Brad Costanzo 🥓 Building A Huge Network / Buying Companies For No Money Down

This is an intro, intro, intro, intro.

Hustle and Flowchart with your boy, my.

Boy, Matt Wolf, Joe Fear. Hey.

Hey, what's up, everyone? Welcome back to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. My name is Matt Wolf. I'm here with my business partner, Joe Fear.

Hola.

And today we've got another awesome guest and this is one that we've been really, really excited about because he actually does a lot of very similar things in his business to the way we do things in our business and a lot of similar philosophies. And you're going to hear a lot of that on this chat today where we discuss a lot of these similar philosophies. Today we've got Brad Costanzo on the show and he's a serial entrepreneur. He's a direct marketing strategist. He's a business consultant. He's one of the most well networked guys I know. He's got a killer podcast called the Bacon Wrapped Business Podcast. And he's just doing so much cool stuff and we can't wait to dive in with him. So thanks so much for joining us today.

Thanks for having me. I've been a big fan of you guys and the stuff you guys put out as well. It's so refreshing compared to a lot of the hype and BS that you hear with other thank you, man folks out there. So no, it's.

I'm gonna say though, you have the best titled podcast.

Thank you. Thank you.

Probably, yeah. I mean, I thought we were good, but Bacon, Come on, Bacon.

You know the funny story, everybody asks, like, why did you name it Bacon Wrapped Business? And you know Lo Silva, familiar with the name.

Don't know him personally.

I don't know. So he's another marketer. He's a good friend of mine. And this is like three. Cause I've been doing the show for over three years. But I remember when he. He had a podcast and he asked me to share one of the episodes. So I just jumped on on Facebook. I was like, yo, check out Los's new episode about, you know, whatever. This is some bacon wrapped business advice if I've ever heard it. And those words just came out of me. And I looked at it and I was like, bacon wrapped business advice. And at the same time, somebody else was telling me to start a podcast, like, yeah, you should do this. And I'm like, yeah, but I just don't want to do the Brad Costanzo show because, like, I wouldn't listen to that famous. So.

A week later, my friend Nick Unsworth, you guys probably know Nick. He. He. He had a podcast and he asked me to be on Life on Fire, and I told him the same story. So he's like, yeah, so you're gonna launch it? I was like, yeah, I'll probably launch it. So we do the episode and he. He brings it up. He's like, so, Brad, you've got a new podcast launching, right? What's it called? And I. I just went with it. I was like, bacon wrap business.

Yeah.

Cool. Where can they find it? I go, b. And I had no idea if the URL was available, by the way.

Oh, man.

No idea. And we were done and, you know, high fived each other. This was in person. And I was like, okay, so when does this come out? Because I was just on John Lee Dumas's podcast, and he was like, okay, this will come out in two months from now. So I thought, I'd like two months. Get ready to go. And he goes, no, this comes out in 10 days. And I go, what? He goes, yeah, you've got to launch a podcast in 10 days. I'm like, you mofo.

That's a perfect way to light a fire, though.

Oh, man, it did. I was just like. I just figured it out what I had to do, and it just kind of all came together. What was cool about that is I'm not a specialist in any specific area of marketing necessarily. I mean, I'm a specialist at marketing when you look at business in general, but I'm not a specialist. I'm not the best Facebook advertiser. I'm not the best copywriter. I'm not the best this, that, and the other. But. And that's why I also didn't name it bacon wrapped marketing. But I wanted it to give me an opportunity to get out there and have conversations with people that I wanted to connect with anyway and pick their brains in a way that was cool and not douchey and just let me explore and see where it went. And then the whole concept of bacon wrap business gave me the opportunity to just have fun and be a little bit cheeky and cheesy if I wanted to.

Yeah, that's awesome. And everybody knows everything is better when it's wrapped in bacon. So why wouldn't business be.

Yeah, go for it.

Oh, I was just gonna ask. So let's give our audience a quick rundown of sort of what your business is and, I guess what you're known for, what you want to be known for in your business.

What I want to be known for actually what I do. So this is one of the hardest questions to answer, as I mentioned offline. So I oftentimes refer to myself as an opportune because I do not fit in any one box. I do not have one business. I've had that business before. I've had a couple of businesses at a time where then I built those up decently and I sold them to different investor groups. And. And that was cool. I didn't get, like, you know, retire in Bali money, but it was cool. And then I started consulting and just using a lot of the direct response and digital marketing knowledge. I knew over the past few years to go deep in consulting with now friends of mine and other people to kind of come in as a marketing strategist and say, look, here's all the things that you could be doing to better optimize what you're doing. And they kind of saw me as the. And I acted like the quarterback. So they weren't just hiring me for Facebook. They weren't usually hired. People didn't hire me because they knew exactly what they wanted to do. They hired me because they wanted to grow and they wanted to figure this out, and they wanted a better holistic marketing strategy. And that's kind of one of my strengths. I'm a very proud jack of all trades and a generalist, and that allows me to bring in the specialists, that allows me to know just enough to say, hey, we need some content marketing, we need some Facebook advertising. We need some conversion optimization. And. And I got you, bro. Like, I know who the people are, and I can get them in your.

Connectors, more or less.

Yeah, so, exactly. So that has been. And by the way, the podcast has been an unbelievable way for me to develop those resources, because anytime, for instance, I just had, you know, a YouTube, one of the top YouTube experts in the world out there on the show Derral Eves. And I contacted Darrel because there was some things I wanted to know more about. So I contacted him. But I also did it because he. If I come across a client or a friend or a prospect who needs that, I was like, I got you, bro. I got the person for you. So it allows me to have that as a resource, but then it also allows me, like, I've hired a lot of my past guests to do work for me or for clients. But, yeah, so the consulting I do, it's very deep. It's boutique consulting. I go deep into a company strategy. I don't have some productized service. I don't have a um, you know, not that there's anything wrong with this, but I don't have a glorified info product that I charge $10,000 a month and call it consulting. Right, right, right. You know, you have no idea what I'm talking about, right?

Never heard of that.

I've never seen anybody do that ever.

So.

So what's the bigger driver than with consulting? I know you kind of, you know, kind of talked about this offline a little bit to us, but what's your big why, like, where are you headed with the consulting itself?

You know, what I like to do with my consulting is see where else I can take them. So recently I've done consulting for equity, and I like to consult for things that have potentially much bigger opportunities as opposed to just a paycheck because, you know, I'm not in this business. The one bad part about having a consulting business, depending on the kind of business you're doing, is you have a whole lot of bosses, right? If you're actually performing a service for people, you got a whole bunch of bosses to answer to. And it gets a little bit. It gets a little bit crazy. Yeah, exactly. But the kind of consulting that I like to do are the ones where I think that.

I can either do this for a much bigger piece of the pie, whether it's profit share, whether it's equity, or whether it's the opportunity to purchase the company, which is one of the big areas that I've been doing recently is in certain cases, if a client comes to me or a prospect comes to me and we're able to talk about what they need. If I think that this is something that I have the ability to.

To capitalize on, I try to get control of the company in one way or another. And that might mean buying the company, that might mean accessing something they have or getting the rights to it. It's very Jay Abraham esque, which is like, how do I get the control of an asset and decide what to do with it later?

And one of my marquee clients is a. He's a guy named Jesse Itzler. And he is.

The reason I decided to work with him. He's the best selling New York Times best selling author of a book called living with a 31 days training with the Toughest man on the Planet. But what was really amazing was his business backstory. How he went from being a rapper on mtv, a white Jewish rapper, to being, you know, selling a sports music company to a public company, starting Markey Jet Card Company, selling it to Warren Buffett helping to co, found, or partner with Zico Coconut Water and sell it to Coca Cola. Buying the Atlanta Hawks. And I'm like, dude, this guy is like the most interesting man in the world.

Married, Married to Sarah Blakely, founder of.

Spanx, billionaire, youngest billionaire and female billionaire. Yeah. So the reason I'm working with him, not only because I love his message and I love what he's doing, but there's a lot of really big opportunities there that. So I choose my clients by who I want to work with, who I love to work with, and who I think I can really move the needle for, while at the same time looking for opportunities to build and acquire assets.

So I've always got my eyes open for what? The opportunity. Going back to that word, the opportune. Right. What are the big opportunities that I can play with? Because I do. I get very bored with one business for any long period of time.

Yeah, for sure. Now, earlier when we were talking, you mentioned actually buying businesses with no money down. I don't know if that's something that you want to talk about or even able to talk about, but we'd love to hear more about that.

Sounds pretty sexy.

No, I'm happy to. So this. And if anybody out. This goes beyond just consultants, but it definitely goes to consultants as well, which is.

Most people don't ask.

I jokingly say, I almost don't want to reveal this because it's so blindingly easy. If everybody did it, it might ruin some opportunities, but most people won't do it. Which is if you're talking to a business owner or a client, especially you're a marketing agency, ask the question you ever thought about selling or what's your exit strategy? Just simply asking that question will open up a.

You know, just a crazy amount of opportunities. Because most people never ask that. Especially because most people don't even think that, well, I could never buy this guy's company. Like, I couldn't do that. I wouldn't know what to do with it. You don't have to. No. You just have to see if the door will open because you may know people that will. I've never purchased a company before. I've sold a couple companies, but I've never purchased one. And this month, I'm under contract to buy two businesses. One's doing, you know, several million dollars a year. One's doing a lot less than that. But I also know that I have the ability to bring in the people to do the stuff that I need. And as a marketing generalist, It's a lot easier for me to take something that's already got momentum and, and add value to it as opposed to start something from scratch. I hate, I've learned to hate the word startup. It's a four letter word for me, like literally hate it.

Like we've been in our, they're horrible. I mean there's just a lot of, there's just so much work stress, money outlay, you know, emotions between partners or whatever.

The worst part about the startup culture that I hated was the whole decision by committee sort of aspect of it. Shit did not move unless, you know, five people all agreed on it, you know, and that, that was, that was the worst part for me working in the startup world in the past.

Yeah, well, and you know, but conversely that could also be the case if you're working with a very established business. They've got a marketing department, they've got their entrenched way of doing stuff, so you can run into that anywhere but you know, kind of circling back to the buying a business for no money down or when with no money, et cetera. So that's a very sexy way to get somebody's attention and go, wow, I would love to do that. It's the same way a lot of people get into real estate, buy a house with no money down, right? And it sounds like bs, but it's truly not like I'm right now in, you know, under contract and I, and I can't divulge really the details yet, but to purchase a business that's doing about 3 to 4 million dollars a year in gross sales and I'm not bringing any real cash, any cash to the table beyond just some legal fees for my attorney. And the reason behind this is you to understand the motivation of a client because.

You'Ve got the personal motivations why somebody does something and then you've got business reasons and motivations, right? So a business may be worth a lot more money, but you don't know the person's situation until you realize that, until you start to ask questions. So in this case.

The business owner has built his business multi millions doing nothing but offline advertising, no digital marketing whatsoever. And he's at this point where he's a, he's kind of burned out on it. He just doesn't have the vigor to do this. You know, he's been doing it for five or ten years. And he, he even said he goes, look, I've got a few options here, I can. And especially because sales are starting to go down, right? So for various reasons, offer fatigue. People have seen it in the offline publications. So he's like, all right, I got to do something otherwise, because otherwise it's, I'm losing. So I either have to hire somebody like a consultant or ideally an employee who understands all the digital marketing and all this other stuff and I have to manage them and pay them a salary and all that other crap, or I need to learn it myself and spend a lot of time learning all this crap that I don't want to learn or I could sell it. So I took a look at the business and I was like, alright, cool. So there is a, you've got a business that is, is done really well. It's a very, it's a well known brand. It's a, in its niche market. It is.

It is viable, it's done well. There's a lot of low hanging fruit. But your sales are down about 25% recently over the, you know, year over, like in the past year.

Right.

And you need to stem that bleeding, right? So because of that I, you know, I simply said, listen, he understood by the time we had talked that I knew what I was doing and that if he applied, like if I had control over it, I would be able to do this, this, this. And he goes, yeah, dude, I totally get it. I can see how you can grow it. And I said, all right, cool. So I can't bring money to the table. And I said these words, I can't catch a falling knife, right? So I can't catch a falling knife because.

You know, there is a, you know, there's a possibility I'll lose money and if I'm going to bring money into the table, I'd rather use it on marketing. He goes, yeah, I totally get that. So I proposed, well, how about I stabilize your income and we just say, look, I'll give you a valuation of X and I'll buy it over the course of, you know, three years for this amount per month. And this is, and I just backed into it. What are you making every month right now? Like what are you paying yourself and what's your salary? So I simply said, look, this is, I'll pay you this amount per month and I'll give you this guaranteed dividend distribution, full disclosure, I'm buying 80% of the company, not 100, because he wants to participate in the upside. So it's like, all right, cool, so he gets a win, win, win. There's no risk to him. He gets a stabilized income, he does less work and he gets to participate in the upside. And I'm not bringing any money to the table. And it's a very amicable deal. We have not really brought attorneys into it except to draw this stuff up. I really like him. I think he really likes me. And I brought a partner in here on the deal. I'll give him a shout out named Luke Havard, who's been really, I don't know if you guys know Luke, but he's been, he's been on my show a couple times. He's a good friend and he's got a little bit more experience in this area than I do. And actually Roland Frazier and I. Roland was very, in the very beginning, he was instrumental in this, not only in giving me advice, but in meeting with the, with the owner of the business as well. And for various reasons, you know, Roland.

You know, couldn't, couldn't participate in the deal or whatever. Yeah. You know, long story short, couldn't move forward with this. But there's still potential going to be doing some stuff here in the future together on that. But. So I'm just giving a shout out to some of the people. I didn't do this all myself, but that's the key is you don't, you don't have to know everything as long as you know the people who do. And that's why I immediately, I went to Roland, I went to Luke, I went to other people who understood this world and I understood it from a 30,000 foot view. What I decided to do was just get my foot in the door and figure out what I was going to do next.

I love the fact that you created the situation for yourself and for him. He would have never had that win. Win. Matt and I actually have done this recently. Actually. It's kind of, it's still in the works. But it's interesting what a question can because you never know what's going to. What's in there between their ears, what's. Maybe they have issues with a partner and they want to get out.

Yeah, you got to ask the question. Yeah, just got to start. Like, I wrote an article recently on Influensive.com and it was really about how. I can't remember the exact title. I'll send it to you. But it's really about the power of questions and how they open up the opportunities for so many things. And the better you get at asking questions, the more opportunities you'll uncover. Because everything, every single thing you want in life is behind a question. And you know, they say, oh, if you want, there's that old adage. I don't know if it's Jim Rohn, who said, or Brian Tracy, if you want. Or Zig Ziglar, you know, if you want to get rich, help other people get what they want, or if you want to get what you want, help other people get what they want. Well, right before that is, you have to know what they want. And if you know what they want, you got to ask questions. So you guys have listened to my show, and if for anybody else who has or does, there's a question I ask at the very end of every episode, and I call it the nutcracking question. So I'll say, Matt. So now comes the time in the, you know, in the episode where we get to turn the tables, and I get to ask you, what's a nut you're trying to crack? And I don't stop there, and I ask the. And I use these words very, very specifically because I. I dislike the words.

How can I support you? Here's the reason I make. If I ask you, Matt, Joe, whatever, how can I support you? I'm making you do all the work. I'm making you think, like, okay, well, what do I need? So instead I flip it and I go, what's a nut you're trying to crack? And by that, here's what I mean. Maybe who's a person you're trying to meet, whether it's to just get advice or to hire? What's a skill you're trying to learn? What's a problem you're trying to solve? Maybe are you trying to raise capital for something or you want somebody to validate an idea? What is it that is kind of keeping you up at night? And that if you had the solution to right now, that nut would be cracked and you'd be good to go. So that. And there may be even better ways to do it. But that has created so many opportunities for me because people will now think I've given them something to grab onto, and they go, oh, well, you know what? I'm trying to hire this, or I'm trying to figure this out. And I'm like, I got you, bro.

Or if I can, I do. But those kind of questions create so many opportunities, and you just got to ask. You got to ask them to everybody and just listen actively. And that's how. That's how these things kind of come around. And, you know, for sure.

Yeah. Now let's actually talk about podcasting for a minute. There's kind of two questions that I've got that sort of could probably be combined into one question. So one thing we've noticed about you is that you seem to be super connected. You seem to sort of know everybody, and also you seem to have some really, really great people on your podcast. So obviously those two are connected. So let's talk about your approach to podcasting. What is your sort of philosophy behind podcasting? And the reason I'm asking this question is I actually read an article that I believe you wrote on Digital Marketer, the Secret Number. Something around, like, the secret number or like the number that nobody knows about or. I don't remember the exact title, but I know what I'm talking about.

They created the title. I forget. I think my initial title for that was how to have an Instant Return on Investing in Podcasting. And, you know, using it like a little loophole.

Yeah.

So, yeah. So let me explain. I know exactly where you're going. So, first of all, my entire philosophy, I unofficially call it the most selfish show on itunes.

But I stand by that because I don't charge people for the podcast. Right. It's totally free. And I'm doing it because I'm getting a lot out of it. But that's why I'm doing it. It's because I'm getting a lot out of it. I only invite guests on my show who I have authentic curiosity about who they are, what they're doing, or if I want to build a relationship with them. Right. It's all about me. So if I'm talking to them, I'm gonna ask them questions that are gonna solve my curiosities, solve my business problems, solve my clients business problems, or move a relationship forward in one way or another. And what that. What that allows. Like, my listeners have even said, what I love about your show is you ask the questions like, I really wanted to know. I'm like, yeah, because I'm asking the questions I want to know. There's no standard questions. So, number one, I start very, very selfishly, but that I think that means a better show. Number two.

The way to get instant ROI is define what ROI is. For me, it's not making instantaneous money. It's defining ROI as access and opportunity. And those are two huge words for me because I think access. I'm sorry, I said access and opportunity. I meant access and influence. So access and influence equals opportunity. In fact, I think there's an old saying that says big doors swing on little hinges, and I think the two hinges are access and influence, and they'll swing the door of opportunity. And by that, I don't just mean access to people, although people is ultimately what you have access to. It's access to information, knowledge, capital, access to support, friendship, love, access to anything like you. If you don't have access to these things in life, you don't succeed. Right? If you don't have access to knowledge and information and the supportive system growing up, you probably end up in the, you know, lower edges of society. But you also, on the other side of this with business, you don't need to own it, you don't need to have it if you can access it. You don't need to own a car these days if you can access Uber.

And capital, you don't have to have the capital if you can raise the money from VCs, angel investors, crowdfunding, friends and family, right? So what I started to realize is. Wait a minute. So access is one big, big part. How can I access it even if I don't have it? Remember I said I don't have to know everything as long as I know the people who do, because I have access to the people who do.

That solves that problem, opens up. What's that?

It opens up.

Yeah, right. But then the next side of that is it's one thing to have access to those resources, it's another thing to have influence with them. And influence can be authoritative influence. It can be.

I could be an Instagram influencer. I can have a lot of influence. I have a lot of influence personally because I have the ability to put somebody that I have access to in front of a lot of people with my podcast. So I can get access to people because I have influence, right? Because I have influence with my listeners, I can get access to people who want that. But I can also access their influence. And if I can build a relationship with them and I can build rapport with them, that influence can simply be, hey, I know like, and trust this person. On a one. On one level, yeah, I'll give you access to what I've got, or, yeah, I'll do this. And I think it just. To me, it's this. It's this common denominator of success. All successful societies, civilizations, individuals, really rely on two things. Do you have access to what you need and do you have the influence over the people who have them in order to use them? And when you can, when you can wield those, it opens up the door of, like, so many opportunities. Now, circling back to podcasting, right? Like, I think it's the single best.

Opportunity for people Right now, because I can. I don't. Even if I don't care how big my listener base is, I just want the ability to access the people that I want to talk to and get their information, knowledge and their relationship and build influence with them so that I can create opportunities. So a, that's how I define instant roi. Now, the little secret number is actually the lack of a number that makes it all work. And this is kind of one of the things that most people don't appreciate this or aren't even aware of it until you start your podcast. Podcasting statistics are not publicly available. Right. If you have a YouTube show and that's all you've got, I can see that you've got six subscribers to your YouTube channel or 600 or 600,000, so I can immediately judge you by how worthy you are. Itunes does not show this. You know, they'll come out with rankings and whatnot. But there's a billion podcasts, so nobody really knows what they are. And you don't know If I've got 100 listeners to my show or a million listeners to my show typically. And the general public is not even close to being aware of this stuff. So if you, if you have a good looking podcast and it sounds good and you've got some potentially good people on there, potential guests will almost always say yes. In fact, I've never had a guest say no. And I've never had a guest ask me how many listeners I have prior to doing the show and judging whether or not they'll do it by how big my show is.

Yeah, same here. Yeah, we've never once had any of those questions. No.

It could be your grandma and grandpa are the only ones listening. Nobody knows now, chances are that's not the truth, but it's the great equalizer for somebody just starting off right. So I call it, you know, you can literally start off a podcast. And I do what I informally call lipstick on a podcast. Right. How can I make like if I was and I have a client who is, or a former client who, you know, did this, so she's teaching executive leadership things to technical engineers, like a very, very, very niche, like B2B technical engineering leaders, helping them be better. I was like, we'll start a podcast and we're going to make it like, you know, leadership insights or something like this. I forget the name of it and do, I don't know, do 10 pieces of content out there. Just yourself. Contact some your former clients and ask if you can interview them and then go out to some of the folks who are your, your target prospects at these companies and tell them your name. Hey, here's who I am. And you know, I'm with this podcast and I'm interviewing technical leaders in these various fields about, you know, the challenges and, you know, challenges and opportunities or whatever as technical leaders. And I've just been a big fan of your company and I think you might have a lot to offer. So by getting her to go after, you know, people who never get, you know, asked to be interviewed, it gives them the opportunity to be featured and it gives them kind of a status symbol and it gives her the opportunity to get on the phone with prospects and ask them a ton of questions and then follow up with them later. Like, I think it's the greatest lead gen opportunity for, or let's just say stealthy ninja lead gen opportunity for B2B that exists.

Just imagine all the niches that people don't typically get interviewed in. I mean, in the marketing niches, you know, podcasts are a lot more prevalent. Health probably as well, but still there's so many people you could tap there. Maybe that's that person that you've really wanted to connect with. You really wanted to establish that relationship or somehow get in with their sphere of influence. This is the way.

Yeah, well, and then you can take it another level. So now let's say I've got, I've got an interview with you now. I can go to some of these major publications, the industry rags, right. Or, you know, these are the, you know, Technical Leadership association of America making that up. But you can take that and say, listen, I've got a, I've got a library of great audio content in this area.

Can I have a column? And I'm happy to give you guys the exclusive. And I'll transcribe this and I'll write articles about each interview I do and you can share it with your people. So now when I go to these.

What do I call them, like prospective guests, also prospective clients. I can tell them. Yeah. So I've got a podcast on this. I'm also a writer for the association of Technical Engineering Leaders of America. And I would love to interview you and talk about some of the challenges the industries face and what you and your company are doing to overcome them. And now you've just up leveled your game even more. But what you've done is you've gotten access to people that you need and you have influence with them because you have, because you have influence with the, with their potential employers. Their colleagues and everything else. So they're. And you have influence with them because now they're like, yeah, sure, I'll sit down with you and talk to you, because who knows what kind of opportunities might come out of this. Well, the biggest opportunity is I'm going to sit here and I'm going to do a discovery call on you, and then I'm going to follow up with you and say, hey, by the way, remember that thing that you said that the biggest nut you were trying to crack? I think I can help you solve that. Can we jump on the phone privately?

Oh, that's so smart. The whole. Getting it into other publications, too, because now you're going to talk to somebody about being on the podcast, but you're also going to show, look, it's not just this podcast. I'm also going to get you into this industry magazine that you might not have otherwise had access to.

Yes. Now I should probably drink my own Kool Aid and do that with my show and take it to. You know, I could potentially take this to a business or marketing publication and say, I've got these great interviews with these people and I'm happy to adapt them for a column on your.

Right.

On your publication. I just, I've been so busy, I actually haven't done that, but I should, however. Yeah. If I was. If I was doing this exact. Lipstick on a podcast.

By the way, I'm verbally trademarking that shit. Nobody else. Lipstick on a podcast.

It's yours.

Formula. Damn it.

Hashtag lipstick on a podcast.

Yeah.

Yeah. But I don't know. This is the way I think. Right. This is why I, as I said, I'm an opportunistic thinker. And I think, what are all the ways that I can do something that other people aren't doing? And this is one of the reasons my clients do hire me, is because I do think out of the box and I think laterally and how we can find the biggest points of leverage. Because leverage is my favorite word. It's the reason I would rather buy a business or buy into a business because I can leverage everything that they've already got as opposed to starting from scratch, which I've done. I did recently. I was telling you with a business, and it. And it failed because I had no leverage.

And we'll get to that in a second here. But I have one question about. About being that opportunistic kind of guy. Do you ever find yourself getting spread too thin?

That's my biggest problem.

Yeah. So a lack of focus so because that's something Matt and I have battled for nearly 10 years now. And literally in the last, like year, we've really just focused in on, okay, we're, we are growing our letter, a recurring base and you know, we have a handful of partner products and some, and some equity stakes, but we don't really want to spread too much further out of there. How have you battled, I guess that focus problem or have we gotten.

How am I battling? Well, battling the face.

No, how are you getting.

Yeah, yeah, no, I do. That's my, that's my singular biggest problem in life right now. Fortunately, could be a lot worse. Is battling the switching cost, as I mentioned earlier, like offline, the mental switching cost of going from one thing to the next to the next. It does take a toll.

I think.

And I don't necessarily recommend people do what I do. So my, you know, the way I run my business, my life is not necessarily a model for everybody else. It so happens to be part of my strengths is I can multitask relatively well and I can get my foot in the doors and I do have enough resources to offload some of the stuff and just let go and say, okay, I've got this now. I'm going to bring the people in to kind of take control of this for me and to take it off my plate. But it is still quite literally the biggest hurdle I face. So even though it, I mean, I don't know if it sounds like I've got it all figured out, I've got some stuff figured out, but that's. No, absolutely. It's an issue.

Yeah.

It's interesting because we actually go back and forth doing more of what you're saying. It's more or less us creating a base, but it's long term thinking of, okay, who can we have that influence with? Where can we maybe head? Maybe you create a vision for yourself if you go down this route. Where do you see yourself in the next five, ten years?

And that's. So I've been doing a lot of just personal work on that because I've always had a problem with creating a concrete vision of what I want, you know, and I remember you're learning about this years ago when Frank Kern came out with his core formula, right. What's your perfect average day? And I don't live it right now, but I'm pretty close to it. Like, I've, I've got a lot of the things I want and I'm not motivated by material things. I'm motivated by the experiences but when I look at.

What my vision is, it's more of what I want to be doing on a daily basis, is I want to be highly engaged and excited about the work I'm doing and knowing that it's making good money and it's putting something good out in the world, and it's making good money, and it's doing it in a way that I'm not overwhelmed and confused. And I want to know that I'm. That I'm doing something I'm good at, that I like, that is working, that is providing me not only the financial resources I want, but allowing me the time and energy I want to focus on other stuff and to have a lot of free time. That's why I've been focusing on more on building assets that pay money and using leverage as opposed to just trying to just chase how much active income I can make. So focus on much more on the leveraged passive income. Although I work really hard for that passive income.

You said. You said one of our favorite words, assets and assets. Yeah, and leverage, obviously, those two.

Yeah. No, this. This has been. It's an awesome conversation because I feel like our philosophies and sort of our strengths and weaknesses are so aligned with yours. I mean, your whole philosophy behind podcasting is very, you know, it's almost like a selfish means first, but then you're also sharing that value that you. You got from the podcast with anybody who wants to tune in. That's our exact same philosophy with this podcast. Hence why we've been talking about acquiring businesses and podcast philosophy, two things we do in our business. So, I mean, it's been a great thing. And like Joe said, we. We have that issue with the focus in our business as well. We've. We've had those same issues. And the way we've always kind of looked at it is like a ship at sea. You know, like a ship at sea is never going in a straight line. And one of our friends, Gonzalo, was talking about this the other day on one of our episodes that, you know, we've got this sort of end destination, but you never really travel in a straight line to it. You just kind of got a course correct all the time, and you're going to get off course every once in a while and, ooh, look at this product. You know, E commerce looks really cool right now. Let's go test this. Or. Oh, let's. Let's go all in on cryptocurrency right now. And, you know, you just got to keep on like course correcting back to that main patch. And that's sort of how we've always kind of looked at things.

Yeah. And I love the ship analogy. I hadn't actually thought about that, but it's absolutely perfect. And the other thing, and this is probably why I do this as well, is because I actively try to view life as a playground and business as a playground. Like, if I don't feel as though I'm playing and having fun and experiencing stuff, that's the point of life for me. And I want to be involved in businesses that are. That I get to feel as though this is fun and I'm playing in it and I'm doing something I really, really enjoy. And quite honestly, with a lot of the businesses I've done, life has been. I figured out the secret to life is this process of elimination. Like, sometimes you don't know A, what you like or B, what you're good at, or C, what you like and are good at until you've done them and you're like, check. Nope, nope, nope, nope. Right. And I get into a lot of stuff. I think this is really cool. And I'm like, yeah, no, this wasn't what I thought it would be. It's not what it was promised. So when I get out of the point to where it feels as though and it's not always play. Right. I work really, really hard to be able to play and I'm able to weather some storms because I still believe in the full vision of it. But at the same time, it's like, if I see some big opportunities in life, I'm going to pursue those things and, you know, maybe it'll work out, maybe it won't. But I also look at the worst case scenario and, you know, in Tim Ferriss book, Four Hour Workweek that I, you know, first read in 2007, one of the biggest takeaways was when he talked about what is the worst case scenario? Figure that out first. It's like, what, are you going to be homeless? Are you going to be destitute? I was like, no, I won't. You know, I've got savings and I've got the skills to turn around and make money anywhere tomorrow. So I don't necessarily have to bank on just one vehicle.

Yeah, right.

No, I was thinking as you were talking about these opportunities and buying businesses, anything being opportunistic, have an exit plan, some strategy, and probably each one of these things you're getting into, because you never know, it could be like day two, you're like, fuck, pull a cord. I'm out.

Right. Well. And the businesses that I'm buying, I absolutely am going into it with the end in mind. Like, then that's what. One of the reasons that the owner of the business and I are getting along so well and why he's. He's willing to do this is because he knows, listen, I'm not just buying this thing for a. To have a lifestyle business or to just sit back and have a cash cow. I want to grow it like crazy. And I've got, I've already got exit strategies in general mapped out on what can happen. And he sees the, you know, the fact that he can potentially come along for the ride with this. You know, some of the biggest things that have changed my thinking on this, some of the people that.

Friends of mine that I've talked to a lot and concepts and books. So Ace Chapman is a good friend of mine and he was on my podcast talking about this. Roland Fraser, obviously, Luke Havard, who is my business partner on this, and I learn a lot from Luke as we go along.

MJ DeMarco, author of Millionaire Fast Lane and the most recent book Unscripted, which I'm about halfway through.

That's a good one.

Yeah. I'm trying to think who else, Jay Abraham has been a huge influence for me. I'm trying to think who else has been really.

Who'S really helped me kind of put my brain around this concept. And it's something I'm continuously putting my brain around because it's, by the way, acquisitions is one of the harder business models to learn because not everybody can just go out and learn it. Because it does take some very high level strategic generalist thinking. Because it's not, hey, how do I sell T shirts on Facebook, it is, how do I take over the operations, the marketing, the people, the finances of an existing company. Like, how do I hop this train while it's already moving and do it in a way that it doesn't derail it? And how do I come in from day one with all the right resources and things that need to happen in order to get this to.

Level up? And it's not something for the faint of heart, but I'm so crazy curious and I love learning about it and I actually like all of that stuff. So I also tell other people that, look, you don't have to be the best at this. You want opportunities. If you're running a Facebook marketing agency and you're listening to this show and you like it, like, man, Brad's Brad and Matt. Joe, this is really smart stuff.

I know I can ask those questions of my clients. And next time you're talking to a client, you say this. Now what if that client says, yeah, actually, I've been thinking about it. I would actually love to sell this business. I just don't know the first thing about it. So you don't have to buy it, but just say, hey, I got you, bro. I know a couple people.

I know the people.

Right. I can go to people. So you call Matt, you call Joe, you call Brad, and you go, listen, I don't know if this is up your alley or not, but I've got a potential opportunity here. Would you like to take a look at this? And if I know for those people, if you do, I'm happy to reward you with, you know, financially or however. Shoot. I'll bring you the Facebook account, right?

Yeah.

But opportunities are out there if you have access and influence. So it's easy to get access to a lot of people. You got their email, you got their social media. How can you get influence with them? You know, add value to them?

Yeah, for sure. Now, I have two sort of last little rabbit holes I want to go down with you quickly. One was before we were talking, you mentioned, you know, we talked about your coffee business. You've got the Stiletto coffee business. And you mentioned you kind of had some hard lessons that you learned from that business. So let's talk about that just for a second because I do think that'll bring a lot of value to the listeners.

Absolutely. And I'm going to potentially apologize in advance if you guys hear some noise. My. My maid is vacuuming. The house door is closed. But if you start to hear. What is that sound? It is. It's my maid servants.

Maid servants?

Yes. Okay, so the last part of that question. So the Stiletto coffee. Remind me the very last part of that question so I can.

So the coffee business, you said you learned some hard lessons while starting up that coffee business.

Yeah. So the hardest lessons is a great business, stiletto coffee.com. you know, my wife and I started it, and it's a great branding concept and it's a product and everything. And we, I think we did a lot of the right stuff. I went into it with blinders on as it pertains to the economics of the business and what it would really take in order to. In order to make this profitable and successful. And I. What's funny is I went into it with very. I knew I had blinders on But I was like, this. This brand is going to be so much fun to do, and I think we can will it into an existence. It's this delusional optimism that is oftentimes needed to get a brand off the ground. But then sometimes those delusions are real and you're like, man, here's reality. So the reality was, if I had a very big budget and if I had a lot of time to just spend on this and do it, I almost guarantee that I could make it happen. However, opportunity cost really got in the way. Like the cost per acquisition of the. Of the product and the amount that I made on the product and the amount of upside. You know, the average customer value that I could create. Selling coffee is just a really big hill to climb. And I remember thinking with opportunity cost, when. When a client who became a client because he listened to my podcast and he said, hey, do you do consulting? And I said, well, let's find out.

What do you mean, let's find out?

Right? It depends.

That's how you sell them, huh?

Yeah, exactly. That's my ninja level sales skills.

Yeah, man.

And it just so turned out. I was like, listen, here's what we can do. We can start to work on a monthly basis. I give you, like a phone call every week, and we can kind of address. Or you can just come spend an entire day with me here in San Diego, and you'll get 8 to 10 hours of undivided attention on what you're doing. And he said, yeah, I want that. In fact, can I have a day and a half? I was like, sure. So I ended up charging him 12,500 for a day and a half of consulting with me, which is, you know, not cheap. It's great money for, you know, it's all right.

Yeah.

But I started to think, what, okay, opportunity costs. What would it take for me to make $12,500 in my pocket selling coffee beans? And it just so happened I would have probably had to have sold 12,500 bags of coffee. Let's just say 13,000 bags of coffee. With no marketing expense, no cost of equity, 13,000 people would have had to come across my site and said, hey, I want this. Dear God, in order. Right? In order for me to. And then. And then I would have to decide not to put anything back into the company.

Right.

Okay. What the hell am I doing?

Good luck keeping that alive. Yeah, right.

So, you know all those. All those adages says never, never, ever, ever, ever give up. Sometimes you should give up, sometimes you should Say, now what should, you know, what should I be doing elsewhere that could really get me to my end goal? Now, as I also mentioned, one of the things, if I get the time to really pursue this, I will, is I want to find a company that will.

Acquire this brand, which is a great brand, and run with it. But ideally, it's not somebody who just wants to be an E comm guy. It's somebody who's already got a coffee business and has got a distribution channel that they can quote, unquote, leverage, and then just take this and run with it. So I'm always thinking, you know, whatever I've done, is there salvage value in that? But speaking of, you know, I mentioned Roland Frazier before, and if you folks don't like, if your listeners don't know exactly who he is, I don't know if you had him on the show or not, but not yet. He, you know, he's a partner in digitalmarketer.com and I always say, I want to be Roland when I grow up. But we were at lunch and he goes, let me ask you a question, Brad. This is right before I decided to make the move back towards the consulting stuff. And he said, if, if Stiletto Coffee was a client right now, would you keep them? And I go, well, they're not paying me. Like, I'm not making money off Stiletto. So no. He goes, okay, let's just say. And he used these examples. He goes, what if they were paying you $5,000 a month? He goes, you're not making $5,000 a month in profit off the business now. I go, no. He goes, what if they were paying you $5000 a month and.

You know, would you do it? I go, well, I don't know. I really don't know. It's a lot of work for 5,000amonth. He goes, well, what if they gave you 50% of the company and $5,000 a month? And I said, well, what's their marketing budget? Would they have another five to $10,000 easily to spend on all the marketing stuff I would want to do? And he goes, okay, let's say they did. They'd pay you 50%. 5,000amonth plus 50%, and they give $5,000 a month marketing budget. And I go, I might consider it. And he goes, what if they wanted you to spend 50% of your time on it? I go, no. And he just sat there smiling with his big rolling smile with cherub cheeks. Son of a bitch. I can't argue with that. It's like Wait a minute. I was already spending 100% of my time on it, and I was losing money on the hopes that it would do really well. And it just got. And then at the same time, a consulting client said, hey, can I give you cash for your brain? I was like, okay. So I made the decision to kind of put that on the side. Sometimes you have to do this. I was in a mastermind here in San Diego and everybody, like we meet once a month and everybody raised their wine glass up and said, yeah, here's the failure. But that also goes back to why I think the word startup in a lot of cases can be a four letter word. Because most startups fail, most businesses fail. What is it, like 90% in the first five years will fail?

Something like that, yeah.

So this is where I mentioned Ace Chapman, who I interviewed on my podcast. And he said, you know, if you know that 90% of businesses fail in the first five years and you want to buy a business, why don't you just put it in your criteria that you won't buy a business that doesn't have a five year history. That way they've already validated the product. I was like, that's so stupidly simple. Like, oh my God. Like, that's how you overcome all these obstacles. He's also the one who told me that he used this metaphor that, you know, if.

You know, as entrepreneur, he goes, as consumers, when we want transportation, we go buy a car. And oftentimes we, you know, we get financing to buy the car right when we want a place to live, you know, but we don't build the car. When we want a place to live, we don't build a house with our hands, you know, and get hammers and nails out. We go find a house that somebody's built typically, and we get a loan. We use somebody else's money to buy the place where we live. And even with clothing, you know, you want clothing, you don't go knit your own clothes, you go to the store. Sometimes you go to Macy's and you take out a credit card and you buy the clothes you want to wear. He goes, why is it as entrepreneurs we feel as though we have to build our cash flow from the ground floor? What if you could buy your cash flow using other people's money? The cash flow you need to live, how can you engineer that? And that was brilliant to me because now you just have to reverse engineer. What do I need? Well, okay, If I want $10,000 a month to live on, what do I need? Well, I need to find a company that's got at least a 10% profit margin that's doing. And these numbers can change. It's doing a million dollars a year with a 10% profit margin. Or, you know.

At the worst case, I mean, I might be able to find something with a 10% profit margin that I can take that $100,000 as profit, but I can also pay myself 5,000amonth. So now, okay, well, I gotta buy a million dollar a year business. Okay, well, what is it gonna take to buy that? Well, if I can find a company who's willing to do owner financing, maybe I can do it with nothing, but maybe I can find an owner to take back, take $200,000 down and I can, and I can buy that business for, you know, 80% owner financing financing. But I don't have $200,000. But maybe I can find somebody to invest or loan me the money and say, listen, I'll give you 50% of this company for $200,000 and I own 50% and I'll run it and you can run it passively. And I just got into that business for nothing, but it's making me now what I need. Right. Like, I just went through a top of my head example. But when you start thinking like that, it starts to change the entire game.

No, I think that's brilliant as well. I mean, that's just so smart. And the criteria you gave even before that of, you know, would you, would you work for this business if you were making X amount of money just kind of running, you know, what you're doing right now through that sort of filter is genius as well. I love both of those philosophies.

Thanks. Yeah, and it's a. Yeah, it's when you start to think like a business person, you know, in our world, in our crazy wacky world of Internet marketing and whatnot, which is a cool tribe. I've realized that there's not a lot of business people in here. A lot of us stumbled into this world because we bought a course, we learned how to do Facebook advertising, we learned how to sell an ebook, we learned how to do. We just learned sales, but we didn't really learn business, like really wise business thinking. And some of us have stumbled into some pretty good success, but we're really, a lot of us just glorified salespeople and that's it. And that is a big difference between a salesperson and a business owner. Right, right. And.

Another great book, by the way, that I read. I don't know. Do you guys know who Roger Hamilton is?

I heard the name, but no, I don't.

Okay, so you're gonna love this book. I hate the name, just like I hate MJ DeMarco's book name, the Millionaire Fast Lane. I think it sounds cheesy and it doesn't do the book justice. This one is called the Millionaire Master Plan by Roger Hamilton. Sounds cheesy as hell. Yeah, but. And I won't like, you guys can go buy it or just take a look at it. But one of the things he talks about there is the various levels var almost like a rich dad, poor dad, the cash flow quadrants, how you go from employer to self employed, et cetera. But he thinks of it as like a lighthouse, how you're going from the bottom to the top. You go from like a victim to a survivor to employed and well, self employed to, you know, business owner, investor, et cetera, et cetera. But a lot of the times in there, you know, he talks about how you know that at each level of the ladder you're climbing up. The skills that got you there, those cherished skills that you worked so hard to get you to this level you're at right now, are the exact skills that will keep you there and will prevent you from climbing up unless you just release them and sacrifice them and say, okay, as a self employed person, let's say I own a small digital marketing business. I'm the only employee, I'm focused on conversion optimization, leads, sales, average customer value, all this other stuff. And he goes, that's cool. But if you want to get to the next level, you have to start reading profit and loss balance sheet, cash flow statement. And you have to start thinking and acting and looking at your business like a business owner, like an investor would. And you have to start by thinking that way first and then say, okay, well who else can I bring in and hire to think about conversion optimization stats and average customer value and what's my funnel value? Because he goes, if you continue to focus on those, you will never take the next step up. So there is this sacrifice you have to do. And it's a very painful sacrifice because the stuff that got you there won't keep you there. It will actively prevent you from getting to the next level. So I immediately started, and I've got a degree in finance, but it was rusty and I was studying investment finance, not like corporate finance. So I started reading everything I could about balance sheets and P Ls and numbers like this, even though I hate them like I'd much rather study conversion stats. Right. But it's so much more fun. But I was like, I don't want to stay at this level. So how can I start if I treat every business that I've got, as I'm an investor in it, not the owner of it, I'll start to think like that. I'll start to bring the right people in. But I got to up level my thinking before I up level my actions. I don't know, the book is much more than that, but that was one huge takeaway. Is this concept that you have to make a sacrifice. And a lot of times it's either freedom or.

I think he says, freedom or design. Right. Like, so as a, as an employee, you don't have freedom, but you can do whatever you want. Like, I mean, I got freedom to take my weekends off, I got freedom to do all this other stuff. I'm sacrificing upward mobility and all that other stuff. But it's a cool. And the minute you quit that job and you decide to be an entrepreneur, you're sacrificing all that other stuff. Like you're sacrificing the.

You know, what do you call it, the stability. But you're gaining the ability to design your life.

You have that upward momentum. Yeah. That whole opportunity there.

Yeah. You're sacrificing one thing, you're getting another thing. However, now you're a self employed entrepreneur and you've got the ability to take the day off and go create, you know, go to the beach if you're here in San Diego, or do whatever you want. You don't have that stability, but you got that free to design your life. But if you want to get to the business owner side now, you've got to sacrifice that freedom to do whatever the hell you want, whenever you want and say, well, if I don't make that much money this year, it only affects me. You go, no. If I want to own a business where people do this stuff and now I want stability of income and I want the freedom to do ultimately whatever I want without having it impact my income. I've got to sacrifice all those little daily pleasures and I have to put into the systems into place and I have to put the people and I have to be accountable to them. And it's not just me anymore. Right. So there's, you're always sacrificing something, gaining something else and it never stops until you get to the.

Until you quit. No, until you die.

So I don't know. Those are Some of my. Those are some of the big takeaways. And I just. They stay with me throughout the day, every day.

And it's just like, man, this is investor mindset, man. Yeah. Well, I'm gonna go back really quick. As you mentioned two things, cars, and you mentioned OPM, other people's money. So let's talk about your R8.

And the strategy of how you pay for that supercar.

Yes.

How much is that worth, by the way? Because I. How much is it worth, by the way? The car or how much did you buy it for?

We'll say that. So it is. Okay. So I bought. It's a 2011 Audi R8 convertible Spider. And I bought it in 2013, and it was retailed brand new. It retailed for 160.

Okay.

And I got it for about 120. So I gotta. You know, that's why I never buy a brand new car.

Right.

However. And I do have more fun telling this story than I do actually driving the car, which is. It is basically not cost me much at all because.

I. Before I bought it, I called up an exotic car rental agency company here in La Jolla. And I said, hi, my name is Brad, and I am. I got a couple questions for you because I'm about to purchase. I'm about to go shopping for an exotic car. And I just had a couple questions. Number one, do you do consignment rental? Meaning, you know, if. If I let you rent my car. If I have a car and I let you rent it out, because I know you rent these Ferraris and Lamborghinis and stuff. Do you have a program where you'll pay? He goes, yeah, we'll pay you 50% of this. Of the day rate that we rent it out for. I'm like, all right, cool. Question number two, what do you need? And he goes, what do you mean? I go, what do you have in mind? He goes, well, what are you thinking about buying? I go, no, no, no, what do you need? He goes, well, okay, well, we just sold our Lamborghini Gallardo, so we need one of those. We get requests for an Audi R8. We don't have one of those. We need an Aston Martin. And I'm like, all right, cool. Wrote those all down. And then I went shopping. Shopping. So, right. Find out what they need. Ask the question.

Smart.

And I happen to find a great deal on this Audi R8, and I allow them. They rent it out about four days a month at about between 600 to $900 a day for the people who rent it. And I make half of that. And I only really need to rent it out about four days a month. About four days a month to pay for the car.

Wow.

So. And they don't put that many miles on it. And I'm actually trying to sell it. So if anybody wants to buy an Audi R8 right now, it's still great. It's only got about 20,000 miles. I can teach you how to do this potentially, but it's been great. So I get to drive it whenever I want. And they'll call me up and say, hey, we've got a rental. Do you want to let it go? And I'm like, yeah, I'll let it go. You know, and they only rent it out to really good people. It's not rented out to any, you know, you know, 22 year old bro who wants to just take it for a joyride.

It doesn't come back with like bald tires and all that stuff?

No, I've had to replace the tires because, I mean, those kind of cars, the tires have to be replaced. But, you know, it's a cost of, of doing business. However, what's cool is because I bought it in my company, it's a capital asset and cars depreciate over five years. So I've gotten to take about a $37,000 tax depreciation deduction on the car every year. So I get to write off $37,000 against my active income.

In addition to not having to make many car payments on it. So it's been a really cool way that you can access an exotic car, right. By just thinking ahead of time, like, all right, well, who else may want this and how can I? And I was funny because when I did this, I was talking to my CPA beforehand and I was like, all right, you're probably going to kill me for this. And he goes, no, he goes, I have clients who do this with their boats, with their planes. He goes, nuts. Very common. I'm like, no shit. Did I just hack the exotic car market?

That's awesome. That's awesome.

And I know it's even easy. Well, I don't know. I don't know if it's easier, but you can do that on apps like Taro or Toro.

Turo. Yeah, I haven't used Turo yet, but.

Yeah, we know some people who have done that. Yeah, same kind of situation. So it's. Dude, it's so many opportunities.

So do you actually keep it in your garage or do they. They keep it. You Go get it when you need it.

I got a garage. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I keep it there. Sometimes I'll just like, yeah, keep it for a little while. I'm not going to be driving it. Very cool.

Freaking awesome, man. Yeah, cool.

That's such an awesome strategy. I love that.

Yeah, it's fun. And I'm like, how else can I do that? That stuff with other things, Like, I love that out of the box, lateral opportunistic thinking. Like, you know, what else can I do this with? Can I do this with a house? Can I do this with a car? Can I do it with a boat? If I can buy it, let other people. I mean, this is the access economy. This is the sharing access economy. Why not do this?

And the downside was pretty much nothing because, I mean, yes, you had to buy the dang car.

And I mean, there's risk. I say that totally. Here's the biggest risk. Honestly, I think the biggest risk. Well, first of all, don't do this if you can't. I can afford the car payment, right. So I. Worst case, if it didn't rent, I could still afford it. However, the biggest risk to me, I think is buying it and somebody wrecks it, but doesn't total it because that dramatically affects the resale value of it. Like if somebody does $10,000 worth of damage to it, hey, that can be paid. And it's like. But now it goes on Carfax. And trying to sell an exotic with that's been wrecked is going to wreck my resale value.

So what you're saying is if somebody wrecks it, you want them to go all out? You want them to.

Yeah.

You want them just destroy the thing.

And I want them to explode in a fiery accident. Take that after they get ejected from the car and land on their feet.

Right, right.

Marshmallows.

Very cool. All right, so you had something else.

Yeah.

What nut are you trying to crack right now?

Good point. So the biggest nuts I'm trying to crack right now is building up the, you know, what do I say? So, so this E Commerce business that I'm buying is we've got very, very big plans for it. So my partner and I are lining up all the various resources that we can line up for who's going to come in and allow us to operate this as strategic business owners and not day to day operational slaves to the business. So we are looking for somebody or people actively who have, you know, E Commerce or operations, logistics, et cetera, experience who either want, you know, that we can hire to kind of do some of the aspects that we're not good at like inventory management and staying on top of conversion optimization. Whether this is an agency or an individual or somebody who we can either hire or wants to buy in and partner with us or something to where we can operate this at one level higher than. Does this make sense? Right? Like, absolutely. Yeah. We don't. One of the things I learned from Stiletto Coffee is the fact that I am not at my best when I'm doing operational stuff. If I'm answering all the customer support, if I'm fiddling with, you know, Shopify or BigCommerce or whatever the system is and if I'm doing all that stuff, I'm not able to do the much bigger strategic plays that I want to do and add value that way. Yeah. So.

The nice part about acquiring a business that's got cash flow, etc. Is that we're going to have the money to, to. To pay some people. So that's really the biggest nut is just to. There's going to. And there's a lot of stuff right now that we don't know that we don't know just the operations of the business. But we're excited to jump in. And I know for the next three months it's going to be really, we're going to deep dive on that. But that is a, that's a big nut I'm trying to just crack is getting the resources to help run this business.

Very cool.

Well, especially because we want to take this to, you know, we actually may want to acquire other businesses in this vertical and do a roll up.

Very cool. Well, we do, we do know a handful of people that are, you know, pretty active in the e commerce world. So we'll have to, to try to connect you with them.

We got you, bro.

And if anybody's listening to this episode that has the solution or knows they can jump on a call with Brad and help them out, I also made.

We can talk offline. This other business that I'm buying, very content marketing driven. So I know you guys do a heck of a lot of that. So I want to talk to you about some of that for some of my clients, nuts I'm trying to crack. So I've got some really cool, you know, clients who are doing, you know, neat things like. So Jesse Itzler, as I mentioned, he is open to do some. He's not, he's not cheap, but he's amazing public speaker. So if anybody's having an event or Doing some amazing things like that. Would love to potentially get like a, you know, somebody world class to come speak. I've got him. I've got. I've got a. I've got a lot of public speakers that I'm not even necessarily clients with, but that I just know a lot of them. And I've told them that I'm always open to hooking them up with booking arrangements if they ever need that. So if anybody out there is like looking for some great high profile marquee speakers, hit me up on that kind of stuff because I'm cool.

I dig it.

Always looking for opportunities.

Opportunities. Very cool.

Cool, man.

I think he tapped us out on all of our questions. We're selfish and asked everything we want wanted.

Yeah, I think, by the way, can I get. Can I get you guys on my show too? Can we?

Of course.

Just so I can turn the chairs on you.

Do it, man. Absolutely.

Yeah.

Nice.

I think this is actually, I think our longest episode we've done so far, but we didn't want to stop you because it was such good stuff. So.

Yeah, so you say.

I just rattle on and on and on. No, it happens when you bring another podcast.

I know, right?

That's a problem. No, it's a good problem.

All right, so we got. We got two quick wrap up questions. I know you've already sort of mentioned a few books throughout this episode, but we always like to get a couple book recommendations at the end. Maybe something you find yourself recommending often or something that you find rereading multiple times because it's that important to you. So do you have anything like that?

So in addition to the books that I've just said. Right. Like, so I've. I've kind of told you, like Millionaire, Fast Lane, Millionaire.

Master Plan.

The. Some of the books I'm reading right now is by one is by John Spilestra. Marketing outrageously redux. And it's just a fun marketing book. He was a big marketing expert in basketball. I'm reading a book right now that I really like. Simple Numbers, Straight Talk, Big Profits by Greg Crabtree. And it's all about that stuff that I talked about, like understanding the real business numbers of your business as opposed to just the marketing numbers. I like it. I think that's amazing. I'm actually scrolling through my Kindle as we talk about this. Good. What are some of the other books? Rocket Fuel is an amazing book.

I've heard that recently.

Yeah. Buddy of ours, you're like the third person who's brought up that book, and it's one that I still haven't picked up.

So it's so great. You'll love it. And.

Anything by Steven Pressfield is a go to. Like Steven Pressfield and Seth Godin are two of my favorite business writers.

Yeah.

Yeah. Steven stuff's awesome.

Yeah. And they're fun to read.

Yeah. All super duper good.

Cool.

Trying to think what else. If there's anything else. One Simple Idea by Stephen Key is still one of my favorite books. He's one of my. He's my most popular podcast episode. It's really all about licensing.

Yeah.

And leverage with that. So I just found that like absolutely fascinating. But.

And 8020 sales and marketing. I actually just saw that on my shelf and I was like, I gotta reread that. Cause that's so good.

That's all right. Cool.

Perry Marshall, right?

Perry Marshall. Yeah.

Yeah. Yep.

Good stuff, man. Cool. Well, that just gave me like a month's worth of reading. There are more.

And I don't know when it's coming out, but I am writing a book right now.

Drop the name or the concept.

So the book does not have a name yet, but it is based on the principles of access and influence. Equals opportunity. Right. So it's that entire premise of how to kind of think opportunistically like an opportune or. But how to. How to leverage and wield access and influence. Both how to get it, how to build it for yourself and how the plethora of opportunities that can arise with. With that. And by the way, the way I'm writing this book is I'm not sitting down and chunking it out. I hired a guy named Aaron Wang from Author on Demand and he has been amazing me and pulling it out and developmentally editing it so that I can do what I do best, which is like let me edit my own words as opposed to sitting down from the blank slate. And if anybody ever wants.

An introduction to him, just let me know because he's awesome. Very cool.

Right on, brother. Well, cool. Last question. Where can people go find you? What's the best place?

So, well, one of the easiest places is on my podcast baconwrappedbusiness.com or just search for it on itunes. And Stitcher, you can always shoot me an email. In fact, we're talking about books. Send me your book recommendations or send me your ideas to ask bradaconrappedbusiness.com though that is, you know, probably the most public facing thing I do have. Costanzo marketing.com that's more of just a brochure page. I don't use it for a lot, but you can find me just with Brad Costanzo and everywhere from Instagram to Facebook and Twitter, et cetera.

Very cool. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for hanging out with us and just really unloading and being super transparent with us. We really, really appreciate it. And. And we got a ton of tips for our own business, which is, you know what this podcast is originally designed for, right?

And we'll talk in your podcast. So, yes, let's book that sucker up.

Cannot wait.

Cool, man. Thank you. We'll chat soon.

All right, guys. All right.

Hey, thank you, thank you, thank you for listening to this podcast. Now, if you want to learn more and hear from us every single month, which a lot of people do, it's pretty fun. We actually write this thing called the Evergreen Profit Letter, and that is a printed newsletter that we actually send to hundreds of people every single month to your doorstep. So you actually get it in the mail. You can read this sucker. You can highlight it, you can dog ear. You can scratch some stuff out. If you don't like that one, you say, no. Joe and Matt, that's not cool for me. But you can take a lot of different strategies, about 15 or so from every single issue, and it's really cool. Cool. So basically, these are actionable strategies that you can use in your business right away to test out and pretty much build on what you already have going on. So check it out. It's at www.egpletter.com. it's pretty amazing, and you should go check it out, see what it's all about.

Boom.