Lessons from Elon Musk on Acquiring Businesses

On today's episode of Business Lunch, as.

Business owners, as entrepreneurs, at some point the question we should be asking is, when does it make sense for me to invest and own media? And the answer is always.

How much more successful would you be if you had lunch once a week with insanely successful entrepreneurs who share their biggest secrets on how they think and achieve success? Grab your seat at the table because this is Business Lunch with Roland Frazier and Ryan Deiss.

Hey, Ryan Deiss here. You know, it's been a while since I've run the day to day for Digital Marketer, the company that Roland and I are partners in. Fortunately, we have a great team and great partners who help us with all that nitty gritty stuff now. But the one thing that we focused on while I was there and the one thing the team still focuses on is to this day is optimizing everything. I'm talking testing everything from the sales copy to the color of the checkout button. Testing like this can have a huge impact on your bottom line. But the truth is it takes a lot of time and a lot of resources and half the time we were just throwing stuff against the wall just to kind of see what stuck. But the good news is you don't have to figure everything out on your own anymore. And that's because our friends at Conversion Fanatics have optimized hundreds of sites in all types of industries from small startups to Fortune 500s. And now they can handle all your testing and optimization for you too. So if you feel stuck when it comes to optimizing your website, go and visit ConversionFanatics.com and they'll give you a list of custom suggestions to optimize your site 100% free once again. You can find them at conversion fanatics.com.

Hey everybody. Roland Frazier and Ryan Deiss here. We want to welcome you to a new episode of Business Lunch podcast. Ryan, how are you doing today?

I am doing great, mi amigo. It was fun getting to hang out all last week. For those who don't know, and frankly, I don't know how you would know, we basically had a week long sleepover. It was great. It was like a slumber party. Yeah, we had some consulting days, some strategic planning days, some event out in San Diego and I used to stay at hotels and then I realized that Hotel Fraser is one of the nicest spots in all of Southern California. Yeah, so now I just, now I just stay at your house. So now it was good. It was good to get to hang out. It's always amazing how Much work we can get done when we're in the same room. We're face to face. I felt like we got like a year's worth of work done in two days.

Yeah.

And I think. I mean, we basically created a whole new business and a framework and an outline for a course. And content will be easy flowing from that, which is pretty cool. Like in a day. We created an offer in a day. Like, those things are amazing to me. When you have the right collaborating partner, you can do that. And it's hard to find people that you can do that with because, I mean, in a normal circumstance, I think generally to create one person kind of gets something and then it's an editing process. But somehow we seem to manage to riff off of each other and not step on ideas and improve things, which is pretty cool.

Yeah. And I'm really excited about. We kind of created. And so this is a plug for future episodes. Right. Cause we talked about we need to do some episodes on this. But we really created a framework around what does it mean to be an investor if you're also an entrepreneur. Like this new class of entrepreneurial in investor. Cause it's different. Right. Entrepreneurs are different. And all too often we're told if we sell our company or whatever that we need to start acting normal and do all the normal stuff. And neither you nor I subscribe to that. But we didn't really have a. This is what you should do. And that's the thing that we were finally able to put our heads together on. Because while how we implement it may be a little bit different, our philosophies we found were really aligned. And so we're going to be talking more about that maybe in the next few episodes.

Yeah. And even something that might be interesting there would be like the incorrect or the incomplete creation process of. It's like, it's okay. We're gonna put this down. Like we put weird category titles. We're like, we know we need three things here. We're gonna call it, you know, these stupid names until we get there. And that you're okay and you're not overwhelmed by the tyranny of having to have it all perfect to start with. Like that imperfect creation. I think that then allows you to go back and edit and revise and have a conversation about it. But you get that initial skeletal structure together, that's. That'd be probably something interesting to talk about at some point as well.

Yeah. So if you want to hear us talk about that, maybe let us know. However, whether it's in the comments or you're leaving us fun 5 star reviews.

Or subscribe and then when we do talk about it, you won't miss it. So that's kind of a cool thing.

Bango.

One of the things that I was going to ask you about, because I know that you have lots of thoughts on these types of topics, is that Elon Musk, I think he got a 9.2% stake in Twitter and just filed. I think the filing just hit today. So what do you think he's doing? What do you think about that? And let's talk about the business case for doing that. Or is it business or personal? Because I know he had been a bit of a critic of some of the things that were going on there. What's your, what's your take on what's going on and why he might be doing that?

Yeah, Elon is a funny character because, you know, so his investment was about $3 billion, right? He got about 10% of Twitter. You know, Twitter's market caps about 30 billion.

I think it was 2.5 when he bought it. And then on his announcement, it went till 3.2.

That's a pretty.

You move your own market. That's pretty good.

And what is 3 billion to Elon? Right? I mean, he's got to be. He's worth, like, he's, I mean, he's the richest man in the world. 288 billion.

88 as of today.

All right, so that's pocket length. That's what a normal person would tip a valet. Right? So he's. He's going to be.

It's like he might walk past that on the street and see it there and go, it's not really worth it.

It's not really worth it. Not really worth it.

So I'm not going to pick that up. I'm just going to go on.

Yeah, it's hard to tell with him, like, because he's just kind of, I don't say snarky enough, but I could see him doing something just to, you know, it's $3 billion is worth the joke, you know. Right. Like, like, I'm going to do this kind of, you know, for the joke or just to show people, like, hey, I'm not messing around. Because if you follow Elon on Twitter, he's been very critical and even putting out these polls on Twitter, basically saying, like, do you feel like Twitter is editorializing too much? So on one hand, you know, I do think that he feels, you know, very strongly I'm not going to Try to ascribe any kind of, you know, political, you know, affiliations to Elon Musk, but I think it's safe to say that he's fairly libertarian, you know, in his leanings. He's, he's more pro speech than, you know, than not.

I like that. He's, he said, because he came out against the censorship of the Russian propaganda channels because he said free speech trumps that misinformation. And that's an interesting argument.

Yeah. And funny enough, it's an argument. And again, we are not a political show. And I know Roland, you and I are fairly, I don't wanna say apolitical, but, you know, we're kind of like, all right, we think all of you are clowns, but just tell us whatever the system is like, we'll fine, but adapt. Yeah, we will adapt, but we don't think any of you are actually sincere. That being said, I mean, that is also what the ACLU used to say. So the American Civil Liberties Union, which is considered this hyper liberal organization, they sue everybody. Yeah, I mean, they sue everybody, but for free speech. And so you would think that might be, quote, unquote, left leaning. And yet you have somebody who would be, quote, unquote, hyper right leaning, agreeing that, you know, maybe this is a, you know, this, this is a problem. Again, this is probably not in the forum we can have a discussion about the value of free speech. I, for one, am pro free speech.

Let's talk the business case. Yeah, let's talk.

So the business case is, you know, again, I think on one hand, let's, let's give him the. I don't see the benefit of the doubt. Let's assume that he's doing this for, you know, for business reasons, which he may or may not be. I think it's instructive that when certain business people get hyper successful, they would go and they would buy a newspaper or they would buy a magazine. You know, Jeff Bezos did it with the Washington Post. So this is not a new playbook. And if that's what Elon Musk is doing, then I think it, you know, it says a couple of things. Number one, it's an acknowledgement that Social and Twitter in particular, this is the new news. I mean, that was the whole. The old adage used to be, never pick a fight with anyone who buys ink by the barrel. Right. In other words, don't pick a fight with the newspaperman because they're going to print all this stuff about you. They own the media, they own the opinion.

I would add, don't pick a fight with anyone who owns a jail or an army.

Just, just saying this is the type of advice and wisdom you can't get just anywhere, folks. So, yeah, anybody who can essentially take your liberties from you, right. Which obviously governments can, people with jails and missiles can. But to a certain extent, the press has been able to do that as well. We've seen a lot with cancel culture and things like that. And, and so I think what Elon Musk is seeing is that there is an opportunity here and it doesn't cost him that much money to own one of the most important news channels. And maybe you want to throw up the air quotes and say, well, that's not really news. But the reality is that's where people go. I mean, think about Donald Trump and how he leveraged that channel and how devastating it was to him when he was removed and canceled from that channel and what his next action has been, which was to create his own social channel. That's what they're working on right now. And I think Elon rightfully said, hey, I don't care how big your platform is, that's hard. Creating a channel is hard. That is so brutally difficult.

It seems like it's just a natural outgrowth of what he was saying. Cause he was saying, I've been flirting with starting a social media channel. And then I think he, probably because he's smart guy, he was like, can I do that? He's that first principles reasoning, right? Should I? Should I? Should I? Is there a battery that I can create that creates, you know, this whole new industry that's cheaper? And they probably looked at it and said, these guys already have such momentum with a few tweaks to management and the ability to, to get your word out there uncensored, it could be huge. And so it's just as a business case, I think its market cap is $31.5 billion. His investment got him just under 10%. He's got almost a 300 billion net worth. He, you know, hooking up with private equity and fans. I think he could. He easily grab control of that. And, and you're right. And that now he basically owns the new news network. And man, that guy's got the personality to drive it too.

From a business case, it sounds a whole lot like. I'm guessing that Elon Musk invested and went through under a pseudonym. Your epic training probably did.

I get a lot. A lot of the richest people in the world, I think, are doing that. I think that's My personal belief.

But like speaking to the politics of it, we'll leave that to somebody else. Speaking to. Is it a good thing, Right. Is it a good thing for these channels to be closely held by a handful of wealthy, controlling individuals? Again, speak to that from a business case. As business owners, as entrepreneurs, at some point the question we should be asking is, when does it make sense for me to invest and own media? And the answer is always right. That is something that you should. Once you have a proof of concept on a monetization vehicle, you should then always seek to own your own media. The simplest way to do that is with an email list. Right. What you and I are doing right now, this podcast, is us, to a certain degree, owning this media. It's obviously dependent upon certain channels, but at least the core asset, we have it. And at a larger level, you own the entire distribution network, the entire distribution channel. And that's simply what he's saying. But this is something that you can create, which is really hard to do. We were talking before we even press play today. This is hard. Creating media is hard. Creating media channels is like 100x harder. So same thing that you always teach, just see if you can buy it, you know, and he bought it at, you know, not a no money out of pocket type thing, but he bought it, like you said in day one, he made money on it. Right. He added value to it. He made money on it. So all Elon is doing is what you tell everybody to do as business owners and entrepreneurs. So I just want to give you all the credit.

Easier to buy than it is to create. Always.

I'm waiting for the day when Elon issues the press release thanking Roland Fraser for the idea to buy Twitter.

And I mean, they say that the longer you wait, the more you appreciate something. So I don't want him to do it. And if he's listening, and we know.

He is, he is.

Yeah. Don't thank me, like, for a long time, you know. Right, I know, I know, I know you appreciate it now. So let's talk about, like, how do you do that? So step one, buy Facebook, Twitter, meta, whatever. That's hard. So as far as acquiring media, what do you think, Ryan, somebody should be looking for to find? Let's define the kinds of media that somebody might think about buying and why that would make sense and something that pretty much any business could do so that we bring this down from the Elon level to what most people who are listening or watching could handle. Sure.

I mean, something that we've done in the past is we've acquired elite email newsletters and web properties, blogs, things like that. Because again, usually media is undervalued and under monetized. So most traditional media monetizes through advertising, which is like a really bad. If you're all by itself monetization vehicle. Not always. I mean, sometimes it can be great. But like I've got a buddy of mine, Sam Parr, who started an email newsletter called the Hustle and he sold that to HubSpot for. For a lot of money. Now HubSpot was happy to buy that email newsletter because it had a couple million subscribers that were, you know, ideal and so one of the first. And they were already looking to advertise on that. So when we've done this in the past, we've said, you know, what are the email newsletters? What are the lists? What are maybe some of your better affiliates who we know they're already effectively monetizing what we're selling. Well, maybe we should just look to acquire them. So it could be an email newsletter, it could be a blog. You've been really successful. Not. And a lot of people don't know you can do this, but you can actually acquire Facebook groups and you can acquire different social channels.

Yeah, I think the first place that I would say that you should think about things is, is there is media that you will completely own and control and then there is media that you will have access to traffic that already exists from another platform and that you won't own, but you may control. And that's an important distinction because if you own your website you mentioned or you own a newsletter, that's media that you own and control. You control the platform of the media that it might be dependent on a tech distribution platform, like maybe you're going through AWS to host it or something like that, but you basically control it. Nobody gets to censor you ever. And you get complete ownership of it. That means you can sell it, you can transfer it, you can bring other people in, you can get sponsors, all that kind of stuff. The other kind of media would be one that would be platform dependent. So you have a blog on WordPress.com, which I did, and you get banned, which I did, with no due process or ability to fight for yourself. You just basically they say we decided we don't like you and so you're shut down. And I know so many people that happened to, which completely runs afoul of our whole constitution here in the United States anyway, where you're supposed to get the Ability to, to face the people who are taking a right away from you. But that kind of doesn't exist in the tech world somehow. I don't know how, but it doesn't. So then you get to, you know, you're Trump and you're putting out information on Facebook and Facebook says, we don't like what you're doing, or Twitter, we don't like what you're doing. And so because we believe we have a fiduciary responsibility to the public to ensure that what's delivered is true, even though truth is, you know, anybody's guess what it is, we're going to make decisions which becomes very dangerous. And constitutionally, content based discrimination for media is generally not constitutional unless there are certain exceptions. Now that's a dangerous path to go down. And so I, I think what Musk says and what the Constitution says is, hey, we have to be okay with erroneous content and the public has to be able to discern whether it's good or bad rather than setting up these arbiters. So when we get to this kind of media, now you're in a Facebook group or you've got a Twitter account or a YouTube account, you have that media, but you neither own it nor do you ultimately control it. You are an administrator. And so you can, as long as they're okay with what you're doing, you can control it. So I like, I would argue that it's important to think about the benefits and detriments of each of those two types of media and say, I want media that I own and control, like my email list that I can take to any other email service provider. If infusionsoft throws me an email jail too many times, I'll go to ActiveCampaign or you know, Send Grid or somebody else. But if, if I acquire a Facebook group and Facebook decides they don't like what we're doing, then it's gone and good luck ever getting it back. So I think that's a decision to make. And then it's like, okay, now both of those are probably good because one, you're 100% responsible for generating the traffic for and the other generates traffic for you. And ideally you're taking them off and converting them over to the media you own. And so I think that's a very, very important threshold decision and that both are important. What are your thoughts on that?

Well, I was going to ask, so because you almost with the setup, I could see somebody saying, okay, so I should never acquire a media property that is a Facebook group that it, you know, might be a YouTube channel or something like that. But I know for a fact we've done that in the past. I mean we've, we've done deals with Facebook groups. And why, yeah, why would we do.

That knowing that risk?

Yeah, we would do that knowing that, that risk, because it still has all of our people there. They, it is still aggregated, the people that we want. Now would we pay as much for, you know, for a Facebook group as we would for a, you know, a, let's say a community on an independent platform with an, you know, with an email list to go with it? No, no, we're near as much.

Right.

Could be half as much. But everything has a price.

So beautifully said.

Just everything's got a price. And so there's going to be some kind of discount for that platform risk. So the platform risk exists whether you're creating on there from scratch or whether you're doing an acquisition from scratch. And so you just got to know that platform risk is at play. But there's risk in any business, there's risk in any acquisition. And so all the risk, you bring that risk into the calculus and you say, okay, based on this risk, we're going to apply this valuation to it. It's as simple as that. And that's why usually when we're doing deals on Facebook groups, it's, they're cheap generally. I mean they're, they're a pretty good deal comparatively speaking.

Yeah. And just, just to give people a guideline, it's like, whereas an independent media that you own and control is going to be a multiple of earnings. Typically the Facebook group social, those platform dependent things that you don't actually own, you administer. Because Facebook or YouTube or Twitter ultimately owns the property. Right, that's there. So that's why they can do whatever they want with it. You're just kind of renting it, right, for free. You're not paying anything to rent it, but you are, you're paying your blood, sweat and tears to create the content that then could go away in an instant. So those, we typically offer one times the trailing twelve months profit on something like that. And many times there's no profit at all. And so we'll typically start around between 1500 and $5000. And unless we can, I mean, I think this is the thing too, and Ryan, you said it so well is that it's all about risk. All pricing is based on risk. And so because there's such substantial risk that that could go away, that on the Platform based media. It makes sense that we want to get our risk down to almost nothing to where we can really pay for it within a matter of a few months. And that I think is the major difference. And we want both of them because like you said, they've aggregated the attention and eyeballs of our ideal customer. And if it's on Instagram or TikTok or wherever, there's a lot of discovery benefit that we're getting traffic just because it's the platform. Whereas if we buy that newsletter, the only traffic we're going to get is people that know about the newsletter, people that tell other people about it, and the ads that we run to create it. And it's way harder to build that. So the sweet sweet spot, I think, is that you're aggregating both and you're, and I know, you know, you do this really well. You're doing your best to get the people off of that one that is platform dependent over to your other so that you get them both places and then that reduces the risk and increases the value of the one that you actually own. Right?

Yeah, that's exactly right. And so the answer is you would like to have all of them. And that's why if you can own the entire channel, well, you get all of them. And that's why Twitter, you know, is worth 30 billion and somebody's, you know, schnauzer Facebook group is going to be worth, you know, a thousand bucks. Yeah. So that is the thing. But it's always a calculus, you know, what do I believe? What can I do within the first 30 to 60 days to ROI this investment? And if the answer is, gosh, I don't know, probably not a good buy. Right. But if you look at it ever, really. Yeah, ever, Ever. Right. But if you look at it and go, you know, I feel really, really good about the fact that if we were to do this launch roll also, you know, tell everybody they get a free subscription to the newsletter, all these things combined, you know, we feel pretty confident that we can ROI this investment within the first 30, 60, 90, 12 months. Right. That's kind of about as far out as we would go on something like that. So just something to keep in mind, I, I do want to say before we move on, because I've got a question for you, but I could hear, I can almost hear people come through, through, you know, the speakers yelling at us, saying, but you're not allowed. I know Facebook's terms of service, you're not allowed to buy a Facebook group. Because the person doesn't technically own it. So can you kind of speak to just how that works structurally and from a entity type standpoint, if somebody did want to do a deal with somebody on a Facebook group or an Instagram channel, any of the social channels where it's not technically theirs?

Yes, it's a really great question. And that's why we go out of our way to say that there's media that you own and control and then there's media that you don't own and you don't really control, even though you are kind of in charge of it. So the difference is that you don't own the ones that are on Facebook and Google and YouTube and all of those. They own that platform. So what we do is we acquire administrative control. So what we're buying what we're paying for. Whenever we, you know, quote, unquote, acquire a group, we're talking about acquiring the ability to run it. And I don't even call that control because you're still at the whims of the social media gods as to what you can and can't do.

Right.

So, so it's, it is that we are acquiring administrative control. And so think about it as buying a job. What you're really doing is you're buying the job of administrator for you or the people that work for you to run, as long as it's within the terms which are very, very amorphous of the social media platform that actually does ultimately own it. Now, that can still equate to being pretty much ownership. It's just that the risk of losing it is pretty high. And so that's why we pay less for it. Because you, if you run the German shepherd group that has a hundred and some thousand members, you are pretty much in control of the messaging as long as it is in compliance in the eyes of the platform that owns it. So that's, to me, that's the big difference. That's what we're acquiring there. We know we're not acquiring ownership, but we are acquiring the right to run it. And very often we're simply acquiring the right to run it as an administrator while taking the person who was running it and letting them continue to do what they did. Only messaging includes messaging about our stuff. Right. And that can generate hundreds of sales a week. Right. It can be very, very advantageous because that is your ideal customer. So I think, I think that's the, that's the distinction.

I agree. So thank you. Thank you, Elon, for again, the fabulous testimonial for our Epic accelerator, where Roland, how you teach everybody how to do that. And if somebody just. And I'm throwing this out there again only because this was Elon's idea, right? Yeah. We're totally gonna get sued anyway. I think everybody knows we're joking. This is enough over the top. But if somebody did want to know how to do that, a shameless plug. How would they, how could they sign up for, for the challenge and learn about that method?

You can message me anywhere forward/rolandtrazier or you can go to getpichallenge.com where we basically show people how to do this kind of stuff. It's a five day challenge, $55. But the program is one we would normally charge a couple thousand dollars for. But we've had, I think about 20,000 people go through that thing now. It's been fun. And every day get messages from people about the deals they've done with, with little or no money out of pockets. It's so that's pretty fun. So, yeah, if you're interested in that kind of thing, definitely worth checking out. If you're interested in acquiring media, if you're interested in acquiring companies, that is a great place to go to do that.

And we don't know whether or not Elon Musk was one of those 20,000.

But he could have been. He could neither confirm nor deny.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

So let's take a break for a second and then and come back and talk about something else. How about that?

Sounds good.

Hey, business hunch listeners, we're going to get right back to the show, but Roland wanted me to invite you to a brand new training that he's doing on acquiring businesses with no money out of pocket. It's something that he's talked quite a bit about on the show, but he's doing a free training where he's going to walk through the entire process. So if you want to get access to that, go to businesslunchpodcast.com EPIC. That's businesslunchpodcast.com Epic. And you can get signed up.

Okay, we taken a break and now we're back. So that's an advertising friendly break if I've ever heard of one. So what else should we talk about today?

Yeah, so as I mentioned, at the top of the show, you and I got to hang out. I mean, for those who don't know, Roland is in Southern California, in the San Diego area. I am in Austin, Texas. So while we get to talk and do the podcast together, we don't actually get to hang out in person as.

Much as we had a five day pajama party, but we did not have pajamas.

Yeah, well, okay. I didn't know you were going to tell all of our. Yeah, we did. We were fully clothed, so. No, but we did. I mean, so when I'm out there, you know, again, as opposed to staying in the hotels, happy to crash at your place, beautiful home, you always bring out your awesome chef Adam to come and cook for us. A wine cellar that I don't believe any hotel in California or Texas could compete with. So there really isn't a better. A better place to stay. But the thing that I'm always amazed by, aside from just the, you know, the general awesomeness of your day to day existence, is just how. And I think a lot of it's because you don't have four kids that think it's their job to destroy everything.

Right?

I only have two kids that think that way.

They moved though. They don't even live there. I've got four that they think it's their job to take stuff that was in one place and move it to another and then destroy it.

But for you, the game is much more sophisticated as they get older. But it's still a foot.

It's still there. So the thing that I'm always amazed with, with you is how the term balance is thrown around a lot. I don't really like that term as much because it kind of suggests this is perfect Zen, like state. But I guess maybe what I would say is you're very intentional with your lifestyle and you're very intentional with the projects that you take on and the things that you say no to and kind of. I was going to ask, but we were kind of on business topics. But like, what is that for you? Because, I mean, there are plenty of things that you and I were talking about. You're like, yeah, no, I don't think so. And it was like, okay, and we moved on to the next thing. But for you, you know, what is that? Do you have a framework for saying yes to some things and no to others? What is that kind of process?

So it's a combination of Steve Jobs, Marc Anthony Bates, something that you said the other day, and then just a time filter. But I'll start with Mark's because it's a great framework and he calls it pfm. And it's so great because it's very simple and it's easy to remember those initials. But people are first. The people in the deal have to be people that I want to deal with, that I'm interested in, that I think will help me grow as a business person or as a person or both, that, that I could see hanging out with on a social basis. I don't want to just be in, I don't want to be in business people that I only want to be in business with them because they're business people. Right? Not for the opportunity. The next thing is the F in PFM is fun. And it's gotta be fun. I, I'm, you know, we were talking about this. It's like kind of we're good, right? We don't really have to do anything. I mean, we're set. So if it's not fun, then why would we do it? If it's not with people that we like, why would we do it now? Then the last thing is you could stop it pnf. But for business, if it's truly business, there needs to be an roi. And that ROI can be social or it could be monetary. But I think in this analysis I always run it through a monetary. And so it's like, will it also make money? And then the money thing is going to be, is it money that can move the needle? Because if it's not, I don't need another thing to do and you don't either, Right. So if it's not going to like up level in some way like the, the place that I am or the place that I want to go financially, it's not going to happen. So that's like the first filter.

Yeah. Can I speak to that? Like what I love about that so much, people fund money, right? When I think about all the projects that I've taken on that made sense in the moment and wound up being a horrific mistake, it's because I was missing one or two of those, right? There's times when I've taken on projects because I was, I was really excited about the people we were working with, you know, even going back to one of the first businesses that I started in college. I started a business in college with my college roommate because we were buddies, right? Now the business itself, not fun at all. I wasn't interested in it at all. And it made no money and in retrospect had no ability to make any money. Right. I mean it was like the dumbest business, but it was like, oh, let's do it because of the people. There's been other times where I've been like, oh, that would be fun, right? Yeah, it'd be fun to own a restaurant. With these people. But, oh crap, it's not going to make any money and there's no way to do that.

Right.

The worst ones, though, and I think that this is something that I would encourage and why all three are important, but I think the absolute, the ones where I made the biggest mistake is when I thought it was going to make a lot of money and I knowingly and intentionally sacrificed on the first two.

Yeah, same here. A hundred percent.

Those are the worst ones that I've regretted the most. Because if you get into a business that you know great people and it's a lot of fun, doesn't make money, you go, God dang, it didn't work out. But hey, we had some fun, you know, and we're still friends and we're still friends, right? But when you get into a business where, you know, these are not the kind of people I really want to work with, we're not aligned from a values perspective. And furthermore, you do work that is not the kind of work that, that's in your kind of native genius, but all you're doing is chasing the dollar. Those have been the most miserable ones of all. So I would just say, like that framework that people fund, money is big, but don't let any one of them trump, you know, be like, well, there's so much money here that I can sacrifice on one or more of the others. No, you can't, you can't.

You will ultimately pay a price for that that is greater than you believe it will be. It's just not going to work out if the other things aren't there. It's just not going to ultimately work out long term. If you're a long term person, what.

Do you say about how often the opportunity of a lifetime comes along?

Yeah, once in a lifetime opportunity comes along three or four times a year. It just does.

And so when you take that big M and you sacrifice the P and the F, what you don't know, not only are you saying yes to misery, but you're potentially saying no to other, quote unquote, opportunities of a lifetime.

Right? Because you'll be too full, right? Maybe even too full to see the opportunity that that exists. And that's very, very scary, I think. And the other thing that I think really helped me a long time ago is I heard Steve Jobs say that it's very easy to drown in opportunity. And I think that when you get like when you're starting out, especially if you're thinking about like buying businesses or getting into business and what's the thing I'm going to do and all it feels like there is no opportunity. It feels like. Well, how I remember for the longest time I was like, I want to start a business. And I would go to the guru type people and I'd be like, how do you do? They're like, find a need and fill it. I'm like, how do I find a need? All the needs have been filled. Now this is a very. Now I can say that and think that's really naive to say, like the guy that said we should close the patent office, I think in the 17th century, because all, everything that could possibly be invented had been invented. But, but I do think it's very easy to think about that, right? It's. You get in that. Well, I just don't know how to do that. So how would I ever do that? Well, the, the truth is, is that so many things are imperfect. And no matter where you are, whether you're Elon Musk saying I can make Twitter better, you know, or you're just you saying, this particular product or service that I've just used could be so much better if only they would, right? Well, now you've got that opportunity. But eventually as you start to see that and you get experience and network, you have so many opportunities coming at you constantly. I mean, I think we, we have. I would hesitate to say, I would not hesitate to say we have an opportunity a day that gets thrown at us, right? That's 300 and some opportunities a year, but it's probably more than that. And so you couldn't possibly do all those. And many of them sound really good. The PFM filter is a good way to start that. The second is to say I have to be careful not to drown an opportunity. So I think to say I am going to limit myself to a certain number of opportunities a year. And keep in mind, no rule is hard and fast. But as a guideline, if you say I'm looking for three to five opportunities a year to do to acquire a business or one opportunity a year that will have a needle moving effect on the three things I care about that people fund money, that can be a very good guideline to help you not drown an opportunity so that you are available for those once in a lifetime ones. And the other corollary to that is that that don't actually say no, because no means never. But not now means that currently I am either full or I'm waiting for something better. And so I'm going to say not now. And if that opportunity ultimately goes away because my not now leads to people doing other things. That's fine, good for them. I don't want to hold them up. But it does make me feel good that I didn't just leave this opportunity and cut off all possibility of doing that.

Makes sense.

Yeah. It's such a good point. And I'll tell you, you know, as someone who, you know, I'm a people pleaser, it's really hard for me to say no. And so it's one thing if you're saying, you know, a lot of people are saying, oh, can I pick your brain? Oh, can I take you to coffee? You know, can, can I get your advice on this? That at some point you've got to learn to cut that off or you'll never get any of your own work done or like, spend any time with the people you care about. That's bad enough.

So that is also, though, a perfect not now opportunity. Because the way to me, the presentation there is our consulting for equity play, right? Which is, can I take you to coffee? Can I do all these things? Not now. I only have the time right now to do that with my paying clients. If you would like to be one, then I have time, but right now I don't have time for the other. So you're not even saying you're not important enough or successful enough or any, or I'm too, you know, big a deal or whatever. You still make an available slot. It's just, it's a paid slot. And you say, but if I do ever have free time, I'm happy to talk to you. I just don't have any right now.

Okay.

I just, I like. Because what you said to me was perfect there. So I just wanted to point out that that is a not now opportunity as well.

Yeah, and, and it's, and, and this applies to the not now. And it's not just kicking the can. It's not just a brush off. I mean, look, if somebody presents an idea that is just truly, you know, a horrific idea that you know that for a fact, you would never do, you know, hey, like, I want to start a, you know, a dog fighting thing. It's like, you know what? Never. Because that's just evil. But truly, if it's the kind of thing where you're like, that's a good idea, I want to say yes, because I love opportunities. Like, if, you know, you're an opportunity junkie like we are, and you have such a hard time, you know, you know that by bending down and picking up that, that dime, that, that means you're going to miss that dollar. That's further down. And yet you just can't help yourself. You want to pick up the dime, then the best thing to do is be like, love you dime. Mean it. Not now, I don't have time. I got a place to go. So it's not that you're not valuable, you're definitely worth 10 cents. I just don't have the time. And that is something that can help you if you're an entrepreneur. You know, maybe you've got a team member that wants to comes to you with an idea or a pet project that they want to implement. You know, love the idea. It's possible to validate someone in their idea, but to at the same time acknowledge that the timing isn't right for you and just to be like, oh, love it. I think it's great. Here's why I can't. And it's not that I won't and it's not that I don't want to. It's, I can't right now. That gave me, when you told me that, that gave me so much freedom. Because it does feel bad. You know, you feel bad saying it to the person, but you also feel bad to yourself saying like, did I just permanently shut this door? When you say not now, you're saying, maybe it will come back around.

You said a version when we were talking the other day, because I was talking about several, several projects and you said a version of the, that if you pick up a dime, you might miss the dollar. And it was basically something along the lines of that you're going to eventually just get completely exhausted and worn out if you, if you stop to pick up every nickel. I think that's what, what you said, and I think that's important to think about too, is, you know, we all have. I, I continue to suffer from the myth of unlimited capacity and, which means, you know, ah, I can do that, I can do that. I can do that, you know, oh, you can't do that. I'll take care of that. Because I'm very passionate about all the things I'm involved with and the people I'm involved in. And I like the new also. But it is important that you can easily burn yourself out. And that's, that's something to be aware of. Do you have a framework for that? Like, because I know you're very good at saying, that's my personal time. And so not even for that half million dollars I can make on that day. Am I willing to do that.

Yeah. So what my wife and I do between Christmas and New Year every year we sit down with a calendar and she gets first dibs. And so it's like we're blocking off this week for a family vacation. Where are we going? I don't know yet, but block it off, you know. And we know that we're going to do this. So it's kind of the, you know, the rocks pebble sand analogy. Like you want to put the big rocks in first and then the pebbles can go in around that and then last the sand. And so you've got to decide not just what are your business rocks but what are your personal rocks that are going to be there for you. And so I get out a big, you know, I've got a, I've got a sheet that has all, every month represented on one sheet. Right. You can buy these, you can go online, the, you know, basic 12 month calendar, all the days. And so we'll go in and just block all of those off. And so if something is on that comes in on that time, I mean business or not, I mean you, you know, we've got an opportunity to go and have a pretty phenomenal wine experience at a place that, you know, I want to go. And it's like I can't because it's already been blocked off with a family trip. And so that's, that's what we do. And I know if my wife and our family has first dibs, then I am. That's aligned with what I've determined my priority should be. Right. So my priority should be, you know, my family. If you mean that, then let it have first dibs on your calendar and should have first dibs in your wallet. You know, that's where it needs to go. So go ahead and out pre spend that time. And then it's just, I can't, it's not even a negotiation, it's. I can't. It's already booked. So that's what we do. And it's funny what you said about deciding ahead of time the number of projects. I actually did that in 2021. I said I'm going to take on six.

Because I did.

I looked at the previous year. I had attempted 30 and completed almost none of them. I did, I made at the outset like, what are the big projects? What do I want to get done this year? And I created this like massive to do list. And I think out of the 30 something I'd only completed two of them and then added a bunch More I was like, this is dumb. So I said I'm only going to do six and I can't start more than three per quarter. And so like what that told me is that I'm agreeing ahead of time. Some of these are going to take longer than a quarter. I can't have too many at the same time. But I need to hold some over for the end of the year because when I'm out, I'm out. And that was really effective. And it just hit me that when you said what you said, I didn't do that this last year and I should have.

So it's arbitrary numbers, doesn't it?

Absolutely.

Yeah, it really does. And also I think that I'm just thinking about it now based on what you said, and it's something you and I have talked a lot about, is can your business handle the things that you're going to start the project? Because one challenge that we have is that we're blessed to be part of prolific creators of content and courses and products and things like that. And I think that particularly combined we can way out create the ability of the infrastructure and the, and the team to be able to deploy the things that get created. So it probably doesn't make sense to create. Like if you run a filter when you guys are thinking about what you're going to do and say, well, I want to create these five products, let's say, can you launch them all?

Yeah.

Can the list handle it? Is there advertising capability for it? Does your team capable of building out all the stuff that has to be built out for that? Because if not, and we did this when we were talking about Epic Network, it's like we have a roadmap that's got a list of a lot of other things on it that we can do, but we're not doing them now, even though we could, because if we did, it'd be wasting our time that.

We could be spending things that can.

Be productive faster because they aren't limited by the constraints of that particular company. So if you're a multi, like if you're a portfolio person thinking about what can I do reasonably in this portfolio and don't take on more things than can happen in the current year to start because they're just going to be wasted because they'll be sitting there gathering dust and you could have been doing something that either would help your family or that would be a give back or that might feed some other business that you've got that does have that.

Capacity or that might just be Rest.

I don't know. Restful, this word you speak of.

Never heard this, Never heard of it. Yeah, no, I think that's a very important thing. So that's cool. I love the pfm, the people fund money. I think that's big. Deciding ahead of time, how many projects, big projects are you going to, are you going to take on? And maybe blocking out those things at the, you know, before the year even starts. Make sure you carve out that truly critical time. Whatever you've decided is a priority. It could be you just want to.

Be a better golfer.

Right. Or something like that. Whatever it is for you, maybe hate your family, don't want to spend any time with them. We're not here to tell you what it should be, but whatever you've determined is your priority. Budget it in ahead of time. Tell your. Tell your time.

Intentional. Yeah. At least make it intentional. Go. Awesome. I think that's it for this, this particular topic.

I got my question answered and so that's all that matters to me. This is Selfish Time with Ryan and Roland.

I like it. I like it. The Selfish Edition podcast, Business Lunch the Selfish Edition. So if you guys enjoyed today's podcast, please take the time to subscribe so that you don't miss any episodes and also please shoot us those five star reviews. We really appreciate that it helps other people to see that. We got some cool stuff here to share as well. And Ryan, is there any other resource or place that you would like to tell people about today before we sign off?

We just released at the Scalable company a brand new flagship training. And so it is, you know, we did a couple episodes on the seven levels of scale and so we actually produced a course all about how to essentially get from, from wherever you are right now to level seven, which is where you're hitting your number, achieving kind of your version of the entrepreneurial dream. So it provides a step by step for scaling your company, which to my knowledge hasn't really existed. We certainly didn't find one. So scalable CO7 levels. Scalable CO7 levels. You can find out. We got a special run right now. It's actually oddly inexpensive. I was kind of surprised.

Is that a forward slash 7 number or 7 written out or either one gets there?

7 the number, but I'm going to make sure that either one of them gets there.

So now that we think about it.

Yeah, now that I think about it, yeah. So the number I think is right now the number 7 level. So scalable CO7 levels. Go ahead and check that out. Literally priced where any business, I don't care if you've just made a single sale, you can afford it and it's well worth the investment. Get that roadmap. Right. Get that roadmap.

Awesome. All right, everybody, thank you. We will see you next time on Business Lunch. You've been listening to Business Lunch, a roll and Frasier. If you're enjoying the show, let us know by subscribing and leaving a review. And for more information, go to businesslunchpodcast.com thank you for listening.

Ever wondered how some people build real wealth through acquisitions while others just sit on the sidelines? Well, I'm here to tell you it's not about luck. It's about having the right system, the.

Right deals and the right guidance.

And that's exactly what we give you in the EPIC Deal Fast Track. If you've been thinking about buying a business, but you keep getting stuck, whether it's finding the right deal, structuring the financing or negotiating with sellers, you are not alone. Too many people waste months, even years just thinking about acquiring a business while the real opportunities pass them by. The Epic Deal Fast Track is not another course. It's actually an implementation program and it's designed to get you from the idea to the acquisition in just 16 weeks or less. We work with you one on one to help you find, fund and close your first or next deal. And once you do, we're going to plug you into our elite EPIC board community so that you can keep scaling through acquisitions. We install three powerful systems in your business. The first is the Deal Flow engine.

So you always have high quality off market deals coming to you.

Number two, we give you our offer and funding system so that you can structure offers that get accepted and fund them creatively many times with no money out of your own pocket. And number three, our closing and integration system so that you don't just buy a business, you actually successfully run and scale it once you have acquired it. Plus, you'll have direct one on one support from an EPIC Deal Advisor every step of the way. And that's people that have actually come up through this system and done these deals themselves. That's the only way to become an EPIC Deal Advisor. And if you're serious about acquiring a business this year, don't just sit on the sidelines. Just text I'm in to 334-458-9034 and we'll get you in. So text I'm in to 334-458-9034 will get you in. No fluff, no wasted time. Just real deal making from people that are actually out there doing deals right now.

I'll see you there.