He sold his own business first.

The story, in full:

Scot had built a successful business many years before — a janitorial company cleaning high-rise buildings at night, with a large number of employees. Then he purchased another business that did make-readys for apartments and rental properties. He bought it for their commercial contracts.

But after he acquired it, he discovered something the previous owner had missed: there was a highly profitable, massively underserved market in the make-ready side of the business. Once he saw it, he scaled into it aggressively. The business grew dramatically.

Government regulations and a weak labor market — he was scaling faster than he could hire — made him decide to sell. That’s when he started looking for a broker. It was 2003. You found brokers in the newspaper and phone book.

He called four brokers. Some didn’t call back. Some he met in person.

One came to his office and walked him through exactly how they sold businesses. But he never asked Scot any questions. Didn’t ask about the business. Didn’t ask what he wanted to sell it for. Didn’t try to understand the owner or what he’d built. He just talked about himself and his process.

Scot realized something that day: if he’s only interested in himself, he’s going to stay interested in himself when he lists my business.

He needed a broker who was interested in him.

He chose a different broker — one who claimed they’d sold more businesses than anyone in America. It sounded credible. It turned out later to be a trademark with no basis in reality.

What happened next is what changed everything.

The broker’s model was simple: he was paid only at closing. So he didn’t care about the highest dollar amount. He cared about the quickest close.

Scot’s financials were rough. With six months of preparation — cleaning them up, documenting what was in his head, showing the buyer the genius of the business — he could have sold it for far more. Thirty-five percent more, at minimum. Possibly double.

But the broker wasn’t interested in preparation. He wanted to close.

So Scot left money on the table. A lot of it. Because an inadequate broker didn’t understand how to sell the business, and didn’t care enough to learn.

Here’s what made him different from most owners who undersell: he knew exactly what he’d left behind. He understood the genius of the business. He’d discovered an underserved market, scaled into it, and built something valuable that no P&L could fully capture. The buyer understood it too — Scot was able to share it with them. That’s the only reason the business sold at all, when many like it never do. But the broker never saw it. The broker was throwing the business against the wall and seeing what stuck.

After the sale closed, Scot didn’t go into another industry or start something new. He bought a business brokerage firm.

Not because it worked. Because it didn’t, and he’d just spent months learning exactly why.

He rebuilt it into something else entirely: a sell-side M&A firm working one side of the table, on a conviction he’d learned the hard way.

Every business has a genius, and it’s almost never on the tax return.

That’s why Sigma exists.