#376: Ryan Begelman on Buying and Building Profitable Companies

Ryan Begelman and his partners bootstrapped Bisnow Media, an email newsletter and conference business, to over 7M in annual profit after only an initial $50,000 investment. They ultimately sold the business for over $50M. Most recently, Ryan is the cofounder of Summit, which has been called Davos for Gen Y by Forbes. He is also an early investor in startups like Uber, Warby Parker, and CoinBase. Today, he’s on the hunt for small companies to acquire. In this conversation, we discuss the tactics and techniques every operator should know, riches in niches, systemization, training programs, holistic entrepreneurship, and productivity hacks. ============================ Choice is a new self-directed IRA product that I'm really excited about. If you are listening to this, you are likely part of the 7.1 million bitcoin owners who have retirement accounts with dollars in them, but not bitcoin. I was in that situation too. Now you can actually buy real Bitcoin in your retirement account. I'm talking about owning your private keys and using tax-advantaged dollars to do it too. Absolute game changer. https://www.retirewithchoice.com/pomp ============================ ExpressVPN lets you access the internet as if you’re from a different country. There are hundreds of VPNs out there, but ExpressVPN is ridiculously fast. You can stream everything in HD quality with zero buffering! If you use my link right now at EXPRESSVPN dot com slash pomp, you can get an extra three months of ExpressVPN for free! That’s https://www.expressvpn.com/pomp ============================ Pomp writes a daily letter to over 50,000 investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy to understand language, while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://www.pompletter.com

• 0:00Speaker 00

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off. Ryan Begelman and his partners bootstrapped Bisnow Medium, an email newsletter and conference business to over $7 million in annual profit after only an initial $50,000 investment. They ultimately sold the business for over $50 million. Most recently, Ryan is the co-founder of Summit, which has been called Davos for Gen Y by Forbes. He's also an early investor in startups like Uber, Warby Parker, and Coinbase. Today, he's on the hunt for small businesses to acquire. In this conversation, we discuss the tactics and techniques every operator should know,

• 0:45Speaker 00

  riches in niches, systemization, training programs, holistic entrepreneurship, and productivity hacks. I really enjoyed this conversation with Ryan, and I think you guys will learn a ton from it. Before we get into the episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. The first one is Choice. They're a new self-directed IRA product I'm really excited about. If you're listening to this, you're likely part of the 7.1 million Bitcoin owners who have retirement accounts with dollars in them, but not Bitcoin. That's a big no-no in my world. I used to be in that situation, too, but not anymore, thanks to Choice. Now you can actually buy real Bitcoin in your retirement account. I'm talking about owning your private keys and using tax-advantaged dollars to do it, too.

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  three months of ExpressVPN for free. If you go use expressvpn.com/pomp, you'll get three extra months of the service for free. Everybody likes free stuff, so go to expressvpn.com/pomp and protect yourself today. Lastly, don't forget that I write a daily letter to over 50,000 investors about business technology and finance. I break down complex topics into easy to understand languages while sharing my personal opinion on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at pompletter.com. Again, pompletter.com. All right, let's get into this episode with Ryan. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 4:50Speaker 00

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Ryan here. Thanks so much for doing this, man.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks, and I'm really excited to be here. How you doing?

• 4:59Speaker 00

  I'm doing fantastic. For those that don't know you, let's just jump right into your background. You've done a bunch of awesome stuff, built some pretty large companies. Maybe just talk about like where'd you grow up and then kind of how did you get into the business world?

• 5:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I'm from the DC metro, I'm from Maryland. And I went to school at Northwestern in the Midwest, near Chicago. And then I went through the whole like banking route, did the JP Morgan Lehman Brothers, worked at Deutsche Bank during school, took a full-time job at Deutsche out of school, did the investment banking thing for a short while. And then I went to the Carlyle Group, moved back to DC, worked in Carlyle's US Real Estate Fund, when it had about a $3 billion fund in 2006, and did a whole bunch of deals there. I was learning a tremendous amount. And then while I was there, I started doing real estate deals for my own account on the side.

• 5:55Speaker 02

  And I was reading this newsletter called Biz Now, B-I-S-N-O-W, which is this father and son duo had co-founded Mark and Ali Biz Now in DC. And I essentially cold approached them and asked them if I could buy a big chunk of the company. And I ended up doing that and becoming CEO of that company. And I spent seven and a half years scaling that company from, which was newsletters, an email newsletter for every metro market that we were in. So we had 28 metro markets eventually with a reporter in each one, kind of like Imagine Business Insider for commercial real estate. And we made a bunch of our, our money was really made on conferences and advertising.

• 6:39Speaker 02

  And we scaled that to about 300 conferences a year and about $7 million in profit, a little over $20 million top line, and sold it to a private equity firm in 2016. I I replaced myself with um kind of like my my protege, if you will, who became CEO of the company. And he's still there. And and so at the same time, though, in two thousand eight, Elliot Buznow and I co-founded this company with a with a few other friends. Called Summit or Summit Series, which is basically like this kind of a community or gathering for all kinds of people like, you know, founders of companies, nonprofit leaders, activists,

• 7:21Speaker 02

  academics, athletes, you know, anybody who's a leader in some sort of space. And we would gather them for these like really like immersive events that were made up of of wellmists and talks and art installations, kind of like Burning Man meets Ted. Some people kind of refer to it. And yeah, eventually that became thousands of people gathering at a time. Uh, you know, they'd buy a ticket that's like anywhere from, you know, four thousand, five thousand dollars on average. Uh, and we'd have all kinds of, you know, amazing speakers and personalities there. We've had Bezos and Branson and Shonda Rhimes and Jessica Alba and Reed Hastings from Netflix, Ted Turner, Brene Brown, Al Gore.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  All kinds of, you know, really interesting people who would come and, you know, inspire the community and and many of them were part of the community. And then in two thousand twelve, we bought a ten thousand acre ski resort. It's actually the largest ski resort by by acreage in the U. S. In Utah, a ski resort called Powder Mountain, which is actually where I'm at right now. It's absolutely beautiful here right now. And we, it's about a seven lift. You know, four restaurant, ten thousand acre ski resort. And we um we've been essentially become developers of the resort. So we're we're building roads, we're building utilities, we're building lodges and hosting our events here.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  And building this community here, like it's a it's still, you know, open to the public, but there's also an element to the community that's like a membership. Uh, as well. And so we've sold about a hundred and fifty million dollars worth of real estate here since two thousand twelve. Um, and it's been kind of an interesting way to think about extending a a media brand or a community brand into a real estate project. Um, and we we started a thirty million dollar venture fund at one point called Summit Action, which invests in startups. And started a nonprofit called the Summit Institute. I was just a five oh one C three and yeah, and I still do real estate investing and my main focus these days actually is trying to buy small companies.

• 9:25Speaker 02

  And we're we're actually a friend of mine helping him close on on a company next week. So that's been kind of a crazy adventure.

• 9:34Speaker 00

  So you not only one have built multiple companies, you've also done everything from media to software to real estate to kind of community building and you've just got a lot of what I'll call kind of practical experience and and expertise. So throughout this conversation, I think we'll kind of talk through a lot of just like the lessons you've learned from the operator seat. But maybe talk a little bit, let's go back to biz now and and talk a little bit about like tactically. You know, once you bought the business, what was kind of the state of the business and what did you do to actually grow it to a twenty plus million dollar top line, seven million dollars in profit? Like what were those steps that you took and why did you do that?

• 10:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you know, the idea was to build like a mini conglomerate of sorts. Like I I was looking for a cash flow positive company and then I would take the cash flow and invest it in real estate. That was my original thesis. I underestimated how busy I would become running this now. And so I frankly ended up, you know, just becoming like kind of more of a passive real estate investor than doing as many deals as I thought I would on my own. But but the way that, you know, we scaled that was was was by market. So, you know, I'd go to New York and crash couches with friends and hire our first writer and then I would make the first sales myself selling advertising and get it up to break even. And, you know, one thing that we would do is whenever I'd go to a new market, I would go to all of the

• 11:02Speaker 02

  the top firms in the space and say, look, we're only going to have one law firm on all of our advertising for a year. And we're only going to have one accounting firm and one, you know, lender. And I'm talking to five of you and one of you is going to get it and I'm going to give you a big discount. And I'm going to give you all the ad inventory for a year and your and your exclusive category. And that really worked well. Like I could get, you know, the first five, six key stakeholders. And then that would basically pay for the writer and pay for me to hire a salesperson. I would pay for some of our overhead for a year. And I just basically did that market by market. And the thing I thought was kind of cool about that is we we never took any outside capital. So we ended up owning a lot more of the company than, you know, your typical kind of growth company or startup.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  Through this kind of like profitable sales method. And then, you know, once we got, you know, maybe, I don't know, five to 10,000 subscribers in a market, we would start producing our own conferences. And the conferences would bring in ticket sales through our website. And and our sales team that was selling the ads would sell the sponsorships to it. And we would do an event pretty much every month in every market and eventually even as much as like three events per month per market. And we became, you know, obsessed with data. You know, how could we have the most data on our audience so that we could deliver an event on hotel development in Brooklyn?

• 12:22Speaker 02

  And have 400 people show up when like, you know, the competitors at best could have maybe 200 people show up for a hotel development event for for like the tri-state area of New York. Like we could get super niche and really deliver like a really specific audience for a specific event, like like like that example. And then, you know, the next week we might do an event on, you know, midtown office, you know, real estate in midtown Manhattan. So like really, really super niche was kind of, you know, like our belief is that there is riches and niches. And we could deliver like this really specific audience. So that was like part of the methodology.

• 13:00Speaker 02

  I'd say one other thing about it too is I think we learned pretty early on that if you're going to produce 300 events a year and publish 28 newsletters every single day, five to six days a week. It's all about systems and making it replicable, which initially we were terrible at. Initially, you know, we would try to have like one smart person like me kind of just do everything like, you know, I'd I'd I'd get the speakers. I'd figure out the contract with the hotel. I'd show up and, you know, the morning and get all the chairs arranged. You know, I'd even write some of the copy. I'd edit some of the copy and. And initially, that was the model. I kept trying to find like replicas of like our founders and people like myself who could do kind of everything. And what I learned is that, you know, most people are just like,

• 13:44Speaker 02

  you know, they're not going to necessarily be that dynamic. And and maybe it's that they don't, you know, have enough equity. I don't know, but it was hard to get, you know, these people. So I ended up studying this company. It was called I R. They had hundreds of conferences and figured out, oh, wow, they break it down into an assembly line. And so we basically had a programming department that gets all the speakers, a production department that handles all the coordinating and all the contracting and details. And shows up and actually executes on the event. A marketing department that does all the constant email marketing. I mean, every day we're sending marketing about, you know, hey, check out this speaker. You should sign up. You know, card abandonment, all the e-commerce stuff. And then the fourth department was sales.

• 14:27Speaker 02

  And then those four departments are supported by HR, technology and accounting. And we invested really heavily too in like our CRM. And so just making this whole thing like this assembly line was was really critical.

• 14:43Speaker 00

  And talk a little bit about the systemization. So you just described kind of the buckets, but maybe walk through. There's a lot of people who run a business and human capital is the solution to every problem, right? They just throw bodies at something. And for many people, especially kind of small business owners, they throw themselves at the problem. You were able to kind of at different points in that business build systems so that you didn't have to write every newsletter, do every sale, kind of all that stuff. But then also eventually on the transition, when you sold the business, you were able to step away from the business and not have to kind of continue running it. So talk a little bit just about like, how did you design the systems? And then what were the steps it actually took to implementing them?

• 15:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I basically tried to take everything that seemed hard to formulate and turn it into a formula. So like for the writing, we turned, we created this like manual for like, these are all the do's and don'ts. It's kind of like a design guideline, you know, we, we don't, we speak in the first person, we, you know, we write headlines that look like this. Uh, we write this many words typically, we, our photos should never look like this, but they should look like this. And it definitely was far from perfect. It's not like I just handed this manual and people just instantly could write it like this, but, uh, but over time, we managed to train people and then, you know, put in place a certain amount of management and culture that people could replicate the writing.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  And the same thing on the speaking, like, we're like, you know, we want, we need a certain percentage of the speakers to look like this and a certain percentage like this. And, you know, when we set up chairs in a ballroom, we never want them just to all be forward. We want them to be curved or we want to be teetered around. So we basically break as many things down into formulas, even the, I was really obsessed with like the sales processes. Cause that was a huge difference between a good salesperson and a mediocre one. And like a lot of them don't schedule the next meeting in the meeting. They just want to email the proposal instead of present the proposal because they're kind of, you know, scared to talk about price. And all these kinds of things that make a huge difference in conversion.

• 16:45Speaker 02

  And so we had to basically build training programs and, and also I found that, you know, people forget like 80% of what they learn in the training program when they join. So you basically need to have like a continuing education where you're just constantly every week, getting people back together and teaching them and going into the field. And then another thing I, I think we, we learned eventually was hiring multiples of people at a time and hiring full-time recruiters. If you have a lot of great talent coming into the company, you can put pressure on the people that are in the company that like, that what, you know, that they're replaceable. And that there's great talent coming up the pike and that they have to keep improving and honing their skills. Um, and also it was a cool thing is then they would teach the people who are coming in and people learn a lot through teaching.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  And so we built this whole kind of like apprenticeship program where, you know, each department was constantly bringing in new talent. And training them. And we had two to three full time recruiters. We're just constantly hiring people. Um, and the one other thing I learned was whenever I do something new myself as a CEO, I should never be doing it alone. I need to have like at least two to three people learning it with me as apprentices. And you know, one of those people is going to end up being outstanding. One will be kind of so so and one will probably have to let go within a year. And so I I used to like hire one person at a time. I started trying to hire at least three at a time for any role. Um, especially when when you're growing, you know, if all three of them are amazing, great. You'll find, you know, you'll find a place for them. So

• 18:11Speaker 02

  I think some of those things were key. And yeah, that investing in getting office spreadsheets and into a CRM was a huge thing. Like we, we took, we not only put our um, our sales in the CRM, we put all of our speakers and a lot of the people we wrote about and all the information about them. We're constantly adding to this, this like central database. And so it got, the job got easier and easier. Like if you were trying to get a great speaker for like a podcast, we could just click a button and say, okay, who do we know that's real estate, that's hotel, that's in Los Angeles for this event? And we could just click a couple of buttons and get an email. Um, and so that made it a lot easier as we got, as we got scaled.

• 18:52Speaker 00

  Yeah. And and then these training programs, I think, uh, probably if you ask most entrepreneurs, what are they really bad at? It's like onboarding, training and that continued education. Uh, you spent um, what seems almost like an inordinate amount of time, money, resources, mental energy on these uh, kind of supporting actions of this system. So you got to design the system, you got to implement the system. And then like, it's almost like garbage in, garbage out type, uh, you know, scenario. So talk a little bit about those training programs that you set up. What were you guys optimizing for and kind of how did those operate?

• 19:23Speaker 02

  So every time we hired a new, a new employee, we'd say, here's the existing manual, tear this thing up and and make it better. Because you're good, because in your first ninety days, you're going to learn the most and you're going to see a lot of things that we don't even, you know, remember or see anymore. And so like every week you owe us a certain, you know, a certain amount of track changes and updates to this manual. And it's great because new, new people are, are like I said, they're like, they have fresh eyes. And so they're, so we, we were constantly refining. We had a manual for editorial. We had one for, you know, uh, producing the event, one for contracting, you know, the hotels, whatever it was. And then, and then when people would join, we'd put them into like a four to six week program where we, we're, we'd have someone in that department.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  And sometimes even myself for part of the time or my COO go in and actually train them. And then we'd bring them into the field and actually we, we, we learned that just telling people things doesn't really work. They have to do it themselves. And so, you know, the first weeks we'd get them to actually do a lot of this stuff and, uh, and then, you know, help in be corrective. And, and then eventually, once they got good, you know, it was all about getting out of their way and like removing, uh, and just throwing, you know, resources at them. Here's more talent that we'll hire for you. Here's more money that will throw at your ideas. Cause that was, that was, and that was challenging. And I think also I learned that sometimes you have to allow like a department to do 70% as, as well as you might do yourself as the founder.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  Like there were definitely tons of times where I'm like, Matt, I think had I shown up at this event, I would have done the chairs this way. I would have gotten this speaker. Oh, I would have made this sale, you know, 7,000 instead of 5,000. And, um, I kind of had to let go of that in order for us to grow. And, um, but that was challenging initially because I, I definitely was like, you know, always wanting to like fix and optimize everything. And then other times people would way exceed by it, you know, they, they'd make like mistakes initially. And then they would learn and then they would get way better than I could ever be. So, um, I don't know. I, the, I don't know if that perfectly answers the question, but no, those are some of my observations.

• 21:25Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then both of the businesses that you've built, um, you did so with no outside funding. Talk a little bit. I know you've got a whole bunch of thoughts on, uh, kind of venture capital versus bootstrapping and, and maybe some of the fallacies that people fall victim to there. Um, you, you kind of take us down that path, however you want to, but, but just really comparing the, the venture route to, uh, to one that doesn't involve outside capital.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I've been kind of like an evangelist recently of trying to persuade more and more people that they don't need to pursue venture. I just, you know, having worked at Summit like you, I think we've both seen so many entrepreneurs in the venture space and and I just see a lot of them suffer from a tremendous amount of anxiety because they've got to keep hitting these growth numbers. Because their only opportunity to make any real money besides their salary is to sell the company generally. And it usually takes like seven to 12 years to get to the place where they actually sell. When I first went into it, I thought it was like a five year thing, but it's it's longer. And then, you know, if they're losing money, which they often are because they're they're so focused on growth. Their only, the only place they can exit to is a strategic because they are going public, right?

• 22:34Speaker 02

  They they can't sell to a private equity firm typically because they want profitable companies. They're not going to do a management buyout. They can't, you know, they can't borrow debt against their company because it's not profitable typically. And so, and most of them aren't big enough to go public. And and so, and strategics are kind of like, they're they they kind of come and go. There might only be three or four of them and they're they're kind of temperamental. It depends on their their mood and their goals of that year. So I'm a huge fan of like, I think, I think a lot of businesses could start off without venture. And and so like my example for for, you know, one example is pre-sales. You can pre-sale sell your some sort of product. So if you're like a subscription software product, go to your customers

• 23:18Speaker 02

  and say, look, I'm going to give the first, you know, 50 customers a lifetime membership where, you know, give us like, you know, three years of what this product costs and you'll get it for a life. If you're like a membership, you can do something similar. You know, I just spoke to like a manufacturing company, like an Amazon FBA sort of company. And they had a really cool approach. They went to some companies that would want to buy their products in a B two B sale and said, we'll give you exclusivity for your region so that your competition doesn't have our products. It was like a packaging product. And and you got to give us, you're going to pay us an exclusivity fee. And then they use that fee to pay for the tooling and the initial, the initial prototyping of the product and got them off the ground without any outside capital.

• 24:01Speaker 02

  And, you know, one thing I love about this is if you sell a company for, you know, 50 million without venture, like that's like the equivalent of selling your company for like two, three, 400 million with venture capital typically. And so you don't have to scale nearly as large. And so you don't have to focus on as much growth. And along the way, if you want, you can take distributions if you're profitable. And so, you know, there were many years where we were making really nice money, like living off of distributions and salary and still reinvesting millions of dollars into the business and growing it. And so I just found that we had a lot less stress in like years four, five and six than a lot of my, my friends who are, you know, have 200 employees that are losing 10 million a year,

• 24:43Speaker 02

  bringing in 30 million and they're, they're just hoping and praying that like Salesforce requires them or, you know, whatever, you know, Shopify buys them or whatever it might be. So, yeah, and I, and I, one other thing I'll say about that is I think, um, part of that comes down to the ideas that you choose, the business ideas, if you're going to get started. For every market that you're interested in, that you're excited about, maybe you're excited about crypto or excited about, you know, whatever it is, there's a continuum of like capital intensive businesses to capital light businesses. And I would suggest for many people, they start capital light. And then, you know, over time, invest the, the profits from that capital light business. Maybe it's a consulting business or a service business initially. And as you're getting that

• 25:25Speaker 02

  cash flow, invest it into your product business and your more capital intensive business. You know, maybe you have to build a piece of software for two years before you can release it. But you start with having an agency that serves the same clients your software is going to serve. Uh, and so you basically, you, you essentially are able to, um, you know, finance your business through this initial business model. Um, so yeah, I, I, that's the kind of thinking that I, I love to spread more out.

• 25:51Speaker 00

  And, and I think that as you do this like project selection or, or market selection, it's a huge determinant of whether you're going to be successful or not. And your point about, based on what market you choose can determine a lot about, do you need tons of capital or can you kind of bootstrap and, and drive some cash flow? Uh, one of the things that you've done over and over again is, uh, you take these like, um, I call them highly ambitious, kind of pie in the sky, uh, really dreams, right? Or goals. Uh, and you're always able to pull it back to, uh, very rational. Plans and very kind of execution driven plans. How do you think about being able to kind of context switch, right? So, hey, I want to go after this big market. Here's kind of the end goal or where I see this going.

• 26:36Speaker 00

  But then being able to kind of come back down to reality, if you will, and say, okay, here are the 10 things we need to do in the next three months in order to kind of keep going down the road that we're going down in order to get to that goal.

• 26:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, so like, one thing is we, I like the idea of not worrying too much about a massive total adjustable market, instead thinking about a minimum viable market, just initially at least. So like, you know, maybe I want to build, you know, take the real estate example of business now. Like, maybe we want to build the largest commercial real estate, you know, news and media business. But and maybe we even want to eventually get into software and do other things or buy a ski resort. But initially, I just focused on, you know, can I build a following and a profitable business in Washington DC and get everybody who cares about real estate in that one market to know who we are and buy our product and then launch it to New York. And we did the same thing with Summit.

• 27:29Speaker 02

  We started with 19 founders and then eventually we got, you know, then it was 85 and then 140. And, you know, our last event was over 3,000 people. And we took the, you know, the cash flow from that and the know how and the IP and the community that we built from that. And then we formed another joint venture and a separate LLC. And this is one thing I love to think about is how do you structure separate LLCs so that you can, if you don't want to dilute your initial company, you can still do ambitious new projects. So like, you know, maybe you get like the pop brand going and you've got this, you know, profitable engine and you decide like, you know, you want to build, I don't know, the pop hotel chain. And that appeals to all the kinds of people who, you know, are into the pop brand.

• 28:13Speaker 02

  Well, you could start another joint venture with a, you know, a private equity firm perhaps that funds it and maybe a hotel development company and license your brand to that other entity and control your brand through the license, get royalties for that. And maybe you even, you know, raise money for the venture and take a significant piece if the venture does well and the upside in the form of carried interest or promote. And so I think. Thinking about structure is super important. And at the same time, thinking about, you know, how do you initially get some cash flow going in and a brand coming in? And how do you hire those first five employees?

• 28:50Speaker 02

  And one other thing I'll say is, um, I was talking to an entrepreneur last week and he was going to start like a new, kind of like a community for techies. And he was going to raise a million bucks. And I asked him like, well, how, you know, how do you know how to price this? He was going to charge like 300 bucks for this product. And he was like, oh, you know, it seems like the competition is like, you know, this much. And so I'm going to charge, you know, 300 bucks to come in a little cheaper. And I was, I was helping him like, I think everyone should build their budget first. It doesn't really take a whole lot of time. Like, if you just take a few bids on everything and you look at what like, you know, your first employees are going to cost, what the product's going to cost. And then price it with margin above that budget. And I think a lot of like early entrepreneurs, they just kind of throw out a random price.

• 29:34Speaker 02

  They don't really like back, I like to back into my price. So that I know instantly that if I sell one unit, it's a profitable unit. And if I'm, if I'm going to sell it at a loss, then it's, it's on purpose. It's not like, you know, by accident.

• 29:49Speaker 02

  So yeah, I don't know, those are a few thoughts on that.

• 29:52Speaker 00

  And so one of the things that you've talked about in the past, uh, and I think just really nails at home is like, what's the purpose of all of this? Right? So the systems, the operational efficiency and excellence, the bootstrapping versus venture. Like it's this idea that you've talked about where entrepreneurship gives you the freedom. And it can alleviate a lot of the like financial anxiety or financial issues. Talk just like from a high level, somebody who's saying, I may want to go do this, but like, what's the purpose? Right? Or how should I think about it? I think you've got a very kind of sober view of, um, you know, this is what this allows people to do.

• 30:37Speaker 00

  And some people want to optimize for that, some people don't, but maybe just describe that a little bit.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, so for me, I was, you know, like a lot of people, not super happy working in banking and private equity, was, you know, working these crazy hours and, um, and was, you know, found it just not, not as rewarding as I was hoping. You know, like I was on this track that it was super appealing that everyone wanted to get into in college. And I finally arrived at Carlyle, you know, it's one of the top B firms. And I wasn't really, I really wasn't that satisfied. I didn't see my family a lot. I couldn't pursue my hobbies anymore. And, and so, and I wasn't really working on something that I was super passionate about. And so I went down this entrepreneurial route. And what I discovered is that being an entrepreneur can also be super stressful and cause a ton of anxiety.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  You know, you're, you're trying to keep up with growth and you're multitasking and you're managing all these people all of a sudden. And so I've, and now looking back, I've, I've been, you know, I like this idea of like holistic entrepreneurship where, you know, you're really, you're trying to solve for your wellbeing and you're trying to solve for, you know, real wealth, which to me is not just about getting rich, you know, financially, it's also about gaining freedom, you know, the freedom to self-express, the freedom to set your hours, the freedom to pursue, you know, your interests and have time for family and friends as well as your business and your team, the freedom to work with people that you love working with.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  Um, and so I think entrepreneurship is this amazing vehicle for, uh, being able to achieve that sort of freedom. And I think, you know, but, but the key is to avoid some of the traps of, you know, growth at all costs. Uh, you know, growth can be like a cancer and it can kind of like eat you. So I think if you can, um, structure things the way, some of the ways I was discussing, you can have this like really fun and really enjoyable outcome as you go. Um, and just like take it like in small little steps bit by bit, uh, and gain a tremendous amount of freedom. And then, and also solve financial anxiety. I know I, I suffer and still do, you know, especially early on, uh, from a lot of like, you know, insecure, financial insecurity, like, am I going to have enough to, you know,

• 32:48Speaker 02

  pay the bills as I'm building this business? Can I take care of my, you know, my family that I hope to have in, you know, the future and, and, you know, retire and all these, you know, questions that, you know, plague all of us. Uh, and so I was very focused on like trying to mitigate risk as I grew the business and try to ensure that we would have enough cash to, you know, weather storms and things of that nature.

• 33:10Speaker 00

  And so you've obviously spent the last number of years building businesses and done it at a very kind of high degree of success. You've been able to build really interesting communities that are not only full of successful, powerful, interesting people, but also can be quite profitable. But at kind of the heart, you started out wanting to do real estate investing. And so talk a little bit about how you think about investor versus operator today. And you kind of merged them, it seems like, or there's like now more of a gray area because you literally own Powder Mountain and you guys are selling real estate there. But just talk a little bit about kind of capital allocator versus operator.

• 33:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think there's a tremendous amount of power in being able to, if you really understand both. And I, I think a lot of startup people don't really understand private equity. A lot of private equity people don't really understand startups. And if you understand, if you consider the intersection of those two things, then you can do some really powerful things. So, you know, like an example I give is, I'm really fascinated by Barry Stern. I like to create at Starwood Capital and Starwood Property Group and, you know, hotels like the St. Regis and Hyatt and the One Hotel. And, you know, like just as an example, you know, he'll buy, like he bought the Baccarat Crystal Company. Have you heard of this company?

• 34:33Speaker 00

  No, what is that?

• 34:35Speaker 02

  So like, there's this company that's been out forever. They make these like, you know, crystal chandeliers. And I think they make like, you know, silverware that's beautiful. And so he buys this company underneath this private equity firm. He takes the brand and he builds a hotel brand using the Baccarat name. So buying the crystal company in itself was a good buy. Like he bought it at a decent valuation. And then if you could grow that brand over time, you know, as more and more consumers in places like China, you know, are becoming middle and upper class, Baccarat's going to grow. But at the same time, he took that brand and did something new with it. So he launches a new vertical that's a hotel brand. And with his private equity fund, he funds the development of a new hotel in

• 35:20Speaker 02

  Midtown Manhattan with condo and hotel. And he joint ventures with the developers. He puts up the capital for it from the fund. He licenses the brand from his Baccarat Crystal Company that the fund owns. And he gets a developer who really is an expert in building, you know, skyscrapers to actually build the hotel. And so he's playing in like all parts, you know, he's making money on royalties, he's making money for that Baccarat through the brand and the license, he's making money for the private equity fund on both the Baccarat company and the new hotel development. He's got a partner who's handling the day to day of building that hotel. So he's leveraging his, his human capital, so to speak, instead of having to build all that internally. And, uh, and so he's kind of playing in all the different components of this. And so

• 36:04Speaker 02

  he's able to do that because he really understands like everything from, from brand and design and operation to also understanding capital, capital markets and structuring. And I think that, um, more and more people should learn how to do this, you know, I think Virgin's another great example of being able to do that. And so I've been trying to apply things I learned at Carlisle and things I've learned as an operator and trying to sit at the intersection of these things. So, you know, Summit is a brand and, and has events and Powder Mountain's a joint venture. We can, you know, leverage that brand to be a developer. And we can use our hospitality expertise to improve the management of the mountain and make that, you know, a better feel when you show up at a restaurant, for example.

• 36:44Speaker 02

  And, um, and then the brand of the mountain strengthens the brand of the Summit community and the Summit events, because more people hear about the mountain. More people want to come to the events, more people hear about the events, more people want to buy a piece of real estate at the mountain or just come out and ski. And so you're, you're kind of starting to leverage all these different things. And so I think that's a really, there's interesting ways to approach like, you know, building businesses in this way.

• 37:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, it, it's really interesting, uh, when you start to think about, uh, the importance of IP, um, and, and using IP as an asset or a resource, just as much as capital, human labor or anything else, right?

• 37:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I like what you said in another show about Barstool and how, you know, they should have bought Peng Gaming, you know, potentially that. I, I, I think it's smart, you know, like, uh, like, like, like you were saying, you know, they could use their brand. They've got this huge following. And, uh, you know, they could, they could launch a new app for sports betting, you know, the Barstool app with, uh, the infrastructure of a gambling organization and, and, uh, and leverage that brand to make money in a whole new way. Uh, in addition to having their, you know, all their, their multimedia platforms. So I think a lot of people could do this, like even on a small scale. Um, you know, like I, I spoke to a guy recently who was, uh, manufacturing pickleball rackets and selling them on Amazon. And nice profitable company, you know, doing a half a million a profit.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  And you know, but it was it's competitive on Amazon. So he was, you know, he was growing, but it's it's hard to grow. There's more and more competition every day. But one thing he could do is launch, you know, a league, for example. And, you know, he's got a following. People love the brand of his racket. So he could, he's got an email list. So he could announce to them, hey, listen, we're now going to do this thing where it's, you know, fifty bucks a month. And we're gonna, if you, you know, we're gonna meet once a week and we're gonna have a tournament. And he could start to expand into like a totally different vertical. And, uh, you know, I especially like that vertical because it's kind of capital light. So it wouldn't need a lot of money to launch it. You could experiment and shut it down in six months if it doesn't work. And so, yeah, again, like leveraging your brand and your operational expertise to to play. And you could, you know, he could also do that in a separate LLC.

• 38:53Speaker 02

  He could join venture with another entrepreneur. Like, let's say, he doesn't have the time to build and manage this, a new company. Well, another way to go about it is he joined ventures with someone else. And they launched that and they run and they've got skin in the game. And, you know, they pay him a royalty or or they, you know, they give him thirty percent of the equity in the in the business. Uh, you know, I think there's a lot of different ways to skin the cat.

• 39:14Speaker 00

  Absolutely. And and so I guess as part of this, um, you now are looking at, uh, kind of going out and finding brands to acquire and and scale and and, uh, you know, grow. Uh, maybe before we get to the types of things you're looking for, uh, I know you and I have talked about a couple of different types of businesses, uh, and what you could do with them. So we'll play a game of what I'll call hypothetical private equity, uh, to to kind of go through. Uh, let's start first with, uh, Tony Robbins and, uh, and his business. What, uh, what would you do and and kind of how do you think that business could be improved?

• 39:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I love Tony Robbins' business and I went to my first Tony Robbins event last year. Super impressive, uh, incredible business, huge following, you know, diehard fans. And, you know, it's largely monetized through conferences or seminars. You know, where thousands and thousands of people gather for five days and they learn a tremendous amount. And, you know, but one thing I noticed is they they just kind of go home and and they listen to free stuff that he puts out and, you know, he he provides coaching and some other services and. And and and by the way, I, you know, he runs an amazing business. But I think there's ways that you could take that and extend it, right? So one thing is that would be to build a monthly forum. You know, there's YPO and Vistage and other companies. There's a company called Chief now in New York that's super successful.

• 40:35Speaker 02

  Where you get people together in groups of 10, they meet once a month. Some, some it's actually producing this now, something like this called Junto. And you meet once a month and you're basically a support group for one another to help each other achieve your goals, both personally and professionally. In the case of Tony Robbins, maybe even spiritually. And I think that could be a super sticky product and his, his audience would, you know, pay at least five grand a year for a product like that. You know, YPO costs 10 to 20 grand. And I mean, these are like 30%, you know, EBITDA margin businesses. For kind of, you know, Vistage does over a hundred million dollars in profits sold to private equity. So I, you know, that's like one extension that he could sell as people are leaving the, the seminar. You know, from there, you know, I, I've just been, one thing I've been really interested in is just,

• 41:20Speaker 02

  if you learn like 20 different monetization tactics, then you can kind of come up with infinite permutations of things you could do if you bought or started a company. And so, you know, another thing you could do is build a lead gen business where he builds the best SEO, you know, rated content on all things mental health. He's already kind of famous for that. He already has a lot of traffic to his website. So he could build, you know, a huge amount of media on his site that covers every topic about mental wellbeing. And then people end up on those pages and he could be an affiliate marketer that where he's driving traffic to, you know, different products around that space and, and taking, you know, a cut through Legion. He could build a premium subscription newsletter like, like, like you've done, of course,

• 42:01Speaker 02

  and an online community, kind of like Trends by the Hustle, where, you know, people meet in a private Facebook forum as part of that premium subscription and share tips and, you know, shared notes and how are they getting, you know, managing life?

• 42:15Speaker 02

  I also think a cool way to extend his brand would be, you know, kind of like I was saying, he could build a private equity firm and buy other companies in the wellness space and then leverage his huge following to promote those companies. He's also got just an amazing set of operators in his business that could drop into those companies and help improve operations, cut costs, whatever it need be. You know, I thought one cool thing, I don't know if many people know this, did you know Jimmy Buffett as a real estate, you know, division as well?

• 42:42Speaker 00

  I did not.

• 42:43Speaker 02

  But like Margaritaville Buffett's company. Not only does it, you know, have like a radio station, I think XM Sirius and of course, you know, his concerts, but he started a senior, a senior living development brand where if you want to live the margarita style, you know, lifestyle as a retiree, like, you know, I'm sure there's, you know, tons of people would love to live that, that lifestyle. You can move down to Florida and live in one of his senior developments and, uh, and live in this like really cool culture. So I think, you know, Tony Robbins has this huge following, especially among baby boomers, who, you know, have a lot of disposable income and they, they want to, you know, visit wellness resorts and retreats and, you know, maybe go to meditation centers around the world. And so I

• 43:26Speaker 02

  think you could build a, uh, kind of a hospitality brand, um, as well. So, yeah, I mean, I could go on and on with, with ideas for his company, but I think once you have a following like that and expertise, there's a lot you could do.

• 43:39Speaker 00

  And, and it feels like really what you're talking about here is, uh, that following has bought into, uh, a way of thinking, a way of life, right? And then they feel, uh, part of their identity is attached to that. And when you reach that point, uh, you can apply it in so many different ways from a, from a business perspective, right?

• 43:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think someone smarter than me said, focus on psychographic instead of demographic. And, uh, we've certainly seen that with Summit. Like, we have people who are kind of like gray haired millennials, if you will, who are, you know, sixty five years old, uh, but they, you know, when Summit started was all people under thirty. And now there's, you know, all these incredible people who are, you know, in their sixties, seventies even, who are, you gotta kind of share the ethos. And they, they share the energy of wanting to create things and have an impact on the world and, you know, other things that kind of appeal to the summit kind of, uh, psychology. And so, yeah, I think if you can focus on the psychographic of your audience, uh, there's a lot that, that you can do with, and you can kind of lean have more

• 44:43Speaker 02

  heavily into that psychographic, uh, and get a lot more, you know, out of it, out of your following.

• 44:49Speaker 00

  For sure. Uh, another business, uh, that you've talked about is, uh, Vayner Media, which is, um, you know, different, but, but has some of the same elements as a Tony Robbins type business. What, uh, what are the thoughts around something like a Vayner Media or media agency?

• 45:03Speaker 02

  So you know, agencies are traditionally kind of like, they're challenging businesses, they're lower multiple businesses. They only grow through adding, adding employees typically, you know, because every time they get a new customer, they need more bodies to support the customer. And so, but it's a great business for bringing in cash flow. It's a great business for getting out your name and they can scale very quickly. Uh, and, um, and they only, you know, you don't have to like scale them ahead of your, your, your profitability. You can grow them as you get more clients. But if you want to transition an agency into a higher multiple business, this is one, you could come out with a product. And so like, you know, Vayner could develop like a piece of software for social media. Maybe they should have been the next, you know, they should have been Hootsuite.

• 45:47Speaker 02

  Uh, you know, so they could, I'm sure still come out with a great software product and, and just leverage their huge brand and following. Um, but another thing they could do too is launch a venture fund and, um. You know, I think Hawk Media did this in LA, Eric Huberman's company where, you know, in addition to having this, this agency. You know, they have access to so much deal flow. They're seeing so many problems that need to be solved. And they're helping so many startups. And so you could launch a venture fund with a group of, you know, frankly, with a lot of your customers could be your investors. And then you could use that to make debts on the companies that you're servicing. And, and use this kind of unique perspective that you have. And then that just makes your clients even more kind of sticky.

• 46:30Speaker 02

  Uh, because you know, you've also become their investor. I also think you can make a private equity fund, like. Say you're an SEO agency and you, you help companies optimize how they show up on Google. Well, you have so much insight into, you know, certain verticals and how to get the best SEO for those, those sites. You might as well buy those sites and roll them up. And if you roll them up and take them public, I mean, you could even take advantage of the public markets right now where multiples. For public companies are higher than private typically. And, uh, you know, with SPACs and everything. So you could, you could have an amazing outcome, you know, rolling up, uh, you know, blog sites, let's say if you're an SEO specialist. Or if you're an e-commerce agency, you could do this where you're rolling up, you know, e-comm companies.

• 47:13Speaker 02

  Like Thras is doing and then actually provide them this this service, you know, Vista Partners is a good example, like they're this amazing private equity fund. And one of their they buy, you know, enterprise software companies, but at the holding company, they have a consultancy. And they drop that consultancy into the companies they buy and improve all their operations with their own, because they they kind of just like formula. That they know what is going to work before they buy the company. And so I think Vayner is super well positioned to do that. And they have so much expertise internally that, you know, most what what company? Has a thousand people internally like Vayner that's got all these experts that they could deploy and leverage. So, yeah, I think I'm I also love events, obviously, in a post COVID world.

• 47:58Speaker 02

  I think Vayner could create a huge social media agency. I I love how Salesforce launched Dreamforce. I I used to be so jealous and I I'd go to Dreamforce and be like, you're kidding me. This software company is a more successful events company than my company and I'm a full time events company like. They've got, you know, I forgot what it is, you have fifty thousand people buying tickets and, you know, huge companies buying booths. And, you know, that's crazy that a software company owns that. And so I think that's a, you know, it's huge business. The trade show business is a very high multiple business. And I think Vayner could crush it in building like a social media trade show.

• 48:35Speaker 00

  Yeah. And and talk a little bit about how this changes for non product companies like credit products? Or buying product companies and then using them to kind of scale? So I I think one of the disconnects is like, oh, if you're in the agency business, like, then most people think you just have to stay in software, right? They they don't understand. No, actually, and and Gary's kind of does a little bit, I think, in terms of he's bought some companies, right? And then try to use the expertise they have online to to scale it. We see guys like Ty Lopez, I listened, I recently listened to him, Sam Par and Sean Perry talk through. Basically, he's just buying up Pierwin, Import, Stress Bar, and whatever. And he's like, hey, I'm better at the internet than most people, and so I can market this stuff on the internet.

• 49:18Speaker 00

  Like, how do you think about that meshing or intersection of the software businesses and skill sets with those physical products?

• 49:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I'm really, really excited to see if the Tai Lopez model, how that ends up playing out. But I think like if you have, if you have like a media brand and you've got a big following, I think like you said about Barstool, you know, you can go buy, or I think you also said about Joe Rogan, like, you know, Joe Rogan could go buy a physical product that's sold on, on Amazon, sold through Shopify and e-commerce and leverages his, you know, not only his, his following, but it's like, you know, he's got this kind of like sticky, diehard psychology around what he's built and he could leverage that to, to promote a brand. I think someone who does this really, really well is Golden Hippo, Craig Clemens Company.

• 50:07Speaker 02

  They kind of fly under the radar, but they are this kind of like holding company that is behind a lot of direct to consumer brands. And their methodology is they find a guru, kind of an expert who's known in a space, you know, usually like a doctor. And they find some famous doctor, you know, the, the leading cardiologist who's like, you know, you know, worked on, you know, Bill Clinton and, you know, everyone kind of knows this cardiologist. And then they find a product then in like, you know, the heart health space, you know, maybe it's a vitamin. And they go and get that doctor and they joint venture with the doctor and they build the infrastructure to sell the product and do the customer service and build the freight formula.

• 50:48Speaker 02

  Maybe they buy an existing cardiology product that's already out there and they use this, this famous brand. And then they, you know, spend a bunch of money on Facebook and build that brand even further. And, you know, they've, they've absolutely killed it with, with this strategy. And, you know, they don't all work. I think they're, they're, they're almost like an incubator, you know, some of them fail, but, but the formula works. And so I think a lot of people could, I mean, obviously you see the Kardashians do this, like, you know, anybody who's got a brand, I think, could play in the, you know, the e-comm space, which of course is, you're basically growing in the, behind Amazon, you know, as, as Amazon helps, you know, just expand the e-commerce universe. There's kind of this wind in your sails from, from all the amazing work that they're doing on Shopify.

• 51:33Speaker 02

  So I think a lot of people could take advantage of that.

• 51:36Speaker 00

  For sure. Uh, Whole Foods is a, uh, a, a pretty interesting one. What are your thoughts there?

• 51:42Speaker 02

  Uh, this is my silliest one, but I, uh, I've always wanted someone to create this. Like, I love what Walt Disney did with, um, with his brand. I mean, it's just insane. If you look back at what Walt Disney did, it's just so inspiring, uh, to take a cartoon brand and think, oh, I'm going to go buy thousands of acres, you know, near Los Angeles and then, you know, eventually in Florida and build a theme park. Uh, and I think Disney is a great example of, of all these things. They bought companies. They, you know, they, they spun up other brands. They leveraged their brands, all kinds of different things, cruise lines, you know, et cetera. So while Whole Foods, you know, everyone trusts Whole Foods is like this amazing culinary brand, right?

• 52:24Speaker 02

  I think they can build culinary world where it's basically like a theme park, again, post COVID. But, you know, a theme park where, you know, imagine the ad, like, you know, come see how, you know, 50,000 different kinds of food products and how they're made and experience this place. And I think it could be a huge tourist destination. The company that owns Italy created kind of a theme park in Italy that, you know, most Americans aren't as familiar with. And it's like this really cool experiential theme park where there's just, you know, tons of tour buses showing up every day with tourists who want to go see, you know, how, yeah, how is mozzarella made? And, you know, where, where does, you know, how's, how's beer brewed? And, and so you could imagine like a huge theme park like that. Maybe they put it in Orlando or outside of Vegas where there's already a lot of traffic.

• 53:08Speaker 02

  Uh, and they get this awesome culinary experience. And I, I think Whole Foods has got the brand to do it. I, I think other food brands could do it too. You know, I also, you know, I love the newsletter business. Uh, I, you know, I think they could also build a premium newsletter about nutrition and just, you know, own that category. And every time you're, you know, checking out, you know, they give you a free subscription and get you kind of, you know, into the brand and then upsell you into paying them, you know, whatever it is, 50, 10 to 50 bucks a month. And, uh, if you want to get nutritional updates, you know, from there they could do nutritional software.

• 53:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, it it and it also feels like maybe Amazon is playing this game of like vertical integration. They just came out with a wearable, you know, last couple of days that it's going to check your health and fitness, all this kind of stuff. And like, I mean, it's not hard for them to immediately now start to hook that in with what food you should order. And then through Amazon Prime, it gets delivered. Like, you just start to put all the pieces together. It almost feels like some of the larger companies are doing this. Does that take away the opportunity for smaller companies? Or is that just a sign that like, there's so much opportunity that, you know, whether you're large or small, it's kind of a green field?

• 54:18Speaker 02

  I think there's just so much opportunity. And yeah, I think, yeah, but I think that these are great companies to learn from. Their case studies are incredible. And especially we're lucky that they're public and we can see, you know, a fair bit of their numbers and see kind of dig behind the scenes and see what they're doing. But, you know, you're so right. There's this, you know, there's this ecosystem effect as you build out more products. You know, Apple is probably one of the greatest examples of this, where you get people, you kind of hooked on the services, they're hooked on the physical product. And so, you know, there's this huge moat that you're building. You know, Buffett says, you know, buy moats, don't buy companies. Like, you know, Apple has got this amazing moat, Amazon has this incredible moat. You know, Salesforce is doing the same thing. They're buying all the companies that they can kind of channel right through their software, right

• 55:03Speaker 02

  through their sales team. And on top of it, they've got, like I mentioned, the trade show. And so, you know, you turn to them for everything CRM. And next thing you know, they they launch customer service. And, you know, you're immediately going to look to them for that. And so, you know, I think Oracle's done a great job of this, too.

• 55:20Speaker 00

  Talk a little bit about starting a company versus buying one. I know you've got some thoughts on acquisition and how that can be a great jumping point for for kind of kickstarting something and then also increasing the odds of success later.

• 55:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it was a space that, you know, it's so kind of unknown and splintered that it doesn't even have a name that anyone can agree on. I started just calling it micro private equity. I heard someone else say, and you know, I think it's a really interesting space where I've been spending a lot of my time recently. You know, there's all these companies out there that are like 300,000, or I often say 50,000 of profit to two or three million. That for the most part, the big P shops or even the mid-market P shops, they really can't spend their time on these. They just don't move the needle for a fund. But they do move the needle for an individual entrepreneur who's trying to make, you know, a half a million, a million a year, two million a year.

• 56:15Speaker 02

  And, and, and some of them can grow and I've seen friends grow them to five to 10 million dollars a profit a year. And, and the space is highly splintered. And if you can become good at sourcing deals, it's the easy part is raising the capital. It's actually, there's a lot of capital and plus the, the small business administration lending makes it very easy to borrow money. If you're willing to personally guarantee it, you can leverage up to, I think, 90% and take out a loan. And right now, you don't even have to pay interest, I don't think, for the first six months. And so, you know, one nice thing about buying companies, instead of starting them, is you get the advantage of leverage. You know, the power of leverage is, is, as I know, you know, like it's enormous. The returns that you can make under capital when you only have to put in, you know, 10 to 20% of the equity.

• 57:01Speaker 02

  And I think one thing people, a lot of people in the startup world don't really understand is joint venture waterfalls.

• 57:07Speaker 00

  What is that? Explain that, explain that for people.

• 57:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, so instead of thinking of like pre-money, post-money, convertible notes, sort of startup methods of raising capital. The, the private equity world and the real estate world work in this concept of a waterfall. So I put in 10% of the equity needed. My investors put in 90%. After we each get our money back, I get 10% of every dollar out. They get 90% of every dollar out for the first dollars out until we each get 100% of our money that we put in back into our pocket. Then we each get maybe an 8% return on that money. And after we've gotten our eight percent return and our money back, then I, as the entrepreneur who did all the work, found the deal, put it together, worked in the company day to day,

• 57:51Speaker 02

  I then get a kicker, I get a sweetener, maybe it's twenty percent, somewhere between probably twenty to fifty percent extra percentage of every remaining dollar of that business. And so if you buy a company and you hold it for ten years, you know, and you buy it for the, you know, four times multiple, in the first, you know, three to five years, depending on how much you grow the company, might even only be two years, you'll get everyone's capital back. And then for the next, you know, five, ten years, you might own fifty percent of that business, even though you only put in ten percent of the equity. And so you're clipping fifty percent of the profit, plus you're paying yourself a salary. And if you're, if

• 58:33Speaker 02

  you're clever or ambitious about this, you can do this, you know, you could do this a few times a year. You could buy a handful of companies and build a portfolio, spread the risk of you and your investors across multiple companies. And, you know, you could build, and you could even put all that into a holding company, which then has, you know, enterprise value across all of these things. You could take the holding company public. So anyway, there's a lot of things you can, there's a lot of things you can do with structuring that. But, and I'll say one other thing about this is, there's this concept that there are, the largest generation in American history are the baby boomers. And they're retiring right now, right? Like, my parents are seventy-three years old now, I'm thirty-seven. And I'm the first year of the millennials. I was born in eighty-two, I think maybe I'm the

• 59:14Speaker 02

  second. So, over the next, you know, ten years, tens of thousands of business owners who are baby boomers are retiring. And if they're running a small business, many of them can't sell their business to like a strategic or a P shop because their business is too small. And they, and they really, they need an operator to take over the business. And private equity firms, they don't want to be operators. So they're not going to buy a business and step in and run it. So, for, in order for these people to retire, they need an entrepreneur like us to come and buy it from them. And so there's a ton of opportunities now to buy these baby boomer businesses. And the other benefit is a lot of these boomers, they didn't really Really understand online marketing. So maybe they're running an HVAC business in Ohio.

• 59:57Speaker 02

  And you know, they've had a kind of a reputation with their customers for years, but they've got almost no presence on Facebook. And so you can buy this company, which has a great reputation, great employees, maybe even has a bunch of good surveys on Yelp, but they're not spending any money on Google AdWords, they're not spending any, they're not investing in Facebook. And you can totally transform the marketing. So there's a lot of opportunity there, and I think it's an exciting space.

• 1:00:21Speaker 00

  Talk a little bit about as you go out and you start looking at businesses that to potentially acquire. What areas or industries do you think are interesting?

• 1:00:32Speaker 02

  Well, I just mentioned one that's kind of interesting, the the home services industry. You know, Buffett and Munger, they love these kind of boring businesses that, you know, aren't going to be disrupted overnight by new technology. And and are enduring. So yeah, home services, you know, companies that install pools and fencing and roofing or do HVAC servicing are interesting businesses. Now, the downside of these businesses is that they, you know, the challenge is the personnel, you've got to take over and maintain personnel. But the upside is you're not, you don't have platform risk, you know, if you buy like a e-commerce company on Amazon. You know, there's always a risk that Amazon will just come out with their own competing product or, you know, a competitor from abroad will undercut you on pricing because they have cheaper labor.

• 1:01:15Speaker 02

  And so I, you know, part of me kind of likes these boring offline businesses. But then I also really like, you know, there's a lot of great online businesses. There's, there's a number of companies right now rolling up kind of the FBA, the fulfillment by Amazon space or Shopify e-commerce space. Of course, software has always been a space that, you know, P shops love, but don't have the energy to buy the really small companies. So if you can buy small software companies. There's a couple of interesting companies that are kind of rolling that space up. There, there's this publicly traded company called Constellation, which is this amazing software company. It's kind of like the Berkshire Hathaway of software. And I think you could build a mini version of that. Where you buy, there's so many, you know, small kind of micros, they call them micro SaaS businesses out there.

• 1:02:01Speaker 02

  And you can buy them and if you if you can buy them when they're small, when they trade for, you know, three to five times earnings and and scale them up to where they're a little bit bigger, they trade for more like eight to fifteen times. Or if you can aggregate a handful of them together and then your collective EBITDA is, you know, as you approach five, 10 million of EBITDA, suddenly private equity firms want to buy you. And if you can get above 10, you could potentially even go public. And so there's a multiple arbitrage opportunity there where you're buying low multiple and and scaling it into a higher multiple category. So, yeah, those are, those are some ones I've been, I've been kind of tinkering around like, you know.

• 1:02:37Speaker 00

  How do you think about talent in these businesses? So businesses that maybe are a little bit more antiquated, they haven't gotten kind of updated with technology, use of the internet. Traditionally, a lot of that's, in my experience, been the skill sets are different, right? So people kind of do what they know. And if you bring a bunch of young people in who are super savvy with the internet and technology, like they start trying to put technology everywhere, right? And do things differently. If you don't have people who are kind of up to curve on certain types of technologies, they just don't know what they don't know. And so therefore they kind of do it the way that they were taught or that they've done for their career. So how do you think about talent and kind of managing existing talent when you go in and buy a business

• 1:03:19Speaker 00

  versus kind of bringing in folks who have different skill sets?

• 1:03:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, my, my experience, you, you have to enter with a lot of humility. And if you're going to buy a business, you got to come in and spend the first six months just earning trust and and leaving a lot of the things in the way that they're doing it the same and making only a few strategic changes. So like, if you bought an HVAC business, you could update the marketing right away because the, the, the people you have out in the field, a lot of times in HVAC, they get paid in part on commission for how many installations they make or how much they service. And so they definitely want more business. So if you could start by helping the people that you're employing win more business and earn more money.

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

  As opposed to immediately starting changing with like how they implement the business and how much data they need to enter day to day, the things that are going to annoy them about your new management style. So I would start with like, you know, how can you actually help them earn more and gain, gain some of their trust? And then once they're kind of bought into the new, this, this, a little bit of this new method, you say, hey, by the way, we're also now going to put in this new system where you have to enter some more data about, you know, what happened on the visit and how many hours did it take you to install the thing so that we can get better at, you know, optimizing, you know, how we put, you know, labor out into the field in this example. So I think it's like, kind of like a step by step, you know, kind of gradual approach. But and I think,

• 1:04:40Speaker 02

  you know, one challenge is if you're going to buy a portfolio is like, how do you scale yourself? You're not going to be able to be intimately involved in every detail. And I think that's one of the amazing things when I watch like Buffett, like it's incredible how much, you know, they don't meddle in the businesses. And so, um, you know, one method is to be more hands off and be more of a capital allocator and buy things and, you know, leave management in place or hire GM while you're under, under LOI to come in and manage that business for you and just provide them the right incentives and culture and which is a lot easier said than done. I'm like amazed when I'm, when I see how, you know, some of these companies like Constellation have done that. Um, but yeah, I think it's, I think it's a challenge and an opportunity around, around the, the human element of this.

• 1:05:23Speaker 00

  Got it. And, and what do you think is the, um, the, the counter argument, right? So obviously there's a ton of opportunity. There's a ton of positives to taking the approaches that, that we've talked about, whether it's bootstrapping or acquiring businesses and scale. And what's kind of the counter argument that people should be aware of or, you know, the, the downsides and obstacles?

• 1:05:43Speaker 02

  Well, look, for, for, for, for society, we venture is amazing. What, what it's done for, you know, the, the human race, if you will, right? Like you're not going to put rockets into outer space and solve, you know, major challenges globally without building billion dollar unicorn companies. And so I, I think, you know, just for societal reasons alone, we need people that are, you know, building massive companies like. Like, you know, like a Whole Foods, like an Amazon, you know, like a SpaceX or a Tesla that can deliver these new solutions and make huge innovative breakthroughs. You know, especially thinking about just like what's happened in developing drugs, you know, you're not going to develop a breakthrough for COVID

• 1:06:27Speaker 02

  without spending, you know, hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. So there's definitely a need for it societally. And then also some entrepreneurs, they, you know, they want the adventure. They want the challenge. They want the moonshot of going and taking on a huge world challenge and solving it. I think that's inspiring. You know, I definitely, you know, I watched, you know, some of the people who've done this and just blown away by the things that they're doing. You know, for me, I think I'm like too timid and too worried about failing and, and, and having that financial anxiety that we mentioned earlier. And so part of that's one reason that I kind of avoid this personally.

• 1:07:09Speaker 02

  And, but yeah, I think, I think that's, that's one thing is just certain, certain concepts are going to take a lot of capital.

• 1:07:15Speaker 00

  For sure. And, and I guess as you kind of go through this, how do you suggest people getting in touch with, you mentioned earlier, like joint ventures and ways to get access to capital through private equity firms and stuff like that. Like what's in your opinion, some of the things that people should should, should think through and should kind of be aware of as they approach those conversations in order to make it a win-win and really align incentives?

• 1:07:41Speaker 02

  Well, I think that there's tons of capital out there chasing deals and the thing that's in short supply are operators and deals, you know, and we have fairly valued deals. And so if you can bring yourself as a, as a good operator, and if you can bring a deal, then you've, you've really solved like a major challenge for investors who are trying to diversify and put out capital. And so you're going to be in a really nice position. Like you'll, you'll be able to get pretty good terms today at least, you know, it's kind of like a, it's an operator's and kind of like a market, you know, there, there's an opportunity to structure deals that are pretty favorable to the operator. But yeah, I think, you know, you really You want to make it a win win. You want to earn a good reputation so you can keep doing deals with your investors.

• 1:08:25Speaker 02

  And so, yeah, I mentioned that joint venture waterfall concept. I think that's a really nice way of raising capital. Because I mean, think about the proposition, like instead of me saying, look, I'm going to value this new concept at 10 million, this random number, you know, 10 million bucks and you guys are going to put in a million and we're going to give you 10%. Instead, you can say, look, put in a million and every dollar out initially you sweep and you're going to get the first million. And after you get your million, I'm also going to give you this nice return. So at a minimum, like you're kind of protected to make this 8% return. And then if things go well and I'm really, you know, doing what I said I could do, then I get the extra 20, 30, 40% of this deal, only there of the remaining capital thereafter.

• 1:09:07Speaker 02

  And so I, I personally just love that structure. I learned it from the real estate private equity world. It's that this is super common. This is how like developers build, you know, office buildings and apartment building and hotels. As they raise the capital in this kind of joint venture waterfall.

• 1:09:23Speaker 02

  You know, nothing wrong with the venture sort of methodology, pre-money, post-money. I just, it's, I find like the argument is like a little bit harder to follow because you kind of have to believe in this kind of valuation. It's kind of hard to pencil.

• 1:09:35Speaker 00

  Absolutely. And, and I guess as part of this, when you think of kind of where the world is going, the pandemic, the economic shock, the recession, the stimulus, the quantitative easing, like there's so much complexity in the world and so many moving parts. Do you see that as a opportunity or do you see that as a, something to kind of be very cautious of and could potentially be a negative?

• 1:10:06Speaker 02

  Well, I've certainly been cautious and not, you know, taking too many steps. There's been a bunch of companies I looked at buying since, since around February. And I've been kind of following like the Buffett's of the world and kind of trying not to do too many things and being disciplined and kind of waiting for the right opportunity. Because it was kind of hard to see where this was all going to shake out. And it's still hard to see from where I sit. You know, maybe we'll enter recession next year and at the business I buy will, you know, be be down thirty, forty, fifty percent. And especially if you, so one thing would be to use less leverage in an environment like this. Don't put too much debt on the business and burden it. Raise a little extra capital at the outset, even if that means you dilute yourself a little more. Whether that's starting a company or buying a company.

• 1:10:51Speaker 02

  So you've got some working capital sitting around. And then if you have the extra capital and a little bit of extra and less leverage. Now you're in a great position. You've got a company, you've got some extra capital and you can be aggressive. Because, you know, this is a great time to be hiring people in the coming year. Talent is going to be less expensive, really top talent that maybe you would have hired. They would have left you in six months for another great job. You're going to be able to maintain for longer. You know, we built our businesses out of the recession in oh eight. And these were some of the advantages that we that were really helpful to us. The other thing was competition was kind of distracted. So, you know, like this now, we kind of came out under the radar. When there were these big companies that were doing commercial real estate publishing and events.

• 1:11:35Speaker 02

  And in like oh eight, oh nine, they were so busy just cutting costs and dealing with challenges and raising capital to survive. That they really weren't paying attention to us coming in and eating their lunch. And by the time they kind of woke up to what we were doing. You know, we had a few hundred thousand subscribers and a team and a great product. And so it was harder and harder to compete with us. And we we ended up going from like, kind of like the underdog to to being kind of like the giant in the space. So I think if you've got, this is a great time to to take advantage of those kinds of things.

• 1:12:07Speaker 00

  Absolutely. And so I guess.

• 1:12:11Speaker 00

  How do you find the opportunities? Right? Like, I think that's another piece to say, okay, great. You you convinced me this is an awesome way to to kind of build a business. I want to go do this. Where do I find them? Like, how do you normally think through finding either acquisition targets or or markets to go look in?

• 1:12:31Speaker 02

  Alright, so I stole this from this venture capitalist page Craig who said something pretty brilliant. So he talks about hunting, trapping, farming and trading. And I think I was kind of doing this naturally, but once I started, once he got this framework into my mind, I've like tripled down on it. So hunting, so hunting is cold outreach. So you know, you can network, you can, and you can also just do cold email campaigns. And if you really want to get super sophisticated about it, you can build a team in like the Philippines that does outreach. And you can scrape LinkedIn and there's a lot of clever ways to use technology now and software and outsourcing to build a huge lead gen pipeline for whatever niche it is that you're trying to buy companies. Or if you're trying to buy real estate or any other asset for that matter.

• 1:13:17Speaker 02

  Again, then second is trapping. So trapping is becoming known in a niche and becoming kind of like, like you are, like you're this, you know, known entity in a number of different business verticals. And so, you know, one way is to speak on podcasts like this, you know, one way I love is host an event, you know, again, with COVID, you could do this over Zoom, but you'd be amazed how you'll just come together, even if you're a nobody initially. If you say, hey, I'm getting the founders together of a bunch of newsletter companies, we're going to have a Zoom call where we all share notes. And so I do this all the time, whenever I enter a new vertical. And I find tons of people will show up. I used to do it like in the back of a bar and serve drinks in Manhattan.

• 1:13:57Speaker 02

  And what the way I would do it is I would, I would have calls one-on-one with five or six people that I might've called outreach or gotten a couple of warm introductions to. And once I had those five or six people and I earned some trust with them, I'd go back to them and say, hey, here's a list I created. I just emailed it to you. Keep pulling this up. Here's 50 names I think you know. I saw you actually friends with them on LinkedIn. Would you mind introducing them to me so I can invite them to this like event that I'm going to host on Zoom or, you know, at this bar? And you'd be amazed how many people will come together and then you become kind of like the mayor of this space. You get up and give the toast, you make all the introductions. And so that puts you kind of in the, in the center of the universe of DealFon. And then you let all those people know, hey, I'm looking to buy companies and this is what I'm up to. This is my pieces. So that's.

• 1:14:41Speaker 02

  Number three is farming. Farming is basically just spreading love, like just helping lots of people. I especially love like helping lots of twenty something up and comers who are, you know, are doing all kinds of cool ambitious things. And who are in a particular industry you're interested in, maybe it's newsletters, for example, again, just get to know all the, I just go and help them. And I give them free, you know, help and advice. And eventually that starts to plant seeds with a lot of people that grow into trees and start to bring you deals. And then finally, trading, going to other people that are doing deals and saying, look, you're looking for software deals. I'm looking for information product deals. Every time I see a software deal, I'm going to send it your way. And every time you see this kind of deal, would you, you know, would you mind sending it my way?

• 1:15:23Speaker 02

  And like, you know, yeah, people, people love this. And so like, you know, just yesterday, I sent like a software company to a guy who's rolling up software companies. And, you know, maybe he'll never, maybe he'll never send me something, or maybe a year from now he will. So if you do that with, you know, fifty people, it kind of adds up.

• 1:15:39Speaker 00

  Absolutely. Um, co-founders versus no co-founders, you talked a little bit about kind of capital partners. Uh, but how do you think about this in terms of, uh, is this a solo route to take? Or is this, um, something that's done more in partnership?

• 1:15:56Speaker 02

  So I think that depends on, on yours, on the individual, like there's definitely, it's, you know, getting a business partner, I think I underestimated initially is like getting a spouse. It's a major, it's a major commitment and, uh, and it's really hard to know upfront. If your business partners are going to be the, you know, the three things like, you know, you want them to be right, you want them to be high energy. High intelligence and I, I'm speaking about intelligence broadly, maybe they're amazingly, amazingly high, high EQ. And so they're awesome in sales. Maybe they're really good IQ and so they're really good with systems. Uh, and then third, you want them to be high integrity. And, um, the challenge is it's really hard to know that until you work with somebody, you know, you interview a bunch of people, you get to know them, even, even friends.

• 1:16:38Speaker 02

  You start working with it, you learn, oh, they're actually a little lazier than I thought, or, you know, or they're just not a good match, you know, for my personality, for whatever reason. Um, I mean, one good thing is you'll grow a lot and trying to be a better partner to your business partners. And so you'll have to develop empathy and patience and things like that. But, so I don't know, it kind of depends. I, I, you know, there are days where I'm jealous of the Ted Turners of the world who just owned, you know, all their business and had no partners. And there are other days where I was like, thank God I've got these partners. Like I would have never made that, you know, that sale or thought of that, you know, great idea. So, um, but yeah, I think the extent I I would say, you know, Naval Ravikant talks about,

• 1:17:17Speaker 02

  look at the signals, like, look at the actions of your partners more than what they say, especially when you're choosing a partner. And, you know, it's really in the hard times, you're going to find out if your partners are really who you thought they were. When you're running out of money, when you're making capital calls, when you've got to fire someone who's really hard to fire, like, are they going to show up and treat you the way and are you going to treat them like the way that you, you know, kind of imagined that might go down? So you can kind of look at the signals from their past, like, look at their actions as best you can and kind of determine that, but, yeah, and it can be amazingly fun having partners too, like, you know, they just bring a lot of, it's fun to have someone at midnight to call and, you know, gripe about your day with, or, you know, it's just, it can be cathartic, so.

• 1:18:01Speaker 02

  I don't know, it's, it's a tough calling partners.

• 1:18:04Speaker 00

  Absolutely. You, uh, you're hyperproductive, uh, in terms of, you've done a lot. Um, and before we go to wrap up with some rapid fire questions, talk a little bit about some of the hacks that you have on the productivity side, um, that you've learned over the years in terms of really helping you focus on the highest priority things.

• 1:18:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I think people spend way too much time in their inbox, and so I'm constantly telling my team, don't worry about being inbox zero, like, ignore your emails. If you're going to read them, you know, like Tim Ferriss's four hour work week, you know, said, like, bunch them up and read them at certain times a day, um, and scan them. I think people would be amazed how many emails they don't reply to just get resolved, especially when you have a team, like, someone else resolves it, or if you look back at your inbox, well, one trick is look at your inbox three weeks ago, like, go back three weeks and look at the things that were in there and see, like, you know, did they really have to be answered or solved? A lot of times, they're not urgent, so one trick for this is, whenever I'm done with a phone call, I'm on a lot of calls all day, my first thing is not to check my email.

• 1:19:08Speaker 02

  My first thing is to check my to-do list, because the to-do list really can move major action items forward that really move the needle. Whereas responding to an email, like, most emails don't really move the needle a ton.

• 1:19:22Speaker 02

  Whereas, like, you know, hiring the next person, building that next big system, like, those things could really make a huge kind of, like, they leverage your time. I think if you have a team, every minute you can spend investing in your team, instead of getting your own to-dos done, creates leverage. If I can get like, you know, a person, like three people on my team to understand the way I think about negotiating a contract, instead of me doing the next contract, I, I struggle a lot with my, my team and getting them to do this. You know, as people become managers on my team, they want to keep doing the things that they were doing because it's, it's going to be, they'll tell me it's, oh, it's faster. You know, the person I'm, I'm managing isn't very good at doing this, so it'll just be a lot quicker if I get it done for them.

• 1:20:04Speaker 02

  And like, they have to let go and invest in that person so that, you know, six months from now, they're never doing another one of those uh, items again, and they're now innovating and doing the next item.

• 1:20:15Speaker 02

  So I know that that's really been hard for me to, you know, kind of get out of my own way and do that sort of thing.

• 1:20:21Speaker 02

  But yeah, I would say, um, in general, sticking to your to-do list, let's see, what other things? Oh, another thing that I've found is if you don't spend like one late night a week, or maybe for some people, I'm, I'm a, I'm a late person, but maybe it's an early riser. You gotta get like an extra like three, four, or five hours in sometime in the week at a minimum, whether it's on the weekend, early in the morning or late at night to kind of like get into the proactive stuff. Cause it can, you can very quickly just be in reaction mode all week and be super busy. And I find it, I make so much more progress if I put in like one extra chunk of time where I'm like, okay, that project I've been holding off on, I'm going to do, you know, during this period. And then one last thing I'll say is do the hardest thing when your to-do list first.

• 1:21:05Speaker 02

  Like when you wake up, you know, do the thing you're, you most hate doing that, you know, get that out of the way. At least for me, and maybe not for everyone, I, I find that that's huge, because I'll, I'll just avoid it all day. Um, and uh, one other thing I do too is I'll set an alarm for two, around two or three P M. In the afternoon. And I'll, I'll, the night before I make my top five list, the things I really were going to move the needle the next day. And when that alarm goes off, I check that list to see if I actually done this, and if I haven't, I'll cancel everything else that's happening the next like two, three hours and just get those things done. Uh, and that way every day I don't miss, you know, because a lot of times otherwise it's like, oh, I'll snooze it to the next day, the next day, the next day. Next, you know, three weeks go by and you still haven't gotten done.

• 1:21:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's um, it's so funny how humans all do the same thing, right? Like, everything you're describing, people are gonna be listening now that, yep, I do that. If I'm really intellectually honest with myself, I absolutely do that. And it's being, one, aware of it, but also too intentional about, you know, putting yourself in a position to be better about it, right? You don't have to be perfect 100% of the time, but just being in a position to be better and improve something can have a significant impact.

• 1:22:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. Oh, one last one, I really like, I think this is from Getting Things Done, this kind of famous book. Anything you can do in under like two or three minutes, just do it right away. Sometimes it annoys people on my team, because I'll like, you know, they'll bring up something, and I'll just like pause, and be like, can you give me a minute and get it done? And then, so it's not always great if you're like in a team call or something. But otherwise, if someone sends you an email, and you think, or you think it's something that's quick, I would just get it out of the way. And if you can't, you know, if it's longer than that, put it on a to-do list, and have it, you know, have it organized into some sort of bucket. But yeah, we're all, you know, we all have like, a lot of us have the same bad habits. And so, I'm always trying to kind of, you know, fix those.

• 1:22:59Speaker 00

  Before we get into the rapid fire, to finish up, where can we send people to connect with you, find out more information, or send you deals that I think potentially would be interesting to you?

• 1:23:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, if you just go to RyanBeagleman.com, my name, you know, it's B-E-G-E-L-M-A-N, RyanBeagleman.com, and you could subscribe there. And I'll occasionally send out some insights, or share some info. And also, if you have a deal that's 300,000 a profit or more, that you think I could acquire, would love to know about that. You can send me, you can find my email on my website, and you can also follow me on Twitter.

• 1:23:39Speaker 00

  And I get two questions. I'd ask everybody and then you could ask me one to finish up. What is the most important book that you've ever read?

• 1:23:48Speaker 02

  Oh, easily Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. You know, the most useful thing I've invested my energy into the last 20 years have been trying to become more mentally fit. And, you know, I think a lot of people think it's just like woo woo Buddhism and mindfulness, but man, there's like really hardcore, very real gains that you can make. From, you know, the same way that Federer and Nadal are just better than every other tennis player. It's largely the mental game. It's the same, it's the same as it can be applied to business or your relationships. Is be a becoming more patient, more focused. Being able to, I really like this.

• 1:24:31Speaker 02

  If you get frustrated with something, how quickly can you, can you switch from frustrated to being back at peace and like serenity and clear headedness? And even like as a manager, I, I have to have a lot of endurance for decision making. I'll sometimes go, you know, six calls in a row where I've got to make a decision. And I get tired of it. And so like you can build up mental endurance. And so anyway, Michael Singer's book is a great place to start. It teaches you about how to develop awareness. And awareness is this muscle memory that you can use to see patterns and make huge gains. So I love that book. Yeah, that would probably be my, that's my number one right there.

• 1:25:12Speaker 00

  Untethered Soul. I haven't heard of that one. I'll have to go read that one for sure. Aliens, believer or non believer?

• 1:25:21Speaker 02

  Well, there, I definitely believe that there is advanced, you know, beings somewhere out there in the vastness of our universe. I mean, so 100% believe that there's alien, you know, life forms. Maybe it's simply bacteria, but you know, my guess is there's also advanced life forms. I think it would be kind of a sophomoric not to, not to imagine that there's going to be, you know, There's like something like, you know, a million times the number of grains of sand on Earth in the Milky Way alone. You know, there's probably another rock that's pretty close to a sun that's got life forms. Now, whether or not they've visited our planet, if that's what you're asking, is a whole another matter.

• 1:26:06Speaker 02

  You know, I don't know, it's fun to think that they're out there and that they're hanging out. No, one crazy thought is, maybe they're among us right now. And we just can't understand them like, you know, to walk through the Amazon and pass an ant. And you imagine trying to explain to that ant, hey, we built the skyscraper over here in Manhattan. Can you wouldn't even be able to communicate with them, they might not even, you know, be able to fully understand anything about your presence. And so I think when you think about artificial intelligence, super AI, like, you know, there could be, you know, we think it'd be advanced forms that are just like living on a different frequency than us or a different multiverse that are. So what does it mean to actually visit Earth, quote unquote, is like, I think in itself kind of complex.

• 1:26:50Speaker 02

  But yeah, if you're talking about like, you know, the UFO landing and like a movie, I, I don't know, I'm gonna guess that hasn't happened.

• 1:26:59Speaker 00

  I, I've never thought of it as like, what if we're the aliens to the ants? Right? Like that, like that's, I've had a lot of people ask that question. I've never had anyone present it that way. That's a pretty good way, way to think about it.

• 1:27:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, there's this concept of Fermi's paradox, which is like, why haven't we seen other advanced life forms? And, you know, it could be for any number of reasons. Maybe they always get wiped out because they kill each other. You know, maybe they're just too far away, they can't reach us. But yeah, one plausible concept is that they're, you know, they uploaded their information into the, into like the server. And, you know, as they became advanced and they, you know, they're traveling through a frequency that's, you know, that we can't imagine in the same way that we can't see radio signals. And, you know, they're among us in that way, or we're living in a virtual reality that they created. And, you know, they're just outside of the video game that we're in.

• 1:27:55Speaker 00

  That is awesome.

• 1:27:58Speaker 00

  You could ask me one question to, to finish up. What one question do you have for me?

• 1:28:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, well, one thing is, well, what are one of the more interesting alien responses that you've gotten?

• 1:28:09Speaker 00

  Yours is definitely one of them. Um, no, I think most people fall into two categories. Either yes, I believe the universe is so vast, like that type of stuff. Uh, another is I don't believe because I've never seen them and so shown to me and then I'll believe it, uh, are kind of like the two most common, but it's like heavily slanted, like 90% believe, 10% don't. Um, I had an alien researcher come on one time and, uh, I'm sorry, an ancient alien researcher. And, uh, he had a whole, uh, theory as to, uh, the extinction of the dinosaurs was actually driven by, uh, meteors that impacted the earth and that caused, you know, a change in the climate, all that kind of stuff. But, uh, everyone thinks it was a meteor that collided into the earth instead.

• 1:28:53Speaker 00

  Actually, it was, uh, alien spacecraft and, you know, you can imagine the, uh, the, the conversation from there, uh, a guy named Bruce Fenton, uh, and, uh, that one was pretty wild, you know, I, I, uh, jokingly told a friend later, I should have been drunk for that one so that, uh, I could like really let my mind, uh, you know, go and, and explore all the possibilities.

• 1:29:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's an interesting one. I mean, there's, you know, there's a, there's a handful of people who believe that, uh, the Younger Dryas period that, you know, wiped out a bunch of civilization, uh, like about 11,000 years ago was caused by, um, like a solar flare up that led to the magnetic field changing on earth and which the magnetic field protects us, I guess, from solar winds. And so that led to like huge lightning storms and, um, and so that could have like wiped out, you know, that could have clouded the, the earth for a long period and, you know, led to drought and all these, all these interesting things. Maybe an alien caused the sun to flare up 11,000 years ago in some form. They, they set off a nuclear bomb and, and on the side.

• 1:29:57Speaker 00

  Trust me, Bruce has probably thought about it. Awesome, Ryan, listen, uh, anyone who wants to get in contact with you, Ryan, B E G L E L M A N, right? B E G E L M A N dot com, uh, or they can find you on Twitter. Um, any last parting words there, my friend?

• 1:30:18Speaker 02

  Dude, I just, I love watching, I love listening to your show and, and reading your newsletters. So I really appreciate it. I think everyone should pay more and more attention to it. And I bet, and also I've been watching you on YouTube now while I eat lunch. So I love, I love how you're a multi-platform. It's awesome.

• 1:30:36Speaker 00

  All right. Thank you so much. We'll have to do this again in the future.

• 1:30:39Speaker 02

  All right. Thanks. Talk to you soon.