Talked to a trades buyer this week whose off market process blew my mind. He doesn't touch broker listings. His whole thesis is that competitive processes jack up valuations, so he only does proprietary search. His actual workflow: manually searches Google Maps for plumbing and HVAC businesses in his target states. Uses review count as a rough revenue proxy. Digs for the owner's name one business at a time. Builds a spreadsheet of 1,000 plus companies. Sends it to a direct mail company that prints personalized letters with a photo of him and his family at the bottom. Dozens of responses, multiple owners saying they'd have a conversation about selling. The part that stuck with me: he said the time sink of building that list is the single biggest reason most searchers give up on proprietary search and go back to fighting over broker listings. For those of you doing off market outreach in the trades or any non digital business: how are you actually building your target list? Is it this manual for everyone?