187. Reid Tilestone | Grit It Done

Hello, Book Thinkers family, and welcome to our personal development podcast, Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books. During each episode, we interview one of the world's top authors, and as a listener, you can expect to discover new books, new mentors, and new resources that you can use to achieve more and live better. In today's episode, we have the pleasure to interview Reed Tyleston, author of Grit It Done: A Low-Risk Guide to Entrepreneurial Business Ownership. Reed is an entrepreneurial business owner, adjunct professor at Case Western Reserve University, where he teaches entrepreneurship through acquisition. He also invests in entrepreneurial business owners, is a board member, is an award-winning paid keynote speaker, and an elite athlete. Reed started his entrepreneurial business ownership at a young age and has over 16 years of on-the-ground experience Acquiring, opening, growing, and selling 4 companies in addition to his academic research. He is an impressive and inspiring person to learn from, to say the least. In this episode, you'll learn about Reid's background, how you can win through pure effort, why you don't have to have a novel idea to become a business owner, the differences between entrepreneurial business ownership and traditional entrepreneurship, how it's possible for anyone to become a millionaire, why the American dream is alive and well, how you can create a life of freedom and autonomy with the right knowledge and leverage, and how being a business owner So if you're ready to dive into the world of entrepreneurial business ownership and start taking control of your life, you are in the right place. Now get ready to learn and enjoy this incredible conversation with Reid Tylston.

Reid Tylston, what's going on, my friend? Welcome to the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast.

Hey, Nick. Happy Wednesday. An absolute pleasure, absolute pleasure to be with you today. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, a little bit of context for the Book Thinkers family. I was actually with Reid last weekend. at his home in Salt Lake City, and we got to spend a couple of days doing a deep dive on his book, and I've gotten to know him really well. So one thing that I didn't get to know really well, Reed, was actually your background before getting into entrepreneurial business ownership. So what was Reed Tyleston like as a young man?

Reed Tyleston like as a young man? It all goes back to how my parents met. It was the late 1970s. My dad Fred, he's six two. His first cousin Terry, who's six five. They're both serious runners. It was a starting line of a running race, and this is the late seventies. So they're dressed in tank tops, short shorts, good healthy portion of untrimmed body hair, and it was a pretty warm day in Northern California. You know, mid eighties. So they were worried about sweating a lot and then skin chafing. So to avoid skin chafing. What people back then did was they took Vaseline and they lubed themselves up, inner armpits, nipples, inner thighs. So my dad and his buddy were sitting there lubing themselves up when out of nowhere, my mother walked up and was like, hey guys, can I borrow some of your Vaseline? And then one thing led to another. So my parents met over a bottle of Vaseline in the late 1970s. That pretty much explains me as a person. That's why I'm able to. That's why I love endurance athletics, like the stair climbing and the Ironman, the ultramarathons. I've worked out every day for over five straight years, right? I mean, all that stuff kind of stems back to to how my parents met. And it also goes to illustrate a point which I think is important, and that is that sometimes in life, especially in entrepreneurial business ownership, it's got to go out and do the awkward thing. Find awe in that awkward moment. If my mom hadn't awkwardly, awkwardly, awkwardly gone up to my dad and asked super awkwardly to borrow some Vaseline, that I would tell you that I am not— I would not be here. I would not be here today. So key takeaway for your audience, don't fear the awkward, lean into it.

Well, I can officially say that this is the earliest that the words Vaseline and nipples have been used in a Book Thinkers conversation. So you get the award for that, Reid, but I'm not gonna let you off the hook. What were you like in high school? Let's say high school. Like, were you running in high school, for instance? Like, were you part of a track team? Like, what was it like for you when you were a little bit younger?

Yeah, when I was in high school, uh, there was 2 sports that I played. One, I played basketball, and second, I was a runner. With basketball though, I wasn't very talented. I was a little bit tall, so I had that going for me, but the people I played against were all much taller and much bigger. So I just basically made the point of saying to myself, you know what? I'm just gonna like out hustle. I'm gonna out work, and I'm just gonna out aggressive to to use like a term that doesn't make sense. All the people there. So I had these like you know people that were like six four, six five, probably two twenty, not two twenty, but two hundred, two hundred and twenty pounds. And you had me who was like six feet and super skinny. I was just mean. I was just nasty. I used my elbows all the time. I just really, you know, went after it in that sense. And that's where I learned, you know, to be totally frank, that you can just win sometimes through pure effort. If I just wanted to get that rebound more than that other individual did, not every time, but so many times I could do it. And if I was just mean in the paint, I could actually intimidate people that were much more physically strong and more talented than me. To not want to come down there. And some of the best moments that I ever had is like, I could just— either coach would be like, get down there, go. And they'd be like, ah, he's like elbowing, he's doing this, he's doing that, right? Like, I got under their skin and I was so proud of that. And I don't know if anyone on your podcast has, you know, watched Mark Madsen play basketball. He was a, you know, guy from— played at Stanford, then he went to play on for the Lakers, became famous for doing that awkward dance after they, you know, won the championship. But I modeled my basketball game after, uh, after Mark Madsen, which goes to show the power of having You know, a mentor around you, someone who who's who who's aspirational in so many ways. So yeah, that was me on the basketball court. On the on the running side though, and this is you know this is kind of an interesting vulnerable moment. But you know on the running side, I actually would physically, and I was captain of the cross country team. You know not not always the best, but at times I was the best runner on the team. So you know very very good. But before almost every cross country meet. I'd actually get so nervous, Nick, so nervous that I would physically become sick and I would throw up before most, uh, most cross-country meets. That's how, that's how seriously I took that, which I had shame about, uh, for, for a long time. And then I was watching, uh, this, this movie called The NBA at 50, just giving a backstory of the NBA after 50 years. And I found out that, and it's funny because I'm wearing green as I say this, that Bill Russell was the exact same way. So one of the best basketball players of all time, also a hustle player, right? All about the defense and the rebounding, who also went to school in San Francisco at USF. He also got sick before every single game, right? So then I flipped that from shame into getting sick and being nervous into empowering. I'm like, you know what? If Bill Russell does it, then there's probably something good. So. Fascinating fact for all your listeners out there is that Bill Russell, who I tell you is one of the best NBA players of all time, physically sick, and best leaders of all time too, for that matter, physically sick before every single game. And one thing, Nick, which I absolutely love about your podcast is, I mean, you bring people on here that are about making people's lives better and self-improvement and just mission-driven messengers. So you attract the right kind of people. But I also like how you just ask unique questions that take things in a totally out-of-the-box direction, which is cool. It's how you like drive a lot of engagement. And I think that's a great value to your listeners. So I highly encourage you to keep that up. It makes these things so much more fun to do.

Yeah, well, I appreciate that. We are here to learn. But I'm also here to learn myself. And one thing that I've been interested in recently is what makes special people special. And so when I hear you modeling your basketball tenacity and out-aggressiveness, like after some mentors, I think that's really cool. And it shows up in the way that you approach business and life. So it lends itself like into an interesting area of Reed Tyleston that we didn't get to chat much about last week when I was with you. So I was, when I was growing up, I joined a football team when I was in 7th grade for the first time. And it was a, It was— I was the worst kid on the team, we'll put it that way. And there were a number of kids that actually went on to play D1 at major schools, like—

Yeah.

Um, a couple of kids that played at Ohio State. Like, there were some freak athletes on this team with me, and a lot of them— and I don't know what it was, but there were like 3 or 4 kids that would get sick before every single game, and they were all the best kids on the team. And I think it's because they cared a lot more than everybody else, and that created A little bit of anxiety and that heightened, like, sense of alertness and anxiety allowed them to actually perform better. Do you think it was the same thing with you?

Yeah, I absolutely do. From my personal experience, it was, and it was because I cared. And I do think it led to better performance. And also, I was deathly sick before this podcast for the same reason too. I'm just totally joking, by the way. But I agree.

Now that would have surprised me. And I would have said, go calm yourself, like the shirt that I'm wearing right now. Uh, let me ask another question. Were you entrepreneurial at all when you were younger? You know, kid with the lemonade stand or selling things door-to-door, or did that enter the picture later on?

I had a great formative lesson growing up that taught me the value of low-risk entrepreneurship and just taking something that works and just acquiring it or building upon it. And here's what happened. My older brother Trevor, who I mentioned in the book, Trevor Great dude. He's exceptionally entrepreneurial. He has a great creative entrepreneurial mind. And he in high school started to, uh, in Northern California, way before the days of Uber, just, just started driving like our parents and our parents' friends to the airport. And what we just— and what he discovered is that, you know, first it was like an allowance thing for my parents, then eventually like the parents' friends would pay him, you know, $20 in like the late '90s to go drive him to the airport, which was like a 15-minute drive. And then of course, you know, he left and he stopped doing this. And I was like, wow, this is a great like model. Like people just don't like taxi cabs. And then so I did it with my parents, did it with my parents' friends, did it with my friends, did it with my friends' parents. And then, or I should say I did it with my friends' parents. What I discovered is that a taxi would basically, say a taxi costs $20, right? They were happy to pay me $50, $100, no joke, to drive them 15 to 20 minutes for the airport. So what I realized is, why do I have to think of something on my own? You know, why don't I just take something that exists and that's already working? Uh, in this case, you know, the quote-unquote owner was going off to college and just inherit it and then just build upon it. So I made, I made a lot of money, uh, driving people to the airport in, um, You know, 1999, 2000, 2001 in the Bay Area, uh, based off of an idea that my brother had. And I just, I just built upon it. And the margins were good. I mean, someone who's 17 years old investing 40 minutes of their time and getting paid like $100, no joke. Then I also started doing it for charities. I would be like, hey, if someone wants to like, hey, can you donate something? I'd be like, I'm gonna donate a free airport ride. Can you care to guess what happened in that? And this goes to a great life lesson about the power of charity and giving. And this, I can't make this up when I tell you it's actually— what do you think happened when I gave this as like a charity at a church fundraiser or something like that?

Well, I'm guessing that you gave a couple of rides and those people started to spread the word and share about this amazing service and it led to more business. Now that's my guess, but I don't know this story. So what actually happened?

Yeah, that's that's a guess, and that's absolutely right. I give them one ride; I get more rides. But something else that was even more impressive happened that I would not have couldn't even have. This blew my mind. On the first ride, they would give me tips of like twenty or forty or fifty dollars. So it's like I gave the ride for free, but they just tipped me so much that actually made excellent money off of like that. And then plus later on, they actually. Wanted to, want to hire me for it. And this became like a capacity thing. I was a, you know, playing basketball, running cross-country, doing Boy Scout stuff, you know, busy with high school. I had like a lot going on, uh, so I didn't like have like all the time that I needed to do all these rides, which is one reason that I had the pricing power to charge more for it. Um, but yeah, so that was like my formative, um, entrepreneurship through acquisition, you know, entrepreneurial business owner experience. Was, uh, was that. Um, and then obviously, you know, some number of years later, like, you know, Uber comes out, and I always thought back with good memories. I'm like, yeah, no, that was, that was solid stuff because people just hated cabs so much, and they're willing to pay like a neighborhood high. I didn't even have a nice car, by the way. It was a 1992 aquamarine Ford Explorer with like no tinted windows. Like nothing was nice about it, you know. It was like a four out of ten, but people were just always happy to pay really good, really good money for that. So. That was my first delving into the world of small business.

Well, I think there's still room for disruption in the whole airport taxi Uber situation because I think about whenever I travel, the car is sitting at the airport. You have to walk from the garage to the terminal. That's another time delay that people don't think about. It's inconvenient, it's cold, it's not very fun. And nowadays, like, I live in Boston, you're paying $25, $30, $35 a day to keep your car in that garage. So it just makes so much sense. But that's really cool. So you teed it up nicely. Let's talk about entrepreneurship through acquisition and entrepreneurial business ownership compared to starting your own business, because you're the only person that I've met that has really articulated it in this way. It's riskier to start a business than it is to buy an existing one. Do I have that right?

Yeah, I think that the best way to become a business owner is to take an existing concept that works Why try to reinvent the wheel? Buy into it and go from there. The issue with entrepreneurship, I mean, entrepreneurship is great. It's fantastic. It's just that after 10 years, 65% of startups fail, right? Buying an existing business, the failure rate, which there's no excellent data on. I can tell you though, that it's a lot lower than that. And the upside to it is, I think it can be just as great from the freedom side of things, the autonomy side of things, the financial upside as well. In addition, hey, the most important I think aspect of life, which certainly comes to entrepreneurial business ownership, is the relationships of people you're going to meet along the way. So yeah, it's just a low risk way, a low risk way to go out and doing things. Now, is it is a risk? Absolutely. And I'm going to tell you the best way to become an entrepreneurial business owner is to use SBA 7A financing, right? You know, give your neighbor a pat on the back for the taxpayer subsidy they're given for it. But if you if you default on that, then, you know, you're gonna have an intimate knowledge of Chapter 11, right? Which is not a chapter in my book. It's a chapter that no one wants to go through— bankruptcy, that is. So there's risk to it.

It's a good—

it's a lot of work. Yeah, totally. Yeah, there's risk to it. It's a ton of work being a, being a, being a business owner. But I outlined in the book, you know, the 9 steps to get there so you cannot be a business owner where you're kind of owned by the business, but be an entrepreneurial business owner where You know, you own the business and the business works for you, as opposed to it being the other way around. And you know, it's available on Amazon, grititdone.com, 99 cents through the end of May. Just all the stuff that I've learned over that 16 years of successfully of successfully doing this, and we're not even counting the acquisition of the airport ride company in that. You know, probably well over 20 if we count that one there. So, although I can't say that actually sold that one, so we couldn't we couldn't we couldn't call it a round trip.

Well, I learned in your book and through talking with you that over the next 20 years, there's roughly $20 trillion that are going, you know, those dollars are going to transfer from this generation that has it today to the next. What do you call it? The silver tsunami. And so what I don't think most people who are aspiring entrepreneurs realize is that like zero to one, meaning going from absolutely nothing to getting somebody else to transfer a dollar from their bank account into yours, that's the hardest part of the problem. Process. And what you're providing is a shortcut, a way to skip the line, to, to just breeze past that whole, like, awkward first stage, and buy an existing business that's already working with an existing book of customers. And most people don't realize that there are all these baby boomers about to retire with no one to give their business to. And I think I read in your book that, like, 70% of businesses fail to transition from one generation to the next. So You're like a savior sometimes when you step in and save somebody's business that they can't sell. It's just going to die. And you're saying like, hey, no, like, I'll buy it. And I appreciate the fact that you've spent so much time building this thing in the first place. Hand it to me. So not only is it low risk, but there's like so much opportunity out there for the taking. I'm sitting here today with Ken Rusk, who has done hundreds of millions of dollars in business. He's also sold tens of thousands of books and changed countless lives. We're sitting here today because he is sponsoring today's episode. So, Ken, tell everybody about your course. Well, thank you. I built a course called The Path to a Successful Life. It's designed around trying to get somebody unstuck. You know, sometimes you're feeling like you're kind of stuck in where you are. You're not really sure what you want your life to look like or how to go about getting it. Well, for the cost of about dinner and a movie and maybe the time you'd spend on a weekend, you can know exactly what you want your future to look like and how to go about getting it. You know the power of vision. That's why you watch Podcasts like this. So click the link below, get signed up, and let me know what your experience is like.

Yeah, absolutely. And the real issue is, uh, to drill down upon is what's the median US wage right now? It's $1,118 a week. Let's gross it up, add some benefits to it over the year. We'll call the value of that like $70,000, right? That's what the average full-time American is making right now, $70K in total annual value. What I would say is that It's a better career option to go out and buy a business that's making, let's just say, $500,000 of cash flow per year. Get an SBA loan for 80% of it. Use your savings or borrow some money from friends and family to fill that equity gap. If you want to take money from someone like me, I will happily consider it. But if I had the money, I would just put it all in myself, own all the upside to it. And if you want equity, raise money later. If you do that, and assume you don't even grow the business, it just keeps at that $500,000, you're going to make more money than you make than $70,000 a year. And after 10 years, when the SBA 7 debt is paid off, assuming that the business again didn't grow and that you sold it for the same amount that you bought it for, you're gonna have a 7-figure exit. So you can literally become like a millionaire in 10 years. By buying an existing business. It is as simple as that. And I, I, I want to be crystal clear that it's a lot of work to do this, and there's, there's risk, and failure does happen. And also, if you have a business that's making, you know, $2 million a year, that has all of the great attributes to it— recurring revenue, fragmented customer base, you know, uh, stable management team— that's gonna be a very popular business to buy out there. But there is a lot of other ones out there that aren't getting that kind of attention that still exist to day. And this is not something that was like 5 years ago, this trend is over. Like, this trend is happening right now, like as we speak, and it'll continue to happen over the foreseeable future. So this is in the moment, like happening right now. And it is super exciting because I've been that person, you know, having that full-time job before. And I've been doing this for so long that I just, I see such a better life as an entrepreneurial business owner for those people. And like, I want them to know about this. I want them to at least think about it and analyze it because at its core, like the American dream through entrepreneurial business ownership is alive and well. Despite what you hear, the American dream is alive and well. And I just want to engage with your audience. and engage with others about how they can live their American dream through entrepreneurial business ownership.

You know, I think, I think a lot of people desire what I know you have, which is freedom and autonomy, freedom and autonomy. And what they don't realize is that trading their 9 to 5 for a startup venture that's in their head, right, it turns into a 24/7 and they get the handcuffs, right? They're stuck to the business. They're working in it, not on it. And so could you just highlight there the difference between a business owner and an entrepreneurial business owner and why only one of them actually has freedom and autonomy, whereas the other one only has the illusion of freedom and autonomy?

Yeah, absolutely. And it's critical to understand that difference. And the real key is just a philosophical one. A business owner works— the business owns the owner. For an entrepreneurial business owner, the owner actually owns the business, and they're able to work in the business— excuse me, work on the business and not in the business. But it starts with a mentality that, you know what, I'm going to make myself as redundant to the business as possible. Just start with that mindset that you're going to put the pride aside and do everything in your power, make those hard decisions, surround yourself with the right people that are going to push you so that the business can operate Without you there, that's what the mentality needs to be in order to get to that what I'll call EBO entrepreneurial business owner status. Now, it can take time to get there, and there's nothing wrong with saying you know I'm gonna say for example you want to buy into a franchise system, right? Say you know what, I'm gonna buy into a franchise. I'm gonna learn how to run the business. I'm gonna learn how to get it done. I'm gonna learn how to hire people. I'm gonna get some time in the trenches, and then I'm gonna hire the right people around me to where it becomes to where I become from a business owner. To an entrepreneurial business owner, it doesn't always have to happen overnight where you just buy it and you're instantly there. It can take time, but that time you invest in the front end, you you get to earn becoming an entrepreneurial business owner later. So that's how I think about it. And the key is that I love business owners, by the way. I've been in that state before. I would tell you in the academic and like there's a lot of research that backs this up, but that's still a better life than having a corporate life. There's more levels of utility and happiness there. Right? But if you get to the entrepreneurial business owner life, ah, you're just in such like an absolutely better situation. And if I was to look at, you know, people that actually achieve that versus those that don't, the one differentiating factor is that those that get there are surrounded by groups and people that are either on that same track to getting there or themselves are already there. Because just by rule of osmosis, They're going to push you to make those hard choices, to do those hard activities, right? And they're not easy. That will allow you to attain that entrepreneurial business owner status, which is, again, it's the 21st century manifestation of the American dream. I just get so stoked about it.

Yeah, me too, man. Me too. And I'm a business owner who's aspiring to be an entrepreneurial business owner, I think, in a lot of ways. And I'm not too far away, but I'm working to get there. And You're helping me, you know, by studying your material, Reid, and becoming friends with you. You know, you're one of those people now that I can surround myself with. Now, just to summarize what we just talked about for a second, I think for anybody that's just listening to this, if you view freedom and autonomy on a spectrum from 0 to like 100%, you know, there's 4 stages along that journey that you progressively work towards to get to that 100%. So, An employee has low freedom, low autonomy. An equity employee has slightly more, right? So you're working in the right direction. That's the next step. That's when you take on more responsibility, more ownership in the business. You're rewarded maybe with some ownership, but you're not fully there yet. Then there's the business owner, right? It's another step in that direction. You have the potential to get there now, right? You're a little bit closer. And then once you can finally own the business, make yourself redundant, remove yourself, and have a team that executes everything within the business for you, not only do you set yourself up for a pretty exit at some point, whether you pay off your loans or whatever the case is, but you have that freedom and autonomy. And I know that's why people listen to this podcast. It's because they want to achieve freedom and autonomy in some sense. And so just wanted to summarize that for everybody real quick.

And the key is that when you're at that entrepreneurial business owner level, the sky is the limit. I'll give you an experience here from the book. So when I was looking at selling an industrial services business, you know, because I care about leading by example, I, I got out in the field a lot early on to learn the business, and I got my commercial driver's license. So when I'm looking to sell the business, the best leverage to have is to be able to just continually improve it and grow it, right? This business was already growing a lot. But after I got my signed LOI, I determined that the best way for me to work on the business was to work in the business. And the business was already growing a bunch, but I got out in the field at, uh, very high, you know, hourly rates. And I probably juiced the profit margins of that business an additional 1%, 2%, 3% per month just based on my effort. But if you think about what the return on doing that is relative to anything else I could have been doing in my life, it had the highest possible return. As a business owner, I would not have been able to do that. As an entrepreneurial business owner, I can. So having that ability to figure out the way to drive the most value in the business when the business runs without you there is critical, critical part of it. And that's where that important transition, as you noted, from business owner to entrepreneurial business owner, that's how it— that's the upside to it. And doing the hard work to get there, the sky's the limit.

So you can help me clarify this a little bit. So in this world of, let's just say, buying service businesses, right? And we know, and by the way, the Book Thinkers family knows that Ken Rusk, who's an author that we work with pretty closely, he's been on the show a couple of times and he's stated some data that says for every 10 plumbers or electricians retiring today, only 4 or 5 are getting into the space, which means that Even though demand is skyrocketing, supply is actually lowering. And so there's a lot of money to be made in these blue-collar trades type jobs. So we'll talk a little bit about service-based businesses for a second. Are you telling me that a lot of these businesses are not purchased like that? Evaluation is not determined by revenue; it's determined by profit or cash flow, like EBITDA, right? Is that what you're saying?

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

So if a business is doing 2.5 million a year in revenue. But it's only kicking out $250,000 in profit, in earnings after everything else is paid. A lot of times you can buy a $2.5 million revenue business for, let's say, $250,000.

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Yeah, that's— I don't think a lot of people realize that.

Well, you're gonna pay a multiple on that $250,000, which is going to be dependent. But yeah, the multiple is not— it's not going to be a 10x multiple, I'll say that, right? It's probably going to be somewhere in like the 2, 3, 4 range. Yeah, you buy that cash flow, lever it up with SBA financing for 80% of it, and you can make like some good money. That's what you can make good money out of it. And that's before you even think about growing it, right? That's if it stays the same. You get in there, you put some effort into it, you put some systems in place, you, you hire some people, you can— people juice growth in these things all the time, which then also makes it so you can sell it for a higher multiple. I'm being, I'm being conservative and I'm being humble into how to think about it. But if you buy a business that says doing $500K of EBITDA, and you put 5% growth on it, and you think about who you might sell it to afterwards, oh, You could do so much. Like, I've done so much of that. People I know have done so much for that. And it's just a lower-risk way to be an entrepreneur. And you can really buy all that. You can get so much great financial freedom out of it, the autonomy. It's a great situation that more people should know about. And quite frankly, it's why I wrote the book, right? So I outline like the 9 steps that I use to think about this. I put all the tools and the frameworks that I personally have used in there. And just basically giving this away and saying, hey, you know, literally spend 99 cents and 3 hours before the end of May and you get everything I've learned from 16 years of doing this. And you don't just get the frameworks, right? And you don't just get like the here's step 1, step 2, step 3. I sprinkle in all of my personal anecdotes and some anecdotes of others to get a real sense for those of you that don't, that aren't business owners. What it's actually like to run a business, the pleasure and the pain of people, right? Of vendors, of the issues that happen in the trenches so that you're just fully immersed and as prepared as one can be before embarking on this journey. And the real first— the real key to it is assessment. You mentioned those 4 personas earlier: employee, equity employee, business owner, entrepreneurial business owner. It's critical to understand which of those you are and which of those you desire to be. And to understand like, how much money do you want to make out of this? Why are you doing it? What are you willing to do? Do that painful work on the front end and then determine what the right next steps for you are. Some people will choose to go to business school to figure these things out. And that's great. It's a great next step for a lot of people. Some people will go to, you know, take classes on it or go to conferences on it. And that's great. Those are all awesome. What I determined is that, hey, spend $0.99 and 3 hours, read this book. It's a great first step in thinking about going down this process or just deciding, hey, you know what? This process is great for a lot of people. It may not be great for me. That's fantastic too. Just the most cost-effective, time-efficient first step. Nick, I do— a lot of people reach out to me about talking about this stuff because, you know, they— oh, this guy's done it. He's been like, you know, successful with it and seems like he's credible. And what I found is that a lot of people aren't really ready for those calls. So now if you want to talk to me, read the book first and then we'll book a call together and go through things. Because that way you'll know everything that I know and you can ask some really intelligent questions. I can add more value to it and go from there.

Yeah. And you'll be hosting an in-person multi-day kind of like deep dive into your entire framework. So I know they're going to be long days, but that's another option. So people can reach out to you on your website. I want to tell you real quick, Reed, that on— let's see. Yeah, it was Monday morning. So just a couple of days ago, I got coffee with a friend of mine, Derek. And Derek built and sold a company called Label Radar. And now he's an employee at that company. So he's doing his couple of years of service to the business that he sold to. And he's looking to start something new. in the next couple of years. And I said, well, tell me what you mean by that. And he said, well, I just want to buy a safe business. I don't want to start something again. He was like, that was crazy. It was a roller coaster. It was risky. It was up. It was down. I said, listen, I've got the perfect book for you. And it's coming out on May 13th. So tell everybody one more time where they can go to learn more about you, where they can learn more about the book. And how they might reach out after they've read the book and want to do a deeper dive by attending one of these in-person sessions that you're going to host.

Yeah. So, grititdone.com. Book is $0.99 to the end of May. I'm also getting more active on LinkedIn and Twitter. So, certainly feel free to engage me and follow me there. And then, if you want to learn more, just input your information and we can book a call. I teach this stuff as an adjunct professor already. And I do these workshops, and I teach it to MBAs over X amount of weeks and everything like that. And I'll just be honest, I mean, it's just fun. We have a good time. And I always tell you, we used to have a good time doing it. So yeah, if you're interested, definitely happy to have the conversation. And exciting times await. grititdone.com.

Yeah, Reed, well, you're a fun guy to be around. And you're— you definitely have a wealth of knowledge, 16 years of business experience, maybe 20. If you count your driving experience as well, 4 acquisitions and exits and triathlon and 10x return on your last acquisition. Like, you've got all the credentials. And now people just need to do the work. They need to read the book. They need to learn more about you. They need to learn from you, engage with you on social media. We'll have all of those links in the show notes below. And just one more time, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Yeah, my absolute pleasure. And the key takeaway is that in this world of entrepreneurial business ownership, I'd love to say, if you're not all in, you're in the way. So just get out there, get out there and get it done. Fact.

That is a wrap. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Book Thinkers, Life-Changing Books. It would mean the world to us if you could write a review and share this episode with a few of your friends. I mean, these books truly have the power to change people's lives, and by reviewing or sharing our podcast, you're helping us make an impact. If you have any recommendations for future guests or any constructive feedback for us on how we can improve our show, please feel free to submit a form on our website, www.bookthinkers.com, or send us a direct message on Instagram @bookthinkers. With that, I am signing off, and I hope you have a wonderful day. Don't forget, go read something.