In this Business Blast Podcast episode, host Tyler Wagner interviews Carl Allen, a former HP corporate M&A executive turned entrepreneur, investor, and coach who has facilitated over 250 acquisitions and $50 billion in transactions. Allen shares a pivotal personal story about the birth of his son that prompted him to leave corporate life and focus on buying and flipping small businesses. He argues that aspiring entrepreneurs should avoid starting companies and instead purchase existing businesses, leveraging the target’s cash flow and assets for financing. Allen explains where to find deal flow—business brokers like BizBuySell.com and, more effectively, building human and social networks (e.g., LinkedIn, CPA, suppliers). He outlines his personal philosophy of balance and harmony, inspired by Garrett White’s “Warrior Book” and the “4 Bs” framework (Business, Body, Being, Balance). He also recommends two influential books—The Warrior Book and Shoe Dog—highlighting persistence and mastery of life’s domains. Allen’s favorite quote from Apollo 13, “Failure is not an option,” encapsulates his mindset. Finally, he directs listeners to his website ninjaacquisitions.com and a free 90‑minute masterclass for learning how to acquire small businesses.
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Welcome to the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite provides you with all the resources you need to become a successful author. You can learn more about Authors Unite and join the free community at authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode.
All right everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Carl Allen with us. He's an entrepreneur, investor, and corporate dealmaker who has worked on transactions worth over $50 billion, which includes over 250 acquisitions and sales together with more than 100 capital fundraising Projects. Carl is one of the world's premier experts on buying and financing small business acquisitions and coaches more than 1,000 entrepreneurs all over the world to buy small businesses rather than starting new ones. So, welcome to the show, man. Excited to have you on.
Hey, thanks, Tyler. Great to be with you.
Of course, man. We'll dive right in. The first one I have for you, Carl, is what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
Sure, so that's a really good question and it's kind of something that happened to me just over 10 years ago. So 10 years ago, I was working in corporate mergers and acquisitions. So I started my life on Wall Street and I worked in private equity, did my MBA in Chicago, and then I ended up— I was one of the corporate M&A guys at Hewlett-Packard. So I was flying all over the world, buying and selling businesses for HP and earning a lot of money, but had no skin in the game and was just making lots of people lots of money. And the tipping point for me, Tyler, was my wife was 36 weeks pregnant at the time with our son, Josh. And I went to Moscow to buy this business for HP. And as soon as I got there, my wife called me and she'd gone into labor. So she's in the ambulance, she's going to the hospital to have the baby, so I had to get my butt back on the plane and get home so I wouldn't miss my son being born. And I literally made it with 5 minutes to spare, and I'm sat there, the little guy's in my arms, you know, he's like a few minutes old, and I just thought, you know what, I can't do this anymore, you know, I just don't want to work for other people, you know, I have a crappy work-life balance, I miss my family, you know, I want to do my own thing, I want to be an entrepreneur. When I started my entrepreneurial journey, I only had one skill, which is how to buy businesses. I was a very, very good expert at that. I started buying, growing, and then flipping my own small businesses. They weren't the billion-dollar deals I've been doing at HP. These were $1 to $5, $1 to $10 million small businesses, but I was able to master that process and that's what I've been doing for the last the last 10+ years. My big message from that was if you've got a passion and you want to have a balance in your life is do your own thing. You don't need to work for other people. You need to get skin in the game because then it gives you all of the things in life that I think we covered the most, freedom, work-life balance, and the pride of owning our own investments, owning our own businesses, doing our own thing.
Yes, man, I love it. Thank you for sharing that. The next one I have for you is— I'm excited for your answer on this one— is what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
Right. Okay. So my biggest, most valuable piece of information, and this piece of information will change people's lives if they take it to heart. And my advice to everybody is, you know, do not under any circumstances start a business. Go and buy one instead using, and you can use the business's own resources, namely its cash flow and its assets to fund the purchase. So you can buy an existing small business without investing your own capital. Yet it's crazy that there are 2.4 million businesses for sale today in the United States and only 1 in 13 of the people, only 1 in 30 of those businesses will actually sell within the next 12 months. Yet in America, 6 million entrepreneurs every year go and start a new company, and 96% of them will fail inside of 10 years because they don't have any assets, any cash flow, any credit, any customers, any products, any premises, you know, any equipment. So it's not surprising that startups fail, yet there's so many existing businesses out there that are successful, the owners just don't want them anymore, typically retiring baby boomers or frustrated entrepreneurs. You can go and buy that business and you can finance the acquisition by offering up the assets in the business. That's exactly what I do. My analogy for this is Tesla. Tesla, has only very recently come to the United Kingdom. We've not had Tesla cars until quite recently. And I've just placed an order for one, and I'll get my Tesla in about 3 weeks. And I could have gone and bought a battery and some aluminum framing and some seats and some wheels and some tires and a motor and glass, and I could have laid it all out on my driveway, and I could have built it myself. Or did I go to a dealership? Buy a Tesla or order a Tesla on someone's bill and then use Tesla's financing to purchase the car. That's exactly what I did. And that's my metaphor, you know, don't start businesses, go buy them instead. It's safer, cheaper, quicker, and it's a lot less risky.
So normally the next question I would ask, like, what's your best piece of overall business advice? But I'm very curious about this. I would assume our listeners are too. So what came up for me is like, Where do you find these? Like you said, 2.4 million. Like, is there like a website with these or is like this like person to person? Like, where are you finding all these businesses for sale?
Yeah, it's all of those things. So, so what most people do when they want to buy a business is they go to a business broker. So, you know, the biggest website in the United States is BizBuySell.com. They have about 100,000 of those listings and you can do that. But the best deals that I've ever done and the best deals that my 1,000+ people in my coaching program do is I teach people how to build networks. So if you're a— if you own a small business, um, before you ever consider listing that business for sale, you tell the people in your immediate network, like your CPA, your accountant, your bank, anybody, you know, key customers, uh, even key suppliers. So I teach people how to build those networks, both human networks and also social media networking through like LinkedIn and tools like that. And we can get some very, very good deal flow from businesses that haven't yet been listed for sale. So then, you know, we're in a non-competitive situation. We're able to meet those people, build phenomenal rapport, and structure those deals, you know, that are a win-win.
Okay. And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
So I would say the one piece of advice that I would give my younger self would be to, you know, is to never stop learning and focus on your why. Focus on why you wanna do what you do, not what you actually do, because your employees, your stakeholders, your shareholders, your customers, everybody that you contact, they're more focused on your why. You know, why do you do what you do versus what you actually do? That's my biggest piece of advice.
[Speaker] And in your opinion, kind of going down a different path, in your opinion, what's the key to happiness?
So for me, it's balance and harmony. So I met an absolutely phenomenal guy last year called Garrett White, who is the warrior. You know, he has a coming up Warrior Week, and you know, it's a male fraternity, and he's got a great book called The Warrior Book. It's actually my favorite book of all time. And what Garrett White talks about in that book is what he calls the 4 Bs. The 4 Bs, your business, your body, your being, and your balance, which is your family. So it's all about having a life where you're firing on all 4 of those cylinders. Your business or the way you make money, the way you make bank is firing. It's all about your body, having a healthy body and giving you the energy and the pride your being, so it's your spiritual self. You know, he teaches you how to meditate and get real kind of peace and harmony in what you're doing. And then it's also balance, it's making sure that you've got time for your family, your friends, your community. And he teaches you how to gamify your life. He has some simple strategies which are so cool where you're making sure that you're hitting all of those 4 things, you know, every single day. And I've built my entire life now around those 4 key things, to make sure that all the things I love and I care about in my life are all getting the same focus and the same attention.
So my next question is, what's the best book you've read and what's the number one thing you learned from it? But is that your answer there as well?
I've actually got 2, if I can have 2.
Great, yeah, go ahead.
One would be the Warrior book. It's called Warrior book, How to Master the Art and Science of Having It All. Absolutely phenomenal book. And then the other book, and I've only read it quite recently, and it absolutely blew me away. It completely blew me away. And the book is called Shoe Dog. And it's the story of Phil Knight, the guy that built Nike from nothing, from his back room, into a $56 billion business. And it's a phenomenal book. And what drops out of that book, the big takeaway, It's all about persistence, it's all about determination, and it's never ever giving up on your dreams. That guy, he failed so many times, and if he'd have given up and walked away, which sadly most entrepreneurs do, Nike as we know it, the sneaker industry, the basketball industry, the sports industry would not be the industry that it is today. So that book just burns into your mindset about focus and determination and, you know, just never giving up on your dreams.
And I agree, Shoe Dog. I listened to that audiobook. Unbelievable. This is very good. Um, and what is your favorite quote and why?
My favorite quote is actually from the movie Apollo 13. Uh, if you've seen that movie, and there's a scene when, when the spaceship blows up, but they're trying to get it home and they're figuring out how to do it. You know, Gene Kranz, who was the director of flight operations, played by Ed Harris in the movie, is in the kind of war room with all the guys, all the PhDs at NASA, and he said, you know, we've never lost an American in space and we're sure as hell not going to do it on my watch. Failure is not an option. And that, you know, since watching that movie in 1995, 1996, I think it was, That's been kind of my mantra, that's been my code. Failure is not an option, there is always a way. There is always a way to be successful and make something work. If your why is strong enough, and your focus and your mindset is strong enough, you will find a way.
Yes, I agree, man. Thank you so much for coming on. The last question I do have for you before we let you go is, where is the best place for people to find and/or connect with you online?
Absolutely. So people can head over to my website, ninjaacquisitions.com. And a lot of people always say to me, is this some kind of free training? Is it like a 90-minute masterclass where I can learn about you as an entrepreneur, learn how to do what you do, how to buy these businesses, how to structure these deals? So I have a free 90-minute masterclass training, and that's at ninjaacquisitions.com/free. So if any of your audience are curious about what it takes to buy a small business, you know, quit their 9-to-5 or maybe buy another business fitting into what they already do, recommend they go check out that free training at ninjaacquisitions.com/free.
Perfect, man. Thanks again for hopping on.
No, thank you very much for having me. It's been great.
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