Algorithm updates, Rand update, time for a reintroduction! Howdy, I’m Rand Larsen CEO and owner of @joinscalepath, a peer community of business owners. We’re sitting at ~100 members, ~70% of our community are successful acquisition entrepreneurs, we organize owners into peer groups of owners who share similar revenue sizes, business models, and personalities (Ambitious, wholesome, helpful, smart, and fun). We have peer groups in plumbing/HVAC, B2B local services, home services, holdco owners, manufacturing, and professional services. A quick timeline: 2019: started a business making documentaries about seniors to preserve life stories and legacy for future generations of people’s families. My grandparents all passed away when I was very young and I thought “how amazing would it be if I had a professional documentary made just for them I could watch and learn about who they were.” I made a documentary for both of my parents and then started making them for others. 2020: Covid crushed that business. So I got a landscaping job while I figured out what I was going to do next. 2021: I started learning about “the Silver Tsunami” and explored buying a business as a means to build wealth. Shortly afterwards I met and started working with @wilsoncompanies as an Entrepreneur in Residence, helped him acquire/operate businesses for ~1.5 years in a plumbing/HVAC trades rollup. 2022: I meet a business owner going through massive distress after buying a $20M HVAC business. He had no else to talk to about the challenges of business ownership (can’t talk to employees, W2 friends just don’t “get it”, etc.). So I started building peer groups to solve the loneliness problem so many business owners experience. Did this for free for over a year. Also started a ghostwriting agency, got it to $100,000+ in annual revenue. 2023: I start monetizing the peer groups and building more of them, working on it part time while the agency was my full time job. In October that switched and I went full time building more peer groups and started winding down the agency. 2024: Went on my first “SMB Road Show” or “Rand Run” for those of you who remember. I visited ~15 major cities in the Northeast and Midwest, hosted SMB/ETA meetups in each city, I met hundreds of people doing this and it all happened in ~5 weeks traveling full time. Twice I hosted 3 events in a single week. Tuesday in Detroit, Wednesday in Chicago, Thursday in Grand Rapids. In July I bought a campervan so I could travel more and experience van life. In total I’ve hosted nearly 50 events with >1,000 people attending across the country and met some amazing people and friends. 2025: Acquired Scalepath from @girdley and rebranded the business around their branding. In our community primarily made up of holdco owners and successful ETAers, I finally did my first acquisition! Also fun this year, we started making entrepreneur trading cards. These are fun gifts meant to celebrate entrepreneurs the same way we do sports stars. People love these things! Also, I was featured in the New York Times, which made my parents super proud of me. 2026: We’re still only halfway through, but I’m having a ton of fun, we’re making more entrepreneur trading cards, planning more events, building more peer groups, working with amazing people. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows but there’s certainly a lot of it. Follow me here for: - Anonymized stories of what business owners actually go through - Tactics and strategies I hear about that are genuinely great but never talked about publicly - Patterns I notice across hundreds of peer group conversations

Welcome to business ownership in 2026. - Diesel just hit a record $6.53 a gallon, up about 77% from a year ago - Your health insurance renewal came back up double digits - Tariffs keep pushing up what you pay for materials and equipment - The Fed just raised rates, and your variable-rate SBA payment goes up with it - Your wealthiest customers are asking for discounts - A competitor walks onto your job site and starts poaching your crew - Your driver heads out on his route at 8am, comes back at 10, drops his keys and card, and leaves without saying a word - A client approves every step of a project, then decides they don't like it and sends a ChatGPT-written email saying they're exploring other options - You land a 7-month project, won't get paid until month 8 or 9, and have to borrow $600K to $700K to float it - You invest in leadership training for your GM, he quits 30 days in - The $90K hire that you thought would change everything can't get along with the rest of the team - The seller of a business you're buying pulls out at the last minute, and $20K in legal and QoE fees is gone - It doesn't feel like a recession. But every few months there's a new reason to hoard cash. And through all of it, this is still a land of opportunity. Every problem on that list has an owner on the other side of it who figured it out. The client who walks teaches you who your real customers are and when to fire the bad ones. The deal that falls apart clears the way for a better one. The GM who quits makes room for someone who actually wants to grow. Sure, a lot of the time it feels like 2 steps forward 1 step back. But that's the game. Small progress is hard to feel day to day, until it adds up and years later you're looking at a totally different business, a different life. This game is challenging, but you can come out on top. You can build wealth. You can build a life for your family.

~70% of our members are acquisition entrepreneurs who've bought at least one business Something interesting I've found is that in a peer group discussion, people seldomly seek advice on a additional businesses they're buying. We'll talk about this a bit when people are just giving their recent updates... "Oh, I'm under LOI on a local ____ company. Everything looks good right now" and we'll get a small status updates along the way. "Still under LOI", "Closing delayed", "seller pulled out", etc. Occasionally when someone buys a business that is in a new industry they'll ask "does this make sense?" or "am I crazy for wanting to buy this thing?" and we'll go deeper on it. Or if there's real hair on the deal they'll bring that up. But for the most part, all of our discussions are focused on operations. Hiring, incentivizing, lead flow, systems/processes, etc. Not sure what this says but it feels like once someone's bought one business, they need less general help acting on the next one. They'll still get their attorney's involved, QoE, etc. Or if they do need a fresh eye, they'll call someone else. But more of what they're in a peer group for is just talking with other operators on how they can run their business better, bringing up challenges, opportunities, etc. Just an interesting observation from years of facilitating these conversations.

I just ordered the official next edition of entrepreneur trading cards: 11,500+ cards ordered 237 total decks 194 unique card designs This one is epic and features primarily business owners who acquired companies in 2025 Order arrives in ~2.5 weeks. I'm PUMPED

It’s been over 9 months I haven’t taken my van out to host an event for SMB peeps. I still get introduced to new people today as “the vanlife guy who does SMB stuff too” Either a horrible error in personal brand building or absolutely amazing. Either way I’m happy I did it.

I’m building a peer group in Dallas Goal is 10 business owners, everyone owns some kind of B2B professional services company, everyone doing $3M or more in annual revenue If you’re interested, or you know someone who needs to stop working in isolation, Send me a DM!

The local shoe repair store in my hometown is still open and running, it’s been around longer than I’ve been alive Idk what the economics of a shoe repair store are, but I can’t imagine they are attractive

For those of you who wanna sell your business one day, I wrote a book about it Link in comments LFG!

Me, a few months after working with John Wilson at one of the businesses we bought

I've been asking a lot of business owners what their outlook on the economy looks like right now. Overall, most are cautious. They think tariffs and the war are driving costs up 30% or more in some categories, or they've seen discount requests triple this year in the wealthiest zip codes they serve, or they're seeing banks micromanage construction financing like they're more scared than the developers. A few think we've been in a middling recession since 2022. Others think we're in a vibes economy right now. Even still, most of their businesses are still growing just fine. Though I do wonder if it's just the people in ScalePath/my network. Would be curious to hear other people's opinions and observations.

This is one of my favorite entrepreneur trading cards For those of you receiving decks/packs, put this one in a protective sleeve 50 years from now it’ll be called something like an “Eric Pacifici OBJECTION First Edition” and worth $10,000

250+ downloads for the SMB Owner AI guide Thanks to all of you who downloaded it, I hope it’s inspiring/insightful to you and gives you a unique perspective. I’m mailing it to 130+ business owners in DFW for the first in-person peer group we’re starting, should be a super unique marketing experiment And for anyone who hasn’t seen it and wants to know what all the fuss is about, I’m happy to send it your way! Rand

Thursday night is business owner dinner night Thanks to the Cleveland crew who drove through a deadly storm to make it! @Glavin_ID @SMB_Merch @KurtisCarman @tjdowhan … And several others I don’t think are on Twitter

This is the exact things we're building at @joinScalepath Appreciate the shoutout Girdley!

You need a CEO peer group. I joined a decade ago: - 10x’ed my businesses - I now “tapdance to work” - More time with family/friends Here’s my story. 🧵

Mr dollar bills looking sharp! S/o @RandBusiness… these were fun haha

A+ for creativity 🙌😂 CC:@RandBusiness

Alright, here's the big news I was teasing yesterday: I'm still having a hard time believing it's real. @smblawgroup was just named a finalist for The American Lawyer's 2026 Best Corporate Practice (Small/Midcap Deals) award. For non-lawyers: This is not pay for play (you don't even pay to apply). The American Lawyer is THE publication in the legal industry. They publish the Am Law 100, the ranking every big firm in America lives and dies by. Their awards are judged on actual deal work by their editors and outside judging panels. Objectively these are probably the most prestigous awards in the entire legal profession that everyone is competing for, guys. There are 7 finalists. Here they are: Covington & Burling Cozen O'Connor Hughes Hubbard King & Spalding McGuireWoods Morgan Lewis …and us. Lol. Those firms have thousands of lawyers, offices around the world, century-old brands and billions in revenue. Four years ago we were a few guys with a couple of X accounts and an idea that entrepreneurs buying small businesses deserved really, really good lawyers too. That was basically the whole business plan. No offices. No institutional clients. No brand. We just answered the phone, treated people well, did great work and tried to get a little better every day. At some point we started joking that maybe we should stop trying to be the best "small" firm and just try to be the best lower-middle-market M&A firm in the country. Against everyone. An objectively insane goal. And now The American Lawyer looked at our little firm and decided we belong on a list with six giants. Do I think we'll win? The smart money is probably on no. 😂 Honestly, that's fine. Because we set out to prove that a boutique can go toe-to-toe with anybody. That small business owners shouldn't have to choose between world-class legal work and lawyers who actually care about their deal. And here's the part that might matter most. This isn't just about our firm. The biggest legal publication in the country just put ETA/SMB/independent sponsor (lower-middle-market) deals on the same stage as billion-dollar M&A. Searchers, independent sponsors, HoldCo builders, the people buying "boring" businesses nobody on Wall Street pays attention to. This space isn't fringe anymore. It's a real, sophisticated corner of American M&A, and now it's being recognized like one. You all built that. We just get to be your lawyers. So let me say the thank yous, because none of this happened alone. To our attorneys, paralegals and ops team: you're the ones grinding through diligence at 11pm, running the checklists, answering the panicked Sunday texts and closing 400+ deals without ever letting quality slip. This award has your fingerprints all over it. To our clients: you took a chance on some lawyers from the internet when the "safe" move was hiring a name you recognized. You trusted us with your life savings, your SBA loans, your one shot at buying the business. We never forget that. This is yours as much as ours. To this community: the searchers, sponsors, operators and mutuals who referred friends, shared our stuff and rooted for us since we were nobody. You built the ecosystem. We just grew up inside it. And to @KHendersonCo and @Sam_Rosati: thanks for being crazy enough to build this with me. We find out in November. For now, back to work.