The 7 Figure Opportunity No-one Talks About

If you want to get rich, you shouldn't start a business, you should buy one. What is going to happen to you guys after you learn how to buy a small business? And you're going to see them all around. The truth of the matter is there's 2.5 million small businesses for sale right now in the US and so what if we can learn how to find and buy businesses in a market in which people are closing them instead of selling them? In this market, you're going to find a bunch of people, talk to you about all the reasons why we should be scared, all the reasons why we should be careful. And in my mind, this is the time to learn how to push buy when there's blood in the streets, especially if that blood is your own. Here is how I found one of my very first businesses to buy that basically cost me no money and made my ROI in one month. My goal by the end of this is that you have something so actionable and you can make moves and you can feel confident that the things that you learn today could actually make you a few more zeros. The message that I like to try to bring to rooms like this is that it is not easy. I am not saying this is a get rich quick scheme. In fact, if that's what you're interested in, I'm not your girl. But I do think that there is a way to have income on day one with the lowest failure rate mathematically and they keep it from us. How do you find a business to buy where the owner says thank you when you buy it and they help you fund it? No banks, nobody in the middle. That is the idea today. We'll see if we can actually do that together. When I think about what's stopping most people from buying businesses, it's this. They're like, I don't know where to find a business to buy. I don't know where to look. Nothing's come across my plate. The truth of the matter is there's 2.5 million small businesses for sale right now in the US which is wild. And it's actually bigger than that. We have the entire baby boomer generation aging out of owning these small businesses. Look at these stats. 61% of owners don't know how to sell their small business. We got 10 million that will sell in the next two decade. We've got 75 million baby boomers going to retire and we've got 10 trillion with a T in assets. That's going to change from one generation to the next. Here's the problem, lots of people think that that generation is going to hand down money. Do you know the percent of net worth that most business owners have tied up in their business? 90. So if we don't buy their small businesses, $9 trillion of wealth gets dispersed or gets bought by BlackRock or Blackstone. This is the opportunity we have in front of us. And it's really, really important because the way we will take over that wealth is through business generation. And how do I know? Because I use these four rules I'm going to talk to you guys about today to build my portfolio of a bunch of businesses that have nothing in common with each other for the most part that are all small businesses in my local community. I want you guys to do the same thing. And then I thought, you know, okay, Cody, I did these huge 100 million plus dollar deals when I was in finance. I bought these businesses for myself. Little tiny guys up to bigger businesses. Could I teach other people how to buy business? Like could anybody buy a business? Or there, you know, there are a few people out there that you're like, buddy, it's better you get a job. You know, I was nervous, I didn't know. And then we went out and we taught 5,000 people how to buy a business and just last year they did $262 million in businesses bought. It is totally possible. Thank you. It is totally possible for hard working people who are willing to be a little bit of a masochist and do the miserable thing that is business ownership for you to buy a small business. And so I want you to break that first belief if you've ever been concerned. There's also something really weird happening this year. Look at this number here for a second. 356 companies have filed for bankruptcy in 2024. This is higher than in 2020. What does this mean? It means we have businesses all over this country. How many of you guys have felt this in real estate? It's hard out there right now, right? Feel a little harder this year than it has before. Feel a little harder on business overall, definitely. But when do we make money? Do we make money buying at peak markets or do we make money buying in troughs? Troughs. Baron Rothschild. Buy when there's blood in the streets, especially if that blood is your own. The idea that I see percolating here is that this year is going to be really tough. And so what if we can learn how to find and buy businesses in a market in which people are closing them instead of selling them? Every single business that Closes has some value you can't get out of them. We call them Baby with the Bathwater businesses. So how many of you guys have ever had a business and you shut it down? I have. Mm. When you look inside of your business, what's inside of there? There's client lists inside of that business that you could cross sell to. There's assets inside of that business. Maybe equipment. Maybe there's a lease that's at a lower rate than it ever was before. Hey, there's employees inside that business that already know how to do X and Y and Z. Here. Every single business has a value. And if you guys know how to buy it, that's when you become really, really wealthy. I'm going to break this down real technically about how to buy businesses. Everybody cool with us getting a little technical? All right. I like it. You're into spreadsheets. You're an accountant. Are you ready for this? I'm just enjoying it. Okay, good. All right. I like. You know, you never know. Accountants are cool, too. All right. I call this the. Are you into blondes or are you into brunettes? Before you go and buy a business, a lot of people ask me this question. They say, how do I know which business to buy? I don't know what business I should buy. I don't know what I should do next. What's the best business to buy, Cody? And I tell them this, that your biggest problem is actually you don't know what the fuck you want. You're this guy. You're walking around like Neo in the Matrix. On your mission, girl in the red dress. He looks. And then you die. And the thing that kills you is not your competitors, but it's your lack of focus. And by you, I mean me, too. It happens to every single one of us. So we call this deal clarity. Or your deal box. If you know what you want, it's a hell of a lot easier to find it. The problem is that for most people, we think that confusion is good because clarity limits. Right? Clarity seems to put some sort of ring around what we want. And that might be scary because what if I want the wrong thing? But I want to push you a little bit on here to go narrow, not wide. And let's talk about why. Remember this guy? This rich guy? This is Charles Koch, One of the richest guys in the world. And interestingly enough, one of the biggest funders of politics in the US him and his brother and his father. What's interesting about Charles is, look how he made his billions. Toilet paper. What else we got. We got napkins, we've got some energy down here at the bottom, we've got household products. Does any of this scream sexy or Silicon Valley? No. Does this scream tech dating apps? No. What did this guy know? How did he make so much money on something that has a margin of less than 3%, which is what napkins and toilet paper have? Could you please imagine that for a second? Imagine for a second that your business, if your client gave you a dollar, you only got 3 cents back, would your businesses right now survive? Fuck no. That's terrible. Even Walmart has a 6% margin. But he was able to grow an empire. Why? Because he knew exactly what his deal box is. And that is what I want for you guys. Now, the better question to ask instead of what kind of business should I buy? Is what kind of business is right for me? I call this the Goldilocks effect. So there's sort of four main things that matter in figuring out a business to buy. The first one is how much time do you want to spend both finding the deal and inside of the business? The second question is, how much money do you want to put up or do you want somebody else to put up for the business? The third is risk. What percentage of what you already have and what you may have in the future are you willing to sacrifice for this business? And the fourth is what does that combination look like in a little soup just for you? A lot of people confuse business buying with these big spreadsheets trying to figure out what future forecasted cash flow looks like. But they don't actually understand the main ingredients to the thing they're making. And that's not going to be you guys. Now, this is slightly technical, but here's how I think about deal clarity. And this is a decent point to take a picture with your phone if you want it. So when you go to buy a business, three things that matter what you want personally. Like, what kind of business do I want to run? Where do I want it to be located? Second, how much money do I want to make? How many of you guys do business and lose money? It's just your charity, Nobody, right? Your business has to make you a certain amount of money. And third is can it better the things that you already do? If everybody in here already has a business, a job, et cetera, what if you buy a business that gives you an outcome, unfair advantage in the thing you already do? So you start out with your ideal owner experience. Then we go to your zone of genius, and then you go to your current business and figure out how can we pull the two together for one plus one to equal three. This is how pros buy businesses that are profitable to them, even at a 3% margin. So we're going to start with this and here's how this goes. Most people give me a goal that's really broad. When they say I want to buy a small business, they say, I want to leave my 9 to 5. I want 100,000 in income for my business. I want a million dollar business. I want you to replace your deal clarity with something like this. I want to replace my income with a cash flowing business because we buy realities and profits, not hopes and dreams that will pay me 120,000 plus, let's say insert your number whether you want to operate the business or not, for what period of time, with what kind of plan to exit. And finally, what is the why that drives the fact that we all sit in this room, at some point you're going to have enough cash and you want to make sure that the business doesn't just support your ego, it supports whatever your bigger vision for life is. So before you even think about buying a business, I want you to have a little paragraph like this. And then we go into what I call your zone of genius. It's three things when you buy a business. It's what skills and experience do you bring, what can you not sleep for the want of doing, AKA your passion. And who do you know that can make this a fuck yes? No matter what happens in the business, how can you make your first acquisition so seamless that you do a second and a third? Here's how I think about it. When you think about passion here, here are the questions you should ask yourself. Most people when they go to buy a small business, they go, cody, you bought laundromats and car washes. What do you think? I'm going to buy laundromats and car washes, Right? That's what everybody says to me. But in fact, what I want you to do is think about who are you uniquely as a human and ask yourself these questions. And then I want you to ask yourself something a little bit deeper. So let's take you for instance. What's your name? Jonathan. What are you good at? I'm pretty good with repairing garage doors manually with my hands. I love it. So he says, I'm pretty good with repairing garage doors with your, your hands. First of all. Pretty good or are you really good? I could do it with my could do it. He says he can do it with his eyes closed. I like that. I like that line better. Okay, so you are very handy. And is that something you use in your business right now? Yeah. Okay. And so in your business today, one of your main skills is, hey, I can actually do the work. I can operate this business with my hands. Yeah. Okay. What's your second main skill? Are you really good at sales? Are you good at marketing? Customer service. So when you get one customer, they want to stay with you because you treat them right. Maybe you treat them like the only customer you might ever have. Good value. I like it. Okay, so for you, when you're looking at a small business, what would one of your businesses that would be interesting for you look like? It might be one? What is the business you do again today? Garage door installations, repairs and replacements. I love it. So what's the name of your company? All Roads Garage doors. All Roads Garage doors. He does garage replacement. So right now, if I'm looking at your unique skill set, it's going to be 1. I already run a boring business, Cody. 2. In a nation of people where they don't even know who to call when something gets broken, I actually know how to fix shit. Right, that's you. Three, you can probably talk to the operators who are every day inside of a business doing the fixing, right? How many other people that aren't friendly, you know, that don't do what you do, come into, your guys, try to talk to them, and your guys don't respect them at all because they don't actually know how to fix things. That's not you. So that's three. And then four. You know how to bring customer in and keep them cool. So when you're out looking at a new business, would you want to do a business that is a tech business? No, not in your skillset and son of genius, would you want to do a business that has no sales at all? Probably not, because you're actually good at keeping clients, but maybe not getting them. So you might want a business where they're really good at getting them and you get to keep them. Right? This is what it means to understand what your skill set is and then finally your network. And this is a game you guys can play in this room today, which is if you wanted to buy a maintenance or garage installation business, you now got a guy in this room. When you go and buy a small business, there are three people you need on your team. You need an accountant, you need an attorney, and you need a subject matter expert in your sector. So if I was going to Go buy an accounting firm. And I don't know any accountants. I'm going to have a lot more risk. So I want you guys to think about who is in your network. And like they say, six degrees of Kevin Bacon. Most humans can triangulate their way to another person. So now we understand our deal clarity sheet. There's a QR code at the end. All of these little sheets on here are going to be for free for you guys at the end. If you take a picture of the QR code, it'll get sent to you. This is called our deal clarity worksheet. And what this basically does is asks you all the questions, just like a dating profile for you to find the business that you want to buy. But the last thing that I want you guys to think about with the type of business you. You want to buy is this line from. You guys know who this is? The sage of Omaha, Warren Buffet eating a popsicle, which just to me, you know, kind of, I feel like that's what he does. I feel like that's what he does on the weekend. So, as he says, never invest in a business you can't understand. Now, let's play a little game. I bought a company that built autonomous ships. Or I bought part of it. Is that a good deal or a bad deal? Do I look like I know autonomous ships? I should go straight to jail for this business. This business is in Forbes. It's an incredible business. It's going to do millions in revenue. No, the answer is straight to jail. Because I don't know anything about autonomous ships. So I should never buy this business. What about this? I bought a company that fuels athletes using new protein synthesis techniques. Is that a good business? Not if I don't know shit about new protein synthesis techniques, which I do not. Or have a fitness background that's also straight to jail. Cody should not buy this business. The moral of the story is your second biggest business buying problem is that you think you're smarter than you are. This is why most people lose money in deals. And you see it again and again and again. We fall for the sexy, and we forget about the profitable. And so when you're buying a business, I want you to think, Can I explain it in one sentence to my grandmother? I fix garages. Nana's got it. She understands. I buy and build autonomous ships. I don't know. Probably not. You need an accountability buddy to hold you responsible for this. And you need what's called a deal box. We've talked about this, right? So your deal box. Helps you constrain the things you want in your life first. In my deal box, I like to obsess on how much money I'm going to make the first couple segments. Then I like to obsess on how much money I'm going to spend. If I make sure at the end of the day that the amount of money that I'm going to make and the amount of money that I'm going to spend are correct. I have negated about 80% of the risk in buying a business. So you can seal my homework and you can take a picture of the deal box. The truth of the matter in investing is if you remember one thing, it's that the right tools limit mistakes. So every time you can get your hands on somebody else's spreadsheet, you take it. Now there's one other aspect of buying a business that most people don't think about. So in real estate, you have on market and off market deals, right? You could go to Zillow, you could go to mls, or you could go door knock. It's the same in buying businesses. There's a difference between the two though for everyday humans. If you want to buy an on market deal, what do you think the difference is between the two? More options if you go off market. Right? Way more options. Less options if you go on market, but a lot faster. So when you're thinking about your business to buy, a lot of people obsess on this idea of I got to go find an independent business, I have to find an unlisted business. The truth of the matter is, do you want to take a lot of time up front or do you want to take a lot of time on the back end? And that is how you determine which avenue you're going to take for buying your business. Now I want to reap one more time on this narrow your deal box idea. So this guy's name is Brett. He was in our community and he said this line, which is the biggest pivot for me is when I realize that it doesn't really matter the size, it matters exactly what business I want to buy. The second you know what you want, it comes into your life. The yellow Ferrari comes your way. And so if you leave with nothing else today but an idea to buy a business and a specific range, you're farther than 99% of people. I really think of this just like searching for a house. You can use filters to slim down what you want and you can narrow your business search. But if you don't actually know what you're looking for, it's a hell of a lot harder. Which is why a lot of people in life run around like what my mentor talked about, that famous chicken in the head. The reason why you don't have what you want isn't you're not working hard enough on it. It's that you haven't clearly defined and then taken action to get what you want. One of my favorite mentors told me a story once. He was like, I sat down. You guys do this at the end of every year, I do an annual goal review, right? So I sat down and every year, me and my husband, we write out our goals and we say, here's what we're going to accomplish this year. You guys do that. Okay, great. I do it too. And then I realized one year that I was only hitting about 60% of my goals. Does that relate to anybody else? So I thought about what was the difference between the two. And I was talking to my mentor, who's a billionaire, about how he does it, and he said this to me. He was like, you write down your goals. He's like, don't show me what you want. Write down what you're willing to sacrifice to get it. I thought about that for a second and I was like, you're right. The world is full of people who want things, and the world is short on people willing to do what it takes. And so I changed my, my strategy. Now every year when I write goals, I write sacrifices instead. And that one change made me millions of dollars. Because the truth of the matter is most people make decisions and they never turn them into habits. So they never become skills and they never change their life. If right now you said, cody, I need to find a business in the next 30 days to buy, I want to find a business where the seller will give me seller financing in order to buy the business. How would we do it? Ready? Go. Here's what we're going to do. First, we're going to determine do I want an on or an off market deal. Am I willing to go do the quote unquote door knocking or am I going to find an on market deal? If we're going to find an on market deal, that means these businesses already know they want to sell. They're listed, and they're on sites like Zillow, which is Biz Buy Sell. Biz Scout is a business that we own, Florida Flippa, E Commerce Flippers. And then the second is off market deals. This is a business like, let me play this game really quick. How many People in here own a business. Keep your hand up if you own a business. Okay? How many people who own a business would sell your business at the right price and the right terms? Look around the room right now. Nobody lowers their hand. One person does. Liar. Just kidding. But seriously, every single business owner has a dark night, right? How many of you guys have had your business for a while and you have had that moment where you can't make fucking payroll. Anybody had that before? Had that moment where the worst thing in your life was this business that you started? Had that moment where you're ready for the next thing, but you are tied to it like a woman you don't want to date. How many of you have had that moment? Of course you have. That is the moment in which you find your seller of a small business. That's called an off market deal. All an off market deal necessitates is some funny looking dude willing to go do the uncomfortable thing, which is to say these words. Hi, I'm Cody and I buy businesses. What kind of businesses? Small businesses located in Austin, Texas. Lot of laundromats, car washes. Businesses that do less than a million dollars where the owner's looking to sell. They've been in business for like 10 years or more. I like to make sure the businesses are profitable. Do you run a business like that? Oh, you do? We should talk. You're going to find this fascinating thing, which is that most business owners have never talked to somebody about potentially selling. And then you come into their lives and that's a really special moment. So at this point you've realized, all right, am I going on market or am I going off market? That's the easy part. That is the easy part. But if we're searching for on market deals, here's what I want you to think about. One, go use other people's homework. These two business sites are the number one places to find small businesses for sale. If you want to go find them, you do have to dig through them like a needle in a haystack. Especially biz. By sell, we are building something to compete against biz. Buy Sell. It's called biz scout. That should be out in the next six months or so. You can get on the wait list on there. It's not something I talk about publicly yet, but the idea is we make the off market short chain a lot easier for you guys. Once you find your business listings on sale, there's this beautiful thing that's very easy and I want to get to it really quickly. I call it the 2060, 120 method. Almost everybody I've ever taught to buy a business can do it within 120 days. And here's how. 20 minutes a day for 60 days until you look at at least 100, 120 high level businesses. And once you've looked at 120 high level businesses, you'll screen them down to about 10 businesses that fit inside of your deal box. 20, 61, 20. There's a wild truth to this, which is you creating a habit is contagious. And if you do that every single day for an extended period, I think your life will change. Look at this number here for a second. 65% more likely to meet a goal after committing to a partner to do it with. How many of you guys ever try to work out, get in shape? Doesn't really do much. You hire a trainer, all of a sudden you fit. Does that happen to you guys? If you actually want to buy a business, if you actually want to make whatever change you decide from these last two days that you've been here, I urge you to leave with one thing. A human who's going to call you a piece of shit if you don't do what you say you're going to do. Okay, so find your accountability partner. Now what does good accountability look like? It's not that crazy. I call it the P's. You need a partner, you need a plan, which could be following up once a week, every Friday. You need a purpose in order to buy a small business inside of the next nine months. Needs to be periodic. Once a week, twice a month. You've got to have some goal that feels worth it to you. And I like when you put money on the line and hey, if I don't do this, I owe you 100 bucks. You got to have some benefit if you do the thing you say you're going to do. Hey, if I do this, I'm allowed to go out and have a wild night. And finally, you've got to have some ability to pass on whatever you've learned to somebody else. That's where you hand it off to the next accountability partner. If you want to change in your life, you have to have the peace. You're 65% more likely to do the thing you say you're going to do. Now let's talk off market deals for a second. I was taught by my mentor in private equity that my secret weapon was finding businesses before they knew they wanted to sell. I just did it with you guys. Theoretically, if I wanted To I could have kept all of your hands up and said, go around and tell me what businesses you do. And by the end of it, with all of you guys in the room, I probably would have a deal. That was interesting to me. And you guys could do that in every single interaction. Because the truth of the matter is this is a numbers game. How many of you guys would be successful in sales if you didn't have high reps every day, at least in the beginning of your sales career. Love it. Not a single hand. Look around the room. Not one. And yet the biggest reason why most people aren't successful is they don't know what they want. They don't tell you what they're willing to sacrifice to get it, and then they don't make the discipline, the habit to do it. That's not going to be you guys. So I truly believe this line. You either search or you attract. The first to search is pretty easy. You're already here. If you want to find a chick and you're trying to date somebody, do you think you go to a Muay Thai gym or a BJJ gym to go find somebody to date who's a woman? Not if you're good at math. Have you been to those places? It's like 10% chicks, 90% really testosterone filled dudes. Where would you go if you want wanted to find a woman, then you were single. Pilates, yoga, not rocket science. And yet what do most dudes do? They're like, I'm on Tinder and it's not working out right. We're not going to do the same thing when we buy businesses. We're going to get into rooms like this where owners already are. Because you are now in a Pilates studio. As a single man being here, the more you do this, the more likely you are to buy a small business because you've already seen that all time. The all around you are owners ready to sell right now, Today, it's like you're walking a neighborhood full of houses that are unlisted. Think about this for a second. In the US right now, there are 11 businesses for sale on average. How many businesses of those 11 do you think sell in one year? How many of the 11? 2, 1, 1? Can you imagine a street even in like Detroit, right, where there's 11 houses on a block and only one sells in a year. It doesn't happen. And yet all around you, you are sitting at a generational wealth creation event. Now I want to play one really quick little game. You guys want to Try a challenge with me. Okay. The game is called your personal P and L review. So I know there's a bunch of owners in this room right now. Here is how I found one of my very first businesses to buy that basically cost me no money and made my ROI in one month. Month. Here's what we're going to play. Okay, the idea is this. What if you made money every time you spent money? That'd be cool, right? I like that idea. So where are there small businesses that you can get to the owner that you already spend on? How do you think you could do that? Go to your dry cleaner. Go to your dry cleaner. I like that. So he's using what I call my geographic COI strategy. So where's my center of influence? And can I go around to my geography? It's an inflation. Interesting idea. What else could you do? Call local businesses. So I would sort of think about that like this. He's going concentric circle. People I already know. You're going a little bit wider. You're going people I don't really know. Fuck. Yeah, that's exactly right. You're already spending. You're already a customer. When you guys have customers, do you typically answer your customers emails and telephone calls? Do you respond back to them? You have a group of people all around you that you are already engaging with that you could potentially buy their small business. So let's look at what this looks like. You could pull up your Venmo right now. You could pull up your PayPal. You could pull up your Amex bill. This is a fake Amex bill. In case any of you guys want to get crazy and try to take all my money. So here's what you do. You'd open up your credit card statement. You'd see what do you spend on. You'd see which one are vendors, local businesses, which ones can you get to the owner? Probably. Probably not. Bezos, we're going to have to go a little bit lower. Are they profitable? So for instance, if you reach out to your dry cleaner, are they profitable or not? Well, they've been in business for 20 years. That's probably a pretty good sign. Which one of these would you want to own? And then you start working the process. And the process goes like this. You have a little spreadsheet who do spend revenue value add. So in this particular instance, who. I'm going to walk through what these are, but this is the business name. What do they do? Podcast production. How much monthly or. Apparently I don't speak English. Do you spend $3,000 with them. Total revenue. How much revenue do they make in general and what do they do and what value can you add to the business? And I want you to run this down your Amex bill. Now, a couple different parameters are size, can I get to the owner? Do I want to own it? To simplify, this is how I bought 50% of Strike Fire Productions for $10,000. And I'll show you the transaction. So I told you we were going to get to spreadsheets. So this was 2021. I bought Strike Fire Productions for $10,000 for 50% of the company I ended up making. You can see it down here at the bottom, the payouts. So anywhere monthly from, let's call it five to $8,000, I was making about every 2,000 weeks in the company. Why would somebody sell me a business for 10k? 50% of it, that's going to ROI back to me completely in 30 days. Why do you think he would do that? Super dumb. No. What else? Doesn't know how to run his business? Desperate. Missing a team could be. What's the number one reason you will do something in your business? Greed. You want to make more money, right? You want your business to grow. There's three ways to get a business for almost $0 with just a little bit of your time. The first way is make them more money. The second way, what do you think it is? Cut costs, save them money. The third, decrease pain, which is operations. Make it not miserable to run their business. In this instance, I said, hey, dude, you got a podcast production company and it makes, you know, let's call it 30 to $40,000 a month profit. And how's business going? Jonathan's like, ah, business is kind of like, okay, it's not great. I'm like, what's not great about it? He's like, I'd like more clients, but I hate selling. At which point I'm like, ding, ding, ding. All the salespeople in the room. I hate selling. Selling. Interesting. Okay, how much do you do in revenue a month? You know, I run a business and I do X. What do you do? You give them a little bit, they give a little bit. He goes, well, you know, we do, I don't know, 70, $80,000 a month in revenue. I have a 50% ish margins on that business. I'm like, that's pretty good. But you don't want to grow the business. He goes, I do, but I'm really bad at it. I really like the actual operations and podcast or Production of the business. Cool. Hey, Jonathan, what would you say if I double it? Your monthly revenue in your small business? Would you let me invest in the business and own a percentage of the amount that I bring in for your business? If I bring in nothing, I'll give you 10k. I own nothing. If I bring in a lot, I own a commensurate percentage of the business. And you didn't make any money on that anyway. What do you think he said, yeah, let's do it. And this is a tiny little business. But I show this example because you can do this with huge businesses and you can do it with small businesses as long as you understand the game. It's also how I bought out half of my partner at Unconventional Acquisitions over six months and used the company's revenue to pay for it. Now, I like to show this image because most times in business there is something dragging us back. And one of my favorite lessons from my dad is your biggest mistake in business won't be an action taken. It'll be a human chosen. How many times have you had a huge mistake in your business, but it had a face in a name? A lot. That's right. Anybody who's been in business knows the hardest part about a business isn't profits. It's people. And so the one caveat I want for you guys before you buy a business is make sure you're not Leia chained to Java the Hut. And so before you go out of here being like, Cody told me how to buy a business, it turns out I don't know at all how to do diligence on a business, but I know how to find one. I don't want you to buy a Java. The worst thing that you could do in life is buy a business badly and have your first deal go wrong. Why, if your first deal goes wrong, are you ever going to do a second? No. You're gonna think you're bad at doing deals and deal making is bad. So I want you to watch out for Java. But if you were gonna buy a business with a personal P and L review, you guys could pull out your credit card right now and you could follow your process. You pull up Venmo, your credit card, you pull the list of all the people you pay currently. You ask yourself, would you want to own part of their business? You have a combo with them about how big their business is, what are their pain points, and you write up an offer for the small business. And this is how you buy businesses without any cash. I think the truth of the matter is most people think that to invest money you have to have money, but you don't. You can show up with $0 if you want to learn, if you want to network and if you want to do the work. The problem is most people don't want to do the work. Okay, the last thing that I'm going to tell you about is called the nine to fiver strategy. The nine to five. How many people here are employed like a W2 employee? Okay, we got a couple of you guys. So the cool part about the nine to fiverr strategy is you have right now in your hands potentially a business to buy. It might be the business that you work in. My uncle E.B. for instance, he had a business called E.B. home Plumbing. The business did 3 million. No, no, did 5 to 6 million dollars in revenue. About $3 million dollars in profit per year. One year, my uncle A.B. got a phone call. The phone call was a terrible six letter word cancer. He was in his 70s. He didn't have very long to live. He had a profitable business and what do you think he decided to do with it when he got that phone call? Closed it. He shut down a business that did $3 million in profit, which was probably worth 6 to 9 million dollars. Why? He had no fucking idea anybody would buy this thing. He was an old school guy with a plumbing business that had no idea. If he had one employee that came to him and said, hey, eb, I want to continue your legacy. I don't have the money to buy this business, but man, I respect what you've built. Is there any way that you would help me fund the acquisition of this business through future project profits and I'll take on the liabilities of the business, what do you think? I would say yes. Beautiful. Carry on my legacy. And instead of that, a business shut down. And that is happening all around this country. So I want to show you one more. This is Jade. She just bought a business that makes $1.5 million a year in revenue. How much money does she put down for that business? $0. Jade is former military. Do they make a lot of money? No. Why could she buy a business like this? Because she was trusted, because she respected, and because she would carry on somebody else's legacy. If you guys in the audience are an employee now and you are with a small business, but you are not talking to that owner about legacy and transition, I think you're missing out. Anybody know who this guy is? This is Bill Perkins. Bill Perkins is close to a billionaire. He wrote a Book called Die with Zero. He's become a mentor and investor in a bunch of deals alongside me. And something crazy happened to me the first time I hung out with Bill Perkins. We're walking along the lake. Do you guys think I've been pretty successful with the stuff that you have heard from me before? Does it seem like I've done okay thus far? Right? I did all right, I think. And I'm like, oh, no, stop, stop. So I thought I was doing pretty good, right? This is just a few years ago. I'm walking along Bill's lake house, lakefront. He has this beautiful, like, I don't know, 30 million dollar property on Lake Austin. We're walking along and I'm explaining to Bill my huge idea, my big idea. Have you guys ever, like, gone home to your partner, your wife, or your husband and you have, like, some really exciting, crazy idea for them and you are all amped up and you explain to them your idea and they just, like, all over it. Anybody done that? You know, I think it's our job as wives. You know, my husband calls me Captain. No. So anyway, so I have this big idea. I tell it to Bill. Bill pauses and he looks at me and he goes, do you think that you have been around small businesses for so long that small has infected your thinking? Yikes. Yikes. And so I kind of paused and initial reaction is like, oh, well, you can go suck a goat or something like that. And instead, I paused and I said, I'm not sure I want to think about that for a second. But Bill did a huge favor to me that day. He planted this, like, little seed in my head that said, don't you think you're capable of more than that? Like, with. With what you have and what you're willing to do, can't you do more? I think this day and age, we have all these people who get on stages and they tell us, like, you're so good. Go queen. Keep going. And in fact, sometimes the best thing you can have happen is be in a room like this and have somebody look you in the eye and say, you are not doing enough. That when you stand before God at the end of your days, you will not be able to say, I gave it all I got. I have nothing left. And that is my biggest fear in life. And what I do not want for all of you, I want you to ring dry every single ounce of talent that you have. Because it's a beautiful feeling when you do. And probably because I think this country needs it. And if we don't do it. Who will? How many people? How many people in the US own a business? Do you guys know what percent3.3% of people in the US own a small business. Only 10% of any small business will hit a million dollars a year in revenue. 10%.4% will ever hit $10 million revenue. You are already incredibly rare for being in this room. If you do not ring dry, what happens? Who shows up? And when I go around today and I see what is happening to business storefronts in this country, I see what the sidewalks look like, I see how much they take in your tax dollars. And the potholes are bigger than the fucking Sierras. Not okay. And yet in a room like this, are all of you humans with the ability to change it. Let me tell you what sucks today. You couldn't pay me enough money to go into politics. You couldn't pay me enough. It was a miserable job. And so if we don't want to be in politics, we gotta at least fund the people who are going to believe in your ability to be sovereign yourself and to be an owner. You guys don't need babysitters, you guys don't need politicians who have never built anything telling you what to do, telling you where to put your money. And so I want to press upon you this one kind of crazy idea, which is when the market continues to fall as it will be, the people who buy become the next Cerberus, push back on the black rocks and black stones of the world and become better than the people on high who want to push us all down. Because I think the truth of the matter is really nobody is coming to save us. Nobody. And no matter who, who's president on either side of the line, they're not coming either. And so if we know that to be true, what are we going to do about it? Today my answer is buying businesses. Your answer may be something else. And that is okay as long as you wring it dry. And so as much as I don't want to get up here and proselytize to you guys about more work because it sucks being an owner, often nobody else is going to do it. We as a country are not where we want to be because we have not done what is necessary to get there individually and collectively. I'm really public on social media. And I was telling a few people backstage, I have a mission that by the end of my days, when I stand before my God and I see that tombstone, I want on it, that I created owners in this country that's my mission. Thank you. I want on it that I created owners. And so I want to know when you buy that business, when you do your next deal, when you win. My whole point is to celebrate you and then for you to reach your hand down and pull that next motherfucker up. And so please reach out to me as you build and as you grow, I want to know you. You are rare. And I don't want you to ever forget that, because every single moment, they're gonna make you feel like you're not enough. You can't. You won't. And they are lying for the first time ever in this country. And I get goosebumps thinking about it. Can't you feel it? They're a little scared, aren't they? They're scared of us because this country is starting to wake up, and we are now able to see what's going on with a media that's not controlled. And so I think for the first time ever, we are at a tipping point of how we will decide how this country and where I'll end is. Is anybody here from Venezuela or Argentina? Okay. You know, I was in Argentina when Christina Fernandez took over. I had a business there that did hundreds of millions of dollars in assets under management, not revenue. And I was building it up. I wanted to build one of my first billion dollar businesses there. Christina Fernandez took office, and maybe 60, 90 days later, she outlawed our business. We had to flee the country, and it became illegal to have external investments, which was US dollar denominated investments. In 90 days, my business was gone. Gone. And sometimes I think with this country that we're in right now, we have moments where we get a little close to that. And I think we're actually, for the first time ever in what I would call, I am optimistically discontent that in this room, we have the weirdest of things. We have a generational wealth creation event in that the baby boomers are transitioning their businesses. We have a market that's falling a bit, which means prices are coming down. We have an elite that for the first time ever, are getting revealed because the media is no longer centralized. And we've got a group of humans who now know how to buy businesses without banks. And we know that ownership is the answer to everything because money is what creates political power. And so I want you to sit with that and know that you are powerful beyond measure, and I hope you wring every ounce drive. Thank you so much for having me today.