Worked on 117 Acquisitions over career $5 Billion value , Nick Bradley E:44 Top M&A Entrepreneurs

Wow. Welcome to the top M&A entrepreneurs. This episode is brought to you by Duilio. That's D U E D I L I O.com. Dudio is a M&A due diligence marketplace of service providers. It's free to use. Sign up, only pay when you engage with the service provider. It's for online and offline businesses. If you're financing an acquisitions, lenders are gonna require due diligence. So hire due diligence on demand at due dility. And I want to bring on my guest. It is Nick Bradley. He helps ambitious business owners scale fast and exit rich. He's host of Scale Up with Nick Bradley, the UK's number one business podcast. He's an investor, M&A entrepreneur. Business mentor, he sold his first business at 21 years old. He's bought and sold 26. He just corrected me this morning, and he needs to update his website. It was 25, it's now 26, worth $5.2 billion in value. Welcome, Nick Bradley. John, it is a pleasure to be here. Yeah, that, that last one was a Monday deal. We're recording this on a Wednesday, so, you know, not to say it happens that quickly all the time. They do, you know, exits build up, but, you know, there we are. That's, that's the accurate figure, my friend. Well, that's, that's wonderful. I mean, what, what was it? What kind was it? And let's just talk about that. Yeah, so, so to put some context to it, so just so people kind of know that all of these companies I'm talking about, they're not all my companies, right? I've had a few exits myself. But my background is, um, uh, a, a good stint in private equity, uh, a good stint in corporate, and through that journey, I was involved in lots of acquisitions and lots of exits. So it's 117 acquisitions if you go over my career, uh, and, uh, 26 exits. So this last one, I was working with a, a technology business in the education space. Um, one of my last big exits was a, uh, a business called Ascend Learning that was sold to Blackstone. Uh, in 2017 for $2.2 billion I was running their international division at the time. Uh, so I've got a good knowledge of, of that space. And, yeah, this was an interesting one because, you know, a lot of the time when you meet a founder or a founding team and they're, they're saying, Listen, I'm building this to exit. And not enough people think like this, and we can get into the reasons why a little bit in this call. And, and, you know, when they start with that as an ambition, a lot of them don't have the fundamentals in place, let alone the foundations of how you would actually do that successfully. And quite often, things happen. And in this particular situation, um, one of the founders passed away. Um, this is over the course of about 3 years of me kind of working with them. We had to, you know, pivot around that, which is just challenging emotionally as much as it is from the business context. And, you know, for this particular one, we positioned it out very specifically, a little bit like, you know, instead of going out there with a net trying to fish and just, you know, whatever you get, you get. This is like sniper rifle stuff. We positioned the whole business, the product story, the journey, how value was created for a very, very specific number of potential exit, um, uh, categories. And, and then we went out there and we have a very, very clear process of how we start to, to work those, um, possible, um, opportunities. And so that's what we did. And then eventually we had 3 interested, uh, and 1 decided to buy it. And there we are. And you coached the seller through this process, you, you knew exactly what type of PE firms to reach out to or this was a strategic, so this was a uh this is this is a PE backed um strategic. So it's funny, right, like people say to me, you know, how do you exit a business, right? And there's only a few ways, right? It's not like there's a whole heap. The, the market right now is either a PE firm, if your business is big enough, so mid-market PE, and we can define that, uh, or it's, um, businesses that are backed by PE because, as you would know as well, John, you know, if a PE firm buys another business, the only thing they care about is buying other businesses and scaling them all together and providing groups. And they have so much capital to to make them. The money out there is crazy at the moment. So yeah, so this was a strategic off the back of that, but it's funny, I've been involved in a few exits where The vision of the business at the very beginning um needs to change through the conversations that I'll have, as you said, coaching and mentoring the founders to say, well, listen, if you keep going down this route, you're gonna build a pretty good business, but it's gonna take a bit of time. Why don't we think about what the market's doing? Let's look a little bit bigger, let's go to 30,000 ft, let's have a look at the, the transactions that are going on here, let's have a look at the strategies of these other companies. And why don't we try and think about your growth strategy that could be complementary to one of these other companies, and then, and then there's a very clear process of how we bring them together, so that, you know, it's called synergies, as you would know, but you kind of bring them together in a, in a kind of less, um, obvious way, and then when the two businesses connect, it's like, oh well, you know, obviously we can go 1 + 1 equals 11 here, so why don't we do it? And all of that, all of that is orchestrated, it's not just random. What at what level of revenue, even though, are you talking to him about this conversation? So, so from my, my sort of, I spent a lot of my career in mid-market private equity. So they're, they're deals that have been done in the eight-figure range. So you're usually buying businesses for 8 figures, uh, you know, usual transaction size, let's say $30 to $70 million and then you're looking to compound those up to a bigger exit, usually, usually in the nine figures sometimes can be higher, OK? So, so if we go back to the, the, the founders of these businesses, well, if you want to be a portfolio company, so you wanna be the, the, the acquisition by a PE firm that's gonna be the platform, the platform that will then be grown through other acquisitions. The, the minimum usually is around about $5 million. That's low. Usually, you know, someone would look at that and go actually closer to 10 in EBITA, we're talking about here is, um, is the range. But if you're at 5 million EBITA, right, which probably means you're at sort of, you know, $20 to $25 or $20 to $30 million in revenue, you're a, a nice little like, you know, what I call portfolio play or platform play for a private equity firm, OK? If you're smaller than that, let's say you're making, you know, somewhere between 2 to 3 million EBITDA, you might be a small bolt on to a, to a platform play where they might be making somewhere between 3 to 5 acquisitions. But all of the deals I get involved in, and the ones that I'm sort of more excited about are profitable businesses, um, or certainly very, very much run rating into a profit. And and can then be sort of co-joined into, as I said, that private equity platform. Yeah, I, I got a question for you because I have a lot of conversations with business owners on LinkedIn about, you know, growing through acquisition. And I, I gotta tell you what happens is they kind of come to a block because they spent 5, 10 years growing to $5 million and then you kind of insert the idea in their head that Well, you know, you can double your size in one year. Like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you blow my mind. I, how do you cross that chasm, you're like, you know, my, my idea was like, look, the thinking that got you here is not the thinking that gets you gonna double your size. You, I mean, you just have to gonna start hanging around people that have been in 25 to $50 million dollar businesses. That's my, I mean, I'm, it's funny you bring this up now because I'm in the process of writing, writing a book at the moment, more of a guide. And the title of it is the 6 Reasons Why Your Business Will Never get to 8 Fires and How to Fix It Fast. Right? That's the title. Oh, I gotta, I'm gonna be on the list to buy that. It's only a small thing. It's like, I'm gonna send it out because people, like, the reason is, I get asked this question all the time, right? And it's funny, I've got it here in front of me now. And reason, here it is. Let's, let's talk about it. Reason number 4, right? I'll read it out to you because I think it's a relevant part to your question is, Uh, you don't know how to leverage other people's money to drive growth. It's reason number 4. And, and, and this is the thing, right, people's minds are blown because you're putting something in front of them, acquisitions, which, which first and foremost people think is done by big companies, right? I'm a small business, I'm doing less than 10 million in revenue. I can't buy businesses. I haven't got the money to buy businesses, right? Or, you know, I don't know where to start, right? All of that is just limiting belief stuff because, you know, of those 117 acquisitions that I, I mentioned beforehand, not one, not, not one of those was all cash upfront. They were all leveraged in various ways. Even the 10% down or the equity down somehow, yeah, there's always something like, you know, a lot of people go out there and say, you know, no money down deals, no money down deals. I'm not an advocate of that um dialogue, right? So, you know, I, I know that those deals happen. I've been involved in two. But when, when those deals did happen, there was a very extenuating circumstance as to why they happen that way. What is realistic is, you know, 10% down, 15% down. Again, you can get investors to help you with this, it doesn't have to be all your own cash, but you know, you're leveraging the rest of the deal, right, you're leveraging the assets off the balance sheet, you're negotiating deferred payments in whatever form that is, right? And, and, and in small business acquisitions, you know, again, this, this, this thing that's often mentioned about the retirement age stuff and all these small businesses going bust because people haven't got succession plans. All of that is true. So you have, as the buyer here, you have your own leverage to negotiate the deal. So to your point, right, I've got a business, you know, I've, I've built it through blood, sweat and tears, up to $3 million.05 million dollars, all organic, one customer at a time, high risk, high cost, right? And then, you know, you and I turn up and say, yeah, but just go and buy your competitors, or, you know, go and create a group where the synergies between the various products and services can be sold into the customer base. This is how you do it. This is how you get the money to do it. This is the time frame, this is how you source deals. All of it is just, right, all of it is just a process, right? Knowledge, process, execution. And, you know, I've got a client, quite recently, she was doing $2 million. We got her up to $5 million in just under 18 months, all through acquisitions. And none of it was her own cash. I mean, like, like small amounts of money, like the stuff that she would have spent on her normal marketing in a year, we deployed to acquisitions, and she just got it done. Uh, what kind of business was she? Uh, she was in a, um, recruitment space, so it was basically, um, acquiring other recruitment firms. Yeah. But interestingly, she built her business by being super niched. Uh, and we just said, well, hold on, you know, what other products and services are required within your niche, so therefore, what talent is required, and how can we do that? But final point I'll say on this, it was a mindset shift. It was a thinking bigger shift. And, and also the idea of going to 30,000 ft and looking at the landscape of the market and where she was playing. And then knowing the process after that. But she had to make that mindset shift first before it was even gonna compute to get into the, the weeds, if you like, of how to do it. What, what kind of stories do you tell to help them with a mind shift, to think bigger? I had a conversation with a guy and he tells himself always when he's looking at an opportunity at a zero. Nice, I like that. I haven't heard that before. Very good. Yeah, I mean, I, for me it's, it's great to be able to um set the intention. So I mean I, the methodology that I, um, propose, teach, whatever you want to call it, is, is very simple. I have 3 things, right? Um, the first one is clear endgame. So whether that's adding a zero, or whether that's defining your life changing number, whatever that is, there's a process to do that. So the first thing you've got to do is you've got to have a clear endgame. If you haven't got a clear endgame, you're not gonna get to anything, right? It's, it's the number one, sounds so simple, but it's the number one thing that can unlock, you know, what you mentioned, the mindset piece. I, I love it. There's a book out called, uh, Start at the End. It just, you start backwards and Rob Durdek, the skate guy, he said like, hey, I built my $100 million fortune with Clearly setting out goals exactly what I want to do exactly what I want. Did you see my, my speech in Tampa last year, which was how to sell your business for life changing money? Have you seen? No, I haven't seen that, but I will. OK, now I I bring it up because in that speech I ask three really important questions and I think those questions are relevant to the people listening to this. First question is, what is your life changing number? And I joke saying it's not a billion dollars, by the way. Life-changing is the number that gives you time and money freedom. Quite often, that's a figure that's somewhere between $10.20 million dollars. So I always say, if you haven't exited a business before, set a marker around that number because if you've got $20 million in the bank, even if you just invest that money in like a 7%. Vanguard account or something like that, you're going to be getting something like 80,000 to 90,000, um, of income a month just off that very passive investment, right? So, I don't know how many people need $80,000 a month to live on. Maybe some, not me. I'm not happy with my houses and cars. But, but the point I'm making here is define the number. Second question is, why does that number actually matter? So what's it going to do, right? Is it about? You know, inspire family to think, you know, to do something different or supporting them, is it about going on to make a bigger impact? Why do you want to do it? And then the last question, which I think is probably the most important one that business owners don't ask, which is, is what I'm doing now, in my business, going to get me there? Yeah. And, and that question normally people go, you know what, it's not. And that's the thing that I said to, to the lady I mentioned beforehand that got her to change her mindset, which is just trying to grow one customer at a time in a recruitment business that's getting consolidated by acquisitions. I'm gonna become obsolete. Yeah, so let me ask you a question. When you ask that question, did you pause and let her think about it, or did you say, hey, OK, think about it, I'll come back in a day? How was that? I mean, I think it's really important what happens next and what you say next. I made her write it down. So, so, and I, I, I, for me, it's about, you've got a journal on this. Um, there's a really, um, have you ever read any of Keith Cunningham's book, um, books? There's one called I Keith Cunningham's? Ah, good. OK, so we are in, we are in. Have you got the road they've got the less stupid there. I love that guy. This is the sheets are pulling out. Yeah. So he talks about thinking time, right? And you know, scheduling something like 45 minutes to an hour once a week where you sit in a chair and you have a journal. Um, but before you go into that session, you ask yourself some powerful questions, and one of the questions he says is like, what am I not seeing in my business. So, so in this situation, what I say to people, you know, when in this kind of scale up phase is what we're talking about is, here are 3 questions. I want you to go away and sit for a couple of hours with a journal, and I want you to write the answers in paper, don't digitalize it, write it. The answer to those three questions and really go deep into them. And normally they come out of that, they have a bit of an epiphany, and they go, you know what, everything I've been doing right now is not, is not right. And then they'll say to me, how do, what do we do now? But, but you, I can't help someone really, unless they go through that mental journey, somewhat emotional journey first, because otherwise, any of the stuff that I can teach them is just not gonna land. Yeah, let me, let me ask you about that. How many people do you think you have this conversation with that they actually take advantage of? Cause I imagine some people go, you know what, I wanna get off the merry go round. Well, there's two ways of exiting a business here, right? So, so let me, let, so, so I, I was, there's an exit, which is your life changing number exit, right, which is the capital event, zeros in the bank account, like amazing stuff. And then there's you exiting the business, but you keep ownership and you just keep the, um, the cash machine, you know, popping out every month and paying you, right? They're both exits, they're just different types of exits. So what I found, what I found to be true, right, not always, but what I found to be true is that, Different business owners will gravitate towards one of those, and quite often it's pretty, there, there isn't usually a middle ground. It's not like, oh, I just want to be stuck in my business forever, and I wanna make money running my business. No one ever says that, and I, I wrote a quote, um, that I put out, uh, when I was speaking at this event and I said, you don't make serious money running a business, you make serious money, right? Or serious wealth if you like, from scaling and exiting. And that's what I mean by that. And most people get that, but most people aren't building back from that outcome. Yeah. I agree with that, yeah. What kind of numbers do you see? I mean, if you have this conversation, and you say, hey, it's a 1 out of 20, 2 out of 20, or what do you think that is? I mean, you, if a guy, if somebody was to come here and like, you're teaching somebody how to do this, they're gonna be, I don't know, the numbers are gonna be a more more lopsided, 50 out of 1 out of 50. Now you've been in it for many, many years, 26, bought and sold. You have the ability to kind of do sniper rifle type stuff. I, I, I have a belief that any business can be sold. Yeah. You know, I believe that any business, you know, maybe not when, when we, we first look at that business, right? But you can build the business for exit. I think in terms of your, you know, numbers, I mean, I, I've spoken to hundreds of entrepreneurs about this, um. Most of the ones, well, OK, the, the people who have very, very limited, um, limiting beliefs about their ability to actually achieve this are the ones that will tend to um move back into themselves, OK, without getting too mindsetty here, they just don't believe that they can create that type of events. OK, and quite often in a situation if someone comes to me like that. I will often say, well, it either doesn't mean enough to you. OK? It's not, it's not, you know, the, the reason, the why isn't big enough, or you've got so much fear and uncertainty in your ability to do this, you know, you need to think differently about kind of what you're doing, because you're just gonna be on the merry go round. I mean, I've had, I've had people come to me who have been in this kind of stuck place for over a decade. I'm not kidding, right? Like, like, I, I thought that I would've, I thought I would have finished by now. OK, well, let's let's evaluate why you haven't. No, it's they're still on a treadmill, and they're getting older and they're getting tighter, right? You know, and the energy's not there anymore. So my, my, my belief on this is that, If, if, you know, one of your highest values is freedom, you know, the ability to do what you want whenever you want, that sort of thing, you know, you've got to have an exit plan. You've got, you know, think of your business as a wealth creation vehicle. Wealth, wealth in terms of time and money. You've got to think like that. And so as soon as you get that in your head, and I think everyone, and this is my experience, everyone reaches it at some point. You know, sometimes people don't do anything about it. That's a different thing. But most people get to the point where they just don't want to be a slave to their business. Right? But it's the ones that then start to look outside of themselves, get help, you know, support, join masterminds. I've done all these sort of things myself, and then they start to get exposed to the strategies, the ideas, which are going to allow that to happen for them. Yeah. And they usually don't do it by themselves. They usually bring on somebody that can do it a lot faster. Well, you know, back to my, my little book that's here, because I was writing it before joining. So reason, here we go, just to have some fun with this. Reason number. There it is. Reason number 5, your environment, and the people that you surround yourself with are holding you back. Ah, look at that, man. I've already talked about two things in your book. There you go. We see, but it's, but like, like, I'm not, I'm no genius here, right? It's, it's, it's obvious stuff when you think about it, but the playbook to creating the stuff that you and I are talking about, right? Thinking bigger, getting in bigger rooms, uh, learning proven processes, executing, having the discipline to execute, right? Not give up all that. This stuff is not rocket science. I have, I gotta tell you, man, hanging around people that have built $100 million dollar businesses, I mean, it's like an opening a door to a new dimension. I mean, I can't believe how many pianos are tied to my legs. And I just cut that off when I hear somebody talking about, oh yeah, we just, you know, I was doing $2 million and I bought a business for $30 million cause the guy wanted out, and the bank said, hey, the, the business is gonna pay the debt. And he's now a, you know, an $80 million business because of that first acquisition. Yeah. I mean, 11 deal can change your life, right? And, and this is like, you know, when people sort of come to me and say, cause I focus on scale up to exit, right? As we said, scale fast, exit rich, but the jewel in the crown of all of that thinking, right, is acquisitions, right? Because it's, it's, it's the playbook of private equity, it's the stuff that I was involved in for so long. And so, so I sort of say, listen, if, you know, it depends on what you want to do, but you can get there so much quicker. You can get there within, you know, I've seen it happen within 12 months, on average, it's 36 months, you know, maximum from beginning of the idea to the end. I mean, you can sell your business in 3 years if you're intentional. Tim Ferris calls that uh ask the question he asked is, can you do it in 6 months? Well, it depends on where you're at, I mean, you know, there, I, I always say, you know, once, once you build the, once you start to get the momentum around the scale and the value. You kind of wanna have a timeline on it, but you don't wanna do it too quickly, so, so this is the way I, the way I teach it, right? So first and foremost, um, you know, do you want to learn how to scale your business via acquisitions? Do you want to learn that, right? Because it's just a process, right, it's quite simple, it doesn't take too long, do you want to add that to your repertoire of knowledge, you know, that's the first thing. Yes, I do, great, cool, awesome. OK, so let's do that. The second thing is, once you've, once you've learned how to do that, right, you know, do you want to learn how to scale, to, to kind of compound on that thinking? So, so how do I then rinse and repeat that, build value in the, in the group that I'm creating, take out costs, keep doing that position, and that process usually takes about 18 months if you do it properly, because, You're not often going to just do one acquisition. You can do one acquisition, but, you know, more often than not, there's, I always say, look, look for 2 or 3, you know, that are gonna create something compelling because the exit's gonna be to someone like a private equity firm, and they want it to be something where the strategy is super clear. And once you've done that, I have, I have a thing called Pathway to exit, which is in the last 12 months, so we're gonna, you know, in 12 months' time, you're gonna, you know, open up your, your online bank account and you're gonna count some zeros, OK, right? So that's what's going to happen in 12 months from today, right? Now, quite often, and here's the trick, John, it's a little bit quicker than that, but, but that's what I say. OK, so we're now on the pathway, you've done some acquisitions, you've got value, you've got money, you know, it's all there, the cash flow's there, we're now gonna go out there and we're gonna do some clever things, and one of the things I get people to do, I we pinpoint where the exit could be like a, a sort of long list or short list, so there might be 20 companies or 20 PE firms that we think are interested in, in the sector, the type of business that we've, we've created. Then we go to the events where they are, right? It's a little bit difficult. This is 12 months, you know, in the event. OK. So we do two things. I'll, I'll give this because I think it's an interesting thing for people here. So you go to the events where they are right. So, if you can get on stage, virtually or live at an event where some PE guys are and you just kind of tell your story, right? Nothing cooler than starting to sort of, you know, raise your awareness on the precipate of this stuff, right? Cause, cause, you know, all those firms are looking for deals. they're looking for if they're hungry, they gotta have deals, they gotta spend the money. So you want to go out there with the best pitch you've ever done, but it's not a pitch to sell to the business, it's a pitch of how great our growth strategy is or what we're doing. It's a, it's a, it's an ego pitch, but the point is it doesn't matter, right? The other thing you do is you go out to all the companies that you think could acquire you and you start to open up the the joint venture and partnership route. Because, you know, you'd know this, John, as well. More acquisitions are done from partnerships and joint ventures than anything else. When you start, whether it's, uh, upstream or downstream, and then in your ecosystem. We've got one at the moment, so this hopefully will be my 27th exit. This one's a 9 figure. I can't talk about it, obviously, but I'll tell you what's happened. Um, we, we looked at a company that was just acquired about 24 months ago by a PE firm in the US. We got a fair amount of data about their strategy. We reached out to them to form a partnership because we thought that, you know, the product and service that we had would be complementary to their customer base. Built some rapport with both the PE firm and the CEO of that company, found out through those conversations what their exit strategy is and what their numbers are, and also how many acquisitions the PE firm would like that company to make versus the organic growth. And I kid you not, this is, this is true. We didn't even get into a partnership conversation, they went straight to let's have an acquisition conversation. Mm. That com that process is happening now. Well, the conversation, did you know the CEO of the PE firm, uh, Partners? Not beforehand. I, I knew, I know the PE firm, but that, that, that wouldn't have swung this. It was a well orchestrated approach. Yeah, no, it's a nobody's gonna buy a business just because you know it's the synergies in the business that makes it where you could see the growth. Yeah, I mean, but what what's, what's interesting here, if you think about how this works, you know, if there's a, a business owner, founder listening to this. It kind of works like this, right? So, as soon as you start to create scale and you start to remove yourself from the day to day of the business, in other words, you have the resources to be able to have an integrator or a CEO running the business for you or a COO or whatever it is, you can then step away and be strategic. You can, you can look at the, the landscape, as I said at that 30,000 ft view. And you can see who's buying businesses, you can look at your competitors, you can do some desk research. Now, of course, you could outsource that to someone, but I think, you know, quite often, if you, if you're the founder of the business, going in there and doing that work yourself is gonna get you so much clarity, right? And then, and then you can start to think, OK, how am I gonna do this? Right? And so what I tend to do is I help guide and mentor these people on that. You know, the sounding board of how it needs to be done, but quite often, that's, that's, that's the role that happens for the founders once they start to get the machine working properly, and that's why that very clear pathway, as I mentioned before, is defined as it is. Yeah, I love that with the end goal in mind. I mean, you're forming that relations early on. Hey, I got a question, maybe you can clear up, and, and I've seen this more than a few times. PE firms are kind of notorious for looking at a business, really quick look and just, oh, you know what, I'm gonna write an LOI. And then they say, I'll give you this. And then they take 60, 90 days, and they whittle away, whittle away, and it goes, and the guy's locked up, and then they give him a much lower number. Is that, have you come across that? Yeah. Oh God, yeah, we, we, we used to, we used to do that, John. That, that's, that's the strategy, right? It's partly, it's partly the reason why I don't work in private equity anymore, because, you know, it depends on what your values are, right? And what you, what's important to you. But, um, Yeah, so, so what you just defined there, I mean, there are ways out of this, and, and there's a little technique that I advise, uh, my clients on to use, right? So, remember how a PE firm works. You're gonna have, um, a person in the front who's your rapport guy. Good cop, right? And their job is just to build a relationship. And so that first discovery call or approach is gonna be, you know, schmoozing, like really full on, right? It always is. Then, then what they want to do, or, you know, is, is the thing is they want to lock you into the due diligence process so that the exclusivity um timer is pressed. So quite often they'll, they'll do a, a shadow, uh, valuation. And say, we think the business is worth about this, um, on the premise that that's a number. If you're, if you're not attuned to how to do this as a founder, most founders might even say what they think the business is worth. Don't ever do that. Don't, don't even give a number. Just say, oh, what do you think it's worth? Give me a number. Never, ever, ever give the first number, no matter what, right? So, so then the number is put down. Then you're locked into this crazy due diligence process, as you said, you know, 90 days is about the average. Then they find something wrong in the business, right? This is where the, the spreadsheet jockeys get into it, right? And then all of a sudden, you know, the, the valuation going. The other thing that's really clever here as a, as a, a technique is over that 90 days, there's a thing called the trust timer. The truss timer is a, is a little bit like an egg, uh sorry, like a sandla thing where you spin it over and the sand runs through. The more time that you spend, right, with someone over that period of time, the longer that trust timer. So if I spend time with you, like trust between you and I might be for another half an hour once this conversation's finished. If we spent weeks together, like that trust timer might be hours, weeks, months, OK? So, so the PE firm is really just trying to get you emotionally connected to the outcome over time. Yep, yep, right. See what's gonna happen here. I'll give you an example of this very quickly, just for fun. So, uh, a friend of mine, not, not a client, a friend of mine sold his company, uh, last year, and, uh, went off and bought the, the, the Aston Martin, you know, the 1500 car. Now, before he did that, right, he thought he was gonna sell the business to a PE firm and he actually went shopping for that exact car. OK? And I had a coffee with him and I said, firstly, you're an idiot, right? Don't go and shop for the car, because most deals fall down, right? But he did it anyway. He got really attached, you know, the deal fell through because they tried to, to really lowball the number. He started, you know, he got really, really upset. Anyway, great outcome because he learned the lesson and then he sold the business about 2 years after that conversation, right? But the point being here is, most founders, they see the money. They go and buy the big house, buy the car, they get the offer, right, and they go, oh, that's not what it was, but they're so emotionally attached at that point. That they say yes. And that's all the plan, all strategy. All done. The way you get out of it, just to finish, right, is in that first sort of meeting where you have the guy who built rapport with you, you'll have the spreadsheet guys, you'll have the principals of the PE firm, you'll all be sitting around, you might have a nice lunch in a wine bar or whatever else. You go up to the most senior guy. You put out your hands, And you kind of whisper, like no one else hears it. You lean forward and you say, you know how, you know that number we spoke about, like, you know, just a few minutes ago? That's the number. If the number ever goes below that, I'm out. So I want your commitment today that that's the number. Right? And there's a power frame that happens in that moment. Yes. Right, and you have to be, you have to have the confidence to do that, but if you can do that, I tell you what will happen, the number may still not be the number, but I can guarantee you it won't be as low as it potentially was gonna be. Without that guy's uh commitment to you, he's gonna go back and go, oh, this guy's good. What's a, I mean it's a relationship business. If the word gets out that he's screwing people, he's just not gonna buy a lot of businesses. It's just it's a it's a massive power frame, if you ever watch the series Billions, right, with Bobby Axelrod and all that, it's a massive power frame, and it's just, you've got to deliver it well. But if you do it early, when everything's going on, they just know that you're not one of those business owners that's naive to the process. And they don't like it, like, like you, but the point is, you are gonna get a better outcome as long as you deliver that professionally, with confidence, with conviction, etc. Yeah. So that's buying a business. Have you ever bought a business from a PE firm or or family office, kind of a reject, it's not meeting up to expectations? I have, I haven't personally. The businesses that I buy now are all of people retiring. So I use, I, I'm focused 100% on that. So my whole strategy personally is buy businesses that are doing sort of around 1 to 2 million ebis. So I look at that sort of size of business cause I want to create a group structure to build into the threshold and then sell to private equity. But I have done deals, um, Where businesses have been um sold off if you like, from both private equity and corporate beforehand as well. Um, and that's, that's not a bad strategy. Uh if you've got a business and you're trying to scale via acquisitions, um, that sort of de-investment strategy is quite powerful. Um, I wonder if you could apply the same techniques to the pre-E firm that they do to you. Yeah, get an LOI on them and go, you know what, 390 days later, I, it's, it's not 10 million, it's worth 6 million. Yeah, I tell you, I'll tell you how that works just quickly, um. Remember, the difference between VC and PE is, is venture capital will go out there and speculate, you know, 30, 40 investments or more. They need to unload that crap, the dogs. Yeah, but a lot of those businesses aren't profitable, so you're not getting much value, right? So you're buying the revenue or the customer basis. In private equity, particularly mid-market, there are fewer transactions, so you might have a fund of let's say 400 million, uh, and from that you're gonna buy 10 to 15 businesses, something like that, maybe less, OK? One thing you want to look for, and this, this is another bit of a trick, is what the only thing that private equity firms really care about um having multiple funds over time. So they want to, you know, deploy their first fund so they can raise the second fund, etc. etc. and they make quite a lot of money out of the management fees and things. 2 and 20, yeah. Yeah, so, so one of the things you want to look for here is if, if a private equity firm is, um, raising for a second fund, let's say, and they're trying to um just close out the first funds, if they've had a big exit from one or two of the businesses, That's absolutely, um, uh, you know, adhered to the expectations of their investors. Quite often, they, they kind of just wanna, you know, exit the other ones just so they can move up the chain and do bigger deals. So you can buy businesses that are just problem problem childs, if you want to call it that, for lower multiples of private equity because they've already, they've already got the success that they expected through their other investments. You've got all of this, you've just got to be, you've got to understand the landscape and you've got to, you know, have your ears to the ground. And back to that point around, you know, you're not in the right environment, you've got to be in the right environment just to have that it's impossible. Like, you know, if you're not thinking about it, hey, look at that the press release they just signed Soul us. if you're not thinking, oh, there's an opportunity, let's jump on it. Let's have the conversation, yeah. Yeah, there you go. So, well, let me go back to that training you do or the consulting. I mean, do you charge somebody said, hey, I, I need to know that you're a, you know, a qualified customer willing to listen to what I'm telling you. Do you charge, you know, a certain amount or is it consulting for equity? I do, no, I do, I, I have a, I have a pretty, pretty kind of defined model with it, so. So we only work with, um, businesses that are doing, as I said, 7 figures. That's, that's the key thing. And the whole thing is about how can you get to 8 figures quickly. Um, so we have, we have different training on, on how to, how to scale via acquisitions. So people kind of, um, buy into that program for 12 months, which is a combination of, of a playbook, plus also, um, group coaching. So we do it that way. Um, because it's accessible as well. So, so we, you know, that's something that anyone can, if you've got a 7 figure business, you, you should be looking to make that investment. Um, then we have a mastermind which runs for 12 months, which is called Exit for Millions, and that is specifically, you know, you've now got this, this sort of business and you've got, you know, acquisition, you know how to do acquisitions, but you want to be around other, Uh, business owners who are in the same journey. Quite often in that mastermind, people are partnering, right? And as part of that, we also have a summit, which is called Scale to Sale. It's in Tampa, in September. And that's where we bring together investors, as well as, um, business owners, because a lot of the deals can get done, so there's private equity in that room. And then if someone wants to work, uh, sort of 1 to 1, where we go into the business and we literally guide them, that's the very last thing we offer. That's called the MVP, the maximized Value Partnership. And that is partly consultancy, but it's also a percentage of the deal. So we either take a success fee for the for the successful exit, or we take some equity depending on how the deal is structured. The way I kind of frame that, John, is, You know, we're not, we're not cheap, right? But we, we're pretty, our success rate on the outcome is, is there. And if you think back to, like, if you're going to walk away with 10 or 20 million, right, the value of that, you know, having the right team around you to do that is priceless. And so that's good. Especially if you were just doing a couple million even at that point and you've gotten them to a 10 to 20 million exit. Yeah. And we build back from that. So, you know, just to give you this, the life-changing number. So one of the things we do when we work with, with a, a, a founder from the first sort of engagement is we say, OK, current EIT data of your business, EI data that's required for an exit, based on what we understand about the industry multiples and what's going on within that sort of, you know, corporate private equity. So we have an idea of that. Then we overlay lifechanging number. So, so you want to make this amount of money, we don't get into the tax side of that, and we have people who can help with that, but we get into the kind of high-level principles. So you want to make this sort of money. The uh exit valuation of your business based on these kind of characteristics of this, is this, your current EI data is this, your delta to get to the EIT data that you need to to sell the business for those different things is this. What percentage of that growth can you do organically? What percentage of that growth can we do strategically through joint ventures, acquisitions, partnerships, and then how long is it gonna take to bridge the delta? That makes sense. It's quite scientific, that simple, but quite scientific. So, so then the, the business owner, the founder comes out of that going, I know exactly what I need to do. I need to get the EBIT data from 2 million to 3.8. I reckon I can do that in 18 months based on this, and then they structure the team or whatever resources they need internally to be able to focus on those, those growth drivers. Yeah, well, I love the way you say that, process, execution. Yeah. it is simple. Yeah, let me ask you, uh, you set these business owners up in a mastermind and peer groups. I mean, who do you go to for role modeling, masterminding? Yeah, so I, I invest a heap of money. Well, you know, I, I'll tell you the story very quickly, again, because I think it's interesting for people to hear my journey. So, when I was in the world of private equity, um, I built my lifestyle around the money, you know? So, I joked before about billions and Bobby Axelrod. You know, I had, you know, 2 Porsches, you know, million buck houses, all this sort of stuff, right? And then I had this kind of weird awakening, which was, I don't really want to be in this environment anymore for some of the reasons we actually discussed earlier. And so I thought, well, how am I gonna do this? I need to get myself into some different rooms. I've got a really good knowledge of how to scale and exit businesses, but I'm not gonna do it in the way I used to do it. So, um, so I went and got a heap of coaches. So initially, I got, um, I got involved in sort of the whole Tony Robbins stuff and got involved in kind of some mindset stuff, cause I just needed to think a bit differently. And then, um, worked with John Demartini also on some mindset and just getting clear. Yeah, do you know John Diaz? So he's, um, he's really good on, uh, the why, the why we do what we do and the why we think how we think. And a lot of it is, is that you've got to get the mind clear so that you can, you know, get out of your own way. Um, so I still invest, um, in 1 to 1 coaching for myself. Um, and then I get involved in, in various masterminds around the world. Um, a lot of the ones I'm involved in now are eight-fi masterminds. They're sort of invitation only ones, as opposed to ones you can just go and find a website about. Um, but there are people who are trying to build empires off the back of what they're doing. So, so that's how I do it. And the other, just, just to give people a, a kind of strategy for this, if you like, I work on what is called a 90 day cadence. So, I set my goals or my intentions, um, for the year, but I break it down into 90 day blocks because you can take action on that. At the end of every 90 days, I try and, you know, I used to do this all the time. I try and get on a plane, fly somewhere, go to an event that I think's interesting, where I'm gonna be meeting different people, not just because I'm trying to grow my businesses or, or find other deals, but because I want to change my thinking. And I'll go and put myself in a room for a couple of days in those environments, and then I'll feel refreshed, energized, new ideas, come back, and then I'll go again for 90 days. And I try and do that, as I said, 4 times a year. And I think that one thing has probably been the biggest game-changing thing. I really struggled actually, you know, through the, the lockdown when I'd have to try and do that virtually. I still did it virtually, but getting into a room in a different country, Just really powerful in terms of just evolving your, your, your thinking, your, your mindset, all of that stuff. Yeah. I, I got a question about your, I, I know that you run, you got the, uh, uh, medals over there. Oh yeah. How many freaking marathons have you done? 67 marathons, uh, yeah, quite a few. Yeah, is it, is that, uh, you just want to be in good shape, or is that clear help you clear your mind, you get into the runners zone. Combination of things, a combination of things. It's a, it's a great question actually to delve into. So, um, I, I, I specifically do ultra marathons, um, which are, you know, people say, what's an ultra marathon? Well, technically it's longer than a marathon, but you know this guy? Uh, yes, I think he's coming on my podcast actually very soon. So, um, so I, I, I have quite a few, uh, ultra endurance athletes on my podcast as well as I talk about business, because Cause I think there's a certain degree of um grit, discipline, resilience that comes from putting yourself through hard things. So, I, I run because it is about sort of meditation, and I, I get a lot of thinking time when I run, particularly long runs. Uh, I do it to stay fit and healthy as well, cause I think energy management's important, even though sometimes the endurance stuff can be the extreme of that cause you get quite tired, but you feel quite refreshed as well. Um, but the main reason I do it is when you put yourself through something as challenging as that, Physically, mentally, um, the whole piece, probably spiritually too if you get into it. Um, any challenges that you find in the world of business, you know, this idea of doing big deals, working with big numbers, the stuff that we've been discussing, kind of becomes secondary. And you, you just kind of, you know how to put yourself in a certain state of focus. And you learn that because if you're running an ultra marathon and you're at mile 70, right, some people can't even comprehend this, right? You're in a shitload of pain. And the only thing that's gonna get you those last 30 miles, right, which is in itself, like another marathon. Is, is where you can take yourself mentally. And doing big deals and being involved in some of those, it, it, it takes a very similar mindset on occasion, so, so I do it for those reasons. You know, I, I, I have been studying this, and thanks for sharing that with me. I, like, how do people, some people are able to just look at it as a game and just keep playing over and over, you know, and I see, uh, you know, you could see immigrants from other countries that came from a, you know, totalitarian type environment, just. No, like, uh, the yogurt guy just takes, takes off. I've seen, I, I got a buddy that was in Afghanistan as a marine, near death experience, and he just looked, and he's acquired 100 businesses. And it's just how he sees it like, just a game, man. What's the worst could happen if I go bankrupt? Yeah, right? Well, that is true, there is, there is, sometimes you've got to go there because if you're getting up every single day thinking, you know, I've got, you know, I, I've got to survive, if I don't survive, what's gonna happen? It's that whole um saying that you know, why worry twice. Right? We're, we're programmed, we're programmed to, to experience fear to protect us, but it doesn't always serve us. So, you've just got to kind of think about what's the worst that can happen. And the worst that can happen isn't usually that bad. It's, it's why you also see like, um, entrepreneurs who take big risks, go from bankruptcy to, you know, life, well more than life-changing money, right, some of them. Because they don't, they don't get attached to either the success or the failure, right? The failure being bankruptcy or the perception of that, or the success being I'm worth hundreds of millions. They just, they focus on what they can affect in the present moments. And so, if you think back to the ultra running, just to draw a line under this, you're never more present, right, than in the sort of mile 70 of an ultra marathon. Right, you know, it's bloody painful, right, you, you, you're just trying to survive, right? And if you can kind of, if you can kind of work within that space and, and what it teaches you, it, it can open up many other channels. That's, that's, so that's what I found from it. So I gotta go, so what's an ultra marathon versus a marathon. What's an ultra marathon? Technically, OK, so I'll give you the, um, I'll give you the pussy definition and then I'll give you the real definition, right? Like the, the, it's technically anything over a marathon. So if a marathon is 26 miles, you know, uh, 42 odd kilometers. Like, if you do another, you know, 100 m, you've done an ultra marathon, right? But, but most people would say, so if a marathon's 42 kilometers, right, to use the metrics, um, the first proper ultra marathon is about 50, 50 ks. So, so you're doing another 8 kilometers, which is about another 5 miles, right? That's challenging. Um, personally, I think it's when you get into the 50 mile and upwards that you're really challenging yourself. That's, that's effectively like a double marathon. Uh, you're out running for anywhere between probably 8 to 10 hours. Um, and that's, that's proper challenging stuff. Yeah, that's, uh, David Goggins. Yeah, it's all that sort of stuff. I mean, he does 200 miles, right? I've never, you know, I, there's a point where I, I like to do these things, but I wouldn't, you know, kill myself in the desert at 140 degrees, right? Yeah, so I, I've got a friend called Frank McKinney, who's in the real estate game, and he builds very, very, um, uh, amazing high-spec homes in Miami. Uh, each home is, uh, eight-figure home. And, uh, he goes and runs the, um, it's called the Bad Water Ultramarathon, which is in, um, uh, oh God, it's in the desert somewhere. I can't remember exactly where it is. In Mount Whitney, wherever that is in the US. Uh, and you're running through literally salt, salt basins in, you know, 100 °F. I think that's the salt flats. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he does that, um. Same reasons I do it really, you know, you kind of, you learn a lot about yourself, um, when you put yourself through those extremes. Yeah. So where are you at right now? What don't you know the answer to that, you know, like, hey, I'm, I, I gotta get myself to a trade show. I, I want to go to a convention. I gotta read this book. Where, what do you, what don't you know that you need to go to the next level? Yeah. So, so I, I set, um, I, I, I set a 20 year vision. I'm now 48 and I set a 20 year vision when I was, um, 40. And, um, one of, one of the things I wrote down, and I've got it on my screen savers here and all that was, I want to buy the Boston Celtics. I'm a massive basketball fan. I've been. Yeah, I've got, you can't see it, but below the medals there is a signed, uh, Larry Bird, um, poster, right just there. And, um, Indiana. There you go. Right? So I even, I, I went as far as working out what they were sold for when they were last on the market. Uh, which was around $350 million. I know the valuation at the moment is somewhere between $3.04 billion dollars. And, um, I even reached out to Jesse Itzler and had a call with him because he owns the, um, Atlanta Hawks. Yeah, yeah, so I had a call with him about it. And like, I'm not a billionaire, right, let's be super clear to everyone listening here. But, you know, what, what does it, what does it take to do that, right? And I'm not, I'm not the guy who's gonna go and do sort of tech startup, and there's a lot of billionaires that have been created from uh M&A and private equity. So I'm still trying to understand what that looks like, you know, trying to get around people, you know, spending more time with billionaires, that's interesting. That's, you really wanna blow your mind up. Gary Buck's trying to do the same thing. He wants to, I think the Mets. Yeah, I think, uh, the Jets, that's right, the, uh, yeah, the, the, the NFL team. Yeah, I mean, I, I just, I mean, for me it was just putting out something big, right? You know, the, the reality of it is I'm not that attached to the outcome of owning the the Celtics. It's more about who do I need to be to be able to do it, right? So, so what's the growth that has to happen? You know, from a, from a mindset skill set, network perspective to do it. So a couple of zeros. You know, Bob Proctor, this guy, he's another mental guy. He talks about it, he goes, look, everything is already there for you. You just got to have the knowledge process and then execution. Yeah, and I, and I believe that. And, and, and someone said to me the other day, and I thought this was, was a brilliant, um, kind of line as well, is that, you know, when you wake up in the morning. Somewhere, somewhere in the world, there is a person who has the resources, whatever that is, the knowledge, the money, the network again, to, uh, bring you closer to whatever you're trying to achieve. So your job is not to focus on how the hell am I going to buy the Celtics. My job is to focus on, who do I need to connect with, right? Or, you know, what do I need to learn? You know, those sort of things today, which is gonna take me closer to that outcome. Yeah. And get past that first question, and then start asking the other, right. So, so, you know, for me, as I said, my process is, you know, get into rooms, uh, meet different people. So the big thing for me in 2022 is one of my goals is, um, to speak more on stages, particularly in North America. So I did a number of different speeches last year. I was in sort of in Tampa doing one, to different investor groups. So I'm, I've got a number of different, um, speaking events that I'm booked in to do. And I'm doing that for a couple of reasons. A, I like to educate and I like to help people through what I've done, right? So, I enjoy the process of speaking. But I also know that, you know, by going to those, those stages and then speaking on bigger stages, my network's getting bigger, and it's bringing me closer to the people that I need to meet, not even knowing who they are yet, to achieve some of those big goals and that bigger vision. Yeah, it's an interesting behavior that happens. The more you share what you've learned, the closer you get to the people that you want to do the next thing with. And that's what I found with podcasting, right? As, as I'm sure you have, John. So, so I'm, I'm connected to some, some quite interesting groups, um, off the back of this, um, some quite high profile names. And, um, you know, like I mentioned, Jesse Itzler and those sort of things, there's others. But um that came from, you know, putting yourself out there in a, in a form of media as we do, and it's, it's funny, I'll I'll I'll sort of finish with this piece is that, A few years ago, when I was doing the private equity firm, I was traveling around the world, but I could go to like any city, and I wouldn't know anyone. So I'd go and stay in a hotel, I'd go out for dinner, you know, maybe work related or by myself, you know, you know, these work trips, how they used to be. When I went traveling in September, I went to Dubai, Canada, the US, I'm doing, there wasn't one city. I ended up going to 4 countries, 9 cities in something like 25 days. There wasn't one city that I couldn't have stayed at someone's house, uh, gone out for dinner with multiple people, right? And all of that was created through the podcast and, you know, having these various platforms that we all have access to right now. Yeah, I, I, I love doing podcasts, aside from, uh, getting smarter every time I talk to somebody like you. Um, then, then sharing this with my network and they love it. So, thank you so much. So we're at the hour already. This is Nick Bradley, definitely a top M&A entrepreneur. He's uh Helps ambitious business owners scale and fast and exit, hosts of Scale Up with Nick Bradley. Watch that, get on that podcast. Is, is it on YouTube too, or? Yeah, YouTube, uh, there's a little bit on YouTube, but we'll, uh, we're launching the YouTube channel, I think in March, so people can find it, but it's best just to listen to the podcast now. Yeah, I, I gotta tell you, I get almost 5 times more views from my YouTube channel than I download audio. Yeah, well, I've I've done a, I've done a partnership with a guy called Evan Carmichael. Um, who's got, um, something like 3 million subscribers to his YouTube channel. Yeah, he's the guy that does the list, like 8 top things I learned. And he's he's helping me with that. So yeah, so I've got that. So, so the best way to reach me is, yeah, have a listen to Scale up with Nick Bradley for sure. I've got a, um, a group on Facebook, which people come and they can kind of ask questions and get involved, which is, um, build your business empire. And that's specifically for people who are trying to do, you know, scaling, acquisitions, trying to build something substantial. It's that type of thing. So yeah, if people want to reach out to me or get in touch with me, they're the places that I hang out and then they can kind of, you know, become part of the stuff that, um, that I'm talking about. Ladies and gentlemen, Nick Bradley, thank you so much for joining us. Great John, thank you. I appreciate this. Thank you. Like