ACQUIREpreneurs do not get bogged down with operating the businesses they own. They only acquire businesses that already have qualified managers to run them. (Location 420)
But capital can be so much more than money. Capital can be relationships, knowledge, skills, talents, time, or any number of things. (Location 458)
The second path is about how to rapidly grow a business that is under your control (whether you are starting from that position already, or whether you acquire one via the first path we just described). (Location 498)
What they found was startling: about two-thirds of the companies that made the list had shrunk in size, gone out of business, or been disadvantageously sold. (Location 515)
To reiterate, that is the magic formula: 1) acquire existing businesses from motivated sellers—without committing your own capital—that have already been validated, that are already profitable, or are strategically beneficial; 2) blow them up in two to five years for tremendous profit increase through optimization of the existing business and implementation of the strategies presented in part two of this book; and 3) then sell them for a multiple of many years of profit, usually paid all in one day, at closing. (Location 524)
These EPIC investors are primarily focused on acquiring businesses, growing them, and then selling them at a nice profit. We call people who specialize in acquiring business in this way “ACQUIREpreneurs,” an apt portmanteau of “acquisition” and “entrepreneur.” (Location 600)
To begin, we want you to understand that our system works across any industry, in any country, in any economy, and it doesn’t require any capital, any monetary investment, or any of your own personal credit. (Location 606)
Buy when the market is down and everyone is panic selling; sell when the market is up and everyone forgets that recessions even happen. (Location 640)
We have extensive experience in business turnarounds, where you acquire or take control of a business that is experiencing existential challenges and take action to right the ship, save the day, and hopefully, make a nice profit in the process. (Location 660)
And before you answer, consider that, depending on the age of the business you acquire, only about 10% of acquisitions fail as compared to 90% of first-time founders. So, you have a choice: a 90% chance of success through acquisition or a 10% chance of success with a start-up as a first-time founder—and a 65% chance of start-up failure no matter what your experience level. (Location 668)
You’re not interested in anyone listing with a business broker and trying to get an auction going to get the highest price for his or her company. You want people who are driven by one—or ideally several—of these ten reasons. (Location 755)
an investor is defined as “a person that allocates capital with the expectation of a future financial return or to gain an advantage.” (Location 877)
Capital is broader than just money or cash. There is intellectual capital, social capital, human capital, etc. Capital is any asset or resource that you can bring that will help the business you are interested in working with. When you bring your skills, talents, resources, connections, strategy, know-how, labor, plans, and such to a business, you are bringing capital. Therefore, you are an investor. (Location 881)
Companies find a “platform” business to acquire and then aggregate similar businesses around that platform company through a series of acquisitions (called “roll-ups” or “tuck-ins”) to build a much larger company that then sells to strategic investors, family offices, private equity firms, or goes public. (Location 896)
Then you simply aggregate them, employ the “beyond exponential” growth tactics that we will describe in part two, and package them in a deal worth a whole lot more money than the companies were worth individually. (Location 902)
These are all business interests that Roland acquired for little or no money out of his own pocket. (Location 943)
The key here is to recognize that, for you, the product isn’t what the business sells. Instead, the business itself is the product. (Location 1028)
We’ve had clients acquire 16 businesses in their first few weeks. (Location 1035)
Unfortunately, however, many talented people fall into this trap. Roland’s father risked and lost all his wealth. Yes, ALL of it. He came from absolutely nothing. His father’s father was a minister and had no money at all. (Location 1040)
In effect, he began to create wealth by betting the farm in every deal, and he never stopped. He never learned how to use SPVs and protect his personal and other business assets from liability and it cost him everything. (Location 1045)
Remember, if you are daisy-chaining your businesses and your finances to fund your portfolio’s growth, if one business goes bad, you’re going to suffer a lot of harm and possibly lose everything that you’ve worked for over your entire career. (Location 1049)
Later in the book, we’ll talk about how to acquire these high-profit businesses at low prices and then sell them for a lot of profit to a really hungry crowd of private equity investors, Amazon aggregators, family offices, and other corporations and investors. (Location 1074)
We love getting in and adding value by deploying our exponential growth strategies, and then adding even more value to increase the price at which the businesses can be sold to private equity funds, family offices, SPACs (special purpose acquisition companies), and larger companies. (Location 1079)
Then you deploy our exponential growth strategies and add value for three to five years increasing the EBITDA by 5X, from $120,000 per year to $600,000, and then sell it for a multiple of 10X the then-current EBITDA of $600,000. (Location 1090)
You want to acquire a business that will let you unleash that greatness. Michael Jordan loved baseball and basketball, and he had experience playing both, but he was a mediocre baseball player and a superstar on the basketball court. (Location 1143)
With the information in this book, you are, at a minimum, becoming a mergers and acquisitions consultant, or at least by the time you’re done reading it, you will be qualified to consult in that area. (Location 1219)
If you had 20 consultancy deals at 5% each, that is like owning 100% (20 companies multiplied by 5% ownership in each) of a company. (Location 1228)
You can approach people who already have businesses and say, “I’d like to help you grow this business and acquire companies with no money out of pocket.” And in exchange, you’re going to receive 10-50% ownership. (Location 1233)
The first is CASH-ON-CASH. Here, you’re acquiring an already profitable business—perhaps one that’s closing or fits some of your other criteria from Chapter 2. What’s crucial is that you acquire it at the right multiple or price. (Location 1276)
Why would anyone sell for less than market value? For the reasons we clarified in the last chapter: because they’re a motivated seller. (Location 1354)
When you sell, you will not be similarly motivated. Your aim is to buy low and sell high (or at least to buy below market and sell at market)—to get the most money you can for the business. (Location 1358)
nonsense! This issue is 100% mindset, which you’re developing as you read this book. And if owners have gone through the process of trying to sell and failed, or if they need to sell quickly and don’t just want to close the business and get $0 for it, your 1x offer is going to be a godsend. (Location 1362)
In Strategy 3, you’re going to MAKE MONEY ON THE EXIT (where you buy businesses with the intention to flip them or to build them to even higher profits and then flip them). Either way, you’re planning to cash out with an exit. And for mergers and acquisition (M&A) deals, there’s more cash than ever out there searching for great businesses to acquire, a total as we write this of about $5 trillion. (Location 1366)
Or, you can leverage reach: implement a referral strategy where your referrals (like a lever) do all the heavy lifting. Almost every business we look at gets 10% to 100% of sales from referrals or word of mouth, yet not one in a hundred have in place a formalized, systematized, referral generating system. (Location 3025)