Vetting Opportunities Quickly

Business brain episode six hundred and three for casual friday november twenty ninth national day of listening twenty twenty four greetings folks and welcome to business brain the show where we take a few ideas and we crunch them we dissect them we use them so that we can tune our business brains each and every day time we get together here on this national day of listening our sponsor is incogni dot com brain where you can go to get sixty percent off of an annual plan using code brain there and we will give you something to listen to about that in a little bit for now here in durham new hampshire i'm dave hamilton hey and.

Out here in northern california i'm shannon jean i love that sixty percent off that's pretty sweet yes yeah pretty good.

Yeah it's a good thing yeah man.

Yeah yep love it love it love it you you mentioned something as we were talking earlier about having the ability to vet ideas quickly and i wanted to learn more about this concept that.

You were talking about yeah and ability i'm hesitant to use like the term ability or skill it's the awareness to vet ideas quickly the awareness of the value of vetting ideas quickly because yeah okay i think most of us already have the ability to do this this is not something you need to learn and eventually you'll be able to do certainly like anything you do it more you get better at it but you can do this right away and and i know that you already know how to do this now you will be aware that you know how to do this or know to do this and and it is it's this concept of vetting ideas quickly i had a business partner somebody who's been a business partner in the past call me up with an idea just earlier today and he was like you know do you have and he brought somebody else into so there were three of us on this call he's like i have this idea and he's like i need to know if it's crazy or not and so he talked about it and he shared the idea with us we all he shared enough of it that we understood it you know on the surface what it was we could start asking questions and and it was like okay i what i immediately started thinking was okay how much time is this going to take and how long is it going to pay off and it was very clear that this particular idea even the way he pitched it was a short term payoff it was like we could get together we could build a system to do this but and we could make this and it was like all right well you know i kind of looked i'm like am i understanding this right like we're going to put in x amount of work and we're going to get a payoff what do we think the maximum payoff would be and it was like is it a million dollars it was like no like okay is it one hundred thousand dollars maybe okay and neither of those numbers is small like sure you know it it's.

Fine depends on how much time you.

Have to put in the effort to make that right yeah all of the there's lots of things at risk right there's your time that's at risk there's the distraction from other things right right you know all of those things and you and you need to be able to look at all that and say okay on paper it's like hey if i do this i can make you know if we do this we can make fifty thousand dollars let's say that that's about like where it was going to be might have been one hundred k but better to okay better to you know be conservative with s sure you know and if we think it's going to take three weeks to build this thing it's going to take six okay great so six weeks of work yes it will fifty k and then is there any benefit that we see to this thing that we're going to build that would continue paying residuals to us down the road and the answer was a pretty easy no and so it was like all right i think i'm a thumbs down on this like i would rather take this idea let's let's continue to crunch it and see if there's something that can just pay like i don't need it to pay fifty grand every month but if it paid ten grand every month and didn't ever stop that's grand revenue yes yes it is i know what's valuable to me now somebody out there might be listening being like dave i'm exactly the right kind of person to do that that's how i fund my life i do six week projects that pay off fifty k and i know it cost me twenty five so i made a net of twenty five and then i just go do it again and this is how i love to fund my life this way it keeps me from being tied to something that's happening long term you might be that person i'm not right and so i knew for me no this ain't it it's not that it's a bad idea yeah sure it just doesn't i mean if it's an idea that you could put six weeks of work in and get fifty k maybe like that's actually a pretty good idea you but i don't that's not how i like to run my life and i i know that it probably won't like there's all kinds of risks it it's not guaranteed to pay this off right so sure i i like i like to set up systems not just go after the the the the big you know i'm not i'm not after the big kill i'm after.

The slow burn yes way more valuable for me i would yeah yeah i have learned over the years to to make those vet ideas and opportunities opportunities.

Quickly as well maybe that's the right term is opportunities opportunities.

I'Ll give you a good example so i have people in a mastermind that i help learn about auctions and buying things and we were on a call about a week ago and he this person brought up a shared screen and it was a deal to buy like the retail value of this was like two million dollars and what it was was this infusion quick backstory there's there's kohler which is a shower whatever faucet manufacturer they make this thing you can put in your shower to infuse like scents eucalyptus they maybe have at spas or whatever yep well they were auctioning off some of these systems but the big thing they had was about two million dollars of the kits that you put in this system like eucalyptus or mint or jasmine whatever it is and so this student of mine was really excited look at this it's selling for like next to nothing and i immediately look at that i said there's a reason why there's two million dollars number one you need to find out how many of these spritzing or whatever they are systems are there installed in the country oh right.

Yeah who are who are your customers.

Right i mean if there's only if you know thousands that's a big problem because where are you going to sell them and you know quickly deduced that it was a horrible deal at any price because you were going to take you know truckloads worth of this product that effectively is going to be very difficult to sell no matter what you paid for it so a lot of companies auction things off just to get them to go away of course that's.

Why you auction things off yeah you.

Take my problem yeah well sometimes they want money of course a lot of them want the cash whatever they can get but they're also getting a problem out of their warehouse so vetting those kinds of deals is really important and you learn it the only way i know how to learn it is to put in the reps and just do.

It more and more but there's there's one i there's many similarities between the two stories we just shared the one big one is thinking about the end first yeah that's right like yes okay on paper work it backwards it's too yeah work it backwards that's if you needed one more piece of icing on the cake you already knew this by the way of course you did but sometimes you have to hear it so that you know to employ it and.

There you go i would yeah and i have the only thing i take that i do not agree with is like you said most people can do it or everybody can do it i.

Don'T think so i think everybody listening.

To this show can do it yeah if you're an entrepreneur and you've learned to make quick decisions you've learned it probably the hard way because you've made some bad opportunities you thought and you like whoa i didn't vet that one right so i think entrepreneurs make those decisions a little quicker all right folks.

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Ton from you very thankful to have the show you know the listeners really hold us accountable to show up every tuesday i love talking about this stuff i you know it is my whole life and it's just part of me i can't shut up about it and i love talking about opportunities and crazy ideas and you know and if the the key thing is that you just gotta keep working at it and it pays off in the long run just like you know we've been here ten years and it's awesome i love it so thank you appreciate it yeah yeah thank you all and i always learn the most i always tell dave that so i'm learning i stole something from you in the last episode so it's true you know it's true it's good.

Yeah it's really good no it's great that we get to learn from each other and i am thankful killer to all of our listeners from for providing us like you said they hold us accountable by expecting more episodes which we are happy to deliver but because of that we get the opportunity to talk way more frequently than we probably would and that like it's priceless it's priceless.

It'S great it is it's really good it keeps your brain going and you know i would encourage you if you're an entrepreneur by yourself on your own building something get involved in a group join people i don't care it doesn't matter if it's a facebook group for business owners entrepreneurs the local chamber peer group on x you know sending emails into us so we can talk about it yeah score the society of retired executives having that peer group and accountability group really makes a big difference in your life definitely that's cool i want to talk about a strategy that i've used my entire life to get cool stuff and i mentioned it today up on x and someone coined the term which i immediately stole called flip to fund f u n d and let me let me set the stage on how this works so i have a really i have two two problems quote problems i have a bad case of the i wants okay i want all kinds of stuff you know i want a new truck i want an atv i want a house on the river i want i want i want now i'm not super material but i've learned that those carrots out in front of me help propel me forward and i like to work towards those things but the other issue is i have is i don't like to spend a lot of money i'm frugal right i like to i like to pay with my lifestyle with profits not assets right i'm always trying to do that one way to get stuff that i want whether it's a new truck or even a even a house i've done it with is to use this flip to fund strategy and the way it works is if you want something but you don't want to pay for it you have to go find one of more of those things and you have to find a great deal okay and i'll give you an example i'm about to buy i want a new utv which is a side by side atv little small you know vehicle that you can drive in the mud and go around for this property that we have which i got through this same strategy okay and i want one of these things but i don't want to pay the ten thousand dollars i just don't want to do it okay so i've been searching and i've just come across i think i believe the opportunity to buy two of these things and to sell one but in addition to just the thing both of these utvs have snowplows on them so i will be able to remove this i don't need a snowplow i will sell the snowplow separately i will sell the other utv and i will get my utv for free now.

No cash i mean free your labor.

Is your cost it's my labor my expertise my research finding the deal this is what i do i sit at night i always tell people that i'm coaching whatever i'm like hey don't watch anything don't stream netflix your new hobby is making money keep your laptop on your lap and let's show you how to do this research i do this stuff all i love it it's fun and so you have to find the right setting i've talked about a piece of property real estate that i bought here before that i did this flip to fund to get a know big five acre piece of property on the on a river in the sierras with two two houses on it i use the same concept and so you can you can do it with anything and it allows you to upgrade your lifestyle without having to kick out a lot of cash it does take resources to do it because then you're trying to recapture that cash right so i'm you.

Got to you got to go buy these utvs in order to sell them.

Correct yeah so i'm going to buy them with the prospect and does it always work no i'll give you another perfect example i need i needed a shed up on this property i wanted to buy this sheds that i wanted was like fifteen hundred bucks well i found an auction where i could buy two of them for fifteen hundred bucks and i could sell one to not pay for the second one so is it complicated yes sometimes it does it work all the time no but if you do it enough you get better at it and yeah i love the concept i'm always looking to upgrade my lifestyle and it's allowed me to i've done it with computers my whole life i've done it with phones i've done it with i'm always just thinking like how do i get that like i want an apple studio display but i'll be damned if i'm going to pay what they're selling for it's impossible for me i just refuse so i will wait until i can buy a couple or maybe i have to buy ten and sell nine of them to get one for free and i've done it so many years i'm pretty good at it i understand the concept i track it in a spreadsheet and maybe when i buy the ten studio displays at the end i'll have paid two hundred bucks for the studio display if it doesn't work out right but i'm not paying what are they fifteen hundred bucks twelve hundred bucks that's crazy whatever it is yeah it's crazy and so by.

The refurb lg at least at least that's only eight hundred bucks so yeah it's half the price yeah but i.

Like i also like the challenge no.

I get that i'm in the game.

Yeah yeah yeah yeah we talked you know about boredom in the last episode this this kind of stuff these are fun games and i enjoy playing them and you know if you have stories about how you've done i posted about this online and all of a sudden all these people are like i've done it with this and i got a car this way and i did collector things with this so it's not like i invented the concept but i like to think i have you can think of it as it's not really barter but you could use that same concept but yeah it's great keeps me motivated keeps me researching which research is a key to building wealth in my opinion we should do a whole show on that but i'd love to hear your stories feedback at businessbrain show and the other thing you know we've got about four hundred people on the live stream and thousands of you listen at home in your car as you're driving we would love your review we need your review that is it's crucial for us to succeed as a show and keep going for another ten years businessbrain show slash review probably take you about twenty seconds tell us what you like tell us what we could improve help us.

Keep going like he said businessbrain show review thanks for listening folks make sure you have a great day charm life yesterday that's right you got it keep living that charmed life we'll see you next week later.