The Profitable Path: Unleashing Business Brilliance with Marcus Lemonis

28:09And you're better off grinding at the time of the negotiation to get the deal right, even if you're keeping a little money in your pocket. But once you break it even by 50 cents, the other way, you're an asshole. 100%. And then they'll tell other people. They will tell everybody. And then your deal next time is built with suspicion. And then you'll pay a bigger premium on the other side. You will. And the other thing would be that if you are, with respect to the bankers, if you are painting too rosy a picture, you might find yourself with covenants that you don't want to live with because they're saying, well, this is what you said.

28:47So we're building this in as your debt to equity ratio or something like that, that if you go below that, then bad things happen. Let's talk about covenants. Yes. So I don't do deals with covenants. Okay. I'll do personal guarantees. Okay. And there's a difference. I'd rather keep pressure on myself in a covenant light deal that I know that I can sit down at the table and work it out because there's no tipping point. But when you sign up for covenants, sometimes you have no control of the tripping of that covenant. COVID was a great example. No kidding, right? Okay? Nobody could have ever expected that the world would come to a crash that way.

29:29And I knew a lot of people who unfortunately lost their business because covenants tipped over. And the kind of lender that you go out and get money from matter. If you're going to go out and get money from a lender who also owns equity in businesses, what they're essentially telling you is, we're comfortable lending. Why? Why? Because we're comfortable owning. So you'll find that in the private equity world, covenants are there for a reason. And the stress test is there for a reason. It's there for control. In my opinion, it breaks the entrepreneurial spirit because a dude in an office in some city that has no frigging idea what it's like to put the first deposit on a credit card and sign for a lease and not be able to make payroll has no idea how that works.

30:22is more than happy to own your very high-valued business. Right. They almost, in my opinion, structure deals going, yeah, when we go to credit committee, we say to ourselves, if they trip, are we okay owning that business? And if the answer is yes, don't do the deal. I'd rather you paid a higher rate from a conventional bank with an honest conversation that you will stand behind it personally, which a lot of people are like, I'm not giving a personal guarantee. It's like, well, you kind of are, no matter what, because they're going to take your stuff. Your stuff is your business. Okay, they didn't take your house, and they didn't take your bank account, and they didn't take your car, but if they took your business, most of us would rather have our business than our house.

31:07I'd rather live in my business. This is the honest truth. My wife's going to freak out when she hears this. If you gave me a choice of losing all of my houses and all of my stuff or my business, I'd be like, I'll just sleep on a couch at the office because my business will regenerate itself. Yeah, exactly. That's a no-brainer. I could buy another house. I can't buy another business. I don't get when people let those go. That's why we're in the RV business. We could drive away. You can live in your business. Yeah. I love that. On the acquisition, kind of sticking with that. Oh, can I just finish one more thing?

31:41Please, yeah. The other reason I don't like covenants is because a lot of people sign up for bad debt deals because they don't want partners. Yep. it's okay to have partners. I have partners. I took my business public. I have a bunch of partners. It's a little bit of a pain in the ass because you've got to file paperwork and answer reports and you're accountable to people. But being accountable to people is actually a good discipline. I think it's a good discipline, yeah. Because it makes you pay attention to stuff and you have to answer questions and you get annoyed. And you get challenged. But equity, 80%, owning 80 % or 20 % or 30 % or whatever it may be, is a lot better off in the bad times than having the lender take stuff.

32:19Yeah. So let's not have a lot of crazy covenants. Let's be okay with a higher interest rate and let's be okay with having partners. If you can scale quicker with partners, why not do it? Well, let's talk about partners for a minute then. So what do you look for? How do you identify what might be a good partner versus a not so good partner? Somebody that's smarter than me. Okay. And how do you figure that out? Well, when they ask me questions that I don't know the answer to. Okay. And they're not stupid questions. They're good questions. They're like, tell me pi to the 75th decimal. Not a good question.

32:53They challenge me on the way I think about people. They challenge me the way I think about how I communicate to the consumer. They challenge me. And maybe they're not totally right. But they bring a tribal knowledge from other industries. Or they bring a tribal knowledge of their own experience to the table. So that's sort of number one. I want them to be smarter than me. I also want the partner to bring additional resources to the table that are more than just money. I want them to bring maybe their own portfolio of companies that can add value to my business that I could either sell to or buy from where this web is going to start to build itself.

33:36I think the last thing is that I want them to understand the time horizon and the goals that I have and be okay with it. And I made the mistake, and I'm grateful to them. So they may be in the room. I don't know. But I will never get into a deal where a partner has a very tight time horizon that doesn't line up with mine. because all you're doing is inevitably going to run into some sort of conflict where they say, it's been five years, I need my money out. And you're like, I don't want my money out. And they have some sort of Chinese option where they can buy and you can sell and things get crazy.

34:21And then you get forced to sell your business or take it public. And a lot of crazy stuff happens. You really want to find people that family offices are great. People like yourself who understand that. and you want them to just agree that there's a time horizon that works for everybody. Speaking of family offices, have you ever thought about that? I would be a terrible family office investor because I'm an active investor, not a passive investor. And I always tell people, they're like, we'd like you to invest in our business. I'm like, no, you don't. You just don't. They're like, why? Because I want to be involved.

35:00They're like, no, we're totally good with that. I'm like, I promise you. You're not. I'm a better 100 % owner or majority owner. I'm not a good minority owner because I want to drive the car and be in control of my own destiny. That's why I don't own any stocks in America other than my own. I don't own one stock. I don't want to rely on, you could be super smart, but I just don't want to rely on you. Also, I trust me to get the returns I want. But if I mess up, I take responsibility. I can hold myself accountable. I like that a lot. What did you learn about yourself during the pandemic that surprised you?

35:43That I didn't need as much as I thought I needed everywhere. Interesting. Including inside of my business. I also learned where my deficiencies were. I was not as much into technology and communicating with consumers in a rapid pace. And I had to overspend to accelerate our ability to communicate with consumers. We were behind the eight ball digitally. From a digital marketing standpoint, we were behind the eight ball. And the way consumers started to transact just changed. I had overbuilt big facilities. People didn't need to come in. They didn't have to communicate a different way. I had overbuilt big marketing staffs and big marketing budgets that I didn't need to.

36:34And I realized that I was my own worst enemy prior to that. I used to tell people, I don't invest in technology, and I don't do a lot of it because I don't understand it, which seemed kind of silly. So I really changed and pivoted the way I thought about that. And I also changed, as I said to you, the way I thought about my own stuff. I just didn't need as much. When we all got locked up, we were like just with our families. And it was like life seemed a lot, I'm going to be honest, it seemed a lot simpler. I was a little lonely because I'd like to be in my office and see people. But we just didn't need as much.

37:12My business got a lot tighter because I would go back to the office and be like, we don't need that. We don't need all this. I'm sorry, sir. We don't need you. Thank you. And we're not going to do business like we used to. Okay. That I think I learned more than anything. And so how are you doing business now differently? I brought in a bunch of engineers. Okay, interesting. In a non-engineer type business to document every single process and every single deficiency in my business that even I still argue to this day. And they'd say to me, you could argue with us. It's just like it's right here.

37:48And so I decided to bring in 30 different engineers across our entire platform in a business that didn't have one. What kind of engineers? So process engineers, people that really understand how things have to work and where the efficiencies are or are not. I'll give you an example. A regional manager historically was an over-promoted manager who had done well. Right. And it was like this Peter principle, like, oh, they did good in one side of the business so they could do everything. What I realized is what I need is professional managers who documented things and who understood how to run it better than we ever did.

38:28And even if we didn't end up pivoting our business to that thesis, it forced us to analyze and ask questions. So what I did is I took five million dollars out of our marketing budget and put five million dollars into our process budget. Interesting. And the business got faster and stronger and the cost of acquisition got lower and the margins got better and the SG &A got better. And it was all things that I could have never figured out for myself. So for everybody here that's thinking that sounds really cool, I'm not sure exactly how to find one of those people or how to implement that. Corn Fairy can help you find one.

39:06Yeah. And you're going to spend way more than 100 grand, my friend. I know you told everybody you're spending. I didn't want to make it sound too bad. It'll be like a half a million. I know what it is. Yeah. Yeah. When he gives you a number, when he gives you a number, he's probably trying to make it relatable to all of us. Okay? Because the number may not be 100 for you. But there are outside resources, like the one we're in today, and like outside firms that I used to shy away from. Me too. Same here. I would look at those folks and be like, I'm not paying a consultant some money. Yes. Because it's so...

39:39Consultant was a dirty word. I was like, you know what? it's kind of like, it's like temporary labor. I don't have to take on the fixed expense. I get the immediate gratification of learning what I need to know. And then I can thank them and say goodbye. It was my ego that stopped me from the longest time from doing that. Cause I was like, I can find that person. I don't need these people. And, or I don't want to be told that I'm wrong. Yes. Yeah. That's a hard thing. Yeah. Do you use recruiters? We do, but I, we use a combination of internal and external. Okay. And we're building a lot more platforms because we have so many different types of employees that we need to have different types of recruiters.

40:16It is the single hardest thing in any business is to find the talent. And what we've started to do is these assessment tests of really understanding what's the kind of profile of person that we're looking for. What are the disciplines and the characteristics of that successful person in that job? And how are we mishiring that? Right. We do a lot of mishiring because we're like, well, we think the person should look or sound or act like this. When the reality of it is you take these assessment tests and they're like, no, no, no, no, no. If you look at your top performers, this is the personality traits and the characteristics of them.

40:55Just go find those people. Right. Are there any particular assessments that you're using that you find to be effective? The smart people know that. Okay. But I will come back to you when we come back next time. I will bring you the Rolodex of stuff. That's awesome. I know it's 1.5 million a year. Yeah, okay. That's good. But the attrition was costing me 3.5 million. Yeah, absolutely. I want to make sure you caught that. I spent 1.5 million a year, which I choked on, but I ended up saving through inefficiencies and attrition. That's people leaving and me having to hire people and teach them again, 3.5 million.

41:31Who do you hire in your business? Like what positions? Well, I tend to hire the server at Red Lobster that I think is going to be a great salesperson. You joke, I mean, you're laughing, but I am always recruiting. I am always recruiting. And I look for people from different industries with different skill sets that are going to bring something new to the business. I like that. Do you have a kind of a wish list of new things to bring, or is it just opportunistic identification? Yeah, forgive the vulgarity, but I have a no asshole policy in my business. We like that policy. Well, we like it, but we sometimes struggle to live by it.

42:21Yes. Because they're top performers, because they make us a lot of money. But what we don't understand, and I want to make sure everybody's paying attention to this, the no asshole policy is very clear. It applies to everybody regardless of how they perform. Because what you can't see hidden behind the performance of the bad person is the collateral damage that they create around them and the inefficiencies and the turnover and the lack of production that happens around them. And we think that person generates this much in marketing fees or that person generates this much in whatever it is business that you have and you don't understand the collateral damage.

43:04And people will walk into our office and say, hey, Joe's got to go. Hell no, Joe's not going. And when a lot of people start telling you that Joe has to go, and I'm sorry if you are named Joe, Roland has to go. You really need to take your time as a leader. And I'd like to segue a little bit here. Let's do it. You need to take your time as a leader to really listen to what's happening in the marketplace. when our business starts to grow we all have a tendency all of you have a tendency to remove ourselves from the little details remove ourselves oh I'm just going to hire better people and they're going to run the business for me and one of the conflicts that has happened in sessions that I've been in with you is that I want you to work on your business and not in your business we don't agree on that.

44:00I'm a micromanager of my people's life, not a micromanager of their tasks. And what I mean by that is I spend a lot of time understanding where their mental health and wellness is inside of the business, how they're doing, what's happening with them in terms of how they're interacting with other people. I spend more time on micromanaging the culture, not what's happening on the assembly line. And I think sometimes when we remove ourselves from that, we don't have our pulse on it, the business starts to deteriorate in ways that the P &L won't show today. When you're going to sell your business and people start doing due diligence, like you do, they don't ask the owner a lot of things.

44:49They tell the owner, I'll be back in an hour. And they start walking the production floor. They start walking the labs. They start walking all these other things, and they start asking questions. Hey, what's it like working here? It's all right. What's been your growth in the company? I haven't grown much. Well, what's your wage growth like? I haven't received a wage in five years. And if you think that a potential buyer of a business isn't paying attention to those answers, then what they're doing is they're paying attention to the health of the DNA of the business that doesn't show up on paper.

45:25So in order to avoid multiple compression, value compression in your own business, I'd like you to go back over the next couple of months and re-immerse yourself and ask the questions of your own business that you would ask of a business that you would buy. You may not like the answer. Also, try to have some other people do it. including third parties. I brought in a few third parties to do assessments, and I was definitely scared that they were going to tell me how screwed up we were. And they did. And the reason that I was shocked is because when I would ask the same questions, I would get a totally different answer.

46:11They're not going to tell the boss or the supervisor how bad Susie is because they would worry about the repercussions. So spend a little money on having third-party assessments come in and prepare yourself for very bad news. Yeah, I like that. Do you maintain like ENPS, like employee net promoter score or any of those kinds of measuring things? We do. Okay. Do you find them to be effective? I find them to be effective, but I also find that my staff tends to be reactive and overcompensate. and they get a bad score, and they forget that it was December and business was a little slower, or they forget that, you know, the pay raise didn't go the way they thought it was going to.

46:56Net promoter scores in the business are a good guide. Yes. But they're not the Bible. Right. And you can't overreact. And a lot of companies tend to do this. We better change our benefits. Right. We better give people Fridays off. And it started to happen a lot during COVID when the NPS scores would happen around this work-from-home model. People will not be happy if they have to come back into the office. I said, okay, I guess we'll just let people stay at home. How'd that work out? Not good. Not good. And it wasn't about their productivity. Their productivity was actually, oddly enough, slightly better.

47:36But it was the culture that started to break. because they weren't communicating with each other and their relationships weren't built. And I didn't know that you had a kid and I didn't know that your wife got cancer and I didn't know that your son almost died. And so my empathy and my sympathy and my warmness towards you didn't exist because I didn't know. And then the culture started to get cold and then it started just to feel like a job and nobody could figure out why it happened. we would get on a zoom with somebody and they would seem a little like placid and they're not obviously on a giant zoom call going to tell you like they found out that they were diagnosed with some terrible thing and if you don't get a chance to be with people and read their body language you don't do it right i'm grateful for all the people that are here on zoom but you need to get your ass here right yeah because you can't feel what we're feeling in this room because as I talk I look around the room and I can see who's paying attention who's not I could see who's engaging who's not I could see who's shaking their head and who's not and I adjust based on that number one thing to be an owner of a business the number one thing is to know your audience whatever that audience is and you can't know them if you're not with them You can't know them if you don't show a little bit of yourself at the same time.

49:11And you can't know them if you don't ask them. And you can't ask them if you're not with them. That's ultimately, I think, how you build value in the business. I like that. From a leadership standpoint, what do you feel your obligation is within the companies that you've got? And how do you nurture and promote leadership for the people under you? My sole obligation as the leader of any business is to shepherd every single person to something better than when they came. To shepherd their financial health, to shepherd their mental and physical health, and to shepherd their family's sort of trajectory.

49:55I take that a little too seriously because I get involved in people's business. I call them at six in the morning and asking them if they're at the gym. because two years ago they were diagnosed as overweight with high cholesterol. And I know that they have two kids at home. And he or she is the wage earner. And if something happens, their whole world is going to collapse. I take that burden on to myself. It's the greatest. The one thing that people ask me all the time is, how do you measure financial success? And I said, well, I don't measure it through my own financial success. I manage it through the average wages that I pay on an annual basis.

50:38So I measure at the end of every year the number of employees and the average wage. And I don't think anybody in my company even knows that I do this. I take the number of employees and the total compensation and benefits that we paid out, and I divide it. And if I see that we don't have growth every single year, I make that my burden. Because costs are going up. And some people would look at that and say, I'm paying too much. I need to pull back. If somebody's wage, the average wage went from$43 ,000 to$44 ,000, we probably need to look at doing something. And that's the wrong way to look at it.

51:19I agree. The right way to look at it is, wouldn't you want, and you and I have talked about this, wouldn't you want people to feel like their personal financial growth was attributable to you sir what is your name um in the blue shirt yes jerry okay not you you the guy that has hair like me. Sir, right there. No, no. Nope.

51:51We don't have the box. Stand up. What is your name? Here you go.

51:59Come on up. Please.

52:07He did a good job of trying to get out of that. I mean, I really like that. Oh, that guy? That guy?

52:15How are you? Good. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. What do you do? I'm a real estate investment company in Australia. Okay. Do you live in Australia? Yes, in Brisbane. You came all the way here to be with him? Yeah. Yeah. How long was that flight? 14 hours Brisbane to LA and then three hours to here. And when do you leave again? On Wednesday. So you're here for some other things as well? Yeah, well, if you're going to fly all the way here, you might as well hang around. And my friend Chris is also, he's the same. Same business? No, we're both entrepreneurs in Brisbane, different businesses.

52:52Okay. You didn't seem, you seemed like you were distracted. I was listening. Were you? Yeah, relating it to my own business. So I'm listening and then my eyes are down because I'm thinking about how it applies to my business. How does it apply? Yeah, I think it's very true. Actually, I'm thinking right now we've got some pretty hard inflation in Australia as well, very similar. I think it's like 9 % is tracking for this year. And I was thinking about my own staff and I'm like, yeah, you know, they've got mortgages, they've got things and I'm thinking we really need to look after them and give them a pay rise.

53:28And then I'm like, well, then we're going to have to put prices up or something to cover that as well. And yeah, so that was what was going through my mind right then when you were talking. Have a seat.

53:39You sit down, Roland. Okay.

53:46Based on, isn't that accent awesome? Based on valuations of businesses, this is a question. Is the value of a business going to be higher or lower if the retention and the tenure of the employees is 10 years and the business makes a million dollars a year, or the employees have a tenure of about one and a half to two years and the business makes$1.4 million a year. In an exit, what will a buyer pay a greater overall purchase price for? And be honest if you don't agree. Let's poll them by hands. Hands up on the first. on. So option one is a million dollars a year in earnings in net income, EBITDA, whatever your metric is.

54:47And the average tenure of your employees is a year and a half. Or a million, or so it's a million, a million four, excuse me, 1.4 million a year in earnings. And the average tenure is 1.4 years or the business makes less because it has a higher payroll of a million and the tenure is 10 years what's that stand up you're you're gonna be uncomfortable here you you're the buyer be honest don't bullshit thank you with the one that makes more money can i throw this so everybody can hear because the people at home won't be able to hear. Let me review one more time. Number one is makes 1.4 million. The average tenure is 1.4 years.

55:37Option two is the business makes a million. The tenure is 10 years. Personally, I would go with number one. Making 1.4 million. No, no, no, no, no, no. One. Oh, sorry. Option two. I want the people. I want the people. I want the people. I want the people. Does anybody have the courage to disagree with that? Come on up.

56:04You got to, no, come up means like up here. With us. Because we're all here trying to figure out how to scale our business. And we're all here to scale it for a potential exit at some point. And we all know the value we want for our business. And the only way a deal gets done is if the buyer and the seller agree on a value and the deal gets done. So as it, hi. Hello. Come on up. I'd like to have an open debate, and I'd like you to debate it with Roland. Oh. No way, I can't. What do you mean no way? Why do you think you're paid to come here? I can't win debate with him. You can do it. Okay. Why I chose to disagree with him is, see, when the employee turnover ratio is, you know, tenure is 10 years, but top line is 1 million only, that means two things.

57:06Number one is they are not growing aggressively, number one. With 10 years, that culture has been set. we're not talking about growth so let me help you here for a second we're in a moment in time okay it's friday afternoon we're looking at two p and l's two financial statements at the bottom of that financial statement is net income that's the profit right not revenue okay okay okay net income one has one million dollars of net income we don't know what kind of business it is it Doesn't really matter. They could have had 100 % growth. We don't know. Okay. $1 million. And the tenure of those employees is 10 years.

57:54Okay. The other one has$1.4 million in net income. It makes$400 ,000 more in profit. Okay. But the average tenure of those employees is 1.4 years. Okay. Okay. But based on this information, only if I need to take decision, I would go with that option A that 1 million with the tenure of 10 years of employee okay thank you for agreeing I think you all are totally full of shit and let me tell you why I know you're going to say why because ultimately we're capitalists

58:35we're capitalists and we all think we're smarter than everybody else which is why we're capitalists okay let's just not We can all be nice and humble and all these things, but we're capitalists. And we have to correct ourselves away from that logic. We have to correct ourselves away from that logic. Because if I'm going to get bank financing, I need the EBITDA to support the purchase price. If I need bank financing, I got to make sure that the wages are in line. And the reality of it is, is that if I was selling a business or buying a business, stability and a higher multiple is better than instability and a lower multiple.

59:18Can we agree on that? Can you agree on that, ma 'am? Okay. So I want to make sure that you go back to your business, whatever it is, however many employees you have, and you take your total compensation for the year, and divided by the number of employees, and you take your total compensation divided by the number of employees last year and the year before. And you tell me, and I'm going to have you email me, did your number go up every single year? And did it go up because your revenue went up? Or did it go up because you passed on some of those earnings to them? Then I also want you to tell me what the average tenure is of your employees.

1:00:05and I want you to pick people at the highest level and I want you to track over five years what happened to their wage. It's a really interesting study in how we think about our people and so he's this all started with him asking me the question how do I determine financial success? Financial success is not determined by my P &L it's determined by their P &L, their individual w-2 which is their source of revenue their source of income if you can't do that it's a problem and if you can do this over time when a potential buyer comes in and you can say to them look i came up with this thing at roland's session or you can even take credit for it i came up with this idea and i want to tell you before we even get into talking about price or value, I want to show you something.

1:01:04If you do this deal with me, I need to know that this is important to you as a buyer. I measure our company's success on the growth of our employees' own wages. Now, there may be a year where it dips because the economy gets crushed, and depending on how you pay people, they may go backwards a little bit. But over a five or eight your period, you can't run from the truth. The$2 billion valuation that you got could be three a couple of years from now, even if your revenue and everything stayed constant, because the viability and the stability of your business really mattered. That is how I extract value out of companies.

1:01:47That's how I look at it. May not be right, but it's worked. It's been okay for me. You're doing okay. I'm doing okay. I like it. So when you go back, if you find that you don't see any growth, I'd like you to dip a little bit into your earnings. 1%, a half a percent, something. It doesn't need to change like any sort of big thing. And just say to people, I'm going to give you a raise. Best way to build stability, give people more money when they don't ask for it. When they don't ask for it. Give people money when they don't ask for it. Okay? So, yes. If you don't mind, with your kind permission, can I ask you one question only regarding this?

1:02:32No, regarding this, the information which you gave. See, based on the information which you gave us... Can you try that? Overtime sign off? One second. Based on the information you gave us, which one would be the better? 1.4 or 1 million? For me? Which one you would pay more? I would pay probably one or two times more in a multiple for a business that I knew there was people that were going to be there 10 more years. Because the most difficult thing to replace in an acquisition, right, the most difficult thing to replace in an acquisition is where do you get the tribal knowledge of the business?

1:03:07And if you do that, you could buy businesses that you aren't that familiar with. What I've learned is I can dabble in things that I'm not a subject matter expert. Because I can pay people to be subject matter experts, and I can say to them, you have 10 years of history? Great. I'm going to pay you even more because I need you to be here 20 years. Then I don't have to invest the time. If I get a deal and I buy the thing cheap and I'm thinking that there's 1.4 years of tenure, how much time am I going to have to spend there? And what's that cost? Yeah. Does that make sense to you? 100%. Absolutely.

1:03:43Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you guys for coming up. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Let's give Marcus a giant hand. I just think it's been awesome having you here, as always.

1:04:01Thank you, man.

1:04:06Before we leave, I want to make sure that everybody either wrote this down or took a mental note. What are the three things that we started out this conversation with that we're going to do to scale our business? What are the three things? Insulate from the outside. How much? One notch. As tight as you can. One notch. That's what I thought you said. No, I said as tight as it'll go. Oh, okay. Tighten our belts. Look at our SG &A. How many people in this room need help understanding how to manage their SG &A? So the rest of your SG &A. How many of you honestly need help with that? There you go. Because I would love to come back at some point and really do a little session on how to think about SG &A and what the ratios are.

1:04:58They apply from industry to industry. Okay? What's the third thing? Hoard cash from those SG &A savings and buy everything that you could buy that's in your flywheel. Buy everything you could buy that's in your flywheel. And you're going to find that if you pull up a bunch of acquisitions, you're going to think that your infrastructure can't handle the absorption and the integration of them. If you have to spend a little bit of money to staff up, do that. Because the multiple, the arbitrage, everybody know what the word arbitrage is? the arbitrage is unbelievable. It is. Okay, those three things.

1:05:41Thank you guys. Thank you. Thank you.

1:06:00Hey, Roland Frazier here. If you're looking for a way to grow your business exponentially, to get more customers and ultimately increase your wealth. There's no faster way to do it than to acquire other businesses that already have the customers, products, services, teams, and media that you want. If you wanna double your sales, just acquire a company that has the same sales as yours. It sounds simple, but far too many people end up starting new businesses that fail and forget that they could skip all the hard stuff and just acquire one that already exists. There's a reason why private equity firms, family offices, big companies like Apple, Google, and some of the smartest entrepreneurs on the planet do not start new businesses from scratch.

1:06:42They acquire already successful businesses. And when they do it, they instantly increase their sales, their profits. If they want market share, they increase that. They can get new products and services to offer all instantly. Hey, look, 90 % of new businesses fail. 90%. Why not acquire an already successful business and increase your chances of success by 900%. What most people don't realize is you can acquire highly profitable businesses with no money out of your own pocket in pretty much any country in the world, regardless of your credit and without having to go find a bunch of investors or needing any experience.

1:07:19Look, I've been acquiring businesses for over 30 years now, and I cover the whole process in my epic investing strategy training, and I want to give it to you 100 % free. Just visit businesslunchpodcast.com forward slash epic to get your free access to my epic investing training right now while it's available.

1:08:00in the Epic Deal Fast Track. If you've been thinking about buying a business, but you keep getting stuck, whether it's finding the right deal, structuring the financing, or negotiating with sellers, you are not alone. Too many people waste months, even years, just thinking about acquiring a business while the real opportunities pass them by. The Epic Deal Fast Track is not another course. It's actually an implementation program, and it's designed to get you from the idea to the acquisition in just 16 weeks or less. We work with you one-on-one to help you find, fund, and close your first or next deal.

1:08:37And once you do, we're going to plug you into our elite Epic Board community so that you can keep scaling through acquisitions. We install three powerful systems in your business. The first is the deal flow engine. So you always have high quality off-market deals coming to you. Number two, we give you our offer and funding system so that you can structure offers that get accepted and fund them creatively many times with no money out of your own pocket. And number three, our closing and integration system so that you don't just buy a business, you actually successfully run and scale it once you have acquired it.

1:09:11Plus, you'll have direct one-on-one support from an Epic Deal advisor every step of the way. And that's people that have actually come up through the system and done these deals themselves. That's the only way to become an Epic Deal advisor. And if you're serious about acquiring a business this year, don't just sit on the sidelines. Just text I'm in to 334-458-9034 and we'll get you in. So text I'm in to 334-458-9034. We'll get you in. No fluff, no wasted time, just real deal making from people that are actually out there doing deals right now. I'll see you there.