New Equity-Crowdfunding Opportunities Available To Any Business Owner with David Metzler

All right, welcome back to the show. This is Brad for all my loyal long time listeners. Love you folks. Thanks for listening to the show, subscribing, sending me emails and telling me about all the cool stuff you're up to, as well as sharing a lot of the issues that you guys have been going through. I get a lot of people asking about how to get clients, how to use Facebook advertising, how to, you know, improve their sales and get more traffic to their websites, all things that I cover on the show in a lot of detail and all things that I actually can help you out. If you are the least bit interested, send me that. An email with a challenge you're having to ask bradbaconwrappedbusiness.com more than happy to see if there's something that I can do for you. And if there is, maybe there's a chance we can partner up or work together. You never really know. That's one of the things I love about doing this show is I meet some of the coolest people. One the things of One of the other things I love about this show is I get to pick the brains of people that I want to talk to about topics that I'm really, really curious about. In the past I've told you that I like to think of you, my listener, as a fly on the wall with me having conversations about topics I love with people I love to talk to. And today is going to be exactly that. I've invited a good friend of mine named David Metzler on the show and he's here in San Diego. He and I met in a Mastermind together and we see each other once a month and talk business. And he's always impressed me and made me feel like, okay, this guy's playing big boy game. He's raised over $20 million of venture capital, been involved in nearly $8 million of business development. Not too long ago, he's founded tech startup, he's been a serial entrepreneur. He's that guy that is not screwing around. He takes big risks. He may share with you. They don't always work out, but a lot of times through the failures you find amazing insight and success. He has been recently diving into the world of crowdfunding businesses. This is a brand new trend and I'm not talking about Kickstarter. I'm not talking about crowdfunding campaigns like this. I'm talking about crowdfunding for equity. I'll have David explain why this is so brand new, cutting edge. But David is already one of the leading experts in the Entire field. And he's doing some amazing things. In fact, when we were sitting at a Mastermind the other night, he was explaining this. I, I knew just enough to say, David, I got to have you on the show because I want to know a lot more about this. I see tremendous opportunities. I think my audience would love it. That's you guys. I'm going to apologize now if some of the stuff we talk about is complex or over your head. I'll try to keep it kind of simple because I want to make sure I understand it. But once more, you are eavesdropping on a conversation that David and I would have had over beers or coffee or something. Anyway, now without further ado, David, welcome to Bacon Wrap business.

Thanks a lot, Brad. It's been a pleasure knowing you over the last several years and having opportunities to work together on different adventures and looking into different opportunities. And as you know, we've also played in different categories, you and the Internet marketing, being an expert in that space and me over on the funding and venture side. So my expertise being in creating businesses that scale raising capital and bringing companies out to market. As you know, my career started as an investment banker. So I started as an investment banker bringing companies in the middle market space, 500 million to a billion dollars of market cap and taking them out to public offerings and, or leverage finance and leverage finance buyouts. So that was my background. I did that in New York for five years. Had an opportunity to really gain the expertise necessary to see the fundamentals of what goes on behind the scenes and how to take these companies, frame them for a positioning necessary to go out and get the capital necessary to grow or sell their company. So that was my background, a fundamental basis of knowledge that was really critical to understand what goes on for financing companies and the backbone of finance for operations that most companies don't ever get to see, but the bigger ones do. And so that was where I really learned everything I know. Actually took out $626 million worth of advisory assignments. So that's capital that we raised directly and over $2 billion of M& A assignments.

Well now you, now you're just showing off.

So yeah, I mean it's, we've got to see everything from small cap companies, you know, $100 million where we would sell them to larger strategic advisors and, or buyers and, or we would take companies out public. Naturally 500 plus million dollars or large market cap companies would be buying those. So had an opportunity to get my fundamentals learned at that element of my business career. And then from there went into venture capital. So as a venture capitalist here in San Diego, we had a $600 million fund. We invested in technology companies within Southern California. Operating thesis was there's clearly not enough capital down here. All the capital is up in Silicon Valley. How do we add value to entrepreneurs down here in the startup phases? So we would invest specifically in series A or series B companies, which is usually a sweet spot of $5 million into a company. We'd invest those companies over the life cycle of five to seven years. We would return our capital back to our limited partners, our lp, and we've done that through three different funds. That fund was called Mission Ventures. And so that gave me an opportunity to get close to entrepreneurs, seeing what makes successful entrepreneurs and how to scale those businesses at a startup phase and, or an earlier phase towards what I had been doing as an investment banker. So naturally, as I got closer to the entrepreneurs and Brad, you can relate to this. I fell in love with those entrepreneurs and their desire to go out and change the world. And that is a very contagious desire because anyone can create a company in a widget, but the desire to go out and make the world a little bit better is left to a select few of people that value the desire to make their lives count. So through that process, I actually got into entrepreneurs and seeing what was successful for them, I caught the bug myself. What's in venture capital? World's entrepreneur in residence actually became an entrepreneur in residence at the BC fund that I was working, where they take smart people, bring them into their universe, and trust the fact that they're going to create something about. So that's what I became an entrepreneur in residence and subsequently started. My first company was almost nine years ago in the healthcare space. And so we created a healthcare platform similar to Facebook, a social network that we sold into insurance companies. And it allowed for them to create communities that would network them together. And by doing that, you can actually lower the cost. So if you think about it, a bunch of people that had alcohol or drug problems or had chronic cancer problems or diabetes, if you put them into a community, we could actually lower the cost of treating those people. And so we raised $16 million for that company through venture capital and also angel dollars. So $2 million worth of angel dollars and essentially $14 million worth of venture capital dollars, we were able to then to return that back to our investors, sold it, that company to an insurance company out of Dallas, Texas. And it was the first operating company that I had. I ran that for I guess seven years as the CEO and got a chance to work with, on my board, four billionaires that had created billion dollar companies prior to joining my board.

Wow.

One of which was the founder of WebMD. He then subsequently took over and ran the company for the last three years and took it to an exit for me. So got an opportunity to see firsthand what these entrepreneurs go through. And it's a very different experience when you're running a company than when you're investing in a company. So I got to see what it takes to actually build up management teams that scale, how to take that company from zero in revenue up to multiple millions in revenue, and actually how to create the business development relationships and funding structures necessary to get that exit to a bigger player.

Yeah, dude, I'm kind of speechless on that stuff. It makes me feel like I'm playing entrepreneur. It's true. That is the big boy business of people raising millions and millions of dollars building major enterprises. I love the fact that you've been a part of that. I know that your recent venture, Wildfire, which started off as fit in.

And.

I don't want to go into too much trouble with this, but I know that it was a really exciting venture that you had going and for one reason or another, it folded. How long ago?

Well, yeah, say it the way it was, it was a fairly epic fail.

Not if you're going to fail though, do it.

Well, I mean, it depends on how you look at fail. The company itself wasn't successful in terms of being able to get to the next exit, but we raised $4 million worth of capital for that company in angel dollars. And we're able to grow it in a year from zero to $2.5 million run rate. And that $2.5 million run rate at the end of that first year of sales, we were adding 100k of revenue a month. So we had a tremendous amount of growth potential. We had spread throughout Southern California, had 450 studios. To boil it down a nutshell, it was really a company that was pretty cool. You could actually use our app like Uber and drop into any Yoga, Pilates fitting, CrossFit studio. So, brilliant idea. We were competing against a company out of New York called ClassPass. They were a $400 million company, Google Ventures, back then. And so we were on a pretty strong roller coaster and Rocketship. And you think you learn everything you can and then you learn something new. And I was actually just talking to a very successful entrepreneur about this this morning for breakfast. And I've Been an investment banker, a venture capitalist, and have raised a ton of money for my own companies. And yet here I am on the other side of this failure. What I learned out of that was something I should have known before, which is you always want to shop a deal. You always want to have as many sources of revenue potential and also a venture capital and or funding potential as possible. We had a private equity firm that came in about a year ago today and swooped us up preemptively, took us out of the market, locked us up into a term sheet, and then subsequently, last minute, two days before they were going to close, hundreds of hours worth of documents, done, they ended up calling my board, saying, we're not going to invest, we're not going to move forward at this time. We're an investment real estate company. We're trying to be a technology private equity company. But this is too new and too soon for us. And so I should have known better. I should have known that you always want to have multiple choices to choose from. And having shopped that deal, I would have had options to choose from all the best VCs up in the Bay Area. But the valuation was so great. I mean, they gave us a valuation that was unbelievable in a $12.5 million round. You take what you can, and it was easy capital for us. And the subsequent learning was always have a pipeline of opportunities to take to.

Yeah, I mean, there's an adage that I live by which is there is no such thing as failure, only feedback. Like, you know, like, there is no failure. You either you either earn or you learn. Right. And, you know, sometimes you do both, ideally, but.

And I moved on to something better, which is always the lesson. And now, you know, that was such a painful reality for me that it really drove me to wanting to go out and help other people. Entrepreneurs never have to go through what I just went through as they raise capital. In other words, so many entrepreneurs have these ideas and so many of them are fundamentally great ideas and products that deserve capital. And if I could keep even just one more person from having to go through what I went through and learning in that pain, then that would be a worthwhile mission. And that's really where I looked at Serenity Ventures as a vehicle. And knowing that I've $626 million worth of advisory investment banking assignments, $38 million of invested DOL other companies, and raising over $30 million myself, I'm like, how do I apply those stats and those experiences to make sure no one ever has to go through what I went through again and where, where do I get them to the capital sources that they need to get the money that they need to take their companies to the next level and doing in a way where there's transparency and they don't have to end up, you know, with a rug pulled out underneath them because they were dealing with somebody that, that wasn't prepared to do something like in our case.

Absolutely. So that is a perfect segue into the real heart of today's topic. And it's what we were discussing recently. It's what Serenity Ventures is all about. And I'm going to be listening to this and I want my audience to listen to it like this too. I'm listening for the opportunity because this is so new, you'll probably agree it's the Wild west right now. I think you even use that and nobody out there quite has it totally figured out because it is, I mean, probably what, weeks or a month old really? Although it's been building up for a little while. But I want to talk about in somewhat basic terms what is going on right now. As far as you know, this was because of the jobs act that was signed by Obama not too long ago and what just went into effect right now. So let's start off with the basics of what crowdfunding is from your definition.

Yeah. So I started looking after this last company concluded at where do I want to go next? And as I mentioned, I looked at the stats of what I've done successfully and realized that I'm fantastic at helping companies raise capital. Why don't I apply myself there? And really realizing where is the opportunity. What was passed in 2012, actually April 5th of 2012 was a fundamental shift in capital that's probably not happened since Silicon Valley was first formed. And the reason I say it's that big is because the laws have been such that you cannot go out and solicit a security, meaning an investment from the general public. That's been in effect since 1934. When the stock market crashed, the Great Depression came on and laws were put in place to make sure people didn't get hurt again. And because of that, since 1934, people can't go out and solicit a general security unless you're an accredited investor, meaning that you meet certain standards that are set forth by policymakers. Let's say that you meet a certain set of net worth standards that allow for you to be a sophisticated enough investor and or have enough capital that you're not going to be in A situation where the investment itself, if it didn't come to a success, would actually break the bank.

So give me an even more layman's example of that kind of solicitation. And I know this, but I just want to make sure that everybody else is following that. You can't just do an ad to say, hey, we've got a new company. Come invest in our company. You can't do that, come buy our stock. And it's actually not as much to do with public, although it's private offerings. Right. It's raising money for a company.

Right. So just to give you the actual standards, an accredited investor is someone that has a net worth of million dollars, excluding the value of their primary residence, and have an income of at least $200,000. So that's what defines an accredited investor. Now here's the tricky part. I don't know if you're an accredited investor or not. Right. So if I go to you without having an idea of that actual knowledge basis and I ask you to invest in my startup company, that's a security that I'm asking you to invest in, and to send that off to you without you being an accredited investor is actually a violation of credit standard laws. And so that's the concept that you're dealing with. So I've created a bunch of different companies and helped fundraise them. And every time you send that off, the investment presentation to somebody, you have to realize that they're an accredited investor and that they are meeting those standards. Otherwise you violated current law and you're soliciting an investment or security, and that is an actual felony.

Felony. Right. Okay, cool.

So you want to make sure that you're covered in those things because they're very serious about that.

Right. So what this means is that up until now, and then we'll talk about exactly what's changed up until now. Yeah. Raising capital. You had to have good connections with rich people and you had to follow a lot of stringent guidelines and security, I'm certain protocols to raise money for your business. Right.

You nailed it. And that's the fundamental shift of why it's so powerful of what we're talking about here today is in 2012, the laws began to change, whereby that was no longer the case. And so there's certain protections and provisions that we're going to go through right now that I'll walk you through on how to do this, that keep the guidelines and make it legal. But the general premise that we're talking about here is that law allowed for others to invest that are no longer accredited investors. So think about what we're talking about. You're an Internet marketing guy. If I want to take a company out and bring that through Facebook, through LinkedIn, through any of these mechanisms, I don't know if I'm soliciting that to someone that's accredited or non accredited. So I can actually publish that because I don't have actual documentation that everyone that's going to see that advertisement is an accredited investor. That's how it used to be. So hence the reason you'd only be able to show it to your rich uncle that you knew was a rich uncle that could give you some money. And that's about it. So if you didn't have access to those angel networks, to those larger, you just couldn't go out and solicit. The average person wouldn't have access to those VCs like I do, or those angel groups like I do. And so you're stuck in a position that no matter how good your idea is, you don't have anywhere to take it out to get the funding necessary.

So how has that changed?

So that changed in 2012 and specifically in 2014, where they have allowed for a process to happen, what's called a regulation A offering, and that's part of what's called Title 4 of the Jobs Act. So I mentioned the JOBS act passed in 2012 after a significant push through Congress and a lot of educated players really helping others to understand that this is something that's needed and the market's ready for it and that through crowd offerings this could be done legally. So they pushed this through in 2012. In 2014, what I'm specializing in, which is title four of the jobs act or Regulation A offerings became legal where you can actually, they call them mini IPOs, so you can raise up to $50 million from both accredited and non accredited investors. And that has allowed for a process where you can actually go out through Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter and solicit an investment for a company that you're raising money for and get people to actually say, you know what, I like that product, I like the offering. I'm going to actually put money into that company and buy a small piece or a large piece of that company. So that only happens, I want to be really clear on this is the regulation A offering. The way that they're making sure there's no fraud in this is the SEC says, look, if you will go through and file a process with us, which takes about three to four months. We'll go through and review your offering all the different pieces of your company, we'll review your financials, review every part of it to make sure there's no fraud. And once they approve that, which like I said, takes about three to four months, once that's approved, then you essentially have a license to go out and offer it to both people that have accredited status and also non accredited status. And now a non accredited investor, someone that you might see on Facebook advertising your friends, your 200 plus friends that you have on average in your Facebook network. Those people can now invest in a company that you own as long as the SEC is filed through that process.

Okay, cool.

So that's one of the four different types and I'll talk about that one. And I'm also going to talk about title three, which just. You are absolutely right past May 16th of this last year, which allows for you to raise up to a million dollars, a smaller offering but with very little existing paperwork. So the way before you jump into.

That, let me just recap here. So up until recently, 2000, like really 14, I guess you couldn't, you couldn't solicit the general public or people you didn't really know or non accredited investors for funds. Now you can do what you refer to as kind of, or what they refer to as a mini initial public offering, up to $50 million both from accredited and non accredited investors. But you have to go through a three to four month process. Whereby is it? The SEC reviews everything, filters out all the scammy fraudsters.

Yeah. If you're going to raise $50 million to large offerings, you have to go through an SEC filing. That's the thing that the bigger companies that generally speaking have revenue are going to actively pursue because it's a much more streamlined process than going through a venture capitalist.

Yeah. Or going public and doing. Now. This is not them going public, right?

No, it's not going public. Matter of fact, that's one of the really strong benefits is when you go public you have all the different regulations that you have to stay compliant to. It's much less regulated in terms of ongoing filings and documentation that's necessary for a company. So it's very interesting for average companies to go through because they don't have to go through and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to file all the necessary paperwork after they go through this process. It's a fairly easy process to go through. But keep in mind this is going to be for your listeners that are active in business that have an existing business that's probably doing significant revenue.

What do you think significant revenue is?

I mean, anywhere between a million to $10 million. But some of it is there's one that's out right now in the virtual reality space that has $2 million of addition of bookings pre booked for their product and that doesn't actually have zero of revenue currently, but they have a lot of inventory backlog for that existing product. So, okay, it could be in that state of condition. Now if you're raising less money and you're, let's say you want a dry cleaning business or you want to start up a normal business and you only want to raise up to a million dollars, this is where it gets really interesting.

This is title three, right?

This is title three. And this is where the average companies can come out and go out through their existing network of people. With about $10,000 worth of documentation, including your audits, you can be out and running and raise up to a million dollars from existing people in your network.

Okay, so this is the cool stuff I want to talk about and I'll tell you that. And you're probably familiar the two frames of perspective or whatever that I'm listening with is one, how could I potentially like in any ventures that I'm involved with, I want to understand it. So I'm like, oh crap, I have access to funds that I never knew I thought I would. But then I also want to talk to you about opportunities that maybe even you and I would have about, you know, being a marketing bench, being something that is useful in helping these companies. Because that's the other thing we were talking about. You said, look, you guys as Internet marketers and you guys with skill helping a company grow or market this stuff, that's really interesting to me as well. I just wanted to let you know the two ears I'll be listening with here.

You just touched on what I'm fascinated about with this thing and why I think it's so powerful specifically is this, which is when you start thinking about the idea of people and products becoming one and the same with ownership. You're now thinking about the people that are buying into your company are actually becoming your brand advocates. And that's incredibly powerful for you, right? So now if I have a thousand people that are owners in my company, they actually not only believe in my product, but they actually own part of the company. So they're out telling all their friends at dinner conversations and at lunches and everywhere they go about this exciting product that they have that they Big evangelist for and that they can actually go out and tell people about and actually get them involved into buying your product or even wanting to maybe get involved in investing in your company. So very word of mouth operation for you and a very strong way to combine your product offering with taking it out and getting people to buy it.

Cool. So let's now talk about this in real world terms. A lot of my listeners know that my wife and I started a company, a coffee business, Stiletto Coffee, marketed towards women. Stiletto coffee.com for all your coffee needs. So we have got, yeah, it's a coffee company, very focused on professional driven women, et cetera. So we, we've identified a, you know, a pocket of people and as you talk about like we are starting to build out brand advocates, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. This is highly interesting to me and whether or not I decide to do anything like this because I don't know if I need to raise that money. Let's use that as an example and explaining how I would go about it first.

Yeah, so the first thing to decide is, hey, I need capital and for what purposes, right. So once you figure out that your capital is going to be, let's just say for growth purposes or for marketing purposes or for scaling and buying inventory. Right. Any of those reasons would be part of why you would decide to go out and get capital. So once you've figured out that you need capital and how much, the other next question you're going to ask yourself is what type of exit are you going to be offering? This is really interesting for people and companies that are going to have an exit potential at some point. So for you, Brad, we already have talked about this. There's already people that would want to buy your company because it's a coffee company. Their synergies with their existing ones. You can imagine Bulletproof coming in and.

Saying, look, bulletproof doesn't have, Dave doesn't have enough money. I want Pete's to come in and buy it.

So Starbucks has been sniffing around your company so you know that there's an exit for your company eventually. Because if you're offering up an opportunity to buy into your company, what people really want to know is where is it going to get their money out? And usually these are going to be coming out when someone buys your company, right? So in your case you have a perfect scenario for this because you have people that like your product and, and you also have people that will eventually want to buy your product in a very acquisitive Marketplace. Right. Starbucks does buy up a lot of businesses in that space.

Yeah, so does Pete, Coca Cola.

So you would look at that and say, okay, those two criteria have been met. Right. I know that I need capital. I know I have an exit for people that would be investing in mine. And I also realized that I have an audience of both, you know, some of which are accredited investors, but some of which are non accredited investors. And and so I can take that audience for all those women that like your product, like what they stand for in your brand, because your brand stands for women empowerment, which I personally think is an awesome cause. And the fact that you're giving a piece of your proceeds away to a charity, those things are something that is very sexy for people to want to come in and get involved in because it's the type of company that people really can get behind and believe in. You're meeting all these criteria that make for a company to be an interesting investment capability. Right. And so once you look at that, you now know that you would want to come in and essentially get the pieces in place for you to raise money. And let's just say that you're raising a half a million dollars right now. And you know that most of your people are non accredited investors. And these are people that don't meet that 250 plus standard. What they can invest into your company, and this is really important, is $2,000 or 5% of their earnings, right? So if someone is making $40,000, they can invest 5% of their earnings, which is $2,000, and that can scale up to $100,000 of income per year or 10%, whichever is less. So people can actually put into your company depending on how much they make. If they make $40,000, they can put in $2,000. If they make, you know, $100,000, they could put in $10,000. And these are non accredited investors that believe in your product. They can invest that amount of money into your company per year. So year is part of that requirement.

So yeah, so the average, if the average American makes between like 40 to 60,000, I think it's like even less like 40, let's just say 50,000, then they can invest 2,500 per year.

Yes, exactly. And so that's an important number to know because the reason those have been set up to be that way is because they want to make sure that still average people, Main street investors is what they're calling them, don't end up extending themselves into something way beyond what they can actually afford to do. So you can only put in that limit per year, make sure you're protected.

Gotcha. Okay, perfect.

Okay, I'm on the call. Okay, perfect. Thank you. Yeah, sorry. No worries on a call there. And so anyhow, that's the amount of money that could go into a, an offering there.

Okay, so let me ask a couple questions there now. Okay, so I could solicit, let's say I wanted to raise half a million dollars, I could solicit people to put in at those rates. Now how does the valuation work? Do I say what the company's valued at?

Yeah, a lot of times it's market rate. But you're choosing that market rate for you and your companies. What I would advise for you to think about is finding that market rate that is actually something that's within a standard of credibility and actually something that you think is a fair offering. So if you were to go to your mom or your dad or your friends, what would I offer to them?

Right.

What would be an offering to them?

I can't say, hey, I'm making ten thousand dollars a year. It's a ten million dollar company.

Yeah, exactly. It's not right. And yet it could be down the line. But at the current state where it currently is, and for this current offering, because you can do this every year, by the way, it is in its format is worth, let's say, $100,000. You're making $10,000 a month. Right. Because a really good rule of thumb, and this is from Harvard Business School, and I really like it as a way to look at it, is when you're looking at the value of a company, it's at the total maximum amount that that company can make in earnings throughout the course of its lifetime. That's a great way to value a company. So right now, with a 10,000 earning potential, and let's just say that you were over 10 years to run that company, $100,000 might be a pretty good indication of what that total value creation could be for that company. So your enterpr. Your value of your total company might fairly be $100,000. Right. So that's kind of a nice way to look at it. Now, tech companies tend to run at different multiples, and so they've gotten their valuations and their unicorns, as they call them up in Silicon Valley, as a different type of valuation metric. But it's a pretty good rule of thumb to think that whatever your financial number that you're currently making in revenue, if you could take it out several years into the future, and figure out what that potential would be over that course of that lifetime. That's a great indication of what a fair value is for your company.

Okay. Okay. And it's. And it's something that takes, you know, some little bit of work and understanding, working with some experts to kind of figure that best number out. But, yeah, obviously you want it to make sense because, you know, and I imagine when, like, if I was raising money, I mean, you open the book, this is not a. This is not a Kickstarter. This is not a crowdfunding for swag campaign. Right. So you have to actually open your books on this.

Well, yeah, and that's a great segue into part of what's interesting here. So you mentioned that you wanted to raise up to 500,000. So if your offering is between 100,000 and 500,000, you only have to have a review of your financial statements. And so you could either be at $10,000 of revenue or zero revenue. But you would go to an auditor, they would review your statements. But it's not even a full audit of your statements. It just has to be a review of your current financials and what your financials are going to be in the future. Now, if you're going to raise more than $500,000 under title three, between $501 million, you actually need to go out and get those fully audited. It's within that $10,000 worth of total legal fees that it's going to cost you to get this thing going. It's still within that range. But you'll have to, if you're raising a little bit more, get that audited financial, which adds a little bit more credibility because there's a CPA that's gone through your financial statements and said these are believable and true.

But then. And on the lower one, though, are they still saying that, like, yeah, listen, the business is doing. The business is doing $250,000 this year or whatever it is the revenue is. I mean, you are providing financial. Some financials or at least a statement to the public who's investing in it. You're not investing blind.

The difference between the less than 500 and more than 5,500 is you're putting the financials up, like you said, under both circumstances. But under the more than 500,000 to a million, it's been audited by a CPA firm, which gives a higher level of credibility to those financials.

And I'm trying to draw the distinction between that and, like the Indiegogo kickstarter where it doesn't matter. They're just saying, hey, give us money for this cool product so that you never need to see their financials.

Exactly. It's all based on the fact that you're giving advance money in Kickstarter against the idea that you're essentially pre ordering a product. Right. We follow Eric Rees a lot. Right. And his stuff on Lean Startup. If you really think about Kickstarter and Indiegogo, what's beautiful about them, he talks about the minimal viable product of an offering. And it's really, in the Kickstarter's case, it's a video. Right. You're creating a video of a concept of something that could be built and that would be really cool if it was built and people like it enough to buy into it or not. And if they like it enough to make their standards and they fund it, then you'll go out and build the product and then deliver it to them. But they're pre buying a product and so what a great way to test the market reception. But they put it on Kickstarter to see if people will pre buy it or interested in it. They won't.

Absolutely. Okay, so the basics of this are, yeah, if I want to raise $499,000 or you know, up to a million dollars, I go through it cost me. Did you say about $10,000 in filing fees?

Yeah. And keep in mind, that's going to come down significantly. This is the early gates of this thing. So technology is going to continue to bring the legal costs down and the CPA auditing cost is going to come down. But right now, assume that if you're going to raise and I'll send you a document that gives a quick proxy of all these different types of offerings. So you can put that up wherever you want or have it for your own information. But yeah, assume $10,000 for your total document cost if you're going to raise up to a million dollars. And assume if you're going to go after and you're a bigger company with actual financials and you want to do one of these Regulation A offerings, what I specialize in, you're going to assume that it's going to be about a $50,000 cost basis for you to file the SEC documents and about three months worth of time frame.

Did you say the time frame on the title 3 1?

The title 3 can be pretty quickly and it's almost instantaneous. And also, by the way, the regulation D offerings where you're doing the same thing, you can raise up to a million on that, but that's from accredited investors. That's almost instant, instantaneous and about the same cost point, about $10,000. So the difference is it depends on who your audience is. Right. So this is a quick way to think about which one would be appropriate for you. The title three is usually good for consumer based products like your coffee business. Right. Consumers are going to want to buy it because they believe in you, they believe in the brand, they believe in the charities that you're supporting. Whereas think about it like what we call in finance a B2B business, a business to business business. Those are not really consumer centric businesses. People don't want to really buy them, they don't understand them. And those are more often than not better off for accredited investors because they understand those types of businesses.

Totally.

So that's what's called a regulation D offering. Once again, if you have a business to business offering, you could put that up and it's $10,000 worth of cost or less and your fundraising up to a million dollars almost instantaneously.

Okay, I like it. So now as far as the ability to advertise, like let's say all my filings done, I'm ready, I want to raise money for this. Is it like I could literally do a Facebook ad to say, would you like to own a piece of Stiletto coffee? Come here, check it out.

So on title three, this is where it's helpful to know the nuances of it. What they call is a tombstone.

So finance, I'm familiar with that, but go ahead.

Yeah, Tombstone is usually what an offering perspective is, is what you can technically put up for your thing, but it's not supposed to have a share price listed on it, but it can drive it to a portal. Right. So what you're going to end up doing is you're going to put it up on like Seed Invest or We Fund or any of these other portals that are out there. And you could put something that says Stiletto Coffee. The next thing in coffee, are you interested in investing? And you can have that link to the portal where it shares the specifics of the share price. But you can't actually say on the Facebook ad that this is you're buying stiletto coffee for $2.50. No.

But on the landing page you can like on the ad you could just say, yeah, would you like to.

Yeah, you can invest in this company. And so it's a little ambiguous because a lot of experts are also believing that a tombstone quote unquote is not Just a static ad where it just says this is what it is. A tombstone by definition could also be very easily described as a video that's an offering and a perspective or any of those other things. So this stuff is yet to be determined. And how this falls out is going to be depending on how the SEC ultimately regulates it. What they decided to do right now is leave language like that broad based and see how it plays out and then come back later on and regulate it. You won't get in trouble. I don't think at this point if you put up a video and says, you know, stiletto coffee is the next thing in coffee. If you want to invest in this thing, here's why you should. We support charities, we're, you know, a woman centric company. You know, all these different things that make the value proposition there. You probably won't end up in anywhere near any level of disclosure that's going to make them uncomfortable. And that would be. Then drive through clicks to that portal where then they can see the actual share price that you're selling $100,000 worth of your company for $1.50 or $2 per share. Right. And on the, on the actual portals you can share what your share price is and the actual offering on Facebook you cannot as a general solicitation for Title three. It's really important to understand that because Title three is different and this is why than title four, which is where I specialize in the bigger offerings. The SEC makes it essentially legal for you to share the actual share price if It's a Title 4 or these many IPOs because they certified your offering. So if you go through that three months and $50,000 worth of process, they then have gotten out of all the fraudulent basis so they don't feel like there's any risk for an investor to come into it. And so they've certified it. And by doing that you can actually share on Facebook. Like I saw one on Friday night that popped up in my ad for virtual company, Virtual reality company that says invested in the next thing in virtual reality. $2.33 per share. Click through.

So they were actually saying the price per share on the Facebook ad.

Oh, it's fascinating. I mean, I'll send you a thing and a picture. I snapshot it on my phone. I mean it's crazy. I mean this is the new thing. I mean it is really going to be that level because once again the value proposition is people are going to like products. And if I'm going to buy that product, why not Own a piece of the company. It makes sense.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's fun to be in the beginning now before somebody gets in there and screws it up for everybody else. Okay, so recapping this part, I want to raise between one and a million dollars, file my $10,000 paperwork. If I want to go up to like 499,000, it's going to be a lot quicker. 500 to a million audited review. Then my tombstone is in essence, especially if it's for title three. I'm just telling people that, hey, there is an opportunity to invest. And then that takes them over to a plate page on my website or portal where it explains all the particulars and then people can decide, hey, I'm in. Maybe they want to talk to somebody at the company. Maybe they want to, you know, automated purchase right there. I don't know how it's being done right now.

Yeah, so it's going through. There's the leader in the space is called Fundamerica, and it's essentially an escrow agent. So the way that the SEC has kind of put a division and a Chinese firewall there is the portals can't actually hold on to your money. So unlike Kickstarter, where they actually hold onto their money and they actually make an arbitrage play on your money, while these things are being funded, they're getting interest on your capital. That's part of the upside for Kickstarter, by the way. But unlike those things, the SEC said, look, we're really worried about portals cheating people. So way we're going to separate, that is none of the portals can hold the money. And so until those companies hit their funding minimum, the money is actually in escrow. And the escrow companies, there's a couple of them right now, but one of which is called FundAmerica, is the leading one in the space. The CEO is Scott Parcell, and he's a great guy and a good guy to maybe interview if you want to learn more. Basically, what he does is they hold on to that capital until you hit your fully funded amount and then it's released to the company directly. It never actually goes through the product portal. So the portals are essentially the booking agents. They're the ones that hold all the offering information and talk about the value of the deal and what it looks like and where people would sign up, put in their bank account numbers and all the other pieces. But all that money goes into an escrow agent until the deal is funded.

Okay, that makes more sense. This is why I have you on the show, dude.

Well, and then that's also interesting too because these escrow agents like Fundamerica, it's really cool for the bigger offerings. So if you're a bigger company, you want to go raise out money or if you have a big investor base or following base. You know, we talked about Drew Paxton's company where he has all those, you know, hundreds of thousands of people that follow his company. It would be a no brainer for him to raise money because they all love him, they love his product. What's interesting is you can do what's called testing of the waters. So even before you file your SEC documents as an Internet market marketer, think about how valuable this is. You can go out and actually put out to the market and say, would you be interested in investing in this company, Stiletto Coffee? And people can click through if they like it and actually put down how much they're going to invest, their bank account information, all that stuff. And Fundamerica will actually soft circle that amount of money. So you get a pretty good sense of what your cpa.

What do you mean, soft circle? Explain that.

Well, yeah, sorry, that's an investor term. Usually when you're getting a sense of how much money people are going to invest, we call it soft circling, like so on a fund, I have $250,000 of a million already raised or people said, expressed interest in it, you know, then that's what we call soft circle. But basically it's how many people have expressed interest in it that said, yeah, if you do this, I would commit this amount of money. Yep.

I remember when I started my very first Internet product, I soft circled the product. I just said, you know, would you. I wrote a sales page for a product that I thought about creating and ran some ads to it. And then it said, step one, to buy this for $67. Enter your email, you take it to the order form. And the order form said, hey, we're almost done. Coming soon. Thanks for your email. I didn't take any payment information, but now I knew, crap, there's people who want this.

Yeah, that's exactly it. Except to do the same thing for an investor. Right.

Are you saying that the people actually do something with their bank account? Like they actually get to the point where they put in their information there?

Yeah, that's coming live right now from Fun America. And the reason that's valuable is before for that, basically people could come in and just put their name, their email and how much they'd be interested in investing. It's A good proxy for how much you're going to ultimately get from it. But as you know, people can fill out and say anything they want. If they're going to click through and actually put their bank account numbers in and all the other things, no money gets transferred. But nonetheless, they're committing at a higher level to that investment. And so you have a higher reliability towards the probability of that being the right amount of money.

Okay. Then when it's done, they send you the money. Is there any big time, especially with Title 3 oversight on how you spend the money? I mean, obviously you should be spending it on the business and not taking trips to Greece.

Yeah, that's yet to be determined. And a lot of that's going to be goodwill. But now you keep in mind you have a fiduciary responsibility. A lot of us entrepreneurs that, you know, I've never had, shareholders don't understand what a fiduciary responsibility is. And that's an important thing, which means you have a responsibility to represent all shareholders, including yourself, on the same level of impartial decision making that you would. So in other words, if you did something that was in the best interest of you, that is going off degrees, you now have four or five, you know, or however many people in your, in your capital structure, you know, up to 5,000 people that now have been essentially defrauded from that and actually have a liability to go against you because you're a director of your company. So there are strict rules about fraudulent behavior that go beyond what we call in corporate world, the corporate veil, which protects you and your governance of your company so that you can actually penetrate the corporate veil and go after an individual and hold them for fraudulent behavior. So if someone were to fraudulently default a company, the shareholders could go after that person and put a lien on them and their whole company and as well as their own personal assets. If there was. So there's some strict protections around this, but you want to use it within good judgment is a good, fair way to look at it, right?

Yeah. So when Steve Miller band saying go on, take the money and run, he was not referring to this.

Well, you might, but just keep running.

Just keep running and run fast.

Make sure you run countries where they can't come back and extradite you back into the United States.

Exactly.

But this is going to be figured out the idea here. And I was at a conference recently where several of the SEC regulators are speaking and there's a lot of visibility and transparency here because think about a normal angel deal where it's one person representing this to angels, and you don't know what someone said to one person that maybe is different than others. And in this case, it's all documented, it's all online, it's all seen by the crowd, and there's a lot of wisdom that we found in the crowd. And so far, through this whole process over the last couple years, there's been very little fraudulent behavior coming through on this thing. So we're really excited about it. But don't get me wrong, there will be inevitable situations, and those will be heavily enforced.

Yep. Oh, absolutely. Now, it's probably. Is it safe to say that this is. Is this throwing some big changes into the whole traditional world of angel investing right now?

You know, it is, and it's in the starting. But I'll give you a sense of it like the world that I'm living in and these regulation A deals, because I'm specifically investing in those type of deals. The bigger raises that go from 5 to 50 million, that's title 4 right now. It's been $2.5 billion of funds to date through 2015. And what it's going to be in the next four years by 2020 is about $40 billion. So, I mean, you're talking about going from 100 deals currently in filing for $2 billion of capital raises. There's 100 deals right now that are in filing for the SEC going up to 5,000 deals by 2020. So this is becoming a disruptive nature. And actually, funny enough, Cuban two weeks ago said this is probably the biggest opportunity that he's seen because he's been a very big naysayer of venture capital dollars. And what the effect of that is on the IPO market. As we know, a lot of these companies are not going out public successfully. And so they're stuck in this situation where they've received, like, Uber. Uber's received an incredible valuation at like, $67 billion and multiple. Multiple billions of dollars of capital. But they're stuck in a position where they can't go out public because they're almost overvalued. This is essentially going to.

Yeah, the value would plummet.

Yeah, exactly. And they don't want to go out because they're actually getting private money cheaper than they're getting what would. Public money would come in. Because the public money is going to be what we call, you know, an equilibrium price point where the market sets its actual natural equilibrium. And a lot of times, like we saw with GoPro, they went out public and then they dropped down pretty significantly pretty fast because the market didn't see them as valuable as they initially went out. So.

Yeah, and that's how that's interesting because then all the people who are, who have their money in Uber, they really can't cash out until it goes public. So It's a catch 22.

Yeah, exactly. I think that's part of the thing that is something that's really fascinating about this, especially for the bigger deals like the regulation A. If you're a company and a follower of Brad's and you meet certain criteria where you're going to raise 5 to $50 million, what it does not only creates an opportunity to get money into your company, but it also, 30% of your proceeds can be paid out to insider shareholders. So it creates a liquidity event that doesn't exist in the current marketplace for people. And that's actually where my company comes into play, Serenity Ventures, where, you know, we're funding these companies and using that liquidity event to not only get them through this process successfully and get them into the capital that they need, but then their companies become liquid in a way where they wouldn't in a normal angel or VC deal. So we get an opportunity to pull out some of our cash and reuse it for another company and help that next company get to the funding that they need. So, okay, okay, we're going to back.

Up and slow that back down because I fully understand it.

Sorry. I realize that I know this stuff inside and out, but I'm not sure everyone else.

Well, it's easy to get, it's easy to get like steamrolled with, oh, wow, okay, he said a lot of good stuff. Let's repeat that. So. And this thus begins phase two of the interview with David Metzler. So this is the other big part. So now we've already talked about, Listen, the opportunity is out there for the smaller, especially consumer driven business to raise up to a million dollars fairly easily in ways that did not exist before. So that's there. Now this is the part where you were talking about the other night at the Mastermind that I was really fascinated by. So let's back up and if it helps to use an example like now we can assume we can still talk about Stiletto Coffee if we want. Mainly because that just kind of makes me feel really cool that it's like, oh yeah, Stiletto Coffee is doing like.

I think you're cool, millions of dollars. So let's fast forward Stiletto Coffee Coffee a year from now. Yeah, right. Making good Money, a million dollars of sales and you're growing at, you know, a 30% growth rate month over month.

35. Let's just say 35.

35.

It's bigger than 30.

I like reality. So let's go to the 40%.

Yes.

Now you're a company that legitimately, with your growth rate has a very strong story for an investor to come into, for a lot of investors to come into, and also for a significant takeout, you know, from acquisition down the road. I mean, now Starbucks is legitimately talking about buying you for not just, you know, five, $10 million, but if you can continue on that growth path because all these women are supporters of your brand, they might buy you for 100 or $300 million. Right. And now your valuation, let's just call it $100 million valuation as a fair market value is a potential legitimate valuation for your company. So let's go with those assumptions. You're growing at 30%.

I like those assumptions.

That was good. Look, we see the future here, right? So you're 35% month over month growth rate and your valuation and fair market value looks like it's about $100 million now. The way the old world.

Hold on. Kimosami.

Yes.

Are these numbers, like you said, a million dollars in revenue with a 35 or 40% growth rate?

Yeah. I mean, if you're.

Because I'm not going to get to.

100K a month to your, your, your, your revenue 9. That's probably something that could legitimately be claimed to be $100 million company. Right. If you were doing those kind of numbers, let's just say. But these are arbitrary numbers that we're picking out. If your growth rate looks like that kind of number, any investor is going to want to get one.

The other question is how long can you keep that growth rate up? But that's a topic for another.

I know you said you can keep it up forever, at least. That's right.

Exactly. There we go.

So here's the way it used to work. And this is what was so unfortunate about the old world as I was an angel and a VC is you would put money into your Stiletto company and I would put an investment of let's say a million dollars into your company or 5 million doesn't really matter. And on average, a VC and an angel is sitting on that investment before an IPO or an M&A for seven to 10 years. So, I mean, I put $5 million into your company and I get a certain proportion of your company. Let's say 10% of your company, but you don't sell that company for seven to ten years for $100 million. So I've got five million bucks into your company for a long period of time. That's really hard on me as an investor and ultimately on the market. Right. Because it doesn't make people want to put money in because they have to wait so long before they get that big payout. Right. And so now we're looking at a scenario by which I can actually invest into companies with this Regulation A offering where they're raising $50 million. And every year I can pull out as an investor, 30% of my investment into that company. So if you raise $15 million. Right. I can pull out four and a half million dollars and pay out existing investors and other shareholders. So that's a liquidity.

So when you said I can pull out, who's pulling it out? Is it the owner of the company or of the company? Right. Okay, cool. So that means.

Which is a huge upside for this deal offering. So owners can get liquidity that they couldn't get before. An investor can get liquidity that they couldn't get before and, or, you know, other shareholders that invested in the Regulation A shares themselves can get out. So every year you can raise a Regulation A. So this year you can raise 50 million. Next year you can raise 50 million. The year after, you can raise 50 million. And each year you can pull out 30% of that and pay out yourself, pay out your investors and create liquidity for everybody. Does that make sense?

Yep. Let me recap it to make sure I got it. So I filed all my documents. I'm about to do a Title 4 regulation a fundraise, and we raise, let's just say what, 10 million?

Sure, let's take 10 million.

Numbers easier math. Right. So I raised $10 million from all these ladies who love coffee and love the mission. Now you're saying that I can now raise that, but I can pull 30% of it out now, immediately or after a year?

Immediately, every time you do one of these offerings.

So I raised 10 million. Now I got $3 million. And I can either use that to pay off early stage seed investors if I want, or I can use that for liquidity for. Well, actually, I don't need to pull it out to use it in the business, because that's not pulling it out of the business.

You use the 7 million to keep your math even. Right. $3 million can be pulled out to pay out to existing shareholders, VCs, angel dollars or even existing regulation A shareholders. Right.

Okay. But it has to be pulled out to pay existing shareholders. I can basically pull it out and pay me if I'm the, like, if I'm the only major shareholder, I can pay me. If you're the one who put in, I'm the sole owner, I own 100% of the stock. You give me $10 million, maybe, I don't know, I give you 10% of the stock. Right. Cool. So if I pull that 30% out, that's all for me. That's not your. You don't get any of that back.

No. That all goes to you. So every year you can pay out and play it. And the crowd would put in $10 million to your number and you would have valued the company at $100 million. Right. You said 10% is what you're giving up for 10 million. That's the math. Right. So of that, the $3 million you could pull out as long as you disclose it in the SEC documents and everyone understands what you're going to use the proceeds for $3 million could be paid out to you as the only shareholder to your example. And then the next $7 million would be your growth capital that you would use to buy inventory, fund the business expansion. And what you just highlighted is one of the huge advantages that's different than it's ever been before, that there's liquidity in these deals that are privately owned deals. That's never existed before. It's fascinating.

It really is. Now, do I have to tell you? Thanks, David. When you put in the 10 million, I'm going to pull 3 million out.

Absolutely. In your SEC documents, the $50,000 worth of documents, in three months, you're going to go ahead and disclose to everybody exact exactly what you're going to be doing at all stages with your money, with your capital. It's very, very detailed. Right. And so no one could be misled into believing that that money be used elsewhere. So it's very transparent. That's part of the reason the SEC looks at it.

So I could take out that $3 million and put it in my own bank account and be cool with it. But I just gotta. If I tell you that I should be using it for something else, right, like ideally, as opposed to just fun money.

No, I don't think so. Because people. You're selling 10% of your company to people that want to own 10% of the company because they see the upside of what that 10% is going to look like. Yeah, that's true. You're losing 10% of your ownership and people are gaining 10% of your ownership. And how you choose to use that is.

That's a good point.

Close to them is you're giving them an option to get in on, on a really great deal and your company, Stiletto. So as long as you're allowing them to own a piece of this upside, that's not a bad deal at all for them because they know that your 40% or 35% growth month over month is going to continue forever in your game.

Yeah, and this is where I was confusing it. So if it was seed money, like early, early stage, like, hey, I'm getting startup funds, it might be a different story because you would want to invest like ownership and something total startup is not like. You would want to know that your money is going to work for the company. Not just going in my pocket, but once I'm filing one of these. Because you can't do this on the title.

No, on the Title three. It's stricter rules and really its use of capital is primarily for growth of your business.

Yeah. So like you said, now I've established value in owning the business because it's got a good revenue, it's got a good growth rate. And I demonstrate that. Hey, you want 10%? If you want 10%, I am going to take money out. I've got things to do with it. There's, you know.

Yeah.

Hookers and blowing grease that need the money.

Exactly. And so I've created value. You want some of that value? I'm going to share that upside with you. And in exchange, as long as I'm disclosing it, you know that I'm going to take 30% out for me and. Or imagine this scenario, this year you raised $10 million, but next year, and people put that money in, they own what's called Regulation A shares. Next year you raise another $10 million and 30% of that can go out and those people get liquidity. Right. So if I invested this year into your company at $10 million and next year you go and raise it for. You raise another 10 million, but at 150 or $200 million valuation, I can actually pay out once again $3 million to people, but they've now doubled their money, they can get liquidity again. So every year you're creating a liquidity event for people, it really pays off.

For the early investors because they don't have to wait. That's really what it boils down to.

Keep playing that out because that's what I do right now you're seeing the upside of why I'm interested in this marketplace.

Yeah, the old time investor or current, you know, prior to this, they would have to invest in just hope and pray that there's an exit, either purchase IPO or something to get their money out. And if not, they didn't get their money. The way now is, yeah, I invest now and like next year, especially if you, you know, or next year if you do another capital raise, even, hopefully even higher, you can take that money out, pay 30% to me. So depending upon how much you pay me. I mean, shit.

Well, and here's the interesting thing. If you know what public companies are, it's called float, which means how much the money is being traded every year. And what's interesting is it's young and it's starting out right now. But there's what's called a secondary market where there's float that's coming on where you can actually, if you say, hey, I really like Stiletto coffee, I want to own Stiletto coffee. David, you got shares of Stiletto Coffee ad you bought it at $100 million. It's now being valued at $200 million. Can I buy your 100 million dollar shares? And essentially you can trade them on what is the equivalent of a NASDAQ or a New York Stock Exchange type equivalent where you can actually trade from your brokerage account to my brokerage account and buy stocks. And right now there's about 100k a float on some of these companies that are going out. Like Elio motors has about 100k. They went out and raised $17 million and closed that this last couple months ago. And every day there's about $100,000 afloat where people are trading back and forth their shares just like they are on the public markets. Isn't that crazy? And just keep in mind this is early, but where it will go is you'll have essentially a equivalency of the NASDAQ and New York Stock Exchange for these private companies on, you know, oc, you know, trading floor where you can trade back and forth these regulation A shares. So there's liquidity along the way and that's a whole different ball game. Okay, so let me see it now.

This is. Yeah, no, I totally see it. And this has been. This is such a cool podcast. This is like, it's very rare that I'm not talking about something. Well, actually I do know something about this. I used to be in finance. I was financial, financial advisor, finance Major and all this. So I get it. But this is all really cool to me and I'm getting little epiphanies and I'm sure this is what you went through when you started really exploring this in the very beginning.

It's a math formula, and you guys get it. That's why I love. What your business is in the Internet marketing world is you can actually see what it costs to acquire a user. And that is the most authentic, true form of valuing what a product's worth, because you know how much someone's willing to pay for it as you spend on Facebook and so forth forth that people are going to. It's going to cost me $5 or $50 to acquire a user. And that lifetime value of the user is $200, right in this marketplace. The, the comparables have shown that it's roughly. And this is a good number to note down 5%. 5% of whatever you're going to raise, you're going to spend on your ad spend. So If I'm raising $10 million.

Hold on, hold on. Ad spend for what? To drive sales or to try to acquire investors.

So, yeah, imagine you're going to put out on Facebook that buy Stiletto Coffee. Invest in Stiletto Coffee. The share price is $2.33 per share, and you're going to have to spend essentially 5% of whatever you're going to go raise on your ad spend. So if I'm raising $10 million, I'm going to send, assume that in order to get that amount of money and I'm going to have to spend $500,000 of ad spend on Facebook, on Google, on LinkedIn, in order to get that amount of money in from investors to get to that total number. Okay, so now you can see it. It's a math formula. And keep in mind what this means, and this is why I'm fascinated about it, is the new investment banks of the world. The Goldman Sachs is, the Merrill Lynch's, all these guys that have been underwriters in the past as they take their offerings. When you go public and send it out to all these investors, they're now moving towards guys like you that are the Internet marketing guys that are going to have the ability to take a company like this that wants to go out and raise $10 million, they're going to hand you $500,000 and say, get me all the investors I need to get the $10 million in and sell my product to those investors. And it's going to be roughly about 5% of the total raise, where did.

That number come from? Is that a.

It's comparables that have gone out so far. And they did an analysis on how much they is costing right now to take these companies out through the.

And it's about 5% of raise is what it's costing in order to advertise to get the raise.

Okay, cool. Exactly. So now it's an ad spend. And that's where I come in is we're loaning companies the money to cover their ad spend to get the money in as part of the value add of the services. Not only do I add expertise and knowledge and all the things that go along with, you know, having spent a lifetime adventure in investment banking, but also we're giving these companies money to cover their cost of filing the documents and the ad spend and helping them get out to market successfully so that they can get the money in. And when they do, after they get the money in, we're pulling out some of that cash to then go invest in another company to go do that. And that's what my funds for Entity Ventures is doing.

Okay, awesome. This is really where we switch over to what you're doing and the. And not just explaining the nature of what's possible out there. So this is. Let's stick with the examples. Stiletto Coffee is now like, alright, I'm ready. I want to raise $10 million. David. I want to use Serenity Ventures to help me do this. What's the first thing we're going to do? I want to raise 10 million. We're going to need about 5% of that, right?

Yeah. And so let's do the math here. And I wish I could do a screen share. I'd show you a slide analysis of it, but.

You can just screen share. Nobody else will see it.

Well, we don't want to give away all of our secrets, right?

That's true.

Hey, let me see. Where's the screen share? Switch over to the plus button.

Are you on a Mac?

Yeah, I'm on a Mac and I see it down here. All right, so wait, I just saw it. Where's the plus button?

Hover over the. Hover over the.

Can you see me now? Perfect. Okay, so let's see if this works. Can you see my screen?

No, not yet. Did you hit share screen?

I think I did.

You finance guys. There we go. Hey, there's a.

I feel like I'm in your world now. All right, so hopefully you can see a screen right there. And let me see if I can make it a Little bit bigger. This is an example from my investor deck where people are putting money into my fund because of the returns that we're giving them. As you can see here hovering over it, it's basically $50,000 worth of cost that Stiletto is going to have to go through to file your document. It's going to take you three to four months to get your documents together. So that's part of the assumption that we're going to be covering that cost for you so that you don't have to spend the money. We're going to loan you $50,000 and we're also going to loan you $100,000. You can see on my screen again, that's going to cost you to get to a minimum. So if you're raising $10 million, you would file with the SEC and say.

This is based on what size raise here?

Let's say these are arbitrary numbers because you can set this to this of a million.

Let's just keep with your numbers. A million. I want to raise a million.

Well, no, let's keep it. You can see your total raise is $10 million. But you have to go to the SEC and say, what's your minimum amount that you're gonna raise? And you're gonna say, our minimum amount is gonna be a million dollars. And as soon as you hit your minimum amount, the money goes from the funding escrow into the Stiletto coffee.

Okay, cool. Yeah. So if I tell. If I'm trying to raise 10 million and I only raise $800,000, you don't.

Hit your funding minimum.

I don't, I don't even get any of the money.

And no money goes to you. It all goes back to the, to the investors. They don't lose anything. It doesn't come anywhere and it just sits in FundAmerica's bank account. But it's minimum.

So. And then you're going to do the. You're going to loan me 50,000 to get my reg 8 filed, then you're going to loan me 100,000 to get to the 1 million dollar, right? Yeah, to the $1 minimum. So that you're loaning me 10%, figuring.

In the initial spend here that there's. The first hundred K is going to cost a little bit more than the subsequent 400k that you're going to do. Right. Because on average it'll be 5%. But as you Internet marketing, the momentum is always in the first early dollars. Right?

Yeah.

I'm tracking now essentially you're going to double up and Just make sure you have plenty of capital to do what you need to do. Then make sure you hit your minimum, which in this case we took an arbitrary number of a million dollars and said that's our minimum. Okay, now you're interesting is after you hit your minimum, the money goes into Stiletto's Coffee. And what you can then do is use the proceeds from the minute, the hundred million dollars. You can use the proceeds from that million dollars that came in from the crowdfunding it to continue to fund your ad campaign. So as you can see on my slide, the next 400k can actually come out of ad spend that was from the proceeds. As soon as you cross the minimum, you can do it. So you no longer need me. At that point you can actually take over from the actual fundraising that you've done and take over your ad spend and continue until you get to your fully raised $10 million amount.

Okay, so and then how are, what are the terms of the loan? So in essence up front, you're loaning $150,000.

Just a little coffee because I believe in your company, I see that you're running it and you're a solid executor and an operator and I believe in your revenue add, you know, your growth rates and so forth. And I've gone through diligence on your company and I believe enough in that to say that I think you guys are going to be able to go out and raise the money. And based on your cpa, you've, you've successfully gone out and raised it. Because here's where it becomes, where you and I can do it is this is the little known fact that makes my business work really well is while you're filing the 50k, remember I called that testing of the water, remember that you can actually go see how much people are going to soft circle, which is how much they're willing to invest. Well, we can go out and spend 25k while you're filing and your SEC documents are going through that process and get a sense of what your cpa, your cost per acquisition is for your members. So we'll spend 25k while you're simultaneously, you know, filing the documents to get a sense of what your ad spend is going to be and if it's within a certain bandwidth with of what I see is tolerable. In other words, it looks like you're going to spend 10% of my 100k and get to your 100 million, your million dollars, then I'm going to go ahead and Give you the rest of the money and if it's not, you don't want to go out and do it. So we both go away without losing a lot of money, right? Yeah.

Cut your losses.

Not ready for it. And so we both cut losses. So we use that 25k as a proxy to get a sense of what the actual CPA is going to be. So I don't end up going into a deal and losing money and you don't end up going into a deal in a situation where you're taking money in that you shouldn't be taking it. So now what do you know?

What are the terms of that loan? So what do you make out of it?

Yeah, so you got to keep in mind we're asking for 7% on our investment. So I'm investing 150k into you and it's going to be six to nine months. You're going to pay me 7% interest over the course of that loan and you're going to give me share coverage into your company. So when you do hit your fully funded amount, you would pay me back an additional amount of money back on top of it. In our case, it's 100% warrant coverage for it. So essentially for every 150k I'm putting into a company, if they're fully funded and if we succeed as a venture firm, to help you get what you need the 10 million in, then we'll take out 300K of which 150 was our principal.

So. And then if everything works well, you'll double your money in that six, nine month period.

Yeah, that's part of the reason it's such a great upside for our firm and it's a great upside for your firm because keep in mind, what did you raise your money at? We remember the numbers we went back to. You raised ten million dollars on a hundred million dollar valuation, right. What is 150k, which is what you're giving me up in share counts when you're essentially giving me back 150k back on shares on, you know, it's like less than 1%, right?

Yeah. And, and are you, maybe I missed this. Are you actually staying as a part? Like are you getting shares that you hold on to?

So, so this is the way the fund works is the investors put in the money into our fund, fund one, and the 150k comes out of that investment dollars into it. 100% of the money the investors put in going into these deals and once they get their money back, 100% of their. Their principal back and their interest back on that principal. Then we split the proceeds of those share coverage. The second 150. 50, 50 with the investors. So my firm, Serenity Venture Partners, keeps 50% of that. In that case, that example would be 75. Yeah, we would keep 75k and 75k would go back to the investors as part of their upside for their fund. Right. So the investors, fantastic deal, 100% of their money back, 7% interest, and they're getting essentially 50% warrant coverage. And then Serenity Ventures, for doing the deal and being successful in delivering the funding to the Marketplace, will get 75k of the upside of that. And so for that, I can choose to do what I want with that. In some cases, some companies you could.

Roll it into the company.

In other cases, I'll pull out the 100, the 75K.

Okay. So that's not something going in that. It's like you're loaning the 150,000. You're getting 7% plus 1,5. Whatever percent of the valuation. Right. You're not building in a. You're not. Serenity Ventures does not automatically become a shareholder from.

No, we choose on company by company basis. What we do with 50% of that. In some cases we'll leave it in. In other cases, we'll pull it back out because we want the liquidity. It's up to us. And it depends on the company and where we see the future of the company going.

You just may want the cash flow. And you're cool with that. What's your downside?

Investors always get their money out. They get 100%, they get their interest and they get their 50% out. Always. And then from our perspective, Serenity Ventures as a management company can choose to keep it in or pull it out, depending.

What's your downside protection on that? If you put that in, we spend $50,000 to get the filings done. And then you put in 25,000 to test the water, or you put in the full 150 and we don't meet our minimum raise. Do you have any downside protection?

Well, yeah, I mean, we're looking at individual case by case basis. If you're pre revenue, it's different than if you're post revenue. So it just really becomes the specific. But. But what we're looking at doing is protecting our investors money. Right. And so this is a fund and that we make sure that the fund gets 100% of their proceeds back, their principal back, 7% interest back on the deals. And their 50%. And then after that, as long as they're 100% made whole, then it comes down. So if we have a failure rate that comes out of our 50% of the upside.

Okay, but like, but so if you just.

It's a great deal.

So. And it kind of depends on who you're investing up front because there may not be much collateral. Are there any personal guarantees that the owner is making towards you or anything like that?

You know, it depends on the, on once again, the company by company basis. You know, our ideal is not to take money from people that can't, you know, get it out. So that's the 25K. So if you really look at it, we're not going to fund the 50k of filing documents and the 100k beyond that. For things at the 25k, initial dollars don't show a CP that looks like we're going to get the million dollar minimum reach.

Yeah, yeah, good point.

But so 25k is really our downside. So maybe we miss, let's say worst case scenario, four of our, you know, seven investments in our first fund, you know, 25ks didn't indicate a CPA that was interested. We put 100k to work to these companies that first 100k didn't look like it returned any capital. And that was our loss ratio that my Serenity Ventures would take, not our investors. And then from there, you know, several of these companies would hit their minimum and would get fully funded and that would be upsized production that would make up for the 100k that did go into those companies that didn't get successfully closed. So we're minimalizing our loss by the 25k. And in some cases, yeah, if a company, I'd rather not do personal guarantees, I'd rather have a company that, you know, put up to 25k themselves to cover the cost. That's not a lot of money, you know, and if you can't come up with 25k, then, you know, you shouldn't probably be in this game. And I don't want to fund you if you can't do that because I might be putting a company out to market that's not a credible company and I don't want to.

You don't want to do that? Yeah. So it all depends on who you're dealing with. But that's.

Yeah. So I mean realistically, and we know a lot of Internet marketing guys, the 25k would be like 10k to Mike Keenings, you know, who's one of the best marketing guys I've ever met. He'd create a video for you. We'd go out and spend 15k on your ad spend. And between those two things, we get a pretty good lip to test that this is going to fund or not. And I would normally, if the company didn't have any revenue, make the person put that money up themselves just because they got to have some skin in the game. Right.

Okay, so let's talk about how we make money. Let's collaborate. Let's see what. Let's hunt this rabbit. See what this looks like. So from your side, what you find a company and you say here's what I just want to explore with you. All the little opportunities lie you find.

A company here actually because I'm only doing the funding side in Serenity Ventures in the current form. But there's a whole agency side. Remember the guys I'm giving that hundred k to? Those are agencies that are creating the ad spend and spending that money. There's an upside for that because I'd rather give you Brad my hundred K and know that you're gonna spend it wisely because you're one of the best Internet marketing guys I've ever met. Then go give it to some XYZ agency company. So that's. There's a whole play there.

I mean because you're. And because you're loaning the money, you can direct which agency to go with. Yeah, I mean if they're amazing at what they do, you may want to use them. But. Okay, cool. So you find a company and you're like hey, we need some marketing power behind here. And I guess that's not tremendously different than what they call like what is it? They call it a marketing bench for a VC fund or what?

Yeah, I mean that's exactly it. Some of our guys have done it. Another way to look at it is really someone compared it to this. One of the guys that wants to invest my fund recently was the infomercial market. So where you're putting money into these products that are consumer driven products because keep in mind this doesn't really work for a business to business company. B2B companies aren't really relevant but a consumer product where you're putting 25k, test the water, see if there's a market appetite for it, which is then a good proxy to say that this is a good product. And then if it's a good product then you would then go ahead and automatically fund the rest of the 150 necessary to continue to Drive forward on it. So that's probably a fairly easy comparison to make.

But you were saying for the infomercial market, when you meant the infomercial market, you're talking about people who are selling their products via direct response TV infomercials.

Yeah, I mean, as you know, those guys up in LA did a very strong QVC home shopping network. A lot of times they got into the business of actually funding these early companies because if they tested well, they would actually have a strong upside for product reception and would make millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars. Right. And if they didn't test well, then they would pull it back and their loss is 25k. But if they did test well and they put 150k into these companies and blew it up, there's a huge upside for them. So that's the kind of comparison basis of what we're seeing ourselves to some degree as in this thing.

Cool. Okay, so then, yeah, I see exactly what you're saying now comparing to the people who in essence loan money to prove that out. That's awesome. Okay, so there is the reactive opportunity, which is you come across a cool business, it needs some marketing firepower, ad spend and in essence you're creating like an investor funnel. Here's add to the page to build up the know like and trust factor. Cool. So what is a proactive thing that like for instance, I can either keep my mind, my eyes open for you or for us. What is something that. So I'm not like, I don't like to sit around and wait for opportunities.

That would be interesting for me to talk to. Right. Companies that have already existing customers, that have a significant customer base and or a significant following on social media or existing funnel that's already set up that says, look, let's go file the SEC documents, I'll give you money to add to your funnel. And in so doing we have a fairly high confidence ratio because you already have a good product out in market that we can sell this thing and get investors to want some of the upside because they're already buying a product. So if there's an existing product out there that's working, that's a pretty good idea of a way that investor can get liquidity. He can pull out his 30%, pay himself out. I'm sorry, the owner can get liquidity, we'll invest into the company, we'll get liquidity. The agency side would be paid out for fees to running the dollars. So there's a lot of wins all across the thing. And then My investors in my fund are incredibly happy because they're getting with success a large upside. So that would be an example a company that doesn't have the sales funnel, but it has an existing product that you see as potential. Could be an interesting component to it too to go out and test the market on.

I could easily as well see companies that like exactly what you said, they have a good product, maybe not a great sales funnel in place and build that up tag team.

Because you have a lot of Internet marketers that follow you on this podcast, right?

I hope so.

So think about it.

I like to think it's a bunch of hot Instagram models that they just want to follow me because they love the sound of my voice and also.

Happen to be fitness models on the side, but they do that because they want to keep themselves in shape, right?

Yes, it is likely a bunch of Internet marketing nerds, but I like to think of it as the Instagram model. So let's keep on going with that.

All right, so here's the thing that's interesting is they'll understand this. Once you file the 50k for SEC documents, it's essential you get a license to hunt, if you will, and add a new upsell funnel to it. Right? Hey, buy my product. Is one part of your funnel. Buy this upsell part of my product. I'll give you this plus this as you know, as part of your upsell. And now all of a sudden if you file this SEC documents and you have a good funnel, or even if you're fixing the funnel, now all of a sudden you got a third thing which is invest $2,000 into my company, you own a piece of this upside. It's as simple as that, right? So your Internet guys that have products that are either they're fixing the funnels as you mentioned, but they're actually got sales, or they want to add it to that as an upside funnel for them. That's a new way of making and selling a product. Does that make sense?

It does. It does. Yeah. I mean you could literally put that right in the upsell sequence. Now granted, it's not like hey, one click upsell, I'm sure, but you're letting them know after they purchase, hey, you want to share this on social media? Do you want to own a piece of this?

Here's the other cool thing is you can. It doesn't preclude you from giving away Kickstarter like upsells. Totally. So like I can. If you have a cool. Alright, let's go back to My last company, the fitness company. Right. Buy. Invest $2,000 into my fitness company and I'll give you six months of the membership for free. Yeah, that's, you know, because I can do the math on that.

Yeah. And that's something you control. It's. Especially if it's high margin. If it's whatever. Invest in this. Not only are you going to get shares, but you'll get.

You know.

Yeah. Some.

Something else or an entire minor Nasrapper guys that we know.

Like Drew could do. Like win a date with Drew. I'll go out with you.

He's like, look, I'll personally date you if you come in. Right. But in all seriousness, probably something illegal about that. He could give a year's worth of supply alongside an investment to his company. It's a part of the equity. It's the same thing as Kickstarter, but you're adding an additional layer to it. Dude, I know. It's big.

I knew I asked you on this show for a reason. This is cool, dude. I got several pages of notes here. I really like that this is top of mind because I just interviewed a guy the other day and I've always been interested in this for my current listeners, this show should be out by the time I'm talking about this. But just interviewed a guy named Ace Chapman, and Ace specializes in buying businesses, offline businesses as well as online businesses, e commerce businesses, you name it. He's, I don't know, probably bought 50 different businesses. And he teaches people how to do it as well. And he's always out there looking for businesses to purchase. My friend and a former guest on the show named Luke Havard also buys businesses, sometimes does consulting for equity, helps them raise liquidity in different ways. He's absolutely going to love this episode. So if somebody's out there looking to.

Purchase a business, wow, you just stumbled across a new thing. That is absolutely the right way to go. Right. Here's an interesting thing. Let's say you wanted to buy Stiletto Coffee, right? Yeah.

We're doing a leveraged buyout here.

You can. But here's the thing. You got to have a definitive agreement before you could go crowd raise the money necessary to go buy it. Yeah. So you and I would. Before I go out and say, hey, I'm buying Stiletto Coffee, I would have to have a definitive agreement that says as soon as the proceeds meet the amount necessary to buy your company, let's say it's $10 million. As soon as I acquire $10 million, there's a definitive agreement that you will transfer the assets over for that amount of $10 million. As soon as we have that definitive agreement in place, we can go crowdfund that capital.

Really? Okay, I think some brain matter just came out of my ears.

Here's another one.

Hold on, let me back that up.

Franchises, like a lot of our people know franchises, right. A lot of people don't have the money to buy the $50,000 or $250,000. Title three is a perfect example of a franchise like opportunity where you can go and buy a franchise. Right. It's not as good for an exit opportunity because it's harder to sell, but you can go raise the 50 or 100,000 or $250,000 franchise fees necessary to buy into and get your company up and running.

Okay, let me recap what I understand there. The previous example. I find a business I want to buy. Let's say it is a supplement business, E commerce supplement business. Because why not? And I come to an agreement to buy this company outright. Right. Cost $5 million.

Yep.

All right. Value's cash. He'd sell it tomorrow for cash for 5 million. Are you saying that I could come to an agreement? I could have a contract with him, whether it's like an option contract to buy or something like that, to where it's in writing that says I have the right to purchase that, but then that allows me to go file.

Yep. Because you're using, you're using his financials. So if you're buying it for $5 million to say he's got a certain amount EBITDA, he's putting off every year.

And I have an equitable interest in it because I have an option on the business.

Right. And so you, you have an option is essentially transfer of management. Right. I mean, really is what it is. And so as soon as that's done, he's been. He's been bought out. You own the thing. You're using his financials. They'd have to be audited, set up, and put through the same allow amount of SEC filings and so forth. But you would use his financial plus a definitive agreement in your ppm, your private placement memorandum. And then people would be looking at his financials when they decide to invest in the company, knowing that you're going to be the new operator of it.

Dude. Dude.

I know. I didn't really see why this is going to be so big.

I'm so glad we had this conversation, but I'm so pissed because I've got so many other things on my plate. And this is the sexiest. This is really, really cool.

You and your followers can all put a little bit of money into my thing. I'm really specifically. A lot of my guys right now are finance guys that are attracted to the terms because they're so good. But I love to have some guys in there that are Internet marketing guys that want to throw in some cash into these deals and put them into my fund because then I can use them to vet every one of these deals that I'm looking at off of it. Right. So imagine the, the talent that I could have with all the guys that follow us in one of our investment funds looking at every deal that comes out. I mean, I'm getting.

Yeah. So you don't just have mom and pop. These are like smart money investors who like, oh yeah, well, when you buy this, we'll take a look at the marketing, we'll see what needs to happen to grow it to do X, Y and Z.

Right now my guys that are funding it are like guys that put money into lending club and big, big plays out there, right. That are multi billion dollar things. They get the finance terms of it and they want the deal because of the finance terms. I'd also equally like to have, you know, people in there that are smart money from the Internet marketing side.

That's what I'm talking about, smart money. I'm talking about smart marketer.

Finance guys call themselves smart money. But it's all depending on perspective, isn't it? Exactly. Guys in this world, smart money.

I'm thinking smart marketer money.

Yeah.

I wonder if smartmarketermoney.com exists.

I'm gonna go buy TN.

Son of a bitch. But yeah. Shit, dude, this just head exploding.

Okay, so it's such a great deal for them versus everyone getting into the industry, which inevitably a lot of Internet guys are going to be coming here because there's going to be a shit ton of money going into it and a lot of opportunity to capitalize. I'd rather consolidate those guys into one element and one vehicle and that we become the most powerful vehicle in the industry to really be the go to de facto underwriter for these deals. And you come to us because we got every good Internet marketer guy in the deal and we know that we're going to get you launched and successfully out and raised. Yeah, we'd be unstoppable.

Really smart. Because now, I mean, because otherwise it's like, hey listen, we got a bunch of money and we're just going to invest money and hope you do something right. It's like, no, we're going to invest, going to do this, and we got the people behind it to make sure that it's a success.

We'll be the new Goldman Sachs of the world, dude. Yeah.

Okay, so let's wrap this up. This has been amazing, by the way. You're going to come to the Boardroom Mastermind in July. I'll send you the exact dates. Are you going to be around in July?

Yeah, I'd love to come.

I'd love to have you present on.

This show back from Europe, I think late June. So, yeah, love to come.

Yeah, I think it's July 14th. If any of my listeners are interested, it's really by invitation only, but you can apply just go to theboardroommastermind.com but yeah, David, I'd love to have you there. And I think there's some people in there that you would blow some minds. Okay, so for my listeners, number one, I see your screen still, so I know you have a pitch deck there. I don't know if that's. That's publicly available. If you want to make that available for download on our site, you can. You do not have to.

Now, this is for sophisticated players that are either in Internet or finance business that would want to get in, that could invest probably 25 grand minimum into a fund. As I mentioned, the terms of the fund would be you get 100% of your money back, you get 7% interest, and you get 50% of the success fees of that money.

So send that to me privately. I won't share it with anybody else.

Our Internet guys want into it. So I'll circle it all around to our Mastermind. And then if any guys that are listeners, they can email you or me and we'll let them in. Because like I said, as long as they got smart money, quote unquote, we'll let them in.

Okay, cool. The other thing, for people who are listening, if they're still listening after an hour and a half, then they're awesome. And if they want to know more, if they want to get involved, involved means a, they can invest money with you to be a part of Serenity Ventures to cash in as well. If they may have a company that they're like, shit, I want to raise money. I want to be one of the investments. Right?

Yep. Cool.

I can already think of. Ooh, shit, dude. Dude.

Mm.

For this guy, I mean, for the early stage people or for, you know, this Title four. Did you say it can be pre revenue or early, early stage.

It can be pre revenue. And just keep in mind that your revenue is going to be directly proportionate to the valuation you're going to be able to get.

Cool. So I've got a pitch deck. Hey, Mike. Brunette. Are you listening, buddy? So he's a listener to the show and I've done a call with him and he's gonna love this. But the long story short, without going into too much detail, he's raised, he's got a $50,000 angel. I believe it's angel commitment. But that's predicated upon him raising another 50,000. So when he can raise the other 50,000, then this one kicks in and he's looking for funding right now. And he's got an app based business, looks pretty good. I've seen the deck. Real serious. Smart guy. There may be something there because he's already moving forward. He's got his valuations, he's got all that other stuff.

Yeah. For him, he could put it up on a portal. That's not going to be Serenity Ventures specifically because unless you're raising a large enough money, the cost doesn't make sense. Sense. But.

Oh, that's right. Because yeah, if he's raised like a hundred thousand, that's not.

I don't agree. Perfect. Right. He can get, he's got 50k committed. It would be a very sexy, you know, offering to say there's essentially matching funds for, you know, the next 50k. Right. That's really what it is. Right. Is so he could put that up on a portal and pretty quickly get friends and family and others to come in and just interested investors as well to come in and invest knowing that there's already 50k committed or matching, however you want to describe it.

That's huge.

And then, you know, I mean, we're really bigger plays that are for Serenity Ventures. I mean this is, it's expensive to do this. You know, 50k is even pretty.

Right. Though.

Yeah. People. And then, you know, these are bigger companies and a specific criteria, but if you meet that criteria, you have a big, you know, customer base or you have a good selling funnel. Yeah, send it over our way. We'll look at it and you can help me look at it and we'll just do the deals for them and make sure that they're successful.

Sweet. Okay, so how do people get ahold of you?

You can email me at davidmetzler. Actually just go to davidmserenityvp.com serenity.

Is that V as in Victor, Victor Papa.

In my air traffic control days. Victor Papa. Yes. Serenity Venture Partners vp.com and that'll come to me. Davidmserenityvp.com and we'll take a look and work together with with you.

That's great, man. I am really glad we did this. Really?

Yeah. This is fun. I mean I love dealing with smart people. And as you can see, this is now a wedding. As I said in our Internet mastermind, I finally figured out why I'm in this group. I'm a venture investment scaling business kind of guy and all of a sudden now I can see the Internet play here. It's just as strong. It's a venture meets Internet right play here. And that's the people that do this are going to be the rulers of the future Finance.

I agree with you. One of the things I actually really like about it is that for me and why my curiosity is huge for the past. Oh shoot. Since 2000 I guess eight, I've been doing Internet marketing eight years and all types of marketing, Internet especially prior to that I was in finance, sales and finance most of my life with a degree in finance and economics. Sold stocks, bonds. I understand it.

You're not just a pretty face sometimes.

Not just a pretty face, but that's one of the things I do like about it as well is that it also marries my two pieces of past experience together and my head is swimming with potential opportunities here. Well, I'll tell you what man, we will wrap this up to my bacon wrapped business listeners. I fully expect you to email me like I'm dead serious. If you're still listening, email me, ask bradaconratbusiness and say Brad, that was effing awesome. Loved it. Oh my gosh. No other podcast hosts talk about this. They're all talking about bs. You're the best and you're handsome. Say that please, like make me happy. Or to say it in a better than better than emailing me, put it in the itunes review. But if you do have any questions, concerns, if you've got any ideas, share those with me at AskBradacon wrapped business. And if you are, I mentioned earlier, if you are potentially interested in taking a look at the boardroom Mastermind, go to theboardroommastermind.com and let me know what what you're trying to achieve. I was on another interview earlier today, dude, and one of the things I said, he goes, what's been one of the secrets of your success? And I said, it's the mindset that I don't have to know everything. I just have to know the people who do and that's what I absolutely love. I mean we have the ability now to. Because I know you, because you know me. We know other people. There's a lot of money that can be made in this world.

Yeah. And doing it ethically is something that I'm interested in. Right. Bringing these companies to market that don't have funding so people don't end up like I did. Right. Short on capital because someone didn't follow through with a commitment.

Absolutely. All right, man. Well, this has been really, really cool and we will be talking here real soon. I guer own t. All right.

A lot of love and thanks for having me on here. What a cool show and to be around smart, good looking people like yourself. It was.

Thank you. Thank you. All right, brother, we'll talk to you soon. Bacon rat business over and out.