Christi Loucks

The small business acquisition market isn’t one ecosystem, it’s two: coastal markets built on speed, process, and competition, and regional markets built on trust, time, and presence. In places like New York or San Francisco, deals are packaged and priced for efficiency, often clearing near 6x EBITDA. In smaller metros and the Midwest, transactions happen because relationships happen, with valuations closer to 3.7x, not because they’re easier, but because buyers invest months building real trust

Every few years, someone announces the death of email. In 1996, it was "too technical." In 2006, "instant messaging is faster." By 2007, "social networks make it obsolete." Then came "Slack will replace email" in 2014, followed by "peak email" in 2018, "spam will ruin email" in 2020, and most recently, "AI assistants will kill email" in 2023. Meanwhile, email users grew from zero in 1996 to 4.6 billion today. The predictions were loud but the data told a different story. The current version...

In 2025, we sent 82,035 emails to small business owners. We got 1,815 replies (3.87% reply rate) and 454 owners who wanted real conversations. That means that of the people who replied, 34% expressed genuine interest in exploring a sale.