Thrilled to be on the Acquiring Minds podcast today! Here is the link to the episode: redacted Separately, here is an update on EPI-Colorspace, the company I acquired, not originally to operate - 3 years ago. In the podcast, we start to get into this deal 42 minutes in. On May 10, 2023, I acquired EPI-Colorspace through Angel Investments LLC. It was a textbook proprietary deal sourced directly from the founder. No bankers. No auction. No formal process. The deal itself was exceptional: • acquisition price of roughly 1.5x earnings, • almost entirely seller financed, • zero interest on the seller note over five years. What attracted me to the business was not just the price. The core team had worked together for decades and clearly cared about the quality of their work. The clients were marquee and those relationships spanned generations. And the company had survived the GFC, COVID, and multiple industry cycles. But there were concerns too. Customer concentration was real. The business was small. And unlike larger companies I had operated previously, there was very little margin for management mistakes or unexpected disruptions. Still, my original plan was straightforward: I was not supposed to run the company. The idea was to stabilize operations, verify everything post-close, and eventually hire a general manager to operate the business day to day. That plan lasted about 24 hours. The day after closing, the controller — who had managed the books for roughly twenty years — informed me he would be leaving within two weeks. Instead of panicking, I focused on transition. We built a four-week handoff plan, brought in an outside accounting firm, and ultimately improved the function while reducing annual costs by roughly $30,000. For the next several months, operations remained relatively stable. I avoided making major changes early on, but I did begin introducing more transparency and communication into the business through weekly all-hands meetings, operational visibility, and improved project coordination. At the same time, my personal and professional life accelerated rapidly. My brother and I were launching a specialty infusion pharmacy. I got engaged, married, and became a father - within roughly the same period. But financially, EPI held steady through the first-year post-acquisition. Margins remained healthy and we closed the year in line with historical performance and better than the previous two years. Then came the real test. In February 2024, a top account executive — responsible for approximately 35% of sales — abruptly resigned and immediately attempted to pull business to a competitor. For a company our size, that kind of event can become existential very quickly. I had a choice: focus on legal action and non-competes, or focus on clients, execution, and relationships. I chose the latter. We showed up for customers. We doubled down on project execution. And I became deeply involved in nearly every aspect of the business. What followed was one of the hardest operational periods of my career. Over the next year, I cycled through multiple account executives trying to “replace” the lost revenue producer. None of it worked. At one point, a friend and business coach asked me a simple question: “Why can’t you become the sales executive?” That question changed everything. Around the same time, my partner and I dissolved our partnership after increasingly different views on the direction of the business. Eventually, I bought him out completely. That period forced me back into the familiar shoes of a true operator. - Not just an owner. - Not just a dealmaker. - An operator. I stopped looking for someone else to solve the company’s growth problems and went "All in" myself. Eventually, I met Kevin Durbin, who joined EPI with an ownership path tied directly to performance and EBITDA growth. Since then, we’ve focused heavily on client development, project management, communication, and operational systems. Ironically, losing the top salesperson forced us to discover what clients valued most: responsiveness, execution, and trust. Since then, we’ve implemented new systems, integrated AI into portions of our bidding and proposal workflows and invested heavily into operational infrastructure that did not exist before. By the end of 2025, the business had largely recovered financially to pre-departure levels, with a significantly stronger operational foundation underneath it. Now, in 2026, the climb back feels both gratifying and exhausting. That’s the reality of operating a small business: There is always another problem coming. - Another setback. - Another unexpected shoe to drop. But there is also something deeply satisfying about surviving difficult periods, adapting in real time, and rebuilding stronger than before. The immediate goal now is to grow EPI to $1M+ EBITDA and eventually build toward $1.5M in cash flow through a combination of organic growth and selective acquisitions. We’ll see where the next chapter goes and cover some of the options towards the end of the podcast - around the 1 hour 41 minute mark.