01
The detour
Before Budsies, Scott worked in film and TV. Around 2016 he got extremely sick. “I ate a panini and got hepatitis A. If you’ve never been sick for a year, I don’t recommend it.” He had to drop projects he had been working on for years.
Afterward he started looking at different ways of investing and asking people he trusted for their perspective. A couple of them mentioned acquisition. “I was reading the book and then COVID hit and then through chance, I met Walker Deibel for the first time.”
His mom had heard about it too, through a friend. He got on a call. “I just followed the yeses, and I was like, ‘All right, let’s do this.’”
“I had to drop all these balls that I had convinced myself were so important at the time.”Scott Meier
02
The Lab
In the Lab, Scott looked at hundreds of companies, and he did not look alone. “You bring it to the Tuesday deal review, and we’d all shoot holes in it and ask questions.”
He compares it to living many lives at once: “if you could be reincarnated in 50 different lives where you own 50 different businesses,” sitting in the co-pilot seat while someone else works the deal.
It also changed his idea of risk. Like a lot of people coming in, he had planned to buy small, something around a million dollars, and feel protected. “It’s still a million bucks and if it goes wrong, there’s still a personal guarantee. That personal guarantee is like a thing of nightmares.” His conclusion was to “go bigger because it’s actually safer.”
“Without the Lab, I never would have had the guts to pull this off.”Scott Meier
03
The second call
He remembers where he was: on the porch of his parents’ cottage, talking through a business that made stuffed animals. “I’m not sure if I want to push my chips on like stuffed animals,” he said. “Ah, it’s not for me.”
But every night brought “a flood of ideas of like what could be done.” After poring over the numbers he called the broker. “You’re too late.” The offer had been accepted. “Do me a favor,” Scott told him. “If anything falls through, give me a call, and I’ll pick it up.”
The call came. The other buyer had fallen out. Scott flew to Boynton Beach, Florida, and met the seller. In the warehouse he pointed at a plush and asked about it. The seller scanned it and pulled up the story the family had shared with the company: a daughter who had lost her father, opening a doll made in his likeness. “Daddy, you’re with me.”
“I just lose it every time,” Scott says. “I’m sold. Let’s do this.”
“You might see just a plush, but behind it every single one is an amazing story.”Scott Meier
04
Monday morning
He signed the paperwork on a Friday and surprised the team on Monday morning. People wondered whether their lives were about to change. “So, you have to go in strategically and be open and honest and have as many conversations as you can.”
It worked. “I know people are concerned when someone new comes in that they’re going to clean house and it’s going to be completely different, and that was not the case at all,” one member of the team says.
What reassured Scott was the team itself. “Everybody that works for this company is here because they love the mission of the company, and they love the company. So, as long as I didn’t mess that up, then we’re in a good place.”
The focus now is teachers, because kids learn when they can connect an idea to something physical. And the plan is long. “I think that Budsies is a brand that should be around long after my time.”
“Magic is sustained effort over time behind the scenes that most people don’t see.”Scott Meier
