“Everyone has a plan until they get hit.”
— Joe Louis
WHEN THE PLAN MEETS THE MARKET
Quick links
Joe Louis was talking about boxing, but the quote captures something I see in entrepreneurship through acquisition all the time. A plan can look and sound great until you have to make that first phone call.
In a search, the “hit” may be the moment an owner picks up the phone. The owner may describe the business differently than expected. The industry may not behave the way the research suggested. The buy box may suddenly feel too narrow—or not narrow enough. And then all those gre at things planned for the call suddenly leave your head.
That is not a failure of planning. It is the beginning of learning.
The work of the ETA Hub is to help fellows prepare thoughtfully, then develop the judgment to adapt when their plans meet the market.
Through this partnership, fellows in the Fall 2026 ETA Hub cohort will move beyond hypothetical sourcing exercises and participate in an actual proprietary search. They will develop buy boxes, identify business owners, conduct live outreach with side-by-side coaching from the Caprae team and bring promising opportunities back into the classroom for discussion.
The goal is not simply to create more conversations. It is to help fellows understand what happens when a search thesis, a fellow’s narrative voice and a real business owner come together—with experienced practitioners close enough to help fellows notice, interpret and respond to what is happening in the moment.
Hands-on search in the classroom
The ETA Hub begins with a six-session cohort over approximately ten weeks. Fellows first work through the questions that shape a search:
- What kind of search is right for them?
- What kind of business do they want to own?
- Which industries fit their experience and interests?
- What geography and business size make sense?
- What are their no-go rules?
Those questions form the beginning of a buy box. But a buy box is only useful if it can guide action.
Through the Caprae partnership, each fellow will receive a curated list of approximately 60 verified acquisition targets. Fellows will develop an outreach narrative grounded in their own experience, strategy and voice, then have the option to participate in four 90-minute live calling sessions with the Caprae team hands-on. The first sessions are scheduled to begin October 31.
These are not calls fellows make on their own and review weeks later. The Caprae team will provide side-by-side coaching during the sessions—helping fellows prepare, listen for what matters, adjust when a conversation takes an unexpected turn and think through what to do next.
In keeping with our No Scripts philosophy, these sessions are not about teaching fellows to recite the perfect language. They are designed to help fellows build pattern recognition, entrepreneurial thinking and the confidence to adapt when the conversation does not follow the plan.
A live loop for learning
The sourcing component creates a loop that looks much more like an actual search:
Build the thesis → identify owners → make contact → generate conversations → evaluate opportunities → refine the thesis → pursue the strongest possibilities.
Each step changes the next one.
Side-by-side coaching makes that loop more useful. Fellows can receive feedback while the conversation is still fresh—not only on what they said, but on what they heard, what the owner may have been signaling and what deserves a follow-up. The learning happens in the space between calls, too.
As opportunities develop, selected anonymized deals can come back into the ETA Hub classroom. Fellows and mentors can work through questions about seller motivation, valuation, diligence, financing, risk and next steps.
The learning does not stop when the outreach session ends. The conversations become material for better judgment.
Pattern recognition at scale
Caprae brings significant experience to the sourcing process. Since its founding, the firm has completed more than half a million human cold calls and currently conducts more than 10,000 human-dialed calls each week.
That volume creates a kind of pattern recognition that is difficult to develop as a first-time business buyer.
But the value is not only in the volume of calls. It is in having experienced people help fellows recognize what they are hearing while they are hearing it. A fellow may miss an important signal in the moment—or interpret a polite response as a promising one. Side-by-side coaching creates an opportunity to slow down, examine the exchange and decide what the conversation actually tells them.
Over time, you begin to see patterns in:
- When owners are more likely to answer
- Which industries respond more positively to direct outreach
- How much follow-up is usually required
- When persistence becomes counterproductive
- Which messages create curiosity
- Which conversations deserve further attention
Kevin Hong and Hereford Johnson bring that perspective to the sourcing component. Both have experience as founders, traditional searchers and self-funded acquisition entrepreneurs. They have experienced the search from the buyer’s side of the table, acquired and operated businesses, and dealt with the consequences after closing.
That matters because sourcing is not simply a sales exercise. It is the beginning of a relationship with a business owner and, potentially, with the business a fellow may one day operate.
What fellows will learn
The goal is not to turn ETA Hub fellows into professional cold callers. We want to help build fellows who can move a promising conversation toward a real acquisition opportunity.
That means helping fellows understand how a proprietary sourcing process works:
- How to translate a search thesis into a practical target list
- How to communicate why an owner might want to speak with them
- How to adjust in real time when a conversation takes an unexpected turn
- How to learn from a response—or lack of response
- How to manage follow-up without losing judgment
- How to turn immediate feedback into a better next call
- How to identify a promising conversation
- How to decide whether an opportunity deserves further work
Most importantly, fellows will have a chance to test their assumptions before becoming too attached to them. They will also have someone experienced beside them as they begin to interpret what the market is telling them.
The Fall 2026 cohort will be the first implementation of this expanded sourcing curriculum. We’ll learn from the experience, refine the model and determine how best to continue the collaboration in future cohorts.
I’m looking forward to seeing what happens when fellows move from discussing proprietary sourcing to actually doing it—with preparation, side-by-side support and the opportunity to bring what they learn back into the room.
Read the full announcement on ACCESS Newswire for additional details about the partnership, Caprae Capital and the sourcing curriculum.