Passed 64K followers this week, thanks y'all ❤️, here's a brief intro for the new people: - I live in central TX, married 18 years, 4 beautiful kids (3 teen daughters now 😱). Family and faith very important to me. - 42 years old and my career arc went: flight instructor to aviation insurance to serial entrepreneur to business broker to tech CEO trying to disrupt the business brokerage / M&A industry forever. - Hobbies include weightlifting, travel adventures, flying small planes, smoking meats, shooting and hunting, and now dabbling in pickleball and golf. - I try to be a mix of entertaining and educational around the topic of business acquisitions on here and mix in stuff from my various hobbies and areas of passion as well, so I'm not just a business robot. - I'm an optimist and have an abundance mindset and want all of us, including you, you to win and be the best versions of ourselves we can be. I'm cheering for you. - I publicly post personal goals and whether or not I hit them on here, with monthly updates, and hope that becomes a trend for lots of people trying to build their dream lives. - My favorite DM to receive is someone that wants to discuss selling their business.

My wife taped a $5 to the bottom of a crumpled paper towel and threw it conspicuously in the hallway outside the kids’ rooms. Whoever picks up a piece of trash without being told to will see it and get instant $$$. It’s been there for 23 days now. 😫

I need a dashcam

An ex-employee purchased thousands of dollars of stuff for themselves personally with a company credit card before they were fired. (friend's company, not mine) Low odds of ever being able to successfully go after them and get repaid. A savvy oldschool business owner gave this advice to the ripped-off owner, "Send them a 1099 for the entire amount, and report it to the IRS as the company buying them stuff during their employment as a 'gift' or additional compensation" with the logic of: - they'd now have to disprove the charges weren't for them personally or pay taxes on it - you'll deduct it as an expense of company I thought this was an interesting strategy for a small bit of revenge without a lawsuit. Have any of you heard of or done such a thing?

but seriously, do Trump and Harris know that if "no taxes on tips" becomes a thing, everyone will try to be paid for everything with tips?

99% of people that think this vehicle is ugly just haven't seen it in matte black yet.

Hey @SouthwestAir first off I’m a fan and have been flying with you for many years. I would like to bring to your attention a possible core values lapse I’ve repeatedly seen from your flight crews on short hop flights. “Our pilots have told us they are expecting to encounter some turbulence on this short 35 minute flight to Houston so they have asked us to remain seated throughout the flight so there will not be drink service on this flight. So be sure and get a beverage here in the terminal before the flight if you need something.” I would like to show you this perfectly smooth air we flew in (pictured), and the forecast of turbulence (none), and report the ride quality was smooth as I expected it would be as a pilot that can read and access the same weather data as your pilots… that leads me to the conclusion the SW pilots did not indeed tell their crew to remain seated due to expected turbulence. My theory is the flight attendants didn’t want to work so hard on such a short and packed-to-capacity flight to get us all beverages and collect all the trash. I get it. That’s a lot of work in a short time frame. The passenger beside me frequently makes this San Antonio to Houston trip and she was also laughing about it saying “they say that same thing pretty much every Houston flight. I fly this all the time.” I suggest just being honest and saying you don’t serve on flights less than 45 minutes, or whatever your policy should be if you don’t want to serve in this situation, rather than lying to your passengers because A) we aren’t dumb and B) your core values are things like integrity, honesty, and work ethic which this seems to violate all three. I think it’s super important for passengers to be able to trust the flight crew, and for Southwest to continue to live up to its values, and little white lies do not help that. Thanks for reading and happy flying today to all the wonderful Southwest pilots, crew, and passengers. Cheers, Clint

Do you teach your kids the "4 S's" rule? Don't go stupid places, at stupid times, with stupid people, and do stupid things. We teach this- that the more S's you stack up, the more likely something bad is going to happen.

How rude is it to buy this for your parents for Christmas? I'm on the fence.

Finally got a video of this crash instead of just the pic of the upside down plane. No flaps and no flare? Just drives it in like a carrier landing? Wild. So glad this other pilot decided to be filming, and thankful everyone survived. Could have easily been 100% death.

Every time I have a child turn 13 they get a budget and are responsible for totally planning a family vacation. We are embarking next week on this itinerary created by my 2nd daughter: - Durango - Grand Canyon - Vegas - Thanksgiving with good friends we haven’t seen in years in Prescott, AZ - Carslbad Caverns They can choose any mode of transportation inside the budget and she chose road trip in the Yukon XL. She is responsible for all spending on the trip in her budget. If she comes home with money left over we split it 50/50. If she busts the budget I will only buy PB&J sandwiches with my money and nothing else to get us home alive. So fun. Stoked for this trip. It’s her world I am just living in it.

Please pray for Kerrville, TX. Horrific photos and videos coming out of flooding on the Guadalupe River. Multiple fatalities and one of my teammates Dusty is out there rescuing people and has been out since 3am. It’s bad. These are boys in a cabin at Camp LaJunta that fortunately all survived as their cabin started floating away in the early morning hours. Our business is based in Kerrville and we’ve been seeing bad reports from our friends all morning like this.

We started doing Sundays with no handheld electronics and people and kids that come over have to put their phones by the door in a wooden box (they can go check it there when needed, but can't keep it on them while we hang out). Everyone's loving it. BUT, this one 11yo girl, friend of my daughter's, came over yesterday for the first time since we implemented and she was unable to properly function. My daughter explained the rule and she laughed thinking she was joking. "What will we even do??" she asked incredulously. Daughter and friend explained how it's a beautiful day and they can swim and jump on the trampoline and they've been finding a bunch of red caterpillars in the backyard. "I hate nature. That sounds so boring. Why can't I have my phone?" Daughter patiently explains how she tries to limit her screen time to an hour a day as it's not good to be staring at your phone all the time. Visiting 11yo girl laughs again, "ONLY AN HOUR?!?!", and they open her phone to see what her average screen time is daily.... 15.5 hours. Average. Daily. Not joking. She's had an unrestricted iPhone since she was 7, with 24/7 access to whatever apps and websites she wants. She goes to public school and has well-off, two nice parents with full time jobs. But she's on a path to be a completely nonfunctional adult. She watches TikTok videos for probably 10+ hours a day even on school days, staying up all night with her phone addiction. Absolutely crazy to me. Eventually my daughter and her other friend had to tell her she needed to go home because she did nothing but complain and be a PITA the whole time she visited on no phones day, they had to be like, "look if you don't like it, you don't have to hang out, you can go home", she pouted and eventually left and the other kids resumed having a blast without phones. I'm guessing there's more kids like this than we can possibly imagine. Just completely lost, antisocial, and nonfunctional without their device. Please do better for your children. Again I want to recommend reading, "The Anxious Generation" and following their recommended guidelines for device access and milestones.

Is there a rule of thumb for what your income or net worth should be to fly first class on international flights? Economy over oceans sucks but I’ve never been able to make myself pay the extra thousands for 12-16 hours of comfort instead of gritting it out.

This Uber driver, Fredy in Dallas, pulled in $166K in 2022 and drove about 100K miles averaging 8-10 hour days. Revenue split was 20K private driving, 10K for the advertising on the car, and the rest from Uber. His costs were about 40K. Essentially the car as he burns through 1 every year (buys at 50k miles sells at 150k) + maintenance + snacks. The most dialed-in business-minded serious Uber driver I have ever met. Really knew his stuff! Next car he is getting after this Hyundai will be a Hybrid Volvo to take advantage of additional Uber incentives and programs favoring the electrics and hybrids. Fredy just bought a house and is rapidly paying it off and wants to do more RE investments. God bless him. What a hustler.

Texans, can I say something without y’all getting mad? These ingredients are trash.

A 16yo boy who is a good golfer is offering to help teach and mentor my 10yo boy who is just getting started… Wants $75/hr which is “a lot less than PGA pros charge”. I think I’m a little hung up on the hourly rate because that’s 2X what I was making flight instructing which is literally risking your life with students doing a thing that costs you $60-100K or so and years of training before you can make your first dollar. Howwwww can I pay a HS kid that’s good at golf more than a CFI gets?? 🫠😵

THE PLAYBOOK How to Buy a Business worth Millions with $0 of your own money. I have done this and helped others do this and can confirm 100% possible. There are many variations of this, but this structure is super reliable and just works. A thread. 🧵

Lord grant me patience 🙏

Flew my family of 6 from Kerrville, TX (near San Antonio) to Denver yesterday. Total flight time 3.7 hours. Burned about $360 of avgas. Driving would have been 14 hours and $150 of gasoline. Flying Southwest would have been ~$1,800 and slower door to door.

I once met a guy that owned a concrete leveling company that specialized in sidewalks. His whole model was he learned a city's rules for how out of alignment a sidewalk could be legally and who was responsible for keeping it in spec, then just went around finding sidewalks with sections out of spec and reporting it and then offering to fix it.

Took an “L” on the pilot life today. Sons 9th bday tomorrow. Huge baseball fan. Was flying him and a friend to Houston for their first Astros game. Had great tickets. Boys were so stoked! Leveled off at altitude. Leaned the mixture back as normal. Plane at cruise was running a little hotter than I liked. Not quite making full manifold pressure. probably a minor issue with my turbo. Still safe parameters but I didn’t like the heat building in my engine especially not knowing why. Turned back to home base. Couldn’t drive it in time so we are missing the game. Being a safe pilot means being willing to break the heart of your favorite little dude in the world. When in any doubt on engine stuff, figure it out on the ground. Remember all of this flying stuff is fun and optional. Make the safest decisions you can 100% of the time.

We had one of our Sellers die in a motorcycle accident while under LOI about a month out from closing. The Buyer, instead of trying to take advantage of the situation, sprang into action and volunteered to help come in and stabilize the business. He worked hand in hand with the grieving widow to make sure the customers and employees were all taken care of and business was able to continue. They went ahead and announced he was buying it early before closing to help bring stability. He worked tirelessly for free at one of the busiest seasons of a seasonal business. Closed without changing any terms of the deal. Business is still doing great, breaking records now. Widow was so relieved and so proud to see the business in good hands. She still comes in and works there part time and feels connected to her late husband's legacy. This Buyer is probably our favorite Buyer ever and already bought a 2nd business from us and gets to front of the line if he's ever interested in anything from our firm. Just wanted to say that people can be awesome and rise to meet challenges in breathtaking ways, and the world tends to reward selfless and kind behavior.

Every time people try to explain credit card points stuff to me... this is all I can think of. I don't know if I'm the guy on the right or left, but I'm not the dude in the middle.

No income tax for the rest of your life if you have birthed 4 or more children. (copying Hungary 🇭🇺 in 🇺🇸)

I just had to tell a business owner his personal cell phone number, that he's had for 27 years, HAS to transfer to the Buyer when he sells his business (since he made it the company's main #) I'm once again reminding you not to do that.

Holy crap another close call happened this morning in Chicago. Great heads up by the landing pilot to go around and dodge catastrophe.

HOW TO PHASE INTO AVIATION AS A MID-LIFE PROFESSIONAL OR SMALL BUSINESS OWNER 🧵 You've been dreaming about it your whole life. It's not that hard. Time to become a pilot. 🛩️ I'm a CFI and small biz owner and own my own plane I fly for biz and fun. I'll walk you through it!

Long exposure shots of planes taking off, making super cool sky highways. 🤩

If you could pick your Age and Net Worth combo starting today, what would you choose? 20 with Net Worth of $500,000 30 with $5,000,000 40 with $50,000,000 50 with $500,000,000 60 with $5 Billlion

Attorneys and Bankers working on deals this week:

How are y’all doing cars for your teenagers? My oldest is about to turn 16 in a few months. I have always wanted them to buy their own cars as a way to learn to save money and take care of something expensive. I had planned on the Dave Ramsey method of matching what they saved and buying a car cash… but dang cars are so expensive nowadays for something safe and reliable I would be comfortable putting them in, this just seems infeasible. My 15yo only has about $900 saved so far in her car fund from doing babysitting and pet sitting around our neighborhood. She’s awesome and works hard but is a long ways from 1/2 a decent car $ saved. I’m thinking new plan might be to just keep a 3rd car that’s mine but I let the kids all drive it from 16-18 and then do the matching funds car purchase thing with them when they’re 18 so they have a couple years they can make and save better with decent part time jobs and car access. Would love to hear other ideas on how you’re approaching this with your kids. Are you just buying them a car at 16? Or some other strategy where they have some skin in the game on it?

such a cool way to teach kids angles in school 🫠

My boy was so confused when he saw these boxes in Costco 😂

Y'all aren't gonna believe me, but I don't care. I met a young guy yesterday who bought his first business, closing about 6 months ago after searching for one and striking out for 18 months. It was about a $2.5M deal with ~700K of average annual EBITDA. Through some creative financial structuring the Buyer was able to get into it with only about $150K of cash and owns 100% without investors. Business was in a slow decline with an aging owner in poor health. Typical stereotypical situation- boomer owner that hung on too long and didn't have a succession plan and a good business was slipping away from him. Buyer has never owned a business before and never even managed a single employee before (never had a management job in prior career). But he's very smart, hard working, good business sense, and brave. He also worked for months to build a strong relationship with the Seller- almost becoming a surrogate son, which helped him gain the confidence he was the right Buyer and extended friendly seller financing terms for the piece of the deal not covered by the bank. Business is B2B and serves large corporate customers with a unique, highly-valuable solution to a recurring expensive problem (sorry I can't say specifics). Very little competition and they have an exclusive agreement for a vastly superior solution than their 1 big competitor that has about 90% marketshare. But Seller just has been old and tired and not selling it aggressively for years. Buyer immediately dove in working extremely long hours to turn around the decline. He refined their pitch to showcase the value of their solution, raised their prices waaaaay higher (employees pushed back hard and thought he was an idiot, but Buyer knew the value of what they were doing for the customers was way higher than their competition's much higher price point and that this should be a price-insensitive situation). First two months were ROUGH with all the changes and the team adjusting to the new strategy, but it is working, working crazy good. Sales team is crushing it and service team is working overtime trying to keep up and they're all making more money than they ever have. January through April they've already done $2M EBITDA in 4 months (remember this was 700K annual EBITDA prior to purchase). Buyer already has strategics that want to buy him for at least a 7X EBITDA multiple. If they keep up this pace, which it looks promising that they will, he could potentially sell at the end of the year if he wants to, having put up $5-7M in 2025 EBITDA, so selling for like $35-45M is possible. This is obviously an outlier and a lot of luck and skill was involved here, but this guy is likely about to turn 150K into 10's of millions of dollars in ~18 months via 1 really good acquisition and hard courageous work on it. Absolutely staggering, life-changing result that showcases the wealth-building power of Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition. Even though this is crazy, it's really not crazy for normal people with some skill to do this over 10-15 years of effort. Don't go in expecting it to happen in 12-18 months like this, but you could do this in a decade with a good 7-figure acquisition purchased with leverage and a 6-figure down payment- turning into an 8-figure exit.

Politicians at every level from HOAs to City/County, State, and Federal

My 9yo boy went to 6 flags with a group of friends and their dad for a bday party yesterday. Midway through day wife gets a repeated call from strange phone #, decides to answer. It's a 6 flags employee saying they're with my son and his friend and they can't find friend's dad. My boy's friend, 2 years older than him, didn't have his dad's number memorized. My son knew what to do. He got an employee to assist. He had my wife's number memorized. They called her. We called the dad. We helped everyone find each other. No big deal. But let this be a lesson to drill your phone number into your kids. Make them MEMORIZE it.

HOW TO PHASE INTO AVIATION AS A MID-LIFE PROFESSIONAL OR SMALL BUSINESS OWNER 🧵 You've been dreaming about it your whole life. It's not that hard. Time to become a pilot. 🛩️ I'm a CFI and small biz owner and own my own plane I fly for biz and fun. I'll walk you through it!

20 Books I read in 2024 with mini-reviews of each 🧵 Scoring System: 1/5- Don’t waste your time. 2/5- OK, got some out of it, but mostly fluff. 3/5- Pretty good. Glad I read it. 4/5- Very good, lots of value, highly recommend. 5/5- AMAZING and I’m going to re-read it as it ranks among my all-time favorites.

Anyone else seeing a lot of those ads here?

AT least 30 Vietnamese kids at my HS were 10X better than this.

I don't think people do that quite like that... I think people are buying admission for family members with large generous donations, and some vanity of having things named after you at a permanent prestigious institution. But still, good point.

Not kidding- CEO at a company I used to work at told attractive young woman that worked for him that they really couldn't afford to give her the modest raise she asked for (like a few grand/year), then a few weeks later they were in Vegas at a conference and he bet $50K on one spin of Roulette and lost it. Trying to impress her on that trip totally made her hate him forever.

I feel like people slightly younger than me just can't fully understand how loose the mortgage lending environment that led to the GFC was when I bought my first house in 2006. Me, fresh out college, no serious income history, buying a BRAND NEW house in Denver, broke, with almost no down payment based on "stated income". So I'm starting a commission sales job, no idea what I'm going to earn, and the mortgage lender is like, "Just write here what you THINK you're going to make, and it has to be above X for you to get the loan." I still can't believe that was how everyone was making mortgage loans, lol.

Texas be like, "We are the most business-friendly state ever and all about freedom!" Texans be like, "Can I buy some whiskey at the grocery store?" Texas: "No. Never." Texans: "Ok, but at a liquor store I can?" Texas: "Yes, of course." Texans: "On a Sunday?" Texas: "No, not on Sundays you heathen." Texans: "But I can order a drink at a restaurant on Sundays though, right?" Texas: "Yes, as long as it's after noon and you have a signed attendance slip from your church pastor that you didn't skip service that morning."

First 3 upgrades when I get my Cybertruck: - black matte wrap - modest lift with some oversize tires - LS Engine Swap

In Italy 2 days ago a 22yo female pilot pulled off an incredible emergency mountain landing. All 3 occupants unharmed. Reminds me of a much more pleasant version of my crash with better scenery and a nice snow cushion. 10/10.

Speaking of DEI... I've had more white men tell me stuff like "yeah technically my wife owns majority stake because we wanted to qualify for woman-owned status" (when she really doesn't do anything other than a token role) than I've seen minority-owned companies taking advantage of preferential treatment on government contracts.

I’ve met a handful of “zero to one” small business people that are so good at starting businesses that about every 2-3 years they start another and it turns into being worth $1-3M in value and they sell it and repeat, often in a different industry every time. They usually hate managing people and hate getting stuck on plateaus and don’t know how to take an organization 3 levels deep on an org chart with a management layer, so once it hits that ~10 person mark and starts to naturally plateau, they just sell. I have massive respect for these people as I know how hard it is to get off the ground in the zero to one stage, but they thrive in the chaos of it. And they have the self-awareness and humility to hand the business off to someone else that is better tempered for scaling. Have a few as repeat clients of our firm and I’m always excited to hear from them a few years after I sold their last biz and learn about something else cool they’ve built and are ready to sell. Very special people.

Pitch to seller on the seller financing, “hey so you know that thing you own that just kinda manages itself with very little involvement that pays you $100K per year for an infinite amount of years… what if… you let me own it and I will agree to pay you like $22K per year for 10 years. Sound good?”

"No Tax on Tips" just passed the Senate in a 100-0 vote. How come politicians can only unanimously agree on stuff that's ridiculously dumb? This makes zero sense: - taxes are now more complicated instead of less - it's arbitrary and you could argue immoral to tax a waitress less than say a salaried schoolteacher when they both have the same gross income. clearly this is just picking winners and losers with no logic. - obviously will increase tipping culture to the max, one of the already dumbest things about the USA

good to see this also doesn't work on man-children

I think a valid use of the no-fly list is putting anyone that came off this plane with a rolling suitcase in hand on the no-fly list forever. They've proven they'll endanger the lives of other passengers in an emergency to get their crap.

Cute popular small town in Texas town I lived in last 12 years. The average citizen: - complains about high house prices and property taxes and "too many people moving here" (especially Californians) - strongly opposes new housing developments (NIMBY central) - complains about government being too big and claim they want freedom, less taxes, and smaller government (reliable Republican voters) - wants government to stop any new business from opening if it's something they don't want or that we "already have too many of" ("no more fried chicken places or nail salons!") - back the school district and police and fire departments unconditionally and will say yes to any amount of money requested with new taxes and bonds. Will build them palaces. Buy them tanks. Anything they want. Somehow they can hold all these views all at the same time with full confidence.

hire a nanny-sitter in the Philippines to create SOPs, track her spending, coach her weekly, and create and share a nanny-KPI dashboard with you

There's a dude here that bought a fence company that was doing $260K revenue for $60K 5 years ago and now it's doing $10M revenue.

A Cybertruck on their 16th birthday makes the most sense except financially: - can't door ding them - can't scratch them - can outrun trouble - can drive through high water - holds all their stuff securely - great crash safety - they don't have to be good drivers because it drives itself - can't go too far cuz of range limitations - preserves virginity

Why can’t they just let us be happy and look at airplanes?

Maaaaaybe consider unbranding your work trucks when you sell them 😂

Why the crap are there sex scenes in Oppenheimer and Napoleon? I actually wanted my kids to be able to watch those but noOOOoo Hollywood has to be freaking weird.

THE PLAYBOOK 2.0 How to Buy a Business worth Millions with $0 of your own money. Bookmark and consider this thread your 𝕏 SMB MBA This is 100% possible.There are many variations of this, but this structure is super reliable and just works...🧵

How I do healthcare costs for my family of 6 as a self-employed small business man. 👇 This is such a difficult topic. Our country's system is jacked-up and I'm not trying to fix it with this post. I'm just sharing how I navigate this stuff. There's so much fear about leaving a job with good benefits and going into small business. I'm hoping this post gives you some hope that you CAN do it. For the past 12 years I've been out of the corporation-provided health insurance world and raising a growing family, currently with NO health insurance. Here's the way we handle it: 1) Concierge doctor membership for routine stuff. 2) Non-Insurance Medical Sharing program for catastrophic scenarios that give us some protection from financial ruin via unexpected illness or injury. 3) Budget and Cash Pay for Wellness. 1- Concierge Details: There's an awesome local clinic that is a concierge medical practice with a group of doctors that don't take any insurance, and offer membership for individuals and families. Cost is $150/adult and $25/kid per month. So it's $400/mo for all of us. They are amazing and can get us in usually same day for an appointment, are never busy, and you can even call or text their cell phones after hours. Everything they do is free, unlimited, and they'll do routine checkups stuff, shots, write prescriptions, draw blood, stitches, whatever. They even have a body scanner thing I track body composition with there for free, etc. etc. Because they don't accept insurance or get any kickbacks from anyone (their sole revenue is membership dollars), they give really good, unbiased advice. I love it. Anything they refer you to they can't do there they try to help get a discount on and never mark up anything. For example, full blood panels that are usually $400-600 at a 3rd party lab, they'll send out and it's like $20-60 depending on what all you need at their wholesale cost, so no insane markups. 2- Medical Sharing Details: But what if we have to go to the E.R. or get cancer or something terrible happens our friendly concierge doctors can't handle? We've used various non-insurance medical sharing programs for this including MediShare, Samaritan, and now CHM (Christian Healthcare Ministries). We landed on CHM because we like their bronze program which costs our family of 6 only $357/mo currently and covers expenses above $5,000 for anything that might happen to one of us. We are on their CHM+ Bronze program which covers up to $225K per illness year 1, then adds 100K each year of coverage until you get to $1M per illness. We found this to be the most affordable way to cover catastrophic illness that we could find. If you are considering joining CHM and want a referral link, shoot me a DM and I'll send you mine. We went many years with this program only, before we found our concierge doctor, and were successful with it. We also had a couple babies with our previous provider, Samaritan Ministries, and everything worked as advertised with both organizations. These are legit options for folks. 3- Budget and Cash Pay Details: We are also big believers in wellness and preventative medicine. We have a budget category of health/wellness and every month my wife and I discuss proactive things we want to spend $ on that will keep us healthy. We usually spend about $300-600/mo on stuff like supplements, physical therapy or chiropractic care, dentistry, orthodontics for kids, eye doctors, etc. and other wellness needs. We shop around for best values and pay cash. We haven't done an HSA account yet, but I probably should do that to get further tax advantages from this part of our strategy. So yeah, that's how our family of 6 manages our healthcare spending and can scale to as low as $357/mo of cost commitment if things are tight financially and we just want to do the catastrophic coverage only, or when we're doing okay we pay $757/mo for that plus concierge doctors, and budget some additional money for health/wellness cash spending. So out of pocket most months averages $1,000-1,400 for us to be well taken care of health-wise without insurance and without massive financial risk exposures. Feel free to ask any questions you have in replies here and I'll help however I can.

How to Value a Main Street Business A step-by-step, street-smart guide: 🧵

Should have said *business class instead of first in my post. I’m talking just a fun trip with me and my wife or our whole family somewhere across an ocean. We often find tickets for $500-800 each. Business would be $3000-5000 each. Hard for me to justify the big jump X number of us for just 12-15 hours of more comfort.

CPA, "This business makes no money!" - Business buys owner new Platinum F-350 every 3 years - Supplier takes business owner deep sea fishing in Cabo annually - Entire Family on Payroll - Vegas trip expensed for the industry conference - $30,000/year in credit card rewards

A SMB Searcher's Guide for Identifying a Great Deal when business buying. You want as many of these attributes as possible ideally: A thread 🧵

Harrowing story this week from a Private Pilot taking extreme action to save his own life from Justin O’Donnell: “Today I had my first near death / nightmare / hardly believable moment as a 120hr PPL holder with 35 hours in my new-to-me Grumman AA-1C. Airplane was in maintenance for an AD that was due, specifically, AD 98-02-08. This is for an inspection of the inner crank diameter, to confirm there is no pitting or corrosion developing. This AD involves removing the plug from the front of the motor after the prop is removed, completing the inspection, and putting a new plug back in. Simple! I picked the airplane up today from the shop, two days after dropping it off, and completed my preflight walk around as I would any other time. Things were all in order. On departure from KLUK, I was cleared for a right turnout from 21R and knew I needed to stay clear of the class B shelf (KCVG) down to 2100 just to my west. With my destination only 20 miles away, I figured I would just stay low under the Bravo all the way there, which opens up to 3000 and then 4000 closer to where I was headed. I get 10 miles out, well clear of the class D airspace, and very quickly lose all forward visibility, the windscreen becoming rapidly covered with something. First thought - icing?! No, not today. Very low humidity and over 70 degree air temp. This also means it can only be one of two other things - oil, or fuel. I opened the canopy and put my hand out on the windshield to sample it. It was engine oil. Immediately whipped a 180 and got back on frequency declaring mayday and that I needed to return immediately for landing. As I make this call, I see the stream of oil become even thicker and it begins dripping into the cockpit. I have 9 miles to go, losing oil fast, over a densely populated area (Cincinnati metro) with no good place to land other than interstates if I lose the engine. I opted to continue flying for the field and nursing the engine, knowing there was finite life and oil left, but desiring more altitude and speed. I entered a visual approach for 21R, the closest runway, into my GNX 375 which would at least give me glide slope and extended centerline info on my GI 275, but I wouldn’t be needing it. ATC vectored me to final as I had no visibility outward and no ability to identify the field. After turning on a two mile final with the airport directly ahead, I could see none of it and knew time was not on my side. I then did the only thing I could to save myself. I unbuckled my lap belt and shoulder harness, made a final call that I was taking my headset off, then fully opened the canopy, and stood up with my head above the top of the obscured windshield. From that point, I flew the airplane by feel and with zero instrument or airspeed reference (I was standing up, right hand supporting me on windscreen and left hand on yoke) until I knew I had it made, hot oil covering my face, all the way down to the ground. Dumped full flaps at an unknown airspeed, and put it down as smooth as I ever have. I pulled the mixture as I landed and brought it to a stop as emergency personnel rolled up. There was fortunately no fire to extinguish. I got out of the airplane and just sat down on the runway in silence, wondering if what I just lived was real. I am simply happy to be alive to tell this story. Preliminarily, I believe the plug replaced as a part of the AD inspection process either had a material failure or installation error. It survived 8 minutes of flight.”

17 year old does an awesome no gear emergency landing nitter.app/Figensport/status/1652…

Why the "Silver Tsunami" hasn't happened in SMB: 🧵 I came into business brokerage 10 years ago with a promise of a "Silver Tsunami", a demographic wave of Baby Boomer business owners with no succession plan and trillions of dollars of small businesses needing to sell in the next 10-20 years. In theory, it should be the biggest Buyer's Market in History right now! A huge wealth transfer! BUT, the entire time I've been brokering deals it's been much more of a Seller's market than a Buyer's market. Buyers still vastly outnumber Sellers. So what gives? 6 things: 1) There's a "Buyer Tsunami" that's bigger than the Silver Tsunami. All the business schools are teaching about ETA (Entrepreneurship through Acquisition) and pumping out hungry grads looking for deals full-time, aggressively. Also, social media superstars like @Codie_Sanchez and @sweatystartup are turning people onto entrepreneurship at a staggering rate. It's becoming mainstream-cool to leave the corporate 9-5 and go buy or start an SMB. Lastly, more and more small business owners in the Gen X and Millennial cohorts are learning about growth through acquisitions and joining the fray looking for add-ons and building multiple location strategies and HoldCos. Combined- much more Buyers entering the space than retiring Boomers can satisfy the demand for. 2) COVID took out a chunk of Sellers. Many businesses took a big hit and shuttered permanently during 2020-2022. Others survived but gave up hope of selling in 2023-now because they were anchored to their old valuations and can't get back to where they used to be on profitability and haven't adjusted to the post-COVID world. So they're closing or just limping along mortally wounded unable to come to grips with selling for a much lower value. 3) Boomers in general suck at preparing their business' books for Buyers and Banks and making their business' profits provable and their deals bankable. They're oldschool and hate showing profits because they don't want to pay too much in taxes, so they have these decades-old ingrained habits of keeping lackluster records, 'forgetting' to report cash sales, bartering services with their friends, and writing off as much discretionary expenses as possible, making their tax returns and P&Ls look like they don't make any money. Today's Buyers want to borrow and leverage SBA loans and if the business can't easily pass underwriting with its historical tax returns, they're VERY hard to sell. 4) Commercial Real Estate has been appreciating like crazy for decades. Boomers that have Owner-Occupied businesses and want to sell the RE with it have a problem. They paid tens or hundreds of thousands for their building/land and now it's worth MILLIONS. They aren't impacted by it because they paid off the RE long ago and just pay themselves whatever rent they feel like or none at all. But when they want to sell by golly they want the business value AND the appreciated Real Estate at top dollar (often they still want top '21-22 prices before interest rates rose). These RE values are often more than the business can support in rent or debt service. So to get top dollar for the Real Estate, they may have to close or liquidate the business and sell to a different Buyer that can put something else there that is today's Highest and Best Use. Many remain in purgatory unwilling to close their business they love and unwilling to accept offers for the RE that the business can sustainably support. 5) Boomer psychology is an underrated barrier. This generation highly identifies with their businesses. They feel like they are the business, and selling feels like they're losing their meaning, their worth, and even reason to live. They equate selling to "being put out to pasture" which feels like they're one step from the grave. This is making them hold on longer, often until a major health scare or they drop dead, at which point the business is much more likely to be distressed, close and liquidate than able to sell, further compounding the problem for Buyers. 6) Many, in fact MOST, of the Boomer Businesses never were sellable and never will be. More than half of "small business owners" are essentially self-employed. Revenues under $1M, wrapped around the owner's skills, relationships, and lifestyle and don't work without them there working. AND they're only making enough profit to take care of the owner, but not enough to support business purchase debt or hiring a GM to run it. So even if a Buyer wants their lifestyle and is capable of filling their shoes, the value is still essentially $0. These "businesses" all go 💨 poof when the owner retires or passes. If you're a Buyer frustrated with market dynamics seemingly making buying a business an uphill battle, hopefully this helps you understand why. There is hope though! Follow me for deals, read my "How to Find a Business to Buy" thread in my highlights section of my profile for further instructions, etc. You can still win as a Buyer but it's not easy and you need to learn the game and get good at it! I'll keep pumping out content and deals and try to help as best I can! Love you all and wish you the best on your SMB journeys. ♥️

Having kids 10 years sooner means you get to live to see your grandkids grow 10 years older. Hard to fathom as a young person how priceless that is being able to see and enjoy two generations of your favorite people that mean more to you than anything.

I'm amortified that you posted this.

My "yacht" is going to be an incredible mountain cabin. We'll host family gatherings with all our kids and grandkids someday and have unforgettable Christmases there. We'll host business retreats for CEOs we've invested in or are mentoring in some form or fashion to help them relax, enjoy their journeys, and dial in their big-picture visions and annual strategies. We'll host spiritual retreats for small groups wanting to go deeper in their walks with the Lord, and couples wanting to improve their marriages. One situated near a ski area and close to a private airport that I can easily fly people in and out on a turboprop aircraft that serves this vision. I'm currently not close to financially being able to fulfill this vision, but seeing it clearly, ~10 years away, challenges me to think bigger and work hard on a strategy that could make this a reality.

If you own a small business, go ahead and put your salary, your payroll taxes, your insurance(s) for yourself, your travel expenses, etc. on separate lines on your P&L than everyone else's. Trust me. Call it "Officer Salary, Officer Travel Expense, etc." SMB Tip.

Yeah it will be 2500 pages long probably and add another 10,000 pages to the tax code over time and be constantly manipulated and fiddled with forever if history is our guide.

Sorry it's been hard to talk about this stuff but we are not ok still in Kerrville, TX since the July 4th floods. I got to drive through the whole area all the way past Hunt, TX and out past Camp Mystic yesterday with my team and am having trouble describing what I saw. There was no escaping this for the campers and residents of Hunt. The entire river valley was swallowed up by 20-40 feet of fast moving water. I couldn't believe what my eyes were seeing- how high the water got, how wide it went up the hillsides and cliffs. It looks totally different now- the riverbed is completely reshaped and devoid of trees that were there for hundreds of years. Every survivor that was in that area is a miracle. My friend and business partner Dusty Block (Dealonomy's Director of M&A) is a volunteer firefighter that's swiftwater rescue trained and was out there while it was unfolding with his small team of rescue swimmer volunteers- he was there in the early morning hours in the pitch black before any reinforcements or helicopters arrived in the daylight, and he witnessed and experienced unimaginable things as he gave every ounce he had to save as many people as he could. Him and his brother and a couple of their teammates lost their truck in a wall of water that came over the road and carried on on foot for 18 hours straight with no support, just throw ropes and their wits and adrenaline, swimming and hiking through the areas nobody could get to. They covered 60 miles running and hiking and jumping in and out of the river saving people and catching all they could. There's 30+ people alive right now because of their heroism that they plucked from the river, but for every one they caught and saved they saw 2-3 others go by they couldn't reach, screaming and begging for help in the dark, or already dead inside mangled cars and RVs or in tree branches. They helped hundreds more get to safe areas and medical attention and get evacuated to safety. I can't tell you all the details of the stories. I can't do it justice. But how do you deal with the emotions (as a dad of two young boys) of talking to a young boy 15 feet away, having a conversation, telling him it's going to be okay, and you're going to get him out, only to see an RV come out of nowhere and hit him broadside and take him out? Stuff like that X100 is what he went through. Dusty did rescues 18 hours straight on the 4th, then 12 hours each of the next 2 days doing recoveries and swimming out bodies that were hard to get to, and has been out there helping most days in different ways the 2 weeks since. Yet our business and client work continues and we have to keep working on business deals and doing calls and meetings and showing up to the office and acting like everything's ok, but man, it's not ok. We're covering for each other as a team and still getting our normal work done, but we're threadbare. I'm grateful for the miracles and the survivors. I'm grateful for the heroes. I'm grateful for the outpouring of support and volunteers and donations. But yeah I'm still really sad and heartbroken for all the losses and the trauma endured by the survivors and responders. This has been one of the hardest months ever. We're just a small town, everyone knows everybody, we're not used to being on the national news. We've never seen anything like this. 3 weeks later everyone's moved on to the next story. But Hunt, Ingram, and the Kerrville river area still looks like a warzone- just total annihilation. I drove past miles yesterday of piles of rubble that used to be houses and cars and RVs just piled into mangled masses of splinters and sticks along the road. It's going to take many months or years to clean up, and our hearts are going to carry scars forever. We'll never forget July 4th, 2025 around these parts. Please keep us in your prayers, and if you want to donate to Dusty or the Mountain Home Volunteer Fire Department let me know. We're trying to help them replace their trucks, ropes, and gear they lost. They're a small group of dedicated volunteers that don't have the resources or attention of the larger communities. I'll post some links below to news stories, some pics, and donation info. But please continue to keep Kerrville in your prayers. This is going to take awhile and our hearts are very much still hurting.

This little section of TX is the best Real Estate. Why? Not just because it's hilly and gorgeous, no I'm talking about the Axis Deer. Native to India, some TX ranchers brought them over, they escaped, and went BONKERS breeding and competing with our native White Tail. They absolutely thrive and love it here. Now this part of the state enjoys the most delicious, prolific, invasive exotic species. - They taste soooo good. Better than White Tail (slightly fattier with scrumptious, big bodies) - You can hunt them year round, day or night! No tag limits. (no season! only need a hunting license) - They travel in herds of a few to up to 100. - They reproduce like crazy. A female is almost always pregnant or nursing and they produce about 4 offspring every 3 years, 7.5mo gestation. - An estimated 125,000 of them are here! In summary: free, unlimited, delicious, year-round, grass-fed, organic meat with a hunting license. The most fun, delicious, and nutritious hobby.

HOW TO FIND A BUSINESS TO BUY 🧵 No idea why I haven't written this yet, but here's how to find small businesses to buy: There's 3 main strategies: On Market, Referrals, and Proprietary Search 1) On-Market should be everyone's starting point and baseline. This just means you're keeping your eyes open for businesses for sale as they hit various marketplaces. These can be brokered deals or FSBO. Plenty of phenomenal opportunities go to market every day! Start with familiarizing yourself with the major listing websites: - BizBuySell . com (biggest site, but mixed quality) - Axial . net (larger deals usually 7-figure earnings+) - @acquiredotcom @Flippa @EmpireFlippers @quietlightinc @FEIntl are the kings of digital/website deals There's many other good, smaller marketplaces like DealBuilder, BuyAndSellABusiness, etc. Find the marketplaces you like, register as a buyer, and setup notifications with them. Visit them often. Find a rhythm. Now go find some great brokers. Go to ibba . org and search for business brokers in your geography, preferably with the CBI certification, go visit their sites, look at their deals, and get on their early notification lists. My brokerage (BisonBusiness . com) for example sends out our "Probably a Good Deal!" newsletter to Buyers we have relationships with 1-2 weeks before we list them elsewhere. Many have this practice. An absolute cheat code for on-market deals is a site called Kumo. Kumo daily scrapes over 50 marketplaces and compiles virtually all on-market listings for you and dumps them in a customizable dashboard you can sort and filter by your criteria. Saves tons of time. My affiliate link gets you an extended free trial to try it out. withkumo.com/?via=clint This on-market strategy is all many will need to find a buy a small business, and should be where everyone starts. This next strategy is to build a robust ground game for direct referrals of deals... 2) Referrals is just what it sounds like, maximizing the odds someone directly connects you to an opportunity to buy a business because of your relationship. Here's a small sampling of the types of people who will refer deals to you, and tips about how to get referrals from them. - Business Owners. It's funny to say this out loud, but business owners know business owners. First thing you should do is go to everyone you know that owns any business and ask them if they know of any other biz owner that might be wanting to sell in the next few years. Most will have a referral, and some will even say, "me!" Go to ones you know first then go to Chamber of Commerce mixers, CEO groups, anywhere where biz owners congregate, and meet more of them. - Business Brokers. Any time you talk to one in person or on the phone, be sure and ask "what else do you have coming down the pipe soon?" as I guarantee you they have more deals than are listed on their site. They often will start talking to you about a deal early they're working on. These things take time for us to win and get to market and the pipeline behind the listed pipeline can be a goldmine. Also ask them for referrals to other business brokers they respect and then talk to them too! - CPAs are the most trusted advisor of most small biz owners and usually the first to know when the owner is thinking of selling. They're also hard to get referrals from and tight-lipped. Favorite strategy here is to let them know you're going into business soon, and want to take them to lunch as you're getting to know CPAs (so they'll see you as a potential client, which you are!). Learn about their practice. Tell them your story. And politely ask if they know any owners that might be wanting to sell. They're much more likely to refer if they like/trust you and feel like you'll keep the accounting with them or move it to them if it's elsewhere. - Attorneys, business and estate ones especially. Same strategy as CPAs above. They often try to "play broker" for their friends and clients and know about all kinds of estate, divorce, or distressed situations where owners are looking for an exit. Build trust and they can hook you up with things nobody else can. - Bankers. Easy to get lunch with. Lots of connections. Loose lips. Talk to their loan officers, business development types that are out schmoozing with biz owner clients all day. Community Business/Commercial Bankers, Credit Union Officers, and SBA specialists can all be good. Anyone that serves biz owners in a sales capacity. - Commercial Real Estate. You have to be careful as sometimes they try to use you to bail out a tenant in distress with a failing business as their referrals, but sometimes they get some real great opportunities. Their main motive is to sell buildings or leases and sometimes they know of businesses unrepresented that need a Buyer and they're happy to refer as it helps them get the RE part of the deal done. Get to know CRE people around you and be their first call. - Wealth Managers. Tremendously aligned interest. Any of their clients selling their biz means a windfall of assets to manage for them. And they like to add value to their clients' lives, so be valuable and show you're legit. Earn their trust and they can be a great source. Also usually highly trusted, so a referral from them is strong. - Insurance Agents. The most underrated referral source. They know tons of business owners, and know which ones are doing well by the amount of stuff they insure for them. They are also social but don't get asked to lunch often enough by businesspeople and prospects. Easy to become their go-to Buyer referral for tons of owners. A serious business buyer should be having lunches, coffees, and zoom calls with several of the above referral sources each week. One more strategy, cold outreach campaigns, otherwise known in the SMB World as: 3) Proprietary Search. This is where you build a large list of off-market business owners, that likely fit your search criteria, and systematically pursue them. Usually today's proprietary outreach is automated e-mail heavy, but it can also be done by mail, drop letters, door knocking, cold calling, social media DMs, etc. The best campaigns hit the owners multiple times, multiple communication channels, and make them feel like you're a real human trying to connect with them, not being spammed by a large entity. Bottom line here is I can't do this robust topic proper justice on this post, BUT most people if they're good with on-market and a good referral network game won't need to do Proprietary Outreach to find a deal. Proprietary is the most advanced, difficult, and time consuming strategy, but it can be very fruitful if done well. However, if you are full-time looking for a business to buy and have the time to commit, or are in a niche where an on-market deal or referral are about as likely as being struck by lightning, or are buying multiple businesses systematically over time, then Proprietary Search is for you. It all comes down to these steps: - Design your multi-step process / customize your campaign - Build a list or buy a list - Work the list with as much automation as possible for the repetitive stuff, then use your time to do relationship-building with owners that respond The best free playbook I've seen for those of you that want to DIY this was written by @J_M_Vogt and he or someone will link it below. For those of you that want a done-for-you solution on this, please shoot me a DM with the message "Search Program Interest" and I'll connect you to either my team or other practitioners that can help you setup a customized proprietary search tailored to your needs, for a fee (ours and some others are usually a monthly retainer + a success fee when your deal sourced from the program closes). And there you have it. Those are the 3 main ways I know to find a business to buy. I hope this was helpful. Please bookmark and share the post if it was. I want more people to be able to benefit from this free teaching as these take a lot of time to write! Feel free to ask questions below and I'll be happy to help if I can!

Husbands with kids: if your wife gets mad at you because you didn’t do anything for her for Mother’s Day, all she may need is a gentle but firm reminder that she’s not your mom.

Raise your hand if you were attracted to small business ownership because you saw a pattern of people that seemed to be total morons making a lot of money. 🙋‍♂️

41. 4 incredible children. Wife, 39, hot. We can go out any Saturday night with no babysitter needed as well (kids are old enough). Will probably have 10+ grandkids when I'm 60. Blessed. Happy w/decision to marry young and have kids.

I bribe my kids to read personal development books. Have a big shelf of ones I like and if they read one and tell me what they learned I give them $20. I get texts like this from them. Totally worth it.

I always thought when I was a server I was at a severe disadvantage vs pretty girl servers when it came to getting good tips. Which is true, all else being equal. More attractive people are tipped more. But I figured out how to overcome my physical appearance limitations and consistently made the highest percentage tips at my restaurant. Here's the playbook I used to get awesome tips every shift: - Greet promptly, even if you're slammed and can't get to them quickly, do a quick fly-by apology and show them you're moving at warp speed to try to get to them as soon as you can, preferably dropping off waters so they don't die of thirst while waiting. Make a good first impression. Show them you care and are hustling for THEM. - Compliment their food and drink choices like they're brilliantly discerning, and set expectations that their genius-level ordering is going to create an amazing meal for themselves. Reality tends to follow expectations and people take pride in their role and want to confirm with you later that they were correct and it was amazing. - Don't ask if they want a refill and never let their drinks run dry. Just keep bringing them refills unless they're totally done with their meal, that's the only time to ask. And bring them out when their glass still has some drink left in it, as this wows them with your attentiveness. ANTICIPATE AND GET THEM STUFF BEFORE THEY ASK FOR IT. And it saves a trip vs asking then having to go back to a drink station. - If they're drinking booze, ask them if they'd like to order another when they're 50-75% done with their first, not after it's empty. Generally work hard to coax them into having more than one drink. Makes ticket higher and makes them happier and more generous at tip time. - Upsell. The more you upsell, the happier the customer will be, the more the meal will feel "special" to them, and the more they'll tip you. Patrons actually like being sold. They like how it feels deciding to throw caution to the wind and make that margarita a "top shelf", or getting that new, better Carbernet you just got in everyone's raving about. Eating out is an experience, and upsells can really make it special for people. I sold hundreds of Long Island Ice Teas at lunches over the years just by always saying, "Want to make that a Long Island Ice Tea?" in a fun, mischievous voice, every time someone ordered an Ice Tea. You'd be surprised how many people smile back and go "sure, why not!" So go for it, start with offering alcohol, then appetizers, add-ons to their entrees, and enticingly describe dessert offerings, TRY TO UPSELL EVERY STAGE OF THEIR MEAL, EVERY TIME. Keep it fun and kind, no pressure, and they'll usually say yes to at least one upsell, but they'll feel like you did a really great job even if they said no every time- they'll appreciate the effort. - Never make them wait on their bill. It's super frustrating when they need to leave and can't pay and leave. I always had their bill pre-printed, and drop it on the table the second they decline dessert with a "no rush, but I'm just leaving this here for whenever you're ready". If they ordered dessert, GREAT, just reprint and do the same thing dropping the bill with the dessert. - Close strong. Promptly run their card. When you drop it off look them in the eyes and say a genuine, heartfelt, "I'm so glad you came in to enjoy dinner with us today. Hope you'll come back and see us again soon." or something like that. If they are taking leftovers, pack them up for them, offer them a drink to go, etc. Make sure you wow them at the end. This last little flourish, coupled with the excellent experiences throughout the meal brings you top of mind at tip time and makes them think "wow, that server did an amazing job. I should leave a really nice tip." I guarantee you if you're a server and follow these simple methods you'll make way more money than your peers (likely 20-50% more). This is what I'm gonna teach my kids if they ever choose to be servers somewhere.

If you start a business today there's about a 90% chance you'll be out of business in 5 years. If you buy a business today that's already been in business for 5 years, there's about a 90% chance you'll be in business in 5 years. Buying flips the risk profile on its head.

I don’t know but I want to run up to it and adjust it

Prediction: Americans are about to get a lot less fat, and a lot more jacked in the next 10-20 years. I think ~2021 will go down in history as our peak of national fatness, and the fitness pendulum swing is already underway. Culturally, the "Body positivity" movement (telling people fat is beautiful) is ending, and fat shaming (telling people the truth that excess fat is not beautiful and very bad for you and causes you to die early and feel terrible) is returning. Medically, hormone therapy, peptides, and especially GLP-1s are going mainstream. They're becoming more effective, more affordable, increasingly accessible and de-stigmatized, and helping millions fix their habits. We’ll see more people lifting, eating high-protein, drinking less alcohol, increasingly tracking health with apps and high tech tools, smart supplementing, and mixing pharma with natural protocols. More cash-pay ownership of proactive health outcomes is coming as people uncouple themselves from our sick-care system and take responsibility for looking and feeling their best. A health renaissance is starting with Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z's. I'm bullish on all things wellness.

The Whale Shark has emerged and is taking over the SMB acquisitions world. A new breed of Business Buyer. A thread 🧵

I raised $3,000,000 from some of the top leaders in M&A to disrupt the business brokerage industry with a better way to do deals. I've been building in stealth for almost a year. Dealonomy launches Monday. So what the heck is it??? I’ve been selling businesses for a decade and took everything I’ve learned that frustrates Buyers and Sellers, then started with a clean sheet of paper to see if I could solve for both—and create a new kind of tech-enabled, scalable super-brokerage at the same time. But first, let’s take a quick journey back to where I began, so we’ve got context for where we’re going. In 2013, I sold a manufacturing business I helped start and decided to buy an established business for my family using some of the capital from the sale. I had no idea how broken this market was. Days of searching turned into weeks and months of striking out. Ads looked good at first—but then I couldn’t get calls back, couldn’t get complete information, or discovered the details were totally different than the ad led me to believe. Incomplete info. Overpriced deals. Poor representation. It was a nightmare. 😵 That frustration as a Buyer is what made me start a brokerage—the thought of “someone has to do better!” So I created a buyer-friendly firm called Texas Business Buyers and enjoyed real success over the next 7 years, winning awards and building a small team doing good deals for great people in Texas. During the downtime of Covid, I started sharing deal stories and teaching everything I knew about M&A on Twitter. Little did I know, social media was about to change my life and business. People all over the country resonated with the quality-first, transparent approach of Texas Business Buyers, and I quickly became one of the most well-known business brokers on the internet. I got tired of hearing, “I wish your team worked outside of Texas, I’d love to buy a business from you!”—so we rebranded as Bison Business and started doing deals nationwide. (The other quiet shift with Bison: we began offering Buy-Side M&A services and launched a paid deal distribution newsletter for Buyers—which taught us what they valued enough to actually pay for. Up until then, we had only charged Sellers.) Our proven Sell-Side formula was similar to other top independent brokers. We were picky. We turned away 70% of Sellers who approached us, only representing high-quality businesses with clean financials and strong earnings—the kind we’d be proud to buy ourselves. Then we packaged them beautifully and sold them to our Buyer network at a fair price. This made Buyers love us. They knew if they saw our logo, it was a good deal. But the Buyers kept flooding in. “Quit your job and buy a boring business!” was hitting mainstream. Meanwhile, we couldn’t find enough Sellers who met our standards. We were victims of our own success. When we used to get 10–30 interested parties per deal, we were now getting 200–500. And the Buyer database kept growing. Eventually, we realized: our business model was breaking. Having 20x more Buyers and the same number of Sellers didn’t make us more money. It just made us work harder—communicating at scale, disappointing more Buyers—for the same number of closings (since we can only sell each business once). We needed a LOT more Sellers to feed this demand. That’s when I had a chance meeting with Marshall Hatfield, a marketing expert from the real estate world who specialized in sourcing off-market Sellers at scale. That’s when the Dealonomy dream started to come together. If he could get me in front of more Sellers, I knew we had the Buyer network, team, and reputation to close a lot more deals. I had also just read Alex Hormozi’s book “$100M Offers” and realized I didn’t just need more Sellers—I needed to make our pitch a no-brainer. Most brokers, including me, had essentially the same pitch: “Pick me, I’m the best. I charge ~10% at closing and only get paid if you do. I’m worth it because selling a business is hard, and I’m really good at it.” But here’s what we came up with instead: “We’ll sell your business for 0% commission to our large, pre-screened Buyer Network.” If Buyers outnumber Sellers 100 to 1, why give Sellers any reason not to list with us? Actually—why not go one better? Let's offer a guarantee. Over the years, our team had become so dialed-in (we averaged 99% of asking price received and closed 90%+ of engagements in an industry where 20–30% is typical), we knew we could back it up. So, the $10,000 guarantee was born: “We’ll value your business and give you a realistic sales price range. We guarantee you’ll get offers from real Buyers within that range in 90 days or less—or we’ll pay you $10,000.” Dealonomy is now the only way to sell your business with an experienced, professional M&A team that runs the process, guarantees results—and does it all for free. You're probably wondering: “How do you make money?” Simple: Buyers happily pay us to solve their biggest pain point—finding a good deal and making it easy to buy it. Right now, it’s ridiculously hard, and they get no love. Most brokers are so fixated on Sellers that Buyers are neglected and treated like they’re a dime a dozen. Buyers feel like they’re searching for a needle in a haystack—sorting through junk and time-wasters, with no one on their side. Dealonomy is basically a Needle Store. No more haystack. The serious Buyers we knew all said they’d happily pay a small percentage fee at closing if we brought them a good deal at a realistic price and saved them a year or more of hassle. So for Buyers, here’s what our platform delivers: - Good Deals Only – Strong earnings. Bankable pricing. Clean financials. Motivated Sellers. - Frictionless Process – A state-of-the-art platform where you can quickly sign NDAs, access fully populated Deal Rooms, make offers, do diligence, and close. - Helpful Advisors – Our Intermediary-Led Process means no more adversarial Brokers. Dealonomy dealmakers work transparently with both sides to find the win/win. The cat’s out of the bag. This is our playbook—and we believe it will transform how Main Street deals get done. We’ve built this deal-facilitation platform by combining: - A no-brainer offer to attract top Sellers at scale - A real solution to the biggest Buyer pain points - Our award-winning Deal Team from Bison Business - Tech leaders with a proven track record of building and scaling products - An Advisory Board and Investor Group of 30+ top minds in M&A - And a pile of capital to hire top talent and invest in tech + marketing to launch it right. Now it’s game on. See you on Dealonomy.

Met with a Buyer last night, very intelligent and successful guy, currently President of a technology company with ~150 employees. Flew out to see me on a private plane. He's touring a dirty, low-tech business we have for sale. I ask him straight up at dinner, "Why are you drawn to this company of all things? This seems almost... beneath you." Him, "Well, It's in an industry I like, but frankly, I want a greasy, real business that does real stuff that will be minimally impacted by the A.I. Revolution that's coming, and it is coming. I'm not smart enough to predict how it's going to play out in the technology workforce and not confident I can adapt to it in time, so I want something low-tech and tangible that new technology can't easily replace." Seeing this very successful guy, considering taking such a life-changing new direction for his life to leave tech in the near future to go all-in on a greasy business makes me even more convinced A.I. is really an existential threat to white collar / tech businesses. Be prepared to harness it and use it to beat your competitors, or prepare to get badly beaten in the coming years if you're in tech / white collar sectors.

Which of these 3 would you pick? Also has Toyota lost their mind releasing these all so close together? There seems to be a ton of overlap.

This guy is probably good at gardening and flying planes but he's not so great at tailgate advertising design.

it trips me out that Bill Clinton was President when I was a kid and he seemed old at the time, and now I'm a middle aged man with 2 teenagers and he's been out of office for over 20 years and he's still younger than the top Presidential candidates right now for both parties

what's your quota as a salesperson? 1 car per 5 years?

In college I went to a friend's family reunion and a group of ~35 of us all went to PF Chang's where his rich aunt proceeded to tell us she was paying and told the server to "just bring one of everything on the menu". That was the most baller thing I'd ever seen.

the dead horse business is hard to beat

I mean I will support the FL is a great state argument in general, but clearly the CA weather is way better.

Getting married 💍and having babies 👶👶👶👶is not an excuse to "settle" for lower expectations in business and financial success. I've had 4 kids (didn't think I could afford my first one!) and I've somehow made more money every time we had one. Let's clear this up! Thread🧵

I have a theory that you could raise a genius super easily by homeschooling them with no curriculum by just limiting their screen time and having them read books- ANY books, in massive quantities. I'm talking like 200-450 books per year, reading 2-5 hours per day, for 10-15 years. Maybe a little math on the side and that's it. But can you imagine how freaking smart a kid would be that hit 18 after having read 3600 books? Anyone want to try this with their kid and report back? The main thing that makes me believe this is one of my clients was a HS dropout that went to prison for 10 years in his 20's and early 30's (was a wild youth and sold drugs), and while in prison he read a book EVERY DAY for 10 years. He came out and became a multi-millionaire really quick and is just a phenomenal, well-grounded person (he also became a Christian on the inside, so have to give props to Jesus too for his remarkable turnaround). Definitely one of the smartest guys I've ever met and he can hold a convo on ANY topic with incredible precision. I sold one of his businesses for several million dollars. But it makes me wonder if children, with more pliable minds could achieve even greater results than he did if they read that much at younger ages. I myself became an avid reader from the ages of like 9-12, I was reading Michael Crichton, Peter Benchley etc. Devouring huge grown-up novels in 1-3 days each, and by 12 I was a National Spelling Bee finalist with no linguistics training and was testing beyond college level reading (PSAT scores in 8th grade said I didn't need to go to High School and could skip and go straight to college if I wanted), but I didn't... I went to AP classes in public schools and was introduced to "required reading lists" which were books I had no interest in, so I basically stopped reading for fun because I always felt guilty for reading anything when I hadn't done my required reading yet... so I stopped reading for many years- killed by the school system being lame/boring to me. And I think my academic growth went from being on the track of genius wonderboy when I was 12, to just being a bright-but-not-that-remarkable, near top of my class boy at 18. Probably should have just kept reading what I wanted in massive quantities. Would love to hear if you know anyone that's done anything close to this strategy with their kids, or if you have any similar experiences in your development.

The masculine urge to buy a home on 20-100 acres with no restrictions and create an RV park or build a bunch of cutesy photogenic AirBNB structures in clusters that make enough cash flow to set you free for life and rule over your little kingdom like a gigachad.

The 22 books I finished in 2023 lightning review and /5 scores. 👇 5/5 = I loved it, will re-read, and you should definitely read it too. 4/5 = I'm glad I read it. Great one-time read. 3/5 = pretty good 2/5 = nah 1/5 = under no circumstances should you read this

Wow this blew up. And the DMs are coming in from Southwest pilots confirming my suspicions are correct.

Guy I interviewed today (vid coming soon) went from 8K Net Worth to 8-figures via starting, scaling, and buying add-on acquisitions. He really started going vertical when he read a couple of books that taught him about how to run his business in a way that made them more valuable. The top two books that helped him level up: - Built to Sell by John Warrillow - Simple Numbers by Greg Crabtree Both are on my all-time favorites list as well.