Leaving Apple to Buy a Real Estate Business with 150+ Agents
In 2021 Kinza Azmat left her promising career with Apple to acquire a 35-year-old real estate brokerage in Austin, Texas, that she found on BizBuySell.
At just 31 years old, she acquired a business that was older than she was, and the world of real estate was a far cry from the sort of traditional immigrant path her family envisioned for her in her youth.
Kinza arrived in the United States from Pakistan at the tender age of six. In adapting to her new environment, she developed a tendency towards over-preparedness that would serve her well throughout her life, and which she would utilize fully in navigating her journey to acquisition entrepreneurship.
“The immigrant mentality was ‘Fit in. Do what you need to do to fit in.’ …studying the environment around you… constantly comparing where you are compared to other people around you… It didn’t really click in that I had gone overboard with that, or in a sense, that I was exactly where I was supposed to be, which is, overly prepared for most things in life.”
A Well-Planned Tech Career Loses Its Luster
Kinza was geared up and ready to move to California when she began working for Apple in early 2020.
The challenges and opportunities presented by working at the tech behemoth were exciting, and the lifestyle perks of the Bay Area attracted her.
But just as she and her husband were preparing to take the leap, Covid struck, leaving Kinza to start her time with Apple working remotely from her house in Dallas.
While the pandemic threw a wrench in her plans, Kinza began to doubt whether the tech industry was really right for her.
“It just didn’t really do it for me. And I realized that maybe what attracted me to Apple was, you know, that fancy headquarters, that lifestyle, all the perks of being in California. And I didn’t really want that, after a while, when I reflected on it.”
Kinza Is No Stranger to Pivoting
Apple was only the most recent in a chain of bold career shifts for Kinza.
Initially, her upbringing in an Asian-American immigrant household set her on a “very education driven, very traditional pathway”.
“Imagine a newly minted Asian person growing up, you know, go be a doctor, lawyer, engineer.”
And so, after graduating from Ohio State, she started out as a mechanical engineer working for Southwest Airlines. Quickly though, Kinza realized that engineering left her feeling unfulfilled.
“My personality is a lot more dynamic than this, I think I need to be on my feet more, I need to just be doing a lot more different things during the day.”
From there, Kinza moved on to operations, then business school, consulting, and finally tech.
“Man, I think I’ve done everything out there!”
The Appeal of Acquisition Entrepreneurship
Kinza had always been entrepreneurial.
“There were little leaks or small events in my childhood. I was always trying to come up with some weird business for something, like repairing computers or taking women on outdoor adventures.”
And she retained this spirit through all her diverse career moves.
“I was always trying to create some sort of business in a way that I would achieve more fulfillment, but I always just got stuck in the beginning phase.”
So when Kinza found herself working remotely for Apple and still seeking that sense of fulfillment, she began to consider entrepreneurship more seriously — if differently than she had in her younger days.
“Approaching from the startup angle, you know, taps into a level of risk that I, personally, was not interested in.”
Business school friends had introduced her to Walker Deibel’s Buy Then Build and with it, the larger concept of acquisition entrepreneurship. To take an existing business, acquire it, rethink it, build it up, and improve it seemed ideally compatible with the diverse skillset Kinza had cultivated.
“What really appealed to me about acquisition entrepreneurship was… that I could continue having an income that continued giving me that quality of life; I reduced the level of risk that I was just not willing to take on, and… that I would have the autonomy to make the decisions that I needed to make and I wouldn’t have to run it up the chain, I wouldn’t need to check with the boss.”
It was this approach that Kinza decided to investigate in earnest.
Learning the Ropes Through Moonlight Brokering
As Kinza embarked more seriously on her hunt for a business, she reached out to a local broker who ended up offering her a job at his brokerage.
Taking advantage of her unique, mid-pandemic, remote work situation with Apple, Kinza decided to say yes, working both jobs simultaneously. She thought that this way, she could continue earning and saving from her Apple salary while also accelerating her business search by becoming a broker.
“I thought [the perfect business] would just stumble across my desk; the brokerage is gonna have access to so many businesses! I’m gonna get ahead of the curve in their pipeline before anything even hits the market!”
At the brokerage Kinza learned what buyers are like, what sellers are like, and what sort of challenges she might face when buying a business – like the disappointed shock many sellers feel when confronted with the much-lower-than-expected valuations of their businesses.
Ultimately, Kinza’s time with the brokerage taught her how difficult it really is to come across good deals and the hard work it takes to get a seller psychologically prepared to part with their business.
That understanding made her realize that successfully finding and acquiring a business would require her full attention. She went all-in, deciding to leave both Apple and the brokerage and launch a full-time, dedicated search.
“There’s a lot of people like me searching out there. I’m not just gonna come across something and it’s gonna work. It would have to be a real concerted effort.”
The Six-Month Search for the Right Business
Kinza and her husband reached a consensus on a six-month search period bound by a few key criteria.
First, there was a geographic constraint. The business had to be near where they were currently living in Dallas.
Next, Kinza would have to be able to make an income like what she was making in tech, $200k to $300k. She was not open to a pay cut.
“If my focus is worth X dollars, why would I take that same amount of focus and have it be worth ½ X with a smaller business?”
Lastly, the business had to be one that was stable through Covid, or that she was confident she would be able to normalize. This had to be an explicit part of the transaction; Kinza was not interested in buying a business with a valuation based only on the past year, during the pandemic, when it shot up or down 40%.
It was a high bar: six months to find a business with $750,000 - $1.2 million in EBITDA, in a single geography, and steady through the pandemic.
Trials and Triumph of Negotiating a Deal
Despite the “half-search” she had started while at the brokerage, and the network she had built while there, her full-time search continued without results and time kept marching on.
Along the way, Kinza took missteps. Rather than be firm and upfront with an offer, she spent weeks of valuable time in negotiations for a cabinet company where the sellers were “wishy-washy” and kept trying to pull working capital out of the business.
“I was too analytical, I wanted it too bad… I would show my cards too early, because of all the tight constraints I really just wanted to perform.”
In another case, she met with a seller despite a warning from the broker that, because he was “racist and misogynist”, she should bring her husband along to the meeting.
“I actually can’t believe that I followed through with that. I should have just seen it for what it was. We would have had an unsuccessful transition. I would be in a culture where I would be working against that culture and it would never be a fit.”
Halfway through the search without much to show for it, Kinza and her husband decided to open up their geographical requirement and expand the search to more cities.
Kinza flew to Seattle, Portland, and finally Austin, where she met with the sellers of the business she would ultimately acquire: WTA Realty.
Knowing When She Spotted the Right Fit
WTA Realty was a 35 year-old real estate brokerage based in Austin, Texas, with additional offices in San Marcos and San Antonio. It specialized in apartment finding. The team was 150-200 licensed real estate agents, paid on commission, with an additional 5-15 salaried office staff and a strong management layer already in place.
The apartment finding service they provide is free to the apartment seeker, and they are paid via a number of partnerships with local property management companies.
The previous owner had done an excellent job developing the business and was keen to ensure that whoever took over would continue to do so.
“The seller was so transparent when he was going through the process. He just really loved on the team, loved on their skillset and the contributions they’ve made over the years, and I can see that every day.”
The more she delved into the business, the clearer it became that it was a perfect fit for her strengths.
“I think I am the ‘chief solution architect’… I have always just been solving problems. So, how do we… collect all the problems? How do we solve them in a strategic and structured fashion? And then, you know, at a higher level – strategy… Where are we headed? What’s the market doing? How do we wanna grow as a company?”
“All of the things that this business really needs are things that I’ve done before, that I’ve been great at!”
Kinza was committed and bought the business by taking out an SBA loan with a $345,000 down payment.
Since the business had a huge team and multiple property leases, the acquisition process ended up being long and complex. She and the seller also agreed to a “type D reorganization”, a complicated process that enabled the transfer en masse of all leases and employee relationships to her new legal entity.
It required a lot of money, time, expertise, and coordination but ultimately proved to be worthwhile.
Her Next Steps with the Business
The seller had been easing into retirement and was more hands off. Kinza took advantage of the void to create momentum from the get-go.
Right away, she sent out a survey to the entire team which was met with fantastic engagement, candor, and a lot of improvement opportunities.
Next, she got her real estate license to start doing ride-alongs with agents.
She also started contemplating a full rebrand of WTA.
The current business consists of several existing brands, and consolidating them all under one name seemed to Kinza like an important initiative.
“We’re gonna create something really frickin’ fantastic.”
Reflections
When considering what is truly different about owning her own business compared with her previous jobs, Kinza jokes that “you get to choose which 12 hours of the day you wanna work!”
That quip captures Kinza’s whole attitude towards her business. For her, acquiring a business was never about finding a way to live more hands off or work less, but about independence and fulfillment.
“I get to decide where I wanna be, who I wanna meet with, what I wanna do. There’s a lot of autonomy and flexibility… More fulfilling even is being able to see where a company can go, and knowing that you’re going to be the primary visionary… and know that we can actually affect and achieve something at a scale that I never had access to as a corporate employee.”
That deep sense of gratification is palpable when talking to Kinza about her journey.
“I stepped into something fantastic and amazing, and I don’t know how I ended up here. It was a lot of hard work, but I am grateful every day and I absolutely think it’s the right fit. When I show up to my office and sit in my chair, I’m like, ‘how the hell did I get here? This is awesome!’’