Navigating Business Transitions: From Epic to Scalable

Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Business Lunch with your hosts, Roland Frazier, that's me, and Ryan Deiss, who's coming to you live from my casita.

Yeah, live for us. Not for them, though, because that's true. But that's true. Yeah, it's fun. We're getting to actually hang out together, but not. Yeah, yeah, we're in the same house.

Like, we've tried it, where I sit here and he sits there and we kind of huddle in together, but it's just. It's kind of hard to make it work that way. So we decided this was better.

Yeah, yeah. Divide and conquer. Divide and conquer. Well, this has been a bit. A big week. We've got our event Get Scalable Live coming up. We've got some cool announcements to make there, but leading up to this, you had a pretty cool, exciting announcement that you made about a pretty significant change in direction that we're doing at one of our companies. I thought it'd be fun to kind of talk about what's happening, why it's happening, and where we're going from here. What do you think?

Yeah, I'm. I'm in. Let's do it.

So what's the. So give us a backstory. You. I understand that you recently were fired from your. From your post as the head of Epic Network. That's what I'm telling everybody. It just didn't work out. Yeah, you were. You were getting the job done. And so, yeah, we had to say.

I had a certain talk with myself, and I didn't react well to myself. And then I told myself that I was not allowed to be there anymore. No, no, it's really funny. Epic was a wonderful adventure that came about during the pandemic. And, like, literally, the name is Ethical Profits in Crisis. You know, how do you be ethical about making money in a crisis? And we talked about it with people and showed them how to buy businesses, and that was really fun. The challenge was it kind of two things. Like, after about three years, it really became much more of a business than I wanted it to be, selling courses and things like that. And we had, you know, coaches that we paid and, you know, that came up through the program and employees and all those things. And I found myself on an org chart effectively, and I didn't. I wasn't, like, officially on it, but I kind of was. And I just don't. I don't like living there. That's kind of my happy joy and genius spot is helping make things happen and add value in a Hit and run kind of style, not like I'm in a meeting kind of style. So that was part of it. And it just, you know, I wanted to have more time to focus on doing deals. And one of the big reasons for putting Epic together, in addition to kind of helping people figure out what to do when things were in the challenging times, was to have deal referrals. And honestly, it didn't generate as many deals as I expected that it would. And that's fine. A lot of people did deals. We had over 100,000 people go through the program. And I got. Every day I get stuff from people saying, this changed my life and that kind of stuff. And that was very, very motivating. But as we came into the end of 25, as we're recording this in November of 25 and looking at 26 and setting goals and stuff, it's just like, you know, you and I talked and everything, it's like, man, this just isn't. It just doesn't seem like it's got the legs to go where we wanted it to go. And we probably want to focus more on the deals and less on the. On the educational side. So, I mean, that's really. I think it as much as anything.

Yeah, I think there's a couple of them.

The other thing I want to say, sorry, I forgot about this, was that it also felt weird. Like ethical profits in crisis, after the crisis kind of was gone. I mean, we have. There's always a crisis, but, you know, the one that it was really designed for was when everything was shut down and everything's not shut down. So it just was kind of like, this is just not really. Do we rebrand? Do we change the name?

Right. And so I guess just kind of the, you know, to back up, like, the highlights. What we've decided to do is we're going to be digital market, not, sorry, the scalable company. So the other company that we own and operate is effectively acquiring the assets of Epic Network. The ip, the training, all that's going to get rolled into scalable. So a lot of our scalable clients are going to have access to it. That was another, I think, you know, challenge that we had where we had business owners over here who wanted to learn about the stuff, but really that was now in a different brand over here and not through, you know, any really good, solid strategic reason that we had devised. It's just. That's how it kind of worked out. And so we're able to. To still utilize the assets and in a more, I would argue more strategic way right now that's more beneficial to our, to our clients and that gets you back off of the org chart where you're not having to effectively run another company. I mean, I know that that wasn't how it was necessarily, but I think any time you're the face of something, you wind up kind of being in more meetings and getting sucked into more stuff than you want to. So Epic Network as a brand is going away. That's like that, that's happening right now kind of as, you know, as we speak. I think if you go to epicnetwork.com you'll see all the information about that and what we're doing to kind of give everybody one last chance at having access to this content which is going to go away, it's going to get sunset and clients of the scalable company are still going to have access to it. But yeah, that brand is going away. So I think it's good to talk about, take this from a couple angles. You touched on a little bit of the why I think it's worth kind of going in a little bit deeper on some of those also kind of what's the future? Where do we see things going? Maybe even like what's the future of course, and information type businesses as well, because I know a lot of our listeners are in that space or have been. But where I would like to start and kind of get your opinion on, get your take on is just this notion of businesses happening sort of almost by accident because I think a lot of people find themselves in this place where you found yourself, which is the original intention was not to start a totally separate business called Epic Network. The original intention was just to show some people how to buy and sell businesses during kind of a scary time. And then one thing led to another, led to another, led to another and next thing you turn around and it's a business. And I think we've worked a lot of people who that's exactly how they could describe their entrepreneurial journey. And oftentimes this is amazing. This is wonderful. That's that accidental entrepreneur where you stumble into something great. But sometimes businesses can take on a life of their own and they can wind up in a place that you never intended for them to be. And we almost feel guilty like we're no longer allowed to decide what this business should be, even though it's ours and we started in the first place. But it kind of has developed this life of its own. So I think it's just worth maybe talking about some of the thought process that we went through, because it's not like we came to this decision, you know, lightly, but I would say once the decision was made, it was fairly okay. That's obviously what we need to do, and there wasn't a lot of emotion around it. So can you kind of speak to just, you know, how you think about, you know, businesses and when they do start to take off, take on a life of their own, and when is it appropriate for an entrepreneur just to pause and say, hey, is this actually what I wanted? You know, it's become this thing, and it's successful. You know, it's making a whole lot of millions of dollars, and this is great. It's helping a lot of people, but I don't know that I'm loving it anymore, and I don't know that it's right for where we're going. And so it's time for a change. So can you maybe, like, speak to that? Because I think a lot of people might even feel some guilt around that.

Yeah, I mean, I think that, like, you have to start with the. Well, it. For me, it's helpful to start with the fundamental belief that the business is there to serve you, and it's there to serve the people that it's there to serve you first, though. And then secondly, it's there to serve the customers that it has. And that might sound like, oh, no, it's always to serve the customers. But if you're not happy and it's not serving you, then to me, you shouldn't be doing it. And so I think you have to look and say, is this what I want? And if it's not, then don't be afraid to make a change. So one of the things for me was I didn't really want to be an acquisitions guy. I didn't want to be, you know, like a course instructor. Although I will continue to do courses. EPIC will not sell courses. But, I mean, I'm sure that I will do courses in the future, because I like to teach just like you.

From time to time in the future. Right. Like, you're not done, like, talking about stuff? Yeah, no.

And I'm not done talking about acquisitions, but I'm kind of tired of only talking about acquisitions. And there's so many more things about business that I do that I really love and, you know, and am involved with actively. Acquisitions is, you know, maybe 30% of of the stuff that I'm involved with, and so like to have that be everything that I'm focused on in terms of Like I've got to have content and I'm on a treadmill of producing it for that stuff. It's like, that's not what I want and it's also not who I am. So I don't want to put out into the world this only one mono dimensional aspect of, you know, of me and who I am. And so I think like with anything. And I've been in other businesses before when I was practicing law, you know, to where it just became boring because like I loved law. I love complex problems. The things that I did, like tax and securities and business and international stuff was all fun for several years, but then eventually it just became I'm doing the same thing over and over and over. And that's kind of what was happening with Epic too is like it just started to feel like, you know, it's the same thing over and over and I want more. And so I didn't have a problem leaving the law practice. I didn't have a problem, you know, leaving Epic. And you know, there's God knows how many other businesses along the way that I've done from, you know, appraisal businesses to music to, you name it. So I really, you know, in real estate and everything, I think if you want to evolve as a person, you just can't be afraid of change and you can't be afraid of initiating change when things aren't going in the direction that ultimately puts you primarily in your zone of joy and genius.

Yeah, and I love what you said there. Just you got to a point where you're like, this isn't really what I wanted. And you have to give yourself permission to say, this business exists to serve its stakeholders first.

Yeah.

You know, now customers must benefit from it. Because if you're not creating surplus value, you're not going to exist or you're not going to create a profit. And obviously the employees that are there need to benefit from it too, or they're all just going to leave. I mean, so certain things, these aren't, it's not binary, but it's so I want people to hear that because I think what we've been told as entrepreneurs is that we're almost, once we start these businesses, they sort of take on a life of their own. And at that point, now it's up to us to martyr ourselves for the sake of the business, for the sake of the customers, for the sake of the employees, for the sake of literally everybody except for the people who we supposedly more times than not started the business for, which is like, it's your.

Story too, though, right? With. With the story you tell about, you know, your conversation with Emily. Right. And you. It's like, you, you. I mean, gosh, why make yourself unhappy? You know, why destroy your family and your happiness? Because, I mean, I don't even know what the thing is. Is it that you. You're embarrassed, you're not gonna. That you didn't do whatever the ultimate thing that people think you're going to do with. I don't even know. It's like. Because most people work, like, most people that are entrepreneurs work in a business for a while and then either sell it or close it down or retire or whatever. So it's like, I think retiring from a business when it ceases to serve the things that you want is actually kind of a bold thing to do.

Yeah, it's awesome. And that's why I wanted us to, because I talked to a lot of entrepreneurs, business owners. I know you do, too. It's like they don't know they're allowed to do it. Right. And so just you saying, like, yeah, I wasn't feeling anymore. So we're making a change. I think it's important for people to hear, and it doesn't always mean, like, let's shut the whole thing down. Because one thing that I do believe is important is anytime you're exiting something, you have to be clear on what you're exiting to. Like, we. We've known a lot of different people who have exited a business, and then they're miserable because they knew what they were exiting from, but they didn't know what they were exiting to. And the analogy that I'll use all the time is if you're selling your house, you could be really excited that you're selling your house. You're making a lot of money off the sale of your house. You were kind of. That house was too big or too small or whatever. But if you don't know where you're moving next, you're homeless. Right. And we would never do that. When we sell our home, we sell our home, and we generally know where we're going, even if it's a temporary spot, even if we know we can move into, like, a freaking apartment for a little bit until our next place is ready. Like, we know. We always know where we're. And I think people get, you know, upset and they get depressed after they've exited because they don't know what they're exiting to. And I think similarly, people don't give themselves the option to exit or to make a significant change like the one that we just made at Epic or the one that we made previously this year, digital marketer. Because we don't. Nobody pauses to think, okay, what is the next thing? What are we exiting to? And could the next thing be even better? And that ultimately when it was like, well, this isn't really working in the way that, like, I don't, I don't say it's not working like successful business, like all the, all those things. It's not working in that it's not working for you and it's not really working for us. So you just pause to ask the question of, well, what could work? Because what do I want? It's our business. And so often when we talk to, like, founders, board clients and things like that, I try to tell them, look, all we care about is you, the entrepreneur, you the business owner. And if the vehicle is the ultimate, if your business is the ultimate vehicle for you achieving your goals, then we're here to support and help you scale that company. If it's not, and the right thing to do is to burn it down, we're going to be the one standing there with the match and lighter fluid to help you burn it down, to find that next thing. And so I just think business owners knowing that that's okay, that that's a completely acceptable outcome is important. Anything else on that?

Well, one thing I wanted to say, because we did have. I haven't had a chance to talk with you about it, but we had several people that reached out and said we'd like to acquire it, and it is being acquired. It was acquired already by Scalable. So as a business owner, I think that you have the option of folding what you've got into the next thing that you want to do that you're going to go make a transition with, to the extent that that thing that you've built up can support that, that's a good thing. If it wasn't, if we weren't in a situation where that was going to happen, we, we would have absolutely have sold it. And, and you know, a profitable business that makes lots of money can sell for a lot of money as well. But, but ultimately I think that, I think it's just whether, even if you weren't like, even if it was profitable and you were just going to walk away, I would walk away before I would be unhappy, you know. Yeah, I think that's it. And so I like what you said that, you know, I don't think that it occurs to a Lot of people that they have the option to stop doing what they're doing, and you always do. So I think that's like, if that's the only thing you came away from, you know, this episode with that, you know, wow, I get to decide whether I keep doing this. I don't, you know, like, my family doesn't decide for me. This is me. My, you know, my kids don't decide, my customers don't. My employees don't. I decide. And I only. I know if it's making me happy. And I think that's a big thing to think about and realize.

Yeah. And if you're not around other, you know, entrepreneurs, business owners, founders, to tell you, like, hey, that's okay, and the only people you're hearing from are the people who tell you that that's bad. You need to go hang around more people like you. Right. I mean, that's just really, really, really important. Because I do think that's one of the issues is we only hear from the folks who might be negative by these decisions that we make. And that's why we wind up in this kind of martyrdom loop.

And they might not even be negatively impacted. They might be positively impacted, but they're scared of change because most people are. Right. And that's the other thing to think about is, like, if your family's like, yeah, but what are you going to do? And how are we going to eat and all that stuff? I mean, you need to think about those things. But probably you can do things different than you're doing now that will put food on the table. Right. So it's like, hey, I want this change for us because we will be happier. I'll have more time to spend, or, you know, I'll be happier and be a nicer person, you know, or whatever.

Yeah. And think about all the additional bandwidth that now is created, because that's one of the things we were talking about. I mean, obviously, like, EPIC generates a lot of revenue, Right? It generates a lot of revenue. So we're like, okay, we're going to shut this thing down. We don't just want to say goodbye to all the revenue. That would be stupid. Yes. So how do we make sure that we still get to benefit from some of the revenue? Well, we can continue to leverage the assets, the intellectual property, things like that, through scalable. So there's things we can do there where it's not totally gone, but there is definitely going to be a reduction in revenue. There just is. But what we know is that, well.

There'Ll be a reduction in revenue from epic, correct?

Yeah. Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah. It's not like. It's just. But we get to capture a lot of that still over here because of the acquisition. But also, and this, this is kind of the bigger point. You don't know what all you can accomplish when you give yourself the margin. Like, so now you have quite a lot of extra time of things that you're now not forced to do. Also, by focusing our combined efforts into scalable, as opposed to them being divided, we know that it's going to benefit. So I think it's important to know you don't always have to have an answer to this is where every single dollar is going to wind up and how at the end of this, it's going to be better financially to make the call. To a certain point, you're just like, this is something that I need to do. And I trust that by making the right decision for me as the single most valuable person in my company, which, if you're the business owner, congratulations, you are by taking care of this business's most important critical asset. Me, I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to make it work. Because you probably will, because you only always have before.

And what's the opportunity cost of you staying there?

Yeah, and I think that's the thing. What a lot of people will do is they will stay in a business that they don't really like. And it's one thing to. We talk to a lot of people who love their business but hate their job. You know, like, they hate the role that they currently are doing within a business. And sometimes that's just temporary. And sometimes part of being a business owner is you just kind of got to suck it up buttercup and chew rocks for a little bit to get through a season. And somebody comes in there that's just a part of it. Same when you're a parent, sometimes you just got to change diapers. Right. It just is what it is, but it shouldn't be. I'm just. I just hate this a lot. And when you get to the point, I've seen this happen with people where they hate the role within the company, they really start to resent the business completely. And because their heart isn't into it, their business starts to just get into this death spiral. And when they realize, like, oh, I should really probably sell this thing or do something with it, it's too late. All the value has been gone. So make the decision sooner rather than later. That you want to make a change while there's still lots of value there. Don't wait until you've completely lost all interest in the business and you've just.

Sabotaged it because you hated it.

Exactly. You sabotaged. You're like, well, have no point, no choice but to shut it down now. Like, well, it didn't have to happen.

Because you will do that. Yeah.

Heck yeah, you will. So, so what do you think this says? Because, you know, this year we're rolling Epic Network into Scalable, so effectively shutting down Scalable, which is kind of a coarse brand. We made a pivot.

You said shutting down scalable, but you meant Epic.

I'm sorry. Yes, Epic. Thank you. If nothing else, just simplifying our kind of owned brands will help me and stuff like that. We did the same thing at Digital Marketer, where we pivoted Digital Marketer away from courses and consulting. And I basically, from the courses and training, and I said, I'm no longer. Because I kind of the same thing. Like, I don't want to just be seen as just a marketer. Right. And so, you know, made that shift there. I've had some people, you know, ask the question, gosh, so you're basically shutting down Epic Network. You didn't shut down Digital Marketer, but you did shut down all the courses and trainings and pivoted over to like, AI. What does this mean about like the course and the training business? Is it just dead? What's your take on that?

I don't think it will ever be dead. I think that it is suffering from a significant over sale of courses. Like, I think five to eight years of courses got sold during the pandemic. I think you had a lot of people that were selling stuff that wasn't very good. And so the trust of the public in the quality of courses is lower than it, you know, than it has been. I think you have commoditized courses through Udemy and companies like that that basically put them up for, you know, next to nothing. Yeah, I'm getting there. Yeah. And I think that you've got books, YouTube and AI that, you know, like, like ChatGPT and Claude and all those things where you can just ask the questions that you've got the. That's different fundamentally to me, like, I don't think YouTube was as much of a threat because YouTube was the video version of the books that used to exist that were the courses. Right. But what AI does is it allows you to, to organize it. And that's really, I think the premium that you paid for courses was that you didn't have to go on YouTube for hundreds of hours to find the things that you needed and organize them into a playlist that somehow taught you sequentially the information that you wanted to learn. And the other thing is that in courses, the way that they were primarily being sold, the higher ticket ones, was that it was, here's the video training. Consume it now or live. It's recorded, you can look at it later, and you also have the ability to ask questions about it live. And that was the kind of differentiator between YouTube and books and that kind of thing. So I think that with AI now, it will organize it all for you, it will lay out your learning plan and everything. I don't know how many people are using it like that, because I think that we're way ahead of the curve on all of these things always. And so we think everybody is. And so I could be completely wrong there, but it's all there for you now and it wasn't before. And so I think that the value of courses is being commoditized more and more and more by that. And so that you've got to have something different. And now with the ability to build text code, apps to get something, instead of buying the course, I can just get the thing that does the thing that I wanted the course to learn how to do that. The course has become the middle person that's being cut out.

Yeah, I think it's interesting. You used to buy courses because you wanted to learn the answers. Yeah, I mean, that was the whole thing like I don't know the answers to things and I need to know the answers. I need to be knowledgeable about this stuff. And we're now at a point where kind of answers are commodities. I mean, they're so readily available in all of its form. And it's not just Google. I mean, Google was always pretty good at throwing out an answer. But now with AI, it can just say, here you go, you never really need to learn this ever again. I'm not saying that there isn't still tremendous value with courses and things like that, because obviously there is. But it's the from the outside in, the desire for people to have them. I think there's at least a perception on their end that I don't need to learn this stuff anymore because AI is just going to do it for me. The bigger thing though, I know for us, I think it's kind of worth looking back and why did we want to do this? And you alluded to this earlier with epic. I think there was an idea that, okay, if we can teach a bunch of people how to do this stuff, then they're going to go out there and they're going to find some deals and then they'll bring those deals to us. And this can wind up being sort of a deal flow engine. Yeah. And I think one thing that we did, because that's never really worked, it was same on the scalable side. It was, if we can teach people how to do this, then maybe they'll want to partner with us and involve us in their business. And what seems to be the case, and I know this isn't true across the board because I buy courses, you buy courses, and we still very much do this stuff. But the people who invest in courses and training don't seem to be the people who want to then come alongside and partner with us on things. Like you said before, it didn't really turn into a lot of deals. And that was kind of the original thesis. If we teach people how to do this, then it'll turn into deals for us. I mean, it seems like you captured the. Nobody else.

Yeah, I think that's what I think that's because that's what course people are. You know, I think course people are primarily DIY people. Whereas if, if you're selling a solution, then you're in a better, A better market to find to have people that want to partner because they are buying the solution so they don't have to do it. Whereas the course people are buying the course so that they can learn how to do it. And then that means they're going to learn how to do it and do it themselves like that. And that, to me, it's not, that's not a bad thing. I'm not, you know, I'm not talking bad about course people, because you and I are course people too.

How to do this stuff ourselves.

I was gonna say we, we want to do it too. So. But if you're the solution provider of the thing selling to DIYers, then you shouldn't really be surprised when they DIY. Whereas if you're selling a solution to people who want a job done that does the job, then you're probably going to be more likely to get those people wanting to hire you to do the job. So I think it, to me, kind of a. It's a pretty big epiphany to realize that this far in that that's really not the market. If you want to build deal flow, it's probably not going to come from there. Now you get huge credibility and everybody's.

Like, oh, you're the, you know, you're.

The acquisition guy or you're the marketing guy or whatever. So then the people who do want the solution come to you, but it's indirect. And so if you're taking so much effort and directing it towards being the DIY educator person, teaching people how to do the things, you're really teaching your competition. And you're also kind of barking up the wrong tree. You're trying to teach the pig to sing.

Right.

It doesn't work.

Yeah. And I think, because I was going to ask, what, what do you, what was sort of the biggest lesson, biggest takeaway from this five year experiment, you know, with, with Epic. Yeah, I think that's it. Right? Because that, and it's funny because it was the same thing at the scalable company. I mean, the scalable company, we've developed a lot of, you know, frameworks and models and methodologies for scaling businesses, scaling entrepreneurial companies. Our scalable operating system being kind of the flagship of all the models that we do. When that business launched, we taught people how to do it. There were courses and cohort based things. I mean, this again was coming out of the pandemic when everybody's launching courses. And our belief was, well, surely if we have people go through this course and training on how to systemize their business, some of them will say, wow, we would love to have you partner with you in the scale of this business. And what we found was that nobody did that. So we stopped selling the course and instead we just started saying, if you want us to work with you and your team one on one to install this operating system, we'll do that. And people have said to me, they're like, ryan, why people still be like, why are you in the course business? We're not. We don't sell courses at the scalable company. But then they'll say, well, why did you build this services based company if you just want to do deals? Because to your point, the people who invest in services, in getting it done for them are the people who want to partner with you on deals moving forward. The people who want to just buy a course on how to do it are not. And so it's been a long time. Yeah, yeah.

Seems like that should be obvious.

That's my.

Yeah, that's my.

I feel so stupid saying it. And I. If you're listening to this right now and you're thinking, yeah, morons, of course, just Know, we thought the same thing once we, once it's finally clicked for us as well. But what I'm excited about is what I've been able to do because we made this pivot at the scalable company three years ago was when we said we're no longer selling any courses, let's just do the stuff. It freed me up to just teach everything for free on YouTube. And funny enough, you wind up in social and what you wind up building is a much bigger profile, far greater credibility and you wind up attracting the people that you actually want to do business with. So I would just. If you're thinking about being in the course business, I would say, do you want to be in the course business because you like the course business? Because it can be a really great business, can be very high margins, can be a good lifestyle. From a lifestyle perspective.

It doesn't scale past a certain point though. It's very lifestyle.

Yep. I think you got massive scale issues and we know a lot of people who are in this space. Ultimately, if your goal is to actually do service type work, if your goal is to partner with the people that you're teaching, the course business is not the ideal front end that I think a lot of people, us included, thought that it would be to these like higher level deals because they're DIY people and they are do it for me people and course people.

And let's be honest, also let's be honest with the, the crowd here. 95% of those people are never going to do anything. So not only are you preaching to the wrong crowd, but the crowd isn't going to even listen to you. Like they're going to buy the course and put it, you know, on the shelf in a box on their computer, lose their login and then report you as a spammer for sending them information about the course that they bought. It's amazing to me. So most of the people who are buying courses, me included, aren't going to consume them. It's. I plan to, I want to, I will for a brief period of time while I'm super into it. And then, you know, or I'll be like, oh, I'd really like to learn that. I'm going to buy that. And then, you know, life gets in the way. So it's really funny that that's the other aspect of that is that you don't even have the audience that you think you have because they don't even know that they're your audience, you know, past the time that they bought your course you know, like, like we've had things. I know you know this, but to me it just, it amuses me. You have things where you send people the confirmation of buying the thing that they got with their password and they report it as spam.

How?

How?

I'm literally trying to give you the thing you bought. Yeah. No, you're not wrong.

That is not like those people. Yeah. If you think those people are going to then, like, send you business, it's like they don't even want to. They don't even want to talk to the person that they paid money to. It's amazing. But there are lots of people, like I have, and you have too, got lots of great relationships as a result of doing that. And it's not everybody that's like that, but it is high 90s. I really do believe that. And, and then of the people that do it, then you're into what Ryan and I just said. Big epiphany. Hey, shock, shock. The people that wanted you to teach them how to do the thing don't want you to do the thing for them. They want to go do the thing for other people and be a competitor to you. And in the nicest way. But it's really interesting. So, gosh, it only took me decades and decades to realize that and, and you less time because you're younger than I am, but it's kind of funny. And so I think this was the right move. And that's the other thing is like, so when you do identify something like that and you're like, hey, this isn't working to give me the outcome that I got into this for, then have the guts to say it's not working out. My assumptions were wrong. It didn't work the way that I thought it was going to work. Even if it's doing like, even if it's making great money, if you're not getting to the place you want, have the guts to just say, I'm going to turn this train around and go in the other direction. You know, this isn't headed to the destination I want. I need to get to the place I want. I'm going to correct course.

So if you could go back. Right. And time machine. Right. We're going to go back and talk to that 2020 Roland. Right. Where. Because I remember the first webinar that you did. I mean, it kind of started off as like, yeah, I'm going to do like a small. It was sort of like that, like, high school party where you're going to have a few Friends. And then because your parents are out of town and those friends tell a few more friends, the next thing you know, it's like a rager happening at your house and you don't know what to do. That's sort of how that first Zoom webinar went when you were going to talk about this. Because this is not something new that you just came up with out of nowhere. Like, you've kind of only been doing this for the past couple of decades. You know, 3ish by last count. I mean, you and I got to be business partners because in the earliest days of us working together, you were telling me that I should be doing acquisitions with the people that I was working with. And I was like, I love the idea. You should help me with that and we should partner up. So this was not a new thing for you. It was just, you saw a unique opportunity in 2020 where it was going to work better than it had, and there were a lot of people freaking out. So you're like, everybody's freaking out. There's opportunities here. I'm going to tell them about it. And then it was like, everybody wants to know how to do this. I guess I'll create a course and some of course on how to do this. And then, you know, fast forward, you know, snowball, snowball, snowball. It's a business. And five years later, we're like, what the heck is this? So, time machine, we go back to 2020. What would you tell 2020 Roland to do if you had it to do all over again? Because it's not like it was all bad, obviously. It was mostly like 90% amazing.

You know what? I wouldn't. I wouldn't tell that version of myself anything different. I would probably go to 2023 Roland and say, hey, is this doing what you wanted to? I mean, is it headed in the direction that you want? Because I feel like the last two years have been kind of like, you know, hey, this isn't really, you know, this isn't really the place I want to go, but, you know, but I'm not sure I want to, you know, let it go at the same time. So I'd probably have the talk with that. That version of me because I. It's great ride, you know, just long. I think it went on a couple years longer than I would have liked to for two years. I've been saying this wasn't supposed to be this, you know, so, yeah, I should have. I would have moved sooner, I think, to make the change.

I'm glad you said that. Because I think sometimes, certainly some of the regular listeners, we will have a reputation with some of these folks that they think that we just kind of always get it right because we get to talk about stuff after it happened. And you look really, really smart when all you do is talk about things that happened. And so. Yeah. And you and I haven't really had a chance to talk about this, but I agree. I think we knew. And I just think it's hard to say when something is working, but you're not happy. We should make a change. It's easy when it's like, especially the people. Yeah.

I mean, you feel like we had 300 people at one point in Epic Board, we had a couple thousand people that were in our active programs. We had 100,000 plus that had gone through it. We had 25,000. I think in the Facebook group. We have employees and vendors and coaches and partners. And there's just. You don't want to feel that you let those people down. So I think that was the hardest thing about making the final decision, I think, is that you're like, you know, this is. This is going to be different for a lot of people, but at the same time, it does free them from something that you're not yet. Your heart's not in anymore the to go do, you know, other things. And I think that there's. There is good in that for them as well. So. But that's. That's the hard thing for me is. Is just like, you know, when you have so many people that. That depend on something because it's grown to this thing. And I think that's hard for any entrepreneur. And you're like, I don't really want to do this, you know, so. But. But then, like, what we ended up talking about was, well, it's not that we're not going to do it, it's just that let's not do it the way that was not effective for us. How can we make what would have to be true for this to actually be doing the thing that we wanted and to be happy with it. And we were like, we just need to move it over here and focus it on the people that we want to do deals with. And so that's, you know, that was what we did. If you didn't do that, I'd say sell it. And when you sell it, then it's kind of a pretty good line in the sand of this isn't going to happen anymore.

Yeah, I want to come back to that, because that question to Me is the razor. Like, that's. That's the question that kind of cuts through everything. But you said something there that I think is important. I love. I love the way that you said it. We didn't. We're scared to make decisions very often because usually we know what we should do. Anytime I've found that anytime I'm struggling to make a decision, it's rare that I don't know what I should do. It's that I know exactly what I should do, and I know people are going to be impacted negatively by it. And so I'm actually trying just to come up with a way, like, is there something else I haven't thought of? Is there, like, a Plan Q or Plan V that, like, I haven't thought of that, like, is going to allow me to have everything I want and for nobody to be negatively impacted by this. And so that's kind of where you get into this delay cycle. But you said something that I think is important that we'll forget about allowing people who you say you care about to linger in a business or an opportunity that you no longer believe in. Well, that's not very nice either. And that's not fair either. Simply saying, I'm going to let this be this person's, like, kind of best, worst option. Like, I'm not that into it, but I'm so worried about how it's going to affect them that. That I don't want to make a call. We should call that what it is, which is ego. Right? It's ego and fear of having the uncomfortable conversation. Because the reality is we ain't the only game in town. There's lots of ways for people to have phenomenal careers and opportunities and things like that, even outside. And fortunately for us, like, we're able to, you know, again, this is being acquired by another company. So we're not, like, letting a bunch of people go. But I've just found when you do this, you're like, I don't want to make decisions because it's going to hurt these people. Look, they're probably going to be just fine. In fact, they'll probably be better off because they're going to land in a company with a leader who believes in the thing that they're building that they're not working for. And so stop telling yourself the lie that, like, all these people, they're going to be so hurt by it. Usually that's just fear and ego talking, in my experience.

Let's stay married for the kids.

Yeah, right, Exactly. Let's do this for the kids. Like, kids are so sick of y' all being around one another. Exactly. So what? And okay, so going back here in that kind of one last, like, round of question, you said you. You asked the question or you mentioned the question that kind of. We asked that I think is the important one. Whenever you're not happy about your business or your role or whatever, the question to ask that I know that, that we asked, that we pondered, is what would need to be true for this to be awesome. So right now it's not awesome, but what we need to be true for it. For it to be awesome. Is there anything else that you would want to kind of say to about that? Because I think that is just such an important question to ask.

I mean, I think that's the question. So, you know, then. Then it's. It's like. Like that if we went through that one, it's like, what would have to be true? I mean, they'd have to be sending us deals. Okay, well, what would have to be true for them to say? It's kind of like the, you know, the five whys. You know, why is this thing not working? You know, on the manufacturing line? I forget what the guy's name was, the Japanese guy that invented it, but that system of the five whys applies, you know, here. It's like, what would the five what would have to be trues? You know, you need to dig deeper. It's like, well, it'd have to be sending us customers that. It'd have to be sending us deals. Okay, well, what would have to be true for it to be sending you deals? These people would have to actually go out and do more. And then they would have to believe they would have to find leads of companies and then not want to do those deals themselves. Okay, well, what would have to be true for them not to want to do it themselves? They would have to find deals that were maybe beyond them or outside their area of expertise. Okay, what would have to be true for that? I mean, but then you look at all of those things and you say, what's the likelihood of that happening? And what could I do to make that be true? And if you can't change the universe and gravity and things like that, then it's like, what's the lift also to make that happen? How much effort would it take to turn that into that? And you're just like, eventually, if you can't find a solution to that, it's do something different.

Yeah, and what you said there, I think Is important. It starts with asking and acknowledging, well, why did we do this in the first place? Right. Because there's lots of ways that we can go out there and make money. We did this because we wanted to do more deals. We wanted to do more acquisitions. We've got Scalable, that creates a deal flow engine in terms of people coming to us. We wanted now to partner with deal makers who are out there going and finding more deals that weren't necessarily coming to us. Well, that's not happening. So what would need to be true for it to happen? I mean, and ultimately it's like we can work with a lot less people within the community that we already have on the scalable side. Not for us it was.

Yeah, for us it was. Well, we actually already have that. Why don't we just double down on that? I mean, that. That's really what happened.

Right. Yeah. And again, I think that's, I think asking the question of what, what do I actually want out of this? Like, what did I want when I started? Has anything changed on that? Because for us it hadn't changed. We still wanted the original thing that we wanted when we started the thing. Nothing's changed on that. So how do we get there? And. Yeah. And then you wind up with what would need to be true. And ultimately. Yeah. Found out that it wouldn't need to exist as brand on its own.

Yeah.

Any. So what, what's next? You're, you know, you're. You're retired.

Right.

So I'm guessing you're just gonna be playing a lot of golf lately. Screwing around? Not really doing a whole lot.

Yeah.

You know, pickleball officially done.

Is that travel? A little bit of travel related.

You are playing reading crime out of pickleball?

No.

No.

I. Yeah.

What does day to day life look like for Roland moving forward? How. How does, how do we see this going. Going down? What can people expect to hear from you?

I mean, I'm busier than I've, you.

Know, Homer Simpson back into the hedges kind of thing. So what's happening?

I'm. I am busier than I've ever been. I have doubled down on all the content because I love creating content. I feel more creative and productive in that area than I have in a long time. I've written multiple books in just the last few months. I've got two fiction books now that are business fables. One of them is in process of being final edited. We've got Exitready is the book that's coming out. I've got maybe Four more. I've tried to lure you into one of them. And, and so I love voraciously consuming all that I can that's out there and having hours, long conversations with all the AI engines and, you know, and other business people. And so I'm, I'm probably going to be more productive than I've ever been and I'm super, super happy with it. And, and deals wise, I see deal levels kicking up because I'm not, you know, you and I talked about last night, we were drinking wine and I was like, man, I have never created so many decks in my life to present. I would be kind of happy not to have to present another presentation deck for, you know, a year. That would be fine with me. I do enjoy doing them, but my gosh, so many. And so I really want to focus on the deals. My whole life is going to be. You know, we have several deals that we're in. We have a very large one that you and I, you know, are in the fourth month of right now that, you know, hopefully will turn into a significant equity deal for us. And we have an exit that we are working on for one of our companies that should lead to some significant new things that will take some of our time. So like, I, I think you're going to see more of me, not less of me. It's just you're not going to see me saying, you know, please buy my Epic course.

If, if this was kind of the last message to the Epic community, which I get it, like Epic people, you're very welcome in the scalable community. They've always been like sister brands anyway. But you know, probably by the time this drops, Epic will pretty much have been sunset like that, that brand. If this is kind of the last message that you put out there to the thousands of people that have gone through the programs, that have learned from you, that have built businesses, acquired businesses because of it, what kind of message would you want to leave them with?

I mean, it's different segments of people that you mentioned there. The people that have acquired businesses and done all that stuff. You know, I would say thank you for taking what I shared and actually putting it into use and then letting me know about it, because that is so fulfilling. I've had so many people that just found a new life for themselves by doing this stuff. And so, you know, the message to those people is thank you. The message to the people, you know, which is the bulk of the people who haven't done it yet, it would be stop learning and go do it. You've learned enough, so go and make this happen. Go do deals. That, to me, is the big message I would like to leave with them. Because you can. So many people have. And so if you can get past your imposter syndrome and your fear and your disbelief and your inaction and actually focus on doing this, I finally started in the events that we were doing saying, you know, everybody here can buy a business tomorrow. Like, go to biz, buy, sell and find one that's for sale, get an SBA loan and you've got a business. So, like, that should not be points of disbelief because it's so easy to do that. There's a business store. You can go to the business store and take one off the shelf and take it to the cashier and say, this is the one I want. And ta da, you own a business. And so like, there shouldn't be anything standing in the way of you doing that. And you have all the strategies and tools and techniques to do it. So that would be it for me is like, man, if I had a hundred thousand of those people that didn't take action that now bought something over the next year, I'd be so happy. So happy. And then send me a message and tell me that you did it, because I really do like hearing it.

Amber, one time you said to me, sometimes you just got to get out there and just do a crappy deal just to get some forward motion. Like, let's go there and let, let's do it. Let's do it poorly at first. And the very first deal that you and I ever did together was, in fact, an incredibly crappy deal. And you knew it was a crappy deal going into it. Yeah, yeah, I was excited about it. And you felt like it was important for us just to do a deal and for me to see that these kind of things can happen, that they're out there and you, and you can do them. You can, you know, you can get into them now. I think what a lot of people forget, and this is why I'm so excited to have epic and Scalable together, is because very often people are the dog that catches the car. It's like, I did a deal like, now I own a business.

Crap.

Like, the acquisition isn't always the hardest part. It's the, it's the running and the scaling of the dang thing. But yeah, just the idea that get out there and whether, whether you're thinking about, you know, doing a deal on the epic side, I think this applies to any aspect in life Anything we're doing is worth doing poorly at first. And so just go out there and just say, I'm just going to go out there and just do a really crappy deal where, where I kind of, you know, burn up some time and, you know, I might even, might even lose a little money. If you follow, if they're following your advice, they shouldn't lose a lot of money based on you. Learn from it.

You'll learn from it.

It'll be great. You'll learn so much more by getting out there and blooding your nose a little bit than you will just by going and going through a bunch of courses. So I know there's people out there right now because they're buying them like crazy. I mean, when, when you tell people, hey, these courses are going to be gone forever, so now it's kind of your last chance to get them. What do you know? People decide to buy them. So there's a lot of people right now going to epicnetwork.com who are, who are buying these different courses and trainings because they know that this is their last chance to have access to it.

I think that's smart, too. I mean, I, I, I am a fan of somebody that knows what they're doing and lives what they're doing, who has taken the time to organize their thoughts into a way to show you how to do it, is pretty priceless. That's why I love autobiographies. Right. And that's what I have done for acquisitions and consulting for equity. So to me, and I've bought and gone through every course that you can imagine on how to do this, and I think that ours are the best, like, by a long shot. So definitely, without a doubt, if you, if you're thinking about doing something like this and you want to own a course about it, you will not own a better one. It's, to me, one of the best investments you can ever make, particularly if you're going to take it and use it.

And that, that's the message. Right. Definitely go out there and get it.

Yeah.

Because it is the best that's out there. And we can say that, obviously we're biased, but we're also not idiots. Like, we're not, we're not just going to, like, you know, keep selling stuff that we know is inferior to what else is out there on the market. I mean, if I, like, if.

I don't know how, I guess we're naturally biased, but I'm perfectly fine saying, man, those guys nailed it. That course is amazing.

We're very often harsh critics. Yeah. So I completely agree. But the number of people you were among the first to talk about this stuff and the number of copycats that have popped up and we know who they are because, God dang it, they started as our own students and some of them we've had to send some cease and desist because their copycatting was a little too copy caddy, a little.

Copy, more copy copyright.

But I think it's one of the things I think is a tad unfortunate is that like the person who's the best out there at doing this stuff has decided that he wants to focus on doing it and therefore he's going to. Doesn't have the time to teach it anymore. That's the decision that you've made is I don't have time to teach anymore because I just want to go and do it. And so I think that's a bummer for a lot of people who hear this after everything is gone. But if you happen to hear this first, please take advantage of it, please utilize it and please go out there and do some stuff, even if it's just like one crappy deal. And hey, look, if you happen to be one of the very, very, very rare course person who buys a training, invest in it, learns how to do it and happens to actually find a deal and wants to bring it to us, we still would love to work with you.

We would.

That still is our goal.

That's why we got here in the first place.

And that's what we're going to be focusing on.

So.

So yeah, so I would say in the future, like, where should people go if they want to kind of keep learning from you? I mean, obviously you're going to be still talking about stuff in your social properties and things like that, but that'd be the place.

I think there's. Go ahead.

I'm sorry, no, you're answering go ahead.

Oh, I. I mean I have a YouTube channel and a LinkedIn and an X Twitter account and Instagram and Facebook and all of those things, you know, and TikTok and all of those things. Have content. Will continue to have content. I do a Weekly live on YouTube answering questions, you know, I will be involved with scalable. So findable. There's. I'm pretty easy to get a hold of and you will definitely see me because my content is Amazon new books. My content will continue to come out. The good news about the courses too is they're not like marketing courses where the things change every day. They are pretty Solid for a long period of time.

Yeah, that's a really, really great point. Yeah. So I guess everybody should be following you across all of the socials because you're going to be more prolific even than before. Less content, gating. And then. Yeah, see, what if you're in the scalable universe and in the scalable ecosystem, it's going to get fun and exciting. Certainly for scale and exit accelerator clients, for founders, board members, this is only amazingly good news for you because now all of this is just getting pulled right in to all the stuff that you already have. So it gives us the ability to make the programs that we have even more awesome and deliver even better for our clients. So I'm excited about that as well. Any final words?

No, man. I'm excited about everything we did. I am grateful for everybody that participated in it. This is not over. It's just changing. And I'm excited about where we're headed. Really, really excited.

Me too. Me too. And for everybody, just know if you're. They're at a similar place with your business where you're like, I don't know if I'm really digging on this thing anymore. You know, change it. You get to do that. Like, that's. That's the great thing about starting one of these things is you don't have to stay stuck. I think it goes for anybody. You know, if you're somewhere where you don't want to be, move. Be proactive about doing it. But be clear if you're going to exit something what you're exiting too. And certainly if you need help processing through any of that stuff, that's kind of what we do with our clients all day long. So shameless pitch. Go to Scalable Co and, you know, book a meeting to talk to us about whatever the heck it is you want to talk to us about. Cool, man. Well, we should probably. I know we got some, you know, stuff that we got to finalize for this pesky event we got coming up in the next couple of days of Get Scalable Live. So we should probably call it there.

I agree. Let's do it.

Amazing. All right. Well, thank you. You usually sign this thing off.

Thanks, everybody. I'm going to sign it off. I was going to say thank you, everybody. If you found this interesting and enjoyed it, please let us know. We're available on all the socials, as Ryan said. And if you enjoyed it, also, please share it. We love having people on business lunch. It's, you know, we're tens and I don't even Tens of millions of downloads at this point and I think almost into 600 episodes. Been doing it for a long time and really, really enjoy it and love having you guys with us. So share it with a friend, tell them that it's wonderful and that they should be watching. They're listening too. And we'll see you next time on Business Lunch. Ever wonder 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 to creatively many times with no money out of your own pocket. And number three are closing and integration systems 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 the 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.