Kevin Bibelhausen – Navigating the World of Entrepreneurship: Lessons on Buying Established Businesses

In this Maker Manager Money podcast episode, host Kyle Knowles sits down with Kevin Biebelhausen, an investor and business owner based in North Carolina. Kevin shares his journey into Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition (ETA), a unique path to business ownership that focuses on acquiring established, profitable companies rather than starting from scratch.

Discover how Kevin’s fund, Fruition Capital, targets B2B companies at least 10 years old and generates between $1 to $2 million in EBITDA. He explains why acquiring an existing business can be easier than chasing venture capital. He offers powerful insights on betting on yourself and building sustainable wealth through business ownership.

Throughout the conversation, Kevin discusses his background, including his experience as a professional opera singer and how it has influenced his approach to business. He also shares valuable advice for aspiring entrepreneurs, particularly those transitioning from corporate careers or military service.

Join us for an inspiring discussion highlighting ETA’s potential and the importance of finding your own path in entrepreneurship.

Key Topics:

• What is Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition (ETA)?
• The benefits of acquiring established businesses
• Insights on investing in small to medium-sized businesses
• Kevin’s journey from opera singer to business owner
• Advice for transitioning military veterans and corporate professionals

Links:

• Learn more about Kevin Biebelhausen at biebelhausen.com
• Connect with Kevin on LinkedIn
• Book Recommendation Buy Then Build: How Acquisition Entrepreneurs Outsmart the Startup Game by Walker Deibel

Kyle Knowles: Hello there, welcome to the Maker Manager Money podcast, a podcast to inspire entrepreneurs to keep going and wantrepreneurs to just start. My name is Kyle Knowles and today’s guest is Kevin Biebelhausen. Kevin is an investor and business owner based in North Carolina. After acquiring his first business while doing an executive MBA at Duke, Kevin now invests in entrepreneurs acquiring established companies through his fund, Fruition Capital. In today’s episode, Kevin breaks down ETA, Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition, a path to business ownership that focuses on buying established, profitable companies rather than starting from scratch. You’ll learn why Kevin’s fund targets B2B companies at least 10 years old, with one to two million in EBITDA, and why he believes acquiring an existing business can be a smarter path to entrepreneurship than chasing venture capital. Kevin also shares powerful insights on betting on yourself, and building sustainable wealth through business ownership. Welcome to the show, Kevin. How are you? Good, Kyle. Good to be here. Awesome. Where are you dialing in from today?
Kevin Bibelhausen: I am just north of Charlotte, North Carolina. So in a small town called Concord. But yeah, the business that I acquired is located right on the I-85 corridor, north of Charlotte.

Kyle Knowles: Awesome. And then where are you from originally?
Kevin Bibelhausen: I’m a bit of a mutt from the Midwest. I am born in Ohio, moved around a bunch, ended up in Iowa for, you know, kind of seminal moments in my upbringing. So I kind of just say I’m from the Midwest, lived in a bunch of different places.

Kyle Knowles: Okay. That’s great. So your LinkedIn headline states investing in entrepreneurs acquiring consistently profitable SMBs nationwide. What does that mean? And how do you make money?

Kevin Bibelhausen: We take an approach at Fruition Capital of investing in sponsors that go through either a self-funded search or independent sponsor kind of model, which is a fancy way to say using an SBA loan to acquire a business, or if you go and buy a larger business, you go out and you raise capital as a fundless sponsor. which is kind of an old private equity way to take down a larger business and have, you know, some ownership and more responsibilities for larger businesses. So we started off by investing purely in self-funded search, which is, you know, businesses between one and $2 million in EBITDA and, you know, those that are particularly leveraging the SBA to acquire a vast majority of companies, of equity in a company.

Kyle Knowles: Okay. And can you explain EBITDA to those who don’t know?

Kevin Bibelhausen: Yeah, EBITDA is just a proxy for cash flow. And all the finance people listening to this who do know what EBITDA is are going to get mad from me for describing it that way. But that is the best way to kind of at least have a common working definition. It’s not a perfect definition, but you can think about EBITDA as a proxy for cash flow.

Kyle Knowles: And do you consider yourself a disruptor when it comes to entrepreneurship?

Kevin Bibelhausen: Disruptor, um, that’s a very like tech buzzword, right? I, I think it’s, I think it’s a, you can say that, uh, primarily because, you know, we’re, and how I approach entrepreneurship is a different way. Like when I, when I wanted to get into this and, and, and run my own company, own my own company, kind of do my own thing. I didn’t want to go the tech route. I didn’t want to have, I didn’t have some, you know, brilliant idea that I wanted to go raise a bunch of VC money for a bootstrap or anything like that. I wanted to acquire a consistently profitable business and then use the corporate experience that I had had to scale it. And that is a fundamentally different kind of approach than what a lot of people think of as entrepreneurship. Um, you know, we’re not starting at zero or I’m not starting at zero and the people that we back aren’t starting at zero. They’re, they’re going in and they’re, you know, uh, taking on some debt, uh, either putting in some equity or raising some equity to buy these businesses, starting with a base of cashflow. Uh, and so they’re, they’re effectively borrowing on the assets of the business, um, which the business will pay back over time. to get in and be a pretty early manager, pretty early CEO. I mean, most people don’t get to be a CEO in their 30s, which is what a lot of our cohort ends up doing. They’re typically from high finance, investment banking, private equity. They’re from consulting. They’re from otherwise great career tracks, but they’ve decided that they want to pivot their career and do something that actually builds equity for themselves and owning a business. And so they take sort of this alternative career track, you know, away from corporate America, away from, you know, high paying W-2 type jobs to how do I own a small business and how do I, you know, invest in a community and how do I grow my own wealth through business ownership versus, you know, working a W-2 and just, you know, saving money over time. And a lot of this is a lifestyle choice, right? The people who kind of come in, there’s a lot of ways to make money. This certainly isn’t the only way, but a lot of the people that make this decision to go and acquire a business and own a business, run a business, are people who have a innate desire to call their own shots. and to do what they want to do and kind of live life on their own terms versus purely work for somebody else for their entire career. One isn’t better than the other. It’s just different personalities are attracted to different things. And having this as an option, I know has been a lifesaver, literally a lifesaver for multiple people. And then we could talk about all the different personality types that are attracted to this. And, you know, one of them being, you know, former military guys, like there’s tons of, you know, retiring military guys have done 20 years in the service. who are interested in doing this because they’ve taken orders their whole career. They’ve had excellent team management experience. They’ve led massive organizations. And when they retire, do they want to go and work for an investment bank or a consulting firm, which a lot of them post-MBA end up doing, and report to a 26-year-old? They don’t love the idea of that. Military guys have been a huge resource for us, a huge pipeline, I should say, for us coming into the business buying space.

Kyle Knowles: Okay, so you’re a partner at Fruition Capital. And how many other partners are there?

Kevin Bibelhausen: Four or five other partners right now. We started with three in our first fund, and then we added some team members for Fund 2. Fund 2 is a $20 million fund that we’re looking to make 20 or so investments out of. We’ve already made a handful of investments out of Fund 2, and we’re continuing the raise, continuing to be evangelists for this kind of investing. It’s nothing new. We’re not reinventing the wheel, but we are bringing it down market. So all of these strategies are things that private equity has used for decades. It’s purely looking at, you know, what is possible in this lower end of the market that was otherwise kind of the Wild West or no man’s land as private equity has become more and more efficient. With larger businesses, you could say there’s less alpha to be gained. There’s less money to be made because you’re not able to get as much from just levering up a company. There’s actually operational efficiencies that you have to go in and improve. And that’s what we like to think that we’re doing in the lower middle market by having a sponsor like myself. I am both an investor, but I started as a sponsor. So you go in and you are the CEO of the company that you acquire. And you’ve taken a personal guarantee in debt majority of the time. And so you’re all in. You’re going in there and it’s up to you whether this whole thing works or not. You’ve tied effectively your entire net worth to operating this business, to growing this business, paying the debt back. You’ve got a lot of skin in the game. And that’s an important distinction in what we’re doing in this end of the market, because in private equity, upmarket, there is no real skin in the game. There’s capital at risk, of course, but when it’s in individuals, livelihood, when it’s an individual’s full net worth, if I fail, they get my house, the bank comes and takes my house, takes my assets, takes everything, because I’ve effectively put a personal guarantee on the loan that I used to acquire the business. And that’s terrifying for a lot of people. But for those who are willing to bet on themselves, it is one of the single greatest wealth generation tools that I know of today.

Kyle Knowles: And so that’s what you did as president and partner of Heritage Fabrics. You were the guy that was on the hook.

Kevin Bibelhausen: That’s right. I signed all the loan docs. Yeah, that’s me.

Kyle Knowles: All the loan docs. And was that your first foray into entrepreneurship by acquisition?

Kevin Bibelhausen: Yeah. And I tried to do this. I’ve known about this whole space for, oh man, for the better part of a decade. And I’ve tried to do this since 2018 was when I had my first business under LOI. letter of intent, which just means I put in an offer and it was accepted. And got pretty far on with that deal, but it ended up falling apart for any number of reasons. Deals die all the time. But of course, at that point, like I had no idea, I thought I was a huge failure. And then I just kind of like licked my wounds and went back to my job, not really having a community or resources to kind of tell me, hey, man, this is normal, like it’s normal to to have a deal die. And that’s why you kind of keep your pipeline active. That’s why you continue to review deals. And you don’t stop once you get one under contract, you just have to keep going. But the whole community that exists today didn’t exist in 2018. So now there’s you know, Twitter communities and LinkedIn communities and all these offline type of meetups and books and all of this stuff that has grown up over the last five or six years that just didn’t exist. I mean, there’s there’s a a very popular book called Buy Then Build by Walker Dybul that kind of talks about this strategy. He really lays it out well in that book and he’s built a whole, you know, he’s markets an acquisition lab to teach people how to do this. He’s got it in the book. Like there’s so many more resources available today than existed five or six years ago. It’s pretty incredible.

Kyle Knowles: And is that how you heard about ETA or entrepreneurship through acquisitions through Buy Then Build?

Kevin Bibelhausen: No, not at all, it didn’t exist. How did you find out about it? Yeah, no, it was by, I can say it was kind of by chance, but I ended up listening to a podcast that was done by, and it wasn’t an ETA podcast, which of course didn’t exist, back in 2017, 2018. It was two Harvard professors who had recently written a book in 2017 called The Harvard Business Review Guide to Buying Small Businesses. And that was sort of the first real, I don’t know if I can call it scholarly, but like a pop science or just generally accessible text on buying small businesses. And these two professors at Harvard had written it, and they were being interviewed on a podcast that I happened to listen to. And as they described what the strategy was, I just fell in love with the idea. You know, one of the and I read the book, of course, I bought it right away and read it cover to cover. But one of the things in the book that was so appealing was this guy that was going out and he wanted he ended up buying a port-a-potty business. And I was so in love with that idea of going and buying. a essential or established cashflow business instead of, you know, hey, let’s try and do the whole Silicon Valley thing and start with a small idea and build. And then, you know, that wasn’t as appealing to me. What was appealing was jumping into something that was profitable. And then given the decade plus I had in corporate America, taking that skillset and applying it to a small main street kind of business and scaling that over time. I feel like I’m a better, I’m not a zero to one guy as much as I am a one to 10 guy. And an ETA gives you the ability to kind of jump the line in entrepreneurship and take out the riskiest part, which is the startup, right? Most businesses fail within the first five years, all of that. Well, you’ve skipped all of that effectively by buying something, right? You’re typically buying something. And at Fruition Capital, we’re looking at buying in things that are at least 10 years old. All right. So it’s got a decade of a track record. It’s, it’s quite profitable, you know, doing between one and $2 million in EBITDA. We’re looking at business to business only companies. So companies that aren’t selling to the consumer, but selling to, you know, uh, to other businesses, uh, which are generally more stable than, than consumer based businesses. So you’re effectively getting something that like, yeah, you’re taking on a lot of debt. No question. But you’ve eliminated the riskiest parts, and that’s why these are fundable deals, because you’re able to jump into something that has been consistently profitable. And just by nature of how we approach these deals, we’re looking at an even smaller, safer asset class than just businesses writ large.

Kyle Knowles: Okay. And so you make money by being a partner in Fruition Capital and investing in other companies. You also make money as a partner and as president of Heritage Fabrics. Do you also do consulting or make money in that way? Like, how are you helping these military veterans or other people that want to escape corporate?

Kevin Bibelhausen: I don’t make a nickel off of that. I genuinely enjoy Talking to a lot of these guys and it really started on my MBA program where a lot of people were I actually bought heritage while I was going through my MBA. And which, by the way, is not a requirement to do this by any stretch, it was something I personally wanted to do. The NBN? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But these guys were transitioning military, and they were very interested in what I was doing, because it was different. And because it had sort of the features of a second career, of a second act that they liked. It was a little more, it was, you know, more independent, you know, you’re able to be a leader, and you’re not, you know, going in at the more junior ranks. And so that’s kind of how that whole I mean, you can call it consulting or advising, but it’s true. I mean, I do a lot of that just for fun. And I’ve had several classmates who have gone on to purchase businesses in the last 18 months just because they heard about it from me while I was talking about what I was doing in school. And they changed their career trajectory because of it. And that’s kind of how powerful this model is. And I’m not some great salesperson and I would never tell anybody to go guarantee a bunch of debt without understanding what you’re doing, but it’s an attractive enough wealth generation engine and sort of on a risk reward basis, it was worth it for them. And they were able to leverage their military experience, their new MBA, their business knowledge to go and be effective managers in small businesses.

Kyle Knowles: Okay. And did you have anyone during your Duke MBA program? Did you have anyone that was an entrepreneur through acquisition that came and spoke?

Kevin Bibelhausen: Yeah, it was me. I was the guy that, yeah, I was kind of the guinea pig. Like they had an ETA club at school, but there’s sort of two paths in ETA. Well, there’s more, but the two kind of main paths are, You go join a traditional search fund where you are effectively a gun for hire CEO. You go out and you find a deal. You raise all of the money from investors and you take like, these are round numbers, right? But you take a 30% kind of carry in the deal, meaning you could own up to 30% of the business. There’s another model, which is the model that I advocate for, where you use the NSBA loan, you are effectively doing all of the equity raise or putting your own money into it, and you’re personally guaranteeing the debt. Whereas like in a traditional search, you wouldn’t have a personal guarantee. In a self-funded search using the SBA, you would have a personal guarantee on the debt, but you are rewarded with a higher percentage of equity. So you could own 70% plus of that business. So it’s effectively the difference between being a CEO and being an owner. Now, those are two very different things. One is more task-oriented, job-oriented. As a CEO, you kind of come in and you’re the manager and yeah, you own a little bit of equity, but you’re not the majority owner. You go the route that I went and that we advocate for at Fruition Capital, you are an owner. You own the majority of a company. That is a very different life than somebody who is basically a well-compensated manager. That’s how I would look at it.

Kyle Knowles: Okay. I’m of the opinion that MBA school helps train people to work for other people.

Kevin Bibelhausen: Yep.

Kyle Knowles: And it’s very rare that I talk to an entrepreneur who has an MBA. Of the 40 entrepreneurs or so that I’ve had on the podcast, probably four have an MBA. So you felt like it was something that you just wanted to do. But were you, I mean, that’s what’s interesting because you were working corporate at that time. And so an MBA obviously helps anyone in corporate. opens up doors, and especially if people that are hiring have MBAs, they almost guarantee that they are interviewing.

Kevin Bibelhausen: I’m a smart guy. This guy must be smart because he has exactly right.

Kyle Knowles: What percentage of the Duke MBA. Classmates went to school with you. What percentage are working corporate and what percentage are entrepreneurs?

Kevin Bibelhausen: Oh, I mean, I especially because of the program that I went through. So I wasn’t a full time student. I went through the executive program. And so, I mean, just by nature of that program, 99% of them are corporate, right? I mean, nobody does entrepreneurship. The whole point of that program is to keep working your job and get an MBA while you’re doing it. So that was everybody’s type. I was the only weird one that didn’t, I didn’t want to go back to school full-time. I was actively looking for a business while I started that program. But I was also working my sort of day job while I was doing it. So I was pretty unique in terms of the population. But I mean, I fully agree that an MBA doesn’t teach you how to be an entrepreneur at all. And it is suited for people who are working for others. And I can tell you, you know, when I was, when I was in my corporate role, the way I approached this was, okay, I’m going to go apply for business school, apply for an MBA. I’m going to go do that. And the worst case scenario is if I don’t end up buying a business, I have it in my back pocket. I have the MBA. I can continue on this corporate track. And the other thing was I had huge imposter syndrome about being an entrepreneur and being an owner. Like I didn’t, there was some special knowledge that I didn’t have that would make me a more effective CEO and owner, which of course is foolish, but you know, you tend to rationalize things like that when you’re kind of afraid to take the leap. So going to the NBA, going through an NBA program was, yeah, a personal choice for me, but it was also, you know, I didn’t have the confidence in my skill set, despite having done it for, you know, a decade plus, I just, I just didn’t have it. And so the way I looked at it was like, well, at least this will convince or maybe this will convince somebody that I belong in this room. You know, like that, that kind of that whole credibility thing. Now, you know, we fund people who have, you know, who don’t have MBAs who, you know, are, are, you know, career long managers like that happens. But we also have, you know, quite a few people who graduate from top business schools that go this route as well. It’s a, it’s a growing trend. And I, I like to look at people from both walks of life. Uh, I think you’re leaving a lot on the table if you don’t look at people who have kind of come up. you know, through the School of Hard Knocks, who have had winding career paths, like me, but who didn’t decide or who didn’t feel like they needed to justify their lives by going to an MBA program. I felt like I did. And I certainly learned a lot through it. And I had a well-rounded education. And now a lot of things made me more comfortable as a manager. Was it necessary? No, by no means. But I appreciated the well-rounded general education that I got from the MBA. So while it’s not necessary, I think it’s certainly useful. And that’s kind of how we look at it.

Kyle Knowles: Yeah. And did it give you the confidence that you were worthy to be in the room?

Kevin Bibelhausen: I think it did. I think it did. And that was probably more… It was totally more like… my own psyche that was more than anything else. It’s not like somebody was like, oh, OK, well, you graduated from this program, so now you’re in part of this cool club now. It was totally just based in my own head, and that people are taking me seriously now. So it really was this kind of stumbling block for me that I just needed to get over. I think it did help me to get over that hump, but looking back on it, It was by no means needed. I just, I felt like it, it helped me kind of break through that barrier mentally.

Kyle Knowles: Okay. And before you worked corporate and before you went to Duke, you were a professional opera singer.

Kevin Bibelhausen: Yeah. A number of years ago.

Kyle Knowles: Yep. Yeah. And how has being an artist helped you in business?

Kevin Bibelhausen: Yeah, so just like as a timeline here, I started out after I did my undergraduate in music, and then I went out and gigged around for a few years before realizing like, hey, this is a really hard way to make a living. And I was married at the time, I got married very young at 21. I say at the time, I’m still married. But the point was that I had to put together a living. It wasn’t like I could just go couch surf. I had real responsibilities early in my life and went from kind of doing the whole gig lifestyle to going and getting, you know, a job in corporate and kind of working my way up the ladder and ultimately ending up as a technology executive in a hospital system. So that’s kind of where I ended my corporate career. I would tell you that, I mean, being an artist, especially with a business that I acquired, which I would tell you, you know, I wish I could tell you it was some, you know, grand master plan, but it was pretty serendipitous. You know, I, I have now felt like I’m, I’ve returned home in a way to the arts because, you know, textiles are an artistic medium. Um, and that’s what we do at, at Heritage. Like I’ve got, you know, designers that work for me. I’ve got, you know, this whole artistic world that has opened up to me much in the same way that I had in music. And it’s just a, it’s an interesting thing to reflect on because I’m now able to apply all of the business knowledge that I had in my corporate career and through my MBA to an artistic business. And so it’s almost like I’m. I was, I was prepared for this over my whole career. So if you, if you didn’t know anything about my story, it could look relatively logical, but it’s very much not like it was, it was very, you know, one step at a time and no grand master plan. I just sort of. fell into the right things at the right time. And I think that just goes back to be open to opportunities that come across your path and try not to be so dogmatic about how you think your life should go. And I’m really talking to myself back in my early 20s because I had a very specific plan that did not happen the way that, that did not go the way that I had planned it to go. So, you know, if anybody’s listening to this and they’ve got a very rigid, and I think any type A personality does, right? Like, I’m going to go, I’m going to go do this for a few years, and then I’m going to go do this. And then ultimately I’ll get where I want to go. And I was that guy. And you get a little bit older and a little bit wiser and you live a little bit more life. And you realize that like, it just doesn’t work that way. You know, it happens for some people and that’s fine. But, uh, for most of us, like life kind of has us on a, you know, we get, we get redirected and we get rerouted and we, you know, end up discovering things that otherwise we wouldn’t have known. But some of that, sometimes that can be the most fulfilling in your career. Cause you’re, you’re never going to know everything that you want to do in life at, you know, 18, 20, whatever it is like you, you need to be open to learning new things and, and the opportunities that life can present you.

Kyle Knowles: I love it. What is the saying, life is what happens while you’re making plans?

Kevin Bibelhausen: Yeah, very much so. Very much so. I remember when I was buying Heritage that I was talking to investors at the time and several of them were like, really Fabric? Is this what you want to do? And I remember being like, yeah, I mean, it’s, I mean, what’s the difference? It’s a wholesale distribution business. It’s, it’s got great financials. It’s very consistent. Like, you know, being in the design industry doesn’t really scare me. In fact, it was something that, that was, I think on some subconscious level appealing to me. I didn’t evaluate it, you know, that way, but, but it was appealing. And now that I’m in it, I can see how my, you know, subconsciously I would have been attracted to it. A lot of the personality types are the exact same as I would have interacted with in music. And now I can kind of apply these sort of left brain principles to a right brain type of business. And I think that really does give me a unique advantage in this company specifically, because I can talk both sides. I can talk design, and I can talk art, and I can talk creativity. But I can also, you know, I can also do a, you know, cashflow analysis and I can also, you know, look at the financial statements and, and, and glean information from them and actually, you know, put together a business plan and, and, and think more along those lines. So it’s been a, it’s been a fun few years to kind of feel like I’m pulling all the threads of my life together into something new.

Kyle Knowles: Yeah, yeah, this is a fascinating discussion. I know we’re running out of time here. So back to being an opera singer, do you still get chances to sing?

Kevin Bibelhausen: No, and it’s because I haven’t really pushed or looked for them. I have toyed with it several times about just kind of going back into that world a little bit. I’m not gonna close the door on it, but I’ve certainly got enough on my plate at the moment. One of the things that’s kind of appealing for me is going back and revisiting some of those creative outlets, but now with a different perspective in that like, I don’t need to feed my family this way. I don’t need to have the pressure to take every gig that comes along because I need to pay my rent. It’s now I can do the things that I want to do. And you can be more creatively fulfilled that way. It’s tough to do. It’s tough to be a creative and an artist and also make your living from that. Not just because it’s a difficult business in general, but because you are you are so emotionally involved and personally involved and vulnerable in art that it’s hard to continue doing all of your best work when you’re worried about the next paycheck and you start making some trade-offs and sacrifices that you otherwise wouldn’t have made. Now, I’ve effectively built out an infrastructure where you know, my, my livelihood is taken care of with the businesses and I can go take some of those chances. And if it fails, that’s okay. You know, there’s no, there’s no real downside except for, you know, my ego, but I’ll tell you what, owning a business for a few years, you, you learn to set aside that ego pretty quick. So, uh, I certainly don’t have as much of an ego as I used to because life happens and has a way of beating you down a little bit. But yeah, no, I, I don’t, I don’t do anything actively right now, but I would never close the door on it. especially as I get deeper into this and continue to build systems that make me, you know, not irrelevant, but give me more distance from the business because the business can run itself most of the time.

Kyle Knowles: Okay, what was your favorite song to sing? Or what is your favorite song to sing?

Kevin Bibelhausen: Oh, man, like, you look at any of those. I mean, there’s all kinds of albums out there. I mean, I loved singing Verdi and Puccini, the great tenor arias. I mean, I was doing that when I was 13 or 14, singing along with you know, Pavarotti and all of the really famous tenors. I mean, it just it spoke to my soul. That’s why I loved it. And it just it was a way to express emotion and feeling. I think, you know, in your in your early in your early adulthood that you don’t otherwise know how to express. And that was my that was my medium to do that. And so, I mean, There’s a whole laundry list of arias, but I mean, it’s all the hits. You go on any singer’s discography and you see the great tenor arias, it’s all the same ten arias most of the time with some variance every now and then. I mean, that’s kind of the cool thing is that there’s these classic pieces that everybody reinterprets. And so I, you know, those two Italian composers were huge for me. You know, I enjoy every once in a while dusting off those those albums and listening to them again.

Kyle Knowles: Can you give us just a few bars?

Kevin Bibelhausen: I can’t actually give you a few bars here because I’m at the office. So yeah, I don’t want to I don’t want to scare everybody here.

Kyle Knowles: And yeah, I was so looking forward to that. So I have a lot of questions. We’ll just rapid fire go through these because we’re getting close to the top of the hour. What’s your favorite candy bar?

Kevin Bibelhausen: Candy bar. Great question. You know what? I really enjoy a Butterfinger candy bar, but it was Halloween relatively recently. You can’t go wrong with a Reese’s cup, but I’ll tell you what, that Butterfinger is a solid choice.

Kyle Knowles: Favorite musical artist?

Kevin Bibelhausen: I’ll tell you what, it’d be easy for me to go back and do a lot of classical artists, but somebody that I’ve really enjoyed recently is John Mayer, who has kind of had this this renaissance going through and gigging for Den Company. And I enjoyed his music from the get-go, but he wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea as a singer-songwriter. The way he’s reinvented himself and just has explored his artistry has just been really cool to see. And I think he’s another guy that started with a massive ego and has just really matured over time and is now kind of doing it doing the things he wants to do, doing the things he likes, doing the things that give him joy. So I really respect that. And that’s, I’ve enjoyed a lot of his stuff recently.

Kyle Knowles: Favorite cereal?

Kevin Bibelhausen: Captain Crunch. Final answer.

Kyle Knowles: Mac or PC? Mac. Google or Microsoft?

Kevin Bibelhausen: I was the biggest Microsoft promoter for the last five years. I think what Satya Nadella has done as a CEO has been nothing short of incredible. I think he’s an excellent executive. I think things that they’ve done with Xbox and things that they’ve done in even, you know, Office 365, say what you want about it. I think he’s a wonderful manager. That being said, I will say that, you know, of the video chat apps and all of that, like I don’t enjoy using Teams. I think there are better products out there. I would still probably lean towards Microsoft, but I do think that Google has done a nice job of remaining competitive. And now with a lot of the AI stuff that they’re doing, I mean, they’ve been a legacy player forever. So it’ll be really interesting to see what happens over the next five years with a lot of these legacy tech companies, Google included.

Kyle Knowles: Dogs or cats? Dogs. Phantom or Les Mis?

Kevin Bibelhausen: Oooh. Now, that is an on-brand question. I wore out the tape of Fan with the Opera when I was five years old. My parents went and saw it in Toronto. Now, real music theater people, a lot of them will make fun of Fan with the Opera. Angela Webber does not have a lot of serious musical fans. I still enjoy it. I don’t care what the haters say. That being said, Les Mis is a better production and a better show. I do enjoy both, but there is a soft spot in my heart for the Phantom because I literally, when my parents brought that cassette back, I literally wore it out. So I’m going to go there knowing that, you know, anybody that listens to this and it has, you know, some strong musical theater opinions will chastise me, but I don’t care. Come at me.
Kyle Knowles: I love those answers. And that probably got you, launched you into your musical Yeah, totally. No question. No question. Okay, last couple questions here, and we’ll finish. Kevin, what’s the worst thing about being an entrepreneur? And what’s the best thing about being an entrepreneur?

Kevin Bibelhausen: You know, The worst thing, I think, I think they’re the same thing, you know, in a, in a lot of ways, like it’s, it’s the, that, that, that the buck stops with you. And so that means, you know, you gotta, you gotta do a lot of the hard decisions. You gotta make, you know, personnel decisions that, that, you know, otherwise, you know, you would, you would love to hand off to somebody else. You gotta, you gotta, um, you know, you gotta do all the, all the administrative and the paperwork and the, and the, just all the, all the BS that comes along with owning a company. HR issues, all of that. And the best thing is that the buck stops with you. And then ultimately, you call the shots, you get to call the plays. And guess what? If it doesn’t work, it’s on you, but at least at the end of the day, you own your decisions. I really enjoy that. It’s not for everybody, but because Like I just said, it’s two sides of the same coin and it can cut you both ways. But I do think that is the best and worst thing about what we do. There’s nothing like the highs of entrepreneurship and there’s nothing like being down in the dumps because you’ve got some massive HR personnel issue that you need to solve and you know how to solve it. You just don’t want to rip the bandaid off. It’ll test your fortitude, no question, but the benefits are certainly worth the downsides.

Kyle Knowles: Well, thank you so much, Kevin, for sharing your time today and being generous with your time. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you for all the advice about entrepreneurship through acquisition. Where can people find you? Where can people find out more about ETA and And all about you.

Kevin Bibelhausen: Yeah, I’m pretty easy to find online. My last name is pretty unique. So if you do go to biebelhausen.com, all my stuff is there. You can subscribe to a newsletter. You can find me on LinkedIn. You can find all of my other socials. You can even book a call if you want to talk about ETA in general, or think about passively investing in these deals, or if you’re interested in being a sponsor. Generally, I keep time on my calendar to talk to people. I try and do as much as I can. It’s not always as much as I’d like. And sometimes people get upset for how long things have to be booked out for. But I’ve tried to keep it free. I don’t like to gate a lot of that stuff because I think that good managers, good entrepreneurs can come from anywhere. So that’s the easiest place. Go to my website. Otherwise, I’m easy to find on LinkedIn. There’s only one Kevin Biebel Housing out there that I’m aware of. So if you look me up, I’m sure you’ll find me.

Kyle Knowles: I love it. Well, thanks again, Kevin. Thanks for being on the show today. And I’ll put all the links and everything in the show notes, but looking forward to publishing this episode to help people learn more about entrepreneurship through acquisitions. Thank you.

Kevin Bibelhausen: Thanks, Kyle.

Kevin Bibelhausen: talk about like, I don’t know what else to call it, but like design entrepreneurship. What does it look like to kind of go in as a creative person and acquire a business and kind of operate, you know, have that left brain, right brain capability? You know, you’re able to manage the enterprise, but then you also have this creative outlet. You know, because I think a lot of people have been attracted to talking to me. You know, I talked to somebody who was looking at buying art auction houses. because she was an artist and then found a way. There’s all of these different little ways that people can find to be profitable, non-starving artists, right? And it may be through a different medium that they weren’t otherwise competent in, but it’s the same flavor, it’s the same kind of principles, right? And so I’m kind of interested in exploring that.