Shaan interviews Sarah Moore, a Harvard MBA grad who bought a multi-million dollar business called eggcartons.com with zero cash down using a seller’s note and bank financing. Sarah describes her full acquisition process — from scraping databases and hiring Craigslist interns, to cold-emailing thousands of businesses and negotiating the deal — and then tells the remarkable personal backstory that made her who she is.
Speakers: Shaan Puri (host), Sarah Moore (guest, owner of eggcartons.com)
Shaan Introduces Sarah Moore [00:00:00]
Shaan: All right, what’s up. It’s Shaan, and I’m going to start by reading you a tweet I did a year ago. It says: “I have a new hero and her name is Sarah Moore.”
The reason Sarah Moore is my hero — and somebody you’ve probably never heard of — is because she was a student in college, in her young twenties, with no money and no experience. The only thing she owned in her life was her car, a RAV4. And she hustled this crazy story of how she decided, “I’m gonna buy a business even though I’ve got nothing to my name.”
She spends a year searching through 100,000 businesses and finds this niche business called eggcartons.com. Literally, this guy sells the carton that your eggs come in. And she bought this multi-million dollar business with all debt. She put no money in because she didn’t have any money. And then she grew it a bunch.
I said, “I think this is like a $2 million business that this woman bought — wow, what a hustler.” So I told this story on the podcast and it kind of went viral. Nobody had ever heard this story before. She had done no interviews, she had no social media, she was like a ghost. And honestly I didn’t even know if it was true, because it’s one of those stories that’s too good to be true.
Here’s this girl who comes from absolutely nothing. She talks about this in the interview — she literally had no parents, she was in and out of jail as a kid, she was just trouble. And then she has this turning point in her life that gave me goosebumps. She ends up paying somebody to take the SAT for her. She gets into college. She hustles her way through college, finds a way to buy this business, and it’s this amazing success story.
Two things happened after I told the story. One: it kind of went viral. She said Netflix and others reached out to her after the episode went live, that people started showing up on her doorstep asking for advice on buying a business. And it was honestly kind of bad — too much. Please don’t do that, because she’s like, “Dude, I’m trying to run a business. I don’t even know you.”
So a year later she’s like, “Okay. First I was like, ‘wow this is crazy.’ Then I was kind of annoyed and scared — is this going to mess up my business? But then I started to see the upside of telling my story.” And she said, “Look, I still have no social media, I still do no interviews, but you were very nice and you told my story. I will agree to come on and do one interview.”
She said, “After this I’m one and done. I’m going to come on, I’m going to lay it all out there. I’ll tell you everything you want to know about buying a business — how I did it, the good and the bad, all the mistakes I made. I’ll tell the life story. And then I’m disappearing after that.”
And she did not disappoint. We just finished recording. It’s one of my favorite episodes we’ve ever done. She is somebody that I really admire, and I don’t use that term lightly. She is a real hustler, super genuine, and her story is frankly incredible. It’s not often I have goosebumps during an episode. Enjoy this episode with Sarah Moore.
Welcome and Context [00:04:30]
Shaan: All right, today’s episode is going to be all about buying a business rather than starting one. We usually talk about ideas you should use to start a business, but as you know, one of our best friends of the house, Andrew Wilkinson, has told us many times — buying a business can be a better path. But how the hell do you actually do it? That is the question, and we’re going to talk to somebody who has not only done it, not only done it successfully, but has really never told her story.
You, Sarah Moore — you are basically not on the internet. Welcome to the internet. I first heard your story, then I went Googling, and I couldn’t find anything. You were a ghost.
Sarah: Intentional or unintentional?
Shaan: Very intentional.
Sarah: I’m a very private person and I’m not a fan of public attention. You kind of blew up my spot, so things have changed a bit.
Shaan: Yeah, sorry about that. So a long time ago — I don’t know what it was, hundreds of episodes ago — I came on the pod and I said, “Hey, I got a story for you. I would love to have this person on as a guest, but you can’t find them on the internet.” I said, “I think this is an incredible story. There’s this woman who, out of college, bought the most boring-sounding business you could think of — eggcartons.com.” I called you the queen of carton, or something like that.
And I was like, she bought this business that some guy had been running for 20 years. She’s running it, she’s growing it. The way she did it with no money down — her story sounds really interesting. But again, there was literally one text interview of you on the whole internet.
So I emailed you and I said, “Hey, I’d love to have you come on.” I don’t think I got a reply. But then I sent you a Google doc and said, “Look, I just have to know — can you just fill this out? Just from my own personal curiosity.” And to my surprise, you actually did.
So when I came on the pod and told your story, suddenly a bunch of people were very interested in you, giving you a lot of attention. And correct me if I’m wrong — sometimes not in the nicest way. It wasn’t all good, right?
Sarah: That’s correct. I’ve come across quite the cast of characters.
Shaan: What do they say to you? How are they finding you?
Sarah: Some people beg me to talk to them for 15 minutes. Someone specifically offered me $500 for five minutes of my time. It’s crazy, because I’m so irrelevant most days. I’m out in Massachusetts, so there’s not much happening here. I’m kind of under the radar. And all of a sudden I’ve gotten a ton of inquiries — a lot of people wanting specific information. A lot of people emailing to say, “Hey, I’m doing this exact thing. How do you get financing? Can I get your opinion on this business deal? I’m about to close — how did you get a bank to do your deal without putting much or any money down?”
Shaan: Well, hopefully this podcast tells your story in a good way and does not create even more people chasing you down, because we’re just going to tell all the answers right here so everyone can leave Sarah alone after this.
Sarah: Yes, I’m serious — please do not contact my business. You can email me or reach out on LinkedIn, but please do not contact my business or show up there.
Shaan: Yeah, we’ve had a couple of those.
Sarah: A few stragglers. There’s always a few stragglers.
Shaan: It doesn’t help that your story is kind of unique. You didn’t come from money. You didn’t know how to do this — you were a total beginner when you started. You’re a woman doing this, which I think is more unique. You did it in a niche that sounds boring, and boring businesses have become sexy. So there are a bunch of reasons people are excited. But let’s start at the start.
Why Buy a Business? [00:08:00]
Shaan: You were in school and you decided, “I want to buy a business.” First, why? How did you even know that was a path you could go down?
Sarah: Oh boy, there’s a lot of context here. But to answer your question in the simplest way: I was between my first and second year of business school, talking to somebody about what they wanted to do afterwards, and they mentioned something called a search fund. Where you essentially go out and buy some grungy business and become the CEO basically overnight, without any money or experience.
Shaan: That was very appealing to you. You’re like, “Hey, I fit that criteria — no money, no experience. Sign me up.”
Sarah: Absolutely. Sign me up.
Shaan: And you hear this idea — what was your plan before that? Did this replace something?
Sarah: So we’ll do a bit of storytelling here. When I was in business school, there was a guy I was working on a project with who was incredibly responsive — almost annoyingly responsive, one of those. And I asked, “How are you so responsive all the time?” And he said, “Goldman” — he’s referring to Goldman Sachs. He said at Goldman there was a rule of 15 minutes: you had to respond to whatever form they reached out to you in within 15 minutes, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Shaan: What if you’re in the shower?
Sarah: 15 minutes.
Shaan: What if you’re running a marathon?
Sarah: 15 minutes.
Shaan: Christmas day?
Sarah: 15 minutes.
Shaan: And my favorite — what if your wife is giving birth?
Sarah: 15 minutes.
And I mean, we laugh, but I had worked my ass off to even graduate high school, worked my ass off to get into business school — to be frank. And I’m thinking, “You went to an Ivy League undergrad, you’re clearly off-the-charts intelligent, you have this amazing network, you come from money, you have everything I don’t. Why would you choose to essentially sign up to be someone else’s…” — I didn’t say that to him, but that was my thinking.
So I had no idea what I wanted to do, but up until then I was at Harvard Business School trying to fit in and find my footing. And after that conversation I’m thinking, “I don’t want to be like these people. I don’t want to be a consultant, I don’t want to be a banker. This is so not me.” And I’m only going to answer to one person, and that’s myself.
Shaan: That’s every entrepreneur ever. There was a guy we went to college with — next door neighbor in our dorm, great guy, Sam Soy — and he went to work at Goldman or one of those banks. He read our blog where we’d write about building our company. We’d be like, “Yeah, we woke up, we had these calls, and then we went for a hike because we lived in Boulder.” It sounded so sexy — in reality it was pretty lame, but you know, blogging back then was like Instagram. You make it look good.
So Sam quits his job, moves into our living room, lives on our couch. He’s like, “I’m going to do this.” And I’m like, “Dude, you were making six figures, you’re making zero figures here.” And then he sent an email and said, “Hey, can you get that to me ASAP or sooner?” And I was like, “What do you mean ASAP or sooner? ASAP means as soon as possible.” He’s like, “Ah, that’s a banking thing.” I’m like, “What the hell is sooner than ASAP?” That’s the mentality. I get it, I get why you quit.
Sarah: It honestly blows my mind, given the pedigree of these people. You would think they’d shoot for the moon — you would want this freedom in your life. But you’re literally choosing a form of enslavement, in my opinion.
Shaan: Anytime you know — banking, consulting — these are often brain drains. Really talented people go there because it’s a safe, well-respected path. But think about how many more cool, interesting things could be built if those same talented people went out and did more entrepreneurship. But to each their own.
The Search Fund Approach [00:13:00]
Shaan: So you hear that, you’re like, “All right, I’m not going to do that.” Now you hear this idea of buying a business. Where do you start? How do you even know how to start?
Sarah: Great question. I lacked the ability to evaluate businesses — I had no experience doing that prior to business school. I was in the steel industry before. I thought if I could get a business, I was pretty comfortable with the idea that I could probably run it if I tried hard enough. But the searching itself — I thought I needed to have a background in private equity.
I looked at the investor-backed search fund route — where investors actually pay you to search. I’m thinking, “That’s incredible. Someone’s going to pay me to look for a business?” Look further into it and see that if you get an investor to back you, they give you plenty of money, you can live a cushy life, you can wine and dine sellers. But you have to pay back one and a half times that amount. So if they gave me $200K to search, I’d have to pay back $300K. That was absolutely ridiculous.
So one of my friends sat me down and convinced me that it’s similar to dating: if you get enough reps in, you cannot not recognize a good business when you see one. I figured I may as well just try on my own. Worst case, I bring someone in midway.
Shaan: So what did you do? What was your process?
Sarah: Step one: I’m not good with technology and I didn’t have any money. So step one is leveraging what I’ve got around me, which is I’m now in a school with a bunch of smart people. So I had one of my smart friends scrape one of the databases with all the private companies within an hour and a half of my apartment in Boston.
Shaan: Your criteria was just: it’s an hour and a half away. Tell me every private business in this area.
Sarah: Truly. And the problem with these databases is people think, “Oh, you’ve got all this great information.” Not really. We estimated — just by looking at some financials we actually knew about — that the database was accurate about 50% of the time. Accurate meaning the owner’s name is correct, the revenues are correct, the employee count is right. Because they’re all self-reported. And who’s actually going to give you accurate information knowing it could be public?
So we tried to pare down the list by revenue. We did it by a multiple of about 5x. Let’s say a business I’d worked for previously — the database said it did a million dollars in revenue. The business was actually doing over $100 million. So we tried to narrow it down. We took off anything over $100 million in revenue. And then obvious exclusions — a legal firm, an accounting firm, a 7-Eleven. Other than that, fair game.
So we were still left with a pretty massive list.
Shaan: You told me something about this. You think industry is overrated. People over-index on, “I’m looking in this space, this is my niche, this is the industry.” You don’t believe in that. Why?
Sarah: Initially I did what I think most people do — what investors actually require you to do. You sit there and develop a thesis about industries that would make great businesses. Usually those industries have characteristics that make them stable, which is what you’re looking for when you’re buying a business with a lot of debt.
What I found is that the industries were absolutely irrelevant. What matters is that you find a business that is established and has been consistently profitable for a number of years. Everything else? Garbage.
There are so many businesses in amazing industries like pest control. Great industry. People are not going to say, “You know what, not a great year for me, I’m just going to let my house be infested.” That’s not a thing. But I think industry gives you a false sense of security — you think just because I’m in pest control I’m good, when you’re really not. There’s way more to it than that.
Find a business that’s established and consistently profitable. Forget the industry. People could say, “I’m in e-commerce” — that’s an unstable industry. I worked in steel. You would think that’s an absolute hell no. But it’s a great business. Industry would tell you otherwise.
Shaan: So you didn’t look top-down at industry. You had this massive list, you removed the obvious outliers — businesses that are way too big — and you still have an enormous list. One person on campus trying to sort through it. What did you do?
Building the Search Operation [00:18:30]
Sarah: I wasn’t a one-person show, thank God. I hired a ton of interns. I didn’t mean for it to get as big as it did, but initially I had five interns working for me.
Shaan: Wait — you’re a college student, you’re an intern yourself. How does an intern have interns? What happened?
Sarah: I’m quite the pitch. And here’s what it is: private equity is an industry where they don’t do free internships. You’re more of a liability than an asset to them — you need actual skills, probably investment banking skills, before you’re even at their front door.
So this opportunity I was offering was: hey, you’re going to get private equity experience. And I’m huge on transparency, so I created a conference line and said, “I’m going to let every single person listen in on these calls whenever they want.” These were calls with owners, brokers, accountants, attorneys — anyone I contacted. My phone was basically tapped 24/7. If you’re interested in finance, it’s incredibly helpful. Who wouldn’t want to listen in on live business deals?
Ben Graham told Warren Buffett no when Buffett offered to work for him for free. Graham said, “Your price is too high.” Because it’s the time and energy to train someone. But I was in the opposite position — I did need help, I did need free labor. And I rebranded myself as private equity, which technically I was.
Shaan: Where’s your office?
Sarah: It’s in the cafeteria. That table is my office.
Shaan: Were these other Harvard students?
Sarah: No. I initially used the student job boards and they were actually the worst — you get cookie-cutter students who think like everybody else. The best interns I found came off Craigslist. My first intern from that initial batch of five was with me for the entire duration of my search. He came off Craigslist.
Shaan: And even with 5 to 15 interns doing 50 outreaches a day — the math doesn’t work on a list of 400,000 businesses. So you changed your approach.
Sarah: We realized our response rate was awful. No matter how customized you get, you’re reaching out to people most of whom aren’t looking to sell their business. So if it’s already this bad, we may as well go wide. We made many mistakes — the interns were generating all these false positives and false negatives. So we decided: we’re just going to email everybody and their mother.
Email addresses all follow patterns. You look at them all day and you see: most are first name, last initial at domain — or first initial, last name. So we created a big Excel file, guessed the combinations, and then ran them through something like Bulk Email Checker to see whether or not they were real addresses.
Shaan: So you get their contact info and now you’re going to email all of them one generic email. Because you’re like, my response rate is bad anyway. If it gets cut in half but I can email five to ten times more people, that’s a good trade.
Sarah: Absolutely. And we sent the emails out in a way that looked like they were specifically targeted. It said, “Hey, I’m looking for a business to buy, and yours seems to perfectly fit the bill — it’s within this revenue range, it’s been around for a really long time, it’s been profitable for a number of years.”
The people who responded and said, “You idiot, that’s not true” — great. Now we know that. They filled out our survey without realizing it.
Shaan: They thought they were telling you off.
Sarah: Right. And the best replies were: “Wow, you really did your research.” They’re telling me how much research I’ve done, I have no idea who they are, and I’ve got the intern scrambling — what area code is this, who is this, what could this possibly be — while I’m pretending to have spent time researching their business.
Shaan: It’s like being at a party and somebody knows you but you don’t remember where from, so you just say really generic things while your brain is searching, searching.
Sarah: Exactly.
Shaan: What was your specific criteria — did you have a revenue target?
Sarah: Initially I looked at businesses ideally between $4 million and $20 million in revenue and I wanted something at or above $1.5 million in — profits?
Shaan: Profits, yes.
Sarah: Over time that changed. I realized so much of what I was doing was based on what I had heard over and over. Things got tweaked as I realized I didn’t need that criteria. I actually lowered my expectations a lot, and it worked out well.
Finding eggcartons.com [00:25:00]
Shaan: So you lowered your criteria, you widened your reach, you’re emailing a bunch of people. And one of them is this business — eggcartons.com. What stood out?
Sarah: I sent out that email which again looked customized but wasn’t. The owner sent back a very long email saying, “Wow, you really did your research. I am so impressed.” And he starts outlining the specifics: “You’re right, we’ve been around for a while. We started in 2001, and this business has been profitable ever since, consistently. We have an amazing reputation and a very strong customer base.”
At first I’m thinking — guys, we’re reaching out to farms now, because it looked like a farm feed store. So the first thing I always wanted to know was: let’s see the financials. Because if the numbers aren’t there — meaning you actually have been consistently profitable for a number of years — I’m not interested.
But they were there. I would say maybe 5% of the businesses we looked at were consistently profitable and established. That few. So he met those parameters and I was immediately interested.
I started asking about the business and learning more. I was like, okay, this is a commodity, right? And he says, “No, it’s not. We actually have proprietary products. We have some patents.”
Shaan: Explain what the business is.
Sarah: Literally the carton your eggs come in. You buy a dozen eggs, they have to be packaged in something. This guy was the packaging — but as the middleman. So what they’re basically doing is buying, storing, and selling egg cartons. As a wholesale distributor.
I immediately thought, okay, this is simple enough that a person with average intelligence — me — can do this. I think I could sell an egg carton. I think I could buy one too. That’s essentially what it was.
Shaan: And the website — it’s so basic. The logo isn’t even just a logo, it’s eggcartons.com. And then under it, attached to that in the same image, is your 1-800 number.
Sarah: It’s very old school.
Shaan: You weren’t scared away by that — you actually wanted that. You didn’t want some internet business, something new and innovative.
Sarah: That’s correct. You have to play to your strengths. Mine were honestly kind of limited. I’m not handy. I’m not good with technology. Anything with engineering is over my head. So the simpler, the better. I didn’t want to rely on anyone going in. This was a business you could walk into and on day one, more or less get it.
Structuring the Deal [00:29:00]
Shaan: So what happens? You make them an offer, you meet for lunch — how do you actually get the deal done?
Sarah: For me, I stopped going anywhere until we spoke about a tentative price range. I would always throw out a number very quickly. Small businesses like these were all trading between 3 to 4 times profits. So I’d think, “If you’re above average, you’re closer to 4. If you’re below, you’re closer to 3, maybe 2.”
I’d immediately get down to that on the phone. It was great. I’d say, “Okay, what’s your income looking like, what are you guys averaging each year?” They’d give me the numbers, and I’d think, “This is worth about 3.5x.” I always went a little bit high because I knew there’d be room to bring it down. But you’re not being dishonest — best case scenario it’s probably around here.
So I threw out a number and said, “Is your price anywhere within that range?” Because a lot of conversations end because sellers think their business is worth 10x and it’s just not.
He said, “Yeah, I think I can work within that range.” He had looked into selling previously, so he was a lot more aware of what these small businesses are actually worth.
The second thing — and this was non-negotiable for me — was a seller’s note. The seller’s note was a substitute for getting equity, and I didn’t want to get any investors involved. So the next step was: “Are you willing to do a seller’s note?” He was willing.
Shaan: For anyone who doesn’t know — define what a seller’s note is.
Sarah: I’ll use an example. Let’s say you’re buying a house for a million dollars. Rather than the seller getting a million dollars up front — let’s say you have a 25% seller’s note — you would give the seller $750,000 at close, and then pay the remaining $250,000 over time, at whatever interest rate and time horizon you define. The seller becomes the bank. They’re financing part of the purchase.
Shaan: And the argument for getting sellers to do it?
Sarah: If they’re telling me how great the business is and how simple it is to operate — then why would they have an issue doing a seller’s note? If it’s stable, if those things are true, what’s the risk?
Shaan: A friend of mine just bought a business similar to yours. He included a provision where if EBITDA dropped way below where it was at closing — if he found some skeletons in the closet — the rest of the seller’s note would be forgiven. Did you do something like that?
Sarah: I did it as is. There’s something called an earnout, which is similar, and it’s based on the business’s performance. But I tried to keep this extremely simple. The devil really is in the details, and a lot of these sellers — they’re very good at business, but they don’t have high school degrees. I’m trying to do a deal where the terms are straightforward. When you start doing complex terms, the seller freaks out. “Wait, I may not get this money? I don’t even know you.” So I’m not a big fan of those.
Shaan: And the second point from you — industry is overrated, and I also heard you say: don’t use jargon. Even though you were at business school, you weren’t saying “EBITDA.” You’d say, “How much money are you making?”
Sarah: Yes. And I honestly think ignorance truly is bliss here. The less you know, the better, because you can keep things extremely simple for the seller. I think that breeds trust.
Shaan: So you buy this business. How much cash did you actually put in?
Sarah: You don’t need to put any cash down. I didn’t have to, because of the seller’s note. I did a 25% seller’s note and a 75% bank note. The idea was: when shopping around for a bank to do the deal — and it took me 20-plus banks to figure this out — it was all about how they viewed the seller’s note. Banks that viewed the seller’s note as equity — very few did — I could work with. The ones that didn’t, not so much.
Shaan: How did you get them to think it was equity when it’s kind of not?
Sarah: I wish I had some savvy answer here, but to be frank — most bankers have no idea what they’re doing. I had to learn this the hard way. They think they can finance the deal, and they have no idea how to structure these deals. So a lot of it was just their ignorance.
The key thing: the bank had priority over everyone else. The bank was going to be paid before the seller’s note. And the business had many, many years of a track record of profitability. That’s why the track record is so important — the bank is really betting on the business’s history. And then it’s a question of, “Okay, it’s done well for 20 years. What could you possibly do to make it not do so well?”
Fake IDs, Faxes, and Pure Hustle [00:36:00]
Shaan: You told me the only asset you had was your RAV4. And you were able to buy a multi-million dollar business through hustle and a numbers game. We didn’t even talk about some of the hustle details.
Scraping the database. Getting people off Craigslist to be interns. Then those interns need a place to work. So you got fake IDs to get them into the library?
Sarah: We hustled for those IDs. That was hard work. We shot emails to hundreds and hundreds of alumni trying to find someone who looked like the intern.
Shaan: A lot of this story to me is about not counting yourself out. Somewhere along the way, a lot of people would have counted themselves out. “I don’t know how to do this. This is uncertain. I don’t have the money, the experience, the time.” You didn’t do that. You figured out a way to get it done.
And really, the rules are sort of imaginary. You can work around them. And it’s a numbers game — we need to look at a lot of businesses, talk to a lot of banks. Is that accurate?
Sarah: Yes. And if there are two things I’m passionate about in this world, it’s obviously egg cartons — but also this concept of spreading the good news: anyone who wants to buy and operate a small business can do so. It is not a matter of can or can’t. It’s a matter of will or won’t. That’s a fact.
This is an industry where you can choose any type of business, any size. You could be a cleaner looking to buy another small cleaning business from someone who wants to retire. You can buy a dog walking company. There is truly no limit. And to me it’s one of the few areas left of the American dream where you can go out, put in a ton of effort and elbow grease, make something of your life, and make good money without killing yourself.
Growing the Business [00:40:00]
Shaan: Since you took over the business — you don’t have to share exact numbers — but let’s say if the business was making $100 before. What have you been able to do in the years since?
Sarah: So when I first bought the business, the first couple years things may have been on the decline a little. I may have made quite a few mistakes. It wasn’t looking too promising.
Shaan: You’re not getting invited on podcasts for that story at that time. “Sarah bought a business and is driving it straight into the ground — how does it feel?”
Sarah: I probably would have been fired or kicked off as CEO. But here’s what happened.
When I first bought this business, I thought, “I’m in the egg industry.” So I’m looking at what the duck egg market looks like, what the chicken egg market looks like. And I realized again — market frameworks are kind of BS, because you don’t really know until you’re in it.
And when I got in it, I realized I’m not really in the egg industry. I’m in specialty packaging. It was actually a much bigger opportunity than I ever realized. I wasn’t some genius figuring this out — I just looked at our order history. We were getting orders from people selling crickets, buying roaches, using egg cartons for small parts, bath bombs, cupcakes. I estimate now that 40% of our revenue has nothing to do with eggs.
When I realized that, I also realized that our specialty was really these proprietary products. I spent most of my time focusing on those — not on building a fancy modern website, but on these products I call “sticky.” We’re making a custom mold for a customer that they’re then going to keep buying from us, assuming we don’t rip them off or totally botch it.
And then COVID was like cheating. We went 5 or 6x during COVID.
So it was a combination of recognizing how big our market really was and recognizing that COVID was an incredible opportunity to take all our capabilities and run with them.
Shaan: When you talked about specialty packaging, you said something like, “We’re not about egg cartons — anything requiring protection and separation is fair game.”
Sarah: Anything requiring protection and separation is fair game. I stand by that 100%. Think about how massive that market is.
Shaan: You could be making bras with that definition.
Sarah: We’re talking cups, whatever you want.
Shaan: You’re running this as eggcartons.com and I’m not trying to Sean Parker you — but “drop the eggs, just cartons.com.” If you’re making 40% off non-egg stuff, why not rebrand?
Sarah: It’s funny, we are actually in the process of doing a little bit of that. I’ve been buying domain names — machine shop trays, bath bomb cartons, any variations. Who knows whether they’ll stick. But it’s very challenging to figure out how to do that without compromising important revenue drivers. It’s way more challenging than you’d think.
It’s taken me years to really get people to understand this is bigger than eggs. We’re not abandoning the farms or the chickens. It’s just way bigger than that.
Shaan: I’m so jealous of you because I feel like if I ran an egg carton company I could fulfill my dream of being Michael Scott at Dunder Mifflin. Just come into the warehouse…
Lessons from the First Year [00:46:00]
Shaan: If I gave you an hour with your younger self — either during the search or in the early days of the business — what would you tell yourself?
Sarah: I would borrow the advice I got from my mentor, but I’d actually follow it. Two pieces: hire and fire fast — I didn’t do that, and it was a huge mistake — and don’t change anything big, or really anything at all, in the first year. Both of those things cost me a lot.
Shaan: Tell me more about the second one.
Sarah: It’s a temptation. You come in, you’re so excited, you’ve been searching forever, you finally find the thing, it closes, the keys are yours. You want to play with the toys.
I thought there were really simple things I could change. Like our phones — we had hardwired phones in the office with cables everywhere. I’m thinking, “This is 2020. What are we doing? Let’s just switch to VoIP.” Seems like a small thing.
That was one of the biggest mistakes I made. Our phone number is extremely important. People look at the domain, sure, but our number is used by our biggest customers. It’s everything. And we have multiple phone numbers — that 1-800 number is forwarded to like 10 or 12 lines.
Spectrum may have lost our phone lines mid-porting, and our phones were down for almost a week. It was a huge deal because it was under new ownership, and people were thinking, “Did they go out of business? What’s going on? The phones are dead.”
So: maybe just change one phone line, not all of them. Something you think is small can actually be very big.
Shaan: I want to make this point: I think one of the reasons people count themselves out, almost subconsciously, is they’ve never seen themselves in a certain role. Their family didn’t do this. They just assume it’s something other people do. And you have a pretty unique background that should debunk that.
Sarah’s Background: The Real Story [00:50:30]
Shaan: I was talking to you and I thought, “Wow, this is some whip-smart Harvard person.” Like the Harvard pedigree plus street smarts plus hustle. And then you said, “I didn’t even take the SATs.” And I was like, “Wait — how did you get into Harvard Business School?”
Sarah: Okay. So we’re going to go way back. I’m one of three. My sisters and I had a subpar upbringing in that we didn’t really have parents. We were split up and we bounced around, living in a lot of different homes. My two older sisters made the most of it — they got really into academics and sports. I made the worst of it. I became somebody you would not want your kids hanging out with. I was partying all the time. I had a truancy officer. I went to jail. I was just so disrespectful to everyone, and I got away with it because people felt sorry for me.
At the beginning of high school I was living with a woman who was an alcoholic. When she got drunk, her favorite thing was to take all my belongings and throw them out onto the front lawn and tell me to leave. And I was a kid. I didn’t really have anywhere to go.
There was a woman named Natalie Bracken who used to pick me up and take me to her house, let me stay there until this other woman inevitably came back to Earth and called the police. It was constantly going back and forth. And one day she just got fed up and said, “I’m going to adopt you.”
So I’m living with the Bracken family. Her husband one day let me have it, because I was trying to skip school the first week I was living there. He sat me down and literally explained how life worked to me — the basics. You don’t lie. You don’t skip things when you don’t want to show up. And he explained where my life was going, which was basically absolutely nowhere.
It was very emotional for me. Because up until that time, a lot of people had given me lectures, but it always felt like it came from a place of “you’re bothering me” or “this is really inconveniencing me, so can you just stop.” He came from a place where I could tell he actually cared. And up until then, I didn’t feel like anybody did.
So I got my stuff together very quickly after that. I was scared of being sent back, scared of them regretting their decision. Because up until that time, no one — and I mean no one — was looking to invest in me. I was like a junk bond. Not a good investment. I didn’t do myself any favors.
Step one was getting a job. The first time I ever remember truly studying in my life was with Mrs. Bracken, when I was learning a menu to get a job at a diner. From there I applied those new study skills to school. Mr. Bracken had explained, “Listen, you’ve got a 2.0, you’re not getting anywhere but community college with that. You need to get it together.”
So I got all A’s because I wanted to boost my average to at least a 3.0.
I was working at this diner, and this couple would come in all the time. They never had kids and we just got along. I never told them about my upbringing initially. They offered me a job at their company, probably initially out of sympathy. I started working there and it just seemed to fit.
When I was working there, I got waitlisted from Northeastern where I ended up going to college. I had no idea — this couple was extremely wealthy. I always thought rich people ate at fancy restaurants. This couple was coming to a diner every week getting cheeseburgers. I had no clue.
When I was waitlisted, Steve said, “You need to take yourself off financial aid. These schools, especially Northeastern without a big endowment, take that into consideration when evaluating candidacy.” I said, “How am I going to do that? I have no money. This school is so expensive.” And he said, “We’re going to pay for your school.”
It’s hard for me not to get emotional talking about this, because between these two families, they changed my entire life. It wasn’t just the money — it wasn’t just the home. These people changed the way I viewed myself. They invested in me when I was truly the world’s worst investment. Who takes a kid like what I was and says, “I’m going to go all in on this”?
And from those two families I developed this concept of: I just want to be that one person for one person. Because when I was a kid, I sometimes begged people to help me. I would beg judges, attorneys, social workers. Nobody helped. They felt sorry for me, but nobody took action. So “be that one person for one person” carried over into college.
I went to Northeastern initially to be a social worker. But that was way too kumbaya for me, honestly. Then I considered law — I was watching CSI, I thought I’d be in juvenile justice. I figured I could be the attorney I wanted to have, the social worker I wanted to have. But again, not me.
One day I called Steve — I call him Boss — and said, “Hey, I’m now a junior in college and I don’t know what I’m going to do.” He said, “You are not an academic. You are geared for business. It comes naturally to you. You can have a way bigger impact in business than in criminal justice or social work.” And he said, “You need to go to business school.”
He had gone to Stanford Business School. But the average age of business school candidates at schools like Harvard is now 28, and at that point I was about 21. I said, “There’s no way I’m going to get into business school.”
He didn’t know I had paid my sister to take the SAT for me, because I just had no confidence in my ability to perform on a standardized test. When I got to college I was at a 33rd percentile reading level.
Shaan: What does that mean practically?
Sarah: I went off campus one day and got this test done because I was genuinely convinced I was mentally handicapped. I just didn’t understand anything. And they said, “There’s really nothing wrong with you — you’re just at a low level. Your intelligence was below average at this time.”
It put onto paper: you’re not that bright. And you’re at the 33rd percentile. It was heartbreaking. But I was embarrassed, and I didn’t want anyone to know. So the only thing I knew was to just try really hard. I didn’t want to disappoint the Brackens or the Greens.
I studied like you wouldn’t believe. Nobody knows the Northeastern University Library like I do.
Shaan: I’ve met a couple people in my life who had that moment — the conversation with yourself. Where decades are decided. This is my theory. There’s some conversation you have with yourself, and it goes one of two ways. Was there a conversation you had with yourself at that time?
Sarah: I’ve never been a long-term planner. For me it’s more day-by-day, week-by-week. But I did have this mentality of: I’m going to give this literally everything I have. Every day. Because I had this mentality of: I will not disappoint these people. I will not disappoint them. So if I studied round the clock and it still wasn’t good enough, at least I could say I gave it literally everything. That was it.
Shaan: A lot of people think the hardest thing is when nobody believes in you. Actually the most pressure is when almost nobody believes in you, but a couple people do. It adds a whole different level of emotional pressure.
Sarah: That’s exactly how I felt. I wanted to live up to who they thought I was — who I didn’t think I was.
Shaan: I didn’t come from the situation you came from — I was luckier than that. But the Birch family here in San Francisco, they were that for me. I was 24, they sat me down and said, “I think you’re going to do special things. We’ve met a lot of people in Silicon Valley — we think you’re going to do special things.” And then they named me CEO of the company. “Here’s the keys, we think you should do them.”
At that time I didn’t really view myself as special in any way. It was the first time somebody had said something like that but also put their money where their mouth was — not a parent, where you sort of take it for granted.
And then for me the soul-crushing part was: the next six years I didn’t really succeed. I was trying really hard but I wasn’t getting there. And I remember feeling that pressure every day of, “Did I — was I…” I remember thinking, “I wish nobody believed in me. That would be easier.” Because when somebody really believes in you and you don’t want to disappoint them — I felt that day by day. So I definitely resonate with that part of your story.
Sarah: And a lot of people say, “Oh I didn’t have it as bad as you.” But you adapt to what you’re going through. The feelings in a lot of ways are actually almost the same, even if the externals look different.
Shaan: Your life is a movie. I told you this on the phone — your life is literally the plot of The Blind Side. You’re just not a huge football player. Same sort of idea. People took a chance on you.
Have you been able to do that — be that one person for one person?
Sarah: I do, actually. And it’s one of the most rewarding things about my job now. Why I try to keep my circle very small. I’m really big on doing what these families did for me — a lot of one-on-one mentorship. On a mass scale I can only do so much, but one-on-one I can really bring people to the next level.
And I have zero tolerance for self-doubting. I’ll say, “Nope. You can do it. Do it again. We’re doing this again.” I used to tell people: “I will come any day, any time. I will sit with you for as long as it takes. If you try and you’re honest with me, I’m not going to give up on you.” I really mean that.
Shaan: When you were talking I was getting goosebumps. Coming on a podcast like this and telling your story is going to do that for someone somewhere that you don’t even know. Somebody out there is going to hear this or forward it to someone and say, “You need to hear this.” Something in there is going to resonate.
That’s why I was getting goosebumps. The egg carton story, buying a business — that was kind of the bait. But the real story here is the mentality. And those families that did that for you — it’s not as flashy as creating a foundation and giving away a billion dollars, but it is a version of philanthropy that can change somebody’s life in a huge way rather than a lot of people’s lives in a small way. And I think that’s what’s way more important.
Rewiring Yourself [00:66:00]
Shaan: What was it like when you rewired yourself? That’s a big shift — you basically changed all your habits, all the stuff that was getting you bad results, into things that started getting you good results. What was that like?
Sarah: I wish it was deep and I had steps for you. But it was a lot of fear. I was really scared of being anything like what I was. I was scared of what I would be in the future. Kind of like a drug addict that nearly dies from an overdose and gets scared straight. I was scared straight.
I also honestly lost interest in a lot of things I used to be interested in. I used to get into fights, I used to gossip. There was this golf course I used to get drunk and pass out on — wake up to the sprinklers. And I was disgusted by it afterwards. The idea of the taste or the smell bothering somebody — it was like that, but in reverse.
It was hard because I didn’t have any tools. I didn’t read a single book in high school. Not one book.
The Viral Moment and Fact-Checking [00:69:00]
Shaan: I have a couple of docs here I want to share — because it’s cool to see the actual screenshots you sent me.
When I told the story the first time on the podcast, there were two reactions. One was: “Wow, that’s an incredible story — you go girl.” And on the other side, people called BS. “That’s not possible. You can’t buy with all debt. Nobody could sift through 100,000 businesses. How do you go to Harvard and not have any money?”
And honestly, when I saw those tweets, I started to wonder myself. “She’s at Harvard Business School — is she coming from nothing? Am I getting Theranos’d? Is this Elizabeth Holmes and I’m just getting duped?”
So that happened. And then we have this researcher — you texted me the other day and said, “Somebody’s contacting a bunch of my old interns.” It was our researcher fact-checking, just to make sure we don’t look like idiots.
Your story was literally too good to be true, so people started calling BS. And you had no social media, so there was no way to tell your side. And then your sister created a Twitter account that day.
Sarah: She was tweeting like, “No, I’m in the car with her right now. Yeah, we grew up broke. We didn’t have a family.” And I was like, what is happening right now, but this is fascinating.
Shaan: Do you remember that?
Sarah: Yes. It started blowing up on Twitter. My company was talking about it, my interns were talking about it. They’re like, “Sarah, you need to go out there and defend yourself. We’re going to defend you.” And I was worried about anyone getting any of that directed at them. And then I started worrying about my company.
So my sister got on there — we’re very protective of each other. She created a Twitter just to go defend me.
Shaan: Is this the SAT sister or the other sister?
Sarah: This is the SAT sister.
Shaan: She’s the director of HR for Abercrombie and Fitch — corporate level. So her now-husband, her fiancé at the time, says, “You need to delete this, Jane. You have something to lose. It’s a lose situation. You guys are idiots trying to defend yourself amongst people online.”
Sarah: We had no idea. All I cared about was: preserve the business. Don’t mess with eggcartons.com. Don’t let this blow up.
Kenston Green and Hustle Marketing [00:73:00]
Shaan: So then you shared with us a bunch of things. We’ll put this on YouTube so people can actually see. The Craigslist post — you wrote it as “Kenston Green.” What’s Kenston Green?
Sarah: My mentor recommended making the name of the company a name that would have a story to it. I deliberately wanted to say: I’m from Cleveland, I worked in the steel business, I’m a blue-collar gal. So Kenston was the name of my high school in Cleveland, and Green was the name of the family I had worked for in the steel industry. So when they’d ask, “What’s Kenston Green?” — it was my way of giving an intro without giving an intro.
Shaan: It also sounds kind of powerful and old-money.
Sarah: I didn’t mean for that, but yeah, it works.
Shaan: You wrote, “It’s a small, unorthodox private equity firm.” Accurate?
Sarah: Unorthodox for sure. Very unorthodox. Probably very private — just me.
Shaan: “Unlike a traditional private equity firm, we will acquire just one business and the principal will operate upon acquisition.” No lies told. “You will be working for an eccentric, unpretentious Harvard MBA.” And: “Work will not include financial modeling, sophisticated analyses, or anything that you or anyone else thinks is a waste of time.” Tell me about that — that’s beautiful in a job post.
Sarah: I hate wasting people’s time. One of my biggest pet peeves is these jobs where people have to sit there until 5 or 6 o’clock just to be seen. When your work is done, just leave. Don’t pretend to be busy. So I’m not going to ask them to do anything that’s not actually important.
Shaan: Yeah, because when you call these businesses, it’s like, “So what’s your profit for the year?” And they’re like, “I think it’s 1.4 — actually 1.6, I don’t have my numbers in front of me.” It’s not like you’re doing deep due diligence.
Sarah: Exactly. They don’t know their business. They’re not hiding something — they just don’t know.
Shaan: You also said: looking for someone “hungry, comfortable with chaos.” And the compensation: unpaid, in exchange for letters of recommendation and introductions to anyone in consulting, banking, or private equity if you perform well. And also grad school prep.
Sarah: Good qualifier — “if you perform well.”
Shaan: Now, how did you increase your luck? How did you put things out there to get good things coming inbound?
Sarah: Okay, I have something I set aside for this.
People talk all the time about this industry and being a woman, and they think it’s a disadvantage. That’s a matter of perspective. I deliberately wanted to leverage my gender. Within the broker community, it’s all men. So I’m 5’9” and I would go to only free broker events, but I would go in 5-inch heels. So I’m walking around at 6’2” in a loud color outfit. When I’d call the brokers afterward — they never remembered anyone — I’d say, “I’m that extremely tall woman that introduced herself looking for a business.” Not a single person didn’t remember that.
But then I also had this sweatshirt I wore basically every day. On the front: “I want to buy your business.” On the back: my number. I wore it everywhere. I was on these Blue Bikes, running around Boston, wearing the sweatshirt.
Shaan: And you faxed everybody. That was one of the intern’s ideas — mass faxes. And part of the faxing campaign was putting your picture on there.
Sarah: To this day, I have people that recognize me from those faxes. People in the building where I work said, “Wait a second — I was wondering why you look familiar. Did you try to buy my business?” People on my street in downtown Boston will say, “You’re that girl that was wearing that sweatshirt” or “You’re that girl that was faxing me all the time.”
That’s what I wanted. Unfortunately a lot of those replies came back after I’d already bought the business. But that was what I was hoping for — somebody sees it and knows I’m serious.
Shaan: That’s brilliant. Because you’re looking for long-standing, boring B2B service businesses. They have fax machines. Nothing interesting is coming through the fax machine. Completely untapped, unsaturated channel.
And you’re turning disadvantages into advantages. “People say being a woman means you won’t be taken seriously. But I’m also going to stand out if I’m the minority. I’m going to use the psychology in my favor.”
And I’ll say it doesn’t matter if some of this stuff works. One of my life mottos: do it for the story. And there’s something that comes with the mentality of “nothing is off limits. I am all in.” It’s a signal to yourself, to your interns, to everybody — we’re all in. No idea is too dumb, too out there. Everything’s on the table.
Sarah: Anything, Shaan. Truly. I was shameless. If I had anything I could throw out there, I was throwing it out there. Whatever stuck I was okay with. “Hey, I’m Sarah Moore, 5-foot-9, brunette, if that’s your thing — I would love to buy your pest control business. And if you could share the profits, I’d be happy to join you for a coffee.”
Shaan: That’s so funny.
Closing Message [00:82:00]
Shaan: If you could leave listeners with one message or takeaway, what is it?
Sarah: My biggest value is freedom. This country was not founded on equality — despite how things seem now with the culture. It was founded on freedom. And part of freedom is using everything at your disposal. Gender, sex, age, whatever makes you you — you can use any of those things to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and make your life what you want it to be.
This industry, I can promise you, is one of those industries where you don’t have to have a Harvard MBA. What made me successful at this, I really think, was largely my upbringing. Those things were not taught to me at Harvard. The things I do day-to-day were not taught to me at Harvard. They were taught at the clichéd School of Hard Knocks.
So if you want to be free, pursue this route. Freedom is not free — it’s going to cost you time and a lot of effort. But I can promise you that anyone who wants to do this can do this, if they really put their all into it.
Shaan: And normally I’d say at the end, “How should people follow you or reach you?” But you don’t really have social media. What’s your message? Leave you alone?
Sarah: My biggest thing is: I want everyone who wants to pursue this path to have a fair opportunity to do so. That’s why I’m talking about it. I’m going to give people a Q&A-style format with detailed information to answer all the questions I get. But we’ve genuinely experienced a crazy amount of volume — thousands of messages on my inbox and LinkedIn. It really breaks my heart not being able to get back to all of them.
So I’m doing a mass reply — giving you as much information as we possibly can. But please understand I cannot respond to all of these inquiries. I have a full-time job. I own other companies. We’re very busy.
The biggest thing: please do not contact our business. Please do not show up at the business. We’re going to create a Google doc — something for you guys to fill out — and if you want information we’ll send it to you.
I’m not used to this. I went from being a nobody to all of this attention.
Shaan: So we’re going to put a form in the description. People fill it out, you’ll send them a blast. And amazing — if there are people who fill that out, I might cherry-pick a couple and say, “Hey, if you’re serious about this, I’ll help you do it.” I’m taking a break from running companies, I sold our last company last year. I don’t want to start a new company right now. But helping people buy businesses — that’s one of the things that’s actually pretty great. You learn about all these niche businesses. You get the free MBA.
Sarah: You learn so much searching. When I hear about people failing at this, it’s like — you really can’t fail. Unless you get investors, of course. But you really can’t. The amount we still laugh at some of the businesses out there…
And you view the world differently. I think of the freeway now — the lines on the freeway, the signs. Somebody made all of that. These businesses made all this stuff that we’re looking at and using every day. It’s kind of wild. You’re like, “No, that’s Trent in Cincinnati. He does that.”
Shaan: “What do you mean he has a name?” All right. Sarah, thanks so much for coming on. I really appreciate it and I’m truly inspired by your story.
Sarah: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.