Buying, Building, Selling: Inside Eddie Wilson’s 76 Deals in 12 Months

I exited 76 companies in one year for a little over a billion dollars. And you get to the end of that road and you realize, like, I don't, I'm not even sure why I'm doing this anymore. And honestly, you know, another car, another house, another vacation really doesn't mean anything. What I recognized was when my income went above 2 or 3 million bucks, there's really not a lot more you can spend money on. And so it's all diminishing returns past that point. And so then you start looking around going like, well, what am I doing this for? What's the purpose? And what I realized is I was living a very unfulfilled life.

Hello, everybody. We are talking to Eddie Wilson. Hello, Eddie.

Hey, how are you doing today?

The quickest way to know about Eddie is Eddie knows how to make things happen and he knows how to make things happen at a big level. And he is known as the king of exits. You know, the, the old Stephen Covey thing. Begin with the end in mind. Most people when they start a business are not thinking about exiting, but they should be thinking about exiting. And you've owned. It says here, and I'm sure these numbers are usually, by the time I get them, are out of date, but it shows over 125 companies that you've owned and exited. 90 plus. Is that a close?

It's close. I'm a little over a hundred now, but yeah, we're constantly, you know, rinsing and repeating the process.

Yeah. And so how did, how, how, how did you get to that situation? I mean that, you know, you think 24 hours in the day, you know, you're, you're not 100 years old, you take care of yourself. Obviously you take care of yourself. And so how do you find time? I mean, one of the things that's the clue to me in looking at your bio is you created a operating system that sounds like that might be a key to allowing you to do systematically. You get more done if you turn it into a system. But how did you know? Where did all this start, this juggernaut of business impact?

It started with my, I'm a third generation real estate investor entrepreneur and I grew up in a home of an entrepreneur and went straight into corporate right after college and didn't fit in at all. You know, I, you know, when you grow up in the house of an entrepreneur, you're trying to innovate, you're trying to figure it out, you're trying to make things better. Just part of growing up so Then you're in a big corporate office and they, they take that as a threat or they don't like you pushing or they don't like you questioning. And so I had some success in corporate, but I just got frustrated and wanted to, you know, control my own destiny. So I got into running my own business. And then when I was running that business, I was looking for capital and ended up exiting the business. Now, that exit wasn't a good exit. It was, it was a bunch of corporate kind of raider type guys, Wall street guys, that really took advantage of me. I didn't know what I was doing. I was in my early 20s and I realized, like, oh, wait a minute, there's a game that's being played here that I don't understand. Like they, they are doing this with intention. And I just came as an innocent bystander. But I made some money, I made some good money on the exit. But then I realized that there's a game that I have no clue what's going on here. And these guys are playing at a level that I'm. I'm not even aware. And I just made a promise to myself that day. I was like, I'm gonna sit on their side of the table one day, but I'm gonna do it right. I'm not gonna screw people, I'm not gonna take advantage of people. I'm gonna do it right. And. And I started down that path. And to me, the real reason though is there's. I'm a real estate guy. I mean, I have a ton of real estate. However, my real estate has never provided the type of exit or multiple that a business does. You can buy a business today, operate it for a year or two, and sell it at a 7, 8, 9 times EBITDA, right? And get nine years worth of pay on a business you no longer have to even be involved with or operate. It's paying you essentially ahead of time for eight, nine years, and you only operated it for two. Well, like, I don't know where you can find a better investment where you put the right systems in at the right time in. And now all of a sudden you get paid for years in advance without ever having to do the work. And so, like, there's just not another investment type like that. So it really feels like it's shrinking down time for me. So once I got that system and process, I was like, I'm going to do this at scale.

And now how did you, where did the light bulb come onto you that there was that kind of opportunity? That kind of multiple on doing it that way. And versus like in real estate, you have commissions. You know, you run a project, have a commission. There might be some residual type thing or, you know, or a phase two or a phase three or something, but basically it's going to be over. And so this is, this is a different deal. How long did, when, when did that light bulb go on or did somebody explain it to you?

No, the light bulb went on when those guys were buying my business. So the real story is I was trying to source capital and I went to an M and a guy at Merrill lynch and he said, oh, I'll find you the capital you need because you've got contracts. I was young, so I couldn't really get a line of credit.

Tell just the specific situation you were in. You're a young guy, you're overwhelmed, and you probably didn't know what M and A was, EBITDA and all of those. Let's just kind of explain where you were and what you're learning. Because I like to slow things down for the people that are on the way up, mainly because I want them to understand they can do this stuff. You can learn this stuff. And we all had to learn these terms at some time, you know.

Well, that you, you described it. Well, I was overwhelmed. I had taken a contract on that I couldn't cover the cost of. So I needed capital, but I had a contract. So I had imminent pay. You know, I had a, a Runway, but I had to cover the holding costs of that capital. And I was an advertising agency, so it was booking advertising for a big, for a big group. And I had to pay for it 30, 60, 90 days in advance and hold it, but, but I made 15% on it. So it's like for every dollar you book, you make, you know, you make a buck, you make 15 cents. So it's kind of this process. Well, these guys came in and they, they was kind of cloaked. I didn't know I should pay attention to who, where the capital is coming from. I thought that's why my. I had this guy who worked for Merrill Lynch. He came in and at the closing table and I had to have the, I needed this capital within three or four days. They took me all the way up to the edge and I didn't realize that they were playing a game. We hit the table and they said, hey, it's not going to go the way you think it's going to go today. We're going to buy your company. I said, I'm not selling you my company. They said, well, we know that you're overextended. We already, we know that if you don't have money in the next three to four days, you're in big trouble. We know you don't have a backstop. You've been turned down for lines of credit, and if you don't sell us your company, you're going to lose your company. And they, and they were right. They had taken me up, they had, they had baited me. They said all the right things. They extended me, they gave me a guarantee so I felt good enough to go ahead and book all the ads. And, and then they said, they said, do you want to know where you got the contract from that you have today? And I said, sure. They said, us, but today we're going to get it back. And, and I didn't, I didn't know. I mean, they were the largest advertising agency in the world and they had a huge team. And you know, they're hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. Well, anyways, long story short, they were, they were actually kind to me because even though they were taking my company off of me, they gave me what's called a seven times ebitda, right? So like your, your E, but all earnings before interest, taxes, amortization, depreciation. So the, the. They gave me seven times. Well, for me, I, once I got right with it, it was like, wait a minute, they're giving me seven. Essentially, if I did the exact same thing every single year, never went up, never went down. They're basically giving me seven years because they're giving me seven times what I'm currently making. And I don't have the risk of the market changing or going up or down. And I started having thoughts of like, what would I do with my life today that I didn't think I could do for, until seven years from now because I have the capital and I have no responsibility and to that business. And that's when my, that's when it clicked for me. I was like, wait a minute, I could architect this. Like, I could, I could build this scenario. I don't have to do it on accident. I can build it. And then if I'm in control of it versus them in control, like they, I could actually increase it. So I've had exits all the way up to 29 times earnings. You know, it's like you, there's businesses that you can architect these exits on, so.

And so all the way up to a billion dollar exit, right?

Yeah.

And so what was the second. Okay, so, so you get this, you do your. You lose your company, but now these things are going to your. So how do you, how. What's your next step?

My next step is I met a guy in Kansas City who is looking for capital for his insurance company. And my grandfather, I was talking to my grandfather one day and he was talking to me about Captives and insurance. He's like, if you ever get the chance to be the capital in one of these insurance deals, he was like talking to me how lucrative it was. So I start walking down this path with this guy and he's got a big insurance company in Kansas City. Not big, he's about 40 million. And I walk in and we start talking. And I'd already built some of the operating system I have. Like, I had a framework and I just started seeing all the holes. He was an old school guy. He was missing kind of a lot of technology pieces and just things. And I, I said, yeah, I'd like to invest with you. And he said, well, you've got. Given me a lot of insight. Would you ever consider running it? And I said, well, I, I don't know. I said, maybe. And I said, if I, if I got a benefit to me. He said, Well, I have 32 other companies. He said, I'll. He said, if, if you'll run this company and invest here, I'll give you ownership in those 30 or 32. And I was like, well, let me think about it. So I gave it a week or two, came back and I said, I'll do it, but I want, I actually want to run all of it. I said, I want to make sure I'm overseeing all of it. And we struck a deal. And so I invested and ended up. I went from one company to now I got 30 companies and, you know, 20 of them were not great, you know, but 10 or 12 of them were really good. And so I turned that, you know, 20 companies into 86 companies, or 30 companies into 86 companies. I also was building other companies on the side for myself and I really figured out the operations and systems thing. And then 2019, right before COVID I sell, you know, know 76 companies in one year. Sold majority of his. I sold a majority of mine and had 76 exits in one year. That's where I got the, the nickname King of Exits. It wasn't the number of exits, it was the fact that I did it all in one year.

But it's just a matter of, you put these ideas in your head, you know, computers, they Came up with batch processing a long time ago. And. But, you know, you're doing, like, batch processing on running companies and selling companies. And so how does. How does the guy who's running one insurance company wind up with 32 to begin with? You know, like how. You know, right off the bat, the multiples of it. Because, you know, that's a stretch.

But.

But, you know, there's an idea. You know, the thing is that I want to pull out. Eddie is there. There's ideas and thinking behind doing it on this level that, you know, ideas are dime a dozen. You know, once you're. You know, they don't. Ideas don't care who use them. And so what we're doing is putting ideas out here to, you know, kind of tickles people's mind about the idea of doing things on scale like this. And so anyway, how did they have 32 companies?

He was an investor, and he basically would anything that was adjacent to his insurance company, because he really wasn't running his insurance company. There was kind of somebody else running it. When I came in, he was out there just investing, and the insurance company was making money. But he's buying, you know, a mortgage company or he's buying this magazine in Kansas City or whatever. He just. He. It was just a bunch of misfit opportunities that he had found, and now every one of those had somebody that was running it, right? So, like, it wasn't like he was. He was running them all. But when I got there, I realized there was no accountability, There was no process, there was no governance. You know, like, people were just doing whatever they wanted to do. There was no oversight, and it was just a mess. So it really wasn't hard to find success in the beginning. Now, once I built my system and the system began to govern everything, then I even had companies outside of that group of companies that I owned and stuff like that. And that's where. And I took him from 30 some to 86 companies. And I took myself from two to probably. Probably close to 12. So I had a lot of companies around that time period. And then we sold 76 of them in one year. Some his, some mine. But it was a. Yeah, it. It really was just like, once you do it, it's like this. You know, I was telling a guy, today, I own a bunch of coffee shops. I. One of our. We. We still own a bunch of companies, and I own a coffee brand that has a bunch of coffee shops. And I was explaining to somebody today, I said, once you get to two, you might as well have 10. You know, it's like, why stop at two now? Now you have to, you, you have to mass produce the system anyway. So now you might as well go to 10 at this point. And, and that's kind of businesses as well. It's like once you're running three or four, you might as well have 50, you know, like if you can do it, you might as well.

By the time you get to 30 or 40 books, probably 25 of them are out of print. But you know, you probably have some home runs in there too. You know, the main thing is you keep, keep going and you're gonna, you're gonna have some hit. He had 30 something companies. But how do you get this thing going and not only do it seems like you'd have your hands full getting your, your, your head wrapped around again, you're still a young guy on the way up. And how did you get your head around it? Seems like you're already thinking in terms of systems. And maybe that helped you get your head around these other companies because you were looking at them for the missing pieces basically, rather than trying to understand how it works and this, that and the other. But like you had, you could put it into slots. You know, you've got people running it, you have people underneath there, they're accounting their, you know, their payrolls, their supplies, you know, their customer base. And so you had ways of analyzing that. How developed was your, let's just say how did you get your head around the 32 companies and how developed was your system at that point?

You have to couple things on that. First of all, it's, it's how to eat the elephant, right? Like, you got to eat it one bite at a time. Like you, you literally have to break it down into feasible actions. And then you have to determine based on a prioritization which ones turn the dial the most. This is where if you've got a listener or viewer right now that's sitting there going, I'm barely running my one company. Well, how do you run 30 or 40 or 80? The answer is it's still the exact same. And that is I have what's called the Boulder theory. And the Boulder theory is most people look at all the problems in their business and they go, man, I got 30 problems as business, I got 20 problems in this business. But they never isolated down to the biggest problem that makes the biggest difference, and they focus on that one. My system, my system essentially looks at the biggest problem and we solve that big problem, we move on to the next big problem. The next big problem. And all of a sudden, over time, you've solved all the problems. Well, in that same thing with the 30 companies, it was like, you know, a bunch of them had opportunities and a bunch of them had messes, and a bunch of them, you know, were flying under the radar. And all I did was build a big prioritization matrix and determine which one do I focus on the most? Which one gets the resources? What problems can I solve quickly? That changes everything. And when you do that, it starts to just isolate down. And that's what most people don't do. They don't. They look at it in totality and they go, man, I got a big. A bunch of problems. It's like, yeah, but what could you solve today? Like, what could you change today that makes a difference tomorrow? And. And you have to do that, you know, like, it doesn't matter if you're coaching a sports team. It doesn't matter if you're buying a business. It doesn't matter if you're, you know, it's. It doesn't matter if it's your golf game. It's like if. If you're losing, you know, if you're losing 10 strokes on 18, on. On your drive, then go focus on your drive. You know, it's like. It's. It's just. It's breaking it down into these fundamental pieces to make sure that we get the biggest lift when we actually exert the amount of force that we have or the amount of resources we have.

So in a situation like that, you go in, you say, okay, 32 companies. What does that mean? What are the numbers? Right? You know, you can get numbers, and then. Are they reliable? Okay, can I trust those now? Who's making. Then you go and you start sorting. You know, it's kind of like cleaning out your closet. You know, it's like you got too much clutter. You gotta sort things. And so you start. Is that the kind of. You look at, okay, who's making money, who's not making money, who's hemorrhaging the worst? You know, like you say, they say that's how Elon Musk manages. What he gets done in a day is amazing. When they say what he does, he goes into, like, one of these companies, he'll focus on a day, and he goes in and finds the biggest problem, and he focuses on everything, all the energy on getting that solved. And, you know, there is a flywheel approach thing that. Where, you know, the flywheel is the. The 80, 20 rule. But then the 20% of the 20%, you know what's at the center of the wheel that when as that moves, it'll spiral out. Solutions in other directions. When you solve the big problem in a company, it has an effect on a lot of little problems, making a lot of little problems go away, doesn't it?

It really does. And honestly what happens is, is when you solve the big problem, it frees up resources to solve more problems. So like when Elon, Elon essentially dives in, which that's his methodology, he goes and he, he determines what's my biggest problem. And you have to have data, you have to have information to do that. Then you put all your resources to it. All of a sudden now you have all those resources available, well, you could go solve the next problem.

And so when you went in there, what did you, did you. Was a lot of people moving around people or is it a matter of moving around systems? Or what did you find yourself with companies like that to get them back up and running again? Does it fall into any kind of pattern or is it a little bit of everything?

It's a little bit of everything. It's. Your primary problems are either products or people. And you know, a product can be a, if it's a physical product company, it could be a legit product, but it also could be a service based company where you have similar products but you're, you either have product problems or you have people problems. And nine times out of ten they're people problems. And usually the people problems. I always say this. There's really three buckets every person falls into in business. A bucket. Number one, they actually want to do me harm, they hate me and they want this company to fail. Number two, they don't know what they're doing and they've never been clearly instructed. So they don't know what success looks like. Or the third bucket is, is they're incompetent. They actually don't know how to do it and they're never going to get it. What I find is, is that less than 1% of the people you ever come in contact with, especially if they're employees, actually want you to fail. Sometimes you feel like it, you're like, why do they do this thing? Because they want me to fail? No, they don't want you to fail. They realize their livelihood is tied to your success. So I kind of just clear that bucket off the table, say nobody actually really wants me to fail. Number two, they just don't have, you know, clear expectations, guidelines, Training, they just don't know what it means to be successful. And third, they're incompetent. I think that's less than 5% of my workforce. So if you take those three buckets, what I have to assume is that 95% of the people, the reason we're not succeeding is because they haven't been trained and they haven't been told clear expectations on what it looks like to be successful. If you go into every situation like that, you solve your people problems way faster as you.

How long would you say, how much of your ability to grab hold of that situation and get them kind of straightened out, organized, profitable running, how long did that take? And how much of that was. Came from the system that you showed up with, how you laid out that grid in your mind and you knew how to look.

A lot of it did. But, you know, like, any situation, you got to go in and assess and you got to get data. And it took. It took a while to understand what's real and what's not real because people are emotional. And so a lot, if you just ask a person, why aren't we succeeding? They're gonna. They're almost always gonna answer with emotion. Well, it's because of this person and this. They're doing this, or nobody's doing this over here. And it usually almost on every scenario. That's not the answer. Their emotional response is not the true problem. So you have to get data. You have to have data and information, and where there is no data information, you have to start creating it. You know, it's like if they're not measuring things, you don't, you know, like, I remember I walked in and he had bought a magazine. One of the companies was a magazine. And I walked in and day one, and I said, so how many magazines do we print on a monthly basis? They're like, ah, you know, we don't really know. I was like, well, how much. How many subscriptions do we have? You know, that changes every month. I'm like, well, is it a thousand or five thousand? I don't know. We'll have to get you that information. I was like, okay, how much do we sell in advertising on a weekly, monthly, annual basis? Well, that fluctuates. It varies. Okay, well, what do we do last month? I'm not sure. We're gonna have to get it. You know, it's like, if you don't like, you know, that one, you had to. I had to dive in and get the data. You know, it was like, because you can't even make good decisions about good data.

You know, it probably became obvious to you as you were going through the companies that were on top of their data and quality data probably were the higher percentage of the profitable teams, don't you think?

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. There's always a direct correlation with success and governance to the people that know their numbers. You know, that's why you ever listen to like Mark Slimonis, he always did the profit and he was always like, you know, his number one rule is know your numbers, right? And so, and that, that's the truth is like, you're not going to be successful if you don't know your numbers. And. But you have a high likelihood of success if you know your numbers because then you're making good decisions. I always say good decisions come on the backside of truth. You know, it's like if you know truth, you can make the right decision. If you don't know truth, you don't know the data, then you're just shooting in the dark, making decisions that may not actually work or provide to be successful.

And how important. You hear a lot of this from people, and I'm curious from you how important it is with all of these different companies that people understand the mission of the company and they're united behind that. Are they just, you know, you give them a job to do and that's their little world and they focus on that. How important is it, would you think, inside a company to make it profitable and make it a, you know, a growing enterprise that, that people understand not only the numbers, but what it is we're we're supposed to be doing here and why it matters. Talking about purpose driven leadership, entrepreneurship. You hear that in so many areas of life, when you go through the journey you've had in business where you've not only won, but you've won so many times, you get to the point where it's like, what else is out there for me? You know, because like, you know, you figured so much out, Eddie, about, you know, from working with so many different situations and everything. You've been had so many, you know, I see you, I have this picture of my mind of you as like the grandmaster chess player, you know, and he walks into the high school auditorium, it's all set up with chess tables and there's a player and you just go from table to table to table, making a move after another, and then they get improvement, you know, but the result for you is you get exposed to all kinds of different situations very quickly and then you can see how you know also then you get to see how it plays out. And it's kind of a fun way to accelerate it. It's kind of like speed dating. The sense that you get a lot of. Lot of feedback, that usable feedback that you could use again and again. And so then you get to the point in your life is like, okay, I'm not worried about figuring things out now. Now I'm thinking like, why am I doing this? You know, and, you know, you get to the top of Mount Everest, it's like, was this really worth it? You know, because now I got to climb down and what have I put myself? Why did I put myself through? And it's always smarter if you think about that in advance. And when I think about our company, one thing we did early on was we wanted to put together, design a company where you could reach. I remember this phase. You could reach whatever financial or professional goal you had that was important to you. You could reach both of those inside the company. And professional meaning made a difference in other people's lives. You didn't feel like you were just working to make money, but you were also making a difference. And there you got the satisfaction. And so many people don't have that. They're empty. And that's really a waste. After you put yourself through all that. That's a shame. And so speak about what you've learned about purpose driven entrepreneurship and how that's impacted you. You know, how. You know what a difference that makes.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, you. I exited, you know, 76 companies in one year for a little over a billion dollars. And you get to the end of that road and you realize, like, I don't, you know, I'm not even sure why I'm doing this anymore. Another car, another house, another vacation really doesn't mean anything. What I. What I recognized was when my income went above 2 or 3 million bucks, there's really not a lot more you can spend money on. Like, there's, you know, and so it's all diminishing returns past that point. And so then you start looking around going like, well, what am I doing this for? What's the purpose? And what I realized is I was living a very unfulfilled life. And so I went back and really started to tackle some of those issues in my own life and started exploring what brought me fulfillment. What, what, you know, what was my purpose in life? Was there something greater to why I existed on this planet rather than just making money or building businesses? And as I began to explore that. You know, I think all of us have that inside, and I think that all of us have something that I always say that every entrepreneur has this fire. They have. They're driven towards something, and then they also have this hole. They have this, like, deep need for something. And so I think as an entrepreneur, you have to explore that along the way. It's not just about building your business. It's about, like, what drives me, like, what motivates me, and then what's missing in my life. Like, where. Where's the hole at in my life? And for me, that hole was creating impact and making impact on the world and helping other people get where they wanted to go. And so I created the Impact. My. My nonprofit called Impact Others, where we build orphanages and feeding centers, we dig clean water, and then we build sustainable businesses around the world. We're in 103 countries now. We feed and educate about 5,300 kids every single day, where we feed, house them, educate them. And to me, for the very first time, as I began to go down that path, I actually felt fulfillment. Oftentimes you're chasing achievement. You have success, but you don't feel it. And to me, that's the greatest shame, is to actually have success and not feel success. When there's something about anchoring your success and purpose that allows you to feel. Feel it. That's where fulfillment comes in. And that was the journey I was on, and that's what really made a massive difference in my life.

So let's. Let's talk about that a little bit. How did you get the idea? Did you. Where did the idea come from? And, you know, again, that's when that was one thing you hadn't done.

I think all of us, most of.

Us, in fact, Eddie, I'm surprised you don't have about a hundred foundations at this point, the way you do things.

Yeah, I don't. Yeah, I don't need 100 countries, but just not.

There you go.

There's so for. For me, you know, and I think for everyone, oftentimes, the. The passion, the fire, the whole. What I'm talking about, like, that missing piece, is tied to a lot of the experiences we've had in life. I grew up in a family where I. I lost two siblings, I lost a brother, and I lost a sister. My brother was growing up, was. Was normal, and then had a disease and ended up digressing towards death and ended up in a wheelchair the last part of his life. And, you know, as his older brother, I Watched him perfectly normal, loved him, loved spending time with him. And then I watched the world accept him and I watched the world reject him. Right, like when he was a normal boy just running around and like he was cute and, and you know, lovable. And then all of a sudden he's sitting in a wheelchair and the whole world doesn't understand, you know, he looks, you know, he's special needs. And so, you know, I watched the thousand times at a grocery store, somebody, you know, look at him differently or going through Disney World and you watch people just staring and you realize like that, that there are a whole group of people in the world that need representation. And for me, it was the, almost the trauma of watching my brother be rejected by the world that I began to really find purpose in representing people in the world that don't have representation, who are misunderstood, who don't have somebody to fight on their behalf. And you know, and I think that that's where a lot of our, you know, our passions come from. It's like we lost a, you know, a sibling or a mother or father or child and, and, or we lost someone to cancer or we lost like whatever it is. It's like our experiences of life kind of give us that, that person purpose. And my purpose was tied to those experiences in life. Then I went out and I served at an orphanage and we started helping orphans. And I realized like, oh, these kids are like, this gives me fulfillment. It allows me to represent a group of people that are never going to be represented. If I don't help them, no one helps them. And, and so it gave me that sense of fulfillment, but it tied back to those experiences in life. And so I think that most entrepreneurs need to, need to get, do some deep diving into what does drive them. Like what, what is it like, what have they gone through? If they could help somebody else through it, they could find purpose and fulfillment as well.

Well, and then you go in and you, you know, people would say, well, I don't know how to do that. I don't, you know, I don't have that in my background. But how did you work your way into that? You say you, you went, you found an orphanage and you got involved. I would imagine you approached it like you approached the businesses. Get involved. What's working, what are the needs are, how can, what needs to be fixed? You know, where, where do I need to put my energy? How can I, you know, untangle some of these things and then maybe put some resources? How did that go as you got in the orphanage?

Yeah, so I had a buddy that had an orphanage. And I think part of it is just being on the quest of being present. And, and, and when someone needs help, it's stepping in if you can, right? Like you don't have to help every person, but you should help every person that you can, you know, And I think that that's the basis of it. And so I was on a trip, a buddy of mine had an orphanage. He asked me to stop by. I realized he, I saw the need there and he couldn't feed all the kids or house all the kids. And it really wasn't a big expense to fulfill the need. And so I told him, I said, hey, I'll, I'll take care of it. And he said, well, here's the deal. He said to, to give a child hope, he said, takes away oftentimes their fight. He said, so if you're going to step in on these kids behalf, you got to be in it for life. Like, this isn't like you should come down here and appease your conscience one time and you feed them and you go away. He was like, if you feed them and they think, oh, somebody's going to feed me tomorrow, then they're not going to fight. He said, and you'll, you'll destroy that, that fighting spirit. He said, now if you're willing to come on their behalf and show up every day and feed them every day, he was like, then you can give them that kind of next step. And so it was this really like weird dichotomy, right, to make a choice, like, am I going to really do this or am I just doing this? Because it makes me feel good right now. And I committed to doing it for the long, for the long haul. And when I began to do that, I started to feel fulfillment, right? I mean, I had done a lot of other charity things. I had been to so many different things. It was like for the very first time, I was like, oh, if I don't show up, this child doesn't eat. You know, like this child, this child has issues. And so I can do that. And then standing on behalf of them, fighting on behalf of them, it's like now all of a sudden I felt fulfillment. I felt something different. And I think that that's what you have to be aware of is I think you have to be open and present. Then as you step in and you serve in any capacity, I think you need to be aware of, of what, of what drives you, what motivates you, what excites you, you Know, and I think that it can be anything. I mean, I don't, I don't try to push anybody down any certain pathway. I just think that I want to push people to explore it.

Black tie this, that, the other. But it's hard to get the feel at that event. They're very effective. But it's hard to get the personal feel at something like that, no matter how hard they try to present it. Because you don't want to bring them in like the people you're helping. Like animals from a zoo. Look at them, prayed them across.

Look.

How pathetic they are. Give them money. So you don't want to do that. So it's a tough line doing that. But, but it is different. You know, what I'm picking up is that when you saw their faces and you were there, it was different. Rather than hearing appeals for money in general, would that be. There's something about looking them in the eyes, the people, and you realize this is, you know, the people involved.

Yeah, for sure. I take typically four or five trips a year. Almost always I take business owners down with me to one of our sites. You know, we're in over 100 countries now, but we take people all the time. Because your eye affects your heart. You know, like if you actually see it, your heart is moved by it. And you know, one of the big shocking things is that oftentimes people will go down with me and they think that they're going to be a bunch of sad orphans that are, you know, struggling and things like that. They're not, they're the happiest kids on the planet. They are resilient. You know, we, we just rescued a bunch of girls from, in Guadalajara, Mexico from the cartel. And these, these girls were, were essentially captives for over two years for the cartel. And these are 14, 15, 16 year old girls and, and really rescued them from a sex trafficking type situation. And you get out, we were just down there playing soccer with them and having fun with them. It's like these, these are kids, you know, they're resilient and they, they have, you know, expectation life ahead of them and there's just a huge difference. And there's something about being present when you see somebody who's been through a horrific situation and they're happy and you can provide a better life for them that just does something for your soul that nothing else can.

You know, it's like, like a, the most grateful, you know, the most fun to be around. And so that is a light bulb experience. But it, it, they wouldn't be taken serious just like the rest of us. And so how did you, so you, you got, you started your foundation and then how, how did you morph into the hundred countries? I mean that's as you know. How, how would you, it's just give us a peek on that.

Sure. And to go back just to respond to what you just said, it's like not only do they want to be taken serious, they deserve to be taken serious. These are amazing humans and, and some of the most bright young minds, like I have built so many businesses with these kids that you know, we've, we've in Guadalajara, Mexico, we've got a sewing center run by orphans. We've got a taxi company, we've got a coffee company, we've got, we're building businesses with these bright young minds and, and they deserve to be taken care of and, and, and to be taken seriously. I mean like these kids are, these kids, kids hustle and they've got drive and passion like you've never seen before. And so they deserve it. And so in order to scale something like this, you have to create sustainability. And sustainability comes in that you can't just always rely on American US dollars to go facilitate this. I sell a company for a billion dollars, but yet I can't service the needs that are in the world today. It's impossible. The needs are a thousand times greater. And so what you have to do is you have to build sustainable environments. So like for instance, that Guadalajara site I just told you about, we have three orphanages there, but we also have a trade school. So as they get into their 15, 16, 17 year old, they're learning a trade. And so we've got a construction company that employs them as they kind of age out of that. We have a sewing center, we have a coffee company, we've got various companies. Now what happens is we employ them and then we give them a college education. We employ them, teach them a trade and then we use the profit we make off those businesses to support the orphanages. And so it becomes an ecosystem that I seed and get it off the ground. I build systems and then it supports itself. And so out of the 103 countries, that's what's happening is I think we have over 20, 20 some that are already in a self sustaining position. So once they're self sustaining, we can go add more. And so that's the, that's the way that, you know, business is done and that's the way that nonprofits should be done as well.

Absolutely. And I know that listening to this, there's a lot of people have got their wheels turning and thinking about the possibilities that they might get involved in. I mean, you know, it's like not everybody, but there are going to be people at the point in their life where they really want to, you know, make that difference. You know, they feel that emptiness and they're looking for that fulfillment. And I think you can help them a lot. How should they follow up with you or what would be the next step on that to.

Yeah, the easiest thing to do is just follow us, whether it's my personal social media, which is Eddie Wilson official, or on Impact Others. Impact Others is the name of the organization and they can go to any social channel. They can go to impact others.com and if they're a business owner and they want to get involved, I highly, highly encourage them. And if, you know, maybe even not with my organization, but look at the pattern of what we're doing and maybe start creating it for themselves.

Yeah, the thing is, it's just like you in so many professional situations, you get out of school and like, how can I build my practice? Well, you try and, you know, try and get out and piggyback and get a position inside the best firm in that industry you possibly can and learn the ropes and put yourself in a position to launch out. And the same model is a good approach for getting involved in the foundation and the charitable work, don't you think?

Yeah, absolutely.

Rather than going out and just trial and error, I mean, it's what they could learn from being involved with your group that would really mainly accelerate their impact, you know. So anyway, thanks for spending the time and we're going to wrap up this portion of the interview and I do have some questions about, you know, how a little specifics about how to manage all those spinning plates and how you made that transition and the lessons you learn from that. But we'll do that back on the big hitter community and anyone interested in coming over there, come on over, get involved and get some really great information. But what kind of final takeaway would you, you want to send out to entrepreneurs that are interested maybe in scaling, exiting with integrity and making an impact? What would you send them off with?

Yep, just final words would be, you know, that you've got to have purpose in what you do. If, if you're just scaling to scale, when you get to certain peaks or certain levels of scaling, it just becomes difficult for no reason. And most people just kind of sink into whatever their ceiling is. But if you tie yourself into purpose. It always helps you break through those ceilings. I never thought about exiting over a billion dollar company. And because I tied it to my purpose, the outcomes which were beyond just a business, what it did is that it pushed me beyond what I actually thought my capability is. Today I'm building my second private equity firm. You know, we'll, in my opinion, we'll hit the $5 billion mark in three years. And that's because it's 100% tied to purpose. I, I say that my purpose is cause capitalism. I'm here to make money, but my money should go to make impact around the world and, and should make impact on people. And so I would just highly encourage people to tie your business, tie the outcomes into purpose, and it'll help you break through the ceilings.

Folks, you got to follow Eddie. Lots of exciting things going to be happening over there and possibilities to be involved and to learn. And so we've just scratched the surface. And so thanks so much, Eddie. And this is the Big Hitter podcast. If you've enjoyed it, come on back. And I also want to challenge you do something incredibly big. So we can have you on here as a podcast guest and we could talk about your transformation because the world needs more winners, folks. That's why we do this. That's why we focus on winning. Take care.