120 Acquisitions, $550m+ Revenue Acquired $150m Raised E: 28 Moran Pober Top M&A Entrepreneurs

Welcome to the top M&A entrepreneurs. I've got around Pover. Brent, how are you doing? Welcome to the show. How are you? I'm good, man. I'm looking forward to, to have this, uh, this call with you, man. Let's go. So first of all, I gotta ask you something about your In Cyprus, but you have an office in Hong Kong. Tell me about this worldwide location now, and you're Israeli too, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so you, you're going straight to the, to the killing. So yeah, I'll I'll tell you my backstory. So I'm originally from Israel. Um, I served in the military there. Um, after that, uh, I pretty much became an entrepreneur a few months after, uh, finishing with the military. Uh, so the reason that you see all the Hong Kong and Cyprus and all that, so right now I don't, you can call myself um a global citizen, so I have uh residency in a few countries. The reason that I have that is mostly for um you know, like jurisdictions and taxes and all that cause I have a, a capital event a few years ago and I just didn't want to pay as much and it was just a great excuse to go out of uh Of, uh, yeah, of, of a lot of messy other personal stuff in, in, in Israel that I can get into as well if you want. Yeah, well, that's cool. I was in the military too. Uh, it's not mandatory, like we didn't have a draft. Like I know Israeli does where they everybody serves two. Yeah, 330 wow, for 3 years, but uh yeah have to serve 3 years. So did you, how did you drive into, I mean, first of all, you've got the domain name acquisitions.com. That's fantastic. Cause that's what everybody searches for. Uh, how did you get that name and, you know, where did you start and say, hey, look, I'm gonna start buying and selling business. Did you work for somebody else that bought and sold businesses, or how'd that go? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so in terms of the domain, just, um, I don't know, man, a lot of luck and uh few good months of negotiations, and I guess I can give a scoop to your audiences. I just got myself rollups.com as well, you know, we can talk about some of the plans for. That as well. Uh, yeah, so that, that could be interesting. So in terms of my way to acquisitions, um, it's an interesting journey. So I started my journey as an entrepreneur pretty much buying and selling domains, just, uh, so that's, I guess, what led me to sometimes to somehow, um, understanding this domain world. Um, I bought and sold domains, some of the domains that I've been selling, I almost built some kind of like a passive, um, income stream. So we built a lot of different content. I'm talking like almost 15 years ago, and I literally like when we used to. I remember using to outsource stuff for people in the Philippines for like a few bucks, putting like 5 articles on a website and ranking it higher for like really legit keywords, and then we used to promote other products or affiliate offers or whatnot. So that slowly led me to a point where then I had an opportunity to acquire an app company that has a few different apps out in portfolio. And that was literally, I don't know, also call it luck, call it, um. My network, so I pretty much got connected to this guy who had different businesses. He owned this app company. It was barely making money and he pretty much gave it away from me. I just paid him a few $1000 over time, and that got me to that world almost by accident, right? So I went into that business. We then, um, so we hired a few employees, we turned around the business. At the peak, one of the apps in that company became the top 100 apps in the app stores. So that was a huge, huge achievement. So being like an X2. So, and it was a very simple app. So the app was like uh it used to do tips for iPhone. So literally right now when you, when you go to iPhone, you have an app that basically just show you how to use your iPhone in a more productive way. So it used to do the same. So we had like a free version, a paid version, the free one with um ads in it, a paid one if you want to upgrade and not have the ads in it, and we just constantly updated the content. Um, yeah, so that's, that was that. And then slowly after that, um, I can walk you through some more stuff that went through, but right now, so did you kind of say, set the domain business in the background and, uh, or is that still, I saw that on your LinkedIn that you used to do a lot of domains. Yeah. I mean, I have some domains, you can say in my, uh, in my portfolio that I'm, I'm waiting for if, if and when someone's gonna buy them, but it's not something that I'm doing on a, on an ongoing at this point. Yeah, I, I, I gotta, I remember that, uh, a long time ago domains used to be just so available and you could just, you know, the big ones you could just buy and uh reserve, and then somebody started collecting like 300,000 domains and you go, man, I got, there's a business there. Yeah, I also, it's funny, you know, I know a lot of people, so I made some money from, um, also Instagram usernames. So kind of like, so, so I know a lot of people, I have friends who made a lot of money just by having like uh Twitter handles, but like super simple keywords, but then just people bought from them. So I've done it once or twice with Instagram, uh, names. So it's kind of like just any assets that is in scarcity, I think in the end of the day have some value, right? Some Something that people might see as something valuable for, for whatever reason. I, I just, I, I know this is off the subject, but I, I work, I did some consulting for a company. It was, uh, did some apps for putting stuff in space, and they, uh, the name of the company is, uh, bro Research Organization, and a long time ago they reserved the uh keyword BRO. And I was looking through their assets, and they were having a difficult time. I said, look, we, we gotta get rid of some of these assets that may be valuable. And I go, you're getting like a couple 100,000 visits to your site for they're just trash. They don't have anything to do with your stuff, that's because you own BRO. I say, let's go find out what it's for sale and what it's value, and it was from $60,000 to $100,000. And uh it's just one of those decisions. I said, look, this is trash traffic because they're all talking about, bro, hey bro, hey bro, hey bro, uh, let's unload it. They didn't want to unload it. I just said, look, if, if you don't think that's even associated with your business, or you think that's associated with your business and you don't think it's a cash flow to help your cash flow right now, I, I, I need to exit, you know, working with you, cause it doesn't make sense. Anyway, that was off the subject, but uh. Yeah, so look, man, I go to your website from since then, you have done uh Uh, Jesus, like how many 150 million raised, 75,000 in your network, uh, businesses acquired 550 million on over 120 deals. I mean, what kind of deals do you look for and your students you look for? Because there's, you know, Jay, Jonathan, Karl Allen, Roland Fraser, all these guys have a little bit of a different style on what type of business do you. But what I find is People are joining every one of those groups because they find different opportunities. Like, where do you fit? What do you kind of look for? Um, it's a good question. I appreciate them all, by the way, I think they're all great, um, in terms of how do I fit myself. I don't know. I just like to be, I think, maybe more involved. So I just have one program at this point and you just you join and you get access to me basically on a weekly basis to ask me questions, to potentially partner with me. I even just invested with one of my clients' deals. So we just bought a masonry company. And he used obviously, um, so, so we can dive in into the structure if you want, but he used leverage, use the bank financing alongside equity. So me and the network basically invested alongside him. And, you know, I just, I just, I, I think I just like to be more close to the people. Um, so we bought a masonry business, for example, right? It's like, Where was that? Um, to be honest, I just gave him the money. I'm not even sure. I think he's from, uh, IDO, but I'm, I'm not even sure, to be honest. I just saw it that I got 20. I'm, I'm putting a specific amount of money. He promised me a specific amount of returns. So we, we, the structure is basically for investors we got, we get dividends 10% a year plus we get equity in relation to, to whatever we get in the business, whatever we invest in the business. When you said it's in Idaho, is that what you said? I, I'm almost sure. To be honest, I, I literally just saw his promise because he's one of my clients. I'm like, yeah, tell me how much we need. I'll, I'll send it over. And he does, uh, you know, he takes, it gets all the numbers and say, hey, here's the, what it looks like the projections and what you can earn on this, and Yeah, so, so he went through our process. We basically helped him with everything, right? We helped him find a deal, help him analyze the deal. So we have a CFO that's working with us and he helped him basically analyze the numbers and see what offers make sense. We also introduced people to financial institutions. So different, so use the SBA so intro introduce him to different um SBA loan providers that we have in our network. Um, so, so the deal flow, the analysis with our CFO, the SBA loan, and then he needed equity, so we helped him with that as well. And he bought 4 businesses like that in the last year in in different spaces in the home service construction space. Oh, that's amazing. That's fantastic. What was that guy doing before he was acquiring businesses? Um, Jason, I'm, I'm not even sure to be honest, but we have some weird stories, man. We have a guy that's, I mean, everyone's coming to us with different backgrounds. We have a guy I'm thinking about Borislav, he came to us as a truck driver. He bought a truck company, like a trucking company with like uh Um, what do you call it, like, basically, in Chicago, they're doing like, um, doing deliveries with truck. I'm not even sure how, how, how that works, right? But, so he bought a business doing $13 million a year in revenues. We had a guy, I think the weirdest crazy story we have. He's a guy, Leo, and we have by the way, interviews with all of those people, like full 30, 40 minutes interviews on the website, if, if, if anyone of this want to check it out. But basically, a guy who used to play music for a living. Who's originally from Nigeria, living in Ukraine, who bought a multi-million dollar healthcare business in the US. For me, how does that happen? I know, right? And, and the beauty is that, and if you're going to hear the interview, it's like, dude, it was so weird because I called business owners and they're like, what? You're from Nigeria? Is this like a Prints like a Nigerians if you send $3000 we'll unlock 1 million. Exactly that, that's why I'm so inspired by some of those stories. So what he did, he basically, he used to be the deal flow guy. He partnered with one of our community members for the SBA loan, and then you have a manager in the business that he basically, um, promoted from within. So, we have some crazy stories, man. So it's, it's inspiring. I'm telling you, I just had a call yesterday with a guy, Reza from Canada. He just moved from Iran to Canada 2 years ago, and he bought a business, a construction business, doing $16 million a year. I had a call with him yesterday to help him potentially continue to grow it out, and that's what's really excites me to see how I can go to clients that I helped buy, for example, the first business and see maybe what I can do, uh, even further with them. Wow. Do you, I'm just curious, do you find, uh, You know, this is kind of a difference between Americans and and immigrants or somebody from another country, or they're they're hungrier and they see like an open field, or is it kind of a mix? I mean, I, I love it. I mean, you know, somebody coming from a country that, uh, you know, can't do it doesn't really have capitalism, like comes here and says, oh my God, this is a playground. I yeah, I'm just open up. I can do pretty much anything. It's a good question. You know, it's, it's, uh, we can, we can dive as, as deep as you want on that, on just personality in general, right? Who, who, who is successful in the day? Why is someone is more successful than someone else? Is it the is it background? Is it experience? Is it his beliefs? Is it, he's willing to, uh, study and grow? Is it faith? You know, there's a lot of all of those things? Yeah, yeah, exactly right. Who's in control? Are are we even in control of anything that happens in life or in a in a weird simulation? I don't know, man, and it's probably some combination of all, right, in the end of the day. Yeah, well, back to your, you know, you had all these domains and then all of a sudden this guy just says, hey man, take this off my hands. I mean, that's that's opportunity mean kind of luck because you created all this opportunity where it just say it was just there, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I mean, I think for me, I mean, here's the thing, right? I'm working a lot, but I would say that a lot of My success comes to luck. I'm not, I don't think I'm that smart. English is not my first language. It's just that um I think I'm just more persistent than most. And I'm just willing to this. So, so that was, I mean, definitely luck, 100%. And then, I mean, I had, I, I guess some of the other deals were still some luck, some, I guess over time, I just learned more, right? So when, when luck starts, when luck ends, I don't know, man, you know, it just, uh, I mean, I, I think my is. Create that, uh, luck because you just push and push and push to, to be able to get yourself an open shot. Yeah. I mean, was that Nigerian guy that purchased that business, was he, uh, uh, uh, in controlling interest of the company? Because it seems like you'd have to have, if somebody put an SBA program, they'd have to be a United States citizen. Is that Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. So, so you had partners with that and then you had an option to buy them for, for an extra, uh, predetermined price for the rest of it. That's fantastic. I mean, uh, that's fantastic. And we also just, just by the way, with the predetermined. Price on the option, that's something that you might be interested in hearing like we just had a story with one of our guys that we supported. He did a roll up of 16 companies, um, in less than 6 months, doing 62 million and I did that, almost 200 million in revenues with that similar structure. Wait, let's talk about that. So was it a roll up? Did he start with funds like a private equity or is he just an, just an option, just an option to purchase. Oh my God, I love that. So he came in and say, hey. He's obviously pretty good presenter and salesperson say, hey, we'd like to buy your business. Well what we're gonna do is roll it up to get it to a certain, even a level, uh, and then we'll, the end customer in mine, which is maybe a private equity firm or CoPublic or something else like that, uh, and they said, yes, we want to, and What kind of industry was that? Exactly, um, it's in the online space, I'll just say that because uh it's, let's just say that for those of you who hear this, um, you probably, there's a lot of aggregator in that space. Let's just say that in that online space, um, and, um. Yeah, I'm just, I don't want to create too much competition for, for that, but, but you don't have to tell me just be very generic about it's it's in the online space, um, so sorry, what was the question? Well, well, I mean, tell me about a little bit more about, you know, how, how she was able to reach all these players and just really good salesperson to say, OK, I'm in, I'm gonna sign on the dot line because I'd like to see. You know, more money in 3 to 5 years or something. Yeah, so, so he went through the process, right? First of all, we had the process of figuring out what's the best sector for him to be, right, based on his background, experience, contacts, passion, curiosity. Like I like to tell everyone that that I'm talking to, I'm like, hey, like if, if in 10 years from now you're going to be on a Forbes magazine cover. What do you want people to write on here? Like, are you going to be proud saying, hey, this is my sector, right? Are you going to be proud telling your mom, this is my sector, right? So it's start with that. Let's pick the sector, then let's pick a strategy for deal flow, right? So with deal flow, we picked one deal strategy and it just mastered that one. It just went all in on that strategy. Um, with him, by the way, you just went through Masterminds, used Mastermind, so you found different masterminds in that space and it just went all in on that. So, so all in, yeah, so all in on Masterminds then created the partnership and relationship with the mastermind holders, giving them some kind of equity or upside from the deal. Um, then obviously the conversation with the business owners, right? Selling the story, creating the pitch, creating the story, making sure that it's believable, making sure that your offer for the business owner actually makes sense. Compared to what else they have on the marketplace, right? Negotiating the structure or if and how much the owner stays in the business post acquisition. That was a big part for because every owner have different goals, right? Some wanna stay, I want to leave, some want to maybe stay for a little bit. Some are willing to retain equity. Some want to have equity in the holding company. So there's basically, it, it's a different deal with each person, but overall combined, it becomes one big entity that they, then they went out there and pitched for a private equity firm too, and now they're just, they just operated. Yeah, explain how that works, but you, they don't really own the revenue until what part? I mean, until the option is exercised, until the option is exercised, so you, you put an option for whatever period you can negotiate on, and then, uh, yeah. You can, uh, exercise it whenever. And they don't put any money down to purchase that. Um, but do they come in and say, hey, let's uh unlock some more value, or you can see where we can boost revenue and doing this? No, of course, I think, I think in general for everyone who's doing acquisition right now, if you're just a deal maker and you can't really add value to the deal, especially if you want to do a roll up, you're just not a player, you just, you're just a deal maker. A deal maker is not, is not, is not valuable anymore. I think in 2021, being a good deal maker used to be really good. That uh I don't know, in the 80s, 90s, right, that the big acquisitions there right now, unless you can really add value to a business. And when I'm saying value, I'm talking everything anywhere from the leadership to operation to the org chart to obviously sales, marketing, uh finance, right? And what are the values for the company? What are the accountability for each employee? What are the KPIs? What is the corporate structure and governance for each owner of each business? Cause, for example, There's 16 companies in the troll up. How do you keep each person basically, you know, in control? How do you make sure that this guy is not doing something that the other guy, you don't want him to do, right? How do you make sure that this guy is not doing something completely different? Because people think, OK, I'm going to buy 8 companies, but sometimes buying 8 companies just means Messy of 8 more things, right? So it doesn't necessarily mean a, a good necessarily upside. What are the cross-selling opportunities, the synergies, the cost saving opportunities with those businesses. Who is the first best business to buy? Cause sometimes if you don't make the first good acquisition as a platform company that can potentially handle and support all the others, that can be a mistake in itself. So we supported him to make sure that the first one is a platform company that can support all the other companies and he's buying them in their order. So even when he raised capital, he raised it in chunks, right? He told the private equity, hey, here's what is the goal, like, and obviously, it's a matter also of negotiation. They, they gave him a percentage of the total deal. Like that's 62 million in IIDA. Just to give you an idea, other companies in that space, public companies or companies that are raising capital from, uh, from large institutions for different, uh, for similar roll-ups, they're raising the 31 multiples of IBDA. Which means that, yeah, like, like if you look at public companies in that space, they're trading like 30 times, 30, 31, 32 multiples of Ibida. So it pretty much created a billion, multi-billion dollar company enterprise value in less than 6 months, and, and he's a unicorn, right? This is like, this is, this is very unlikely to, to happen for, for most people who want to get in that position, but this is what's possible and this is what, that's one of the reasons I just bought rollups.com because that's what I want to create. Someone just told me, Ron, are you trying to create the biggest roll up in the world? Pretty much. I'm like, that's, that's good. I'm gonna steal that. I'm, I'm gonna use that sentence. Yeah. And so when they put that option on the company, uh, and they say, hey, look, here, here's what we need to, to do to your business. Do they, uh, grow organically, uh, from cash flow, or do they, you said they do raise money sometimes to be able to get, uh, you know, implement or execute that strategy. Yeah, so in, in this case, he just raised everything at once, so he sold everything as one group, right? So he raised, he, he, he created 16 companies, um, structure, and then he raised everything. I know that right now he just closed on a deal that is not necessarily, so we're supporting him with that, with the operations as well. So he's not necessarily putting options anymore, but he's also taking percentages from upsides. Right? So, you have the operation, you have the structures right now. You have the platform company. So now you can take, you can peg some kind of EBA number or multiple and then say, OK, we'll help you and we want whatever from the outside. Yeah. Now how is that if you were delivered to see like you have a pitch deck and you're gonna go raise money from uh somebody and say, look, but you know, this is an option and and and it's not really real even uh for all the 16 companies until they're all signed. I, this is what I'm trying to understand is how they, when you go to investor and go say hey, we're trying to raise on this multiple, but we don't really own all those companies, they're under option. I didn't say that he raised it 30 times. I'm saying, I'm saying that, I'm saying that when he's out there looking at different or similar companies at that size, those are the multiples. He didn't trace at that price, obviously that's where the negotiations come into play, right? So you agree with, yeah. So the, the reason I'm asking is I have a friend doing this, what you're talking about in financial newsletter in industry, in the money newsletter, and those multiples are very high. Very high and it's uh you can turns up 16 companies into a billion dollar company very fast if you've got a bunch of investors. You know, accredited investors on a 1 million email list. Yeah, 100%. And that's the, that's the beauty with everything online and technology. I mean, look, look at the biggest companies in the world right now. They're all technology companies, right, like publicly traded companies. Their technology, they're growing like very fast growing companies. Uh, those are the multiples. That's why you see VC companies, the venture capital firms investing in those companies, and that's why they don't care that 1 out of, like 9 out of 10 will, will shut down because they know that one company that will grow fast will get there. And those what like, yeah, and people don't know like a lot of uh technology firms like I just, um. I had a call with, um, should I mention their name? Their name is Regap and they actually just changed their name. They're, they're a multi-billion dollar company used the process of venture capital, so they raised capital for some of the biggest venture capital firms in the world. I'm talking to Andres and Oovitz and all those guys like in Silicon Valley, and they grew slowly. They have a very minimal product that they grow organically in the beginning, but now they're only growing uh by acquisitions. Like I talked to uh um um someone in their company. And Oh man, I'm getting myself in trouble, but I'll just say that, that, that, that, um. They're telling me that internally, everything is in a mess and what they're doing is they just got to continue their fast growing pace to, to, to make sure that the shareholders are happy, right? Cause when you raise capital from venture capital firms, guess what, they want their exit, they want their returns, right? And they want to go and liquidate and basically uh And the liquidation, go IPO as soon as possible. So they're constantly buying any companies they can think of. They expanded also their sectors that they used to be focused on one thing, now they're expanding their horizon into different sectors in, in basically kind of like, you could say something similar um. Uh, baseline that they can work with and that's all they're doing. And then she told me, um, everything is in a mess. Everything is in a mess. We may somebody on the outside, but inside we know what we're doing. Inside we're in a mess, but we just grow the top line numbers, so that's the most important thing. Now, when somebody goes through your program, uh, do you Uh, take a piece of the business as a, or, or they're, they're, they pay a consulting fee or a mastermind fee. So, yeah, so on the front end it's just one-time payment, it's a consulting fee and then on the back end because in the end of the day, I don't want to party with everyone. I don't know, like I need to know the person first, right? I need to know, um, and I'm, I'm, to be honest, I don't want to talk to you like at this point, we get hundreds of different people who messaging us on a weekly basis. So I'm not planning to talk to everyone that want to partner with me and, and Spend time with all of them, but some of my partners, I just give them access to me on whenever they want. Like they have my, they, they message me on the same number that my mom messaged me. And so, so my goal is to have some kind of a frontend education to make sure that you understand my, my way of looking at acquisitions of the world. Let's see if we even vibe together. Let's see if you, we have similar values. Let's see if you're aligned with my process, um, and then if it is. I'll show you what we do, but if you want our help in the process, then we can talk about that. Yeah. How, how do you, uh, kind of judge somebody's character, you know, after 2 or 3 phone calls. It's really easy. I mean, uh, you know, they're gonna be on their best behavior for 2 or 3 phone calls, and they got a great deal, and it looks good and goes, OK, go ahead. But, you know, they, down the line, you're like, uh, You know, I was just reading a book by uh what's this guy's name, uh Stephen Schwartzman over at Blackstone, and, you know, he said that everybody at Lehman when he was working at Lehman was just, you know, arrogant and unethical and out from himself and He didn't want to do that. He said, I'm we're never gonna take over a business, uh, you know, uh, you know, unless they say they want to. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, so, so it's, it's a great question. I think, uh, probably again question about life in general, right? How do you judge someone that you meet if you can trust them or not? And I think someone told me in the past that I don't remember who was that, but he told me you only really know a person after you really know him for, like, really know him for 1 or 2 years. Before that, even if you think you know him, don't really know him, right? So only after 2 years of intense relationship with someone, you really, really know him. Um, so that's first. So it's coming up with the assumption that, hey, you know what? Uh, I'll just need to take some kind of a risk here, right? Second of all, uh, by the fact that they go through my process, my funnel, they watch a lot of my videos before they even work with us in the first place, right? It shows me that they somehow align with me and my, I don't know, call it my vibe, my energy, whatever you want to call it, right? So I feel like that's a first filteration. And then I see simple things like, OK, how accountable they are, how much, so we're doing like weekly calls with me every week. So I see, OK, who's joining those calls? Who's committed, who's actually serious about that, right? Who's messaging us every day with questions? Who's actually posting, so we have a community with people who's posting and enjoying its progress and maybe helping others and not just taking care of himself and worrying about himself. So I think it comes down to Yeah, just those simple things. Easy, consistent, committed, accountable, sorry, willing to help others. Um, and at some point it just, it's just taking a risk as well. Yeah, I mean, we're interconnected, interdependent on each other, and it's the really the only thing you can do aside from getting them face to face and do a lie detector test, like you know like. You know, you can't, you, you've got to be able to say, like, this is my program and uh and, and it's also understanding I think that in the future, no matter, like, in the end of the day, I mean, look at how many people get married and eventually divorce, right? You know, I'm, I'm sure when they started, when they, when they started with their marriage, they didn't think that they're gonna divorce because they thought, hey, I know this guy. I'm I'm sure I wanna, I wanna live with him for the rest of my life. And so, people change and I think as long as there's um expectations from day one. On who's doing what and um. And I again, I'm not married, so I'm, I'm not sure I'm the best to give advice on that end, but I would say, I would say that. I'm thinking if I would get married, I wouldn't want to make sure that there's some kind of expectations of what the downside might look like. And we want to talk about it when we're not emotional, because when you're emotional, you're just stupid. Me, I mean, I mean, everyone, when we're emotional, we're just making stupid decisions. So ideally, let's make those decisions when we're logical and when we're in a good vibe when we just started with that exciting uh process. And if we can get to those uh understandings when we're not in an emotional state, then Guess what? It's gonna be 10 times more difficult later in the future when we are in some kind of a weird emotional state and everyone is, you know, kind of like just Afraid and acting from their subconscious and their, um, yeah, their um primal brain versus like Hey, let's just be logical and normal and good people and try to create win-win scenarios. Yeah, right, yeah, I heard that, never make a big decision when you're emotionally down or emotionally high, yeah. Yeah. On this, uh, 16 uh company roll up, are, are you an advisor or equity owner and stake in that, or? Yeah, so some, let's just say that with some of my partners, I'm, I'm taking a percentage of of equity as well. Yeah. So, and with, with everyone is different, right? So I, I, I would say on a deal by deal basis with everyone. Yeah, no, it makes sense. Um, and did this person that started this roll up when they came to you, did, have they acquired a business before? Did they own an e-commerce, just one, or? Never. No, they had a business in a, in a healthcare space. Oh, that's interesting. And they just moved over to a completely related, unrelated industry? Yeah, so, so it's a business that's running for almost 15 years. So it's kind of like running. He's still there in the office, but it's almost like running without him at this point. So he's maybe putting like few hours a week into it. So most of his time is right now in the, in the new venture. Yeah. So who do you follow? I mean, uh, I, I, I love reading books and I like right now I'm reading that Stephen Schwartzman's, uh, Blackstone. So that, that's an amazing story, and I just finished Shoe Dog from Phil Knight. He's another great one to follow. Yeah yeah. Who do I follow? Everyone, to be honest, I mean, I mean, I'm exaggerating, right? But I'm trying to, I mean, look, I look at my audible. I have like, I don't know if you can see that. I have like I can't see it but uh yeah. Like 84 874, can you see that? 70 something, yeah. So, so I mean, and, and yeah, I'm looking at, I can go through kind of the first book. So I also have a David Rubenstein book, which is also a Carlisle, um, private equity. I have, uh, a lot of Jim Collins stuff. I have a lot of John Maxwell stuff on uh, on leadership. I have, uh, 11 Rings here by Phil Jackson. Uh, what else? I have, so, so I have a lot of like, you know, different, um, what do you call it? Like a lot of, uh, personal development stuff. I went through some Walton book, uh, Ray Dalio principles, a lot of weird spiritual stuff as well. Uh, I'm just looking at some stuff here, like all the bag ofagida and Rumi stuff, and, uh, I like to dive into all that. Uh, I read through, I'm looking, I read through all of Richard Branson's book. Uh, Branson is, uh, the boss. Yeah, is, is the boss, seriously, I think, I think everyone was thinking about like who's the, I don't know if everyone, but it's like who's the ideal entrepreneur? It looks like, like he got it, he got the success, but he also really enjoy his life. That's the guy, right? It looks like he's always happy. He's like always dressed, dressed like super casual, living on an island and owns hundreds of business. like multi-billion dollar operation. Yeah, I also have a shoe here. Anyway, I can, I can I have a buddy that follows his business model because it's like an ecosystem that feeds off each other. You know, he wouldn't buy a business that just stand alone. It's got business that works integrally with a number of other businesses. But even with Richard Branson, it's not, I don't know if you can say that necessarily all those businesses work together. He basically franchises his, his brand. That's what he's doing. That's the genius. He took one company that had a great brand, great reputation, you know, great way of treating, treating customers, and he basically reprodus, reproduced it in hundreds of sectors, and he's just partnering with people who are super, um, um, what do you call it, that just have already have a good beachhead and, and good face, you know, a value with them, yeah. Exactly. And also have expertise in those areas. So I've read in the book, for example, so he partnered fifty-fifty with, uh, with those guys who already sold the chain of, of genes and then he partnered fifty-fifty with them to create a virgin, um, I think it's, I don't remember, but this is their genes. We don't, I'm not, I'm not sure which countries have that, but he's just doing 50/50 and he's acting many times also just as an investor, as a VC investor, or yeah, not controlling interest. He has a lot of businesses where he said, you know, I remember the story he told about he had a business we only own 30-40% and the management decided to sell, and he said he didn't want to, he just, I didn't have any to sell. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. It is great though. It's, it's, it's truly inspiring. I think even more than the money that he made, it's, it's really the, the level and the expansion of the, the impact that he created alongside of him just living it, it looks like, uh, we don't, I don't know him personally, uh, but it looks like living a great life. Lifestyle, having a great family life from everything that I've, uh, read and so, like, you have great kids. I actually went through one of his kids' books, like full book, all, all about how to build operations and businesses that will create impact and create like different charities and stuff like that. So, I think when I'm thinking success is definitely on, on there on the top. Yeah, what would you pay to have lunch with him? Kind of like Warren Buffett sells just one hour's worth of lunch. Yeah. It's a good question, you know, I mean, I don't know, man. Like, what, what can you really get from, uh, one lunch? I mean, I think, I think, you know what, I think it's worth everything just for the, for the energy, the, the vibe and inspiration you get from being next to someone like that. Cause sometimes it's really just about the transfer of energy as, as, as well as, as I get here right now. But it's just being around someone like that, like, physically, that's really almost forced you to step up as a person. You know, it's kind of like, OK, this guy, that, that's the beauty. Like I met a few billionaires in my life, like I'm talking multi-billionaires. And I think every time the realization I had was, he's just a normal human being. He's not, he's not more smart, he's not like. You can't say that that guy isn't something. Like some of those guys, you see, they're sharp, they're, they're focused, like it's nuances, but it's not like they're, they're not like 100 acts better than me or you or anyone out there, right? And you find out that damn, if that guy did that, I mean, You know, I can, I can probably go through that path as well if I'm willing to make, I think the biggest thing is if you're willing to make the sacrifices. Right, cause most people aren't. Is it, is it sacrifices and, you know, the, the one thing is like, uh, acquiring businesses and uh it's like opening a door to new dimension, cause everybody's just like focused on growing organically, organic, organically, and they'll get 10% growth per month and or or per year, and they just, they're stuck, and that's it. They're like, but what is it unlocks these guys, billionaires, so they could see such a bigger market, such more more value. And spending time with them that unlocks that, that just opens that door and say, hey, walk through it, this is what I see. Yeah, it's kind of like doing psychedelics, you know? It's, uh, yeah, and it's someone who's done probably a lot of those, uh, not probably, but done a lot of those stuff, psychedelics and Ayahuasca and all those stuff. It just opens your, your horizon, how you look at the world. And I think you just start to take things less seriously and you see, hey, this is just a playground, you know, we can just play it. And the level of the game that you're gonna play is, a lot of it comes down to just the level of your Believe in yourself and what's possible. I mean, I don't think, I think that the beauty with business is that unlike like being a professional uh sports player, I don't like being, like, I can never be in the NBA. I don't think so. Maybe if I would start playing from, I don't know, age 5, maybe. But I mean, I'm looking at some of the people, or, or, you know what, forget about it. Let's talk football, soccer. I played, um, actually, most of my life from the age like I think 10, no, from the age of 7 to the age of like 18 until I went to the army. Like I tried to be a professional football player, uh, uh, a goalkeeper, and I just wasn't good enough. Now, the question is, would I, would I be able to be a professional player if I would have the same mentality and commitment that I have today, perhaps. I don't know. But I think what I'm trying to say is that the beauty with business is that Like you see so many stories of people who are just like normal. You hear their interviews, and it's like just small nuances there that they, they made amazing decisions. They took enough, like the right risk. They were able to better themselves. They were able to stay consistent and focused, right? They were able to, to have tenacity and, and go up when, after they failed, right? It's those things, it's more about the character than, than I don't know, being like, obviously is part of it, right? But I think when you have all of this, this combined, you just find like more and more. It's like the, the harder I work, the luckier I get, kind of, kind of close that that we here, right? Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about uh some of your really kind of wild deals that didn't work out. I mean that you can talk about. I mean, I don't want anybody to get in trouble legally. Uh, hold on one second, this happens. I should have. Yeah, yeah, no, no worries. I, I can, I can think about a few of them for sure. So I think the, the, the really interesting story that I had, so I had uh Uh, a company that's very similar, a website is very similar to BuzzFeed, uh, for those of you, I think they just went public on Spark maybe, I think I've read or they're thinking about going on Spark. So I bought that business, so I used to, I, I bought a marketing agency and I was able to buy that, um, that business for basically just providing value. So pretty much the structure that I told you was just like, hey, let's plug a, a number on your Ibida. I think I can help you go from here to there. Here's the value I can bring to you, and let's go in. And I went into that business. We grew that business. Um, so you did around 1 million a month. And at some point, so you're talking about failure, like the way we made money was from Google advertising. So we used to basically what we did. So for those of you familiar with BuzzFeed, it's basically a website that just shows random, um, How can you even describe those like random viral news stories. It's a, yeah, just, just, just weird stuff. So we literally just had the option to drive and I'm talking also like then this was like. Probably 7 years ago or 10 years ago, um, and I'm talking like we were one of the first people to drive traffic from Facebook ads. And back then, we had, uh, what we call Orain and Tebola, which I, I don't know if you heard, it's kind of like, um, also a media buying site. So we were able to find an arbitrage to buy traffic for super cheap and make money. From, from ads, basically, right? So we just created the arbitrage and just like had insane returns on our ads then. Constant we had a team to just find and, and curate content. And I'm talking like the weirdest, like, I'm, I'm, it's funny. Some of those, when you see random ads, I still see some of those websites out there. And when you see some random ads online of like, hey, click this or hey. Yeah, it's like a parrots playing basketball. You're like, why didn't I wanna click on that, but you do anyway. It's like, oh my God, the parrot picked up the ping pong ball and put it in the basket. I gotta show my daughter this. Exactly. It's just, it's just so weird because I remember some of the stuff in that but it just, it's just seriously some of the most ridiculous in the world. And like I said, you cannot not click on those things. It's literally just like you just have to click on that. Oh my God, they're just going back and forth like a real basketball game. I just wasted 90 seconds of my life. Exactly. And that, that's how we made a lot of money, right? So anyway, what I'm trying to say is that uh we have to shut down the business cause Google shut down our, our EDS account. And it happened to us more than once. And at some point, we're like, OK, we don't play with this. And I'm talking like a lot of money, like seven-figure money that Just gone in, in, in Google and we were thinking about suing them, but then we had a few conversations with people tried suing Google and just, it didn't feel like it, like it's worth it cause just, just, just like. Just by going to, you know, to, to those fights with the Google. I mean, that, that, that in itself can cost you more money than you might even bring back, um, assuming that obviously you're, you're losing, so we just kinda like they have an unlimited bank account to keep that lawsuit open with you forever. Exactly, right. So we're just like, you know what, um, let's give up and, uh, and move on. And it's kind of like I think it's, it's also, you know, taught me a great lessons on how like the just the dependency on, on, on one or two, revenue sources, right? It's kind of like, it's kind of like it's, it's kind of like when you're looking at businesses right there like all immediately thinking, OK. Where, what's the revenue source, where that's, where that revenue is coming from? What's the guarantee for that revenue to continue to come to me after I'm the owner of the business, right? What's the potential downside? How can this seller guarantee to me that A door will come as soon as I'm, I'm, I'm going into the business, right? So, I think Anyway, would you, would you say no to that business? If you looked at a business that said whether it's customer concentration is 90% or uh you know, ad source or uh is 90%, would you say no to it, or would you say, look, we're interested in the business, but here's the valuation and here's why, because it's too high a concentration. Yeah. Yeah, so, so I think it depends on the, on the appetite that I'll have specifically on the deal, right? What's my, what's my upside compared to my downside? And I think everyone is in a different situation to, to judge what the risk that he is willing to take. So, I mean, if you'll show me that there's a potential 100X, 1000 X upside versus going to zero, then I'll look at it very differently compared to something that might have, I don't know, 2 times X upside in the next few years, right? So it, it really depends on what's the kind of the risk reward ratio. And based on that, figuring out how do I want to put my time into that, potentially risk money or risk someone else's money. Um. Yeah, I, I, I don't think there is a strict rule. I think it's just a very important lesson to, OK, like when you see something like that, just make sure you're taking it, you're you're taking it seriously and understand, OK, there's a potential downside here and you can get hurt. Yeah, Stephen Schwartzman's Blackstone said, you know, one of his golden rules, don't lose money, which is also we're above it. Rule number one, don't lose money. #2, don't forget that rule number 1. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so you have to minimize your risk on that. How would you look at that deal and say, well, look, I, uh, you, you have too much. Look, let me go back to the story here. I think I've already said this before. I had an e-commerce business where 90% of my customer, uh, customers coming in, prospects coming in was Google AdWords. It was a piece of cake. But when they moved from uh desktop to mobile, it killed my business. Went from, you know, 13 people bidding on something to 4 people. So, All the cost per acquisition cost cost per click just went up 4 X. like killed the business. So, you know, that's a big mistake that I've learned for the rest of my life. I like, dude, if I see any business with 90% customer concentration, and, you know, how do I minimize my risk there? Well, you don't pay any, any money for it because Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's gone. Exactly. And you see it with so many industries online right now. I mean, you hear every day about different accounts getting shut down if it's Facebook or EdWords or, um, different e-commerce, uh, platforms like Amazon, um, different rules that changes every day. Um, back days, even when I used to, uh, buy and sell domains, and I used to, I thought you put content on websites like Every Google update will basically destroy you. So if you, all of your content is from one traffic source, I don't care if it's SEO. That's why actually you see some of the biggest companies in the world. The main um Uh, what do you call it? Like, uh, getting clients source is actually like very old school stuff. So a lot of them just using very direct outreach like called call stuff. Why? Because it's the most reliable. Right? Like, in the end of the day. They can't bend your phone, right? Like if you can, if you, if you can systemize that and, and know how to scale a team like that, that's, that's why you see some of the biggest companies in the world. I had a call with, uh, with a, a top, um, level guy at Zillow, Zillow.com, the real estate, uh, site, and you hear their story, just amazing, you know, they started literally called coin different. Basically, brokers are, are most of their clients. That's how they started, right? Selling um um advertising space for brokers, and he told me that's how we started. We just went out there and reached out to brokers and built ourselves the, the processing scripts, and that's how we do. I also think direct mail too, cause you really can't stop, yeah. Yeah. And now, especially with Google, man, with Google and Facebook, I don't know, it's, it's scary. I mean, especially with what's going on with the government right now that um they don't really like all of those companies. I don't know what's gonna happen in the future, you know, and a lot of small businesses are dependent on, like, I think they said, I don't remember the exact number. But around I think 80 or 90% of ads spent online goes to the big ones like Google, Facebook, and I think, I'm not sure if Amazon is on the top level, but um it's kind of like there's, you know, those, those behemoth companies and everyone else is almost dependent on them at this point to, to create a business. So that's why when you see a company that isn't necessarily depending on 10%, it's, it's, it shows for a lot of strength, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's a different time. Is there any industry that you wouldn't work with? I mean, you're kind of talking about like some conservative sites or, you know, military or gun sites. I mean, they just, they're getting shut down. The payment process isn't getting shut down. The websites, uh, domains are getting shut down from, uh, you know, places like that. Any industry you wouldn't work in, it's just like, no, you know, or, or highly regulated like banking or just is there's too much issue or is it? Um, I, I never want to say no to, to, to anything. I mean, Cause we have seriously, some of the stories that I've seen. I mean, I, I think it really depends on who you bring into the table. Like, if I can bring someone who have a lot of experience in that sector and can show me, OK, what's the downside, what's possible, what's the potential upside, then I might look at things differently. Right now, when you mention what you mentioned right now with the merchant accounts being shut down and stuff like that, then I'm like, immediately you want to walk away, right? But I can tell you with any industry, there are, there are a few unicorns that still find ways to make money. Right? I can tell you it's literally like, I know people who made a lot of money when, like when COVID started with restaurants. I know people who, like I'm in Cyprus right now, I'm just thinking out loud. Like I know people who own here like um one guy specific guy that owns um, hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues, Forex company, shitty industry. Right, like that, that's for example I might, I might not get myself into just morally. I wouldn't want to get close to that. But when I hear those guys talk, um, they talk a lot about a lot of competitors that have to shut down because of regulations and licenses that they can't have anymore because a lot of countries shut them down, but those guys still figure it out, right? So I think that No matter which industry, you'll always find unicorns. There's always, like I like to say, when people ask me what industry should I pick, I say, I mean, at the end of the day, it comes down to what industry you want to be part of, right? Like there are billionaires, millionaires and probably any industry you can think of. There is Like if I would tell you that there's a guy who made billions of dollars after he bought a business no money down, that is a yogurt factory, would you believe me? Yeah, are you talking about uh the Turkish guy in the United States? Chobani, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Multibillion dollar company, a guy who brought this with no money down. Yogurt factory, right? If someone would ask me right now, hey, what sector should I pick, I would tell you, dude, the best sector is yogurt factory. He'll laugh at me, right? Yeah, he was an immigrant from Turkey. I mean, I've lived in Turkey, Arylic a long time ago, and, you know, he came here and just, you know, it's there's no money. It's like, but. He was a capitalist, but you can't be a capitalist in Turkey. Yeah. And I mean, it's, it's, it's just amazing to see that. In the end of the day, again, call it like, call it consistency, call it, in his case, just trying to create the best product, delivering to his clients, the best service and products and creating more products over time. Um, really taking care of his, uh, his, his, uh, employees from what I've heard and and videos and injuries that I've saw him. It tastes good. And it tastes good. Yeah, the product is amazing, right? So the product is amazing. So, so he did so many good things alongside a lot of commitment, hard work, a bit of luck, and billionaire from, from a yogurt factory. How can it get? Did you meet him? I don't know. I know. No, no, I didn't know. Do you, do you, do we, would we know the billionaires that you met? Um, so most of the ones that I met are Israelis. I don't know how much to them, but I met, for example, um, maybe, maybe, you know, it's, it's a technology. Teddy Sagi is kind of top for Israeli richest people in the world, so he's very much investing in, uh, so maybe people from the UK will, will know the name cause he, he bought camps in the market in the UK which is kind of a very big one there. Um, he started his, his, um, He's staying in uh in actually online gambling. So he, he used to have the biggest platform for, for online. So he had a company that used to have all the softwares for every online gambling in, in, uh, in the world pretty much. Like he was kind of the dominant player. He took it public very fast. He became a billionaire from that. And since then he's just investing and he's, he's investing in a lot of technology companies, a lot of Israeli companies that had the same exits and uh they're just killing it. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, it's a big technology sector in Israel. It's, it's really amazing, yeah. Yeah. Who's the guy that's got the crowdfunding site that just is going public with that? Hey, what was his name? Our crowd? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Yeah, he's an Israeli company. Yeah, uh, are you gonna start a fund to purchase companies because, yes, no, I'm seeing the face like uh. Cause a lot of these other guys like Carl Allen started fun to be able to say, hey man, if I go buy a company, I want to be able to get it real fast. Yeah, so we're already doing, so we're already doing that on a deal by deal basis, right? For example, the masonry deal we just closed is one of the examples. So we do it on a kind of a syndicate on a deal by deal basis, but, um, I think it's just the normal. Uh, makes sense next step to, to raise a larger fund, so we won't have to, to basically call for capital on every deal which could just um call once and then do more deals. Yeah, so that the syndicate is the, you know, you got a pretty big list is do they have to be accredited investors outside the United States or So you have to be an accredited investors to, to invest. Um, there is an option to work with unaccredited. I just didn't use it, didn't try it so far, but there, there, there are ways to, to register for unaccredited. I just didn't use it so far. I think that. We just have enough accredited to begin with and it just, I think it's just a much um longer education cycle to explain to non-accredited and what, what the downside might look like and I just, I don't know, at least at this point, I, I don't think I, I wanna play that, at that level. And also I've seen what good Grant Cardone um had going on and it's just a mess. I don't think it's uh Anyone want to deal with it. Like, it looks like a lot of people just, um, complained about his fund, and when I dived into the details, just, I just found out that there's a lot of non-accredited people who just didn't dive into reading the, the actual agreement, and they complained. So I think it makes sense, yes or no. Yeah, if you say yes, I Yeah, exactly. It's your problem, yeah, so yeah, and it's also just, just, just the idea that, OK, if you make some money, I mean. And then I, I, how can I make it sounds, without me sounding like I'm judging, uh, I'm not judging. I started with nothing, right? I came from a single mom home from a very small city in Israel. So, but all I'm saying that I think when you don't have money, you're acting a lot from scarcity and you're just making uh different decisions, that's all. Well, you make, you do make decisions what that's how you know, you just go along that path, best way is find somebody else who's already. Taking that path, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, how would somebody get involved with you in your course? What's the start? Because like the man, I've already gotten talked for 55 minutes here or you have uh. It goes by fast. Yeah, it is 55 minutes. Yeah, I didn't even notice. Um, yeah, just go to acquisitions.com plurals and um see what's up, see if you wanna, and if you guys wanna message me privately, I'm happy to. My, my email is just moran at acquisitions.com. I'll personally answer you. It's not a robot or one of my team members, just me. So if you really want to talk. Cause, cause you guys are deal people, so I'm happy. I always like to talk acquisition. Yeah, and, and by the way, he might take about 10 hours to answer because he's in Cyprus. He's 10 hours unless you're in Europe, then it's uh it's gonna take less. Yeah, that's right, yeah. Um, so what's next for, for you? I mean, uh, are you gonna just take pieces of action everywhere? Are you still going to have your own roll up or acquisition and purchase and sell it? So, so it's all of the above, right? So acquisitions.com is the opportunity for us to find deal flow and to roll up with people. Um, and rollups.com, hopefully, is gonna be kind of the next level of that combination, combined with what you said on the, on the capital side of things. Um, so I think the, the, and that's a good way to end the podcast is like, like that guy told me, Ran, you're building the biggest roll up in the world. I think that if I would look at that as the North Star. Um, that'll be an awesome path and, and, uh, purpose to have. And that north star of helping and building the biggest roll up in the world, uh, is by helping others create big roll-ups on their own, and I'll just be part of that upside with them. So that, if, if you tell me where you want to be in 5 years from now, if I, if I could create. Hundreds of roll-ups with my community where I can be a significant uh partner with them and support them, not just with finding deals, analyzing deals, raising capital, but also supporting post acquisitions with operations, um, and, and everything there. Um, that will be, I think a super exciting, um, and purposeful journey to, to work through. Man, thanks for the time. Great domain name, great conversation. I really appreciate it. Thanks, man. It was great. I appreciate it. Take care. Thank you. You too.