82. Evaluating Business Opportunities with Brian Gubernick — Win Make Give with Ben Kinney

Welcome everybody to the Win Make Give podcast. My name is Bob Stewart, and once again they left me here by myself. Chad and Ben, I don't know, we were— they were all supposed to be here today. I, I don't see them anywhere. Dave, you see them? So guess what we did? We grabbed our friend Brian Gubernick again, my co— my new co-host.

Co-host.

I don't know, Brian, how many of these do you have to do with just me and you before you Do you like officially become the co-host?

You know what, Bob, that's gonna have to be your call. Okay. I'm just, I'm working hard here. I just wanna live up to the standard.

The answer's 2.

Okay. 2.

Ladies and gentlemen, my new co-host, Brian Gubernick for the Win Make Give podcast. So Brian, here's what I wanna talk about today. Okay. Because as entrepreneurs, and I think we have a lot of entrepreneurs that listen to this, to this podcast, you know, we talk about health, wealth, leadership, and legacy. And I think when you're, when you're an entrepreneur, those, Those things all kind of fit in buckets of that you want to develop, right? So as an entrepreneur, we're constantly searching for our next business venture, the next thing we could get into, the next ancillary business that we could invest in. And I think, you know, you get yourself into the right position. Like I watch Ben and he's in this position a lot. These things are, you get to a point where they're coming at you fast and fierce, these opportunities, right? And the bigger business you grow, the more people that you run into, The more people look to you and go, oh, that Ben Kinney guy, like, I'd, I'd sure like to be in business with him. Like, these opportunities that they start to come like pretty fast and furious. So the question that we want to dive into in today's, in today's episode is when we've, when we are presented with a new business opportunity that we're interested in pursuing, like, how do we assess that thing? How do we go about, or what, how do we determine like, is this worth my time? Is it worth my money? Is it worth, is it worth thinking about?

Right. I, you know, I think for a lot of entrepreneurs, Bob, it's a, it's a sickness, right? Like you're walking around, you're thinking about, I mean, many entrepreneurs, I'm going to guess they're anything like me, you, or any of these other individuals I know you talk with or that listen to this podcast, you kind of walk around life thinking, man, that looks like an opportunity, or that looks like something that's underserved that I could capitalize on, or how do I get more out of this respective business that I'm in, or what's a new stream of revenue? Like, we constantly are thinking, uh, this way. And for many of us, I'm certainly guilty of it, you'll bite off, uh, you know, you'll jump into an opportunity that's not really an opportunity at all. And, and in my experience, Bob, a lot of the times if that's happened to me, it's because I didn't actually have a process for truly underwriting whether or not it made sense.

I like that term, underwriting. Underwriting the investment opportunity to make sure that just like an underwriter on a loan scenario, what doesn't make sense to make this loan?

Well, it's an investment, right? That's what I mean. That's really, which is a huge focus, of course, on our podcast.

That's right. That's right.

On our podcast, we talk quite a bit around investment and it's beyond just the next real estate property. It applies very much to businesses. And so we underwrite properties. I think we underwrite businesses. So what's our criteria? What are we looking for? What are we looking for? Not to just qualify this business but disqualify this business? Like, how are we going to come up? Like, what's our method?

And so, or sometimes you're even— it's, it's, you know, initially in the beginning, Brian, it's like you have one opportunity and you're deciding, do I, do I go or do I pass? But later it becomes, I've got 5 opportunities and any one of them could potentially be good, but maybe one of them's better, right? One of them fits better. So you might be underwriting multiple of these against each other.

Yeah, that's very true. And we've all read, we've all heard, we've all talked around. Oftentimes it's the no that makes you more money than the yes. Right? Like it's what we say no to that frees up our time to say yes to the right things. And so I think we have to have a system for this. Why wouldn't we? Right? You made the, you made the comment earlier and you're 100% right. When your world is small, when your current business is relatively small, this isn't a huge problem. But as your world grows, and again, you wouldn't be listening to the podcast today unless you had aspirations of growing your world. As it gets bigger and bigger, your time will get pulled in multiple ways. Your opportunities, or perceived opportunities, will land on your desk at an alarming rate. And if we said yes to all of these things, 'cause a lot of them sound good.

[Speaker:ROBERT_LEONARD] Yeah.

[Speaker:RYAN_LEONARD] If you say yes to 'em, you know, it may not play well for you in the future. So again, I think you really gotta have a method, a system to figuring out what works.

And these things aren't just landing on your desk. They're often being presented to you by somebody that's super passionate about it. They've perfected their pitch, right? Their passion could potentially rub off on you. And if, again, if you didn't have a system to kind of normalize all these 10 different opportunities, put a certain filter on them and look at them compared to one another, or maybe just independently compared to the questions we're going to ask here, right? You would, you wouldn't, it'd be really hard you would say yes to many more than you should.

Well, I think, and also recognize that we're always going to have some biases depending on where we're at at that very moment. What's our headspace? What's our emotion? Like, how are we doing? Uh, I know maybe I'm just speaking for myself. I know that even time of day will directly impact my decision-making ability around what's good and what's not, right? So again, I think you've got to have a system. And today we're going to go through a system that we put together. It may not be the system. I would encourage everybody listening accommodating, to take what it is we have, understand the concept, and either apply it directly as we discuss or come up with your own criteria that works for you. But again, I think the most important thing is that you have some sort of system, you have some sort of criteria by which you're going to underwrite, by which you're going to make these determinations.

All right, so a business opportunity I'm interested in is fill in the blank. So let's— should we work with, uh, you want to work through like—

well, Bob, I, I'm a little, I'm a little worried to ask you like, hey, give me one of your thousands of business ideas you've had over the course of time. You know, let's talk around, you know what, let's just leave it generic.

So, I've got this opportunity A, let's say, right? And let's go through. So, you have, what are there, about 10 or 12 questions?

There's 10 questions here. There's 10 questions here. And you want to know something, Bob? I actually think it might be good to have an example. I know we have a lot of real estate people probably listening. In real estate, one thing we can do when we look for business opportunity, or any business for that matter, we should be looking at our expenses in our respective business and asking, can I turn an expense actually into a source of revenue? So an example of this in the real estate space, we, um, we have costs to list the property, to list the property for sale. One of those big costs is the sign.

Okay.

Like the sign you put in the ground, the sign you are paying— most of us are paying a sign company to put that sign in the ground, right? And if you're taking a lot of listings, if you're listing a lot of properties for sale, that sign cost can get rather high, right? So I think for many people listening today, wouldn't surprise me if they thought to themselves at some point, enough with this, I'm just going to go open my own sign company. It'll eliminate my own expense and I could sell my sign services to all of my realtor friends in the city.

Sure.

So I think we— let's just use that as a simple basic example for this filter.

Okay.

Okay. So a business opportunity, Bob, that I'm interested in, a sign company, a sign post company. Okay. So the first question, the first thing I would do, I have a series of 10 questions. Now, these 10 questions that we run through, Bob, they're not in a specific order, right? So, so for me, I'm going to order these questions that I'll go through by what's most important and what's least important. In other words, there's certain things depending on where I'm at in my life, where I'm at in my career, that might have higher priority than others. For example, and we'll get to this, but I just want to show you what I mean. Um, one of the questions I ask is, is there travel involved? Okay, where I'm at today in my life with my kids and my, the world that I've created in, in Scottsdale, Arizona, um, travel is— I, I'm not— I'm done traveling. Yeah, like, my days of flying into another state and opening a business, it's probably not in the cards for me to the extent it was in 2011 when I expanded my real estate operation to the state of Washington. Yeah, right. So in 2011, I couldn't wait to get on a plane. It was a blast. It was fun. It was exciting. It was new, new city, new town, new people. That was Brian, Brian almost 10 years ago. Brian 10 years from forward today, no way. Yeah, right. So that would move further up the ladder. So it could be—

it's the same 10 questions. It could be based on the season of your life that you're in. These questions have a different order and you're giving different priority to them. I'm assuming— I haven't really dug into these, we're gonna dig into them— I'm assuming even different opportunities during the same season might end up putting those questions in a different order.

That's right, absolutely. Keep in mind though, the purpose of the filter, the purpose of the system is to minimize risk and create clarity around whether this actually makes sense or not. Right. So it's to eliminate your bias to the greatest extent possible. So yes, where you're at, there is some bias involved there. You get to use that bias to rank the questions, but hopefully that's the extent of it.

Right.

Because we all tend to be a little bit more optimistic about our ideas than, than we should be. So the first question— I don't want to call it question number 1, but the first on my list Bob, uh, for this sign company, I would ask, what's the upside? What's the financial upside if we project 3 to 5 years out? What is the potential annual income this business can make? And really, how does that potential, um, annual income— how does that compare to my minimum required new business income? Okay, so what's the upside? Now, what do I mean when I say minimum required new business income? For me, When I was expanding my business in 2011, the number that Ben was told, you know, by our mentor, the number I was told by my mentor in real estate expansion was $100,000. In other words, for me to expand my business, there had to be a $100,000 annual income opportunity for me to jump in. That was my minimum required new business income. Now we all have different numbers. Today, um, that minimum required new business income for me, for me to go put forth my time, energy, effort, dollars, uh, to open a new business, it's beyond $100,000, right? So it's, it's, it's actually much greater than that. But again, that comes back to where I'm at in my life. Now, there was a point in my life as, you know, Brian, the guy fresh out of college, that, uh, if I had an opportunity to go launch a business, the number may have been $30,000, right? Like I could pay my bills. I'm happy. Yeah, right. So you get to determine. So again, first question, what's the upside? And if you forecast out 3 to 5 years, what's the potential annual income that business can make?

Does this— like, that question to me forces you to be clear on how this, how this new opportunity makes money, right? Like, what's the, what's the addressable market? Like, you're having to do a little bit of kind of research here to really get yourself bona fide answers.

Yeah, I mean, if you're really going to— if you're going to be sincere in your answer here, you've got to put together a pro forma. You've got to forecast out. You got to look at best case, worst case. Naturally, we're going to look at what's the worst case that I make in this business? Is it $100,000? And if $100,000 is my number, cool. I pass go. Yeah, right.

Like I collect my, you know, you'd be like, there's, there's X number of listings that go on in my market every year. If I could get 10% of those and install the sign on them, that'd be this. And if they were paying this much, that'd be— it either qualify at $100,000 or it wouldn't.

If we go back to the signpost example, Well, you may say, if I make a dollar of income, I'm pumped, right? But if I eliminate all of my expense, I'm good with it. That may be your answer, and I'm cool with that, right? So that's the first question I'm going to take a look at. The next question, Bob, around this business opportunity, I'm going to ask, what dangers or challenges exist? What obstacles do I have to overcome? What is it that I'm possibly missing or not seeing right now? That can have an adverse impact on this business opportunity. So going back to the signpost company, right? What dangers or challenges exist? There's competition. Okay, how much competition? What obstacles do I have to overcome? Can I overcome that? There's some logistics. There's a— there's people involved, right? Like, these are some challenges. One interesting one, since we're talking about a signpost company right now, there's not a place in the nation that I'm aware of that doesn't have an inventory shortage. Not enough homes available for sale. So that would have an adverse impact on my signpost company. So, uh, what am I possibly missing? Well, if you asked me this a year ago, one of my answers should have been, wow, if inventory dropped a great deal, it would have a sizable impact on my business. What do I do if that happens? Right? So again, we've now looked at how much money can we make. Next, we're going to look at, okay, what challenges exist? I really want to know, Bob, like in this particular case, am I willing to— you'll see it further down the list of questions. Am I willing to put in the effort to go solve for this? Or am I willing to go find somebody that could solve for this? What stands in my way? Because, and I asked this question early because, um, again, we have a tendency to be incredibly optimistic and we rarely slow down and black hat what it is. And I'm saying, go black hat this deal. Bob, if this wasn't to work for you, what would cause that? What would be the issue?

Do you, because in Ben's world, we have a lot of this stuff come across. And he uses the rest of us to kind of, look, I don't, I don't know, honestly, I don't know what his looks like. Like you have 10 things that you asked. I don't know what his looks like. I feel like he's asking a lot of these same questions because he'll often have me say, hey, what do you think of this? This, we're thinking about doing this thing. What do you think some of our, our challenges could be? Right? And so do you bring other people kind of in your world in to help you look at some of these things? Because like, When you're asking yourself, what am I possibly missing? How the hell do you know what you're missing? Right? Like you almost need another set of eyes.

Well, Bob, I mean, I mean, maybe I'm sharing a little bit too much, but I'm spending some time up here hanging out with the crew because we're looking at a couple of different opportunities. Right. And a couple of days ago, um, uh, when you and I were together, I had some of my, my crew with me, some of my partners. And you probably remember my, my, my partner Julie was in the room and I said, Julie, If this wasn't to work out, why? Why would that be the case? Yeah, right. So very much to your point, I'm caught up in it, right? I'm bi— I have a bias. I'm excited. I'm trying to figure out ways for it to work. I wanted Julie, who had a different perspective, to tell me why it wouldn't work. Now, that doesn't mean that she's rooting against it. It just means that I'm challenging her to come up with, you know, poking a hole in my plan. Right. And so— and I want her to do the same. And I think To your point, I think it's tough to see these things if you don't bring some of your, some of your, you know, your board, your people in.

Yeah, your board. It doesn't— it could be a mentor, right? Like, I'm assuming you've done this with Ben before. You said, hey, man, I got this business opportunity. Like, tell me why.

We've done this countless times. We've probably had conversations well into the middle of the night talking around this exact thing. I know some people I coach and train and consult with. I love this, right? This is a— this is really a coaching question. What dangers or challenges exist? We're talking about, you know, people have heard of SWOT analysis. Well, I'm really talking about the, the WOT, you know, the W-O-T here, right? Like, what's the weaknesses? What's the obstacles? What's the threats? Like, we're looking at those things, right?

All right, number 3.

Next question on here: who is the jockey, and is he or she the right fit? If not, how challenging will it be to find the right jockey? So what am I really talking about? Who's driving this thing?

Who's that person?

Who's driving it? And if I don't have a driver, that means it's me. Am I the right jockey? Right. So signpost company, if you're looking at it as a real estate sales organization and you say, I'm going to go open a signpost company, I'm going to eliminate my expenses, all I care about is making a dollar. I've got the challenges and the dangers. I've got that all covered. Now I've got to ask myself, who's driving this thing? Because I can assure you, Bob, in my real estate, when I was really in the trenches with my real estate sales team and I'm in production and I'm running it, If I was the one that was gonna run this signpost company, it would never get off the ground because I would have put it on my whiteboard, it would have been at the bottom of my whiteboard, and would have sat there for 2 years. I would have never touched it. So I'd have to ask the question, okay, I'm not gonna be the one to drive it. Who can do it? Are they the right person? Are they just taking it on because I've said take it on, or are they passionate about building a new business, building a signpost company that's potentially not gonna make any profit but it's going to eliminate all our expenses. Who's the right jockey? Are they the right fit? And if not, if I don't have that person in my world, how challenging is it going to be to find that person? So for everyone listening right now, let's, let's, let's pause, right? You all probably have a business in your mind, right? You've probably— if you're running through this with us, you're thinking, what's the potential income? Uh, what challenges am I going to have to overcome? Who's going to drive this opportunity? Think about your opportunity, who's going to drive it. If you are the person, I'm not opposed to it, but what are you going to give up in order to do that? And not only that, are you even the right person? Like, are you truly the right person? Do you have the right skillset, right? Are you built for this? Maybe, maybe not.

There are a number of opportunities that we've invested in, in Ben's world. You know, we have things like a coaching company, a virtual assistant company, And, and, and there's probably right now 5 other aspects that we want to, we want to do something in. And I just had this conversation 4 days ago with Ben last Friday. I said to him, I said, hey, we got this one thing. And, and you've talked about you want to do this one thing. I'm like, are you actively looking for that person to do this thing? Because what he said to me is, yeah, it's a great idea. We want, we want to do this. We got to find that person. And so my question was like, are you actively looking for this person? But On all those other things, we have a mortgage company, we have a title company that Ben's invested in and a part owner of. We have all these kind of ancillary things around our business. In often case, we said, we know we want to do this. The next step was find that person.

The best out there in business will default to who before they default to anything else. Oftentimes when you're a solo entrepreneur, when you're just building, you'll default to what? Like, what steps am I gonna take? Or how am I gonna get this done? The best though will default to who? And that's a learned behavior because for many, you built your business 'cause you went out there and you out-hustled everybody else around you. That's just how it happened. So you defaulted to what and how, but you're going to hit a ceiling. And when you do, you default to, you have to learn to default to who, you know, and who in this case is the jockey that's gonna drive this business, right? So I think that's an important question.

All right, so we've got the jockey. The next question kind of gets to, I don't know, I, I've actually owned a horse at one point in my life. Me and a couple buddies went in.

Jockey resonates.

We bought a racehorse. Yeah. But what you realize is it's not, you have a trainer, you've got these other guys that help the trainer, you have the team, right? You don't just put the jockey on the horse and the horse wins the race. You've got a team. And so the next question is, how many people?

Yeah. How many people will be involved in the operation of this business today? And how many are going to be involved, or do you forecast involved in 3 years? Now, why does quantity of people matter? Let's call it what it is. People create complexity. That's what it is. So, for me, again, I'll use me as an example. A decade ago, I may want 5,000 people working alongside me. That may have been an aspiration of mine. Today, maybe I'm older and crotchety or whatever it may be. Bob, I like businesses that have fewer people involved. And, and greater production per individual, right? So it's just where I'm at. So how many people will be involved in the operation? I don't think this is a good or bad thing. This isn't even a yes or no thing. It's an awareness thing. Do I want to run a signpost company that's going to need 17 different people just to execute a business that may not make money? Because remember, my threshold in this business may be $1. Or does this— is this actually something that I could take my current transaction manager, um, who puts 5 hours a week into this, and it's run by one individual with a runner, right? So this is complex. This is just— this is just what kind of business do you want to run? How many people is it going to involve? And let's be aware of what it's going to take today, as well as when I grow this thing, what's it going to take, say, 3 years from today, okay?

Which ties back to the first question we asked, which is project— what is this thing going to look like in 3 years, right? And we can't even wrap our heads around how many people we're going to need if we don't know— we didn't answer the first question, which is how big is this thing going to be in 3 years, or how big could it be?

So the next question— again, these are in no exact order, you get to put them in the order you desire, um, based on the priority you have in your world. Uh, the next thing I'd ask is what are you, right, as the entrepreneur, what are you bringing to the table? Is it your time? Is it your influence or is it your capital or combination of two or all three? And how do you feel about this? So what am I really talking about? Is it your time, influence, or capital? If I go back in time, me a decade ago, me 15 years ago, um, and for many listening today, let's just call it what it is. You may not have the capital to go launch this opportunity. Um, you may not have a great deal of influence, but I bet you have a lot of time. So for me, 15 years ago, when I entered the real estate business and, and I haven't had any degree of success, I was willing to outwork everybody. That's what I had. I had time available to me. I didn't know anybody and I didn't have any money. Now, over the course of time, you start to gain influence, you start to build relationships, and of course you start to hopefully acquire capital. So as you progress in business, today I have a lot less time but I have more influence and more capital. So for me, any sort of business venture I get into probably isn't going to be one that takes a massive amount of my time, but may leverage my influence or my capital. Whereas another individual may be able to contribute their time, but doesn't have the capital. That's how some of these business relationships join. So, or come together. So what are you bringing to the table? In this particular example, we're talking about a signpost company again. What are you contributing? Your influence might be one, right? Because you know realtors around town that could leverage your business. Your capital— now mind you, it should be a relatively small startup cost, but it's going to be your dollars. But you need somebody else to contribute the time. Uh, now if you found a business venture, Bob, that was going to require a lot of your time, like for me, if it was a lot of my time, I may be prompted to say no, no matter how great the idea may seem, because I just don't have the bandwidth. I don't feel great about that, or I'm unwilling to say no to something else in order to say yes to this. Again, just another awareness question.

Yeah. And ultimately, we're not making a decision, Brian, on any one of these things. I mean, though, there may be something— the first question, if at the end of the day you're like, this thing actually doesn't make any money, maybe that totally disqualifies everything. But you're kind of— it's the summation of answering all these questions that really makes— helps you find that.

That's 100% right. Though I will say, Bob, there are many a time where I've gone through this with individuals and they get 3 questions in, they're like, this is not the right opportunity. It actually happens more often than you can imagine. And I'm like, perfect. That's exactly what we're here for. That's exactly why we're going to— if you can get through all 10 of these questions, feel great about all 10 of your answers, regardless of how you rank it, it's probably something you should strongly consider pursuing. I mean, it's just the reality. So this next question, Bob, I really like this one. I like them all, but I definitely like this one. Um, for a couple reasons. So the question is, on a scale of 1 to 5— and let me break real quick, think about the business opportunity you have in mind, and if you don't have a business opportunity in mind, you're opening a signpost company with Bob and me, okay? So on a scale of 1 to 5, eliminating 4 from that scale— so on a scale of 1 to 5, you can't use a 4— how passionate are you about this opportunity in comparison to the other businesses that you currently operate and/or are currently constructing? In addition, what opportunities, if any, must you forego in order to pursue this business? So Bob, on a scale of 1 to 5, of all the things you can be doing, or all the things you're currently doing, how passionate are you about launching this opportunity? And by the way, Bob, you can't use a 4.

Okay, well, tell me why there's— why no 4?

Because if you had a 4, everybody gives a 4. It's, it's an on-the-fence answer. It's like if I said 1 to 10, what do you think everybody gives? 6, 7, actually 7's the answer. So I eliminate 7, I eliminate 4. Now you have to commit.

So 1 to 5, I can't do 4. And from— I mean, when I, when I hear that, if I don't say 5, to me, like, if I'm a 3, I'm middle of the road, like, I'm not passionate about that.

But that may be okay. Like, I'll be honest with you, Signpost Company, not passionate. I don't know if there's a lot of people that are going to give you a 5.

Sure.

I think everyone will give you a 4. If you give me a 3, that doesn't mean that you disqualify this. I'm just trying to bring awareness to where you stand. Why? Well, because I know in a lot of business situations, we all know this, when your back's against the wall, when you've got to launch a business, when you're grinding, when you're having to do these things that take it, you know, you got to put in extra effort, passion oftentimes shows up at that point.

Yeah. Do I want to be doing this at 11 o'clock at night? No. But if I'm passionate about it, I'm going to—

I might fight through. And if I really don't care about this, I might not. Now, if I'm a 3 or a 2, again, it doesn't mean that I don't want to go— I'm not going to go open the signpost company. I'm just keenly aware of the fact that at 11 o'clock at night, I'm not working on this signpost company.

And this is again where these questions— like, look, if, if I answered 2, but the question about up above, what are you bringing to the table, and time was one of those elements where it's like, okay, I'm gonna invest a lot of time in this, But it's a 2.

That's a great, great—

all of a sudden those things don't line up, right? But if it was a 2 and really all I was doing is investing some capital in it, I might be more likely to do the 2 when it's capital versus 2 when it's time.

I think you nailed that. I mean, I think it's a great way to connect those questions because you're 100% right. You could be a 1, but if you see, you know, financial upside and you're just putting in your capital and your jockey's a 5, there you go. I mean, you've got a lot of different parts. So again, another awareness question. This is an underwriting question. Like, do I or do I not want to do this deal? This is just one of the components of it. The next thing, this is something I actually added a little later. And again, this is Brian probably being an old crotchety guy these days. Uh, Bob, how loud will this business be? How much noise will it create in my world? Now, what do I mean by that? We all have a slightly different definition. A sign company or a post company, how loud is that going to be? What do I mean by loud? When a mistake's made, am I going to hear about it? When a sign isn't put in on time, am I going to hear about it? When a charge is too high, will it create a headache for me? Because Bob, remember, this business isn't making a whole lot of money, and I've just got my capital involved. Is this going to be noisy for me? Yeah, because it's not worth it. Like, I'm just— that's where I'm at now. Maybe it's a loud business, but I'm great with it because this is my sole focus. I'm a, I'm a firefighter. Like I'm a firefighter, I'm putting in, like, I'll give you an example. I own a property management business. It's a pretty loud business. Not for me, it's not, right? Why? Because my jockey is killer, right? So she, it's super loud for her, but that's her job dealing with, she's a firefighter, she's putting out fires. Now, if that was noisy for me, it's a noisy business, but if it was a noisy business for me, my capital, and my influence might not be worth it. That's exactly right. But because I have the right person, it's not as noisy for me. So I look at noise, I look at loud, part of the— partly because if you think noise, what's a noise do? Distracts you. Loud distracts you, which means the areas that I do need to be focusing on my time specifically, I don't want to be distracted from. So noise matters. Now, if I'm not working on other things, I could deal with more noise.

I feel like this is a question that makes you kind of dig in to understand the customer again. Like at the end of the day, what do we, who do we sell to? And what are all the potential problems that can happen to make that person pissed? And they're creating noise now, right?

Mm-hmm. That's exactly right. So the next question, again, remember guys, not in any specific order, you're gonna rank these. But the next question, Bob, what's this business's moat? What is special about the business or proprietary about its product or service?

Right?

Like what makes it different? So the Signpost Company, What's its moat? I don't know. What is it going to be? Is it going to be, is it possible that its service is better than anybody's? Are you using some sort of special sign? Is it your delivery? Like, what is it that you have that's special, that's proprietary, that separates you from the competition? If you don't have anything, okay, it still may work, but it could be disrupted rather easily, right? So what's so special about this business?

That could be like, I think of the sign company, obviously using this example, but like, you're an influent, you're influential in your industry, in your area, right? Like, you know, most of the agents, you probably know most of the broker owners. You like, so that could actually be a component of your moat is your influence in that particular area.

100%. I'll give you like an example of a moat. Like I mentioned, the property management business. In my property management business, I have a partner that is a military vet, military veteran. And with that military veteran, we then promote the business as veteran-owned. That's actually a moat to our business. People want to do business with us because my partner is a former Army Ranger. That's a very, very specific thing to my business that my competition would struggle in competing with, unless of course they were in the military services as well. So the point I'm trying to make there is that's a unique moat, right? So it could be your service, it could be your product, could be something about it. And if it doesn't exist, I'm okay with that, but recognize that business could be easily disrupted. Okay, so the next question— I alluded to this one at the very start, Bob— uh, is there travel involved? Um, this is another one I added a little later down the road. Um, is there travel involved? I, I think that with a, with a signpost company, you as the owner, there's probably no travel. I don't mean travel in terms of delivering the signs at the property. I mean, do you have to physically get up and go to another state? A good example of this, for me, maybe for those that know me or that, you know, I'm friends with, I've done an awful lot of speaking and training and teaching around the country. There was a year where I think I hit 50 different cities in the year. That was an awesome time. I probably won't do that kind of circuit again. I actually really enjoy the travel. I enjoy the people. I don't enjoy being away from my wife and my daughters, right? So the world is different.

I'm the same way. In 2009, Ben and I went to 36 cities around the country. And it was an amazing experience. The idea of doing that today, again, I got small children, I'm married, I love my wife, like, just not in the cards for me today.

Now, all that being said, Bob, I think if you go back to one of the early questions, the first question, what's the potential income? I'm not saying that that's the deciding factor, but could I change my thoughts around travel plans? If it was a million dollars, my wife would be like, "Get your ass outta here and go do that." It could be such that my kids and my wife go on an adventure with me for a year and we go do those things. So again, it's an awareness thing and you've got to weigh it against the other questions. The very last question. Um, and, and this is, I mean, again, I like them all. It's probably one of my favorites too. Uh, does your existing businesses or do your, does your current business already provide the customers for this new venture? Are there any resources or synergies or efficiencies from your other businesses or business that can be leveraged, right? This is, this is a great one. As a matter of fact, I mean, here we are, we're talking about some things you guys are doing here with Ben and the team. Uh, there is a tremendous amount of synergy, efficiency, customers from one venture that could work with another. Uh, that's frankly, it's part of your model. Like in my mind, and I don't want to put words in anybody's mouth, but I know, you know, my buddy Ben pretty well. I would bet you if he was to rank these, these questions, this one would be one that would have to be at the top of his list.

Yeah.

Because I've watched him business build and we don't—

we— he very rarely gets into something that doesn't— where the answer to this last question isn't yes. Like there's leverage against our existing client base and this is an ancillary thing that, that half of those people definitely want.

Well, I mean, you're absolutely right. I mean, you're Does Ben get out of the real estate space now and again? Sure, sure, of course he does, right? But, but will Ben do something entirely different like it's an easy decision? No, of course not. It would be silly, right? Like myself, I'm the same. Like, I'm going to be predominantly in the real estate space now. There's going to have to be other things that come up or other questions that weigh more, you know, that have higher priority or weigh more heavily that would prompt me to leave my space. But if I stay within the space, I already have some existing influence, existing customers, existing efficiency.

I know, like we were talking about this before we came in the room. You used to have a health-related business. And I think though, well, you still, you own the building in there, right? And so the business went into a building you own.

Really, Bob, I'll tell you, it's a really good one. So I did own, of all things, a cryotherapy business, right? Like, so there's, there is no tie, no matter how I try to spin it up right now, there is no tie between real estate real estate clients and the cryotherapy business. But what most may not know is I owned a gym.

Okay.

And so that gym fed a lot of people into the cryotherapy business. That cryotherapy business was run out of a business that I— I'm sorry, a building that I own.

Yeah.

So it's loose, right? Like there's a loose connection, but there was a business paying the mortgage of a property I own with a portion of my gym customers going to that. So there's some synergies They're not as strong as you may like. Like if you had a real estate sales business and you worked with realtors all day long and then opened up a signpost company, there's probably more synergy there. Or if you have listings that you're taking and you need to put the signs in the ground, some synergies there. So that's, that's kind of what I'm talking about. Again, you're just weighing this into the equation. So that's our 10 questions, Bob. And I know we're going to share this, you know, my question.

We'll put this on winmakegive.com and on the, on the the landing page for this particular episode will have this document for people to download. I'm sure there's a few people scribbling notes on these questions, but we'll give you the actual document that you guys can download. So, as we look at this whole thing, and I've got answers here for all of this, these, this stuff, I mean, you've done this a number of times for yourself, you've helped other people that you coach and mentor do this for them. Like, does the yes or no at the end of the day, does it, Does it really present itself once you've answered all these questions? Do you find most of the time it's pretty clear one way or the other?

Yes and no.

All right.

How about that? That's better. You know, I mentioned earlier, many a time we'll go through this exercise and we won't get through all 10 questions. You'll get to a question that's just the stump, like it just stumps you. Like, it's like, what am I thinking? There was, who is the jockey? I don't have somebody. And I'm not, you know what, Bob, I'm not gonna go find somebody. And I thought I could do this. But if I'm being honest with myself, I can't. Let's eject, right? So often that happens a lot. If you get through all 10, it's not still a clear yes, right? Now you've got to sit back and remember, we've got to prioritize these questions. So if I say, all right, here's the 10, let's put them in priority, like what matters most. Put 1 next to the one that's most important, 10, uh, to the one that's least important. Now we've re-ranked these questions. Now let's walk through them together. So Bob, you happen to rank, um, you know, the upside as your number one criteria. You said you're— in this example, your minimum threshold is $100,000. This business you're projecting is probably around $80,000. Okay, so you're not far off the $100,000, but you're not at $100,000. And you said this is the most important question. How do you feel about that? Now, you don't have to ask— answer that, Bob, but that would be the conversation I'd have with And if you said, "Well, I'm okay with 80," then I'd say, "Okay, with all due respect then, doesn't sound like this question's your number one most important." Because you're willing to— You're willing to bend on your 100, so it's not the most important. Okay, let's move it down the list. What is number one? "Oh, Brian, you know what? Travel." Okay, Bobble, this requires absolutely no travel and you said you don't want to travel. Okay, cool. Let's move on to question two. Question two, you said— You know, you go from there. I think you start having conversation. Like, if I'm working, let's say, with you on this, Bob, I'm going to try to black hat your answers on all of this.

You want me to—

I want you to commit.

You want me to commit. You want me to prove that what I put on the paper is the reality of the situation.

Now, my job in working through this is to dissuade you from doing the deal. If I can't do that, you've thought through this, you've done the analysis, I can't dissuade you from doing it, I failed at that. It probably makes sense. Like, it probably makes all the sense in the world. Again, though, there's not a person on this planet I think that could go through a worksheet like this and not have some degree of bias. So I'm just trying to pepper you and draw out that bias, right? Because again, we're excited about— like, I'll give you again, a couple days ago we're meeting, we're talking about business opportunities. I got on a plane, I flew up, I hung out with you guys, I'm in your office space. It's exciting, it's cool. right? So I have a filter of my own. Like, I have— I'm biased.

Yeah.

When I leave here, do I still feel the same way? Somebody would have to take me through these questions. And believe me, I've gone through these questions, and I went through them with somebody. Now I get to go through them again to see if I still feel the same way.

I was just going to say, you— this is— it's not like you do this one time. Like, you do this from the very beginning. Ben Kinney reached out to you and said, hey, Brian, I'm thinking about this opportunity, you know, maybe we can get together and talk about it. He lays it out for you, you do this. You go, all right, I think I want to move. And now you come up here, you spend 2 to 3 days exploring the opportunity, figuring out the details of what's going to look like. You're probably going to go home and do something like this.

To be super clear, without giving too much away, we've been talking about this specific topic that we've had this week for 2 to 3 years.

Yeah.

So my underwriting started 2 to 3— by the way, in all fairness to Ben, his underwriting started 2 to 3 years using his own filter. So we all get in. It's probably a great great place to end, right? Like, this is my filter. These, these general questions work really well for me. What I think would be awesome is if all the listeners today took the— this filter, took what they liked, maybe applied it all, but took 8 of the 10 questions or 6 of the 10 and came up with their own 3, 4 questions or whatever it may be and use that. My— I think the purpose today is that you don't go into these things blindly. Everybody on that listening to this podcast today, you're aspiring to do more. Just more, live a better life, build a bigger business, make a greater impact. You got to know how to underwrite though what's not going to work for you such that you commit the energy to doing those things that will, right? And so let's, let's go after it. Let's go do that.

Well, I know what's working for me. It's having you as my co-host.

So, Russian, I love that.

Here's the deal. I don't know if you guys are going to see Ben and Chad again. Maybe next week when the next podcast drops, they'll, they'll be here.

Maybe not.

I'm undecided.

I'd love to talk trash here, but I know the fans are clamoring for those guys, so I'm gonna probably get out of the seat here, Bob. But, uh, you know what, I promise to come back and visit if you'll have me.

All right, we'll definitely have you again, Brian. I appreciate— so that was my friend Brian Gubernick. He's, he's been up here with us this week exploring an opportunity, and so I thought it'd be cool if he came here and talked about— because he's got lots of opportunities in his world, and we're one of those. And so Really, I did this for a nefarious reason, which is I wanted to figure out how we could manipulate you into taking this opportunity.

That was a great job, Bob. You know what? That goes back to what we had talked about before around engagement, right? That previous podcast. So maybe there's some play there. Nicely done, Bob. Nicely done.

All right. So maybe you have an opportunity yourself. We'll put this podcast up and you can get his his sheet. You'll be able to find that on winmakegive.com. You can find all of our previous episodes there. You can also join us in our Facebook group, facebook.com/groups/winmakegive. I don't know, I'm undecided on if I'm gonna ask Brian to join me. Maybe we'll do these things remote from now on. He can be down in, in Scottsdale, I can do them up here in the Seattle area. I don't even know where Ben and Chad are. I don't care. Um, I don't know, maybe we'll invite him back, Brian. Hey, listen, you guys go out, have an awesome rest of your day, and, uh, wash your hands if it's appropriate in your area, or maybe even required. Wear a mask, but as always, do good.