E271: How This Dealmaker Closes a Business Acquisition Every Week—WITHOUT Using His Own Money!

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
That's an interesting point about getting expit in companies. People
are from do stuff like when they come in they
want to do a deal, as you've said earlier, and
that's fine, But then they don't think it's suddenly, oh
they've done a deal, and now what kind of attitude
because they haven't thought of the next step. I'm fine
with those people. Again, if you profile them, you can
normally move from sideways or something like that. And job

(00:23):
titles are really weak thing for me. I look, they
look probably what of your life? I don't really care.
I go and do my job, do what I like
doing best, and I think that's what's more important. It
is funny because you see all the tryal of prisons owners.
The minute you start getting down to the dollars and
their cents, you can see the whole mindset changes. Now
they may well have walked into the conversation believing what

(00:45):
they were saying, but when the money the chips are down,
the whole thing changes.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Hello and welcome to the how to Exit Podcasts, where
we introduce you to a world of small to medium
business acquisitions and mergers. We interview business owners, industry leaders, authors, mentors,
and other influencers with the sole intent to share with
you what it looks like to buy or sell a business.
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(02:08):
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I want you to visit acquisition Aficionado dot com today. Hello,

(02:33):
and welcome to the Hot Exit Podcast. Today. I'm here
with Rob Richmond. He is the strategic advisor, he's a dealmaker,
he's the founder of Synergy Groups and starting to consider
you a longtime friend. We've known each other for a
couple of years, though we've never been in the same
room because you're on another continent. But we attend a
lot of the same meetings and hangouts and brainstorm solutions

(02:55):
for ourselves and other people for quite a while now.
So thank you for coming on the show. And I
think we've been planning this for a bit, haven't we.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
Yeah, thanks from arts me on the show. Definitely has
been a while, so sorry to have kept it.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
So the no, no, no, it's good that you you're
a busy man. It's it's good if I bring on
too many people that aren't that busy, and then the
show gets real boring, real fast, because if you're not
busy in this industry, especially in this day in time,
you're probably not getting doing enough work or doing enough
deals to be interested at all. And that's not the

(03:28):
case with you. I know you're extremely busy. You've got
a lot of stuff going on, deals are getting done.
You got a unique strategy about how you're going about
doing deals, and we'll talk about that today. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
Sure, we've got a number of different deal strategy instead
and seemed to be breaking one instead, we haven't the
way of doing vendor finance. And the other one is
that we're doing rich rollerts as well as traditional rollouts,
and that's really getting I've never been so busy I've
been in with the number of years and we're mixuring,

(03:59):
doing a deal every week and there's no sign of
it slowing down in practice, just been sending out some
more agreements. Yeah, it's unborrievably busy, aments and I think
a lot of it is business staring, especially in the
U tabby, but saying it in the US and Australia
as well. And I think down to politics more than anything. Couschers.

(04:24):
When we go bad budget just corner and we don't
know one heading all away, and we don't prom minister.
But anyway, I shouldn't get in politics.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
Yeah, I try not talked about politics too much on
the show. That I'm a big believer that both sides
are corrupt. Right, you got the right wing and the
left wing, and they're both wings of the same nasty
old buzzard.

Speaker 1 (04:46):
Yeah, exactly. Yes, we'll just skip that.

Speaker 2 (04:49):
We'll skip that one all together. All right, let'st's do
a little bit of origin stories so people kind of
know who you are, where you come from, and how
you got into the space of buying and selling companies.
So how did you get started in this?

Speaker 1 (05:02):
Yeah, I mean, do you want to help far back
to Agos though? How I got into it. I'll just
give you a quick run. And back in the nineties,
I step on one of the very first backbone provide
ins that service providers in galed It over the next
twenty four months kind of thing up to around one
hundred old stuff in the UK. Then I did the
same in Austrabio's at about sixty stars, I mean, then

(05:25):
wore a couple of companies one pound down. I didn't
actually know what I was doing, to be honest, it
was someone gave me some advice in the comic Walpost
Companies in two thousand and six and offer exit twice.
I should have taken. It was a lot of money
at the time. Then we had the dot com crash,
and then we had the Financial crime twenty thirteen. I absent.

(05:46):
I helped him not and people asked me how I
did it, so I didn't realize I've done anything in particular.
So I just helped people exit their company between two
thousand and thirteen and nineteen, and I've been an M
and A ever since. The place we have a background.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
I worked in the internet service provider space for quite
a while. There a few years UH cable cable motime
internet service where people would you get Internet through their
cable motive systems. First at a company that probably nobody
knows because it was small, called a SPA Channel. Then
I was senior director of operations for Excite dot com
when Excite was head to head with Yahoo and Excite

(06:23):
was Excite at Home. At Home did the cable cable
motime internet service provider side, but UH I worked on
the portal side where they had about one hundred and
forty seven I think products everything from email to news
to weather, and all that stuff on one big portal
like Yahoo used to be. So we were head to

(06:43):
head with Yahoo and Google was still a college kids dream.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
Yeah, everybody thought, yeah, it was undefinactable eight hundred million
ten over. I remember staying that one year, but they
were doing that one hundred million ten over and everybody went, wow,
they can in the first billion dollars compliments then and
Google from.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
Really now we're in this mergers and acquisition space where
buying companies were helping them grow and helping them mix it.
Your strategy tends to be a little different than some
of the other guys. You've you've perfected it or modified
it to where it really works. Well, can you tell
us a little bit about what you're doing. Yeah?

Speaker 1 (07:21):
Sure. Basically I came into M and A and I
kind of went to the one pound deal and kind
of got stuck then and forgot to gown through the
different variations. Normally people buy do one pound deals on
distressed companies, and I do it on companies aroundy size
any put. I just used that as a point of

(07:41):
entry and rather than having it's basically get the owner
to beat the bank. To cut the long story shorts
And the way I position is, I said, like, it's
very simple, and you want a million upfront, just hyperthetic quit.
You want a million, enough, fine, I can go to
the Bank's going to cost me one hundred grand a
year or whatever it is, doesn't manner I would over

(08:04):
a three year period, that's three hundred grand. It's something
that a lot of deal makers forget to do. Actually,
we'd been the interest when we actually go to payment
working out what they actually paid for a business. Then
all I say to them is that rather than paid
the bank, that's three hundred brand, I'd rather paid to you,
So you'd be the bank. And it's surprisingly when you

(08:24):
frame it in a certain way, which is what we do,
it works. It's worked very well for me over the
last five or six years. And the other thing we
do is the way we do the consideration is we
never do more than fifty sixty percent of EBIT so
that that way we know it's sustainable, because that's something
that most of the dealmakers I've worked with over the years,

(08:47):
they tend to over leverage if they're not here. So
that's why we do that. That's when we're doing a buyou.

Speaker 3 (08:53):
But we do a lot more why boasted now never
used to do I used to avoid them like late,
but now I got the model and where with grouping
and and that's coming absolutely gravely so.

Speaker 2 (09:06):
People not in our circle or WIBO is a work
in buyout. That model is intriguing you to work your
way in and do a buy out. The risk that
I see in you know, I'm working on one right now,
so hopefully it doesn't you know, it doesn't happen this.
We haven't. We don't have any ink yet. But the

(09:27):
one of the risks I see on some of these
things is getting paid. Right, So if you do a
WIBO and you make an agreement with a business owner
like look, I'll help you fix all this stuff. I
get equity and maybe a little bit of a stifle
along the way, depending on you know, how people negotiate it.
If they never sell that equity. This isn't a publicly
traded company where you can have liquidity in Well.

Speaker 1 (09:46):
I'm glad you said that, because that's exactly why we
do raw models. The way you do it, people get
so o sessed with like oh, I've got to take
Camperence and when it's West Sodom until you can sell
it and sell it, and like you rightly said, that's
the major sell the stocks. So for me, it's the
wrong way of doing it. So the way we set
up our right roads are quite different. First of all,

(10:08):
we build on on day one, so don't we said
it's due on day one, so we get paid up
front before we do even started. The other thing we
do is very specifically set out value adds, because something
that I noticed from only from my perspective, that people
do is they tend to em and A in our network.
You know this for a while people going to I won,

(10:30):
so want I want, and note the value add. So
we'd flip the table and now we do value add
and then we go, right, okay, how can we stage
that value add You're totally right. We did that from
one deal a few years ago where we crunched everything
in r to about six years. A six week period.
We did some great stuff for the guy, I mean
the guy you'd phoned me up and it was in

(10:52):
tears during COVID that he's going to lose everything this house.
And we fixed it in six weeks and then we're
going to go to the next stage. And we sat
in the boardroom and there's some came up to me
and goes, you know what, you're wasting our time here.
My dad can do all this on as only doesn't
need you. We won't need to lease. And I didn't

(11:12):
contradict that the sun or the fathering because for me,
I don't see any point in brushing a stone up hill.
Don't worry work with me, right, I'll go. But the
point was is the dad didn't have the bulls to
stap for and so that you know he was on
his knees begging Bruce. But you're right, you shouldn't do
it or go. So what we do is we deliberately
stage it over a period of time so riz there's

(11:34):
value ad each month when we start off by doing
a business assessment so that they can clearly see where
they are, and then we have those value adds in
every quarter we review it and say this is where where,
this is where you are, so they can see the
value add that we're bringing to the table every time.
Point is is I want them to pay me because
they won't be to come through the bill, not because

(11:55):
they go, oh there's another bill.

Speaker 2 (11:57):
Yeah, they want you to come back and continue to
what you're doing.

Speaker 1 (12:01):
Yeah, yeah, Yeah, so that the biggest part for me.

Speaker 2 (12:07):
Yeah, it looks like you do you take a rule
at the company, Do you take an operational or are
you a strategic advisor? Or what is a position that
you're are you taking on board seat? I mean, how
do you structure these these type of.

Speaker 1 (12:19):
Yeah, so we go in as board advisors because then
that enables us to leverage that on social media so
that people can see you've got that credibility and respace.
It also enables the business owner to have the board
they can't board, and because I've got quite a few partners,
what we can also do is we have this collaborative
kind of mindset where and that's something I'm encouraged with
business owners as well. What we do is we say, look,

(12:42):
you've got two or more JV partners, Well, they don't
know that board advisors that come in and then what
we can do is we can top it up and
you can get from our other partners who you would
like on your board. It's not going to cost you
another penny because then that person who's up one of
our boards now put it on their you know, LinkedIn
or whatever, and it gives them credibility to go and

(13:04):
do deals in that space within the group they build.
So what we do is we normally have a platform
company we put them in and then we bring all
the companies into an incubator to get them ready they're
ready to be acquired and then the top coat or
they're all going for an exit. So it doesn't matter
which way you do it. We've got a number of
different ways. But it's about balue out and there jouringly

(13:25):
not what we.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
Want, we're going to build it in anyway, and a
lot of people miss that. A lot of people come
in and they're out there trying to get a deal done.
They're trying to get deal flow going, and as soon
as you get a business on the phone, they start
telling the business or all the stuff they can do
for them instead of trying to really figure out what
the business needs and what the business owner wants or
thinks he needs and deliver in that first right.

Speaker 1 (13:50):
I mean, three weeks ago, I was asked to drop
on a deal and help somebody else, and so I
met the guy first on says day close deal sorry
I'm duesday, and were close to deal on and even
though he'd spoken to the business owner cup of tourists beforehand,
you didn't really dial in into the guy and find
out what the reason why he was going to sell,

(14:12):
what were it paining byes of the business, what was
right to roll with the business for that matter. So
one of the things like buying that business owners are
particularly bad at his approachfiling their staff when they go in.
I like to profile all this stuff because what you
tend to find in business. So this is my s threat.
So it might be different, brother, Pete, is that when

(14:32):
you come into a business, sorry, when you're in buying
people were into a business. You put a job description
up and that person's come in purely for that job description.
Nine out of ten times you don't know what else
that person can do. So this particular company I just
mentioned didn't have a sales team and they desperately needed
themselves and marketing. So I said, if you broke file

(14:54):
the staff, he goes no. So we did that and
found one guy that was particularly good at sales. He's
absolutely brilliant. You put him on stallees. I helped him
out because that's my background doesn't meant and now he's flying.
So now we've got a sales team. They haven't had
to employ anyone. They just redod point someone who was
who knows the industry anyway, and now it's naturally a

(15:16):
sales person. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:17):
So it's interesting, is it's very common when you look
at these businesses that they've got the wrong butts in
the wrong seats.

Speaker 1 (15:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
And it may not be that you have to let
anybody go. It may not be that you have to
hire anybody, but like what you did is you looked
around and go, what are what is everybody's core skill set?
What do they want to do?

Speaker 1 (15:37):
Right?

Speaker 2 (15:37):
A lot of times is it's like if somebody's really motivated,
even if they don't have this core skill set, if
you give him a little training and stuff, they'll be
a better employee at that then they would anything. I
had an executive administrator at a secretary if I hate
that word, but she was an admin assistant right for years.
When I hired her. One of the first things that

(15:58):
you know, we talked about, I hired her for from
a shoe place, so I didn't get a pair of
sneakers once. And this lady was she was dealing with
a really horrible customer. The guy was just being just
rude and hateful, and she handled it really well and
then provided excellent customer service to me, paid attention to
a kid trying to steal something, and like she had everything.

(16:20):
She was juggling like an octopus. She had just like
her hands. She was the only one at the store
at the time, and I said to her, what are
you doing here? You know how much do you make?

Speaker 4 (16:29):
You know?

Speaker 2 (16:30):
What do you want to do? And that when she
when she said she wanted to be she wanted to
learn how to program, I said, why don't you come
work for me? You know, the only pot spot I
have right now is an executive admin spot, which means
you would help me. You know, I've got one hundred
and eighty seven employees underneath me, seven managers, and it's
like juggling, Like I already have one admin assistant, but
I have an open spot for a second one, and

(16:51):
I want you to help me juggle all these people
like just like you're doing here. Just these are a
bunch of prema on a you know, computer engineers who
like their special attention. But she did really good at it.
Within a few weeks of her being there, I had
one of the engineer struts to turn how to program.
And you know, I always used to joke all the time,
so the best employees are hired, they're stolen, right, they
already have a job somewhere.

Speaker 1 (17:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:13):
Right. A lot of times it's within your own company.
They're just in the wrong the wrong buds, in the
wrong seats. The other thing that I've seen, and I'm
sure I'm curious what you see. Sometimes people keep people
around they shouldn't.

Speaker 1 (17:26):
Yeah, I'm quite with those people. Well, again, if you
profile them, you can normally move from sideways or something
like that. And job titles are really great, bang for
me all, but they look probably what if your life.
I don't really care. I go and do my job,
do what I like doing best. And I think that's
what's more important when you get the right culture. We
were in the company the other day and I like
the way he did it. He said, look, I empower

(17:49):
myself to make mistakes. You know, you hear it in
some of it in the top companies in the world,
but he does it in his small company. And he says, look,
if you make mistakes, go and do whatever you want,
but as long as it's with the intent of helping
them company. And then if you make a mistake, just
come and tell me and we'll fix it. That then

(18:09):
don't go it again attitude. I think that's a great
attitude to pass down through your stuff. Because they had
a flat a few weeks ago and he came back
in and he said the floor was repented. They're just
taking it on themselves because they all work for the
better of the calcant And if you've got that mindset
and a cultural mindset is brilliant and to work can
that dog and go back to what you were saying

(18:31):
about that, you know, that family member or whatever it
is left in our business. I think if you profile
that person saying what is because sometimes they don't even
want to be there, they're just being because they don't
know what else to do. So you find out what
they're really good at and move them accordingly. And if
you're building a group, there's great ways to move them
around the group, and then they're out of that company

(18:52):
and they might be in a much better space. Rememb're
doing succession blowing that we try and move members of
the family to the board and away from the working
day to day operations. So we say, look, you know
there's four levels of entrepreneur. In jailing one, you're up
one man of one man person bands. Then you've got

(19:14):
you're like employing a few staff, and then you're the director,
you know, CEO. You've got managers, and then you've got staves.
And then the final one is you've become the business investor,
board members are on whatever you like to be. And
then you've got passive incomes. So now the Japanese working
for you, not you for the company, that the ultimate
place to be. And that's what we say to them,

(19:35):
and we encourage all of have been through to move
up to that place so that we can get the
job done properly, because sometimes you get people in the business,
but they tend to be replacement with where they are.

Speaker 2 (19:49):
One of the things I've seen about salespeople, and it's
how true for time and time again. It may not
be true universally, but time and time again, when I'm
looking at salespeople, looking at staff, is to figure out
what's the highest level they've ever been there, so if
I can, if I hire, if I'm looking at like
for stells guys, and I say, what's the most you've
ever made in a sales role in a company, And

(20:11):
this to say. The guy tells me, well, the last
three companies I got I did, I did about two
hundred thousand dollars a year. I know for a fact
that even if I'm paying him a base of eight,
he'll fight tooth, nail and claw, Yeah, claw his way
with his fingernails through glass to get to a two
hundred thousand, because that's his comfort zone. But I also
can almost promise that he'll shut down right afterwards and

(20:31):
be on easy glide mode because that's where his comfort
zone is that he has. The human beings is in nature.
We have a sense of self worth, and we'll demand
that in any of ourselves and others till we get there.
But to get somebody to push them past that, you
almost have to go out and find somebody has that
five hundred thousand dollars self worth, right We yeah, we

(20:52):
live with it.

Speaker 1 (20:53):
Well, we're paying to live with remains. We tend to
live with problems. But yeah, definitely before hang. I love
it when people say they're not motivated by money. We've
got a really funny one. At the moment you've read
this a million times, probably the business owner says, I'm
not a greedy man. And I care about my staff.

(21:13):
So this was when we first meant him. We quit
the offering and we took care of those two elements
very carefully when we did the bill, sorry, when we
did the proposal. The funny thing about it is he
came back for the counter proposal and he said, no,
I want all the money up front, and if you
don't pay me all the money up front, and I'm
just going to close the company. And what's there. I go, well,

(21:35):
that's interesting that a guy who isn't greedy and cares
about his staff is willing to close the company and
wants all the money up front. So it's an interesting
how people twitched so easily.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
I find that in the first thirty seconds, if somebody
tells me who they are, they're usually the exact opposite, right, Yeah,
the biggest red flay you, the biggest red flayer you
can see? To me is trust me I'm this religion
or that religious you know, trust me I'm a Christian.
I was like, okay, I don't trust you at all, now, right,
why would you ever pitch me on that to start with?

Speaker 4 (22:09):
Right?

Speaker 2 (22:09):
Or or you know, I'm not greedy and I want
to care about my staff. If that's the first thing
you tell me in the first five minutes of conversation,
it's highly suspect, right.

Speaker 1 (22:19):
Invents like that sentence to be honest or you know, yeah,
I mean yeah, now I'm going to be straight with
you and tell you this. That means that everything you
said beforehand is a learned rotors right.

Speaker 2 (22:31):
But usually what I've found is like it'll it'll vet
itself out. But more often than not, in my mind,
I've seen that when somebody says, to be straight with you,
I'm not greed, you know, just to be honest with
you or whatever. They lead with something like that, and
then they go, I'm not greedy. They care about my employees.
I almost automatically assume that that's the one lie. Why
did you presell something? Usually when somebody presells something as

(22:55):
the truth, it's because maybe that's what they want you
to believe, but maybe even what they want to believe
of themselves, but they know it at some level to
be untrue.

Speaker 1 (23:05):
Yeah, it's funny because you say, oh, the try re
Brison starting is the many you stop getting down, So
then their dollars and the cents. You can see the
whole mindset changes. Now, they may well won't change the
conversation believing what it was saying, but when the money
the chips are down, the whole thing changes.

Speaker 2 (23:23):
We have one right now where the ladies like, I
want three million from my business and two million for
my real estate, and they like I want to win
the lottery. But every time I buy that stupid two
dollars ticket, I have not done it yet. But you know,
I wasn't even on the phone call. I'm like a
third party advisor to this call. But that's what comes
to my mind when somebody says I want excident and
I want Z and you're like, we haven't even talked
about what you have or how much money you're making yet,

(23:43):
so yeah, it sounds great until you know, sure, let's
see how we can get you there. That's usually my
knee knee jerk reaction when somebody starts giving me numbers
early on in the conversation, is that if I don't
know what your business is worth, I don't know. You know. Heck,
maybe you're making a hundred million dollars a year and
all you want is a mill Yeah, let's get you there, right,
Or you're making five dollars a year for five dollars

(24:04):
a year, and you want a million dollars for your business? Well,
look cool, Like, I sure you how to get there? Right,
It's not going to be easy and you get a
lot of work, and I'm not interested in helping you,
but I'll give you a roadmap real quick.

Speaker 1 (24:14):
You need to do X, Y and z, you know.

Speaker 2 (24:16):
So my universal answer a lot of times is cool
to see how we can get you there.

Speaker 1 (24:21):
Yeah, I do this thing. I mean, it's surprising surprising
how often are you business owners cover over and slated
price in their hand about what their companies wear. But
what I do, Mike doing is exactly like you say, okay,
forum sets worth half a million dollars and they want
one million dollars a week. Now, got a very clear

(24:42):
explanation about how we break down the valuations so they
can take it to anyone. It's as good as any
graduation we're going to get down in front accounting because
it explains all the different animals. So we send that
to them and then we say, okay, now we're not
disputing them asking price, just sputing the valley at the
moment that is what it's worth. Kind of thing then

(25:03):
is how do we get you there and going back
to what was bending earlier. Vendor finance is the easiest
way both for on because you can breach that gap
so easy with vendor finance. The other side about vendor
finance that being brought off from forget and when they're
buying a company. So say you buy a company from
a million dollars it offered costs you. By the time
you've done really interest in everything character probably will have

(25:25):
been at somewhere that's been one point three or more.
Only six people said to me, Oh, you've voted and
paid for a company going and yours that you've paid
one quarter six for it, you prayed for well over
and the odds for the company. I think there's a
lot both things that people don't take into account. We're
getting back to where it was going with that. Business
owners don't take into out of the tax that they're

(25:45):
going to have what's the back end of selling their company.
So if you now incorporate vendor finance into it, that
will wipe out the tax. So now they get to
take kind of money. So we're doing Run the other
day and it was for six million pounds cover and
he said, oh, run six million pounds not patty less
kind of thing. I said, there's amount of interest. Do
you know how much money you're going to add in

(26:07):
your bank at the end of the day. He goes
six million. He was convinced he was going to get
six million, and then I said, no, you have to
pay tax. He went, oh, he genuinely didn't know. And
I would say, well, got a crack accounting for the
start who didn't give a million, or whoever he's getting
his advisory of and anyway, so I broke it down.
U came for the first million, you paid ten per

(26:29):
said well, very short, it would be fourteen, but just
going with old one. So ten per cent for the
first million lens twenty percent the next five million, so
that's one point one million. When I told him that,
you know, almost a heart attack.

Speaker 5 (26:41):
He said, I'm paid the tax pound one point one
million typically and you going, But uh, what I can
do is I can show you how to get six
million in your branklick in So he's quite okay, How
do we do that?

Speaker 1 (26:52):
I said, forget about the asking price. Let's concentrate on
what you get in your bank. And that's that's actually
has got me more deals than actually were about the
pound will they draw it down or the defect consideration.
If you actually start to focus on what they're going
to have in their bank account at the end of
the day, they start to look at the deal or
expectally different way.

Speaker 2 (27:12):
I like that. I like that along the lines with uh,
I've interviewed everybody. We both have a relationship and know
Jeremy Harbard. But Carl Allen has his phrase, we acqainted
an annuity deal, and people just get that right, Like
instead of seller finance or I'm gonna pay you over
time or you're financing the deal, he calls it an
annuity deal because the especially here in the United States,

(27:34):
business owners understand what he knew it he is, yeah, right,
so and it's like, look, you know, I love the
ideas like instead of concentrated on the sales priceless, concentrate
on what you ended up with in your bank account.
That's it. I use something similar runners in the real
estate space. All the time people would say, well, you
overpaid for the house. I was like, yeah, no, I didn't, like,

(27:54):
do you know I'm I owner financed the house? You know,
you said, you know, there's street value you know, you
would have paid one hundred thousand, you'd to take it
to your bank. They had to charge it seven and
a half to eight percent for a real estate loan.
And by the time you pay that often thirty years,
you'd have paid in two or three hundred thousand. I
paid one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars. I pay
him every month, and I don't pay zero interest on it. Right,

(28:17):
who paid more for the house at the end of
the game. Exactly?

Speaker 1 (28:21):
Well, see if you agree with me on this one,
if you were to describe businesses as in the streets
of houses, it would be one of the worst neighborhoods
in town because ninety nine percent of companies are an
absolute show. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:36):
I won't say the underwin, but they definitely need a remodel.

Speaker 1 (28:39):
Yeah, that's the one. And every I would say that
one house in every street would actually be ready to buy. Right.
So here's another argument, and this is what I often
say to different people that are rep with and say, look,
if I give you a million dollars and said go
out and buy business, you're going to buy one of
those up to thousands.

Speaker 2 (28:59):
Right.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
However, if I if you go through our stenergy groups.
So we do all the different things we do the incubator,
we get it all set up, it's all ready to go.
It's basically a brother's equity level by the time you finished.
Now I sent to you is the business. It's a
passive income. You don't need to work in the business.
All the management team say, a system process is. Everything's
in place, but it's going to cost you a million

(29:21):
and a half.

Speaker 2 (29:21):
Which one would you buy by the one that has
systems and processes that are cleaner?

Speaker 1 (29:26):
Right, so exactly, So this is where that's the value
add that we give to business owners and that's how
we get them from that half a million. Sta't do
dominion and whatever it is that we're trying to do. Also,
they make that money in their bank account real rather
than the tax land taking home.

Speaker 2 (29:44):
So like you guys have developed a system where a
framework that you can apply to multiple businesses across different industries.

Speaker 1 (29:51):
Yeah, we've got we're just about to launch a whole
load of groups. So we're doing something different. We're doing
social proofs, so we're actually putting our out there to
the public and the platform company. I know, we'll go
on a webinar with us and actually get out there
and showing what we're doing. So we've got one on
the twenty cents. They've said that's the invites only, and

(30:13):
then on the fourteenth of March and throughout the rest
of the year, we've got groups in different sectors from
around the world. And yeah, we're we're really excited about it.

Speaker 2 (30:22):
And yeah, are you invading these businesses into like you're
just coaching them and selling their business or you I
already know the answer of this because I know you,
but for the audience sake, I'm building this up. Or
do you do? Are you bringing them into something where
you're putting them in a roll up structure where you're
getting the leverage and multiple multiple companies coming in.

Speaker 1 (30:42):
Yeah, we're actually both. We can do either. So we
can either require them from day one if they want
to quick get sit, or we can roll them up.
Or we can build them up and roll them roup. Yeah,
so we can basically make them all nice and shiny,
rolling rock.

Speaker 2 (30:58):
What's the I see something in here in the here
from you. It's calling the Opportunity value framework.

Speaker 1 (31:03):
What is that? Yeah, Opportunity granary is something that I
particularly like doing when they go into Californias. It's finding
those because quite often you get business owners going you know,
I run it's like ship here. I don't leave any
money on the table, and that's like rent, rapit or
bull to me. I just love going in and finding
it just not there to prove a point, but that's

(31:26):
where I know I can add money to the value
of the company and have a benefits of men. An
example of it was we were talking to an instruction
company did fires, flood and subsidence damage insurance work basically,
and he said to me, you know, I don't leave
any money on the table. It's all ready to go,
and right then, can I sit down with you and

(31:48):
go through the process. And says yeah. We go in
and there's been a flood. We take out the windows,
the doors, the conservatory, do all the carpets, the ex furniture.
So in Hangler, Sex, you're only a construction company does
the rest. He goes, well, about a million and a
half goes out to double blazing conservatories and like that.
So I went into Cardiff, which was about thirty miles
away from this particular company, found a company that was

(32:12):
double glazing enough to Sarah and I said, look, if
I had a million and a half to your top wire,
can I buy your company? He went yes, So we
did a back to back deal like that, so we
leverage one company to get another. But that's that opportunity values.
So for me, that's part of what it is trying
to find those leverage coins in a business that people

(32:32):
often miss, and they're very obvious in the encounters. You'll
see big amounts and I'd go, right, go, what are
you spending that on? And that the target? So it
seeder an acquisition target is and it can bete the
start of the fence.

Speaker 2 (32:45):
Unfortunately, that's a space I know very well because I
used to own a real estate investment firm in Oklahoma
where pipes breaking freeze during the winter and I've had
more than one house flood because of it, right, and
you know a lot of times we've had to do
as much as move the central heat and air from
the floor to the to the attic because it's got

(33:05):
flooded and frozen out and carpet replaced the sheet rock up.
About a lot of people don't know if sheet rocks
down install right, it wis the water up into the wall,
so you have to replace the sheet walk up for
the first two or three you know feet, Yeah, I
can see a lot of the industry that would touch
that company that you could you know, and your sheet

(33:27):
rocker has to be a master sheet rocker because you
don't want to take the whole wall down, So you
have to be able to see when that toury it
doesn't show right.

Speaker 1 (33:33):
That's why going back to your earlier product, it's really
important when you go into counting and talking to business owners,
are really understanding. And on that note, you don't have
to have industry knowledge. You just got to ask questions
like We've got companies in all different industries. I don't
have any knowledge in the industry. And so in fact,
to tell the business owner, it's an advantage if I
don't know your industry because I will see things that

(33:55):
you don't. And besides, I'm not going to be running
the companies don't and that delivered that makes it very
easy for me to be a board advisor and not
operationally involved. Because I said I don't know in the industry.

Speaker 2 (34:08):
I tell people that too. I said, I'm insanely curious,
and it's to your advantage if I don't know your industry.
Very well, because I'll want to I'll want to know it,
and I'll dive, I'll deep dive into it. If I
already know it, then I have somebody that there's you know,
we all have different things. There's we all have cognitive biases.
We think, we think we know certain things in a
certain way. And if you know an industry really well,

(34:29):
there's just it's almost unstoppable to have some of those
cognitive biases where you think, well, this is just how
this works, right, where if you don't know the industry
and you don't know any better, then you can just
jump in and try new things and stuff that.

Speaker 1 (34:43):
You know.

Speaker 2 (34:43):
One of my favorite things to do, and I used
to do this when I own my real estate investment
company and everything else, is go listen to other entrepreneurs
and what they're trying because you can come back and
apply that to your industry. So when I own my
real estate investment firm, every Wednesday, I'd go listen to
the thing they used to call the First one million
Cops here in United States. It was owned by I
think it was a Kaiser Foundation or something. It funded it,

(35:05):
but basically it was entrepreneurs would pitch up, stand up,
and pitch their business idea in front of forty or
fifty of us. They got like two or three minutes
to do it, and then we had five or six
minutes to give them constructive feedback, but to see their
passion and to see the ideas they come up with.
And then you know you're sitting there, You're you're helping them,
You're like giving them advice, and it clicks in your hand.
I should be doing that too, right, Like I've given

(35:26):
this guy advice I know should be done, but I'm
not doing that at my company back you know, and
back in the back at the office. I need to
go fix that. Right. So there's a thing, you know,
out of category or out out a topic that really
I think lends to creativity and lends to being able
to solve problems that the business owner would just think
that that's just the way we've always done it.

Speaker 1 (35:48):
Yeah, right, I big nuts like segue. Oh, but when
you partner. Really, so when we partner, when business downs
to go and acquire all the businesses or we throw
acquire business. And one of the things I think that's
I made mistake with doing that. But now I look
at it a slightly different way, and that's when you
go you meet somebody they're in the same industry as you,

(36:11):
and you think, oh, you make a great deep JV proper.
Actually they the people I now avoids, and I don't
mean it in a nasty way, because if they've got
still like a skill set to you or still on
a knowledge within an industry, and the worst person you
can have as JV propper is actually you want to
be like, right, your great accounts, I'm great, whatever one

(36:33):
is that you're great at, and you want to be
actual opposites is anything so that that way you compliment
one another, not be like a married couple kind of then,
because it doesn't work.

Speaker 2 (36:43):
I always look to see who's the idea guy. Who's
the guy who's a visionary who comes up with ideas
or wants to try your things all the time, And
who's the implement or who's the guy that just the
operator that gets stuff done on a day day basis
because every great business I've ever seen that's succeeding, you
can and within the first if I get to know
the business a little bit, within the first probably fifteen minutes,

(37:04):
I can tell you that's the idea guy. And this
person over here is the operator. A lot of times
the operator may not be in a position of power.
It might be the office administrator or whatever, but somebody
there is making sure the gears turn on a day
to day basis. I am the visionary guy. I'll come
up with ideas and stuff like that. But if you
asked me to do the same repetitive task day in

(37:24):
and day out, it just I'll just drop the ball
right if I can't, if I can't outsource it, get
somebody else to do it it. I just that's just
not the way I'm wired. I'm too ADHD. I guess
I want the new problem, the new solution, the new
like this hasn't been you know this, this hasn't been
done before. How do we solve it? And I have
a real hard time just turning the wheel of the

(37:46):
gears right.

Speaker 1 (37:48):
Shining these things similar. You've got the same one as me.
I'm shockgouned for it.

Speaker 2 (37:52):
And it's beautiful. Because of this industry, we get to
play with all kinds of stuff. Right, everything I look
at is different. This is the this is the If
you've got a d HD out there in the world
and you're creative, and you've got a little bit of
a business actimen. This is the space to be in
because everything you touch is going to be new and different, exciting.
And then as soon as it's up and running, you
should have an operator and they're running it anyway, right,

(38:13):
we'll get rid of it fast, sash, Yeah, sell it off.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
Well, that's that's an interesting point about getting exiting companies.
People are from to do stuff like when they come in,
they want to do a deal, as you've said in it,
and that's fine, but then they don't think it's suddenly,
oh they've done a deal, and now what kind of attitude?
Because they haven't thought the next step. And you tend
to find that all the way. And the biggest one

(38:38):
I find is it's like I bought the company and
fix it up. Now how do I exit? So on
that note, we've had a really easy way to exit company.
You want to you could sell it this afternoon every
single time, right, management buyer is fine, it's my go
to strategy, and just go fine. I've built I've built
a passive income, so I've got to level four in

(38:59):
a business problem state. And now all I do is
I implement a management bias. And it's by far the
easiest way to get out. It's the quickest way, and
you can release it because you can state you can
do it. You can literally do your own my deal structure,
whatever deal structure you want, rights one hundred percent diffairs,
and you just release the shared for as you go along,

(39:20):
they pay you release the shares and great way to
get out, and it's so the same day.

Speaker 2 (39:26):
Yeah, and as long as you've got like the management
structure in place, which you would have done anyway, right, Yeah, exactly.
I've actually uh started down this path once before and
I kind of set it down because I got brought
in as helping some other people do some stuff. But
I think there's a play both in the US and
probably another I don't know how the structure would be

(39:46):
in your country. In the UK and other places here,
it's called an ESOP employe stock option thing. Yeah, it's
just it's a structured management might not be here.

Speaker 1 (39:55):
We have an A, O and C in the UK
very similar.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
Yeah. Here, there's huge tax advantages to it. So yeah,
so and usually you need to be a decent sized
company here for it, like i'd say probably in the
five to ten million dollars, you know, or above size company. Uh,
you know, probably it's because it you here. In order
to be an AESOP, you actually have to have a

(40:19):
plan administrator and they make about eighty grand. So on
top of your operator, on top of your your guy
running the business and everything else, you need somebody who
does that, and then you get their whole job is
to run it. So somebody in the company is responsible
for running the ESAW. And then by law here they
have to have an annual review like evaluation every year
and those can run ten or fifteen thousand, So you're

(40:40):
looking at ninety grand a year, you know, potentially one
hundred and twenty grand a year to be an ESOP.

Speaker 1 (40:46):
I don't know what the minimum requirement is, but we
have two ways you can Diferently, you can just traditional
runnings work buire. Well, you can do what's called an EOZ.
I don't remember what the acronym stands, but it's basically
a family employ ownership trust. They are yeh yeah, so
that it works pretty much the same way you just mentioned.

(41:08):
But I don't think there's a minimum requirements that's dead.
I don't know if you've found this, but in cut
we deliberate well I deliberately now stay above half a
million ego, because the bigger the talpon, the bigger the
mindset of the owner, and the more flexible they are
to doing different deal structures. Because if you go down

(41:28):
to like the Cafe Brow and say no, it's got
one hundred grand leagub or something like that. They tend
to do this and I don't. I don't know if
it's the same in the US, but they do in
the UK. They go right, it's a multiplity big plus assets, manuslatabilities,
and then they'll say plus goodwill and suddenly this word
good will turns up. You know, when you get above

(41:50):
twenty five million. I very rarely hear the word good
will anywhere, right, it does not exist right. Yet, the
smaller the company, the bigger the good will goes right.
It's because they can't get the values of the.

Speaker 2 (42:01):
Comfort as enough to say the good The good will
is code for it's not worth what it wants. So
I gotta you know my brand is worth this? Like
your brand like I've never heard of your company before.
You know your brand is like, well, everybody in this
state knows this. It's the brand is worth X, Y
and Z. It's been in business for sixty years. Yeah,
that's not exactly how this works, right.

Speaker 1 (42:23):
So yeah, an accountants at the worst at that level
because they would say, oh, you know, it's this plus
good will and now stick their hills in. So I
stopped dealing with companies outside and I deliberately go now
above ten million, well five to ten million minimum, because
it's just such an easier space to play in. The

(42:43):
bigger you go, the match easier.

Speaker 2 (42:45):
It is interesting, interesting the what else makes it for
a good candidate for what you're doing for the roll
up model? Whatever? What you know? What are the criteria
that you look for besides being ten million dollars in turnover?
Is it evil?

Speaker 1 (43:04):
The smallest group we've got going at the moment is
a ski shop in Canada, which is a million scenary, right,
we're building a group around them. We've already found one partner.
Now we've built some others and to go in that group.
The largest one is multiples where it's at there're fifty million.
We're talking to one that's journdred and sixteen. But me personally,

(43:28):
I like between ten to fifty that's a brilliant space
to be in the business. Owners ten of glass ceilings
multiple times and they can't get through it, and then
you go, right, Okay, organic grows, in organic grows an
opportunity value. That's basically what we offer them, those three
ways of going through the glass ceiling, and they totally
get it, and it's so much easier to have a

(43:50):
conversation with them. And as long as they've got a
roadmap that at least two years before they run awakst it,
then we can do it. So yeah, two years, ten
to fifty million, then I well signed to fisty. Let's
go to that space and any sector. We're literally covering
lots of different sectors, every big furnam schemes, shops to

(44:12):
civil engineering and everything in between.

Speaker 2 (44:16):
Is there anything you guys are just not interested in.
They're like, you don't there's any industries out there?

Speaker 1 (44:20):
You just yeah, they're not making any money.

Speaker 2 (44:24):
Yeah, I'm in the mode right now. And if a
year ago, I wouldn't have told you this, But right now,
if you've got a bunch of government contracts in the
United States, I'm not interested right because they're they're going
to clean house in these government contracts for a while.
And most government come from that world, right, I'm prior military,
prior defense contractor, worked for a couple of defense contractors before.

(44:45):
I understand that almost every one of those contracts are bloated, right,
They're overpriced here in the United States anyway. So I
think there's a reckoning coming in that space. I was
telling somebody the other day, I have a friend who
does websites for the government. He just goes to one
of the sites and bids on him and he gets
paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to do something that

(45:07):
some kid off fiver could do for forty five bucks, right,
And I said, his day is coming. I told him
via zoom call either he's another state. I said, yeah,
are you feeling nervous? And he's like, yeah, you know,
I've got a plan. I got to continuously plan. I've
got this other thing I'm doing off to the side
right now. So he's really, you know, doing some other stuff.

(45:27):
But he sees the writing on the wall too.

Speaker 1 (45:30):
So yeah, I think that's true in a lot of
industries at the moment. I think a lot of businesses
got to their scale, not by still in the business
signed but by the way the economy has been growing
consistentlyde global economy I'm talking about now, but for decades,
so a lot companies just happened to be in the

(45:50):
right place at the right time and scaled with it.
Because the minute you get like a big change in
the economy or like with AI coming into it, and
that's an interesting worm for Meg, you suddenly see that
this business home and then the mental of business say
like a fish out of the wards.

Speaker 2 (46:09):
It reminds me a lot of having kids. Right. My
first kid slept through the night, did great. It was
just a charm of a of a baby. And it's like,
we're good at this parenting thing. We have our second
one and she's kept us. She's she's the nine now,
red hair, blue eyed, fireball of a little girl, and
she's kept us on our toes the entire time. Right,
you got to watch this one, right, She's just full
of life, always into stuff. Like I was kidding the

(46:29):
other day, was on a zoom. It was a little over.
It's like, I gotta cut this off. My son just
went somewhere. My nine year olds in the house by herself,
and if I don't pay attention, she'll paint the walls
like she'll decide that she doesn't like the color of
the house and change it for us. Oh, I don't
want to leave her in there, you know, or she
might burn it down. She might decide she's hungry and
I'm busy, and she's gonna cook herself dinner, so I
need to go inside and check on her. But the

(46:50):
businesses are the you know, a little bit of the
same way, right. The the the concept there is you
can really take a look at something and go, then
this is easy, this is great, and it just the
company is running great when you realize it was the
right time, in the right place, and when things scramble.
That's the real test. That's the real testament of a
company is when the companies that were founded during the

(47:11):
Great Depression, companies that were founded during economic turmoil and
they're still around, those are usually more solid than you know,
the companies that popped up during a boom road the
you know, surfed in the giant wave and then you know,
they just they don't know how to act or react
when things get tight.

Speaker 1 (47:30):
Yeah, exactly. Not any that I find it interesting. How
many people go, oh, this company's been around because twenty years,
for years, whatever it is, and then go, yeah, that's great.
You do realize that statistically it's not going to be
around so much longer. Megan, what did you mean? I say, well, normally,
if you have a look at the stats, it's quite

(47:50):
amazing and there's a very good reacing part the first
two years. It has been big peril years when you
first start up a company, and then I think it's
every twenty or twenty five years there's a potential for
it to die. And that's because of generational change. Over Now,
if you started a coup young, then you've got stage twenty,
and you got to sixty, then you've got the forty
year one. So it's still fall within the twenty and

(48:12):
forty about twenty forty six. But somewhere among those lines
a company will go through basically like a startup threat
that it will fall on its ass.

Speaker 2 (48:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (48:24):
So yeah, I mean, if we'd have companies that were
so good, how come we haven't gotten companies that are
hundreds of years old. There's only one old two of them.
If it was so easy to run a company generationally
and things like that, we would have thousands of them.

Speaker 2 (48:39):
But well, this they say, there's a saying this is
the first generation builds of the second generation runs it,
and the third generation runs.

Speaker 1 (48:47):
It right into the ground.

Speaker 2 (48:49):
So yeah, runs it, runs it, read it, and runs
it right into the ground the second The second generation
typically maintains it or slightly grows in the third generation.
So somebody says we're third generation, and companies like, yeah,
that is approving. Show me a fourth generation coming, Like,
show me if you made it through the hump, right,
you've got your system and processes down so much that
you're on your fourth or fifth generation, then I'll be impressed.

(49:11):
But uh, you know that's what happened when I was
telling you about earlier. They were on their third generation.
Grant great Dan, granddad or whatever built it, granddad ran it,
or sorry, granddad built it, Dad ran it. They're running
it into the ground where they're destroying it.

Speaker 1 (49:26):
Right.

Speaker 2 (49:27):
It was a nurse and a and a I don't
know where she was before. She was trying to be
a bookkeeper, right, trying to run a you know, an
industrial company, and they had no business doing it and
didn't bring in the people that could.

Speaker 1 (49:41):
Yeah, it's about having the right people in the right process,
isn't it. If you've got those, then you've got a
good chance of its surviving for a step amount of time.
But the minute those people leaves will retire or whatever
you do, then you've got to find the same caliber
of people to put back in that seat. But also
if you don't keep an av that's another thing that
I'm buying. Businesses are terrible at doing. They don't keep

(50:04):
innovating all the time. You've got a cocklit. I mean,
if you're not, if you're not improving the business, your
competitor is and you're going behind. So even if you say, oh,
everything works fine in this business, I'm happy, everyone else
around you is moving every day. There's a new people
coming into the market. The market's changing, the economy is changing,
whatever you know, Likes and dislikes are changing, So you

(50:26):
have to keep innovating. You're buying like one of my
business butlers and I bought double Blazing Cuty during COVID
and I was just we didn't see it. Obviously paid
back and pound broke and dollar fifty, I think, whatever
it is. And so went down there and I was
absolutely amazed at what was there. You know, the old

(50:48):
tea carts. Now there's nothing wrong with tea carts and
things like that, but across a whole long wall. It
did all of its work through these tea cuts, and
underneath it had all the boulders customer folders who tracked
them along, so did have a system. The most disturbing
part of that was as you turn around, there's an
office full of computers that had never been turned on.
Then there was four eight six This is in twenty

(51:10):
twenty three, all right, and never been turned on. And
that we said awesome, and they said, well, we didn't
know how to use it, so nobody would actually because
back then then, you know, computures y a big thing,
and most of the stuff had been there thirty years,
so right, they innovated a.

Speaker 2 (51:29):
Lot more stuff. I walked through an industrial machinist type
of company that I was interested in. They were doing
six and a half million dollars ebiter bigger, bigger company
that defense contractors and all kinds of stuff. And I
had just happened to go to Rotary Rotary International as
a rotarian with the guy's brother in law or something.

(51:53):
So he hears that I buy his companies. He invited
me to do a walk through. Kind of wanted to
figure out what I wanted, you know, what his business
would be worth, and who I'd know. He didn't think
I was a buyer, and I didn't know if I
was or not at this stage. But anyway, we go
through this business and everything looks great, and I said,
do you mind if I take a look at your
books so we can see what you're worth. He said, great,
go ahead, let's go in here. And he goes to
the flip slings, open this big door, the double door, like, oh,

(52:14):
you know, like kind of army green painted metal doors
open up into this room and it's like I said,
we walk into this room and it has low shag
carpet like like like you know that half inch carpet,
and it's kind of like seventies looking phil and it
has green filing cabinet's three hundred and sixty degrees around
and I'm like, what are we doing in here? He
starts pulling out these green books, right and if the

(52:37):
old if you know what the sixties and seventies a
county looked like there was these green notebooks that were
you know, the lines on them were made for account keeping.
And I thought, oh no. But when he started pulling
stuff out, I tell you it was the cleanest set
of books I've ever seen in my life. He showed
me balanced statements and income statements in those books. He showed, well, here,
here's one from the seventies, here's one form eighties, here's
one from two weeks ago. Everything was meticulous. Well, it

(53:00):
turns out his wife was a CPA and his mother
in law basically everybody like the in the business the
business is running. At least one person in the family
was in the accounting space. But it was the best
of the books I've ever seen. So I just called
the buddy of mine. I said, Hey, if I've got
about twenty five thirty years of paper books, how long
would it take to send that stuff off somewhere and

(53:22):
have it put into accounting program? What would it cost us?

Speaker 4 (53:24):
Right?

Speaker 2 (53:25):
I started calling around trying to figure out what is
it going to cost to either box that stuff, ship
it somewhere and have them scan it and put it
because you know, there wasn't something you would do in house, right.
That was if you wanted all the if you wanted
to keep all the records, you know, you really only
need last four or five years technically to run it, right,
But if you wanted to preserve all that stuff. You know,
what would that cost per year? I had to break

(53:46):
it down per year, what would it cost me per
year to take really well done, you know books and
put them into a computer somewhere? And then I looked
around the office and I realized they still had the
old phones you pick up and hit the big you know,
you have the red light and green light, like the
push you had to push a button like they still
had old phones or ones at a computer on anybody's desk.
I asked one of the sales guys, like, do they

(54:06):
have computers on here? He goes, don't tell the boss.
I have a laptop on my back. He's like, I'm
nearly one here that even knows how to use one.
He's there's top sales guy, right, and uh, but they
did a great job. I mean I've seen many a
quick books that couldn't produce anything that looked anything like
what he gave me. Everything made. I'm not an accountant
by my nature, but you know, because my I have

(54:29):
an NBA. That means I've had to take accounting one
and two in my undergrad and and counting one and
two in my master's degree. Right, so so I understand
it a little bit. But I had the cleanest books
I'd ever seen. And it is surprising what people you know,
and it's just a you know, the company my father
worked for for years, I don't know if they've ever
got off of it, but they still had a big

(54:50):
old Like last time I went through there fifteen years ago,
they still had big box machines that used that uh
dot matrix printers, and they would their accounting look like,
you know, on paper, it was two foot wide, you
you know, like that's what they did all their paperwork
in accounting on you know. But so I'm sure they've
updated since then. I haven't been over there, and you know,
since my father passed away fifteen years ago, but i'll

(55:12):
shoot twenty years ago now eighteen years ago. But that said,
that doesn't make a bad company or a good company.
I would have told you before if you don't have
great records, if you don't have your stuff in a computer,
you got a bad company. But after seeing how well
they did their books on paper, good books are good books.
Bad books are bad books. And whether they're on the
computer or on paper or whatever, they do it, if
they've got their documentation well, and they had systems and processes.

(55:36):
I actually I he was big enough. I told him
he shouldn't go to a broker. He needs an investment
banker because he's big enough to other people from other
states would probably be interested in him. And it's a
different process when you get above about five million that
you but you probably shouldn't be talking to your local broker.
You probably need to talk to somebody that can put
together a strategic buyer for you that's going to pay

(55:57):
a lot more larger multiple. So tell me a little
bit about how do people reach you, how do they
work with you at we're at we're at the top
of the hour here.

Speaker 1 (56:05):
Oh yeah, sure, no problem, okay, so yeah, right, very good.

Speaker 4 (56:09):
I know I looked at the times like that can't
be right, Yeah, exactly, So and reach me on LinkedIn
or they can go to more ways group dot com
and you can find out all about is on there.

Speaker 1 (56:20):
That's actually my main company, Senergy Groups is more of
an initiative by always Yeah, you could find out bits
me that I feel free to reach out to me
and always have beat jb LL help businesses at really.

Speaker 2 (56:33):
And you guys go everywhere right us UK, Australia.

Speaker 6 (56:36):
Yah, we got in Canada, US, Australia, News zeal Lens
that will board be by and the UK and iRED
Oh and the European here in books.

Speaker 2 (56:48):
Awesome. Well we'll call that a show. Hang up for
a few minutes so we can uh get the downloads
ever things? Yeah, wrap us up. Yeah. This episode of
How to Exit is brought to you by Final Ascent,
the Batiquem and a firm helping lower middle market business
owners achieve their ultimate exit. At Final Ascent, they know
selling your business is one of the business decisions you'll

(57:09):
ever make, and they've been in your shoes. Their team
isn't just made of advisors. They experienced business owners who
have successfully navigated their own exits. Final Assent specializes in
preparing businesses for sale, building value, and connecting with a
national network of qualified buyers who will compete for your business.
They don't take on a client unless they're confident they
can sell your business at the current market maximum value,

(57:33):
whether you're ready to sell now or planning for the future.
They'll craft a roadmap tailor to your unique goals so
that you can walk away with maximum value and a
peace of mind. Start your journey today at Final Assent
that's www dot final ascent dot com, because your next
chapter starts with a successful exit

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