300+ Acquisitions 23 Industries, $47B in value E: 26 Carl Allen Top M&A Entrepreneurs

Welcome to the top M&A entrepreneurs. I have a really special guest today. It's Carl Allen. Carl, you and I have known each other like kind of loosely over 4 or 5 years because I bought a course from you Ninja Acquisitions. I just wanna, I think Carl Allen is the father of this type of business, so. Yeah, thank you. It's uh it's really interesting. I, I started this kind of coaching journey. You, you're right, 56 years ago, 2015 I think it was, um, you know, obviously I'd, I'd had my Wall Street career as an investment banker, doing tons of deals and then I, the last real job I had was in corporate M&A, so I was doing deals for for Hewlett Packard, and then I, I left to do my own deals, um, which was amazing, and then 5 years ago. Uh, people, I was inundated with people asking me to teach them this stuff, um, and I didn't want to kind of do the hotel, um, ballroom kind of scenario. So I thought I'm gonna create an online, an online coaching program and a system where I can coach people every week on, on doing their deals and. You know, I'm blessed to have over 7000 students now, uh, all over the world. Most of them, US, UK, I would say that's where a lot of the deal activity, uh, you know, still remains. That's where all the financing is as well. And um there's been. Some unbelievable uh deals done uh over the years and uh and I'm still doing it. I, I love, uh, you know, every new client that comes into my business that I can coach is uh is always uh is always a privilege, but um. Yeah, there's there's life in the granddad, yeah. I'm actually a granddad in real life now, John as well. I know since you and I last spoke, uh, my, my daughter, who's 28, uh, gave birth to a little baby girl in January. So I have a, um, I have an 8 month old granddaughter, which is fantastic. And um yeah, 5 kids, 1 grandchild, 3 dogs, um, and you know, I, I feel, feel better than. I've ever done, you know, I want to keep doing this. So I want to be the Warren Buffett of my industry. Um, I'll, I'll still be doing this when I'm 90, I think. Uh, it never gets boring. And until your, uh, room temperature. I, the course I bought a long time ago was from Ninja Acquisitions. And I know that I just checked your LinkedIn. Uh, you changed it a while ago, but what would happen to Ninja Acquisitions? Yeah, so it's really interesting. So, I'd, I'd built the business up, um, we, we grew very, very quickly, uh, very, very quickly, and I, I had a, you know, I had a really good team in the business that that were helping me. Yeah, and I'm, I'm always more of an owner investor, so I, I never, uh, I don't do a lot of the detail. Work in my in my business, apart from being a coach, uh, in this business, you know, I always had a team that, you know, built everything around me. And, and I felt at the time that, um, they were struggling to keep up with the pace of how fast I wanted to grow it. And uh one of my, um, one of my affiliates in the marketplace, a company called Agora. They actually approached me about buying the business and partnering with me to really, really scale it and really put a dent inside of the dealmaking universe and we had some great plans. So uh so Agora bought the business, um, we rebranded it to be DealMaker Well Society, and then. About a year ago, Agora went through some, uh, just some big changes in its in its corporate structure and some big changes in its strategic focus. And, uh, my business, you know, Gore is a billion dollar company, you know, my business was no longer kind of front and central to what they were doing, so I got the opportunity to uh to buy it back. So I took the business back out of Agora. Into private ownership, uh, was able to take the team along with me. Uh, and a lot of the great things I learned from being inside of Agora, uh, about how to think, you know, differently, um, we took as well. So, uh, we're effectively the same business, it's still me. uh, obviously the coaching programs and the systems we built, uh, they're changing all the time. We're constantly refining them with the way the markets are changing and the different funding s. Dreams are coming online and the different types of deal structures that both I'm doing in my private equity firm, but also a lot of my, my students are doing. And this is what's fascinating about being a coach is, you know, I've built this framework based on 29 years of being a dealmaker, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of deals, tens of billions of dollars of deals done. But you get students that take it and they. kind of flex it to see what they're doing and get like amazing results. You know, they'll go off piste a little bit, uh, but still get incredible results. So we're constantly, you know, building a lot of those different experiences into, you know, what we deliver to our students. But yeah, I gotta tell you, uh, uh, Jeremy Harbor, uh, and then one of his students and one of his students, I mean, you have your DNA to Matthew Wainwright, who I interviewed about 10 podcasts ago, they're doing 16 deals a year. Their business is worth almost $250 million now, which is I know it's crazy. It's crazy. And you know, Jeremy's a really good friend of mine, and you know, I, I've spoken at Harbor Club and you know, he and I have done some really cool things together. You know, he's a great guy. There's a, a lot of charlatans now in this world, a lot of people that, uh, there's people teaching this stuff now. They've never done deals before. I won't name names, but, um, you know, Jonathan's, um, sorry, Jeremy's one of the real guys, um, like me, you know, he's, he's done tons of deals, he knows his stuff, phenomenal dealmaker. Uh, so he and I are very privileged that we have skill sets that, you know, are able to, uh, to share with the world and, you know, I've, I've got students that have done 80 deals and built massive. 80, there's there's one student's done over 80 different deals and um and I'm, I'm gonna have one student, and I'm not gonna embarrass him by naming him. I've got one student um in Asia that um with a little bit of luck will become my first billionaire student. Um, he's going, he'll float his roll up on, uh, the Australian stock market, probably the end of next year, um, at a north of $2 billion dollar valuation. I think I know who you're talking about. Somebody already mentioned him to me. He'll, he'll own more than 50% of that, uh, of the shares in that company and all that's come through, um, the stuff he's done with me, so, uh, it's. And I love changing lives, you know, I love impacting people, um, cos it's a really weird skill to have. You know, most people don't know how to do deals, most people don't know how to raise capital, most people don't know how to negotiate and talk to sellers and build rapport. Um, I'm just fortunate to have done it for so long that I've broken it down into a systematic process that anybody can can follow and anyone can can kind of implement, um. It does seem like there's a uh uh, you know, there's a skill level. I don't know what it is, it's just you're, there's blocking, it's it's not as hard as you think as soon as you get on the the other side, but it is a big mountain to climb to get yourself over. You know what, hey, you can buy, buy and sell companies, which is on the layer, you're like, hey, get a job, work for somebody or raise capital for a VC and then, oh, you know what, you're doing what Warren Buffett does. Exactly, it's like being the buffet of Main Street in a lot of ways. You know, I think, you know, we're we're, we're taught to go to school and, you know, drop $10,000 on an MBA and then, you know, go and work for a bank or a consultancy firm and do all those things. Yeah, you can, you work 100 hours a week, you know, you might make half a million dollars a year, you know, which is great, but, um, you know, if you go and buy businesses and you're an owner investor and you can have other people. Running those businesses for you. Uh, you can have the wealth creation and the freedom of work-life balance, you know, to match. It's interesting, you know, I, I work 4 days a week, probably 5 hours a day. Uh, I never work Fridays. I always spend Fridays with my family, um. You know, I never work weekends, it's just great, you know, and I, I've got more money than I'll ever spend in my lifetime. Um, so I, I give a lot of it away. I donate to my community, you know, to my family, to my friends. Uh, I just like making people happy and, uh, cause I, I'm blessed to do that. Um, and, and this is something that anybody can have. Yeah, I have an MBA, I've worked on Wall Street, I've been at this for 29 years, but. You know, I've got people that have come through my programs, they've had to sell furniture to invest in my training. Um, they had nothing, they had no high, they didn't even have a high school education, and they've hustled and grinded and, and pushed forward and, you know, they've bought million dollar businesses. Um, so what's really interesting about this is the thing, the difference that makes the difference in people doing deals, it's all about mindset. A lot of people come into anything in life with limiting beliefs about what they can achieve and they underestimate uh what they can achieve if they put in hard work and follow rules and follow a system, and it's, it's all about taking action, it's all about implementing. Um, you know, as I said, I got an MBA and, and it was a great experience, but it's all theory. What you really learn in anything, and especially in deal making, is when you get out there and you do it, you take the action, you call the sellers, you have the meetings, you talk to the financiers, you put the term sheets in. You get the due diligence done, you get the deal closed, that's, you've gotta, you gotta take action. It's like joining a gym and never going in there, just staring at it. You've got to get in there, you got to lift the weights, you gotta do the work. Um, same with anything in life. So deal making is not a get rich quick sport, it's a get rich slow sport. Takes work, takes discipline, takes patience. Um, but if you do that, the rewards are pretty phenomenal. Yeah. I, I have to tell a comment on your library behind you. And this is kind of part of it, just continuously being a student of the business and the learning, how you have to be curious and want to learn more from everybody else that's doing it. Yeah, absolutely, so one of my, one of my mentors in this life is this guy, Tony Robbins. Tony Robbins has a saying, um. It's all about, you know, modeling people, you know, if you want to achieve something in life, go find somebody that's done it and then just model what they've done, model their approach, you know, don't reinvent the wheel, you can learn from people. So I've got probably 9 mentors that I use in my life. And really funny story about my library, so I, I read probably 3 books a week, I'm a crazy reader. Is a week. Yeah, 3 books a week. I was on a podcast, right. Uh, I was on a podcast with somebody a few weeks ago and he said to me, hey, he said, I love the image backdrop that you've got. He's like, can you send that to me? I'm like, no, dude, this is like, I'm in my library right now. He's like, no. So I said, I'll prove to him in my library, and I reached back and I pulled a copy of my own book out of my library. Uh I got a few, I got a few of these. But no, I'm um. There's 3 types of books that I love to read, right? I love to read. I love to read autobiographies. So back to my original point, um, I think, you know, you can learn anything from anybody. So autobiographies, success leaves clues. So if you, you know, I love reading about uh people that have, have done great stuff in business and in life, so autobiographies are my favorite, my favorite autobiography is Shoe Dog. It's the story of Phil Knight, um, the founder of Nike. Like, I gotta tell you, you know, anybody that thinks that starting a business is a smart thing to do, go, go read that book and you'll realize just how absolutely dangerous and harrowing it is to create a startup rather than what I do, which is. Go and buy a business someone else has built and save all the save all the brain damage. So Shoog's a great favorite book of mine. I love reading books about marketing and about business. So, uh, current favorite of mine is this book, Get a grip. Have you read any of the traction books? They're amazing. Attraction, yes, not to get a grip. Grip, it's a, it's a fable, it's a story of a fictitian, uh, it's a fictional IT company that implements the traction, uh, it's called EOS the the system that they use for uh for developing businesses. So that's a favorite book of mine and I, I love, I'm a big student, John, of mental toughness. I love reading books about adversity and about mental toughness and er my favorite book ever about that is um it's a book called Redefine Impossible. Um it's about the iron cowboy. Uh, it's a Canadian guy called James Lawrence. This guy did the most unbelievable thing in human performance. He did 50 Ironmans. In 50 consecutive days, in 50 consecutive states, right? Yeah. The guy nearly killed himself. He dropped down to like 4% body fat and the kind of mindset this guy cultivated in going through that journey, uh, you know, if, if ever I, if ever I feel like I can't do something. I read that book and then I can do anything, if you, if you read that book, you're like, I can do anything. If, if, if, if a human being can do what he did, you know, there's there's, there's there's a lot of things, we underestimate. How powerful we are as human beings and what we can actually achieve in our lives if we really apply ourselves and we really focus in on what we want and why we want it, and then what's the work we need to do to get there. Absolutely key. So that's, uh, uh, you know that living with the CLJ, uh, it's where he, you know, you can, he proved to him that living with a seal that you can do 40% more with your body by just pushing yourself and having the right mindset, yeah. Yeah. Have you ever read Man's Search for Meaning, like being able to survive something, or, you know, I haven't let me, let me write that down. Any, anytime, anytime everyone gives me a book, when I get a book recommendation, I buy it. I, I go on Amazon and I buy it. So I love it, man. I, I spend a ton of money on Amazon, everybody, and I like the hard books because I always, uh, highlight stuff with uh man's search for meaning. Yeah. There we go, Prime, one day, get it tomorrow by 1 p.m. I'm gonna buy the hardcover. It's only an extra pound, I like hardcover books. OK, boom, I've bought it. right, there you go, I, I don't mess around, um. You prove it. I mean, your library looks like that. My library does too. I think you've got, you've uh reading books just keeps fills your mind with the right source of energy and inspiration to keep moving forward with the idea. Oh yeah, yeah, I, I actually have, I have 3 libraries, right? Um, so I, I have a library in my office. I have where I am now. I have a library in my head, um, and I have a library in my summer house. Which is in Portugal. So, um, all my favorite books, I have to have 3 copies of them. So, um, all my, I have like 100 favorite books and I have copies of them in all my different libraries cos so one day I might just want to pick it up and read it. And, and I don't like digital books. Uh, I'll I'll buy, I, I'll buy a digital book. Sometimes to read on a plane, but I always want the physical copy, um. Because, um, yeah, I, I, I just, I, I love having a tangible copy of a book. Uh it's really, really important. I, I, I do too. I can't be like the, the, the topic, whatever issue I'm working on or topic I'm working on is, uh, I keep it right on the top of my desktop and I usually highlight passages that I'm not familiar with how they say it. I'm familiar with the concept, but the way they say it is a breakthrough. So I highlight that and I'll always refer to it. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, I gotta go back to your deal with Agora because it's interesting. Uh, I got a buddy that, uh, uh, brokered the deal for, I think it was, uh, the, the penny stock trader. Agora bought the penny stock trader and then then sold it back to him. What did you guys, what did you learn from Agora and their, their massive intel on emailing people, you know, they're billion dollar, massively profitable. So what was interesting about agora agora's a great business, um, you know, and I, I had a lot of fun, uh, I, I was in the agora world for about a year, uh, just over. Uh, I learned a lot, I made some phenomenal connections, uh, we did some really, really cool stuff, but I, I think, um. It was just kind of kind of the path that they were on. Uh, they, they were just going through some big changes and you know, it's interesting. Gore's a billion dollar company, you know, I wasn't a billion dollar company, you know, I was a, a, a multi-million dollar company, but culturally, um, sometimes that, that can always be, be kind of difficult. You know what, what drives M&A. In, in the corporate world, so I'm not talking about um like one of my students that will go and get into business for the first time by acquiring a business. If, if I look at my dealmaker Empire students that are doing bolt on acquisitions and they're doing roll-ups and are building big, big corporations, that there, there are really, there are 3 kind of things that, that, that drive successful acquisitions, you know, one is strategic fit. So it's buying a business where you can get some leverage between what you already have and what you've acquired, whether it's leveraging customer bases, whether it's leveraging products or services, um, then you've always got the cultural fit. Um, and you know, I, I, I went through the HP Compact merger, um, which was, you know, kind of horrendous. Um, you know, you, you had Texas Republicans. Merging with California Democrats, you know, that was never gonna work, you know, all, all the, all the strategic rationale in the world was never going to overcome, um, you know, that cultural mismatch, and I would have been called off today after 5 seconds meeting. Yeah, ultimately that, you know, ultimately killed the company. HP's two separate businesses now, they just couldn't. They, they couldn't play nice together, it was just never gonna work. Um, you know, there's been lots of other deals, you know, the AOL Time Warner merger is another example, just for culturally was never ever, ever gonna work. And then often when businesses come together, uh, their systems and processes and their technology doesn't work, that's really kind of a minor thing, but if I look at um my Agora deal. Um, we didn't fire really on all of those three things. Um, I, I just thought being part of a larger entity was gonna be a great platform for, for me to kind of have a much bigger, louder voice in the marketplace. Um, I think at the time. they were very keen on doing that deal and it was a great deal for all all parties, but you know, to be fair to them, they went off in a different direction just strategically with what they were doing. So my stuff wasn't um kind of as relevant as it as it was before. We had some technology issues. Integrating them together and then as I said, culturally, you know, when a billion dollar company buys a multi-million dollar company, uh, sometimes it just doesn't kind of fit together. Uh, but it was a great experience. I'd I'd do the deal all over again, um, because of what I learned and the absolutely phenomenal people that I met inside of Agora and um, yeah, Agora has its ways of marketing, um. It's Obviously very successful cos it's a big business. It's not the way that that that that I do the marketing. I have a slightly different, um, kind of different way of doing it. But, uh, but no, um, it was, it was a nice experience. I, I enjoyed my year and a bit of being part of the Agora family. Did you get a, uh, did you pay more or less, get a good deal, buying your own company back? I, I, I, uh. I'm not allowed to say, but uh, yeah, yeah, it it it it worked, it worked fine for all all sides. So, uh, so yeah. Yeah. So I, I gotta go back now you started a company called and I don't know if I pronounce it right, the PROX pro capital. Yeah and that's a private equity fund for the deal flow from your students and yourself. Yeah, so, um, so my partner and I, Adam Markley, um, we, we do our own deals through that, so we're, we're leveraging our own capital up with our financing network and then we give our students the opportunity, uh to do deals with us as well. So, uh, a lot of the recent deals that we've done, we've partnered with students that, um, you know, brought deals to us, so. So what's great about the two businesses, how they fit together, so DealMaker's got 7,000+ students all over the world scouring. Under the rocks for the deals and you know, there's millions and millions and millions of businesses for sale. Uh, it's easy to find deals, but, uh, the key is building relationships with sellers, that's the key. So we've got our students going and doing that, um, they bring the deals back to base, and then we've got all the firepower, uh, in terms of people and money, you know, to get those deals done and then we can own them together. All. We'll go do our own deals, um, but a lot of our students, I, I would say 99% of our students, um, don't need to partner with procs. They've got, they've got enough coaching and training in, in all of our systems, uh, you know, to go and do it themselves. Um, you know, we, we, we show them where to get the money, we show them how to negotiate, we even give them a Rolodex of all the different, uh, financial resources that they can use and. You know, like the SBA program is just phenomenal, you know, um, there's so many people using it now. I, I, I read an article yesterday that the 504 version of the SBA which deals with real estate, um, is, is about to run out of money. It's about to hit the federal cap placed on it by Congress, but the 7A program, which is really for buying businesses. Uh, yeah, there's, uh, there's tons and tons of money left in that program. So somebody told me that that also, uh, the, the, you know, I talked to Live Oak Bank just a couple of days ago and they, they have so much, I mean, they don't have to customize their reach to, you know, businesses that don't fit their model that can, you know, meet. Uh, the cash flow ratio, the even of turns, everything. I mean, there's so much business coming in, they don't have to reach outside that criteria anymore. No, it, it's great cause I think, you know, what's, what's amazing for guys like Lio, you know, they're one of the biggest, if not the biggest, um, lender in the 7A program. 90% of all the money that they're dishing out on deals is federally underwritten. So it's the best business model in the world for a bank, you know, they're taking, they're getting access to my money at 0.5% that they're paying me. They're charging it out on deals at 67, 8% and 90% of the money is federally insured. So, you know, what a, what a great business model. Um. You know, so, um, the, the challenge is though, there's more money available for deals than there are deals because most people, as I said before, they don't know how to do this. This is one of the reasons why I built this business teaching people how to do this because um I don't believe people should start businesses. I believe people should buy existing businesses to shortcut. The the path to success and and for me if you own a business, you should buy your way to growth. If you want to grow your business, go and buy your growth, buy your competitors, by your partners, buy in complementary markets, you know, like look at Amazon. You know, when, when, when, when Bezos realized one day that all of his book buyers were listening to stuff on Audible, you know, did he sit down and think, well God, you know, I gotta get the R&D guys in here, we gotta figure out how do we code a competing product, then how do we deal with the disc. Contribution and the marketing, no, when I bought them. You know, he, he bought that business for less than a billion dollars, you know, when he wanted to get into the, the food retail space because he saw that as the next big thing, you know, did he figure it out himself? No, I went and bought Whole Foods. You know, when Salesforce wanted to get into the, the collaboration messaging market, did they figure it out? No, here's $27 billion slack. Welcome to the family. So all the big guys, and they, they're using other people's money, you know, slack, using its, you know, sell. Force using its own share price, you know, to buy companies, as is Amazon or HP or IBM and I've done deals with all those guys. Um, everyone's using other people's money to buy growth. If you want more customers, more products, more services, more people, more locations. Go and buy them in acquisitions using other people's money. It's just so much easier than hustling and grinding and figuring it out yourself. You know, I think life's too short to do that. Uh, that, uh, that you read that story about Dell and how he, uh, raised, I don't know, $65 million to buy EMC and the other companies and take private. That's just a. Del's Dell's an amazing story. So that guy. Michael Dell, what a genius, um, created $50 billion worth of value for himself. Doing exactly what I do, using other people's money to do deals. So he founded Dell and his dorm room, took it public, um, you know, grew the business and then realized he could get a much better deal for himself by taking it private. I think he partnered with Silver Lake, the PE firm. They took the business private, so they bought it off the stock market, and they raised another boatload of money. Bought EMC which had VMware inside of it, and then, you know, did a whole bunch of financial restructuring and then took it public again and made it separate companies public. it's amazing in which added to his net worth. Unbelievable 14 billion dollars. I like him. I, I've, I've met Michael Dell. He's a, he's a great, great guy. Yeah, I love this book. That first book. And then the whole Coca-Cola and the key stuff, you need to delegate this. I love that. I, I really, Michael Dell's one of my favorites. I was always a big jobs fan. Um, you know, I was always, um, you know, a big fan of like Luke Gerson or IBM and, you know, Mark Heard, who was a big mentor of mine when I worked for Hewlett Packard. He was my CEO. Um, at the time, um, you know, Jack Welch, I met him when I was at business school, um, absolutely phenomenal guy. And I've learned from all of these people, you know, as I said before about modeling people, um, a lot of the skills and traits and things that I have, I've just modeled from successful people. You know, no point reinventing the wheel. It's like why I say buy a business, don't start one. Go and buy someone else's. Creation, because they've put in all the hard yards to get it to where it's at. You can buy that business using other people's money, you don't need to do it yourself. I gotta go, uh, just jumping. I just saw your tattoo, man, that's pretty awesome. Well, what was the inspiration for that? Yeah, so I'll tell you the inspiration about my tattoo, um, 17 years on Wall Street, um, when I left Wall Street, right, I, I left the corporate life. And I said to my wife, I wanna do something that's like a little bit crazy. And I'd never have got away with on Wall Street. So she said, well, really, there's only 3 things that you can do. You can have a piercing, have a tattoo, or take drugs. Well, I've never taken drugs, I don't like the idea of having piercings, so I thought I'll have a tattoo. So I started off right at the top. And then 7 years later, got the whole, the whole sleeve. So I got the names of my family on there and the time that I was born. And yeah, there's a lot of, a lot of meaning and stuff. Asian, uh, there's an Asian woman there. That's a. Yeah. It's really, uh, yeah, really interesting. I got Buddhas and geishas and all sorts of things. So it's different today. I mean, I, I was in the military a long time ago and you weren't allowed to have tattoos or you were at least We're allowed to show them, so you had to keep sleeves down. And that's completely different today. And my brother-in-law and his wife, who's a doctor, uh, like the top doctor at Banner here, they joined CrossFit. Now they're just tattooed all over the place. It's, it's a different, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, um, yeah, I, I love my tattoo. It's a big part of my identity. And, you know, I'm, you know, there's a lot of different things that I do. So I'm, I'm a Freemason. Uh, I've been a Freemason for a number of years and Like last night I was in my uh my my Masonic lodge doing practice, so I wasn't in all my regalia, like in a normal meeting we have, you know, practice sessions to learn all the rituals and different things. And I was there in my t-shirt with my, my big sleeve tattoo and one of my fellow brothers in the lodge, you know, he's got a big sleeve as well, uh, he's got a lot of Masonic emblems and stuff on his as well. So, uh, yeah, I think the the the taboo around artwork's not there anymore. It can. It's, it's not, and, and I, I remember when I was having, uh, the last bit of mine, mine done, there was a guy on the next chair. I think he was in his 60s. Uh, he was having a tattoo for the very first time. So, uh, it's uh, it's amazing. Uh, it just really hurts though, you know. It doesn't, it's not pleasant, but like anything in life, sometimes you got to go through a little bit of pain to have a lifetime of pleasure, um. So you have, having a tattoo's a bit like getting a deal done. Um, you know, there can be painful parts to it, but once you get it through, yeah, there's, uh, you've got something really proud that you can show people. So, uh, interesting. I gotta ask you about your uhinity for Sylvester Stallone, or Rocky the character. What's that, uh, what does that mean to you? Yeah, so I, I absolutely. Love this guy. Uh, so Rocky is, was a big kind of inspiration for me. So I always enjoyed the Rocky movies growing up. Um, and I don't know if you remember the 4th Rocky movie, which is my favorite Rocky 4, where he goes to Russia to fight Ivan Drago. Um, that, that movie came out. In uh in '86, I think. It came out a couple of months after I lost my father when I was 15. Uh, so I was an only child. My, my father died, he was only 40 when he died, died of a heart attack, sadly. And that movie came out right after he died and I was in total pieces at the time, and I watched that movie. And it just completely changed my, my mindset about myself and, and about the life that I was gonna, was gonna live going forward. Uh, because in the movie in Rocky 4, Rocky's friend Apollo is killed by the Russian and Rocky is like devastated, like I was with my dad, but Rocky decides to kind of do something about it. So I, I use the death of my father to me into having a great life, studying really hard at school, being very focused on doing very, very well, you know, having my own great family. Um, so whilst it was a painful moment at 15, it kind of shaped my life and, and it was through a Rocky movie that I got the, it was the catalyst really to push me into that direction. So, yeah, Rocky's my guy. And what's really interesting. The thing is when I um when Agora bought my company, part of the deal with Agora is I had to spend some time in the States. So they're they're based in Baltimore. Um, and there's a beautiful part of Baltimore called Fells Point, right by the water. And, uh, I had a really nice apartment in Fells Point that I would stay in when I was in the States. So I'd have 2 weeks in the US, 2 weeks back at home with my family. And I was walking down the street in Fells 0.11 Saturday afternoon, and I walked past this art gallery, and it's a, it's an original oil painting of Rocky. And, and I went into this, and I saw it and he's wearing the shorts from the fight um where he fights Drago. And I walked into the store and, and I never normally do this cos I'm normally quite frugal with money. But I went into the store and I just said I'd like to buy that painting. I had no idea how much it was. Um, I just had to own it. It just had a special kind of meaning for me. And um and yeah, um, and that's when COVID hit and I had to. Get my butt out of Baltimore back to the UK. I, uh, I brought it with me. So, uh, yeah, I'm pride of place in my office under my sign Tony Robbins picture. So those two guys taught me a lot about who I am, about mindset, and about grit and determination and endurance. Um, so yeah, they're in my, uh, they're both in my library watching over me. Hey, that's a good point about what art does to you. It's so subjective. There's a price value. You know, Warren Buffett talks about that. He goes like, you know, there's a price and there's value. What's that value that art brings to you or what that business brings to your whole, your whole ecosystem business. There's a saying, isn't there? Value equals benefit minus price. Write that down. Anybody listening to this podcast, write that down. Value equals benefit minus price, doesn't matter how much something costs you, if you derive more value, more benefit from it, it's gonna add value to your life. So, uh, so yeah, um. Absolutely correct, I, I have a lot of great art in my house, um. Most of the stuff in my office over that side um is like sporting memorabilia, you know, I'm a huge soccer nut, uh, huge boxing nut. I got signed boxing shorts on that you call it soccer. What are you winning, you're Americanized or what? Yeah, I am a little bit Americanized, yeah, I'm a little bit Americanized cos it, you know, if I, if I talk to you about football, you're thinking NFL, you're thinking Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco Forty-Niners, which you know I love NFL, but. You know, soccer, uh, yeah, soccer's my, uh, my number one sporting love. Although I do love basketball. Um, have you seen, um, The Last Dance on Netflix? Holy moly. Have you seen it? I haven't seen it yet, but I saw the, uh, episode of the, the tall redhead guy from Australia that got, he was in the Last Dance and he was just. People were making like, man, you were only in the last dance video for 30 seconds, although you were on 3 NBA teams. Yeah, you have to watch that dude, that is an unbelievable show on Netflix. Uh, it's about the Chicago Bulls, er, Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman. What a show. Um, that's uh unbelievable. MJ, what a, you know, he's, he's somebody that I've never met that I would love to meet. Like, what an absolute legend in life, not just in sport. Uh, what that guy did was truly, um, unbelievable. So I, I saw an interview with him. He was talking about that, that center that he had. And what I took from MJ was, he was so hard driving about his goal, where he wanted to go, that it doesn't matter, just contribute to my goal. Like, I'm gonna get there. I'm gonna get there. Yeah, absolutely, and one of his, um, so his coach, his fitness coach. Um, actually wrote a book, um, so his fitness coach was a guy called Tim Grover. Uh, and he wrote a book called Relentless. And in his book he talks about, uh, in life, there are 3 different types of people. You have coolers, you have closers, and you have cleaners. And cleaners are the people that, um, everybody fears them, everybody. Follows them, they just get shit done, uh, no matter what. And MJ's a cleaner in in the way that he describes it, that um will just move mountains to get things done. And I think what what MJ did as he got older, was he figured out how to use his mind, you know, to control his destiny. So a lot of that later success was all mindset driven. Uh, he was able to kind of build his body to match the power of his mindset. Um, and you know, mindset for me. Is the core of everything, doesn't matter what you want to do in life. You know, we've been talking about doing deals and and things, it all comes down to mindset. If you know what you want, you know why you want it, you've got that emotional attachment to your goals, and you're prepared to do the work every day, the daily KPIs, the daily activity to move you forward. You can't fail, you can't fail in anything in life, and what, what stops most people from being successful is just, they just get in their own way. You know, that they're not clear about what they want and they don't get emotionally attached to their goals, they don't get leverage over themselves. Um, you know, it's really important. Once you figure that out, life's really easy, in my opinion. Yeah, I, I think, look, I, 45 minutes in, I think I can talk to you about 5 more hours and a couple, couple beers. We'll do this again. Yeah, we'll do it again. Hey, Carl, I wanna thank you so much and check out Carl at, uh, he's on LinkedIn, he's at DealMaker Well Society, uh, and he's a great, uh. Great mentor in this case. So Carl, I wanna thank you for your time. Uh, just have a great day, man. Thank you, Joe. All right, cheers.