355 - Give Yourself A Fighting Chance!

0:00This week's podcast is simple, and it's entitled Give Yourself a Fighting Chance. Business acquisition isn't something you can half learn and hope for the best. It's a craft. And like any craft, it has fundamentals. If you don't take the time to master those, you're stacking the odds against yourself. So let me share a quick story that illustrates this, I think, perfectly. The mentee who thought he knew enough. Recently, I had a mentee reach out. He wanted to join my group coaching program, the Empire Group. And I asked him, what do you know about business acquisition? And he said, with confidence, I've studied a lot of videos.

0:44I probably know 70 to 80 % of everything I need. Now, I've heard that before. And I told him what I tell others. I don't think that's true. You don't know what you don't know. So I recommended he go through the Acquisition Advantage Bootcamp 2025 edition, which is on my website. before jumping into group coaching. To his credit, and a bit to my surprise, he actually did it. Most people don't. Fast forward to our first group coaching call. I asked him, how far did you get in the boot camp? And he said, I've completed week one. There are six recordings of the six weeks. And then he paused and added, now I think I know maybe 7 % or 8 % of what I need, not 70 % or 80%.

1:36Well, that's a massive shift. I'm not sure it's quite that bad. But one week of structured focus training showed him just how much he didn't know. And that's a good thing, because recognizing the gap is the first step to closing it. So what's the danger of overconfidence? And I think certainly you want to be confident, but you can be overconfident. The most dangerous mindset in this process isn't being a beginner. It's thinking you're not. When you believe you already know everything, you stop learning. You skip steps. And boy, do a lot of people skip steps. You make assumptions. And in business acquisition, that's a fast way to waste time, lose credibility, and unfortunately, blow deals.

2:25This is a skill set you need to understand. Deal structures, seller psychology, financial analysis, team building and positioning, legal and accounting frameworks, how to talk to professionals like you'll bring on, and many more. You can't pick that up through scattered videos or podcast episodes. You need a system, and that's what the Acquisition Advantage Bootcamp gives you. So give yourself a fighting chance. Would you walk into an operating room after watching YouTube and say, I've got this? No, of course you wouldn't. Business acquisition deserves the same respect. There's real money on the line, real families, real businesses.

3:08And if you don't know what you're doing, everyone can tell. Do you have a board around you that helps? I hope you do, because you don't need to know everything. but the mentee gave himself a fighting chance by stepping back, humbling himself a bit, and learning the right way. The ones who do that, they're the ones who close deals. Not because they're smarter, but because they're prepared and they have those around them that fill the gaps in their knowledge they don't have. So let me leave you with this. Before you send that LOI and jump to the step of talking to sellers. And before you pitch board members or negotiate with the seller, ask yourself, have I earned the right to do this well?

3:55If not, do the work, study the craft, master the fundamentals, get people around you who know more than you do, and give yourself a fighting chance. And if you haven't gone through the Acquisition Advantage bootcamp 2025 edition. Start there. Go over to brucewhipple.com. You'll see it under the boot camp and courses. That's exactly why I created it. So I wish you luck in going through that, taking action, but knowing the steps, not skipping them, and following them is critically important to your success.