🆕 Event Rental Company For Sale Making $1.3m 🎪

Welcome Back to The Corporate Pivot!

If "working late for exposure" sounds suspiciously close to free labor, it’s time for a new strategy. The Corporate Pivot will help you buy a business where the late nights actually pay off—and the rewards go straight into your pocket.

Confusing Corporate Saying of the Day:

“Thought Leader”

Professional Translation: “An individual who is recognized for having innovative ideas and influencing their industry.”

Corporate Pivot Translation: “What you should consider calling your boss if you're preparing to ask for a raise…”

Here’s what we have for you today:

Sam’s Perspective (1st Time Buyer)

🆕 Status Update: Met with Tyler this weekend to go over some strategies and get on the same page for the next investment. It’s important to align your goals with the people you want to do business with—and it’s even more important to do it over a beer 🍻. We both want the same thing: total and complete freedom from the 9-5.

The goal is to find a business that not only meets our criteria for a good multiple but also incorporates some seller buyout deal structures to lower our risk. I’m all for gambling just like the next guy, but leave that to your 12-leg parlays—not something as significant as a large business purchase. Seller buyouts help ensure that the business you’re buying actually produces the numbers it’s supposed to. It’s like a proof of concept: a runway for a year, and then you commit. Think of it like leasing a vehicle—minimize the risk as much as possible, and eventually, you just have to send it because risk will never be zero.

Something interesting we talked about was the importance and difficulty of finding a reliable operator. At the end of the day, you don’t want to buy yourself another job. Tyler has an awesome operator for one of his businesses and admits he really lucked out. I totally agree—if you can find a business with a manager already in place, it’s a HUGE benefit. Hiring someone is always a bit of a risk, but you can mitigate it by using some of the tools we’re creating.

We’re here to help and will continue to document our mistakes and successes so you can learn from our progress.

📚 Cool Business Idea: Glamping Goldmine

Glamping—think camping, but with style and comfort. People want the adventure of the outdoors without roughing it, and they’ll pay good money for it. You can buy a luxury glamping unit, like a JUPE (a high-end tent with all the amenities), for $30k and rent it out for $100-$400 a night. Even at $200 a night, that’s $3k a month—basically an Airbnb in the middle of nowhere.

Don’t have $30k to start? No problem. You can get inflatable glamping tents for $1k-$3k. Rent a piece of land, set it up, and see if people book it. If it takes off, expand: buy premium units, offer extras like guided hikes, and negotiate a buy option for the land after a year.

The demand is huge, the margins are high, and you can start without risking everything. Glamping is the perfect way to tap into the adventure market, make serious cash, and grow big if it works.

Tyler’s Perspective (Multiple Businesses Owned)

🚨 Tip of the Week: Well, I jinxed myself. Of course, following the initial conversation with the broker I mentioned in my previous post (calling to tell me they needed more information) I have not heard back from him (nor did I receive the email they promised to send me that same day). This one was really a bummer because this broker seemed relatively competent and (allegedly) had sold to investment firms before. Never say never, but this seems to be another case of the unresponsive broker. As you are probably seeing, the hit rates for finding the end business is low — but the most frustrating part of this process is how often times you can’t even get past the initial phase of inquiring on a lead due to unresponsiveness. Nonetheless, we keep going forward. It only takes one to get the momentum going. 

💰 Deals < $500k

Business Name: Lot Maintenance Company
Revenue: $1,017,000
Asking Price: $309,600
Profit: $254,800 (Profit Multiple = 1.22)
Location: Orlando, FL
Established: 2009

✅ Pros:

• Recurring Contracts: Strong relationships with prominent property managers and nationally recognized chains ensure ongoing projects.

• High Average Revenue Per Job: Each job averages nearly $3,000, leading to substantial revenue with minimal effort.

⚠️ Cons:

• Highly Dependent on Key Clients: The business relies on contracts from a small number of large clients, posing a potential risk if a major client is lost.

📈 Growth Opportunities:

• Expand Client Base: Diversify the client base by targeting new property management companies and retail establishments.

• Increase Marketing Efforts: Invest in digital marketing to increase brand visibility and attract new clients.

💰💰 Deals $500k - $2m

Business Name: Construction Equipment Rental & Repair Business
Revenue: $786,186
Asking Price: $850,000
Profit: $218,195 (Profit Multiple = 3.89)
Location: Palm Beach County, FL
Established: 1959

✅ Pros:

• Established Reputation: The business has been in operation for 65 years, ensuring strong brand recognition and customer loyalty.

• Diverse Revenue Streams: Offers rental, repair, and sales of construction equipment, providing stability and multiple income sources.

⚠️ Cons:

• Aging Clientele: Long-term clients may age out of the industry, creating the need to attract new, younger customers.

📈 Growth Opportunities:

• Expand Product Offerings: Add new product lines, such as modern landscaping tools, to attract more residential clients.

• Leverage Digital Marketing: Increase online presence and use SEO to reach a wider audience of potential contractors and homeowners.

💰💰💰Deals $2m-$10m

Business Name: Event & Floral Design Production Company
Revenue: $3,000,000
Asking Price: $2,699,000
Profit: $1,300,000 (Profit Multiple = 2.08)
Location: South Carolina
Established: 2005

✅ Pros:

• High-Profile Clientele: Past clients include celebrities and high-net-worth individuals, enhancing the business's reputation and credibility.

• Strong Industry Presence: Recognized leader in the Southeastern event production industry with a well-established referral network.

⚠️ Cons:

• Limited Marketing: Growth has been organic, relying heavily on word-of-mouth and referrals rather than proactive marketing.

📈 Growth Opportunities:

• Hire a Sales Professional: Bring in a dedicated salesperson to proactively reach out to wedding planners, venues, and corporate clients.

• Increase Digital Marketing Efforts: Expand social media presence and advertising campaigns to attract new clients and boost brand visibility.

**If today is your first day reading, go to Chapter Recaps to get up to speed!

The Lean Startup: Ch. 8 Part 1

Welcome back! Today we are starting our discussion on Chapter 8, Pivot (or Persevere). Eric discusses when to pivot and when to persevere using the example of Votizen as well as a little blurb on startup runways. I’m sure you have heard all the success stories, where a founder is on his last dollar and PERSEVERES heroically to bring his company into magnificent success. The unlikely underdog being about to pull off what seems basically impossible, kinda like Vandy being Alabama on Saturday. 

Well… it’s not always like that. That’s not a reason to not be an entrepreneur; it’s solely representative of how difficult it is! Especially if you persevere when you’re supposed to pivot & vice versa. A pivot is a structured course correction design to test a new fundamental hypothesis about the product, strategy and engine of growth. Eric wants to bring a scientific approach to the creation of startups by channeling human creativity into its most productive form. 

“It’s about aligning our efforts with a business and product that are working to create value and drive growth.”

David Binetti, the CEO of Votizen, used the pivot and perseverance practices to build up Votizen. David built his first MVP for just $1200 in about 3 months and launched it. It Votizen’s earliest days they were able to attract early adopters. Their first four big leaps of faith were:

1. Customers would be interested enough in the social network to sign up. (Registration)

2. Votizen would be able to verify them as registered voters. (Activation)

3. Customer who were verified voters would engage with the site’s activism tools over time. (Retention)

4. Engaged customers would tell their friends about the service and recruit them into civic causes. (Referral). 

After David’s first MVP, the initial cohort numbers were so low that there wasn’t a way to tell what sort of engagement or referral would occur. Over the next 2 months David split-test new product features and those tests showed dramatic improvement. The improvements gave David a critical mass of customers with which to measure the next two leaps of faith [Retention & Referral]. Although they could measure it now, the numbers were very discouraging. David had spent $20,000 & 8 months to build a product that wasn’t living up to the growth model he’d hoped. 

It was time to decide whether or not to pivot or persevere. David had 2 major advantages in this process though:

1. Despite being committed to a significant vision, he had done his best to launch early and iterate. 

2. David had identified his leap-of-faith questions explicitly at the outset and, more important, had made quantitative predictions about each of them. 

“Failure is a prerequisite to learning. The problem with the notion of shipping a product and then seeing what happens is that you are guaranteed to succeed — at seeing what happens.”

David decided to take on what is called a zoom-in-pivot, refocusing the product on what previously had been considered just one feature of a larger whole. Rather than getting customers integrated in a civic social network, David created @2gov, which allowed them to contact their elected representatives quickly and easily via existing social networks such as Twitter (known now as X). @2gov’s growth model changed, instead of an engagement-driven business it became more transactional. His metrics were improving but not fast enough… so David decides to PIVOT AGAIN.

This time through a customer-segment pivot, keeping the functionality of the product the same but changing the audience focus. He felt that companies, over individuals, would pay to have their professional or business interest in political campaigning. After 3 months and signed letters of intent from these companies David built the functionality he had promised… one problem, the companies got cold feet.

So David did the unthinkable… PIVOTS AGAIN. He performs a platform pivot, instead of selling an application to one customer at a time, David envisioned a new growth model. He built a self-service sales platform where anyone could become a customer with just a credit card. This pivot hit and was a success! One thing to pay attention to was the pace of acceleration of each MVP! The first took 8 months, the next took 4, then 3, then 1. Each time David was able to validate or refute his next hypothesis fast than before. Votizen was able to accelerate its MVP process because it was learning critical things about its customers, market, and strategy. 

Votizen was strategic and smart, their ability to make progress quickly and relatively cheaply provided them to have a long runway. A runway is the amount of time remaining in which a startup must either achieve lift-off or fail. When startups run low on cash they can extend in 2 ways, cutting costs or raising additional funds. Cutting indiscriminately can cause a startup to cut the costs that are allowing the company to get through its BML feedback loop. If the cuts result in a slowdown of the feedback loop all they do is help the startup go out of business more slowly. The true measure of a runway is how many pivots a startup has left, or the number of opportunities it has to make a fundamental change to its business strategy. If you can pivot faster, you can extend your runway farther!

Read more at corppivot.com!

Hope you enjoy this week's insights and happy deal hunting! Remember, if you find these updates helpful, share this newsletter with a friend!

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