How to Buy a Business with Other Peoples Money

Hey guys, what's going on? I'm so excited to have you all live tonight. We're gonna get like right into it. I got no time to mess around, but I am excited to see you here. I want to talk about how do we get parts of businesses, how do we invest in businesses even when we don't have a lot of cash, and even if you do have a lot of cash, how do you use other people's money to do it more efficiently. I got my little live chat going right here. I can look at you guys. What up, Diva 2007 and Whiskey Romeo Bravo. We got some military love on here. I've also got, which I'm not going to tell you yet— oh, it's on the back, so I'm not going to show you— I've got a bunch of free stuff that I am going to give away today. I'm going to give away a bunch of cool things, so you're going to want to stick around till the end. I'm going to hammer you with some cool ideas that I don't think I've ever talked about publicly on the internet before, um, and then I have something for every single person who who is on this call, just so you know, every single person who's on this call, when we get to the end of the live— so let's call that in like 45 minutes or something like that before we get into a ton of Q&A— you are going to get, uh, 3 resources from me worth more than $100 each. Those are like real things. These are not like videos or courses or anything like that. These are like real tools that cost us a lot of money to build. So get excited for that. Uh, you are also going to get something worth $100 right now today. So pretty much it's like $200 free. Um, what you need to do to do it, to get this, is hit that QR code and make sure that we get your information because it's the only way we can actually give things away to you. So hit the QR code, make sure you input your information, and we will get into it as we go. I'm also thinking, guys, I might give away some hats. You guys like these? Some little Main Street Over Wall Street hats, or also some Contrarian Thinking hats for my OGs here tonight. So, stick around, I'll do that too. All right, but I think you're here because you want to learn how to buy a business, is that right? Yeah, I know Tara Lynn does. Okay, so I want to get right into it today. Let me know, can you see my screen? Perfect, because I can't see it on the live, so I want to make sure. Yeah, buddy. All right, I want to talk about how to buy a business or invest in part of a business for $0, and the reason why is— tell me if you guys associate with this today— that starting salaries for grads ain't doing so good. We're at an all-time low. Has anybody in here been like influenced by what's happening with AI? Anybody lost their jobs or felt like they potentially could or worried about AI? If you have, you're not alone. But there's also a really good side to this, which is I think there's more opportunity than ever. And the reason why is because we know firsthand about buying businesses. Everybody that you see on here, all the things that look like this today, are real people we've helped buy businesses. I just want you to know this is possible and we're going to teach you how to do it. Now, today what's happening around us, I'm just going to give you 30 seconds of what's happening before we get into how you today, like right now, can learn how to invest in these businesses without having cash. There's something called the silver tsunami. We got any boomers on here? Um, because it turns out boomers own all the businesses, but you guys are retiring, and so the next generation has to be ready to come take them over. In fact, so many of the boomers are retiring that this is one of the best times in history to buy businesses because there's what's called the supply and demand imbalance. More supply of businesses than there are people who know how to buy them. Lots of people who say they want to buy them but not who know how. And so we're trying to fix that gap because if we don't, this is what happens. Basically, you see small businesses close all around the country. We don't want that to happen. These were profitable businesses. Why would they close? Well, they close because there's this $68 trillion worth of wealth that's gonna change hands, y'all. And I know like a bunch of you see it in here, even when you're in Argentina, like you guys are talking about in the chat, that these businesses are totally different than what's happening in AI layoffs. And in fact, we think the time is always now, but maybe especially right now. Even if the market has a tough day, even if we're seeing decreases in jobs, in fact, the one thing we know for sure is that if you don't own part of something, your business on average is the thing that is more likely to make you a millionaire than anything else. In fact, anybody know the number? You can tell me in the chat, um, of people who own a business and are millionaires. Do you know what the percentage is? Let me know if you do. Um, because the truth is, People are not likely to become a millionaire without owning a business or owning a part of it. It's about 60% of all millionaires own a business. Anybody on here wanna make so much money it makes other people uncomfortable? Let me see. I think so. Marshall says maybe. For those people, 88% of people worth $30 million or more own a small business. So we need to figure out how to buy a business that you actually wanna own. The only thing that I'll say up front about this is I don't know your personal life, I don't know your financial situation, so I always like to say this is the big boys club. You know, this is for people who are actually ready to make real change in their life. This is the adults only comment. So, you know, if you are going to buy a business, there's going to be some risk associated with it. If you're going to invest in something, there's some risk associated with it. And I always like to make sure we say that. I also see a bunch of people saying in the chat that— you see the audio issues, guys? Is there something we can do about that? Audio issues? Audio is too low, people are saying in the chat. So if you can increase the audio, please. I have a whole team here. I don't know how to do live streams. There's a bunch of other people here who are doing this for me. And so today we're going to talk about a paradigm shift, or what I call getting into owner's mindset. And if you guys are wondering what that QR code is, make sure you fill out information on that because I'm going to give away a bunch of stuff at the end. Now let's talk about really getting into ownership. So maybe you guys are like me and you're like, how does this woman, Diana— you can see her here— go from in 6 months never doing anything in regards to window cleaning, not knowing anything about the industry, to becoming a business owner in window cleaning? How did she do that? Well, she actually did it by a couple different financing methods. We're gonna help steal her homework. And you guys, while everybody else is on YouTube right now watching challenge videos, numbing, listening to nonsense, you guys are actually learning how to make money. So I guess I wanna congratulate you because most people are lazy, do nothing, and thus have a life that they don't love. And it makes me feel sad, except that's just how most people choose to live their lives, and I don't think we should live them that way. So Diana basically didn't have the capital, she went to something called the SBA, the Small Business Association, to get funding. We're gonna talk about specifically how to do that in a second. And she was able to essentially get an income of $100,000+ from her business by using funding from the SBA, an operator for this window cleaning business, and combining the two of them. And so, like, I just want you to know the rarest of things, which is how to spot spot opportunities all around you. How many of you know what the reticular activating system is? The reticular activating system basically is the screen in your head that says, is this thing important or not? We've had it all the way since, you know, the cavemen to figure out if a lion was going to eat us or not. Well, the problem is, has anybody on here bought a business before? Give me a little one in the chat or yes in the chat. The opportunity here is that most of us walk past small businesses that are for sale or you could invest in every single day, but they don't actually see the diamond in the rough. They think this is just a piece of rock. And one of my most— my richest mentors said this line to me that I'll never forget, which is, "Your amount of opportunity will always be limited by your ability to recognize it." And he was right. This is a diamond. And I think about that with business ownership. If you guys stay for the rest of this point, you're gonna figure out how to finance a business or part of it, and that is going to take you to the next level of the game. And you're going to do it even if you don't have capital today. We have a bunch of people that have used seller financing. Anybody know what seller financing is? We're gonna explain this later and how to get it and how to get people to give it to you. We're also going to— that chair is awful. By the way, so if we cannot do that. Anyway, it's very squeaky over here, as you can hear. So if you need more cash flow, how do you buy it? How do you do a first-time acquisition? Say, let's say you need new income. How do you buy it? How many people here, you already have an income stream, but you'd like more of it? You would like your income to grow faster? Is that anybody on here? Yeah, Devin says yep. Okay. So We are going to help you do exactly that, and we're going to do it by helping you find businesses that most people don't think are sexy. But my girl Sabrina, she knows what she's looking at when she sees an HVAC business in Omaha. And if we haven't met, we probably have, but it's all started about 15 years ago. So I worked at some of the biggest asset management firms in the world. While I was working in private equity, uh, I realized something. Maybe some of you are here that Man, like, I'm working so hard, but I don't really like what I do. I'm working harder than ever for somebody that I don't really like, but I'm too scared to fail to go do it by myself. And so I did kind of what I thought was the most ridiculous thing of all time. I bought my very first business while in my 9-to-5, secretly, and it was a tiny little laundromat. And that turned into my acquisition of a second business and then a third and then lots of businesses, and I started talking talking about it because I really hated— and maybe you guys do too— my former boss. Does anybody here just hate their boss? I want to pause for the chat. Like, uh, I don't want to mention any names, but Dan— Dan was the worst. And so sometimes still, if you've ever been to one of my events— you should come to one, we're going to talk to you about that later, and I'm going to give you a little gift on that— um, I used to make the audience go, "Fuck you, Dan," because he was the worst and I hated my boss. But I think that behind every successful person is usually a bad former manager. And so today I'm going to talk to you about, even if you don't have a lot of capital, how do we creative finance your exit, your next income, your next acquisition, your next purchase of a business. I want to start by saying, even if you have a lot of money, if you're not rich enough to laugh like this, which none of us are,— and even if you are, I want you to learn to use other people's money intelligently. I want you to use other people's money intelligently. And one example I use of this is Chris Delaney. And Chris, for instance, I taught him how to buy businesses. He was an employee at the time. Now he runs an entire family office on it. We can talk about how to do this today too. Oh, and if you're putting questions in here while we're going, by the way, make sure you fill out the QR code um, because we're going to give away a bunch of prizes if you stay till the end. We're giving away about $200 worth of things to every single person that is on this live. So I got you no matter what. But also, we're going to do a bunch of Q&A in here. And so if you put Q&A in the chat, my team is actively grabbing it. You guys can't see them, but they're sliding these things that look like this to me all around. Um, and so I'm going to answer a bunch of your— well, we should just answer one because 'Cause this one was from one of you guys ahead. Oh, I'm gonna do this in a second. Okay, so lots of people say that they don't use other people's money or creative finance. Even Warren Buffett, who I really look up to, one of the richest men in the world, the Sage of Omaha, he says don't use other people's money, except he actually uses other people's money, you guys. He doesn't, even the richest man in the world uses other people's money to invest and buy things. And so when I realized that I thought, huh, creative financing just means that you use other categories to buy things. We're going to talk about some of them today. I have 21 ways I teach. We'll get through a bunch of them right now, and then I'll tell you how we can go deeper. So to start, let's do this, which makes me overly excited. I don't know if anybody else likes the idea of using other people's money to invest in things, but let's start with Alicia Collins. So Alicia bought her first business using an 80% SBA loan, $100K seller financing, and then she used some of the money from her house in order to refinance. Then she— we've helped her buy 3 or 4 businesses by now, but this is one of the first businesses. And so I want to focus on the first way that she bought this business, which is called SBA loans. So what is the SBA? This is another guy who bought another business. He bought a large business. His name is Chet. But the SBA is basically a loan that is backed by the government. And what's crazy about this loan is that you can use it to buy existing businesses. Now, how many people out here have had a startup before? Tell me in the chat if you've had a startup. And tell me how many people wanted to give you money for your startup. Could you go to a bank and they gave you money? Absolutely not. But what did they do? Why? Why would they not be able to give you money? Because they don't think that you're going to be successful. Successful. Most startups fail. When you buy a business, they will actually give you money to buy the business. They will give you a loan. And there's lots of reasons to do this. The SBA has incredible loan terms. The SBA also has a downside. The downside is that sometimes you have to do a personal guarantee. So that might mean some of your assets. Now, the SBA has some cool new policies where you can diversify the risk. Like let's say a bunch of you guys online right now got together and you all used an SBA loan to buy a business, you could decrease all of your risk by having lots of people in the SBA loan process. They didn't used to do that before. An example is like Houston, for instance. And he was freaked out about the personal guarantee. So since then, Houston has a business that he used debt to buy and now that business does a lot in revenue. We're talking millions of dollars in revenue. But it scared him at first. And be honest with me, how many people are like, scared of buying a business or of investing or of taking out debt, you can tell me in the chat. Um, the truth is that most people should be scared of starting a business. Most small businesses fail, and most small businesses fail to the tune of 90%. But when you buy a small business, even though it might take a little bit longer of a process, you only have to put down 10 to 20% of the loan. So this is like the best mortgage you could get where you only have to put 10% down of the purchase price. And so lots of members use a mixture of seller financing and SBA loans to buy a business. And I want you to just remember this one line from this: the government will loan you up to 90% of the purchase price. And in fact, for those of you that stick around, we're going to give you some free stuff. Um, we have a guy who's actually coming to this event I'm gonna talk to you about, who has helped people get SBA loans for 6 years, and he'll hold your hand and help you figure out how to get an SBA loan or not. We just spun up what's called an SBA loan brokerage. His name is Jordan. And so he can literally tell you right now if you are able to get an SBA loan or not, which I thought was kinda cool. Somebody asked, you know, do I have the personal credit or leverage to afford an SBA loan? And basically he'll be able to tell you. Now, there's lots of examples of people doing this from our community. About 60% of all businesses sold use SBA loans, 6-0. Now, how many people have like a stock portfolio, Robinhood or Charles Schwab or something like that? Let me know. And if you have some money stocks, there's something kind of crazy, which is you can use the stocks to actually get money out for the business. So do you guys remember when Elon Musk bought Twitter, or X now? He actually used something called a securities loan or a margin loan where he took out a loan on the business. And if you guys have been following me, I used a loan to buy part of Resi Brands on my securities. That's my big franchising company because I realized we could actually do a smarter way to my first million in revenue, and I want you guys to realize the same thing. So basically, lots of reasons why you would do it. It lets you access liquidity, like you can get access to your money without having to sell any investments. It really does have one downside though, which is they could take your capital if you do it. The other thing that's kind of cool is it's very fast. So an SBA loan might take you 30 or 60 days. A securities loan will probably take you a few days. And your bank will take care of it. Obviously, you got to be careful about your stock market volatility and default. But the interesting part is you can usually— whatever stocks you have, you can take about 50 to 70% of that and get a loan on it. So you might not even realize you have more what we call hidden money than you think. Now, I want to talk about the big one, seller financing, and then I have a little treat for you guys right after this. Does everybody know what seller financing is? Seller financing is where you can use the revenue of the business to buy a business, which is crazy. Think about if you went to buy a house from somebody and you said, hey, I'm gonna actually buy this house, but I want to use the value of the house to buy it. They'd be like, wait, what? No, that just doesn't work. But in small business, it works. And so I think people every day say, well, you have to have a ton of money to buy a business. That's actually not true. It's easier if you have a ton of money, don't get me wrong, but you actually do not have to have a ton of money. So if you're going to go get seller financing, here's how to do it. I'll give you 3 steps, little secret hacks here that nobody else has. And the first hack is, imagine that the— are there any business owners on here? Tell me like, yes, I own a business, if you own a business on here. So, um, The— if you're a business owner, you typically want to sell your business for more than it's worth, right? Like, you're like, no, I think my business is worth X. You're closer to it. Well, with seller financing, what you can do is say, hey, Mr. Business Owner, do you want to make more money off of the sale? Yes or no? And in this instance, the business owner wants a million bucks for the business. The bank is always going to go lower than the seller. So the bank goes, no way, this thing's only worth about $750K. And then the bank also says, I'm going to charge you interest on the loan. Right? Well, if you go to seller financing, you might be able to say, hey, Mr. Seller, I'm actually going to pay you more for this business. I'm gonna pay you 1.15. And instead of me paying the bank an interest rate of 8%, I'll pay you 5%. So Mr. Seller, do you want to make more money in the transaction than you would with the bank? Yes or no? What do you guys think they say? Answers usually yes. Okay, cool. So you can pay the seller more money, and you can have what's called reps and warranties on it. I can I'll explain that later. Now, the other thing sellers don't want to do is pay a huge tax bill when they sell. So you can say, Mr. Seller, if we go with a traditional loan, they're going to charge you a huge amount because you got to pay taxes immediately. If we do seller financing over many years, you can pay it as a distribution that has a much lower tax rate. So what do you think the seller says? I'm going to charge you, I'm going to make more money on the sale, and I'm going to pay less taxes. Cool. And then the last thing is, you know, the number one reason why people don't make money, you guys, like number one reason why if you're broke with love, this is the reason why you're broke. It's because you don't move fast enough. Rich people move really fast, even when it's scary, even when it's risk. They don't wait around and say, I'll do it later, maybe someday, one day. No. And so if you do a traditional loan, look how long it takes you guys, it could take 90 to 120 days. But if you close with seller financing, you can do it in a few weeks. So what do you guys think the seller is going to say? I get more money, I pay less in taxes, I close faster, so I have a higher probability of selling. They're going to be like, yes, I'm in, right? And so there's a lot of people that go, well, if that works, then like, why wouldn't I do that? Why doesn't everybody do that? Let me just show you a few people who have done this. We've got Renan, who bought not one but 5 businesses with seller financing, and he used used to be in medical device sales. I taught him how to do it. We've got Clint, we've got Khalid. Like, you should be the master of options here, and like, we're gonna hold your hand to do it. And I think this is like the way that you learn things in life, you guys, goes a staircase like this. First, you like don't even know what you don't know. Then you kind of are aware of how little do you know. Then you're very aware of what you do know now. And then finally, you like you know so much, you kind of forget all the stuff that you know. And what I've realized in buying businesses is that if I can get somebody for a few hours or days and teach them how to buy a business, I can change their life forever because there's something called leverage, which is your ability once you have an asset to make more assets. Have you guys ever heard that saying, if you want to— the easiest way to make money is to what? Have money, right? You can always make money when you have money. Well, we do something called Main Street Millionaire Live. And what it is, is it is a 3-day event with all of my deal advisors, with all of my experts in business advising. Also, if anybody's into it, anybody here a MrBeast fan with the former president of MrBeast? We also have Chris Voss coming to this one. We also have Dean Graziosi. If you know, that's Tony Robbins' right hand. Chris Voss wrote Never Split the Difference. He's going to come teach you about negotiation. And we go through, and then I'm going to get— I have two other, like, deep Q&A portions I want to do with you guys, and I have a segment on two other ways I do deals that nobody talks about, one being sweat equity. So stick around for that. But at this event, I'm going to actually do a live workshop. So right now we're kind of having a live workshop, but you don't have all my team here to answer all of your questions Live. This is with all of the people who have built and bought hundreds of businesses. They've done billions of dollars in transactions. And I actually want to invite you to this event. It's basically 3 days of hands-on training with me and my team. And the coolest part about it is by the end, you should know more about private equity acquisition than anybody else. You should be able to tell if a deal is good or not. You should be able to start figuring out what kind of business would be good for you to invest or buy-in. And this event is the only time I'm doing this for the rest of 2026. And it's good. I mean, a lot of these are a lot of people. I hate when people say nice things about us, you know what I'm saying? But this event is so good that we have thousands of people sign up from all over the world. And after 3 days, you're going to have what we call an M&A MBA. And you're going to realize that trying to start your own business is a path, but it's a very slow path. And so instead, we're going to make 2026 the year you buy a business or invest in a business or own part of a business. And the way that we do this is we make you move faster than you feel comfortable with. We know that time kills deals, right? We talked about that. And so the coolest thing about what we do is we decided we would teach people this 3 days for the cost of like, what does $27 buy you these days, guys? Like what, a couple cups of coffee?. But I'm gonna do something even cooler for everybody on here, and that is that I'm gonna teach you what I call Harvard M&A MBA inside of those 3 days for the cup— for the cost of a couple cups of coffee, so that you can leave your W-2 if you want to. You can have more income if you want to. You can add on more businesses if you want to. But I'm also gonna do something kind of cool. So for everybody on here that joins right now, and I'll give you a second with the QR code, If you join the MSM Live, here's what you get. You get $100 off the VIP. So you join for a cost of a couple cups of coffee, $27. And we do this, by the way, because we know if you pay for it, what do we know about you guys? If you pay for it, are you curious or serious? If you pay for it, do you show up or not show up? You guys tell me. So we make this event like a Harvard M&A for It costs a couple cup of coffees, and because you guys are hanging out with me on this live, I make sure you get in at VIP. VIP is kind of cool. It means we go behind the stages, means we have a private Zoom call with just you and all the other VIPs. It means that I see your chat for the entire 3 days. It means— does anybody right now have a deal you're looking at, like you're kind of curious if this is a good one? You get to bring your deal live to me, and so, uh, and my team is going to analyze all your deals. We do a couple segments called Deal or No Deal., and we're going to throw up these paddles and say like, yes, you know, you buy a business here. No, you shouldn't buy a business. We hate this business. We love this business. And so anyway, you can go straight to this QR code. I'll give you a chance to join, and we're going to do something really cool for you guys too. At the end of my next little segment, I'm going to give you guys another gift that is a bunch of tools and resources we're going to go over live at MSM that you can use to buy a business. Does that sound cool? Oh, and a bunch of people are asking some random questions. Um, oh, I am going to give away some pink hats, Tara Lynn, so keep asking some good questions. Uh, but, um, this live code is available for everybody that's on here right now. So we know that you guys are busy, you got a lot going on. We want to reward the people who take action now. That's why, like, quite honestly, I mean For the cost of $27, what the fuck are you doing? What else are you doing for 3 days where you're gonna get more value out of that? Like, get out of here, right? Like, I don't wanna bully you, but I will be your business buying bully, and I will say, like, I'll be damned if you don't come to this event and think, this is the most valuable $27 I've ever spent in my life. Like, I've eaten Chipotle burritos more expensive than that. And so the entire reason we do this is 'cause we're pretty serious about this idea that if we can get a couple hours with you, you, we can actually change your perspective on investing in ownership and we can get you to buy a business. And if we do that, then maybe our communities aren't filled with these big conglomerates and all these Main Street whatever. So come hang out with us, hit the QR code, and let's learn how to buy businesses. And then you can make fun of all your friends who went to fancy degrees for their MBA, and you can say you wasted your money because you own a business for the cost of $27. Like, it's almost embarrassing that we do it for this cheap, because quite honestly, I think sometimes what you don't pay for, you don't value. And so I'm obsessed with this idea of like getting people in in order for you to get ownership. Okay, now I want to go— oh, and then there's a lot of questions on here. Well, let's answer two of these really quick. So, um, a few people on here to I don't know how to say this. Tejas V_Gupti, what up? Uh, so I see this question here as well. Um, is this— is this applicable? Can you buy businesses in other countries? Absolutely. I can't remember how many countries we have represented. It's like 32, 33 company, uh, countries represented. You can do it anywhere. Um, I see another question from Davis Manda. How do you find the businesses for sale? Uh, I'll teach you that step by step. That's called origination.— and we have an entire segment on origination. How do you find businesses? How do you buy businesses? And we have a tech tool that we'll actually be giving you access to for you to find deals live with us for 3 days. Um, Dulta Safia, what is the single biggest red flag that you see in making a deal immediately that makes you walk away? Well, one of my first things is do people move fast or not? If somebody's wasting my time, I'm not into it. That happens a lot. Business buying and selling. And so I think that's a lesson for life. The faster you move, the more money you make. Um, okay, if you have any questions about the event, scan the QR code or the team is dropping the link. That will tell you when the, the event is. It's totally virtual. You can join from your couch anywhere in the world. And the VIP comes with a bunch of extra stuff, and that's my gift to you. You get the VIP for free. So that's $100 off for every single person here. Here. Okay, who is joining us? Um, tell me right now in the chat if you are coming to MSM Live. I want to see from you, and I'm stoked to meet a bunch of you there. And I'm also stoked to actually see your businesses. So promise me that if you come, you are going to bring a deal. I want you to like bring some things to beat up so that you and I can look at them live. All right, I'm stoked. I see a bunch of you guys joining. This will be really fun. Okay, let's go next. This one always makes me laugh. Thanks, Blake. Blake's little fingers over here giving you new ideas. This is gonna be me and you at MSM Live while private equity is drowning instead of the other way around. Okay, I want to talk about— these are, these are just so you guys know what these are. These are seller financing examples from our community. We'll walk you through deals like this live. Like, look at this deal. Appliance repair company closed the end of March, $125K purchase price. It was 100% seller-financed at 0% interest for 48 months. This is a really good deal. This is a hard deal to get. You'd have to learn a lot to be able to get this. This is not normal, but these deals are out there. Another one, 80% seller financing. The down payment consisted of about a third equity investor, so somebody else from the outside side, a third my money, and a third hard money loan, interest only over 18 months. What about this one? Oh, this is an example of basically how to buy a business, a bigger business, a 2.5x they got this business for, and how to make sure they actually used more seller financing to decrease the risk, which is really important. So I'm excited to see you guys. Let's learn how to buy businesses live. I hope you guys hit that QR code and you're going to join us. Um, let's talk about how to fuck this up, shall we? Should we talk about how to have a terrible deal? And by the way, hit the QR code here too. Let's give away a hat, shall we? Do you have like the spinning wheel? Is that how we're doing this? Okay, we'll see if this works. We have a spinning wheel of death, and whoever put in this information, we're going to go through the spinning wheel. And this time, let's give away— let's give away a black hat. What do you think? Okay, and basically you just put in your information and we're going to give this away. Okay, now there's only really one way to mess this up, which is to do it alone. I do not want you guys to buy a business alone. You promise? You guys have to promise me this. Okay, Jolene Sims, you are going to get an email and you're going to get a hat. Everybody give Jolene a little bit of I think we should also talk about giving away a book. Why don't we give away a book? And yeah, and I think also for all of you guys that sign up to come to Main Street Millionaire Live, we will make sure we do something special for you. So you're gonna get $100 off, but let's think about something else cool to do for them. Dee, got any crazy ideas? If they buy the ticket right now, uh-huh. Yeah, we can give them some tools, some calculators. Oh yeah, let's give them the calculators and stuff. That thing's sick. Creative Seller Financing Navigator. That's even bigger. Oh, that's cool. Okay, so there's something called the Seller Financing Navigator. So if you come to MSM, I'm going to give you that for free. Basically, the Seller Financing Navigator helps you figure out exactly how to get somebody to seller finance a deal for you. Let's also give away a book while we're talking about this, and we'll get to some more Q&A. So we're gonna spin it again, but just so you know, I got you guys. I want you to know though that there's always risk involved when it comes to debt. And so I like to think about how could I decrease my risk as much as possible. Like for instance, all right, M. Mack wins the book. So M, you win the book. And if you already have the book and you want a hat instead, you let us know. We got you either way. Now, what I want you to think about with risk is you cannot spell rich without risk, okay? Rich people take risk. That is the only thing. Now, what our goal is, is to try to decrease your risk, which might mean doing things like a 3-day event that only costs $27. There's basically no risk in that. But once you go to buy a business, you're actually going to have some risk. And so it's really important to note— if we could put the slides back up on the screen— It's really important to note that there is no way to avoid this. It's like spinning the dice. But the way that you can is to make sure you're only working with other pros. And so you gotta get in rooms where other people already have the life you want. You're doing that right now on YouTube Live. Like, get in rooms where other people's Tuesday looks like your dream day that you can barely imagine. And if you do that, then when you look at these complex calculations and the calculators, it'll be a lot easier for you to figure out how to do acquisition. Okay, now we're gonna get into sweat equity, and the interesting part about sweat equity is that you need zero, zero dollars to do this. You don't need any money to do it. I have a full segment at MSM Live, so I'll just go through one quick section before we do straight-up Q&A. We've done this so many times, but these are the first 4 people that I had a deep conversation on how how to actually buy a business with sweat equity. And what is this? It basically means, can you contribute your time, expertise, or experience in order to buy a business? And while there's no guarantee of success in doing a business acquisition this way, the cool part is there's no cash required upfront. So if you want to go and help a business owner grow their business because you're good at marketing, and you tell the business owner, can I get a cut of all the business I help grow above your baseline? You can actually get part of a business without having to put any capital down. An example from our community would be Jared. Do we have any like good marketers on here? Anybody who's good at social media? Anybody who's good at content? Tell me, tell me. If you are, then you might be like Jared. So Jared's insane. He was 19 he came to an event just like MSM Live. 19 years old, you guys. And Jared has now bought 3 businesses, not 2, 'cause this isn't updated. But he basically was able to talk the owner into this deal where he bought him out of the business using sweat equity as he scaled his business and then ended up giving him $60K for 18 months of work. This is really cool because this was the first deal and look at what the business is worth today. The company is worth over $1 million and this was 2 years ago. Step by step, how he did it is crazy. This is again fast. They're not always this fast. Um, he got 2 acquisitions done in 36 hours and the interesting part about it is he basically talked his vendors, people he worked with, one that he was an employee for, into selling him the business. And so I want you to figure out how to do the exact same thing. Now, the reason why he was able to do it is because he had a long-time relationship with one of the founders. Then he realized what was important to founders and he kept repeating the model. Um, I won't say his name because he doesn't want it on the internet, but he actually bought a contracting business the exact same way. He ended up doing a little bit of SBA but also some sweat equity. And I just want you to see that there are all these ways for you to buy a business with— that are unconventional. Now I don't want to go through the rest right now because I want to answer some of your questions. Let's go through Q&A and let's do a little wheel spin as well and see if we can't give away another book. Okay, Diana Marks, I'm going for your question next. What do you think of buying non-boring businesses? Yeah, I mean Jared bought a marketing agency. I don't think that's boring. And Jared was obsessed with one idea: could he get more capital into the business by just growing revenue and putting $0 in? What's up, José Vázquez? You get a copy of the book. Let's see what else. So I'm gonna ask some other questions. Kelly Brooks asks, what info do I need to gather to determine if a business is feasible feasible to buy. So we're going to take you through the 10 steps you need to buy a business. And of those 10 steps, one of the most important is you've got to figure out if the business actually makes money or not. And I think most people don't realize that business is— not all of them are created equal and not all of them make money. So I see a lot of people buy hopes and dreams, not profits and realities. We want to do the opposite of that. Let's see, what else do we got? Let's answer a question straight up from right here. How do you enter for the drawing? Oh, go to the QR code in the corner. And let's actually, I'm gonna put up here in a second, don't do it yet. I'm gonna put up the other QR code, this one, and we'll leave this up for everybody too. Okay. So somebody else asks, oh, what are the hours for each day? I think you're asking what are the hours for MSM. The first day starts at 11:00. If you can't come to all of it, that's okay. You should still come. Like, for that price, if you come for one hour, it's worth it. I will say the more you're there, the more value you get out of it. So if it was me, if it was me and I had an opportunity to know what I know now about buying a business and I could get it in 3 days, I would clear to my calendar immediately, especially if you know you're not going to have another chance to do an event like this for at least another year. OK. The event will not be recorded. It is not distributed after the fact. This event is live for a reason. It is for you to attend in person so you'll actually do the work. You can do sweat equity in any country. We have people that have done sweat equity kind of across the board. The trick is knowing how to do it. That's the really important part. Let's see. Somebody says, I'm on the website trying to upgrade to VIP. Where can I enter the special 100 code? You have to buy the VIP ticket and then we cover the price. Correct. So you buy the GA ticket, the general admission ticket for $27. No, you have to buy the VIP ticket and then we take $100 off, so it ends up being $27. How do we take it off later? So you go in, you click on the VIP ticket, then there will be a place to put a code. You put the code SPECIAL100. That's how you do it. Hopefully that makes sense for you guys. Okay, let's see, what else do we got? With AIMVC, what are some real competitive advantages to leverage? Oh my god. One of the coolest parts about owning a business, you guys, is when you own the business, you don't have to worry about getting fired. You don't have to be worried about will AI take over my jobs. You don't have to worry about layoffs. Like the, the only thing you have to think about is can AI do the work that other people used to do for me? And the answer is yes. And so get stoked about that. Okay. What else do we got? Is it possible to help anyone if they're under 18 here? Well, yeah, guys, what do you think? Uh, Jake, you just heard that Jared was 19 when he came to this event, and now he's bought 3 businesses. I don't think 18 and 19 are that much different. It really just comes down to how hard you want to work. I don't think most people want to work that hard. Um, great. Oh, I see some confusion on the recordings. This is not recorded for like you guys to have afterwards if you don't come to the event, is what I meant by that. Like the only way that you get the recording is you sign up for the event and then you get a recording of it. Yes, but it's not like recorded, put on YouTube, something like that, which is what I thought the question was. Okay. And that's the advantage for VIP, you get 3 recordings. And that's the advantage for VIP, you basically get to go back in and look at the recording. And if you want to— if you missed a part, if you need to learn something again, you can go back to it. Although again, I highly recommend you just show up the whole time because you're going to learn so much more from being in person. Let's see what else. At what point are you overleveraged? Asks Danielle Stiver. Typically you don't want a leverage ratio that is bigger than 30% in acquisitions. There's lots of ways around that and they don't do it as 30%. It's like 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, and that represents the percentage version. I just don't like over 30% for people who haven't bought a business before. But the thing with this is when you buy a business using seller financing, you're not overlevered because you're using the business as the financing engine. When you're doing sweat equity, it's the same thing. If you buy with an SBA loan, they're gonna watch your— it's called your debt service coverage ratio, your DSCR. There's lots of fancy words in finance that make this stuff sound really complicated, but this ratio is something they're gonna make sure you don't go over or they won't give you a loan. We also have a calculator. Well, I think I showed you guys this. One of the calculators looks kind of like this. And maybe I'll do that right now. Why don't— let's give away to anybody— let's give away a few calculators. So everybody who joins MSM Live, you get the Seller Financing Navigator, which is going to tell you how to earn seller financing. Let's give away a few deal calculators, which will help to help you figure out if a deal is good or not. So let's do a little spinning wheel for that. And rock and roll. Okay, what else do we get? What do most people misunderstand about cash flow? I believe you should buy for cash flow. You should not buy for price. Anybody who focuses on price is an amateur. Pros focus on cash flow and terms. Wendy Davis, you get a deal calculator. By the way, how cute are these? These are these little, tokens they weighed for buying a business. And so, Wendy, you win a deal calculator. You should join us live at MSM so that we can teach you how to use it live. I think that— I think that a lot of people misunderstand this. So we'll make sure that you don't. Let's see. There's some general questions. What else we got? Well, James, I'm looking forward to meeting you. In person. Also, we're gonna give you like just a few things for homework before you come, nothing crazy, but make sure you check your emails. And everybody who comes to the MSM event gets a bunch of resources and tools. You're gonna get something called the ROI calculator to determine if a business is a good ROI for you or not. You're gonna get something, you're gonna get our deal box, which will tell you if you should buy a business or or not, DealBox is super, super important. You're going to get a version of the deal calculator and you're also going to get— oh, you're going to get some scripts on how to reach out to people. You're also going to get access to Live, which is sick, our AI tool that helps you find a business to buy, really, really useful. So I'm stoked for that. Everybody signed up, you get it. Okay. Do, um, let's do another giveaway for calculator. Um, Remote Talent Architect, I like this question. If someone has no connections, no money, and no experience, what's the most important first step to break into creative financing? How do they build momentum? Well, here's the thing, you've got to become a person that people take seriously. Like, uh, didn't you guys watch Succession where the guy's like, you are not serious people. You need to be a serious person. And the way that you become a serious person is that you have a— what's called an information gap. You need to be the one that knows more than the person you're trying to show you are serious. And so that's why I focus on learning about education about acquisitions, because if you want people to sell a business to you, you better have them believe that you are trustworthy and you know more than they do. And if you do, you you are at an information advantage and they're at an information disadvantage. And that's where all the money's made. So that's a great question, Remote Talent Architect. Let's see. Renan Gaines Burns. Renan Burns wins. Renan, you win a deal calculator. Congrats, my friend. What else we got? Would love to join, but I'll literally be hip deep in crop harvesting. Look at you, Brog, well, you should still join and get the recording. I'm in need of the calculator. Amazing, come to MSM, we got you. Okay, how do you manage risk in a business and not think like a gambler? This is from Dinesh Q5Y8D. Actually, all the richest people I know are obsessed with risk. We actually are trying to decrease our risk profile everywhere. So business owners, part of your job is actually to think not how much aggressive opportunity can I go after, but how can I decrease the risk in every move I make. And one of the ways I like to decrease risk is to buy cash flow. That's why I buy businesses because my risk of that business not working, if it's already worked for 10 years and it already makes money, is severely decreased. You can also decrease risk less risk by having a business that's been in existence for longer. That's something called the Lindy Effect. The longer something is in existence, the more likely it is to continue to stay in existence. Any business that's over 5 years old has about a 60% increased likelihood of continuing for the next 5 years. So old things are actually good. Old things are actually really beautiful and really profitable. Bourbon, I can't wait to see you live. Let's do it. What else? Yay, I'm so excited to see a bunch of you all 3 days. Yes. This is a good question. Coyote Moon asks, when you buy a business, do you have to know anything or care what the business does? Well, we're going to take you through something called— it's called the deal box. And basically, it's going to funnel you down from looking at all of the businesses. Like, you know how you go to Zillow and you look at a billion businesses? I'm sorry, you look at a billion houses. And then you're like, no, I need one that's less than a million bucks, 2 bedrooms, located in Austin, Texas. I need it to have a bathroom and a half. I want a little backyard. And all of a sudden you've got a little narrow strip. Part of the game in business acquisitions is figuring out what is the best business for you, not just any business, but the right fit business. And so you do that by going through your deal box. And we actually have tech that's kind of cool. I'll show you live where the tech will actually help you you ask a bunch of questions, spits out responses, then it will actually give you— it will connect to our business buying marketplace. That marketplace will feed you a bunch of the deals live. And so it will only feed you deals that hit your deal box. And I thought that's really cool. That never existed before us. Okay. Yay. How do you secure the business transaction should the owner pass away? Oh, that's really easy. There's a bunch of things called representations and warranties. And you basically put this into the contract. So if— they're like if-then statements. If owner passes, deal falls through. If owner passes before X date, deal gets decreased by about this much money. If key employee leaves, deal gets decreased by about this much money. If there is a lawsuit on the business that we weren't told about this money comes back to us. So we just make sure that we're really smart in how we structure the deal. Let's see. Oh, that's a good question. Land Rump asks, do you offer support post-acquisition running the business? Yes. I wish you could see my office. I'm actually sitting in one part of it, but there's an entire different segment of the floor which is full of advisors to help you you guys both buy a business and build that business afterwards. Actually, they might be on here. So basically, when you— here's some of them. So Travis helps you with sales. Stephen Brown is going to help you figure out how to buy a business and sell a business if you want to sell a business. Alex Hooper is one of the specialists in advising and how to grow your business. He's also a former private equity guy. Also, look at that hair. But he helps you actually get your business ready to sell or make more money in your business. And then the rest of the guys on here are all acquisition guys or gals, but we have an entire team that focuses exclusively on growing your business revenue afterwards, which I think is really, really important. It's a good question. Let's see. It's a bunch of people are asking like, how do you grow your business credit and can I actually get a loan? I'd like you to come to the session at MSM with Jordan. Jordan Gregory now runs our SBA loan brokerage. He's going to tell you, are you qualified or not, what it takes to get qualified, how much could you get in a loan, how much that loan is going to cost you, which are the best loan providers for for you to go to. It's a fascinating session because I don't know about you guys, but when I was younger, I thought debt was really boring and I didn't want to hear about loans and I thought debt was bad. And only later in life did I realize rich people all have debt. That's where all the money is. Nobody is 100% using their own capital. It's actually poor people that don't have debt. They only have bad debt like payday loans, credit cards, loans on their vehicles. Poor people have the wrong type of debt and rich people have all the best type of debt and one of our missions is to change that. Let's see. Hi, Simon Bradley. Yes, I own BizScout outright. They do get a lot of requests from small businesses, but the problem is we're not in the UK yet on BizScout. So that business doesn't It doesn't have UK listings yet, Simon, which would probably be why. It probably— we're going to have Canada by the end of the year and we're going to have UK by Q1. But there's lots of ways to find businesses. You don't just need BizScout. Okay. What else do we got? Kalita Kin asks, what creative financing was the most effective and optimized way to move from Zero to Hero in 2026. Sweat equity. If you have zero cash and you don't know how to buy a business yet, you need to pay really close attention to how to buy a business using your expertise, time, or experience. And that is actually— some of my first businesses I bought that way. I bought like 49% of a podcast production business for $10,000 and my time and helping them double and triple that business. That was called Strike Fire Productions, and that business did like $300,000 a year. So I made like $8,000 or $9,000 a month off of that business that I invested only $10,000 for. So there's lots of ways to do these deals. Let's see, what else do we got? You guys, you use the code, so you go and you click the VIP and You buy the VIP thing, but you put the code in the VIP section. Special 100 is the code. It should be on here too. So somebody's asking, if I'm flat broke for now, I can still buy a business, say a laundromat? Well, you probably can't right now because you don't know how to. And if you're broke and you have no knowledge, no, you can't buy a business. If you have knowledge but you're broke, yeah, you can probably buy part part of a business. I don't know with broke broke you're going to be able to buy an entire business. What you'd probably be able to do is go help be somebody's operator for a business, earn part of a business, and you would probably be able to help somebody else deal source. So if you have no money, no connections, no experience, no education, you're going to be in a tough place. The way to work on that is always to start with getting education. Get smarter. Come to MSM Live. Then the second thing that you need to do is you need to increase your income. Then the third thing you need to do is you need to start getting some equity. You're probably going to take small chomps at it before you go and take down an entire business. I just want to be honest with you. Let's see. Love it. Somebody asked, is there a way to know about potential disputes disputes over buying a business. Yeah, that's not common because you put a provision in there that basically says are there any outstanding lawsuits, disputes, what's the other word that they use, potential ownership, outstanding cap table representation. So you basically put that in the deal docs to make sure that does not exist. So don't stress. Let's also— let's give away another deal calculator. Should we? Okay, so reminder, if you join today, $100 off VIP. Also, you get the Seller Finance Navigator. Do a bunch of people want to learn seller financing? I think you're really gonna like it. I liked learning that. And then when you come to MSM Live, you get ROI calculators, deal calculators, etc. It'll be rad. And yes, we're gonna cover— amazing, Axel, you win a deal calculator! Let us know if you have any questions, Axel. The event is relevant to every country in the world. Lindsay, have we ever found a country that can't buy a business? I bet like North Korea, but we haven't had anybody try it. Antarctica. Oh yeah, nobody lives there, only penguins. Other than that— Yeah, if you're in North Korea, Antarctica, sorry, we got nothing for you. Otherwise, yeah, we have people buying businesses businesses all over the world. Do you got another country you think they can't? Canada. Just kidding. Yeah, she's Canadian. No, we have a ton. We have like, I don't know how many members we have in Canada. A lot. We have lots. We can't do the— Okay. Okay. The Mormon Black Sheep is saying, yes, I used to use mortgages with seller financing. It works well. It really does. And if you have no money but are an operator, would seller financing or or sweat equity be the way to go? This is from Lindsay Jackowiak. It really depends. If you're gonna actually operate the business, I think seller financing. You have to be good enough to operate the business, so we'll wanna analyze that. You can bring some deals and your experience live to MSM, and we can do deal or no deal on you. But seller financing is a faster way to get the entire business. Sweat equity, you're usually gonna get a part of it and then have to earn your way over time to the whole business. So it's just gonna take longer, which is no big deal, but that is the truth. Okay. I think we should give away another deal calculator. Of course we should. Perfect. And I don't know which one of these we want. We've got so many questions, you guys. These are so good. I'm trying to grab them all live. Cool, thank you. So one of the crazy things is when you start a business, it's actually harder to get a loan than when you buy one. So somebody's asking, hey, I started a window washing business inspired by Pink's, one of my companies. Can I get an SBA loan for it? The answer is actually it's way harder. You can get a capital, a credit line on your business if they exist, but they're actually hard to get and much less. So you'd probably be better off, Terilyn, trying to buy a piece Ink franchise using an SBA loan and combine the business you already have with it. You can actually buy franchises using SBA loans too. So if anybody here wants to buy a franchise, we'll teach you how to do that too. Super easy. I would say most businesses do that. Amera, you get a deal calculator. Congrats. Have fun with that. I love the deal calculators. Let's see. Would you buy a business in an industry you have no experience? Yeah, I do it all day every day. Day. Do I recommend that for your first business? It's going to depend on you. So remember what I told you, we're going to go through your deal box and we're going to skinny it down to the right business for you. The best business for you is one where you do understand it already, you have an unfair advantage, and you get to buy it. But that doesn't mean that's always going to be where you start. We have a lot of people who start like buying vending machine routes. We have business people who start buying ATM machine routes. They just want a smaller business Laundromats. What else have we had people buy that's sort of fun? We've had— oh yeah, we had somebody buy an oyster farm. We also had somebody buy— there's lots of weird ones— we had loading docks, swim school. That was a cool one. That was a 100% seller-financed deal, a mobile swim school, and they didn't even live in that area. So like, it just gets kind of fun when you come to an event like this too. You start seeing all these, you're like, what? I don't even know that business exists. Like, I could buy that. And so that's really fun too. And then it opens up my mind. Like, I own, what do I own right now? I own handymen, I own, I actually sold all my car washes, or car washes and, no, that's not true. I still own part of some car washes. I sold all my laundromats, but I own window cleaning, roofing, exteriors. Handyman, garage companies, garage installation companies, property management. Those are some of the ones right off the top. So, and I had no experience in it. Do I look like I clean windows? No, I don't. Although I find it oddly satisfying. Have you guys tried that ASMR of the squeegee thing? It's very satisfying. Yeah, our PINKS guys are really cute. Have I had anyone buy an insurance book of business? This is Devin Enru. We have had— Devin, by the way, if you're serious about this, you should come and learn because I love buying financial satellite companies. Like back in the day, I bought a lot of asset management businesses and rolled them into my main finance business. We have a lot of people that buy insurance books. We have people that buy financial advisory practices. We have people that buy— a ton of people who buy accounting firms. Bookkeeping firms, fractional CFO firms. So yeah, it's all over it. I'm a window cleaner and an IT professional. There's a fucking combo. I don't know how to pronounce your name, X Jarius, but that is wild. Somebody just write, you look like you could cook me breakfast. Actually, I don't. I'm a terrible— the whole team's shaking their head. You don't want me to cook you breakfast. I make money so I don't have to cook breakfast, guys. That's the fucking point, isn't it? Okay, let's see. Somebody's very mad because you didn't get the discount because you bought it earlier. Guy, do you think I'm not gonna give you $127 worth of value times 10 when you come in person? Come on, focus on the big picture, guys. The big picture in life is If you come to this event, we are going to change the way you think about ownership forever. We're going to help you figure out how to buy a business. We're going to change your life. And you are already one of the few people who made moves. Congratulate yourself. Clap yourself on the back. Stop thinking like a poor person. Don't obsess over discounts. That is poor person mentality. Rich people obsess over how do I make more money. Poor people obsess over how do I save this amount. And let me tell you what, I can say this very easily because guess what? I was super poor. Like, I was in debt when I went to college. Uh, if you— I grew up behind a power plant in a house that's probably close to condemned now. I, uh, know what it sounds like continuously for my debit card to continue to fail. That sound at the grocery store when you go to the checkout and it doesn't go through. Um, I had to fight with like— I had like 6 different debit cards at different banks because I had to fight each one for how many overdraft fees I could have per month. Like, I've fucking been there, you guys. But the truth of the matter is, the things that got me here are none of the things I learned when I didn't have money. And so I wish somebody had yelled at me back then and said something different. So anyway, I'm gonna be your business bully today and say, show up, do the work. It will be the best time you've ever spent, and you're welcome. Also, if I wanted to make a a lot of money, I would just buy all of these businesses and not teach anybody how to do it. And you know, you guys can go look up— there's something called the FDD, the Financial Disclosure Agreement on franchises. You guys can go see how much money we earn from our company called Resy Brands per year. That's public. That's a 9-figure-a-year business. Let me tell you what, we don't make 9 figures selling tickets for $27. I wish we did, but this is a labor of love, unfortunately. Oh, this is a fun relevant question. How do you run your content business and all of the other businesses? Actually, I'm the worst operator at my content business. I haven't figured out how to not run this business the way I don't run all the other businesses because I bought them. Like I don't really work at all in Resy Brands and that business that we do. I have accepted a really, really high level helping them do strategic thinking, hire a new CFO, etc. In content, I do things like this. I guess because I like it. I like meeting you guys and hearing what's holding you back from actually buying a business. It's really refreshing for me. For 15 years, I was in finance, like, you know, on the 37th floor in a corner office building finance things. But it is the least efficient business that I run because I still have a job in it, which is this right now. I haven't figured out how to clone myself and make myself a robot yet. That. So the moral of the story is I work a lot in order to do content and run my business. I'm not good at that yet. Um, let's see. I love that, Denise. You're right, we don't cook breakfast. Actually, sadly, if I'm really honest, breakfast is the only thing I can cook, and I like to make it. Does anybody here do girls' dinner? Hi! When my husband's out of town, I eat breakfast for dinner too, and it's delicious, and I won't feel bad about that or be shamed. Okay, hey, Angel says, myself, that's who's holding me back, man. You and everybody else, don't stress. Like, this is the— you know, people ask me what's the number one reason most people won't buy a business. What do you think the answer is? You. Like, you're not gonna— you're gonna show up to a live, but you're not gonna show up to 3 days for the price of a couple cups of coffee. Why? Because you're like busy You got other stuff going on, the $27, whatever. Like, I don't mean to be heartless about it, but we are always the reason why we do not have the things we want out of life. And, you know, I was talking to a guy today, his name is Maneesh, and he grew up in India, and now he runs a billion-and-a-half-dollar fund. And the guy's wild. That billion-and-a-half-dollar fund he runs with 2 people, 2 full-time employees, and he works— and he only goes into the office about once every other month. He has lunches where they come to his house, and he invests in 10 stocks a year, and he's like best buds with Warren Buffett. And he started off really poor, and he actually had to like completely change his mindset in order to make money. And the first thing that he learned was that you have to take risk. And so today we were like talking about how do you take the right types of risk, and I was explaining to him some of the companies I'm buying and, you know, having him look at how I'm doing deals versus how he does deals. And it just took me back because he has a very large business now that is run so efficiently. So there's always somebody at a higher level of the game than you, and if you have a chance to learn that game, your life will never be the same. If you take it every chance you can get. Let's see. Asking where the event is. Oh, the event is all virtual. Nothing in person. This is virtual so we can hit anybody in the world. This is a good one. Daniel Rice says, "Oh, I also love you bringing your wife or your husband." Let's— should we do something else? How about for everybody that signs up today, so my friend who I yelled at doesn't feel left out, let's give everybody who signed up today, or if they're on this live, just email us, a free ticket for one of their buddies. So we'll give you a code, a special code for one of your buddies. Bring a friend. Like, your likelihood of following through on something when you bring somebody else along with you in almost anything you do in life is anywhere— increased anywhere from 30 to 90%. There's a real, like, accountability leverage. And so any chance you can, I highly recommend it. Let's see what else. Oh, great question, Sheila. Thank you. Should I quit my bit— my job before I buy a biz, or can I do both? Do not quit your job. Please, please, please, please, please do not quit your job. Use your job and your salary to buy the business. You know, Monisha and I were talking about that today. You have a 40-hour workweek unless you're in a high-growth job, but But let's say you have a 40-hour typical work week. There's what, 128 hours in a week, is that right? That means you have on average after sleeping, eating, working out, whatever, you have like another 40 hours you can dedicate to something per week if you're ridiculously relentless. So do not quit your job. I like you to use the income from your job to buy businesses. That's what I did. I think I did that for like 8 or 9 years before I bought a business. That. You're right, I was talking to Dando Investor Guy. Let's see, we're both located in Austin, so we've become buddies. Oh, this is cool. Gurgly says, how easy is it to shape the terms when the owners of the small business realize they can sell their company to you at a higher price as long as you control the terms? The answer is very— that most people— and you guys see state here, most people do not know how to buy a business, how to buy an asset, how to structure terms. Most people don't know how to read a P&L, a profit and loss statement. Most people don't know how to look at a balance sheet. Most people don't know the tools to use to go buy a business. I am telling you guys, you're part of the 1% information gap if you learn this stuff. And so, your ability to change an outcome on a deal is going to be so much higher than the other guys because because you're going to look at a lot of deals to buy a business. But if I own a business and I'm selling one, I might sell one business in my lifetime, right? For most people. So they are not pros at this. You guys actually are. Codie, we put the code— we have to get them the code so they can fill out the form so we can send them an email to gift the free ticket. Oh yeah, yeah, for the extra person. Yeah, so okay, for everybody on here, make sure that you put your information in this lower QR code to the bottom so that when you buy a ticket today, we can gift you your free ticket for your friends. But we have to have your email to do that. So that means you got to fill out this QR code in order to do it. That makes sense, everybody? Uh, so the one right by your head is to buy a ticket, and the one on the bottom is— oh yeah, so this one right here, uh, next to my head, this one right here next to my head is to to buy the MSM ticket. This one down here is to get giveaways, fun stuff, free tickets, etc. Okay, you're welcome for the discount. It makes me happy that you guys become owners. That's like the entire reason we do any of this. This is a cool question. Thank you. This is from Marilyn 9789. Have you ever lost money on a deal? Yeah, a lot. I think you can find on the internet. I've lost like one deal we lost $12 million on. Lots of deals I've lost like sub-a-million bucks. Let's call it a couple hundred K, $200K, $500K, $750K. When I was part of a private equity group, not just me, we probably lost like $25 million on a deal because the difference though is when you're an investor, not a business buyer yourself, you can —have a lot of failures. Failure is actually okay because you have a diversified portfolio. As a business acquirer where I wasn't investing across a ton, knock on wood, I've never lost money on a business that I bought outright. These are just businesses where I'm buying small parts of them as part of a portfolio. And so I'm not saying that I won't, but it's just not as common as when you're an investor in a business. Process. Okay. Let's see. What else? I don't know about that question. Oh, this is a fun one. Should I go into business with my husband? Listen, I run a business with my husband. I would say the first year is really hard. It's like marriage. You have to set a lot of expectations. Anytime you increase the surface area of two things, what do you increase? It's the area for friction, so expect that. You're going to have to get really good at communicating and make sure you guys both know the why of what you do. My husband and I are very aligned. He's a former Navy SEAL, so he doesn't care as much about money. I probably am more money-driven than he is because I've always been in finance and I grew up broke. So I was like, I swear to God, I'm never going to be poor again. I hate that feeling. He doesn't even care about being broke. He could totally like live. He has actually proposed multiple times to live in a van for a year, as if that would be intriguing to me. And, you know, and he has a Pinterest board dedicated to vans he would like to live in. When he drives by a nice van, he goes, look at that house, and then says the color of the van. Like, look at that orange van, he goes, look at that orange house. This is a true story. So, but to get back to should you do business with your husband, the TL;DR is you have to make sure that you have a lot of comfortability having difficult questions. If you don't, you should not. And if you do, then do it. Let's see, what else we got here? Jordan, what do you mean you can't come because you're just getting back from a 2-week vacation? I think you should still try to be there. Now you can come and get the recording, yes, but I would just make sure that's a real excuse, not a fake excuse. And it's okay if you're not going to be there the entire period. I like people to be there as long as possible because you'll get more. But God, it's, you know, it's one thing if, you know, like when we have our in-person events, those cost anywhere from $5,000 to $25,000. And so if you were going to come learn from me in person, it's expensive. And so then you should make sure you're going to be there the whole time. For this, I don't know, up to you guys, but I think it seems like probably you can get a movie ticket for less than that. Let's see. All right, what about— Your Secret Lover, are you the one asking me about breakfast? I think you were. Asks, what about online businesses? We own a lot of those. We own BizScout. We own another one called a Pro approachment. We've invested in a ton of online businesses. So same playbook. I just like talking about boring businesses the most because they're my favorite to buy. But that doesn't mean that has to be your favorite. The same principles apply. What else we got? Mm-hmm. Oh, I'm so glad. Deanna said she went to the event last February and highly, highly recommends. Thank you. That really makes my heart happy. We obsess on this. If you saw the team, there's a whole team that's only focus is on this event because like I said, we will not do this for another year. And I stay up at night making sure that every single person on there has the highest likelihood of learning how to buy a business. We basically don't sleep for— I don't know what that is— 4 days of the event. The whole team flies to the same location and we sort of quarantine them. So that they can help you. Let's see. Are coffee shop trailers a good business to invest in? So, like, Maneesh and I were talking about this today. It's not necessarily a good sector versus a bad sector. Is it a good deal or a bad deal? And is it a good deal or a bad deal for you? Like, we were talking about Warren Buffett, and one of Warren Buffett's first businesses was pinball machines. He had a friend that would buy old beat-up pinball machines for like $5, and he would fix them up. Then they would take the pinball machines and they would put them in a bunch of barber shops, and they'd ask the barber to split the fees 50/50. And so the $5 cost, no rent cost for putting the pinball in there. And like, you know, in the first week, a lot of those pinball machines had $5, so they had 100% cash-on-cash return. And he made a return inside of the first week. That was a great business for him at that point because he bought beat-up machines and the economics worked. And so it's not that like a trailer or a coffee business is good or bad. It's like how do you structure it? You want to look for sort of what makes the business weird and profitable. That's what I'm looking for. Okay. Say that again. Okay, let's go with, um, what's the biggest mistake you have made when buying a business and how would you have avoided it? You know what my biggest mistake in life has been, you guys? Getting around people that don't want more out of life than I do. You know, I think you'll find that most people are like crabs in a bucket. The second that you start reaching to go buy a business, build a business, do something else, they're gonna yank you back. Not because they're bad people, people, but because they're scared of who you're going to become. They're scared of losing the person that they love, uh, that's you today, not this new you, because there is fear and jealousy in it. Because people want you to be just as successful as them but no more. And so the biggest mistake you can make— like, if I'm you, I'm telling a few friends that you're going to MSM Live, but I'm not asking opinions. I'm saying, who wants to come with me? I'm not asking if you think it's a good idea or not, because when you go and tell people you're gonna buy a business, they're gonna tell you you're crazy. I'm just telling you that right now. They'll be like, you think you can do that? Oh, you don't even have a job you like. You don't even have X. You don't even have Y. So just be careful about taking other people's opinions who don't have lives that you want. Let's see. Do you ever get burnt out? Every Tuesday. Do I get burnt out? No, I just get tired. Like one of my favorite mentors said to me, are you burnt out or you just need a nap? And I think that's often the case. Like, I just might need a day off. I might need to go take a vacation. I might need to do a little less of one part of the job that I hate. But I think the idea of getting burnt out usually means you're doing slightly too much of what you don't like and not quite enough of what you do like, and you probably need a little break. Maybe you really don't need a— maybe you need a nap. Maybe you need a day off. No big deal. And so, you know, I worry about people who say they get burnt out, especially when you're young, because this is not the time. This is the time to pedal to the metal, learn how to do everything you possibly can, because there's nothing that sucks more than being old and broke. Being young and broke is actually totally fine, I think, because you're like, you're gonna figure it out. You don't have You don't have as many health issues. You don't have a family yet maybe. Young and broke is okay. Being old and broke is really scary. And I don't think we say that enough. You've got time. I don't know. I don't know. Do you? I had one of my employees here that was gonna pull back a little bit in work. And he's actually really good. Usually if somebody comes to me and says they wanna work less or they wanna do another job or whatever, support them, let them go. But with this one, I was like, I think you're making a giant mistake, and I think you're tired, and maybe you need a vacation, or you need to switch roles, but you shouldn't quit because this is your prime earning years, and you're at a company that's doubling or tripling every year. The biggest mistake that you could make is taking your foot off the gas right now because you're a little tired. Just fill up the tank, man. Like, you don't throw away the car when the tank's empty. You fill it up. And so I don't like the word burnout very much, although It does, like, feeling burnt out is real. That is real. Being tired is real. Hating something is real. It's just like, do you have to take it all the way or can you just take a break instead of quit? Okay. It's pouring rain outside. Maybe we should end it. Oh yeah, it is. It's pouring outside in Austin. Okay. Let's do— let's give away one more deal calculator. Let's do one. So, we're going to give away another deal calculator to somebody on here. I'm going to give you guys one more chance to throw some last-minute questions in there and then I'm going to tell you something while we're doing a little giveaway here. I want you to be at MSM if you are at all curious about how to buy a business. I want you to figure out how to become one of the few who own something. I want you to do it now before AI makes even more changes. I want you to do it now before Ryan Polite, you win a deal calculator. I want you to do this now because I want you to do it before a lot of these businesses transition out. This is not an endless opportunity we have. You know, we only have so much time before most of these business baby boomers retire, or they transition their business, or they close shop. And so just don't sleep on this. Like, we only do this once a year. We do it big because I worry that everybody waits for the perfect moment, and then they never actually do the thing. Um, okay, I'm gonna end with this: learning to buy a business is not the same as buying a business.— you may determine after coming to MSM Live that you're like, "Oh, man, I'm not ready to buy an outright business." That's actually how I was. When I did my first business transaction, I decided I wasn't ready to actually buy the whole business. It was too much risk for me. It was too much work for me. Instead, I was like, "You know what I want to learn to do instead? I want to learn to own part of a business." So I figured out how to do sweat equity first. That was my first— no dollars. I was still working. And I was like, okay, cool, I got that. Then I was like, okay, I want to take some of my money and I want to apply it to buy a business. So somebody else was buying a business. So that's like at MSM, you'll meet a bunch of other people that are going to buy businesses. You may come with them and be like, hey, you're going to do this, I'm going to give you a little money. Can you just give me some cash flow, some distributions on your business? I got comfortable there. I did that a bunch of times until I finally got comfortable going all in and buying buying the whole business. And so don't think that there's like A or B. You might be like, there's too much risk, I'm not comfortable with it right now. That's fine, but still learn how to buy so that you can start getting small bites at the apple. And then you could eventually take down the whole tree if you want, and then the orchard, and then the world. But to start, you could just take one bite. And I wish I learned that sooner because it held me back quite a while. Okay guys, so excited. I want to see you at the event. I, you know, it's really cool. I think by now we've given away more than $10,000 worth of tickets, tools, giveaways, upsells. So I want to thank you for being here. Like, we take this seriously. There's a whole team here on this other side that's making sure you're here to win. I want to see you at Main Street Millionaire Live. You guys tell me in the comments, did you you learned some cool stuff about how to finance deals. I hope you did, and I hope you join us on the next time we talk about this for the last time of this year. The dates for that are what, Dee? June 18th to the 20th. Yeah, June 18th to the 20th. I want to see your pretty face in person. It's kind of cool, then we actually do see your face at this giant studio, basically, and the studio has like multiple sides of video screens, and we put all the faces up. So I actually get to kind of engage with you guys, call you up, ask you questions live. It's really cool because sometimes this feels— I like seeing your comments here, but it still feels like I'm talking to myself in a room with camera, and that does not feel like that. So I'll see you in person. Bring your friends. Don't do this alone. I'll see you there.