Best of Acquisitions Anonymous - Episode 214: Worm Farm

0:28Welcome back to Acquisitions Anonymous. This week is one of, for me, the most fun episodes we've ever done. We have all four co-hosts this week, and we covered a worm farm in Northern California. Yes, a worm farm that is making$1.5 million. They sell worms, they sell dirt, they teach other people how to do worms, and it is priced at 1.2 times cash flow. This was really fun, and I think you're really going to enjoy this episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. Hi, Heather here. When I'm not breaking down deals with these guys, I'm helping people get the right SBA loans for their business acquisitions.

1:05Because when you're buying a business, the best financing isn't one size fits all. There's the best rate, fastest to close, the specific loan structure that you need, or a little of all of those things. That's why my company, Viso Business Capital, works with over 30 different lenders to find you the best funding in less time and with less friction so you can focus on the deal. Sign up for a free live Q &A session on SBA loans at visocap.net, then click Zoom sign up in the top right corner. That's visocap.net and click Zoom sign up. Wait, did we? Oh, nobody's hosting? All right. I'll do it. Here we go.

1:42Here we go. One more episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. This one is pretty cool because it's about bugs. This is one of the weirdest deals we've seen in a while. Who has ever seen a deal like this? Uh, no. That's why I flagged it when I saw it. And we came across it from Thomas Ince, who is a PE guy up in Austin, who is now tweeting a lot about small business and business operation and stuff like that. And so this is a fun one. So I flagged it and insisted we do it today. So here's the listing. nationally acclaimed, quote unquote, the worm farm selling soils, worms, and castings located in Durham, California, which is Butte County.

2:27I've never heard of any of those places except for California. So it must be somewhere very rural in California. Has a picture here of a very, well, a worm, Bill, wearing a top hat. It's amazing. It's a very sophisticated worm. They are asking$1.8 million for it. It cash flows$1.45 million. Gross revenue is$2.5 million. Furnitures, fixtures, and equipment of$400 ,000. Inventory of$950 ,000. And it's paying rent of$1 ,800 per month. So wait a second. They're asking$1.8 million for the worm farm, and it cash flows$1.5 million? So they're asking 1.2 times or something. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Valuation.

3:20I think we're so much like a checkbook.

3:24Okay. Business description. It is an established business with great income and even all caps, bigger upward potential. Welcome to the worm farm. Since 1990, the worm farm has been a Durham staple offering worms, worm castings, premixed, and custom soils blends alongside their learning foundation, helping teach thousands of North State students, both young and old, their vermicomposting processes, ability to custom mix blends to client needs and their registered proprietary mixes have made them the leading supplier in the region as well as having nationwide notability while the company has grown significantly over the past three decades and continually becomes more efficient there is significant upward growth available for a new owner to take this well-known and established blue collar business to the next level previously featured on cnbc's blue collar millionaires and gross sales in excess of 3.7 million in 2021 this bustling small business makes great returns for its current owners and can do wonders for the next generation of ownership.

4:17With this sale, including state-of-the-art custom software program tracking customer orders, inventory, deliveries, replacement inventory, ordering, and more extensive equipment and machinery, existing inventory, intellectual property, yada, yada, yada. And they have a 503C learning foundation. Customer lists and much more. This offering represents a tremendous opportunity for a new owner. Don't miss out, yada, yada, yada. And then they have a video here, Bill. I know it's, it's a shame that this is a, not an audiovisual podcast for most people listening. Six minutes long. I don't think we have time for that.

4:51We could talk to Ty and see if he wants to include some part of this, or maybe we put it at the end of the episode. We'll put it in the comments. Yeah. So it's a, what they have here linked as a CNBC segment. That is a YouTube video that is six minutes and 30 seconds and so on. So, okay. So location, here's some rehashing everything. Location in Durham, California, inventory, including asking price, real estate is leased. They have a 20 ,000 foot building. The lease does not expire for employees. FF &E is included in the asking price and it's located in 10 acres in Durham, California, different warehouse type buildings, a mixed use building for the educational foundation, manufactured building uses an office, multiple medium duty stateside trucks, large loaders, tractors, and specialty mixing.

5:40All right, here's the, if you ever wonder who competes with your worm farm, while this business propagates and sells worm and worm castings, by far and above the largest portion of this business are mixed soil blends, both proprietary and custom blending available. The worm farm produces the highest quality soil blends in the area and is highly sought out through the region. So I don't know, maybe there are other worm farms. This really surprised me, right? Because you hear the word worm farm and you go, this is an operation that produces and sells worms for bait or for putting your garden or whatever.

6:11I thought they're selling mostly worms. Turns out they're selling mostly soil that the worms have lived in and enriched and shed their skins in and has nutrient-rich properties, which I didn't see coming. So this is a dirt farm that uses worms. If you go to their website, though, four pounds of worms is$150. I mean, four pounds is a lot of worms, but 150 bucks as an average order value on e-com. This is amazing. Yeah. 10 pounds of worms,$350. I have purchased worms for my garden. And I think they probably came from, because it had a funky logo on it that I thought was pretty funny. And I could almost guarantee it came from this place.

6:57And I don't remember what I paid, but I ordered them on Amazon and we put them in our garden. And yeah, I got a bag of worms. Heather, you made it four and a half minutes into the episode before you dropped that box. I know, I know. I'm really impressed. I was thinking, you know, maybe I shouldn't tell people about this. So you bought live worms on Amazon? That's possible? I did. I bought live worms on Amazon. And they were great. They're still like, there's a whole colony out there in the garden. That's amazing. So Heather, why did you buy the worms? Is it good for the soil? It is. So I'm into gardening.

7:33So we have a garden. We have a vegetable garden every summer. And we love tomatoes and zucchini and all that kind of stuff. And we're always trying to figure out how to make the soil a little bit better because we have clay. It's clay soil here. So we wanted to aerate it and enrich it. And this was kind of one of the easier ways when we were researching it to do that is just add worms. So we did a couple years ago. So you get in the mail just like a pile of nightmare fuel wriggling worms. I was scared what it was going to be like. It was like a bag that was sort of aerated and had dirt, but mostly worms, you know, dirt and worms.

8:08And, you know, and it comes like, hey, you know, you've got to go take care of this right away. You know, make sure you keep it damp and all that kind of stuff. So, oh, wow. Crazy. How was it shipped? Was it like FedEx? I don't remember, but it had some special shipping. It definitely did. Like, you know, so it was kept damp and it was kept kind of cool so that they would be alive. I mean, guys, the margin on this has to be incredible one gallon of worm castings which is i guess just like the stuff that they you know spit out and poop out a gallon is 27.98 and it's free shipping so uh but that if you get a cubic foot or a cubic yard shipping is not included but a gallon to ship a gallon of something is not i mean i know it's expensive but if it's 28 bill the unit economics on this have to work right even in e-commerce.

8:56Especially because what you're selling here is like worm poop. So the cogs are low. Yes. Well, and if you look at the listing, their business is doing two and a half million of revenue and one and a half million of cashflow. So yeah. Although there is a hint, I'm wondering if the business is in decline because they said they did 3.7 million in 2021. I'm getting a sense that that is the CNBC bump because it's mentioned in the same sentence as when they were on CNBC. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that's a little bit artificially high, but I would like to see that the trend at the same time though, worms, like this does not seem like it's going away.

9:35If people are fishing and gardening, you know, I don't think the internet is disrupting worms. Heather, how did you find, you just went to Amazon and you said, I want garden worms or how did that go to Amazon first for these kinds of things? So I do my research, I figure out what I, what weird thing I need or want. And then I go on Amazon and just search it and there it was. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. One thing that's kind of interesting about this, this is obviously a geographically dependent business. They have 10 acres, they have a 20 ,000 square foot building or it's multiple buildings that are obviously pretty specific for what they do.

10:16They say they're dirt floor buildings. That's not very common. So you got to go be in this area. But when you look at this, they include the inventory and they include the FF &E, which even if you take a discount off of it, there's$1.35 million worth of inventory in FF &E. Even if you say 50 % of that is the real value or the actual depreciated cost or something like that. I mean, there's a pile of assets here relative to the cash flow and relative to the purchase price. That's a good point, Mills. Why is this so cheap? So they're trying to sell it for 1.2 times cash flow, but net of inventory, or maybe they want to buy that differently.

10:57I mean, net of inventory, it's free, essentially. They're going to give you this business. Yeah, that doesn't, it doesn't make sense. And it's way up in Northern California. So I think maybe, you know, the location, they maybe have a very limited number of buyers who can, you're going to have to move there. You have to manage the operations. And by the way, shouldn't it be called a worm ranch? Yes, it should definitely be called a worm ranch. It is interesting. I've pulled up their website, which is great that they're telling us who they are and everything straight up. But they claim to sell. I guess the question is, why is this not just another worm farm?

11:38right that's a you know like what was the last time you saw a farm that's not doing illegal drugs that could do these kind of profit margins like it just doesn't happen and they claim that they have some couple differentiators number one longevity in the market they've been around for a while and people keep coming back because of that they have these relationships with families universities schools non-profit agencies all these kind of folks lawyers hollywood celebrities I've heard Matthew McConaughey is a huge worm guy. I don't know if you guys knew that. Simulator research missions to outer space, home and commercial gardeners, and on and on.

12:16People just like you. So I don't know if that's BS or not. Then they claim that they do this special type of composting worm called the Insinia fetida red worm. But they're not just another worm company. So I don't know. Do you guys buy that? It's like showworms. I don't buy that they've got special worms. So I, I Googled worm farm because, you know, while you're talking, Michael, I kind of wondered how unique is this? And I found a ton of content on like create your own worm farm in your backyard, like small time hobbyist content. Uh, I found maybe two or three. There's this other one, uh, this one called the Arizona worm farm that looks like it's a pretty decent operation.

12:59Uh, they've got another one called uncle Jim's worm farm that keeps coming up that I think sells, you know, has been around for 40 years. I don't think this is like, there's a worm farm on every corner type thing. Yeah. It is. Well, so two things. One is if you go to the contact us page, there's actually two, they have two worm farms for the worm farm. They have worm farm Durham, and then they actually have worm farm Oregon near Portland, but I don't see anything about that one being sold as part of this. So anyway, and then I had a second point, but I'm sure I'll think of it in a minute. I don't, sorry.

13:34So I don't hate this business. Yeah. No, I'm kind of thinking, Bill, why, why would you not buy this business? I mean, okay. So it's very cheap, right? The downside is you've got to live in nowhere, California, but there's worse places to live in Northern California, right? Yes. But do you, I mean, this is the type of business that you could hire a general management manager for? I mean, literally you got to sit there and watch the worms eat the soil. Like how, not to minimize their business, right? I'm sure there's - No, you got to move. It's like heavy equipment, right? You're probably moving quite a bit of dirt and it's a dirty job.

14:10It's a messy business for sure. But it's farming. Like there's a ton of like good general manager farmers you could hire to do this business. I mean, you've got$1.5 million of cashflow. I mean, you could pay$150 ,000 and that would be more than the average American farmer makes, period, working their entire farm. Just get the best farmer to be in charge of this and live wherever you want to live. Hey, everyone. It's Bill. And I want to tell you about maybe the most exciting sponsor we've had in a long time on the pod. It's called Capital Pad. And it is the thing that I wish existed when I started my journey of operating and investing in small businesses.

14:49So Capital Pad is a marketplace for acquisition entrepreneurs, that is people who want to buy a business and need capital to list their deals and solicit capital from other people who want to invest in acquisition deals. So if you want to back somebody buying a small business, Capital Pad is the place to do it. And if you want to buy a business and need capital, you can go on Capital Pad to be introduced to investors. So the really great thing too, from the investor side, is that CapitalPad takes care of all of the details that can get hairy with small business acquisitions. They handle standardized terms, standardized governance, standardized distributions, all up front in black and white.

15:33Basically, CapitalPad professionalizes investing in small businesses. And the returns can be really, really good. I'm so stoked they exist. It's founded by my friend, Travis, who is a phenomenal entrepreneur in his own right. So if this sounds like something that's appealing to you, if you want to buy a small business and need capital, or if you want to invest in small businesses, go check out capitalpad.com and tell them that Acquisitions Anonymous sent you. This is definitely a business that's, I think it's one where you think it's difficult to recruit for this, but it's so inspiring. There's like an unlimited number of people who want to like be close to nature, be helping host kids to come in as part of this foundational work they do.

16:18talk, there's worm nerds. I guarantee there's worm nerds who want to do this. Even though it's 90 minutes north, so 85 miles north of Sacramento, I don't think it would be as stupid as some of the other stuff. We've looked at staffing some of this stuff in rural North Carolina and stuff, and it's just like, you're never going to staff your bowling alley in rural North Carolina. But I think this is one that I wouldn't be so scared. right? So one thing that's kind of interesting is this broker, Warren Bullock, who, if you Google his phone number, it looks like he's a real estate agent in Northern California.

16:59And he has a consulting business. So this is not, obviously, this is kind of a funky listing. No investment bank is going to take this to market. I don't think a private equity firm is going to scoop this up. And it's not big enough, you know, to be a platform acquisition. And it's too weird to be a tuck in for anything probably. Um, but I, I think this guy's like a consultant, probably just like a, you know, a man about town in Northern California who just helps people with, you know, with the general kind of business problem. So I, this is, this is really intriguing. So why is this bad? Because on the face of it, it's super attractively priced.

17:42I don't, it's semi unique. You know, I think you could probably staff it. I mean, this guy ran for paradise town council and he has a clamor shot. Oh, wow. Yes. So this is another thing for those of you listening in. I Googled him and he and his wife, I guess our business partner. It's not really clear. They both have very distinct red hair and decided to wear purple and all of the photos. So it's really great. These would be cool people. I'd like to know these people, but they definitely dress differently. Also, in case you're interested, the most famous person named Warren Bullock is a UK-based ballroom dancer, and this is him.

18:31If you're on YouTube, check this guy out. All right. Sorry. Go ahead, Bill. Sorry. so i mean i think this is a good business right so it's it's a practically priced it's probably not gonna be a ton of competition to own it because it's a little bit dirty right no pun intended and you gotta there's physical operations and as mill said not a great add-on or tuck-in it's represented by and i always love this like you know probably not widely shopped right warren bullock is a is a realtor um it's not complicated you probably saw a lot of stuff online i even wonder if you have four employees, they have four employees.

19:06So it's not that complicated. It makes one and a half million dollars a year. You probably don't have to live there. You might even be able to open one or two more of these things, you know, somewhere in the, in the country. If there's like a local business supplying soil amendments, maybe you open a few more. This is not terrible, right? Is this the first acquisitions anonymous deal? I mean, I know we want to do the pizza boat, but pizza boat, this is better than pizza boat. I think I don't know, Bill, do you like this worse? I mean, it's a little less sexy than Pizza Boat. It's less sexy than Pizza Boat, but it's pretty cool.

19:43So this is the quintessential. It's cool. Do you want to be cool at a whole co-conference? Buy this business and then tell people that one of the businesses in your whole co - is a worm farm in Northern California. and there's like a small segment of nerds that will just be so aroused. Right? Okay. So let's figure out how to make this deal work. So, okay, Heather, do we need an SBA loan? We should get the NDA and sign it and decide whether or not we want to publish the episode. If we're going to try and get it under LOI, we need to wait and not publish the episode and not create all of our competition for the deal.

20:28Oh, broker Warren Bullock is not listening to our podcast. No, no, I know. But if we publish this, right, and then simultaneously we're trying to get the SIM, or I mean, there's probably not a SIM, right? If we're trying to have a conversation with the seller and Heather's going on the site visit for us. I will. And then simultaneously all of SMB Twitter is also trying to hit up this broker. He's going to feel like he hit the lottery. Do you know what? Well, look, I'm not actually that interested in owning the business. I just want to go tell my wife that I have to go on a business trip to a worm farm.

21:03This is it. I just want to record that. I think it makes some good short form content. I don't actually want to own the worm farm. I just want to have to go explain why I'm going to a worm farm north of Sacramento for the weekend. I'm a horse person. So I think I would say, well, this would be awesome to own, live there, have your horses, have the cash flow. I mean, I think it's a great business, honestly. It really is. Can you get an SBA loan? Yeah, you could. Definitely. The tricky part about a loan on this one is the lease. It's all on lease land. So we need to know who owns this land. How long is that lease good for?

21:43That could be the only trick. We don't know much about that. And they've been there for an awfully long time to not own the dirt. And that is the business, obviously. So not probably the easiest thing to move. You know, it's all underground probably, or a lot of it is. So that's probably the toughest part about figuring out whether it's financeable. And really, even if you weren't financing it, even to buy it, you'd have to do a lot of diligence on the lease. I mean, it's 10 acres out of the middle of nowhere. How could we not buy the land with this? Like surely, and they're only getting$1 ,800 a month.

22:15Well, that's what I was going to say. I don't think being the landlord is a good business here. You're making$25 ,000 a year in rent. Well, like if you do, let's say it's$1 ,800 a month, and I don't even know. So it's$25 ,000 plus or minus. Let's say they're getting$30 ,000 gross out of the whole thing. At least$30 ,000 triple net. Even if you pay them a 10-cap, that's$300 ,000 for the land. It's kind of worth it for that safety and security not to know you ever have to move. I would agree. and there's a lot of lease land in farm country, you know, so it could be just, you know, those kinds of farm leases and that's just, you'd have to do a lot of diligence.

22:52And I agree. You would want to own the land if you can here. But even if they double your rent, they hit you for another 25 grand a year, you know, like I could probably get comfortable with this. I think you go to the landlord and you're like, I want a 99 year lease and I'll lock in 5 % step ups until the end of time. Go. Can we get one of those crazy farm loans? Don't they have those things? You know what I'm talking about? Oh, maybe the subsidized agricultural loan. USDA. Yeah, we can get an FDA loan on this. You've got USDA. Okay. You could go USDA or SBA. I don't know that there'd really be that much of an advantage to USDA because they want assets.

23:29It's a weird program where they have to have machinery and equipment or a certain amount of assets. It's probably better as an SBA if you're not buying the land. Okay. So here's the deal on this episode. We're like six, three or four weeks ahead. We can even delay this one a bit. It gives us some time to actually go try to make this happen. So, all right. Now we got to go to the important thing. We have the idea. Who wants to do all the work? Ah, that's always the problem. Heather has to do all the work because she's new, right? That's how it works. Oh, yeah. Pazing. That's how it works. Okay.

24:01No, I would go up there. Heather, don't you live on the West Coast? What do we want to do? Just get the sim and, well, there's no sim, right? just get the financials or whatever we can get, I'll reach out to this guy. I already messaged Warren and I texted him as well. Okay. I mean, it's an easy flight for me to go to Sacramento and rent a car and drive out there. Let's get the SIM. And then here's what we need to do. When it shows up, the SIM, we need to get together and record us reviewing it and record an episode of us. We'll do this live, do the whole thing. And people can see, people are like, How do you go from zero to creating something?

24:38How did you end up owning a Warren farm in Northern California? A great exposure of how people are like, oh, that's how business gets created. You guys are just as stupid as the rest of us. You're just not dumb enough to slow down and question what you're doing. So then we should record it. We'll record us reviewing the sim as the episode. Assuming Warren Bullock would carve out any NDA he would make us sign to allow us to do that. Well, and I think what we could do, right? There was this famous series of articles called Street Smarts in, I think it was Inc. Magazine years and years ago. And it was a guy who was selling his business.

25:14And part of the whole process was that he just told all the buyers, look, hey, I'm just going to be totally transparent. I'm doing this. You're going to be part of this national article that goes out every month. And it was like, I think what the editor at Forbes told me was that, or Inc., was that it was their most popular article in the history of time. but it was just like every month people were like what's happening next with you know so and so's deal that's cool i i could video the site visit you know take a take a take my phone out and video some of that and yeah i don't know why you keep talking like you're going by yourself i'm fine i uh you got you gotta get your mind right on that michael's like i don't want to own any of it but i will i will do diligence the heck out of it with you no no i'm in i'm in i want to be i I want to be part of this.

26:03I want to be on the board of the worm farm. I want to have like worm farm retreats. I want to be like testing the product and throwing the worms in my backyard. I want to have like my Twitter bio being like owner, coffee, school, software, worm farm. Like, yeah, I'm all in. Yeah, let's go. So one more thing on this business. I would be really interested to learn more about how much of this business is the worm farm, like selling the soil amendments and the worms and how much of this business is the education, the, I don't know, maybe people come and tour the worm farm and they sell them beer and, you know, teach them how worm farming works.