This isn't what I thought it would be like...

Good day everyone,

I'm writing to ask for some advice from the community.

About 5 years ago, I discovered search and ETA, and eventually bought my first small business as a self-funded searcher. It is a small parts manufacturing business in the US generating about $500k EBITDA.

At the time, I was working in various corporate roles, such as strategy, business development, and M&A. I had previously been a startup founder, and was excited about the idea of owning my own company again. I thought buying a small businesses would give me the freedom to create my own future and eventually generate wealth to enjoy my life (i.e. pay off my MBA debt, buy a home, perhaps purchase more companies, etc).

I was also disenchanted with the corporate world. In the years leading up to my ETA experience, I was in various roles at different (very large Fortune 500) companies that each individually put a bad taste in my mouth for one reason or another. Everything from people competing for political fiefdoms (which can be somewhat 'normal' in corporate life) to straight up toxic culture, and I did not want to be a part of it. I wanted to own my future - design a strategy, lead a team, generate results, and celebrate success. In my experience as a startup founder, this was our raison d'etre and we crushed it.

Going back to ETA, I feel different about the small business I acquired. Sure, I am leading a team and we are moving forward with small wins, but there are so many stark differences to my daily life these days. The culture I inherited at the small business I acquired is very bad, the people are miserable and often times nasty to one another, the quality of the product is good not great, and - I hate to say it, but I will - the intellectual quality of the people I work with is very sub-par. I came from a world where my colleagues were designing rockets to fly into space and orbit Earth; here, the staff cannot connect to the printer or the internet without asking for help. The people are simply not smart enough to solve basic or even moderately complex problems. I am not intellectually stimulated, and find that I am really only "in this" to have a shot at generating wealth. That's about it. Am I in it for the wrong reasons?

Rewind back to about a year before I acquired my company, I was already in the ETA process to buy a business but had landed a new role within a relatively well known Fortune 500 company. Up until that point almost all my corporate jobs were pretty bad, mostly due to poor culture or a bad manager, or both. But this new role was exciting - the job description was very interesting, the title was director-level, which in corporate as everyone may know, is relatively senior (ish), the people were highly intellectual, the team culture seemed very good, and leadership including my direct manager were great. So now I am sitting here, at 5am on a Saturday morning in the US, typing this note on my couch, probably awake because of some level of stress due to my small business, and asking myself - did I make the right call?

And the other part of my question to others in this space is this - has anyone else felt like they may have made a mistake leaving corporate to go into ETA, only to then determine that ETA - at least in the lower end of the lower middle market - is not for them?

I sort of believe that the company I acquired has some inherent flaws and yes, size does matter - I am aware that typically companies with less than $1m EBITDA have many fires to put out all the time, but I could not afford anything more at the time. And for the record I am working to fix the issues that handicap my small business, but the bigger question is...did I make the right move or should I have stayed in corporate?

I've been struggling with this question for a long time now. Thanks for your comments and advice.