Tim Geoffrion & Blake La Grange on Business, Partnerships, Money and Successful Exits!

The core thing about selling your business is somebody else has to believe if their business is worth 1 and your business is worth 1, when you bring them together, they're worth 3, not 2.

That's it.

Do you actually want to sell this business? Because once you realize you got to do all these other things, you start questioning, well, do I actually want to sell this? And that amount of flexibility doesn't serve you when you're making those decisions.

This is gonna be a really interesting interview. I reached out to Blake. Blake, I reached out to you because I was watching an interview you did with Sam Ovens, who's been on, and you ran a multi-seven-figure education company that you recently sold. And Tim, you were sort of his advisor on the sale. So I think it's never kind of like seen an interview with like a media person who sold his company and their advisor. So Blake, what I want to start with actually is, can you kind of describe where you were in terms of the company and the business when you realized you had to, like, you needed to talk to Tim and what made you reach out to him?

Well, it was like 2 worlds colliding for me, honestly. Like, I was in this info product space, education, and even deeper in that, in music. So I was coming at it from like one angle, And then once I found out that it was one possible to like sell a business like this, or even just treat it as something that was an asset, not just like a cash flow machine, or even a lifestyle business or anything like that. Once somebody put that like stone in my shoe, I was like, oh, that's interesting. So then I realized that there are people who do this professionally. And so I was approaching at it from like a completely Kind of beginner elementary way to do this. And yeah, I live in New York. So there's tons of people that like do that professionally, but not in the info space. So yeah, it was more just a curiosity around, oh, you can actually like treat a business as something you can buy and sell. And I have like real estate experience. So I get that. But I never looked at like a business, let alone my info product business. As an asset that you can buy and sell. So once I got introduced to Tim, it was like, oh, he seems to be kind of the guy to help facilitate this process. Tim's also incredibly intuitive on a personal level, which I think we resonated a lot on that level, Tim, more so than just like consultant-type person. So that sort of put the stone in my shoe for that sort of discussion.

So Tim, you got introduced to Blake. And you obviously, like, if you can contextualize the background in terms of like PE and stuff and the deals you've done, what was your first thoughts when you, when you saw an info business? And have you, had you seen businesses like that before?

Yeah, I did my first decade plus of my career on Wall Street, first doing investment banking and then doing private equity, and learned a ton during that time. I started off doing tech deals when I was at JP Morgan. And then, when I switched over to private equity, I did everything you can imagine from buying Sleepy's, which if you've ever been in New York, you'll see their ads everywhere. They're one of the biggest mattress retailers in America. We looked at doing a porta-potty roll-up at one point, if you can imagine. We had a lead-acid battery recycler. So, I've just looked at all sorts of businesses over the years, but I've always had a huge passion for education. Both of my parents have PhDs, so they come at education from a very different side of Blake, which is all about disrupting education. But I think what's similar is a huge value on the importance of education for just having a meaningful life. And the delivery mechanism, there's debates on what the right delivery mechanism is, but there's a shared value there in education. When I was in private equity, I was always trying to find good education deals to do. And the truth is, from a private equity standpoint, at least to the size of deals we were looking at, there wasn't a lot of good stuff to do. There's been a lot of different business models. They haven't been great. There was a bunch of edtech businesses in the early 2010s that got a lot of hype. The valuation on those, very few of them made sense when we were looking at them for the type of investing I was doing. But I still had this desire To find something in the education space to do. Anyway, so fast forward a few years. In 2019, I left the private equity world and kind of went on like a soul search walkabout for a year where I just sort of like wandered America and visited all the national parks. I was just trying to figure out like what's next for me. And as I was doing that, I kept running into entrepreneurs. And one of the entrepreneurs that I ran into was a woman who, like, just asked me for help. She was like, you're a private equity guy. I have a friend that's buying this business. I don't think he knows what he's doing. Can you help him out? I said, sure, I can help him out. So I made a call to this guy, Sonny Byrd. I don't know if you know Sonny or not. Sonny was actually looking at buying an info products business called EDM Prod that Sam, who I know you are friends with, runs, and he was trying to sell his business at that point. And initially, I was just trying to look at the deal to be like, is this a deal I want to invest in? And then as I got talking to Sonny, I realized like, oh, hold on, there's like a whole set of people who have like no experience buying businesses, but they really want to buy businesses or they really want to sell their businesses. And maybe they've hired a banker, And the banker is just assuming a certain level of knowledge and expertise that's totally unrealistic. Like, neither the buyer or the seller has this. And so, like, what's being offered by the banker here is not meeting the need of either the buyer or the seller. I don't want to get into, like, the regulated business of banking, but I did see that there was a need for somebody to, like, come sort of side by side, either with a seller or a buyer, and just, like, help them figure out from a basic level, like, what's actually important for me. And how do I approach this process? One of the steps of that is buying or bringing in a banker. But what's important with my life? How do I want to spend my time? How do I want to sell this business? How do I talk to investors? How do I figure out managing my lawyer? How do I manage the banker? There's just a million things that for me, I've been doing for 10 years, day in and day out. That's just like breathing air. But for a lot of people, it's the first time they're thinking about it. And once they get involved in the process, I think the process gets taken over versus them figuring out what's important for them. So, that happened a while back and that deal didn't ultimately happen, but I ended up creating a good relationship with a number of people through that process. And, Sonny ended up introducing me to Blake. And, I think, Blake, this was probably 18 months ago now. And, Sonny just said, hey, I know this guy Blake. He's running a business. It's actually very similar to EDM Prod. And, they're at this inflection point and they're trying to figure out what to do. Do they double down on the business? Do they sell the business? Do they take on like a strategic investment to grow the business in a different way? And like, they've been getting a lot of advice, but like, they don't know what to do. Like, would you just talk to my buddy Blake? And so then Blake and I sort of jumped on the phone and I think ended up having like an hour-long conversation about philosophy and not the business at all. And sort of things went from there.

One of the things, like, sort of like assumptions I had was A lot of these info products businesses can't be sold because they're tied to the person. So when you had the first conversation with Blake, when you're thinking about like business fundamentals, what are the things you're looking at? And also like, what are the mistakes a lot of these businesses are making that they could fix early on to be in a position to sell later?

Yeah, that's a great, it's a great question. Comment. And you're absolutely right. Like the, the way that a lot of info product entrepreneurs approach their business is right for them, and right for growing their business. And it's not right for creating an asset that somebody else wants to buy. And so it's like a real question or a real challenge to figure out like, which side of that do you go to as you're growing your business? And I think you have to be like honest with yourself about what do you want to do with the business. Like, for some people, they want it to be a lifestyle passion thing forever, and they're not trying to grow it into something that can be sold. And like, it's totally fine then to like run your business in one particular way, as long as it's meeting your cash flow needs. Like, there's nothing wrong with that. If, on the other hand, though, you are trying to create like an asset that you want to sell, there are a series of things that I think are worth thinking about. And these are things that should be done over a multi-year period. They can't just be done the week before a sale. And I think this is something that I think a lot of entrepreneurs don't get about people that do M&A is they're fundamentally different types of human beings. Entrepreneurs are risk takers and M&A people are risk mitigators. So anything that smells of risk, an M&A person seems to be like, ah. I don't like it. And the entrepreneur may have a good excuse for it, but they're not gonna like it and they can kill a deal. So you're right to say you need to do some of this stuff years in advance. And one of them I think you nailed on the head, which is if your brand is about you as a person, that's gonna be an impediment to selling your business. So that's the number one thing. So this was actually something that we talked through a lot as we were going through the sale of Mastering, which was Blake was the face of Mastering forever, right? Like all the promotional materials, everything on YouTube was Blake. And so, you know, we really had to think through, is there like other people on the team that we want to elevate? You know, for a lot of info product people, there is no other team. Maybe you have some closers, but like there's no other team that's doing the teaching or is doing the product creation. So that's tough to do. But like Blake thankfully had been thoughtful about that and had built a really good team around him. So we were able to do more of that. So that's one thing. I think the second thing that people need to think about is building not one-time sales to clients, but build a recurring relationship with a client. And that doesn't necessarily mean you need to have like a SaaS revenue model, but like if you can establish that your customer base is valuable because they have a high probability of buying from you over time, A buyer's gonna value that a lot more than they're gonna value you being like, you know, having bought our, you know, one course 3 years ago and you never touch them again, but they happen to exist on like a mailing list for you. There's 20 other things, but I think those are like 2 really important ones that are important to think about for info products entrepreneurs.

So Blake, like you, as you're hearing this, Can you go back to like some of those first conversations with Tim and describe like moments where you were like, fuck, I should have done this before. And moments where like, you're like, oh yeah, I'm glad I did like these specific things, whether it's like the business model, team, and how you actually did those. They're like, okay, I did those right to be in a position to sell.

Yeah, I think Tim's right on the money, right on the nose when it comes to the whole like entrepreneur creator type person. not thinking about any of this because usually to create the best offer, you have to be really in tune with your expertise and who you are. So that means that you build the business around yourself. In fact, if you don't build a business around yourself, it's some psycho business that isn't going to do well because it's not tapping into your deep authentic self, your expertise, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So, I wasn't thinking about anything other than I'm only going to teach what I know, right? So, when I was approaching this, I just kept that the main thing, the main thing. And I think most entrepreneurs who are starting info product businesses actually don't do that. I think they try to get into this thinking, how do I exit? Or I like making money, or I always envisioned The power of leverage and selling an info product as opposed to doing the work for somebody, et cetera, et cetera. But the people who are really good at what they do and actually have some, you know, put in their 10,000 hours, that's kind of the spark that sets it off and goes, oh, I can make, you know, 6 figures a year, 6 figures a month, 7 figures a year, 7 figures a month in doing all this. And if you have that ingredient, then that's great. But the problem is, and Tim pointed out pretty good, is congratulations, you've built a business completely around yourself. So that's good to get to that sort of at least 7-figure mark because you're authentic to who you are, you're only teaching what you know, etc., etc. Once you've sort of reached that 2 to 3 person employee, you know, range, $100K a month, You have 2 pays, 3 pays, 12 pays, recurring revenue, couple products, et cetera, et cetera. You basically need to make the decision, how do you keep going? And that's the weird evolution that Tim was talking about that you need to go through is, oh, I actually need to remove myself. So in order to exit, you must exit. And that's painful. That's weird. So it's not necessarily that I wish I knew that when I first started, because I think I would've gotten in the way and built something that wasn't authentic to me. But now that I've done that, I'm certainly thinking, how do I get out of this as soon as possible? Not sell the business. How do I personally remove key person risk? How do I associate myself with the right team members who are creating content that lines up with who I am and what I'm trying to build? I wouldn't have taken 2 or 3 years to do that. If I were to do it all over again, I'd take like 2 to 3 months to get it off the ground. But my hands are going to be all over it the first few months. And I wish now that I know what I know, and after Tim kind of helped me think through this, I think I can just do it faster now, just being more aware that you need to remove key person risk and Man, if I can get into it a little bit here, what Tim talked about of like these sort of one-night stand buy and sell programs, you sell somebody in lifetime value, right? And they just buy it one time and then you never talk to them again. I think in this info space, that's pretty much rewarded or is like kind of the gold standard.

Mm-hmm.

And because you have to be honest with what these businesses are, are they lifestyle business? Are they a cash flow business? Or are they like this asset that you're going to sell later? Generally speaking, they're cash flow businesses. So if that's the case, why in the world would you focus on 12 pays or yearly recurring revenue or subscription models or anything like that? You're only going to be focusing on the one-night stand things because the margins are so good there, right? So now that I know what I know, I'm not doing the one-night stand thing again. I'm building programs or Selling information based off of kind of what Tim said, not necessarily yearly recurring revenue or subscription models or anything like that, but really like a relationship with the customer. You know what I mean? Not even multiple products, just a relationship with your client and building up that goodwill and authentically helping them. And I think in turn, you will be able to sell them more stuff. But it starts with building a good relationship. Yeah, I think it, I think those are the things I wish I knew when I started. But then again, just to double down on this, you gotta build stuff authentically to who you are, what you're actually experienced in. If you don't, then you're not gonna build a compelling offer or a compelling company.

So let's say there's like a creator listening to this, they're doing anywhere from like $10,000 to $50,000 to $100,000 a month. And it's designed around them. So we've talked about sort of like hiring and building a team around you, not being the key man, having a relationship with the customer. What are other levers they should be looking at right now so that let's say they do decide to sell and they want to get the right multiples, they should be thinking about pulling those levers or setting up certain things, whether it's like licensing, equity splits, long-term plans or whatever that they should have now? that positions them to sell at the highest multiple later on when they go to do that?

Yeah, I think you're asking a couple of different questions there and I want to split them out. Licensing deals and equity splits, that's— let's put that off to the side entirely for now because that's not the core thing about selling your business. Is somebody else has to believe if their business is worth 1 and your business is worth 1, when you bring them together, they're worth 3, not 2.

That's it.

So why would somebody else believe that when they buy your business, it's going to be worth more to them than it's going to be worth more than it is when you run it? Like, that's the fundamental question you have to keep coming back to. And a lot of times founders are thinking about like, what makes it best for me? And like, one of the things that makes it best for me is like, I get the cheapest possible labor. I outsource everything to Indonesia and I keep my costs super low. Is that smart? Sometimes, yes, sometimes that's smart. But if you want to build an enduring business, like, you don't have a team. Like, what is the other person buying when they buy your business? Like, they can outsource to Indonesia as well. So like, think about like who you want to have as partners in your business. And isn't— is involving them making the business worth more, even if it's bringing down your profit level this year? That's like a key thing that you need to think through. And then you can get into your questions about like equity splits and blah, blah, blah. But like, set that aside for a second. Think about like, How am I creating something that has like enduring value and would be more valuable to somebody else?

One thing that's actually really interesting on that point is, again, like, because I think a lot of info businesses are designed for cash flow, like they're doing what you're saying, like outsourcing and all of these, all of these different things. Blake, when we were texting, you mentioned a very interesting decision that you made that I think from the start or like early on you had You brought in the right teammates and you had profit sharing. Can you talk about that decision and specifically like how you set that up and what the numbers look like and why?

Oh yeah. Yeah. Tim's right on the money there as well is again, if you're building the business around you, it usually starts with lifestyle, right? And then it moves to cash flow because you see that it can make money. So if that's the case, then the KPI, the key performance indicator becomes bottom line, Profit, which means why in the world would you give profit share to anybody on your team? There's no reason to do that at all. So yeah, why the hell did I do that? Well, I think, I mean, this is a little bit more personal if that's okay. Like, I just remember getting to a place in the business where it was Basically, like a group of contractors, right? So they get paid off of their, their performance, not the business's performance, their performance. So they're siloed to look out for themselves, which is great, because everybody wants to be successful. And if they can be successful in their lane in your business, Then your business is going to be successful. At a certain point, what I found is that there's a lot of work that goes into like this business if you want to keep going. So you have an option. You can either keep doing the work and get more contractors or find people who would kill for you because they've— their lives have been changed by you, your program, your leadership, et cetera, et cetera. And give them an opportunity to become intrapreneurs within your company. And that's exactly what we did is, okay, these closers are way more passionate about the subject matter than they are about closing. And, you know, if they can become like a cross-functional team that are really generalists who believe in the mission and bring their brains to the table instead of just staying in their lane, Then we can move a lot faster. So what that ended up looking like was a team of about 5 people who were just doing that closing. But the business needed not to just be closing all the time. If you really wanted to keep growing, what we found is, okay, we're going to need to start creating more content, like organic content, YouTube content, etc., etc. Oh no, we have to like, we need to start running ads. You know, this is breaking down between us and like this agency we're working with. The feedback loop is not there. So okay, that's another business decision that we need to make. Do we run ads internally? Or do we run ads, you know, with an agency? Do we hire more editors, more contractors, etc.? And then even the program, I can't keep coaching these people. We need to find some other coach. So what I generally see is that people that are running info businesses, if they want to remove themselves at some point, they set it up as this machine that they run and kind of oversee, but they're unwilling to let go of control. That was one thing I had to go through, is you can do that and you can pay the coach to show up on the Q&A calls, right? X amount per month, like done, just do that job. You can pay the agency X amount per month, done, do the job, pay the closer, done. But that's a complicated piece of machinery that's going to kill you over time. So I think what's— what I had to do honestly was that complexity just killed me. And I didn't know how to keep motivating the team. Like bonuses every once in a while that I'd like pull out of my back pocket would only go so far. Or like trying to build some backend programs. So I had enough cash to incentivize more people to come on board and start building out content only went so far. And I started building this complex thing. And when I sort of said, well, why don't we just have these team of killers who have been with us for quite some time, learn all these other skill sets like media buying and making YouTube videos, etc., etc. I'll pay for the education, we'll pay for the education, we'll educate them. And they're going to do it. And we'll give you profit share. I mean, you should have seen the look on my face after I said that to them. I was like deer in headlights. I like couldn't believe I said that. They were all freaking out. Because what I basically saw was my company being handed over to them. It was terrifying. I mean, I remember the Zoom call, I was in like a Like one of those WeWork phone booths or whatever, because I was like on vacation somewhere and I needed to get this phone call down. I just said, we can't, guys, we can't keep paying media buyers X amount of dollars. We need to make tons of YouTube videos because we need to move more to an organic client acquisition strategy. And like, we need to bring the media buying in-house and we need to build out our new program. I was, I just told him, I said, I'm looking at all of this. And either I can do this, we can hire more people, or you guys can do it. So here's what I propose. You guys do it. And, you know, you become— I don't know if I say names, but you become sort of like the media buyer person, you become the content person. And you keep closing, right? But let's just get all together and, and band together. And you guys are now all on profit share. So if we have a really bad month, That means you guys have a bad month. If we have a really good month, then that means you have a really good month. What was scary about that is these people had like kids, you know what I mean? Like a family. And I knew that if there was a bad month, I would be okay with taking the risk. But if I led them down the wrong road, and then we had a bad month, and they're, they're basically their pay got reduced because of a bad month. I would feel like absolute garbage. Like, I really cared about them, but I made sure to tell them that. And I said, if we do really well, then you guys see a major upside. So the way we did it was I put together a spreadsheet and I said, if we sell this amount and do this and do this, and we lower our customer acquisition costs, and if we create more organic videos, and if we do in-house media buying, then this is what our profits could be. I just kind of presented it on a one-pager. And then I said, 25% of the profit of the business goes to you guys. If there's 5 of you, it gets split up this way. If there's 4 of you, it gets split up this way. And they were like piranhas, man. They were just like, let me have it. Because they had all these ideas that they wanted with the business that they wanted to do. And they were like, when can we start this? And I remember in that WeWork booth, phone booth or whatever, Feeling like, I'm too afraid to do this. Like, this is my baby. I can't do this. And they were freaking— they were scared to death. A couple of them called me after, like, on my cell phone and said, are you okay? You look sick. And I'm serious. I don't mean dramatic. But it was like, there goes my business. Like, there goes my control. Best thing for the business, not best thing for me. And that's the main shift that I had to realize is in order to— it's exactly what Tim was saying. In order to keep going and kick down the ball, if you will, like down the field so you have a little bit more runway with the business and more flexibility and more options, you got to relinquish control and give it over to them if it's the right group of people. That's exactly what we did. Sure enough, they did take control of the business. But that's on purpose. The best thing for everybody is if the business is thriving. So that was the only way I could think of at the time to incentivize them to do so.

And how easy is giving up control for you, Blake?

I know you're setting that on a tee because you know me, but that's my biggest sort of idol that I worship is like control, control, control, control.

Yeah.

So I mean, I'm talking like color of the fonts that we use, like obsession of control. I'm talking like minute details of control. So to be able to like, one, like get a business partner, control relinquish, like 2, give team profit share, control relinquish. Anytime I could relinquish control to a human being, not a task, not delegation, That's not that admirable to delegate to people. To relinquish control from the business to another human being basically meant that, oh, I need to trust these people. And I think I'm the most trustworthy human being on the planet. It's all these limiting beliefs that I had that I was carrying around. So Tim will tell you, it was extremely painful, but it was the right thing for the business.

What's interesting is, Tim, like, you have obviously the finance background, but you also have the IFS background, right? So like, switching lenses a bit, can you speak to this, like, with like Blake's example and other entrepreneurs you've worked with from an IFS perspective?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so for people that don't know, IFS is a psychological framework called Internal Family Systems. And it's a non-pathologizing way of understanding ourselves and the different parts of ourselves and how they're in communication and relationship with each other. Okay, that's a lot of words, probably don't make any sense to you yet, but let me slow that down. Essentially, the way that I understand IFS or I work with IFS is when I was in the corporate world, there was this idea that if I worked harder and I was smarter, I could beat anyone. And whatever was happening inside of me was a hurdle. I needed to jump over the hurdle as fast as possible, and then I would solve all my problems. And when I sort of did my walkabout in 2019, I think I realized that is a really limiting way to view the world, but I didn't necessarily have the right tools or language to understand it. And I did a lot of searching during that time to just try to figure out Okay, who is out there that's saying things or sees the world in a way that I respect and I understand? And, I sort of did a ton of deep research on a bunch of different models. And, this ended up being the model that intuitively made the most sense to me. I ended up going really deep down the rabbit hole doing all sorts of trainings, getting an IFS therapist for myself, working with IFS coaches. And realizing that the tools of IFS could be brought back into the business world to make people make better decisions, which ended up usually being profit maximizing as well, but coming at it from a completely different angle. Sometimes not, but at least happiness maximizing, which is more important in the end. So, in the case of Blake, as Blake's talking about control, the way an IFS framework would look about that would say, Okay, well, Blake has a part of himself internally that is very fearful to give up control. Most coaching models that you work with, and these are the ones I was attracted to at first, are all about beat down the resistance, notice your limiting belief, remove your limiting belief. It's the X factor, kill your X factor. And, for a while, that sort of worked for me. And then, I realized actually it doesn't work at all because those limiting beliefs just keep coming back at you.

Yeah.

So instead, like, this model is like, get to know and get to understand that part of yourself. Like, why is there this part that exists that's afraid? Like, instead of trying to tell it it shouldn't be afraid, like, maybe you should understand why it's afraid. Like, what's happened in your history that makes you afraid? How has it been serving you? Like, how has it been showing up and protecting you from experiencing whatever terrible things happened in the past? And like, provided gratitude and appreciation in a genuine, authentic way. And I think from that place, and this is not like a 5-minute thing, this is like an over time, like you can end up getting healing back in the place that like this part ended up getting created in the first place. And I think it's like from a place of healing and wholeness that we end up approaching the present in a very different way, not from like— Trying to bash it over the head with like a rock or like brute force, like willpower, say that like we're not going to behave that way anyway. So it's like really a path towards like understanding back to healing and through healing, react and behave in a new way. So like, I don't want to talk about Blake's specific parts, that would be inappropriate on this. But like, we all have parts, like every single one of us has. Many, many parts. Like the founder of this model would say, like, we have infinite parts. So there's, there's no shortage of parts of yourself to get to know. But I think it can be really helpful, especially as a business leader when— and an entrepreneur— when so much of your life is either performative or transactional, to find people in your world that you can like do this type of healing work with so that you can show up in a more whole way for these really important business decisions. And I think, you know, a lot of times once we get involved in our business or we think about selling, everybody's got an agenda. Like, they want you to sell your business, they want you to sell more products, they want you to give them the raise. And like, none of that is at all caring about like the reality of your own personal journey or places that need healing or like what's scary for you to step up and do. And so like, I think that's the other thing I'd really like encourage entrepreneurs to really think about. as they're running their business, like, don't underappreciate or don't underinvest in like your own healing as part of doing that. And by that, I don't mean like, don't do more Tony Robbins. That's not what I mean. Like, actually do healing work, not undoing limiting beliefs work.

In the space of like, either like scaling a business or selling a business. And again, not specific to Blake. We don't wanna put his whole profile on here. What are other either like elements or decisions that maybe most entrepreneurs look through a business lens, but actually they should be looking through like an IFS or psychology lens that would help them with what they wanna do?

I mean, I think literally you can look in IFS lens through every single decision that you make. Like my wife and I do this all the time. Like anytime that like one of us gets angry, To the extent, or like, that we get in some sort of argument, to the extent that we can like step back and like think about like what part of us is showing up in that argument versus just having the argument, then we're able to have like a very different conversation, right? And like we're able to move through that argument in a very different way. So I think anytime that you're running into like a pain point with yourself or others is like an invitation. to do something in IFS which he calls the U-turn, which is like, how can I look back at myself instead of looking at what the problem is in front of me? So, what's getting brought up for me internally? So, in the case of Blake that he gave the example, he's like, what should I do with my business? I could give away control of my business. And then, he's trying to think about, is that smart? Is that not smart? But internally, It's like 5-alarm fire, 5-alarm fire. Like, the building is going to burn down. And like, he can't think through the decision. Like, is this the best thing to do for my business? So the thing in that moment is to like take the U-turn and be like, oh, well, it seems like there's a part of me right now that's in complete open revolt. Like, I think I need to tend to that little guy, you know? And like, I think I need to like give him a hug, or I think I need to understand what he's so scared about. And, take the time to get back to a grounded state, understand yourself first before you move back into that scary big decision. And so, that can show up anywhere, right? That can show up in a disagreement with an employee, that can show up in changing incentive structure, that can show up with before you launch a new product. Maybe you're trying to move into an adjacent space and you have some sort of limiting I'm an imposter, I can't move into that space. And you need to go back and have that conversation. And it certainly comes up all the time when you're talking about selling your business, because there's 20 different psychological things that you're gonna like come up, and they're gonna come up in different degrees and different things for different people.

So let's say like someone's trying to sell a company, and the other person makes an offer that's really low. And the other guy's like, man, this is like, you're not valuing me. And that's the whole sort of Childhood thing instead of being like, no, that guy's just negotiating.

Totally. That happens all the time. And really skilled bad intent negotiators will intentionally try to trigger you in that way. Right? Like, I mean, this is like the language that I find so funny is like all the trigger warning stuff, right? Like, to me, like, if you look at informed psychological stuff, like, A trigger is like a moment of opportunity for you to figure out like what's going on internally for you, not for you to like shut somebody else up, you know? Like, like in like a negotiating sense, like people are going to try to push your triggers all the time, right? And like you can't tell them to be like, hey, I need you to slow down and like be sensitive to me. No, like you are responsible for figuring out why you're triggered, get it like back under control, and like to take Responsibility for your action in that moment. So like yeah, I think having an awareness of like when you're getting triggered, and then having a toolset on what to do once you get triggered is transformational for people in terms of like effectiveness of running their business and making good decisions that maximizes their personal value.

Blake, are there other moments that happened during the sale for you that Like, or stories that now that you look at through this lens, you're like, oh, that's what was happening. Or even like Tim, for you, like with like other entrepreneurs.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

I'm like 100%. There's, as I look back, I either get PTSD or I get like excitement. It's like only one of those two things. But Yeah. I mean, you know who's really good at this? Like my previous business partner in the business, Rob, he's really good at maintaining a level of stoicism and being super aware to not get in the way or at least let fear get in the way. He's kind of evolved to a next level when it comes to that. He's taught me a lot in that. But as I think through this, I have several examples where Where I'm looking at different parts of me and how are those previous, I guess, a lot of it's just family, like my father, my mother, my brother, my family dynamics have steeped themselves into my psychological subconscious, right? And they're just coming out in these, I don't think the logo should be purple. Maybe we should change the equity structure here or this. I mean, every sort of spectrum of business, it's triggering those things. And I can tell you right now, like the question, what things do people need to go through that are an evolution process for the business in order to set themselves up for success for selling the business? Like, what are those things? All the mechanics and logistics of that, the answers are pretty easy to find and you can just do it. And it's, that's not where, that's not where the difficulty comes from. The difficulty comes from The stuff we're talking about, which is all the deep triggering elements of that process. Like, I never built this to sell. This is my baby. You know, why do I feel like this is my baby? Why is it hard to relinquish control? And the people who are able to build this and sell these businesses, I'm convinced either they have really gotten so in tune with themselves and they've overcome a lot of these fears and can just relinquish control like this. Or they've suppressed all those things and they've operated out of fear, scarcity, et cetera, et cetera. And they're using that as a superpower, but it's really not giving them any health or any life or anything like that. So I'm convinced that, that exactly what Tim's saying, like trying to get in tune and ask, why am I feeling like this? Why is it hard for me to relinquish control, et cetera, et cetera. Those things seem, for me, they seemed like distractions because the next day I need to say yes or no to Alex Hormozi or something. I need to ignore that. I'll deal with myself after I say yes to this. But I think to Tim's point, the most efficient and effective thing that you can do in that moment is say, forget Alex, or, you know, for that example. And like, why? Just keep asking why. Why do I feel like this? Oh, interesting. That's scary. Why, why does that make me feel like this? And it always goes back to— it always goes back to family stuff. It always goes back to those primal things. And once you just are, you don't even need to fix them, it seems like you just have to be aware of them. And then you move forward. And then like, once you're aware, I think things, there's more healing in that, you know, it's just awareness of those things, honestly.

I'd say a couple of things to that too, Blake. One, I think like the moments that's easier to move through something is when it gets out of your own head. I'm not saying you, Blake, specifically, but anyone, and you're able to like talk about it in a dispassionate way with somebody else that you have like a safe relationship with.

Hmm.

And so this goes back to like an earlier topic we were talking about, which is like, I think it's really important actually to have a good business partner. A lot of info product businesses are solo entrepreneurs. And there's good reason for that. But I think the best enduring businesses are often teams where there's like, there's a psychological term, but like earned secure attachment among the partners that were like, it's safe to be vulnerable, it's safe to set boundaries, it's safe to challenge each other, it's safe to hold each other accountable, it's safe to bring forward that you're stuck on something. And trust that people aren't going to kick you out because you're stuck, but they're going to be supportive of you and help you figure it out. And, I think I really witnessed that between Blake and his business partner, Rob. And, I think that's actually a really interesting story we should probably talk about too is the partnership between Blake and Rob is very unique from what I've seen in the info products business that I've dealt with. And, I think part of your guys' success was actually the strength of your working relationship. And like, are you totally 2 different people? Yes. Like, do you have like different worldviews? Yes. Do you have different backgrounds? Yes. Are you independent? Yes. Like, do you like have parts of your lives that are in no way connected with each other in which you don't approve of each other? Yes. And were you great business partners that made the value of the business bigger than either of you being alone? Absolutely.

Mm-hmm.

So I think that's a really unique part of this story too, if your listeners don't know about that.

Yeah, I'd love to speak to that if that's okay.

But yeah, can you kind of start with like, because you didn't start with him, right? So no, what was the context where the partnership happened? And then yeah, talk more about that.

Yeah, no, Tim, that's a— both you guys, like, you're onto something here that I think is so valuable for your listeners, honestly. Yeah, it's— this conversation is what separates the solopreneur from a business owner, honestly. Yeah, I had the business and it was doing just fine. And, you know, it was built around me, built around my small team, etc., etc. But in this niche and with the old business that I had, it was in the music niche, right? So, you know, how many solopreneur music education companies in this specific info product space in the world is there? Like, Maybe like that, that are worth their weight in anything, maybe like a dozen total. I mean, I've tried to find them. There's plenty in the niche in the space, but at this level, not a lot, right? So we were doing just fine. And when I connected with, with Rob, who's, who had his own business, it was purely just, we're in the same space, we should either be friends or enemies. So we chose to be friends. And because I was in a really particular niche that is mastering, which is for those who don't know, a very specific set of skills in the music production process, there was no like immediate competition. In other words, just because we had the same total addressable market doesn't mean that we were in competition because our offerings or our products promised different things. So we just immediately saw collaboration. So on the offset, it It was purely just like, I need a friend in this space, honestly. And I can say Rob felt the same as well. It's just, it was refreshing to talk to somebody else in this niche. But no, it was successful. It was fine. And there wasn't any reason to partner at all. But you know what was interesting about that was it wasn't as strategic as you might think. I think a lot of folks go, what, to Tim's point, 1+ 1= 3. You've got a business, I've got a business. The multiple of this could be monstered out if we partnered together. Trust me, we had that conversation pretty quickly, but initially it was, I really like you, I really trust you. At the very least, we should do some joint ventures together and just share some insights that we have into each other's businesses. So that's the first sort of reason why we connected. And the integration of our businesses was pretty organic. It was not at all that strategic. At first it was, you have a mailing list, I have a mailing list, let's sell each other's mailing lists, each other's products. Like, let's just do some joint ventures and we'll like do some sort of affiliate work together. Cool. That went really well. The next was just lots and lots of phone calls of strategies, kind of like our own little mastermind, just us two. What are you learning? What are you learning? Oh, this guy's really good. This gal's really good. You should talk to them, etc., etc. Just sharing information. And Rob, by the way, I don't know if it's true like this in any other space, but he was the only guy who was actually willing to even talk about any of this stuff. Everybody feels guarded in this space because you're literally selling information. Why would you be giving information away for free? Rob was just so willing to give away information because I don't know why. He's just the greatest. But yeah, it started off with that. And then it got a little bit more serious. Then it was, wait a second, 1+ 1= 3. Are you willing and open to having a conversation around partnering together in some way? And to sort of sign your life away and say, let's start an LLC and partner together and have this one, that's too much of a commitment. For both of us, as awesome as we think we are. What we did instead was, and this is like, I recommend this like wholeheartedly, is centralize your team first. Have your teams work together on 2 different businesses. That hurdle, once you figure that out, that's pretty cool. So that's what we did. We literally like brought our 2 teams together under one roof. And we had multiple products with different companies, but the same centralized team. So it was more the power of people, right? And then we just worked off of some sort of profit, which in that case, it wasn't like 50/50 of everything. It was, you keep your business, I'll keep my business, but we'll split the payroll. We'll just pay them independently. So we had a centralized team. At that point, we're already in bed together, right? So I flew out there and I got to know the guy, and we didn't talk about business at all. It was, who are you? Why are you doing what you're doing? What's your family life like, et cetera, et cetera. And to be able to have those conversations after our team was centralized totally just fast-tracked the entire process to the point where We were better together than we were separate. So I can tell you tons of stories around that, but that was sort of the entryway. And then of course later it becomes very strategic. Wait a second, you're doing $200K a month. I'm doing $200K a month. That's $400K. Okay. If we combine that, we add it to the year, that's— oh, interesting. The multiple gets a lot higher at that point. Why do we— so it becomes really strategic at that point. But honestly, if we would've started like that, We probably would've had it blow up, but because we started on a more relational level and we sort of eased into it and we built trust together and we were open and willing to relinquish control, now I feel like we can do anything together. And that's really what we went through when we were debating what to do at the impetus of, do we move forward with this or strategic partner or seller or whatever? It was that trust that we had That got us through that. And I'm convinced, by the way, if you want to scale past $2 or $3 million a year, at least, at the very least, you need to have a dedicated profit-sharing team. And if you want to keep going further, you need to have some sort of equity partners on board that have the same mission and values as you do.

One of the things I'm thinking of is like 2 friends of mine who like run a business together. And they made an interesting decision that they were like, we're co-founders. So they basically went to Esther Perel, who's like a marriage counselor, and got her as like the psychologist in the middle between them to make sure their like business relationship was good. So Blake, in terms of like stories that maybe you have with Rob or your team, and Tim, like in terms of like tools from IFS or other places, what are things people should be doing or using? Both in like a partnership between, let's say, like co-founders, but also like what you're talking about, which is like integrating teams together?

Yeah, so I do this work all the time. I work with a lot of different entrepreneurs, and a lot of times, um, part of the reason I get brought into the business is because there's a disagreement between co-founders. Um, that was not the case with Blake and Rob. Um, one of the tools that I think is best in this is I'm trying to think what the actual name for it is, but essentially what the tool is, if there's a disagreement between people, often what ends up happening is you get really caught up debating the facts and debating who's more wrong. And nobody wins. Let's just be clear. Nobody ever wins an argument about who's wrong. Or if you can't agree on the facts, like you're just done, you're already done at that point. And so I think a big thing, and that's true with your marriage, that's true with your kids, that's true in life. So a big thing that I do with founders is take them through this process. And the process is you get the person who's upset to own their reaction. And to explain the impact of the other person's behavior on them. And so that— here's what that looks like. That looks like my first step is when I describe the behavior that upset me in totally factual terms. So imagine this is a marriage situation. So imagine like, you know, your, your wife comes home and she slams the door. Okay. Now, if I'm describing that, I do not say, when you came home and slammed the door, because slammed, there's like a debate. Was it a slam? Was it a gentle closing? Like, was it a normal close? Was I trying to make a point? No. You just say like, when you came home last night and you closed the door, I felt— so 1, describe, 2, I felt. I felt that you slammed the door, and that was very upsetting to me because the story that I made up— so this is really important— the story that I made up was that you were really angry at me and you wanted to punish me. And that made me feel really hurt. That made me feel really betrayed. That made me feel hopeless about the future of our relationship. Just getting those like 3 things, like to describe the action, to say like the story that you made up about the action, and then to like own your feelings about the action, that can be 2 hours. And so like sometimes you do need that Esther Perel to come in and like help mediate that conversation. But I found in like 98% of cases, like if 2 people can get Get away from blame, get away from describing them in pejorative terms and move back to taking ownership of their emotional reaction to your behavior. If 2 people really care about each other, they're not going to want their partner to be in distress. And, as soon as they really understand what's emotionally happening for their partner, most problems are easily solvable. So, I think that's the most important thing for any relationship is owning your reaction. And like, um, giving your partner the space and the grace to like be upset and like to stay in curiosity about like trying to understand it together with them. Does that get at what you were asking?

It doesn't. And I think from Blake's reaction, I'm gonna guess that sparked some stories for him.

Yeah, I remember When we were trying to figure out, like, do we sell to this one German company? Do we, like, work with Alex or Mosey? Do we, like, work out a deal with us? Do we try to do something else? There were just so many options on the table. And we felt like the best thing to do was to get some sort of third party involved.

Okay, why?

I think we both thought in our inexperience and immaturity that that would facilitate the consulting that we needed. But really deep down, what we wanted was somebody to agree with us, or me or him, etc., etc., to some sort of third-party intercessor, if you will. That where I could go to and say, see, he says I'm right, or, you know, whatever. It's any sort of— it's like a marriage counselor, honestly. So the way that we did that was we hired a bunch of lawyers and accountants, and Tim will tell you how horrible that was. But we hired multiple lawyers, multiple accountants, people that were experts who didn't care at all about any of these internal conflicts that we were feeling. that we were even aware of, honestly. They just wanted to rack up billable hours and make something happen. And what's funny is what we actually needed— trust me, this will save you tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars if you're trying to make a big move with business. You actually don't need a bunch of lawyers and accountants. You need probably somebody like Tim. In fact, I remember once we kind of wrapped up and buttoned up the complexities of the deal, At a certain point, we just stopped calling lawyers and accountants and we just worked with Tim because, I mean, that's honestly it. Like, you do not need a lawyer, you do not need an accountant to like wrap up an acquisition deal, especially of this size, you know? So we just needed somebody like Tim who did 2 things. One, could ignore business, ignore the metrics, ignore all of those complexities, and just focus on every party's personal needs, be more in tune with that, and be able to speak language into those things and facilitate conversation around that. That was by far the biggest need that we, that we were feeling and that we were facing. And I'm telling you, lawyers and accountants, unless they've got a psychology degree, probably aren't interested in doing that. And to somebody who did understand the complexities and the metrics, who could formulate basically all of our personal emotional language and put it down into contractual language that really made sense on a numbers perspective. So we ended up just relying really heavily on Tim and his expertise in that regard and checking both of those boxes because racking up billable hours with lawyers and accountants did not get anywhere. All that it did was racked up billable hours.

When I first got involved with Blake and Rob, they were trying to figure out, do we sell this business? So I was like, our first set of work together, the 3 of us, was just to like have a series of conversations where we talked about like, is this something you want to do? Like, is it the right thing to sell your business? Or do we keep growing the business? So that was one distinct conversation. And we really needed to think through that conversation on its own terms first. And like, you know, I think Blake would be Honestly, you guys had a lot of conflicted feelings about whether you wanted to sell the business at that point. And I think your and Rob's heads were in different places. And at one point, you really wanted to sell and Rob didn't. And then at a different point, it was the other way, and then you were aligned. And so you can't shortchange that process. So that was part one. So part 2 was then we decided we wanted to sell. What do we do? How do you actually go about selling the business? So we had one guy reach out and was like, I want to buy the business. And, you know, at that point Blake's like, good, let's sell it to him. And I was like, no, like, no, we're gonna run a process. We're gonna do this right. And no, Blake, slow down. And like Blake was like, I always want my chips off the table. And we had, you know, we had some, we had some serious conversations about that. And like, so good. Look, I'm an advisor, so like you can like throw away my advice. If you don't want it, but like at the end of the day, like you know, I think you guys decided that it was smart to to run a process, and we ended up. So this was like phase two. It was like how do you find the right team of advisors around you to sell the business? So then we were trying to find the right set of lawyers and bankers and accountants and blah blah blah. So that was like stage two for us. Stage three was then we had like at the end we had like three options. You know, there was like a company that wanted to buy us in Europe. It was pretty serious. There was an individual, Alex Hormozi, who wanted to sort of make a strategic investment into the business. And then there's a conversation about maybe Rob buying out Blake. And at that point, the bankers were not helpful. Because that's not what they're paid to do, right? So bankers are paid on a commission, like they get paid the more they sell it for and the more that they're involved. And that's nothing against bankers, right? Like, if you're a hammer, you only see nails, but they're not like trying to think about like what's actually best psychologically for Rob and Blake. So Rob and Blake needed to like take a step back and actually take a step back separately at that point and then think about like what's right for each of us. In this situation. So that was stage 3. And then stage 4 was, we decided that Rob and Blake were going to try to do a deal together. And then that was a very weird stage of the deal as well, because now suddenly, instead of like the two of them being on the same side, like in a certain sense, it kind of felt like they were about to go to battle with each other. And again, I think if we had gotten and relied exclusively on bankers and lawyers at that part, it would have turned into like a real nasty fight, and it probably would have damaged guys' relationship. And like, I don't know how much we would or wouldn't have like ended up transacting for, but like the strategy we took was to like take a step back and get both of you to be like really honest about what were your needs for the transaction. You know, Blake had a certain like dollar amount of money that was really important to him to hit. Blake, you know, Rob had a certain set of like timeline over which he wanted to pay it back. You know, he had certain conditions that were important to him. Blake had a certain amount of involvement that he wanted. Rob had a different level of involvement he wanted with Blake. And like, that's where the deal really was, was like getting those needs on the table and getting a series of like really honest conversations versus like the traditional banker way, which is like, you want to pay X million? Well, I need you to pay X plus 1 or you lose it. And so like, we just were able to have the more psychologically informed conversation. And then, you know, we were able to get the lawyers to paper that up. And each of them had their own lawyers to look over things and make sure that, you know, they were not being taken advantage of. And that's all important too. But I really think you got to like separate out the deal into those 4 steps. And so for your listeners, when they think about selling their business, realize it's not just like a one-step process. There's going to be, maybe it's 3 steps for other people, maybe it's 2 steps for other people, but it's going to be multiple steps that you have to go through. And like the psychological questions you have to think through and the tactics of each one of those steps is very different.

You mentioned the 4 steps. Can you outline, like, let's say like someone's thinking about what is the process like? Can you set up the scaffolding on what are the different steps and sort of like elements in each of them that people people should be considering?

Yeah, totally. So step 1 is like deciding whether or not you're going to want to sell your business. That should be done years in advance of actually selling your business. Like in an ideal, in an ideal state, that should be done like 2 to 3 years before you actually go to sell your business. One of the things you need to do at that point Things you need to do at that point are some of the stuff we were talking about earlier. One, make sure you actually have a business and not just like selling a bunch of tchotchkes. And what do I mean by that? Like, you need to have like something that has like enduring value and predictable cash flows that if somebody else buys it from you, they have a high degree of confidence that they're going to continue getting those cash flows after you're gone. That's what I mean by that. So what is that going to mean? That's a little different for everyone's business. But, but one thing is like, you know, making sure like that you understand your relationship with your customers, making sure that you have like a customer base that's going to continue buying from you in the future, making sure that like you are not the only face of your business, making sure that you have a real team. This point's controversial. I think you should have W-2 employees, not just contractors. I mean, I think it should be a hybrid of both contractors and W-2, but an acquirer is going to look at a business that's like only contractors and going to be like, come on, what am I buying here? But if you're buying a bunch of W-2 employees that like feels like a real team that they're going to be able to control and have a relationship going, going forward with. And then I think, I think that's enough for like that stage 1. That can take a long time to kind of put that stuff into place. There's other stuff too, but those are kind of the key points.

So one quick question on this for Blake, because a lot of the info businesses have that model, right, where they're just like selling like one-time products. Can you outline sort of like the specific changes you made in terms of model or the customer relationship? When you realize you wanted to sell and you're like, wait, I'm just selling one time. What are the changes that you made? And then we'll come back to the process.

Yeah, it was like turning a cruise ship 180 degrees really fast. So it was a fine line of like knowing all this stuff.

Sounds easy. Was that?

Yeah, it was a fine line of knowing all this stuff and going, cool, let's just do that. And then, and then having everybody fall off. And the ship is now sinking. It's finally between that and like, oh, we have to get there. I wish we could do it now, but we gotta turn this in a way that nobody's gonna fall off. So really tangibly, the way these info products businesses are set up, generally speaking, is tons of contractors, if any, right? It's usually just you, a VA, maybe one closer, et cetera, et cetera. But if you were like us and had like a team, gosh, at one point we had like 33 people working with us. Have a big team and you hear, oh, you need to go W-2, what you end up doing is, oh, maybe I shouldn't sell the business. You just change your mind because of the complexity. And then you all— there's all these things I need to change in the business. Tim's point is 100% true. You need to 100% have conviction that you want to sell it, not if you can sell it or anything like that. Do you actually want to sell this business? Because once you realize you got to do all these other things, you start questioning, well, do I actually want to sell this? And that amount of flexibility doesn't serve you when you're making those decisions. So after we got conviction, yes, we got to sell it. There are some pretty crucial things that need to happen, which was, okay, remove key person risk. So I needed to get out of all the ads, out of all the content, even the program itself I needed to get out of. Which means that these people on the team needed to build the program, which means I need to give them profit share. Okay, got it. Am I going to give them profit share in a contract or as a W-2? Another conversation we had to have. Another big change that people need to think about, which we had to do, was most of these businesses are set up to do one-time payments or like 2 pays, 3 pays. You're kind of rewarded for getting cash collected up And you should be. These are cash flow businesses. But if you want to sell this business, you don't want to do that. So at the very least, God, I remember having these debates and these conversations. I basically said, okay guys, cash collected, cash collected, cash collected. We minimized the team down to you were fired if you didn't get X amount cash collected. I mean, we were really aggressive on that. And then for me to sort of sheepishly come out of the woods and say, hey guys, we're going to go back to 12-pay. They're like, damn it, Blake. And they're going, why? And I can't tell them because we're looking to sell the business and we need to promote yearly recurring revenue and sort of model out some sort of subscription type thing. I couldn't tell them that. It was difficult. And so I had to tell a few key leaders. Because we're looking to do some sort of strategic partnership or maybe be acquired. We don't know yet, but we need to show, you know, some sort of sustainable revenue that's recurring and predictable. Oh gosh. Well, what about all those people we let go? You know, well, I was wrong. So like introducing 12 pays, which means close rate. I know I'm getting in the weeds here, but which means close rate goes up. Cash collected goes down, profit goes down, revenue goes up. The experience of the closer, now you don't have to be that good because you have 12 pays and the whole business just sort of like starts getting shaken up just from that one change alone. Right. That was one thing we had to do. And then the other thing was like, we had to put titles and positions onto these people instead of just being, you're a contractor, you're a content person. It's like you're the general manager, right? Or you're like head of content, etc., etc. And now you have to promote these individuals as assets in your team, not just these people that can be replaced like that. They're like fundamentally core. They're the fundamental core of the business, if you will.

Powerful.

Yeah. And like the hours, billable hours, all that stuff. Like I need to, I remember filling out these like time cards and sheets during this process of like, Blake, you can't show more than like 4 hours a week on your involvement. Well, like, okay, what, how's the business gonna run anyway? So those are just some of the things we had to do on a granular level to change the ship around.

And I would say a couple things. One, we didn't have the full 2 to 3 years to do this. So that's optimal. Second, I think the 12-pay thing is still like a— when I'm saying you need more recurring revenue, I don't mean that you need to go from collecting all your cash upfront to a 12-pay. What I mean is that you actually are like selling something every single year, right, to your clients. Not just that it's spread out over 12 months, but like January 1st, 2022, sell them something. January 1st, 2023, sell them something. January 1st, 2024, sell them something. sell them something like that history of like recurring purchases is super important to potential buyers. That's the thing that moves these businesses from like selling for like 2 times earnings towards 5, 6, 7 times earnings. If you can't demonstrate that over a multi-year period, like you're stuck being a 2 to 3 times business.

Oh yeah, we, we had to have— we had to add more products. Remember, we had to add like a backend product. We even had to create like a new company within it. Like we had to sell different products, not just one product. That's something that you have that you're rewarded with in this space too. One product, one funnel. You want to sell it, you have to have multiple products, multiple funnels. So we had to set all that up too.

So let's actually take a quick tangent. This is, this is very interesting when, when I'm thinking about a creator business, right? And like how they monetize, there's like the one paid product, maybe they have some like consulting or done-for-you services. Maybe they do like affiliates, sponsorships, Maybe they've like invested in companies. Um, so that's really like, like Tim and both of you actually, like, would love to, like, we'd love for you guys to like walk through like the different ways people can make money as a creator and maybe give it like both a scorecard and a multiple in terms of like whether it's good or bad. And then what would be like the ideal multiple based on the thing that you're doing, uh, if you want to sell?

I can't give you a specific multiple because there's, that's a multi-factor thing. Um, because When you think about multiple, let me just start with that. When we think about multiple, there's a couple of different factors that are important. One is how financeable are the earnings? And by that, I mean—

Can you explain that? What does that mean?

Yeah. So if you go to a bank and you say like, hey, here's my business, I want a loan against the business. The question is like, how likely is the bank to be like, sure, here's a loan, no problem. It seems like you have a great business, sir. Or are they going to be like, this isn't a business. Like, you just sold a bunch of like masks during COVID Like, we're not going to give you money because you're not going to sell more masks next year. You know what I mean? So like, the more that you can demonstrate that, like, no, I sell a widget that goes into like a manufacturing line that builds cars and like it runs out every 6 months. So like, we know that they're going to need new widgets in 6 months. Like, That's a much more financeable set of earnings than like selling masks during COVID right? So like, that's step 1. Step 2, or like factor 2 to think about is like the size of your business. Generally, the higher your level of profit, the more financeable banks will view it. And it has to be like a high level of profit over multiple years. So it can't be like, I made $100,000 last year, and I made $10 million this year, I would like a loan off my $10 million of earnings. Like no bank is going to give you the loan off the $10 million. But if you have like 2 or 3 years in a row of $10 million of earnings, that's going to be much more valued and give them a much higher multiple than a business that like has $200,000 of earnings. So think about like the replicability of your earnings and the probability of your earnings and the size of your earnings. Like those are the 2 key factors to think about for the multiple that I'm going to be attached What are other things to consider?

So that's like, I'm like, I'm doing kind of some sponsorships, and I have some one-time courses. Like, is there sort of like an idealized business structure that's the best to sell?

I think that's a real— that's a huge question. And I think that like, it's not clear what the answer to that question is yet, because not a lot of these businesses have been successfully sold yet. And I think that's because the business models are still evolving. And I don't think that there's a lot of business models that are yet in that place that like you would look at them in the way that you look at like a SaaS software business. Like a SaaS software business is like the ideal type of business. Super high recurring revenue, super high margins. And like high degree of stickiness of your customers. So like the more that info products can move in that direction, the more valuable they're going to be. So like, what would that, what would that look like? To me, that would look like you're selling community. And the value of maintaining relationship with that community is getting you to stay paying For the service over a longer period of time, which is very different than like, I'm going to buy this course one time and have access to like a Q&A every once in a while, which is fine. It's a great business. A lot of people, a lot of your listeners have made a ton of money doing that. It's awesome. They're all living better lives for it. But if you think about like, how do you take that and then get your, you know, 10x multiple off of your earnings? Like, That's the direction that these businesses need to move. And I'm not sure that anyone's like fully cracked exactly how to do that yet.

But tactically, it would be turn like a one-time thing into maybe like a membership that's recurring every year.

And then yes, that's right.

I don't know if you guys have actually seen this, like in podcasting, there's been this like huge rise of like subscription podcasts, where basically, you can get like premium content, you can get like behind the scenes access or whatever for $10 to $20 a month, like Andrew Huberman, our friends like, like Sagar and Crystal, like they run Breaking Points. A lot of shows like that are doing that. So is that good in the sense of like it gives them better predictability if they wanted to sell that later on?

Yes, with the caveat similar to software businesses, people will look at your churn rate. So as long as you're, if you're moving people into subscriptions and they're not churning out and they're regularly renewing, then Absolutely. Much better model. Much better model for selling. It may not be a better model for collecting your cash upfront now while you're still running the business.

Why is that?

Well, because it's like back to this point, right? Like if you're able to like collect all your cash in year 1 and then you disappear and go to a beach in year 2, like you have all your cash, right? You could have sold it at a lower price point. Like for a membership and they've gotten people to pay and like maybe over like your lifetime value over 10 years, you would have gotten more, but then you would have had to work for 10 years. And like some entrepreneurs don't want to work for 10 years and that's fine. So like, this is where I go back to like the psychology is important. Like figure out like what is the business that you want to run? What's the level of involvement that you want to have and make sure that like your business model matches like your psychological desire for your involvement with the business.

That makes sense. Tim, do you want to take us back to the stages now?

Yeah, yeah, sure. So that was stage 1. Stage 2 is like you decide you're going to sell your business. So how do you go about doing that? Most people have no idea, right? No idea what to do. Like maybe you've met some guy at one point who was like, hey, I'd buy your business from you someday, like give me a call. Don't sell to that guy. Like, what you want to do is like run a process so you get a fair view. Like, include that guy in your process, but don't just sell to that guy one-off. Unless you already have like a super established relationship like Blake did with Rob, but like the one-off guy you generally don't want to deal with. So there's, there's a couple of ways of doing that. Like, you could do it yourself. You could like send out a bunch of emails, you know, try to do your research, and you're a solo entrepreneur making info products, you're going to do it terribly. So you probably want to hire a banker of some sort. Now, the challenge of hiring a banker is most bankers don't— like most bankers of repute don't want to work with businesses that do less than $5 million a year of EBITDA. And for your listeners that don't know what EBITDA is, think about that as the earnings of the business once you add back all of your personal expenses. If you've been renting your G-Wagon and leasing it back to the company or whatever, add that expense back in. What's the level of profitability that somebody else would have if they ran this business? So if you're less than $5 million, a lot of Bankers won't take your call. So that's like a challenge. Now, there are other people like brokers. Quiet Light is one firm that we talked to. There's a handful of others. I think Quiet Light is generally the least skeezy of the folks out there who will essentially— they have like a list of 500 people and they just like spam 500 people. Now, they're mostly getting in touch with like rich individuals, And some smaller private equity firms. They're not really typically have a lot of credibility with like big corporations. But up to this point, that's generally fine. But you won't actually get a ton of support from them when it comes to like actually negotiating a deal. They'll provide some, but their biggest thing that they're providing is access to like the 300 email addresses that they're sending information about your business to. They'll provide some handholding. I won't say they'll do anything, but not a lot. And so I think a lot of entrepreneurs at that point can end up making really bad deals if they're not getting good advice. So that's kind of like stage 2 is like figuring out how do we actually— like, who do we actually sell with? And what's the process? And again, like our process was, do we take like what seems like the bird in the hand of the guy who comes to us and is like, Here's X million dollars, like, I want to buy your business tomorrow, like, just give me 60 days. Do we sell with somebody like Quiet Light? Or do we go and try to get a banker? And we ended up sort of interviewing— I can't remember how many folks we interviewed, 5 or 6. Is that right, Blake?

That's right.

And we ended up deciding to go with a banker instead of traditional broker, given the size of the business and what we hoped would be more of like a traditional sale, not to a wealthy individual, but to a corporation.

So Blake, like, you decide to sell, and there's obviously the tactical things that Tim described that you have to do. Talk about sort of like the psychological side of, okay, like, was there like a mindset mindfuck for you when you're like, okay, I'm gonna sell this, this is my baby or whatever, and it's gonna be gone, or something else along those lines once you made that decision?

Yes, for sure. I think the first thing that I felt was tons of excitement. That was it. So like dopamine goes way up because you start imagining your life like, oh, that's a lot of money. And what would I do with that money and all this first exit, all this stuff, and then you just get all excited. That's what happened to me. So then it became sort of like this primal, just 2-dimensional race to that. Because the benefit of that was greater than any sort of pain that I was experiencing. So I'll, in other words, that would fix all my problems, which you could probably guess wasn't serving me. And it wasn't necessarily true. Because once I inputted all that dopamine into me and was so excited about the outcome, once I got the outcome, It turns out that it didn't give me the pleasure or excitement that I thought it did. So yeah, most of the complexity wasn't necessarily just the mechanics of the business and doing all the right things and selling more backend products, giving profit share, talking to a banker, all that stuff. I feel like we did that all right. With Tim's help, we 100% did that the right way. The psychological elements were infinitely harder. And you find this with people who are really successful in this space. I mean, Kevin O'Leary talks about how he sold a learning company for billions of dollars or something like that. And he went to all the beaches in the world and he was absolutely miserable. So there's something to be said around thinking that exiting your business means that you sort of exit the rat race or exit life or whatever. Or to even think that life and business is like a curse, that's all false. Those are good things that you shouldn't exit. So I think getting more in tune with why I wanted to exit was much more helpful as opposed to once I exit, then I'll be happy. That right there is just false. So then the psychological burden became, oh, I've got money, I've got time, I can do whatever I want, whatever. Like, first of all, those things aren't true either because time is against you. Like, time knocks down all of those luxuries. So that was also against me. And then I realized that, like, I don't know, like, that ultimately doesn't make me happy. So then the psychological burden of, well, how do I get back into this, you know, at sort of my new evolved self? But not have to go through the pain that I went through building this. So then, I became pretty entitled. Like, I'm never going to respond to emails. I'm never going to do this alone. I'm going to build a team around me from the beginning. I'm not going to build a one-man band. All those things then kept me from doing the hard work of getting something else off the ground. So, here I am, this sort of entitled, I don't know, fat cat really of like, I'm not going to do anything unless it's purely leveraged the right way in the way that I feel like I need to do. But the reality is all of the highs and lows, the emotional, psychological highs and lows that I went through were the very things keeping me from being happy or going forth and doing something else. So again, I want to just stress that The mechanics of setting this up in a way where you can sell it, like there's answers to that. And hopefully we've checked off a lot of those boxes, but just a fair warning, if you think that's gonna make you happy, like ultimately, or you feel like that will sort of solve all your business problems, it's just not true. It's absolutely not true.

Yeah, I totally agree with that. I mean, I see that this is not info products, but I work with a lot of entrepreneurs and small businesses outside of the info product space. That's where most of my business is. And Blake's 100% right. I've worked with a lot of people who have made a lot of money and sometimes their life is a lot worse on the other side of the sale. And so I think I talked about this earlier, but I think it's really important when you're making a really big decision to be really in touch psychologically with what's actually motivating you to want to make that decision. And I think the people that do that end up being much more satisfied in the decisions that they make.

Yes.

Yes.

When you're thinking about these other entrepreneurs, Tim, and even Blake, so that, that moment of like, I've made the decision to sell and then I've sold, right? Can you describe some of those like psychological changes they go through? And also, what are tools or beliefs or mindsets or habits that they can have to have a good experience through it instead of just like either like crashing or blowing all the money or whatever that happens?

I think the biggest thing that I see repeatedly, and I experienced this not from selling my business, but just from moving from one career into a period of sort of self-exploration, is it's It's easy. Well, I think it's hard to see how much of identity for a lot of men in particular gets tied up with your professional identity. And so once you lose your professional identity, whether because you chose it or for other reasons, like, that can be a very destabilizing experience for a lot of people in a way that's like really hard to actually predict. I mean, I remember that for myself. Like, I remember, like, left this career and, like, I went out to lunch with my mom, like, the day after, like, noon. And I hadn't been to, like, a lunch in the middle of the day, like, ever, you know, like, since college. Like, I hadn't, like, been working nonstop. And so I, like, see all these other, like, people around at that point, they're like wearing their suits at their business lunches. And I'm like, you know, in a t-shirt with my mom at like the local salad place or whatever. And I'm like, who am I? You know, like, who are these people doing important things around me? Like, I'll never be doing anything important again. And like, my whole life is meaningless and they would never want to talk to me. And it was like, whoa, where did this all come from? I never knew that like this existed within me yesterday before I was in this position. And now suddenly like, I don't have my professional identity to fall back on. I didn't know how much of my worth I was putting in my professional identity, like the fact that I had a specific job title, that there were specific types of conversations that I was a part of, that there were million or billion-dollar deals that I was regularly involved in, and that made me smarter or better or more connected or whatever. I didn't realize how grounding that was for me. Now, it wasn't grounding in a healthy way, but it was very grounding. And when it was suddenly gone, I suddenly felt totally like, how do I ground myself again? How do I make sense of myself? At the end of the day, we're apes. How do I make sense of myself in this social community? Where am I in the hierarchy? This is very destabilizing. So I think like the important thing before you enter into that is realize, one, like you can't fully predict what's going to happen. 2, make sure that you have like a really good support system that's non-work-related around you because it's going to mess with your head in a big way. So like your family life, your friends, and they cannot— and I can't stress this enough— they cannot be involved in your business or your professional life in any way whatsoever. Like these people in the support system, because for too many people, so many of their relationships are transactional and they don't realize it until they don't have that seat anymore. And so, you need people who like love and care about you and they're going to support you that don't give a crap whether you're selling 1 million, 10 million of info products or selling nothing at all. I think that's like, that's the most important thing.

So, so what would be like some tools that people can use, um, especially like after selling stage? Because you hear all these stories, right? Like someone like blew their money or whatever, or like fell into depression, or you hear about like Olympians, right? When they win their gold is like when they get the most depressed.

Yeah.

What are tools from like a psychological perspective that they can use or implement before so that to, to kind of like have the right soft landing afterwards?

Yeah, I think one of the other tools that I really loved was Jungian psychology. And actually, I don't know, on Netflix there was recently a documentary called Stutz. I don't know if you saw it or not. It was about Jonah Hill and his psychologist. And his psychologist was talking about— this was a Jungian idea— there's this idea of managing your life force. And, I actually think it's a really good tool that I've used in my own life and that I've used other people too, which is if you manage your life force right, and he talks about it as a pyramid where the base is your physical health, tend to your physical health because it helps maintain your mental health. So, make sure you have a routine of exercise, make sure you're watching your diet, make sure you're part of If possible, like a community of sports where like it's not just running, but like you're like part of a yoga studio or you're part of a soccer team. So that's part one. Part 2 is your community. Like make sure that you have regular relationships that you're expending life energy on. And the third is like do your interior work. So have routines around your interior work. And for different people, that's different things. For me, it was journaling. Like, when I was going through that period, every single day no matter what, I was going to journal for an hour. I wish I was noble enough to say that it was meditation for me because that's so in vogue or ice baths. And, I know those are great things too for some people, but the truth is that wasn't for me. But, for some people, that's really helpful. But, I found that people that manage those 3 things around their life force, which is taking care of your physical body, maintaining your community, and maintaining your interior life, they don't get set adrift in the same way as people who kind of just like recede further and further into themselves and into their thinking and into like this endless like recursive search for like, what is my meaning? But it's like the people that stay engaged in the world that end up actually like finding their meaning and their next thing.

Blake, do you want to share your experience, sort of like what your experience was like once you made the sale and Got all the money or whatever.

Yeah. I remember I didn't do anything for months. Like, I think I just swam in my pool and hung out with my son. And it was weird being like a 1,000-horsepower engine with no vehicle. And because the reality is, is you're not working, you know, 60 hours a week, and then you sell and then you need to rest. The entire process of selling is removing yourself. So you got to remember, like, I wasn't in the business for months. So it wasn't like I'm working 80 hours a week and I finally let go and I can just rest. It just wasn't that. It was slowly letting go very intentionally, but over months and months and months of letting go toward when I was sold, it was like, Just the last 1%. It wasn't 100 to 1. So, in a very real sense, I didn't think that I deserved rest, honestly, because I've been resting. I kind of was restless, you know? So, I didn't feel like I needed to just reward myself or rest or any of that stuff. I felt like when I was letting go of the business, I was letting go of my identity. I was letting go of myself. And that was the thing that I had to overcome. And I don't know if this will resonate too much with folks, but for me personally, all of my sort of emotional, philosophical, religious, spiritual background, I was under the false impression that like the fall of man, you know, like where, you know, what's wrong with this broken world? I always thought that work was the curse. Like, Damn you people, like, you must now work. But the reality is work is a good thing. And it's not that work is the curse, it's that the work is cursed. And there needs to be some sort of redemptive act in that. So now I'm kind of thinking at work a lot differently. I go like, work isn't a bad thing. It's not the curse. Within everything that I'm doing, I'm gonna find brokenness, I think. And so now I'm kind of getting back into it going, work isn't evil. Work is really good. And whether you sell or don't sell, that's perfectly fine. But entering back into it with a really healthy perspective of going, this is a really good thing and I don't want to sacrifice myself as a slave to it. And I can keep a healthy perspective and look at it as a very healthy thing that could really serve me and serve others. That's kind of the next journey. I don't think I would be able to build Mastering again In an authentic way that truly helps people if I haven't gone through this initially.

I think like too, tell me if you agree with this. Like you were super lost for a period of time.

Yeah, I agree.

Like I mean it was painful for you. Like it was not like a happy place for you to be in, and that totally resonated for for me too. Like I went through a period where like that loss was very confusing and upsetting, and. You know, I've worked with a lot of people who've experienced something similar. And I think what I've seen in you, Blake, what I experienced for myself and what I've seen with a lot of other people I've worked with is when people give go of the pressure to like find the perfect next thing to do or to find like a role that's equivalent to what they did before, and instead they just find their next mission. Any mission, it does not matter what the mission is. Like, it doesn't need to be a great mission. It doesn't need to like transform the world. Just any mission that gets you out of bed in the morning and makes you excited to get out of the bed in the morning. That's when people's lives change. And usually you end up integrating everything you've learned before into that, even if you couldn't see it beforehand. Like, for me, the mission was like so stupid. I was like, I'm gonna go see every national park. In America. For me, that was perfect. Like, have other people done that? Yes. Does that make me special?

No.

Did it get me out of bed and like explore new places? Yes. Did it like put me in touch with my creative side in a way that I wasn't when I was in finance? Yes. Did I weirdly end up meeting a bunch of entrepreneurs along the way? Absolutely. Like, and like, did it lead to like whatever the next thing for me was supposed to be?

Definitely.

But like, if you just like, you couldn't have written a business plan that like, I'm gonna go see all the national parks and find my next career from doing so. Like, no, like that doesn't exist. Same with Blake. Like, he could have spent like 2 years thinking about like, what's the perfect business model now that I've created an info products business and like that only uniquely I can do. That wouldn't have been the right thing. Instead, the right thing to do is like, hey, I have a talent and other people could benefit from it. And I really enjoy sharing and engaging them with this way. And like, I'm gonna do that. And I'm gonna I'm going to see what comes from it. And like, now I'm happy again. You know, like, I think it's that simple.

Tim, you helped me with this big time, man. Like, really what needed to happen was shrink the vision 100%. Because I remember when I sold, it was like, what's next? What's next? What's next? The right answer is, you know, nothing right now. I got to rest. I got to enjoy myself. But the next thing will be genius. And that's exactly what I thought I did, right? And you were in this, Tim, like constructing the ideal business model. model that worked so ideally to, if I were to do it all again, how would I do it? And that amount of inflexibility basically led to inaction because if it didn't fit into this perfect business model, then it wasn't worth doing because I already did this. I don't need to do it again. It's that amount of arrogance or smugness that I felt. I remember, Tim, when you and I chatted in person in Austin, you helped me think like, what's next isn't like, what's the next perfect business model? What are your just basic needs, man? Like, what are those things that you really just need? And it's not like I need, you know, $30,000 a month and this and this. It's like, no, no, no. What's your basic needs? The thing that really you helped me see is, oh, I just want to be like super flexible for my family and I want to continue living in New York City. That's it. And once I got clear on that, it was like, oh, I don't need to build this perfect business model, et cetera, et cetera. And oddly enough, lots of perfect business models have come since that conversation where like income's rolling in. It's much more than I thought because I was not as strict on the perfect business model. I just got really in tune with some pretty primal basic— I guess it's not primal to demand to live in New York City, but it was a really simple basic need and to shrink the vision. I honestly got so much satisfaction off of that. And if you're a creative entrepreneur, success will come 100%, but you can't force it into a specific business model. You just have some sort of small win, some sort of small mission, be incredibly open to what's next, and don't try to over-engineer it. As soon as I started doing that, the very thing I wanted came, which was clarity, I know what to do moving forward, perfect business model, etc., etc. You need— I needed to relinquish all that.

It's how you find the thing when you stop searching for it.

Exactly.

So, so we've talked about sort of how like there's like cash flow businesses and sort of like now we're like talking about wealth, right? Um, I think for a lot of entrepreneurs when they're in that habit of like just like getting cash, I, I think like income and wealth is very different. So can you guys Talk about that difference, Tim, like from your perspective advising entrepreneurs and, and like from your perspective, like now being in that position.

Yeah, I've got plenty of thoughts on this, but like income and wealth are two, in my opinion, two very separate things because I'd love to hear your perspective on this, Tim. But with these info product businesses, they are great cash flow machines. And your income should, generally speaking, be taken and poured into a vehicle that creates wealth. For me, that's been real estate. And so, getting these businesses up and running and cash flowing is fantastic. And knowing how difficult it is to make it an asset that you can sell, I've always leaned on, well, this business vehicle is a fulfilling venture that produces income, but ultimately it won't necessarily build me wealth unless I channel that income into some sort of asset vehicle that will increase my net worth, which generally speaking isn't the business. It's usually real estate, some other investments, et cetera. I think the magic is if you can find a way to make, again, this info business some sort of thing you can sell. But ultimately, I would just I'm biased. Ultimately, I just take the money and pour it into real estate, which is exactly what I did. But Tim, I'm so curious to hear your thoughts on this after going through this yourself and just talking with others.

Yeah. I mean, I probably have a more holistic frame I'd kind of like to put on top of it, which is I've been around enough people that have made truly obscene amounts of money that like people in the info products world can't even probably begin to fathom. And I've seen that many of them are as miserable, if not more miserable, than before they had the wealth. But it was enough of a wake-up call for me to realize wealth is not going to solve all your problems. Is having wealth give you perhaps a set of fewer problems than if you're struggling to pay for your housing and food? Yeah, of course. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about people that are— making tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars a month versus people that have tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars. So, first thing, don't think that your problems are going to get solved by hundreds of millions. So, I think it's really important. For me, wealth is living the life that you want to live.

Hmm.

I mean, I grew up in a religious home. It's not something I fully subscribe to anymore, but I think a lot of the religious ideas still resonate deeply with me. And, you can find them in secular traditions too like Stoicism. But, I think returning to the truth that we're all going to die is an important truth to kind of come back to every day if not more than every day frequently, not from a morbid sense but from a questioning like, well, how do I want to live my life knowing that my life is limited? I think it's a really important question because I think We end up, or a lot of people, and certainly in points in my life, have ended up defaulting to, well, I just need to accumulate more wealth. And then, once I have more wealth, then I'll figure it out instead of just sitting down with the hard question of what is the life I actually want to have? What's possible for me with more wealth that's not possible for me now? So, I think that's actually the more fundamental question to come back to. Which is like, what do you want to do with your life when you have this wealth? What's going to be possible for you that's not possible for you now? And is it possible for you to actually have it now with the level of wealth that you have and then have the wealth creation be less consuming for you as a consequence of that? So that's more fundamental. Now, there's the finance side of this question as well. I think the biggest difference between having income-producing things versus having wealth is when you have At the end of the day, you have to spend money. And most people, it's much easier to think about spending money that's flowing in on a regular cadence for you. If I'm receiving a paycheck or a regular distribution every month and that's covering my mortgage payment or my boat or my trips that I'm planning, it doesn't feel like you're spending anything, right? Because you just know that you have this flow of money coming in. I think for a lot of people, and I remember I had a guy that I worked with who sold this big logistics business, he made tens of millions of dollars and suddenly he felt super stressed out every time he had to write a check when his wife wanted to go to the spa. He was like, I don't know if we can do this. There's no money coming in, even though he just made tens of millions of dollars. Whereas before, it didn't feel stressful. Because he knew that his business was going to spit off like a million or 2 bucks a year. So then, you have to think about like, now, how do I manage my wealth? And that's not something that a lot of entrepreneurs think about. It's like a fundamentally different thing in terms of managing your attention and a different skill set. And there's so many people who are bad actors in that space who are ready to take your money and manage it poorly or make bad investments on your behalf. It's like if you It's this new thing that you have to think about, which is like, well, wait, how do I generate the income now to have the lifestyle that I wanted to have before it was just flowing in? So again, that's why I just want to tell people it's not a panacea in any sense to suddenly have this wealth because ultimately, at the end of the day, you still need to figure out a way to make it income-generating for you to support the lifestyle that you want to have. But then, what's the lifestyle you want to have? So, that's why, again, start with that question. What's the lifestyle you want to have versus is just getting consumed with the accumulating of the wealth and managing the wealth. That probably went very different than where you thought I was gonna go.

That was great. So that's like someone does think of like, okay, like, this is the lifestyle that I want. In terms of like tactically, like where to put their money or whatever, like, what do you usually advise people who've sold their companies?

Until they figure it out, index funds. And the reason for that is Definitely not crypto.

Yeah, Tim can go off on that.

I was advising Rob and Blake for a long time to sell all their crypto at the top. And if they would have done that, you guys would be a lot richer. Just want to say. Because I think it's like fundamentally, this is where if you're an entrepreneur, as all of your listeners are, you are extremely gifted at one thing. And like, the human psychological fallacy is to believe that if you're gifted at one thing, you're going to be gifted at all things. And there are so many sharks that exist in the world of finance that are just waiting for you, the overconfident son of a bitch, and they can take all your money. And that exists nowhere more so than in crypto. So that's why I think like the safest thing until you figure out like your fulsome strategy and terms of what you want to do and how you're going to generate your income, it's like, just park it in an index fund. Because like, chances are, like, that's the safest place to keep it while you figure out that bigger long-term strategy. And like, you know, for some people, they want to trade stocks, great. But don't start trading stocks, like, ease into it.

I love that. So I know we could keep going. I think I'm still like only halfway through my notes. But in the interest of time, let's maybe pause here. We'll do the 5 questions we always end with, and then if people really like this, we can do a community session where people can also come in and ask you guys questions, and we'll do a part 2. How does that sound?

Great.

Yeah, that's a great idea. Yeah.

Awesome. All right, so let's do the 5 questions we end with, and then we'll close it out. And feel free to answer this in like 30 to 60 seconds. We'll just go one by one. What 3 books have been the most impactful for you guys?

The Art of Living by Thich Nhat Hanh, which is like a series of lectures that he wrote about living and dying that were kind of put together in a short anthology, was super impactful for me. Super short. It'll take you 2 hours to read max.

Probably the Bible and then Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz.

I've got a million others too. Another one for me was Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg. It just changed the way that I really thought about communicating with other people in terms of like the importance and the gift of being clear with what your needs are.

It's such a great book in terms of like reframing the conversations. One of my favorites. What's one piece of wisdom that changed the game for you guys?

Yeah, for me, it's just that Stoic truth that like you are going to die.

I think the way to find yourself is to empty yourself and not so much see yourself in others, but truly serve others. Willing the good of the other for the other has been the thing that has just— if I could find some sort of common denominator between any sort of thing that I do in decision-making and making a wise decision, when I think of wisdom, it's just, is this ultimately willing the good of the other for the other? That's really what true love is, I think. Is it doing that? If so, then it's probably a good thing to do.

I don't know if you guys have seen this documentary, Supermensch, but that's also what he finds. He like manages a lot of musicians, finds they're like really successful, but empty, then ends up working with this chef and then ends up working with the Dalai Lama. And his— that's his thing too, is like it's all about service to others. When you guys were like— whenever you're like starting out in a career, right, there's always like people who take a chance on you. So here's like, for both of you, who's someone that like, you're grateful for in your life that you haven't had a chance to thank or give credit for and why?

I'm really thankful for my father, mainly because just again, on the theme of sort of family origin, being way more in tune with that. I think ultimately the things that I've resented him for are probably the things that— the ways in which he showed me true love. And the reason why I am who I am today is because of those things. So I've been able to sort of reframe a lot of that dialogue that I've been telling myself. Ultimately, I think most of my success, relatively speaking, is probably due to his love for me and the way he's poured into me.

Growing up was brutal for me, just high school and middle school in terms of socially, it was just brutal, trying to figure out who I was and how I fit in with other people. And I was basically an uber nerd that just liked nothing more than reading books at a school that only valued hockey playing. And so, you can imagine you're in the English class or whatever and they're trying to dissect a poem or something and I can wax eloquently about what the poem means and all the jocks are looking at you like, we're going to beat the shit out of you. High school was not an easy time for me. And so, I had 2 teachers in particular that I think were able to really meet me when I was really acting out and in a super nonjudgmental way that was really transformative for me that ended up being really affirming and helped, I think just helped me manage through those years and figure out what was actually important for me and how to move into adulthood. So yeah, I had a history teacher, Mr. Rosenberg, and an English teacher. Rosenfield and an English teacher, Mr. Moose.

Yeah. Thank you guys for sharing that. Like, man, good school teachers, especially when you don't know where you're going, are so key. So important. Yeah. Like, like, shout out to all those teachers.

Absolutely. Definitely.

For real. Um, last 2. Uh, since the name of the show is Conscious Creators, like, what does it mean for you guys to be conscious creators?

I think everything that I do is creating. I think we are like creators, right? Just as human beings. And something that I wrote down years ago in like, I have like a principles book, like all of my principles that I've just accumulated over the years. The one thing that I written down, it's in the top 10 for sure out of 100 or whatever that I have. It's always be creating something because once you're gone, what's going to be left? And it's generally speaking going to be the things that you build, right? And fundamentally, the only way that I can build things is with people. So for me, a conscious creator is putting the creation process together with people, like not doing it alone. I mean, that's literally the definition of conscious creators, right? What good is a book if it's not impacting people, right? What good is creating a business if it's not impacting people or creating a piece of art if it's not impacting people? I think if you introduce beauty, if you introduce psyche, if you introduce human beings, I mean, all of those things into the things you're creating, it's going to be more beautiful, more helpful, more to the mission that I'm trying to do, which is willing the good of the other for the other. I think the best way to do that is always be creating with individuals that you love.

Yeah, I really like that. I don't usually get referred to as a creator, so I'm honored that you've included me in that lofty title. But I mean, I think in the way I try to approach life, often fail, but the way I try to approach it is just interrogating What are my motives?

Hmm.

Just an endless interrogation of what are my motives. And, you know, try to give myself the space to just change course if I realize that like I'm not really acting in a super conscious way in that moment. And, you know, sometimes that leads to a lot of apologies and 180s. And I think getting more comfortable as I get older with just Accepting that versus trying to either hide it like I did when I was younger or justify it and just try to keep doing better every day.

One quick story for you, Tim. There's a really great book by Derek Sivers, Your Music or Your People. And he's sort of talking about this meeting between a creative person and an accountant or a business person or finance person. And the creative person's talking about how Like, I'm like, we're so creative, whatever. And the, the business or the finance person goes, I know accountants that are more creative than you. Um, because of what they do. So I, I think finance and accounting and, and what you do on the banking side, like seriously, like it's so creative. Um, because you're playing with numbers and when you can see it, like, you know what I'm talking about, right? It's like The Matrix.

Yeah, totally.

It's more creative than a lot of people who think they're creative on the art side. Just so to end with, what are you guys excited about or optimistic about in the future? And let's say like next 2 to 3 years or 5 to 10 years? What are you guys looking forward to?

I'm like super excited about this business that I'm building, Kollege with a K. Really, really excited about that. I've sort of found my new calling in that and doing it in a way that's way more authentic to me and really helping individuals who are in the creative space, just like genuinely helping people and not even thinking about how to monetize has been like the coolest journey for me already. And monetization structures are there and they're in place for sure. But like, just approaching it more holistically with much deeper meaning is like, I'm like, it's the first time I've been this excited since selling, honestly, not any sort of monetization structure or anything like that. Just Oh my gosh, I'm like, I feel like I'm a new person and I can like genuinely help people more. And it's something I'm really, really excited about.

My wife and I are having our first child in June. So that's where my head goes with that question. So super excited to see the world through your baby's eyes and get to meet her and step into that new role as dad.

Yeah, I mean, having seen my brother go through it, it's a it's a really life-changing experience. Yeah.

And if people want to find you guys after like the website's college, my website is is re being made right now, but people can email me just on my personal email. I don't know if you put it in the show notes or not. If not, it's just T Tim. C, Charles, and then my last name, G-E-O-F-F-R-I-O-N, @gmail.com.

Thank you guys for doing this. Any last words or anything else you guys want to leave people with?

I'm really thankful for you, man. Thanks for putting this together and just such a good brainchild, I think, of, man, this is a cool concept, seeing the opportunity, bringing us together. I just really value you and your ability to see the value in this. I'm seeing it now too. So I'm thankful for you.

You're welcome.