the MacAngLyn journey: Canvassing for SMB Cache

KEEP SEARCHING

Lyndee Macaskill
December 14, 2023

TODAY’s ISSUE

👀 Keep Searching
🔍️ Canvassing for SMB Cache - this week’s progress that you can copy
📈 Growth - our take-aways that you can use in your business buying journey
📚️ Resources - books, podcasts, etc. we are using to make us smarter

KEEP SEARCHING

The pungent aroma almost knocked me down. And then the memories relating to the smell came flooding back. I had been searching in my car for months.

With two toddlers, it gets pretty messy in and around their car seats at times. I removed any and all trash, removed both car seats and cleaned the seats where they had been.

Then, I took the seat covers off the car seats and washed them. When I put the seat covers on, the smell in my little hybrid, Ford CMAX was so nice. Maybe I got whatever it was.

Nope. It was still there.

I removed the Weather Tech floor mats which were covering nearly all of the carpet in my small car. They did a great job protecting the carpet on all of the soggy and wet winter days here in Chicago, and were a huge help in keeping the car clean with all of the spills from my small children.

I scrubbed them thoroughly by hand. Then, I cleaned the carpet underneath. It had to be gone now.

Nope. Still there.

I searched for it again. My car was so small that it couldn’t be in too many places. I cleaned under the seats thinking maybe they spilled milk on the carpet.

Nope. Still there.

There really wasn’t anywhere in the car that I hadn’t cleaned. I got a really good air freshener. Nice.

The smell was still faint, but it was Fall. The days were cool, so I drove with the windows cracked and a brisk breeze blowing in.

Between the breeze, the air freshener, and my 5 miles or less a day that I needed to drive, it was a bearable problem.

Time went by. Fall was ending and Winter beginning. My husband bought me a minivan. After a lot of pushback from me, we finally went through with the purchase. Turns out, I like it a lot for the kids, just not the gas mileage or the carbon footprint.

On this particular night, I went to the grocery store in my new (very used) van. You know it’s time to go the store when your 19 year old and your 4 year old tell you that you need groceries. LOL!

Instead of ordering and picking up, as usual, I actually ran into the store between work and picking up the littles. I brought the cart full of baking supplies for Christmas and frozen chicken nuggets out to the van.

Aldi. They don’t bag the groceries. Smaller carbon footprint and cheaper groceries! My favorite.

My process when I actually go into the store is to take the groceries to the car, and load them into my large grocery bags. Then, it’s easy to take everything into the house.

Shoving flour, cans, frozen goods into the bags, I went to open the thick plastic Mariano’s sack next. That’s when I found it. The smell!! Putrid!! After all these months!! It had been transferred into my new van! Inside, a diaper. Of course… I should have known.

I believe that God speaks to us in many ways. I hear Him in the circumstances of life, through the messages I receive from others, through music, the birds in the morning, and even in the stillness of the winter days. Really through everything.

Between the culmination of events around this pungent and disgusting smell and the message that I received on our call with our Contrarian Thinking Deal Flow group last night, He spoke to me one again.

“I sought the Lord, and He answered me; he delivered me from all my fears.” (Psalm 34:4) Fears that I was in too deep with this crazy business buying idea, fears that I didn’t have what it takes, fears that I didn’t know what I was doing, fears that I wasn’t going to find what I was looking for.

But seriously, I believe that it was He who placed this desire to own businesses in my heart anyway, to create, like He creates, and He is leading me through it in His time.

The idea was placed on my heart around 14 months ago. I’ve been at this, learning about how to buy a company and searching / analyzing deals, for 8 months now. It seems like a long time to me when I’m walking through it, but in reality, it’s just the beginning of the journey.

Our homework this month is to get systems and processes in place in order to manage deal flow.

After digging into the assignment, I realized that my process flow starts at analyzing a deal, but it doesn’t address what it takes to get a deal in the first place.

To get this done, buying a business, it really takes systems and processes to become effective. And then it takes doing the process, consistently. So, that is what we are working to do.

I’ve worked in lots of systems in the past, but I have never worked in a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool. This is the type of tool that manages the deal flow, the relationship, the “touches” that you have with a person in cultivating the deal flow.

There are so many options that it almost seems overwhelming. We have whittled it down to a few: HubSpot, Monday.com, Microsoft Dynamics, or Salesforce. Now for the evaluation….

And then the consistency. To keep looking… Eventually, I will find what I’m looking for, what God has in store for me and my family.

Hopefully, it won’t be as stinky as the diaper, or maybe it will be… a waste-management company or a clean up the dead company…

Here are a couple of positive take-aways:

Keep Searching - Always keep searching
Use a CRM Tool for Deal Flow - Track your progress from the beginning
Self Reflection - Continuous improvement… Don’t stop looking within

CANVASSING FOR SMB CACHE

Activities we accomplished this week.

🔍️ 2 Hours Searching for Deals

🎯 20 New Deals Added to the Analysis Sheet

🧑‍🏫 2 Learning Events with Contrarian Thinking

😁 1 Call with an Interesting Proposition

😱 1 Meeting with a SMB Accountant

GROWTH

🌊 Deal Flow Strategy

Researching CRM Software to Support the Deal Flow process
Process analysis to understand that we are not tracking or documenting what happens before the analysis begins.

📦️ Deal Box

Revised Again to be Industry “Agnostic” - If you know anyone who owns a small business in NW Houston that they want to sell, let us know.
Daycares are a great source of regular and consistent cash flow. We are still interested in this industry, but we need to be open to other opportunities that cash flow and have the ability to scale more than daycares/preschools.

🔢 Met with SMB Accountant

This was hard for me. Opening up to talk to someone about money, my money, and my situation is not an easy thing. I was taught that this is not something that “is done” with other people. I mean between my anxiety (which I’m medicated for) and the newness, I felt like crying during the conversation. Logically… different story. It was an awesome experience that I’m so happy to have had. All I have to say is REPS. The more I do, the more comfortable I will be with the situation.
The conversation was so helpful and prescriptive. It gave us direction on how to structure our LLC going forward, how to proceed with filing taxes for this year, and implications of filing taxes on the LLC.

🚗 Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Learning how to use Ahrefs to analyze and use keywords for SEO in blog development of our OutdoorMelodies.com website
Learning how to do on page SEO development to increase organic web search traffic

RESOURCES

Resources that can help you learn about small and medium business (SMB) buying:

🦸‍♀️ Athena Simpson, Lecturer at University of Texas - Podcast - This woman is amazing. She has a wealth of knowledge to share about Entrepreneurship and Small Business Buying.

🔨 Here is a link to a video comparing CRM tools.

🔧 Ahrefs is a software that helps with SEO development. Here is a link to their YouTube channel so you can learn how to increase web traffic.