And then.

Jon Stoddard (30:21.528)
Yeesh, that's gonna drain a little cash, huh?

Jackie Hirsch (30:35.87)
They'll get back on track.

Jon Stoddard (30:37.428)
Are you obligated to tell the spire about what's happening in that scenario? He's like, Hey, there's going to the divorce and yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (30:44.686)
I ask, yeah. yeah, absolutely. I think that that's, really pertinent information. you know, really what's happening with the person's life, not everything obviously, but like if they're getting a divorce, that's a real thing that they need to know because that's, it's an endeavor. Like, thank God, I've been married for 15 years and it's, you know, I've only been married once cause I was just older when I got married. So that's just like how I did it. But, you know, I,

What I've seen with divorce is it's really all encompassing and it's hard on the family, it's hard on the company. And yeah, that's part of diligence that you'd want to know.

Jon Stoddard (31:23.138)
Yeah. Let me ask you about today's market versus past market. It depends, you know, what I'm trying to get at is like, had somebody come to me and they go, you know, I saw a great deal. It's $1.6 million. I'm going to offer them 1.5. And they got ghosted. They just, they never got a call back. They rejected the LOI. We don't know why they did it, but I,

My advice was that's not where the market is right now because the broker has multiple offers on the table. Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (32:02.938)
You know, it sometimes works. I'll give you that. Like sometimes people make an offer and they're likable and it's the right fit. And the seller says, okay, I think that these people can close a deal because that's one of the factors. Like, can this person close a deal? I think they can close a deal and I think they can take it to the finish line. And here's, you know, sometimes the buyer gives reasoning. Here are my numbers. This is why it works for me. And I think that that's one scenario where you could make that work.

Jon Stoddard (32:06.786)
Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (32:32.382)
Here's my loan, here's what I'm gonna be getting, here's what I need to pay myself, here's what my tax liability is gonna be, like submit a spreadsheet with that deal. That has worked. That being said, in this market, it's one of the lowest inventory markets I've seen in a long time, and we are getting some serious multiples for deals. When I put a deal on that's 750 SDE even, like which is pretty low, but a lot of my stuff is, you one to three EBIT.

Sometimes I'll get something as big as like seven or eight EBIT, but like most of my stuff is like pretty like one to three EBIT. I have strategics, I have private equity, I have searchers, I have traditional searchers, I have independent sponsors, like everybody. It's like I did a, everybody, yeah, I did a post with like all this herd of goats like running down the street. And like, think Cody Sanchez reposted it because it was so funny about like, this is what happens when I put a deal on the market. And sometimes I try and keep it really small when I run a process and I pull a list.

Jon Stoddard (33:11.278)
People are gonna raise capital fast. Yes. Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (33:27.258)
And sometimes we open it up just to kind of see what else we can get, cast a wide net, but still keep it confidential. But there have been times where we get like 700, like we had a bookkeeping company, 700 NDAs. And these buyers are like, well, you I'm the only one and I've never bought anything and I'm going to get funding for this. you know, we just sold that for cash.

Jon Stoddard (33:31.65)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (33:51.278)
Wow. This is funny thing because I used to work for Intuit and I was looking at all the major accounting companies, brokers, easy to get on the list five years ago, easy to look at the deals. Now they cut it off and they're selling for some reason why accounting firms go to one time sales. Now it's 1.2, 1.3 of sales.

Jackie Hirsch (34:14.568)
Yeah, it's intense. You know, I think people realize, you know, it's hard to change accountants. It's annoying, it's frustrating, and so the customer base is pretty sticky, and you know, you can just gather those now.

Jon Stoddard (34:25.304)
Yeah. Yeah. People just don't change their accounting system. I don't even care. I don't, this is a Andrew Wilkinson, some guy, the pretty well accomplished guy from New York and he said, I got this new AI company. go, yeah, it's really, it's different because you just don't go, wow, cool. I'm just going to switch all my accounting systems to an AI system. It doesn't work that way. Right. This has to be a new business that takes it on. Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (34:34.098)
Yeah, I Andrew Wilkinson.

Jackie Hirsch (34:47.838)
Right. Right.

Right. And you know, maybe some people have time to experiment with the AI system. I don't know that I want to experiment with that right now. I like AI and I use it for other items in my business. But as far as like putting all my accounting to that, I don't know if I'll do that right now.

Jon Stoddard (35:07.214)
right, so let me talk about first time buyers. What do the best buyers do differently? How they are prepared versus a unqualified buyer. What does that look like? And obviously after 400 sales, you could tell what that looks like and what it doesn't look like. Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (35:13.564)
Yes.

Jackie Hirsch (35:24.188)
Right. Lately, I've had to get really specific with my time because I've been so busy. You we are mainly sales side representation and for buyers to stand out these days, they need to have a bio. They need to have a criteria. Like, what's your criteria? What's your experience? What's your background? Why would you be a good buyer for this business? You know, that's important. Like, why would you even, you know, why would a seller choose you? Right. Because the seller is the one that's choosing and we have to

Jon Stoddard (35:45.464)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (35:52.824)
because they want to turn over or not see their employees on unemployment line.

Jackie Hirsch (35:57.951)
Well, they're looking for somebody maybe with some relevant experience or who's led a team, who has business background potentially. They want to know that, you know, or if somebody's asking to hold a note, they want to know that they'll get paid. So the seller still wants to make sure that note gets paid. They want to make sure their vendors, their customers, their employees are all taken care of. It's not just, you know, one item. It's a number of items. And then would they ever go buy that business again? I mean, past their business and

Jon Stoddard (36:12.398)
Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (36:26.822)
Say hello, you're not gonna do that if you don't think that the person who's running is doing a good job. So I think that they really wanna value that, but a buyer that's a good buyer is prepared. They know what to ask, they can ask specific questions when, if they get to a Zoom meeting, they're running the meeting, right, legitimately, but asking the right questions. So you're not grilling them on every single ratio, you're first trying to get to know them. So how do you get to that point? You first have to have,

the bio, a criteria, you need to have maybe proof of funds. A lot of buyers are like, well, why don't I need, why do I need to show proof of funds? Well, you're asking for all of the seller's personal financial information, their tax returns, everything about the business, and you don't want to provide any data that you could, yeah, like you can't even do the deal. So that, I think that they have to be prepared. And if they can have that, and if they have an investor, show who your investor is, have a letter of support.

Jon Stoddard (37:07.81)
Yeah. You haven't shown helping your kimono at all. Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (37:23.528)
they need to show up ready and they need to ask the right questions. Then when they approach a broker, it should be specific. Don't call a broker and say, hey, I'm thinking about like maybe purchasing a company at some point. I'd love to know like what you think I should be doing and do you want to have coffee? Like, no. I then turn into Megan, Megan trainer. like, my name is no, my number is no, my sign is no, right? Like she has a song. It's so funny. Like I'm like, no.

Jon Stoddard (37:36.312)
Hahaha

Jackie Hirsch (37:49.939)
Because I can't, I can't have coffee. Like sometimes, Dawn, we have 30 to 50 buyer outreaches a week of people who just want to get to know us and be on our list. It's intense, right? So then we have our buyers for our actual deals. So if you want to get seen deals, you need to be very specific in your outreach. You call a broker in your area and say, hey, I am interested in this specific deal. And then if they don't have a specific deal and you're trying to build a relationship, do research on that broker.

I saw that you sold such and such and I would like a business like that. What else do you have like that? I am specifically looking for this. Call with a point and call with a reason. And then from there, if they give you anything to look at, look at it. Keep an open mind. If it's not for you, you know, I really like this business. I don't think it's for me because I don't really want to work nights and weekends at a place. I'm open to working nights and weekends at my house for the business. I understand. I might need to put in 80 hours.

Be specific. And I try and tell buyers that all the time, but they don't always listen. The good ones do.

Jon Stoddard (38:57.112)
Yeah, I always tell the story of there was a porta-potty business in Indiana doing like 2 million bucks and it was really, really profitable. 1.5, something like that. go, but do you want to do the business? Cause there's a lot of shit in this business.

Jackie Hirsch (39:14.184)
Yes, it's always gonna be number one and number two.

Jon Stoddard (39:17.634)
Yeah, you're cashing a lot of money, great, but you have to want to be able to like, guy doesn't show up, you got to put the suit on, you got to spray the blue stuff. You've got to be able to do that, yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (39:25.512)
Right. That's right.

Right, yeah and there's certain businesses, like I would rather do that business than maybe commercial property management. I like commercial property management, it's the condo association management. Condo association management, that is a no for me. Being in a meeting, yeah.

Jon Stoddard (39:42.946)
Yeah, yeah, what? I had a student look at those and there's like 15 of those in there and he had to evaluate each one. What's going on? I don't know a lot about that industry. Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (39:52.691)
Okay, so when you manage like a condo association or an HOA, so it's HOA or condo association management. I like commercial property management or property management, but you have to go to these meetings. They're always at night or on the weekends. You get like some retired litigator attorney that's like debating what doorknob to have on each door and you know, people fighting and like you're dealing with large sums of money that you have to allocate. It's not fun.

Jon Stoddard (40:18.978)
The grass is one entire than it should be.

Jackie Hirsch (40:22.334)
Yeah, right. Like I just, I would much rather put on the hazmat suit and clean the porta potty than go to those meetings all the time. Cause I think that you would provide like a happy, I think it'd be a happier business, the porta potty business. And you'd be able to make great jokes all day long. There's nothing funny about HOA property management.

Jon Stoddard (40:29.123)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (40:39.374)
Yeah, let me ask you about some kind of a wild deals that took a long time or, or, you know, died once, twice, three times. Like what, what, tell me a couple of starts out of 400.

Jackie Hirsch (40:51.678)
What John, never, John, never have deals die, come on. That never happens. That's a myth. Yeah, yeah. It's a lot. Yeah, it's a lot. mean, you know, I've been doing this since 1998. It's a long time. So if you do like a number of deals every year and you're just always on it, as far as like deals that take a long time, there was a deal I did last year. It was my longest deal and actually the buyers.

Jon Stoddard (40:54.99)
400 you are at the like major league baseball anybody that's 400 is crazy. Yeah

Jackie Hirsch (41:19.366)
sent me a huge bouquet of flowers, like thanking me and congratulating me on closing my longest deal that was under contract. So this deal, it was a year and a half, year and a half. There were a number of problems on the deal. One, it's located in this very small town that does not like business. It's very anti-business town. And they do that because they're trying to keep it small town. And I respect that. But this business had been there for 40 years.

Jon Stoddard (41:26.946)
Yeah. How long was that? Yeah. Year and a half. Wow. Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (41:49.571)
And they were just trying to get zoned for the business that they have been in for 40 years in that specific location. And they, we were really having a hard time doing the lease. So what happened was, is the city made the business, the landlord do all sorts of commercial improvement to the property. And they had to go through all sorts of re-permitting, re-zoning, even though the business had been there. And then finally we were able to get that.

Jon Stoddard (41:56.206)
Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (42:19.026)
then, you know, there are certain things that happened with the bank. You know, we had the bank's closing attorney didn't like the way the lease was written. And the landlord would sometimes be on a yacht, sometimes be out of town. Like this guy did not he was not around. Right. This was a very small property that he owned, even though it was many acres. But, you know, he owned like 200 properties. This was, know, so we had to always try and connect with him. And it was a problem. And that was that became an issue. And then

You know, had stuff like Taylor Swift came to town and this is no joke. So when it came time for closing, the bank closed that day. And so we couldn't fund the same time because the bank was closing. Because it was the bank was located in the town where Taylor Swift was going to be. was it was insane. And so the seller who had waited for this deal for a year and a half, like we had to delay it another week because of Taylor Swift. And those are real things. I have to deal with my deal, you know, and and it just makes it I mean, it makes a little bit fun. Like, you know, I have to call like

Hey, you know how you're gonna get that million dollars in, you know, in earnings and you were gonna go out of town? Well, Taylor Swift is coming to town, so that's gonna be delayed a week. But other than that, it's fine.

Jon Stoddard (43:27.557)
yeah, that's a good excuse. That sounds like it. Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (43:30.377)
So yeah, there's always weird deals and inconsistencies. I people die on my deals. I've had people get really sick. Yeah, I mean, there's stuff that really happens. you know, like there was a deal I did and the seller's like, listen, my son still works here who was 21. So he really couldn't have taken over the business. He just really wasn't ready. It was a 34 person mill workshop and his wife still worked there. And he's like, I need you to find a buyer that really culturally fits who's gonna take care of my family. And when he said that he meant,

Jon Stoddard (43:35.799)
really? Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (43:59.995)
all of the workers, like not just his kid and his wife, like everybody. And yeah.

Jon Stoddard (44:05.858)
Yeah, what do you mean when somebody, do you, quick questions do you ask when he said, I need you to take care of my family? What, where do where do you like, okay, what do what do you mean by that? Right? Where are you going?

Jackie Hirsch (44:14.302)
Yeah, well they, donuts every Friday, Cakes for every birthday, time off for your birthday, know, healthcare, even though that's not common in construction. All of those items, like they had a 401k plan, it's unusual for, you know, a small millwork business. So those types of things, like you're gonna take care of them. The way I take care of them, you're gonna take care of my suppliers and pay them on time. You're gonna take care of my customers and the...

Jon Stoddard (44:18.059)
Okay.

Jon Stoddard (44:32.845)
Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (44:41.522)
get the work done. Like they wanted somebody with a very serious work ethic that, you know, also would take care of their team. And, you know, I don't talk about this that often, but a lot of times the owner is the parent of the staff. Not always, but often they are the dad of the company. They are the mom of the company. And a lot of times, if it's a husband and wife team, they are the mom and dad of the company. And there's a searcher that I know and I've invested with him a couple of times and he uses an incredible structure. He'll buy a company.

Jon Stoddard (44:55.404)
Yeah, yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (45:10.718)
always a husband and wife team, he keeps them on. Then he brings in admin, then he brings in president, then he comes in and works 80 hours a week. So that takeover is a full team. It's not one replacing one. And there's a big difference, right? That really creates a platform for success. And it's those types of searchers all invest in. So I've invested in a number of searcher deals and I've invested in different funds like Minds Capital, if you're familiar with that.

Jon Stoddard (45:39.682)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (45:39.781)
you know, just yeah, so I'm an LP in their original fund. And so I like that kind of stuff. And so those are the kinds of searchers I'll work with, like, what's your plan of action for this? Do you know how to treat your investors? Right? If you're getting investors, you have to know how to treat them on the cap table. Otherwise, you're really not going to be able to function in the deal. And that's an important item to know that a lot of people don't.

Jon Stoddard (46:04.376)
Yeah. A side question on this, the treating the investors with the new SBA 7A SOP rules where you have to wait 10 years to see any dividends or distributions or whatever. how is that? How is it? How do you feel about that? Being an investor? How does other investors going like, I'm not going to wait 10 years to see an ROI. Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (46:19.197)
Yes.

Jackie Hirsch (46:24.626)
You

Yes. Right. I'm the same. I'm the same. I'm not going to wait 10 years to see an ROI. Yeah, I think that that I'm not sure how people are going to look at that going forward. And that'll be interesting because it'll be a discussion next week that I'm sure we'll have at SM Bootcamp with the newest class of searchers. But I do think that there's going to be some big changes. I also don't think that SBA was created to fund private equity.

So I think that it was made for individuals to buy companies to grow our economy. I don't think it's made as a private equity funding source. And I think that that is going to change, but we'll see. We'll see what investors come up with. The deal, you know, there was a deal I just, we just closed in June. And so that's the, no, sorry, in May. So that's the most recent one I did. And so I don't know going forward, I'll probably be investing more in independent sponsor deals, which are not beholden to SBA mechanics.

Jon Stoddard (46:54.626)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (47:22.382)
Yeah, it's the debt service. Yeah. It's, I think that's interesting because I don't like just my opinion. And like, see what AngelList does and they invest in the most riskiest things on the planet. And these people are happy to lose 10, 50, $100,000 for one kind of rocket ship out of 30 in a portfolio. And now these are much less risky.

Jackie Hirsch (47:45.704)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (47:50.156)
and can get a return on it because they're already cash flowing. But now they're saying you have to wait 10 years.

Jackie Hirsch (47:56.681)
Yeah. And you know, it's going to be interesting. And again, I believe that that's the interpretation, but I'm not positive, right? And every bank has a slightly different interpretation. So I haven't been on any Live Oak webinars. Sometimes Lisa Forrest gives a webinar. She deals with a lot of searchers. Right.

Jon Stoddard (48:13.368)
Yeah, I haven't seen any notice about that clarification yet. Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (48:18.064)
And you know, SBA changes every quarter. That's the other thing. It might be this way for this quarter and everybody freaks out and starts running and then they might change it. But really, my brother, who's my business partner, we just started like laughing a little bit because like I was joking like SBA just went back to the way it was. Like, yeah, that's all it did.

Jon Stoddard (48:34.158)
couple of years ago. Yeah. How about dropping the interest rates that might open it up a little bit? Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (48:39.39)
You know, I did an SBA deal, I was thinking about this, I did an SBA deal in 2000 at 13%. And everybody actually thought it was okay, because again, you can't, there's no one else who's gonna give you the money. Right, so you can complain about the interest rate, but the reality is where else are you gonna get the money? Hard money lenders? That's not fun, that's not happening. Right, so you can't go to a hard money lender, you can't really, you can maybe suck out some equity of your house, but that's only gonna get you so far and not,

Jon Stoddard (48:45.773)
my god.

Jon Stoddard (48:52.866)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (48:57.964)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (49:08.013)
Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (49:08.43)
usually to the level you'd want. really it's the only game in town.

Jon Stoddard (49:11.404)
Yeah, you're not going to be able to buy a $5 million business. There's no, there's no avenues right there. Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (49:14.078)
Yeah. And so it's brilliant. And other countries don't have it. The Canadians don't have it. The Europeans don't have it. No one else has it. The South Americans. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you should see the movie, The Bank of Dave. I love that movie, The Bank of Dave, if you've seen that. And that's about a real bank. Yeah, that's a great movie.

Jon Stoddard (49:21.598)
The UK only has five banks in the entire thousand year in existence.

Yes, I have. Yes. Yeah. I said that. All right. So you talk a lot about the older businesses hold for 50 years legacy kind of things. What about do like online software? Do you like those dislike those or

Jackie Hirsch (49:48.029)
I do, I do like those. just like the other ones more. I really prefer like brick and mortar. As I was saying before the show, you my dad was a rocket scientist and used to be, you know, in the manufacturing facilities for aerospace parts. And I just always liked that kind of stuff. Also, I like construction and heavy equipment. I enjoy that more. I enjoy like producing something and it's fun. mean,

Jon Stoddard (49:51.18)
Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (50:14.672)
Our business, I told you, we have a small side business and that also produces my sister-in-law runs that, she's the CEO. So for me, that's just a little bit more fun. Yes, we sell online businesses. I think that they're really volatile these days, like because of all of the giants, it's very volatile.

Jon Stoddard (50:29.19)
Yeah. Well, like what is going to be attacked by AI? Like, Hey, I, know, a student goes, you know, Oh, look at this copywriting business. go, you serious? I don't know. But I go like, look, let me show you how easy it is to copywriting right now. I go to chat, you'd be to your grok or whatever Gemini. And I go, I just wrote a book. Did you see that? Yeah. And I could have it flavored with any author. Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (50:39.612)
I wonder if that was ours.

Was it a couple years ago? Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (50:52.67)
No, yeah, that's right. Yeah, and so we had a business like that literally as chat GBT was coming out and they would write help write, you know, thesis papers and term papers. And literally you could hire a professor to help you. And once and literally it came on the market right as chat GBT was coming out. And we didn't we didn't sell it. That was one of the few businesses we didn't sell. We have like an 85 % success rate, but I think it's because we're really specific about what we take to market.

Jon Stoddard (51:12.514)
Yikes. Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (51:22.418)
very specific.

Jon Stoddard (51:22.936)
Yeah. Now AI could help, you know, the guys from John Wilson companies and down in Florida, and he's talks about this, but AI can, it's not going to replace somebody driving out a truck and fixing an AC system in Arizona in August. It's just, that's never going to happen. Maybe the booking system, maybe the outreach, maybe the financials, all that, but yeah. Or the CNC. Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (51:42.847)
Yeah, that's absolutely true. And you know, it's interesting because think about how many years ago they said, yeah, computers and tech, it's going to replace all the realtors. I feel like there's more realtors than ever before because it doesn't. You still need people and you still need a personal relationship and you still need somebody to say, hey, you you didn't look at this. Like there was a house that came on the market in my neighborhood and I'm not a realtor, but we sent it to our friends immediately.

and their agent didn't send that to them, but we're in the neighborhood and we're like, hey, move into our neighborhood and they bought it. It's been amazing. But their agent didn't see that. You know, I sent it to them.

Jon Stoddard (52:21.016)
Let me ask you kind of a scenario where a first time buyer, how long do you normally see somebody take to buy? And I'm kind of just kind of getting a sense of, you know, lot of first time buyers, they look at 13 deals or they look at a hundred deals, whatever it is, you know, what does that look like to you? like, you probably have people come and call you back. Hey, do you have any HVAC companies or hey, do you have any plumbing companies? Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (52:46.59)
That's part of the 30 calls, 30 to 50 calls a week. So we get that all the time. And one of the buyers for that bakery I mentioned, that Disney bakery I mentioned, they told us that they looked at 2000 businesses before they bought their other 2000. And I thought about how much time.

Jon Stoddard (53:00.046)
2000 and all of sudden he goes maybe I should buy a company that already has yeah yeah

Jackie Hirsch (53:06.974)
Yeah. How much time was wasted? Right? What was wrong with their process? 2,000 companies. So do I want to work with buyers all the time? Every now and then I still will work with a buyer. It's not often. It's just, I can't show somebody 2,000 businesses. Like, I just can't. And that's not realistic. So I could maybe show somebody a handful. There was a buyer that I've become friends with them, but I've shown him no fewer than like 30 businesses.

Jon Stoddard (53:23.714)
Yeah, no.

Jackie Hirsch (53:36.415)
over the past three years and even that, I'm like, I can't, I can't do it anymore. Like I don't have time. Yeah, yeah, they know, they know how busy I am. They know, you know, I just won, you know, another award at the IBBA, you know, for volume of deals and I'm always in top 50 in the state of Florida. And I won the award Gator 100 for the University of Florida for growth. So yeah, I mean, they know I'm busy. It's not like a fake busy, like I'm actually doing a lot of deals. And so I don't have time to like show.

Jon Stoddard (53:41.262)
Do you tell him that? said, don't. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (54:04.178)
buyers like other deals in Florida, we do crow broker, right? So you can show somebody a deal and split the fee. It's unusual, but Florida does that. And I used to do more of that. I just can't do it. I just don't have the time because I have so much sell side activity.

Jon Stoddard (54:19.106)
Yeah. So I got a question about this. The Florida BLMS, is that a actual state thing or is that a private company? Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (54:27.73)
Yes. Okay. Yes. The BBF, MLS.com is a state of Florida. It's a private organization, the Business Brokers of Florida. I've been on the state board, or I've been on the state board, I've been on the local board twice, but that is the Florida website. If you're looking for a business in Florida, I would check there every day, multiple times a day.

Jon Stoddard (54:50.978)
Yeah, this is like, I tell everybody, where do you live? Florida. go to this first. Because no other state does it and it's lovely. Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (54:55.794)
Yeah. No other state does it. It's really, and those are legit businesses that are available. And I think it's a great place to start. You can really like scour the state pretty quickly. There's real data. There's, you know, not all brokers fill it out the same, but we do have somebody that on the board that kicks out listings that look strange. Like if your nonprofit is higher than your gross sales, there's a problem. And we kick that out.

Jon Stoddard (55:03.18)
Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (55:22.914)
And sometimes we see that, sometimes we see that. Yes, we've seen that, I've seen that. And I think the brokers in Florida, there's I think 861 brokers currently in the state of Florida. And there's about 1100 deals that transact through that a year. So think about it, I'm doing like 30 deals, I don't know what other brokers are doing. Like they're not doing that many deals, they might do one to five. I think most brokers are,

Jon Stoddard (55:22.99)
The SDE is higher than the gross. Whaaaat?

Jackie Hirsch (55:52.575)
average age I think is still like 55 plus. Yeah, it's yeah. Right. Yeah. I mean, it's you know, there's been you know, at the IBBA it is an old crowd is a very old crowd. Very. I mean, many people in their 70s and 80s many

Jon Stoddard (55:55.138)
Yeah, it's like real estate. yeah, it's less like not 80 20. It's probably 95 5. Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (56:13.038)
So this is a job. Why do they stay for so long? Is it because it's lucrative or is it's easy to do or what is it? Why do the people do it so long?

Jackie Hirsch (56:18.802)
think because first I think it's interesting and you could do a deal like every now and then, you know, and you could just kind of golf a lot and then maybe get a deal every now and then. I think that's what it is. It's never been like that for me. I'm not retired, right? So I just am always like doing a ton of deals. And so that's, that's maybe how I've been able to like chalk up so many deals at this point is I'm just always like, you know, selling a lot of companies and,

Jon Stoddard (56:33.687)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (56:42.894)
always 400 deals. Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (56:45.852)
It's a great retirement opportunity. They can kind of do something every now and then, or at least tell people this is what they do.

Jon Stoddard (56:50.958)
Yeah, we looked at the deal, medical billing company in Texas and the two brokers got online and they were like, one was 76. The other guy was like 80, like just loving what they're doing. Just loving it. he like, I've done this for 30 years, dude. There's nothing you could throw at me right now that I haven't seen. Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (56:59.88)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (57:08.478)
That's right. And so some of those brokers are really great. And you know, I sold a company last year and the guy was 81 and I met him when he was 78. And he's like, Jackie, I'm just not ready to sell. I said, well, why are we talking? He's like, well, everybody thinks I should sell. I'm like, well, that's their problem. And so, you know, he came to me when he was 80, he was finally ready, but during the deal he turns 81, he bought himself a brand new 2024 Corvette. And I asked him, what color are you going to get? He's like, red, red, Jackie. Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (57:19.31)
Ha ha ha!

Jon Stoddard (57:23.789)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (57:34.84)
The rear engine, that's a rear engine, right? Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (57:37.326)
So I was like, well, I would have gotten blue, but you know, he got red. yeah, you know, it's a great, I think some people don't want to retire. I'm not sure that I want to retire. Like, what are you gonna do? I don't play golf.

Jon Stoddard (57:47.256)
Yeah. What are you going to? Well, yeah. I, you know, our family, have one of our guys, in my family and it's just, retired from hunting well after 30 years and he just did nothing. Just sat in his room and just, I think it's like major depression. I don't know what's going on, but, yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (58:05.086)
Yeah. I mean, I don't golf, but I would golf cart race for sure. Like if that were available, I would hands down. And I do like golf clothing there. It's very comfortable and very functional. But, know, I think if I were retired, I would just invest in deals and buy pieces of the deals and, you know, still be active in that space. So I really enjoy that. You know, we invest in venture. We've we've done all sorts of different things for our portfolio personally. And I really do enjoy talking to people about.

Jon Stoddard (58:11.042)
HAHAHAHA

Jackie Hirsch (58:33.724)
what they've started and what they've created. And one of my friend's jokes that really what I do secretly is just business therapy all day. Like that's all I do. It's like just like business therapy.

Jon Stoddard (58:41.41)
Yeah, I think everybody loves that story. Let me ask you, how has this journey since 1998 changed you? Like who you become and things you've dismissed in life, they're not essential to whatever value and what is. Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (59:00.702)
Right. You know, I live right near my office. So I'm in my office right now, but I live right near my office because I like to spend time with my husband and my child. Right. So family, my family is super important to me. As far as what I've learned, you know, at 23 when the SBA would be like, I need this such and such again, I'd be like, I gave you that five times, but I'm not as sassy as I was at 23. Like now I'm like, oh, you would like that for the fifth time. My pleasure. would be my absolute pleasure to provide that to you my fifth time. Right.

Jon Stoddard (59:09.614)
Uh-huh.

Jon Stoddard (59:27.102)
It's still smarts if you hear it.

Jackie Hirsch (59:29.976)
So like, think that, you know, it keeps you vibrant to have challenges and to not always have things that are easy. But I feel like with what I've learned over time, and what I've seen over time, you know, if you've, I'm 49 and when you've made it, I would say over 30, you've had a few close calls and definitely over 40, you've had a few close calls of life and death. And so I feel like I am more grounded in a lot of the ways I do things and

seen a lot more, you you see a lot of, you know, death and destruction and sadness and down markets and up markets and joy and catastrophic events. I think that makes it so that you can really relate to your buyers and sellers. I've also started things from scratch. I've also had to close businesses. I've bought businesses. I've sold something I started. And so as a true entrepreneur and business owner, I think my clients really like that about me. They like that I'm

a little bit scrappy and tenacious and I'll tell them what I think. And that's never stopped me. But I would say like over 40, I really turned that filter off. Like strong, like there is no filter. Just, you know, like the joke I made like about the port of hotties. I just, cause it's fun. Like you have to have a little bit of fun and that humor really helps when you're in stressful situations and you need that. And you have to keep things not in a comical way,

Jon Stoddard (01:00:54.062)
Yeah, that's why the Kings used to hire the Jesters. Yeah. Yeah.

Jackie Hirsch (01:00:56.264)
That's right, you have to keep things light, because it does get very stressful and you have to be able to have a crap sandwich and take a look at it and say, this whole pile of manure landed on my front door and you have to say, it must be a gift, so I don't have to go to the store and get fertilizer. But really, the only way out is through often.

And the obstacle is the way, right? So you have to like look at all these different things and help these people through it. And you have to help them through hard times. Like I've referred many people to a divorce attorney and I've referred people to a bankruptcy attorney. And I've had to like refer people to therapists and like recommend numbers of books. Like there's like life happens in these deals. And if people don't see how personal deals are and how meaningful this bespoke creation that somebody built is, they should not be buying it. This is somebody's

absolute unique creation and they have the opportunity to take it to the next level. So you just really always are learning about life and how to help people really get to where they want to go. And sometimes they don't know where that is and they come to you. So I feel really lucky to have this position.

Jon Stoddard (01:02:09.368)
Jackie Hirsch, we're at an hour. I really appreciate that. Thank you so much.

Jackie Hirsch (01:02:13.906)
Yeah, thank you, John. I appreciate it.

Jon Stoddard (01:02:17.944)
me.