From $50K to $200M: Richard Parker Reveals Untold Acquisition Secrets

And grew up in a really wonderful family, very lower middle class, hardworking parents. My mother had 2, 3 jobs at a time. My father was a hardworking guy. He was actually a door-to-door salesman for— but I was working like a maniac. I was in my early 20s working 80, 100 hours a week because a tremendous amount of my time was devoted to learning. I was— so I'm using a Day Timer since I could tell you everything that I've done by day since August 8th, 1980. And that sounded terrific. But no one tells you what happens if the stock goes down. And the stock absolutely shit the bed. I lost everything. I was 29 years old. I was doing well. I was making $72,000 a year and I lost $60,000.

What's going on? What's going on, everybody who's actually listening to this podcast right now? First of all, guys, welcome back to the Nikhil Sai Show, which is hosted by me, the Nikhil Sai. And guess what's going on today? We're back with another amazing guest, and this is going to be a very, very different podcast than what we typically do. I know we've already interviewed a lot of millionaires, multi-millionaires, you know, deca-billionaires, even 9-figure entrepreneurs. But the guy who's jumping on, on this show is going to help you unlock the bigger game, the game of acquisitions, the game of buying businesses, the game of building companies which have massive scale to it. So I'll tell you more, so pay attention and close Seriously listen, because these advices are going to change your life forever. The guy who's actually jumping on the podcast today has helped thousands of people achieve the dream of owning and buying multiple businesses for over 30 years. His How to Buy a Good Business at a Great Price program has sold over 100,000 copies in more than 80 countries. Can you imagine that? He was hired by the Dalio family office and for several years worked as a mentor to one of the— Ray Dalio's son teaching him the art of buying small businesses. Isn't that crazy? I mean, we're talking about the top of the top of the food chain, the Dalios themselves. Now, he has personally purchased 13 of his own companies plus 1 co-investment with purchase prices ranging from $50,000 to well over $200 million. So the guy who's jumping on has been all the major publications you can imagine like Forbes, the New York Times, thestreet.com, Entrepreneur Magazine, and whatnot. 200+ articles published. So let's not waste any time and actually let's welcome Richard Parker. Hey, Richard.

Hey, how are you? I appreciate that introduction. Thank you very much. It's great to be with you.

Absolutely, Richard. I mean, it's funny. I just want to share a quick backdrop. Richard and I actually met on a different mastermind group we were actually in. It was hosted by Chris Lee, and he's another amazing entrepreneur who actually sold his business for multi, multi, multi-nine-figure exit. And Richard was actually sharing his golden nuggets on how he would actually look at buying businesses and whatnot. So I was really inspired and I actually got a ton of value from that. So I reached out to Richard and I have him on today. I hope, Richard, you will have a fun time here.

Oh, I'm sure I will. I appreciate your energy. And like you said, Chris's show is terrific. I was happy to be happy and appreciative of being asked to be a guest on there. Chris, I admire him immensely and I appreciate you reaching out to me after. And so I'm really looking forward to our conversation.

Yeah, absolutely. Richard, I think what brings value to anybody's business, or I would say accomplishments in business, is really the backdrop and the story they come from. That gives the context of who you became, how you became, what you became overall. So if you could take us 30 years before, or like 50 years before, or 40 years before, like help us understand like your backstory, the childhood, the different situations you come from, and what made you who you are today.

Okay, thank you. Well, I could take you back about 60 years 'cause I'm in my 60s. And I grew up in Montreal in Canada. And grew up in a really wonderful family, very lower middle class, hardworking parents. My mother had 2, 3 jobs at a time. My father was a hardworking guy. He was actually a door-to-door salesman for many, many years, which is a throwback trade you don't even see anymore. And I used to work with him every summer. And so, that was actually when I think back about that, that was actually terrific training because it really taught me the ability to walk up to strangers and have a conversation. And so, I worked for my dad in the summertime. And then, when I finished school, I completed high school. I completed 2 years of college, more like today's version of community college. I didn't go to a formal university. And I started working in my uncle's business, which was in the clothing business. And I worked there for a couple of years. It was kind of interesting, but I found it a little boring as time went on because we weren't really out generating a lot of activity. And went through a couple of iterations of different jobs. And then, I started working for a consumer products company in the mid-1980s. And this company was really on fire. We had some very hot products in toy product, toy-related and sporting good-related. And we were the toast of the town in Montreal. A company, young company went public, raised a lot of money. We're doing quite well. And I got moved up through the ranks quickly. If I had been in a company that was not growing at the pace that it was growing, there is no way I would have ascended the way I did. It was the company. We couldn't catch up to the growth. And so, I kept getting put into situations that were certainly above my level of competence. But I was working like a maniac. I was in my early 20s working 80, 100 hours a week because a tremendous amount of my time was devoted to learning. I was put into positions that again were way above me. But I was very eager. I've always been intellectually curious, wanting to learn. And even as a kid, it was the same way. I always had jobs or small businesses going on the side. And I was always intellectually curious about the idea of making money and trying to be a little better off, I guess, than my parents. But the entrepreneurship and working, I always found very exciting. So, when I think back in how many hours that I worked, I know that now. But going back then, I didn't care. I was just happy to be where I was and having a blast. And then, I grew to the position of vice president in one of their divisions, consumer product infant products divisions. And then, I did something pretty interesting. I bought a stock in a company called Worlds of Wonder. It had a very hot toy at the time. And someone told me about this concept of buying stock on margin where you could double up the stock for half the money. And it all sounded interesting because the way it was presented to me when the stock goes up in price, you sell your stock and you pay back the money that you effectively borrowed when you doubled up. And that sounded terrific. But no one tells you what happens if the stock goes down. And the stock absolutely shit the bed. I lost everything. I was 29 years old. I was doing well. I was making $72,000 a year and I lost $60,000. And that was pretty close to all of my money. I had a little bit extra saved up. I had my first child on the way. I now have 4 children and 1 grandson at this point. And I was really, it was a mess. I was in a financial pit and I did not know how I was going to dig myself out of it if I went the traditional way, meaning if I just kept trying to improve my income stream through jobs, I calculated it would probably take me my whole lifetime to get out of that mess because I had to live. I had to pay taxes. I had a child on the way. Expenses were going to continue to get bigger. And so, I was faced with a choice. And the choices were really, I mean, the dumb ones were I can go take whatever money I have left and go bet it on number 17 black in Las Vegas. And I'm not a gambler, so that won't work. Or I can buy lotto tickets. Tickets. And I don't buy a lot of tickets today. No chance that was going to happen. Could I go get a better job, make some incremental income? But again, there was no way I was going to catch up. And I realized that the only way that I can get out of this mess is to put myself in a position where I was able to earn income with absolutely no ceiling on my potential. And it became very obvious to me that the way to do that was going to be by going into my own business. So, I had two options. One was to start a business. But when you start a business, you have no idea if it's going to be successful and everything sounds wonderful. But you really don't know if there's anything versus going in and acquiring a business where everything is in place. You got employees, you got customers, you got revenue, you've got inventory, whatever the case may be. And I decided to acquire a small business very much in line with what I was already doing, which is in the consumer products business. I managed to tie up a line and some additional lines of additional products and services. And then, started buying some ancillary businesses really with no money. I mean, I just had a tiny bit of money to acquire my first business, leveraged it with seller financing. And then, I started adding on ancillary businesses to that main core business and was getting very creative because I didn't have a lot of money. So, one business that I looked at that I thought would be terrific, I didn't have enough money to buy it. But I convinced the owner of the company that they would be much better off with throwing in their business with my business given what I had in mind as far as how we could potentially grow their company and the combined company. And they agreed to do that. And that was, you know, ended up being a— wasn't a large investment, but $100,000. But that business ended up turning into a $4.5 million business with enormous profits. And then, I acquired the rights for Sega Video for Eastern Canada just at the time that Sega— remember the commercial, Sega? When Sega went completely crazy. Just by dumb luck, I happened to be in the right place at the right time. The acquisition of that was really— it was no forethought, no planning. I didn't even know what video games were, to be honest with you. I wasn't a gamer then. I'm not a gamer now. Now. And I just got really lucky. And my business went from like $2.5 million to $30 million in a year. Just explosive growth. And I ended up selling the company back to Sega. Moved to Florida. This was 1996. Was involved in one venture. And then, I was looking at to acquire another business down here. It was a company that distributed commercial laundry equipment for Maytag that sold to laundromats, dormitories, condominiums, you know, where they put in the quarters. And well, it's probably more than quarters now. You put in the quarters, you get your washing and drying done. And again, in dormitories and what have you. And this company had their own machines that they had in locations, plus they sold the commercial equipment to laundromats, hotels, etc. And they did parts and service. It wasn't a massive acquisition. It was $1 million. I worked out a terrific deal with a very small down payment and about 80 to over 80% seller financing. And I started investigating and doing my due diligence and really digging in. And because they had a lot of different components to the business and one piece was not being sold, and that was the actual machines in the locations where people were paying for their laundry service. That part was not being sold. But as I looked into the business and realized I'm not making an accusation that the seller was committing fraud. But there was so much commingling between the different companies. They're taking revenue. If one of their companies was short of revenue, they moved. They just put money from one company to the other. Paid expenses from one company that were attributable to other companies. It was a real shit show, pardon my French. And it really looked like the financials looked like a plate of spaghetti. I mean, it was just, I just couldn't figure it out. And I had made a number of acquisitions, about 7 or 8, 9 acquisitions actually at that point, I believe. And I had told the seller, I was actually on site doing some inventory review and told the seller I'm backing out of the transaction because I just couldn't make sense of it. And I remember walking out of the place and thinking to myself, the average schmuck would have bought that business. And it's only because I'm not that smart. I just had done it a lot of times. And I'd looked at hundreds of companies to buy the 9 that I did and said, I started getting so enthralled with the idea of what does the average person do who's looking to buy a business and has no resources. This goes back to 2001. What does the average person do? What information is available? What resources are available? What assistance? What advice? What guidance, consultation, etc.? And I got very, I was very immersed in this. And I was lucky because financially, I didn't have a gun to my head. And I was just so enthralled with this whole idea of what the average person does because I know how impactful buying businesses was on my life. And what does the other person do, right, who doesn't have the benefit of experience? And I spent a year doing research, looking at all the information, the resources, the libraries at that time versus the internet, business brokers, business owners, lawyers, accountants, just doing a ton of asking a billion questions to people, right? And the answer I got is there's nothing available to people. I mean, there really is no bona fide resource that takes people through the whole process and really helps them. And I had hundreds of files on businesses that I kept, meticulous notes of everything that I did, every strategy that I followed. And I decided to put everything into a course. And I wanted to put it into a course that followed a few steps that would— my agenda was really to put into material that would I just wanted to memorialize all my years of experience. I didn't really intend to turn this into a business. I never thought that would happen. It's crazy that it has. I mean, we sold over 100,000 copies at this point. It's mind-boggling to me. But I just wanted to be able to lay something out for people to teach people what they need to know, what to do and how to do it. And the night before we launched the website, which is in 2001 in its infancy in the internet, my wife asked me, how many are you hoping to sell? And I said, you know, my But the truth is, if I could just help one person buy the right business or avoid buying the wrong one, it'll be worth all the work that I put into developing this because that was my only agenda. I just wanted to memorialize my experience and help one person. And it's just grown crazy. And over the years, I've gotten into different sides and helping sellers and tens of thousands of people have been successful all over the world. So, it's just been fascinating. So, I stay in the space. I help buyers every day. My phone rings, I let people call me, I never charge them. I answer their emails, I never charge them. And happy to help them achieve what I've been so blessed to be able to accomplish.

That's one of a kind story, Richard. Appreciate you taking us to the roots of the story and helping us understand the great paradigm shifts you have actually had overall. And it's quite a roller coaster, which I could see. But I could see that your determination and your willingness to learn kept you on the right pathway. And now you're sharing that with a lot of people. And that inspires me a lot. Kudos to you overall.

Well, thank you. I appreciate that feedback. That's very kind of you.

Yep, for sure. Now let's talk about, as you mentioned, you, you've had the experience of looking at hundreds, hundreds and hundreds of companies and kind of analyze which deals should actually go through and which shouldn't. Now help us understand, when you look at a typical first-time business buyer, what are the most common mistakes they actually need to avoid and what are the misconceptions they usually have about buying a business? Because you had found very creative ways while you were actually buying your first early businesses. Many people, like right now the resources are much better, like leverage is much easier, capital is much easier to access and whatnot. So like if you're doing this in 2024, what would you do differently? Like think about that action plan and share it with us.

Okay, sure. So it's an interesting question because the things that they should be doing and being made aware of are also the things if they don't do cause the pitfalls. The data, just to digress for a second, the data in this industry is horrific. 90% of the people who begin the search to buy a business never complete a transaction, which is horrific. I mean, we do much better. The people who use our program and consult with us, we have about an 82% success rate. But there's really, to pinpoint it, there's 3 key issues that people need to focus upon. And they're symbiotic. Okay. So, step 3 is understanding this idea of trying to search for the perfect business. The perfect business doesn't exist. And so, every business is going to have blemishes. It's going to have pimples and a little bit of warts on them. But you can solve for all the key ones. But finding an absolutely perfect business, it just doesn't happen. It doesn't exist. It doesn't exist in the real world. The only business that's a perfect business is the one that hasn't started yet. And so, being able— you look at all the bigger issues. You solve for all those. Obviously, if there's something critical, important, and you can't negotiate for that or solve for that like a huge customer concentration issue, of course, you wouldn't acquire the business. But there's going to be little problems. Nothing's perfect. And so, you have to look and say, "Okay, what's not perfect yet? Can I fix it? How can I fix it? And what's going to cost to fix it?" And generally, the better businesses and when you do your due diligence in a good way, the amount of blemishes are very drastically reduced. And so, those are the big 3, which is, you know, again, the knowledge, making sure you buy the right business, and understanding that the perfect business doesn't exist. And so, the goal is to get into business. You don't want to be making any mistakes. But of course, you want to make sure that you get into business.

Yeah, it's really lovely to actually understand that. Let's, let's kind of like dig deep overall in terms of especially buying a business. The biggest question anybody would have is, I don't have capital. I mean, that was one of the issues you actually had when you were starting out as well. And, you know, now the capital game has changed a lot. What is like the most creative way to put together a deal and what are one of the easiest ways to actually access the capital overall if you are about to buy a business in 2024?

Okay, so I want to address this from a couple of points because it's really an important question. The first thing is I want to make anybody who's listening to this aware that some of these delusional promises that you find over the internet or through social media that you could buy multi-million dollar businesses or businesses throwing up hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash flow for no money down and buy them in a month, that's just complete bullshit. It doesn't exist. It's not in the real world. That is just hype and delusion and misleading. I mean, It really makes my blood boil when I see those. And so, yeah, if I had gone back and taught people how you can do that, I probably would have sold 100 million copies of my course instead of 100,000. But that's not the real world. So, I'm never going to mislead anybody about practically speaking what it takes to get into this. So, here's the beauty of this. It does take some capital because you have to inject some capital for a down payment and people generally have a little bit of savings and you can start at any level. I've bought businesses from $50,000 and up. But I'm a huge proponent of a couple of things. Number one, seller financing. 91% of our clients get seller financing. I've had seller financing in every deal. And it's varied between 30% and 90%. And so, seller financing, it's common. It's the norm. And it's what it takes to get deals to the finish line, especially in today's economy. And so, even if an individual comes across a buyer who said they don't want to finance, it doesn't matter what they say because the reality is, barring something ridiculous, the only way they're getting their business sold is through seller financing. So you have to learn the strategies around that, and that's what you have to pursue. There's also some good leverage programs in America related to the SBA where you can have 9 to 1 or 10 to 1 leverage. So those should— with the SBA 7(a) program. So those are things.

So you were talking about the SBA, the 9 to 10 leverage on the capital and whatnot. So yeah, let's start from there.

Okay, so as far as leverage is concerned, there is the opportunity through the SBA to get 9 to 10 times leverage. It's very attractive. It comes with a different set of circumstances as far as collateralization is concerned, what they require from the buyer as far as prior experience. But it's certainly a vehicle for them to explore, individuals to explore, because the leverage is so exciting. With seller financing, again, and I'm a huge proponent of it, you're not personally guaranteeing. You may personally be guaranteeing the loan, but you're not putting up personal collateral. That's entirely different. You're putting your signature on a piece of paper is entirely different than putting your house on the And so, with seller financing, and you can navigate your way through some of the challenges that people are having now with interest rates. Because seller financing, you should be— you'll be paying substantially less interest because everything is open to negotiation. So, those are the options. And plus, you have a third thing, which is there's a lot of capital in the markets that people are looking to deploy to invest in businesses. So, if you work your network and focus on affiliating with people that are looking to make investments. The capital is there. So, my hierarchy is number 1 is the seller financing, number 2 are government programs like an SBA, and number 3, there are other opportunities related to capital that's in the marketplace plus angel investors. There's asset-based lenders. So, there's a lot of ways to finance the business keeping in mind that I prefer seller financing in whole or in part because it's the best way for the seller to validate everything that they've represented, right? They're on the line too.

[Speaker:RAJ] Yeah, yeah. I think that's really, really smart. Now, the second question comes in once you have the capital problem kind of solved is a deal flow and whatever business you really need to be investing in. Do you actually have like a no-no industries or do you tend towards a specific industry which kind of aligns more with you? For a beginner investor who is looking to maybe buy his first business, what kind of industries they should actually look into while they're buying a first business?

Okay, so the industry is part 2. Part 1, again, and I keep coming back to it, is the right business because making sure that it matches perfect with your skill set because it's very— it's much easier to learn an industry than it is to learn a skill set. So, you want to make sure that your skill set matches the business. And so, you're right that Nikhil, I hear you sort of acknowledging. When you think about that, if you have to go learn two things, if you're faced with two tasks, one is to either become an expert at marketing or to learn about commercial dry cleaning. I mean, what's going to be easier? Obviously, commercial dry cleaning.

Yeah, just to do the job. Yeah.

Just do the job and you're going to get the guts of the business in your belly over time. And so, I tell I tell people and I advise people and it's been proven over and over and over again that focus on your skill set and then match that up with the industry. So, the industry becomes second place. And then, as far as my personal view, I like typically bland, boring, unsexy businesses. I'm not— I have what I've developed over the years. I've developed 5 golden rules for any businesses that I look to acquire. And so, we could happily share those with you if you'd like. I mean, tell me if you want to jump into that. Exciting. Please do. Okay, great. So, as you go through the process, you want to be able to when you look at businesses, you want to be able to set number one. You want to be able to say fast no's. So, if you're really in touch with what your best skill set is, you look at a business. If it doesn't match your best skill set, that's it. You get rid of it. But I've developed 5 golden rules after these decades. Now, these are my 5 golden rules. They're not your 5 golden rules. I will never buy a business that has 4 of them. I'll only buy a business that has 5 of them. And so, people have to develop their own rules. So, I'm happy to share them with you. People could take advantage of those, use some of them. But you got to make sure that they're specific to the individual. So, everybody develops their own rules and they could evolve. Like what you think is right for you in a business today may change somewhat as you start looking for more and more businesses. So number 1, a business has to be sales and marketing driven. And the reason why is my My best skill set is in sales and marketing. That's number 1. Number 2, I like a business with high margins. And I spend less time worrying about the revenue. I like a business with high margins because I know that my best skill set is sales and marketing. So, as long as there's good strong marketing and I could grow the sales, the profits are going to follow just as a result of having high margins. So, that's number 2. Number 3, I like a business that's got demand in place. I never want to create demand. Because creating demand is way too expensive. So, I like a product or service where there's already the built-in demand for it. I don't want to create demand. Way too expensive. Number 4, I don't want a business that competes on price. If that's your only competitive advantage, it's not a sustainable model. And you got to go back into business every day. And so, you really don't have anything to build upon. And number 5, I like a business that's got an element of exclusivity, whether that be in the product service, or the geography. So, you have some point of difference related to other businesses that are out there. Those are my 5 rules. I never negotiate them in my mind. I never can try to convince myself that a business that doesn't clearly have all 5 has 5 of them. I'm rigid. There's no negotiation. Those are my 5. They've proven to be successful repeatedly. I have a 6th and a 7th, which are not anywhere near as rigid, which I like to have in place. But I certainly buy a business without it. One is I like to have a business that has fewer number of employees. And I like businesses if possible with recurring revenue. But those are bonuses. Those are 6 and 7. If they don't have those in place, as long as they have the 5, I like that business. And so, I encourage anybody who's thinking about buying a business as they start to go through the process. And it's one thing that we teach people how to do is you want to cultivate your 5 golden rules and don't betray them ever.

Hmm, wow, those are, I mean, really kind of golden principles for any new age business buyer or practitioner to actually do. This kind of really helps a lot, Richard, and that was one of the key takeaways for me actually. It was so surprising to kind of simplify the business buying process, and now it's kind of a relief. Now the stress is gone. Now I should just look at any business and be like, okay, checkpoint 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, does it ring the bell? Great, let's look into the deal. If not, bye-bye.

It's not bye-bye. Exactly, exactly. No, it's bye-bye and it's bye-bye fast. Okay, right? Like, it's, it's not like I'm gonna think about it or maybe this— no, it's bye.

Hmm, absolutely. Now, in terms of when you're actually buying a business, the valuation you're buying on is, is one of the very tricky things you're going to get into at a seller and buyer situation. There is always different debates on the multiple, you know, how are we going to structure the deal, what would be the valuation. And I mean, you have seen a variety of range of businesses. I know different businesses get different valuations and different multiples and whatnot. Do you have any framework to value the business the right way? If somebody needs to see if it's overvalued, undervalued, if it's a good deal or a bad deal, what kind of math do you have in your head which you use every time to be like, oh, it's— that's a good deal, that's a no-no kind of situation?

Okay, so conceptually, people need to understand that what a seller thinks their business is worth rarely has anything to do with the value. And so, when you're looking at a business, the first thing you need to do is completely disregard the asking price because it doesn't matter what the seller— No, you're chuckling. But it doesn't matter what the seller thinks the business is worth because that has nothing to do with what you're going to pay for it if you do this the right way. So, I don't pay any attention to it. To me, an asking price from a seller's perspective is something they put on a piece of paper. I pay no attention to it. And so, at the same time, valuation is as much an art as it is a science. So, over the years, I've put together 50 data points that help me put together a valuation. So, I take the numbers of a business and I marry it into these 50 data points. And these data points are questions related to the business. How long it's been in business? What are the conditions of the books and records? What the terms of the potential deal are? Do they have any customer concentration? What are the relationships with the suppliers? What are the relationships with their customers? What the competition looks like? What any potential threats? Are there any special licenses that are required to operate the business? How easy can someone get into the business? The condition of the assets. Are the employees— how reliable am I on the employees? Does the business— is the seller the business? If the seller gets hit by a Pepsi truck tomorrow, what happens to the business? Are there good people in place that could run the business? Do my skill sets marry up with them. So, I have 50 points that I actually combined and call it a Diomo Business Assessment Valuation, which has become like the gold standard in small businesses to do evaluations. And those are real. I tell people, don't get away from how important it is to do a proper, robust, and comprehensive valuation. I don't believe in rules of thumb. And rules of thumb, and just not sure if you're aware of, is where they say, well, you know, these types of businesses at this level of money have generally sold for this amount of money. I think it's complete nonsense because no two businesses are exactly the same. So, my stance has always been rules of thumb are dumb. You don't want to use those. As some general parameters, businesses will sell for a multiple. And the multiples are all over the place. The multiples could be 1x. The multiple could be 5x. When people hear these multiples like in publicly traded companies or multiple selling 7, 8, 9, 10 times, either that's very something very trendy in industry or it's very high publicly traded companies, not Main Street USA or Main Street wherever businesses that individuals typically buy. And so, there are some price points from the profitability related to the multiples. Multiples fall in. I don't like to give people generic information because I find it's not very helpful. However, if someone wants to have some parameters and not hold me to them, meaning that this is what they should absolutely pay, because you got to double-click on all of this, is businesses that generally have less than $500,000 of profit— and we could define what profit means because it's not just straight profit— will sell for 1 to 3 times. And they'll sell for 1 to 3 times because very often the seller is the business or won't transition well to a new buyer. The condition of the books and records that, or they have some significant problems with the business like a lease that's going to expire that won't get renewed. Or it's a business where the customers may not continue like professional practices. That's some general parameters. When you get into businesses $500,000 to $1 million, there's somewhere in the middle to go to $2 to $4 million plus, would be around $3 to $5 million. But those are, I'm giving you, Nikhil, broad generic parameters that no one should hang their hat on even though you're not wearing a hat. You got a nice head of hair and I'm very jealous. But No one should hang their hat on that, you know, those parameters per se. But I want to, you know, I want to give you, provide some context to your question, if you will.

Yeah, it does really, really help a lot. Now, that's really interesting to kind of actually understand that. I believe that's a very good answer compared to what I usually hear because people do throw up a not very logical number like, oh, typically, you got to pay 3 to 5 type of EBITDA or like some fancy, you know, financial keyword multiple times, you know, by 3 or 5 or whatever. But I think what you shared makes more sense. Now, Richard, there is different ways, or I would say objectives, to buy a business, right? There is a high cash flow positive business which brings you so much net profit and you want to hold it for long term. And there is other type of businesses where you just buy low because of the seller situation, then you sell high and you flip it kind of, you know, in an immediate next round. And there different situations where you want to take it public and generate much bigger opportunity for whatnot. And how do you objectify or how to actually pick a business and be like, oh, this goes into this bucket? Like, what is the kind of, I would say, thought process you would have when you're buying a business? And how can you visualize that thing? Like, okay, is this a buy and hold business? Is it a buy and flip business? Is it a buy and IPO business? Like, how do you choose that difference?

Okay. And there's also a third one, which I'm seeing more and more today of people looking to buy businesses as a side hustle. You know, a smaller business that adds an additional income.

Just an additional revenue, yeah.

Yeah, additional revenue. So, there's really those three. When I buy a business, I never buy it with the idea of selling it. However, I'm always happy to sell it. I don't buy it with the idea to sell it because but I want to run it like I have to sell it. So, I want to put all the processes, procedures, people, everything in place that needs to be done and structure that business in a system so that if someone— and have the financials in great condition so that if someone wants to buy this business or I decide to sell it, it's going to be in great shape at that point to sell. And during the time that I'm owning and operating it, if I think about the day that I'm going to sell it, my business is actually going to be better run throughout that process. So, I don't buy it with the idea of selling it. I buy a business with the following mantra, if you will. Okay. Number one, I don't focus on the money because I know with my five golden rules and I make a right decision with the business, it's going to be successful more often than not. There are some failures and I've had a few beauties over the years. Don't worry. You know, I'm not picking all unicorns and pixie dust. I've had a couple, plenty of businesses that have shit the bed. It. But, um, so I, I want to run it. I want to buy it and run it immaculately, okay? And I want to then, when the time comes to sell, whatever that may be, it's in that position to be sold and to the greatest pool of buyers, as I mentioned to you. But the— and, and when I say that I don't focus on the money, I don't, because the, the guiding principle that I always have is I want to build a great business by doing the following. So, I look at every business that I acquire. I'm going to build this into a great business by doing the following and articulate out what it's got to take from where I buy it to it becoming great because I don't buy great businesses. I buy good businesses. Businesses have trajectories. And there are really 3 steps. You got garbage businesses at the bottom. Those are to me are startups or distressed businesses. I never buy any of those. At the top of the hill, you have great businesses. And those businesses in the life cycle of a business is generally one of these. It goes up to the point of being great and then typically comes down however long that may be. It varies. Some businesses do it in 6 months. Some take 100 years. But that's the trajectory. I like to buy them right in the middle, a good business. Solid platform, easy to understand. I can immerse myself in the business, learn the business. It passes my 5 golden rules. I'll decide over time whether or not I want to keep running it or put a manager into place. But I want to be there at the point when I take it from good to great. So, I call it the 3 Gs of the hill because you got garbage, good, great. I want to buy it right in the middle and be able to take it to the top of the pyramid or the top of the hill. And so, when I think about in going back to the original part of the question about what I decide to happen. It depends how great I could build it. And that determines whether or not I'm going to keep it, whether or not I'm going to sell it, whether or not I'm going to try to leverage it into some more capital or public facility. But my goal at the beginning is I don't buy them with the idea of selling them and flipping them. And I discourage people from that because I think it takes your eye off the ball of what you have to get done. So, if you buy a business, "Oh, this is a good business. I'm going to look to get busy with this and sell it within a year." You can do that with a shitty little business, a small little website business, that type of thing. But if you have any any oomph to the business, if there are any significant components to the business. You can't do that in a year because think about it. If you're a buyer on the other side, the first thing you'd ask the seller is, "Why are you selling? You just bought this thing. I mean, if it's that good, why the hell are you selling it?" So, I think it's somewhat misguided. I know there's a lot of thought. I'm not saying it's your thought process. But there is some thought process about this flipping idea. Even some websites think, you know, called Flippa. You buy business and flip. But if you want to build something really good, and really love what you're doing and get involved. You've got to get involved in the business, immersed. If you build a good business, there's always a buyer.

Agreed. Yeah. As long as it has value in it, which is what a good business is.

Yeah, a good business will have value and a good market to sell.

Yeah, absolutely, Richard. I think that's a very, very smart way to look at it. Now, the question comes down to you are are very good at like sales and marketing. We could see the conviction in you, the way you speak. You, you're a marketing and sales expert. You could really go into a typical business and turn it around and make it efficient in both domains. But what a typical business owner typically struggles in my perspective is the operations. They are really struggling with their own business. They are not operationally expertise or they're not operationally sufficient to manage that. And there is the other side of, you know, the Richard Brunsens who actually manage 400 companies under one group. You know, they have a private yacht and the islands and all the fun in the world comes to them and they still make it successful. So like, what's the missing thing? Like, you know, what's the secret sauce here? How can a small business owner who is making less than $50K a year, struggles all day, work 16 hours a day and can't make their business work operationally. On the other hand, there are billionaires who are running capital companies, they do mergers and acquisitions, have 400 companies in the bucket and they make it work overall. So, where do you see the difference overall and how can somebody go from this side of the horizon to that side?

So, it's a wonderful question because the contradiction between the two scenarios is so great. And I think if you look at someone like a Richard Branson or a version thereof, they focus strictly on what their best skill set is. And for Richard Branson, anytime you listen to him, he's a visionary. He understands the whole picture. He takes a look. He doesn't get busy in the weeds. He's conceptual in nature. He has an idea. And I saw a group, this masterclass that my kids bought me for Father's Day when you just participated in the masterclass. There were great people on there. And one of his philosophies is probably his craziest philosophy. When I say crazy, it's crazy in a good way, was he always says, screw it, let's do it. So, in any way, he has something into a concept that wants to do. It's like, screw it, let's do it. Like, what's the worst that can happen? So, he is terrific as far as painting a picture, conceptualizing of something, recognizing some trends, recognizing businesses where there's a massive gap in the way they service the target customer base, whether it be cruises, airlines, record labels, whatever the case would be. He recognizes that there's a massive disconnect between the companies that are currently doing it and how he sees doing it. Because he goes into competitive businesses— airlines, cruise ships, cell phone. I mean, it's not— he's not going into toughest business possible. Somehow, he comes out at the other side on most cases shining because he sees, he looks, his strength is he sees where the faults are. And he knows what customers want. And for everything else, he hires. Now, Now, that's very much in line with what I do on a much smaller basis, of course, and teach and preach, which is whatever it is that you do best has to be the single biggest driving factor of the revenue and profits of every business you can consider purchasing. For everything else, you can hire. Now, that all sounds wonderful. But let's talk about the little guys banging around every day making $50,000, $70,000 a year in a business, working like a dog, okay, and can't seem to get past first base. Well, there's a couple of ways to look at it. The first thing is people have this tendency to get into busyness, B-U-S-Y-N-E-S-S, versus being in business, B-U-S-I-N-E-S-S. They get busy with the busy work. Okay. And the biggest contributing factor to that individual who just keeps pounding away day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year for the same tough salary is they never take a step back and question what they're doing. They just mentally put themselves on cruise control and they just keep doing the same thing over and over again because they need to make a living. It's not because they're dumb. It's not because if they used to be— there's that old adage, if you do the same thing over and over again expecting different results, it's the definition of insanity. But in this particular case, it's understandable. It's this individual man or woman have to help feed their family, provide an income. And so, they're doing their best. But the best thing that they could do is take a step back and look at it and say, "What the hell am I doing here every day?" And really hone in onto what drives this business. Really, what drives this business? There's a dry cleaner near me that does a phenomenal business. A phenomenal business. And the owner of the place, you can see he's a very, very hard-working individual. But they could have sat helping customers all day long or doing some of the work themselves. But finally realized that the best way to grow this business is through impeccable customer service and automation. And when I say customer service, that the quality of what they're doing surpasses everybody else. And their prices went over the years from way down here to way up here. And like, they are the premium by far, way more expensive than anybody else, not even close. And they have some additional services that they offer. But prior to that, they were looking at it and they were just pounding away, knocking their head against the wall every single day. And I know this from personal experience because I know the individual for years. And it was just day after day, people come in, they take their cleaning, they put it into the bucket, They do their cleaning and they work their cash register and they sweat their balls off every day. And they do it day after day after day after day and they don't get anywhere with it. Okay? And so, what happens is then they took a look back and say, "Wait a minute. Who's coming through the door? What is most important to these people? What do I need to do to separate myself from the crowd? Why is this guy 3 miles away so busy?" And realize that they were just offering a good service, a service that was good enough. People were dropping off their clothes. For the most part, they weren't damaging it. They were doing a decent job, right? And it was good enough and people were paying. And then they looked and said, what if I offer this white glove, top-of-the-line service where we get some better machines but we really inspect every garment? We learn about the industry. When someone comes in and has a stain on their garment, we understand exactly what that stain is and how to remove it as opposed to saying, We'll do our best to get the stain out. I mean, this guy has a, I think, a degree from the Institute of Cleaning. I swear. I mean, and you're laughing. But they adjusted their thinking and they took a step back and say, hey, I'm not going to grow this business just standing at the cash register all day greeting customers and punching up their order. I got to automate it. I need better people, friendly people. But I've got it. I want to start selling my product at a premium price point. So, how do I make that the product premium? Every single garment comes. If you're wearing a beautiful suit, right? By the way, look, you look terrific. You're wearing a beautiful suit. You go to get it dry cleaned. You can get it back on a hanger with some plastic covering and you pay whatever you did for the cleaning versus it comes back. Okay. Number 1, it's perfect. Number 2, it's got tissue paper stuffed in the arms. It's got stiff tissue paper stuffed between shoulder to shoulder. Every button has been verified on the garment to make sure it's not loose. If any loose buttons on the garment, they sew them up and they let you know. They mark it. It goes on your tag that your button, your third button up on your sleeve was loose. If there's a button that's lost, they'll let you know beforehand. They'll replace the buttons. So, and you get the garment back. Your pants are folded over a different hanger, not those shitty little wire hangers But if you leave them sitting there long enough, that they're going to be creased. There's a padding on the portion where the pants reside on the hanger. So, every element of what you get back is incomparable. It's like looking at buying a piece of jewelry at Tiffany versus buying a piece of jewelry at Walmart, even if it was the same piece of jewelry. Tiffany, you get in a gorgeous box with a little pouch. And yes, it's better jewelry. But if you were buying the same thing, it comes in a beautiful pouch. It comes in a beautiful box. The box is wrapped. It's in a bag. You finish it. The person walks around the counter at the cleaner to give you your garment. They don't just throw it on a hanger and say, "Here you go. Here you go, Nikhil. Have a wonderful day. Your cleaning is ready." They walk around the counter. And if you need some help, like I've seen elderly people, "Would you like me to put it into your car for you, sir or ma'am?" And I live in an area where there's a lot of elderly people. You see people loading up their cars with dry cleaning. So, the whole experience. So, that's the person who was making, I don't know the exact amount of money. Money. My guess is probably about $70,000 a year. And I know their number now. It's over $200,000. How's that?

They tripled. It's crazy.

It's crazy. They've incurred some additional costs. But they've put triple the amount of money in their pocket. Took some time. But that's because they took a step back. So, that's an example. And could it be done in every business? Not necessarily. But it can be done in most of them.

Makes sense. Wow, that's really an eye-opening story right there for most businesses. Even if they're considering to buy one, if they own one, if they're even working in one, they could think about the same scenario and apply it and probably get a better job or, you know, increase their salary or increase the revenue or buy a better business and whatnot.

Richard, or all of the above, right?

All of the above, for sure.

Yeah, for sure.

And Richard, I want to be respectful of your time. I know it's it's going a little over the actual scheduled time. You're good with the time, right?

Because I love this subject matter and I appreciate you taking out time out of your day as well. So however long until you get bored of me, I'm here.

Okay, that's a green mark right there, Richard. Appreciate you. So I would love to know the story about the picture you have behind you, the Rocky picture, if I'm not mistaken. What's that about? Is there any story behind it or what's so special about it?

Well, first of all, Sonny Liston and Muhammad Ali in their second match when Muhammad Ali knocked him out in the first round. And there is a story to it. First of all, the biggest part of the story is my youngest son. I have 4 kids. My youngest son bought me that for Father's Day. It's always been to me— there's 2 iconic sports photographs in the world in my opinion. Some people would have more. But my 2 iconic ones are number 1, Muhammad Ali knocking out Sonny Liston. And the second one is Bobby Orr scoring the Stanley Cup-winning goal. I'm a huge hockey fan. I'm not a Boston Bruins fan, but I have the Bobby Orr picture as well and signed. So, I love that picture because Muhammad Ali, the thing that— and he's a hero of mine. And I actually met him the years when I represented Sega. Isn't that crazy? He was actually at the trade show when I was selling Sega. And we had Evander Holyfield boxing. And then, there was a Muhammad Ali boxing. And Sega paid to have him attend there. I was because you hear how excited I am when I talk about this subject matter. I'm rarely speechless. I met him. I was standing like 12 inches away from him face to face. I was looking up at him, of course. I was completely speechless and dumbstruck. But what I— the significance to me about that picture, every time I've looked at it, and I think that was in 1964 when that happened, Muhammad Ali had a big mouth. He was— when I say a big mouth, mouth. When he started out, no one had ever seen anybody like this. I mean, he was shooting his mouth off. He was talking shit. And but you know what? He backs it up. And that's how he— look there. That's how he backs it up. Okay, you're on the ground, buddy. I'm on top of you. I'm not a heavyweight champion of the world. He backs it up. So to me, it's always— it's okay for someone to represent certain things. Okay, but you got to back it up. And it also translates to the way I live my life. But it also translates for people who are looking to buy a business. It's like, Well, listen to everything the seller has to say, but he's got to back it up or she's got to back it up and you've got to back it up with information or financing, whatever. But that's the story. But I just love that picture. It's like real triumph and triumph. He wasn't a very liked guy. People thought he had a big mouth. And then when he converted to Islam, I mean, there was an uproar. He wouldn't go to war, to the Vietnam War, because he said he's not going to some country to kill people that he has no gripe against. And so, he was put into jail and he sat out. He wasn't able to box during the biggest potential years of his career, but he didn't care because it was character and conviction and his moral compass over anything else. So I just find him to be just this, in every way, shape, and form, an individual that people should aspire to. So I apologize for the long-winded explanation, but yes, there is some real significance to that picture.

I think it's great to talk about these, these people who actually have created a very unique way for us to learn and inspire from and, you know, make our lives better. And I appreciate the fact that you're actually sharing more information about that. And Richard, one of the— this leads to the next question which I actually have in my mind right now, which is when you're actually consuming data from a seller in the business, you will have, of course, the data, data which you know is a fact, but then you of course have that intuition, the feeling if you should do the, you know, do the deal or not. Now, like, where do you see the balance? Do you only make 100% database decisions or do you also do like the, you know, the Masa, the guy who actually built the Vision Fund, the $100 billion fund, which I know for a fact you see, like he does all of his gut-based, like, okay, if the founder is great, let me put a billion dollars and see where it goes kind of situation. Where do you see the balance overall and what do you believe is is a better approach for making a successful acquisition if it comes to that question?

If I had to break it down to percentages, the vast majority is not the data.

Interesting.

So, a couple of things. Number one, let's look at the numbers and the financials. Numbers are numbers. Numbers don't lie. People lie. But numbers don't lie. They are. It's math. They are or they aren't. So, it doesn't matter how they configure them, how they want to represent them. If they want to pretty them up and try to put lipstick on a pig, it's easy to figure out that it's not accurate because numbers are numbers. It's math. 1 1 always equals 2. It doesn't equal 2.1. It doesn't equal 3.7. Math is math and numbers don't lie. So, that's the easiest part of the whole transaction to figure out. Looking at the numbers and from there extrapolating a valuation based on things that you're going to learn along the way. When I first come across a seller or have an opportunity to speak with him or her in a meaningful way, the first thing that I like to ask myself— well, there's 4 things that I like to ask myself when I leave that first initial meeting, which is do I like them? Meaning the seller. Do I trust them? Do I trust them even though they're going to be gone? Do I trust them because I'm going to have to get information all along the way? So do I like them? Do I trust them? Do I like this business? And number 4, can I see myself running it and why? Okay. And those 4 things really weigh heavily into my decision. Yes, I look at all of the binary pieces of information, the financials, the contracts, the legal, the competition, the employees, the leases, all of those types of binary things. But it's not altruistic but the philosophical piece of it. I'm not betting. I'm replacing an owner or putting a manager into place. So, I'm not betting on them. So, different than the other example that you made from from the other fund is they're betting on the jockey, not the horse. So, the individual is important. And for me, it weighs a lot. But we're taking over the business. I want to see what impact can I have on this business? What can I realistically do to grow this? Am I the right person to run it? What does the competition look like? Can I compete with and then hopefully beat the shit out of the competition? Are the employees the type of people that I want to work I want to work with? Are the suppliers, are the customers people that I want to engage with? Those are all non-binary, non-data-related pieces. And it probably represents 70% of it because at the end of the day, the product, the service, the numbers, those are agreed to. It's you've got to gel with these people. And you've got to gel with the business. Are these people that are in place ones that I'm willing to bet on? Can I empower them to run their little position? And I don't mean to belittle their position, but it's relative to the whole company, their little area. And I don't have to worry about it. So, all those things are non-data-driven. They're not gut. I like to have conversation. There is some gut with it. And they're not all gut, but there is some gut related to it. And that weighs into it as well. And so, people need to have the combination of everything. Now, at the beginning, When you're buying your first business, well, you don't have the track record that other people have perhaps who've bought multiple businesses. So, gut should play a far lesser role. You got to deal with the binary stuff at the beginning. Use the data, much more of the data because you don't know enough. You don't have a track record. So, rely on the data. And it may lead you to buying a smaller business. It may lead you to taking a little more time. But you need to put much more weight on the data at the beginning because it's okay to make a mistake in your first business. You just don't want to make a big one.

Makes sense. That's, that's quite interesting. Overall, Richard, this brings back to the next question I have. Sorry for asking too many questions.

No, no, it's all good. I appreciate it.

I'm learning a lot, by the way. So, you know, when you're looking at businesses, right, and this is very interesting when you share the analogy, like you're not betting on the jockey, you're actually betting on the system, like the business and the processes which are in it. Now, the biggest issue which I have seen at a smaller scale of businesses, like I'm talking less than $3 million run rate especially, they don't have standard operating procedures, they don't have systems, they don't have operational efficiency, they don't have the second line of leaders who can lead without the leader himself or the person who built the business. It's mostly a one-man show or 3-people show who are running, who are making the business work. Now, what are a few, few things, or what is your approach to taking a business like that and making it systematic? So you, you're sure about the acquisition, you're sure that it's going to run even without the lead team who actually built the business themselves. I'm sure there is a pattern which you can bring up on, but do you have any way to look at the process and be like, oh, this is how I'm going to document it, this is how I'm going to make it operationally efficient? How, how would you go about operations in general? Because I'm assuming it's not your core expertise. I know it's a sub-expertise, but if your main expertise is marketing and sales, how do you deal with operational efficiency in general?

Operational efficiencies are way up on the top of the list of importance for me in acquiring a business. I want that business to be as automated as possible. I could weigh in and contribute to how to automate that business after I've worked it for a while. And that's why I believe in you get immersed in the business for 6 or 12 months to really learn it. And then, you can apply the right technology, the right systems to the business. When you're looking at the business, I have these 10 commandments that I look at in the business, which they're too detailed to go into the course. But one of the things is ingredients are nothing without a recipe. You have to be able to look at everything, all the different components. Because if you don't have the right recipe, it doesn't matter if you have all the right ingredients. If you don't have the recipe, okay, you're going nowhere in a hurry. And so, I look at this from a standpoint of formulating the recipe. And a big part of that is the automation systemizing as much as possible, empowering people, but trying to make people bigger, better, and faster. But wherever possible, if the talent isn't there in a business to systemize it as I want to see it systemized, I'll bring in the talent. Like I don't need to take out— you're looking at buying a business making a couple— your $3 million business as an example. And let's assume they're making $300,000 to $500,000 in profit. You're paying a multiple. I don't need I mean, don't look at it as a business owner, as an owner, a new business owner say, "Oh, this is wonderful. I'm going to take out all the money." First of all, you have to service the debt. But let's say there's a few hundred thousand dollars available for you. Well, take a smaller salary and keep investing in the business. Keep putting the money into the business because it's going to pay enormous dividends while you run the business and when the time comes to sell. And some of the things that you pointed out at the beginning are the biggest reasons why the valuation of a lot of small businesses don't reach where they should be. And sellers leave a lot of crumbs on the table because they are the business. There's no second tier of management. The financials are not in good shape, or there's some problems related to the business, or the business, you know, the owner disappears one day. They don't even know how you're going to run the business. And so, all of those things all come and become inherent with what you put into place to manage that business well. People and processes. And you can get good people, but you can always still get phenomenal processes. And so, it's a very, very important thing to consider because keep just one thing in mind. If you have the right second tier of management and you have processes and procedures in place, just think of when the time comes to sell, how many more prospective buyers will be interested in that business because it'll transition well to them. So, the greater the buyer pool, that adds value to a business. If more people could potentially buy it or are interested in it, it adds value. I mean, that's just supply and demand. And so, putting those systems into place so that it can transition to the greatest number of people possible to become the owner. I mean, that adds just tremendous value.

Makes sense. Makes sense, Vijay. I think that's really interesting. I mean, how can we not talk about Ray Dalio? I heard this on Chris Lee's podcast, interview we were actually on the mastermind we were on together. It was really like, oh, Oh, like, that's the guy I look up to. I have his book. I'm a huge fan of him.

Great book, right? I mean, one of his books, I mean, I keep talking Principles, phenomenal book.

It is. Yeah. I mean, it just is literally like, you know, how it is built, you know, the patterns and how the world is built and whatnot. It's just crazy. So walk us through, like, what are the different experiences you encountered when you're close to Ray Dalio? Help us understand from your perspective. I would love to deconstruct Ray Dalio and how he thinks and what is kind of his investment principles. And we'll get into the next section of questions.

Well, the first thing I'll tell you, their family is dear friends of mine. And I was hired by the family initially in 2007 to mentor one of his sons who was considering buying a business, living in Florida at the time, son Devin, who subsequently did not buy a business, but he went to work at the family office, which was just starting out at that point. And he rose through the ranks to become the co-CEO. And they have a substantial family office. I mean, you can imagine it's really substantial. And then, he decided then that he was going to leave because he had this, as he used to like to say, he had this entrepreneurial itch that he wanted to scratch. And so, he was thinking about acquiring smaller businesses. And at that point, he was even thinking about moving to Florida. And the family approached me with the idea of mentoring him on the art of buying businesses. And we put together a deal very fast. I was actually in the midst of just moving my M&A practice into another company within like a few days. And we got onto the phone and we put together a deal like, I don't know, in 10 minutes.

And deal maker, bro.

No, no, it's just very simple. And the reason why that happened has been is, you know, Ray is probably one of the fairest men I've ever met in my entire life. He goes to the far side of fair when it comes to generosity and how he treats people. And my experience with him and the family and the family office has been magnificent. And we worked with Devon for almost 4 years. We acquired, made a number of investments. Ray was our investor. We had to go through the project, which, you know, made our business easier because we only had one investor. We didn't have to raise capital. Much. And certainly when it's someone like Ray, you don't typically need outside investors. But he was incredibly supportive. He and the family office, we reported to the family office, but we didn't work there. And we were accountable to them. But we were for the most part without question, we worked on our own. We had separate facilities, we worked on our own. When we wanted to make investment, we presented to the family office and Ray where appropriate. And Devin and I did our own thing. And we worked together. We worked beautifully together. We shared an office. When I say shared an office, we kept our desks facing each other. We had multiple offices, but we liked sharing an office. We can bounce ideas off of each other, boom, boom, boom, all day long, whether that be business, personal, or otherwise, and became close like brothers. And he was just one of the smartest, nicest people I ever met. Devin was. And unfortunately, Devin was killed in a car accident on December 17th, 2020, which was, of course, devastating to myself, but in no way, shape, or form came close to the pain that his family has and continues to go through. And, you know, part of that is, you know, the family and I are bound to eternity through our sorrow, if you will. Everything that I did with the family— and, you know, I guess there's two trains of thought. One person could either say, well, you know, Ray was easier on you guys because it was Sonny. Or he might say— some people may say he was tougher. I mean, I don't really have view. He was a terrific investor. He was an unbelievable supporter of what we did. He was an incredible cheerleader. He helped us immeasurably, encouraged us. He gave us all the tools that we needed. And when I'm asked questions similar to what you asked related to Ray, I mean, he's my buddy's dad, right? So, I mean, I'm in awe of what he's accomplished, right? But he's my buddy's dad, and he is really just a regular guy who happens to be incredibly smart, brilliant, and incredibly successful. But he's one of the boys. I mean, he is just a fun, incredibly interesting individual with whom I— I mean, I cherish my relationship with him as and Devin's entire family. I mean, because I see them regularly, as regularly as I can. We should get together at least once a year on the anniversary of Devin's accident. And so, I understand that people are maybe in awe or intimidated by him. But I see him through a very different lens, a real lens of the core person that he is. And I'm not— wasn't involved in Bridgewater Strategies. I just see the core of the human. And he's a beautiful guy. I mean, he was just— he's always been phenomenally supportive. And I just find him to be, besides interesting and smart, just a wonderful guy. I mean, I enjoy every minute that I have talking with him. And certainly during the time that Devin and I, he should rest in peace, were running the business, I could— if I had to script out what an investor would look like for us, I mean, I could never have painted a picture as good as it was with Ray and the family office. It was magical. It was unbelievable. They were phenomenal.

Wow. Great to know. Thank you so much for sharing very interesting snippets of what happens behind the scenes at a very higher level of the institutions itself overall. That's really helpful. And let's get into the different side of questions, Richard. There is like a quick rapid fire, if you will. Like it's going to be very easy for you to knock off these simple questions. I would love to know what kind of tools you use to kind of manage your own projects and productivity personally.

Okay, so it's very simple. I don't know if you're gonna— this is going to be an audio, this is going to be a video. I'm using a Day Timer since I could tell you everything that I've done by day since August 8th, 1984. So, I'm very organized. And I'll use the other tools that may be available related to project management when I'm working with suppliers or what have you. But I keep good lists, follow up, tenacious in follow up, and keep myself very, very organized on a personal level. So, the other tools that may be available, those are mostly as a byproduct to specific projects that I'm working on. But if you take a look at the back end of my businesses, they're all 100% automated. I always spent a lot of time, effort, and money to automate every part of the process. Even the courses that we sell, everything is automated. Everything. The only thing that's not automated are my engagements and conversations with clients. I always have those physically or, you know, by phone or email. And I take care of answering my emails myself.

That is so smart. I'm fascinated by the kind of mentality you actually have with the approach of running your business. Let's kind of— I would love to kind of understand your kind of daily routine. Like, you know, how does your typical day look like? When you wake up, what do you do?

When do you sleep?

Sleep, all of that typical routine, if you will?

Okay. Well, you maybe get a little disappointed because I go to bed when I'm tired and I wake up when I'm awake. So, I'm not like one of these guys. I'm in bed at 10 and up at 4. Whenever I go to bed and sometimes, I'm up at 4 and sometimes, I'm up at 8. Of course, if I have meetings or whatever, there's guidance related to that. But I try to ease into my day. I have always my initial espresso. I try to sit and reflect a little a little bit and think about what I want to get accomplished for the day. I get my day written up typically the night before. So, it's on paper and what I have to do the following day. Things certainly come up. But I take time to think about what I want to get accomplished during the course of the day. And I have a lot of meetings, a lot of podcasts or interviews. I get quite a bit of requests for those. So, do those during the day. I bang out my emails early. I try to go every day at 1 o'clock and I meditate. And then, I complete my day. I try unless I have a specific project that I'm working on, one that I'm working on right now as a keynote speaker somewhere that I'm being taken out of town to Mexico for a keynote for an event for a number of business buyers that have been asked to be one of the keynote speakers. I've been spending a lot of time related to that. I finish my— I'll revisit my emails during the course of the day. I try to carve out time so I don't get distracted with my phone. I don't get distracted with my email. What I'm working on, I'm working on. And so, I bang out my emails in the morning. I'll revisit them during the afternoon. And if they don't get done, I'll just revisit them again the next day because I used to find myself too much in the habit of sitting and answering emails all day long and you just can't get any shit done that way. And so, I stay very focused on what the task is at hand. I spend quite a bit of time during the course of the day as related to the course, How to Buy a Good Business at a Great Price. I get a ton of requests from individuals who have bought our material that they have questions related to emails or in some cases need to jump on the phone. Those people always get my priority. And I never charge them for it. But I enjoy that immensely. And yeah, I really get a buzz out of that. And it has a significant impact on people's lives and I feel good about it. And they're really way ahead after one of those conversations. And then for activities, you know, I have 4 kids, 3 of them are out of the house. One son is still in. So, we always have endeavored to always have dinner. My wife and I always have dinner together. I play ice hockey. 3 times a week. I've been playing ice hockey for 57 years. I still play in an old farts, old guys beard league hockey. And I still play 3 times a week. And there's nothing, no business, no nothing. Nothing could possibly come in the way of my hockey games. So, whoever it is, whoever wants to interview me or do business or talk about a deal, I'm ready, willing, and able anytime. But it's not happening during my ice hockey time. It's not happening during my family time. So, I have some guardrails of rigidity if you will. Will. But I'm not overly neurotic. I think one of the best things that I do is I'm able to take a step back and think about what needs to be done. I'm very good at compartmentalization, meaning if there's a big issue and it doesn't get resolved, I put it aside. I don't fret about it. I mean, I address it at the appropriate time, but I don't let it become all-consuming and get nuts about it. And I refuse to be a firefighter in my business. I try to to work on the business and not spend any time putting out fires that I don't have to put out myself.

Makes sense. You don't like busyness. You like to build businesses. I love that.

Yeah, exactly. I like to be— yeah, exactly. I want to be busy but I don't want to be in busyness. I want us to be able to look at it. And sometimes, it's unavoidable. There are some of those tasks that have to be done. No question they're unavoidable. But the ability to take a step back and meditation, introducing that into my As a matter of fact, it was Ray who was kind enough. He hired a meditation coach for me because he's a big believer, as I'm sure you know from his readings, a big believer in meditation. And when I expressed some interest in it, I told Devin and he mentioned Ray. And as a gift, he got me this meditation coach through TM. And I've been doing that every day for, oh my goodness, It's since probably about the fall of 2017. And barring anything crazy that interferes with it, every day at 1 o'clock, supposed to do it twice a day. People, and they highly recommend you do it first thing in the morning, but I get up in the morning, I'm ready to go. I'm like excited and ready to go. And I can, so the meditation doesn't fit in, but at 1 o'clock in the afternoon, I meditate, I get my 23-minute session in, and I'm good for another 12 hours. But It really rinses everything away and provides great clarity. So, that's what my day looks like. Sorry to disappoint you if it's pretty boring. But that's my life and it's pretty damn good.

Oh, I love that actually boring things, boring days gets more done overall other than like that shiny, weird 75 things to do every day kind of routines which I've heard. Now, Richard, if you could go back in time and talk to 20-year-old yourself, or somebody who's just getting started in business, what would be the number one suggestion you would give them?

Never stop learning. There'd probably be two suggestions. Number one by far is never stop learning. The second part of it, even though you hear this frequently, it's not overused. You're going to fail. You're going to make mistakes. Shit happens. It's just how you handle them, becoming resilient, what you learn from them. Because if you make, you know, if you have enough mistakes, makes, if you process them well and you think about them, reflect upon them, and what you would make sure— and to make sure you don't do the same thing again, well, you've grown. And so, you know, the learning by far is the number one thing. Never stop learning because I think if you can maintain your intellectual curiosity, it doesn't mean you're intellectual because I don't believe I'm very intellectual, but I'm intellectually curious. And so, if you can keep learning, the application of that strategy works for everything. In personal relationships, if you're in a relationship with someone, you want to keep learning about what they're thinking, what they're doing, how things are going for them. It helps that relationship. If you're in business, you want to keep learning about your product, your service, your employees. It helps you, your company, those individuals. If you want to keep learning about something that you may have a particular interest in, it just makes your interest in that even more enlightening. And so, to me, the never-ending quest to learn learn is by far the one thing that I would recommend to people to adopt a learning mindset. And the second one, if you only ask me one but I'll share a little too, would be this idea to dust yourself off from the failures because just shit happens. So, you're going to fail. You just can't avoid it. And so, learn from it as best you can and dust yourself off and keep going. I mean, because in business, resilience and embracing uncertainty and embracing rejection are critical.

Yeah, I think that's great advice. I genuinely believe both of the advices actually cater to most of the audience because even myself, I could see constantly whenever we have that little failures, we kind of over-objectify it and we project that on ourselves and we attach it to our personality. But I think just that, you know, that illustration of just dusting it off and being able to walk forward or, you know, just keep moving is what an entrepreneur needs to be doing. And appreciate you reminding us about that. Now, if you look at your situation, there is definitely many interesting things you have done. If you could look at, be like, oh, these are the few things which I'm really proud of, like what are your life's biggest achievement and next bigger goals you actually have for yourself?

Okay, so my life's biggest achievements are my family, but I haven't done those alone. So, you know, have an incredible wife. I actually have a pretty wonderful ex-wife as well. But my, my wife who I've been married to for 23 years now is she's, you know, makes me bulletproof. And so, my accomplishments related to family and a good family and my kids that are kind, generous, empathetic, hardworking. I feel very proud of that. And I don't take full credit by any means. I take a small piece of the credit because you don't do that alone. And I have an incredible spouse. And so, that's by far are the biggest accomplishments. The rest of this is just window dressing, right? Like in the grand scheme of life, I mean, you know, that's really important, as are my relationships. I've been friends with the same group of guys for some of them 55 years. Some of them speak to every single day. I have the same group of friends. I have additional friends, but the same friends that I was buddies with in elementary school, I'm still close with. Some of them we speak every single day. And I've made a lot of wonderful friends along the way and additional friends. But those old friends, there's no replacing old friends. But I place tremendous value on the accomplishment of having these terrific relationships because I really do have some just— I've really cherished personal relationships that I have.

Fascinating.

And then, on the business side, there are two parts of the buying and selling world that I've been involved with. One are the deal sides where I've either acquired my own businesses or I've represented sellers to help them sell their businesses. And those pieces have been financially rewarding. It's taken a lot of hard work and I enjoy that. I enjoy the hunt. I enjoy the process of the deals. But by far and away on the business side of things, What I've been able to accomplish through my program, How to Buy a Good Business at a Great Price. The fact that sold 100,000 of these and know that more than 100,000. And I know that there's tens of thousands of people who've been impacted by it because not every single one of them has bought a business. But the numbers when we did last audited were unbelievable. The people who bought the course and consulted with us was 82%. I mean, that to me has left my mark on the world of business. Because it's helped an unbelievable amount of people. And sold it with such pride and confidence. You know, we sell our program with a lifetime money-back guarantee. And I don't want this to sound like an infomercial for a program. I don't give a shit if I don't sell another program. My standard of living never changes. Okay, I've done very well. But you know, we sell our program with a lifetime I give them warranty, guarantee because I want people to love the information and I want, you know, it's very hard for people to understand someone's sincerity looking at a website. So, if anyone is never happy with the material, they could send it back. We give them their money back. No questions asked. It doesn't matter. It could be years later. So, out of the 100,000+ that we've sold, the last count, we had 80 returns.

8-0. Isn't that crazy?

It's great.

Look at your guarantee.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, it's just something that I do. I'm, you know, I get unbelievable gratification helping people. And really, it's just— and to be able to do it in a subject matter that I don't know, I'm not that smart a guy. But when it comes to buying and selling businesses, I know my stuff. And so, it's been very gratifying to be able to pass along that knowledge knowing full well how many lives we've impacted. I mean, we don't even have room on our website to post any testimonials anymore. I now have them in the year old. I used to print them out up until recently and keep them stacked in storage. In part of my garage. I don't even have room anymore to store them. I have binders and binders full. So, that's clearly the most gratifying thing or most accomplishment that I'm most proud of on the business side without a doubt.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I would say congratulations and thank you so much for actually helping 100,000 more people to learn how to actually buy great businesses. And I think this is only going to make the world a better place and I believe you're playing a key role in it, which I'm grateful for.

Well, thank you, Nikhil. I really enjoyed our time together. I love your questions. I like your philosophical approach. I'm glad you reached out after we spent that time together when I was a guest on Chris Lee's show. He's a terrific guy, and it's— I really enjoyed, you know, spending our time together. And of course, if I could be of any help to you personally or anyone who listens to it, you know, they know where to get in touch with me.

Oh yeah, absolutely. We are definitely getting closer. Now, if you could go back and look at your previous mistakes? I know mistakes are not what we look at mistakes as mistakes. We learn from them and we move along, like you said, dusting ourselves and keep moving forward. But if you're going to be like, hey, I could have avoided that one mistake, if you would mind sharing that, what would that be?

Well, it would be great if there was only one.

You bet.

There's a lot more of them. Certain business. There was one particular business that I own in Canada. I don't think I harvested properly. I think it could have been a much bigger business. And that was because I had a number of partners and we were— there was just some misalignment, not disagreement, misalignment. Everybody was running their own area. But there was never enough of cohesion as to what we wanted to accomplish as far as going forward and what our plan was. One was really happy making a living. One was, you know, wanted to manage their area well, didn't really care much about the other stuff. And that business could have been significantly larger had there been better alignment. And I blame part of that on just early state, earlier on in the career. And you just learn as you go along and become a better manager over time. So, that was clearly That's certainly one thing. Another thing would be related to my early days was I really, I was too caught up in insecurity and ego. And I let those two things drive my initial earlier life, earlier adult life, business life certainly. And ego got in the way of a lot of decisions. Look, when I finally realized that if I hire people that are bigger, better, and faster than me, I can get to the promised land a lot quicker. Early on, I think my insecurities of being a young business owner led me to be too protective or not be too open-minded enough to the input of other people, which is completely ridiculous. And over the years, and especially the last number of years, I mean, I mean, I've learned, you know, I love being wrong. I mean, if you can get to evolve to that because that's when you learn, right? I'm talking to you now. I'm not really learning much with all one of these things like with all due respect because I'm telling you things that I already know versus being able to sit back and being wrong about things or shutting up. And so that, and when I finally got over that ego and insecurity hump, you know, I was too probably worried about just what I had achieved or being the room that I was in. And now, I look at it and for many years, I've looked at it that if I'm the smartest guy in the room, I'm in the wrong room. I want to be the dumbest guy in the room because that's where I could learn the most. And when you can get past the ego and insecurity, you don't worry about being the dumbest person in the room.

Yeah, I think that's a great way to actually look at how you actually want to surround yourself with. And I'm excited to know more about Richard. You've done it all. Like, you know, you, you've been with billionaires around you, you bought businesses, you've been in all sorts of businesses, you created courses and sold it over 200,000 people. What inspires you? What is your main form of inspiration? And who are the key people involved in your journey? Journey?

Well, I think what inspires me is knowing that I have something that I can help people. Over the last couple of years, I've become increasingly inspired and motivated by what we talked about earlier. These people on the internet, these self-anointed gurus selling bullshit information and get-rich-quick schemes, okay, drives me bonkers because I really It's sickening to me the way they take advantage of people. Like, I mean, the reality is, if you're a guru, you don't have to tell anyone. Right? Yeah. I mean, you don't self-anoint yourself a guru. And so I've become— I feel it's really my obligation at this stage in life to set the record straight and get the word out to as many people as possible so that people have something meaningful and practical and real world that they could put to use. So that really, really motivates me. And on the business side. On the personal side, as you get older and you're a young guy, I'm probably old enough to be your father. But when you go get further down the road and some people are hopefully smart enough that you'd learn this early on, is you recognize that life isn't about things. It's about relationships. And I don't want to get overly philosophical. But to me, it really is. That's the most important things. You could buy all these things. They're all good. But they don't bring you you much joy. They just bring you some temporary pleasure. And so, but the true value in life is built, is based upon the relationships and how you treat each other. And so, that, you know, that the relationships that I have are clearly what motivates me the most and the maintenance of not only the maintenance of those relationships, but to keep enhancing them, growing them and making them more beautiful in every way. So again, I hate to sound too philosophical because we're talking about buying and selling businesses, but that's clearly my true motivation.

Yeah. I believe philosophy is in everything. I think you got to be having very good philosophical rules on how you live your life, which I'm grateful that you have. And I'm also ultimately grateful that you're sharing those values with us, which will help us to build much better thinking systems, if I would name it that way. And help us to make better decisions, Richard. So, I think it was definitely a great podcast overall. So, if somebody wants to learn more about your courses, where can they find you? How could they connect? What is the best place to reach out and learn more about how they could work with you?

Well, again, thank you, Nikhil. I enjoyed our time together and I appreciate you having me as a guest. And the conversation is always good. And when you talked to me early before we got onto the air, we talked about if there's any preset questions or anything want to talk to me specific. And I mentioned, I apologize about that. And I mentioned specifically, no, let's just have a conversation. I enjoy that much more than anything that's scripted because you get to know each other and you could really bounce around some good ideas and have some good back and forth. So again, thank you. And I appreciate that. As far as the getting in touch with me, it's real simple. We have my main website is richardparker.com. And on that site, I have hundreds and hundreds of articles, free articles, free reports. If people have any inclination whatsoever of getting into business ownership, that someone could even own a business and wants to potentially grow their business through acquisition. There are hundreds of free articles there and reports. And from that, if anybody is interested in our course, you could find it through richardparker.com or my other site, which is DIOMO, the abbreviation for Doing It On My Own, diomo.com. So, either one of those. And similarly, if you want to speak with me directly, just go to the contact page and put in there, please send this to Richard. Richard, and it'll get to me. So, very simple. Thanks again.

Yeah, that's really helpful, Richard. Appreciate you actually sharing that resources with our audience, and I'm grateful that you're actually sharing a lot of your IP and all of your experience on your website and whatnot. And any last word before we conclude the whole show for today?

Well, the only thing I would tell people along the subject of what we're talking about in business, if you have any inclination of going into business or whatever that may be, whatever road that may be or whatever specific target that may be, you owe it to yourself to explore it. It doesn't mean you have to do it but you have to explore it. You have to learn about it because you don't want to go through your whole life or the next 5 years or 10 years and say, "Shit, I should have done this or I didn't do anything about it." So, at least you can do this. Put your toe in the water. Learn about it. And because again, I really fundamentally believe that you owe it to yourself to find out what's out there and learn about it, and then you decide. You don't have to do it, but at least learn about it and then decide.

That's a great piece of advice. Once again, Richard, it was really fun and it was definitely an amazing learning, uh, mini masterclass on how to actually buy businesses on this podcast today. Grateful for you to actually, uh, you know, taking out the time and joining us today, and thank you so much for the amazing opportunity. I would love to do a episode 2 with you if you have any time in the coming quarters of 2024. I'm sure buying businesses is getting easier and more achievable for a lot of small entrepreneurs, and I believe the information you're sharing is very crucial for them to learn from. And I appreciate you taking out your time and showing up for this interview today. Namaste, Richard. Appreciate your time.

Namaste. Thank you. Thank you, Nikhil, and appreciate it. As long as you have me back, I'm happy to join you again anytime. Thanks again, buddy. You're great. I really enjoyed it.

Yep. Yep.