This week, I shared an email story about an unusual customer acquisition strategy employed by the team at my company prior to my arrival and some of its impacts. If you didn't get it, you can subscribe to get it and future stories at www.rookieceo.co

With a story like that, a lot was left untold as you can imagine. For example: My predecessor is also my landlord. He came to the property once and I asked him about the strip club customer acquisition strategy. His reaction: "thank God for those girls." He was proud of it. Sick.

Here are some things I pondered, and as acquirers you might want to as well:

1. What could I have done to better tease this out in diligence?
2. Even if I teased it out, would it have changed my decision to acquire the business?

To the first question, I probably could have figured it out by building a better relationship with the seller - though now I know that the broker had warned him not to talk about it for obvious reasons.

To the second question, I think I would have just said "I'll find a way to fix it." My search for an acquisition was long in the tooth at that point and the multiple I was paying was <4X. Lesson: Don’t underestimate the emotional toll the search is taking on you. For solo search entrepreneurs, build in some accountability to help with this. I've found that My IB/PE acquirer friends don't romanticize deals like sometimes we can. It's always great to have them around to help evaluate things.

This week's story is called "2 babies, born 10 days apart. 1 dad. Me." - The CEO lifestyle can lend itself to vices (workaholism, alcoholism, affair-ism etc). In this story I discuss some events that occurred in the early days of my tenure and how I am dealing with one of these 'isms associated with those events (Read the email to find out which ism).

You can subscribe at www.rookieceo.co