More and more people want a business they can see, touch, drive to. That's part of what drew today's guest to his unusual acquisition: an escape room. ‍Adam Whelchel had already built an accounting firm from scratch to $1.5m of annual revenue. Twenty-two people, fully remote, all on Zoom. A good business — but abstract. As his daughter put it: what do you actually do all day? The escape room came across his desk because Adam is also a business broker, and this was his own listing. ‍Seven rooms, $365k of revenue, about $105k of SDE. ‍But running at only 7 to 10% of capacity. ‍That last number is the thesis. Rent, staff, and hours are fixed, so nearly everything sold above that drops to the bottom line. Adam wants to go from 10% capacity to 15% this year. Then there's the tax angle. ‍Adam was looking at a hefty 2026 tax bill of roughly $95,000. So he negotiated that $108,000 of the purchase price for this business be allocated to Class 5 assets — the hard, depreciable stuff — so he could then use bonus depreciation to create a first-year loss that offset his 2026 income elsewhere. That offset was substantial enough to reduce his tax bill by more than his deposit to buy the business. Net effect: the $35,000 he put down to buy the business would have otherwise headed to the IRS. Instead of sending it to Uncle Sam, he bought a cash-flowing business with it. Adam made slides walking through that math; they're linked in the show notes. Here he is, Adam Whelchel, owner of Lakeland Escape Room.

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