If I Wanted to Become A Millionaire in 2026, I'd Do This

Sa. Sam. I want to be able you guys hear me. Hello? Hello. I want to be able to see myself up there, guys. Not the spinny thing. Let's get it rocking and rolling. Ah, there we go. But just tell me when that's going to be up there. Hi, guys. What's going on? Hello, Hello, Hello. I can't see it. So let's get this motoring. Okay, cool. Now I can see it. Just a little bit delayed. Okay, everybody, what's going on? This is super cool. I've never done this before. And here's the thought tonight that. Hi, I can also see your chat. So if you see me looking down here, I can see your chat. If you can see me looking over here, there's a big screen screen in front of me where I can see your chat. So what's up? Tell me, everybody, where you guys are from? What's the one thing you want to learn on here today? Okay, so we got a cool little agenda for y' all today. The agenda goes like this. We are shooting live from the Contrarian Thinking headquarters. So you can't see, but I got a team that's going to throw stuff to me. We're doing giveaways, we're doing prizes. We're kind of going to hang out just, you know, and I. And then I'm gonna have the team get us a bunch of stuff which will be super cool. Then out here, you can't see it, but there's like, this is where our 50 plus people hang out in Austin, Texas. So if you ever come to Austin, come say hi. Our subject today is that we are going to talk about making money. We're going to talk about how to make your first or your next million bucks. That's what I have on my to do list. We're also going to talk about stuff. We have going up ways that we can hopefully help you guys hit that as well. And I guess my little secret here is tell me if you all like this format. We're deciding to do something a little different, which is it feels like everything these days is so overproduced. I was asking my team the other day, is that AI or is that real? And I literally couldn't tell. So I was like, you know what? Let's show people straight up the answers to their questions. No filters, no nothing. Just you and me hanging out. We're gonna do this more often. If you guys like it, if you guys show up and if you tag me on any of the socials with this live, we're gonna reshare it. Cause this is something I wanna experiment with. Like, it feels like we're losing the human and all of the AI. So tell me if you end up liking this and if you got value from it. Also, for these giveaways, the team's gonna tell me how we're gonna do this. Cause I'm like a little bit of a. I'm like, I'm old school. We would call it a Luddite. So I don't always know how we're going to give things away. So they might be throwing stuff to me and telling me how I think I want to give away one thing to start. Should we just like start right now? Okay. They say yes. So if you want to apply for our giveaways, we have this wild spinning wheel thing. And how you get to it is. See this QR code? I think it's right here. Is it right here? Is it right here on the screen? Other side? No. Yep, this side. Okay. Right here is a QR code. If you scan it and fill out your information, then you can win things from me, such as a copy of my book, for instance. And here I'm going to write a little something for you guys. So we're going to choose somebody who's going to win a copy of Main street over Wall Street, Main Street Millionaire by me. And we'll sign it and we'll give it away. And I do this little spinny thing where we can see who we're going to give it away to. So we'll keep this one up here. This one is for one of you guys on a go forward basis. We are also going to give away live tickets to Main street over Wall street, which is my annual event. We're going to get to that later. But let's start with some value. All right. I want to talk about making cash. Is that okay with you guys? Looks like in the comments you guys want to make some cash too. Let's go. If I've realized one thing, it's that you don't actually get rich doing new things. You get rich doing one thing continuously past the point everybody else quits. And so I want to teach you three ways that I made my first million. And then we're going to answer lots of questions for you live. Tell me right here, how many people in here are business owners versus how many people in here are W2 employees? I'll see that in the chat because I want to start with how do you make money if you're an employee? I'm calling this the Salary increase framework. And it's how we teach people to buy businesses while you're employed or how to make your money multiply and I don't know, team, by the way, when I am able to do a spinny thing, giveaway or not. So you'll have to tell me. All right. Sick. Lots of W2, lots of owners, lots of you doing both. Busy little bees out there. I think a big disservice was sold to us that we gotta go get other people to give us money to start our acquisition process. I don't know if you guys know this, but now I own a bunch of businesses at Contrarian Thinking. We have a large holding company, we own a bunch of different companies. One of them is called Contrarian Thinking. You guys are here with that company today. I also printed off a bunch of. Well, let's not lie. I didn't print off the team printed off a bunch of your questions. So I'm gonna get to these too. It's kind of fun. But the way that I started all of this is I had a W2 and I used my salary to actually get me to acquire my first business. And there's not so much that you have to learn how to do this. Here's my little couple tricks. So you probably have maybe tell me if you guys have seen before the 50, 30, 20 rule of leverage. So basically what that means is when you're making money in your salary, 50% of your income. 5 0. I know it's a lot that is going to try to go towards investing or assets. 30% goes to needs or what I'll call expenses. 20% goes to want or what I'll call luxuries. So pumpkin spice lattes for your basic dishes like me in October. That is going to go into that 20% bucket. And basically by taking the 50% that I could spend over time, I used it as a salary accelerator and I became my first investor. And I want you guys to do the exact same thing. So remember that 50, 30, 20. And if you remember it, you'll be one of the few. I think about this as you're not saving your way to wealth. You're actually allocating there. You're investing your way there. Then I want you to think about how to reinvest in until you hit, let's call it escape velocity. So let's say you can only save a few thousand bucks a month. Like tell me if you guys think can everybody on here, can you save a few thousand bucks a month? Let me know yes or no. In the comments. Because what I'd like you to do is treat your employer as your first investor. That's what I want you to do. And so you're going to actually use your employer's, quote, unquote, your money to invest in your first startup. I'll tell you later how we can use third party investment to buy our first business. And the way that we're going to do this is we're going to put aside this amount of cash we found in our communities. It takes you about 3 to 6 months to get your first 10 to 20k to apply to your first business acquisition. And then I want you to use that W2 stability. You know how everybody talks shit about W2s right now? Have you guys seen that? Like, anybody feel bad? Like, oh, I'm an employee, I'm not a founder. That's so bad. I don't believe anything about that. Because do you guys know that with your W2, you have basically almost like a free line of credit based on your employer's likelihood of continuing to employ you to use towards investing in a business? And I talk about that a lot in Main Street Millionaire and at the event that we're going to talk about. But we're going to talk about three ways that we get credit. SBA loans, lines of credit from either your house, your business, or your underlying assets. We'll talk about that. And then we're also going to talk about HELOCs as well. In the meantime, I think we're ready to give away the first book. Is that right? All right, we're going to give away the first book. And this is cool. You want to put the spinner up on the screen and you're going to see that I'm not messing with the process. If you guys scan the QR code, we're gonna be giving away tons of stuff. Tickets to Main street over Wall Street. You guys can include the link in that for them books and obviously some value. Hopefully. Throw it up. Click it to spin it, baby. All right. Who thinks they're winning a Main street over Wall street book? I hope it's somebody like Ben Chan. Oh, oh, yeah. Ben Chan. All right. What does Ben have to do? How are you going to email him? You're going to get his. Oh, yeah, you already have his email. Amazing. Okay, Ben Chan, you get the copy of this book. This is for you. I got to set it aside. To my main man, Ben. Okay, so now we've talked about the first way that you're going to get cash, which is W2 income. What you're going to do with that W2 income is there's basically these three ways to make money. SBA loans, which, which means you go to the Small Business association, ask them for a loan on a business, they'll loan up to 90% of the purchase price of a business. So if you're gonna buy a business for, let's say, $100,000, you need 10k. Do you guys know the new rules they just did for SBA loans too? You can also get the SBA to actually allow you to have third party investors. So it doesn't have to be your 10k down, which is kind of cool. We're going to talk a little bit about seller financing, which is how you get the owner of a business to finance the business for you. So that basically means you say, Mr. Seller of the business, you want out. We don't have enough cash to do this transaction. There's not enough buyers for your business. How do we get you to use future proceeds to buy the business? And in fact, what's fascinating about this, you guys, do you know what percentage of small businesses are sold with seller financing? Anybody know? 60%, which is kind of crazy. And if you think that that's just a US Phenomenon, it's actually not. In Canada, for instance, they call that equity selling. And so if you talk to the, if you talk to the owner of a small business, you'll just use different vernacular, which is really, really cool. In fact, actually, we have a whole section of this at Main street over Wall Street. Our event that's coming up. Should we give away a ticket, you guys? Yes, let's do it. Okay. Oh, sick. Okay, there's a timer right here. So basically, just shy of every 10 minutes, we're going to give away a ticket. This part's kind of cool, you guys, because these tickets are worth like, what are these worth? 1500 bucks. Now, every single ticket is worth 1500 bucks. So these are real prices. This isn't fake. You come to Austin, you hang out with us, you get to meet me. If you like that. I don't know if that's a winning note or not, but let's do a spin and give away this next ticket. By the way, do you guys like this? Teach a little, Get a giveaway. Teach a little, Get a giveaway. Let me know when you're ready to do the spin and click it, baby. We got Kyle on the DJ booth in the back, which is basically what's happening. We have Dee bossing me around, which is about normal. Okay. Hell of a name. Okay. By the way, if you cannot come to MSAL's because you're too far away or something, since this is probably gonna be for us only, just ping us and we will hook you up with something else. Can we do that? Yeah, let's give them something else. Let's do one more spin just in case that individual cannot come. We're gonna do one more spin and we'll pick somebody else. All right, the third way you can buy a business while you are employed, using other people's capital while we figure out who gets it. Derek, George, this one looks like it's for you. All right, Derek, Excited to meet you at msows. You have 10 more minutes for the next sick. Okay. The last way is what I'll explain is a couple. A home equity line of credit. Home equity line of credit. Or what could be a refinance, or you could use robs, which is your retirement account. So home equity. And I really. You guys, this one I'm super careful with. I'm careful of ever putting your house on the line. Like Warren Buffett famously says, don't ever sacrifice what you don't need for what you already have. And so I think be really careful. If you're ever using home equity line of credits to buy a business, you want to be really careful on that, because what if you can't pay it back? What then you lose your house. I don't like that for any of you guys. So the only way that I would do this is if you have a lot of cash and you're just taking money out of the home equity, because oftentimes the rate's pretty good and you want your cash available for you to be able to access. For instance, I do a lot of my deals using something called securities lending, which is basically if I have a lot of capital or money sitting at a bank, you know, like a Merrill lynch, for instance. And I don't want to take my money out of the stock market. I want to leave my money in the stock market, but I want to take some lending ability on top of it. I might do that, and you'll be surprised. Like, Robinhood offers this. Charles Schwab offers it. Merrill lynch just about anywhere. You'll have what's called. You'll have a ratio, which is called a liquidity ratio, which is how much money you can take out on top of the. The equities that you have invested in the market. So you guys remember, like Adam Newman from WeWork back in the day, so Adam Newman famously got a huge securities loan in order to live this crazy lifestyle. Private planes and houses, et cetera. How did he do that without selling WeWork stock? They just gave him a percentage of the total amount of stock he had outstanding. Elon Musk. Do you guys know how Elon Musk bought Twitter? Elon Musk bought Twitter using a mixture of third party capital risk, fundraising and equities loans, securities loans. And so he was like, I don't want to sell my Tesla or SpaceX stock. Can I loan to that amount? That is what he did. And I think a good thing to remember if you're trying to get rich continuously, is the only thing riskier than using debt is not understanding how to use it. Like, if you don't understand how to use debt and you think about it only as a four letter word, I don't think you'll find a way to become truly wealthy. And this is something rich people don't want us to know. Let me tell you why. Warren Buffett, you could Google it really quick. Warren Buffett has all these rules. And I love the sage of Omaha, one of the richest men in the world, the head of Berkshire Hathaway. But he says, don't use debt. He says the three ways, the three fastest ways to kill a man are liquor, ladies, and leverage. And then he famously says, and really it's only the third one, leverage is debt. But the problem is, go look up the total amount of debt outstanding by Warren Buffett and see how much it is. We're talking billions and billions of dollars in debt he has. So he's going like, you guys don't have debt, but I can have debt. That's totally fine. I think that's not very fair and not right for you. So it is totally fine for you to understand how to use debt. And in fact, I really think that you should. Okay, let's also talk about reinvesting the capital that you have. So I think there's like a one to five year plan for how to take the money that you make and allocate it until you become your own first investor, or what I call permissionless investing. And that, by the way, mind throwing me that hat on the far side right there. Yeah. My man. Thank you. Yay. Okay. That is why our event is called Main street over Wall street, where we teach people to buy businesses continuously. And also why it's the mission of my company. I think we should understand how to use equity and debt better than anybody else, because this is how rich people make Money. And so I think I should give away a hat. What do you guys think? Do we like hats too? All right. Oh, I love it. A you say you're already signed up. Okay. So I'm gonna do a giveaway for a hat next. And then we're gonna start going to Q and A here quickly. So let's do a little spin for hat, guys. Main street over Wall street hat. So here's how I would do it. If right now you were making a couple, you were making $100,000 a year, there's something called a compounding model. And how does that work? Well, year one to two, you want to have a job plus your side hustles. Anything you guys have going on out there, nice job, Kim. Kim gets a hat. Is this like my version of Oprah, like giving away Main street over Wall street hats? I actually love this hat. This is an OG hat. The only place you can get it here. I don't sell any merch on the Internet right now, but you guys tell me if we should one day. So your first one to two years is really to start your investment period. I need you to have a plan to get your first $25,000 in investable income. That is where I believe freedom really starts for you. Then in year two, three and four, you're going to use that 25k plus third party investment to buy a business or invest in part of a business. And then by year five, the goal is how can I add my second or my third business? And here's the reason why, and I'll show you kind of the formula firsthand. So if you take your job savings plus your side profit, you times it by years. And then add to that the assets that you have in equity, you'll see how long it'll take you to get to your first million bucks. And I'll put this in the YouTube comments for you guys to come back to. I think it's a little hard to see on a live. So maybe next time we can show this a little bit more easily because I don't think you can see this. Is this too far? Can you get close? No, probably not. Okay, we're going to drop this in the the chat for you guys so it's not too hard to see. But a simple way to look at it would be right now. If you're making 75k a year, you save 2k a month. That's 24k a year. So you've hit your $25,000 goal by year one. If you're making, you know, double that and you're getting to five, you've done it in six months half the time. Basically. The part that's interesting about this is if you take that capital and you apply it to buying a business, let's look at how that breaks down. So when you buy a business, you're going to put down somewhere between typically 10 to 20% of a business. So let's say we have a business that's doing 500k in revenue and $150,000 in profit. So you could replace theoretically your job making 150k with the profits of this business. How much would that business cost you to buy? Does anybody know the answer to that? If a business is doing 150k in profit, how much would that cost you to buy? On average, it's usually about 2 to 3x the profits. So let's call it 300k for $150,000 profit of business a year. Business that's going to cost you about 3,300k. And the reason why is because that's not a very big profitable business. So it's not going to be that expensive to buy. That means that you need 30k down to buy $150,000 a year salary. You all following me? What's fascinating about that is if you pay yourself, let's say 100k a year, you put the rest of the 50k back into the business. If you get a couple of investors to come along with you to put down, let's say 10k each and you buy the business together and then you do something which is called revenue multiplication to get valuation expansion. So valuation expansion is what you're looking for. What does that mean? It means that you're, if you're able to double the revenue so from 150k to let's call it 300k, then you don't sell your business for 2x, you start being able to sell it for closer to 3 or 4x. So if you have a $300,000 business, you're not going to sell it for just 600k, you might be selling it for 800k. Why? Because you get rewarded for every additional dollar that you grow. You also get rewarded for the speed that you grow and the bigger that you grow, the bigger the multiplication is. And so if you sell that business that you bought for $30,000 down and you grow that business to 300k, then inside of that two to three to four year period, you're looking at your first million bucks. And I remember the first time I saw this, you guys, I was like, this is a total unlock. No wonder the richest people in the world only buy businesses. And so I wanted to give you a little taste of that. Now, I know sometimes this could feel like a lot. So that's why we do these annual events to make sure that you guys can learn how to do this firsthand. Because the truth of it is, are you really going to be able to be worth millions of dollars if you can't even stay focused on a 10 minute YouTube video? Probably not. Are you really going to be able to be worth millions of dollars if you can't look at a simple mathematical equation on how to grow? Like, probably not. That's just the hard truth. So let's do two giveaway tickets to msows Main street over Wall street. And we're going to do it right now. And we'll hook some of you guys up so we can teach you live in person. We'll go ahead and set the spinner and get that rocking and rolling. And people want to know if they're constantly updating the chance to win. And we are. So keep putting your name in and you will have the chance to win. Nice. So basically what Dee's telling me is like if you keep putting your name in, you keep getting chances to win. So they have to put their name in again every single time. No. Oh, you optimize. You only have to put it in once, guys. So if you're brand new and you want to win, you scan the QR code and Felix wins a ticket to msals. We're going to do another one right now, and then we're going to rock and roll. All right, I'm going to start taking some questions, y'. All. So let's do this. By the way, the team is handing me sort of these one off questions. Lisa, what up, girl? Can't wait to meet you in Austin, Texas. This. This is so cool. It's three days. You all live with me. I'm bringing in all my rich friends for you to steal their homework. We're bringing in all. So this one's actually good. Somebody. The Puffy Dumpling. 77. What a name. Asks a perfect question for I feel like a Puffy Dumpling. Actually, today I was telling Lee that I'm like, I'm a little. I'm a little puffy today. I don't say I'm feeling fat. I say I'm feeling, feeling puffy. They ask, how do you find funding? When the bank says, no, this is a cool question. So for this reason to our event I'm bringing three banking partners with me. These banking partners are going to do something called pre qualification guys which means they pre qualify you to see what level of business you are able to buy. This increases your likelihood of buying a business by like 2 to 3x. They're also going to talk to you about just things like setting up business bank accounts. They're going to talk to you about like how many of you guys have a side hustle and you need your LLC set up. We got you on all of this. So the question basically how do you find funding when the bank says no or what? My favorite question is how do I get other people to give me money? Which I think about this constantly. Once you understand the game of third party capital, it's hard to ever go back. And so here's a couple different mechanisms you have. Mechanism one, you choose a different banking platform partner. There are these things called brokerages basically where they have multiple funding sources. You apply to one and by applying to one you get access to a ton. So one, never put your eggs in one basket. Never allow one person to screw you. For instance, we have a bank that I won't name Washington Federal. Just kidding. I will name it because I have no relationship with them but they were terrible with one of my businesses and drug on the relationship for months, months and months and months and kept telling them they were going to get a loan and then didn't. So it even happens to me with businesses of our side. So don't bank with them. But we have a good relationship with for instance lendio and with Sofi and with Huntington bank and all those banks I keep going back to. So one have multiple banking partners. That's rule number one. Never let one person hold you back from the dance, baby. You got to have a lot of dancing partners. Number two, I think we, we often. You guys all heard of friends and family raising money from friends and family, right? Angel investing. Why don't we do that more in buying businesses? What's more likely to win your tiny crazy side hustle idea about a business or a business that is already profitable, has been making money for years and has a higher likelihood of continuing to make money. So I like to have a friends and family round. If you were at some of our events, we have four things that msals we have a track so mean people you'll see on their name tag when you come on the name tag it'll say investor or operator or buyer or seller or banker. And on each of Those. Or it might say investor on each of those, you'll be able to pick out visually. All right, that guy's selling his business. Cool. I'm buying businesses. That guy's buying businesses. Cool. I'm buying business. You know, I'm selling a business. So you get to match up with your right person. So the third best way to get funding is get in the room where people are giving money. If you guys are only in rooms where you are the richest and the smartest person, or where everyone is worth the same amount of money as you, I'm sorry, you're limiting yourself immensely. You need to get in rooms that feel uncomfortable to be in. So that's the next one. And then the fourth one is find some funding sources from government agencies. The Small Business association will be at our event that are the biggest lender in the U.S. i'm having the head of the SBA, who's a buddy of mine, Kelly Loeffler, she'll come and she'll help you buy businesses live using the SBA and explain how do we get government money? You guys pay money in taxes to your governments. What services do they have? They have grants, they have loans, they have decreased loan providers. So we've got all of that. Okay, doke smoke. Let's do another giveaway. All right, we're going to give away another ticket. Let's also go to some questions here. Oh, this is good. Hillbillybob J. These names unrivaled in a service based business. How do you charge friends and family fairly while still turning a profit without hurting relationships or your reputation? Rule number one, Hillbilly Bob J. They're not a real friend. If they're asking for a discount, you know what you should do? Oh, what's up, Holly? Soldiers, congratulations. I will see you at Main street over Wall street in Austin, Texas. You get a free ticket. It's pretty sweet. 1500 bucks in your pocket, Holly. All right, let me tell you this, though, seriously. One, if you want to be a friend to founders, don't ask for discounts. Go and pay full price. If somebody's asking you for a discount, they really aren't that great of a friend. Friend. You need to do one thing in business, which is realize that your job as the CEO is to protect your company's ability to persevere, which basically means keep the damn thing alive. It's actually pretty hard. How many of you guys are entrepreneurs, you know this? It's hard to keep a business alive. So one doesn't hurt your reputation. To fully charge. Absolutely not. You should feel so good about providing a service that other people need that you should never question charging the full amount that you deserve. I think about it this way, every time I walk into a restaurant. I'm not a very good cook. So when I see somebody who's willing to spend their life force their time cooking for me, I'm like, thank God. How rare is that? Otherwise I wouldn't get to do it. So one just Hillbilly Bob J. Never feel bad about charging full price. And I always say when they say well could I pay less? I always say, well you could pay more. And I just make a little joke about it because then they feel as silly asking as I think they should. Oh, this is a good question. Office Edge which industries do you believe AI will completely democratize next? And how can a small player position early to capture that value? Listen, I think that most people have no idea what is coming with AI. I've seen it firsthand in my businesses. I mean we employ hundreds and hundreds of people and those companies underneath them, they employ thousands and thousands of people across this country. We're not ready for how fast AI is going to come and disrupt just about everything we do. The people who will continue to win are those who use AI and what they do. I fully believe right now, you guys, if you, if you aren't using AI in your day to day and I don't mean asking ChatGPT questions like you did Google search previously, that's nig me, you're not gonna make it. And I know that's like a really tough thing to say, but I'm like not here to be your buddy. I'm here to tell you the things that I wish other people had told me even if they weren't that PC. I see the speed that's happening. I'm in all the CEO meetings and let me tell you what they're talking about. They're talking about how they're best employees will make a ton of money going forward and the mid level or low level employees will be unnecessary. So it is a race in my opinion to use AI in your job as much as humanly possible. And if you're not right now, I would change that. I use AI probably every 20 minutes or something. And what I do, I like using AI so much that I hired a whole team that's AI special projects for our business. You can see them over in the corner with a sweatshirt over their head, Google Oculus goggles talking to nobody. You know, some of the Things that'll be totally changed going forward first, I mean, lots of the creative pursuits first drafts of everything written content going to be completely redone. Editing going to be completely overhauled by A.I. you know what else will? Any repetitive continuous motions and stuff that's in real life will be done last. Like for instance, if I was you guys. That's why I like boring businesses and buying them. Car wash. You can use robots for sure, but own the car wash, handyman businesses. Why do I own those? Why do I own window cleaning company, painting companies, roofing companies, exterior companies? We own all of those because it will be a lot harder for AI to oversee those, but they'll come after marketing and graphic design and editing and writing first. They'll take all the fun things, actually. Let's see what else we got here. I'm just checking in. We got one. What? Oh, a question that you like. Thanks, Shannon. All right. Oh, thanks. I also like a tea. Anybody having a little. I'm not having a cocktail. I'm lame this evening. But if you are having a cocktail, good for you. I'm having a tea. Oh, a lot of people. So one of you is asking, what is. How do you get a deal review and a deal review here, if you don't know what that means, means that you bring a deal to a group of people. This is typically an investor committee. And in this investor committee, you have them tell you, is this a bad or a good deal? I'm sure you guys feel this. Does anybody feel nervous to, like, buy your first business or to become part of a business or to take a cut of a business? That's normal. And so you should be scared actually to do your first deal. And so at our. At this event msals, basically we do a whole segment called deal review, which is we have our expert advisors and facilitators who obsess on mergers and acquisition live. They will take a deal from. From you. If you're like, Cody, this guy down the street, he owns this landscaping business. It's worth this. It's worth this. He wants this. Can you analyze it for us? And you'll give it to our team and our team will break it down and go, well, I kind of don't like the valuation. I don't think you should spend this much. I think that you should talk to somebody else about this deal. I don't like the single party or single client risk. So anyway, that's called the deal review. We do that at Main street over Wall Street Live. You guys should definitely come if you're serious about business buying? For sure. Okay, I'm getting a bunch of new questions from you. Guys are asking so many questions. Let's see here. Where do I find partners, staff to build a good team of nice, coachable people to work with in business? One of my favorite stories when I first started out was one of my mentors when I started a business said to me, I already know what's going to be your biggest problem in business. I was like, amazing. Tell me. He's like, nope. But when you have your first problem, come to me. And I remember I had my first problem a few months later. And he was like, let me guess. It's one word. What do you got? Do you guys know what the word is? Your people. And so the worst. The worst and the best thing about every business are the people that you employ. The best are the people who stick with you through time and travel with you. The worst are the people who make it about I, me. What's in it for me? If you don't do this, then I won't do that. They don't last long in business and they never end up making much money because they're too. I focused the we focused people end up making a lot of money. So a good way to know how to find good people. Here's things they never say, well, I'll do that if you pay me more. That's not going to go over well. They won't last long at a company. You know what also will make them not last long at a company? Hey, I want to do X activity. I want this. Why? Well, it would make my job easier. That's just not going to make it. If instead the people that you're talking to that you want to go through time with in your business say things like, I think this would be better for the team if we did this. I think the client would like this better. I think the people, the content know people that people watch from us, they would get more out of it if we did this. Like, look for when they use we instead of I, I and me is an immediate signal that you should not bring these people into your business. We and team is an immediate sign that you probably should. Some people asking, how can I get your team to help me buy my first business? Come to MSOWs. Super, super straightforward. The link. Link's right here. We're going to give away another ticket here in two minutes. But I got you and we will help you. That's the entire reason we have this business. I like this one. What are some good starter businesses to acquire for new buyers? We actually have a list, 130 boring businesses we like to buy. Let me give you some of my favorites at the top. You guys maybe know. Do you guys know that's where I started out, Laundromats. So some of my very first businesses I bought were laundromats. I call these low people businesses so you don't have to have a lot of operations inside of them. Laundromats, car washes. I like businesses that are also service based businesses. I buy a lot of home service businesses that would be like painters, handyman company. If you didn't watch our last YouTube video, you should. We do a series called Main street millionaires. Kind of like the book and the Main street millionaire book we teach. Why don't we give away a ticket and a book? Should we do that? All right, let's give away a ticket and a book. Go ahead and make this spinner go. Also, this book is great, by the way. You want to know fun fact about this book? More highly rated than the highest rated Harry Potter book on Amazon. It's basically the same thing. You know, this one has sold a few million less copies, but it has sold hundreds and hundreds of thousands of copies, which is wild because Jeremy, you get both. Jeremy gets a book. What up, Jeremy? And you get also a ticket to msows. Nice job, Jeremy. I can't wait to meet you in person. We could probably give you this book in person if you end up coming out. Okay. But what's cool about the things that you learn in here is you guys. Most people are just not willing to do this. Most people are not on YouTube learning about business, buying, asking tactical questions. They're like watching whatever the fuck Challenge is on YouTube now. Mindlessly scrolling on TikTok. You know, the ones that really crack me up lately are like, I must be in a weird part of TikTok. But it's a part of TikTok where it's like, I'm a millionaire. And then I'm like watching the video and they're like, I claim it so it will be mine. I'm like, that's not how it fucking works. That's not works. You don't just get to claim millions and all of a sudden you got it. If that worked, these bitches with crystals and feather hats in Austin would be. They would be so rich. It would be just so many. You know what the thing is though, about the. The crystal wares, they usually rent apartments, if you've ever met them. You're not like, look at my house I got with all these crystals. That's not a thing. So skip the crystals. Think about the cash flow, you know, or don't and prove me wrong with how manifesting makes you millions. I just don't believe it. Okay. Can you buy a business while keeping your W2 job, Doris Rivera? Yeah, I've bought. God, I don't even know. I think I bought my first 10 businesses, you guys, while I had a W2. Learn right now with your W2 come to MSAL. Stay on this channel. There is no reason why you cannot own part of a business while you have a job. Now don't be a terrible employee and try to go start an entire business while you have a high paying job that has a lot of growth potential. You're going to mess yourself up. But to own part of a business on a side, no problem. How can you help us find a business to buy? All right, this is a good question. Thank you. Bluebird Dog. So couple ways so you already know about the event. We do it there. We have a community we which we can drop the link to. And if you guys want to get on a phone call with our program advisors, you're welcome to the program consultants. If you get on a phone call with them though I don't have that many so we don't talk about this publicly. Like you've probably never seen me do this in a YouTube video before. If you get on a call with the program consultants, which somebody needs to now drop the link for, how to do that for the community. This is only for serious business buyers. It's only if you are going to buy a business within the next six months that then you should talk to our team. We'll hook you up. Now if you're curious and not serious, there's really three ways to buy a business. The first way is what's called on market deal sourcing. So this is where you go to bizscout.com we happen to own this business. Bizscout.com is one of the largest listings of small businesses in the world. And there you can search for free 58,000 listings of small businesses. Think about it like Zillow but for small business. Second way off market searching. That means that you can go also on Biscout you can use our off market deal searcher. It's kind of cool. You can plug in like Laundromat Austin, Texas and it'll give you a list of all the ones that exist on Google and then it'll also give you ways to ping them. So every time I'm looking for a business, I screen that way and then I reach out to the owners direct. And the third way is what I call your center of influence, your friends and family. And this way is a little bit more in depth. Again, we'll teach you live at the event, but I want you to think about it like right now, 65% of all businesses in the US are owned by either baby boomers or the generation before them. 65%, you guys. These guys are retiring at a rate we've never seen before. We're talking millions and, and maybe even tens of millions of businesses that are going to go up for sale. Your parents, friends, your friends, your neighbors, your local business owners are looking for exit ramps and you are going to be one of them if you so choose. You just have to learn how to do it. So those are the three ways I like to buy a business. Let's see. Ok. Doke solutions. Smokey. Is this helpful for you guys, by the way? Love it. Okay, I like to see that. I think we should do another. Let's in two minutes, let's do another ticket giveaway and also a book giveaway. So we'll do two for one. You hit the QR code, scan the QR code in the corner and that will put up this spinning wheel that is so rad. And then I'll pick your name live. Okay. Chris dc, how do you spot a good company to invest in? By the way, thanks for all your questions. You see, we actually have these right there. Live for me. Chris D.C. asks, How do you tell if it's a good business or not? Let me give you the super simple one. We buy realities, not hopes and dreams. That means we are only buying profitable businesses, you guys. No business that is unprofitable to start use. Dear God. Two, we buy businesses so simple you can explain it to grandma. If it's a complex subject, it's as they say, proprietary. If it's patent pending, opt out. Unsubscribe. Simple business. I'm pretty successful. I'm not too big of an idiot. I mean, depends on what. But I own window cleaning, car washes, laundromats. Why? Because I want to take the complex part, which is growth. Put my time and attention there. I don't want to try to understand some business that's hard to understand. So that's the second part. Third part is we nail something called your deal box. This deal box is super, super important. It's like I don't know any of you kiddos go on Tinder or Hinge or whatever people do these days. I'm happily married, so I'm really glad I skipped that entire segment of my life. But in your Tinder profile, you know, you might have like, I don't know, I care about this. It has to be a dude or a chick or whatever you're into. And you give all your specifics. Well, there's a deal box just like that for buying a business. And it includes things like geography, sector, purchase price, amount of money down, financing mechanism. It also includes things like do you want to operate the business or invest? We have a proprietary process. We teach people on how to do it, but we make sure that it's not just what makes a good business, Kris, but what makes a good business for you. All right. Love it. I like so this is a good question. CMOR asks for someone with debt. How do you start? Can I tell you the real real? If you're in debt right now, I want you to do one thing. I want you to obsess on making as much money in the job that you are in right now as humanly possible. How do you do that? I wouldn't suggest that you go become an entrepreneur. Let me tell you why. Do you know the average income of entrepreneurs in the US $46,000 to 67ish thousand dollars a year. The problem with that amount, which could be a decent amount, is that most businesses never make money. 90% fail within the first one to five years in tandem of the ones that succeed. It takes three to four years to become profitable. And then when it is profitable, you make 46 to 64 thousand dollars a year. I don't know about you, but 90% failure rate plus three to four years of making no money to make 46,000 to 67,000 dollars a year sounds like a bad fucking bet to me. It's a no. I'm an unsubscribe. I'm an opt out. And so I always want to have more predictable profits. That's what I like. I'm kind of risk averse. I don't want to sleep on the floor to hope that for some reason I am going to succeed when so many others have failed. I never liked that idea and I don't think it's necessary. I think that's glorified and like one of the ways that you know it's glorified is like somebody like me will come onto YouTube and be like, I too was like you. I was sad and broke. And struggling and on my last dollar and somebody almost took my last dollar from me and I barely made it. But then I made my first sale and my second sale in my E. Commerce dropshipping business, and all of a sudden now I'm a millionaire and I have a Lamborghini. Like those weird sob stories, kind of an immediate signal that they're like trying to sell you something. I actually don't care. Start a business. Buy a business. Do you just follow the math and you can check the math? I. On me. The likelihood of you succeeding in startup land is just not high. And so I just want to make sure we're honest about that. And also because you guys are here with me and you're rare. How about this for everybody that sticks around till the end of this video, which isn't probably going to be too much longer, I want you guys to know that I'm going to give away something for every single person that's on here. We're going to make sure that your time is valuable. Because builders are so rare. Only 6 to 10% of people in the US actually own a business. We need more of you. So I got you. We'll give you away some fun just for hanging with us today. And then I think we should do another book and ticket giveaway right now. Okay. While we're doing the spinning, Kyle, I feel like next time we need a score, we need music. I don't know. Tell me when they come up. Look at all of you guys. I can't wait to get to know all of you guys. Okay, April. April Spivey. What's up, girl? You win. What did we decide? We're gonna give April a book. So April, you get a book. Main street millionaire. You also get a ticket to MSAL's $1,500 worth. So congratulations, you rascal. Okay, Mary says Mary. At Mindgarden, lots of businesses for sale in New Zealand. Lots are closing. Many are struggling to continue to exist. Mary, you're not alone. This is everywhere. You guys don't even realize it, but, like, drive down your main street. Do it for me. Tomorrow, drive down a main street where you live and notice how many abandoned storefronts there are. And then you may say, well, that's because they're not profitable. You know what's crazy? 90% of all small businesses that have been in existence for longer than three years are profitable. Most of these businesses are profitable. They just might not be profitable enough for that owner to keep going after 10 or 20 years. And they simultaneously might not Be profitable enough for that person to be able to think about selling it. They don't even realize their business can sell. So you're not alone. It's totally normal. It's happening everywhere. I'm excited to meet you guys. Live in person too. Okay. Small bit of feedback too. The fuck? Look how many questions I have. I need like just the best ones. Not all of them. We got Shannon out there writing like she's getting paid by word. These are coming live from your chat. These are coming live from the chat. Shannon, next time just give me your favorites. Or you like. She likes you guys. She wants every. She's like Cody. Less long answers, more questions answered. I get it, Shannon. Okay? Juan says, how can I just find acquisitions with seller financing? Well, a couple things, Juan. There's three ways to buy a business without any money. $0. The number one way is to become so trusted to an owner that they want you to take over their business. So you got to ask yourself, are you good enough to do that? Do you know them well enough? Do you care enough? Have you spent enough time with the seller? That's one. Two is, are you good enough in general, which is called expertise to equity. Like the owner says, whoa, this person's gonna grow my business. I wanna give this business to them. And I wanna take a future percentage of the upside. Because, man, Shannon, if there's a words, you know, per minute business, she's gonna be. She's gonna be killing it. And so I want her to do this on a go forward basis. Number three would be sweat equity. This is like, Juan, if you're a hustler, I don't know how many of you guys out there are just like a hard worker. Let me just tell you something. Complacency is the norm today. Most people are lazy. They want to tell you what they want. They don't want to do what it takes. They want to talk about doing less work, not doing what work is needed. They want a better life. But they wonder why they never get it. Because they don't do what is required. They do what is desired. And for you, I want to ask you, Juan, how bad do you want it for everybody on here? Like, are you willing to do the irrational? Because if you are mathematically buying businesses, maps out. But it's how hard do you want to work? And so that's why I reward people who stay until the end of videos like this, because I already know you're rare. Do you know the average attention span in the US it's 45 seconds. 45 seconds on the Internet. That is out of control. And we wonder why we don't have as much money as our predecessors. Okay, soapbox, I'm off. So the sweat equity component is, will you work really hard in somebody else's business? And if you work really hard in somebody else's business and you can drive one of three types of value, you can get a portion of a business with seller financing. Let me tell you what kind. One, if you can increase sales, AKA increase revenue in a business so you can negotiate what's called upside in your deals. Two, are you able to increase profits? So that could mean cost cutting in a business or increasing revenue. And three, could you increase. I'm sorry, could you decrease pain for the entrepreneur? Like, oh, my God, I couldn't live without this person in my business. Which might mean you operationalize it. It might mean you cut things out of the business that they don't like. This is how consultants sometimes get part of a business. So. Good question, Juan. I like it. Let's do another giveaway. What do we want to do a giveaway of this time? What do you guys want? Who here is like, I would die for a ticket to msals. I can't believe you're giving them away. We've already given away. I don't know how much. Thousands and thousands of dollars live, but I want more. Okay, cool. Then let's do a. I see a ticket, I see a mug. They're, like, negotiating for things behind me. They're like, I want the lamp. That's funny. Somebody says a Lamborghini. What do you think this is, Tai Lopez? Pick another guru. All right, I am going to do a ticket giveaway, and we'll do a book giveaway. Let's do two different ones for people on here. Somebody says, my mug broke. That's why I want it. Babar, get. Somebody's trying to take my dog. What's wrong with you people? Also, I love you. This is so funny. YouTube's the best spinning ticket goes to Thomas Smith. What up, Thomas? Can't wait to meet you, Tom. Tommy. What do you go by? Tommy? We'll see you at msau's. And let's do another spin for a book, Okay? I love it, you guys. My mom's on here right now, which is so funny. You know, 39 years young, and the mom's still, you know, the first and the last on the YouTube live. Say hello to Laurie Sanchez, everyone. She gets a round of applause. Yay, winner. Okay. Oh, winner. Dave Austin. Oh, I Like that name, too. Come to Austin, Texas. We'll see you live. Dave. Oh, yeah, this is a good idea. Okay, if you could rewind and start your fund or investment again today, what would you do differently to scale faster or avoid mistakes? Let me tell you this. If you guys have a chance to get around winners, your likelihood of becoming a winner will be so much higher. I can cite, like, 15 studies for this. There's the underperformers and over performers study. There's literal studies that show wealth versus the wealth of the people that are surrounding you. So, like, you need to get in room where winners are. What I did in the beginning is I did way too much myself. If I could do one thing differently, it would stay. Stop thinking that I need to have all the answers. I don't have all the answers, even today to almost everything we do around you right now. I mean, you already are doing it because you're here with me. Steal my homework. Steal my 10,000 hours. Don't feel like you've got to do this by yourself. And, oh, by the way, please, please, please, please don't just go to ChatGPT. Do you guys know that, like, 60% of that thing is fed off of Reddit? Which is. That's a deep, dark place. We don't go to Reddit for investment advice, advice, or ideas ever. So sometimes I'm like, when ChatGPT goes, oh, yeah, I found this off of Reddit, I go, well, that's. That's a fast way to idiocracy. So audit your friend group and audit the people you are around with. Let's do. What should we do? Okay, There's a thousand people watching, so we should. We give away a couple tickets, and let's give away. Shannon, Shannon, stop writing words. Get over here. Give me a pink hat and a shirt and. All right, all right. We got some ladies on here. Okay. First lady to spin gets a pink hat. You can be with me. Look, I matched my background. I made this room just for you guys. This is our new live room. Guys. Actually, let's not lie. I didn't make it. Dee made it, but she did a great job. So we're gonna give away the pink hat. We're also gonna give away my contrarian thinker shirt. Oh, here's another way that I messed up in business early on, you guys. True story. See this contrarian thinker, Damian Sanchez, you get. This is actually a bootlegged shirt. This is an illegal shirt in subways. You want to know why? Because I went to Fiverr. Which I would not recommend for your logos. And on Fiverr, I asked for a contrarian thinking logo. That was cool. Little somebody tell me in the chat, I'm sure somebody will recognize this. So I got this logo. I thought this is sick. This logo is amazing. Let's use it. Turns out this logo, it's somebody else's logo. Logo. Something called like brain dead or something. Not with the contrarian thinker in it, but I guess it represents too closely. So I was like, ah, great. We can't even, we can't even use these anymore because Fiverr really messed me over on it. That was like, this is my first year we were in business at contrarian thinking. So Damian, you get one of these. Let's do another spin. Okay. Shirt to Shannon. Nice job, athlete. Okay, second question. Pink hat for the lady. Pink hat for the lady. Nope. Unless Andrew, you're into it. You know, boys these days doing all the things. Andrew can get a book. Andrew can get a book. Okay, Andrew, you get a Bain street millionaire book. Hopefully you read it because it'll make you money just like our event. Okay, spin again yet. Spin again until we get a chick. Okay, this is a good question. Music for Life. I have a 9 to 5 job. However, I met this guy who was selling his shipping business. Tina, what's up girl? This is for you. Got a little hat special for you. Tina. Bam. Two at once, Shannon. Okay, so Music 4 Life says a guy selling a shipping business, but he doesn't own the building. What is the first step to get get his business? The type of questions and how do I finance the business? First, real estate. Let me answer the business versus real estate portion of it. One, we don't combine deals separate. Why? Because we value businesses one way and we value real estate the other way. So the sneaky, sneaky thing that sellers will try to do is to get you to value the real estate the same as the business. Like bundle it all together. We want unbundling. We want to see what each is worth. So get a realtor to actually look at the cost of the building if you're going to buy it. Second, for the business overall. This is how businesses are valued. It is this simple, you guys. Profits of the business. If you want to say it a different way, you could say SDE sellers, discretionary earnings. That means the money that comes direct into your pocket. I don't mess with words like EBITDA or even high level revenue because you can, you can't do what I can't eat ebitda. You can't keep it with you. And so I want you to think about SDE or profit. So if a business makes 500k in revenue but 100k in profit, you're going to take that 100k in profit and you're going to times it by 2, max 3x. So 100k is 200 to 300k. That's the value for your business. It's that simple in the beginning. Now, we have very complex deal calculators that we get all the members of our community. You'll get one if you come to Main street over Wall street event. But that is where I would start. Good question. Okay, let's see you trying to come in here and give me more. See what's happening. Oh, two more. Okay. Okay, I like this one. Grise art. What is the best way to market my business? Should we tell us in the live, guys? I was thinking maybe we do one of these on exclusively how to create what I'll call a content business. A business of content. How to get free eyeballs on your business. Let me know if you want that and would like it. I love it. I also see somebody fresh Kumar going, surprisingly, I am enjoying this. Happy to see serve doesn't suck too bad. Okay, fine. But to answer the question on marketing man, it's just such a big question. I think what we should do is we should come back to that question because here's what I need to know. You should bring this to the next live. What type of business? What's your goal for the business? How do you market right now in the business? And also how much do you want to spend to market the business Business. Those are the big four. There's three ways we teach to market our boring Main street businesses. We call them the three M's. Markets, monetizations and methods. And what do I mean by that? Methods are like Facebook, SEO, Google, et cetera. Monetizations are what are the people that you are going to implement inside of your business and pay towards for who's not house. And then the third is markets. And that might mean like actual locations. So what geographies are you going to market to that might mean like avatars. Like there's the Cody avatar, you know, middle aged, very helpful white woman. Or there's like the hey, I want to sell to moms, I want to sell to dad. So you can't have too many of them. And so I like to think about your business that way. But maybe we'll do a full one on marketing. If you Guys want it? Amazing. Yeah. We have time for like one more question. Okay. Okay. Let's do another click to spin. Yes. Okay. We're going to give away another ticket right now. Let's do it. To msal's main street over Wall street event. And if you didn't win, you could still join us at the event www.msow. it's also listed below. Oh, sick. That's cool. We're also going to give away something to everybody on here. You guys. We're going to give away a ticket for $500. Excuse me. A coupon for $500 off. Oh, nice job. Nicole Holiday. What's up? Can't wait to meet you there. If you want to join, this is not located anywhere except for you. YouTube rascals. Use code YTL500 and you can come to MSAL's for 500 bucks off. So YTL500. Use the code. I got you, fam. Don't ever say we don't give stuff to you so you can go to msows.com youm'll drop the link too. Right, team? Okay, let's answer like one or two more questions. Okay. Charles Wolf face emoji asks. I want to know the biggest number one piece of advice for someone who is just starting as an entrepreneur. What should they solely focus on to become successful? Making money. Charles, Never apologize for obsessing on making your first 500k. Everything gets easier after that. Everyone will want to see distractions for you. They'll want words like awareness, content. They'll want to tell you things like brand. Let me tell you what. Until you've made at least your first couple hundred thousand dollars, none of that matters. Obsess on treating your very first customer like they will be your last customer. Obsess on over delivering to the few people who come to you and then telling those people how much you care about them to see if they will tell other people about you. This is called a feedback loop in your business and if you do that, you'll be more successful than most people. I'd say the number one mistake most people start in business is they try to make everything scalable. Forget that scalable doesn't matter when you're just starting out. Do the unscalable. That's your unfair advantage. Don't build a bunch of systems so that you can handle millions of viewers. Let it break later. Focus right now on making profitable revenue. That is what matters. Let's see. Oh, this is a good question. Karen Kieran, Is it better to start a Business or buy a business. Let me tell you the math. The average small business as we know doesn't make money for three to four years, fails 90% of the time on average. And on top of that makes the average entrepreneur who starts a business makes 46 to 60 thousand dollars a year. The average business bot makes 15 to 30% profit on every dollar that you make. So if the average small business in the U.S. they say the average small business in the U.S. makes anywhere from 100 to $150,000 a year. You're already more profitable than almost 100% of startups for three years. Why would you not obsess on learning how to buy a business? Especially because if you're like shut up Cody, why? You know, why don't you buy all these businesses if you're on the Internet telling us how to do it all the time, why wouldn't you buy them if there's all these good deals? One, I literally can't buy enough of them. I'm trying, I'm actively out there. We have like, I don't know, 700 locations now at Arezzi Brands companies. We do multiple acquisitions every single year. We are non stop buying businesses but literally you guys, I can't buy enough of them. And the cool part about business too is like now businesses don't really make sense to me for me unless they can make me eight figures a year and that's cool. That's just where we're at. That would be crazy by the way. Nobody's more surprised by that than me. You know Cody, 10 years ago would have been like what are you talking about? That means that every business that is below that line is perfect for you and not me. I literally need too big of business businesses now which means that there is this huge dearth of businesses that will just go away and not be valued. So I believe it's better to buy and I don't believe that because of anything except the actual math on it. Okay, Corey's asking, is it unreasonable to think you can hire an operator on your first business purchase? Let's do another giveaway. Actually I feel like I'm going to here. So we're gonna do a little spin of the hat. Best dad joke in the comments gets a ticket. Well no you don't because it's a spinning wheel of death and I can't pick who you are. But I might, you know, if it's a good dad joke, I might do something with it. Chris Corbett. Chris, you win an msals ticket. I'm so excited to see you in Austin, Texas. Also, by the way, I don't think I've even told you guys what MSOWS is. So Main street over Wall street, by the way, is three days in person. It's almost sold out. And this event is one we do every single year. This is the first year I've ever invited the public to the event. Usually it's only for my portfolio companies, my team, and members of our community and academy. This year, I opened it up to the public because I want you guys to learn how to buy businesses too. And I know that if I can get you in a room with investors, operators, buyers and sellers, you will be more likely to close a business. I just know that we know for our members that those who come in person have a higher likelihood of closing a deal. And so this event is not like a rah rah. Just network and maybe meet somebody and I'm gonna get a little too drunk at the party. Like, no, you can get too drunk at the party. That's. That's fine. You could do that too. But the goal of this is, by the end, you will know more than 90% of people about how to buy a business, and you will have met a few people who could forever change your trajectory of buying your first or your next business. You are going to also see there, which is pretty cool. I'm inviting all my billionaire friends. Well, not all of them, but I think five of them. We've got Kelly Loeffler, who's gonna help you get money from the SBA. We've got Joe Lonsdale, the founder of 8 billion dollar companies, who's become a friend of mine. It's gonna teach you how to get money from investors. Runs one of the biggest venture capital funds in the country called 8VC. We've also got Jenny, just who she's found fascinating. She hasn't lost money, you guys. And I don't want to mess this up, but I want to say it's like 28 years. She's had positive returns in her multi billion dollar investment portfolio for longer than most of us have been investing. So I'm going to bring her. I'm bringing Bill Perkins, dear friend of mine, investor in a bunch of my businesses, runs a big, huge hedge fund. And then I'm going to pair all those billionaires with a bunch of people that we've taught to buy businesses live. So you can kind of see the juxtaposition. Like, this is what it looks like at a billion. Here's a bunch of Guys that are doing six figure, seven figure, eight figure businesses and acquisitions. We're going to bring Spencer who bought one trash truck and turned that into a million dollar business. We've got Lloyd, who bought one laundromat, turned that into a multi million dollar business. We're going to have a bunch of people who are doing this live because sometimes I think you need, you need to talk to the guy who summited Everest. He's going to know what it takes to get all the way to the top, AKA a billionaire. But you also need to know the guy that was like just a few steps ahead of you. Like what's going on over there? How's that crevice? Right? And so I want you to have the whole stack. I want you to be able to have a guide on every step of the way and that's what this event is. So it's really cool. If you guys have the capability to come to Austin and come to this event, you're out of your mind not to do it. I only do it one day a year and then we'll get to meet in person. Ok. Doke I'm going to do. Oh, also remember, you guys, code to the event. YTL500 www.msows.com YTL500. You get 500 bucks off because I told you every single person on here would get a gift from me. And then I think because I got a couple more, I think we should give away another. Shannon, want to run it over here a little? A pink hat and also a black contrarian thinking hat. Thank you. And let's give away because I have these in front of me too. One of each. What do you got? Should we like, should we switch it up? Dudes, do you want a pink hat? Do you want to give it to your wife? Girls, you want a black hat? Let's do it. I mean, who says gender roles? What do we, you know, I mean, I do believe in two genders, but I don't believe that we can't wear all the colors we want. Jaleel, if you're in the U.S. by the way, you want a hat, so we'll give you pink. And let's do another one here. And we'll do a, we'll do a black hat for the next person. We'll spin this too. Perfect. I like it. And tell me who won this one. Oh, we got, I love this. Angela, you get a black one. Okay. Oh, that's cool. Best dad joke for. Was there a good one? Did you, Was there a good one? Dad joke for a ticket. I love me a dad joke. It's. You know, they have. They made me a Poppy Sanchez hat. You know about that, Dee? And that's because I'm known for dad jokes. Gillette. Refusing to go to the gym is a form of resistance training. Pretty good. Honestly. I really respect people who have dad jokes in their pocket. What did the magician say when he picked the beans? I don't know. You have to give me the full thing. Otherwise I can't see it. What's brown and sticky? I don't want to answer that one, Liam. I don't know. I'm not scared for a win. In a word, because he ended up standing in his heels. That's cute. I feel like I've heard that one before. Why did the invisible man turn down the job offer? He just couldn't see himself do it. But I'm. That's funny. I used to be a baker, but I couldn't make enough dough. Please kill me. America's insurance merchantry. You win. Also gotta represent the actual business as your YouTube handle. Well done. Best dad joke from a mom. Why did the businessman bring a ladder to work? Because he was climbing the corporate ladder. All right, Mom. Not work. Not our best work. I feel like we got to work on this. Okay, you guys pick one and I don't know how we'll get it to you. Will we have their email and their handle. Okay, cool. So pick a. Pick a dad joke for constructions industry. Dirty hands still broke, champ. I don't know why America eating like they have free health care. I love the dunk on America jokes. Nice job, Kajal. Okay, let me answer two more questions here. Annie asks. I'm 51 single in New York City with 89K saved. And. And an 840 credit score and no technical skills but a lot of self awareness. What kind of business should I start? Annie, didn't we talk about the fact that we're not starting businesses? I'll do another one of these on if you guys really want to start businesses. But I hate this for you. Also. Why are you telling me your credit score if you're talking about starting a business Totally unrelated. Not needed to start a business is needed to buy a business. Annie. Buy a business. Actually, I don't know. I don't know enough about your personal personal situation to give you financial advice. You should do you. But I think here's how you should decide if you should buy versus start a business. You should start a business. If you cannot sleep for desire of that business to exist in the world. If it keeps you up at night, if you can't stop talking about it, if you are building even though nobody's buying, and you could survive doing that for years because you just blame believe in the thing so much. Start. Then start that business. Because starting a business is a totally irrational pursuit of creation. You do it because you are a masochist who is obsessed with the game of entrepreneurship. That is very different from I want to make X dollars for Y thing in my life. I want financial freedom. Those two things are not correlated. Not correlated. So start a business if you would die for the want of it not existing in the world. Do not start a business because you just need to make a few extra dollars. That is a terrible reason why to do an incredibly hard game. Actually, Shannon. Shannon. I go to ask herself that, she pops up with another one of your questions that she's got for me. Give it to me. Thank you. Can you also search for me? Bukowski? It's his poem on so youo Want to Be a Writer. And I want to read it to you guys because it's so good. Brad. What's up, Brad? Brad Pihari. How did you leave Wall Street? Did you plan save a couple of years of income before leaving? Brad? Great question. Thanks for asking. I ended up leaving Wall street because I hated my boss so much, I could barely stand another second of looking at him. If we're super honest, I was doing a job I didn't really like. For people that I didn't like less, didn't like more, I liked even less. I disliked. And what really got to me is I was winning. Like I was killing it. We were going faster than any other division. I ran a pretty big segment of the company. I won't say which one. And I remember going to my boss, not the CEO. I'm homies with the CEO. He's amazing. But I went to, like, what I will say is like my counterpart boss. And he basically was like, this is the way we're running the company and it's not your way. And I was like, but I'm growing faster than you. Why are we doing it your way? And he said, you know, it's either you get on board my ship because we're going this way, or you get off and get your own ship or you go that way. And I said, fine, I'm gonna get my own ship. And so I have. I did always abide by the 50, 30, 20 that you guys, that I talked to you guys about. I always Saved a ton of my money and invested it. Why? Because I think I would have done that job at different companies forever. I actually really liked like the, the, the thing that I was doing. I was building asset management firms. I love it. I could have done that forever, but I just didn't like this guy. They say that majority, like 60% of people don't quit jobs. They quit people, they quit managers because they feel like they were micromanaged. And. And so I would have stayed there forever. And so I'm actually pretty thankful for the guy. So I did save. But I wish that I had learned how to buy my own business sooner, which is probably why I built this company. It's all a PTSD trauma response to feeling like I had to be stuck in a job that I didn't want to stay in. Do you find it so good? Okay, let me read you that. This is how I think you should feel about whether you should start a business or not. I want you to do it like this. Okay, I'm going to set. So this is Bukowski, if you guys haven't read him. He's a crazy mad genius, a great writer of our time. And this is about writing. But I want you to. I'm going to supplement the word writers with entrepreneurship and we'll do a little wordplay here. Don't be like so many entrepreneurs. Don't be like so many thousands of people who call themselves entrepreneurs. Don't be dull and boring and pretentious. Don't be consumed with self love. Our world has yawned the themselves to sleep over your kind. Don't add to that. Don't do it. Don't start a company unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket. Unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder. Don't do it unless the sun inside you is burning in your gut and that thing has to be created. Don't do it when it is truly time and if you have been chosen, it will do it by itself and it will keep on doing it until you die or it dies in you. There is no other way and there never was. I think about entrepreneurship like this because right now what we're doing with a group of 50 people who could label themselves as employees is the coolest job in the world. And if these people love what they're doing and if they see a path to own part of companies or part of many companies, or get funded by me in their next one, we'll travel through time together. I don't want you to get stuck on this idea of, are you a W2 or not? I want you to get stuck about. About. How can you be so valuable, so smart, know so much about deal making that it will be impossible for you to not get rich over time. I don't think that you should start a company because it's become really sexy for everybody to start companies. And because the Internet says that the word founder on your LinkedIn profile is cool, don't do it for that reason. Don't be like those weirdos that put the word visionary on their LinkedIn profile. Don't be that. Instead. Instead build a business because you can't sleep for want of it or buy a business because you need capital to live the life you want. And do not confuse the two. In the great words of Bukowski. Okay, I'm going to have a wrap here. I want to give away another ticket. And thank you. I love Tom Power. He goes, I like books. Thank me too, Tom. Me too. I like you. So let's click to spin for another ticket. And remember, www.msows.com I want to see you at MSOWS and teach you how to buy a business live. Maybe I'll even bring a little Bukowski for us. I like booked. Tom Nikhil Sharma, we would love to have you at msows. Congratulations. $1,500 ticket. How many tickets have we given away? You guys do. We know? Okay, so like, what, $15,000. So about 15,000 bucks we've given away. Plus hats. Priceless, you know, illegal trademarked goods. Priceless. Okay. I love it. Do you guys like these lives? I'm like, if you guys love these, I want to do more of them. I want you all to feel the thing that we think about every single day, which is like, I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about you guys. It's kind of weird. Don't make it weird. And what I think about is how do we give you guys so much value that you don't want to spend your time on the Internet listening to all of these people who just want to steal your education and your entertainment free time and not give you anything back. I want you to start having, like, a visual, like, allergy to that because there's just not enough builders like you guys. Like, yeah, there's been thousands and thousands of you on here, but how many hundreds of millions do the dancing Kitty videos get on TikTok? We've got to, like, flip the script. And so I hope you guys felt like this was valuable. Let's end with two questions and then we'll rock and roll. A bunch of people asking, how do you get a ticket? Www.msows.com. also, make sure you scan the QR code for our very last giveaway of the day. And I'm so glad you liked this, champ. I'm glad you're saying. Still here. I know I made fun of your. Your dad joke, but I'm so glad you loved it. So I love you too. Okay, Shannon, any. Oh, does she not have any more. Does she have questions? Give me. She literally. I go, you guys, just give me your top one. What. What's happening here? We've got a sickness. She did go on vacation, so she's. She's ready to roll again. All right. Oh, I like this. We got a couple of them. Oh, I mean, some. Something fun. Somebody asks, what are your favorite AI platforms? We have one called Kodi Chat. Cody Chat is me. AI Duplicated. You could see if you can stump me and make me say anything, like, the earth is flat, which I do not believe. But also in it is fed a bunch of my information on buying a business, building a business. So go talk to Cody Chat and see what you can learn there. And maybe you can stump me on the next one. It's free. So you can go to Cody to calm and talk to me with AI right now. Also, my other little fun. Fun one. Is that the team? This is kind of embarrassing, but I will tell you guys, Whisper Flow. I don't own part of this company. I wish I did. Shannon's shaking her head like this because Voice to text is dead to me. You know, when I say the word, I mean it. I don't mean duck. I don't mean truck. I mean the heavy F bomb. It really ticks me off when I can't get that on my. On my text. But. But there's this thing called Whisper Flow where it literally voiced texts everything that you say, but, like, period, comma, exclamation point, spells the names. Write bulleted points. It's so good. If you're not using it, you should. I really need to own part of that company. I shouldn't be giving them such a good ad read. Okay. Oh, Aiden asks, if you could buy any business right now, what would it be? If you could buy any business right now, what would it be? What am I, active? You know what I'm buying right now, you guys. If anybody wants to feed us businesses, you can see all of our businesses at Contrarian thinktrarianthinking Co. That's my company. Contrarian Thinking like that? I don't know. Can you see that? You see? Yeah, buddy. How fast can you make it? Not fuzzy? Nice job. Nice job. Contrarian Thinking at the bottom, you'll see. See, there's something called capital, and that is we have our venture capital company, Contrarian Thinking Capital. And then we got Main Street Holding Company, where we own a bunch of businesses. Long answer to say we are actively buying. Right now, we're looking at accounting firms. We're looking at outsourced CFO firms. We're looking at what else? But maybe the real question you're asking is, like, what should you buy? Not what am I buying. I'm buying businesses that are based as a satellite to what I call my son. It's a core satellite strategy we'll teach you guys at Main street over Wall street or drop the link again for them if they can't come to Main street over Wall Street. But they want to talk to one of our program advisors. Don't feel bad about the fact that if you're serious about buying a business, you should talk to someone before you jump into buying. One of the worst things I could do to you guys right now is just say, go buy a business right now. Go buy any business. I do not think that buying businesses is risky. Obviously, there's real risk involved. There's maybe debt, there's money. There's time. There are risks involved in this. I think you can't spell rich without the word risk, and that's something I ask on all of my podcasts. But simultaneously, you have to learn how to do a deal, because if you do your first deal poorly, you'll never do a deal again. You'll never buy a business again. That could do you no greater disservice than to just tell you to go buy a business. You could do it. Anybody can do it. It's just not true. That's why we've built everything we've built. So whether you come to MSOWs or whether you talk to our program advisors, which make sure we're dropping that link for them to talk to the program advisors, I want you to choose one, because the truth of the matter is, this is a real skill that I want you guys to acquire, just like we acquire businesses. And I feel very confident that if you do that, you'll be able to change your life. If you do the work, I can't do the work for you. All right? I want to do a spin. So let's do another giveaway. And no, everybody's trying to take my mug D Not happy. This is my mug, you guys. Fine. I'll give away a book. Okay, I'll give away one more book and one more ticket to everybody on here. Rosa Rosario Mendina Jr. You get a ticket and we'll do one more spin for a book. And maybe if you come to my next live, I'll give away some mugs. I do have some cool new mugs for you guys, but for now, you can't have mine. All my pins are in it. I don't, you know, trying to take my desk next. Okay, Joshua. Come, Carrico. I love it also, by the way. So cool, you guys, that you're all cheering each other on. I think this is one of the really unique things about our community. And I see all of you here. Like, who else cheers when somebody else wins except our group of crazy people at Contrarian Thinking. Thank you so much for being part of my community. Thank you for being builders. Thank you for lifting other people up too many. The saddest thing in the world is a cynic who has never built anything. There's nothing more tragic to me than a human who tells you all the reasons why you can't. While they never have tried, they project all their failures onto someone who's never even had a shot at bat. So I want to say thank you for not being like that. Because the Internet is filled with people who will tell you it's impossible. And our number one creed at Contrarian Thinking is those who say it's impossible should get out of the way of those of us who are doing it. I can't wait. Wait to see you guys@msals www.m.com and tell me if you guys like this, then we'll come back next week, we'll do another one for you. Sam. Sa. It.