Walker Deibel 0:00
So the thing is, is like I thought, Okay, look, every time I buy a company, it kind of works out. And I understand how to do it. Now I've been through the cycle. And so you know, every time I start a company, it doesn't work. And it didn't take me long to figure out why is that? Well, companies have earnings, right? They've got infrastructure that operate, they've got revenue coming from existing customers, all of the things that we're trying to build from scratch when we do a startup.
Podcast Intro 0:28
Welcome to show me the nuggets. We're each week to chats with world class entrepreneurs to find out the key principles, strategies and processes that lie behind their outstanding achievements. Now, your host the no bullshit serial entrepreneur, Joe Troyer.
Joe Troyer 0:46
Hey everybody, it's Joe Troyer, and welcome back to another episode of Show Me The Nuggets, man. Today's episode I feel like has been in the making, six months, eight months, nine months from now I've been tracking this guy down to get him on the podcast for all of us. So, our podcast guest today is Walker Deibel. So for those of you guys that don't know, Walker, Walker has co founded three startups, I believe, and tell me if the stats are wrong, acquired seven, and actually exited two of them. And we got introduced at an event. Again, getting close to about a year ago now by David Gonzalez. And for those of you guys that know, David, you know that like that means the world David doesn't like introducing people. That doesn't come easy. And let's see, David, I'm sorry, Walker, is the best selling author of a book that you guys need to read. And we talk a lot about books here on the show, and not quantity of books, but the impact of books. And so I really brought him on to talk about his book that has had some major major takeaways for me, which we'll talk about and how I'm implementing some of this advice and the book is called Buy Then Build okay, How Aquisition Entrepreneurs Outsmart the Startup Game. So we're gonna get into kind of all things that Walker is doing. He's up to a lot. But without further ado, man, Walker, welcome to the show. super excited to have you
Walker Deibel 2:14
Joe, super excited to be here. That was an epic intro.
Joe Troyer 2:20
Thank you. So I want to call this buying then building versus just building we'll go with the working title, it might end up being slightly tweaked. But ultimately, at the end of the day, Walker the reason I was so excited to have you on the show is is my business partner, one of my business partners and I both went through your book like really, really quick. I'm a voracious reader, but not like my business partner. He's he's super voracious, he'll read like any book start to cover and fast. I'll read any book and I give about 10 pages. And if I don't like put it down, I read it start to finish but about 75% of books man I put down I can't keep up. I can't keep going like my mind's just bored. And and I think I read yours in like two, two days, two and a half days to start to finish, and definitely wanted to have you on the show.
Walker Deibel 3:12
That's great. Thanks so much. Thanks so much for sharing that. And I think you you read about two years of work per day, it sounds like.
Joe Troyer 3:22
Yeah, man soaking up that knowledge. So I think at the end of the day, your book is just such an advocacy for buying then building versus starting out from scratch. Would you talk about kind of high level the the 80/20 or the thousand foot view of why.
Walker Deibel 3:42
Yeah, great, great, great way to start. So, you know, essentially, I think that you know, when you look at entrepreneurship, right, I mean, it's it's sort it's sort of like we all we all have this drive to kind of own our own business, right. I mean, like all of us that are that are entrepreneurs just have this like condition where it's what we want to do. You look at, you know, the the importance of entrepreneurship in terms of the economy and for ourselves and our own well being and the things that we want to do with our life and, and autonomy. And you look at how am I going to do this? Right. And the thing is, is the only vehicle that we've really had is starting a business from scratch, right? So, you know, a startup is that vehicle of entrepreneurship. The problem with this is that startups are really, really hard to actually succeed in, okay. And that goes, you know, you know, even beyond getting access to massive amounts of capital. Okay, so the point is, is that there's there's plenty of reasons why startups fail.
And you know, when I look at buying existing companies, I sort of am it's, it's sort of analogous to that movie, or that the book of the same name Moneyball, where it you know, that they all sort of are focused on getting on base rather than like the homerun Grand Slams, so I actually think of buying existing business as sort of like an entre metrics, like, how do we get all of the critical factors, right, right from the beginning, and then go from there. So in other words, revenue, infrastructure and earnings, right? Furthermore, just to bring it home, you can get loans on buying existing companies at historical based valuations. Okay, so access to capital is completely there. And unlike your startup valuation that has a future oriented valuation with a really big multiple, it's historical based multiple and so you know, you're typically paying, you know, 2, 3, 4 years worth of earnings for a company like this.
Joe Troyer 5:46
Yep, that's beautiful. So, let's now step back and give us a little bit of background like how did you end up the Walker Deibel you are today like what got you here? Obviously, what what started your journey to now this acquisition entrepreneur and all the crazy stuff that that you're doing these days from working at Quiet Light and everything else, which we'll get into but but how the heck did you get your man?
Walker Deibel 6:14
Yeah. Wow. So, um, this is one of these questions like, please stop me if I'm going too long, you know? So it's one of these Well, you know, go back to you know, I was I was actually an English and Religious Studies Major in college right and when I graduated, I knew I wanted to go into business and so you've got to kind of like, you know, like, put that out there and kind of own that space. And so I actually became a stockbroker right out of college, okay. And I and I became a stockbroker during the tech bust, all right, and so, you know, let's not linger on that but so so I got I got a I got licensed I was, you know, licensed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and right away just really started to understand the public financial markets. Okay, and You know, when corporate for a little bit, got an MBA during my MBA program, me and a couple others, students started a business. And you know, Joe, I want to tell you it was one of these where
we had a customer on the hook, and I don't want to tell you who it is, but they were a national retailer that rhymed with Walmart. And they, they wanted to roll out our product nationwide and not like on shelves, like they wanted to use it. Okay, and it was a really awesome thing. And the whole thing was we had investors teed up, we were in a business plan competition. And the thing was, was it was so promising that I was really the only one in our MBA class that failed to actually look for a job. Okay. And so, um, what happened was the same month of graduation, the startup completely failed, okay, the IP that we had licensed was yanked away from us. And in the whole thing, there was a single point of failure and it broke.
Okay. So, you know, there's a slight difference between being an MBA student with a very promising startup and being recently graduated without one and the word for that is unemployed, right? And so I knew, I knew that there was a, you know, it's like, okay, I can go corporate here, but it was one of these, like, I want my own gig, I want to do my own thing, right. And I and I knew that this is sort of when I realized that entrepreneurship is really kind of a condition and not a job title. And the thing was, was my idea just played out, I just did it. Like, I don't have an idea like that was last month. I'm not gonna make the rounds again, with like, a different idea. Like, so, you know, I knew that I knew vaguely that there was a way that you could buy an existing company, okay. Um, it seemed really unattractive at the time and like a lot of the action was in the online space. But it was one of these where I, you know, I set out to try to figure it out. And I and you know, after about six months, I really was just, you know, feeling pretty unemployed. So that first search that I did ultimately failed, went corporate for a while and ultimately settled into to buy my, my first company.
From there, you know, I really want to I really want to put this into perspective, because I think a lot of people look at people like me, and it's like, oh, yeah, I want to run out and buy seven companies, you know, I think I have a minority interest in like, 24 companies at some point during the last, you know, 10 years. And so, you know, you know, plus the seven that I bought outright, you know, etc. And so the thing is, is it really worked like this, I bought one company, and I ran it as CEO for seven years. And then through my efforts to grow through acquisition, I ultimately found an exit because the guy that I wanted to buy his company ended up wanting to buy my company. And so I sold my company. I did what all entrepreneurs do. Ran out and did another startup completely failed. Okay?
That's that's that startup, by the way was the one that I opened Buy Then Build with, you know, I mean, we have recruited a Microsoft executive we were oversubscribed. I mean, we had all the things right, you know. And so the thing was, was, you know, that one didn't work out. And I sort of like, looked at myself in the mirror and said, Look, Walker, you must be a really bad entrepreneur like every time you try to start a business, right? Well, it turns out started starting a business is kind of punishment for not understanding statistics, right? Like, we're all kind of like Han Solo flying into like the, you know, what, you know, what is the what is that in outer space with the boulders floating around? I can't, you know, I can't think of a minefield, you know, what's the word asteroid field, asteroid field. But in Star Wars like, it's Han Solo, we're not gonna kill off Harrison Ford. In real life.
It's just me like, I'm gonna die. Okay. So the thing is, is like I thought, Okay, look, every time I buy a company, it kind of works out. And I understand how to do it now I've been through the cycle. And so you know, every time I start a company, it doesn't work. And it didn't take me long to figure out. Why is that? Well, companies have earnings, right? They've got infrastructure that operate, they've got revenue coming from existing customers, all of the things that we're trying to build from scratch when we do a startup, right. So that's, that's the moment where I took, you know, sort of the funds that I gathered from my first exit and sort of put them to work in the private capital markets, started writing Buy Then Build, didn't want to be the guy. I started interviewing all other people that were doing it, okay. And what I found along the way was, it's an extremely anecdotal experience. There's not like, there's not like here, go through this program. And then you'll know the 10 step process, okay? It's decentralized. It's fragmented. It's opaque. Data is really hard to come by. And everyone I talked with was like, Well, you know, I knew this woman here.
And this happened or, you know, this is how I did it. It's just very situational, right? And so, ultimately, I kind of said to myself, okay, I'm at the point now where I mean, I bought seven companies outright, I've spent millions of dollars in debt, taking personal guarantees, and putting my own assets at work and running companies. I think I'm on the list of people that are allowed to write this book. And I took all of those interviews that I had done, and sort of turned them into frameworks that, you know, because it because a lot of times Joe, people would say to me, like Walker, you know, I was just looking for the same thing that everyone else was looking for. I'm looking for this. And then they described something that no one else had described, you know, and so I was like, Okay, well, what do I do with these two things that are both totally true. And that's how the frameworks for Buy Then Build started coming coming together.
Joe Troyer 12:48
That's super, super interesting. So lots of places we could go here. For any entrepreneur, do you think that this is the route or do you think that you know buying and building versus starting from scratch is for different types of people, or do you think it's for everybody or who's right for this model? Who's maybe not?
Walker Deibel 13:10
Oh my god. Great question, Joe. So I think, okay, so yeah, buying existing companies is absolutely not right for every business model. Okay. Um, first of all, I want to back up and kind of understand venture capital for a minute. Okay. So if you really look at venture capital, we all have these dreams early in our career, that it's like, Okay, I've got this idea. And man, it is so good. I'm going to take this idea. I'm going to pitch it to venture capitalists, and you know, we're going to raise millions of dollars and run out and try to do this. Okay. Slow down. Number one, venture capitalists don't really care what your idea is. Okay. myth busted. Okay. Number two. What they're really looking for is they're looking for adolescent markets. In other words, they're looking for markets where the timing is just right. And it's going to be a land grab over the few years ahead. Okay. The concept is, is they want to pull in the single best team in the world to execute on that exact, right adolescent growth, and that's who they want to fund. Okay? Even in those situations, 75% of VC backed firms go completely to 00 only 25% get an exit at all, okay?
But, you know, you look at, you know, the companies that have defined our time, okay, you look at, you know, Uber, Facebook, you know, even Amazon, you know, it's like, it's like companies where, you know, these were these were, you know, very you know, the word disruptive I feel like is a little off but, but they were, they were very unique, game changing kind of deals that only work with network externalities and a large gas tank, okay? You can't start Facebook by buying My Space. It doesn't work. Okay. That being said, You know, you look at something like, you know, you look at Elon Musk. Elon Musk is credited for being you know, a member of the of the PayPal mafia. He's He's credited for the founder of Tesla. Let's back up. He actually didn't start either of those. He bought them. He the dude literally bought them. Okay, so there was two guys that started Tesla, he came in with a bunch of money, fueled it from his PayPal days, right. And then and then ultimately became a founder of Tesla co founder of Tesla through that he even got sued for it for changing his title to that. Secondly, in PayPal, his company was called X, I believe, X.com maybe, and he was competing with PayPal. And what happened was PayPal was doing so well and growing so well that they ran out of cash. X wasn't doing that well.
So they had all their cash. So they bought PayPal. So one of these were even in these extreme startup examples, you still see acquisitions, you know, occurring at the basis. So to answer your question, Joe, I think that most entrepreneurs are not doing something completely disruptive. Okay? It's like, hey, I want to, you know, I want to sell a product on Amazon and just like live the four hour workweek. Great. I want to start an SEO company in St. Louis, Missouri, or there's already 20 of them. Okay, great. Hang your shingle, do it, you know, but why would you just go out and like try to buy four of them? Like it's, it's a faster way to getting those customers and getting that infrastructure and you don't have the pain of that of that early growth. And you get to dodge all of those startup pillars across along the way.
Joe Troyer 16:33
Yeah, yeah, it makes perfect sense. So in your book you talked about Really? Why right now is the time for this acquisitional entrepreneur. Can you talk about kind of statistic wise, like why that is, right? With with baby boomers, baby boomers and the rest of the market conditions, why is now such a great time?
Walker Deibel 16:56
Yeah, there's it there's a really interesting Confluence happening right now. Joe, if you if you don't mind, I'm gonna I'm gonna, I'm gonna throw this. I want to talk about COVID for a second. Okay. You know, it's, it's, you know, what is it June right now. So, you know, it's one of these things where, here's what I want to bring up. I think that, you know, there's been a lot of people shaking in their boots in the sort of M&A world, right? going like, Oh, my gosh, what does this mean? What is this mean? Okay. And the thing is, is if we look at the behaviors of the Small Business Administration, you know, they didn't hesitate for one minute, okay. They flew in and like really quickly did essentially a bailout of small businesses everywhere. Okay. Yeah, I want, I want to just look at that one thing and say, Why on earth did they do that? How were they able to move that quickly? You know, and I think that the reason here is that the SBA was really the Small Business Administration, who's the one supporting these loans on these smaller acquisitions up to 5 million in transactional value.
The thing is, is they were the very first ones to identify hey, let's supply the collateral to these banks on these cash flow loans on these small businesses. In other words, in other words, the first company I bought happy to dig into that if you want to, but there's a few reasons why I bought it. Number one, though, was that the assets of the company worked were valuable enough to work as collateral for the business because there was no way to buy a business just for the cash flow if it didn't have the assets. This is as recently as 2008, couldn't do it. SBA said, Listen, we're going to do cash flow loans on these businesses. So now you can go buy a website, you know, or you can buy a machine shop with no real hard assets, okay, whatever, whatever that thing is for your service business.
You know, I mean, you know, um, so the thing is, is is, you know, they are the ones that are making this happen, and what's occurred to me is that you look at the baby boomers, and the baby boomers own more companies than any other generation in the history of mankind. Okay, and the thing is, is there's an estimated $10 trillion in business assets that need to change hands as they retire. Okay? They started retiring about two, three years ago. And it is going to increase to over 11,000 per day by 2023. And then it's and then it's going to go all the way to 2028. So there is a massive amount of the United States economic infrastructure that needs to switch hands, and if it doesn't, think about what that actually means for the country, right? So you have this tsunami of business infrastructure of $10 trillion, sort of up for grabs, number two, capital has never in history been more readily available.
Okay. So, you know, you've got funding of these of these acquisitions. And number three, you have you have, you know, the the sort of online, online, you know, content If you will certainly phrase that differently, you just have, you've got like online marketing sort of hitting its stride, again for the first time in history, right? So you get these three things all happening together. And it's like, Wow, what an interesting time. That's why, Joe what I want to say is it's like, Look, let me roll with this for a second, I think that if you look at the like, the most valuable companies out there, the ones that really have a unique competitive advantage like that move beyond anyone else. Yes, you've got some with like, you know, market externalities and market networks and all the rest of it. I don't want to belittle that, that's awesome. Okay. But the thing is, is when you look at how can I use like proven old economy metrics and marry them with online metrics, you get something truly special, like, we all think of Amazon as an e commerce site. But right behind that webpage is nothing other than a network of warehouses.
I mean, it says bricks and mortar as you can get right and they just a grocery store for crying out loud. They bought a grocery store, by the way, right? And then the thing is, is like you look at Tesla, it's a car company, you look at Apple, they make phones and software, right? I mean, so it's like, I look at the biggest companies and it's like, boy, if you can merge the old economy and the new economy together, that's when something truly special happens. And I think, you know, I look at your audience, Joe, and you're talking about, you know, amazing online marketers, right? You're talking about agency agencies, entrepreneurs, right, like people who have a knack for growing businesses online. And there is a whole economy based on businesses that don't know how to bridge that gap. And so it's a tremendous opportunity for someone you know, knowing how to like run email flows and run social media ads, etc.
Joe Troyer 21:47
Yeah, for sure. 100% so for for people that have looked at buying businesses before, and they've looked at the inventory available and been like, this is kind of it right the people The online marketers that are used to the sites like Flippa in this world, and they're like really are like, I'm not gonna buy this. I'm like, Wait, where is the inventory? Where is like this massive shift is happening, right? Like Where on earth do you look?
Walker Deibel 22:17
Yep, great question. So um, Okay, first of all I want to talk about a couple of a couple of things. Let's, let's mention Flippa. Let's, let's mention Biz Buy Sell, okay? Yep. Both of these websites are open marketplaces, okay? Open marketplaces are actually a horrible place to go. And the reason why is because it's something like 90% of small businesses that get listed for sale. Don't actually sell. Okay, boy, we could spend an hour unpacking that one, but let's not let's not go there. Okay, well, instead, let's just acknowledge like a vast majority of them don't sell and so where did these companies go to hang out forever before they die, they go to these open marketplaces, okay?
And there's a number of reasons why it might not sell, you know, having a bad broker represented having bad economics, whatever, it might be overpriced, whatever. So the concept is, is that if you go to these open marketplace, you know, I'd like to say, I think it was, um, you know, we like to say that it, you know, in business that, you know, you're sort of like the average of the seven people you hang out with, or something, you know, maybe for this, or, you know, Buddhism says, like, we don't act, we aren't actually an individual or simply a reflection of the things around us. The concept here is that when you are going to these open marketplaces and you you are basically looking at a whole bunch of junk, like it's where all the junk goes, okay? It doesn't mean there aren't good businesses there. I have bought companies off of these websites, but they're just really hard to see. They're really hard to understand and I think that you can waste a lot of time because They get you in the wrong mindset quickly, and then you can't see the good stuff. The trick to finding good deals, okay? proprietary deal flow gets a lot of attention right now.
Um it's really really really long okay to get proprietary deal flow and what that means is just going out shaking the trees networking on your own trying to find a seller who's interested in selling before they've, you know, gone to market, right? Um, the thing is, though, is that when sellers decide when when CEOs decide they want to sell, what do they do? They don't just like, answer the phone and go, Yeah, I was just thinking of selling it. No, they talk to whoever they end up meeting some kind of business broker, right, who talks to them about the valuation of their company talks to them about the process of selling their company, and I also work as a broker with Quiet Light Brokerage. And the reason I do that is because after I bought and all these companies today, I own a manufacturing company and an e commerce company, you know, public, public, private small, large whatever, you know, I've seen a lot of deals. And the thing is, is for me, the only place I ever would have worked is Quiet Light. And you know, I mean, I guess I'm saying that self serving now because
I am a part of the team, but I've never worked with better people, Joe, it's just, it's so much fun. But the thing is, is I will work with a seller for you know, as little as a month to as much as like, a year and a half or more, because there's a whole evolution that needs to happen in the sellers mind. And then they need to understand what the value of their businesses and Joe, you and I both know, every entrepreneur knows that our companies are worth 20 times EBITDA, which for any listener doesn't know that's an insane valuation on it, right? So in other words, we all know that we bleed and we sweat and at the end of the year, we make like $1 or we lose money and then we do it again and like eventually we make like a million bucks and it's like, Oh man, this thing is worth doing. This thing is worth my whole life because it is. But it's not at all it's way too risky for a buyer to come in and do that. And so the thing is, is, you know, you transact on these deals that like, you know, two and a half times three times three and a half times or maybe up, you know, maybe down depends. Broker outreach is where I'm going with this. You want to find the good deals, you need to get upstream. And so you go to the people that have the deals, and those are going to be the people that can put good deals on your desk, there's 5000 brokerage firms in the United States alone. There are some in your town, you know, I mean, whatever. So you know, hit hit Google, find them, you know, hit the IVBA hit the M&A Source hit The Alliance of M&A Advisors, you know and find find those people and go out and meet them. Ah, but get ready first, I'm sorry, footnote. Get ready.
Joe Troyer 26:51
So you talked about the the open networks, the different sites that just are that the aggregate listings and I for the record have have bought there and bought successful businesses since and other but I agree with what you said it's it's finding a needle in a haystack there's no there's no due diligence that's been because a broker doesn't have the listing either. I think there's a big difference between a broker having it and you know some entrepreneur solo entrepreneur just listing the listing. So I've definitely found that it's a lot more sorting and sifting and filtering like you said on on the open marketplaces.
Walker Deibel 27:36
Deals are really hard to get closed without a broker. And I don't mean that in any kind of way other than at some point, every at some point the deal everyone needs to like walk away from the table. It just it just has to happen. You need to have that person to coordinate and pull everyone together and in understand that this look, this is this is a buyer and a seller sith a mutual shared end goal, and so we need to kind of help everyone navigate through it. Sorry to interrupt Joe. But yeah,
Joe Troyer 28:06
no, no, that makes perfect sense. I think that deal flow is tough. If you don't know where you're looking and you just go to the open market places, it can feel like a needle in a haystack search. So I think going to brokers is definitely better, but I feel like it's still more of the same, right, you're gonna have to go through a lot of deals, you're gonna have to look at a lot of deals. Any any thoughts on that? How do you look at those deals? How do you kind of protect your mind? because like you said, if you're not careful, man, like, you can spend days and weeks and months, like just looking at deals, and then they all kind of start to look the same. How do you stay objective or what what kind of advice would you give to somebody looking for a business?
Walker Deibel 28:47
Joe? It's, it's, it's I think it's a more insightful question than you realize. I think that a lot of people. So in other words, I'm in the Acquisition Lab. So I started a company called the Acquisition Lab where we help you know, potential buyers, you know, get smart about how to do this and one of the things that we do is we talk about what what I call the Sabri curve. And the the Sabri curve basically goes like this, um, everyone says, I need deal flow, I need deal flow, I want deal flow, okay? You don't actually need deal flow, you need the one deal that you're going to buy. Okay, now, Joe, to your point, if I had that deal, okay, here's that deal. And you've never looked at another deal in your life, and I handed it over across the table to you, you're gonna be like, I don't, I don't know even what I'm looking at. So the thing is, is there's almost like an academic exercise of being of looking at deals and trying to understand, you know, what's going on with them. And, you know, so I think the thing is, is like, go to, let's say Quiet Light I work there, but like if you go if you go to Quiet Light and you just start looking at the deals that are coming up, okay. One of the things that quiet light does extremely well is you know, They we now spend a lot of time you know going through a lot of custom built questions to help potential buyers understand the business, okay? We're not the only one to do this go to Buy Then Build dot com, you'll find all the online, go to Centurica. They're great due diligence people, whatever.
Chris is fantastic. But the point is, is look at deals, okay? And do it know that it's an academic exercise, trying to evaluate the deals, try to forecast, you know what's going on, try to look for single points of failure. Try to understand, you know, what you think what you think about this, right? And you need to work your way down the Sabri curve so that when that day comes that I say, Joe, look at this, you're like, oh, boom, I've been, I got a call. This has happened two or three times, I got a phone call. And I was under LOI on an offer letter of intent on an offer that I had submitted within 24 hours. And it all comes down to being familiar with the different levers and knowing knowing what you want, because everyone says I want a good deal. Well, look, what's a good deal for you is not a good deal for somebody else. Okay, and it isn't that cookie cutter. So, you know, you need to get over that and understand your own truth.
Joe Troyer 31:15
Yeah, I agree. I think that I told a friend that's interested in M&Aand really buying businesses that he shouldn't spend an hour a week on Centurica, or one of the other aggregators. And and just, but limit yourself because if not, like, it can really be like, rabbit hole, like you could spend, like, you know, every waking minute, evaluating deals, and I think that there's, I agree with you, there's a learning curve that you have to go through. So when you see a good deal, you know, it's a good deal. Then, what do you think that next step then is just making sure that the brokers that have the deal flow know what you're looking for? Is that like, in real outreaching to them is that step two then once, once you're caught up, and you understand what's good to you, or you have an understanding of what you're looking for, where do you go from there?
Walker Deibel 32:07
Yeah, I mean, you know, it's it's sort of like when you know, when you start when you start doing broker outreach to me, you know, yeah, you want. Okay, first of all, it depends on this sort of sub market. So if we assume that your audience is, should we assume that your audience is more online focused? Okay, well, okay, then it's, I'm going to change my answer that because it kind of depends where you are. If you're really online focused, what you want to do is, is you want to just go to all of the websites that are doing it, and get on their email list. So you are creating your own deal flow, right. And so, you know, when when the deals come, they usually show up like really fast, okay, like, in other words, everyone gets it all at once. All right, and so it's like, okay, there's not a lot of pregame going on. There's not a whole lot of like, Hey, I know this And let me float this over there, it happens. But it usually happens because like, in the in the only events that come that that happens is when I'm really far down a deal with a buyer.
And then like they lose out. And then it just so happens that I've got another one that I'm packaging that's like very similar, right? But like that happens, but it's, it's, my point is, is get those deals coming right to your inbox and don't sit around, ruminating on like 20 listings all at once, when the deal hits your inbox, understand that it's an academic exercise, and go through it and, you know, get smart about how you feel about it. Then, once you sort of get your your, your bearings about you, um, start talking to the brokers start responding and saying like, Hey, you know, I liked this one because of this. I don't know that I can move forward because of that, right or, you know, just your thoughts are like, I'm looking for this. In Buy Then Build, I talked about forming a target statement. It's a really great way to communicate really fast what you're looking for. And if you can communicate that target statement to all of the brokers on a regular basis without being annoying, then like you will find your deal. It just kind of takes time.
Joe Troyer 34:16
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And I remember that from the book now. Yeah. Okay, cool. Can we can we go up a couple levels? And can we talk about SBA math and cash flow, please? Okay, because I've, I feel like we missed that. And I feel like I was like, I just realized that it was like, kind of Oh, crap. Like, everybody doesn't get kind of the big opportunity here. Like the cash flow, for me is is crazy. And I feel like we got this new surge of baby boomers they gotta get they got to get rid of their businesses. And then not only that, like so we have this surge of deal flow, but we got the surge of cash flow coming off of these things as well, that I never realized. And obviously, like you said, the SBA hasn't been doing this forever and they haven't been supporting things based upon cash flow forever either. So I think that also speaks to the unique opportunity and time that we're in right now.
Walker Deibel 35:11
Yep. So, um, tell me if I'm going the right direction here, but but I think what you want to talk about is, okay, so when you buy a business, you know, you have to ask yourself, like, what am I really buying? Right? And pun intended, the bottom line is that you're buying earnings, okay, so I'm gonna invest money, and then it's gonna make money. Okay? Now, when I was an MBA student, doing a million in revenue just seemed so tiny. It just seemed like whatever, like, you know, a million dollar $2 million $5 million, whatever.
It wasn't until I was reading Vern Harnish's book Scale Up that the first thing I joined EO Entrepreneurs Organization and to get in you have to have a business with doing a million in revenue, and it was like, okay, that's some kind of line in the sand that's fine. Later when I read it, Vern Harnish's book Scaling Up, I realized that only 4% of companies in the United States ever exceed a million dollars in revenue. So all of a sudden, I started to realize, oh my god, like, if you have a million in revenue or more, you are like an elite individual. Okay. And, you know, I mean, I mean, you have created something that most people on planet earth cannot do. And the bar is a lot lower than I thought is my point.
Like, I thought it was gonna have to be like, you know, 20 million, you know, we, as entrepreneurs, we can all think really big numbers, right? But the point is, is it's actually really low bar to be exceptional. Okay. So, let's say for a minute, you've got a business that's, that's generating a million dollars in revenue. Okay. You'll need to run through the math here. Is this right? So there's a company that's doing a million dollars in revenue. Then let's say let me get a calculator. So I don't embarrass myself but you know, you're you're probably going to be doing between 10 and 20% of revenue.
In what we would call seller discretionary earnings. Um, a real quick explanation would be, you know, what is the total cash flow available to me as the owner of this company that I'm about to buy? Okay? So you know, 10 to 15% is about $150,000. Okay, now let's pretend that you're going to buy this company at a three X, kind of, kind of fast and loose here but very realistic. Okay, so now you're going to go buy this company for $450,000. Okay, um, let's say there's some inventory on it as well and you need some working capital and closing costs. So we'll just add 100,000 for fun. Okay, so $550,000 is what you're going to buy this company for. You can buy this company with 90% SBA backed loan. Okay, so you go to like, you know, Steven Spear at E Commerce Lending Company.
And, you know, he'll give you, you know, he'll supply you with an SBA backed loan, you need to come up with $55,000 in this example, okay, take a 90% loan to close out on the business. All right, done with that 55. Then with the 90% loan, your principal and interest payments every year going forward are going to be about half. All right. So about $75,000, it's about 45%, usually, but I can't do that in my head. So we'll just say $75,000 of the 150 and earnings go to the bank every year for the next 10 years. Okay? You though, make $75,000 so in year one, you put in $55,000, you get out $75,000 in the first 12 months, assuming you don't grow it, assuming you don't reinvest the money into you know, you know, whatever, deeper in roads or routes or whatever you want to do for competitive advantage or growth. Okay. But the point is, is that, you know, as entrepreneurs we like to grow things, so I like that I like to buy companies take very, you know, eat ramen noodles for a couple of years and reinvest all of the money back in. So that can start to build modes or grow to the next level.
Joe Troyer 39:11
Yep. Perfect. Perfect. Yeah, I think a lot of people in the agency world or marketers in the in the digital world, they are at a certain level when they become successful, their cost of living and their cost of goods to deliver their services. They have a really heavy profit margins and they start looking for investment vehicles have what to do with their money. And I don't think any of them have really consider acquiring a business. So I feel like a lot of them just go the the real estate game, right or they look at other places. And I think it's really interesting to look at real estate payoffs, no matter what your kind of strategy is, buy and hold or or flip or whatever. And look at that versus this model. And it's it's nuts like even my father. I think he's got eight or nine rental properties now. Right? And I like to have I like to play dumb and have him like, explain the math to me. And then I'll be like, check out this deal. And I'll show them the math of like an online business. And he like every time, it's like the first time like holy cow. Well, he's just like, floored.
Walker Deibel 40:26
Yeah, but it's air. It's an air ball. It's an air ball. No, it's just like cash coming into an account. Sorry to interrupt, Joe. Go ahead.
Joe Troyer 40:34
No, but it's so cool. Um, and it hasn't been around like this. It hasn't been available like this. Like, he's bought and built different businesses. He sold businesses. But he he didn't understand like the business math. And he didn't get the SBA side of things and didn't even know that that existed. And that you could do that. For websites. It was always the fundings got to be done somewhere else for a deal like that. So I can't do that. Right. So I just think it's just a super interesting comparison.
Walker Deibel 41:05
Yeah, I think it's Yeah, I agree. And I was gonna say something Joe but I forgot.
Joe Troyer 41:13
That will happen. So can you talk real quick Walker about the four types of businesses in the acquisitional entrepreneur matrix?
Walker Deibel 41:22
Yeah, by the way, I just remembered what I was gonna say, you were talking about agencies for example. Okay. And I say that agencies are actually really hard to exit. Okay? It's, it's a very unattractive multiple and there's usually a ton of earn outs associated and all the rest of it. And so the thing is, is like, kind of, to your point, let's just say it was an SEO agency. Okay, so I'm just making pick making this up some kind of skill set where you have some kind of skill set, right? Your PPC agency, your your SEO agency, your whatever you are, you know, Amazon, you know, paid ads. If you take your earnings and then go buy a portfolio of businesses that you can grow, that's, that's actually the whole thing right there. It's what do you bring to the table? Okay. And so you just asked about the AE matrix and the four different ways. Let me fast forward to the platform company. Okay. What the platform company takes into consideration is what do you bring to the table? And how are you going to grow this company? And so that's, that's the epitome right there. Sort of like, you know, someone who owns a, you know, an SEO agency, identifying an online business that could tremendously benefit from SEO, picking up that content site or whatever it is, and then taking it to the next level. Okay. So that's, that's the platform. Um,
Joe Troyer 42:40
yeah, real quick, sorry to interrupt, but we had a podcast episode a lot about that, that we'll put in the show notes as well with with Matt Diggity talking about how he's buying affiliate sites and a lot of like Amazon affiliate sites, Amazon Associates sites, and using his score, core strength, which is SEO and they had an agency and they actually transitioned the agency to doing their own services and stop the agency basically all together. Only doing you know that service for themselves. Case in point
Walker Deibel 43:10
That's the move. Brilliant. That's exactly it. That's that. I mean, you know, but you're talking to the acquisition entrepreneur guy. So but yeah, that's the move. And so, um, you know, you're going to productize these things, right. So, so, um, so there's three other, there's four profiles of a business opportunity, okay? And just having the framework to understand where to put them, I think helps you understand, you know, how do I categorize what it is that I'm looking at, um, you know, the first is sort of this, you know, eternally profitable business. So, um, I just got off the phone before this call with a guy that bought a it's like a home health care company, where, you know, he employs like, 150 nurses and those nurses go to private homes and they don't take um, you know, Medicare, Medicaid. It's all like private paid. Whatever.
And the concept here is that, you know, people are always going to be sick. You know, people are always going to need home health care. It's just like there's no like disruptive technology that is going to, you know, make this go away. And it's, it's this particular business has a very interesting tailwind with the with the aging baby boomers. But the idea is something like that it's sort of like the corporate window washing that kind of like snow plow business, just to sort of like, you know, no technological alternatives coming in where, you know, it's a very fragmented industry and you can just sort of like pick up, you know, customers, right. So that's eternally profitable. So the concept there is that you get a you get an increased margin of safety when you buy the company, but the upward potential is very limited, right? I mean, that's kind of the the goal there. Next would be like a turnaround. So I'm, again at the Acquisition Lab last month, we brought in a guy who did just ran a case study with all of our members. And it was, um, he bought a company out of bankruptcy. Right.
And it's, it's, you know, he bought it for pennies on the dollar, because it was a bankrupt company, right and the concept is, is you've got customers that are furious because they can't get their stuff you've got you know, competitors that are moving in like vultures, I mean, you know, just all the rest of it, but you can buy it right and then build it with the infrastructure that's there and just try to get it back, you know, going together so a bankruptcy is a pretty extreme example. But but but the concept is, is something that's kind of trending down that needs some some assistance. Um, and you know, and I won't take too long on the next the next one's like high growth.
The concept with high growth, you know, the epitome is sort of like think to yourself, like, you know, fast growing SaaS company, okay. It's one of these where, you know, it has a very clear growth trajectory and opportunity for growth moving forward. Which is don't do anything different, right? Like it's growing, like just doing it and make sure you've got that that exact skill set. And the reason why is because you're going to end up paying higher valuations on companies that are growing rapidly, right? So you need to not do anything different. Don't go in there thinking like, Oh, I'm going to change all this stuff and do whatever, you're just going in buying the future cash flow of that company. Okay. And then, of course, there's the platform company, which which looks at what do I bring to the table? And what is the growth opportunity, you know, that that that I can add value to for business?
Joe Troyer 46:37
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And I think it can help a lot of people understand what type of buyer they are. And a lot of people that I've spoken with have no idea, right. They don't know what they're looking for. The reason why, and I think that that provides definitely a lot of context. I'm curious, um, some businesses online that seems like a trend as of late on Centurica and other marketplaces or aggregators is to advertise as being SBA pre qualified. Is that just like a scheme on the listing? Or is there actual due diligence that happens there?
Walker Deibel 47:12
Um, it's neither, it's down the middle. If it's not SBA pre qualified, you can't list it. And there's certain businesses that won't be I had a closing this morning that the company was Canadian. You can't get SBA financing on that business. Um, you've got others where, you know, maybe the, the, the growth is too soft, or it's not old enough.
There's not enough tax returns, you know, it would, or it's commingled, commingled financials is a big one, you know, it's just tough. And so the thing is, is is that what's sweet about SBA financing is that, you know, we can take the time when we're packaging a company, to you know, work with a lender and say that gets comfortable with this and says, Yes, I will, you know, I will lend, you know, whatever 85 90% on this business at this price. So here you go and they'll give you a letter, right? They don't necessarily run diligence on it. And there still is a missing component, which is you the buyer, right? And they need to be able to get comfortable with the buyer, but buyers can also get pre qualified. So, you know, if the buyer is pre qualified and the business is pre qualified, then you know, it's it's the likelihood that it's going to happen at those numbers are really high.
Joe Troyer 48:32
So it's a filter to look at consider, right?
Walker Deibel 48:35
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they'll look at I mean, you know, they'll look at they look at the financials and go through them. They don't do any proper diligence. They assume that you're going to do your diligence, right. And they will do diligence. They will do diligence. Later on it you know, once they know who the buyer is, and okay, this deal is actually happening and it goes into closing. They do they do more, they asssist with your diligence, right, but they won't they do not think that they're going to do any level of due diligence in the level that you need to.
Joe Troyer 49:07
A 100% Yeah, makes perfect sense. Any recommendations on due diligence? Are you, do you recommend? And are you a fan of having other people do due diligence at some stage for you or with you? Or how would you recommend that people approach deals? The reason I'm asking is just time, right? Like if I find a deal, and I like it, I mean, there is a huge, huge, enormous time investment that has to happen. Whether you're under LOI or whether you haven't done the LOI yet you're trying to figure out if you're going to make a letter of intent. It's a lot of work. Right. Um, that's on that piece of it. What I advise people are, you know, what would you recommend to somebody? Yeah,
Walker Deibel 49:51
Yeah, great. So, um, you know, I think that I want to be careful. I think that due diligence really comes after your letter of intent. Okay, so so there's some, like before a letter of intent and okay, look, this is how I make sense of the world, okay? But the thing is, is that, you know, when you start looking at a business, all right, you sort of look at it and try to understand it, okay? And then you understand it, you look at the financials and, you know, you kind of evaluate the growth opportunities and all these things that you're doing.
And you're kind of deciding, okay, assuming that all of these things are true, as they were presented to me, do I want to buy this business or not? Right? And then you want to talk to the seller and you want to ask questions and you want to, you know, get a good feeling from the seller, you wanna be able to trust the seller, right? And you want them to like you and all the rest of it, but, but it's sort of like do I like the business enough, assuming it's all true to buy it?
And if so, you know, like only only go so far to ask questions that you need to make a go or no go decision. Leave everything. Due diligence, okay? So once you decide, okay, I'm going to put an offer on this company, then you can put in your offer and then if it's accepted, that's where it's like, hey, guess what it's trust but verify time, right? And there's sort of three components to diligence. There's legal, financial and operational. Start with legal and financial, okay? I like to hire an attorney and just say, okay, go do a background check, do like whatever you legal lawyers do, to like, you know, find out if there's some big lie behind the scenes that I can't see.
That usually takes a week and you know, someone does it and then you know, but you know, it can get more intense with there's trademarks and all that, you know, like things. Um, and then number two is do financial due diligence, because, you know, if there's something that doesn't jive with you, you want to be able to pick up on that at the beginning before you waste all this time, right? Companies like Centurica are also fantastic. Um, you know, if you're going to buy an online business, I mean, you know, like, you know, every business that every online business I've bought,
I've hired them for, okay. And the thing is, is that there's things about the internet that like, I don't know, like, I don't know what, you know, like, what were even to look like, I just have a blind spot, right? And so it's like, bringing in people that know more, you know, so let's say I'm gonna buy a company for you know, a million and a half dollars, you know, I want to not say what their pricing is, because they might decide to change it tomorrow. And I don't want to time it out. But the point is, is it is a small, small, small, small, small, small fraction of my $1.5 million, and I'm about to spend, right so to do the work, bring in the team and whatever. I've also hired CPAs to do quality of earnings and things like that. So yes, I like to do my own diligence, but ultimately, I like to bring in people that know more than I do. Tell me see things I can't see.
Joe Troyer 53:01
I love that advice, legal and then financial. We had a deal under LOI on literally days away from closing and we found a big financial problem. And we had done all the due diligence we had covered legal but we waited for financial to be last we kind of hit legal and then ops and I really dug in on the ops side. and it was it was hard man that was a huge letdown like we were we were at the 10 yard line like this thing was about to go through all the all the money and was in place like everything sorted but what we had found was they were selling like longer term like bundled contracts like six months and 12 months to push their earnings up.
And so he started to dig into the financials and it was like, Wait a second, like this doesn't make sense. Like what is happening? Oh, yeah, we're selling you know, we went from selling monthly to selling yearly or selling six month contracts and the stats looked great, but the recurring revenue was gone like
Walker Deibel 54:02
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, there needs to be some kind of like liability on the balance sheet that's like, you know, services that need to be rendered, you know, like later. So yeah, I totally get that.
Joe Troyer 54:13
I actually thought that was that was great advice.
Walker Deibel 54:16
I actually bought a company out of bankruptcy that did exactly that. And but it turned out to be a Ponzi scheme because he needed new projects to come in, in order to use that money to pay for the existing projects being built, construction company, so it was just one of these like, he ended up upside down and I went for it and got it for a song, but um, it's been really slow going because there's a lot of bad, a lot of people hate the company. I thought I was the good guy, I don't know.
Joe Troyer 54:50
Tell us a little bit about what you're up to these days with Acquisition Labs. You've mentioned it a little bit. I'm Quiet Light is obviously a brokerage everybody can check out. We'll definitely link up to them and also your book in the show notes, which I highly recommend. But tell us what you're up to. Over there.
Walker Deibel 55:07
Sure. Um, yeah, it's pretty easy. There's two pillars that it kind of sits on. And the concept is, is, you know, entrepreneurship through acquisition is the number one elective MBA class at every single school in which it's taught, but it's only taught at 11 schools, okay. And it's like Stanford, you know, Columbia, you know, University of Chicago, Northwestern, I mean, you know, it's a Harvard, I mean, you know, if you are getting your MBA, you're probably not even at one of those schools. Right. And so but what's interesting is that 20% of the school's teaching it actually used Buy Then Building as a textbook. So here I am, like the guy that wrote the textbook, but like, I don't have my own class, right? No one has access to it.
So I brought on a world class curriculum designer and you know, I'm is I've brought a team together and we basically built out a ETA curriculum, you know, acquisition entrepreneur curriculum that we're teaching, but we're doing it not as like a passive online course. It's like live workshops and all the rest of it, it's like eight weeks. So the one pillar is just sort of like acquisition entrepreneurship education. Okay.
The second pillar is I'm at, you know, after I wrote Buy Then Build Joe, it's like, you know, like, you know, everyone just would come up to me and be like, so, you know, hey, do you help people like, find and buy a business? for all the reasons we've uncovered on this call? Like, there's no version of reality that anyone could pay me enough money to help them find and buy a business, right? It's, I mean, you know, there's actually, you know, buy-side advisory, and that's, you know, it's, it's expensive, and it's not, it's not affordable for most, you know, financial buyers most first time buyers right, and so, the acquisition lab is sort of intended to be kind of a do it with you buy-side advisory service, and what would that look like? Right, so, you know, it's this kind of mix of, you know, education and coaching and tools and communities sort of thing.
Joe Troyer 57:02
That's awesome, man, that's got to be lots of fun because you could finally help everybody that's asking you right in a way that you never could before. Because it just wasn't feasible.
Walker Deibel 57:11
That's right. That's, that's exactly it. And it's, you know, it's again, it's just sort of like, and it's already interesting, because you're starting to see, like, the, like, we just launched it in January, we've had four cohorts, purposely keeping the cohorts really small, and, you know, so that we can, you know, work and that's a forum environment and help each other, right, as opposed to like, well, I don't want to tell my group that I found a deal because what if they, what if they buy that instead of me, it's you have to kind of work through all these different things, and then just create a very helpful environment to to help people work towards that goal in a way that doesn't cost them. If you hire a buy-side advisor, and you close 150, you know, a $1.5 million deal. I mean, you know, a million dollar deal, it's going to cost you like $150,000 because it's it's gonna be a $5,000 month retainer, and then probably a single payment formula success fee, and it's going to take 18 months. So again, you know, if I'm running a private equity firm, or I'm an entrepreneur who's had an exit, I'm so happy to do that, right in order to find that one deal that I want. But if I'm just you know, you are me, like I don't I don't want to spend an extra $150,000 on a million dollar transaction.
Joe Troyer 58:19
Yeah, makes perfect sense. What What advice would you give somebody like here, the top two or thing two or three things to watch out for? Like, what? What are the gotchas that you see like the goose eggs, the running 100 miles an hour into a brick wall type of mistakes? They like, man, I just want to shake people like if they just knew, like these two or three things, what would those be?
Walker Deibel 58:40
Yeah, so number one 90 percent of people that start looking for a business never buy one. Okay? And so you really need to unpack why is that? Okay? And number one, no one has any idea what they're looking for. Okay, so like, figure out what your target statement is figure out what you're looking for. Okay. And that's number one like no, no, Know the deal that you want so that when you see it, you can actually move. Number two, um, buyers tend to work without urgency. They think of themselves as investors, right? They kind of come in, put their feet up on the desk, you know, hands behind their head, they're like, I'm gonna buy a business like, you know, or what, you know, they almost think that they're like a venture capitalist. And the seller is like, pitching them on, like, why they should buy theirs. And it's, that's not it at all. Like you're an entrepreneur, you're the CEO, you're kind of applying for it in a way, right? But the thing is, is, you know, you can buy a company and you can you can from today, let's say this right now, six months from now, you can you can own and have your company, okay? work with a sense of urgency, okay. And it'll change how you how you interact with this give yourself deadlines, right. So, you know, note, you're looking for a sense of urgency.
The other thing I think that there's a real big overweight on the question, why are they selling. Okay, in my experience, you know, entrepreneurs, listen, we're talking about online entrepreneurs right now. They really, they really sell for two reasons. And by the way, it's sort of like 99% of sellers are good people that just want to exit their business. And like less than 1% are scumbags that are trying to dodge a bullet, they want to give it to you. Okay. so, you know, by and large, most people sell for one of two reasons. One, we're entrepreneurs and we have shiny object syndrome. And so we decided that we want to build this new thing over here, okay. And so they start focusing on their new project, and then they realize that they have this company that they built over here, and they have to keep working in it to keep growing it but they really their interest is shifted, okay. Number two, they build something of value. Okay. And so, you know, like, like before that first year, you don't do well in the second year you do better in the third year, you sell a million dollars, and then the fourth year you sell 1 million and 1 dollar. In other words, you don't really know what else to do with it.
Okay, so you're onto the next thing, right? So you have a new project, right? And so now it's like I've created this value, let's go ahead and sell it. And if you just look at it and understand it as part of the entrepreneurial cycle, we, as entrepreneurs make 50% of the financial benefit the day we sell a business, okay. And that's, you know, and so the thing is, is like, there is a big financial incentive to sell. And the thing is, is when you buy it, and you look at that equity build up from the loan, that that that equity, that value increase, pretty much parallels the entrepreneur that started from scratch. So you get a very, very similar value gain when you use leverage in that way.
Joe Troyer 1:01:48
Yeah, that's super interesting. I never thought about it like that at all. Thanks for that.
So last question, man. We'll wrap it up here. Walker. This has been awesome. I just want to Thank you. Absolutely fantastic interview, very different style on M&A than we've had in the past as well. We've had some really good interviews that will link up. But I just want to challenge our listeners and people watching the interview to really think about this. If you're at all interested, go ahead and grab Walker's book, we'll put the link in the show notes. Definitely something you should consider. We are actively doing this today. And by we, I mean like me and my business partners that I have. This is a thing that we are really invested in is really buying then building versus just building it. Trust me like I'm a builder. But there's a lot of steps after that building is complete, and there's just something to launch. I'd rather skip all those steps every single time.
So I'm wrapping this up. You've mentioned a couple of books Walker, instead of you recommending 10 different books that you like, I like to do something a little bit different. I mentioned earlier that I'm a voracious reader. Like, once I'm hooked most books though, I read and in the first five or 10 pages, they lose me. And I'm like, yeah, this could be the greatest book ever, but I just can't keep the attention span. I can't read it. So looking at your business, your life now, what do you think is like the one book that's made the biggest impact and is a good read?
Walker Deibel 1:03:21
Okay, um, I know you're asking me for one, but I'm going to give you two for very specific reasons. The first is Jim Collins. Good to Great, okay. It's like, it's just I hang my hat on this book. I absolutely love it. And when I started Buy Then Build it was like, Okay, how do I write a book like this? I mean, it's just like a mammoth undertaking and he pulled off something very amazing. Um, which I'm sure someone's recommended before we all know this book. So I'm going to give you the other one, which was a total sneak attack. Okay. Jim McKelvey, who is the co founder of square, just read a book called The innovation stack and you know, I picked it up thinking that you know, okay. And you know, let's be honest, I, you know, another another guy who started a huge company, like one of the most valuable companies in the world writes a book, okay? It's probably okay, you know what I mean? It blew my socks off Joe. I mean, it's, it's the antithesis of Buy Then Build actually it's all about if you if you read it, the fundamental beliefs are exactly the same. But then I go left and he goes right.
And I actually sent him a copy Buy Then Build and wrote like, hey, this is the antithesis to The Innovation Stack. And it's basically about how creating tremendously, tremendously valuable companies from from, well he talks about from scratch pretty blatantly is all about being able to innovate one piece at a time. And then the culmination of solving for all those problems so you can deliver your product is like the best mode that you can that you can have and so you know, I loved the book. It was truly one of the best business books I've ever read, and the polar opposite of mine. And so I've spent the last couple of months trying to merge the two messages in my head because I find that there's probably a piece of gold there if I can just get to it.
Joe Troyer 1:05:18
That's awesome, man. You got me intrigued. I'm sure those will be in my cart and Amazon in about five minutes from now. So thank you for that man. And thank you for coming on and sharing. We'll put all the links in the show notes and I can't highly are can't recommend more highly. The book guys go go pick it up.
Walker Deibel 1:05:36
Thanks, Joe. Thanks so much.
Joe Troyer 1:05:38
Thanks, Walker. See you everybody
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
