I bought an ice cream company

What a ride this has been.

I’ll tell you how I went from browsing Twitter/X to owning an ice cream company in just a few months.

 I stumbled across this thing called "ETA" (fancy way of saying buying an existing business) on Twitter/X.


Someone mentioned this book "Buy Then Build," I bought it and read the whole thing in 2 days. I couldn’t put it down.

Since graduating in 2019, I'd tried a bunch of stuff - real estate, started a rental car business, and was working full-time helping dentists set up their private practices.

But something was missing...
Everyone's saying the same thing: “Don’t bother unless you're buying a business making $1M+ in EBITDA, otherwise you're just buying yourself a job."

Cool, cool... except I wanted:


1. To own 100% of whatever I bought
2. Complete freedom to run it my way

   Here's what I ended up with:

   

• What: Retail Ice Cream Company (2 shops)
• How much: $1,123,800
• Making: $1.2M in revenue
• Actual profit: ~$250k
• Down payment: $125k
• Loan details: SBA 7a, 11% interest (variable), 10 years
• Due Diligence: 45 days
  
 How did I find this?
  
I looked everywhere.

I connected with every business broker, lived on those online listing sites, even started cold-calling business owners.

I reviewed hundreds of business proposals.

The best part? I told myself no food and beverage, especially not retail.

After almost buying a landscaping company and an auto shop, a broker in Arizona mentioned an ice cream company for sale. 

So I entertain it, met the owner, saw the business, and... here we are.

The special part of all this is that I get to impact my local community and provide opportunity for over 25 amazing people on my team.

It's been about over a year now, and there’s’ been good, bad and ugly.

One takeaway? I learned patience.

Growing quickly in year one defintely put a strain on the business but we’re now at 4 retail shops with a wholeslae and catering wing that is set to take off in 2025.

Here’s my short term goal - turn Novel into a local (Arizona) household name.

And pick up a few more businesses along the way, build a restaurant/hospitality group.

Thanks for reading.