Buy Businesses, Escape the Matrix, and Secure Financial Independence | Richard Walsh

Follow the white rabbit, Neo. Do you want to be free? Do you want to escape slavery by  We have a perfect guest to help break down how to secure financial independence in today's world of AI, World War 3, . Meet Richard Walsh, CEO of Sharpen the Spear Coaching and Author of "Escape the Owner Prison". Want to learn how to buy businesses? Want to learn how to step out of your business and let your business serve you? Sit back, relax, and learn how to unlock a future of fortune and breaking past 7 million EBIDTA with Richard Walsh and Brendan Ecker. Escape the Owner Prison, and Escape the Matrix. The choice is yours, Neo. All I am offering is the truth.

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Timestamps:
[00:00]: Intro
[01:11]: Richard Walsh's Story
[02:10]: From Marine Corps to Entrepreneur
[04:15]: Military Life & How to Survive WW3
[06:45]: Staying Optimistic In the Hard Times
[07:51]: Problems are Opportunities
[08:58]: Real Estate... Future Market Crash?
[10:46]: The Required Hustle in Business
[12:30]: How to Balance Life, Business, and Family
[13:57]: Richard's Book "Escape the Owner Prison"
[16:30]: How to Scale to $7 Million Revenue Per Year
[20:08]: Best Resources to Sell a Business
[25:09]: Who to Hire First When Buying a Business
[28:26]: Buy a Business and a System
[31:04]: Learning is Earning. Knowledge is Power.
[32:00]: Make Millions By Strong LPV
[38:35]: Good Debt vs Bad Debt | Dave Ramsey vs Robert Kiyosaki
[43:12]: Increase Your Earning Capacity
[45:00]: Focus and Overcoming Distractions
[47:28]: Competition and Beating Saturated Markets
[48:00]: Final Remarks from Richard Walsh
[50:00]: Outro

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the process, all right, so are you ready? Can you go forward? Go practice buying a business. No one thinks of that. You're buying a business, but you gotta know what you're looking for, right? You buy a car. You know what you want, right? You want this, I want leather, I want AC, I want this, I want whatever, right? Well, I want an SUV. You know why is a business any different? It's a vehicle to serve you, right? You don't serve the business, the business serves you.

Speaker 2: 0:25

You got to keep that in your head, ladies and gentlemen, today we have a very special interview with Richard Walsh. He is a 30-year veteran of business, ceo of Sharpen the Spirit Coaching and the author of the bestselling book Escape the Owner's Prison, and a four-year veteran of the United States Marine Corps. If you're looking for a life that you can have financial freedom, health, wealth, love, happiness then this is the episode for you. If you want to learn how to buy businesses and have the life you never dreamed of, if you want to learn how to have money, if you want to learn how to have wealth, today's episode is filled with a lot of value, as you'll learn how to grow businesses, scale businesses, but also buy businesses and gain back the freedom in your life that you deserve, and to give a balance of health, wealth, love and happiness. So, and to give a balance of health, wealth, love and happiness. So, without further ado, enjoy this episode and thank you. Be sure to like, comment, subscribe. I got nothing else. Enjoy the show. Thank you for being here today.

Speaker 1: 1:12

Thanks, brandon, appreciate it. Yeah, it goes back a bit. So I've been doing this about a little over 30 years in the entrepreneurial space, a little over that. Yeah, I got out of the Marine Corps in 87. Got a job. Because that's what you have to do, right? You got to get a job and work and make money. And I was swinging a pickaxe for eight hours a day making a whopping $5 an hour, and then someone asked me to help with a side job and I had to move like 35 tons of granite right with a shovel and a wheelbarrow into their back yard from the road and I did that. It was like 100 degrees out, we're in Arizona road and I did that. It was like a hundred degrees out, we're in Arizona. And I got done with that in 10 hours and they paid me a thousand dollars. Okay, I'm like I'm looking at my thousand dollars in my hand and I'm thinking I do this all day for like $50. I think I'm going to go into business for myself and that was the start of the entrepreneurial journey.

Speaker 2: 2:00

That was the beginning. Yes, I love business and I love entrepreneurship. It's a great and I love entrepreneurship. It's a great way to freedom. It's a great way to have the life that you've always kind of dreamed of. What made you want to go from marine to entrepreneur?

Speaker 1: 2:14

I don't take direction. Well, so I don't.

Speaker 2: 2:17

I can only be told what to do for so long, and then I got to do my own thing yeah, when I was in the academy I ended up getting a bunch of demerits because I was kind of the same way. It was usually because I was. It was the rule following and that you know, I was kind of, I was a little bit of a rebel. I'd like to say so I definitely agree with you there. It's insane.

Speaker 1: 2:36

Yeah, I like structure, don't get me wrong. But the whole thing about entrepreneurship for me, brandon, is I don't want a ceiling. I want to make as much or as little. I want to work as much, and it's usually more than less, right? I don't want to be told to go home. I don't want to be told when to come in. I don't want to be told you can, yeah, you can make a lot of money, but only that much. You can't make this much. Oh, you can make $30 an hour, yeah, but I can't make 31. I want to make 31, right? So it's just one of those things that you learn. That, again, it's part of who you are. And then that drive you have to find where you can fit. How can I fit and satisfy those? But still, you know, have a life but build a great business.

Speaker 2: 3:23

Absolutely yeah, and thank you for your service. By the way, how long have you been in the Marines? Four years. Four years, that's good, that's a good amount of time. Yeah, it was enough. A little over two years now. What's funny is, if you read my book, one of the first things I ended up wanting to do for years was get into the Navy SEALs, and essentially I really trained hard too. I did pretty well, and then eventually I just said you know what I think, maybe I'll just go in law enforcement. And so I ended up in law enforcement and so became a police officer. And then I was like no, I want to do more than that. And kind of like you, you want to have more control over your life, right, more structure in your own sense, not necessarily the structure that society provides you, which tends to be more of the go to work, come home, go to sleep, go to work in a routine.

Speaker 1: 4:14

Yeah, it's hard. My son the same thing wanted to be a Navy SEAL but then that didn't work out so he went to the Marine Corps. So now he's in the Marine Corps, which is awesome. He's been about six months now. You know, getting out of School of Infantry on August 1st and MSG was Marine Security Guard, right, so he does embassies and all that, so really cool.

Speaker 1: 4:31

But yeah, he's the same thing. You know he's very driven, wants to do that stuff. He's not going to be a lifer. He already knows he's doing a six-year contract and to do that, get skilled up, do his stuff and then get out. You know he understands Right. So he's a very goal oriented person who understands distraction because he's been a talented athlete and everything along the time. And we were doing three days for seven months, brandon, before we went in basic. I saw basic is going to be a recovery for you. Like people think it's hard. This will be nothing. You're just going to go and rest and be working out, but for doing three days you're going to be resting, so it'll be fun. But yeah, need that challenge.

Speaker 2: 5:09

Yeah, and with everything happening today, it's a crazy world. I mean, we have the Ukraine versus Russia and all of that happening. Do you worry that your son's going to get sent over to Ukraine, or where do you think they're going to send him? I had any idea, but you mentioned something about an embassy so he's probably gonna go to africa.

Speaker 1: 5:25

They're gonna send them to africa because they kind of get the crappy duty first and africa is one of those places. They'll go there for a year, then he'll choose. But I'm not worried about ukraine. I'm worried about china, taiwan, because they're actually re-engaging uh, beach landings, warfare, bringing amtrak's back, things like that that I had when I was in and now they're. So we know where the direction is going right, because they're always a bit ahead.

Speaker 2: 5:51

I read about how Russia was. Russia's been on like what 20 miles off the coast of Miami. That's insane.

Speaker 1: 5:58

Yeah, it's. You gotta be careful with the bear you poke, Right, you know what I mean. You gotta you can play a proxy war stuff and everything else, but you gotta and I know cold war, right, I served her. I know russia, we trained up, we trained for russia for four years, right, so it was. Yeah, it's a. It's a fascinating world we live in it is.

Speaker 2: 6:20

it is we. We're definitely living in interesting times, that's for sure, but it's a good time to be alive. I like the craz craziness a little bit, you know. It makes you feel like you have some purpose, like wow, I'm born in one of probably the hardest times to survive in history, but also possibly the easiest, though right, because we also have all the resources at our fingertips in that way too.

Speaker 1: 6:47

But and I just, you know, I I go in the you know, uh, born for a time such as this, you know, and so I'm here for a reason, you know, here to do my son same thing, you know, all my kids I got six kids, you know, and and, uh, they all have a purpose, they're all going to do great things in their own way and it's awesome and I brought them out to be that way and and I'm an incredibly optimistic person, like sometimes to my detriment or to my wife's frustration, at least right, how can you just be so positive and there's no other way to be?

Speaker 2: 7:12

Yeah, Honestly, at the end of the day, you got a choice. You know, I mean, life's going to throw a bunch of crazy stuff at you, a lot of crazy situations, trials and tribulations, and you have to know how to handle those and you have to be able to you know lock it down and you have to know how to handle those, and you have to be able to. You know, lock it down. And I think being an optimist is a big part of success and finding a good life. You know, finding the good life, that to where you're not worrying as much, because when you're worrying you're making mistakes more you know, and so it's better to just kind of like, look at the, look at the better sides of life, obviously be a realist at the same time.

Speaker 1: 7:42

But yeah, I'm definitely with you there I think if people would take this, this one saying problems are opportunities, if you can just focus on a problem being an opportunity, it'll change the way you see everything you know, because everyone gets bummed out. They run into a little roadblock, they run into this or a problem. It's like that's. I mean, I built a business around that. I built a whole business on solving people's problems. I love it. More problems, the better you know, but but I just it's the challenge. That's what gets me really cranked. You know, it's like I just bring me your problems.

Speaker 2: 8:18

I'll let's fix them. That's the fun part, absolutely. It's kind of like, you know, you look at the real estate market and you know you can look at it as okay inflation rates are at 13%, everybody's losing their homes. But it's like if you're an investor, you're like, well, lots of foreclosures, discounts, you know, and so you look at it a different way. And you know and of course, nobody wants anybody to lose their homes Absolutely not. That'd be horrible.

Speaker 2: 8:41

But you know everybody should be looking at it like that. Right, you should always look at the look through the lens. As an investor, you know. So you should always have real estate on the back burner. I believe you should always keep diversified investments and whatnot. But you know, I mean, I can only say so much. You definitely have a lot of experience when it comes to the housing market crash of 08 and 09. You know the big short, how crazy everything was back then, and we're kind of it seems like we could be going into the same times. But I kind of want to get your perspective on it. What are you thinking?

Speaker 1: 9:13

Yeah, I have some. I have a couple of good friends who built their entire empire on foreclosure. So, like you're saying, you know, back back in 08, 09, they started before then we were able to capitalize by then. They started in 03, 04 with foreclosure, because that's when it really began. People started doing some really dumb stuff, right, but 08, that's when it collapsed. But they built like 30, well, they have 100 offices in 35 states just on foreclosures, strictly 100%, built a massive business. Now they have like 12 businesses. They're awesome. You know, just on foreclosures, strictly 100, you know, built massive business. You know, now they have like 12 businesses. You know they're awesome.

Speaker 1: 9:47

But uh, but that time I lost my house, lost my whole business in 0809, lost everything. You have to start from nothing less than nothing, the old less from, not less than nothing, if that's possible. But uh, and it's just another challenge. You know it was a problem but it was great for me because it made me realize, after 20 years doing my first business, that that was not going to. I was going in a really bad direction, and not just from a business standpoint, but business being number one in my life, that drive that everything is business, it came before my faith, it came before my family. I have six little kids and I said I woke up one day, just had that epiphany that if I continue on this path, all my children are going to know is business comes first. I will destroy their relationships, marriages, then everything will be business, and then they'll think, because they watch me, that's what you do. So I, like man, I threw the hammer down Like I'm never doing that again.

Speaker 2: 10:44

I'm doing business but I'm not going to do it the way I did it, my ambition is going to shift. Yeah, yeah, I think that's very important that health, wealth, love, happiness. You know, I think having a balance of all of those things is what brings a good life. You know, I think that's what really does bring a good life. And the quality and I think that's honestly probably one of the hardest parts about business is dealing with your family.

Speaker 2: 11:00

You know, managing your family, because it's a crazy idea to own a business and to run a business, because you're taking a risk, right, you're taking. You're not really waiting on the uh, every single week paycheck. You definitely you're always relying on sales, right, especially if you're not charging premium pricing. So, yeah, I understand it completely. And then, on top of that, there's also the legal, the legalese and the accounting and just everything that goes with it. So it's definitely wild and it's a tough battle to deal with family at the same time. But you know you're always thinking in the back of your head when this works, it will be worth it, they will understand, and I think it's true, though you have to have that mindset, it's absolutely essential.

Speaker 1: 11:40

I think you do, and what, what I, what I discovered and what my main client base is from a coaching standpoint, is guys who start a business. And when you start a business and I tell everybody this I have not to date ever found a way not to work hard your first couple of years. There's no easy road into business. You are going to go, you're going to get scarred up, you're going to get punched, you're going to get knocked down and you're going to do it. But the problem is next thing, you know, instead of two years, 10 years has gone by and you've repeated those two years five times, right? So you're stuck on that hamster wheel. Now you're managing your business, You're doing okay, but you can't scale anymore, you can't grow and you have no freedom, right. So my book Escape the Owner Prison. You're trapped with your business. If you don't open the door that day, business. Escape the owner prison. You're trapped with your business. If you don't open the door that day, business doesn't happen. If you don't go close the deals, income doesn't happen, right? So you get stuck wearing all the hats but you never know how to break free from that. Now we're business, right.

Speaker 1: 12:34

Okay, it's hard and let's do all that. Try to run your family, to try to have six kids and a wife. Try to run your family. You know what you're going to do. You're going to focus on your business because it's easier than trying to manage this whole family and kids and all this stuff. So it's kind of a catch-22. It's this lure of what's really difficult but it's less difficult. So I'll stay there because I'm doing it for my family, I'm doing it to make money and yes, so you'll see, it'll work. But now again, 10 years have gone by, You're still that same thing and you haven't seen the fruit you anticipated when you first started.

Speaker 2: 13:10

It is insane. Yes, business is a wild roller coaster, but it is so worth it. You just sit to it and when it comes to family, just love them, be there for them, stay patient. But also, you know, remember. Remember, that's the one thing at the end of all of it, right, when, when, like Steve jobs, what was his final, one of his final emails he had sent? Steve jobs had said something like I created nothing that I ever really created. Right, it was always somebody else's vision, it was somebody else's music I listened to, somebody else's movie I watched and it was somebody else's art, whatever it was. I don't remember the exact email or text or whatever it was that Steve Jobs had said, but it was related to that. You know, especially with business and your book, by the way, which is awesome. Tell us more about your book and what was the experience with that.

Speaker 1: 13:58

Yeah. So Escape the Owner Prison is a contract's new way to scale, regain control and fast track growth while loving life the Contracts New Way to Scale, regain Control and Fast-Track Growth While Loving Life. So I wrote it because after the collapse again super successful for 20 years, the best of what I did internationally recognized steel sculptor, water feature builder did all that stuff. That all went away, you know, and I'm like, okay, well, I got to restart and I already know I can't work for someone. I'm unemployable after 20 years working for yourself. You don't do well in the employee position anymore. So I just had to begin again.

Speaker 1: 14:30

But what I didn't want to do, brandon, was the same thing I did. I don't mean in the work, I mean the same approach of business is everything. So I really had to connect the dots first on why my business failed. Really easy to blame that the economic collapse of 08-09. That was just an indicator. It indicated there was a lot of holes in my bucket and I ignored a lot of things in business. I was focused on making money, getting awards and doing all that stuff, but I didn't do the hard work of making business. Easiest thing in business to do is make money. If anyone thinks it's not. Well, you haven't been in business very long. Making money is a piece of cake. I do that all day, every day. It's fun, but all the rest, that's the work, so I ignore that. So I'm like well, I just want to ignore that. I built it in.

Speaker 1: 15:11

I talked about delegation, how to build a business that I can be free of right, that I can focus on what I call my 5% and that's a 5% only. Things that I can do in the business Visionary stuff, strategic thing, right, growth stuff like that. Everybody else is going to do it. All the rest. So I opened a gym and I hired trainers and I'm you're going to do this. We're going to do bootcamp style training.

Speaker 1: 15:31

I'm doing something very different than what I did. It was great and that really was helpful. Now I can be around my kids. We're homeschooling them. I could wanted I still work. It's not like I'm some stay-at-home dad, but I'm working, but I have the freedom to go when and where I want. So that's what I did, and I did a construction business as well roofing and siding windows and did the same principle, scaled that even more. So it's the whole for the listeners. It's really about setting the course early and I call it exit strategy. So in the book, the book is really about my journey through all of that and then fixing it and how you can fix it. So there's a lot of great stuff that you can apply to your business journey. Now that's going to give you the freedom, profit and impact that you really want to make.

Speaker 2: 16:18

Oh, I love it. Yeah, I'm definitely going to get it. For sure. Everybody, make sure you buy the book. It's a great book and it sounds like it, for sure. And when it comes to businesses and buying businesses or running businesses, what do you think are the best scalable businesses?

Speaker 1: 16:35

You know, I don't think there's one over the other. It really comes down to the individual. You know, I can open one gym right, let's just take a gym. I can open a gym. I can open one gym right, let's just take a gym. I can open a gym. I can kill it and I can have 200 members paying me 200 bucks a month. You know, that's not bad. It's one gym and I got trainers. I'm working like an hour a day. That's a good gig. Now what if I franchise that? You know what if I go? Let's open a second one, let's go. I can have 50s or a hundred of these, right? So I go from one gym to 150 gym gyms, like Fit Body Bootcamp, fit Body Bootcamp, stuff like that you could have a landscape business. You can scale that. You know. I've seen guys go from making a hundred thousand a year to making 10 million, you know, in the same general area, right? So anything's scalable.

Speaker 1: 17:21

But it's all in how you build it. How do you start? What's your foundation, what's your plan? So I call it exit strategy, brian. So you got to begin. Like the best time to do an exit strategy is before you launch your business.

Speaker 1: 17:32

Okay, so you set how long you're going to do this? When do you want to get out? How do you want to get out, how much you want? But then it's about the journey to to that point like, well, I need passive income, so let's talk about real estate. How am I going to generate, how am I going to accumulate assets that are going to pay me right? So if I'm making seven figures active business income right in this business I built well, great. Well, how do I replace that with passive? How do I get $83,000 a month coming in? That has nothing to do with my business. So I want to take that active business income and invest in my income generating assets. So, at the 10-year mark, when I want to get $7 million for my business or whatever, just walk away. I've got that million I'm getting every year.

Speaker 1: 18:16

I got that replaced with my passive. Right now I get the big payout at the end. I've got passive replaced my active business income. If I don't ever work again, I'm good to go Right.

Speaker 1: 18:26

But I plan that because as I go in my business, when you start getting successful, a lot of opportunity gets put on your plate. Everyone wants you to invest in this and do this and do that Right? Well, you have to look at it through your exit strategy and it becomes a business filter. If it gets you closer to the exit strategy, great, do it. If it doesn't, business filter. If it gets you closer to the exit strategy, great, do it. If it doesn't, the detraction. But you say no, right.

Speaker 1: 18:51

So it's a real guide to keep you laser focused on achieving what you set out in the beginning. So it's the old, you know begin with the end in mind. Right, it changes the way you do business. It's a very, very powerful tool. Now, there's a lot to it, obviously, right, we talk about investing, you got to find your vehicle and blah blah, you know. So, you understand that. But that tool, that exit strategy and again, the best time is before you launch. The next best time is right now, right.

Speaker 1: 19:16

So been in business 10 years, it's time to put an exit strategy. You know it's not something you're going to put together in a year and be able to exit. It's like get in the mindset, start building it, cause it also makes you automate, delegate and eliminate things in your business. It makes you streamline your business so that it's attractive to be purchased. Right, cause no one wants to come into your business and reinvent everything. They don't want to fix things. If I can come to your business, brandon, and say oh, you want 5 million, we negotiate. Here's a $5 million check. We shake hands, you're out the door, I'm in and nobody knows it's sold. That's the goal. That business is running itself right and now you can come in and tweak it and do whatever you want, but you don't have to. It's make it X, you're going to take Y, and even if you do nothing, you just bought that. That's your investment, right? You're getting ROI on that immediately. That's how you want to build your business.

Speaker 2: 20:08

So what resources do you like to use? Is it like so if I wanted to sell a business or franchise, would you use biz by sell, for example? What's kind of the best way to start? So if I'm like I'm really getting into mergers and acquisitions and I want to buy businesses and just really, like your book says, you know, escape the owner mindset where it's just you're spending 95% of your time on your business and so let's just say I want to have a business but I don't want to be in it, I just want to run it. I want to make the income and I want to as much as I possibly can enjoy it passively. So where do you start if I'm a beginner?

Speaker 1: 20:41

Step one here's step one Practice Practice buying a business. So go find business for sale wherever, that is Okay. If it's industry-related, something completely different just go and say I'm interested in taking a look at your business. You're offering it for sale. Let's see what you got. Walk through the process, because here's what you're going to do.

Speaker 1: 21:01

This is what's great about that. It's like anything else, right? If you want to hit the ball, you got to swing the bat right. You can't just go up and hit a home run the first time a pitch comes across the play. So we go, we look at it and you start looking well, okay, well, they're asking a 1.5 million for this. And well, all you have is a customer list and a bunch of depreciating assets. You got some couple worn out trucks. You got tools, you got this stuff. You know says like, yeah, I think you're a little over overvaluated right now. There'll be legit valuations, but you find you may also go to one that's really dialed in right. Again, they've automated, they've delegated, they've eliminated. You can tell it's running. You know, maybe it's a small franchise, maybe there's three, three, four franchises they own out of 100 or something. And you go and you notice that, wow, the owner's never here and this stuff just runs great. Everyone does everything. It's a well-run business, right, that's one of you put on this money. You understand what you're going to get.

Speaker 1: 21:55

So if you walk through that exercise like once a year, like just practice, you'll start to see either what you need to change in your business, right, like, hey, that's a great idea, I can do that, make my business more valuable. What does that look like? Or that. Or let's say you want to expand, you want to merge, or you want to. You want to gain some more market share.

Speaker 1: 22:14

You go, find that business that has a good customer list, but they have all the depreciation assets. You're going to get it for 30 cents on the dollar because they don't have anything to really sell you. You got to come in and do everything, just like the owner is trapped doing Right. But it's a great way to gain cheap market share because you can flip that user list. Look for what's called lifetime profitable value, right. And because you can flip that user list, look for what's called lifetime profitable value, right and go. There's a lot of money sitting in this list you have not exploited. You served them once. You never came back to serve them again or do something new or anything else. There's a lot of money hidden in that list that you're not aware of and you grab that for pennies on the dollar. You can flip that really quick because you know how to run a business properly, right? So that's one of the things I would do for sure.

Speaker 2: 23:00

Absolutely. Yeah, that's really good advice. And so, in terms of networking and finding the right people, who, what kind of person am I looking for?

Speaker 1: 23:12

So it's always the person who's been there, right? So, like like me, like in my coaching, my business, coaching business, I don't work with startups. Okay, I don't work with startups because, for one reason, they haven't, they don't have any scars. You got to get in, you got to hit, you got to run into obstacles, you got to overcome stuff. You got to lose some money. Guaranteed, you're going to lose money. If you don't think you are you're, you're going to lose money. If you don't think you are you're, you're gonna anyways, right? So so I can't help them until they have value in what I do, like any business, right? Someone's not gonna buy a car if all they've written is a bicycle and they don't think they need a car. They don't have value on a car because they're all bicycles, right? I know that's not very realistic, but it's, it's what it is, right. So so those people have to go through through their things.

Speaker 1: 23:56

Just say, if you have a mentor or a business coach, somebody that's already be there who do you know? Who can you get in front of? Who buys and sells businesses? Start with the people who do the valuations. Who are they? Because they have the network. So if you go talking to a broker, who do you know, you start rubbing those elbows. Now you're going to start learning just from being around them.

Speaker 1: 24:17

What conferences are they going to? Are they going on this? Right, you have to start the education process. That's what's really important. You really got to see what's going out there so you can kind of see the cream that's come to the top and all the garbage is down there, so you can kind of, you know, eat cream if you will, instead of the bottom of the barrel, so the dregs so that's where I'd begin is to create a network there. You know, really understand. Look for the experts. You know, the people who have the scars have been there. They're not afraid to say they lost this and lost that. I was pretty stupid during this time, which I have a lot of stupid in my book. What I did, you know I'm not afraid to say I have a lot of stupid in my book and what I did. So you know, I'm not afraid to say I did a lot of dumb things. You know did really well and I did fantastically terrible.

Speaker 2: 25:05

Yeah, and when it comes to so let's just say I'm, I want to buy my business. I want to buy my first business, okay, and I had. I want to buy a landscaping business. So who should I hire first, like who is the right person? Is it the person doing the work or is it going to be somebody who can run the day to day operations for me? So like a coo or a cfo? Who would you say, is that next person that you should or gets done so you don't have to do it as much?

Speaker 1: 25:34

Yeah Well, the problem is, it's all. It's going to depend on capitalization how much you bring into the table of your own money. You know you're not going to get a CEO when you've got just enough to buy the business. Now you've got to earn the income from the business, so you're going to wear that hat for now. You're going to doubt and it really is what you're buying, brandon. So if you're buying a fully systemized business like so, they probably already have those people in place because they're selling the people too. I know that sounds terrible, but that's what they're doing, right? You're buying the business, people have jobs and I can leave the job because they sold it Right. So what do you have in place? These are things you have to figure out.

Speaker 1: 26:10

Now. If you're buying a little, you know two truck operation with a couple of trailers, a couple of rider mowers, blowers, some edgers you got to look at, well, what really needs to be done in the business. Are they doing a good thing? Or am I grabbing this for 20 cents on the dollar because it's not run well? Okay, so now you got to start putting the pieces together, because no one's really going to come to your business and build it for you. Okay, understand that even an office manager, an admin person, even a GM, they're not going to come in and build your business, because why would they? They're going to come and run your business, so you have to have everything in place.

Speaker 1: 26:45

This is the hard work. Even if you purchased it again, you have hard work to do. You have to create the job functions, create the position, how they operate. How do they stay in their lane, how do they thrive as a person on the team without? It's a mystery every day to build this and figure out how to make that, because they don't want to do that, and then you're actually misusing their talent. Right, you're draining their talent, you're bringing them down because they can't thrive in that area. So you see what I mean. So it's really important to understand that.

Speaker 2: 27:21

It's the capitalization thing in the beginning and what you're actually buying when you make those decisions. Wow, that's insightful and it's definitely helpful for sure, because I've been looking to get into more buying businesses a little bit down the road here I'd like to start, and so that's kind of why, you know, I definitely wanted to have you on, because I think it's just we need more of this. You know, I think this is the American way. I truly believe.

Speaker 2: 27:40

You know, our founding fathers were very, very much the same way. Right, they believed in business, they believed in having their own system, independence. Right, we're coming up on Independence Day. And so, you know, with everything happening today, especially with the way America, you know, we tend to be a more leftist country. Now, you know, the best way to hedge against that is to kind of go back to the old ways, that capitalism, and so I think that is so important to have guests like you on, you know, teaching like, hey, how do you really buy a business? How do you be a leader? You know, how do you actually delegate responsibility, so you don't have to work your entire life 30 years, you know and just to maybe not see the results you'd like.

Speaker 1: 28:19

Yeah, it's so true. And there's freedom and there's liberty, right, because there's a difference. But that ability to run your own deal, to have your business to provide a goods or service, that's awesome. Right Again, the struggle is that's why people don't really talk like I do, like, yeah, go buy a business. Yeah, I kind of fire hose people. They want to start a business. I really, what do you got? They tell me and I just go okay, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and I give them like 50. You ready? And they're like I didn't think of any of that. Right, you just have an to the process. All right, so are you ready? Can you go forward? You know, are you like scared now? You know there's so much that's ahead of you, but you got to just like, go practice buying a business. No one thinks of that. Like, you don't have to write a check. Just go look at cars. Right, do you buy the car or do you go to another dealer? Right, you go check it out. What are they offering? What are they offering? Oh, I got the best deal over here. Will you negotiate with him? It's the same thing.

Speaker 1: 29:17

You're buying a business, but you got to know what you're looking for, right? You buy a car. You know what you want, right? You want this, I want leather, I want AC. I want this, I want whatever, right? Well, I want an SUV. You know why is a business any different? It's a vehicle to serve you, right? You don't serve the business, the business serves you. You got to keep that in your head. But the more that you can purchase that is, complete, complete systems in that business, the easier it is for you to scale and get to a real ROI from your purchase. I don't want to come into a business again, depending on your capitalization, where you're at in your purchasing time, what you can actually buy.

Speaker 2: 29:54

I definitely yeah with my SMMA, which is more, it's more modernized business, right, the social media marketing agency. But I love the model because it's there's really not a lot of cost to it. You know, I mean the startup. I think the startup cost for us was like six grand total. You know, I mean at the end of the day, like low. It really just wasn't that much in my opinion.

Speaker 2: 30:15

And so now all I really ended up having to do was I hired up, hired out a team of VAs. But really the first thing I did, the most work I actually did, was the standard operating procedures right and just here's how this is done. Here's I'd like these people to be hired. Here's how the processes go here's, here's the pay links right. Here's everything you need. And it, as soon as I hired my well as more of a cgo, more of a chief growth officer, that I ended up hiring we're still trying things out all the time, but he's been doing a great job. A lot of the work he's been doing has saved me so much time, you know, and probably done a lot of. He's been like in business like 10, 15 years too, so he has much more experience than I do, so so I've been learning a lot of. You know how it really does help you when you learn how to delegate responsibility and when you get good at that, when you figure it out kind of you know, the big thing, brandon, is what?

Speaker 1: 31:05

what you did right. You're not afraid of people who are smarter than you. That's what you don't. You want smart people. I want the best for that. I want to know a lot more than I do, because they're going to take it, they're going to go, they're going to grow. This for me, and if I'm, if I'm full of ego and pride and think I'm supposed to be the best at it, I that's one thing I learned.

Speaker 1: 31:26

I mean, it took 20 years to figure it out, but I'm like dude, there's a, there's so many good people out there who are brilliant that just want to do what they do. They don't want to run a business, they don't want to own a business. They want to do what they do and be allowed to do that. Let them run with it. They don't want the burden of ownership. That's a lot of burden, even on something like you had a low barrier to entry. You got into it, but you had the courage to like, okay, I'm going to get this guy and this guy and you focus, you reinvested on the right people to scale your business. Most people won't do that. You know they're going to do it all themselves and it just grinds everything to just a crawl, you know. So you're able to explode because you're willing to find great talent and let them do what they do.

Speaker 2: 32:09

I think that's the most important part of it. You got to it's, you know, when it comes to it's kind of like when you go up the ranks on a football team, you know you're, you're really depending on those seniors to kind of show you the way, like, hey, you guys might've been playing since you know, junior varsity, but we've been playing this long, so follow us. And then you go to, and then you go from high school football to college football, which is what I did, and it was that there was a whole difference there, you know. And so you work up a ranking system of learning and when you have a system like that, it just eases your life, eases the stress in your life, Definitely.

Speaker 1: 32:42

And it's duplicatable. It's duplicatable, right? You're like, oh, I built this, I could do this again over here. You go to another my a lot of my clients will. I will dial their business in and get it systemized, automated. Then they buy another business and they can buy the cheap ones because they know how to systemize and automate so they can get it for 20, 30 cents on the dollar. Go in six months later they're generating massive profit because they know how to do it, you know, and they can rinse and repeat with that and build their empire. That way, you know, they don't have to buy the complete, perfect business because they know how to fix the others so they can gain more ground at a lower, lower investment level and get a massive return.

Speaker 2: 33:23

It's amazing stuff. It's amazing stuff. Yeah, I mean I'm still early in the process. We're not making like huge, huge money. I mean, obviously everything's still in development the way I like to see it. I I'm, I'm trying to be in it at least 10 years, you know, and eventually I want to sell my business. For at least probably. I mean, with the business I'm in, you can typically go for pretty good exits. I'll just say that right. So if I wanted to sell my business, what's the right amount of revenue that you should have earned with that business before you go to anybody experienced, who, somebody like yourself?

Speaker 1: 33:58

So that can be all over the map, right, if you're going to. If it can be sold for a three times EBITDA, right, okay, great, well, I'm pulling in. I'm pulling in a 1.5 a year. Okay, well, I can sell it times three in theory, right, that's the theory you go by, that's like the kind of a benchmark, um, so there you go. You know that's what four and four and a half million you can sell for, so you can exit for for that, right, again, in theory. What have you built, though? What are they buying? What are they purchasing? Right? So every business is going to be different, you know. That's why I talked a little earlier about lifetime profitable value, so called lpd. When I have a client who comes on board and I sell them the first thing so let's take my roofing business I sell them a roof. Well, do I say, hey, see, in 30 years, that's when you're going to need a roof again. No, I mean, they have siding, they have windows, they have other things that I do, so that that client, over time, can be worth 106 figures to me. Right, they spent 15 on a roof and I got siding this. Okay, over the next 20 years of owning their home in my business that were six figures. Well, look, I got 7 000 clients. That's a nice number right. So the lpv factors into the sale price.

Speaker 1: 35:08

A car dealer I'm. I have a, I have a wife and six children and we buy new cars every three years. So in the beginning it's mine and my wife's. That's two cars every three years. Okay, that's 70, 80, 90,000, a hundred thousand of them every three years. But now my kids are driving. Where should they go get a car? Oh, let's go talk to my dealer Now. Times six Okay, I'm a seven figure, my family's a seven figure customer to a car dealer.

Speaker 1: 35:35

One family, do those numbers right? If you're a good dealership who stays in contact, reaches out, offers deals to service, what am I worth of a seven figure family to their business? And they have 5,000 family? You know what I mean. So you got to look at what you're doing. You got to really understand, like, what you're building, what you offering, because remember, when seeing you know this, when someone buys from you once, unless you completely drop the ball, they'll buy again and you need to have something in place for them to buy. Do not think it's one and done ever, because chasing new clients. You know way harder than you know keeping existing ones right. We're always getting new clients, don't get me wrong, but we need to nurture who we have because they like us. We did good business together. How can we do business again?

Speaker 2: 36:26

What do you think is the best or the best business to sell? Is it more of a like, for example, an e-commerce business today that's, let's just say, both companies are making the same, so like a service-based agency or an e-commerce product? Because it sounds like from what you're telling me, it's more about productization. You know so make you want to really make sure that your business is also systemized and productized, kind of, so you want to have both in place to where you know everything. The deliverables are there, all the numbers are there, everything is just just set right. So commerce, for example, like it's just like apple, like it's a product you're buying a product more or like service-based, like landscaping and things like that.

Speaker 1: 37:07

So, again, both work. It's who you are. You know what do you want to operate. You know if you grew up in the trades, you know you grew up in the service business, you know it, you know how to scale it, you can see it, you know how to fix it. That's your vehicle. If you're in e-commerce, like you, you're an online guy. Right, you're doing marketing, you're doing stuff like that. That's your niche, right. If you're e-commerce and you're shifting probably not building product, you're just moving product, that's a different game, right, very different game right. Now, if I'm building a product and I'm going to sell it solely online, well, now, I've got production, warehousing, distribution, e-commerce right. So it's not, it's not like what the the layman would consider e-commerce, right, you're actually building all this stuff and that's your vehicle to move it, to sell it as e-commerce.

Speaker 1: 37:57

I have a custom woodworker, makes custom vanities, spectacular work, it's all e-commerce, right. But he's doing great, you know. But he's, you know, he's on that seat and he's got his website. Now we're splitting traffic and how do you drive right, so he's doing great, you know, but he's, you know, he's on Etsy, then he's got his website. Now we're splitting traffic and how do you drive Right. So he's got his whole focus is how to drive traffic to these sites so they'll buy what he has, that he custom builds and delivers and all that stuff Right. So there's a combination. He's only e-commerce but he's building product right. Different animal, you know, dcc does that make sense, kind of the the variances there.

Speaker 2: 38:34

It's very wild. The world of business and how, how many. It's just amazing what they just didn't teach us in school. You know, just the craziest stuff they like look, looking back it was just like, wow, they really taught us nothing important. I never learned how to invest in real estate, and at least in my high school I didn't. You know, they gave us a. It was called consumer's math, that's what this class was called, and it was a Dave Ramsey class.

Speaker 2: 38:58

And I love Dave Ramsey. I think he does have great practical advice. You know, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not saying anything against Dave, but I do believe I'm more of a Robert Kiyosaki guy versus a Dave Ramsey guy. I think it's just the level of rankings, kind of like I was saying, it's a level of learning. So like, with Dave Ramsey, that's probably more for the audience Okay, get your finances in order, get your debt to zero or work towards that. But then with Robert Kiyosaki, you listen to his, you listen to his show. It's I live off debt, you know. So there's different thinking and you know, I remember when I was just younger, totally uneducated, it was Dave Ramsey was like what? Like, like he made sense and then I would listen to the. You know, the billionaires say I love debt and I'd basically I'd be like that makes no sense. Now I understand it. It so explain a little bit more for the audience. What does that mean, debt, and why you should kind of use debt okay.

Speaker 1: 39:52

So to one other point on, like dave ramsey is, he's working. He's with well, I'll call it fixed income people, right, working people. Or you have a job, you have a w-2 job right, and that's what you're working. So they're the ones who get trapped in the bad debt, right, so he's focused, so that's his niche now he. So they're the ones who get trapped in the bad debt right, so he's focused, so that's his niche. Now he does. I know he does entrepreneur and stuff like that with businesses. I'm not going to cast any judgment either, okay.

Speaker 1: 40:16

But the other one is very focused on getting out of your debt. You have $300,000 in debt and you're 24 years old because you got college loans and you bought a house and you got married and you had a big wedding, and all of a sudden you're like $300,000 in debt. Do you know what you could do with $300,000? Do you know from an investment standpoint? This is the difference. Like you're doing it to have a house and a car, and like get married and your education, that you're probably not applying properly, right, or you're probably not even following your major like 90, some percent of the people do right, or you're probably not even following your major like 90, some percent of the people do, right, so let's talk about that Now. Business debt, good debt, they call it right.

Speaker 1: 40:54

Leveraging debt Now you can over leverage. You can do a lot of bad things. A lot of businesses do, but they're not doing it to get a return. There's this consumer debt. So you bought a car? Well, that's a liability. You bought your personal home? That's a liability. And if you ever, like I did once talk to a financial person, they told me my personal home is my asset. I said, okay, I gotta go, I'll see you later. Have a nice day. I'm like, if you think my personal home is an asset to me, it's an asset to the bank until the mortgage is paid. Right, I put in new air conditioning, I put on a new roof, I've got taxes.

Speaker 1: 41:38

I bought a $200,000 house in a year 25 or 30. You know, I've spent $250,000 in interest plus all the upkeep. I need like 700 to break even on my home, okay, so people don't understand that process, right. But now buy assets. I buy a rental property, right? Oh, hey, it generates me five hundred a month from the rental, right, when all said and done, cool, now that's investment, right? So, so if I get a mortgage on another rental home, right, ok, great, it's eight hundred dollars a month. I'm charging nineteen hundred a month to rent the home, right, I have that additional income.

Speaker 1: 42:08

What is it? I have upkeep, I have management fees and everything else, but again, oh, look, $500, all said and done. Well, wow, if I have 10 of those, I have $5,000 a month. Mortgage is all being paid. I have debt, right, I'm paying down the mortgage, but I'm profiting. I'm creating income, right, see the difference. So I think that's where they get confused on the debt, right? So they really. You really got to understand what you're using things for. What are you accumulating with debt or cash in general, right?

Speaker 2: 42:39

Yeah, yep, chris Cron was one of those entrepreneurs. He was a he's a social media entrepreneur. I don't know if you know, if you've ever followed him on Instagram. He's getting into private equity, I believe but I've been following him for a long time. But in college I remember I did not understand anything that I understand now. So I was just, he was just like I love debt. You know, he was one of those people and I was just like what do you mean by that? That's stupid. And then now I'm like, oh, I was just stupid. And so the interesting thing, you know how? How? Just again, they don't teach you this important stuff in school that you need to know.

Speaker 1: 43:12

That's why you get around the people you go. So there's a great saying degrees cost money, licenses, certifications make money. Okay, you get, go get licensed in real estate, you're going to make money. You get a college degree. You have debt because it'll do nothing for you until you, unless you can apply it. But then you know what I'm saying. You go get a certification that you dropped two grand on for a conference on the weekend and you come back with just all the tools and you start making deals. That 2000 is made back on your first deal and you're now you're rolling in profit. It's, it's amazing.

Speaker 2: 43:48

That's totally true. That's2,000 is made back on your first deal and now you're rolling in profit. It's amazing, that's totally true. I was listening to Alex Ramosi I'm a big fan of his and he was just saying how, yeah, you could pay $500 for a phlebotomy class and now you have this skill, now you can actually make money and it's really not that much work. I'm just like, wow, it's so simple, but you know, people just don't do it. You know, by the way, somebody who's also in the same industry of acquisitions how did how? Is somebody like Alex Ramosi making the wealth that he is? What is his secret? Right, because he's, I mean, worth something around a few, a couple of tens of millions of dollars now, I think, in profit, but I think his businesses generate like billions now. So what do you think is that kind of secret to that?

Speaker 1: 44:37

Well, there's a lot of persistence involved, like, you know what people do? They look at where people are now, not where they were. Okay, they don't see everything in between. Okay, there's a great saying I learned. I go like a lot of people today younger kids. They want to be discovered, not developed. Okay, you talk about him and if you get, if you sat down at the table with him, he's going to talk to you.

Speaker 1: 45:02

All about development, all about the journey, all about starting with nothing. Like, I literally started with a wheelbarrow on a shovel, my last $85 at the time and it made me a thousand. That's a pretty good investment, right, do that every day. Right, so it's, it's no different. You know the number might be different, but it's the persistence, the hard work, the sweat. You know the focus that I'm doing this, I'm getting to this place that we talked to exit strategy, right, well, I'm focused. I know where I'm going to go. That's why he's able to do it. He did not get distracted, right, cause there's tons of distraction in business shiny object syndrome, right, all these little opportunities, the next fast moneymaker, which is all lies right, focus on your thing, just like you're doing. Focus on it and grow it. That's what you do Again. If something can speed you to your exit, say yes. If it doesn't, say no. It can't be lured just by money. If it's just money acquisition, oh, if I do this I can make some more money. People do it all all the time and they're doing like nine different things and they're all mediocre. They don't do anything great because they're just chasing the next little dollar at a little opportunity instead of focus on the one main thing you know that's going to take them to the billions. He's focused on the one thing he got there. Now the guy can play wherever he wants because he got to where he wants to go. Now he can go look for other opportunities because he's got everything driving toward the billions. He's creating it. Now it was the next.

Speaker 1: 46:33

There's a diane hendricks abc supply familiar with her. Well, she's a she's the richest woman in america, right, multi-billionaire. Lives in my town. Incredible lady. Her and her husband started abc supplies, or roofing supplies. They got about 700 locations, 800 locations. She has construction companies. She's, she has, she's in everything right and she has a ceo for a construction company. She has a ceo for acquiring other businesses right kept leveraging and building and building and building it's. It's amazing to say it's super humble woman, like legit, like get still on the phone now, whatever, whatever 70 years she's on the phone doing deals. Okay, she's focused, right, she's building that. She puts the right people in place and continues to build. You know so there's a way to do it, but again, it's focus. We're in an incredibly distracted world. It'll ruin you. So just dial it, man, and stay until you get it.

Speaker 2: 47:28

And a competitive world. Right, there's more gladiators in there, as he likes to say. Yeah, there's more players, definitely more competition. At the same time, though, I always like to think, you know, there's more opportunity when there's more competition, there's more opportunity, and so I think that's very important, and so, oh, yeah, go on.

Speaker 1: 47:48

I was gonna say one thing about competition that you want to remember. So you played football, right. So when you're playing at the college level, there's all these people playing from peewee stuff, high school, junior high, all that they're not your competition, right, there's a lot of competition in the field, but it may not be your competition. But real estate's a great example. You in the field, but it may not be your competition, but real estate's a great example.

Speaker 1: 48:13

You know how many different ways there are to accumulate and sell and buy real estate. You can make money in real estate and never do anything with real estate, right. You can close the deal for this guy. You can do seller finance stuff. You can do whatever. You can do all this different stuff and never go in a house. You've never been in a house and you could be selling real estate, right. So I mean, so competition is a relative term. So again, understand your niche and that's why you got. You can't do it all, right. You're not doing 10 different ways of doing real estate. You find the way that works for you and you run hard with that and you become an expert and you drive hard with that and that's how, how you get through. You're still going to have competition, but you're going to know them right. You're going to know how they operate because you're in it as you focus on and that's how you beat them.

Speaker 2: 48:56

I think that's very true and, man, I definitely want to have you on again and I think this will be a great interview. I think it's super, super valuable for the audience. Again, I have a million questions. I could ask you so many, so many. I'm going to be mad because I'm going to remember like 20 that I wanted to ask you, but definitely going to have you on again. I want to have you on when I build out the studio. That's kind of my next move. I'm really working hard on that, but got a few different irons in the fire at the moment. But lastly, where can anybody find you?

Speaker 1: 49:30

And where are you working? Sharpen the spirit coachingcom. That's my website. You can contact me through there. You can book a call with me if you want. Interested in helping me make coach your business, helping you get to where you want to go? Uh, what I'm working on? Wow, we're right now. We've started the movement to help 10 000 business owners create freedom, profit and impact in their business. So really get them out of the prison forever so they can really thrive and balance out that life, what we call the five Fs faith, family, finance, fitness and friendships right. When you build your business right, you can focus on those. That's a real balanced life, you know. So sharpenedspiritcoachingcom is the place to go.

Speaker 2: 50:05

Absolutely. And your book. Where can we buy that?

Speaker 1: 50:08

Amazon, Absolutely. And your book. Where can we buy that Amazon? Where else the people who have the monopoly on book selling 86% yes, Escape the Owner Prison on Amazon.

Speaker 2: 50:17

Awesome, everybody get the book. And thanks again for being on here, richard.

Speaker 1: 50:21

My pleasure.

Speaker 2: 50:22

We'll be in touch. Take it easy, you.