The Land Geek Podcast #10

Welcome to the Land Geek podcast, your resource for information and tips to making money by buying and selling land. Let the Land Geek show you how to make a passive income by working smart, not working hard. Learn strategies and tricks to make money buying and selling raw land today. And here's the man that's gonna help you do that, The Land Geek.

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the Land Geek. And today I am so excited because I have the guest that I have been dreaming about getting on this podcast for everyone out there, and it's Mike Warren, an internationally known business maverick, wealth coach and investor. And for those of you who are fans of Anchorman with Will Ferrell, this will be my anchorman voice. He's kind of a big deal. So Mike's a big deal. He holds a double mba. He's the president of a diversified consulting firm. He is America's premier bad debt financial strategist. And he's been doing this for 20 years. He's the expert among experts. And I am thrilled, pleased, honored. Mike Warren. How are you?

I'm great, Mark, thank you. That was really nice. And I really like that little part where he's the real deal. That's a big deal. I like that. That was kind of good. Subtle, but really good.

Yeah, yeah. So, Mike, I was telling you that I have a program, Art of the Land Flip. And I think my program is great for people that want to learn how to buy and sell land and flip it for cash online. But your niche is even more interesting to me because it's flipping businesses, and that is just fascinating. Usually when I think of flipping businesses and back in the day, I was a business broker, which I hated and couldn't be more happy to be transitioned into real estate back in 2001. But this is really intriguing because to not be a broker, be a principal in learning how to buy and sell and flip a company that just equates to big dollars for me. Can you kind of explain to me the process of buying a company and using its own cash?

Sure. Well, you know, let me try to make it a little bit more relatable. I think for a lot of people, when you hear about buying a company, they start thinking about millions or at least hundreds of thousand of dollars or maybe even buying a franchise like McDonald's or Subway or Taco Bell or something like that. I'm not really talking about big, huge, 20, 30 million dollar companies. I'm talking about companies where they're doing probably gross revenue somewhere between, let's say, 1 and $5 million, that's a nice sweet spot. What I like to do is I'll go into a company like that, I'll end up buying the company, using the assets of the company itself to buy it. So I have no money out of my pocket to buy it. And literally from the day that I buy it, I'm typically getting a six figure salary from the day that I buy it when I use none of my own cash in order to buy it. So people like, what did he just say? Let me compare it to you or size it up for you a slightly different way. Let's compare this to buying a house. A lot of people hear, oh, well, yeah, you can buy real estate. Well, a lot of people also know that you can buy real estate, no money down. Well, the difference when I buy real estate, no money down. And anybody that's out there that's listening right now can certainly buy real estate, no money down. The difference between buying real estate, no money down, and buying a business, no money down, it's about six zeros. That's the difference. Actually, I'm trying to find something here. Let me see if I can find this real quick. There we go. So I was going to pull up, I can't show it here, but I was going to do a slide for you and kind of talk about it. So let's kind of go through some numbers. Can I go actually break down some numbers for people?

Yeah, that'd be fantastic.

Okay, so let's say that we find a house that we want to buy and let's say that house has a purchase price of $100,000. Or you know, you can liken this to buying land just like you do Mark. So land, house, business, pretty much the same thing, the same strategies, the same thought process go into this part of the business. The difference is how much profit you make and how much work you got to do going back to the house. We buy a house, it's $100,000. Let's say they require a down payment of either $10,000 or if you're really good and you know how to buy houses with no money down, well, you can buy it no money down. So now you bought this house, no money down. Let's say you turn around and you rent out that property. Well, if you rent out the property, let's say you get $200 a month in rental income, which is a decent income for a single family residence. So you're getting $200 a month. And let's say that down the road, three years down the road, you sell that business for 100, or, excuse me, you sell that house for $130,000. Now, we're not going to take out any taxes, we're not going to take out any commissions or anything like that. So our numbers will work nice and easy. So what happens is you sold the property for $130,000, which is $30,000 more than what you bought it for. So you made a decent profit, but you also rented it for three years or 12 months. Three years times 12 months at $200 a month. So you made $7200 in positive cash flow out of that. So you take your $30,000 profit on the increased value of the house, plus your $7,200 in cash flow, you made $37,200. For most people, that's a home run. They're really happy with that.

Yeah, yeah. And an infinite roi.

Yeah, it's a great deal. Let's take a look at buying a business. I go in, I look for a business typically around a million dollars or so. So I'll buy a million dollar business, I'll buy it with no money down. Most of the businesses I buy, well, actually every business I buy is doing a positive cash flow. They're making money. A lot of them are making about 30% profit in their business, which means in this case, you broke that down, that's about $25,000 a month in positive cash flow. And let's say that what I like to do is I go in and I'll typically triple the value of that business in about three years, which is when I would normally sell it, let's say that I triple that business size. So in three years, it goes from 1 million to 3 million. My cash flow at $25,000 a month times 12 months, times 3 years is $900,000 in cash flow. So if we add in the difference between what I bought it for, I bought it for a million, sold it for three, so I have a $2,000,000 profit plus my $900,000 in cash flow means I made $2.9 million or I made $2,600,000 more than what you did, buying and selling and renting that house.

Those numbers are making my head spin.

But see, here's the thing, right? I mean, people go, holy cow, that sounds really good, but. Well, there is really no but. It's a matter of leveraging the assets of the company itself to buy the company. Just like you leverage a house. How do you leverage a house? You get owner financing. You could go Borrow against the real estate itself. So if it's a house that has a little bit of equity, you can borrow against the property. Maybe it has, if it's a commercial property, an apartment building or something like that, you can go against the rental income, you can go against laundry facilities, parking facilities. There's lots of ways to leverage the assets when you buy real estate. Well, the exact same thing happens when we go in to buy a business. We leverage the business such as accounts receivable, accounts payable, we change vendors, we might have equipment that we could borrow against, we have merchant accounts we can borrow. Right. Lots of different ways that we can come up with the cash. The important thing here, I think Mark, for everybody to understand is this is not your cash, this is not our listener's cash, this is not my cash.

Right.

It's cash that there might be cash that's required to buy the business, but it's just not our cash. Just like it's not your cash to go buy a house, it's somebody else's cash. But you still went in and you bought it. No money down. We do the same thing on a business.

Now. Am I taking on debt to do this?

You might be. And some people say, well when you buy a house, no money down. Are you taking on debt? Yes, of course, yeah, well, same thing with the business. But that's okay so long as you make more than enough money in your house in order to cover whatever the debt is and give you a positive cash flow. In that case, in the example I gave you, we were running out at a $200 a month positive cash flow. Well, if I buy a business which is already profitable, now here's the key thing if you think about this Mark, is I buy a business, it's already making money. It's not a startup. Most startups fail. Well, if I'm buying a business that's already doing over a million dollars a year in business, I do, they already have a lot of the basics in place, right.

They've got infrastructure, they got the most important thing, they've got customers, their management.

That's right. It may not be perfect, it may need to be fixed, it could probably be grown a whole lot, but they've already got it all there. So I'm not struggling to try to figure out, oh, how do I make this happen? No, it's already there. I'm just essentially taking it to the next level. Because typically the owners skill set of growing that business from zero to a million dollars, they've typically maxed out on their skill set. They don't know how to take a company from 1 million to 5 million, which is a totally different mindset.

Right, right. But you know, to play devil's advocate, you've got a double mba. I mean, for all I know, you could be a quant. And looking at these cash flow pro formas, and you can see things like Warren Buffett and do some kind of financial engineering, you might look at a million dollar business. And I look at it in one lens and you look at another lens and you see all these hidden assets and ways to grow the business. I mean, how can someone like myself do this? Can anyone really do this?

Sure, anybody can. In fact, you know what, let me give you an example. So this is a deal I just bought. So I just bought a vitamin company. And what's interesting about the vitamin company, though, is it didn't require any of my own cash. In fact, I got 51% equity ownership in the company and they're paying me $2,000 a month to take it.

Okay, right. That sounds like an amazing deal.

Well, it's kind of like cash back at closing. When you buy a house, you get cash back at closing. Well, I get cash back when I buy a business. Anybody can do it. If you can understand the basics of real estate, you can understand how to buy and flip businesses. It's really not hard. And anybody can do it. Yeah, I've got a couple MBAs. But you know what? Realistically, Mark, I don't use them because what I do is I don't have to know every aspect of buying a business or in fact, running a business. Let me give you a couple other companies I'm working on, right? So I'm working on a radiology company. I'm working on a medical supply company. I'm working on a trucking company. So these are all different companies in different industries.

Right now you're. Now you're based in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Right, in Colorado.

So are all these companies local or are they.

No, they're all different states.

They're all different states?

Yeah. I have some in Canada too. We're working on a couple in the uk the process is pretty much the same in all these different countries. The only thing that changes from country to country and state to state is your basic paperwork and your legal disclaimers and stuff like that, how you write up the documents and of which case, you know what? That's what I use a lawyer for. I pay them hourly. Let me say it this way. The company that I'm Buying pays the lawyer hourly to do the paperwork. So it still doesn't come out of my pocket. I just figured out how to do it. As a business valuation and expert, back in the day, you looked at all these companies for a mergers and acquisition firm, right. And you're looking at, say, gosh, where you know, we want to do this, you want to put in your own money, take it over, do this, and maybe take a public or sell it to a Wall street company and, you know, sell it at 12 to 15 multiple, whatever it is. Well, I'm down in a layer in an area where the mergers and acquisition folks, they can't operate because it's not cost effective for them to do that. Right. Your home runs. I'm willing to look at other deals that. I'm not saying they're dogs, but I'm looking at deals that other people won't touch. And I know how to grow them because it's just basic marketing. The people, because they're so busy working in the business, they don't have time to work on the business. I'm sure you've heard that phrase.

Yeah, I mean, and I say it all the time, actually. This is really, really intriguing. So anyone can do this. How fast can it get done? I mean, from, you know, from sourcing the deal, from doing your due diligence on that company, making sure that it's in within. I guess you have a template that you look at. Just like if I were going to look at a piece of land and have to have certain characteristics that would make me say, okay, this, I would actually close on that property. I mean, how fast can this be done? Typically when I was doing it, it would take them a year of due diligence. It'd be $100,000 of hiring a Big Six firm to go in, do the audit on the books. And it was a very long process. If they had a dip in the numbers, they'd hold off for that quarter. So how fast can someone analyze a business and then close on it?

Well, if you look at those are all great questions and I think you bring up some very valid concerns. And this is why we're able to do things a lot differently than the larger boys. Let's look at it from two angles. If I were to go in and buy a business, first off, I don't want to buy the business and own it outright because then I have to run it. I may not know anything about running the business. And I don't want to run because now I'm working in A business. I'm not working on it. I like to look at it from this standpoint. I want to have 15 or 20 companies that I own at any given time. And if I have that many, how can I operate any one of them? I can't work in them, I have to work on them. Meaning I have to act as a true CEO. Right?

Right.

So who is best? Let me ask you this question then. So who would you think would be best qualified to run that company that I might be interested in buying? At least the current owner. Exactly. So what I do in all the companies I buy is I keep the owners involved in the business. They run it. Now I talked about they don't have a certain skill set. Well, they run it while I bring in new staff, new operations people or new CEO or new marketing person, whoever it is to come in. It gets trained by the owner to run that on a day to day basis. And then the owner eventually elevates to what's called the chairman level for their company and pulls away further and further. So literally, in a span of about my time period, I want to be in and out of a company in three years. From the day that I buy it to having sold it, I'm looking at 36 months. I'm out of the property, but I'll grow it and I'll have a new operation. Person who comes in replaces the existing owner, not me, because I'm not skilled at running that company. I'm good at knowing where to find people who are because I can always find the right skill set. I get them to come in, run the company, grow it. Now it becomes an even more sellable asset because it's totally a hands off business. The next owner now doesn't have to worry about running it day to day because somebody else is already doing it for them. It's purely a cash cow.

Yeah, I'm loving this model because if I'm looking at it from the sense of you come to me, I own this company that I've been working for 20 years. I'm tired, I'm not growing it. I've been at a million dollars of revenues for three years now. And you come in and you say, look Mark, you're going to get two bites of the apple. You can get 50% cash now. We're going to leverage your existing assets, but then I'm going to grow it in the next three years to $3 million. And you get another bite of the apple when we sell it. Is that correct?

That's pretty much it. Yeah. Now, just for clarification points, I actually grow it. We'll typically triple the profit in about eight to 12, maybe 14 months. And then we'll do it again. And so we actually grow it really fast. So the, the first 24 months are all about that super growth. And then months 24 to 36 are all about the sale.

Okay.

So while months 24 to 36, we're still growing it, but it's really about packaging it together, really. From day one, we're setting it up to sell or flip that business to somebody else for a much, much higher multiple than what we bought it for. When I'm buying a company that I'm going in and it's doing a million dollars and I triple it and it goes to 3 million, we're making a sizable chunk of cash. If you think about it, if I'm not running the company and I put none of my own cash into the deal and somebody else runs it day to day, I'm still receiving part of that $25,000 a month cash flow in the example I gave you. So I'm getting money every month, and I get the big payday down the road. So I get cash every month, just like you do in rental property. I get that huge equity kicker at the end, which is a seven figure payday.

It's fantastic.

And it can be higher than that. It could be up to an eight figure payday. It just depends on how big a business that you have and how fast you grow and how big you get.

Wow. So what kind of support do you offer if I wanted to flip businesses on my own?

Well, I mean, the only support that I would offer to you, Mark, as an example.

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I know that you teach people how to do this. I do, and I'm interested in learning. So I mean, it just seems so complex. Is this something that you support or.

Oh, no, I support it. Let me, let me put it to you this way. Would you like to be able to. Well, if I showed you how to find these deals and negotiate and stuff like that, and then allow you to work with my team and bring a deal in, we take a small piece of equity in your deal, you keep the majority. Would you like to partner with me on doing deals so that we ride it out together?

Absolutely. That's a no brainer.

That's how I support you.

Oh, I get it. Okay. That's fantastic.

Right? Because I mean, if you look at it. Well, what's in it for Mike? Well, Mike's looking at the big payday down the road. I'm not looking at how much money am I going to make from a little bit of cash flow, Even if it's not 25,000, don't get me wrong, that's a lot of cash flow. Right, right. But even if I was making a five or ten thousand dollars a month, I'm not looking at getting a paycheck like that. What I'm looking at is how do I get a seven figure payday about three years down the road. That's what I want.

And that makes so much sense to me. And if, and if I was going to do this, yeah, of course I'd want to partner with you. It completely mitigates so much of the risk. So Mike, it mitigates my risk. But how do you mitigate your own risk? I mean, clearly there's a large population out there that would have tremendous interest in learning how to do this. You can't possibly partner with everybody. Correct?

You're absolutely correct. I mean, what I really look for, people that I want to partner with, I really call them more of an apprentice than anything else. And everybody says they want to do it, but very few people actually stand up and do what they need to do to make it happen. So what I found the easiest thing for me to do is I just get everybody that says they want to do it. I put them in a room, I train them for a couple days and say, here's how to do it. And then I wait to see which ones really do want to perform and want to partner. So if you actually found a deal after I showed you all the right ways of going about it and you wanted me to partner at that point. Yeah. Then I'd be very interested with it. But you got to get the basic training of how to do all this stuff first. It's not complicated. It's just like buying a house. If you go buy a house and you've never done it before, you're going to make a lot of mistakes. So you put around you teams or people who are part of your team who know how to do each aspect of the business. You just go in and do the part that you're good at, whatever part that may be, but you still make the lion's share of the money because you're the one that found the deal and put it together.

Yeah, I mean, that makes a lot of sense. Sure, sure. So what kinds of businesses are you looking for? Manufacturing, services.

Everything. I want cash flowing businesses. My sweet spot and I encourage. So Mark, let's just use you as an example. If you were going to start out and you say, well, Mike, where should I look at? What business should I look in? What I would recommend for you, Mark, would be find an industry that you think that you might like to own a business in once you figure out what that industry is. Because it doesn't matter what industry you're in, so long as it's making a profit. Don't go look for a company that's sick or in bankruptcy. Those are great plays. You can make a lot of money with those companies. But in your very first few deals, that's not what you should be doing. You can make a lot more money by finding a company that's already doing well right now. You go in there, you get equity in the company, no cash out of your pocket, you get a nice salary out of the whole thing and you, you grow the company, you get a payday, but it doesn't require full time effort. So what I'd really encourage you to do is look at more of an industry that you think might be interesting and then look at what the numbers are and does it have room for growth? Because if it's a business that's doing, let's say $150,000 or $200,000 or $300,000 a year in gross revenue, well, they're probably operating on a shoestring budget. That means they don't really have the resources or the staffing in place to have or handle additional sales and marketing websites, trade shows, whatever it is that they may need to do in order to generate those additional sales. They don't have the systems in place to handle them. A company that's doing a million probably has a little bit more resources. They'll have more than a smaller one. They don't have as much as they could have. But you know, that's where you come in. Having a team around you that knows how to grow that company. Yeah.

And yeah, I mean, that makes a lot of sense. And what I like about this niche for you or for someone that is interested in the program is that you've got a seller whom has limited options. If I'm doing a million in revenue and I'm doing 300,000 in free cash flow and I want to get, let's say a 4 multiple. I want 1.2 million for my business. There's not many people out there that can just throw $1.2 million in cash at that company and say, you know, buy Mr. Jones, thanks for doing this company and kick them out, Right. I mean, they're motivated to see you succeed because they're probably, you know, they're partnering with you, correct?

That is exactly right. My tagline is, would you like to get a smaller piece, a bigger payday down the road? That's what I sell to the owner or say to the owners. And once they understand, for instance, let's go to the example that I gave you. Right? Million dollar business doing $300,000 a year in net profit. I'm probably going to buy that company somewhere between 300,000 and $600,000. So one to three times its net is what I would probably buy it for.

Okay.

But if I grow it to 3 million and it's now making $900,000 a year in net profit. Right. Figured just to triple the numbers, it's doing 900. I'm going to sell that thing for 900 to 2.7 million.

Right.

That's what I'm going to sell it for. All cash. But I'll probably actually sell it for more than that because it's on this dramatic growth uptick and it makes it easier to sell as a company because it has really solid financials. Now, most owners in small companies, they're running the company their own private piggy bank. So they write everything off through the business. And don't get me wrong, I do that too in a couple of my companies. That's what you're supposed to do, right. When you're trying to set a company up for sale, that is not what you do. You have to do it a different way. So we go in, we clean up the books, not say there's anything wrong with the books. It's just that we have to make the company more sellable and more valuable.

Sure, sure.

Because it's done multiple. It's not just a dollar for dollar exchange.

Right, right. I mean, when you're doing your due diligence, what which do you really think is more important? Is it the business, the cash flow, the management structure? Or do you say, look, I'm going to vet this current owner because I really like this guy. He's just tired. But with the right injection of marketing and talent, this is the guy that can help because he's done it for so long. Take this company from a million to 3 million, or is it a combination thereof? I mean, what do you really look at?

It's really a combination. And it depends on what industry it's in, who their market is, meaning who their buyers are, and what can we do to get more awareness in the market. Is it a local only business or can it go statewide or national wide, or could it even go international? So you have to look at how do you plan to grow that business? And if you're planning to go, let's say national, well, who has the skill set to do it? If the owner had the skill set, he would have already done it. Or maybe he's dabbled in it a little bit, but he hasn't been successful because he's guessing he's just throwing a little bit of money here and there. Nothing's really working because he doesn't have a plan. He doesn't have any systems in place. So what we've got to get is a different management team in place that knows how to do that. So people that I bring in have already done that. They can step in and it's a very clear plan. The owner looks at it and says, okay, this is my baby. But obviously I'm selling my baby, so how can I get the largest return? If we go back to the example earlier, I said, well, if the owner sells that company to me, he's doing $300,000 a year in net and he sells it to me at one times his net or $300,000, and then we grow that company at $900,000 a year net. And we sell that now for 2.7. Well, let's say that we both split it 50, 50. If he sold it to me in the beginning, he'd get $300,000. If, however, he waited and we round the number from 2.7 to 3 million, just round it off and he waits three years to do it, he would now get one and a half million versus a 300,000. Which one do you think most owners want to take?

Yeah, absolutely.

They'll defer that retirement or that whatever they want to do for a little bit of time to get to bigger payday.

Sure, sure.

Like.

Like golden handcuffs, if you will.

Right, Exactly. That's exactly right. I like to refer to them as platinum handcuffs, but yes, as well too.

Exactly. Platinum handcuffs.

Yes.

So how long you been doing this?

I've been doing it since the 90s.

Since the 90s.

I've done real estate. You know, I'm a big real estate investor also. I've done real estate. Started got my first house when I. In 1985. But then I started. I went to grad school. I've always wanted to do businesses. I've always started a lot of businesses and then looked at, well, gosh, I could continue to start all These different businesses and put in my own money, my own talent, try to figure out from scratch the benefit there is. It doesn't require a lot of capital, at least when you're starting out. At least sometimes I looked at, well, gosh, if I buy a business that's already running, already has the capital, has some of the staffing in place, some of the infrastructure, you may have to have some turnover there, but most things are already there. Gosh, that seems like a much better play to me than trying to start it from scratch and do all that work myself. Most people just start a business because they think I don't have enough money to go buy a business, so I have to start it myself. And it's just like they're buying themselves.

A job is what they're doing.

Right? That's exactly right.

Yeah. I mean, I see that all the time. And it's. It's distressing actually, to see people, you know, spin their wheels. They're working 40 hours a week now. They're working 80 hours a week and taking on all this risk and actually making sometimes less money than they were working a job just so they could say, hey, I don't have a boss anymore. Well, you still have a boss. Your customers are your boss. But you know. You know what I mean?

Yeah, they think they're calling their own hours. Yeah, they're calling their own hours where they're working at 6 in the morning. They work, they go home, have dinner, put the kids to bed, and they work some more.

Right, right. So it's working hard, not smart. Where this method is working really smart, leveraging your time and someone else's time and really getting that nice cash flow. And then as well as the big payday down the road, I think a lot of people are going to be very interested in learning more about this. So how many apprentices are you looking for? And how can my students go out and learn more? Because I do preach a lot about having a plan B. We had Joanne Musa on a couple weeks ago and talking about tax lien investing. I don't do tax lien investing. I don't do business flipping. But, you know, I am a big believer in the name of the podcast is working smart, not working hard. Earn more, work less, learn how. And Mike, I can't thank you enough for, you know, taking the time to talk about this. So, again, how many apprentices are you looking for and how can I learn more?

Well, ultimately, I'm only looking maybe for 10 or 15 apprentices, but again, I don't know which one will turn out to be a real apprentice or not because it's really a longer term partnership thing that I'm looking to find with people. So I have to probably put 50, 60 or 100 people in at any given time to figure out, okay, which couple are going to work their way to the top and say, okay, yeah, I'm actually willing to do this. I'm not just buying a book or I'm going to attend a seminar and they go home and say, wow, that was really great and go back to what I always did before, expect a different result. I want somebody that says, well, I'm going to do this. It actually works. Because it does work. It can be life changing, not only for the people who do it, but for their families and their friends and everybody else. It changes the whole dynamic, the whole legacy factor of what they're doing. I mean, I teach my kids how to buy business. My daughter's boyfriend, in fact, wants to learn how to buy business because he's saying that I'm buying them with none of my own money. In fact, most of the time they pay me to buy them.

Right, right. You know, it's tremendous.

So, yeah, I open it up periodically. I don't do it all the time, but when I do, then I'm looking to see just, you know, who's going to rise away to the top. And, you know, I'll give everybody the same training. It's really a matter of who takes action. Because action is not something you say, it's something you do.

Right.

You know, and who steps up and proves that they're willing to take action. Great. Those are the people I want to partner with.

Sure, sure. And when I train, I have like a VA program to teach people how to hire VAs. And I always say, hire three, keep one, give all three the same project. But you'll see out of those three, one is going to stand out and you know, really put what I like to call emotional energy into it. So they're not just going to follow directions, they're going to think for themselves and make it better than what you actually even wanted. So that's probably the ideal apprentice that you're looking for as well. I would think.

I would say, yeah, that's pretty much it. You know, that's why I'll do, you know, like a couple of day training, put people in, you know, everybody in the room, everybody's really excited. But it's, you know, it's what happens after you get the training. And what do you do with that. And those are the people that I want to work with.

Right, right. So let's talk about the training and the room. Where is that training and when?

Well, my next One is actually July 27th and 28th in Las Vegas, Nevada. Yeah, I know it's hot in Las Vegas, but we'll be in a hotel room. It'll be air conditioned, so it'll be just fine.

Right, right, Yeah. I mean, I'm sitting here in Scottsdale. I think it's like 1:09 today, so.

Thanks.

Yeah, yeah. That's not hot, that's. It's a dry heat, Mike.

Yeah, yeah, sure, I've heard that lots of time. I just know that when I go outside, I start sweating really bad. So that's hot.

Right, right. All right, so I'm an A player. I'm a big hitter. I know I can do this. But I live in New York and I can't come to the live event in Vegas. What do I do?

Well, I could always get you videos of the event. That's your worst case scenario. I really don't like it that way because there's so many things that go on. For instance, I have a few people that are going to be bringing deals to the event to participate in what I call my snake pit. My snake pit is where people that have found deals prior to the event get a pitch it to my panel to see. It's kind of like Shark Tank.

Oh, I love Shark Tank.

It's done a little bit differently, though. So they get a pitch it to us to see which one of us is willing to take the least amount of equity to partner with them to go buy these deals.

Oh, that's fantastic.

So it's a twist on a generic idea and that works out really well. So that's going to be pretty popular. So they miss out on stuff like that. Plus the networking, meeting, the teams, sharing information, figuring out who can be part of your team. Because the people at the event are people that you want to get to know because they're all going to be players just like you.

Yeah, that's, that's great. I mean, have you opened this up yet or is it, I mean, how tough is it going to be to get a ticket?

I opened it up and it's open until probably about the week before the 27th of July. So then I'll have to close it back down.

Okay. Okay.

So if people want to go, can I give them the website where they can go?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

So if they want to go to that they need to visit the website at Flipping businesses Calm. So it's flipping businesses. So there's a bunch of S's in there. So flipping businesses dot com. And it'll have information about what's going to be covered there. And you'll see that there's just a boatload of stuff that's covered. So, you know, using your example, somebody's in New York and can't go. What they have to ask themselves is really, how important is it for them to be able to have a multi million dollar business that pays them six figures every year anyway without them operating anything? Is that worth two days out of their life and changing their schedule?

Yeah, exactly.

Then it's probably not the person I'm probably going to be doing an apprentice program with. Honestly. No. They can still get the training. I'll give them the videos. But, you know, it's not the same thing.

Right, right, exactly. I mean, there's, there's so much that goes on at a live event that it's, it's apples and oranges, completely different. So, any last minute thoughts for folks who want to learn how to flip a business?

You know, one of the things I would just try to tell everybody to think about is there's a lot of businesses that are out there. There's a lot of actually, in fact, what I found is that almost every business owner wants to sell their company. They just don't know how and they don't know how much it's worth. They don't know how to do all those things. So I find a lot of companies, by the way, that are not listed with business brokers or anything like that. I buy a couple from business brokers, but rarely do I have to use them. There's so many others out there. It's just about letting people know that you're in the business of buying companies. If you're in the business, all of a sudden it starts up a whole different conversation. You don't want to treat yourself as a salesperson. If somebody comes in and says, oh, Mike, I want you to, you know, help me grow my sales and I'll make you this super affiliate and we'll pay you this extra commission. It's like, no, I am not a salesperson right now. You want me to grow your company, I get equity. You don't want to give me equity, that's fine. I'll refer you to somebody who will be a salesperson for you. And good luck. Good luck with that.

Right.

You know, if you want me to treat this as My baby and really grow it, then this is how we've got to do it. So I must always be in control. And I would encourage people to just look around and start talking to people and look at deals. When you start thinking about the number of deals that are available, all of a sudden your perspective changes. A little quote that I like to always say, and we can try to use this for everybody as well, is that opportunities don't go away, they just go to somebody else.

Right.

Opportunities don't go away, they go to somebody else. So the opportunity is here. It's available for everybody that's listening in with us right now to start finding deals. You can find them online, you can find them in Craigslist, you can find them through referrals, you can find them talking to people. I find, I found one, what was it, last month, by riding in first class on the airplane talking to somebody and the guy was like, well, yeah, well, I became interested in that. When you struck a deal and worked out an equity arrangement, you never know where your deals are going to come from.

Yeah. I mean, it's really just opening your mind and learning.

Yes. And letting other people know that you do it.

Right.

Don't take it a secret.

Right, right. And I'll have in the show notes the website flippingbusinesses.com and I know that that's probably going to be your tip of the week. And I told you a little bit beforehand, we always do a tip of the week. So do you have anything else you want to share as a resource, a website or tip besides flippingbusinesses.com well, you.

Know, if they go to that site, they could also get. Well, actually, if they go to Amazon, they can get a copy of my book, which is called how to Buy Business using Its Own Cash.

How to Buy Businesses Using Its Own Cash. On Amazon.

On Amazon. Now, what they need to understand, though, is that's just a book. It's not going to teach them everything about buying and flipping a business before you know what it'll. It'll answer a whole lot of questions. But it's not an end all, be all. That's what the live event is for. You know, you figure a book that I can read in an hour versus, you know, at least 16 to 20 hours worth of live training. Which one would you rather have?

Right, right. In something like this, when the dollars are so big and the opportunity is so big, you don't want to, you don't want to scrimp.

No, don't pretend you're a Startup, pretend you're a big corporation. You're coming in, you're going to play a big game, you know, so you act the part, you dress the part, you don't walk around in flip flops. You're not doing the Internet marketing guy, you know, because nobody takes you seriously when you go into a million dollar business.

Right.

If you tried to do that, and I tried to, I walked in with flip flops and shorts and a T shirt. So, hey, yeah, once you give me, you know, equity in your company, they're gonna laugh me out the door.

Yeah, Right.

So part of it is knowing what to do, what to say, how to go about it. And you just act the part. You act as if, even if you don't know all the answers, Mark, it's okay. But if you act as if you do or you act as if you have access to those answers, everything else will be fine.

This is fantastic. I know you're busy, Mike. I can't thank you enough for taking time out of your very, very busy schedule to share with my listeners, flippingbusinesses.com and the incredible opportunity that you're offering. So I want to thank you again and I hope we can, we can do another podcast because this is such a wide ranging industry. I'm sure we can find more to talk about and more details.

I would be happy to do that. It was a pleasure being on the call with you. Hopefully you get some good comments from everybody that's listening and they should, you know, if they, they're listening, you know, write some comments, give you some feedback, tell you that you like this kind of stuff and, you know, we'll do some more, we'll go into more detail or talk about different topics or other things that I'm doing. However I can help you, I'm available here to help you. So thanks for having me on the call.

Yeah, no problem. And hopefully I'll have a follow up because I'll probably be in Vegas and then I'll tell everybody, hey, I was at the live event with Mike and this is what I learned. So fantastic. But this is, I just want to thank you again, but I'm going to sign off. And this is Mark Podolski. If you want to learn more about me, go to www.thelandgeek.com. and to learn more about Mike Warren and what he's doing, of course, go to www.flippingbusinesses.com. i will have all this information in the show notes. And this is Mark Podolski, the land geek, saying make it an extraordinary day. We'll see you guys next week. Thanks a lot.

Thank you for listening to another episode of the Land Geek. Join us next time for more tips, secrets and information that will help you succeed. Stay connected with the Land Geek on facebook@facebook.com thelandgeek.