Dan Martell - July 26, 2024


27 Years of No Bullsh＊t Business Advice in 27 Mins


Episode Stats

Length

27 minutes

Words per Minute

209.22711

Word Count

5,693

Sentence Count

198


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Since the age of 17, I've only done one thing, build businesses.
00:00:04.040 Today, 27 years later, I'm the founder of Martell Ventures,
00:00:07.440 a portfolio company that makes over $100 million a year in revenue.
00:00:10.960 And I get thousands of business owners DMing me on Instagram every day for help,
00:00:14.920 but I only have time to respond to a few a day.
00:00:16.980 So today, I want to give you all of my knowledge for free.
00:00:20.060 Everything you need to start, grow, and exit your business in as little time as possible.
00:00:24.880 The first thing you need to do is start.
00:00:26.620 so the first business i ever started was a vacation rental website think airbnb
00:00:32.400 but i built it for my dad he was asking me to build a web page for his cottage and i thought
00:00:37.660 my dad needs a web page for his cottage maybe there's other people so that's what i did i
00:00:41.780 essentially convinced my dad it was going to cost like 500 bucks to host his web page he's like i
00:00:46.180 thought it was free i'm like trust me took the 500 bucks went and paid for hosting for a server
00:00:51.500 for a year which allowed me to build this site this app then i had to figure out how do i get
00:00:55.900 more customers to pay me for a webpage for their cottage. And my buddy Dave gave me this crazy
00:01:01.860 idea. He said, there's a tourism guide that's got all the bed and breakfasts. You should talk to
00:01:06.280 that. So what I did is I had my little brother enter in all the contact information from this
00:01:11.180 tourism guide into a Microsoft Access database. Then I opened up Microsoft Word and I did a mail
00:01:16.360 merge, printed out all these letters that said something to the fact that, hi, we're Maritime
00:01:20.940 Vacation. We allow you to have a webpage for your listing where you can manage the availability and
00:01:25.820 the rules and people to reach out to you and book if you want a web page then just fill out this
00:01:30.460 form include some photos thirty dollars for the web page ten dollars if you want your photos back
00:01:35.500 and we sent out i think like 400 pieces of mail manually just folding letters licking stamps put
00:01:42.060 it in the mail and it's funny because maybe a week later my dad and i came home to our apartment he
00:01:47.100 checked the mail and there was like a stack of envelopes and in the envelopes was dollars and
00:01:52.540 that's how maritimevacation.ca was born i remember somebody saying that if you can get a stranger
00:01:58.620 that's not your cousin your uncle your aunt to send you money over the internet then you've
00:02:02.220 gone pro so at 17 18 years old i went pro indirectly by helping my dad deal with all
00:02:07.100 these phone calls that was my first dollar on the internet most people think that they need more
00:02:16.860 ready to charge somebody money. I always ask myself, what's the minimum I have to do to present
00:02:23.780 something to a potential customer to get them to give me money? Dollar bills exchanging hands. It
00:02:29.840 doesn't matter if it's a product or a service. I don't have to have the product to sell it. I don't
00:02:33.520 need to deliver the service to sell it. I can have the conversation to see if there's a problem that
00:02:37.440 needs to be solved and ask the person to pay me to solve that problem. I think that is the biggest
00:02:43.200 thing stopping people is they think i need the business cards i need the website i need the
00:02:46.960 logo i need the team i need the credentials unless you're doing brain surgery you don't
00:02:51.280 need any of that you just need to go find a customer and get them to pay you
00:02:59.040 i think the best industry to start in is something you're passionate about and the reason why is
00:03:04.320 because and steve jobs said this a long time ago any sane person receiving the amount of friction
00:03:09.200 or pushback or challenges would give up.
00:03:11.400 But because you're passionate about it,
00:03:12.840 you keep pushing and that's why you'll be successful.
00:03:15.440 It's almost like you have to be unreasonable
00:03:17.100 about what you wanna achieve
00:03:18.700 because you may not see proof
00:03:20.180 that it's working for a long period of time.
00:03:22.000 The best case is get into an industry that you love,
00:03:25.520 that you're interested in,
00:03:26.560 that in many ways you would do for free
00:03:28.060 just so that you can be in it even if you make no money
00:03:30.860 because being in it is the actual reward.
00:03:33.380 So a kid this morning was talking to me
00:03:34.860 about his business idea.
00:03:35.940 He wants to get paid to modify cars.
00:03:38.000 Truth is, if he never makes a profit for the first three years,
00:03:40.920 he's pumped because he's talking to people that own these cars
00:03:43.980 that he's involved in modifying, and that's his real passion.
00:03:47.000 So whatever you have an interest in, that's the best place to start.
00:03:55.060 My favorite thing to do if I'm starting off is find people
00:03:57.980 that are already selling to the people I need to talk to.
00:04:00.160 So if I want to start a business selling a Harley memorabilia,
00:04:04.580 I would find out who sells to Harley owners.
00:04:06.840 Obviously the Harley dealership, but there might be some other brands and clothing lines online websites some service stations
00:04:13.040 Whatever and talking to them and figure out how you can promote what you've got inside their store or online through their channels
00:04:20.360 Through their facebook page through their instagram account. That's the easiest way. That's the best way
00:04:25.000 And the cool part is if you do that instead of getting one customer
00:04:27.560 You might get 12 customers instead of spending all this time trying to get one new sale
00:04:31.780 you can do the same amount of effort to get in front of that partner that audience and then
00:04:36.240 get a lot of people to buy from you most people make the mistake they go well if somebody's
00:04:40.140 already selling these customers why would they let me in there to help well the truth is is
00:04:44.440 i need to figure out what are the other problems my customers have and introduce them to people
00:04:48.140 who can solve those problems because then they look at me as somebody helps them solve their
00:04:51.240 problems if i'm a barber shop there's no downside to me promoting a garage shop around the corner
00:04:55.540 that i really like the owner that's where a lot of folks have these like limiting beliefs around
00:04:59.840 what other business owners will or won't do
00:05:01.980 when the truth is just start talking to them
00:05:03.900 and ask and see what they are willing to do.
00:05:06.300 Are they willing to send an email
00:05:07.340 letting people know about your business
00:05:08.720 or at least let you put your business cards
00:05:10.320 on the counter in their store
00:05:11.560 or pin it up on one of their community bulletin boards
00:05:14.320 or whatever it is.
00:05:15.060 That's the easiest way to find a customer.
00:05:22.540 Number one skill is the skill of sales.
00:05:25.660 Nothing happens until somebody sells something
00:05:27.840 and that's just the truth.
00:05:28.960 Most people are so scared about being rejected
00:05:30.920 that they will sit at home
00:05:33.100 and play what I call business theater.
00:05:35.120 Business theater is doing all the stuff
00:05:36.880 to get ready to actually do business.
00:05:39.040 It's the logo design, it's the webpage,
00:05:41.640 it's the letterhead, the business cards.
00:05:44.520 And it's fascinating just how elaborate people will go
00:05:47.740 to play business, to be, I'm an entrepreneur.
00:05:51.540 It's like, you don't have any revenue
00:05:53.680 or your only customer is your dad.
00:05:56.000 That's not a business.
00:05:57.040 you're essentially a low paid employee you just happen to bill through a corporation anything
00:06:02.360 that is not trying to get in front of customers and asking for the order is just distractions
00:06:07.580 it's just procrastination it's literally business theater
00:06:11.100 my whole thing in regards to like the core functions of a business it's awareness also
00:06:21.100 known as marketing it's selling getting somebody to buy and then there's fulfillment how do you
00:06:26.120 deliver what you just sold. Everything else can kind of fall into operations or administration.
00:06:31.100 The truth is most owners or the CEO or the founder, whatever you want to call them,
00:06:35.220 they should spend all their time on marketing and sale. Then if they get customers, obviously
00:06:39.360 fulfill over deliver to get referrals to help with the marketing and sales. The first level
00:06:45.100 of getting things off your plate is administrative and operational tasks. People wear those as badges
00:06:50.340 of honor but the truth is is taking time away from doing the other areas is just not time well
00:06:56.100 spent so as soon as you have revenue and you can afford to pay anybody to do any task that's
00:07:00.820 administrative in nature operational in nature it's money well spent because then you're going
00:07:04.660 to take that time and reinvest it in marketing sales it's going to generate more resources
00:07:08.580 dollars revenue that you can then pay other people to help you on the delivery side and then we move
00:07:13.700 in to grow. So the biggest mistake people make is they don't focus on the biggest lever that
00:07:21.840 they've got, which is sell more things to your current customers. I can't tell you the amount
00:07:26.380 of entrepreneurs that I work with where they're like, Hey, we need to get more customers, more
00:07:30.000 customers. I call it the chocolate, right? Where they're like spending all their time on marketing
00:07:33.460 and the real broccoli, the thing that's really going to move the needle is looking at their
00:07:37.780 existing customer and say, how do we get them to buy more, more frequently, bigger packages.
00:07:41.820 and usually if they have a hard time doing that
00:07:43.820 is because they don't actually have a great process
00:07:46.400 for delivering what they promise.
00:07:48.700 Because if you call a customer up
00:07:49.820 and they're not willing to buy anymore,
00:07:51.320 it's probably because they didn't have
00:07:52.040 a great first experience.
00:07:53.160 So we really have to focus on the existing customers
00:07:56.060 to make sure that they're happy,
00:07:57.300 they're referring, they're buying more,
00:07:58.960 you give them offers, you design that conversation
00:08:02.100 and really build a system around monetizing
00:08:05.020 your existing customer base.
00:08:06.620 Once you have that, then you go and try to find more.
00:08:11.820 the most underrated skill is having a level head i can't tell you the amount of entrepreneurs that
00:08:19.500 self-sabotage by screaming at customers that's not fair when it's their fault they didn't set
00:08:24.220 the expectations they didn't manage the expectations they didn't look and communicate
00:08:27.820 properly and all of a sudden the customer is upset especially if you tried to make it better
00:08:31.340 that's where it's really tough for entrepreneurs where they showed up and went above and beyond
00:08:34.700 and the customer's still saying things but the funny part is then they overreact they create
00:08:39.340 what i call emotional shrapnel they explode the most underrated skill is somebody that can
00:08:45.180 disconnect the emotion from the action no matter what somebody says to you you can hold your
00:08:50.300 composure those are the ceos the founders and leaders that end up growing big teams because
00:08:55.900 they don't self-sabotage throw hand grenades in their business like fire half their team get pissed
00:09:01.580 off at their bank manager i've seen it all and literally the bigger the business the more composed
00:09:07.500 you'll see the ceo when it comes to heated customers the way i think about learning i call
00:09:20.460 it just in time versus just in case we always want to try to find the information that's going
00:09:24.700 to help us solve the current problems can have the biggest impact on our business just in case
00:09:29.340 learning is what they teach us in university or what i like to call shelf help in the world of
00:09:33.980 personal development some people they just in case consume 14 different podcasts because they
00:09:38.620 don't want to actually do the business doing the business is marketing sales and then delivering
00:09:42.460 listening to the podcast is not doing the business now if you want to get better figure out what skill
00:09:47.660 you want to learn that's going to have the biggest impact to your business and then go find the
00:09:51.660 resources things like the top five books the top five online programs the other areas it's the
00:09:56.940 fastest is finding a mentor finding somebody that's done it before so that you can not pay
00:10:02.620 the ignorance tax by trying to make the same mistakes they've already made figured out and
00:10:07.200 give you the blueprint i mean it's crazy to see people feel like what they're doing is this magical
00:10:12.480 unique snowflake when it's no different than anybody's gone before you and a lot of people
00:10:17.300 try to sit there and reinvent the wheel and it's slow finding a mentor a coach that's been there
00:10:22.640 before they can literally take 15 years of learning and compress it into a year it's probably the best
00:10:27.960 trade and then i would say build a peer group sometimes we have to do a friend inventory we
00:10:32.440 need to audit our friend group and say do these people support my dreams or when i share do they
00:10:39.080 talk it down do they tell me i'm not thinking about stuff even though they've never done the
00:10:42.920 thing that you want to do and then go find other peers other people in business doing similar to
00:10:48.360 you and spend more time with them that is another great way to learn because they're going to be
00:10:52.680 trying different things at the same pace as you so you'll be able to learn from their trial and error
00:10:57.560 mr beast did this great i remember back in the day he talked about having like 10 friends and
00:11:01.480 they would get on skype and stay on skype all day long for 20 hours straight they would just stay
00:11:06.600 there and every one of them was trying to learn and do new things and then they would share it
00:11:10.600 they're like hey i just tested out these thumbnails check this out or hey i just tried this new
00:11:14.600 storyboard in my video i found this book and it had all these weird ideas so now i'm using them
00:11:18.360 for title ideas and it's just having a peer group of people that are passionate about their future
00:11:23.560 and personal development and growth I think is a great way to learn new stuff when you don't know
00:11:28.140 what you're doing. So there's only four ways to generate demand in your business. I call these
00:11:35.640 the four Ps. You have partner, publish, press or PR, and paid, paid acquisition, ads. The fastest
00:11:42.460 one is partners. Why? Having somebody that's done all the heavy lifting, all the work to build an
00:11:49.460 audience of people that you could sell to. It's kind of like you have a train and the person that
00:11:54.400 has the train going from one city to another city had to build the train tracks. They had to clear
00:11:58.840 the land, build the train tracks, put down all the rocks, put down all the beams, then put down the
00:12:03.340 steel so that the train can roll on it. Then they had to build the train for the passengers to get
00:12:06.840 inside of it, fill it up with cargo, and then the train goes over the track. What you do with a
00:12:11.220 partner, you're starting a new business, all you got to build is a hook. You got to build a long
00:12:15.380 hook when the train comes by that you just latch onto the train and you get to hitch a ride of
00:12:20.660 all the effort building that train, that track, and getting those people on board just by creating
00:12:26.300 an offer, an opportunity for the owner of the track and the train to get you in front of their
00:12:31.320 audience. It is the fastest way to go from zero to hero in your business. Most people are scared
00:12:36.740 of it. So that's number one. Publish is social media. It's content. It's SEO. The problem with
00:12:41.820 publish is that it can be slow. It's great to have it there because people are going to check
00:12:46.000 you out online. You don't want to come up empty, but spending too much time there and not on the
00:12:50.120 other ones is probably not a good move. Paid is very fast. It's the fastest channel. It's just,
00:12:54.740 you got to spend money up front to get a customer. And most people starting off don't have enough
00:12:58.800 money to be able to invest and spend over a long period of time to learn how to do paid. So it's a
00:13:04.180 tougher one to activate. PR is a great one. This is the Richard Branson strategy of trying to get
00:13:08.960 people to talk about you, but trying to figure out what's already a trend or a topic in the market
00:13:14.280 and how you can introduce your business, your personal story, what you're doing that's
00:13:18.660 complimentary to that and insert yourself into those stories so that when people write about it,
00:13:23.280 they mention you. That's a very fast way to get in front of tens of thousands of people,
00:13:27.520 but you just got to be super creative and try to understand how what you're doing aligns with
00:13:31.780 what people want to know about today in the world. My favorite way to sell anything is to
00:13:38.740 talk to somebody and I'll tell you why because the goal isn't to just sell the goal is to learn
00:13:44.140 I can learn faster by talking to somebody about their interests their challenges their problems
00:13:49.780 their reality to then present them a solution way faster than doing it over email doing it over chat
00:13:56.760 even doing it through a partner sometimes if the partner's promoting you I'm not getting any
00:14:00.800 feedback to know what part of the offer is not working for the buyer my big thing is get out of
00:14:06.200 your office. Do not sit in your office and do this. Go to the streets, show up at somebody else's
00:14:10.940 office, go to the mall, go into the streets, stop people, ask them questions, try to figure out your
00:14:15.820 talk tracks for your sales process or your sales script. But the best way to sell is to get on a
00:14:21.640 phone or in person or Zoom so that you can not only get somebody to buy, but learn faster what's
00:14:28.060 working, what's not so that you can make every shot on goal better.
00:14:36.200 In the early days, the brand that matters is your personal reputation.
00:14:40.260 I think too many people worry about the logo, your color palette,
00:14:43.740 but that's not what's going to get people to make a decision.
00:14:47.520 What they're debating when they're looking at you
00:14:50.180 is your ability to understand their problems.
00:14:53.200 And this is where an expert and an amateur are separated.
00:14:56.420 An expert asks questions that make them sound like an expert.
00:14:59.700 An amateur can't talk intelligently about the problem.
00:15:02.860 and if you can't describe to me as the buyer my problem better than i can explain it then you're
00:15:08.620 not the expert your ability to ask me questions to communicate my personal challenges and be more
00:15:14.300 descriptive and accurate than i can makes you the expert so if you want to get somebody to buy
00:15:19.500 then i would say the brand is understanding how do you present yourself in a way that makes you
00:15:24.620 separated from everybody else out there the brand is a byproduct of how the customer experiences
00:15:29.420 is your service, not what you tell them it is.
00:15:31.740 Too many people say, well, the brand is our tagline.
00:15:33.740 No, no, the brand is customer buys, has an experience
00:15:36.860 and decides to explain it to their friend,
00:15:38.380 what it was like.
00:15:39.220 And if that's not a positive experience
00:15:40.740 and you don't have a brand,
00:15:41.700 a brand is what people say about you when you're not around.
00:15:49.360 Most people do a lot of things wrong.
00:15:51.480 There's levels, zero to 300,000 in income.
00:15:54.880 The problem they're trying to solve is to learn to delegate.
00:15:58.520 unfortunately there's a lot of high paid experts they call themselves entrepreneurs but they're
00:16:03.520 really vsbs very small businesses because they don't have a business they're just a high paid
00:16:07.940 consultant a high paid expert and this is true for doctors lawyers dentists etc some of them don't
00:16:13.620 have teams because they don't know how to let go so they just rather do everything and i'm talking
00:16:17.860 about they're lucky if they even have a front desk person doing the billing and scheduling
00:16:21.500 appointments i've seen a lot of barber shops the barber who owns the shop he's doing everything he's
00:16:26.820 answering the phone he's cutting hair he's scheduling stuff and that'll keep you stuck at
00:16:31.300 about 300k the next level is to get to 2 million the problem that people get wrong there is they
00:16:36.860 don't know what to let go in what order they think because they're busy putting on roofs on houses
00:16:41.900 they got to go hire more people to put roofs on houses the challenge with that is then you step
00:16:47.500 away from the work and if it doesn't get done right then you're spending so much time fixing
00:16:52.060 problems because you're not there. So then people will, how do I do that and free up my time to go
00:16:57.020 to the marketing and sales? It's by not doing any operational work. So think non-customer facing.
00:17:02.480 So anything that is marketing, customer facing. Sales, customer facing. The delivery of it,
00:17:08.280 customer facing. And then once I get bigger, a million plus on my way to two million, then I
00:17:12.940 hire leaders that can run those areas of the business. I can hire a consultant to help me
00:17:17.420 with the marketing. I can hire another salesperson to take those calls and do follow-up. And I can
00:17:21.080 and hire a team lead to manage the projects
00:17:23.320 that I've properly trained.
00:17:24.440 To even do that, you gotta build systems.
00:17:26.520 Most people do not document the process
00:17:28.900 for how they do what they do.
00:17:30.160 They just think everybody understands it
00:17:32.080 and then they get upset when things go wrong.
00:17:33.600 To go from two to let's say 10 million eight figures,
00:17:36.660 the real skill is to learn how to work through people.
00:17:40.680 It's a different skill.
00:17:41.940 Delegating to people at scale, you can get to two million.
00:17:44.440 You might run around the day like you're spinning plates
00:17:47.180 and you're worried that one of them's gonna drop
00:17:48.540 and smash all over the place,
00:17:49.760 but you've got leaders that are managing people.
00:17:52.700 To scale the 10 million,
00:17:53.940 you gotta be good at communicating through outcomes,
00:17:56.620 not tasks, because the outcome is where the person now
00:17:59.860 has a vision for what they gotta do,
00:18:01.280 and it's up to them to figure out the task.
00:18:03.100 The worst thing you could do is hire somebody
00:18:04.780 and tell them what to do.
00:18:05.900 You wanna hire somebody and have them tell you what to do,
00:18:08.540 and that's how you go from two to 10 million,
00:18:10.520 and that's the biggest thing is hiring driven people,
00:18:13.120 learning to work through them and let them figure out
00:18:15.720 how to solve problems at scale,
00:18:17.760 the volume two to ten i mean if you're a barber you might have ten barber shops not one or two
00:18:22.720 managing ten that's a completely different set of complexity that you got to figure out because
00:18:26.800 if you don't your ceiling of complexity will be where you naturally hit a glass ceiling of growth
00:18:32.720 might be at 300 000 1.5 million even 10 million and then 30 million there's all different levels
00:18:37.760 of these glass ceilings of growth or what i call the complexity ceilings that you have to learn how
00:18:41.920 to deal with and overcome. If every time you hire somebody new, you start first with the premise
00:18:53.480 that they have to buy time out of your calendar, something you're currently doing, then as you grow
00:18:58.900 and you hire new people, your calendar should get freer and freer and freer. See, most people don't
00:19:05.220 do this. They hire for capacity. I need another logo designer. I need another programmer. I need
00:19:09.880 another roofing guy. The challenge is if you're early days, then what happens is you still do the
00:19:14.900 work and then you get stuck with all the other stuff as well. And you can burn yourself out
00:19:18.940 where you're literally working 30, 40 hours a week billing or doing customer facing stuff,
00:19:24.040 fulfillment, delivery. And then you spend the other 30, 40 hours a week trying to run the business.
00:19:29.360 So the best way is to start with your calendar, find out what you're doing that is low cost to
00:19:35.140 pay somebody else to do that you don't enjoy doing in the first place and build the process,
00:19:39.320 the standard operating procedure to do that work
00:19:42.240 so that you're not present and give it to somebody else.
00:19:45.180 And I'll tell you, the first day,
00:19:46.860 you don't do all your invoicing,
00:19:48.940 you don't do all your follow-ups,
00:19:50.600 you don't do scheduling,
00:19:52.180 and somebody else takes those tasks
00:19:54.220 and gets them done for you.
00:19:55.360 And they're done as good, if not better,
00:19:57.580 because they actually have the time to do it right
00:19:59.300 where you were rushing before.
00:20:00.540 It is a beautiful moment.
00:20:02.520 My philosophy is 80% done by somebody else
00:20:04.740 is 100% freaking awesome.
00:20:06.200 Because I'll tell you, the faster you get to a point
00:20:09.020 where you're making money that's not connected to your time,
00:20:11.840 that will be the freedom point where business becomes fun.
00:20:15.300 And you can get there a lot faster than you think
00:20:17.060 if you use that process of looking at your calendar
00:20:19.660 and only hiring people that's gonna buy time
00:20:22.280 out of your calendar first.
00:20:28.120 Most people overcomplicate the training of the new person.
00:20:31.680 And I think it's because they wanna be seen
00:20:33.320 as like competent.
00:20:34.340 You start off and you're like,
00:20:35.220 I don't want somebody to think that I'm incompetent.
00:20:36.840 But the truth is, if all the person does
00:20:39.720 the first day they start is sit there and watch videos
00:20:43.200 of you doing the work that you've been doing
00:20:45.380 that they now have to take over,
00:20:46.820 then you didn't have to train them.
00:20:48.920 And then it's up to them to tell you
00:20:51.280 what they learned watching those videos.
00:20:53.040 But that might be the first week or two weeks.
00:20:55.380 So yes, you're thinking,
00:20:56.260 oh, I can't afford to pay somebody to do that.
00:20:58.220 You can't afford not to do it
00:20:59.800 because if it costs you your time
00:21:02.500 when you hire somebody new to get them up to speed
00:21:04.920 where they can actually create value for your business,
00:21:07.800 then you will accept yourself
00:21:09.600 to have an underperformer on your team
00:21:12.180 because that underperformer is easier to deal with
00:21:15.320 than not having them and having to find
00:21:17.600 and train somebody new because it takes your time.
00:21:19.800 But I think that part is really
00:21:21.660 where people overcomplicate it.
00:21:23.200 It doesn't have to be a fancy document
00:21:24.860 that's thought through all the different scenarios
00:21:26.640 and can be as simple as just a bunch of recordings
00:21:28.700 of you doing the work and having them watch you do it
00:21:30.940 and then figure out what makes sense for them.
00:21:33.020 And then the last step is to exit.
00:21:34.920 here's my philosophy if you don't build a business to sell then you'll always feel
00:21:43.380 like you're a prisoner of your company but a business that you could sell is a great business
00:21:48.660 to operate so in many ways just having the decision that someday I will sell this changes
00:21:54.380 your whole relationship with the energy of building the business it doesn't mean you're
00:21:58.340 less passionate or not committed to the future what you're doing is saying hey I want this thing
00:22:02.860 to be bigger than me.
00:22:04.240 I don't wanna be needed for this thing to add value
00:22:07.640 to people I love in my community, online, in the world.
00:22:11.500 I want it to continue past my time.
00:22:13.960 If something happens to me where I get hit by a bus,
00:22:16.380 I don't want the business to not keep going.
00:22:18.340 So I think that if you start with the premise
00:22:20.120 that someday somebody's gonna buy this,
00:22:22.560 it's gonna be worth something,
00:22:23.920 and realize that for most entrepreneurs,
00:22:25.720 the real payday is by creating a business
00:22:27.920 that is valuable to somebody else,
00:22:29.600 then they should wanna create it to exit.
00:22:32.860 You can sell your business for anything.
00:22:35.980 Doesn't matter what industry you're in.
00:22:37.740 Restaurants, home services, tech.
00:22:40.620 There is a business out there in your kind of industry
00:22:43.260 similar to yours that is sold for a billion dollars.
00:22:46.560 So the amount you could sell it for
00:22:48.860 is literally whatever you want
00:22:50.860 if you're willing to do the work.
00:22:52.540 But it starts with the belief that,
00:22:54.500 hey, somebody could build it
00:22:55.640 if I learn how to build it in a way
00:22:57.040 that's valuable to somebody else.
00:22:58.240 The only reason it's valuable
00:22:59.560 is if it makes profit consistently
00:23:01.980 without you needing to be there.
00:23:03.820 That's what makes it valid.
00:23:04.740 People don't buy businesses as charity projects.
00:23:07.180 They buy businesses because whatever amount they gave you,
00:23:10.220 it generates a return on that amount over a period of time
00:23:14.040 and they expect it to grow.
00:23:15.360 When you're at a million,
00:23:16.320 they're not gonna pay you a whole lot.
00:23:17.540 If you're five million,
00:23:18.740 that's the beginning of where it's interesting
00:23:20.420 to other people.
00:23:21.260 If you're at 10 million,
00:23:22.280 all of a sudden now people are like,
00:23:23.600 oh, I'd pay you three, four, five, six times
00:23:25.980 on your profit, your EBITDA.
00:23:27.520 If you're at 50 million,
00:23:29.100 that's like real life-changing dollar amount.
00:23:31.980 that's the cool part. It's not like one day, maybe I'm going to have this big payday. And
00:23:36.300 all of a sudden I'm going to live differently. It's like, if you do it right and the business
00:23:39.000 makes profit from the first year, second year, third year, et cetera, your life changes right
00:23:43.260 away. The more the business can one operate without you there a hundred percent. If you need
00:23:55.180 to be there every day, that's not as valuable to it doesn't make profit. If it makes a lot of
00:24:00.760 profit. That's obviously awesome. Three, there's a business operating system, a way you do it.
00:24:07.540 Think about your company way. You've documented the process for how you do production management
00:24:13.120 and planning and accounting and recruiting. Essentially, if somebody bought your business,
00:24:19.020 they could go through this manual for how you've been able to create the income and the profit and
00:24:25.340 the whole team structure. That's really valuable. And then you're in an industry that's growing,
00:24:30.760 that's also very valuable.
00:24:32.500 Ideally, if you have some intellectual property
00:24:34.360 or some patents or something that's kind of unique
00:24:36.340 to you guys and how you do it that nobody else has,
00:24:38.240 that makes it obviously very attractive
00:24:40.180 to a potential buyer.
00:24:41.280 But those are the big things you wanna think about.
00:24:43.400 It's stable, durable revenue.
00:24:45.980 Talent in the business is incentivized to stick around
00:24:48.520 that you're not needed for it to operate and grow.
00:24:51.380 And then a manual that defines the process
00:24:54.080 for how you get customers, sell those customers,
00:24:57.460 and keep those customers.
00:24:58.800 If you can do those things,
00:24:59.780 then you have a business that's valuable
00:25:01.280 and people will pay you top dollar to buy you.
00:25:06.680 So there's a bunch of different processes,
00:25:08.580 but the easiest one is to just reach out
00:25:10.320 to a business broker.
00:25:11.500 Depending on your industry,
00:25:12.520 there's somebody that has a job,
00:25:14.460 that his full-time job is to evaluate your business,
00:25:17.620 tell you what you need to fix to make it better,
00:25:19.860 and then go find somebody that would strategically
00:25:22.580 or financially buy your business
00:25:24.340 because it makes sense for them to expand their revenue.
00:25:26.860 And they will sit down with you,
00:25:28.160 for the most part for free to evaluate and assess where you're at and tell you hey go work on these
00:25:33.280 things and then i could probably present you to other businesses and you could do it in a way
00:25:37.280 that's anonymous and your customers don't find out but there's a whole market for doing this
00:25:43.920 so the interesting about selling a business is most people don't know what to do with the money
00:25:48.080 i'll tell you why if you are making five million a year in your business and a million in profit
00:25:54.320 that's 20% profit on $5 million.
00:25:57.920 So if somebody gives you $5 million,
00:26:00.040 where are you gonna take that 5 million
00:26:02.440 and invest it to get a 20% return?
00:26:05.000 So the fascinating part for most entrepreneurs,
00:26:07.400 selling the business economically doesn't make a lot of sense
00:26:11.460 because then they don't have a vehicle
00:26:14.060 that gonna continue to pay them that kind of return.
00:26:17.000 Usually what people do in these long journeys
00:26:19.940 of building the business is they will diversify
00:26:22.080 into other means of businesses.
00:26:24.640 You hear people say like multiple streams of income.
00:26:26.620 The truth is, is the multiple streams
00:26:27.900 are like real estate, consulting, passion projects
00:26:31.580 or businesses they co-found with other people.
00:26:33.860 But if you have those, then you would take the capital
00:26:36.440 that you just got from selling your business
00:26:37.900 and you would reinvest it in those other businesses.
00:26:40.120 Because again, you own a piece of those business
00:26:41.940 or they are your business
00:26:43.020 and that's gonna generate a better return.
00:26:44.640 If you don't have that,
00:26:45.620 then hopefully you have a wealth manager.
00:26:47.460 If you don't, you should get one that's a fiduciary
00:26:49.840 because if not, they're just gonna sell you stuff
00:26:51.200 make money off of it not a good look but it's also an opportunity for you to learn the next skill
00:26:55.600 creating wealth is a different skill than maintaining wealth making money is easy keeping it
00:27:01.120 hard most people that make money lose it very quickly after that was 27 years of business
00:27:06.000 knowledge but if you want to learn exactly what i would invest in in 2024 starting from scratch
00:27:10.880 Click the link and I'll see you on the other side.