E8: Top M&A Entrepreneurs - Terry Williamson Proximity to Power

I love the fact that you're doing podcasts with just um ecalias. And I, I've done a couple outside LinkedIn. It's uh interesting. I knew a guy, uh, by the way, I, I started recording just uh that's fine, absolutely. Uh, uh, a guy I've known for almost 20 years. He used to work it has his own company. He's now he's doing cannabis with his son and Yeah. You know, he's, he went up to the gyrations. He started off buying companies, went public, and a lot of capital, a lot of interest, and using that, uh, stock as currency and bought a lot of companies. And then boom, we went back down that, so he had to recontract and sell some stuff off, and it didn't integrate a lot of stuff didn't integrate to his business as he uh as he hoped and it's now he's doing it just seems like he's doing a lot of it by himself, and it's a lot harder. Well, it, it is a lot harder, but I mean, you do get to pick your own flavor. And I, I had kind of a, not kind of a similar experience, you know, founded a company, grew it, national company, sold it to a private equity firm, and then sat on a board for 10 years with a couple of billionaires and watched how they just build this kind of behemoth thing. And I was like, I thought that would be fun. I thought it would be fun going to board meetings and listening to the list of acquisitions. And, but actually after a while, it wasn't. It was, it became more of a um less of an operational thing and more of just kind of moving business chips around. So, so I did that for a while, um, and then I like, like the story you just said, I'm like, I really like the operations. I really like The beginning part of the business, I'll tell you about what, what I'm up to now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the as the assembly piece, um, and then when it gets really big and bureaucratic and it's just board meetings all the time, I kind of lose interest. Um, so I totally get what your friend said. Bigger got better, more money, more people at the table. Yeah. Well, I, I got a question for you about that. Now you sit on this board, whether it's a phone call or you go to face to face. I mean, did you just listen most of the time, or did they say really, it really, it really was that. It's a, it's a company called KPA. Um, the, the sites KPA online for anybody who wants to go take a look at it, and it was compliance consulting in the automotive industry, which is like, well, how, how fun can that be? Well, not fun, but very lucrative, um cause this, this was the 90s when really the environment became very popular to talk about and saving the environment and, and there were all these safety regulations that came out. So my company just Exploded. We went from California only to national, and it was like super kind of cool, just growing and picking up thousands of clients and putting offices in everywhere. But like I was involved with all of that. And then I sold the thing in 2004, just to date myself a little bit, but because I've done so well, I still got to keep a lot of the stock. So I ended up the 3rd largest shareholder when I thought I was selling and leaving. And the two guys that came in, it was just a different way of doing business, where like, I would like to get an endorsement in a new state, put an office in, hire staff, bring in marketing, scale the HQ. They would just come in and go, ah, we should be in, we should be more in software. Let's, let's get an HR software company, and I, I was like, huh? How does that relate to compliance consulting for car dealers? And lo and behold, we don't, uh, we don't a software company doing HR software. Well, we should build their websites. What does this have to do with? And again, there was no synergy at all that was it only synergy, the only synergy is that it's the same customer and they got a bigger checkbook to spend money in other places. So if you're already in there and you're doing compliance consulting for car dealers, when you come in and you go, hey, you need a website? Yeah, yeah, we need a website. Ah, we got that too. And you know, who's right or who's wrong, um, sold again in 2014, um, and then just recently sold again to Providence Group for multi-9 figures. Oh wow, these two billionaires, they made out with tons of money. Guys like me did great and, and it's the company is thriving now, and if you go take a look, even today, it's called Vera now and like um yeah, and then the software part of that, I'm like, well that was a deal years ago. So who's right, who's wrong? Uh, it's my point is that there's just so many different ways of doing business and scaling and the trick, my trick has been to be do the version that makes me happiest. Well, how, how, you know, it's a part of negative art. How do you get into something you think it's kind of fun, and then all of a sudden you go, it's not, I delete that from my. Well, I think, I think first of all, is always have a, a goal what you're playing too. Like, you know, for me when it was when it was when I was young, it was retired by 40. And I saw that at our website, very goal-driven, retired by 40. And, and why? Because like that seemed like a Hollywood movie, and it seemed hard but doable. And then like from an ego standpoint, but then they go, you have to make enough money to retire by 4. I mean, anybody can retire by 40, just move to Africa. Be an expat. That's it's simple. But when I was like, no, no, I want a house on the ocean in Del Mar and I got one in the house in Florida, and I, and I want a Bentley, and I, this whole thing, I mean you're like, well, how much does that cost? And so you pick a number and then like that becomes your obsession. And you're like, I don't care if it sucks. You know, I don't, I, it's supposed to suck. I'm supposed to hate this. And so when I'm in Wisconsin, and it's in the middle of winter, and I'm freezing my ass off because I'm from California, and I'm like, I, it sucks so bad. I love it. I'm getting so close. And then lo and behold, I retired at 39.5 and I'm like, OK, I did it. Now, where's the victory parade? Man, unless you're Tom Brady winning Super Bowl #7, there's no victory parade. You simply sit there in your living room and go, well, that kind of sucks, and then next thing you know is like, you don't have friends who played at the next level because all your friends you made on the way up. You talk to your ass anymore because like you're not one of them. You're set up with all this money. Yeah, you get on a point that it's like like Warren Buffett and Charles are gonna do this till they die is because they love doing it. They're working. Exactly what they love to do. Well, I think it's even bigger, is that, you know, one of man's greatest driving forces is to live consistent with their identity, right? Like you got, you got a hat on right now. It looks like a cobra eating a baseball. Diamondbacks, Diamondbacks. So you identify as a Diamondbacks fan. Now there's probably 6 or 7 things in your life that define 90% of your personality. Like I'm looking at 600 books behind you in a Diamondbacks thing, and I'm like, this dude loves baseball and reading. Well, what if all of a sudden you couldn't, the Diamondbacks, you couldn't go to any more games and you couldn't read. Then you'd sit there and go, well, crap, I didn't even know that, but that was part of my identity. And this is the struggle that entrepreneurs have is that their excuse becomes, well, I was this way for that reason, but then they really became that way. So when you retire early and you go, oh hold on, I used to have 200 employees, 20 offices, and that was very important. And now I've got all this money and I sit in my living room and nobody gives a shit. Even the people who used to work for me won't answer my emails because I'm not the boss anymore. You're relevant. Yeah, and that's what Warren Buffett has faced with. That's, that's what I have, I haven't met one person who hasn't had this, this struggle. It's just like choose your identity, or it will be created by the actions that you take. Yeah. So this 39, uh, by the way, welcome to the top uh entrepreneurs podcast. We are Terry Williamson. He's an early epic member and uh he's behind the scenes. If you watch any of the trainings, he's in there in the legs. Yeah. Yes, there's no doubt. I'm the guy. Yeah. So what do you do? What did you, how did you reimage yourself after this 39, I retired and, uh, yeah. Um, well, I sat on boards for about 6 years, um, and then at 45, I'm like, I'm pretty sure I'm brain dead already, but in what little thoughts I have original thoughts I have left, I need to go back someplace that reengages my brain. So I went back to business school. Yeah, I saw that USC, right? Yeah, I went, I went to University of California San Diego. San Diego, OK. I was living in Del Mar, a beautiful, beautiful area, and they had this new business school that that entrepreneurs funded like Irwin Jacobs from Qualcomm and Ernest Ray. And like just billionaires. They threw in like $100 million and built this crazy amazing campus, and I was like in the 4th class ever. We had 52 students in my class. And it's just a school for entrepreneurs. So I went right back in. I got these 27, 28, 33. I'm 45 years old, people think I'm there to teach the class. But it was the most invigorating thing because it reminded me of when I, when I was younger and I was like, I remember when I used to used to think about building businesses and then I'd go do some stuff. Not like get the funding, build the team, that the, you know, vet the idea. They just like think of stuff and go do it. And so I'm sitting there my, my second year, I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna graduate and, and I'm, I don't know what I'm gonna do. So I took a social media class and like, I hadn't sent a text when I went there in, in 2009. My first text was in 2010. Not internet, not face, a text on your phone, but my last year in the, in the spring of 2011, I said, you know what, I'm gonna start a social media marketing firm. Screw it. I don't even know what social media is, but the world needs it. So I did right there in school and I was doing multiple seven figures before I graduated. My problem was I didn't know a thing about social media. Yeah. Tell me how you did that, because most of the times, you know, if you go, you want a hungry customer, that's your best pass, right? Yeah, so you heard of proximity is power. So I was the only student who was in tech Post Angels, one of the largest angel investing networks in the world. Gotcha. I happened to be at that point just on the board, like the junior guy who vetted a lot of deals and did follow up stuff, but here I am with all these business guys, and so I would call up and say, hey Pete, you heard of this social media thing? Yeah, you need it. I'm gonna send you over a contract. cause we've done deals together, right? I'm investing in companies with them. So next thing you know, I'm, I mean like one of my first con my first deals on True Story was the University of California, San Diego. Why? Cause I walked in and talked to that person. I'm like, Terry, I had just sponsored some big um pitch competition. Like they don't normally have students sponsoring like competitions and stuff, and like, so like, I would have a pretty high visibility guy and I'm like, I'm doing the social media marketing thing. That's great. Sign us up. So this happens sometimes in business where you get a ton of, you, you get a deal simply because you were in the right place at the right time and there was a degree of trust. You may or may not be qualified, but it happens all the time. Yeah. So you gotta you gotta keep your eyes open for that too. I mean, really. Well, you gotta be, you gotta be careful that you, that you want that. Because like when I, um, I mean, it's no secret Roland's my partner, right? So, um, or one of my partners. So in early Epic, I would do Epic Elite, and like, people would come and say, how about half my company? I'd be like, OK. And so it was, it was very um easy to do deals, but then I ended up with deals that like, well, how am I gonna add value here? How am I gonna do anything great? I own 14 companies. These are all people who trusted me to be able to help them. One, I'm not sure I can, and not 2, I'm not sure I want to. So, so it's very careful, don't, you know, don't and I get my advice to people listening, especially epic guys listening right now, is like it's passion, skill set, demand. Your zona genius is at the middle of that. Passion, skill set, demand. Look for deals. Where there's a piece of that, you're passionate about it. You have a skill set that supports it, and then there's demand for it. So now I only look at deals, and I look at a lot of deals, but I only take deals or interested in deals, they're at the focal point of those three points. Now, those I get excited about. So I'm like, oh man, I hope I get it. I was putting deals together that I hope I didn't get. Like, no, well, you wanna give me 30, I want 40 and they go, OK, 40. I'm like, damn. And so that's what I think I, and I would, I, you know, I was in a very luxurious position, John, and that like, at 39, I figured out that having a bunch of money didn't make me happy. That actually being fulfilled, makes me happy. So when uh Roland and I decided to do some stuff together, we named our company Fafillionaire Ventures. Yeah, I didn't know Roland was a partner in that, but that's cool. It's he plus me, and we're just like Roland, we're only doing deals that make us happy, that make a difference. Um, not just to get as many as that we would like make a difference, you mean social good or they make you feel good? And it Well, I'll give you a for instance, um, we're doing uh uh FBA, Amazon FBA roll up. Um, a lot different than most port there's, there's a 100 portfolio companies doing the same thing. Ours is around a niche. So we're doing it in the dog space. So the company is called We Googo.dog. I thought I'd break the cycle on .com. It's.dog. And the, the, the lead piece of that is charity-based. So the first thing we went out and said who is a massive charity that we can associate ourselves with, where we can give. So like literally today, which is April 21, 2021. Forgive me killing your evergreen portion of your podcast, but just for for for reference, yeah, yeah, we're sponsoring the Pay It Forward campaign for bestfriends.org. So we're we're paying the adoption fee for 2000 dogs in shelters across America. And for me and for me, it's like, wow, one, we're building this really great Hyper niche um brand around dogs, doing all these acquisitions around it, but like we're giving away a ton of the money. So if you can build business and save dogs, um, my wife is a full-time philanthropist. She's building, it's called the Sunshine Factory here in Montana across the street. It's a Ronald McDonald house. There's sick little kids and their families, and these kids get life flighted in and And she built a, built a house firm, you know, the family stayed there for months. So my point, my point is, is that It's easy to keep the passion part of the tryout alive, passion, skill set, demand. If it's something you really care about. Yeah, it's like two things. My uh my daughter right now really wants a new puppy. Yeah, yeah, I. We've got one dog already and it's uh my wife is saying no cause she has to take care of it. I go, no, wait a minute, I'm the one that walks the dog, runs the dog. I feed the dog, uh, and your son cleans up the poop. Well, we got, we got 3 dogs. One of them, um, walks on its front legs and wears a diaper, had a spine injury, has most of his life. The other one is blind, and the other one is a puppy though mama. And so it's easy to have a dog brand and and be doing a roll up around something I'm I already love. Yeah. And is that, do you see a payoff in this sort of way, and I'll give you an example, if you are you familiar with Mr. Beast, the guy in the video, yeah, so the more money he spends and gives away, the more uh subscribers he gets. Yes. That's 1000% true. Um, there are several, in fact, in the do space, there are several big brands, big, big brands that started as charity only, and they, so they started as nothing. Literally we're a charity, and they built it into multi 8 and 9 figure businesses because that becomes their identity. So, so, absolutely, yes, um, that's one of our, it's great for building the brand, like that gives us brand value. Like, like, one of the things we do is really big Facebook groups. So yeah, but our, our, our Facebook groups, we just talk about, we don't, we don't sell stuff. We, we have a uh half a million people in, in uh great Facebook groups. We don't sell anything. There's never an offer dropped in the group. It's just building goodwill. And now when we, we go in there and we have something that they might be, like we just did a a a um a report on dog anxiety. Like humans are going back to work, there's record numbers of dogs in houses, the dogs are anxious. Right? How do you help an anxious dog? When you leave, they've seen you home every day for in your, in your pajamas for 500 days in a row, and now you're gone all day. Yeah, I, I'm not going anywhere, but my dog follows me around the house. 100%. So there's separation anxiety, so we prepare a report. We put it out to half a million people and lo and behold, tens of thousands of them want it. Now we exchange an email address for that, and that can take them over to the paid part of our business. But it started as a pure gift and we didn't, we didn't ask or force them. There's no, hey, today only 50% off this because you're a Facebook group member. Um, so those two, those two pieces fit together, and I would argue that in just about any business, if you have a charity that's actually related to the business, that's great. But even, even if you don't, having a charitable component, and I don't mean 1% of profits, I mean, and something visible, and it's not even, it's not even like holding up a check. It's like, what did you do with that? Yeah, you know that, uh, have you seen those commercials, those sock guys companies, they said that, you know, the, uh, the number one request of uh clothes donation is socks. So every sock pair they sell, they give away a sock to the. Yeah I I'm saying it's a. Business model for sure. Charity is a business model, but people also under understand when it's authentic versus self-serving. Yeah, trying to duplicate, you know, Tom's shoes or something. I get it. Well, do me a favor, set up your 501c3, audit your financials and release them. And if you can show that you are in fact giving away millions of dollars, now people will believe you. Otherwise it's just some BS version. Yeah. What was first, did you, uh, the Facebook group, did you buy that or the, the Amazon, uh, we do first of all, all of it at one time. Um, again, we have, um, have the resources and, um, so, you know, we, we have the ability to scale businesses really quickly and, um, gosh, I think we've added 29 employees in the last 60 days or so, put an office in China. Um, so we did it all as a coordinated strategy. Yeah, so you're you're talking about 89 figure business right now if you're well, that's, yeah, that's what we're trying to, what we're trying to do is because there's this whole Amazon FBA consolidation. We're taking advantage of the ridiculous multiples there by by spinning something up very quickly. That's, that's different than the 100 other guys doing it, doing the consolidation. The other 100 guys are simply buying any and every pri uh private seller brand they can get. To combine them together in a portfolio model to either go public or to sell to a bigger group or something. We, we just, I just think that the actual way to do it is to actually build a brand through consolidation. uh, and, and I'll give you a a quick for instance on waste management years ago. There was a company called Waste Management. In a year, they bought 150 garbage companies around the country. They put them all together. It's called Waste Management. It's, but they all had garbage, and that was what they consistent with them. That's uh isn't that Wayne whozinga too? Yeah, that's him, and then he went on to do the same with AutoNation. Yeah. So AutoNation was a client of ours, 400 dealerships. He simply bought them all, put them all together. It's AutoNation, the world, the nation's largest um auto chain. So my point was when it came when it comes time to do consolidation in markets. Private equity guys come in and they're agnostic to the business. They just want the revenue and they want to combine that together. They're like, we'll buy um potato chip company, somebody who does oranges, somebody who makes cars, and somebody who does blue jeans, and we'll put them all together, as centralized management, but the IEA we create will give us leveraged returns. I just think it's a faulty strategy. I like building a Kind of a core brand and then having acquisitions around that. Because there's an accretive value for doing the same thing at a bigger scale. And you can also exit, not going public or to some other private equity fund, you can exit by selling it to actual businesses who would like to spare a million customers. Yeah, I, I got a question. This is, if you're buying an FBA business, it's doing 5 million, and another one doing 10, it's unrelated. Is there a piece of software that could consolidate that? The tracking of the information in there, so. Yeah. First of all, there's a billion pieces of software. I actually just bought, we just bought um 2 software companies, um, which will be pretty public news here, um, very quickly, um, to, to not do just that, but to do the data analysis on the Amazon business. There's 100 tools that do it right now, depending on what you want to look at. Yeah, but it's everything from inventory management to, um, Amazon Pay click to, um, all the metrics on any part of the business, to reviews, um, rankings, that kind of stuff. There's, that's already been totally done. Oh, that's beautiful. Yeah, it's a, I read a story about uh Walmart when he started. He said, look, I'm gonna dominate the small cities because, you know, people buy towels in San Diego, they don't buy beach towels in Nebraska. And I don't want to centralize, you know, uh, location deciding that. No. Well, one of the, one of the, um, and again, I can't announce the name, but we're going to market here in about 60 days, everybody will know. Um, what it does is it does Amazon ranking geographically. It's kind of like what you just said. It will, it will, people don't buy, people in sunny places buy more suntan lotion than dark places, right? Yeah, so this software lets you a portion your, your inventory, um, you know, based on that. So the technology is out there, but the problem with Amazon Business is they really are. Seller driven. I mean, there really are nuances of it. You know, a lot of, a lot of like the big payback from consolidation is you get to fire all the headquarters staff and bring them in, and, and so like. That works in a lot of places, cause like, if you bought 2 companies and you had 2 CFOs. Well, they both just manage money, it doesn't matter, we don't need to. So you either keep the best one or you keep the cheapest one, but you get rid of one. Well, it doesn't work that way with Amazon because the knowledge about the specific products and the ranking techniques and, and all that stuff are so nuanced that you can't just apply a corporate solution. Um, so, No, our team looks all day every day at just dog stuff. Our acquisition opportunities are just dog stuff. When we're doing product dev, we understand dog products inside and out. We're doing supplement brands and a new dog water bottle and a dog, a backpack, you know, but the thing is, this is all we, this is all we do. We all have dogs. Everything is dogs. Any of the acquisitions we do are dogs. Because we think there's a home filled advantage for understanding something at such an intimate level, and because there's 2.5 or so million Amazon sellers, we're just very selective at making sure the ones that we get fit into our core brands. Yeah, um, do you, uh, when you buy an Amazon business, FBA business, do, do you? Some of them manage it there or they, they want out or or? Well, no, that's, that's the, that's what I'm saying is that the that what's happening on the consolidation in the industry right now is portfolio companies, usually private equity guys, they're firing everybody. They're firing the management team. Now, if you've ever done acquisitions, and I've, I've been part of and done many, you know, the first question I ask is who are the key players here in this company? Yes, there's 1000 people that work here, but I bet there's 4 guys that can't leave. And so it, it's a very, you know, specific strategy. The strategy shouldn't be fire everybody cause we don't need you. And with and and with Amazon businesses, usually the top guy. Got the business where it was. It's very difficult to just luck out on a product anymore, right? Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's about getting, how do you get that product above 30,000 other listings there? I mean, whatever, I'm it's like exaggeration, but if it's 30,000 listings. Well, right, I'll give you an example. So my partner, um, Eli, Sam, um, JT. Um, he's 30 year old whiz kid. He's, he's my partner in this business. His last business, he was with, uh, gaming. He had a gamer's company. You know, all these, these, I call them kids, but, you know, twenty-somethings that like video games. So like he was very successful, he owned an e-sports team, but he was the number one guy in the planet for the earphones, literally like, who, who is the guy who, you know, who does the earphones? Well, it was him. I mean, literally sold $15 million a year, $20 at a time, but he made them specific for gamers. So then now that he had the brand as being one of the top gamer brands, when he added a product, he already had 2.5 million gamers in his community. So how you compete is by going out to your gaming community and going, hey, we got these little headphone things. You're gonna love them. They're the best ever. I built them specifically for gamers. Now you have to have everybody else. Yeah, you have to have that, uh, that brand and that community because, you know, it's Amazon's customer, right? So you have to absolutely now you don't have to, but if you're gonna compete in Amazon based on organic SEO and Amazon pay per click. You're gonna, you, there's very little chance. I mean, somebody wins that battle, it's just probably not gonna be you. But the trick is, can you bring your own traffic? Which is why you, why you buy Facebook groups of half a million people so you can bring your own traffic and you build email lists and you have influencers and you do these kind of tra off Amazon traffic generating maneuvers, so that you can build these big communities, so you don't have to compete with giveaways and paper click and SEO and all the normal ways that everybody has to compete. Yeah, I, I got a question about is a phenomenon happens, so we do uh reggae raises uh for my company and we don't particularly like sending our company to do a listing on Star Engine or Republic CO says, look, if you're gonna spend money, you know, let's say you spent $500,000. And you're gonna send somebody to start engine and they're gonna find, oh, that drone looks really cool. I'm gonna spend my money over there, cause they did a better job of marketing. Like, you're back to the days of that marketing goes, well, I just don't know where 50% of my money is being spent. First of all, absolutely true, uh, and, and what I, I think is building, well, gosh, let's just take an example. It's a poor one, but we'll try anyway, the Kardashians. Right? The Kardashians spend $0 on marketing. Why? Because they're influencers, they get it for free. They get 75 to 80 million Instagram followers or something. It's crazy. It's, it's crazy. That's why Kylie Jenner is a billionaire. She spent $0 on marketing. So that's simply it to an extreme. So my argument would be, you know, the days of like profitable Facebook ads, I mean it's really hard. Google because the ad, it's an auction system. Obviously marketers and corporations are gonna screw that because they can, they can, uh, outbid everybody. Google AdWords, go compete for the word lawyer in Los Angeles and see what it cost you per click click. I'm guessing you can't do it. You can't do it, right? So now it's always. Finding the next thing like now it's TikTok ads. We're doing, we're running, literally right now running TikTok ads. Why? Because the costs are so cheap. Amazon sponsored ads. The most profitable division of Amazon is sponsored ads. It's on an auction system. So I think it's a losing strategy to play the paid media auction game. You can do it short term in the beginning, but very quickly you get past the tipping point, and you, you're, you're gonna lose money. So I think a better strategy is do the Kardashians thing and build a community of people who love it, and then make sure that you can reach them easily without having to pay. Yeah, so I take it you have some celebrity influencers, dog loving celebrity influencers. We have, we have, um, several, um, we, we just signed up, um, there was a show called Pack, an Amazon show called The Pack, and, um. It's a combination of Amazing Race meets survivor. Yeah, yeah, I know, it's so the, the skier, what's her name? Lindseyvon, Lindyvon, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So the guy who got 2nd place in that, he has a blue mohawk and his dog has a blue mohawk. So we just did a book deal with him. We're actually publishing his book, Amazing Story, and we're paying for all of it, and he's an influencer with us. Beautiful. Yeah, so, so we get his community. Um, and you know, we're here helping dogs. Well, what better way to have a guy who's had a dog who's helped him, who has an amazing story, tell the story of helping dogs. Yeah, and that's a lot better than us doing paid ads to chewy.com or something, right? Yeah. Yeah, so that's, that's what we're doing over here. It sounds like, I gotta tell you, I know that you love dogs, you got your own dogs. It sounds like a business, it's a forever business versus, oh my God, I'm just gonna wait for the FU offer from private equity. Well, no, no, when I already had the FU offer a couple of times in my life and I took it. So we're, we're fine. So I sold out job. I sold out, guilty, right? So, but that puts you in the position where you don't have to sell out. So, I'm not saying that. You know, when the right number comes along, we won't be like yes, but it'll be yes, but here's the conditions. The charity stays alive, you make these contributions. We have these charity partners over here. We sit on the board of the charity. Like the bigger you are, the more successful you are, the more you call the exit rules. We got, we got acquired by like, I don't know, C Chewy. Then I would do this at a massive level. Well, why, why would they want us to do that? Because we've done something they can't, not CUY because they have mastered the online world, but Petco, Petco's, they announced they're putting $300 million into e-commerce. Why? Because of CUY, which is owned by PetSmart, which did $3 billion last year online. Might be a good business move to not be Barnes and Noble, right? Yeah, let's uh let's Amazon take out your. Right, so we come along. They can't buy Chuy belongs to PetSmart, but, but they could buy us and they wouldn't have to build it. It's already built. We simply scale it into Petco. I'm just using them as an example. It's cheaper to buy us. Then to try to build it yourself, because if you could, you would have already. Or you're just dumb. And if you're listening to the CEO of Petco and you're listening to me, guys, you're, you're, you're messing it all up. All right, just said it. I don't care. Yeah. Somebody might see that. How, how do you, are you the driving force behind this project or are you guys? I know that's, that's what I'm saying, John, kind of circling back to the beginning. You know, I, I really enjoyed building KPA into something huge. Yeah, that I really didn't enjoy sitting on boards and being fancy. And I really did enjoy digital marketing, and now I really enjoy e-commerce. The only requirement is that I've got to be here doing it myself. Now don't get me wrong, like I got time to talk to you because I have amazing people I trust, and it's like there's a whole level of decisions I'm not involved in. But acquisitions, hires, products, kind of the important stuff that I love. I get to see how all the pieces fit together. So it's kind of like jigsaw puzzle playing at a at a grand scale. I, I like that puzzle analogy, absolutely. Yeah, and then in the e-commerce world. It's wide open. There's not a lot of dudes like me out here wanting to play in this cause all the fancy dudes are doing Bitcoin, right? Stuff like that. Cannabis and Bitcoin, and I'm like, nah man. I'm doing it on dogs. Yeah. I don't get me wrong, I got a bunch of other holdings. I do cannabis. I got hemp, I got, I got some wine stuff. I got in uh air filtration, doing some stuff with some epic guys. I just, uh, started working with a guy doing billboards. It's a different, yeah. I mean, it's just great. Serial entrepreneur, I love it. I said, if the guy was a startup and I didn't know him, I, I wouldn't even join him, but he's done 3 or 4 other companies and I said, look, I'll have, you know. I'll come as a board advisor, yeah. How, how about, uh, how's your successor been at acquiring these FBA businesses? I mean, how, what's that like, what's that funnel look like? You gotta reach out to 100 that Roland talks about Epic, or is it? Yeah, no, we're not, we're not playing that game. It's all relationship based. Yeah, so what we did first, it's a hub and spoke model, which is build the core. Which is we go doggo.dog, and I think we got 12 products coming out in the next 7 weeks, coming out with supplements, hemp oil, um, we got a dog travel um seat and uh travel bag and a water bottle and stuff. So build the core brand, then build all of the community traffic assets. So email list, Facebook groups, stuff like that, and then get all the data analytics, the software part straight. So we acquired uh 3 companies in that space. And so now we have all of the core of it together while we network and, and for instance like this, I don't know if there's any, any big dog brands looking, but we're already influencers in the space. So we, we go directly to. Either the person who has it or whose good friend runs a big dog brand. And we're not worried about the good ones being gone because the good ones don't want to sell to Amazon portfolio companies. Yeah, yeah. I, um, is there a danger of Amazon, you know, being in the house and seeing the numbers? Out there and they go, you know what, we're gonna come out with our own brand. Well, Amazon has their own brand now. It's one of the biggest in the world. Amazon Basics, the big, the big fear is that they don't want the competition of consolidation. Somebody put enough brands together to compete with Amazon Basics, for instance, would be bad for Amazon, they could simply say we don't allow that. It's a private marketplace, we're shutting all your stores down. And that would be, that would be really, really bad. Yeah, uh, that sucks. Um, you guys have at the point, do you, are you applying most of Epic's, uh, strategies of buying no money out of pocket, or using other people's money, or, or do you guys have a fund to do that? Uh, well, first of all, 100% funded by us. Yeah, so we own 100%. Second of all, I will answer that question by saying, Roland Frasier is my partner. Yeah. So, you can imagine how much money we've spent. It's so close to 0 that we'll round it to 0. Yeah, all right, well, that's great. I mean, uh, you know, there's some acquisitions we're working on here and it, uh. You know, we love the business it's doing 5 million and 2.4 million and even uh yeah, I, I'm in the software business. I've been software all my life, so it's a kind of an IT software business. So, uh, but he, he is moving off to a new company that has potential to be a, you know, a billion dollar business, so he needs capital to, to move to the next business. And so many different ways we can have a 10 minute conversation, but I already think of 7 ways that you can get that for no money. I will say this to any epic elites listening. Most of the deals I've done are with Epic elite members, and I don't, I don't mind mentioning, like I said, we're looking at cannabis and hemp and all that. That's what I'm gonna say his name right now, Paul Newman. Paul, I love you, brother. I'm gonna send you this, um, and, um. It it's because most people think the deals is like us versus them. Like what, what his company is doing for the world. It's unbelievable. I mean, cannabis to actually cure people like hemp air filtration. I, I mean, this is just, and, and this is really the heart of their company. Now, why would he want to do something with me? Well, one, I'm all about kids. They're sponsoring the air filtration system at the Sunshine Factory. It's amazing. I'm all about dogs. They're about helping dogs. So when we come together to do a deal, we simply decide that it's not like how much money, how much money this and that, the money will all work itself out. But what it is, is like, what are you doing, what am I doing? How do we do that together? And then when both parties are motivated to find the solution. Not because I win, you lose, I risk, you don't risk. That's how all of my deals get done. Yeah, I gotta say, man, we're already almost 50 minutes into this. I gotta tease you. You teased me a little bit about 7 ways to do that. We're just looking at some, uh, like family offices and some. Yeah, maybe it's private equity group. It's just borrow the money and purchase it, uh, you said there was like 7 ways. Is there anything? I just thought of 7. Yeah, yeah, I just opened the loop on that, John. Yeah, OK, so now you want to know like what's away. Yeah, I do. OK. So the real thing is the motivation of the buyer. He says he simply wants capital. Does he want it all at once? Does he need it all at once? Does he need a huge chunk of money? That's the first question that I need, right? Yeah, so he wants a big portion of there's two things that changed, uh, two things that kind of changed his thinking just in the last couple weeks. One is a private equity firm came to him and offered him uh some money for it, uh, and we said. You know, he told us the conditions and he goes, he hasn't been through due diligence yet, so they will probably lower it there, uh, any multiple in the payout. Uh, and they want 66% of it, and they want him to stay on for 3 years at 40 hours a week. So that's not really an offer, but he's buoyed by the price. And the other thing his wife got in a car accident, uh, head on with a drunk driver 3 weeks ago. So he had a life changing event. It's like one of those tickets in your life where you only get 20 punches and be very serious about the punch. Uh, and this is a life changing event, so more money in the pocket, and he's got this other business that he's trying to start, and it's actually taken off. Yeah, yeah, so it's all, it's all about motivation and the thing we know about private equity guys, it's just about money. So you're probably not gonna sculpt the deal with private equity guys, but there's a lot of strategics. So what you simply want to do is be be the in between between him and the strategic, right? If you can be the strategic, it's even better. Because like, listen, screw the valuation. I know what it's worth, I'll give you this. Due diligence, don't worry about it. I'm gonna check 12 things, right? Now you have this free cash flow. Now you can either go into kind of stall mode, which is then I'll just pay you out a free cash flow. It's no problem. And you go, but I want more than free cash flow. Great, we'll do a little mezzanine debt. I think I can go out and I can raise, you know, $1 million at Y dollars, and the mezzanine guys are looking for deals. And so right now you get the debt, you get $75 you get all of it is debt with 25% convertible to equity. Mezzanine deal guys love that. The guy gets his money, you make sure that the cash flow covers the payments. That's all. And now you have growth. Now, if you don't need him to grow the business, let him go. If you need them, hey dude, I just need you around to be able to answer questions for 90 days. Great. So then all I like to do is calculate what growth I can bring to the business, not astronomical, spend everything you've got, but to accelerate the repayment of the debt. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I look at the 2, what can I build in 24 months and we'll pay this thing off. So basically for 24 months, he got his chunk. I got the debt, some of it is convertible to equity. I can pull a couple of levers. I can do a little debt reduction. I can add a product feature. I can go to a new market. We'll simply accelerate it, not to blow up the world model, kind of the de-risk model where I know I can do it based on my skill set, and then for 24 months, I basically work for him. Now, when I get done. I own the whole asset or I own 75% because I did such a good job. The mezzanine guy converted to equity and we're good. Yeah. Yeah, so that, that, uh, yeah, I love it. By the way, uh, I do have another epic partner, Sabri Savin, that's in IT works for Deloitte, does consulting for them. So you are very correct about working with others in the Epic Group and the strategy working with, uh, you know, how we're doing this and That's a, that's a, I have been talking to a number of mezzanine guys from Axial.net, you know, that group where you can, of course it's like, yeah, so that is awesome. Just one more and I'm gonna let you go. Yeah, right. Well, I got a message about Apic I'm gonna let you go. Yeah, no, no, no, I love it. the guy came back and he's like, man, I love this business. It's my little baby. I hate to let it go. I would probably do an ESO. and then you can, you can do, uh, EOS will let you take about half of the free cash flow out of the business to fund the old partner leaving, and then you can redistribute the equity to the people who were there, which is and it's all funded by profits from the company. It's basically the most, the best. From a tax standpoint, we to transfer wealth from one generation of owners to the other if you want those people to stay in the company. And they don't have to pay for the stock. And I need the CTO Oleg to stay in the company. That is what I'm saying, John. So if you had it at an e stop where the other guy is like, how much do you want? Well, I need I need 5 million. Well great. Now you can have a fiduciary come in and say of the 8 different ways I've looked at this company, I believe its value is X. Now a bank will loan against that with up to 50% free cash flow going to the contribution of the retirement of this debt, at which point the stock transfers to the people you want to go to. So the guy leaving, he guys kind of get a stake around, he gets some of his money. The guys who stay love the dude cause they didn't just sell and walk away. They get stock for free over time. The company retires the debt, meanwhile, your personal holding position increases. Now that's about a 34, maybe 5-year strategy, but again, it all goes back to what does the guy leaving want? Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. Look, this is Terry Wilson, this is why I joined Epic Elites, you go. Hey, Terry, thank you so much for the time. I appreciate it. I can. One thing, the reason I said yes to this podcast, one, because you're a good dude, 2, because I saw the interview you did with friends of mine, Tom Wells. We do, we're doing a deal with him. Um, and more importantly, I want to create the actual network of epic elite guys. That like, when you look back in 5, 10 years, we only do deals with each other. Ah, it's so powerful, that's so powerful, yeah. All right, my friend, thank you, Terry. I appreciate it. If anything I can do for you, let me know. OK, take care. Cheers.