How I Built an Off-Market Pipeline of Florida Travel Agencies Using a Free State Database

If you're running off market sourcing for a fragmented vertical travel agencies, health studios, motor vehicle repair shops, LP gas installers and you're buying lists from brokers or scraping Google Maps, you're probably overpaying and underperforming. There's a better source most searchers overlook. Every state maintains public business licensure databases. Florida's is one of the best. The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS) regulates a surprisingly wide range of consumer facing businesses. Their Business Search portal lets anyone query the registry by industry category, filter by district, and export results. Link: csapp.fdacs.gov/cspublicapp/businesssearch/businesssearch.aspx Categories include: - Sellers of Travel (every travel agency, tour operator, cruise planner) - Health Studios - Motor Vehicle Repair - LP Gas Installers For each one, you get an actively licensed, state verified list of businesses operating legally in Florida with registered business name, owner, address, and (for most categories) email. The Playbook I Ran Last year I wanted off market dealflow in travel services. Here's the end to end process. Step 1: Pull the data. Downloaded the full Sellers of Travel registry. Thousands of verified contacts, filtered to the districts I was targeting. Step 2: Enrich with AI. Fed each business's website URL into an LLM and extracted a 1 2 sentence personalized description: specialty (cruise lines, corporate travel, luxury, groups), years operating, and any standout detail. This was the difference between generic outreach and outreach that felt read. Step 3: Set up sending infrastructure. Most first time outbounders underestimate the deliverability problem. Sending 5,000 cold emails from one address gets you in the spam folder. Registered multiple email domains. Set up 4 sending addresses per domain through Zoho (rotating name variations: B.Hopen, Brandon.H, BrandonH, Brandon). Rotated them through Smartlead, an outbound platform that staggers delivery, warms inboxes, and caps daily volume per mailbox to stay under ISP thresholds. Step 4: Write the email. Two to three sentences. Lead with one specific, relevant detail (drawn from the enrichment). Close with a single clear ask: "open to a quick conversation about the business?" No pitch, no attachment, no calendar link. Step 5: Run the campaign over time. Not a blast, a drip. Smartlead sent the sequence out over several months, paced to stay clean. Results - 5,200 emails sent - 2,500 opened (~48% open rate) - 160 replies (~3% reply rate) - 65 positive responses: owners interested in a conversation about the business Why This Beats Most Alternatives - Data is accurate. Every operator on the list had to submit legitimate contact info to the state to get licensed. Almost zero bounces. - It's free - It's specific. Every name on the list is a legitimate operator in your exact category: no scraping artifacts, no defunct entries. Applying the Model to Other Verticals Florida's FDACS is one database. The same pattern works in every state. Each maintains its own licensure authorities, and most expose public registries: California has its own Seller of Travel registry (CST#). Washington's Department of Licensing covers contractors, real estate, and most trades. Every state has liquor control boards, HVAC registries, pest control licensure, and funeral director directories. City and county websites publish business tax receipt lists and professional licensure. If your ICP is "fragmented, licensed, retiring owners," this is your sourcing engine. Smartlead has a Claude MCP integration, meaning you can update sequences, rewrite personalization, and re queue contacts without leaving your workflow. If you're running outbound at volume, it's worth setting up. About myself: I'm Brandon Hopen. I run Alta Torres Capital, a digital first brokerage for first time acquirers on $2M+ EBITDA. Helping you source private credit and equity. If you're under LOI on a travel services rollup, home services business, or any fragmented vertical, visit altatorres.com. Or if you are looking for free strategy session, happy to chat. Otherwise, take the playbook above and run it yourself. Good hunting.