Sneak Peak: Main Street Millionaire Live with Codie Sanchez

Sa. Ram. Ram. It. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome

to Main Street Millionaire Live.

Please help me welcome to the stage

the president of Contrarian Thinking, Mark Hustevet.

Hello.

Welcome.

How is everybody?

Wow.

We are live streaming all over the world. I can see all your beautiful faces. This is amazing. Some of you don't have your cameras on. I see a few without it, so please turn on your camera. But I want you guys to see what I see because it's really cool. So can we. Can we get a studio shot? Look at this. Look at, look at all you beautiful people. I see the backgrounds already. You figured that out in the dashboard. Hi, can I get a wave? Can I get a wave to say hi?

Yes.

Look at that.

Amazing. You guys are beautiful. Awesome. Well, I'm Mark Kousevin. I'm the president of Conturion thinking this is honestly the best event we do all year. I absolutely am grateful to be here. I'm curious of like, where you guys are all from because we're live streaming here. We're in Charleston, South Carolina at the moment, if you can believe that. But where's everybody from? I'm seeing New York City, Michigan, South Jersey, Iowa, Miami. Hi from France. Oh, bonjour. Comment? Look at this. New Hampshire, Canada, Germany. It truly is all of the world. This great thing is about like business ownership and small business ownership, media, business, it's all over the world. And frankly, every country needs business owners more than ever right now. We believe like part of the deep mission of why I'm here, why I joined this company was that we believe our country, our communities are better when we have strong independent owners and not just have private equity own everything. It's super important we can see the trends of this. So we know that there's this like our country, particularly the United States, speaking of one I know well was built on small business owners. Many like you, who took that made the decision to take the leap and say, no, I'm going to really own a business. And it's incredibly powerful and rewarding and so we need you. So there's never been a better time than now to be an owner. So we're really doubling down. These three days are all about getting you prepared. And many of you are at different stages in that journey.

Journey.

Some really, really know business, maybe have already run a business before. And some of you may have been working in a normal sort of office job and are now realizing, no, this is the time. So whatever brought you here, I want to congratulate you for showing up. It's super, super important. I'm super thankful for it. Okay. Gosh, I love seeing this. I see Eddie Freeman over here. It's kind of fun. Mark, Brett McKee. I can see you here. Norris Salazar, Philip. I see you. I see Lynn Williams. There's two of y' all there.

Hi.

It's amazing. Brett McKee, if I'm saying that. Sorry if I mess up names. I have a crazy last name, so. Houstavette. It's a tough one to say. All right, couple of things. My job here, before we get the programming going, is to give a little bit of, like, pointers, advice, a little housekeeping as well. So first, I just want to say stay engaged. Every session, every activity, every breakout. Like, really be present. Especially there's this can't miss deal review tomorrow night, which is really, really special. But really be present, because this event is built on this idea of what's called the accumulation effect. Each session builds on the one before it. So to miss a little is to miss a little.

Lot.

Really. Like, I'll repeat that. To miss a little is to miss a lot. So really take. Take the time, take the space to really invest in yourself and cameras on. Because otherwise we can't see you and we can't get to know you, and we'll like. As we do, you'll be breaking out and meeting each other. And it's really. It's really great to have cameras on. But. So thank you all who have done that. Another thing, thing, phones. I'm gonna do this too, because I don't know if I've actually done this. We're gonna. You go into your settings, and you go right here where it says your focus. If you're on an Apple phone, do not disturb. Turn that on. It's actually because this is a huge distraction. I know when I'm trying to get a lot of work done, if this thing's beeping, I'm picking it up. It's just habit. So really try to. Try to, like, put it on. Do not disturb. Put it away. You'll have time in the breaks to check in if anyone really needs you. But what could be better than doing that?

This.

So otherwise, let's get our brains working. Make sure to have water and healthy snacks nearby. And also, like the chat. The chat is popping off, and I love it. Oh, the audio is out. Can you guys. You guys. Can everyone hear me? Okay. All right. I saw somebody. Couldn't hear me. You guys are good. All right, I'll take that. I love that. So you see the Chat. It's going on. The chat can be a little distracting, but. So the chats are meant for, like, getting to know each other. They are for the aha moments or talking to Cody and the other speakers. But don't let it be a distraction. So if it is, you can always just minimize it. And a couple of rules. We say just be constructive, be respectful. It's not for sales or self promotion. Like seriously. All right, so VIPs, we have some VIPs here. I see some rooms. One, two, three. So we're going to be spending quality time together. We have some special things for you guys. Of course, this is for everyone. We have. This event is designed around everyone. Obviously, the VIPs have some extra benefits. There's an exclusive Q and A during our midday meal break today and tomorrow. We also have for VIPs lifetime access to the event recordings. And speaking of being present, this is something. And for those of you guys, some of you know this. We showed up earlier to the vip. Welcome, welcome. We have a drawing where we're going to be giving away a MacBook Pro for those who show up for all three days. So it's an investment in you guys. If you show up, we're going to pay it forward and make that investment in you guys. I just love MacBook Pros. I think they're a lot of fun. We're going to try to get a big 16 inch one for you. All right, now let me show you guys the dashboard. This is. This is all roads during this event lead to our dashboard. So you probably have already seen it. If you've come in already, you've been here, because there's a button here where it says main stage. And that'll get you in to here. So a couple of different pieces of it. You can submit a question. There's a help desk on there. Let's look at the zoom backgrounds really quick.

Quick.

So if you haven't found this, and I know a lot of you have, because I can see them, we have a couple of different zoom background options and I guess you can get creative if you want to play with these a little bit. But they're really fun. Give you some of that branding to all kind of really identify with each other. Now we got these. This is, I think, is the best part of the whole thing. We've got these four buttons right here of different flare emojis. So let's give them a little try. There's a magic wand. We got a thing. Oh, yeah, yeah. Nice. I love seeing that. That's awesome. So you can do that throughout the session to show that you're really like, oh, wow. Oh, love it. It's a great way. And I think it. And the speakers really love it too, because it's kind of knows you're paying attention.

All right.

And then you'll also see. You'll also see this. This is to submit if you want to be part of the deal review with Cody. So it's a series of questions to fill out and you submit your deal analysis application. And it's okay if you're not ready at that stage to do it, but that's where you'll find it. And then finally at the bottom there are the downloads. We have a couple of different downloads here. There is a workbook. The workbook. You download it, you fill it out throughout the session. So it is kind of key to have. And really we do this so that you can leave with a to done list and not just a to do list list. I wish I wrote that. I didn't, but it's a lot of. I actually really am going to use that. So we're back to the dashboard. And then also we've got this fun little door hanger that we made because I have two kids, I have a 10 year old and a 12 year old and sometimes they act like real little kids. And so it's really. They always, especially when you're in the house, really try to command my time. So we actually made these like do not disturb door hangers and so you can download it and print, print it yourself. Many of you may have gotten this in the mail if you were in early enough. So I think it's kind of fun. It says do not disturb. Stepping in to owner nation. So fun little fun, little add on there. Okay. It is again wonderful you are all here, so I am not. Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, it's time to get this show started. So the woman I'm about to bring on stage is one of the most inspiring and committed people I know. I've never seen someone so committed to her mission and it's a privilege to work with her every single day. It is honestly one of the greatest privileges of my career and my life. And it is an honor to welcome her to the main Street Millionaire live stage. So please help me in this. I do need your help. Please give her a warm welcome. Ms. Cody Sanchez.

Yeah,

hi.

What's up, crew? How are you guys? This is my favorite part. I know that Mark said the same thing, but seeing all your faces this is so incredible. Like, I want to get right into this, but I want to tell you, first of all, why this means so much to me. I have thousands of you here today, and it kind of like, rips me open because. Because I believe if you're here, you and I are already kind of kindred spirits. You're here because you want to go bigger, you want to do more, you want to be better. And without getting too emotional, because we ain't got time for allergies. Thinking about that really matters in this world around us. Because I don't know, you guys tell me in the comments, but I think most people have either sadly lost that belief or totally given up on it. And so you already. Being here is really important. Now, I do have a request from you above and beyond this. I want you to be more than just a passive listener. These next three days. I want you to promise me to take action, to actually steal my blueprint and do this for yourself. Like, I can't promise you anything if you don't take action. But I can promise you that you can buy a business. Almost everybody can. Or you can buy a part of a business if you're not ready to buy the whole thing. And if you do follow this playbook and by the end of the event, we're going to give you exactly what you need to do. Like, you are capable of this. And, you know, I think it's not just about the tactics. We're going to give you all of those. But I also think that this blueprint, it's an opportunity for a totally different vision for yourself, for your family, for your community. Like, you can leave your mark on the world. And I don't mean that in an exaggerated way. I don't think these are exaggerated claims. Actually. These are very reasonable quotes. Everything that I have have done and everything that we teach is not about rocket science. It doesn't require you to be superhuman. Although I imagine, like, somewhere inside of you, we all have that portion of us. It doesn't require that. So lock in. Let's get there. Can we put their face on the wall one more time? I just want them to look at everybody else around us. What's up, guys? I know you can't see, but this whole time, even when you can't see yourself back here, you know what crazy is? I have all these monitors. I can see your face the whole time. So keep your clothes on. You know, we don't want to make it weird, right? We want to keep it PC up in here. But just know that, like, this is why we do everything we do here. Most people will not show up for something like this. So first of all, congratulations, you did this. All right, we can let them focus on in this again and move them off the back screen. All right, I have a big question for you guys. Which is, who wins in this world today? Is it the employees or the owners? What do you guys, guys think? Who wins? It's the owners, right? More than ever, it is so important that you are here. I have never felt the sense of urgency that I do right now. And I know that I've been saying for a while, the time is now to buy a business. And we've theoretically, we've been right. Like, if you had first bought a business when I told you to, in 2020, you'd be millions richer now. Valuations have like 3 to 5x since then. And I kind of thought, like, you know, at some point, like, what happens? Maybe these valuations don't go up, but, like, now something else has happened, right? And that's something else is that we have a technological change we've never seen the likes of previously. And so I have a deep, deep conviction, not belief, that you do. If you do not become an owner and grow your profits in the next one to three years, I worry deep, and let me tell you why. I want to just show you something really quick. If we put up on the back screen, do you know what this is? Can anybody tell me what this is in the chat that they're about to throw up here? This, that I'm about to show you is fascinating in many ways. What do you think this is? That's right. This is called your new box. This is a software that uses AI to track the productivity of the baristas and how much time customers are spending in the shop. It literally says, oh, this customer's been here for an hour 15. Over here it says, Anna. She's crushing it. Olga. I don't know if she's gonna have a job later. This is just the beginning. Owners will want more robot oversight, and workers will fight for less. And there will be two sides to this story. You'll either be the one who owns the business and can use these tools, or you'll be the one owned by it. So before I get into all the particular on how to buy a business, I want to talk about why right now we got to move faster than we ever have before. Tell me if this resonates with any of you guys, but the numbers aren't great. Young Americans can't find jobs. We have actually seen that the average adjusted salary for college grads is down 8% year over year. We're at the lowest levels in at least six years. And most of these graduations graduates, they are down 20 to 26% from what they used to be able to make. And if that's not enough, we as workers in general. So those of us that have jobs are taking home the smallest share of the economic pie since the feds started collecting data in 1947. Which makes me feel like this guy's. And then they just tell us to skip the lattes, right? So like there is material economic change happening in the world. And then January was rough. Biggest layoffs in 17 years, you guys, up since 20, since 2009, which is when I graduated. And if you guys, if you graduated college, I graduated in 2008. 2009 was not a great year to get a job. Except instead of what was a V shaped recovery, which is what happened back then, market plummeted, recovered. I don't think that's going to be what happens here. We are entering a new era and so we probably should feel some concern about this because this thing that created this image that you're seeing, well, it kind of makes me cry too because we've seen also the worst January for job cut announcements, but also the worst January for future announced positions. And maybe even more sinister to this pattern is that this appears to to be sort of persistent. So if we go all the way back to 2020, we can see that the job market in the US has just decreased. Right? There's just less jobs and we've got UPS slashing 30,000 jobs and Amazon cutting 16,000 and Dow is restructuring thousands and it kind of just keeps coming. And so when I say this thing, which is the time is always now, I really mean it. I mean it especially right now. Like who else here you gu can tell me in the comment. Kind of can't sleep for like all the change happening in the world. Like you just feel it. Maybe there's some of you also like I am that is on X all the time and you kind of see what's happening in real time. I think we have two choices, you guys. We can be managed by AI in the future. Your manager won't actually be a human. It'll be, it'll be some version of an AI or a robot. Or you can be an owner who uses AI. It still keeps humans in the loop and is a good owner. But you know, you have two options. Choose wisely. And I don't think you should just listen to me. Whether you like this guy or you hate this guy, he's pretty smart on the subject matter. So let's listen to Elon. Anything that's physical, those jobs will exist for a much longer time. But anything that is digital, which is like just someone at a computer doing something, AI is going to take over those jobs like lightning. So, as an owner, I've simultaneously never been more excited. But for employees, you guys, we got one, one, one thing to say, which is, we gotta wake up. Sorry. And so, thankfully, you're actually here to answer these two questions. How do you become part of the ownership class? Or how do you proliferate and own more businesses in the ownership class? And how do you make more money without starting from scratch? And these three days, I can't promise you much, except I promise you we will answer that because we believe in something called Owner Nation. See, at this company, contrarian thinking. How many of you guys have followed us for a while? You can tell me in the chat, how many of you have seen how many owners we've created? I can see your hands up. How many of you have seen the thousands of people who have bought businesses, grown businesses, sold businesses with us? We have a mission. It's actually the mission of my church, too. I stole this from the. The church. I think he'd be okay with it. And that mission is to make Main street more crowded. Their mission was to make heaven more crowded. And my mission is to make Main street more crowded and to also do something else, which is to do the jobs that only we can do and want to do as humans. Let's throw up this next slide on the background, because I want you to see how fast this is moving. This is an AI robot that can clean an entire bathroom, does it continuously, never sleeps, doesn't ask for a pay raise, doesn't show up late to work. Actually. Now, whether we feel a certain way about this or not, I can't stop it. I'm not smart enough to stop the robots. I don't know how to do that. And maybe that's a different question for a different group. But what I do know is that when the world shifts, your identity has to shift. And so the question I want you to keep asking through this weekend is, who are you in this world? And I want you to ask, is your identity really, owner? Is that what you should be taking on? And before you think it's like, must be nice, Glass tower. Cody, I just want you to know, like, I Had the identity shift I had to make too. So if you guys don't know me, like way before I was talking on stages and doing stuff like this, I, I made $37,000 starting in finance. That was my first job. You know, I don't want to make a big deal about it, but I was pretty rich. I started a company called Vanguard and then I went to Goldman Sachs and then I went to State Street. You know, I headed a business in Latin America. I built a billion dollar in assets under management business in Latin America. I really thought I had made it. But after a while, you guys can give me a little golden handcuffs or a little fire if you feel the same. After a while I really realized I was tired of the 70 hour weeks. I didn't want to work for somebody else forever. And so I felt overworked for somebody else's tower, not mine, and a little bit hamster wheeling. And so maybe you guys can tell me in the chat how many of you guys are employees right now, today that want to sever the golden handcuffs like I am. I see the hands raised too. I made a shift and I started buying small businesses on the side. And I wasn't like some disgruntled bad employees. I was very smart, I made good money. I was sophisticated like you guys are. But even I didn't do a first big transaction. I started with $100,000 laundromat that made $67,000 in profit. And I didn't tell anybody when I say I didn't tell anybody. You're going to actually meet Stan Sanchez, my dad. And I didn't tell him when I bought it because I was kind of embarrassed. Like I'm under 30, I'm buying businesses but leaving jobs like Goldman Sachs, like what's wrong with me? But that one tiny laundromat, which is why I want you to just crack open the door. Just get some ownership percentage. Well, it's led to a laundromat and then three laundromats and then five, and then 10, and then a wash and fold service and then a tech that supports all laundromats. And so even though at the time I had no experience, I had a full time job, I did not have millions. One small acquisition led to, to something really big. A holding company and a venture fund that has companies so big in it they could be publicly listed. And nobody's more shocked than me by the way, about this because like, you know, I don't know. I hated school. I loved detention. I went to Arizona State which is really Harvard of the west, if you ask me. You know, and you know, this wasn't part of my plan. I mean, I remember my math teacher told me back at the time time shout out to him that Helen Keller would have a better chance of winning an archery contest than I would have getting into finance. And so like, I don't. I think we were kind of sold this lie that we have to be on Wall street to do all this. And I know we have a ton of people in our community and in our academy that are ex finance professionals. I've hired also some of the best in the world that work with us, but we don't have to do that. And so that's what led to a New York Times Times best selling book and teaching Good Morning America about how to buy businesses. I was actually teaching Michael Strahan how to buy car washes, right? And a book that sold hundreds of thousands of copies and was talked about around the world. Which is weird because most people don't think acquisitions is like as hot as fairies and werewolves and all my ladies. You know what I'm talking about on here with the fantasy we're reading these days. I see a few years shaking your heads. The men are like, what? And then I started buying more and more businesses, right? Bigger trade trades businesses. And those trades businesses turned into a big franchisor. And that franchisor led to hundreds of locations around the country. You guys can shout out if you've ever seen any of our companies around, like Pink's or that one painter or garage up. And I created this what I call an acquisition flywheel. And I'm going to teach you guys how to create your version of a flywheel. And then we bought and built one of the biggest business buying marketplaces in the world. We're going to teach you how to use it this week. And all of that started really with one decision. Buy boring businesses don't build. Because I actually think your life and your trajectory is not based on anything except the decisions you choose to make or not make. And so I had a realization at some point, I guess this was probably three years ago, that my method for purchasing businesses worked better than it anything else. Because the truth is not all business buying is equal. Like how you do it matters. So let's throw it up on the back. I started teaching people like you. This is actually my very first cohort of business buyers. So you can see all of them. This was a group of us, you know, me up here. And my method, like it actually started Working for a bunch of people. You know, I wasn't sure. I thought, well, I've bought businesses. But maybe that's just a Cody thing. Maybe everybody else can. I can't do it. And then. Wait, you guys. I just want you to think about this for a second before I put it up. This cohort. So this was four years ago. Now, look at them today. Every single person with a yellow arrow has bought a business. Many of them two or three. Like, this is incredible. You know who's in this group? Renan, who was a medical sales professional, bought a business. How about Sam, who had only ever done construction work before, bought a business. How about another one of our members who's in Alaska, who has bought two businesses with his wife, plus they've had, like, three children during it. He likes reproducing, I think. And so my point here is, this isn't actually about me. You guys are how we take back Main Street. And my goal for you by the end of these three days is that you look at an H vac just like this woman looks at a Grammy or whatever she is trying to win. Like, this is what I want for us. And let's talk about you for a second. So why acquisitions for you? Why make the shift? These numbers are why. Because you want to steal the richest people's homeworks. Look at this graph, you guys. The poor, they own cars. The middle class owns homes. And rich owns, owns businesses. You can see as you get wealthier, your blue segment increases materially. And when you are poor, you have no business exposure. And so I realized, you guys can tell me which one of these three you are. Which of these three are you? There's only three types of business people. Employees, entrepreneurs, acquirers. You can tell me in the chat. Which one are you? Employee, owner, acquirer. Okay. Amazing. What's fascinating about this is the way we think about making money. It's really helpful. I can, like, see all your stuff in the chat. So thank you guys for putting it in there. Employees. Well, you think that salary and income is the way this is how I used to think. So if you start out at $100,000 salary with an annual raise of 3% compounded, how long does it take you, if you start at age 24, 5, to get to a million dollars a year? Well, let's do some public math to see what that looks like. If we take the compounding plus the starting salary, it takes us about 77.9 years, which I equate to. What the fuck? That's not going to work, especially at the rate of inflation and especially at what we are seeing happen with assets today. So we go, okay, well, employment, employment, not the greatest thing. Unless you work at a company like mine where the best players get access to all the companies that we want to invest in and buy. Okay, so if most employees, this doesn't work, then how about entrepreneurs? Well, we think as entrepreneurs, revenue and profit is the way. Okay, that's smart. But let me show you maybe how not that smart. So let's say our business makes 300k a year. You take home 100k. So again, we're starting at 100k. Now, wage growth is 3% per year. A business is typically somewhere between 5 and 10. So I split the difference. I said, let's give us seven. So how long does it take us to get from 100k to a million dollars a year at 7%? And the answer is 34 years. What the fuck? That's not going to work for us either. And then I've got the acquirer, how I buy my profits, where I want to merge salary potential and ownership potential. And what happens if we do this? Well, we can actually change the financial slope of our life. Let me show you this one. Average small business growth you can see here, 5%. If you add leverage on top of it through acquisitions, we're talking about, instead of taking, I don't know, 30, 40 years, 78 years, we get the same thing in. Ryan Gosling is really how I think about this one. You know, I just think this is where I want to be when Jesus comes. I don't know about you guys. He looks thrilled. And so if I'm a math girl, this is what I want. I want the fastest way with the highest probability of beachside. And don't get me wrong, buying a business is not going to mean that you have a simple, carefree, easy life. It's going to actually suck the first few months that you do it, maybe even the first year, but then at some point, everything flips. And let me show you you why. Because look at this. The first year, let's say your business doesn't grow. But the second year, let's say you grow your business by $300,000. Well, if you do that in your job, that's just it, you can't sell your job. If you do that in a business, it has something called an a multiple, an enterprise multiple, that is a value multiple, which means you take 300k times four, because you can sell this level of a business business at 4x either the revenue or the profit, depending on the business type, which means that you've just created $1.2 million in value for you. You do that a few times and you have changed the slope of your family's financial life forever. And you've done it in one, three to five years. Ryan Gosley, Now, I think builders are built different and so we are searching for you. Now one of the reasons that we even have this event cost anything is because we want to find the people who are willing to do what Brandon did, which is buy a street sweeping business. Even though this guy was a former pro athlete, but he knew that he had a limited amount of time, so he came to us to learn how to do it. And why? Because we don't actually work smarter. We don't actually work harder here. Always we work smarter. This is called the multiple effect. What I just showed you, that every dollar you bring in in your business, if you understand how to build it to sell, has a 4 to 5 to 7 to 10x multiple. And so we know if we're smarter in how we work, plus we move faster, we're going to make more money. And this is how we all become part of the self made millionaire class. And I want you to see a few different faces who are doing this. For instance, like Jen. So I don't know, is there anybody on here who is in health care, nurse practitioners, doctors, anything like that? Am I? So Jen was like you, she nurse practitioner, she buys a $362,000 business. How she didn't have that much cash. Well, here's how she did it, 25% down. The rest was financed by the seller, aka her boss. There was $370,000 in revenue and let's call it like $125,000 in profit. Now what's interesting is after two years, her and her husband, this is her husband here, Ullman, they started at 300ish in revenue. By year two, I'm sorry, this was actually by the end of year one, they had grown to 1.25 million in revenue. By the end of year two, this was a $3 million in revenue business. So what we want to do, especially in this age of AI, we are going to be able to buy businesses that probably weren't even sellable before, integrate tech into it and create value where we didn't see it before. And, and guess what else that has not been priced into these businesses. So we get to steal the private equity guys leverage and their homework. Because the truth is I didn't Come up with any of this stuff. This is what I learned working on Wall street for as long as I did. And the biggest thing that I learned, how many of you guys have ever started a business, maybe had that business not make you as much money as you thought it was going to? You can put your hands up, you can tell me, yes, the reason why is, look at these numbers. When you buy a business, you get to skip time. You basically steal time, sometimes 10 or 20 years, because when you build, it takes you three months to get any revenue. It takes you six months on average to get a team. It takes you 12 months on average to be positive cash flow. Although most businesses never even get there. But if you buy the business, you already have all of it. And so if we know that millionaires own businesses, 60% of all millionaires own a business business. And we know that the faster you own a business, the more money you'll make, then I think this path to ownership becomes really clear. And it's probably why all the private equity guys hate me. Because this is not something we want to normalize broadly. But I don't know, does anybody here want to make so much money? You make other people uncomfortable. Is anyone. Is that like. It's just me. I see a few Maria's like, yeah, I do. I see that nod. Okay, me too. So if that's you, if you want a net worth over $30 million, aka close to private jet money, you really gotta own a business because 88% of people with this net worth own equity. So the truth is, if you want money, you need ownership. And so our goal over these next couple days is to move you closer to here. Now, I want to talk about one other thing. I have a deep belief that it's really hard to be what you can't see. And so I know you guys have seen on social, you know, I've taught athletes. Like I was talking to Sierra the other day, which is a ludicrous line to say, do you ever, like, sometimes I'm like, what is life? But I think we're going to teach you how to do the exact same thing I was teaching her. How do you structure deals? Which deals are interesting or not, or Stephen Bartlett or Ashley Graham or whatever. So we've taught all these fancy people, but what I may be most proud of is this. You probably don't know any of these people's faces, but Anna is a stud and she's a vet who bought a business. Houston used to work for one of the companies, companies he bought. We've got Craig, who is a real estate investor. We've got hair stylists who have done this before. We've got nurses. So I just want you to know that all those people who think that somehow we're less than. Because I'm an Arizona State, you know, public school grad, before I went to Georgetown and before I worked at Goldman and all the things you're not. This is not easy, but it is simple and there is a proven playbook to do it, if you follow the right playbook. And we're going to give it to you. So you'll kind of see throughout these days a bunch of things that look like this. And here's why I'm not showing you all these people that have bought businesses that we've helped. Because I want the pat on the back. Like, that's not what I'm saying. I want you to be able to see yourself in them. I want to show you all the different types of people that have done it. And I also want you to see what happens afterwards. One of the biggest reasons we don't see people do business acquisitions. You guys can tell me if this is true. Drop it in the chat, or you can wave your hands if you're like, what if I buy it and then what do I do with it? What if I can't run it? What if I can't grow it? You know, how do I know that my skill set is going to transfer to here? I had all of those questions the first time I bought a laundromat. My husband would tell you, he doesn't let me do his own, his laundry. I'm not allowed to do laundry in my own house. I bought a laundromat. And so we want to show you people who have actually built businesses too, which is what this looks like. I'm going to show you also in depth case studies to track and break down their house. People like Bobby, who bought a preschool and real estate and didn't use his own money and how much it took to get there. Like he joined 30 calls before he was able to actually build a business or buy a business. So what is that, four, eight, six? So somewhere around seven or eight months, right, of showing up. I'm also going to show you these. This is kind of cool. So now we have incredible tech. We'll show you this throughout. I'm really proud of. It took a lot of work to do, but every time you see these, this is an integration that shows us when people close a deal and they have to actually Submit a bunch of paperwork to verify that the deal is done. So now you'll see them and you'll know, okay, if I see myself in here, maybe it's possible because I want to show you you are capable. And let me. This is like really important, but I just want to throw this up for a second. I truly believe that buying a assets, hard assets, before GPTs, aka AI, deflates our pay and ownership becomes concentrated in the hands of the few is like getting on the last lifeboat off the Titanic. I feel this in my deep bones. I've always said I think we have a couple years for the, for us to take advantage of the silver Tsunami. But what is happening in AI? Like sure, you can go learn every AI tool, you could take all the classes, but what are you going to do? Create more slop that everybody else is creating and hope that those like little spin up small businesses actually stick? No, no, no, those aren't going to last. They don't have what's called the Lindy effect. The way to play the game with AI is to own things that have already existed, that everybody needs and add technology to them. I feel that in the bones of my body. And so how do you beat AI? You use it as an owner and you never let yourself become the horse. The other thing I want to talk to you about today is like, turns out if you wait a day, you wait forever. And so there's this myth that I kept telling myself, I don't like risk. My parents think that's funny to say now, but I actually really don't like risk. You're never going to feel like everything aligns perfectly. Timing, market, resources, money, belief, da, da, da. And I just want you to make yourself one commitment to take some sort of action while you, you're here to do whatever. Because if somebody in Lake Como, Italy, where real estate is incredibly expensive and there's like three laundromats, can buy all three of them, then I can tell you you can do the exact same thing. I had a tweet this morning that I had to put on here because I was yelling at myself. How many of you guys like know you need to do something and you procrastinate? Does that happen to people on here? It happens to me often. My husband actually just doesn't do it. He's a former Navy seal. He almost always just does the thing that he says that he's going to do, which I find very annoying. You know, am I really? I think procrastination is the highest form of self Neglect or maybe self abuse. And so while we're going to talk tactics, I also want to talk to you about moving faster than you feel comfortable with. And let me let somebody else show you why. A decisive aggressiveness, moving forward quickly on decisions as quickly as you responsibly can, is how you increase velocity. Most of what slows things down is taking too long to make decisions at all skill levels, you know, so it has to be part of the culture to get high velocity. You know, Amazon has a million and a half. You're not going to be like most people who never move at all. And let me show you why this is so detrimental. How many people do you think actually own a business in the US? Anybody know? Anybody know 30 million people in the US or there are 30 million SMBs in the US and if you think that sounds like a lot, I did too. But look at this. This is the long run decline in US business ownership. We have basically seen it go from 95% ownership when the country was founded all the way down to less than 10%. This is not a you problem. This is a pervasive problem that we have to push back against. So yes, we are procrastinating, but also structurally we have been pushed out of the game. And so if we think about how bad we are losing, I just want you to know, even the Canadians are beating us, what the 7.8% ownership to 6.7%. How many Canadians are on the call and love you guys? You know what, there's always some. And then Eden's like, so just know, like, this is not wherever you are, it's okay. And all we are doing is stealing the homework from private equity in Wall street and applying it to the rest of us. Because if we don't, we'll continue to go to the grocery store and think we have a bunch of options and not realize that 11 guys own everything. We'll continue to see private equity go from in 2000 owning 4% of our businesses to in 2020, them owning 20% as of 2025. I think it's closer to 25%. It's really hard to get the numbers. Wonder why. Shocking. They don't want us to know that. So these three days, you and I, my friend, we are going to take it back. I may not be able to be in your couch, to hold your hand, to yell at you in person, but we are doing this just the same. Same. Because I want you to even be like, there's probably a bunch of people on you. Like maybe it's Michael. I'm looking at Michael's face right now and maybe Michael is like Josh, who is actually one of our vendors. And Josh is a business owner. So Josh, he didn't want to like buy an entire Laundromat, some separate thing. He actually just wanted to own part of multiple companies that he worked with. So we taught him how to do a mixture of expertise to equity and small checks. To get parts of a business. It is a fallacy that you have to quit everything to buy a business. I didn't do that for upwards of seven years. I had other people I invested alongside. I was the operator for some. So we could actually take back our countries by starting on Main street, wherever you are. But what I do know for sure is that our only answer is ownership. And if we don't move like I talked about, and so did my buddy Jim, Jeff, this is your life and it's ending one minute at a time. Now if you think that you can't do this and if you're wondering if you should, I just want to share some mistakes that I made. Like I took too long. I did so much wrong. Remember when we talked about all you guys, how many people here have failed at a startup? Anybody here failed at a startup before? Took me three times. It was three strikes. Cody was out. And, you know, I thought I was kind of broken and I was successful professionally, but I thought I was broken. And then I looked at the math. Look at the math, you guys, new business failure rate over 65% as opposed to acquisitions, less than 20%. A bunch of you are like me. You've played startup roulette and then you've looked at this graph and gone, why are they trying so hard to get us to start businesses and think we can do that, but not that we could buy them? Why do you think that is? Because it takes a lot of creativity, innovation, and you years of pain to do that. I also, maybe a few of you guys will feel this too. I started a business early on with a fraud who I thought was a friend. Lost all of our money, right? I had to go after him. Basically said, I'm not going to take this anymore. After we had lost the cash, I also used my own money instead of smart financing. How many of you guys here think you don't have enough money to do deals? You can put it in the chat. You could put your hands up. You're like, I'm not sure I can afford this. I'm not sure if I have enough cash to buy the level of the business that I want, that is a totally reasonable thing. And what I want to tell you is we're going to have an entire section on creative financing and seller financing. Like, you guys have to make sure you're here for that. But there is not. And I want you to, like, let this sink in for a second, and maybe you can do this in the chat. Some of you guys are pros, people who are in finance, people who own businesses. Back me up on this. There is not one, and I mean one, serious investor or business acquirer who has used only their own money. Do you guys know that, like, literally not one. It doesn't exist. Anybody who's built businesses that have done over nine figures has used some combination of other people's money. Like, it's. It's a. And isn't that crazy? Because what do they tell us? That debt is what? What bad? That you should only buy the things you can, what, afford. Why? Because they want to use our capital to buy the things. So we leave it in our mutual funds and in our 401ks. And so the banks go and they buy our houses with our money at lower rates, and they do it with our businesses, too. This is just how the system works. And so I do not want you to fall into the fallacy of thinking you do not have enough money. What you don't have. Have enough is knowledge. I actually had a funny mentor. She was a woman who's totally politically incorrect. Are you guys okay with that or am I gonna get. We're past cancel culture, aren't we? Can't people. Do other people just say whatever they want? Now, the politically incorrect mentor of mine, she said something to me early on. I was like, not feeling very good looking. And I said something like, this is a female thing. But I was like, God, I just, like, feel ugly. And she looked at me with a straight face and she goes, you're not ugly, you're broke. I was like, first of all, fuck you. But also true, because it turns out you can buy looks, you can buy cash flow, you can buy businesses with other people's money. And I wish somebody had taught me earlier. So I want you to skip my 10 years of struggle and steal the homework that I've stolen from other people. And I want you to do it because I think that we all don't fully understand how the rich think and work. So let's listen to one of them. I once asked Warren Buffett, why don't

more people copy your investment strategy?

It's not that difficult. To understand in principle. And he said, oh, Jeff, that's easy. My, my approach is a get rich slowly scheme. People don't like those. And so. But there's a lot of truth in that for everything, which is if you can think in terms of seven years instead of three years, and you can defer gratification and think long term, that will give you a head start against all of your competitors. And I want you to sit that in for a second. A lot of times people ask me, well, why, Cody, would you teach other people to buy businesses? You know, if it's so good and if you're so good at it, why don't you just buy all of them? And one, I think that's really scarcity mindset. I think that's from a bunch of people who think that they have to take advantage of you in order to get. And I mean, you guys have seen all the businesses I own online. I own of lot. A lot of them. Do you know Resi brands, like the one that has 700 locations, seven different brands under it? You know how I found it on the Internet talking to all you guys? Somebody came to me on it. So this belief that we cannot grow together is so erroneous. It's. It's why everything we've built is built on the opposite. Because what we've realized is actually it's not rich versus poor going forward. It's not white collar versus blue collar. Especially now you guys. Blue collar got such an unfair advantage, it keeps me up at night. As a white collar worker who owns blue collar businesses, it's now leveraged versus unleveraged. It's now do you understand capital structures or are you a part of the structure that allows others to use you as capital? That is the difference. So if we can teach you to learn deal making, it's like teaching a man to fish. A lot of times people will go, well, hey, can you just buy businesses for me? And I think that is the biggest disservice we, we could do for you. Because if we teach you how to do this, even if you don't buy a business right away, one day something wild's gonna happen to you and let me know. I know this has happened to some people in the chats. Cause a bunch of people here have bought businesses before. How many times have you opened your aperture to what's possible in business buying? And then you walk into a store and you talk to an owner and you're like having a coffee, whatever, and all of a sudden the red light Goes on. You're like, wait a second, this guy owns this business and I think he's interested in selling. And wait a second, look at that. That might be a deal. And I bet that business is up for for sale. This happens all around. And so I want you to know that the things that you are learning today, you'll be able to carry with you through life. So let's go into some of the positives, since I have totally freaked you out about the world that we're stepping into. The positives. You guys are this. There's a silver tsunami that is transitioning assets from one generation to the next. And whether you are part of the baby boomer generation or you are younger and not part of it, we can all take advantage of it. We've got 17.4 million business owners over the age of 55. We have trillions of dollars in assets changing hands. But for the first time ever, we're going to be able to apply technology to those small businesses to make them more profitable. This is creating what we termed the Great Boomer Fire Sale. And before I started talking about this five or six years ago, nobody was talking about this when I tell you guys, it was like me, my dad, sometimes my mom on the Internet here before the rest of people realized, wow, there's 33 million small businesses. We've got like 44%, almost 50% of GDP, which means they make all the monies in small businesses. But there is a little bit of an angst that I get on this, which is this graph. Look how long we have to take over these businesses here at this cost, closely. The peak window is now through 2030. We have probably less time. This was before AI came into the equation. So I don't think this opportunity lasts. Which is why in business buying and doing deals, does everybody know what is the number one thing that kills deals in business? Anybody knows know what it is? Want to put it in here?

Yeah.

I see slow. I see ego. Time. Time kills opportunity, period. Actually, this is fascinating. Really good mentor of mine, David Osborne, back when he was worth his first hundred million. And I, like, couldn't quite conceptualize that much money. That just seemed like too much money to me. That's what he told me. I go, what's your best lesson about doing deals? Buying businesses, doing real estate deals. He said, if you're going to to do it, make the right decision and move fast. So I do think your business success is a reflection of your speed and direction. I don't want to freak you out, but again, and again. But again and again, the best people in the world, they say the same thing. So let's listen to one. Any given thing can be sped up, however fast you think it can be done. Like, whatever the speed, the speed is being done, it can be done faster. Also, I love sending this one to my employees. You can imagine how fun I am to work for. They'll be like, when are you going to have that done? And then I'll just send this back to them. So you got anybody you as employees, you can do that same thing. You're welcome. They will hate me later. So if we know that your bank account will reflect your speed, I don't want you to freak out because it doesn't mean we have to do huge deals. Look at one of our community members who did a deal for a business that was making about $50,000 a year with a purchase price of 150k, totally done with seller financing, and it was her first small business that she got into. But I do want to make sure I hammer home the truth that, like my mentor, Bill Perkins says to me, he's a multi billion dollar hedge fund manager. And I remember when I asked him, like, why he was so good at doing deals, like, I didn't have the identity of a deal maker back then, you know, I didn't think the way that I talk to you guys about now, so I know I'm like yelling at you about moving fast and what's happening, but I had to have somebody else yell at me. Bill literally sat me down and I go, why are you so good at doing deals? Why do all your deals make so much much money? And he just looked at me kind of confused, and he goes, you don't have to be smarter or richer. He goes, you just have to move faster than everybody else. He's like, by the time other people had talked to their spouse, thought about it, figured out what their bank account looked like, did they have enough time, put it on the calendar? He's like, I had just made the decision, made three mistakes, and then found my perfect way. And so the most successful people, all these videos I'm showing you, they just moved fast, take risks, and they work a lot. It's kind of it. We sort of put them on these ivory towers. And now, and you guys know, if you've watched my podcast or me on the Internet, I meet these guys. I've met most of the people that are in these videos. Mine is Jeff Bezos. They're not so much superhumans. They just do these Things differently. So I don't know, maybe this is you. Like, maybe you feel like you have no time, you can't. You're too busy. Maybe it's actually just time for you to take on a different idea identity and to figure out that if you move with speed in the right direction, you could change your life completely. Now, I do have a particular way I want you to prepare for these next three days. Okay? Y' all are really smart. You want to look at something fun? Do you guys want to know how you guys saved, I don't know, like, 14,950 bucks already by being here? I hope nobody went to this because then they'll be sad. But look at what the, like three day event in Mike at Wharton costs. You want to see? Anybody want to tell me what that price is? Oh, that would be 15,250 bucks to learn how people do huge acquisitions. And instead, you guys are here today and you're going to learn more than they did. But I want you to kind of show up like you spent 15k to be here because you did just actually make a better decision than they did. Because you're going to learn more applicable ways for you to buy a business as opposed to for you to go into M and A or private equity. And because we believe in being unreasonably helpful, I want you to see this little weekend as like your mini mba. Like you're. You. You're almost. It's like your first week at orientation for an MBA that actually makes you money as opposed to tells you what to think and not how to think. And so how do you win this weekend? Couple things. You kill distraction because you cannot do big things if you're distracted by small, small things. Doesn't this kill you? Like, our world is built as a giant distraction device. But I go back to this quote because it's just not possible to do the big things if you're distracted by the small things. So be here when you're here. Now I want to go through five lessons before I have a little worksheet that we're going to work on really quick together that I want you to carry through. And the first lesson is, humans are contagious. I wish I learned this earlier. There's so many fascinating studies about if you're in a 25 square foot radius from a high performer consistently at work, they'll make you 15% more productive. If you're in a 25 square foot radius from a low performer or a bottom performer, they will make you 30% less productive. So you have to keep distance from the people you do not want to become. You need what we would call more allies, less product, friends. And this weekend in particular, we're going to have some crazy ideas, and you might be sharing with friends and family, and that could be okay if they are the type of people to be allies and to lead from possibility and not fear. But I also want you to never let their fear stop your wins. This is actually called conditional learning. If there are any psychologists on here, you guys know all about this, which is that we don't actually come out of the womb with fear. That's why babies are like, doo, doo, doo, and they'll fall off the couch and it's no big deal. Or they burn themselves on the thing. They don't come out with fear. You learn fear, right? You learn what to be scared of. In fact, if a little baby. There's fascinating studies. I don't know what kind of psychopathic parents do this, but there are these really cool videos where they put these babies in, like, a ton of pythons. Like, the pythons are just. Has anybody seen these? The pythons are just rolling all around and the babies are just crawling around. They don't care. Kind of pulling on the python, whatever. Me as an adult, I'm like, don't do it. That's the wrong end. Don't touch that part. The babies, no idea why, because they didn't have other people around them telling them what to be scared of. And so I'll share something really personal with you guys. Has anybody here ever had, like, a truly awful boss? Just, like, just an absolute. Yeah, I kind of think that, like, entrepreneurs, the best entrepreneurs, are just unemployable people who had a terrible boss. But I had one. And I don't want to mention any names, but Dan. And so. So Dan was a truly terrible boss for me. And he sent me this email. This is a real email from a billion years ago. I saved it because I wanted to keep that chip on my shoulder. And he basically, what's hysterical for me, you guys, you are part of a grand endeavor. We were a private equity company. We were, like, stripping the soul out of Main Street. And he said, I hope you gain more followers this week because you didn't help the firm. You keep dumbing us down. And you have, like, a choice kind of over the next couple of days and weeks, you can let other crabs pull you down in the bucket, or you can escape. So if you don't want their life, send them love, but ignore Them, they will come back to you later. And let me tell you why. A monk that I've become a friend with, his name is Don Depondi, has this great idea which is like if you take a tissue, the tissue's flat, you're in the the middle and on the four corners are like your spouse that isn't sure if this is a good idea, buying a business. Your friends that don't know, your boss that you're scared of, your, you know, I don't know, kids that want to spend more time with you. All people that you actually maybe really love. Maybe some of them you don't, maybe some of them you do, who kind of might hold you back. Well, when you first start to rise. So let's say you become, make a decision to become an owner and you start to pull up that tissue a little bit, right? When you make that first tissue decision, what are you creating? You're creating distance from them, right? They don't like that because people who love you, they love you as you are now, not for who you might become. That is scary. So they are going to feel tension. But eventually what happens if you keep rising, everybody rises. So I want you to realize that it's going to be some friction. That is normal. The third lesson is something called the Pygmalion, in effect, which is another psychological principle that is true, that is you will win exactly as often as you think you do. This is actually fascinating. So there is a lot of data, various studies to show that when you set an expectation or belief, when you set a belief of what you want, when you set it as an expectation, you are more likely to fulfill this expectation. Right? And I think this is like perfectly evidenced the most in the most scientific of graphs, which is a meme. But basically what I found is most people have a lot of excuses in the middle. And that is like, I need a perfect idea, I need all the capital, I need my mba. I gotta wait until this, I'm getting married, then there's been a death in the family. Really sad. I'm sorry, it shouldn't stop you. The truth of the matter is, no matter what side of this graph you are on, the answer is just buy, just keep moving. Because when you establish action as your expectation, like who you are, you actually build that reality. It's probably the only reason I've really been successful over time. Now lesson four is kind of interesting. So we are a data hungry company. I'm the type of person where when somebody tells me something like the Pygmalion effect. I'm like, I don't know, show me the studies. Like, show me the numbers. I'm not exactly sure. Like, is it a double blind study? Was it longitudinal? Like, how many participants were in it? Like, we should check this out. That's just my finance background. So naturally I've been stalking you all. And when I've been studying you, I've realized there's kind of broadly two groups of people. We've got what we call beginners versus pros, and for the big beginners, which was me for many years. Have you ever noticed as beginners, we all kind of over complicate everything? I'm not saying this is real life footage of me trying to go with my husband camping, but probably it is. Like, we over pack, we over, you know, we under prepare, we go slower. We do it all ourselves. We're kind of scared to ask. And so in some of the information we sent to you guys before when we were gathering intel, I pulled a bunch of this information. I was like, okay, I see all the beginners. Like, I don't even know where to start. You guys can tell me if this is you in the chat. Like, what about, I don't know about creative financing. I'm completely new. How do I find these things? Like, maybe I don't even want to do this. Maybe I only want to buy part of it, right? And I just want you to know, like, I see you, I got you. We know how to help you get to the next level of the game. The second is the pro. And I just want you to know too, that we're going to make you faster and more efficient. And what you get is different from the beginner. You're going to get a not to do list. You're going to get strategic M and A and integrated acquisition acquisitions. You're going to get ideas for how you plug operators into multiple businesses because you have more cash than time. And so no matter where you are, it is okay. And there is a step ladder to the right acquisition for you. And then my last note, reading all of the information about you and looking at some of the data was, I just want you to know it's never too late or too early. Like, is there anybody here you can tell me in the chat? Raise your hand. Is anyone here thinking, I'm too young, by the way, Way, what a fox was I back in the day? You like those braces? Do they even do that to kids anymore? Okay, some people in here thinking, maybe I'm too young. Maybe I Don't have enough experience. Okay, that might be you, right? How about. Is there anybody here thinking I'm too old? Like, I don't know. Fuck, I'm on my second mountain, my third mountain. I don't know if I can do this anymore. I'm kind of tired. I'm slowing down. All right, what I will tell you is this. There's no such thing as too late or too long young. But there is such thing as regret. So I want you to meet a couple people really quickly. I want you to meet Jared, who joined us when he was 19 years old.

How old are you?

23.

I have three fractional stakes in companies.

I have three other companies that I'm running that are completely mine.

So if you add them all together, it's six.

But the ones I'm actively managing, just three. All right, who's like, fuck this kid at 19, right? Because I wasn't doing that then. I mean, now we're adults, so we say, good job, and we say it nicely instead. I also like all the people I could see laughing on here along with me. Thank you. We're also terrible people. But I remember when I first met Jared, and after, like, a couple years, you know, six deals done, I was like, God, this kid. I literally sat him down. I was like, you're gonna lap me? And then Jared introduced me to a bunch of other members in the academy, and I was like, oh, my God, you guys have multiplied. You're like a whole new generation of young people doing stuff too fast. And then I want you to meet Wendy, who thought she was too old and she didn't have what it takes. This one just gets me. I made my first acquisition five days ago. When I found Cody, I was in the process of going through kind of a big transformation. I ended up getting divorced, broke up with a lot of friends. Now my cup is so full. I'm really grateful. I can't. Is anybody else a crier? When somebody else sees a crier, I can't. It's not good for me anyway. I just want you to know, wherever you are, I didn't get married until I was 30. I didn't make content until I was 35. I didn't start my podcast until I was 37. I didn't give up a paycheck. I just bought businesses. But I didn't quit until I had a backup, which is my businesses covered my entire paycheck. And so at 30, I thought I'd peaked at 39. I know, it's just getting better. So, like, I want you to know, wherever you are, we can start there. Because the key to all of this, the key is that we take back our communities, we push back on becoming part of the machine. We own companies that matter. By the way, I don't know if you guys recognize these two dudes. These two young guys used to be. Is anybody in here in like marketing or finance? You can tell me if you're in marketing and finance. One of these guys was in marketing, one was in finance. And they left, like what would be considered very white collar good jobs to go and buy a cleaning company, a window cleaning company. And now that window cleaning company that they started with a couple bucks has over 100 and something locations. I want to say 170, but we should check my homework. We'll just keep it at 100 to make sure I'm right. So, like, and these guys, if you see them on social, they're making this look more fun than you could ever imagine. And I remember one time I asked, I asked them, I'm like, do you ever regret it? Do you regret? Because that was the fear I had when I started buying business. I was like, what if I buy this business and then I don't want it anymore? Does anybody feel that? What if I buy the wrong business? What if it's not the right transaction? All right, you guys are largely braver than I was. I was worried about that. And these two gents looked at me. I remember perfectly. They said in the eyes, they're like, I remember when we had to clean the windows because for a few months they were hiring people. They had more demand than they had ability. So they were like cleaning windows. And they went and cleaned the windows of one of their friends in finance. And they were like, this is a weird moment. Do I feel like I'm now working for them? Like, how do I feel about this? And then at the end, the guy comes out, he has all these screens, you know, like finance dudes do. He comes out, he like, you know, it's auto pay. So they'd already paid. And he looks at them and he's like, God, you guys really did it, didn't you? And they're like, yeah, the windows are clean. Like, we did it from top to bottom. We did it all the way. And he's like, no, no, that's not what I mean. You actually went out and you built something. Like, you can touch this business that you've created. You came to a house and it was dirty and you left it clean. Like you can Touch it. And he's like, I can't do that in what I do right now. And so I just want you to know that even though we started as a nation of owners, and even though we have now become a nation of serfs and owned, I do not believe I know that you guys are the only answer, because this is the first. At contrarian thinking, we have 13 principles, 13 parts of our creed we live by. And the first one is this is that people who say it can't be done should not interrupt those of us who are doing it. So you're actually doing something bigger than profit. You're bringing dignity back to you, your community, your business, your dignity team. And you're going to do it faster than everybody else, because while they're all waiting, while everybody else is just trying to figure out the next AI innovation, you guys are going to own the companies that get to integrate the innovation. So I just want to first, before we get into our next thing, I want you to just take a big round of applause to commit to being here for three days fully and to know that. That you made maybe that one decision that shifts your entire identity. I'm so fucking proud of you guys. I see a man with a tiny hand. Can we please put him on the back? This whole thing is hysterical. What's up, Carlton? Where do we find him? He's right in the middle. How ridiculous is this? Anyway, you guys have made a decision to do the rarest of things, so I think right now we should get to work. Let's do some work in. You can actually leave my other slide up because it's all on there. We are going to go into our workbook. So if you go to page five of your workbook, this is on your dashboard. You got how cool is technology? This is on your dashboard. We're going to start doing the work to envisioning what your shift could look like. We're actually going to do a few things. We're going to take what you learned and we're going to apply it in real life time in a small group. Now, introverts, you know who you are. Do not flee the scene. Don't leave. Speaking the couple of ahas you've had and writing them down is this is what the neuroscience says, one of the best ways to learn and retain. And it's also to test the truth of what you're saying. I call this using your internal tuning fork to see what lands like. Is that actually why I'm not going to do it? What is going to stand in my way. So this is how it's going to work. You're going to be pulling put into small groups of four to six cameras on. Please, let's not be creeps. Everybody gets two minutes. Extroverts, you know who you are. You are not allowed to take somebody else's time. Okay, Equal time, equal share, equal voice for everybody is what we want to do now to help keep everyone on time and to save time. Let's get organized. So here's how the groups are going to work. It's going to happen with tech. You don't have to do anything. The person with the shortest hair in the group is the timekeeper. So if we got a bald guy, that's you. If there's two bald guys, fight it out. Person with the longest hair goes first and then go one to one, longest to shortest, does that make sense? Shortest hair in the group is a timekeeper. Person with the longest hair goes first and then you go from longest to shortest in order. Timekeepers, you have my permission, in fact, you have my full throated support to lovingly aim. Interrupt just before the two minute mark. We can't have anybody having soliloquies. This is your first example for how to be more decisive and to take action. A few important guidelines before you go. If you have fewer people, do a speed round of ahas from the exercise. You don't have to do anything. We're going to send you out and we'll bring you right back. I am so excited. This is your first little step of taking action. It may sound silly, but I just want you to know Michael dell started with 100 bucks in computer. Henry Kravitz, which is the head of kkr, the biggest private equity company out there, had no dollars raised. Institutional. Who else? McDonald's. Ray Kroc, who was one of the acquirers of McDonald's, used other people to do it and took one tiny action and started flipping burgers himself. So like these tiny actions compound, I'm excited for you guys to go in your small groups. Let's shoot them out it. Oh, well, hello. Thanks for joining us for the first session. I hope you guys enjoyed the content. What do you think? I can see the the chat. Tell me in the chat, did you guys like what we were talking about first? I like it. Okay, preview of what's coming next. We've got deal box. This is where we're going to break down for you. What business is right or wrong for you to invest in? How do you decide if it's a good deal or a bad deal? We're going to get into Deal Clarity yet. How many of you guys want to buy a business but you're just not sure what the right one is to buy? By the way, if you see me looking up here, I'm looking at your, your, you know, comments in the screen. If you see me looking down here, I'm looking at you in the chat. So Deal Clarity is where we figure out and give you some worksheets on what the right business is for you. Then we've got creative financing. I don't know if it landed with anybody, this idea of like, do I have enough money to actually buy a business or how do I get money or how do all these people do all these deals? Do they just have millions lying around? We're going to answer that question for you. Then we've got some more from me. We've got Vanessa Van Edwards. Anybody know Vanessa? She's a dear friend of mine. She's also probably one of the best behavioral psychologists in the world. She is going to talk to you about how do you negotiate, how do you get people to like you so they will give you their business. Then you've got Pace Morby, another dear friend of mine who's like arguably one of the best in the world at creative financing for real estate. Him and I have become dear friends. I've helped him actually buy a couple businesses using creative financing. So he's going to go through those structures in depth with you and then you're going to get a bunch of gray hairs on here. And what is that? Those are our deal advisors and they're going to teach you the 10 proven steps you need to acquire your first or next business. And if you don't know this, our deal advisors have done over a billion dollars in transactions is now wild. If you're in finance, you'll know what these names are, but they've been at places like Valor Equity and Apex and Goldman Sachs like me and bought a ton of businesses across all different levels. Now, to be fair to those who paid to be here, the next session is the last one you will be able to join for free because we believe that people don't value as much the things they don't pay for. And so we like to make sure that you are actually locked in. So if you're loving this content, if you'd like to stay with us this weekend so the learning doesn't end, you can go to the link which is MSM Live so Main Street Millionaire Live and As my thank you to you for showing up, you can use the code my seat to save 10 bucks on your ticket. The team is also dropping this link in the chat. Also, you guys, this is like less than the cost of a lunch or a couple of cup of copies if you're fancy like I am and you like lattes. So it's that simple. If you're ready to choose action and decisiveness, to choose speed and velocity, if you're ready to get serious about being an owner, that's all it takes to stay for the rest of the event. I've loved having you guys this morning. It's kind of fun. I get to see this YouTube feed on this huge studio that I have and I hope you choose to double down with us. Actually, I'll show you one other thing because I want you to hang out with me me for the weekend as you're joining. Also, if you tag us in it, can you guys see this? I'm sharing like all the stories of people who are tagging us so you can show me where you're, what you're learning. You can do this on Instagram, so you can leave your YouTube up, you can go to your phone and you can tag us in the parts that you find the most impactful. You can tag me in the things that you still have questions on and you can figure out what part of deal making you want to do next. The only other thing I'll say to you is like, I think a lot of people get held up about the fact that they might not be ready to buy a business overall, the whole thing entirely. And I think that's smart. My first couple deals were partial acquisitions. So like, for one of them, I used what's called sweat equity, my time and some of my expertise to buy part of a business. For another one, I used expertise to equity, which was mostly my expertise to buy part of a business. And then I've certainly used cash to buy businesses and SBA loans and third party raised capital. And we're going to teach, let's see, we're going to teach 12 of the 21 ways you can use other people's capital to buy a business over the next two days. So if you are ready to get serious, I want you guys to make sure you show up the link again, for those of you asking is www.msm.live. so www.msm live. And then of course, because you're my YouTube fam, you get a ticket discount to just about anything we do. Okay. I love somebody saying Can I give you advice on your audio feed? If you think that I'm in charge of my audio feed, I really, I adore you, but even think I'm more capable than I am. I really just, I'm really just a finance deal maker. And then they do all the tech stuff for me and we rock and roll. The other thing I would say is like a bunch of people ask like, what if I can't make it the whole time? I have two thoughts to that. One, to miss a little is to miss a lot. So you do want to show up as much as possible. But two, you really don't have the luxury of waiting too long in this world today. So if you can calm down for some parts of it and move forward your trajectory for a couple cups of coffee cost, I kind of think you're crazy not to do it. That's a decision only you can make. But you know, if anybody. Is anybody here in finance like. Or is anybody here in business acquisitions previously or an executive, we're going to basically be dropping all of these tools and resources and LOI templates, etc. Which are things that, you know, people just don't share in finance and private equity. But our hope is that you actually buy these businesses, you buy part of them. You come to us for investment, maybe you come to us maybe to operate one of our companies and we have this like flywheel where we make more money when you do deals. You make more money by doing deals with us. You bring us more deals, you bring us, we bring you deals. You bring us investors, you bring us operators, we bring businesses for you to operate. And it becomes comes this flywheel and we end up getting rid of the middlemen. The flywheel used to be between owners of companies, financial bankers, so investment bankers or business brokers, banks who would back it and. Or really, really wealthy investors. And we're trying to replace all of that with people like you and me. And we've been pretty successful at it thus far. So, team, do I have anything else I need to share with the YouTube land? All right, how many minutes until we're going be to be back onto the workshop? I'm going to get from them. How many more minutes? Seven minutes. Okay, seven minutes and 45 seconds. We are going to be back on from the worksheet, so make sure you are here. And we are going to be going live into a worksheet breakdown finally and then our next session. All right, YouTube fam. I hope to see you www.msm live. Don't miss this. Ram. Sa. Sam. Hello. What's up, crew? Let's put them on the background so they can see themselves here and see the beautiful faces. By the way, this is kind of fun. If you guys haven't already seen. I'm seeing all of your stories on Instagram and I'm retagging you in it. I don't know. Can you see that? I can't really see myself. So it looks like. Who's this one? This is Ash Tella. What's up, Ash? Love that. I also saw another one here from the Tiffany Lyons. What's up, Tiffany? Anyway, it's super cool. I like kind of. I like creeping on you guys. As you notice, we're data people, so I'm always curious, like, who's on here? What are you guys trying to figure out? What are your unfair advantage? So that's really cool. Okay, so I want to do some shares here and I want to learn about what exactly do I want? I want to hear what your biggest takeaway was from the share session you had. I'm actually going to call on a few of you, and the only thing I'll ask is I want to get to a few. So if you guys could. Wouldn't mind being a little tight. You can just tell me your name, you can tell me where you're based, and then you could tell me your share. Is that cool? Okay, cool. No soliloquies, no sales pitches. I know this crew doesn't do it, but you'd be shocked what happens. All right, put your. Click the hand raise button if you want to share and I will call on a bunch of people. Okay, I'm going to call on. I love this. Okay, I'm going to call on. I love it. Tia Marcel. Nice job. Room one. Juan. Tia Marcel. Tell me what you learned. Did I say your name right? Okay, you're ready? Yes.

Hello.

Hi, Tia. Okay, I already said your name.

Where.

Where are you? I am based out of California. Bay Area Silicon Valley. Amazing. What I got out of the shares was one of our people, he's doing a whole bunch of of things, and another guy is like, oh, I just want to do this little bit. I don't know what I'm like, why don't you guys get together? Love that. And so you're like, community is powerful is what I got out of it. Ah, I love it, Tia. What an incredible thing. That's so true. So meet you where you are and find the right person to help you do the thing that you're not maybe doing. So Well, I love it also. I always feel like. Well, let's give Tia a round of applause. Thank you, Tia, for sharing. I appreciate. Appreciate you love seeing all the hand raises. Okay, let's do another chair here. What you guys learned from the chairs. I'm gonna go to room two. I'm gonna go to Edward Ratcliffe, maybe it looks like Edward and his lady Ratcliffe, room two. Come on up here. Tell me what you've learned or what you have to share that you found impactful. Wonderful. Yeah. I'm Edward. I'm up here in upstate New York area, and we found that everyone is pretty much in the same boat.

Like.

Like us, they're looking to build their family up primarily, but they're also looking to be balanced in how they build their future so they don't compromise that. And we can see the sincerity in everything they're doing in terms of building their family up and being smart about their finances and ready to learn, basically. And one person even told us they jumped in at the last minute. Even though they're dealing with the death in a family, they want to take the opportunity to do this. So just appreciate that. I love it. Edward, what's your better half? What's your name? Bernice. Yeah, I agree with everything he said. Everyone's just so driven and so passionate about improving where they are and also to just putting their family in at a better place and having a better future. Oh, I love it. Let's give him a round of applause. That's incredible. Thank you. Ratcliffe's. I want to go back to the group for a second. Something you said that really landed with me, you know? So this last week, does anybody ever remember the show Dawson's Creek? You guys know James Van Der Beek? Okay. So I've been lucky enough to call his family, friends, and his wife in particular, friends. And if you don't know, James actually passed last week after a long bout with. With. With cancer and leaves behind just a ton of kids and a beautiful wife, but they live kind of in the country where early. And she was actually texting me yesterday. So I was talking to her yesterday, and I asked her because we had a group of friends all getting together that weekend, and she was like, I want to get together. I want to do the next thing. I want to figure out what's next for us. And I said, well, like, take your time. You know, like, you're in this moment. You're whatever. And she said something really profound, which is maybe impactful for you guys, or not. If you've had a loved one. She. She was like. I said, I know. James was an incredible man. And she said, no, James was and is an incredible man. And life doesn't stop because he passed. And he hasn't passed and thus been gone forever. It's all a continuation. And she's a very profound, wise woman. And so anyway, I liked it because she's like, we're not stopping. The world can't stop because James isn't on this planet anymore. Maybe he's in heaven, at least that's. So anyway, kudos to you if you're going through something right now, if it does feel like it's heavy. And there's a lot. I know life's hard, and yet we keep persevering. So thank you for sharing that. Raf Cliffs. I really appreciate you. Okay, let's do another share here. I'm gonna go to. I'm gonna go to Joseph Finnegan, Room three. Am I saying that right? Joseph, talk to me.

Sorry, it's Flanigan. I was wondering what.

Sorry. You're very tiny over there, Flanagan. No, it's all good.

It's all good.

Yeah.

I appreciate being here.

Name's Joseph Flanagan. People call me Joey.

I'm in New Jersey, and what I

learned is that, yeah, we are really

all in the same boat. We're all beginners.

And all the concerns that I had with experience and not having the right

skill, going the wrong way out, it's all there. We all have the same exact thing. And maybe I'm not in as bad

of a position as I believed I

was prior to this. Oh, what do you guys think? Do you think Joey's gonna make it? Come on. I love that Joey. What a beautiful share. Also incredible for a dude to share that. Sometimes I think that's harder, you know, and you don't share the things that you're scared about. So thank you for sharing that and big round of applause, and we're glad you're here. And no, there's no such thing as behind one of the first. Thank you, Joey. You're the man. I'm so glad you're here. One of the first businesses that I bought early on, it was an $8,000 newsletter that I did through a percentage of profit share. So it's a tiny little business. No, no, no. It was a $2,000 newsletter business that I bought through Profit Share, and we sold it for $8,000 a couple months later because I really didn't know what I was doing, so I needed to start somewhere. It's called Grow Getters. You can actually find it online, I think and still see the story about it. Anyway. Okay, let's go to room. Let's go to. I'm gonna go with. Who do I see here? I'm gonna go with Alexander Kish, room six. Talk to me, Alexander. I love the people saying Jersey, represent. Do we have a bunch of other people here from Jersey?

How's it going?

Hi, Alexander Xander. Tell me what your takeaway has been

thus far here from Irvine, California. It's very much the same thing. You know, you would think that it would be the takeaway from everybody was in my opinion. I would think it'd be like a lack of money or something like that. But it's actually just a fear of not knowing how. That's my biggest fear is actually, you know, I have some money saved. Me and my wife, you know, we're ready to make the jump and because of, you know, maybe some investments in, in the past, like crypto or something like that, you know, just didn't work out. You know, there's a little fear there. So you know, we got to change our identity and we're ready to act. We just don't know, you know, I get this company or whatever acquisition, am I going to like it? Am I going to make money doing it? What's, what, what's, what's it going to be like?

You know, I love that also. I love the Buddha behind you. I love seeing inside your guys houses.

Yeah, it's our little Zen place.

Yeah, I love it. Let's give him a round of applause. Alexander, thank you for sharing.

Of course.

Little, little fun fact. I got in a tiff with somebody on the Internet yesterday. I won't say who but because I think that, I think collectibles are okay, but I think buying Pokemon cards at all time highs, thinking that you're going to flip them to somebody else for more money is probably not the best. And investment strategy, call me fucking crazy, but apparently that makes people really mad on the Internet. And so one of the things I'm really proud about. No, not Gary Vee. I like Gary. Gary and I are buddies but somebody else who is really slanging Pokemon cards right now. And my point here is I'm really proud of you guys because this is not short term grifting. This is not what I call last fool theory. It's not speculation. This is like there's work involved. Like you guys are real people. This is the most proven path to wealth there is which is investment in things that make Money and thus grow in value because they are productive assets. And so anyway, people do take their Pokemon cards seriously, actually. I mean, they were like, the comments are actually hysterical. It's like, this is why we don't let women speak. I'm like, oh, you probably don't have a girl girlfriend, you know, anyway. But this crew is totally different. So I want to say I'm really proud of you. Let's do one more share here. How many more? Oh, perfect. I have time for two more shares. And then if you can throw up the housekeeping slide. So I know what we're doing next. Keep your hand up. I want to hear what you. What you have to share. That is different. So I don't want you to say same if you have same. Okay, that's okay. You'll have more opportunities to share. I'm going to keep coming back to you guys, but raise your hand up, like your physical hand if you have something else to share that you think is different and other people would benefit from. I'm going to go to Daniella Picus, Room three. Picus. Picus. What's up, Daniela? I love seeing Melissa and her husband, like, they're fighting. She's like, I don't know if it's different enough, babe. You know? Okay, Daniela, talk to me. Hi, how are you doing?

Thank you for this opportunity. So I'm from the Netherlands, and we had a mixed room. Most people were from us, but we also had a German person in there. And we noticed that while studying. I studied your book and a lot of your podcasts as well, and YouTube videos. And we noticed by studying that there were a lot of differences in the US versus European Union. And what we want to learn is how can. Can we understand the US Framework in order to ask the right questions here in the Netherlands or Germany in order to understand the business. The business structure that we could make for seller financing, which is called differently here in a good way. So if we know how to ask the right questions, probably we'll have also better answers in order to be able to understand deal making.

I love that. Why don't you guys do something for me? Drop in the chat and I think we should be able to pull up all the countries you guys are from. And we have resources for almost every country that you can imagine. I think there's a few where we're like, I don't know, maybe don't buy a business, but there aren't very many of them. So drop what countries you're from so that we can give you some of that vernacular. We believe in being unreasonably helpful. So that's really helpful to hear. That's what you took away. Because we don't want you to think that just because you're in another country, you can't do this. And I love you already have the right mindset for it, so you're going to nail it. But a lot of times we are always all looking for the reason why we can't, as opposed to saying, how could this work for me? And you're already nailing it. And then also please share it with the rest of the group when you do in the chat, et cetera. About like, I learned this and this is actually how I would. Would apply it. Another thing that's kind of fun that maybe you guys can do after the end of the programming, depending on your time zones that you're in in between, like, just like send a text out to us to a business owner, like, run some of this stuff past other business owners out there and you'll kind of have more questions, too. Okay, cool. Let's do one more question. Amazing. Share. Thank you, Daniella. I'm going to go to. I can't remember which rooms I haven't done yet, so let's do room. I'm going to do room five. And I'm going to go with. Who am I going to go with here? I'm going to go with. I'm going to go with. Is this a winter? Okay, Avi, you want to tell me? And thank you guys all for raising your hand so much. We're going to have lots of chances to do this, so you'll get lots of chances to share. What's up, Avi? Tell me what you learned.

I think what I actually really learned is my inner self. Like, I came in there listening, but I came out there really. I didn't really think, like, what's holding me back and why I'm not doing it. So I think that, that I was able to was one, like, looking at myself and saying what's holding me back? And also just realizing it's just fear. Like there's nothing else. Like, there's nothing holding us back at all except jumping into it.

And we need to do it.

Like, there's always going to be a list of holding back.

Always.

And it doesn't matter what it is. We just need to, like, close our eyes, do as much research as we can in a certain amount of time, let's say, and then do it, you know?

Totally. I got the chills. Did you did everybody else get the chills from Avi? That literally gave me the chills. You're faster learning at this than I did. Because I actually am so in my rational brain that for so long I was like, well, when I just learned this one other thing. Well, when I add this one, I don't know, Avi, if you're like this too. If I add this, oh, well, I don't know that. And so I can't do it yet. And then I realize, oh, this is that, like, voice in your head that always makes you small. And I need to get over it. But I was such a finance nerd. It took me so long to realize that. So can we just give Avi a round of applause of applause for that? So true. We're going to give you all the tactics, but man, if the truth isn't that, we are our biggest obstacle. Okay, so what's next? We got a little 10 minute stretch break. Or if you're me and drink a lot of fluids, it's your potty break. Use the restroom, get some fresh air, hydrate, caffeinate, set a timer on your phone. You're going to really like this next session that we get back to. Get your 10,000 steps in like me. But then make sure we're back here. The cue song that you're going to to be so sick of by the end of this event that you're never going to want to listen to it again. Just fair warning is going to be when AV plays the thunderstruck chorus. So leave your computer on for full audio. And when you hear this song. No. Oh, yeah. Play it again. Okay, so when you hear that song, know that that is a five minute warning. So when you hear it, start making your way back and that will put on the next song at the 10 minute mark. So pop quiz. How much time do you have to get back when you hear the song? Let me see it. You can hold up your fingers. You can put it in here. This is to prove that you're actually listening. Unlike me, I get distracted. I'm very distractible. All right, five minutes. Amazing. Remember, to be early is to be on time. So be back in 10 minutes. I want you to get squeeze every fucking inch of this three days. So I will see you back here in 10 minutes. Let's go. It. Sa. It. Ram.

Welcoming to the stage, your MC for these three days, Alex Ramone.

What is up, everyone? Awesome. How was the first morning session, everybody? Let's see some energy. Let's see those hands wave them there do not clap because I can't hear you, but I can see you. So let's see. I see Jessica. I see you. Thank you, Jessica Garon. I will call you out, guys. I will call you out. I see you right there, my man. What's up? All right, Isaac, welcome back. My name is Alex Ramon, and I am your MC for the entire webinar for the next few days. And I'm so excited and stoked. And not only am I just your emcee for Main Street Millionaire Live, but also, I am a magician. Professional magician. Yes.

I see.

Already as soon as I said that, people get a little skeptical. Rashida went like this. Okay, don't be scared. You don't even know me yet. Okay, so I'm the reason why you have magic wand emojis. I'm the reason why. It's because I requested them. I was like, can we get some magic wand emojis? Let's see them. Do we get. Can we get some magic wand? There they are right behind me, right there. Okay. And also, let's take a look at you, and I want to make sure. Let's get a studio shot. Let's show everybody what we see. So as we are talking to you, educating you, giving you all the information on big business acquisition, we are really looking at you. So your energy, you giving us your best, is going to give us, make us, give us, give you our best. And listen, I'm not just a professional mc. I'm also one of you. You see, I joined the Contrarian Thinking Academy a few years ago hoping to be a Main street millionaire. And I had no idea what business to buy. I had no idea how to do do it. But I joined because I was inspired by Cody and the team here. And then I was thinking about it because I was always told, oh, use your unfair advantage in an industry that you know about. Well, I'm a magician, and all I know is showbiz and entertainment. I was like, what business would be relevant to me?

Right?

What would I be doing? Hmm. I don't know. I asked Cody about it, and Cody gave me sage advice. She said, look at your bank statements, see what you're spending the most money on, and then acquire something in that space. So not only will you get some cash flow from the company, but you'll also reduce your expenses at the same time. Talk about magic moment. Am I right? Like, isn't that amazing advice? I had never heard anybody say anything, anything that profound to me about business. It was. Why? Because it was tailored and relevant. To me and where I was in my journey. So that's what I did. And I looked at my bank statements and I was spending tens of thousands of dollars a year on merchandise. I would sell merch after my shows. I have a show in Lake Tahoe, and after the show in Lake Tahoe, I do a meet and greet. I have souvenir hats and beanies and shirts and posters and all these things. So I thought, oh, my gosh, this is incredible. Why don't I buy a screen print embroidery company? And that is exactly what I did. So I bought Innovative Imprints. I'm now a proud owner for almost two years. I've been an owner of Innovative Imprints for almost two years. And I print all my own tour merch. And let me tell you, it's really nice. Thank you, Juan. I appreciate the applause. Thank you. I appreciate that, guys. I appreciate the love. Okay? And now I print all my own gear. I get to start my own brand brands. And it's just been a blast. And I cannot tell you how amazing it has felt. It's been so rewarding seeing the company grow. We grew by 4% last year. And it's just been such a fun journey in this business world, in the game of business. And most importantly, it was a business that was relevant to me. It wasn't just, oh, let me try and get rich quick, scheme and buy a company, and now I'm going to cash flow hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. It wasn't that. Because what we teach here at Contrarian Thinking Academy is that things are very simple to understand. Doesn't mean they're easy. I've known Cody for five years. She's never said this is easy. What we're interested in is you acquiring a business in your space. Something that is going to be best for you. You. That's going to turn you into. Allow you to reach your greatest potential and turn you into a business owner, part of Owner Nation. So that's what we do at Contouring Academy. I'm right there with you. I'm learning all this. Cindy, I appreciate the vip. Cindy, I appreciate the love right there. So that's my story. And I'm so happy to be here with you this weekend. I see. I'll go do some. Do some magic. Okay, Back. Ben, listen, where can I find the magic wand?

Heather?

It's in the portal dashboard. Okay, Ben. Maybe I'll do a little magic for you guys later on in the webinar. But guess what? Right now, we're gonna keep it Going. Okay, we're gonna keep it going. Before I bring Cody back, we are going to hear from a member of our community, from the Contrarian Thinking Academy. We think of this as a moment of inspiration because Cody believes that inspiration is every bit as important as education. Again, we can educate you, give you all the tactics, but if you're not inspired to actually do something, all the education in the world won't make a difference. You have to decide that this is a new chapter for you. This is where you begin your journey here this weekend. Now's the time. So this is our moment of inspiration. And these are case studies into windows of possibilities that when you apply that learning here, you'll make it out into the real world. And our next session is about getting clarity on your deal box and a deal clarity. So that's going to be our next session, but our first moment of inspiration is Academy student Marie Kalini, who is going to share some insights into her ownership journey and how she is creating her very first deal box. Maria Kalini.

Thank you, Alex. It's a pleasure to be here. And thank you for getting us so excited about today's workshop and the rest of the weekend. So, hi, everyone. I'm Marie. Last summer, my twin sister and I joined Contrarian together as business partners. And the big vision for me was really simple. I hope this resonates with some of you. I wanted to diversify my. My portfolio. I was really heavy in real estate and public equities, and I'm already semi retired, which might sound impressive until you realize that boredom is not a strategy. So for those of you who raised your hands earlier when Cody said, who feels like it might be too early or too late? I'm definitely somebody who thought, maybe I'm too late late. But it's never too late to start. I felt really inspired to join, and there are tons of us today in this workshop. So I was talking to my twin sister one day, and she said that I should check out Cody. I had not heard of her before, so I did what I always do. I looked at the model, and Cody says, buy a boring business.

Hmm.

That got my attention. I've been a W2 earner for a very long time, but I needed to see how it worked out on paper. So my sister and I joined the community. We signed lots of NDAs, and we came close to a few deals. We've met with a lot of sellers, who we really like. And what I've realized so far pretty quickly is this. Opportunities are everywhere. But good opportunities, well, those Are not necessarily everywhere. But Cody's work has helped us to identify and evaluate the good ones and to pass on the bad ones. So one of my key learnings and how I translated that was into something that I call my durable deal box. I look for margins, profit, and risk. And here's what's changed. After I joined the community, I stopped screening deals based on my excitement and started screening them through the right lens. I think about it this way. It's a little like high school in that it's number one. It's part math. Do the numbers hold up? Part two is science. Is the deal aligned to our interest and risk tolerance? Part three is chemistry. Do we like the seller? We're going to be going into business with them. In some regards, the chemistry has to be there. And part four is the art. How are we going to negotiate the deal? So if we don't see a deal that meets the math, science, chemistry, and art, we pass on it without trying to rationalize. We do not fall in love with potential. And what I appreciate most is that Cody's work does. Doesn't just teach you how to buy a business. It teaches you how to think like an operator before you own anything. And that shift alone has made me sharper, calmer, and honestly, a lot harder to sell to. So I'm really honored to introduce someone who helped me define how I'm allocating capital and evaluating opportunity. Please welcome Cody back to the stage.

The lady that's talking, Marie. Marie. Hey, you beautiful things. So cool. Also, what a stud, right? How impressive is Marie? Also, you know what I love about this community, which now all of you guys are a part of of, is that most people, once they've made it, they don't share, right? They like make it, then they go quiet. Then they say things like, I got lucky, you know, or, oh, it just happened to me, or it was hard work, but they don't actually share the path. And so I love that Marie did. This is also Karun. If you see the image of Karun here in a minute who was one of the first people we talk. And now he's bought like eight or nine law firms. Just wild. So let's get into some tactics now. You guys ready? Is everybody. Everybody have a coffee because it's going to start to get a little bit more technical and more technical and more technical as the days go on. Okay, so this clicker isn't working, my friends. It's slides two, please. If we can get the slides two clicker working. Okay, we are going to talk to. Now we go. We're good. Now we're going to talk about how do you nail your deal box. How do we find not just a deal, but the right deal? So that was really important, what Marina and I kind of believe this thing that most people don't, which is there's no such thing as a good deal or a bad deal. There is just a good deal or a bad deal for you. I also know a truth, which you'll find and probably hear from a bunch of our advisors, that pros think about terms and amateurs think about price. So we're going to teach you how to do correct and smart strategic deal negotiating. Okay? Now this is the ownership acceleration program. This is what I, I teach when it comes to buying businesses. There's 10 steps to it. We are in step two, which is deal clarity. Deal clarity is where we find what we call your perfect fit business. Kind of like Cinderella has the shoe no other broad can fit in those pair of glass slippers. That's what we're looking for for you, right? And you can kind of see how important this is. Like Jesus, who we're going to kind of follow his deal in a second, really, in the beginning, had what we call call a too wide deal box. He said that he wanted everything. And when you say you want everything, you actually find nothing. And so this image that you can see next to me, see where you see the scrolling and they're filling out things, this is our proprietary tech tool. So this is how we drive deals to academy members. So we'll talk about that later. But this part is really important because there's like one major problem about deals, and I want you to hear it from someone, somebody else. Now, if you guys don't know who this gentleman is, he is one of the hazard to use the word best, because he's controversial. But he has made almost more money than anybody else in doing deals in the world. And so let's hear from him how he thinks about a deal box.

I fear all the time, but that's what keeps us going. That's what keeps us focused. You have to have a fear. People who say, I have no fear and I'm not afraid of ever failing, they're kidding themselves. Sometimes it's the fear of failure, of not wanting to fail, that makes people as great as they are. I know that's what pushes me a lot. I've always said, and I say it to my children, I said, you know, I'm the kind of person that could fall out of a Window land on my head. I'm going to bounce a couple times and I'm going to come up on my feet because I'm going to make myself come up on my feet.

And.

And you have to be a little bit of an optimist, too, but a realist.

And

risk is important to take. Not foolishly, not blind risk. But I love the word entrepreneur. And I ask students sometimes up at Columbia, I'm on that board, and I ask them, how many of you want to be an entrepreneur? A lot of hands go up. And I said, okay, you explain to me, what does that mean? Well, I'd like to go work at IBM. And I said, you just failed. That doesn't count. I said, how about you? Well, I'd like to work at Procter and Gamble. And you failed to. A real entrepreneur is somebody that has no safety net underneath them, really, truly has an idea and has a vision and sticks to their convictions. You've got to have the courage of your convictions. And a lot of people are going to tell you you're wrong. If you did everything by consensus, you wouldn't do anything at all.

Now, if you don't know this guy, this is Henry Kravis. And why would I bring something about fear into a deal box? Because Henry Kravis is one of the founders of kkr, one of the biggest private equity firms in the the world. And he calls himself an entrepreneur. And he is in many ways, but he used acquisitions to build his entire empire. This was his net worth in a video from him, Obviously, as you can tell, this was around the 90s. And now the guy doesn't really talk online very much. If you were to go to try to find interviews of Henry Kravitz, maybe you'd find him at the World Economic Forum, maybe something like that, maybe at the un but he's one of the men that secretly runs our world. And so why I. There's a few words, I don't know if you picked up on them when it comes to the deal box, but you picked up on the word fear, Right? So this is a serious entrepreneur worth billions of dollars talking about it. What was the other word that you might have picked up on in it? Do you guys notice another word that he says? That's right. Dan Horner knows. He did the RJR Nabisco Risk. That's right, risk. One of my favorite lines from one of my mentors was, you can't spend rich without risk. And so if we're gonna take risk in doing deals, which we have to do. You will never. I'm sorry, I've never. In all my years of being an entrepreneur, I've never met somebody who got rich without risk. I wish that existed. I love the people that are like, no, I just bought a Pokemon card for 40 bucks and now I'm a billionaire. You're like, I bet you did, kid, I bet you did. That doesn't exist. This is speculation that crashes and burns. This is not actual entrepreneurship. That is lasting wealth. But the problem with risk is you gotta actually know what you want. And most people in doing deals, they're kind of like this guy, right? It's like you, your dream's right next to you, it's holding your hands, and all of a sudden you're in Pokemon cards or crypto or the next thing, or you're on to whatever. Or you get off this, you know, three day, and you decide to go, I don't know, do whatever's next. And I'm just as guilty of it historically as you are. Before, I. I changed the type of person that I was, which I had an identity shift, that I am a type of person that follows through on the few decisions in life that I know are going to make all the difference. And so this part is really important. What we've realized time and again is if we can get you to zone in on the thing that you actually want, you will close faster. So this is, for instance, this is Jesus Wong. Jesus is a member of the academy. Now, when Jesus came up in, he had that wide deal box like I told you about, and he started looking at all these different things. And then we narrowed it down and we said, actually, we want a business of this size in this location, in these number of industries that has this sort of profitability. And Jesus is actually a really smart guy, but he wanted to do a business that he thought was defensible in any market. And so he was like, well, I think we are always going to have people who want to repair great clothes and shoes, except, et cetera. This will be a business that we will always have. It has always been around. And in fact, it is often something that people do for luxury items. So it has a little bit of a recession resistance to it because it's people fixing, like Chanel bags and people fixing fancy leather jackets. And so while this might sound like a boring business, Jesus was like, I know this is what I want. Because he realized what this guy is. This is one of the founders of Koch Industries, one of the biggest acquisition families in the world. And look closely at all the things they own. Now you could like this guy or not, he has politics that are different than some, but his acquisitions, I mean, we're talking about toilet paper, paper towels, we're talking about, they own energy companies, they own plastics companies. Because the truth is complexity impresses your peers and simplicity makes you money. So there's not very many businesses that I'm going to tell you not to buy. But like in this world today, I'm telling you I'm using AI in all of my companies. I'm not buying an AI company right now, that's for sure. Because I want to make sure that we focus on what matters, which is there's something called Feynman Razor, which is basically, if someone uses a lot of complexity and jargon to explain something, they probably don't understand it. You guys have heard that before, right? Haven't you heard somebody, like, somebody could come on a stage like this and be like, theoretically what we're seeing in the macro environment is a conversion to the mean on the use case for small businesses being the predictive index for wealth inside of this country. And you're like, what the fuck are you talking about, Carl? It's like, no, no, we like the valuations of small businesses. We think they're going to improve and thus we're buying them. That's it, Carl.

Right?

And so we got to really narrow down on what do we want from this deal. So for instance, this is Riley and his significant other. And basically what I hope is that if we can, we have an AI tool inside of the community. But he kind of went back and forth with the tool and was like, all right, simpler, simpler. What else don't I want? We call this Charlie Munger always says invert, always invert. So sometimes you can start thinking about what you don't want to get to what you want. Because the most common DM I get is what type of business should I buy? Like, they want to know if they should go out and buy a Laundromat, a car wash, a mini storage, a package pack and ship center. But I got to tell you a hard answer, which is that's actually the wrong question to begin with. The better question, you guys, is to ask what type of boring business is right for me. I call this the Goldilocks Business buying effect. So I want you to think about it like this. Instead of heat, we think about, is the business too time consuming, is the business too much money, is the business too much risk, or is it just right? And if we get you calibrated to the right level. Then you can be like Diana, who went from six months learning this to a window cleaning business owner. And you can kind of see the process where she went from a business where she's going to get some type of income around 100,000 before they grow the business by doing the same exact thing. And here's what happens. So she came into the community in like, I think it was April of 2024, bought the business and actually like did the first part of the transaction coming into August. That transaction didn't go through, ended up doing another transaction and closed in April of 28th. So actually 12 months from the time that she closed her final transaction, about six months to the time she had her first deal on the table, but it fell through. And so what's interesting is when we do this, we gain clarity and that'll actually help you move faster. Because the only way we can have smart risk is by having skill plus preparation times action. The action multiplies our skill in preparation. So the faster we move, the more our skill in preparation helps. The more skill and preparation we have times, the faster we move, the more we can move, the more we can have success. And I want you to think about this in a few different ways. This is actually a screenshot from a guy that I have come to respect immensely, whose name is Brad Jacobs. He's an acquirer of businesses. I believe he's bought and built $8 billion businesses. And I just want you to read this. He looks for, this is what he calls his requirements, we would call our deal box. He wants immense scale inherent long term growth. Growth, a fragmented landscape. Right. For M and A, that means like instead of one big laundromat, you know, centralized owner in the country, there's tons of laundromats. A favorable multiple arbitrage, that means a reasonable valuation to the amount of profits it brings in. The price is good economies of scale. That probably means that if you continue add more clients, you don't have to keep adding more, what's called capital expenditures, expenditures at the same time, time and tech, he calls it tech backwardness. What that means is do they use fax machines, do they not have great SEO? Are they not implementing AI? And he says if I have those things, I can create a tech forward industry leader that outpaces all of the competitors. So let's listen to Brad Jacobs for a second. Nail his deal box.

I don't know. Another person started eight separate billion dollar companies.

So.

So it's like almost like you can't help yourself.

That's what I do and that's. I know how to do that. When you have problems, when you have

challenges, you have obstacles. By addressing those, that's how you make money.

Don't stay in the business world.

If you're going to get down on

this stuff, these are the things you

should get up from. But your inner monologue.

Are you nice to yourself?

It was probably the only time in

my life that I was depressed. Like, you're doing huge deals right now. You're doing all kinds of crazy stuff. You built eight separate billion dollar companies. You don't do that by accident.

I have a winning formula.

I know how to execute on this.

And most of my main acquisitions, I've done this.

They were great companies and everyone says,

oh, they're working really well. Okay, well, three years later, we doubled the profit. You said something interesting.

I like the pressure.

I do thrive on it. Every business, every single business is going to see more automation and more AI

People have to get on the program

on that or they're going to be dinosaurs. You don't want to have a dysfunctional management team. So I want all a players around me.

Why?

This is. What is he talking about right there? He's like, I have a winning formula. He says formula. We say deal box. Once you guys figure out where your unfair advantage is and what you're uniquely skilled at, you just keep doing more of it. A lot of people say, Cody, how can you do so many acquisitions? How can you own all these companies? I don't recreate the wheel every single time. And those are the words from some of the best in the world. So let's go through our deal clarity framework. First step is I want you to think about your ideal owner experience. Brad Jacobs seems like a happy guy, right? He runs all these businesses. $8 billion business, businesses. How many days do you think he has without one problem in it? $8 billion businesses. Does he ever have a day without a problem? Absolutely fucking not. Every day somebody's probably doing something that costs him millions of dollars. But he's figured out how he wants his business to interact with his life. And so let's think about how this could work for you when you start thinking about what you want. I don't want you to have wishy wife washy goals like I want to leave my nine to five. That's no bueno. What instead we want is really clear. Clear is kind. And you're going to have a deal Clarity segment where we're going to work on this. So I want you instead to say something like, I want to leave my nine to five because I want to replace my income with a cash flowing business that pays me 120k. I will be the operator for two years with a growth plan for me to hire an operator by year year 3. This income will allow me to spend more time with my family, invest in more businesses and create more of the same. Maybe this is yours. And when you do that, you're going to actually use. You're seeing the tech right here in our business, this is then you integrate. Let's actually pull over here to the deal box for a second. If we can show them this on stage. So you guys have this on your dashboard. We're going to go through some of this, but you actually have in here how to analyze if a business is right for you, you or not. What's your personal cash flow requirement? What's your operator's cost, what's your purchasing and finance cost? And you have a multi page document that you can go back to the screen for them for me that does a part of what this tech does for you. And what happens is once we fill out what your deal box is, you can hit the bullseye because you have a clear target. So remember when we talked about inversion thinking? Talk about the things you don't want. Well, let's go to one of our, our members, Harris. So first I want you to say the things you don't want. Think about this for a second. You can start writing these down. Harris didn't want any business that was one time transactional. So he's like, I don't want non recurring. Harris didn't want a business where the clients churned a lot. He was like, I don't want a problem. I'm not Brad Jacobs. I don't want to come in and turn a business around. He also didn't want a business that he had to put a ton of capital up front. He's like, they got to be open to seller financing. Okay. Those were his business. Big three. I want you to think about yours. You can start writing them down. Harris had two deals fall through because he didn't know what he didn't want at first. Then he found his high margin recurring revenue industry in commercial cleaning and fire safety. Look at this suave gentleman. Do you think he know he looks like he was searching for a commercial cleaning and fire safety company? Was he like, you know what I want to be when I grow up? I want to be a fire safety guy, right? No. This all came out because he realized the things that matter in his deal box, which you guys are going to do too. There's three areas in your ideal owner experience I like to talk about. We got personal goals, income goals, business goals. Let's talk about personal goals first, what do you want your life to look like on a daily business? And how does buying a business fit into this vision for your life? Write down some ideas for me and let's not be be unreasonable. Like, don't be like, I want to work $0, you know, 0 hours and make a million dollars. Be like, I want to have a great team. I want to be able to hire a players. I want to have margins that allow me to reinvest in the business. I want to. I want to be able to wake up in the morning and go into my office, you know, I want to. I could picture the sign like, Cody Sanchez Incorporated up top. It's a brick building. It's on Main Street. It's five minutes from my house. I can leave at lunch to go hang out with my kids. Like, what does that ideal life look like? Or I don't want to own an in person business. I want to own an online business because I want to work from anywhere in the world. And I picture myself like part of the year. Like one of our members who lives in Greece and she operates abroad. Tell me about it. You can post, you can drop it if you have any of it in the comments for me, Carlton, satisfied customers, reliable partners. Yes, Carlton, not real enough. Like real is. Instead, I want partners who are better than me in this business where like, we're a team and I can rely on them. And I don't have that existential dread of being alone in this. Okay, good, Becky. I want to hire a players who are passionate. I want to be able to leave to randomly go plant coral or network. Go plant coral. That's cool. Does that mean you're like going into the ocean and planting coral? I don't even know what that is. Sounds great. Carlton goes. I was still typing. I want to. Oh, this is a great one, Yolanda. I want to wake up and look forward to showing up. That is such a good one. Sometimes people say to me, why do you keep doing this? I'm like, do you know how much fun this is? Like Brad Jacobs and I, you're have to pull this business out of my cold dead fingers. I will be running these businesses, businesses until I am unable to operate. I want my employees to feel that I care about their growth. I want to Work with winners. I want to have time for my coming grandchild. Love it. So like keep those, keep those things, write them down. Let's go to, let's go to one, one of our members. We're going to go next to the next slide, which is Shannon Watt. So Shannon wanted a service business, business located near her without a lot of capex that she wouldn't have to run daily. But she wanted to be scalable. She wanted to first learn so not have it be huge and then expand. Right. So this was an August 30, 2024. She ended up closing in January of 2025. I'm trying to give you some measure of time, right? You can have. Jared was one of the guys who bought a business in like I don't even remember. It was the fastest time of the all time. Then we have other members that it takes two years, right? Somewhere between 30 days and two years. Now your personal goal, what are your long term goals for your life? Maybe you're like Shannon, you're like, I want my first acquisition to be what's called a platform acquisition that I get to stack a bunch more on top of like I want to be able to own an empire. And if that's you, that's what Shannon wanted. She was like, I don't want to buy an eight figure business. That was too big seeming for her. She's like, I want to buy a six or seven figure business and I want to get to eight. Because she knows most businesses operate at about a 30% margin, 15 to 30% margin. So she's like, if it's eight figures, that makes me a couple million dollars a year.

Cool.

Then I want you to ask, what kind of freedom do you want to create for yourself? A lot of you guys were writing that in here, like wanting to hang out with my grandkids, having autonomy. I want to benefit the community. Right. Then I want you to talk about your income goals. This is really important. I need you to nail this. I want you to nail how much money you want to make with this first acquisition. And you're going to hear from some of the other people here. Do not let small infect your thinking because small is the reason why you will never do this. So let's be real. I would rather you say I want to make a couple hundred thousand dollars in my first transition. I want to have a million dollar payout in my first transaction. Then use the words on here, which is passive income. The only way you guys are getting passive income is if you're an investor in deals. It's just not going to happen. Passive income does not exist anywhere in the world. Repeatedly. I hate to tell you, the only way I get passive income is that now I've invested in so many businesses over time. I get checks, I get K1 checks. And if you guys have capital to invest, that can absolutely help happen for you. But if you're going to actually own the business outright and you're going to go run it, it's not going to happen in the beginning. Okay, so let me give you an example of income deals. Shannon, she wanted to close fast. Are there a bunch of people on here that want to close fast? Like, you're like, I like, like how long? Put in the chats for me. You can take, you can put like your fingers up there. Like how many like months are you guys and thinking that you want to close a business in and think about what your preference and then think about what you're committed to. So I have a preference. I have a commitment. I have a preference. I have a commitment. Okay, I love it. A lot of two months, four months, six months. All right, great. So she closed in 45 days. I would say that's incredibly fast. So I think really you want to think about this being three or six months, which is why I want you guys to start soon, because I want you to commit to this path now. The other thing I want you to think about with your goals is what is the number one reason a business fails cash flow. So what we need to make sure we do in your transaction is have enough cushion in the income so that if anything goes sideways, you're actually, you can buy using debt structures, the cash on the balance sheet. And so that can allow you what's called cushion, in order for the business to continue to make money, even if it goes little bits of sideways. And then for you investors, how many people out there have more money than they have time and you really just want to allocate money to doing deals or other people's deals. And you're like, maybe I'll own some stuff, but I really want to allocate capital. Like, that's me, for instance. You can tell me in the comments. Okay, cool. It's really helpful to see. Okay, there's a lot of you. So you can have return on investment goals or you can have cash flow goals. If you're just allocating cash capital, you're going to think about return on investment. If you are thinking about cash flow because you want to have an income source, I would think about that instead. Now let's talk. Let's hear from one of the greats on how they think about doing deals, how they think about making money on deals, and how they think about picking which deals.

Every now and then I get tempted because I started out with Ben Graham in 1950 or so, and his whole idea was buying things that were cheap. You don't want to buy things that are cheap. You want to buy things that are good. It's much better to buy something that's good at a fair price than something that is cheap at a bargain price. And I didn't start out that way. I was taught a different system. But if I didn't learn from Berkshire Hathaway, I'll never learn it.

So that's the man, the myth legend himself, Warren Buffett. And I love that line, you don't want to buy things because they're cheap. You want to buy things because they're valuable. And so I'd want to get you guys off of price along little bit. Because, for instance, look at Shannon. Shannon was able to do an 80% seller financing deal. The owner wanted to exit pretty quickly, was willing to sell or finance her, and she was able to raise some capital for the rest. This ended up even being a better deal because the owner, which sometimes happens, was quite too optimistic about what the business would do long term, which allowed her to claw back some of the purchase price. And so your business, business goals are the next thing we're going to talk about. Do you want to be the operator or do you want to do it semi passively? Do you want to install an operator? Does the business need to come with an operator? You guys can tell me in the chat which ones you want. Now, most of the businesses I buy, they need to come with an operator, unless they're going to integrate into my company what is called a strategic acquisition. Okay, now long term term, she wanted an operator. In the beginning, though. She was like, I want to understand this business. She wanted to replace her job with this business. She's like, I want to go in, I want to operate it for the first year because I want to replace my salary. I want to learn the business, and then I want to scale. I think a lot of times I just want to push upon your preferences. This deal box is really important. We'll be able to get some done in three days, but not a perfected deal box. You also have to make sure you come back tomorrow night, too. That is when we're going to beat up some of your deal boxes and do some deal analysis, live. But be careful about your preferences at this point because they're just that like you have to ask yourself questions like do I really want a semi absentee business because I want to keep my job or am I just scared, you know, would I leave my job if I actually bought a business that made me 500,000, 750,000, a million dollars a year and wouldn't I actually want to work in that business? Business? Some like, like do you guys think that I'm a really sad, pathetic person because I actually operate and run my business? You know, we are kind of told this little bit of a downside thing about we got to have somebody else operate. Now it is okay to have that, but it is not the only way. So we're going to push upon your preferences. Shannon wanted to operate it. You'll meet some other people like Hans, he just wants to invest like Robert, he wanted operators to come on board. You're going to be meet all of them. Next goal, how much involvement do you want to have in this business and the search for it? So let me give you an example. Shannon was like, okay, how much, how much work am I going to do basically? And the TLDR on this whole thing is she's like, It'll take about five to 15 minutes a day to weed things out. Then about 30 minutes all in. When I'm looking at the deals, she's like, in the beginning she sent out a lot of stuff, sims, but then that is when you send out a sim. That's basically like asking for more information on a business. As she moved further along, she realized that was too many. She should have been more thoughtful on how many. And then she had a couple deals under contract in 90 days. But you saw it took her a year to get the full thing done. The point that I want to make here is the more clarity you get as to who you want to become, the quicker you can start making the choices needed to get you there. Most people will take just go, is this a good business or this a bad business? I don't know. Because maybe Susan and Aaron have totally different goals. Aaron might be like, I want a eight figure business that I work in that I'm going to grow like crazy and sell the private equity. And Susie might be like, I want to work with my husband and be home with my kids, so I just want to have to be there like 20 hours a week. Is one of those wrong? Of course not. It is just what do you want? This one's really important. Where do you want it to be? My one caveat for you guys, I try not to tell you exactly what to do too often. For your first business deal, please do not buy a in person brick and mortar business too far from where you live. If you want to buy a business that is remote, that is okay. But for your first business, you're going to have to go there at some point. Then I want you to ask, what are your superpowers? Like, what skills or knowledge you have that other people come and ask for your advice on? Like maybe Jessica, for instance, is an incredible storyteller. And Jessica's like, I tell stories, and so I know that I can write incredible copy, you know, and maybe Jim or Jose are both really good salespeople. So, like, that's what I know I can sell. So if I can find a business that needs to sell more, I got it. And maybe we got Celeste up top and she's an incredible designer and she just makes a vibe, right? And so Celeste is like, if I can find a business kind of run down and ugly, then I think I can revamp it and make look pretty amazing. That's going to be me. Now for Shannon, she lists a bunch of her superpowers. So this is one of the first things you do when you come in the academy. But you list a bunch of this stuff so we can start helping you tailor your deal box. So she's a great public speaker. She's also a marketer. She had also run some of these businesses before, and she, she kind of knows what it goes from, what it takes to go from zero to one. So that was Shannon now. Now, the cool part about this is once you guys do this, once you nail your deal box, it is so much easier to see the opportunities around you. It's almost like, could you imagine? Well, for us married people, we could never imagine, but imagine for a second that we were single and we got on Tinder or whatever the kids do these days to meet one another. And on Tinder, instead of you having preferences, you're just like, give me every human that's around the area. And all of a sudden you got men, you got women, you got whatever it is the kids call themselves when they're not one of those two things. Like, you got everything on there. That would be overwhelming, right? You would not actually know what you wanted. That is what most people do in business buying. So what Brett is saying here is we have to narrow our scope because if you're looking for everything, you will find nothing. Okay, next step I want you to uncover your zone of genius. We're not going to spend too much time on this, but take a little picture of this, a little screenshot. I want you to think about where your path, passion, skills and experience and network overlay. Your passion is everything you love to do. So what did Jesus love to do? Remember Jesus? We talked about him. Jesus was like a lot of you. I think he's a stud. He was a pretty serious employee, but he wanted to do something that mattered. He was burnt out by his job. He was super fucking tired of it. And then he was like, okay, what am I actually good at? What are my skills and experience? And Jesus was like, you know what I'm really good at? He's like, I'm a leader. I lead top performing teams. Is the TLDR of all of this information. Jesus is also in Canada for you Canadians celebrating earlier. Then he was like, who do I know? How can I get this business done faster? And so he was like, wait a second. I make this cool business profile that we help you guys create and I shared it with all the brokers and owners and anybody I could share this with. I told them that I was looking for small business. And I want you to hear from another investor how they think about this. If you see an opportunity, just go all in.

Oh, yeah.

If there's one thing I learned from

George and what made me a better money manager because of George, it's exactly that. It's not whether you're right or wrong, it's how much money you make when you're right and how much you lose

when you're wrong and how confident you

are that you're right.

Yes, but up until that point, I

had a very good record.

But it was only after I was with George that I learned how much

you should really press a bet when

your confidence level is extremely high. What is that saying? That as soon as you know what you want, you're going to see it. And then where I'm going to push you is I'm going to tell you, go all in. Because when you go all in, you, you win. And just you wait because we're actually going to go through some deal clarity worksheets live. They're actually on your dashboard. And what I will tell you is there is not a single person in all the slides you're going to see from Zach Bundy to Claire to Shannon to Jesus to Jared to whoever who would have closed a deal without a deal box. This part is really important. So, you know, we could keep the secret for ourselves. We also have a whole segment on business owners. So actually do something for me. Drop in the chat. How many of you own a business right now? Because your deal box might be a little bit different depending on if you own a business or not and if you want to do strategic acquisition. So just drop it in the chat for me so I can see. Okay, cool. I actually want you guys in your dashboard. I think you're able to ping our team if you're a business owner and they're going to to do something for you. It's not relevant if you don't own a business. So don't worry about it. This is all just about narrowing your deal box specifically. Okay. And if you have an LLC but you don't operate a business, don't worry about it. That's not for you either. This needs to be an actual up and running business. Okay, let's go to the next level of the deal. Clarity Framework 202 level for just a second. So for your business owners and it's useful for you guys who aren't to do some future casting. Why do we do strategic acquisitions? Because when we have company A plus B plus B plus B plus C plus D, what we get at the end is a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. So what's going to happen to you after you do your first deal? You're going to figure out something pretty wild which is if your first deal is good, it will not be your last. Look at this. It's fascinating. Look at the value and revenue growth of companies that do more deals. Astronomical, right? The companies on the far right, that is how like Carlos Slim. Do we have anybody from Mexico? Do we got any Latinos in the house here? Richest man in Mexico got there largely through acquisitions. Amazon, of course, fast growth company, my man Jeff. But they've bought 115 businesses. So for business owners, you can do a vertical acquisition. That's when like a close clothing company buys a manufacturer. Also one of our members owned a pets. No, no. They owned a dog grooming company. Then they bought a dog gourmet boarding company. Then they added Treats and then they added a website. You could also be like Aaron, who was. Do we have anybody in real estate in here? Who here's in real estate? You can raise your hand or. Okay, great. Real estate people do great in acquisitions. Aaron basically bought fix and flips, right. He bought foreclosures. And so we helped him buy some SaaS companies to even out his growth. And then we've Got our horizontal company, this is a graphic design company, for instance, with 500k in profit, they might buy another design company with 150k in profit. You know why that's cool? Because when you buy a company that is smaller and you have a bigger revenue, you can use the equity from your company to buy the smaller company without any cash. This is actually how I did a ton of transactions early on. I also, this is an example, for instance, of one of our companies that we looked at where the fold. Remember one of those laundry companies I showed you about in the beginning where there were a bunch of Laundromats and a wash and fold company. It actually got acquired by 2u laundry with a mixture of cash and equity. And this isn't that abnormal. Like Amazon has done so many acquisitions because there's something there which is called accretive value. So Amazon, yes, they bought Whole Foods for the revenue, but look what else they bought. Distribution nodes, hundreds of thousands of new members, a food supply chain, premium data. That data is really valuable, right? So I call this core and satellite acquisitions. And it is your unfair advantage. You can do this even if you don't own a business. So check this out. Let's imagine right now you're in real estate. We talked about a bunch of you real estate people, and right now real estate is hard out there, huh? Like commercial real estate market not looking so hot. Tough market. So in this world, you might have bought commercial real estate buildings. Maybe you were a broker, maybe you did multifamily industrial. Well, what if you were to add services around all of your real estate portfolio and then you could use the income that you get from the services to buy more real estate, which has tax consequences. And then you have. Remember that flywheel, I think talked about a really unfair advantage. What's kind of cool is this guy, Chris Delinear was one of my students. I think he was in our year two cohort. And Chris bought his first business. And now check this out. Chris now has his own family office. So he went from being an employee and he had like kind of a tough situation going on to now he owns all these companies, he has other people's cat capital, and he does more deals. He's a total stud. And then he does something else, which is come back and share his experience with people like all of you. So this is what I want. I want you to find your unfair advantage and I want you to keep using it. You know what I don't want you to do? Listen to old man Warren. We never Invest in a business you cannot understand. Let me give you an example. This is so embarrassing. Okay. I bought part of a company that builds autonomous shop ships. Cool, right? Does everybody think that's cool? Do I get applause for buying an autonomous ship company? I think I should get some applause here. Amazing, right? Except straight to jail. Cody goes straight to jail. That was a terrible idea. That company went bankrupt. Why? What the do I know about autonomous ships? Then I bought a company that fuels athletes using new protein synthesis techniques. I can barely explain that. What do you believe? Right to jail. Again, terrible idea. Not a profitable business. Really complex. So your second biggest business buying problem is not not knowing what you want, but it is actually when you think you're too smart, but you're actually not that smart, which is me in many ways. So one of our rules is so simple, granny can get you. So simple, granny can get you. In this world we can be really smart with AI and applying it to our businesses. But the main business can be pretty straightforward. Let's talk a little bit more about the number of decisions we need to make and the type of businesses we should buy. My idea of risk control is a little non conventional. I like putting all my eggs in one basket and then watching the basket very carefully. Dude, I don't know why, but I love that quote. You know how many people today. I bet I know you guys out here. How many people here have multiple businesses going on right now? Raise your hands. It's okay. Raise your hand. I know, I can feel you. How many of you guys have too many businesses and a couple of them aren't making money, but you're still doing them. I know I see you across all the rooms. What I'm hoping that you can do is figure out how to create a wedge that allows you to have other businesses. But they're also always strategic. So let's talk about some unfair advantages in business if we can focus. So we call these sows businesses. So a sows business is a business that's so simple grandma can understand. Understand it. With weak competition that will survive any recessionary period. These are a couple examples of them. So I would actually put this into our search platform and I would find these types of businesses, let's say you're in media. Is anybody here in like creative pursuits, graphic design, marketing, something like that? Okay, a couple. Well, here are businesses that I might be buying today. And then what we're going to do is we're going to lock in your deal by so you know exactly what you want. Because one of my smartest mentors said a great line to me. He goes, you can either make all the mistakes trying to build your own tools, or you can find the right tools that limit mistakes. How many of you guys have ever tried to hang a painting on a wall with two nails without having a leveler, right? How hard is that to, like, perfectly get the two nails situated? If you're a woman, you do what we do. And I put one nail in the midd, kind of. I like, rearrange it every time I walk by because it moves, you know, that's not what we want to do in buying a business. We want to have a leveler so that every time we go and do an acquisition, we have the right tools. The only thing that I will say for you guys that own a business is, I think one of the most underrated things done today is strategic acquisitions or what's called a merger. And so if you're already a business owner, you're actually in incredible position to build your mp. So do not feel like because I already own things, I shouldn't do something else. We just need to make sure that that acquisition is strategic to what you do. And then I just. I can't think about this enough as you're putting your deal box together. Never let the words of Warren Buffett go away, which is price is what you pay, value is what you get. I think about that story about the guy who goes to fix a complex piece of machinery, and he charges them $9,999. And the person who's getting it fixed is a little miffed because when the guy comes in, he twists one thing, the thing's fixed, he walks out, and the guy goes, well, what the hell? That took you one screw to turn? And he said, no, no, that took me 10 years to figure out which screw to turn, which is what you pay for. And so I want you to be able to find that one screw. That is your unfair advantage. That means you don't have to work harder. You just have to be. Be smarter. Because I don't know about you, but I want a fucking empire. I don't just want passive income. Now, I'm going to go through one other part here. A lot of people think about business size, but business size really shouldn't matter to this group. We're not at the top, we're not in the middle. We're not doing the entire market. Almost everybody on this call should be looking at small business businesses. And these businesses, the transactions change a lot at every level. Of the game. So the Level 1 acquisition really means you haven't done a business before. So this will be your first time. The cost to acquire is usually less than a million bucks. The multiple is a little bit less. As opposed to the high level of the game where most people buy who do acquisitions, the acquisitions are pretty, pretty big. This is where private equity plays. These are big nine figure companies. In acquisitions, a lot of people are trying to figure out what level they are. But for almost everybody in here, you're level one, level two, maybe level three. So nobody's really gone above $20 million in acquisitions. And so if we get to nail the size of the business that you want, then you can apply what Warren Buffett has to. Then you can apply what Warren Buffett has to say, which is how you will find your deal.

Ted Williams wrote a book called the Science of Hitting. And in the Science of Hitting he's got a diagram shows him at the plate and he's got the strike zone divided into 77 squares, each the size of a baseball. And he says if I only swing at pitches in my sweet zone, which he shows there. And he has what his batting average would be, which is 400. If he had to swing at low outside pitches, but still in the strike zone, his average would be 230. He said the most important thing in hitting is waiting for the right pitch. Now he was at a disadvantage because if the count was 0 and 2 or 1 and 2 or so on, even if that ball was down where he was only going to bat.230, he had to swing at it. In investing, there's no called strikes. People can throw Microsoft at me and

you know, the point of this is you don't actually need 20 right decisions in your life. Life. You got like one big decision. You're already here deciding to become a business owner. You've got another decision which is deciding to follow through on business ownership. And then you've got one or two businesses you'll buy that'll change the financial trajectory of your entire life. So while you will look at many deals, you only make decisions on very few. Which is why I think people get overwhelmed by this game of acquisition and the they shouldn't. Let's end on this part. When we're buying a profit stream, what I want us to think about is that we're not buying a business. You're buying income. Right? And an income, this is important, has to cover four things. Debt, service, operating salary, growth, working capital, your earnings or income. We'll learn later. How to determine whether these businesses are covering it. This is something we're going to go over with a guy by the name of Rylan who heads ML for us. But there are these three tests that have helped me the most. So I'm going to give them to you. We talked about sows pretty quickly. Sows is basically this. Is the business stale, minimal innovation, Is it old? Has it been around a while? Does it have poor competition and is it so simple Grandma gets it? These stale businesses, they might have a fax machine and actually require their customers to use it. And they have something called the lynch effect, which is basically the time something has been around. The longer it's been around, the more likely it is to continue. And so I want you to look for companies that have been around a long time and also haven't been that tough of competitors. I call this the thread theory, which is basically an individual thread is weak. You can break it by pulling, but starting enough of them together and they can pull a shift. So your target company is old and stale, but its competition is worse. Think about this, you guys. When was the last time you got a plumber? And you're like, what an incredible follow up sequence. I'm so glad they put me on that recurring revenue plan. Yeah, the branding was amazing. I remember the name of the plumber. Of course not. Right. So we're looking for these businesses that are simple but also not that great at their business in the high demand, but not that good. The second test is called Brain Brit and I think the Britons, when I remember this one, in order to remember it, Brit means we're going to buy businesses that cash flow and we're going to buy these businesses that actually are cash flow versus cash suck businesses. That means you get paid first and then you provide the service. We have a 90 day rule that will teach you here, which basically is the only time I'll buy a cash suck business, which is where I provide a service and I don't get paid tax later, is if I think I can fix it in the first 90 days. Then we're going to buy businesses in recession resistant sectors like plumbing versus custom framing. Because when we invest in this type of business, even in a recession, are you guys going to call a plumber when your toilet fix is broken? If you don't know how to fix it, of course you are, then we're going to add new pricing or add additional pricing levers because most small business businesses are underpriced. So if you have an opportunity to buy a Business that could be charging more, that's a win. Like one of our members who became entrepreneur of the Year simply by buying a business and changing the price. We have a lot of resources about how you can figure out if you want to raise prices. We won't go over that now, but just so you know, a hint might look like if it's a shitty website versus a good website, that probably means they haven't updated their pricing. Then we're going to add tech, which we've talked about. Easy ways to add tech exist just about everywhere. And so I like to buy businesses that earn me at least $100,000 in my pocket every year because I want to make sure that I can have an operator salary of at least 100k as well. One more important consideration, how much time do you have in order to invest? AKA this is Eric, who closed a deal, started in April, closed a deal in July. In other words, how quickly do you want or need to buy a business? He moved fast and this is how much activity he had to have to do it. So what I like to think about is if you want to move faster, then you probably like on market deals more. If you're willing to get a great deal, you're probably looking at off market deals more, but it'll take longer. So your acquisition opportunities are going to be determined by your true time, skill and money available. There's like three of them. And the more money, time, skill you have, the more options and the faster you can move. And the less of those you have, the fewer options or the slower you move. And so you're actually not looking for a perfect business in a perfect industry. You're looking for this right business for you. Now the question of industries, we'll go through this pretty quickly. The wrong question, remember, is like, Cody, should I buy a Laundromat or an H VAC company? Do you guys hear that? Now is everybody like, yeah, I see what you mean. I see how that would be like not a useful question. Give me a little nod or a little comment. Yes. Okay, so the goal is that we're going to narrow your industry focus to follow your first portion, but we're also not going to narrow it so much that your deal box isn't wide enough to get what you want. So I don't want you to just select a couple that you want. I want to actually keep it wide in the beginning and sort of whittle it down, down. And the way that we're going to do that is actually using our resources. So it's going to help you determine this kind of business versus this type of business. Because you don't have to be that complex. You don't have to be that complex to buy a business.

All we're trying to do is try and find businesses we think we can understand where we like the people running them and where the price makes sense in relation to the future economics. And when I find that I like to buy a lot of it and keep it and they're hard.

Literally that is the best investor in the world. That is the best business acquirer in the world. And that is what he does. We were sold such a lie that this is more complex than we think it is. Here's my four favorite types of businesses to buy right now. But this might not be for you. I like digital businesses. I like consumer home services, I like professional services and I like real estate enhanced. So digital business businesses. Our businesses like these, you can see them on our sites that are like easy to scale and market. I could plug them into contrarian thinking. What about E commerce? I don't love physical inventory businesses, but we have friends who have made hundreds of millions of dollars off of this. I just want to make sure if I buy an online business, it's been around for at least five to seven years. Home services. I love home services business businesses. And as you guys probably know, I also like businesses where like laundromats where I can go and have a service close to home. My goal is you guys all get kissed like this because we help you find that laundromat that doesn't take up a bunch of your time that is perfectly in your deal box. That is exactly what you want with your first offer. These home service businesses. This is actually a video of me on a roof which is kind of fun. This is one of our roofing companies. There's lots of reasons why I like home services, but what I think is interesting is a lot of times these have a certification, a skill set, a training specialty, which we think is bad. But I'll show you why I like these in professional services. Professional services often have something called a labor moded business. An example would be like you have to be a CPA to be an accountant. You need a license or certification or registration to be a roofer often. So a lot of times times those businesses have more of a moat around them then real estate businesses. I like these because we can use the actual tax depreciation on the real estate to buy the business. So these businesses are ones like the ones that you See here, one of the other best investors of all time has one other thing to say that I'm going to leave you guys with. Before we go to do your deal box.

This business of controlling the costs and living savings.

And

that was the secret. How much money Warren and I had, tiny little bits of money, we always underspent our incomes and we invested and we. Well, if you live long enough, you end up rich. It's not very complicated.

This is one of the richest people in the world and they didn't get there by raising a bunch of capital to start. The richest people in the world says, yeah, I just didn't spend that much money and I invested what I had and I compounded it over time and I got rich slowly. So now we are going to do yours. And so this is actually really incredible. I'm really excited. He's never been on a stage with you guys before. You guys are in for a treat. So our next speaker, he actually leads our academy program. And he is, he's fascinating because he has a decade of experience in corporate and investment banking. In private equity, he built in the led, basically entire M and A teams that helped go out and buy businesses. He also has done something called origination, which is where you find the businesses. Like, how many of you guys are like, how do I find these things? Can you guys teach me how to do that? Well, he's actually made thousands of cold calls to buy hundreds of businesses. I think he's done 70 plus transactions actually. So he has actually managed outsourcing of outreach, but he's also sourced what's called proprietary off market acquisition options opportunities. And then beyond that, I think you guys are going to associate with him because he could have just stayed in investment banking, kept making a ton of money, kept being one of the top in his game, but instead, he's a Christian, he's a father, he's a husband. And the reason he came to contrarian thinking when he could have gone to the big guys and stayed in private equity is because he believes that we should own the small businesses in our community. And so today, he's actually sharing one of the most important steps to ownership. Deal clarity. I want you guys. He's never been out on a stage like this. He's only done deals. Private equity guys do not come on stages like this. So I want you to give a big, huge mainstream millionaire welcome to Rylan Harvey.

Yeah.

You look great.

Thank you.

All right, man, go get them. It's lovely to see.

Good to see everybody today. How about that? How about Cody Sanchez, everybody? My God. You know, when I was in business school, I can tell you one thing, they did not teach you how to follow on with somebody like Cody. That is a big act to follow. So I'm super proud to have this opportunity here to get into it. So let's get into the slides here. First slide, please. Can we get the first slide, guys? Thank you. Okay, so just a little bit about me, guys. Just for those of you who don't know me, there's a lot of people here who do. My name is Rylan Harvey, and I lead the academy at Contrarian Thinking. So my team and I, we work with thousands of people just like yourselves, and we are obsessed with doing deals. We teach members to find, diligence, make offers, and ultimately close small businesses that allow the pursuit of financial freedom through ownership. So my background began. I worked in the Wall street world for nine years, which was right out of finance, which I studied in college. I spent six years working in investment banking doing large public Ms. Deals, private equity backed transactions. And then I moved down market to private equity backed home service platforms across the southern United States. I got to the point in my career where I got kind of tired of making the top 1% of the top 1% money, consistently answering to institutional investors and LPs. And I didn't like the man that I was looking in in the mirror anymore. And that caused me to say, okay, how can I give back? So, you know, I fundamentally believe that private equity is really hollowing out the American dream. I don't know about you guys, but I like to go to businesses all across my town, where I live with my wife in Austin, Texas. And I see a lot of things. The local H VAC business, the local plumbing business, the local landscaping business, and the local dog walking business, they are all being taken over by private equity. What does that mean? That means that the service that you're getting and the price that you're paying is moving in the wrong direction. So, you know, a big part of what we do at the academy here at Contrarian Thinking is we motivate people and we teach people how to take back a little piece of the American dream. And I know this is America focused. You may be in, you know, Canada, you may be in Europe, you may be in South America. Wherever you are, we work through that with our members. So let's get into it. So the first thing you know, we talk about this one a lot at the academy, guys. There's no such thing as a good. There's Only a good deal for you. So as you get into this, you'll realize there are hundreds and thousands of deals coming to market across the world every single day. It's overwhelming, right? So we need to break things down into little pieces so that we can determine what makes the most sense for us as the buyer. And how are we going to do that? Well, we have an entire framework for that and that's why it's so important for us to get deal clarity as we start looking at these acquisition opportunities. And let's talk about a little bit more, guys. Why is that not or why is that important? It's important because if you look at some of these success stories here, you know, these are just four of our members who have bought businesses in the academy. We have Sharadha, who bought an online telehealth clinic. We have Wendy, who bought a less than lethal security company. We have a member who doesn't want to be named, who bought a premium kitchen company. And then finally we have someone in Fort Collins, Colorado who, who bought a plumbing company, which is actually very close to my heart, having a trades background. So if we can get clear on deal clarity, we can take that to close deals and that's we're gonna get into. So I believe we just got clear on this. I think Cody did a fantastic job summarizing your passion, your experience and your network. But just to reiterate your passion, so when you wake up every day, what is it that keeps you guys going? You may be somebody that loves to, to work on cars. Maybe it's an automotive business. You may be somebody that loves to take care of animals. Maybe it's a dog walking clinic. This is going to vary based on you as an individual, but your passion is going to be one of the main drivers as we look to isolate your zone of genius, your experience and skills. What have you learned in your professional life? What have you learned in your personal life? What have you learned in your education? Have you managed people? Are you, are you a tech person? Whatever it is, your experience and skills, I believe that everybody is unique and everybody can take that and apply it to entrepreneurship. And then finally your network, everybody knows people, your personal network, your professional network, the people that you see at the dog park, who are those people? Once you start thinking about what kind of business do I want to buy, who can finance it? Where can I find employees? Where can I, where can I find customers who can be a mentor of mine? You know, these are all real important segments to start to look at as you start to triangulate and identify that. So Cody already covered this in detail. I'm not going to get into it too much again. But again, this is how we identify the perfect fit for you. So now we're going to break down the deal clarity worksheet. Guys, could I get this on the back here, please? They're just going to put it up up here. One second. Can we get the deal clarity worksheet on the back, please? Okay, well, it's fine. I'll read it off of here. Oh, we got it. Okay, great. Now everybody can see it. Thank you, guys. So, for personal lifestyle goals. So what do you want your life to look like on a daily basis? And how does buying a business fit into this vision for your life? Do you want to be the type of person that gets deep in the weeds for a while while works your butt off, eventually injects an operator so that you could hang out on the beach and answer emails? Does that make sense for you? Is this something where you want to be a member of the community who's the face of the business so that you can say hello to people every single day? You know, there's a lot of different ways you can look at this. Be specific as possible, guys. When you're figuring this out, this is going to allow you to get more clarity on exactly the type of business that's right for you. So in terms of timing, how much time do you have? So can you wait and be patient for 12 months? Do you have to buy the business in six months? Are you so desperate to leave your W2? And for those of you who've been there, I have been there, so I get it. That's going to frame where you're at and how long you can wait to do a deal. So there's on market deals like Cody mentioned, those are deals like picture a house, a real estate agent, they're listing the property. You have an open house. A bunch of people are going to come there and look at it. What does that drive? That drives competition and that drives price. So if you. If you need to pull the trigger immediately, you may end up looking at deals that are competitive. If you can wait a little bit longer, you have the opportunity to cold call people, you have the opportunity to email people. You can go into your local business and shake hands with the owner. You know, your local dentist, your local doctor's office, your local pet care clinic, and you can say, hey, I have just started this entrepreneurship through acquisition journey myself. Had you ever considered selling your business? So you know Depending on your timeline, you have a lot more opportunities there in terms of your cash flow goals. So how much income are you trying to generate from this? So, you know, like, let's look at your personal situation. If you're in a W2 right now and you're making $100,000 a year, most people don't save that much. Although we hope that that you do. That's probably a good estimate of the amount of money that you're going to need to replace from your business. You know, that gives you a good proxy for if I'm making 100k now or 80k now, I need to make 80 or 100k from this business for this to make sense and cover all my expenses. I'm also going to ask you guys to complete the minimum annual cash flow. So let's say you cut out a lot of the, you know, Uber Eats, doordash, all those luxury and unnecessary expense expenses. What is the bottom line that you can live on? And I'm not saying that you have to do this, but what I am saying is that if you can scale back your lifestyle, your ability to buy a business is larger because you can take that money and you can invest it back into the business. You can hire an operator, you can spend it on advertising, you can spend it on marketing, all of those things. This is really important here. As you get clarity on how that that works, then we go into financing. So how much pure cash do you have available to invest in your deal? And the reason I say pure cash, I'm not talking about Bitcoin, I'm not talking about leveraging your 401k, this is a pure cash question. So how much pure cash? If it's none, put zero, that's totally fine. We have, you know, a lot of different financing options, but how much pure cash are you able to bring to the deal? If you think about it like a mortgage, guys, you know, if I go to a bank and say, hey, I want to buy this house, it's going to be challenging to buy a house and get a mortgage with zero money down. If you have 5%, if you have 10%, the bank will give you leverage so that you can close on the deal. It's the same thing here. It's not 100% required. It just frames the financing avenues that you will have options to. As you start to think about how you're going to pay for this acquisition and then what type of financing do you want to use? There's a bunch of different routes, as you can see See here, you can buy it with all cash. If you guys have super deep pockets, then I'm jealous. But you know, then you can, you can buy an entire deal with cash and you don't even need to take financing. If you want to take a traditional avenue to financing, you can go to a bank. You can say, this is the deal that I'm looking at. Can you guys provide financing? You can go to the SBA program. In Canada we call it, you know, they call it the bdc. In the US it's the sba. These are government, government backed programs that are designed purely to promote entrepreneurship in the markets where they exist. So, you know, the SBA program is federally backed by the US government and they allow you to come in with a 10% down payment so that you can buy a business. Seller financing, this is one we cover a lot. So seller financing is essentially the seller is making a loan to you, the buyer, so that you can buy their business. I'm a big fan of this one because it creates what we call alignment. If the seller is lending you money to buy their business, then they truly have skin in the game. In your success they want you to see, or they want to see you succeed because that's directly related to them getting paid back. So all these financing structures here, guys, I mean, they're not overly complicated. Keep them simple. Last one. I'll cover expertise for equity. Like I mentioned, if you're not somebody who has a bunch of cash to bring to the table, you can partner with another person who may have capital, but not the expertise. So think about it. Let's say my background's in home services in the H Vac space. Let's say you're a really good H Vac technician and you love fixing air conditioning units. I know a lot of people like this, but you don't have a lot of money to buy a business. You can find an investor, somebody who may not know how to fix air conditioning units. They'll put up the capital, you put up the extra expertise. You guys can take down a deal together. You know, that's one of the options if you want to get creative about how you're going to finance a transaction. So the next stage of the worksheet, guys, and just to clarify here, we're going to give you a couple minutes to work through this. In a second. I'm just walking through how to complete this so that when you guys go off on your own and you start working on the material, it makes sense. So Cody covered this. I'll Reiterate it. What type of acquisition are you at?

Looking.

Looking to acquire if you're a business owner. So for the business owners here. Hello. Welcome. Vertical acquisitions. Think of it this way. You know, you're an H Vac company. I use that example. Let's say you're tired of constantly paying suppliers for expensive H VAC units. You feel like they're charging you too much and it's eating into your profit. You can buy a supplier of H VAC equipment and material allows you to bring down your material costs so that you can have better, better profit margins. If you're looking to do a horizontal acquisition, that's buying another business to allow you to capture market share. So I'll use H Vac in Austin. Let's say I operate an H Vac company in Austin. I work on the west side of town. I'm interested in getting customers on the east side of town. What can I do? I can do a horizontal acquisition. I can buy another company in the other side of town that will allow me to expand to that side so that I can have customers all over town. So, you know, that's, that's how it works. And then what are the goals? If you're a business owner, what do you want to accomplish from this acquisition? Are you looking to support your current business? Are you looking to acquire intellectual capital or human capital, meaning like good quality people? Are you looking to acquire systems or technology? Are you looking to push a competitor out because they're stealing all your business? You know, there's a. There's a lot of avenues here. Start to think through the, the reason for the acquisition. You can populate that right there. Then we get into business goals. So how much involvement do you want to have in this business? So the first option is I want to be the owner, operator. I want to be in the weeds driving the bus every single day. I want to be managing the employees, managing the customers, managing the workforce and working with the team day to day. What does that take? It takes time, right? Like, this is not something that's passive. You're going to have to be in the business every single day. And that's great. I love that. You know, good operators are world class and they need a lot of respect. But we also have, you know, the more investor or the passive type of person. So in this situation, you may say, okay, I don't have the time, but I have money. So I want to buy a business and I want to put an operator in place. And I want to take more of a passive role. So you know, you might be sitting on the beach or in the mountains or at home anti emails while some operator is working in the business for you. Managing the employees, managing the customers and keeping the machine running. So start to think about that guys. It's important because it'll frame the cost of an acquisition and whether you need to hire an operator and account for that cost or whether you're going to do that labor yourself. Then we get into does the geographic location matter to you and if so, what geographic area do you want to be in? So this is important. Really think about this. If you live in a metro area, do you want to buy a business in your metro area? You know, do you want to buy a business far away? Like Cody said, for your first deal, I do not recommend you buy a business in another state. You can, you can fly in on, you know, Sunday night and fly out Thursday night. I've seen it happen. It just makes it harder early on to step into the weeds when things require your time. And then, you know, what are your superpowers? We call this, you know, what is your unfair advantage? As Cody says, what is something that you have been told or that you know you do better than other people? Public speaking, mathematics, coding, organization, Everybody has one figure out what that is. And if you put that down here, it will help a lot because everybody has value that they can add. Everybody's unique and beautiful in their in a different way. And this is a great opportunity to write that down right here. And then finally, you know, what other characteristics or traits are important to you in the business that you want to acquire. So if you think about it, you know, you may have a creed or some type of beliefs that make it that you don't want to buy a certain type of business. And there's a million different examples. You know, like often in the investment space, people will not invest in firearm manufacturers, tobacco companies because it doesn't allow align with their personal beliefs. And that's totally fine too. So if there's any non starters for you, doesn't matter what they are, write them down there just so that you can start to screen out the criteria of those transactions when you guys start looking at these opportunities. So we're going to get, when you get into the worksheet here, target income at the top. That's the desired cash flow we talked about here. So what kind of money are you looking to take out of the business to cover your lifestyle once you acquire it? It's pretty simple there, there's a quick formula here you take that target cash flow, you multiply it by 0.43. That's a rough estimate for what we call debt service. So I'll give you an example. If I need 100k of cash flow to leave my W2 job and to buy a business, 43,000 is a rough estimate, you know, about what you can expect to pay on interest in the deal. So you can go ahead and pop that there. You know, it's a quick calculation. Target cash flow times 0.43, that gives you your debt service estimate. And then when you add those up, you get your total cash flow needed, and that's the entire burden of the deal. And an important number to keep in mind as you guys are looking at this business. And then finally as we start to look at really the range, your buy box, as we call it, you know, what range can you play in given those factors? So on the low end, the minimum that you could probably expect to pay is 2 times your target cash flow. So, you know, I'd use an example there. I think 143,100 K for me, 43 K for the debt service, two times that, you know, that's 286,000. That would be the bottom end of the purchase price range. And then on the larger end, for the better deals, for the less risky deals, for the higher quality deals, we will use a four times multiple. So, you know, you take that 143k, you multiply it by four. You know, off the top of my head, that's five, 60 something. I think that would be the higher end of the range for what you guys can look to purchase at. So, you know, start thinking through these things. It's super early, but you know, this is going to frame some clarity on what type of price range you're going to look to pay as you guys look to buy these businesses.

So

next slide, I'd love to introduce to you guys a friend of mine, a mentor and one of our deal advisors at the Academy, Robert Klinkenberd. So Robert's an entrepreneur, executive and business coach with over 30 years of experience. He founded and exited one of the largest landscaping businesses in the southwestern United States. At the time of exit, they had 350 employees. They did well over 20 million in revenue. He sold that in 2016 and, and he is a big part of the Academy and a big mentor to me and the team. Robert, welcome. Do you want to give a quick intro for anything I missed?

Yeah, no, thank you, Ryan Ryland. I really appreciate being here. Yeah, I think I've now been part of the community for five years. Cody, you know, I was doing a lot of coaching once I sold the business back in 2016. And when I heard Cody speak probably 5ish years ago, I got really inspired by her. So I actually have got back into businesses. I now have five businesses. And I just, you know, I love coaching. I love being able to help people. But to be able to then have your own business and put your hands on it and create that framework, it's super exciting to get back involved in businesses again.

And Robert, as you think about deal clarity, you know, when you were an entrepreneur early in your career, you ended up landing on landscaping. Can you talk a little bit about how you came to Deal Clarity as you started out?

I mean, I think once after I sold, I mean, just that experience of, you know, I went through 2008, 2011, which was obviously pretty challenging, especially in the Phoenix market. Now, I think one of the things I learned was, you know, I love the recurring revenue. I love trade businesses that, as somebody mentioned earlier, people will always still need landscape and they'll still need plumbing, they'll still need electrical because a lot of there's issues around health and safety. So, you know, that's definitely framed my Deal Clarity piece. I really focus deeply on the trade businesses, you know, plumbing, electrical, H vac, pest control, landscaping. So that's really helped me to dial in my deal about.

Amazing. And then one last thing, Robert, I wanted to ask, what do you see most people struggling with as they work through Deal Clarity? Like, for a new person who's coming into the game, like, what is it that they struggle with the most as they're just starting out now? We give them a lot of tools, as you've seen. But you know, I'm interested in your take on that.

No, it's a great question. I do see a lot of people struggle that maybe they start off too narrow and then they realize once they get into that industry, they're there's a lot of challenges there. Or maybe they start off with too wide of, you know, a deal box there, and they're just looking at too many deals. It's overwhelming. So as people get into the program, they start learning from other community members to start looking at deals themselves. Then, you know, they'll either if it's too small, they might widen their deal box, or if it's maybe too wide, then it'll bring begin to narrow down a little bit. So that's where I see that transition as people get into the community.

Fantastic. Well, thanks Robert. So we're going to come back to Robert in a minute guys. For now we're going to pass along here. It's going to be your turn now. So if you could please open up the workbook that we've provided, I'd love you guys to go to slide 18 here. And on slide 18 you're going to find everything that I just covered and summarized here. So remember guys, as you're working through this, what business do you operate it or does an operator operate it? How much money do you need for yourself and what would this opportunity mean to you if you were to buy this business? How would it change your life? How would it change your family's life? How would it change your community's life? And then just in case you missed it, this is a time guys, if you missed the last session to take what you learned and apply it in real time in a small group of like minded peers. So for introverts, I hope you guys saw the value from the first round. Stick with us, be fully present extroverts. Remember, you know, equal time, equal share, equal voice. We want everybody to have the opportunity to participate here and everybody can add value in their own way. So remember that. So we're going to separate everybody now into small groups or four of six, please keep your cameras on and we're going to work through a lot of this material together and and everyone gets two minutes. So you guys can go at it now and if we can set the timer, we will come back shortly.

What's going on crew? I want to hear from you guys, what have you thought thus far? I love my YouTube fam. You guys are near and dear to my heart. YouTube. I don't know if you know this but it's my favorite platform so don't tell anybody on all the other ones. I just feel like we can go deeper together on here than anybody else. So I can see your chat. Why don't you guys tell me what are your takeaways from this and also what business are you guys thinking to buy? I pulled some questions so I wanted to talk about a few of them. Let's see, I pulled one question that is about daycare, like should I open a daycare? So the answer to that is I really don't love opening a new business. If you guys didn't catch the section on whether you should buy verse build, I would like to hyper focus on buying versus building. The reason is most businesses is don't make money for the first three years. There's a 95% failure rate in businesses within the first 10 years. Most businesses cost the entrepreneur money for the first three years. You pay for the right to potentially one day make money. And then for those that make it, Most businesses make 46,000 to 70 to $67,000 a year for the entrepreneur. And so while those are okay, you can get jobs that make you that much money. And so in my opinion, we should really focus a little bit bit more on buying these things as opposed to building them. I'm. I'm also laughing. People are, I think, making jokes about Minnesota daycares here. Apparently that works well if you want to, you know, steal from the government, which I'm not into. The other thing that I thought was interesting today, that I'm curious for all of you guys is how many of you guys are international? Seems like there's a lot of people from all over the world. And so I don't know if you saw one. One of our moments of inspiration and individuals come up and talk about what they've learned, but they ask, like, what is different in other countries? And the truth of what is different on other countries is largely one thing, which is that the sba, the Small Business Administration, does not exist exactly as is in other countries. And so in every country that exists today where you can buy a. A good or a service, you can buy a business. So you guys tell me, if you can buy a good or service in your business, you can buy a business. Now, the flip side of that is you might not be able to get the government to give you money for it. That is unique to the U.S. canada has that potential to Europe has that potential too. But lots of other countries, they have new mechanisms for doing it, which might be seller financing. And a lot of times they don't call it so seller finance it. A lot of times they call it profit financing in other countries, like in the Netherlands, for instance. So I think those are some of the things I find the most useful for international members is just you realizing that it actually doesn't matter that much whether you're in one country or another. If you learn the game of business acquisitions, you can do it just about anywhere. The only thing I don't really think you should do is let's say you're. I see somebody on here in your. Say you're in Peru and then another person on here d. I see you're in Tanzania. If I was in Peru, I wouldn't recommend buying a business in Tanzania. If I was in Tanzania, I wouldn't recommend buying a business like Shur's business in the Bahamas. It's really best to buy a business where you live or where you have unique subject matter domain. So if you're in Kenya, buy a local business in Kenya. The other thing I think I want to remind everybody on here is lastly, you know, small business acquisition is not taught very often because people aren't like you guys on YouTube. Like there's hundreds of you here watching a live stream on acquisitions. Most people can't even spell it. Most people are going and watching a, you know, I don't even want to say the name. They're going to watching some entertainment challenge on, on YouTube. They're just there to be entertained, not to make money. So like you're already rare, you're already doing the right thing. You're already moving forward correctly and you're not that normal because most people come in here to forget their lives and how difficult it is and you come on here to change your life. And so I just want to like give you a little, a little pep talk. Like you're already probably going to be more successful than the average Joe because you're willing to listen to this kind of stuff and not just flip off of here to go and watch something that's going to make you forget that you don't have the life that you said you wanted or the one you think you're capable of. And it's way easier to just turn it off and not look yourself in the face. So just congratulations. It's rare. Other people won't tell you that other people are kind of like happily connected to the matrix and want to stay there and are never going to go and achieve the things that they want out of life because they don't do what it's necessary to get there. So basically I just want to say like congratulations. You guys are already pushing forward to the thing that you need to do. I think the only other thing I have for, for you guys is I believe my team should tell me. So I think you basically have another 10 minutes if you want to join for the rest of the programs. So if you want to learn more about acquisitions and you want to stick with us for the next three days in order to close your own business or invest in part of a business or be an operator for a business, you can go to the link which is www.msm.com live. And I just want you to know the thing that most people won't tell you, which is you're probably more capable than you're giving yourself credit for, but you might not be betting on yourself enough. And that if you actually want to change your life, you got to take a little risk. And so maybe that first step for you is taking the risk of staying, of signing up, of joining us. Maybe it's not either way, like nothing but love but our side. And we're going to do everything humanly possible to make it easier, easier for you. So you can click the link in the chat, you can go to www.msm.live and you can also use code. What is the code speak? Cody, do you remember what the code is? We'll get the code for you in a second. And you can get 10 bucks off. I think that makes it incredibly cheap, like $37 or something like that. Oh, the other thing that's kind of cool. My seat, my seat. Wow. Couldn't have been more off. Hope you guys didn't try that. Code my seat for 10 bucks off. Kind of a preview of what's coming next to see if it's good for you. The head of my head of M and A will be back to talk about how to close deals, how to do negotiation and structuring. We're going to do live deal reviews. So if you want to go like right now and pull some businesses and then get them reviewed live, you should. You can also potentially be included to win A, a Mac 6 MacBook Pro, 16 inch inch because, you know, I have too many of those now that I use AI on them. And what else? Oh, you'll also hear from my husband on negotiation. He actually runs our holding company and our venture capital fund, so that's cool. You'll also hear from Dean Graziosi. That's Tony Robbins, right hand man for like 20 years. But to be fair to those who paid to be here, this is the last session I'm allowed to give my YouTube fam for free. But if you're loving this content, just know like we want you to here with us this weekend so the learning doesn't have to end here. You can go to WW MSM Live. And as my thank you to showing up, you get that. My seat, $10 ticket. Our team's dropping the link. It's really that simple and it's really only for you if you're serious about learning how to become an owner of a business. But I, I've loved having you guys. Regardless, the team keeps giving me updates on the comments that you guys have. And I have this like screen up here where I'm looking at all your beautiful faces and elephant faces. I guess you're from Kenya, so that's a sweet picture. So thank you for being here. I hope you join us. I want to see your face. If you do join us, make sure that you comment that you came from YouTube on the live stream so I can call you guys out directly. Sending you guys so much love. Let's go buy some businesses, huh? All right, Sam. Sa. Welcome back, everybody.

So who enjoyed the bear rakeouts?

Can.

Can you just raise your hand if you guys actually learned something from that and you guys had a chance to collaborate with other people who are also excited about potentially doing deals with. I see some great hands up. I see Alexander, David, Mayan. Good job. Guys. Really like to see that. So like I said, drop a quick note in the chat. What was awesome about your group? Anything. Any aha moments where you're like, wait a minute, I didn't know that until we got into the session. Okay, cool. So what we're gonna do now, let's take a couple one to three, or, sorry, let's do one to three, depending on, you know, how long this takes, shares amongst the group here. So if you guys could just put up your hand if you. If you'd like to ask a question, and then Robert and I will take a couple in real time and you guys will be able to listen in. So let's take a look here. What do we got? What do we got? How about Kent Gale in room one? Could you put Kent in for us? Stand by, Kent. We're just getting you popped in. Cool. Kent, how are you? How are you today, sir?

I am well, thank you. How are you?

Very good, Very good. So we got Robert and myself here. What question did you have, Kent?

It was more of a comment.

It was just that in both of these sessions or both the breakout sessions, I just noticed that the vibe is always really different when you're talking with

people trying to make change.

And I was struck by the huge diversity and experience that people had. Some already had businesses up and running.

Some people are just, you know, not kicking the tires exactly, but just starting. Like me in some ways. But the kind of the. The energy is different when people are

looking to make change and trying to

kind of do something that they haven't done before. And I just really appreciate that.

Yeah, I mean, look, I'll. I'll give you my comments, and then I'd love to hear Robert. I mean, this is a massive endeavor for new people, right? Like, you're really changing your life. You're Going from being a person that clocks in at nine and clocks in, out at five and you're going into becoming an owner who has equity in a business, who has to make decisions about the direction of the business. So you're going to get that. And then there's also people on the other end, people who have bought businesses, people who know what they're doing. They have a huge amount of value that they can add as well to our newer people. So I think it's really important that everybody's friendly, open minded and collaborative. It allows us to all work together. Robert, I'd love to hear your take on that one.

Yeah, just wait till you get into the community. I mean this, this. I've been part of several communities over the years, including eo and I would say this community is amazing. That's why I've been in it for five plus years, just to, to be able to go in and share your experiences. We have deal reviews on Monday nights and we're going through a particular business, you know, it's whether it be medical or some type of trade business. And then you'll get somebody from the community pop in and say, hey, hey, I'm already working in that space. Here's some shares I can add to that. And it really, you can dive deep. And it's actually amazing, just the energy around people sharing on those calls. So yeah, it's unbelievable.

Amazing. Well, thanks for asking the question. I really appreciate your time. We'll go to one more, guys. Let's see here. Who do we have there? I love the comments y' all are posting, guys. By the way, keep it up. Great stuff here. Let's go with Olobunmi. Apology for mispronouncing your name. But you're in group two. Can we get her into a breakout here? O L U W A B U M N B I in room two. Just a second. We'll get you parsed in.

Alrighty.

How are you today?

Fine, thank you. Good afternoon, everyone.

We're glad to have you here. What's your question?

So I was going to ask about financing. So basically in our group we have people that already, you know, are looking into deals and trying to, you know, find how to, you know, basically balance the financing. So my own question is I'm in the US and so I, in our group, someone mentioned about the SB loans, so I was asking about the criteria to meet those loans, especially for someone that doesn't have, you know, financing because part of the workbook says you should have, you know, maybe you have some cash for financing, which I don't at this moment. So I wanted to know, how do you navigate that, starting from ground up to financing?

Yeah, Robert, I'd love your take on this one. We see this one all the time.

No, absolutely. Yeah. When you have those types of situations, then you know, and you present your deal, you'd maybe do a deal review or a pre deal review. Then the deal advisors will come on the phone with you and we'll explore different options. You know, is there creative ways and how to create that financing, whether it be an sba, whether it be private financing, whether it be friends and family. So we'll explore all those different options. Could even be the expertise to equity option as well. So that's where the deal advisors come in. And we love being able to creative and think outside the box. We're dealing. We're probably reviewing more, 30, 40, 50 deals a week. It feels maybe more. And a lot of people come with those types of challenges.

Yeah, good stuff. Just on that. Look, I would never let anything like this hold you back. SBA protects particularly, they have their own underwriting standards. Conventional banks have their own underwriting standards. A seller note, you know that you have, the seller just needs to trust you that you're a person that will pay him back. There's so many different options here. I would never let a lack of financial capacity hold you back. I mean, I think Cody shared it a lot. You look at people like Warren Buffett, they started a business with a very small amount of money. They ended up getting into Berkshire. There's been so many entrepreneurial success stories of people who started with nothing and built their piece of the American dream. So I wouldn't let that detract. We'll take one more question here. Let's see here. Who have we not had a chance to go with? Let's go with Juan Martins in Group 4, please. Just get you patched in here.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yeah, hey Juan, how are you, sir?

I'm doing well, thank you for asking and thank you for the opportunity. Well, as I mentioned, I'm an employee and during my group we found out we have some business owners. And the big question I found out is that sometimes you feel alone in this community or finding others to expand, whether you're doing vertical or horizontal sample expansions or just finding a partner or an operator. Just wanted to know if there's besides communities, is there a way to find other like minded people to assist you growing your business altogether?

Yeah, I'm happy to take that one and I can speak to Robert after. You know, we have currently about 2,800 people working on deals all the time in our contrarian academy. So you can imagine this is people from all different walks of life. We have people who are just starting out but have expertise. We have people with a lot of capital and no expertise. We have people that have little expertise and no capital. We have everyone of every race, of every creed, of every, you know, you know, we have a fantastic community that is really representative of the world. Right. So, you know, what I'd say is you can find your people pretty easily in our community. Robert, do you to want, want to add to that?

No. I mean, I call it find your tribe. You know, I think the community itself is a tribe, but there's also going to be sort of many tribes within that. You know, we have channels in our slack that, you know, people looking for, you know, some financing options or they want to invest. We have some great concierge team. If you look to meet up with some like minded people, they'll, they'll help you try and match up those people. Our ambassadors will again help you with that onboarding. But then once you're in that onboarding, you might create that little cohort team. And we've had some situations where several people have all got together, said, hey, we all have that medical background or we bring expertise to that deal and then they go out and try and find several deals. So there's so many different examples within the community that you'll find that your tribe pretty quickly, quickly.

Amazing. So listen guys, thank you all for asking such thoughtful and well thought out questions. Just going to go back to the slides quickly here and we're going to work through a couple of them here before we wrap up. So as we get into, you know, you guys have kind of defined deal clarity here. You know, we're going to now use what we just did in our deal clarity worksheet to move to our deal box. And I'm just going to walk you all through this exercise. If you can see on the screen here all the things that we worked there before is ultimately what we worked into our cash flow requirements. And stay with me here for a second. So you'll see your personal cash flow, you'll see if you do need to hire an operator what the potential salary is. You see some financing information based on the multiples that we described and we're going to work towards the total kind of cash flow requirements for a business to cover all these matters. So remember how Much money do you need out of the business? You know, if you're taking on debt to buy the business, how much do you need to cover the debt service? And if you are going to hire an operator, you know, you have to include that cost as well. So you know, we call it our deal box. That's just an indicative example there of how that all comes together. And then once you get into that, you know, just to kind of show you the future of how it looks on, you know, through the community and through Bizkout, there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of deals in the United States alone coming to market daily. And it would be completely overwhelming and impossible without knowing what you want to take any reasonable shot at them. So if you can define what kind of business you want, what lines up with your expertise, what you're passionate about and your capabilities, from like we talked about, the financing perspective, it'll allow you to channel that into looking at the right deal for you because like I said, there's thousands of businesses coming to market and that'll allow you to get clear on that. So we're going to have another quick working session now, guys, and then we're going to wrap it up. So I'm going to pass it back to you guys. This time we're only going to do a six minute session. So I'd like you guys to go to page 21. This is not going to be a breakout. This is going to be just you guys working through with what we've discussed today to complete that section. So please go to page 21 here and we're going to give you, you guys about six minutes to do this and then we'll come back here and we'll wrap it up. So if you could just parse them out for six minutes, please.

It.

Welcome back everybody. So I appreciate, you know, everybody taking the time to work. I saw a couple questions in the chat. I think I should address two really important ones, guys, and maybe we didn't clarify on the operator section salary. This is really industry specific. You can probably use a range for Most deals between 50 and 100k. So the smaller deals 50, 60k, the bigger deals 100k. The reason we didn't tell you is because look, if you live in New York City, it's going to be different than rural Texas. It is really business specific. But that's the cost of an operator to inject into the business and it does vary. But as a proxy, 50 to 100k can be used and then on the Debt service calculation. I saw some questions about that. Take the target cash flow, multiply it by 43%, and that's your target cash flow. So the money you need to take to leave your W2 times 0.43. That'll get you a rough estimate for debt service for the purpose of this exercise. So we're gonna keep going. We got a couple last minute slides to cover here, guys, and then we're gonna move on here. So a big thing here that I want you guys to take away from this is the opportunity to ask others. I hope that you use the breakout sessions earlier to clarify, collaborate. As you can see, there's strength in numbers and everybody has a different opportunity to add value in a different way. So, you know, we had members asking if you're new and you don't have much capital, but you have some expertise, you can partner with somebody who may have capital but doesn't have those expertise. If, you know, if you have a good relationship with a person who's looking to sell your business, they may trust you enough for seller financing. So there's so many different options for how you can finance a deal and just talk about it. You know, that's what communication is for. You know, for some aha moments. I hope you guys had some aha moments through this session. You know, like Jennifer here. So Jennifer is one of our members who was looking at multiple different businesses and realized initially she wanted to take down a really small business because she thought it would be less risky. What she found out through working through the process is that larger business businesses are generally less risky because you have people, you have established processes, you have established systems, you have a marketing plan usually in place. There's a bunch of infrastructure that you're buying with a larger business and you have to wear less hats. So that's something that Jennifer benefited from. Just as a takeaway there, another one is your deal box might evolve over time. So Vishal's a great example. He came into the program thinking one thing. He had a very technical engineering background. He was, I believe, looking at a software company that would benefit from his skill set. You know, he realized as he started to look at those deals that they just weren't a good fit. The price didn't make sense for him in the region that he was. He wasn't able to locate a particular transaction. That made sense. He shifted to laundromats and he actually just made an offer, I believe last week on a bunch of laundromats in California. So, you know, just because you Come in with a deal box and deal. Clarity in one particular thing doesn't mean you can pivot. All I'd ask is that you guys are flexible, that you're open minded, and that you're willing to work because, you know, that's really the most important thing. And then the last thing, like I just said, have an open mind and take action. So having an open mind to this process, I know it's a lot of new information. Take it in, be a sponge. I mean, you're gonna. You learn a bunch of new topics, but it's really the learning here that's gonna allow you to step out of that W2 and take ownership. Ownership. And with that, I'm going to now pass it along to Alex. Come on out, Alex.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Rylan. Thank you. Cody and Robert. What an amazing session. Am I right? It was just such a great lesson to see how business buying is really about you finding the right business for you. And that's what we want you to do in order to be successful in. In this business mind journey. So what a great session of learning. And let me tell you, we are about to take a lunch break. But don't go yet. Do not go yet. I can see you remember that Samson has already eaten. You're starting lunch a little early, my man. Okay, you're starting lunch a little early in room two, apparently. But we are about to go on a lunch break. But if you guys have that ownership mindset already, if you guys are locked in, you want to work and grow, grind. During this lunch break, I want you to do this. Go to your dashboard. At the bottom of your dashboard, you're going to download the workbook. Okay? Download the workbook. If you have not done so already, by the way, let me just tell you, you should have already downloaded the workbook. But just in case you haven't download that workbook, because it is 79 pages of information and we cannot go through everything, but we want you to work on pages 10 and half a 11. Cody already mentioned them. Okay? She went through them. But now this is time for you to get specific work on page 10 and 11. That's what we're requesting, okay? And also that will keep that momentum going, okay? That momentum will keep going through that lunch break, working on things so we can be very, very prepared for our wonderful afternoon. And I do have one other thing before we go to break. Hey, guys, can we get that information on our slides up here for me? Because VIPs. VIPs. I have something to tell you, rooms one, two, and three, those are our VIPs. You have five minutes before Cody and Rylan start the Q and A. Okay? You are in the right place. You do not have to do anything. We will be live streaming to you in just five minutes. So VIPs room one, two, and three. Three, stay put. You do not have to do anything. We will come to you. Now, if you are in rooms 4, 5, and 6 or you just upgraded to VIP, okay, if you just upgraded to VIP, you will need to leave and then re enter. Okay? If you just upgraded, you need to leave and re enter, you will automatically be assigned your new VIP room for the rest of this event. All right? And also, if you do want to buy vip, this is your last, last chance, okay? This is your last chance to join the Q and A and get lifetime access to these recordings and a chance to win a MacBook Pro. I didn't even know we were doing that. That's amazing. Look, Catherine's hyped. Yeah, you guys want to win a MacBook Pro? Can I upgrade? I would like to upgrade. I would like to upgrade and win that MacBook Pro. So upgrade now. Go on your dashboard, click the link. Okay? Click the VIP upgrade button. Okay? That's going to be on your dashboard. You can upgrade. This is your last chance. But up until now, everyone take some time to refresh. Come back ready for a powerful afternoon with three guest speakers. I am so stoked about these speakers. I'm not going to tell you who they are because it's going to be a surprise when you get back.

All right?

You do not want want to miss anything, okay? Because our speakers are talking about deal origination, how to have confidence in deal making and creative finance. Three very, very powerful speakers coming up this afternoon. So fight the urge to get sucked out of our vortex here right now, okay? Leave the emails and social medias alone. You could do that later tonight after we're done with this live stream. So keep percolating on everything you've learned this morning. And don't just stay seated there. Get up, move your body, drink some water, get hyped. Enjoy your break. 30 minutes. But remember, in 30 minutes, we will be back. And when you hear thunderstruck, that means you need to be ready to get back to learning here at Main Street Millionaire Live. Set your timers. 30 minutes, everybody. 30 minutes starting. I don't have a watch. 30 minutes starting now.