Top Business Exit Planner Reveals Secret Strategies for MAXIMUM Profit — with Marc Adams

Most founders focus on scaling revenue, hiring, marketing, product growth, but when it's time to exit, they realize something brutal: buyers don't pay for effort, nor even revenue. They pay for profit, systems, and structure. So the argument is, if you're not building backwards from your exit, you are building something potentially no one will want to buy. And if you are not having built your business with the buyer in mind, your exit might not happen at all. Our guest today has helped founders to double their valuation in under 12 months and exit with almost zero tax. So there's a couple of takeaways you can expect from today: how to use exit valuation first model to plan your path, how small bolt-on acquisitions can drive massive growth, how to structure deals without your own money, how to exit smart, meaning keep what you have built. Hey, what's going on everyone? I'm Mike Sirius and this is Mastering Tech Growth. Every week we chat with industry leaders to bring you no-fluff tips on how to grow. If you enjoy the show, if you find value in the show, please do me a favor, leave us a review. As well, drop us your biggest growth questions in the comments or send me directly, or go to masteringtechgrowth.com. Today I'm joined by Mark Adams, founder of Acquisition4U and author of Secrets to 10Xing Your Business and Cashing Out Tax-Free.

Book.

That's a, that's a mouthful of a title, Mark. He scaled businesses from zero to $30 million in 18 months, engineered exits worth hundreds of millions, and built a value growth framework used by clients backed with over $22 billion in capital. And now he helps founders grow through acquisition even if they have zero cash and exit without losing what they have built. Mark, welcome.

Wow. Thank you so much. What an amazing welcome. I better be good.

You better be good. I really have. You better be good. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Thank you so much for having me. And thank you for that amazing introduction. There's a lot packed into that. There's a hell of a lot packed into that.

There's a lot of— so I was traveling, by the way, Mark. So I read your book on my flight in and back. So I was going to holiday when we started communicating. So I started reading the book and then sort of finished it on my flight back yesterday. So it's like, there's a lot, right? Like, you know, the whole book is affected the way you do things. So we only have 60 minutes. So I hope we'll give our listeners at least the idea that growing through acquisition might be a better path to growth than looking for that organically. So before we go into that, we love asking every single guest this question. When I say mastering tech growth, what comes to mind?

Mastering tech growth. I come from the tech industry. That's where my roots were. And these days I spend time with tech, but I also spend time with a lot of traditional businesses. And what I've discovered is the principles, processes, and procedures of growing and successfully exiting a business are the same, are the same. So I think that if you are fortunate enough to maybe start with the end in mind and maybe work back from there, um, you'll acquire the skills that you need to master tech or any other sector growth. Now, what, what would I— what do I mean by that? I think something in your intro, Mike, sort of sparked for me a real issue that my, my 10-year-old sort of put me on to. He's 14 now. Um, and so unfortunately, too much of the time when a business owner may be has put 10, 15, or 20 years into growing their business, adds value to their community, has a lot of loyal customers, has built a great name. You find in companies with 60, 70, 80 million in revenue that they're brilliant at doing the thing, whatever that thing is, but when it comes to sell it, they've not given any plan to how much they're going to keep.

Yeah.

And so this varies all around the world, but you could lose between 30 and 55% of the sticker price, the price that you want to achieve for the business, by not thinking about this ahead of time and planning for it accordingly. So what does that mean? One of my clients right now has a business worth $10 million. They're based in California. We serve clients all over the world, but most of our clients are in the USA, Canada, or the UK. But the same principle that I'm talking about here is applicable worldwide. So for this business, the business, they're worth $10 million, but we've helped them discover that if they do nothing, they'll end up with about $5.6 after all their Let's call them leakages, Mike. Leakages for them in this case would be 10% they're going to pay to a broker to sell the business. That's nearly $1 million. And then they're going to lose a significant chunk in state and federal taxes. Yeah, that'll be 40% plus. So they'll end up with about just over 5 of the 10. And the real sad thing for so many business owners that are in that position is that isn't enough to see them into whatever it is they want to do next. And that, that can often be retirement. And so I started thinking about this problem to solve it from a different point of view back in the pandemic of 2020, because back then I was much more in private equity. I was the kind of guy that was looking for good businesses to buy, and you'd try and get them as low as you could because you're You're going to— you're going to improve the value of them over 7 or 8 years, sell them at a profit by buying other companies and bolting them on, and return those profits to the investors minus your fees for doing it. So, but I got diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and I was given 6 months to live, just as we were— just as we were coming out of 2020 when we'd been in the lockdown. And we're going into 2021. So the vaccines weren't in, Mike. And so in my case, cut long story short, they were— they'd agreed to take the primary cancer out, but I'd been scanned and there were so many other things that came up that they were confident that I was— I had secondary cancers everywhere else and lots of other places. So taking the primary out might give me a couple more months. And at that point, you know, as a, as a dad of a, uh, of a loving wife and a young family, you'll do it. You do anything for one more day.

Yeah.

But while I was back home recovering, laying in our, you know, in that— my wife got COVID and I got COVID, and we had the original strain of COVID so there were no vaccines in original strain. And I don't take you back then. I don't know whether you can picture this, but I don't know if you've got kids, Mike, but for those, you know, but all our kids were at home, and for us it was lockdown as adults, but for the kids, my kids, it was, it was a year of fun because school wasn't really geared towards teaching at home and weren't doing a great job. So they got, they got a good 6 months of Xbox every day, so they were loving it. And, um, and my 10-year-old, his name is Thomas, he'd come in and check on Dad at 7 in the morning when he woke up and then at 11, you know, sort of snack in the middle of the morning, lunchtime, afternoon tea time. And, um, we chat about Xbox every day for a week post-operation, you know. And I've got things plugged into me, all sorts of stuff, and I'm not very good at Xbox, but you, you want to— I was learning a lot. And he came in one afternoon when I picked up a call from a client in America, and we were talking about a business that we were wanting to buy but couldn't buy. And so just to break the pattern, he said, who was that? I said, it's a client in America, a business that we're trying to buy. He said, so, so what does that mean? Tell me about, you know, tell me a bit more about it. Those weren't his exact words, but we got into the conversation of why 9 out of 10 companies might don't sell when they go to market. And the reason everybody tells you is because the owners are too greedy, the brokers are too greedy, and that's not really true. Most of the time it's because the owners begin to realize in that moment, yeah, with all the fees they're going to leak, what's left isn't enough. So they have to increase the price in the hope they can get what they need. So when I said 9 out of 10 didn't sell and explained it, he said immediately, so what are you doing with the 9 out of 10? What happens to those? Well, they, they either have to drop the price or they end up most of the time keeping the business and working in the business. Well into their retirement years when they should be spending time with their families. And he said, Dad, he said, what happens if the mums and dads in those businesses that don't sell get COVID and die? Who's going to look after their families in those companies? Who's going to do that?

That's a great question.

Oh, out of the mouth of babes. Yeah. And that one comment I didn't realize, I didn't have an answer. I said, well, I said, I don't know. He said, well, they're the companies that need your help. The one that's going to sell doesn't need your help. You need to do something for these guys because too many families won't have parents. Now we were in the midst of the pandemic. We didn't have the vaccines. We were seeing the lot, we were seeing the death reports every day of how many people had been infected and died as league tables all over the world. And our kids were seeing that on the news as well. So it was top of mind for him. But kids don't forget, especially my son. So the first thing for me was to, you know, did I even have the time? Because I'd got a 6-month death sentence on cancer anyway. So roll forward to April when I went back to see my consultant. He said to me, I've got good news for you, Mark, and I've got bad news for you. And I said, okay, well, let's start with the good news. He said, he said, the good news is we can't find any of the cancer. I said, okay, so we definitely sure I had stage 4? Yes, was the answer I got. So why can't you find all the secondaries that you thought were there? Because at a PET scan, they're normally quite reliable. And, um, he said, and he said, well, that's the bad news. I said, why is that bad news? He said, because we— the bad news is we don't know. My reaction was, that might be bad news for you. Yeah, but I'll let you live with that. And I said, well, what is it? Why do you think? And the amazing thing about this was they think that having COVID cured me because— not because— because— so he said, we think it's to do with COVID and that it's stopped you from developing any— you know, he's got rid of the cancer. I'm immediately thinking, we've got the cure, we can bottle it up. And he said, no, it's not like that. It's because COVID forces the immune system in basically, you know, in healthy people. And I was in great nick when I went in. To have the op, to go into overdrive. And the immune system is not good at saying, leave COVID, deal with the cold, let's leave the camp. You know, it just blitzes everything it can. Yeah. And it turns out that one of the best things that you've got for your defense in curing and helping you get over anything is your immune system. So I was incredibly lucky to be in, in that position. And, and they still think now that COVID played a significant part of of now, they say, curing me of the cancer because I'm at the 5-year point just coming out of remission. So, and with the kind of cancer I had, I'm not going to get it back. So I'm, I'm grateful and incredibly lucky even to have an opportunity to meet you, let alone talk with you and spend time with you on the show, Mike. So what then happened was my son reminded me, and I was trying to think of what— of ways in which a small boutique company in private equity with 20 or so people could help everybody and we can't. So I wrote a book called Secrets to 10Xing Your Business and Cashing Out Tax-Free. And the book leads to a system which is not described in the book because I've refined it since, um, since putting the pen to paper on the book. There's no AI in the book, by the way. This is just stuff that you might think about beginning to do that might help you grow profit and therefore value in a business, but principally also start to consider ways in which you might exit the business and minimize, and minimize your exit leakages, your taxes and your fees. So that's the idea of the book. And if anybody wants to get a free copy of that book that's a listener to your show, Mike, I'll send you a link where they can get a free PDF version of the book. It's not expensive, it's $15, and we don't make any money on it. We make about 15 cents a copy and we give that to charity anyway. But if anybody wants a free copy just to help them on their own journey, I'm happy to make a link available for you to help them on on their way. That's what they want. But rolling forward, rolling forward, I started to think about, um, how do you solve the problem? And really, if you come back to where we are now, um, a client I've got that's worth 10 that will only keep 5, what we're doing with them is working on ways in which we can double the value of their business inside a year without it costing them any more of their own money. They, they do have to engage with us and pay us some fees, but they're very modest. But without them costing them money in systems, processes, procedures, sales, marketing, none of that, we can double the value of the business so that they can be worth more at sale. But we're helping them also organize the sale because there's a lot that they can do to see in California, if you sold for $20 million, you're gonna, you're gonna end up losing half of that if you do nothing. So you end up with $10, right? But what if there were a way that we might help them keep so much more of it? We can't get them out tax-free in their case, but we can certainly get their taxes down to a very advantaged, minimized position. And their, and their other fees, like broker fees in this particular case, um, don't get paid either because we're actually going to work with them to sell the business privately so we don't charge broker fees. We work with them in a different way so they can keep more of what they've earned through their lives. But even if we weren't able to double the value of the business and just save them the leakages, they're going to keep closer to the 10 than the 5. And that's huge for them because they've spent 30 years building a business and they just want to retire. And there are so many people all over the world in baby boomer land that are walking into this trap because they've been brilliant at serving their communities and building their businesses, but they've not given enough thought soon enough to themselves, Mike, and how they're going to maximize on that. So there are, there are 3 legs to this stool that we're talking about. There is the improving the value of the business, so you can organically do that. You've already pointed out that you could do that by acquiring other companies. Now, organic growth, I think you cover very well with other people that you've had on the show. So let's talk about acquisitive growth, because I know that that was something that potentially people would be interested in. So one of the quickest ways that you might double the value of a business today would be to another— buy another business of a similar shape and size and level of profit and bolt it on the side. But not everybody's got the cash to do that. So increasingly there are ways in which you can, with a cash-flowing business, borrow money to acquire another business on extended terms to make it affordable so that you could afford it. It's like, it's like taking a mortgage out. You know, you, you take a mortgage out, you're paying on a monthly basis, and then you own the asset. But once you've got that in your group, and you're driving more profit as a result because you'll do some things to improve it, you'll pay down that debt very quickly. We work on strategies which are a bit of a secret sauce where you don't even need to acquire to double the value of a business. Can't really go into those here, but there are sometimes ways in which we can help double the value of a business and you don't have to buy another one, but we can still get the same result. Um, and, um, So then you've got to start looking, and you, you do this at the same time as you begin to think about exiting the business in a way that ideally means you don't have to pay tax, which is not always possible but certainly reduces that tax bill massively, and in a way where you may not have to pay any fees. And we help companies do both those things. And you— one key thing that I would like everybody that's interested to take away from this from this, from this call, from this meeting, is that to minimize that taxation level, they must start with that first. You don't go out and advertise the business for sale and then start structuring the business to reduce the taxes. That doesn't work. You can't do that. You can go out— so people work with us because we are not— their business is not on the market to be sold. We're quietly exploring the most suitable buyers with money that at the right time might be interested in exploring the purchase of the business while we are structuring the business in the right way to be tax advantaged to save those millions of dollars. Now, a lot of people ask me, Mike, does this work for me if I'm a business that's making $100,000 a year in profit? And the answer is it does. But it's not going to be a big enough net gain for you at that level of profit because there are some fees to consider in setting things up to achieve these savings. So you, you really want to build your business to a point where it's £750K pounds or dollars minimum in profit. Now that profit is EBITDA, earnings before income tax and amortization and other deductions. That's That's before you take your dividends out. So that's before you take your profit tax. So you work on that— that's before you've paid your profit tax, rather. So you, you work on that level to multiply to get the value of your business. And so you want to be at $750K for that because you're probably going to be worth between— it varies industry to industry, but you're probably going to be worth between $750K and $1.5 mil. Lots of people will tell you that you're an awful lot more than that. But when you really look into the statistics of how many companies in most sectors sell, what the multiples are, they're going to be a lot lower. But, you know, getting that then to evaluation of sort of multiple based on an EBITDA of 7, 8, or 9 million of EBITDA, that's our job. That's the specialist skill that we provide to help companies do that. And then the multiple— then the, um, the multiples then are often 7, 8, 9, or 10, and that's where we get a significant value up. Now, we're fortunate enough to have the support, as you mentioned at the top of the show, of, of $22 billion of capital resources at our disposal. Sometimes we're able to use some of that cash to assist in this process. It doesn't always work, and it's not always guaranteed, but it's really bloody helpful, you know, that's for sure. And the whole goal is to make more money for for people that are selling their business than they could make on their own in a much shorter time frame. So it's about minimizing your leakages on fees. So that's broker fees a lot of the time, and taxes, and, um, there are some other fees you're not going to get away from those, but they're very valuable to you because they're going to help you structure to add value. And it's about how can you grow the value of the business. Three routes to that: organic growth, uh, people have normally got that covered, acquisitive growth, we, you know, that's a really good way to grow if you're at a level of profit that will allow that, or some methods that we use for customers that we're working with that are similar to acquisitive growth, but you don't actually have to do the acquisition, you know, we can get normally get that done without that having to take place, which means you don't have to spend any money, but you benefit in the upside. And it's critical, it's really important, because otherwise Too many people end up with just losing too much of what they built, and the object is they should, and I think they deserve to keep more, Mike. So Mike, I've been chatting away for a little bit there. There's a lot in that segment. Would you— should I take a pause?

I was just taking notes, Mark, but you, you went with such a passion, I didn't want to sort of disrupt your flow over here. So when we talk about the taxes, which is effectively the main point when you sell the business is where you lose most, right? Is that states in particular? Like, do you do anything in Europe? Like, is that worldwide? Like, can we say that the average which you mentioned, which was around 30% to even 50%, is that like across the globe? Like, if you don't think about a proper tax setup, before you exit, you're likely going to incur that. And that's just, that's the rule, right?

Yeah. So there are some areas around the world that are tax advantaged by nature. Think of Dubai. You know, that's a great tax advantage area for many things. But if you are a business in most European countries, if you are a business in North America, so that's Canada and the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Asia-based countries, there is normally a level of tax that you pay, capital gains, yep, when you sell the company. Okay, it varies. In some places it's really quite low and that's okay, but in places like North America it varies too. So in the United States, you could be— if you're in California or New York, you're in a lot of trouble. Um, you're not in a lot of trouble, it's going to cost you a lot of money, right? If you're in the UK with Rachel Reeves you're going to be not as expensive as it is in North America, but by the time you've said and done on your tax mitigation leakages and your fees that you pay as well, you'll be into 35% each, maybe a 35%, maybe a blended rate which is lower for you if you've not taken advantage of some of the things like entrepreneurs relief, which is much lower these days. But still, there is, you know, if it's there to have, then have it. You're still going to be paying a bunch of tax there. And sometimes there are ways of avoiding that, something else, um, something to avoid that. So something else I've got for you, we've built, um, I'm going to call it a global tax engine. We use it internally, we don't sell it. So anybody that owns a business of any nationality, um, we, by getting them to take a 3-minute quiz confidentially, free of charge, can— they'll share with us a little bit about, um, their business, where it's incorporated, the level of profit that they make, and where they live from a tax point of view, where they pay their tax. There's a few other bits in there that help us. We can give them back in 24 hours a direction of travel of what the tax position or the leakage position for their business is going to be at a summary level. It doesn't give them the detail of the things that they can do. That's much more involved.

Yep.

But, but at the very first step, your position in the UK is different to somebody that owns a business and lives in Germany or France or the United States. So I'll make that link available to you, Mike, so that if anybody wants to just find out free of charge what that might look like for them, they can do that, and they'll just get a a PDF report back, no heavy selling from us. There is a— and it's considered this a direction of travel where it would say if you do nothing, you're likely— your likely leakages would be between this figure and this figure. Okay. And so now we'll ask them some questions, a question of what they think the value of the business is. I'll tell you why we do that. If you're doing 1 million a year in profit, somebody might think their business is worth 50 million. I'll always— so when I sort of— we can work out based on the industry they're in what the actual multiples are and give a direction of travel as to what the business is likely to be worth. But sometimes I got one of these right now. It's a business that's making a million and a half in profit, but it's got $30 million worth of assets. So, you know, so its valuation is going to be a lot higher because it's got all these assets that sit on the balance sheet. So notwithstanding those things inside, because, you know, we, we, we do a direction of travel here to show you what your position might be. And we'll, we'll ask people what they think their business is worth. So I can normally read into what they're telling us and then follow up with some supplementary questions. Now, this is not AI doing this. There is some AI that helps us, but we review these individually because AI is not good enough to pick up the nuances of what an individual business might be doing. That's why I've got people looking at this just to fine-tune it. And what we sometimes see is— what, what we always see is the direction of travel that can identify for you what your leakage in fees and taxes would be if you were thinking about selling. We can also look at it and say whether we think there's a potential for you to double the value of it. I call this the Double and Keep It Blueprint in 12 months or less, but it's, it's the Double and Keep It Blueprint. So do we see there, for the nature of the business that you're in, whether it's potentially possible to double that in a year without you having to spend money? Um, we can, we can make a guesstimate of that based on the information that you give us. It's a 3-minute quiz, not a 30-minute quiz. We can give you a direction of travel, summary of what your leakage reduction might look like, and we deliver that back. And that's just to get people thinking about what they might want to do next when they're ready. Now, if they want the detail, if it's a big figure and they want the detail of it, we can do that, but that is chargeable. We're going to charge people for that because it takes us some time to do it.

So that's, uh, that's if I have a business, right, Mark? So, uh, I have a business right now, makes a profit, and I'm started thinking about exit, I want to find out that information. But if you just starting out, right? So yeah, let me ask this. It's a different path, right? So let's say I want to buy a business, like I don't have a business, I just want to go ahead and buy a business. So can I just take a loan on a business cash flow and buy them out? I feel like that's probably a lot founders will be thinking like this. And as well, you have mentioned that the profit of a business you want to buy should be around 750. I took that note. Can you talk about like just that scenario? It's like why the profit must be like that and how likely can you buy a business if you don't have any other business?

Okay, so there's a number of ways in which you can go if you are going to acquire or buy a business. Normally, you will be able— if it's a— let's assume it's a positively cash-flowing business. It doesn't necessarily have to be profitable, but there are lenders out there that will support acquisition finance for you to be able to buy the business, Mike. There are some things you will need to do. Let's imagine that it's a $5 million purchase business. Could you raise the money for that? You could. You could get— and it's a 5 million business, it's generating cash flow, it's making a small profit, you can raise money to buy that business with today's lenders, with the products they've got now. These products come and go, they might not be available next month, but right now you could do that. You're going to need to put 10% from somewhere as a, um, um, into that business, and that will go into an escrow account. Because what you're basically going to be doing on that 5 million spend in borrowing 5 million is taking what they call debt equity, which is providing that the profit of the business is sufficient to cover the payment terms of the loan that they're going to give you to buy the business, like a mortgage. Now, they'll back you on that. Now, you'll need some other things too. You need some industry chops. What do I mean by industry chops? I mean, if you're looking to buy a business that's supplying NASA with parts and you've got no experience, they're not going to lend you the money unless you've got somebody around you or a small team of people around you that have got that expertise, because it's too big a risk for the lender. So you've got some things like that to do. So you need 10% with a couple of lenders I'm thinking about that would do this. Um, you would need expertise in the business. You've got to look after the people and make sure you keep them on board, because if you're buying a business, that normally means that a founder might want to leave at some point in the next 2 years. And you— and the 10% is one of the biggest sticking points for a lot of people. Now, there is another way that you could acquire a business. I show people how, with something I call Consulting for Equity, that they might acquire a business without having to use any money. This is how that goes. You, you look at a business today that might be worth 2 million, but you can't raise the money to buy it right now. But you know the owner would, you know, but you can see ways in which you could help that business become worth 10 million. And you offer a— and you do what I call a consulting for equity deal with the owner that says, look, I'd like to help you improve the value of the business. This is how I can do that. I want to take it from 2 million to 10 million, but is it okay that I have 2 20% of the upside of the $8 million of value that I'm creating for you that you wouldn't see without me. And I want maybe 5%, you know, of the— or up to $2 million. Or sometimes you might even say anything up to $2 million is yours, anything extra I want 20% of, and they— and you're going to pay me a monthly fee to help— for me to help you do that. In that way, when you get it to that $10 million valuation, they're going to owe you 20% of the difference between 10 and 8 and 10 and 2, which is $1.6 million. So that difference between 2 and 10 is $8 million. So if they'd agree to give you 20% of that 8 that you created for them, then that's $1.6 million. Now you've got that income coming to you that you could use as a deposit to buy that business if you wanted to, or you could take it and go and buy another business with it. The benefit of doing it this way for so many people is they don't need to do a PG on the business, they don't need to raise the money, they don't have to find 10% to put down, they don't have to take any of those other risks, but they're providing value to the owner of the business to get the valuation that they want but wouldn't get without you. I teach people how to do that, and I've run an academy for people to, to do that, and people are doing it really successfully, and they're doing it as an alternative to actually buying to buying a business outright because they haven't got the cash out front to go and do that. Now there's another way of doing this. I'm working with a 19-year-old at the moment. Now when this 19-year-old was 15, he was in a lot of trouble with drugs. He was every parent's nightmare because turns out that 15-year-olds that want to do, um, not hard drugs but smoke weed and things like that, um, are very creative in the lies they tell. About where they are and what they're doing. And no matter how hard you try to lock them down— and any parents out there with teenagers this sort of age will resonate with this, I'm sure— you can't have eyes on them 24/7, and they're going to use those moments to fuel the habit. This teenager was in so much trouble with the police, who worked with the parents in partnership because they believed in the family and the parents and this young man. Um, the parents had to get him out of the country. So they got him out of the country for a summer, which was 12 weeks. In that time, the people that he was mixing with got caught up with the police and ended up going to jail. So when he came back, they weren't around. And that was the beginning of that young man, um, turning the corner. Now, the reason I share this backdrop with you— he's writing a book. He's writing a book on his journey with drugs and how he went in the right direction and why he wouldn't touch it. But he's sharing all the secrets of all the devious little tricks he used to play to get what he wanted, but not for his mates, for the parents. Now, he's not going to be a multi-millionaire from that book, but he now wants to be a digital nomad. He's 19 now and do a bit of travel, and the money that he makes from the book sales will just buy him beers and pay for some food while he's traveling. But more importantly, the skills he's learning on a digital platform with other products that he can drop on the top are going to allow him to do what he really wants to do, which is take a business from nothing to a $20 million valuation in 6 years, 19 to the age of 25, and then sell it out. Because then he can work with other companies to do the same thing for them that he's just done for himself, and it's a very low cost of entry. So there's 2 ways in which people can do it. People might not— if they're just starting out and they haven't got the cash to buy a business, there's 3 ways. They're just starting out, they haven't got cash to buy, then they can use the second method I talked about, consulting for equity, where they add value to earn into the business and then buy it out. Or they can start from scratch with something. So most young people are digitally incredibly strong in terms of the usage of all the digital platforms, but they're using them to make money off it, they're not so strong on. And so they can work with the right people to do that. That's going to make them money in their 20s, their 30s, their 40s, and 50s. So he's working on that with the Double and Keep It blueprint and structuring what his endgame is going to look like in terms of exiting the business um, with minimum— he will pay some tax, but he'll pay very minimal tax because he's organizing it right now. He's 19. 19. So, so there are 3 different ways that we've just discussed that answer your— in answer to your question, Mike. But there's, there's another dozen that we could discuss. Am I making sense? Let me just pause and take a breath here. Yeah, I get very animated and very passionate about it.

It makes perfect sense, Mark. And I'm thinking, um, do These ways which you just described, this creative financing, let's call it like that, like, are these well-known ways or are these experience-based ways from people like you who, you know, who do acquisition for, you know, for the living? Like, if I would go right now and Google and put it like in ChatGPT, like, give me all the ways I can, you know, finance a purchase of a business, would I get these ways giving me? Like, is that like a common knowledge, or is that more like experience-driven, non-so-common knowledge?

I think that if as a result of this conversation people went and Googled, give me all the ways that you could buy a business, uh, um, ChatGPT all the ways you could buy business, it would come up with a lot of ways you could buy the business, some of which we're talking about. What it doesn't— what ChatGPT doesn't do yet is teach you the how to do that, how to apply that.

Yeah, the how to.

Yeah, I get you. So think of it this way. The information game has completely been decimated or changed by ChatGPT. The implementation game hasn't. So to do that, you go on trial and error, or you get somebody that knows and partner up with them. To help you take those very next steps. And once you've done it 4 or 5 times, yep, you can do it on your own, right?

Yeah.

So when I, when I started thinking about consulting for equity, um, and eventually started sharing with other people how they can do that too, it was because I got fed up with people asking me, how do you do this? Can you help me? Can you help me? Can you help me? Um, but a lot changed when I had cancer. I stopped being a taker and started giving out a lot more because I'm privileged to be here and there's got to be a reason for me to be here. And it can't be to be— to continue to be the selfish person I was before cancer. It had to be to help other people get to where they needed to be. And it was embarrassing that a 10-year-old, my son, was showing me the path.

I wouldn't say it's embarrassing.

I wouldn't say it's embarrassing, by the way, is, is, is, is, is now asking me for royalties.

He said, Dad, you wrote the book, give my cut.

Exactly, he's on royalties, but you know, and which is great. But there are so many different applications of it. So finding from ChatGPT will help, but how you implement it, the conversations that you have, the way that you discover and reach out, the kind of agreements that you put together, the expectations that set and the steps that you take, that's not really, um, that's not yet the domain of ChatGPT. I think it's just pure information is being disseminated everywhere. If you want tax advice from a tax attorney, that's gone. If you want accounting advice from an accountant, that's gone. If you want legal advice from a lawyer, in many ways that's gone. But their experience of knowing how to work the courts, what's going to win and what's not going to win, and all that kind of stuff, Yeah, is what you're now going to be paying money for. And that will be— that will save people a lot of money because they don't have to spend all that money finding out what they're going to do, which is easy money for the service providers. They can start thinking about the information implementation much sooner with a much smaller spend and get more value. Does that make sense, Mike?

It does make sense, Mark. Let me give you this. So, uh, if I'm just starting— just, I love that use case, by the way, by, by the 19-year-old starting with nothing, you know, writing a book. I mean, it's not going to be a moneymaker, but then looking to actually Setting the vision, you know, your book talks about this, that start from that end game, you know, set that vision for which will be your sell and then move towards that vision with all the tactics in place so you're not going to lose on taxes. That's excellent. Can I ask this, like, why can't you just open a business in Dubai or like Panama where, you know, when the sell will come, we'll just have no tax implications and just be done with that?

So, so you can, but your audience and everybody's audience is made up of two groups of people. There's the group of people that have already started a business and been working in it for several years, if not decades already. Yeah. And those businesses are not based in Dubai or Panama. Yeah. And then there's those young people right now who are just beginning their business journey and they can absolutely set up a business in Panama. The benefit of using Panama is that all— if you're earning revenue outside of Panama in your business, it's considered foreign earnings and not taxable. The same is true in Hong Kong and a few other jurisdictions. And Dubai is a very tax-friendly place. Tens of thousands of people of all ages are migrating their lives to Dubai. They're not the only ones. There's Cyprus and other places around the world that are really worth looking into, St. Kitts and so on and so forth. But it's not— and so if you're just being— it's not just as simple as starting a business in one of those locations. Imagine that you start a business in Panama, but you're an American. Americans are subject to taxation on whatever they earn, wherever they are in the world. And if they go over $2 million in net value and they live in the United States and they want to leave the United States, they're going to pay— I think the latest figures are 33% or something like that in an exit tax. So there are ways in which you structure that. And if you're young, you might consider— some people are considering, um, even going as far as giving up citizenship in the United States before they're worth $2 million to so that they don't have to pay an exit fee, and then accumulating their wealth outside of the United States through a number of different structures that they can use, um, and taking that well beyond the $2 and the $10 and the $20 million. So this is where you can in theory do what you're saying, but in some cases you might want to think about these steps and the sequence that you take on that journey to get the best outcome for yourself.

I mean, ultimately Uh, to your point, Mark, you can chit-chat your way around that, like with ChatGPT, but the implementation and the how-tos, it still needs to come from people who actually done it. So did they already have the experience, the trial and error, as you have mentioned? And, and this leads me to this question. I like all of what you're just saying about taxes. I mean, that's an accounting territory, right? That's an accountant.

No, it isn't.

It isn't.

So I absolutely promise you that for most of us who use a standard accountant, let's call it, or CPA, yep, the core— that if you ask your standard accountant that does your books for you each year, can you give me tax advice on this, that, and the other, they will say to you it is not specialty that they work in, but they know with other people that can help them with that, and they will charge you a lot of money. So the domain of the corner shop or the corner— the street-level accountant that does your books, yep, is to make sure you're paying the right amount of tax, and they'll do the best they can to help you minimize that tax. But when you're thinking about future planning and tax mitigation, they are not the people that you're going to use. You're going to need specialists. So So increasingly what we're doing with clients is doing all the strategy and structuring for them. But you'll need tax specialists and attorneys. Yeah, because, you know, so for example, to do that structuring in many countries, you will need a licensed qualified professional to set it up. Yeah, but what we're doing is, is taking all that structuring in hand in conjunction with the sale of the business. Or growth and acquisition of a business. So, you know, because some people actually— we're working with some companies just to acquire companies at the moment for growth. We won't start the tax mitigation for 2, 3 years, but we've already fed in, based on current legislation, what the choices might be for them.

Yeah.

And they're going to be— and we're updating them on a quarterly basis as to what those choices are because laws change, regulations change, so that they're in the best position to plan early. Now, I'm not doing anything that the super rich like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or lots of other people have been doing for a long time with different strategies, but the end game is the same. I've just made it available to people like you and me. Okay.

So let, let me ask this. Um, let me ask this, Mark, so that the, if, if people listening, and they go, you know what, I want to find someone to just have a consultation with, how would they find— I mean, outside of, of course, reaching out to you, Mark, how would they find that person? Like, you know, if it's not an accountant, you mentioned like tax specialists and attorneys. Like, if I go to LinkedIn, like, how would I find a person like you who can actually help me with all of this? Like, what's the title? Like, how do they name themselves?

Well, Yeah, so, um, the challenge is most people I work with— so one of my clients, we've just been through a process of helping them. Gotta be careful how I say this because there's confidential information there for them. Currently their net worth is less than $2 million, but they fully expect their net worth to be worth $200 million plus within 12 months. So we're planning out all of that for them. The trouble is for them is they don't know who to trust because they haven't got those relationships. So, but before they start building those relationships and spending money, the very first step that people can take for free is to use a link that I'll make available to you to go and find out by answering some questions whether they've got anything to worry about or not. And then if they want to have a conversation about the next strategic step, they can do that and then it will come down to which professionals they might want to select, and that will change according to which country they're in and which country they want to stay in. So in the case I'm— I just spoke about, this particular gentleman will go outside of the United States. I've got another one that's going to come outside of Germany. Not everybody wants to leave their country, so I've got a couple a customer that actually wants to stay in the country that they're in. So it changes what you can do and how much you can keep. But once you understand strategy that's going to work right for you, you can now select the specialists that you want to work with to implement it. So we'll line up all the strategy for people, and actually you can use our specialist to implement it if you want to, but you don't have to. You can go and find your own specialists And they will be, and we can help people find those specialists if they want to depend, which, but it will be relative to where are they now and where are they going to be?

Okay.

Because so you might need you, if you're going to go outside the country, you're going to need specialists to do some of this in two, in two places, the country that you're in and the country that you're going to.

Okay. So I am who I am. I set the goal. I built the strategy and then whatever specialists I need, I'll hire to implement that strategy. But I'm not going to be able to set that strategy myself, right? So you mentioned the link, Mark, we'll put it in the show notes. So that will give some type of insights. But what if I just want to find a person who will help me to build a strategy? Is that like some type of like acquisition strategist? Like how do I find people like this?

Yes. So yeah. So So we can help people build that strategy. Just use the link, that's the beginning of it. But from as far as I know, there's lots of people out there that can help with tax in one form or another. There's lots of people out there that can help you fund the acquisition of a business. There's lots of people out there that could help you sell a business. When you bring it all together in a way, that says, why don't we talk about the potential to double your business at no additional cost to you in 12 months or less, and at the same time think about how we could prepare that exit in a tax-free or minimized way that doesn't cause you to spend a load of money on fees with third parties in addition to the, you know, in tax fees and leakage fees. As far as I know, no one else does those three legs of the stool together. We're the only people that do. So if you want to do any one of those, there's lots of people out there, but they're not talking to each other to provide you an integrated approach to help you make more and keep more. Okay, you, you could Google keep more of what I earn and probably find a lot of people out there that would help on taxes in two different ways. One your personal payroll tax, your W-2 or PAYE, or— but they'd be different people to structuring the sale of a business to minimize. So there's different elements of that there. So it's difficult to say they call themselves one thing because actually to maximize wealth you need a combination of 2 or 3 things. And there's one other leg on this tool that we haven't spoken about at all, is imagine that we could help you and I double a business from 10 to 20 and then show people how they could, um, keep most of that 20. Now they've got it, it's in their hand. What are they going to do with it? There's a lot of things, depending on where you live, that you could do with that cash to then further protect it from taxation and leakage going forward. We've not even talked about any of that. What we're talking about here is how do you keep more of what you've earned and double the value before you get to the point of protecting it? Am I making sense?

Yeah, yeah, Mark. So before we actually go into that last phase after you actually sold it and realized, I got one more. So you mentioned that you're buying businesses for growth. You're not even like thinking about the tax yet. So you want to, I don't know what your use case was that, where you, you mentioned that you're just buying, you want to grow them, and then you're going to think about, you know, the, the, the tax structure. Can we talk about that?

No, no, no. You're buying with the end in mind, Mike.

You're always buying with the end in mind.

Yeah. So, so I do. Yeah. So this is what, if you and I were talking about your business and you were saying in 5 years, I'd like to sell it, I would say to you, what would you like to get for it in 5 years? But you can have that conversation with anybody. So with my 19-year-old, my first question was, okay, if you build a business, what do you want to get for it when you sell it? He said a million. I said, that's not enough.

Yeah.

And he said, why? I said, well, because by the time you've got a million, it won't last you for very long. How about 100 million? He went, no way, I couldn't, couldn't, couldn't possibly imagine that. I said, okay, what about 20? And, um, so now, so, so you settle on 20, 25, or 30. Most people, when you say to them, how about 20 or 30, they'll go, it's impossible, it could never be done, it would take me the rest of my life. But actually, think about this. If you go back from your 20 to say, what would it take for me to get 20 million for the sale of a business? It would take $5 million of EBITDA. So now you know that's what you're aiming for.

Yeah.

So how quickly can you get to $5 million of EBITDA? Well, in the very first year, it's about can you even pay any bills? Your first $100K is about paying bills and putting food on the table. Once you go beyond that— this is $100K profit— once you go beyond that, you are then starting to move into, I've got something here, how do I scale it? So I want— so you want to scale organically and through partnerships and through clever marketing and through working with other people's customers and that then working with yours and cooperatively marketing to grow and scale the business and drive revenue that way because it's cheap, right? And you want to do that to your sort of 750, but as soon as you get to 750, it opens the door to you more to do more, for you to do acquisitions much more easily because you've got some profit behind you that you can deploy. You can go as low as half a million on this and start to do this. I would just caution and say you could do that, but you, you go from 750 and acquire another business for 750 in profit, you're now 1.5 million. So 1.5 million, you're worth 6 to 9 million. At 750K, you're worth about 750 to 1.2. So when you look at a lot of big public or privately held companies, when they get to 200 or 300 million in revenue, they're growing predominantly by acquisition because organic growth is never fast enough. Yeah, but acquisitive growth is. So this— so now you can see that it would take you 2, 3, 4 years to get to 750K in profit, and then 2 years to get to 7 or 8 or 9 million in, in profit by acquisition. But if you're at 750K already and you wanted to partner with another organization like ours, we could do that in 12 to 18 months because of the way in which we're going to do it. Because your growth when you're doing it organically is how quickly can you acquire more profit to deploy to acquire another business, right? So that slows you down a bit because you've got to get your debt down before you can borrow more money because Otherwise you go to a point where you're paying out too much in debt and not making enough money to save it.

So you want to have 750 in profit before you start sort of going on an acquisition spree, let's call it like this. What if, can you go into, so you mentioned it's going to take 3 to 4 years to go into 750. What if I want to accelerate this? Like how can I go from 0 to 750 through acquisitions? Is that even possible? Like can I buy into it?

You can, but you're going to need some— in most instances when you're looking to buy a business and it's already profitable, they're going to need you to put some cash into the deal to get it bought.

Yeah. So that basically the 10% you have mentioned, like, that's— is that universal or is that just sort of like an average number?

It can be more depending on who— it could be as much as 20%. Um, in some circumstances it can be as low as 5%. Now, sometimes somebody will allow you to buy the business on the basis that you're going to pay them from future profits. I think that's a good way to go because it's good for them, because it reduces their tax burden significantly. But actually, that happens rarely. That happens in businesses that are incredibly difficult to sell.

Yep.

That doesn't mean they're not worth buying, but it means they're hard to sell. But when you've got a a business which is cash flowing and profitable and making great money. Normally when people are selling it, they want to take their cash out.

Yeah.

So it takes time. So that's why it can be harder. So you've got to— you can do it with what I like to call an annuity structure. I've seen it done. I've done it myself. But it's, it's not always easy. So the answer is yes, but you want to— you might Another way to do this that not many people use is start to grow organically and find a company that you want to buy, but partner with them first. And when you partner with them first and you're driving more revenue for each other, it cements the reasons that you want to buy them, because you're good for each other. And then execute contract to buy them that way. But then doing it that way means you've built a relationship with them, of knowing them, liking them, and trusting them. And I see that, you know, used quite a lot when you're extending and expanding into a new region that you've not been in before. Maybe you're going from Europe to America, right? So you find a partnership, you make it successful, then you buy them out. So you can, you know, you can, you can do that as well. Also, if you're in the digital product space, there's still a fortune to be made in those space, but your barrier to entry is incredibly low in terms of the cost of producing your product. But what you have to do is build a social media following. So your barrier to entry there is, is the followers that you've got. So if you've only got 2 followers, you're not gonna make much money. So you've gotta build the followers out there. Or partner with other people's audiences so that you can make money for them and make money for you to keep the cost down until you get to that critical mass and then you can go to the next level. Am I making sense?

100%, Mark. So, I mean, is this adding any value?

Did you think anyone's gonna be interested in what we've been talking about today? Was it just you and me?

I'm sure that people will think, I mean, our listeners are, you know, small business, small medium enterprises, a lot of founders, some product people, but growing by acquisition, you know, it's not a secret, Mark. Everybody knows that. But I think what you're giving here to the audience is a lot more tangible in the sense, if they're interested, they can start thinking about the ways, can start thinking about the frameworks and start doing research. Right. So I think it's definitely valuable. Mark, thank you for sharing everything. So to summarize, because we sort of coming to the last section of your book and of your framework is that you start with setting the exit first. You start by setting the vision and then you're working backwards from that vision. That will give you the best plan for execution, you know, the strategy. So the execution will be flawless, right?

I think it, I think it might depends on where are you in your journey.

Okay.

So when you asked me that question and we set that vision, it was for people beginning and starting a business.

Yeah, beginning and starting.

Yeah. A lot of, a lot of your listeners have been in business for a long time. So that's a different vision for them. So their vision, the vision for them is if imagine that I would like to buy their business. So I'm gonna, so here's what I believe. I think every one of your listeners that owns a business would sell it if they were offered the right price for it. Imagine I'm going to offer you the right price for your business. Reach out to me so that I can share with you what the likely value range of it is now, and then you can plot a plan on what gap you need to cover to get the price you actually want. Now, some businesses are undervalued and they're going to get bought very quickly. It's like like a house. If you overprice a house when you're selling it, it's still on the market a year later. But if you underprice it, you sold it the next day.

Yeah.

If you get it about right, it's 3 months, and it's 3-6 months and it's done, right?

Yeah.

So, and buying a business or growing a business in terms of its value is similar-ish to that. So what you— with any— I'm going to send you 2 links. One's a free link, free link to the free PDF copy of the book Secrets to 10x in Your Business Cashing Out Tax-Free, which by the way, to my absolute amazement, has become, um, a global international number one bestseller on Kindle, on Audible, and on Amazon. Who would have thought that? Because we don't promote it, it's just self-published. Um, but the second link I'm going to send you is a starting point that everybody would consider, which is— this is for the business owner that's had a business for some time and one day they might want to sell it. It. So they can use that link to get a rough view of what their business might be worth now, and that will tell them what they need to do to get the price they want, or it will tell them what they're going to leave behind if they sell it now and do nothing, and therefore how they can start to plan. To think about, in— this is where I am today and I want to get over here, how do I get there? And then, um, They could do that on their own. Some business owners work with us. We run a program where we work alongside a business owner to improve the value of the business, and we find the buyers, all confidential and off market. And we put value in by growing the value of the business, and we put value in by mitigating the leakages, saving them, in some cases, millions of pounds or dollars. And we've got investors sitting behind us. We have a network of over 7,000 investors that are all interested in buying good businesses. So, but we only approach those investors with a business that's not on the market, because if it's not on the market, it gets a better price. When it is on the market, strangely, it doesn't get quite so much. Right. Yeah. So we, so we can help people do that if they, if they wanted to do that, but that's not the object of this conversation. I'm not here pitching what we do, but I do want people to help themselves. So they can grab a copy of the book if they want, and they can have a look at their own position. And if they do that survey, 3-minute survey, a 3-minute questionnaire, give me 24-48 hours to get our team to send it back to you. It will show you what your leakage is likely to be if you do nothing and what you could therefore save. And we can't double the value of all businesses, but if we could, we'll give you a view of what that might look like so that you can see what the range is. That's at a summary high level because we're doing this for free. It's not a detailed overview.

Okay, so, so Mark, if we zoom out, right, so it's basically you, you have a business right now, you want to understand where you are, you want to get the strategy, you want to double the value of the business, so you want to know how to do that. Then you want to reach a point of having $750K in profit, at least that point. Then you're going to start acquiring bolt-on, you know, business. So you start going to be doing acquisitions and that effectively hopefully brings it to a realistic vision of an exit, which is 30, 50 million, you know, whatever you have sort of set in the beginning. Is that like a good zoomed-out assessment of the steps you do?

Yeah. So you grow organically to 750 and then you acquire yourself, double it to 1.5, and you probably do 2 or 3 more acquisitions as well.

Yep. 100%. Okay.

So those people with us are still working with us, are still at 750. They don't actually have to acquire another company to double the value of it because of some proprietary methods that we use to double that value without them having to buy one. So that's another option.

But you—

what you're going to do— not everybody wants to do that, Mike. You know, we've got a client in, in, um, in the States at the moment that doesn't want to save any money on the tax and doesn't want to double the value. They're 76 and 78 years old. They just want it sold.

So, so just want to sell and don't want to double.

So can we save them any money? Can they save themselves any money? Some people want to increase the value of it first before they sell. Um, and, um, and so, you know, it's whatever the situation is. They want to start with, if I were to sell the business today, what would I lose?

Yeah.

Can I, you know, yeah. And then basically, am I happy with that? Yeah. Can I save that? And then do I want to double double it. How could I double it? I can go and acquire, I can have another chat with Mark and see how that, you know, what they're thinking about, what we could— we do that, we could do— there's a number of different options available.

Yeah, it's quite fluid process. I, I get that, Mark. Is there— is definitely, you know, we're not gonna sort of unpack everything in the rest of the like 15 minutes. Uh, let me ask this, like you mentioned doubling of the value, so is that purely of like, uh organic value growth, which comes from like sales and marketing and social media, which you talk in your book about, or do you have some secret sources of how you actually help business to go, you know, double the value in like a year?

Yeah, so, um, organic value, um, in terms of how they will do this themselves normally delivers 10 to 20% growth in a good year. Yeah. Now, if they're partnering with other people, then they might get more than that. When we're looking to double the value of a business in 12 months or less, there is a secret sauce that we work— that we, that we bring to the table for those customers that we're working with that doesn't require them to spend any more money on sales or marketing or organic stuff to get that double in value. That's a secret sauce that we bring And we do that with the clients that we're working with because that's real value. And we get a percentage of that upside. That's how we are rewarded for that. And those are using, uh, little-known secrets that, you know, to sort of do that.

Okay, so what are those secrets? Yeah, so I'm not going to—

obviously I'm not going to share the secrets. People would need to contact— people, people would need to contact me and go under NDA for me to start talking about that.

Okay.

But it's not— it isn't dissimilar to buying businesses. It's a similar thing to buying another business where you can double the value of a business. So, but we've got a way of doing it where you don't have to buy, and that's very appealing to companies that can't raise the finance.

Yeah.

Don't want to raise the finance but want to see the upside of the growth. And so we couple that— we do that with customers that we work with where we can grow the value value of it, but also mitigate the fee leakage as well. So it gives them a big upside and, um, we, we charge a success fee for that, of course. Yeah.

Okay.

Um, so that's, that's a bit of secret sauce.

So the last stages, which, uh, potentially founders are not thinking about, is that you sold it. Great. You know, hopefully you saved on taxes. Excellent. Now you have 5, 10, whatever is the selling price in your bank account. What do you do then to actually protect that wealth? You're not going to just keep it in your bank. That's going to, you know, inflation will eat out, uh, some of that money very quickly actually. So you want to put it somewhere where you're continuously getting some, you know, passive income or dividends or whatever. It's like, you talk a little bit in your book about this, about that stage after the sell, that this needs to be planned as well. So do you got like What's your, like, in general, what's your take on that? Is that like homework for people to think about, or do you actually guide people through that stage as well?

Yeah, so we do even more than that. So let's imagine now that you sold the business for 20 and you've kept the bulk of the 20. It's a lot of money to invest. So this will be very dependent on where that person is resident for their own tax, uh, where they're living, where they're paying tax, right? So, um, it's not always dependent on that, but a lot of the time it will be. So we introduce them to partners that we have worked with that have specialty areas that they can help you with. So for example, there are some ways in which you can roll the cash from the sale proceeds of a business into property, or you might roll it into some kind of insurance products. Now, um, those are designed to mitigate your tax but give you an income as well. Now, we're not allowed— we're not licensed to sell any of those products, and that's why we're aware of them and we introduce them to the specialists that can mitigate that. But But the key thing here is, before working with us on a $10 million business, they kept $5 million. Now working with us on a $10 million business, they're closer to $20 million. So they've got a lot more to invest. But in the States, it's property. There are some insurance products. In the UK, there are some other— there are different kinds of things that you can do. But in each country around the world, there are different things that your own tax codes will support you doing. Yeah, from a tax mitigated point of view, to protect that wealth and earn well from that wealth. Okay, for that, we, we introduce our clients to our network. We— they don't work for us, we don't work for them, we don't take any fees from them, but they then will help and advise them on the best way for their circumstances to protect and grow that wealth going forward from there. And that's a game changer for a lot of people because now they're out. To your point, you do nothing, it's just going to erode. But there are lots of things that you can do to protect that money, not risk it, but still have a great income from it as well. What we're trying to do is double or treble the amount of money you can enjoy in whatever it is you're going to do next. We're talking about people retiring here. Don't forget, a lot of people want to take the money out and roll it into the next venture, and there are strategies for that as well. Makes sense.

Yeah, I get you. Again, it's such a fluid process. There's so many different ways you can take this, and, uh, and people interested in all of this, you know, you'll need to either do your research, contact, talk with Mark, or leave us a comment, you know, to us. Yeah, we'll have to answer all the questions.

Yep, the methodology is the same, the system. So the Double and Keep It blueprint is a system, and it's a four-legged stool, and one of the legs is an optional leg you don't have to use. But it's about making the money first. So we talked about all of that within the organic piece that we spoke about. And then it's about growing through acquisition, or my other way of doing it, which is the secret sauce of our company that no one does.

Yep.

So you've got those two things to create the wealth and double it. That's the double. And then the, um, and then the key part of the blueprint is How do you structure your business in a way that you pay very little taxes and fees? That's the— and then, and then you're out. So the fourth leg of that stool is how do you further protect that and reinvest it? And by the way, that's one thing that you could do, but now that you've done this, do you realize there are very few people that go through a system like this? This— the system that we use is proprietary. I've been developing it for 30 years and adding more pieces to it as I've gone along to make it more valuable for business owners. Now what you do as a business owner when you've come out is you take that and you reinvest it. But actually, you can take the journey that you've just been on, and if you've been working with us, the system that we've, um, that we've gone through to get you from where you were to where you need to be, and you go back and consult for other companies to do the same for them. And you've got another stream of income, maybe £5,000 or £7,000 or £8,000 a month, plus a percentage of their business when they sell, and the knowledge on how to do it because you just did it with us. Does that make sense?

It does. It makes perfect sense, Mark. And as well, it's such a good summary of everything we touched today and tried to touch today that I'm not even going to do my closing remarks. So that's pretty much— is a whole summary of the episode. So we got only 9 minutes left, Mark. So I want to jump in a quick rapid question round. So there's just a couple of questions to pick your brains, 30-60 seconds as an answer. Ready?

Yep.

All right. What's the easiest type of small business to acquire with minimal upfront capital?

Um, generally businesses that are, um, where the owner is the face of the business is easier to acquire because they're much harder to sell. So if you're—

interesting—

in terms of acquisition, right?

Yeah.

So if, if you are, um, a plumbing business and you're the only person, if you want to sell it, it's incredibly difficult to sell, which makes it easy to acquire once the owner realizes it's very difficult to sell, because it gives you the maximum flexibility. Now, you should only buy a business like that if you feel you can get other single-owner businesses to go around it. So you've got other maybe electricians or plumbers or things like that. So from an acquisition point of view, Bonus tip. Yeah, bonus tip to start a business. Um, if you're going to start a business, you may be of a younger age group, so digital-based products such as the 19-year-old that's writing a book as a baseline platform to start making some cash, they're very easy to start if you're willing to commit the time. And there's a lot of really good people out there that you can follow who have done this and documented this, and you just implement by following on YouTube what it is they're doing. People want to know more about that, hit me up after the show and I'll put you in touch with them because I've done it, not with those people, but in touch with those learnings so you can begin to build that blueprint. That's easy because as a young person, the one thing you don't have a lot of the time is cash.

Yeah, but you have time.

So, yep, but you have time and you've got— and they're all digitally really savvy, but they might not want— but not all of them are going to be wanting to do something on the digital front. A lot of them are going to be really good in the blue-collar stuff. Which is ChatGPT isn't going to take away electricians or plumbers or people like that.

Yeah.

So if you're going to acquire one of those, pick a smaller one because you don't need— you can become the face of the business, um, and then you can acquire other ones around it. And it will take you— you've got the time to do it if you're a younger person because you've got a 40-year working window. So those would be easier businesses to start with because they're bloody hard to sell. But if you're starting from scratch I think there's a way to do dish products that can be— that will build a big following and lots of cash for you in the future.

Okay, second question: can you really buy a business with zero cash down, or is it just a myth?

No, you can. You absolutely can. So generally speaking, then— so, so let's put the businesses into two very broad camps. A business doing $10 million in profit isn't going to be zero down in cash. It's not going to happen because they know the worth of it. It's worth 50, 60, 70, and they're going to get it all day long. A business worth— that's doing, say, half a million in profit, it's harder to sell, especially if the owner is the face of the business. So then you can get much more flexible. What will normally happen is they'll go to market, and in the first 6 months, they're going to go, no, I'm going to get the price, and the broker promised me this, that, and the other. But they're going to realize it's not selling. Then there's a window from 7 months to ever, where they may be much more flexible. But you have to understand what I call their MUD score, which is their motivation score to want to sell. And, and that's not about the business. That might be because they just want to spend time with the family. Maybe they're ill. Maybe they're like me and they've been given 6 months to live. So in that scenario, you can work out ways to buy the business, which doesn't necessarily mean a lot of cash up front, but you might take care of them and their family dependents for years into the future. And really what they're looking to do is liquidate in that unfortunate example of not being around.

Yeah.

And take care of the family. So you've got to find the other motivating factors that would allow you to do the deal without any money down. It's harder to do, it's more unusual to do. Everybody talks about it, but it can be done.

Okay. Are you looking for these motivated buyers yourself? If so, how? Or are you using brokerage?

You can use both. So, so when you go off market, you tend to find that it takes a lot longer to get the business to a point where it's ready to sell. We do a lot to prepare businesses by growing the value and minimizing their tax and leakage, but there's an awful lot that we look at from a systems and process point of view to make them ready as well. Cleaning up their accounts, for example. Most people run a smaller business as a lifestyle, which is not the best way to run it if you're going to sell it. So we work with them to get all that sorted out, but that could take some time before it's then ready to be sold. Um, and so, um, okay, so there's—

so the deal size, uh, Mark, the deal size, uh, which is just sort of follow-up to the same, is like, how big of a deal can you actually expect if you're doing zero down approach? I mean, it probably has a, you know, to your point about profit, probably has a, like, a cap, right? Like, you should not expect to do, you know, $5 million with zero down cash, right? Like, like, what's the— what's that? What's that?

Yeah, I would, I would agree with that. Here's, here's the thing though, think of it this way. Um, if a business is worth a million, you may be willing to offer them 4 million. But the only reason you'd offer them 4 million is if it's, if it's the price that they would love to have, it's got to be on your terms. So the terms for that deal would be, if I'm going to give you 4 million, I'm going to give you £400,000 a year for 10 years. Now, before you commit to that, you need to know that the business can afford to do that and is making enough profit, this, that, and the other. But that's a way in which you might get somebody to say, I'll do that deal, because they're going to get so much more cash for it, so you don't have to put a lot down on day one. This is an example, it's not a reality. Where you're giving them so much more than it's worth on your terms, you can often get away with a much smaller down payment or upfront deal. But whether you want to do that or not is a completely different question. Yeah. When the price of the deal is much lower, so it's, say, your price, because it's a very low price, it's going to be their terms, which is, I want the money at closing. So thinking, maybe thinking those two constraints. One is if it's the price they want, or even more than the price they want, then it's got to be in your terms. And are they motivated to do that? But if it's the price you want, because you want it at the cheapest possible price, it's going to be on their terms. Think of it in those two ways, and that's how you could frame with their collective motivation and all the other things that you need to do, whether they'd be willing to do. And it's critical that you build a good relationship with the people that you're buying a business from, because most of them don't just care about the money. They care about how you're going to look after their people. Yeah. How you're going to protect their name. How you're going to carry it on. If you're not looking to look after a business, don't buy one, because I've seen too many companies destroyed by people that come in and think they know everything about the business and ruin the culture and people leave. And the asset that you have in the business is people.

Yeah, I love that. I love you calling that out, Mark. I mean, that's I've been part of a couple of mergers and acquisitions where exactly that happened, where the new owners just destroyed the culture and a lot of high-talented people just basically left, including me. It's just, and I mean, I'm sure the business didn't go bankrupt, but it's just another, if you don't expect that attrition to happen, it's just gonna be another headache for you to deal with as a new owner. Right, so if I don't have capital, right, so if I'm doing the zero down one, how can I make my offer credible to the seller? Because, you know, that's what I'm thinking. If someone coming to me, they go like, hey, I want to buy your business, I would go like, well, you know, show me the money, right? And then I would go like, well, I don't have any money. What I'm planning to do is, you know, is do this zero down financing and stuff like that. Like, I would instantly, as a seller, would go go like, whatever, not a— this is not a good buyer. That's how I would look at it. So if I flip this, how do I look credible if I'm doing this?

Um, it's very individual deal by deal, my friend.

Okay.

So you gotta look at the company, what they're asking for it, and what you might do is, you know, it's worth a million, for example. You might say, look, I understand that you'd like a million for the business and you'd like that now. There are some things I'd like to do with the business that help me keep the capital, but I'm willing to give you 5 million or 6 million for the business. I'm giving you these extreme examples, but if I do that, it's got to be done over a long period of time, which means I'm not going to give you money on day one. Yeah, I'm going to defer the first payment for 9 months or 12 months or 15 months. And flinch test that. If they go no, no, no, no, no, then you are no worse off than where you were before you asked the question. Yes. And then you say, let me go away and keep thinking about it, um, but I've got to think about, you know, I think there are some things that I can do, but I need some cover and protection. And that, and in many instances they're going to go no, this is the price. Now if it's overpriced, you're not going to get that money. But if it's under— but if it's, um, sorry, if it's overpriced, they are not going to get that money. And the longer it's on the market, the more flexible they may be. I've got an example of this right now. I've got to be very, very quick on this. Training business, they want $10 million for it. It's an information business, and $10 million was a fair price a year ago. Now it's not even worth $5 million, and the pricing they're charging is too high. What I'm saying is, to the, to the people that want to that want to buy the business. Let's go in there and say, look, happy to give you the 5, but we're going to have to structure it over the long period of time because actually in the market we've got to re-engineer the model to offer the same things but at 25% of the cost to get the volume up. And so we can't do that on the current cash flow of the business, and you are in decline already and you've not sold the business and everybody else has taken a look at it and said no, but we think we could do it if we did it this way. But we've got to re-engineer the model. So we'll give you the value, but it's got to be structured out over a long period of time. Now that will make sense to them, but it doesn't mean they'll do it. Does that make sense?

It does make sense. Again, very fluid, very negotiating type of situation.

It's about working in partnership, right? Seeing what you can get that's a win-win for both sides. You don't always get there. You don't always get there.

Okay. So what exactly is an earn-out? And when is it useful in small acquisitions?

Yeah, so an earnout is the business is worth 1, but you've agreed 5. So the 4 is the earnout portion that you're going to agree to give them on certain conditions being met. They're normally revenue goals, revenue or profitability goals, so over a period of 2 or 3 years. So if they do these things, they'll get that extra money. The downside is if they don't, they don't get that extra money. Right, and that's how you can agree an overvaluation based on a lack of current performance when you've got the leadership team in staying in place to work on delivering the additional performance that's needed. And if they deliver that, they get the extra money. If they don't, then they don't.

Okay, why do so many acquirers prefer 5 to 10 small bolt-on acquisitions instead instead of one big deal?

Because if you are looking to— if your business is worth less than a million, it's probably 1 times its earnings. But if you can get it up to 8, 9, or 10 million, you could be 7, 8, 9 times— 6, 7, 8, 9 times its earnings. Yeah. So there's a huge exponential scale on bolt-ons improving the overall value of the business that makes what I call the juice worth the squeeze for acquirers to do small acquisitions and hoover them up and then sell them as a package as a much bigger deal.

Yeah. Okay. So you just basically pay a much less on multiple if you're buying multiple smaller ones instead of just going after one big.

Yeah, because you're— because that's already been done and you're going to pay a much bigger multiple for it. So you force value in by buying smaller ones and then you get the multiple added to it. As a result of that, and then you can sell it at a profit.

Excellent. What's one red flag that tells you not to buy a business, no matter how cheap it looks?

Whether I like the people or not. So there's a whole bunch of different things. So I never do business with people I don't like, number one. Number two, I always look at the fundamentals, the accounts of the business first. Because there's always a slight difference between the story and the reality, and the numbers don't lie. So you've got to look at that. And there's a bunch of other things, but those— work on those two big things. Make sure you've got good relationships and make sure you do a thorough job of the numbers in analyzing its current performance and potential future performance.

Is the people and relationship first and then the numbers second, or are they equally more than—

they're equally important. There's other factors in there that are important as well, because you've got to look at the other things in there, like are you doing an asset purchase or are you buying the whole business? Because sometimes you find yourself in a position where you then find that there's a huge tax bill to pay that no one found in due diligence. So you, you know, you want to build good relationships with people because you want to access them going forward potentially, but you've got to make sure the numbers make sense.

Of course. How to spot if a seller is hiding something during due diligence?

Um, you don't always spot it, but normally when you're looking at the numbers, um, you can— there's so many variations on this, right? So, um, when you're looking at the numbers, you're going to get an indication of past performance. When you're doing a quality of earnings report It will go into the contracts and the customers and the concentration. And that was— and when you're interviewing people, um, or talking to owners and their immediate team, not everybody in the business, you'll start to get a sense as to the direction of travel on the business. And so it's, it's, it's just time-consuming and important to do as much as you can to uncover that. But you can put some protections in that, in, in in there with warrants and things like that to sort of have some cover, but you want to avoid that if you can because they can often be difficult to execute on.

Okay, excellent. All right, well, we are done, Mark. Excellent episode. Sets a good stage for us as a podcast because we will be unpacking many of these steps much, much deeper into a much more tactical way to our listeners, hopefully putting something together which is, you know, executable in the sense of people actually going into an M&A strategy, let's put it like this. So if they want to know more about you, Mark, and about acquisition for you and about your book, how do they get in touch? You already mentioned a couple of links. We will put this in the show notes, but is there something, you know, else?

I'll send you a, I'll send you a link to my Linktree, and then on my Linktree they can WhatsApp me, they can email me, they can get a free copy of the book. And they can go and assess their own position with a completely free 3-minute questionnaire that will give them a summary on their own position in their business and where they are in their own journey. All of that will be in the Linktree for you.

Excellent. One link which gives you a lot more links. So that's for our listeners. And you summarized that well, the whole episode. So I'm going to just skip over that and just remind our listeners If you find value in this episode and in the show in general, please make sure to subscribe. If you have a founder in your network, someone who wants to grow, maybe sharing that episode will be useful to them to understanding that the way of acquisition or of growth of acquisition is actually a very valid strategy. And as always, until the next time, stay safe and see you online.