It has been several months since I have posted, but don’t worry; we have still be working hard at winning at life. We have been very busy with our recent venture. After nearly a decade of talking about it, we purchased a wedding venue! I’ll share a little bit about the process of purchasing an existing business, why we think it was the perfect fit for us and how we’d like to help others who are interested in exploring acquisition entrepreneurship!
It all started with my first job in high school. I worked at a local community center and reception venue; I would run the sound board (play CDs and provide microphones) for wedding ceremonies and setup the tables and hundreds of chairs for receptions. I ended up starting my own DJ business at the age of 16 and my schedule was booked solid with school dances and weddings. Since I went to college only 20 minutes from where I grew up, I also kept my job at the reception venue and ended up working 20-40 hours per week managing the venue, sales, marketing and staffing in addition to attending college and several DJ gigs per month. The wedding industry is actually perfect for college students since events take place on weekends and during the summers.
Megan and I stayed active in the wedding industry after college by running a successful DJ and Photo Booth service in our spare time after our 9-5 jobs in insurance sales and government communications. After so many years in the wedding industry and moonlighting as amateur real estate investors, we decided owning a wedding venue(s)was the ideal end goal!
About 5 years ago, I started connecting with commercial real estate brokers, business brokers and setup automated searches for wedding venues on bizbuysell.com.
We had several properties cross our radar, but none of them felt like the right fit with the potential that we wanted in our venue. In the meantime, we kept stashing away cash and decided to try our hand at owning an Airbnb.
In addition to spending 15+ years in the wedding industry; owning an airbnb and rental property ended up being the perfect preparation for owning a wedding venue. I honed my wedding sales, marketing and customer service skills managing the wedding venue while in college and running my DJ business; but owning a multimillion dollar property is also a lot about being a landlord. A life lesson that I learned as a landlord is that everything is going to break eventually. Rather than being inconvenienced by it and caught by surprise, my mindset is to plan on it and prepare accordingly. Everyday something doesn’t break is a good day.
The beautiful thing about purchasing an existing business is that you get to pick up where the other owner leaves off (for better or worse). It’s important to do your due diligence and really get paranoid during this stage of the process, but once you vet out all of the strengths and weaknesses of the business and see an opportunity for you to add value and be successful; you can be the proud new owner of a turnkey business with clients, an existing brand and revenue coming in from day one. Every business owner has to retire eventually, so why not help continue the legacy they’ve built while making your own mark!?
If you haven’t purchased an existing business before, you wouldn’t believe everything that I’ve learned over the past 9 months since I was first approached about purchasing this business. I’m excited to share our adventure with you and help others learn through our experiences. This has been one of our most challenging ventures yet, but is just scratching the surface on how rewarding and life changing being a business owner can be!
If you haven’t already, subscribe to our blog! We promise that we won’t spam you; you’ll just get an email notification when we share a post! I’ll be sharing our lessons learned so far and keep you updated throughout the journey as we try to win at life and business!
Send us a message with any questions or topics that you’d like us to cover!
Cheers!
Blaine
letswinatlife.com 
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