E: 12 Top M&A Entrepreneurs - Chris Daigle - Assisted 1000s but working on the Billion Dollar Idea

Cloud. There you go. All right, we have Chris Dagle today, top M&A entrepreneurs, these guys have been, I, I've been trying to get Chris Dale gone cause I love listening to all this course. First, I gotta ask you, why do they call you Doctor Dale? I solve problems. I solve problems with doctor. Yeah, it was a nickname that, um, stock. I, I've always been a, a bit of a business fixer, um, through strategy and networking. I have a fantastic network and somebody would call and be, oh my gosh, the sky is falling. I'd be like, you know what? I got a guy. And I just kinda, maybe 15 years ago. I think the first person to call me Doctor Dale was a guy named Louis Lautman, L A U T M A N, and Lewis ran a uh a global entrepreneurs network and um Uh, now I think he's in Medellin, like a lot of, um, uh, nomad entrepreneurs, but, uh, It's stuck. Yeah, that's cool. That's cool. Solo, let's uh talked about you give these courses. I mean, you're one of the instructors for the videos for the Epic course. How long have you been involved in Epic? I mean, uh I said so first, yeah. Yeah, so I'll tell you how it started. It was interesting, um, when COVID hit. Right right at the very beginning, as I mentioned, I have a fantastic network. I reached out to all of the people in my, well not all but a lot of people in my network that were high achievers, CEOs, founders, funders, whatever, said like, what does this mean? Um, just to kind of see if I could get a, a measurement of the zeitgeist, like what were people gonna do? Were they scared? Were they seeing it as an opportunity? And one of those calls was with Roland, and it was on that call that Roland came up with the concept of epic, ethical profits and crisis. So, um. And I told him, man, I'd be happy to help. And sure enough, a couple weeks later, he's like, I'm gonna launch this thing. Uh, are you still in? So I've been, uh, there since the inception, I guess. Beautiful. I just curious. I mean, ethical profits and crisis, I think we're coming out of the crisis. Would you still say we're in a crisis or is that kind of kind of change the strategy a little bit? And the reason I'm bringing this is, you know, I, I'm talking to a lot of IT guys and the software guys and the the it's frothy evaluations. It's not crisis anymore, yeah. Yeah. I think that it would be easy, it would be easy to keep the title because there's always going to be. uh life situations that that uh introduce crisis into a business, a divorce, a sickness, uh, retirement, uh, partners splitting up, you know, in the business, whatever. So I think that, uh, and kind of what the epic model does is it, it, it, um. It provides solutions in environments where, uh, like there's a high degree of motivation from the, the seller or the business owner. So I think that that title will still stick. Are we still in crisis from COVID? I would say, uh, it certainly doesn't look that way. I've been doing a bit of travel for business and that sort of thing. And everywhere I've been, I was in Dallas for a couple of days this week. I was in South Carolina, I was in Florida the week before that, um. It seems like boom times, honestly, uh, is there, are they still uh complying with masks uh in stores and everywhere around? Because in Arizona, if I go to Trader Joe's or if I go to a doctor's office, it's still mask, yeah. So, from what I'm seeing, um, the signs are like, if you've been, uh, immun and at least in Texas, it said, you know, the signs where if you've been immunized, masks are optional, um. In South Carolina, it still says mask. There are many stores that I walked into and people weren't wearing masks at all, except for the staff. Um, so I think that, uh, you know, I don't know, but I think it was Jim Kramer that was saying when this thing's over, it's gonna make the roaring twenties look like, you know, child's play. And I'm, I, I traveled during coronavirus. Airports were empty, planes were empty. It was awesome. I mean, not for the economy, but for a traveler who I was tired of that, you know, the jostling around. It was great. However, in the past, say, 6 weeks, man, bananas. Airports are full, flights are full, um, restaurants are full at the airports, uh, people are out and about, so it's changing. Yeah, it's good. It's coming back. So let's talk about, uh, since you started, how many acquisitions have you done for yourself or for others? I mean, in to in total. So, you know, I, I guess a macro picture would be that I've I've assisted over 2000 entrepreneurs, uh, and Um, the acquisition process, I guess, at least on the education. OK, that's crazy. That's a crazy, but yeah. It's well it's I use that number because that's that's that many people plus have gone through Epic at this point. I think we're on the 13th or 14th cadre. However, I don't really do a lot of one on one, It would have to be a real sweetheart deal and I'll tell you why. I'm very focused on what it is that I do. Um, I'm very clear on what a deal is for me. Um, I play a longer cycle, so I'm working on really big deals. I say really big. I mean, I'm working on a, a roll up that on the, the high end could be worth a billion dollars, right? Now that's frothy markets the whole deal. Um, however, it could be worth a billion dollars. Stuff like that. Uh, usually the tempo is a lot slower. Um, oh yeah, there's not, there's not that turnover that you're just, yeah, that's a, a 2 year process to make deals, yeah. So for me it's not as much about um frequency or quantity. Uh, because I'm, because the way I see it, I've, I've always been this way, a whale hunter. In my business development approach, and my growth strategy for businesses, I've always looked for, let's think big and shoot big. Um, so for me, it's always been about deals that if I, if I only do one deal, it's gonna end up being a big deal. This is my, uh, you can take fireflies out, it's a. um, an AI note taker. Yeah, it's cool. I use it too. I'll just leave it going right now. It's, it's gone. So, um, are you working with other Epic members on this deal to do this roll up? No, this is, um, it's in a space that I have a pretty big footprint as far as network and history of success, uh, so. You know, I is that the, uh, is that the, the email, uh, Agora? I mean, not Agora, but, uh, yeah, uh financial publisher, publisher, yeah, um. Uh, you know, I, if, if somebody from Epic called and they said, listen, I got a great deal and I heard them out and it sounded like a good deal, I'd be happy to assist in an advisory capacity. Um, I got involved at the beginning with a couple that seemed like they had promise and Um, You know, you, you gotta bet on the jockey. And the jockeys at at this point, they're probably very capable at that point. Um, It was more enthusiasm than experience, and Uh, it ended up being a bit of a, not a time suck, but Uh, you know what, we both learned, those parties and I, we learned from the process. So I don't really, um, Uh, what I find that the short short money is is a distraction. There's a deal that, you know, someone's like, hey, I got business that's, and I can get it for under a million bucks and it's worth $2 million. OK. I don't know that that's really gonna Uh, you know, you hear it's a cliche. It takes just as much work to do the small deals as the big deals. Yeah, yeah. I wouldn't say just as much, however, it's not the amount of somebody at the door, it's not the amount of um. Of effort that you put into it. It's the distraction because if you say yes to something, you have to say no to something else, right? That's true. Yeah. Um. For me, I learned this from, um, wait, hold on. Yeah, let me pause it real quick. Yes. Um, So, going back to what I was saying about, if you say yes to something, you have to say no to something else. And, uh, entrepreneurs have a tendency to say yes a lot. And what ends up happening is diffused focus. They've got a lot of potential deals that are happening or potential opportunities, but because opportunities require you to kind of dig in and, and really think about them and all that kind of thing. But if you're thinking about this, and oh, I can't think about that because I got a call here and I got to get this contract out. That's not how I like to operate. Some people can thrive in that. There's a couple of things that I've heard recently. One of them was from Derek Sivers who started a company called CD Baby. And He was talking about travel. I said there was always like an event that I could speak at or something, and so my wife was like, you, you gotta make a choice. And he said, I finally realized that it's either a hell yes or it's a no. Cause I was always like, yeah, maybe that sounds cool, right? So for me it has to be a hell yes. For me to pursue it and also um Jesse Isler. Yeah, we know Jesley Jesly from uh the uh Navy SEAL living with a seal for 30 days or something, yeah, and married to Sarah Blakely, the founder of Spanx. Yeah. So Jesse introduced me to this concept of monottasking. Not multitasking. Monotasking. And that fits in really well with how I like to do business, how I like to live my life, because I Um, when I was younger, I'm not that old now, but when I hadn't achieved a degree of success that I have achieved since. Um, my time was cheaper. So I was OK spending time cause I didn't have the money, right? And then at some point. Uh, survival is not the issue as an entrepreneur anymore, right? Like the, the bills are taken care of, there's security in the bank and Um, you, you can stop, you don't have to say yes as much. And when that happened for me, and this is for everybody, you don't have to wait until the money's there and start behaving this way, because this is what big boys and girls do. They, they don't say yes to everything. They mono task and they dig in and they focus and that results in Winning. As compared to trying to do a bunch of stuff at once. Yeah, you're familiar with uh Warren Buffett's at the 20 punch cards. If you only if you were on the planet, I only gave you 20 punch cards to invest in, you're going to focus a lot more about that deal. Yeah, yeah, same concept, yeah, it's like um. Uh, Yeah, I and another saying that I heard recently that really impacted me from a guy from Epic, Lewis from the Beta program. It was money comes and goes, but time only goes. Right, one of his mentors told me that and I was like, damn, that's profound. So I, I, I look to live according to that kind of ideal of, you know, my time. I really need to pay attention to where I'm spending my time and doing a bunch of deals at once is not that. That's not you. Yeah. So what does this deal look like? I mean, I, I, I, I, I wanna jump back just for a minute for a minute because if you go to Chris Dale's LinkedIn profile and you look at their, the about section, and he's got this really cool how he segmented it, created it, like, if you knew me in 1991, if you knew me in 1999, if you knew me in 2000, you know, he's working on different subjects. Uh, I, I love this. I do have to ask you though, you know, I could love some kind of marketing strategy and and not work at all. Does this work? I mean, do you guys get people reaching out to you and Oh, here's the thing, I don't care. You don't care. And I don't mean that to be like, you know, flip about the whole thing, however, Uh, not having an attachment to the outcome seems to be a very like refreshing and, and, uh, place of sanity for me. Yeah, yeah. That is a Buddhist thing, you know. Yeah, I, uh, you know, actually, I'll tell you who I learned this from was Adam Lyons 15 years ago, maybe more. I'll tell you, um, Wait a minute, you've known Adam Lyons for 15 years? That's great. But here's how I knew Adam. I knew Adam through the the dating world. Uh, I had gotten out of a relationship and somehow I got turned on to uh Neil Strauss, not the stuff he was doing with the game, but he did this book called Emergency, which is about second passports and um global turmoil and that sort of thing and Um, Neil introduced me, or somehow I got introduced to Adam, and I hired Adam for a day of dating coaching, and we were in Manhattan, and he's the same guy that he was then as far as like his love of life and his zest and all that type of stuff. But one of the things that he told me was like, just if, if, if you want something to happen, you just, you can't be attached to the outcome because that attachment to the outcome is gonna It's gonna mess up your, your thought process and it's gonna, it's gonna uh amplify, you know, the importance of something. And he was talking about it in the framework of uh approaching a pretty girl, right? Or what if she says no kind of thing. And oh, that's a perfect example. Yeah. And that's, that's how I look at it with business. Well, what if this business owner says, you know, what if they think, oh, I'm dumb, you know, what if they say, oh, that's a crazy idea. And I just quit worrying about it. And when I did, I just go in there and say, hey, this is, this is how it works. And my approach is I'm very straightforward. Um, there's a book called Straight Line Leadership that I was uh introduced to by Um, Travis Sago, and it's pretty much like if you want to get to B, just go to B. Just say, listen, I, you know, this business, I'm interested in acquiring your business. Uh, here's my purchase price, and that's based on a formula that I do, uh, and just like not trying to necessarily. Um, be too, uh, flowery with the language or, or not have some agenda, just be like, look, I'd like to buy the business. Looks like this might work for you. Here's how I'd like to structure it. I don't plan on writing you a check at closing though. That's not, it's just not how I invest in businesses. Typically I'm looking for opportunities to leverage existing assets or something like that. So I don't know how I'm going to structure the deal. However, it's probably gonna look like this and that. Does that work for you? No. OK. Bye. When you get up to leave the table, that is the strongest sales technique that exists. The the just walking away from it and not necessarily as a tactic, but really being like, OK, it doesn't work for me that it, I understand you need something different than what I'm offering you, that's fine. I gotta go. Yeah, I, I'm guilty of that too. I mean, I get like guilty of like trying to word it correctly to think, oh my gosh, just this one change of words is probably gonna, you know, he's gonna bait the hook on this one. You know, I think that's a good idea to study the language that you use because it is important. Um, And assuming that you've, you've kind of game planned it a little bit, game plan, that approach. Don't game plan necessarily some sort of Because if, if you approach it in a like a very natural, comfortable, confident way, uh you, you can't screw up. But if you try to be somebody that you're not or try to present something that the deal's not. It, it One pinprick and it, you know, the balloon deflates kind of thing. So, um, not to say that there's not, this is just my opinion, this is just my approach. There's plenty of guys who and gals who spend a lot of time really, uh, precise with the language and using NLP and all that type of stuff. Uh, maybe I get nos when I could have gotten yeses. However, it's an abundant world. There's plenty of deals out there. I don't need every deal to be a yes. Yeah, I like the way that Roland says that uh these once in a lifetime deals actually come to me like 4 times a month now, so it's abundant life, right? Yeah. Yeah, so this big deal you're working on, it's in the email marketing content world that you're trying to assembly. It's um, email is, is a tactic that's used in the space, but it would be more financial publishing and how that, for those of you who don't know what that is, um, there are a lot of self-directed investors out there. Those are essentially people that say, look, I've got some retirement money, I've got a 401k, I've made money, I've inherited money, whatever, but I have some means that I want to invest in the market, but I don't want to put it in somebody else's hands. I don't want to just give it over to the uh The stockbrokers or whoever the certified financial planners and let them do it for me. I want to be educated about where I'm putting my money in that sort of thing. Those people, and I think there's uh some trillions of dollars that are directed that are held by self-directed investors. Those individuals look for counsel, look for advice, analysis, research, perspective, opinion, and when they do. The industry that I am doing this roll up in, they're the ones that provide this. They are ex-Wall Street people. They're self-directed investors who've been very successful. They're, um, theorists, they're, uh, PhDs or whatever, but they're subject matter experts on. Prognosticating where the market's gonna go or evaluating macroeconomics and self-directed investors and institutional investors now pay for that advice that they pay for access to that analysis depending on who that person is. I'll give you a a fantastic uh scenario like, well, who, who's an example of that? There's a guy named Jim Rickards, and Jim's a, he's, um, his main thesis is that, um, there's gonna be a currency war. And America will lose its uh status as the world's reserve currency because we hold that because settlements with Kenya and um Egypt, they don't occur in each other's currency they occur in US dollars. Settlements with all these countries in the world, they use the US dollar as the the currency that they settle their um multinational transactions in. If the US was to lose that status, it would have a major impact on the manipulation or the The engineering that's been done with the US economy. Absolutely, it's just like you keep printing money and that happens. So, people like Jim's thesis, Jim's evaluation on macroeconomics. So people will pay Jim Rickards, uh, $50 a year to $15,000 a year depending on the level of access and the depth of, of, um, content that he's providing for access to where is Jim putting his money? What does Jim think's gonna, gonna happen geopolitically that might impact the markets. So. There's a number of those, call them gurus in the space. There's a number of those gurus out there. The market is very fragmented. There's a couple of big, big players and a lot of small players. However, recently there's been a number of transactions, there's been 4 that I can think of that have been 8 to 10 figure acquisitions of uh or investment. Valuations of companies that are in this space. So now there's all these facts, there's all these investment banks and private equity and venture capital and all these guys that are interested in investing in the space, but they're looking around and all they can find are these small players. As I mentioned earlier, it's just as much work to do the small deal as it is to the big deal. So what I'm doing is I am manufacturing a big deal. I'm getting the small players that have synergies. I'm, uh, adding a little secret sauce to the deal to make, to kind of enhance the growth, um, forecast of that combined enterprise, and that's what I'm shopping to the bigger players. And is that this is kind of like a a Wayne who singa. Waste management or or Blockbuster, you're looking at all these players and going hey you got a great location. I wanna buy that block, but we're just gonna change it from A&V video to Blockbuster video, same kind of concept, yeah. I'm doing it a little differently though. Um, I'm not acquiring in advance. I got, as I mentioned earlier, I don't like to get involved in deals where I have to do a lot of risks. So what I'm doing. is I am. Uh, approaching the business owner, conversation's gonna look like this. Hey, at the size of the business that you're, look, you know what's happening in our space. There's a lot of interest in investment. However, the language I'm gonna use is a little more, um, Intelligently designed, a little more um. Um, elegant than what I'm gonna share with you. But the essential concept is, hey, Mr. Mr. Guru, your business is doing a couple million bucks a year. Nobody's gonna buy it. And if they do, the multiple is gonna be kind of low. And publishing, it's a couple of times maybe. He, however. I'd like to buy your business at 3 times. What? That's crazy, Chris. How are you gonna do that? You're gonna pay me more than my business is worth? Yes. So I get an option to purchase their business at a higher multiple than they'd get as an individual. OK? Now, I get enough of those together and now I go approach. The bigger fish, and the bigger fish is gonna pay for the convenience, they're gonna pay a higher multiple than what they would do in these smaller businesses. You've seen the, the models, they're gonna pay, actually one of the biggest transactions in the space, they paid 24 EIA. So I can get another 10 times even. I can get a buyer to, to purchase this combined enterprise with a combined ebi of say $50 million. I've got 5 or 6 publishers, I've got a financial tech company. I've got all these things in there, right? So now, I can take the arbitrage between, let's say they're gonna invest, they're gonna buy this. At 10X I'm gonna go exercise at 3x. I keep the difference. That's the theory at least. That's what I'm, that's how I'm structuring this, so I don't have to come out of pocket. These guys, the smaller gurus are getting a higher multiple than they'd get if they tried to sell to anybody that would buy a $2 or $3 million dollar enterprise. The Investment banks, private equity of the Sacks, they don't have to go out and try and put all this together for themselves. I've done it and I've negotiated extremely favorable entries plus, not only did I do that, but I've said, guys, here's how you grow it, ta ta ta ta. Here's the optimization that needs to occur. Here's the economies of scale that get introduced and I'll stick around. I'm gonna get a piece of the deal, right? Not only the arbitrage from the investment side of things, but I want to take the ride up with these businesses because the model that I've created for growth. I've got the team to execute. It wouldn't be that difficult. It's not gonna take me a whole lot of time because my team is in place. I run on a model called EOS and EOS, uh, some of you might be familiar with scaling up or the Rockefeller habits from Bernhar's very similar model. So I'm just gonna, I'm, I'm deploying systems in those businesses once acquisition occurs, I'm taking a payday plus I'm getting an ownership interest and the ability to Uh, grow those businesses according to the forecast that I sold the investor on. Uh, yeah, I love that. I, I gotta make a point here. You've already recommended 3 books, and I just had a call with somebody else in Epic today, and I said, look, you, you're gonna be taking now you just started, but you gotta take massive action. And when somebody recommends a book, get on Amazon 5 seconds later and order the book, and Rockefeller habits I have and uh the other one I didn't have. I think I had 2 of the 3 that you have, so beautiful. Uh, so you have to go back to your strategy. You've got a pretty good contract legal team together to, you go out to these guys doing a 2 million years and said, I'll buy you a 3X. Keep your option for how long? Is it 12 months to a year or something or or or plus? Uh, my goal is 36 months, 36 months, yeah. And that's given that they don't, you know, go like, oh, that's a great idea. I'll try to shop around, or you just have an exclusive or a non-exclusive. Please try to shop it around. Yeah, well, who you, who do you shopping around to like uh uh Agora, and that's it, right? You know, and trust me, Agora doesn't pay retail. Agora is, yeah, Agora will do if they want something they'll go get it like that penny stock trader guy that they bought his, yeah, yeah, so I brokered that deal. You brokered that deal. Nice. What's his name? Tim, Tim. Yeah, he's Tims, yeah. So, but here's the thing, go shopping to Agora. Agora's not gonna pay you. They don't need you, right? And if you want to sell your business to Agora, you're gonna take a steep discount. So I'm not too concerned, but and if somebody does want to go out there and say, hey, I like that idea, I'm gonna do a roll up. Awesome. That means more eyeballs on this model in in this space, like. I don't see it as competition. If somebody else is out there chatting these people up. I have confidence that my stru what that person can do, maybe they can go structure it, but they don't know how to grow a business the way I do. So if they're out there having conversations and it gets an investment banker interested, what's this financial publishing space and they start looking around and they hear about me because they will, because I'm doing the same thing. They're gonna look at the deal and they're gonna be like apples to apples. This thing's a lot better. What does this guy do, right? And I don't need 24 X. I don't need the highest multiple in the space, and I just, I, I see that that African proverb of faster alone, farther together. Go do it, man. Go try it. Yeah. So, and if somebody wants to buy you out, it's, it's my option is the, the right, but not the obligation to purchase. If I don't want to exercise, go, go for it. Do it. I want people to win. I don't want to like. You know, however, that person is getting a better multiple than they get on their own. Right? And they don't have the know-how, the focus, the connections, any of that stuff to be able to grow the business fast enough for their, for them to be able to take advantage of the froth in the marketplace, so. Yeah, I'm, I'm not concerned about. Do these financial newsletter guys that you reach out to is sometimes it is, is it their intent to start a financial newsletter, or do they just do it by accident, you know, and all of a sudden it turns into something. So a lot of these people, they come from the institutional space, they worked on Wall Street, they worked in hedge funds, whatever. And in that world, you pay for analysis. Right, yeah, it's, it's a cell side analysis a lot of the times, yeah, so they get it and they're like, huh, OK, so. I, I'm getting paid to generate this analysis now. I don't want to do the crazy hours. You know, what is Agora doing? Oh, they're selling to self-directed investors. Let me try and take what I do for, you know, Wall Street and do it for the smaller guy. And they do. So, uh, the typical person, uh, typical guru that would be self-direct or like running their own show, they might have 500 to a couple 1000 subscribers to their analysis, right? They work with me, we can get them to 50,000 subscribers or, or more, right? So it's, it's, and they don't work any harder. To go to 500 to 50,000. Exactly. So that's, and, and, you know, like there's opportunities in the process. A lot of these guys that I'm talking to about the roll up, I'm now advising them on growth. And now the thing is, well, Chris, aren't you increasing your price? Yes, but remember, I'm not buying it on the price, I'm buying it on multiple, and I'm arbitraging that multiple. So ideally, And if I can get them up faster and show a growth trajectory, they become a better part of the story anyway for the investment bank or the spat that's interested in investing, right? So, and I'm, I'm getting paid by them in the process. And sometimes if I want to negotiate um um um. An earn in so that my option price drops or my, you know, my ownership interest. I'm not buying 100% of the company at that multiple. I'm buying 80% because I got 20% from an earn in. It's just a number of ways that you can structure this stuff and it's, um, Uh, really, like there's no right or wrong way. Yeah, I some of these companies you work with, is it just, uh, one of my clients hired a cell side uh analysis of a company, and his bragging rights was he was the first analyst to uh say that uh Tesla is gonna go to 3 digits. Um, and what I found was It is the company didn't pay for that analysis. The analysts paid for that. I mean, the investors paid for the analyst cause they're always looking for deals, they're hungry. They have to have constant deal flow. They have to look for a company that's gonna go, you know, from $50 to 3 200 dollars. Yeah, because their mandate is to put the money to work, yeah, and to make money with that money, so they can't, they have to be, there is a little bit of FOMO and a little bit of urgency. On the investment bank side or the PE side, they, they gotta get the money to work. They don't make money if it sits around. So yeah, a lot of times they will, uh, they'll fund that. Yeah, I, I, I have to tell you, we, I was part of that and, you know, we saw probably 300 companies request the report. And they just followed the stock, they asked normal investor questions, and I tell you, it was a public stock. So, you know, we had the reggae price at $2 or something, and then once the public, the market price stock hit $4 they jumped in. It was incredible. Yeah. Yeah, so what is this? how's it going right now? I mean, you're, you're reaching out to these companies and contracts are out. I mean, is it, are you signing companies up? Is that working? Yeah, the I haven't allowed anybody to participate yet. What I mean by that is that I'm getting the word out there cause it's a small space and I know everybody, not everybody, but I know a lot of the people in the space. So, I am, I'm getting the word out and I guess the, the debut of the opportunity to to actually be invited to participate. Um, because my intention was to, a lot of these folks that are running these businesses, they're, they're operators. They're not investors. And the idea of a roll up isn't something that they're all aware of. So what I've been doing is I've been seeing the marketplace with the fact that this opportunity exists. So I've allowed for the market to start to really like marinate in this concept. Like, wow, that would be awesome to participate in something big like that. Now the debut of the invitation will be occurring at an event, uh, in about 3 weeks in Orlando, Florida. It's called Financial Marketing Summit. It's kind of It is, uh, there's not very many events that are as. Uh niched down for financial publishers as this event. This is all gonna be financial publishers, copywriters, but investors from outside of this space are going to be there. So I'm, they're looking for the next company, but, but the challenge is, is that they're gonna go there and they're gonna find all these small companies. But I'm gonna be presenting from the stage about the roll up. So I have a feeling this is what's gonna happen my my plan, this is what's gonna happen. The parties in the audience who've been thinking about this are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's talk to Dale now. The investors who are there are gonna go, oh, let's just talk to that guy. He seems to know what's like, he seems to have the right idea. So I have a feeling it's gonna be um. Friction-free. So, yeah, um. I think so. I mean, if you, if you're saying like I'm an independent operator, I got 50,000 on the email list, and I could probably get a 3x because it's all even. But here's a guy he said he can get me 24X and there's, it's not gonna cost me a dime. I, I might have that conversation with you. Yeah. But, and also like people in that space, they know that I like they know that I've done big deals, like with the Sykes deal and stuff like that. Um, I ran business development at a division of Agora that while I was there, we went from about $100 to $300 million in a couple of years because of not exclusively, I didn't wave my magic wand. It was a team effort. However, a big part of that was the deals that I brought to the table. So people in the space know that like, uh, I'm, I'm capable of, of doing bigger deals, right? I'm in negotiations with one of the companies that I got a $3 billion valuation, um. I'm in negotiation with them to I'm sourcing acquisitions for them now cause they went public via reverse merger with Sack. At a very big valuation and they need to spend the money. So I'm helping them deals you got 2 years to spend it or they return it. Well, the SA is already like they the deployed 80% of their capital into this one deal, so they're, they're good. Now the now the public company itself needs to fulfill on the forecast because with the SA you can base valuations on forward-looking projections which you can't really do that on other, you know, securities and stuff or with SEC. Um, a traditional IPO, let's say. So they need help and one of the big pieces that I'm helping them source is the fintech side of things because that's an easy way. To get that valuation because the multiples on technology versus publishing are a lot higher. So NDAs are in place now with that that company and we're, I'm presenting them with deals now, so I'm brokering stuff into their business. So, you already have a customer in mind and those could be spat guys with tons of dry powder out there, um, that looking for cash flow and not only can you aggregate these financial publications. To investors, you can also grow them significantly, 5, 10, 200 or something. Yeah. I get it. I love it. It's awesome, yeah. I just, I Right place, right time, smart guy, good connections that I built and um you know, I'm, I'm not driven by ego, so I think all those things. Tell me that it's a good season for me. Yeah. That probably would happen. I mean, are you, those facts are already in place and they have that dry powder to spend cause I've seen the the reason I bring that up is the SEC, you know, there was in March, there's a 230 nearly something stacks in April it dropped to 10 because the SEC cracked down on these things. So, when I looked in March, uh, I think there's a site called Spacktrack. Sack, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I think that it showed that there was about $140 billion in the phase of searching. I don't need all that. I mean, I think this deal, I think the deal that I'm working on. That's just in March. I mean, there's January, February. Yeah. So the, the deal that I'm working on, my target is $50 million in combined ebita, but I'm, but it's not just publishing, there's been tech in this model that I'm creating financial services as well as the publishing and the traffic sources because essentially the, the pitch is. We've got exclusively financial traffic companies are very good at driving the eyeballs. OK, you got that in this deal to the offers, the analysis, you got that in this deal. The analysts, some of those self-directed investors that are buying the analysis are gonna want more individual uh advice. So we've got a relationship with RIAs here and this is kind of upsells. Would you say these are upsells crosses, you know, yeah, it would be upsells almost like, but what if you were to look at it, it would almost be like an ecosystem that I'm creating like being able to to generate the interest online to a product that has high conversions with a back end being the fees that would come from a registered investment advisor. And the RIA encouraging them to use a certain financial technology stack, right? So if I can get the person from doing a Google search, how do I buy Bitcoin? All the way through, oh, here's, here's the ad. Here's the Bitcoin guru. Here's the RIA that's gonna advise me on my crypto strategy, and here's the platform that he's telling me to, you know, that he's suggesting I conduct my trades on that, that is what I, that's this roll up. It's not just the publishers, it's the whole that's, that's kind of the point of distinction and. The presentation that I'm doing. Yeah, I, I gotta ask you a question about the, the Bitcoin cause I knew you were gonna get about that and you know, it's Charlie Charles Munger from Berkshire Hathaway put something out about Bitcoin, uh, just that he would never invest in something like this because it's something you can create out of thin air. How real is that from what you've seen? I mean, I, I'm not asking you to be an expert on it. Yeah, uh, I'm not, I'll tell you, oddly enough, I bought my very first Bitcoin today. Oh, did you really? Yeah. And it's because I have some very smart people in my network like Very smart people that aren't crypto people, they're finance people, but the philosophy and, and everything that's happening with, with cryptocurrency, particularly in Bitcoin, they, these are guys that, you know, were, uh, Wall Street for 30 years, so didn't want anything to do with crypto when it first came out, but now they're like, it's a viable asset class. So, is it a viable asset class because we're over leveraging and printing money or is it because there's, you can have currency between, you know, uh emerging countries, international company currencies, and they don't have banks there like Africa, Morocco or something like that. They don't have banks, it's all done through their phone. I think it's all of the above and and if the US were to lose its its status as a reserve currency, what would be a safe haven, right? Gold, gold is great. I have gold. However, I carry it around, am I gonna be able to conduct business in gold? It would be challenging, right? Unless I was, I was doing stuff extremely local, but with Bitcoin, it's not, and I'm not like I didn't put all of my money into Bitcoin. I bought some bitcoin. Yeah, yeah, so I haven't bought any bitcoin. It's uh I mean uh a Charles Munger, uh, Berkshire Hathaway kind of, uh, Warren Buffett disciple. So when he says something, he's been right on so many other things that, uh, appear pretty great and you're gonna miss out on something and then they, he says, no, you know, junk bonds are just that junk, right? I I I'm. In agreement, and I know people that like all of their investments are in cryptocurrency. Yeah, I trust it. I don't trust it that much. However, I'll play there's some people making a lot of money, you know, like the NFT stuff and Bitcoin and that to me that's short money. Let's, let's look at a trend over, but I guess somebody would say, look, I bought Bitcoin in 2015. The, the trend is up, right? So, um, but I'm definitely not that guy. I can advise. There's a guy that I work with, his name is Mark Moss, and Mark has a fantastic YouTube channel and Mark's Got a, a very profound thesis on why Bitcoin in particular, um, I Um, A life, a life raft, a life buoy for a lot of people should be. Should the bubble burst and like all signs indicate that at some point there's going, it's just not sustainable what's been happening with the production of fiat fake money. Yeah, yeah. Check out what Mark's got. Mark's, um, he's a well respected thought leader in the space. He's an advisor to many, many companies, um. Uh, and his YouTube channels free. Yeah. I think I'm on the Bitcoin, I'm gonna say what Charles Monker said, I have nothing more to say on that. Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm kind of the same way. Yeah, I wanna go back to the Timothy Sykes and his sites, your broker the deal to Cora, um, and I'm not asking you to publish a number. I can't, you're under nondisclosure, but how did that Pitch go to them. I'm obviously he does a great job of marketing. He's a very visible guy, but, you know, it's a penny stock deal where you're talking about companies in the that are trading at, you know, between 1 cent and $1. Uh, and if you look at what's happening right now with the SEC, the, uh, uh, it's the rule 15 to 11, where the SEC is kicking off 3000 companies that are shell companies that are just trading, um. Where there's no, you know, there's no income in the business. I mean, for 5 years there's no income, but that's the penny stock. How is that sale to Agora saying, you know, it's a viable market, he's got a big audience, uh, we can make a lot of money and this is a good. Yeah. Acquisition. I don't think it was so much about the widget that was being sold. I think it was the the distribution that Tim had. That was of interest because they were like, oh. Can we, will, will some portion of people interested in penny stocks, will they be interested in options trading? Will they be interested in Uh, buying like, like all of the other spectrum of investment, uh, strategies that Agora shares. Tim had a big audience, right? How, how big was it like 1 million or 2 million or something like that, you know, I, I don't know exactly and So Tim had a very successful business prior to any deal with Agora, but here's how it went. I happen to know those guys. I was like, hey guys, you want to do a deal with Agora? Uh, what does that look like? I don't know, let's figure it out, right? So they flew up to Baltimore, they had lunch with, um, a number of different divisions and ultimately they went with the division of Agora that I represented, um, and they ended up doing a whole lot of money in a very short period of time because what happened was. Tim now had Agora's marketing budget behind it as well as all of Agora's infrastructure with all of the analysts and all of the graphic designers and all of the, the smart people that sat in the rooms and all that kind of stuff. So it essentially let Tim plug into a much bigger infrastructure that allowed them to have a higher velocity of product creation, a higher velocity of customer acquisition because. They could use Agora's money for acquisition and Agora doesn't need the money back today. There's plenty of money in the bank, right? So they were a lot more tolerant when it came to, uh, how long it took to hit an ROI neutral or ROI positive environment, which a smaller business just doesn't, they have to get that capital back to reinvest it. Agora can play a longer game, so it just made a lot of sense to both parties. Um, however, it was a short term, I say short term, it was the deal lasted about 2.5 years. Agora, uh, and Tim, they no longer work together. It's amicable, um, but both parties got what they needed from the deal and That one, the sunset has happened on that. Yeah, oh, that's cool. Yeah. Got it. So if you're listening to this podcast, you heard a number of like 4 books he's recommended, a trade show he's going to, uh, instead of, uh, a lot of frequency and smaller deals, going for the big home run deal. This is, uh, this is an awesome podcast, man. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you for reaching out and for being patient. Uh, I have been busy and now that you know what I've been doing doing the the front loading on that, that, um. That roll up And then this week I got stuck in Dallas for 2 days because of weather. Screwed up the airports and all that stuff, so yeah, yeah, they're probably just not used to the uh the the level of business getting back to normal just yet. I was that plus Dallas Love Field had like 5 inches of rain in 6 hours. Oh yeah. Big hub for Southwest, so it shut him down. Shut down. I don't know. I probably canceled 100 flights probably from Dallas. It's crazy. But thank you for being patient. I was really glad that uh you invited me to share my thoughts on this and oh man, it's I, I, I love it cause I think everybody, a lot of people in Epic are seeing. Uh, you know, 10 deals, 100 deals, and they, they're getting in their mind that I need to do a whole bunch of deals, and, and I, I go back to what Warren Buffett talks about and said, look, if you only had a punch card and you only had 20 slots, you're going to, you're very serious about where you say yes and where you say no. Yeah. You know, I think that Adam and I are a great compliment because Adam's much more high velocity and Like he's, he loves wheeling and dealing, right? Not that one way is right or or the other because there's people that are like, dude, I need the action. Chris, you're too slow, right? So I think that Adam and I are a great compliment in the epic program because um People are able to, to like get the, the quicker wins or like get a lot of stuff going on and a lot of times people feel that um Uh, activity is productivity. Yeah, right. So I think that for a lot of people that are new to the space, not to say that Adam's stuff is just activity and not productive because Adam's doing very well in his business yeah, it's definitely the opposite of that. It's very lucrative. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that it's a good compliment because some people may say, listen, like I just don't have the time to be as active in the due diligence and then the deal sourcing and all that stuff, and then they hear what I'm saying and they're like, oh, that's more my speed. People hear me and they're like, dude. Like, that's great, do a big deal. However, I want to make a $1000 this year extra. I wanna make, you know, whatever. I want to make an extra $2000 a month. And for those people, my strategy doesn't make a whole lot of sense because they got to wait. There's delayed gratification for the bigger, um, the bigger deals. So I think it's a great compliment. Yeah, it's kind of reminds me, uh, I don't know if you uh read written uh read uh Andrew Carnegie's biography about Charles Schwab just went around and acquired all the steelmakers, um, and sold to JP Morgan, yeah. I think it's on my bookshelf right over here, Titan, I think it's called, is that right? Yeah, uh, that's Rockefeller, but uh that's the same kind of thing, but Carnegie does this kind of the Sold out to Charles Schwab because he, Charles Schwab brokered that deal. He said, look, we could buy this guy, this company, this company, and then he went to the investment bankers and sold it to them. Yeah, yeah, yeah, kind of what I'm hoping to do with the fin pub space. Congratulations, man. Anyway I can help, I want to just thank you for the time today. Thank you, John. I think you just did help. You let people know that what I'm doing, so. Yeah. Well, it was, I would say it was a little bit of a mystery. I mean, you've got nuggets of wisdom when you come out in your calls, but it goes like, but what does Chris do? Yeah, I do those calls once a week and that's about it. Other than that, it's. A lot of. I wanna thank you so much, Chris. My pleasure. Thanks for the invite. Take care, man. Take care. Bye.