There's a moment in every physician's training that no textbook prepares you for.

You've studied the anatomy. Watched the videos. Practiced on the sim lab mannequin until muscle memory kicks in. And then one day, an attending hands you a scalpel — or a laryngoscope, or a needle — and says, "You're up."

Your hands shake. Your mouth goes dry. And some voice in your head whispers: You're not ready for this.

You do it anyway.

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This week, Lacy and I wrapped up the third module in our business acquisition coursework. If the first two modules were anatomy and pathophysiology, this one is the clinical rotation where you actually touch patients.

Translation: it's time to find deals. Real ones. Not hypotheticals on a whiteboard.

And honestly? My hands are shaking a little.

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Here's what the origination module taught us: deal sourcing is a volume game with brutal math.

One experienced acquirer shared his funnel data. Out of 7,933 businesses he vetted, he closed 3 deals. That's a 0.04% conversion rate.

Let that sit for a second. Nearly eight thousand businesses evaluated to buy three.

In the ER, we call that a high-sensitivity screening test — you cast the widest possible net because missing one real case isn't an option. You accept the false positives because the cost of a false negative is too high.

Same principle. You can't cherry-pick deals from the couch. You have to build the funnel, accept the rejection rate, and trust the process.

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What we built this week:

Our Deal Box is live. Think of it as our clinical criteria — the admission parameters that determine which deals get a closer look and which get triaged out:

We activated BizBuySell — the largest online marketplace for buying businesses. Flippa alerts are running. Listings are already landing in my inbox matching our criteria.

And behind all of this sits our deal sourcing CRM — a dashboard where every lead gets logged, scored, and tracked through the pipeline from first contact all the way to close. No sticky notes. No scattered spreadsheets. One system with a full status workflow: Inquire → First Contact → NDA Signed → Financials Reviewed → Offer → Due Diligence → Close.

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Here's the honest moment for this week.

I'm an introvert. Always have been. I became a physician because I love solving diagnostic puzzles, not because I love cold-calling strangers.

The coursework is now asking me to do something deeply uncomfortable: pick up the phone and call business brokers. Send cold emails to owners who never asked to hear from me. Walk into a conversation where I'm the one selling — selling myself as a credible buyer.

In medicine, I know my credibility. I've earned it over years of training, board certifications, and thousands of patient encounters. But in business acquisition? I'm a first-year resident again. And that feeling of being a beginner — of not knowing the language fluently, of worrying I'll say the wrong thing — it's humbling.

But here's what I've learned from the ER: discomfort is data. It tells you you're at the edge of your current skill set. And edges are where growth happens.

So next week, when my clinical schedule is light, I'm leaning in. The cold outreach starts.

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Next week's targets (Mar 9–15):

Light clinical week. Heavy acquisition week. That's the prescription.

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Thanks for being here in the early days. We're documenting everything — the wins, the ugly math, and the moments where our hands shake.

See you next Sunday.

— Joe & Lacy
Acquisition Rx

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Where clinical precision meets business acquisition.