20+ Acquisitions Worked on 100s E:10 Adam Lyons Top M&A Entrepreneurs

So welcome to the uh top M&A entrepreneurs. Uh, I've got Adam Lyons, he's the Meenon from Acquisitions of the Dynamo dealmaker, and his reputation is just growing every day. There was a post in an epic where it was like, You, you are the man. They brought some guy from Epic brought you in, you negotiated something or you did something amazing with it like the art of the deal and uh welcome Adam. Hey, thank you so much, man. I appreciate it. Yeah. So what was this deal that you uh worked out? You don't have to name the names, but it was uh somebody with Epic, and they, uh, yeah, the game board maker or something. Yeah, so I do, um, I do, uh, coaching inside the ethically profit program that's run by Roland Frasier, and I'm the uh negotiations expert and I'm the, the deal acquisition expert. So I help people find deals and help them negotiate them. And uh this one particular deal got brought to me, it was, um, they're doing $3 million a year gross revenue on a board game, uh, and not just a board game actually, uh, 15 different intellectual properties, and uh they were looking for an amount of cash to clear up some debt in return for equity. Um, so it, it should have been a, a simple cash for equity deal, but when I go in and look at it, I realize that actually that's a really bad deal, because if, if you give them this cash, they've got so many other integral problems in the company that, um, it wouldn't fix it. You would end up back in the same situation except now you would own equity of a company that has financial problems, right? Even though the cash would have solved it, they're gonna be back there again. So it needed more hands on, it needed somebody to tidy up the company. So I made uh an alternate proposal, it was very complicated how I got there, but um over the course of an hour we ended up with, they agreed to a $0 equity partnership where we would come in and tidy up the whole company, um, and, and by tidy up I mean really tell them how to tidy up the company, um, in return for uh a a substantial amount of equity in the company without having to pay any money um to pay back the debt, so. And, and so that's a great question. No, they don't know who you are. How do they know you can do what you do? I mean, and also is, you know, I'm, I'm sitting on this side as a buyer and I'm a little bit skeptical and saying, OK, this guy sounds really, uh, you know, knowledgeable, you know, can do what he does, but what if I, I can't give him for, you know, a year to do it or I give him 6 months to do it or 2 years. Yeah. So yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot of stuff there. The key is um accurately predicting what's going on in the company. So from just talking to them for a few minutes, I said, can I make some assumptions about your company and you just tell me if I'm right or wrong. And then I started outlining common problems they may have, and I hit every single one nail on the head. So I predicted that uh they ran Kickstarters, and I predicted that they'd run Kickstarters, that at the end of the Kickstarter, they were out of pocket as opposed to being profitable. I predicted that there was nobody in charge of sales and marketing. I predicted that when they calculated their costs, they had at some point missed certain elements like shipping that would have been a huge. Factor. I predicted the fact actually their board games are considered some of the most expensive in the world, but I predicted that actually because of the amount of stuff they put inside the board game, their profit margins are significantly lower compared to what people would think. I mean some of these board games are 4 times more expensive than what you'd find a regular board game would be, but they're running them at almost a loss because they're trying to pack everything in, that's why they're so expensive. Um, I also predicted that a particular business model that they should employ would be more profitable, and then they told me they already had employed it, but only in one intellectual property of the 15, at which point I said to them, I guarantee you that's your most profitable, um, IP. And they said, it is, yeah, how did you know? And I was like, because that's. The right model you should be using. So by the time, you know, 30 minutes had been spent of me doing this business analysis, they were like, wow, you know so much about this. And I was like, yeah, because like in the last year I've coached 700 CEOs through acquiring, negotiating and scaling businesses. I was like, I, this is all I'm doing all day every day. I can see from a mile away what's going wrong. And then they said, well, how do you fix it? And I said, we've got two options. You can pay me a quarter of a million dollars, which is what I would charge you to come on board and do a consultation. Or if you're open to it, we can release some of that equity to, uh, to have me come on board and help and my partner. So, yeah, that's what happened. Oh, that's beautiful. You know, I came across a company in Tucson, Arizona that did Kickstarters to this, uh, fund their manufacturing, and I was always suspect of that, that, that's like to me that's a losing proposition. You can't have money donated to you to fund your manufacturing. You have to have customers do that. So yeah, it, it's. So I, I've generated over $2 million on Kickstarter for successful profitable Kickstarters, and every single time the way that we approached it was different. We approached Kickstarter as a way to obtain customers that are actually willing to pay a premium. So a lot of people make the mistake of selling to Kickstarter people at a discount, right? Like you're gonna be, if you get in the Kickstarter, you're only gonna pay this price in the future, the price is gonna be this. It's actually a lot better to be like, if you're on the Kickstarter, you're gonna get limited edition versions that are gonna be unavailable in the future. You can only get them today, right? Like the gold plated version, but they pay extra for it. And what's, what's important about that is that it gives you actually a higher profit margin. And all of those Kickstarter backers, they're not donating money for manufacturing, they're buying, they're pre-sale, they're, it's pre-sale basically. So that way I know, like one of them we did like uh we were developing a robotics unit and we generated 56,000 but we only needed 100 for manufacturing. So all of that left over was essentially profit. So we knew right out of the out of the gate we we're gonna make, and I think we ended up with like $260,000 in profit off the Kickstarter, and we knew that straight away. But that's because it was calculated correctly. And these were the limited edition beta tests of this particular robotics unit. Well, that's a completely different perspective. I mean, I would have never thought like that. I go like, yeah, you just can't keep having somebody else donate your manufacturing piece. Just, just, just, just, and do it as a, as a customer acquisition source. Now this is where this gets really interesting in the Kickstarter game. Kickstarter will send an internal email promoting the fastest rising Kickstarters. So actually, a cool trick you can use, I'm shifting it to Kickstart strategies, but a cool trick you can use is if you have a mailing list, you can make sure that your audience is warmed up, ready. To start buying the beta test of whatever it is that you're gonna release. And the minute you go live on the Kickstarter, um, have all those people buy, but also, and we've done this a few times, we'll get our internal staff to pay, we'll, we'll, we'll purposely put a $1000 item there, and we'll have 10 staff members pay $1000 each and get, so we get $10,000 right away, like the top item is selling out. And the combination of that plus all of our customers, drives up the algorithm. Now, um, the whole purpose of this is to reach out to Kickstarter and say within 1 hour we achieved this much money. Kickstarter, which is 50,000 or 100,000 plus, sorry, 10,000 plus whatever the uh the Kickstarter does, right? So it's a huge number. So Kickstarter goes, wow, that's amazing cause it's just an email person and email person's right, we'll definitely include you in today's email. Yeah, the money's gonna go back to you, it's irrelevant. You are buying the limited edition items, but you're, that money just comes straight back around on the company credit card. But now Kickstarter's doing an internal email and now you're gonna have all the Kickstarter fan people who are gonna be all over you. Yeah, yeah, I, I looked at a business. Three years ago called Backer Club.co. And it's just a group of people, uh, that get together and follow and, and buy into Kickstarter campaigns. And it was doing $2 million a year, and the profits were 90, but the guy was spending about 80 hours a week on it, just 2 guys. Wow. Pretty neat little business, but I didn't want a job. Yeah, yeah, no, exactly. I, I think it works well as long as you view Kickstarter as a customer acquisition tool and as a way of getting high profit sales by bringing out limited edition items, because when you're in the manufacturing stage, that's the time to create the limited edition prototypes and things like that. Yeah. So Adam, let's let's rewind a lot here and go back. When did you first make your first acquisition? Um, my very first acquisition started in 20, 2012, I suppose, so nine years ago. And uh I, Roland Frasier is my mentor, Roland is the one that taught me how to do this. He ran a two day workshop on how to uh acquire a business, and honestly, I signed up for it because it was the only one of his workshops I could afford. Everything else was like $10,000 or more, and a $2000 workshop was just affordable. So it was 2 days, $2000 I was in a room with 10 people and uh he taught mergers and acquisitions. And I went in there, just wanted to listen to the guy cos I love when he speaks, um. And I walked out knowing how to acquire businesses. I remember thinking, huh, never gonna do that. Um, and then within 3 months, I was sitting down with, uh, Ty Lopez, and he had a, uh, a project that he needed some help with, and, uh, they brought it to me, and I helped him out with the project, and then, uh, Tyi Lopez became, you know, I suppose it was a bit later on, but he blew up like maybe years later at this point, but he became sort of like big. And um and at that point, the project that I was working on them with, Ty wasn't really interested anymore, and he wanted to let it go. And he had another business partner in the project. So Ty says to his business partner, buy the project off me. And uh the business partner comes to me and it's like, hey, well, you're kind of doing a lot of the work on this. Do you, um, you know, do you want to buy the other half? And I was like, I don't have the money to buy the other half, but. And that's when I did the acquisition. I said, but I tell you what I'll do is, um, I'll work it off, I'll do an earning for the other half. And so that's what I did. So he fronted the cash to Ty and I did an earning to acquire uh half the business. And, uh, I've worked on that business for many, many years and made some, you know, some great money on it while, while Tyi went off and did Tyi's thing. But it opened up my mind. To the fact that I could acquire businesses by by trading work, I suppose. And then I just got, then I got tighter and tighter and I realized I didn't have to trade work, I could trade advice, I could trade consulting, um, I could trade assets. Um, I just didn't need to use money. And of course, you know, I could use money as well as part of that merger and acquisition process, but it didn't have to be my money. And that's when I realized I could partner with someone who's got some cash that wants to make some money back, and I could use their cash as part of the deal. So the long and short of it is I got better and better, but it was always behind the scenes. I never really made a big deal of it. It was like my secret, uh, technique to grow my business. And one day, uh, I say one day last year, 2020, uh, Roland phones me at the beginning of the year, uh, Roland Frasier. Did you guys stay, did you guys, were you guys friends and stay in contact and do deals together during that 2012 and 202,020? Yeah, I, I've continued like um hiring him for advice, attending whatever events I could, um, and I ended up engaging him as a private, uh, a private consultant for me as well, like I, I hired him for mentorship. Yeah, so I just want to make, just point out how important that is to, you know, bring by somebody's intelligence and experience. Yeah, in the time span. I, I paid for his $100,000 mentorship program. I mean, as I, as I grew, I remember the day I turned around to my, my partner and I said, hey, I just took our life savings, gave it to Roland Frasier. But I mean it's one of the best things I've ever done. Like, you know, I, I made that back, I made that money back, I mean, more than tenfold, much money, you know, like, I mean, yeah, I've made millions off the back of that information. So, and, and, and not just that information, I mean, I literally, it's funny, before coming live with you right now, me and Roland are texting about an acquisition for a company that specializes in um supplements for the Olympics. Like, that's a pretty big deal, and I can just text with him. Like now he's, now he's he's not someone who's who I'm. And he's taking your text calls. You don't have to go through Deanna. She feels it. And then it goes to, maybe it goes to somebody else, and he goes, no, yes or no, and then it comes back, yeah. Yeah, yeah, me and at this point, me and Roland are friends. Like, he helps me, I help him, he's amazing, you know, like, and, and yeah, that's why I'm so blessed to be, to be part of this program. Um, but yeah, Roland is, uh, you know, was monumental in teaching me this stuff. So he phoned me up one day and he's like, hey, I'm gonna do this, uh, challenge, the epic challenge. And, um, and he's like, would you like to come on board and be interviewed by me? He's like, because I know you've acquired, um, some interesting businesses and maybe talk about it. So I was like, sure. So I come on board and I, I, you know, he talks to me and I, I break down, there's a, a couple of my deals have become quite famous because um they, they started very, very small and end up very, very big, and they didn't cost me any money. Um, and you know, I got the deals from my, uh, for my children. My children identified the right, right, they did the game store, one of them, yeah, yeah, the game store, which I, I, I don't know if you know now, the game store has now itself acquired a commercial property that's worth, it was worth 600,000 when we bought it, but we bought it in the middle of the commercial property dip during COVID. Um, it's projected to be worth a million within the next two years, and again, it cost us nothing cause the game store. Bought it. I didn't buy it. The game store bought it. The game store, I don't work, I've never worked a day in that game store. I've never done. The only thing I ever did was help decorate, that was it. I've, I've not worked a day. And uh, you know, so when we first acquired it, I mean, it was struggling. It had $5000 in expenses a month and made $4000 right, that was when we acquired it, we acquired it for no, for no money down whatsoever. And then, like last month, we did over $25,000. The the expenses are the same. So it's, you know, in, in addition to now making large sums of money, it bought a commercial property for us. Yeah, I, I, you know, this is another point too now. I've done a, uh, rehab too. It was an e-commerce company here in AIs, you know, and it was losing money and and then I helped it. Redid, but it was, that was a lot of work. Um, I probably won't do that ever again. I mean, you've got to have that certain ability about you say I, I wanna take a company that's actually losing money because I see all the opportunities. Yeah, it's not something you could say, well, if you've never bought a business, I don't recommend it or what? Yeah, and, and that's something like I, I run my own company called the Smart Blueprint. It's like the SmartBlueprint.com, where it's the, we created that for ourselves. It's the blueprint we apply on any business to make it work. And we know as long as we follow this blueprint, the business works. So actually looking for opportunities for me is simple. I look at their business and see if they're missing any of the elements of the smart blueprint. If they're failing, but they've got all the elements of the smart blueprint, I'm out, right? I'm like, I'm, I'm not gonna do this. On the other hand, if I look at the business, I'm like, oh wow, they're missing. So uh it's S M A R T. So I'll look at them and be like, oh then. Missing S, they're missing R and they don't do T at all, but they've got, you know, A is good and M is like 50% there. I'm like this is great, I'll just come in and go bop bop bop bop bop and fix it. Um, and the Game store was exactly that. The Game store, the, the S, uh which is star, was terrible. No training, no standard operating procedures at all. So that was one opportunity. Mstands for marketing. They had no ads, no outbound marketing whatsoever, um, and they had no good internal marketing either. Um, A is audience, they had a, they had a tiny audience of about 20 people, but they had an untapped audience of 400 people that they never communicated with, who were all avid buyers. So their revenue was coming off of just 20 people. With 400 waiting to buy. It was insane. Uh, revenue is the R, which is the sales processes, and they had absolutely none. They relied purely on customers coming in and saying I want to give you money. There was no like reach out whatsoever, um, at like, you know, sales processes, and lastly testimonials. They had no testimonials, no evidence of, you know, no good reviews, nothing. So I look at this thing and I'm like, OK, it's losing a grand a month, but the opportunities are insane. And because of what we have with the smart blueprint, we can take a staff member that we train up, give them the, the systematics of the smart blueprint and go go and apply all this, and that's what we did. Beautiful. I mean, that's I, I'm, I'm rereading a bunch of Buffet, uh Warren Buffett books, and there's discipline, patience, flexibility, courage, confidence, and decisiveness. I gotta say, if you've got a checklist, like a manifesto, that guy wrote that book, that's perfect. I mean, that's great. Thank you. Yeah, and it's been like one of the most important things for us. It's like following that checklist so we like, OK, we know this is this is good. And so yeah, so that's what we did with that. And so Roland asked me to share the story, so I shared the story at the time, we hadn't bought the property, but the business was growing. And um Roland had been talking for like 5 or 6 hours, he was dying, and he had 67 questions in a Q&A. And so he says, Adam, I'm, I'm kind of tired. How about you answer the 67 questions, and every time you get one wrong, I'm gonna make fun of you. Totally fine. And, um, so I answered all 67 questions, one after the other. And, uh, at the end, Roland looks at me and he goes, Dude, you got every single one right. Well done. He goes, But I knew you would. You listened to me, and you're a good student. And I was like, you know, thanks ever so much. I get off the phone call, and I was, you know, off the Zoom, I was so excited. Just, just that I did a good job. And Roland phones me and he's like, I'm looking for somebody to come internally and deliver the program. He's like, it'll be, it'll be my face, I'm gonna be out there, it's my content, but I want someone that follows my content closely who will be an internal trainer specifically for negotiation and uh deal acquisition. He goes, you're really good at finding deals and you're really good at closing them. And he's like, would you come on board as a, as a coach? And I was like, I would be, it would be my absolute honor. Um, and then it gets funny cos he says to me, um, he's like, OK, cool, how much do you want? And I was like, I'm not gonna charge you. I was like, I'll just do it. Like, you know, I got your back. And he's like, no, he's like, I insist you have to get paid. And I was like, well, this is now a problem because you're hiring me to be a negotiator, and you're telling me I have to get paid and I don't want to get paid. But if you, I can't join the program. And then have a story about how I negotiate with everyone, but I didn't negotiate with you. And Roland's like, I'm hearing a lot of talk and I'm not seeing a lot of negotiating. And so, I think, uh, he's still the master negotiator, right? Oh, by far, by far. So, and I'll tell you, my, my favorite story about Roland is, uh, so I negotiate, and I negotiate really hard and I negotiate for the one thing that, of course, you always want, which is gross revenue. And I was like, I want, I want a piece off the top. I don't want it off the profit, you know, I want a percentage. And Roland said, I think I would lose respect for you if you asked for anything less. And so I asked for a number that I thought would be completely fair, and that he would say yes to. And uh Roland says to me, wow, that's a, that's a pretty big number. And he goes, didn't you just have your 5th child get born recently? And I said, yeah, and he goes, well then we're gonna double that percentage. And I nearly cried, so. So that means you are. A staple of this training that comes in. Now it's it's at 1112, no, you're on your 12th epic, right? And all the people that come through going, oh my God, this guy is dynamic, I wanna work with him, and deal flow flows your way. Basically, yeah. I, I like that funnel. Yeah, it's, it's pretty good, um, and you know, not, not all the deals are perfect. I mean, I say no to a lot more deals than I say yes to, but every so often somebody will drop your favorite board game company in your lap, um, that needs help, and they're based in Dallas, and I live in, you know, I live in Texas just outside of Austin. So it's a great deal. Um, I know you, you, we brought a deal to use that clubhouse for dating and that was just, that was just ugly. I mean, it, it looked great on the face, but, you know, diving in a few more questions like, uh, yeah, you're losing like $20,000 a month. You don't know the IP. It's, it's funny, I think that's the value that people like from me coming on board, is cos I'll tell you if the deal is bad, and it's, that's better than, than doing it, you know, like, and I think, uh, I think I've helped people not do deals a lot more than I've helped them do deals. So it's funny cos I'll get paid to come in and negotiate, but once I pull it all up, I'll pull them to one side and be like, hey, we're gonna talk about this before we go any further. I'm gonna feel really bad if you acquire this even for no money. And then I'll, I'll show them. You know that's uh Jason Calcanas, he's one of those investors uh that invested in Uber and turned 25,000 to 100 million. He said it is about swiping fast on the bad deals, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, wipe, and double down on the great deals. But you've got to be courageous and decisive about those bad deals and don't get attached to them at all, emotionally. I, I find the easiest way to think about it is like real estate, like, just because the house is cheap doesn't mean it's good. And uh you know, we, we actually, it's funny that the, this is like my, my office, uh, which I, I love this place, but we looked at a house that was one block over and it was half the price. And I remember being like, wow, it was the same size as this but half the price, and I was like torn between the two, but I couldn't let it go that it was half the price. And so we got two surveyors to come in and then found out it needed an entire roof and foundation replacement, which actually is a brand new house. And at that point, this house, which is more expensive, was a lot better. Yeah, so that's out of your deal flow, that type of deals, yeah, um, so how many deals have you done or participated in since negotiation with Roland? Is it, what are we talking about? You can't even count. It looks like you can't even count. Yeah, yeah, I, my own deals, like my own deals, um, I'm in the probably twenties of, of my, yeah, of things that I've participated in or or I'm part of or or what have you, um, but. Deals that I've been brought on for somebody else, uh, hundreds, hundreds, I mean, I, I helped analyze and negotiate 4 deals this week. To show you the, because people are bringing me their deals to help them with, you know, like. I, I'm, I'm dealing with them via email, via text, some of them in person, over the phone, it's nonstop. I got, um, I got friends that phoned me up, they're doing a $2 million deal, and they just phoned me up and we're like, hey, can you help us through this? We know you're good at it, you know, like, and, and because both parties were friends, I didn't charge them because I was like, I can't charge you guys, you know, like, and so I was like helping them negotiate between each other. So. And did you take a percentage though? I mean, that's the part that you don't charge, don't charge the, yeah. In this one I didn't take a percentage, but I tell you what I did is I got, uh, I got the service for free cause the business is actually a really cool business. And so they ended up giving me, uh, what they deliver at cost for life. Uh, so that was pretty cool. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, yeah. And all of these deals, your deals, the twenties, are they earning type deals, part of equity, or have you done anywhere there's, yeah, you need money now. Um, I have managed to not spend a single dollar of my own money for any of the deals I've done. I'm, I'm at 100% none of my own money being used. Some of them needed cash, but it was not my cash that got put forward. It was somebody else's, every time, every time. Yeah, that's amazing, yeah, yeah, but, but that's like how can you be Roland's protege and not prescribe the medicine he's distributing, right, yeah. And I remember there was one, there was one where like it absolutely needed cash to go through. Like 100%, and I phoned a guy that I knew had a large sum of cash. I heard this, I heard this one, and you just like screenshotted his bank account or something, right? Yep, and I was just like, can you just give me the money? And he went, OK. But yeah, I had to ask, you know. How are, yeah, I gotta try. How are all these deals doing? I mean, are they all money making, stable, or is this kind of like a a VC's portfolio where only, you gotta get 20 deals in it, only 3 are making money, right? I, um, my, my revenue increased 40% last month. So March I made 40% more than February and it was, it was one of the highest months I've ever had. So it, it's working. It's working and it's it's, I mean it's consistently, it's consistently growing across everything at all times. Um, sometimes it doesn't scale, like sometimes it's a percentage, not a, not a multiple, um, but they're all getting bigger and better day by day by day. I mean, I remember my, my vice president, uh, we were talking about, uh, about, so and that was March, sorry, March on February, not April cos we're still in April. Um, but my vice president said to me about April, uh, she came to me and said. This month was easy. And I was like, what do you mean? She goes, I didn't really have to do anything this month, we just, we made a lot of money. And that's, that's a good sign. But it's also a sign to me that we're plateauing, so we need to, you know, we need to push again, um, but like, yeah, and that's because of these deals, that's because of how we're doing it. Like, we have a, we have a seminar going on tomorrow in one of our brands, and I literally, the only thing I did was, um, all, all I've mentioned this before, all my partners, they attend a free training on a Thursday afternoon. So I have 20 seats at my free training that are available for all my partners to sit in and attend. So I think last Thursday it was only 5 guys, but they, they can choose to come and sit in, and I do it every Thursday, it's like 2 to 3 hours. Uh, you can't pay to be part of it. I have another, I have a second one you can pay to be part of that my partners also get, which is a Tuesday afternoon for 1 hour. So you can pay to sit for Tuesday afternoon for 1 hour and listen to me talk to my partners and I'll talk to you too. But Thursday afternoon they get 2 to 3 hours and it's, they don't pay for it, that's like the equity earning, and uh it's only my pay, it's only my actual partners. And um at that training for the last two weeks, I've been teaching this guy how we do our internal sales and how we make a lot of money with seminars. And so he's doing a seminar tomorrow. Now I own 40% of gross of his business, of any money that comes in. So he's got X amount of hundreds of people attending this training tomorrow where he's gonna be selling a $3000 program, of which 40% of that will be mine. And the only thing I did is turn up on Thursday afternoon as I always do for 2 to 3 hours and teach him and all my other partners what they should be doing. In 2 weeks' time, another partner will be doing another one. That's lovely, lovely. Now, let me, uh, the type of deals that you look for, uh, you know, I interviewed Patch Baker and he refers to Richard Branson because of like the ecosystem. They are all customers feed. So what do you prescribe to how how do you that strategy. I, I'm, I'm exactly the same as Patch. My, my customers all fit in the same ecosystem. It's essentially the way I look at it, it's the same avatar. Every company I work with, the avatar will be identical. There'll be variants, but my avatar will buy from every single one of my companies. Yeah, at this, yeah, yeah, I gotta love that. I mean, why not follow Richard Branson? He's worth 5 million or more. Yeah, he's pretty smart. Yeah, what about, um, do some of these customers, when you look at the, actually the question is, Are you buying businesses that overlap each other? I'm trying to be very Or they completely brand new segments. Um, yeah, so, no, they're, they're often different, like, so, uh, like the core businesses, like my core brands, um, there's 3 dating companies that overlap each other but have their own new products. So they, those 3 I would say, you know, are borderline the same, right? But then there's a, a retail game store company which is nothing like that, but does have the same avatar. Um, then there is a YouTube channel for gaming that kind of overlaps with the game store, but also they're completely separate business models. Um, then there's a, a wealth finance company, which is totally different, which is all about, um, improving your credit score and your initial investments and, and financial trading. Um, then there's a Fintech company, again, you could argue the Fintech company and the wealth finance company maybe go together, but you know, they're a bit different. There's a web hosting company, you know, you could argue there are websites for the others, but this is kind of how I, how I acquire is based on need, right? If I need financial technology in one of my companies, why not find somebody who has a financial technology company who's struggling and take a part of it rather than going and hiring a financial technology company. If I need web hosting, rather than go to GoDaddy, why not start a web hosting company or in this situation, partner with somebody already had one that wasn't growing. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, I was looking at a library of courses and his add-on or upsell cross sell was a web hostsD company, cause he sold a library of software courses like, well, what are these guys gonna do? They're gonna build, you know, parallel type systems on websites, so sell them web hosting. Yeah, exactly. I think, you know, that's that's one of the key components is um and you know, Roland says this all the time, you want to be acquiring the costs in your company, so they become profit centers. Yeah, and that's, that's like been my biggest lesson. Yeah, just acquiring the costs of the company, just 3 or 4 words and it changes your perspective. Yeah, it's really easy, like, what are our biggest bills every month? Acquire that. Interesting, yeah. Are you do a lot of outbound now or is most of your deal flow just organic from Apple organic? It's, it's all organic, it's not really from Epic. Actually, only one deal of my own came through Epic. Most of my deals, actually, I'm more likely to get a deal from this than I would from Epic. Somebody watching me on a podcast somewhere else giving advice, who then reaches out to me and says, hey, I'd like to talk to you. That's usually where my deals come from. That's why I'm always so open to speak for free anywhere. Like I did a um I'm a member of Visage, I don't know if you know Visage, it's like a group of CEO deal, yeah, yeah, so Visage is a great way to get deals because there are people in there that are looking to grow their company, that's why they joined Visage, and I mean 7000 CEOs worldwide. I mean, you just, uh, you and I talked about this, like we're one of the biggest problems that needs in Epic is helping people get deal flow, cause they, the first thing they do is go over the uh broker dealer websites and they get rabbit holes in that deal. Yeah, yeah, the best, yeah, the best way I found the best way to find deals is in networking events with business owners who are trying to grow their companies. Because that's what you do, if, if you're gonna sell your business or if you're trying to grow it and you want a partner, the very last thing you, or the very last thing you're gonna try is, well, maybe I'll try and grow it. I'll sign up for this program, and bam, you can find them. So where are you at with this, like your, your long term goal? Keep and hold forever or? Yeah, I'm, um, it's a bit complicated. I I could stop working tomorrow and be fine for the rest of my life. So that puts me in a unique perspective. I, I like don't need to work ever again if I don't want to. So I only do things I like doing, and I'm acquiring businesses that I like. And so I don't know if I would get rid of them just cause I like them, but that doesn't mean I haven't considered it, and I might be interested, it's kind of like houses. I've got the same model of houses. Like, I don't really sell my houses either, cos I like them. And like, yeah, I. I own like 4 houses. Everyone's like, are they investment properties? I'm like, kind of, I kind of rent out rooms in them, but I tend to not let the whole building go because I like using the building as well myself. Um, so I've got like this, this whole thing that I buy it cause I like it and I don't really need the money. Um, but, having said that, I have definitely thought, well maybe I'll sell 2 or 3 of the houses and buy. One I really, really want, and I feel the same about the businesses. Like if, if ever the right deal came across and I really needed to sell some businesses just to free up bandwidth to work on it, I would consider. Well, I guess you better do it before 2022 comes around in case Biden's, uh, 50% or 40% capital gains tax comes in. You know, it's, it's pretty funny, um, I, I find if your companies are structured correct, like I'm an employee, I like. It's not really gonna affect me cos I am an employee of my own company, my company's their own corporate entities, and because we look after our staff, uh, we perfect, like, so I, and I got my, my own viewpoint on this. The valuation of your company is based on a multiple of your e-bidder, right, which is your profit. It, why would you ever run a company at profit if you weren't planning to sell? It just to me doesn't really make sense. So we keep our profit low on purpose and reinvest the cash into our staff and systems that way there is nothing really worth taxing. But we don't hide that would call that uh compounding. Right, and I would, I would much rather do that, so we do it like all of our staff get 5 weeks vacation, all of them, like we have a 5 weeks. Yeah, exactly, right, so we give them 5 weeks vacation. They, uh, we pay full medical for them, the highest level medical that we can get in Texas, uh, we pay for all of them, full. Expenses paid, um, they have to pay the co-pay, but we pick the highest amount, so their co-pay is the minimum. Um, they get virtual doctors for free, we pay for that service which doctor on demand. Um, so if our staff are sick, they don't have to take a sick day. They can from their home, use their phone, talk to a virtual doctor who can make the decision on whether they need to or not. Uh, we always tell them to take a sick day though, um. Uh, yeah, we have an annual bonus every single year based on percentages, uh, pay rise and pay review every single year, plus, uh, onsite training, plus additional cash available for training. So, like, uh, my, my film guy who set up our beautiful little camera here, um, he has a budget every year to go and spend on his own training to learn audio or graphic design or whatever he wants to learn. He chooses his own, uh, trainings that he wants, he runs it by the, the financial department, they get, give approval on that. So I mean we're pretty, we're pretty good at putting the money into the employees and into the systems and structure of the company. Yeah, the loyalty. Yeah, yeah, and I'm, I'm paid a a um like I said, I don't have to work, but that's cos I've got, uh, you know, a nominal salary. I, I get paid a, but it's cool because if I ever wanted to fire myself, I could hire a CEO at my salary, and it would be set in stone. It would be like we know how much the CEO gets paid because that's how much Adam gets paid. It's a, it's a good salary, you know, I'm not gonna get a stimulus check, but um. But it's not terrible, and, and the taxation on that would fall way under what Biden's looking at. I, I think that I think most important is that what you've created is working above the business and the time, because the times are the only commodity else. Everything else is you can't buy more of the time. How are you? Yeah, how are you doing this structuring this business where it's so yeah, I'll give you one other little piece which is key. If I ever wanted to sell them. I would take one year and bump up the profits. That's all I would do, because your, your valuation is based on your last year. And when I came to sell, if someone's like, why did you have no profit or minimal profit for this many years and suddenly your profit margins are through the roof, and I would say to them, the profit margins could always have been through the roof at that point. We compounded it to grow the company. You're welcome. You can either, you can either take it exactly as it is and scale it yourself. And just enjoy that massive profit margin, or you can sink the profit back into the company and scale it through the company. These are both options for you and they're both mapped out. This will make my company sell for a high multiple if I ever did want to sell it. Just for the record. Um, the way my company's structured is, um, it's very complicated. Uh, I actually have a legal team that manages the, the legal structure of it, so we have, uh, multiple corporations that own shares in each other, we have. Special purpose vehicles to acquire our acquisitions and depending on the grade of the acquisition, whether it's um a partnership and what percentage will depend on which company owns it. So it's, it's pretty robust, almost too long to sit and explain that. I have to do like map it out. It's like an Inupal graphic, yeah, yeah, but the uh but the summary is I have a a full C-suite, um, and my C-suite works for the core company, and they are fractional C-suites for each individual company. So, you know, my CFO doesn't need to spend 40 hours a week on each brand. So he'll spend 10 amount of hours on this 1, 10 amount of hours on that one, and we'll build for his time where it makes sense as well internally. So that way there is actually a paper trail of that work being done, which again makes it easier if we ever want to expand it, bring somebody else in, etc. etc. Yeah, I think, you know, that's the most one of the most important thing. I had a conversation with Sharon Brown, and she's, it's all about putting that infrastructure in place too, so that she's not spending in a new job. Correct. Yeah, that's amazing. Hey, Adam, we're at, uh, you know, 40 minutes, so I, I, I, I wanna thank you, man. This has been a great addition. I, uh, I, I just love hearing you talk, and I think I think out of all the ones I watch, I watch Roland, I watch you, and, you know, and I think it kind of in that order. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, me too. I watch him first. Yeah. Hey, I wanna appreciate, man. Thanks for the time. I appreciate that's uh the the top M&A entrepreneur. Appreciate you. Have a great day. All right, take care. Thanks. Bye.