The rich are making silent moves.
Find out what they’re investing in before it’s too late. A former Google engineer just broke the silence.
The rich are making silent moves.
Find out what they’re investing in before it’s too late. A former Google engineer just broke the silence.
Why do the rich keep getting richer?
This ex-Google insider just exposed the investments that quietly power the portfolios of billionaires
— from tech founders to hedge funds. If you're still saving the old way… you're losing.
What if the wealthy are investing in assets you’ve never even heard of? A former Google engineer reveals the hidden strategies the 1% use to grow and protect their wealth. This isn't taught in schools — and it’s not in mainstream media. Watch before this gets taken down.
#WealthSecrets
#FinancialFreedom
#PassiveIncome
#TechInvesting
#ExGoogleEngineer
#HiddenInvestments
#RichVsPoor
#MoneyHacks
#FinanceTips
#SmartMoneyMoves
#InvestmentStrategy
#AIInvesting
#FutureOfWealth
#1PercentSecrets
#WealthBuilding
Watch until the end — the last 60 seconds could change your financial future.
Don’t just scroll — learn what the 1% are doing that you’re not.
Think this info will stay public for long? Think again — tap play.
This is what they don’t teach in college — start watching now.
If you’ve ever wondered how the rich keep getting richer… this is your answer.
Find out what they’re investing in before it’s too late. A former Google engineer just broke the silence.
The rich are making silent moves.
Find out what they’re investing in before it’s too late. A former Google engineer just broke the silence.
Why do the rich keep getting richer?
This ex-Google insider just exposed the investments that quietly power the portfolios of billionaires
— from tech founders to hedge funds. If you're still saving the old way… you're losing.
What if the wealthy are investing in assets you’ve never even heard of? A former Google engineer reveals the hidden strategies the 1% use to grow and protect their wealth. This isn't taught in schools — and it’s not in mainstream media. Watch before this gets taken down.
#WealthSecrets
#FinancialFreedom
#PassiveIncome
#TechInvesting
#ExGoogleEngineer
#HiddenInvestments
#RichVsPoor
#MoneyHacks
#FinanceTips
#SmartMoneyMoves
#InvestmentStrategy
#AIInvesting
#FutureOfWealth
#1PercentSecrets
#WealthBuilding
Watch until the end — the last 60 seconds could change your financial future.
Don’t just scroll — learn what the 1% are doing that you’re not.
Think this info will stay public for long? Think again — tap play.
This is what they don’t teach in college — start watching now.
If you’ve ever wondered how the rich keep getting richer… this is your answer.
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00If you guys don't know how to buy businesses, if you don't know acquisitions, if you don't know deal making, I think you're f***ing up.
00:05We are at all-time low levels for ownership in this country.
00:08The big keep getting bigger, and the little guy gets hammered.
00:12What do you think that does to our society at large?
00:15We allow only a few to own.
00:17We are putting ourselves, our kids, our future generations in a really difficult place.
00:22These are the 10 steps you have to learn.
00:24Much people on the internet just want to entertain you.
00:26They want to dance in Barrett up on stage.
00:28They want to give you that thing called motivation, which actually is pretty f***ing worthless.
00:32I'm here to do one thing for you.
00:34Make you money.
00:35We're going to talk about how to make more of it.
00:37We're going to talk about how the big boys do it.
00:40And we're going to get technical as f***, basically.
00:42That's what this whole thing is about.
00:45And all I ask of each of you is you're going to have a moment here where, I don't know, some words sound different.
00:51Maybe it feels a little bit technical.
00:53Maybe there are some tactics here that are getting a little bit deeper than that dancing bear on the internet.
00:58We've all gotten used to.
00:59And what I want you to do in that moment is pull out your pen and paper.
01:02And I want you to actually buckle down.
01:03Because here's a secret I realized really early in my career of working in high finance.
01:08That all of the money is made on the classes we f***ing hated in high school.
01:16Accounting, all the money made.
01:18Finance, all the money made.
01:20Calculus, okay, probably not.
01:21But everything else besides calculus is where all the money is made.
01:26And yet, it's the very thing that bores us that we'd rather just Netflix and chill instead of.
01:31So we're going to dive into that today.
01:33And let's see if we can figure out this PowerPoint.
01:35Okay.
01:35These guys.
01:37Anybody know everyone on this screen?
01:39Who's this guy?
01:40Do you guys know who this is?
01:41Yell his name.
01:42Carlos Slim.
01:43Nice.
01:44My Latino out there is like, of course.
01:46Okay.
01:46This guy.
01:47This guy is the richest f***ing guy in the world.
01:52LVMH.
01:54Anybody know this guy?
01:57Charles Koch.
01:57That's exactly right.
01:58What about this guy?
02:00Ah, yeah.
02:01I love it.
02:01We got an Indian in the house, too.
02:03Okay.
02:04Richest guy in India.
02:06What's funny about this is, one, you don't see these people on the internet.
02:09Why?
02:10Because they get rich pretty quietly.
02:12Two, these people all have one thing in common besides their giant bank accounts.
02:17What do you think that is?
02:18They're men.
02:19They're men.
02:19Okay.
02:20That's right.
02:21They have penises.
02:22There is, there's a penis attached to every one of those, I think.
02:25Okay.
02:26Anything else besides that?
02:28Growth through acquisition.
02:29They own holding companies.
02:31You think Bernard came up with Louis Vuitton?
02:34Does this guy look like a fashion icon?
02:36No.
02:37He bought that thing for pennies on the dollar.
02:40Same with Dior and a bunch of the biggest brands in the world.
02:43They followed this playbook.
02:45And that playbook is what we're going to break down today.
02:48It's how a bunch of guys that look like this take your blood, sweat, and tears as entrepreneurs.
02:55And just at the moment where you can no longer tolerate running your business, they buy it from you.
03:02And they 20x it.
03:04That is what we are going to change here.
03:07We're going to stop one thing I see happen to entrepreneurs again and again and again.
03:11Is that you sell at the point of paying for you, which is the point of profit for somebody else.
03:18And instead, we're going to talk to you about the private equity playbook and growth through acquisitions as opposed to one client at a time.
03:25I have this one overarching truth, which if you believe this, you can believe most things I'm going to tell you today.
03:30Which is that it is easier to buy profits than it is to build them.
03:34It is way easier.
03:35Why?
03:36At Contrarian Thinking, I've always had this purpose of I don't buy into people's hopes and dreams, a.k.a. venture capital.
03:45I buy into facts and realities, a.k.a. private equity.
03:49And if you can believe that, then you might be interested in what the rest of this presentation is about.
03:55The second truth that these guys know that most of us don't is the exact opposite of all the books that we read early on.
04:01The, you know, power of one, the one thing.
04:06I mean, the richest guys in the world tell us you must focus on one thing, right?
04:09Otherwise, you won't be successful.
04:10Well, do you think the richest guy in the world, Bernard, is pretty successful?
04:15Yeah.
04:15And yet he has a holding company of more than 20 individual companies.
04:19It's all about how can you acquire, add leverage and scale and combine so that the parts are greater when they are summed.
04:28That is the goal today.
04:29But the other thing that people typically get to at this point is they're like, that's awesome, Cody, but I am not Carlos Slim.
04:35I don't have access to millions of dollars or tens of millions of dollars.
04:38And so how am I going to go out there and buy these businesses?
04:42How am I going to buy profits?
04:43I can acquire a client for basically zero, theoretically, if I go do it door to door, if I go do it by cold calling.
04:49But how can I do this at scale if I don't have a ton of money?
04:52And the secret word there is really three words and three letters.
04:55It's called the LBO, leveraged buyout, which is a fancy way of saying I'm going to use other people's money to buy some shit for myself.
05:04And they're going to get a percentage of it, but I am not going to put my skin all the way down on it.
05:10And once you realize that there's this word LBO out there that nobody in private equity wants you to know about,
05:15and you look at any deal that's done in private equity, you'll realize, oh, wait a second.
05:19These guys didn't put a bunch of their own skin on the line.
05:22They didn't do what entrepreneurs today tell all of you guys to do.
05:25How many times have you heard this story?
05:27I slept on my couch for two years to pull this off.
05:32I mortgaged my house.
05:34I barely made it.
05:36I'm so tired of that narrative.
05:37We've all done it.
05:38It is hard.
05:39Don't get me wrong.
05:39Being in business means that we're all in this room a little bit.
05:43We're masochists, right?
05:44Like, it's not that fun, actually, you know, when you run a business.
05:47It's hard.
05:48Payroll doesn't get made all the time.
05:50Your employees are always the solution, but also the biggest problem.
05:54And we know that.
05:55But I don't want to get over this hustle porn nonsense mentality that you have to sleep on a cot or in a couch to make your millions.
06:03I actually just think that meant that those people weren't very good.
06:06Because guess what?
06:07I've accumulated a giant portfolio, happily never slept on a couch, even though my parents came from nothing and they were immigrants.
06:13So what if we could just work smarter instead of harder?
06:17That's my idea.
06:18Now, before I get into the tactics, let me tell you why I'm even open to talking about this on the Internet.
06:23Just like Ryan said, most people who've had some sort of success in private equity, you don't see us up here on stages, YouTube channels, blah, blah, blah.
06:31We leave that to the 24-year-olds that pretend that they've ever done anything and really haven't, right?
06:35Now, the reason I'm willing to do this is because the people that then listen to this advice and apply it, I have a mission for you.
06:47The information is free, but it's actually not.
06:50It comes with strings attached.
06:51What is the number one reason people leave jobs?
06:54Categorically, by a scale of three, they're boss.
07:01Now, if you guys buy these businesses, take over these companies, what do you become?
07:08So don't suck, huh?
07:10Be better to the next generation than you were treated yourself.
07:14How about when you're an owner, give your people skin in the game?
07:18How about as you build your business, you also build up your community?
07:22How about you do right by those that help you profit?
07:26That's my ask.
07:27I think the world today is a little messed up.
07:29And I think our country has a lot of difficulties in front of us.
07:32And the solution is not shopping local because it turns out we're incentive-inbiased short-term monkeys running around that only do the things that are easiest for us.
07:41What actually changes communities and what could actually change our country is more of us getting skin in the game and us locally owning the businesses that serve us.
07:50That's my belief.
07:51I think if we do that, we can change everything.
07:53And that's why I'm willing to yell about it on the internet all the time.
07:56So if I hear that you bought a business, but you're part of the problem, I don't know.
08:01I don't really have anything I can do to you, but I won't like it.
08:04And I hope that you hold the other people around you accountable to that.
08:07This isn't one of those things where I go out there flexing a Lamborghini or fast cars or jets.
08:12I can't stand any of that.
08:14Instead of doing that, maybe help the other people surrounding you because when all of us are a little bit wealthier, when all of us have skin in the game, the world gets a little bit better.
08:24Speaking of helping you guys out, the most valuable resource a business owner can have, it's not money.
08:28It's actually time.
08:30And being a business owner means that your attention is getting pulled in a million different directions.
08:34And if you own multiple businesses like I do, you don't even want to see what my calendar looks like.
08:40That's why we're partnering with Roll by ADP.
08:42Because basically they have this AI technology that takes the guesswork out of when you're supposed to pay your employees by sending you automated notifications.
08:50You basically complete the payroll.
08:52Freeing up that mental space means I get to think about my next move, not the last pay period.
08:58Even better than getting paid on time is getting a bonus for a job well done.
09:02With Roll's 24-7 in-app messaging, you can request off-cycle payments.
09:07Super easy.
09:08So check out Roll by ADP.
09:10Click the link in the description below and you get a three-month promo offer just for you guys.
09:14So you can get back to what's important.
09:16Speaking of which, let's get back to the video and my calendar.
09:19We're going to do what the few will do.
09:21And that is not just own a business.
09:23It's that we are going to be empire builders.
09:26This used to be a thing back in the days of Rothschild and Rockefeller, right?
09:31They took these hard, dirty businesses and they proselytized them across the country.
09:36That's what we're going to do today.
09:38And the reason we're going to do it is because I think you guys are ready for that Warren Buffett level shit, okay?
09:44I think we're going to break down something in a way that this guy, the Sage of Omaha, might relate to because I've stolen many of his ideas.
09:52Now, one thing you should definitely do before you listen to anybody on a stage is you should question them.
09:58You should question everybody, including me, maybe especially me, according to my husband on some days.
10:03And what I only want to tell you this.
10:05I don't want to come up here and talk to you about all my accolades.
10:07All I'll say is this.
10:08There's plenty I'm bad at.
10:09If you ask my head of marketing, Chris, who's over here, it's I hate details and operations.
10:14Like I'd rather slit my wrists than do that.
10:15I need somebody else to take care of it.
10:17Many things I'm bad at.
10:18Don't listen to an operational speech from Cody Sanchez on details.
10:22Now, a couple of things that I'm pretty good at is I've done a ton of deals.
10:26So I've closed hundreds of different businesses.
10:29I was at Goldman Sachs.
10:31I have the PhDs and the MBAs and all that jazz.
10:33So I know a thing or seven about buying businesses.
10:36And what I think could apply to all of you that might be interesting is that it's been cross vertical.
10:42And so as you're listening to me give an example of a car wash, a laundromat, a SaaS company,
10:47I need you to take a step back.
10:49And usually most people on the internet can't do that.
10:52They go, well, she said buy a car wash.
10:54So I'm going to buy a car wash.
10:56And I'm like, it's called an example.
10:59Doesn't mean everybody needs to buy a car wash, right?
11:01This is an example.
11:02Now, I talk about some of these lower level businesses, what I call the gateway drug businesses,
11:07because they're simplistic.
11:08It's like if you can't understand dirty clothes plus change plus washers, probably shouldn't own
11:14any business, not even a laundromat, right?
11:16So that's why we talk about them.
11:18But I want you to think about this idea for whatever your sector is.
11:21So if you're like, but I own e-com.
11:23Okay, yeah, apply it to e-com.
11:25And if you're like, well, I own advertising businesses.
11:27Great, apply it to advertising.
11:29We're going to use the frames to cross sectors.
11:31I've bought SaaS companies.
11:34So this company is part of what I call my satellite acquisition strategy.
11:39So I own 26-ish boring businesses now.
11:42We're about to close on two.
11:44So maybe it'll be 28, but let's say 26 businesses.
11:48I own three media companies.
11:50And those three media companies all talk about boring businesses.
11:53And they talk about how to acquire them and how to buy them at ContrarianThinking.co.
11:57And I was like, wait a second.
11:58Not only do I want to educate people, I want to solve another problem for them.
12:02I want to help them deal source.
12:03So I bought this company called BizScout, which helps people find small businesses in local
12:08areas.
12:08So one SaaS acquisition down.
12:11Then I actually bought out my partner at unconventionalacquisitions.com because I wanted
12:15to scale it like crazy and he wanted a lifestyle business.
12:18And so I bought him out.
12:19So you could use this strategy to buy out a partner, to buy out vendors.
12:23I also bought this company ApproachMint.
12:25Now ApproachMint, what does it do?
12:27The number one reason small businesses close one versus the other, what do you think it
12:33is?
12:33Like plumber A, plumber B.
12:36They're both exactly the same.
12:37One's going to close a client more than another.
12:39Does anybody know why?
12:41It's response time.
12:42The number one reason you will close a lead is your speed to respond.
12:46Cross any industry.
12:47And I've looked at thousands of deals across every sector in private equity.
12:52You think it's your marketing.
12:54You think it's your price.
12:55No, no, no.
12:55It's literally, can you respond faster than the others?
12:58So when I realized that, I bought this company ApproachMint that was one of my vendors and
13:02I put it into our satellite acquisition strategy because 526 businesses and they all respond
13:08faster, I make more money, right?
13:10So this is a service businesses.
13:12And then of course, fucking laundromats because I love laundromats.
13:14I own a few here.
13:15And this has led to 26 companies all coming together.
13:18Those three companies I just mentioned to you are also not part of that.
13:21They're part of our media strategy.
13:22So you can use these things across whatever sector you want to, to grow and build.
13:29Now, right about now is when people are like, yeah, but the world's getting really tough.
13:34A recession's coming.
13:36It's going to be difficult out there.
13:37I'm not sure I should buy.
13:39And I always, I have this on a screensaver on my computer.
13:43It's Barrett Rothschild's quote, buy when there's blood in the streets, even if that
13:47blood is your own.
13:47So there's something in equity, private equity and funds called a vintage.
13:52You guys know what a vintage is?
13:53It's basically like, say you have a fund that comes out every single year.
13:57Each year is a different vintage.
13:59That's what they call it.
14:00And so the best vintages or fund years are when?
14:05In a recession.
14:06In a recession.
14:07You do not want to invest in a private equity fund from 2020, 2021, 2022.
14:14Why?
14:14Valuations at all time highs, difficult to find opportunities in the market.
14:19When you actually want to be putting money to work is when everybody is fearful and running.
14:24So there's about to be blood in the streets, which means if you guys don't know how to buy
14:28businesses, if you don't know acquisitions, if you don't know deal making, I think you're
14:32f***ing up.
14:33Right now is the time to do it because you're about to see a lot of stuff go on sale.
14:38Good indicator of this is what's already happening in the real estate market.
14:42You're starting to see it across the industry.
14:45That is a forward leading indicator.
14:48So the interesting part that I think most people don't realize is it's not just that
14:53a recession is coming.
14:54It's that we have a generational tectonic shift happening in the world.
14:58And that's this.
15:00It's that baby boomers are retiring at all time high levels to the tune of trillions of
15:07dollars and 11.2 to 12 million small businesses being on sale.
15:11The vendors that you work with, those owners typically want to sell in some way, shape
15:17or form.
15:18The people who service your home in varying ways, they probably want to sell too.
15:23We are having a massive shift from the fact that baby boomers got accelerated by COVID.
15:30These baby boomers got tired after the businesses closed down.
15:34And in fact, 80% of all restaurants on Yelp that closed ever for COVID, what do they do?
15:41They shut their doors for all time.
15:44This is fascinating because how many people in here own a business?
15:48Raise your hand if you own a business.
15:49Okay.
15:49Most people.
15:50Now keep your hand up.
15:50Sorry.
15:51Keep your hand up.
15:51How many people in here would sell that business at the right price and terms?
15:55Shocking.
15:56Really.
15:57If you look around the room, there's hundreds of you.
16:00And in every single room, do you know what people say to Chris and I and my team?
16:04They go, well, go to no deals to be found.
16:06I'm like, motherfucker, look around.
16:08There's deals everywhere.
16:09Anybody that owns a business, if you catch them on the right day at the right time with
16:13the right offer, what will they do?
16:15Sell.
16:16Of course.
16:16Because we're masochists and running businesses is hard.
16:19And so if you can find people at the right time, you too can acquire a bunch of companies
16:24and become an empire builder.
16:27But it's more than that.
16:28It's more than just let's get rich.
16:29Let's make money.
16:30It's actually a little bit, and this is where you guys can cry if you want to later, because
16:34apparently I hear people were doing that earlier.
16:36This is where actually there's something really interesting happened where profits can actually
16:42meet the purpose, which doesn't always happen.
16:45This is what I don't want to see in the world.
16:48Big corporations on every street corner.
16:52The big keep getting bigger, and the little guy gets hammered.
16:56And slowly, although we started as a nation of owners, we've become a nation of serfs.
17:02We are at all-time low levels for ownership in this country.
17:05Ownership of our homes, ownership of our companies, ownership in equity and stocks overall.
17:11Only 15% of Americans actually own equities, just public equities listed on an exchange.
17:20And so instead, what do we have happen?
17:22The few that know become the only that own.
17:26The few that know become the only that own.
17:29Think about that for a second.
17:31What do you think that does to our society at large?
17:36What does absolute power do?
17:39Corrupts, doesn't it?
17:41And so if we allow only a few to own, I think that we are putting ourselves, our kids, our
17:47future generations in a really difficult place.
17:50And here's why.
17:52Look at these stats.
17:53We did an analysis.
17:54So this says more hardware, grocery stores, car washes are owned by conglomerates, not locals.
17:58Here's the analysis we did.
18:01Across 12 subsectors, such as hardware stores, car washes, laundromats even, landscaping companies,
18:09we did an analysis of how much of the industry is owned by the top 10 players.
18:1625 to 33% of almost every industry is owned by the top 10 players in that industry.
18:23We have a real opportunity to do what the Bitcoiners said they were going to do, but we're actually
18:29going to do with ownership, which is decentralize.
18:32I already mentioned this, but think about this for a second.
18:35As those 60% of all businesses who closed during COVID closed permanently, as those companies
18:42are closing down, what happens?
18:44Who's buying those?
18:45The big boys.
18:46So the big companies and the big government are forcing companies to close.
18:53Target stays open.
18:54Your local corner store has to close.
18:58Walmart stays open.
18:59Your local corner grocery store has to close.
19:03And so as they close down, these guys steal their market share.
19:07We're going to make sure that doesn't happen anymore because most small business owners
19:11look nothing like this crowd.
19:12They're 65 plus years old and they have very little cash on hand and they use fax machines
19:18and they are not the future of business ownership, but this crowd actually could be.
19:24Think about this.
19:25In November and December of last year, we did an analysis to see how much cash on hand small
19:32business owners have.
19:34They have 27 days on average.
19:3727 days.
19:38How long were the shutdowns in 2020?
19:40A lot longer than 27 days across the board.
19:43On average, at least 90 days, if not 120 days.
19:48So with only 27 days of cash on hand, these businesses are wiped, right?
19:52Now, instead of those businesses being wiped out, what if there was something else?
19:58What if you were the answer to these small businesses all over the world closing down
20:02and feeling pressure to close down?
20:04When I get out there and say that I like people to buy small businesses, it's not that I want
20:09you to take advantage of some owner and you're going to rape and pillage his legacy.
20:14It's that if you do not buy, that business will close.
20:17And let me tell you how I know that.
20:19Because not only do these small businesses close down in this specific instance, but these
20:26small businesses also then have a rippling effect across the industry.
20:31One small business closes, that's one less vendor to, on average, 10 other small businesses.
20:38And so that takes away one of their clients, which might be relatively a large percentage
20:43of that 27 days of cash.
20:45So, sad story over.
20:48The idea now is, if you believe me, that tons of businesses are on sale right now, that this
20:53is going to continue, that you can grow through acquisitions faster than anything else, that
20:58you don't need a ton of cash to do it, I thought we'd walk through how we grew one particular
21:04business.
21:04We mess with some of these numbers since typically my businesses have operators.
21:08And so I don't share always who the businesses are and their exact numbers because they don't
21:11love that.
21:13But how we took one business and acquired seven businesses to take it to $1 million in revenue.
21:20We're going to break that down for you and we're going to break down the profit numbers.
21:23So this is where we get a little technical.
21:25Bring out the pens, bring out the paper, and think about with each acquisition, how
21:30could you do the same exact thing in your business?
21:32Before I get into it, I want you to play this game for me.
21:35I do something called a personal P&L review.
21:38What does that mean?
21:39I want you to think about or write yourself a little to-do list note after this.
21:43What is every company I spend money on personally or in my business that has a CEO I can get to,
21:51aka not a Fortune 500 company, Bezos probably isn't picking up your phone calls, and who
21:57is also a company that you would potentially want to own if the profit is there.
22:02For instance, man, I'd love to own a landscaping company.
22:05Yeah, I got my landscaper over here.
22:06I've never talked to him before.
22:07He looks like he's 65.
22:08Okay, there's one.
22:09Huh, my video production team.
22:12I would love to in-house and turn that liability into an asset.
22:16Maybe I should talk to the owner of that company.
22:18Huh, I spent a lot of money on PPC right now, actually.
22:20I wonder if I could just own that agency instead of outsource it.
22:23The thing is, graphic design is like $12,000 a month for my company.
22:27What if I just in-house the graphic design?
22:29That's where I want your head going, and then I'm going to show you how to do it in action.
22:32All right, you ready for that Bezos level shit?
22:35You guys ready for it?
22:36Not that Bezos, this Bezos.
22:38This is where we're going instead.
22:40Okay.
22:41Ooh, this is tiny.
22:43All right, first deal.
22:44The first deal that we did this for was a laundromat.
22:48Profit, $67,000.
22:50A year, price to buy the laundromat, $100,000.
22:54Money down, in this case, 0% down, but usually you'd have to go somewhere between 0% and 20%.
23:00Method, seller financing, and then you could finance down payment with investors.
23:05So this is what I call a platform acquisition.
23:08So I buy one business so that I can layer others on top of it.
23:12It's like Legos, right?
23:13You start with the big Legos on the bottom, and then you think about how you can add others.
23:17This specific deal, I bought this laundromat, not because I actually was thinking about it
23:22from a platform acquisition perspective, but because it was really cheap.
23:25It was opportunistic.
23:26At the time, I had some spare time where I wanted to understand the laundromat game.
23:31But this was step one.
23:32You start with a platform acquisition, something that you can build on.
23:37What does that get me?
23:38That got me $67,000 in profit and one income stream.
23:41And I talk about income stream, but really this is a revenue line.
23:44You can change the two terms interchangeably.
23:46Then we do what's called an add-on acquisition.
23:48So I got my laundromat, and now I'm like, huh, I'm 30 days into the business.
23:52The business is sort of motoring, but I'd like to have more revenue.
23:55How could I acquire more revenue?
23:57In this case, we added vending machines.
24:00These vending machines included soap vending machines.
24:02They included little toy vending machines.
24:05They included typical snack vending machines.
24:08This was bought all in.
24:11Our first vending machine was about $3,000.
24:13We bought it online.
24:14I think we spent about $25,000 all in on the costs of this business.
24:18And what did that then net us?
24:21That gave us another, what is that?
24:24So $50,000 in profit for $117,000 in total profit.
24:29So I have my platform acquisition.
24:31I do my first little add-on acquisition.
24:33After 30 days of being a business, now we're at $117,000 in profit.
24:37And two, income streams.
24:39So now I'm like 90 days in, let's say.
24:42My business is sort of standardizing.
24:44I'm rocking and rolling.
24:45I'm ready to do my next acquisition.
24:48The next acquisition is called a vertical acquisition.
24:51This is I buy my competitors.
24:54Somebody's going out of business.
24:56In this case, his name was Bob.
24:57Bob was older.
24:58Austin's too hipsterful right now.
25:01They roll up their jeans.
25:03I got to get out of here.
25:04I want to go out to the country, Bob says.
25:06Bob happens to run a large laundromat.
25:08This laundromat was about $300,000 in profit.
25:11First, I would go to Bob and say something like, Bob, incredible operation.
25:14Oh my gosh, I just bought a laundromat.
25:16We don't really know what we're doing over here.
25:17We're not competitive.
25:18We're way over there.
25:19You're over here.
25:19No different.
25:20But man, can I take you out to lunch and learn a little bit?
25:22I get to know Bob.
25:23Bob tells me his hipster feelings.
25:25I say, Bob, would there ever be a world in which you'd sell at the right terms and right price
25:29and go buy your ranch out in wherever, in Texas?
25:33At which point Bob says, yeah, actually, I might do that.
25:38So we acquire Bob's company.
25:40$300,000 in profit and we use seller financing.
25:44Typically, for a seller financing deal, if I have cash, I'm giving them somewhere between 20% and 50% down.
25:50If I don't have cash, I'm trying to have them finance it all.
25:53Does everybody know what seller financing means?
25:54Not, okay.
25:56Seller financing means you take from future profits of the business to buy the business.
26:02This happens with 60% of all small business acquisitions.
26:06So if I own a business that I'm going to buy for $100,000 and that business does $30,000 a year in profit,
26:15I'm going to ask the owner, hey, would you be willing to finance me this business over a five-year term?
26:20I'll pay you the $100,000 in chunks over five years.
26:23Very, very normalized.
26:26All right, so I buy out Bob.
26:29Now we're at $417,000 in profit through this vertical acquisition.
26:34Next stage, asset acquisition.
26:37So now I'm like, man, I know how to run laundromats.
26:39I got two of them.
26:40Things are motoring.
26:42What if I could add more capacity to my laundromats?
26:44I don't need another one per se, but I could probably add some more machines
26:48and then I could have more people come in here more frequently.
26:50So I go out to the market and I start looking for struggling competitors.
26:55If you owned a gym company, you might go out to gyms that are struggling and say,
26:59huh, what if I was to buy up some of those bikes because you aren't using them right now?
27:03What if I was to buy up some of your barbell equipment because you're not using them right now?
27:07So we buy machines for pennies on the dollar and with those machines, we add another $100,000 plus or $50,000 plus in profit to this business
27:20by stretching out how much more we could do at capacity over the year.
27:23Now we've done four acquisitions.
27:25Do any of these acquisitions feel unattainable?
27:27Do they feel super hard and onerous?
27:30If you guys can't figure out how to buy a vending machine online, like, yeah, this could seem tough.
27:34But in fact, these acquisitions do not have to feel the way we feel typically when we hear that big word.
27:40Now we've got our fifth one.
27:41This is what I call a satellite acquisition.
27:44So I'm basically like, okay, so I've got these laundromats, but laundromats run on average at 20 to 30% capacity.
27:50Like, my team could do more.
27:52The team at ApproachMint that I bought, they were running at 30% capacity.
27:56Every time I buy a business, the first thing I do is do a capacity analysis.
27:59How much more work could my people, machines, things be doing?
28:04And how can I get more work to them?
28:06Because I hate paying for stuff that I'm not using.
28:09And so I'm like, wait a second.
28:09We have all this extra capacity because we're only running at 30%.
28:13What if we could run all night long when nobody's doing laundry?
28:17Oh, man.
28:18Okay, if we could do that, we'd probably bring in a lot more revenue.
28:20How could we do that?
28:21Add a wash and fold delivery service.
28:23So what do we do?
28:24We go and buy a bunch of vans through acquisition of a company that's not doing well in the wash and fold space.
28:31We buy them out for basically the cost of their vans plus a little bit for the owners to stay with us for six months.
28:38And with that, we've added $250,000 in profits.
28:42We acquire their machines.
28:44We acquire the owners for a period of time.
28:46And we acquire their SOPs and software.
28:48How do we do the van delivery process?
28:50That's the difference between starting a new revenue line where you're just buying the vans outright and buying another business so you get all of that inherent knowledge.
28:59The cool part about that knowledge is it's worth zero to them because they're closing.
29:05And it's also typically valued at zero.
29:08Any businesses below five to definitely one million in revenue, you don't really value that they have systems and processes in place.
29:14You say, you guys make $100,000 a year, I'll buy you for two to five X profits.
29:21That's what a small business trades for.
29:23Two to five X profits.
29:25Almost every time.
29:27Below the 10 million mark.
29:29Pretty much 100% of the time below the $5 million mark.
29:33So we buy this company and we add $250,000 in profit.
29:37Now we're at $717,000 in profit.
29:40This is coming out, let's call this like, you know, 200 days in, something like that.
29:46Step six, horizontal acquisition.
29:48This one just really, this really did it for me.
29:50We bought a soap company.
29:51We did not buy this soap company because you e-com people are clever like that.
29:55We bought a no name, brand list, no marketing soap company.
29:59And we did that because the second thing I do after a capacity analysis is I go, huh, where am I spending a ton of money?
30:08I hate spending money.
30:09Very cheap.
30:10I want to turn everything that is a liability into an asset.
30:13So I look at where I'm spending money and I go, oh, wait a second.
30:16Soap is one of my biggest expenses besides my lease.
30:20How could I turn that into a profit center for me?
30:23And so we buy this company that has mixers for commercial grade soap.
30:29We brand it a little bit differently.
30:30We bottle it and we cut our costs 30 to 50% within that soap line item.
30:36This adds another $200,000 in profit because we go, well, wait a second.
30:39Now we know a bunch of the other people in the area.
30:42Why don't we, and we know what the price are for soap.
30:44Why don't we undercut the main providers of soap that they're going to with cheaper stuff because we're locally based.
30:51Plus there's some like goodwill between us.
30:53And so we're going to sell out into the marketplace, which is how we get $200,000 in profit.
30:57So now we're at like $917,000 in profit.
31:00Step seven, hard asset real estate.
31:03This is a real book, by the way, which I just think is fantastic.
31:05Could you imagine putting that on your book cover?
31:07We buy real estate.
31:08We buy the commercial unit that we're in, the commercial building that we're in.
31:13Why?
31:13Because for your laundromat, that is your most expensive cost besides water and utilities, which you can't buy.
31:19And so the most expensive is our lease.
31:22In laundromats, I typically require a 12-year lease because it's expensive to like build out all this stuff.
31:27And so we buy our commercial property, which, if you guys haven't been tracking the commercial real estate market,
31:34probably is going to become a really interesting play in the next one to three years.
31:38I think arguably the commercial real estate downturn will be worse than 2008 for that market.
31:44And if you're not up to speed on that, it's worth taking a view at.
31:48Now, we buy our little landlord or our little commercial strip, and we become landlords, not just for myself, but for the other properties on hand.
31:57So we then use other people's money in the form of a mortgage to get another $100,000 in profit,
32:03which takes us to a million dollars in profit inside of one year.
32:07The cool part about this, how many customers did I chase?
32:12Zero.
32:13How many times did I try a new revenue line and plow a bunch of money into it with a hope and a dream that a customer would come?
32:21Not once.
32:22I was buying things at their cost value or at a multiple of profit and using the profit from the business
32:29and other people's money in order to acquire more customers.
32:33How many of you guys can use other people's money to spend on ads?
32:38Can you do that?
32:40Not really.
32:41You can do that all day in acquisitions.
32:45All right.
32:45So this is typically people say something right here.
32:47I don't know if it is too soon or not, but it's just his face is so pathetic.
32:51I love putting it on there.
32:52Then people go, well, I have no cash, right?
32:55And I think in this audience, there's plenty of people with a mind capable of thinking of how to get access to capital.
33:03But if you have that sneaky little voice in the back of your head saying that you can't do acquisitions, it's too scary.
33:08I want to keep acquiring my customers one on one.
33:11I want you to talk.
33:12I want to talk to you about what I call the Get Rich Tripod.
33:15Super clickbaity name.
33:17But basically what it is, is there's three legs of the stool to stand on if you don't want to use your own cash and you want to do acquisitions.
33:23I think about it like this.
33:24The highest leverage activity is cash, right?
33:28Cash is something that once you have some of it, you can make it work for you.
33:33How much more expensive would an hour of Jeff Bezos' time be than the cash you would be willing to pay for it?
33:39It would be very, very expensive.
33:41He has a limited amount of them.
33:42So if you have money, I like to use money or I like to use really smart deals terms so that I can use at least the seller's money to buy their business.
33:52But say that you don't have any cash.
33:54The next leg of the stool is experience.
33:56In this room right now, there's a bunch of you that basically have businesses that operate as a glorified vendor service business.
34:05So you provide consulting for X.
34:08You provide X service for Y.
34:11This is pretty common from the group that I've looked at.
34:14What I bet you're not doing is using your experience to take distributing equity, not straight equity, but equity that cash flows to you when you do a deal with somebody.
34:25So you could do that.
34:27You could say, hey, from now on, 10% of all clients that I take on board, when I see this little thing that I know is going to mean that that company is going to be successful, I take a little bit of equity and I take a little bit of cash instead.
34:39And we could talk later in the part where we have Q&A about how to structure that.
34:43But that's the second leg of this tool.
34:45It's going to take some of your time so it's the least leverage.
34:48And then the third is just sweat.
34:49So for any of the young guns in the room or for people with spare time on your hands, there are people like me all over the world who do a couple different things.
34:58We pay something called a finder's fee.
35:00So if you give me a business that I want to buy that's in my deal box, a.k.a. the things that I buy based on my parameters, I give you typically somewhere between 1% and 10% of the purchase price of the business.
35:13This is super normalized across the industry.
35:16People that don't have time, a.k.a. me, also give operators equity, right?
35:24So I, all day long, hire people who run my businesses for me.
35:29Those people could bring me the deal.
35:30They could just bring me their time.
35:32And for that, you could get equity into a business without having to put any cash down.
35:38So you either use cash, highest leverage, use experience, second highest leverage, or you use your time.
35:43The other way to get cash are three things.
35:46The SBA, how many of you guys know about SBA financing?
35:49Okay, a decent amount.
35:50Perfect.
35:50The SBA, getting a loan from the SBA is similar to a colonoscopy.
35:55Just so we're honest about that.
35:57It's like doable, you know, as everybody, it happens all the time.
36:01Does it feel great?
36:02Not really.
36:04It is very detailed.
36:05They are going to ask for a bunch of information about you and the business.
36:10But SBA loans happen all the time.
36:13And the SBA, or the Small Business Administration, will loan you up to 90% of the purchase price of your business, which is pretty wild.
36:20They also just started, for the first time, doing fractionalized loans, which means before you had to buy the whole bad boy out.
36:27You had to buy that whole business.
36:28But now, let's say you want to buy part of one of your vendors, or you want to buy part of a company and the guy is still going to run it, you could actually use an SBA loan to buy 20% of the company, 30% of the company, which is totally new.
36:40A couple things that suck about SBA loans.
36:43Personal guarantee.
36:44That means if this deal goes sideways, you have to pay it up, whether that's your house or some assets that you have, whatever the case may be.
36:52Second is life insurance, something lots of people don't talk about, but they make sure that you have a policy in case you croak and they're stuck with this business, right?
37:00And the third thing about the SBA is they have some specific terms.
37:04So interest rates are set.
37:06You know, the payback period is set.
37:08There's some prepayment penalties.
37:09All these things that sound super boring, but if I was to tell you, if you were my student, I was going to tell you how to do a deal, I would tell you to put it all in a model with all the options.
37:19And the model doesn't have to be fancy.
37:21It can be a little Excel spreadsheet that basically says, here's what it looks like if I buy at Y, Z, A, B, right?
37:28The second way is seller financing, my favorite way to do deals, because it happens all the time and people on the internet love to tell me that it never happens.
37:36And the truth of the matter is, is that if you're a business owner and you come to me, like that laundromat deal, and I'm going to buy your business, and I tell you I'm going to buy it with future profits, most people think, why would a business owner do that?
37:50And let me tell you why.
37:51Because if there are 11 small businesses for sale inside of one calendar year, how many of them do you think sell within one year?
37:5911 businesses, how many will sell in one year?
38:01One.
38:02One.
38:03That's right.
38:03One small business will sell.
38:05So it's the opposite of real estate.
38:07You got 10 people that are looking for a way to close a deal.
38:10Of course they're going to negotiate with you.
38:12Of course you're going to have to prove to them that you're not going to run their business into the ground and then give them no money.
38:17Of course.
38:18But this is totally doable, and we do deals like this all day.
38:21The last thing is OPM.
38:22So say you're in an audience like this, and you want to do a deal.
38:26You want to get it done fast, so you don't want to do an SBA loan.
38:28The deal's a great deal, so it's kind of competitive, a.k.a. they won't sell or finance you.
38:33What do you do?
38:34Raise from some friends and family and buy the business.
38:38This is a really underutilized way to do deals because how many of you guys have ever had somebody come to you and say,
38:45hey, will you invest in this business I'm going to buy?
38:48Probably, yeah.
38:49Tons of you.
38:50So many.
38:51It's not that normal.
38:52Yet people will come to you all day, and they'll do what?
38:55How many people have come to you and asked you to invest in their startup?
38:59Raise your hand if that's happened.
39:01All right.
39:01Let's call it 20%.
39:02Still really low.
39:03Fascinating.
39:04People have normalized the let me give you money for an idea that you think might work maybe,
39:11although it turns out about 90% of the time these things fail.
39:15Horridly.
39:15They flame out, and you'll never see your money.
39:17I think angel investing is a bit like taking a dollar bill, lighting it on fire, and then throwing it off a cliff.
39:22It's not a great way to make money over the long term.
39:25There are a few outlying experiences, but for the most part, you lose your first $500,000.
39:30Buying a small business is the opposite of that because there's profits inherent in the business.
39:34So I think OPM or raising from friends and family is an interesting way to do it.
39:37The reason I don't do this a lot is because if I love a business, do I want to give away equity?
39:42Do I want to give away a portion of that business?
39:45No way.
39:45I want to do debt where my profits pay for me to buy the business,
39:50then I don't have to give away a percentage ownership.
39:52How do you do deals?
39:53We're going to go through this pretty quickly.
39:55It looks the opposite of how Shark Tank does it, actually, and it feels very different.
40:01And this is an important part because we have to remember that we're taking somebody's little baby in our hand,
40:06their little business baby that they've spent years building,
40:09and we're saying we're going to take care of it.
40:11Like, you made a baby, it's now a toddler, or maybe it's a teenager, and I'm going to continue to take care of this thing.
40:16It's a really important perspective to have.
40:18And the reason why I think this is so important is because this story that sometimes I tell about my Uncle Eb.
40:25So Eb owned a company called Eb Homes Plumbing in Phoenix, Arizona.
40:31The company did $5 to $6 million in revenue a year.
40:35And one day, Uncle Eb got the phone call that nobody wants to get, right?
40:40Six-letter word that ruins many people's lives in this country.
40:45Cancer.
40:47He gets this phone call.
40:48He goes home.
40:49He talks to his wife.
40:50And he's like, I want to spend not one more minute in the business.
40:55So this business that did $5 to $6 million in revenue and $2 to $3 million in profit,
41:01what do you think he did with that business?
41:03He closed it down.
41:04He didn't sell that business.
41:06He didn't know he had an asset that was worth $6, $9, $12 million that now, since he has passed away,
41:13could have alleviated all the issues that now his family has to deal with from a monetary standpoint.
41:20This happens every single day.
41:22Then the opposite part of this coin happened.
41:26One of the members of our group at Contrarian Thinking,
41:30they were talking to me about a business that they worked in.
41:33They were a high-level manager and operator for a small business also located in Phoenix, Arizona.
41:39And that business, they had never thought of buying it or offering to buy it.
41:45You know, they made like a nice $2.50 a year, took their kids two weeks on vacation,
41:50didn't have a lot of extra cash, wanted to send the kids to college,
41:53liked to play softball on the weekends kind of guy, right?
41:55And when we taught him how to do deals, one day, Larry went to the owner of his business
42:03and basically said, hey, you know, this business is amazing.
42:09I love working for you.
42:11You know, you're 66 years old.
42:14I don't know how long you want to keep running this business.
42:16And it doesn't seem like your kids are that interested in running it.
42:19But would you be open to, at some point, selling this business to me?
42:23When Larry went to have this conversation, I mean, let me tell you guys,
42:26he was emotionally distraught.
42:28He thought, maybe I'm going to get fired from having this conversation.
42:31He thought, there's no way this guy is going to sell to me.
42:34He thought, I have no cash.
42:35He's like, this is not going to happen.
42:37And instead of that going down, the second that Larry told it to this guy,
42:41he didn't tell him, yeah, maybe one day that'd be nice, whatever.
42:44Like, potentially, I guess we'll talk about.
42:47He said to him, oh, this is amazing.
42:49You want to start next week?
42:50We can have, like, a couple-month transition period.
42:52And what are we going to do?
42:52Are we going to use seller financing?
42:54I swear to God, you guys, we have it recorded.
42:57Chris can back me up.
42:59The guy literally was like, I love this.
43:01I didn't know that this was a thing.
43:03You want to come in and I'll, like, help you for the next six months?
43:05His only parameter was that he'd still like to work three days a week.
43:10What if there had been a Larry for my Uncle Eb?
43:15I think about that a lot.
43:17It still gives me goosebumps.
43:19But maybe full circle, we can save more people's families and these small businesses.
43:25So when people ask me where to find deals, this is what I tell them.
43:28I tell them, buy the company you work for.
43:31Buy the company you pay to.
43:34Buy the company you compete with.
43:36Buy the company that you get paid by.
43:38The best way to find deals is your personal ecosystem.
43:42We teach 12 different ways to do it.
43:45But that's where I like to start.
43:47Sure, you can do what everybody on the internet loves to do, which is like go to the MLS
43:51of business buying and go search a small business and go cold call owners.
43:55Or you can sack up and talk to people every single day that you engage with anyway and ask
43:59them if they want to sell their business.
44:02Nobody does this.
44:03And this is why there are millions of businesses for sale right now in the U.S.
44:08Now, if I was to tell you the type of business that I like to buy, this is my strategy.
44:15I call it sales.
44:16Stale, old, weak, simple.
44:17I buy businesses that are stale, old, weak, simple.
44:20Why?
44:20Because I'm lazy and I don't want to work that hard and I don't want to overpay for an asset.
44:25And so I buy these type of businesses like this.
44:28Remember that company Approachment I told you guys about?
44:31They had had stale revenues for the last three years, flat.
44:36They are 12 years old.
44:37They were weak, aka no marking was done.
44:40The guy said he only worked on it three hours per week.
44:42I ended up believing him.
44:43They're simple.
44:44It's an outsourced chat group.
44:46Look at what we got this business for.
44:47$150,000 a year EBITDA business.
44:50We bought it for $75,000.
44:53Now, we're doing about $300,000.
44:55We think we'll do about $300,000 a year EBITDA with this operator in place if we grow this
45:01business correctly.
45:02Like, think about that for a second.
45:04That's a no-brainer.
45:05I actually only paid 60% down and then I paid $15,000 about 90 days later when I confirmed
45:12it was everything that he told me it was going to be.
45:15These businesses are all around.
45:18I also like this strategy.
45:20Buy boring businesses in recession-resistant asset classes, raise the prices, add technology.
45:26The average small business hasn't raised their prices in how long?
45:29Anybody know?
45:3012 years.
45:32It's actually eight.
45:33Fucking close.
45:34Eight years.
45:35Think about that for a second.
45:36Inflation this year is what?
45:379.1%.
45:39So you are immediately buying an asset that you can raise prices for.
45:42And typically, people don't raise prices because they think what?
45:45Oh my gosh, all my clients will leave me.
45:47There's no way.
45:48How many times have you gotten a plumber and they gave you an offer for that broken sink
45:53that you have or that toilet that your child decided to flush something down and said,
45:57yeah, sorry, I'm going to have to shop around.
45:59I'm going to compare for this.
46:00No, it doesn't happen.
46:01Of course, you're going to pay the $150 or $175 and you probably don't even realize
46:05the prices were raised.
46:06That's why I like to buy these businesses.
46:08Right about now is when people go, okay, what do I need to run this playbook?
46:12And what do I mean by a playbook?
46:13I mean a holding company with a bunch of businesses within them.
46:16This is what you need.
46:18You need a right hand.
46:19Chief of staff could be something like a CIO that's more expensive, could be something
46:24like a business development person, could be something like an M&A expert.
46:28You need a head of each business.
46:30So these are going to be your operators of the underlying businesses so you don't go crazy.
46:33Eventually, I do like to have a CIO of the overarching holdco, but you don't have to start there.
46:39And then at some point, if you want to get real fancy, you can buy the ugly houses on the block.
46:43But I don't like you guys to start with bad, failing businesses.
46:47I like you to start with profitable, consistent businesses that are kind of motoring along year
46:52after year.
46:53They're not the ugly kid on the block.
46:55They are actually the businesses that are doing pretty good and you can make them a little
46:59bit better.
46:59Now, eventually, you might want to get crazy and you add a turnaround specialist that can
47:04take really bad businesses and make them awesome.
47:06But I do not recommend you start with that.
47:08If you guys want to buy businesses, these are the 10 steps you have to learn.
47:13You basically go from the foundation, which is what you already learned today.
47:17This is like, oh, wait, I could buy a business.
47:19How exactly does that work?
47:20They're for sale everywhere.
47:21Check one.
47:21You've already done step one.
47:23Two is called deal clarity.
47:26Lots of people ask me, but Cody, so which business is the best business to buy?
47:29And I'm like, wrong question.
47:31Totally wrong question.
47:32The right question is, what is the right business for you to buy?
47:35So we take you through a bunch of steps so you can figure that out.
47:38Number three is origination, which is a fancy word for how do I find a deal?
47:41Or the deals, how do I find them?
47:43Give me some mechanisms to do that.
47:45Step four is selling you.
47:46That's where you basically need to go through and make sure that when you take that little
47:50baby over from the business owner, that you're explaining yourself right.
47:54That you put your best foot forward.
47:56That it's like you know how to date properly.
47:58Next, we have negotiation.
48:01Negotiation is basically how do you get the price that you want in a way that's going
48:05to consistently have results.
48:06And there's an art to that and a little bit of a science.
48:09Then we have financing.
48:11So how do you get the money for the business?
48:13Then we have closing.
48:15How do you, what are the right deal docs?
48:17Who should be on your team?
48:18What about accountants and attorneys?
48:19And then we have your first 90 days where you take over the business.
48:24Now, this little deal process that we have, we use again and again and again.
48:28And I like to show it to people because I think just about anybody inside of 90 days can learn
48:34how to buy their first business.
48:36Can you do a multi-million dollar deal within 90 days?
48:38Probably not.
48:39But you could certainly do your first couple six-figure acquisitions.
48:43And if you want to get technical on the part that kills most deals, which is how much do
48:48I pay?
48:49Is this really worth it?
48:50Are you sure that I should financially buy this business?
48:54Then you might want our deal calculator, which is here.
48:57It's free.
48:58And in it, you can basically take a bunch of the different numbers of the businesses and
49:03you can plug it in and you can see varying outcomes.
49:06So if I change the interest rate here, if I do seller financing instead of SBA there,
49:11then you visually can see, is this a good deal for me to do?
49:14I think it's really useful.
49:16If I was you, these are some of the questions I would be asking.
49:19I don't want to seed it too much because I want to answer what you have.
49:22But the most important steps are the ones we've talked about today and these.
49:27So that's my suggestion.
49:29Lastly, let me end with this.
49:31I think we are about to have, in fact, we already are having,
49:35one of the most difficult markets, probably of our careers for most of us.
49:40I was at Goldman Sachs in 2007, 2008, when the world was falling apart.
49:44I saw what happened to retail investors then.
49:47And I think it'll be worse this go around.
49:49I think it'll be worse.
49:50And it'll be worse because the way that 2008 played out had a lot to do with government
49:56intervention.
49:57And it also had a lot to do with a V-shaped recovery in something called mark-to-mark
50:01accounting, meaning 2008's V-shaped recovery was completely manufactured, completely manufactured.
50:09This one, I do not think will be.
50:11Think between interest rates, commercial real estate, and the fact that we have to also battle
50:16inflation.
50:16We are going to come into one of our most difficult markets in our existing history of
50:23investing.
50:23It is also not going to be only isolated to, let's say, startups like it was in 99.
50:31This is going to be a pervasive downturn for a period of time.
50:35And that's scary.
50:36And it should scare you.
50:38But there is a silver lining, which is that there will be blood in the streets.
50:42And in fact, the money is made when most people are fearful and greedy, and you can choose
50:49the opposite side of the coin.
50:51And so I hope you do this one thing.
50:53I hope whatever it is in your business, you make it a moral prerogative to learn deal making
50:59and business buying.
51:01There is one thing I can guarantee you.
51:03I can't guarantee you your first deal will work.
51:04I can't guarantee you your second deal will work.
51:06I can guarantee you that if you learn how to do deal structuring, and if you learn how to
51:10do deals, you will never go hungry.
51:13Because this is the outlier effect.
51:16It is where asymmetric risk meets asymmetric upside, which means the amount of time that
51:21you put in is completely dwarfed by the amount of value you will get out of it.
51:27So I hope you guys do the boring thing.
51:30Pay attention to the accounting.
51:32Ignore the f***ing TikTok dancing bears.
51:33And I hope you invest in your community and in our country.
51:39I can pretty much guarantee you, you will not regret it.
51:42All right.
51:42Thank you so much for having me.
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