Grow Your Business Empire  â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â The best tools to buy and grow a business in 2023 â
Today in 10 minutes or less, youâll learn: âï¸ A terrifying truth âï¸ Stuff your toolkit âï¸ Get past your blindsides âï¸ Buy a business âï¸ Build, operate, optimize Cutting down a tree can take a lifetime with a nail file or a few moments with a chainsaw. Thankfully, you get to choose your tools. Iâve built 9 companies, invested in 100+, bought and sold dozens of others, and had some luck hitting the 7-, 8- and even 9-figure club with our investments. However, itâs taken me slowing down, writing more and creating nomenclature around our frameworks to realize that it doesnât always have to be so hard. Today, Iâll share with you the tools and tactics that I wish I had 15 years ago when I started. â
A terrifying truth If youâve never gotten so lost in work you donât want to be found, you wonât understand this. It may surprise you, but I donât feel bad for those who work long days and burn the night hours. I donât feel bad for those who have never heard the words âwork-life balance.â I feel deep, crippling sorrow for those who never know what it is to love every moment of the work you choose to spend your life lost in. I feel a gripping terror at the idea that my whole life could have been spent âlooking forward to the weekend.â Someone asked me why I write. The truth is, I donât write for you. I write for me. Some people get massages, others have affairs, I write. I write because it takes the lunacy out of my head and traps it on paper. It wraps that constant voice in pen-drawn chains. I write because itâs a thing I cannot stop. If you are a writer, you understand me, although maybe very few understand you. Your blood isnât red, itâs black. Coders you probably follow along, although your blood flows with 0s and 1s. Hardware engineers, you speak my language but in wires and currents. Painters, you hear meâ¦on canvas. Builders, you hear me in dollars and cents and P&Lâs lined up. For the rest of you... If you havenât found the thing that you get so lost in that you pray to every God youâll never be found, then keep searching. I donât know about religion. I donât know about heaven or hell. But I know that bliss isnât found in drugs or excess, in sex, in escapingâ¦itâs found in creating. Once youâve tasted that drug, nothing else will satisfy you. Youâll be a hunter in search of your prey. Everything else is a shiny distraction. Work-life balance? A funny joke among the children who donât yet know what theyâll grow to be capable of one day. Or a tragic jest to those who let others build their lives. I canât promise you much, but I can promise you the point of life is not passive income to sip tequilas on the beach. It is to let out that thing inside of you and leave it stamped on the world. If you donât understand this now, one day you will. Or youâll die uncompleted. â
Stuff your toolkit The world is noisy. The tools for financial freedom are aplenty. The tools for ownership, just as many. If I could go back in time, the tools listed below are what Iâd tell young me to use to start âmy thing,â to buy my first business, to begin to leave my mark on the world. Each grouping has the steps you should take to buy, build and then run your business. Hereâs the framework: - Blindsides â what donât you know but should ponder
- Buy â how to buy the dream you want
- Build â how to take the dream you now own and build your empire â
Get past your blindsides Step 1: What you're doing right now is probably wrong If youâre reading this, there is one framework I want you to know above all others: the sunk cost fallacy. What is it and why? Well, for starters, [only 29% of Americans are happy with their work](. So the truth is youâre probably part of the 71% of humans in the unhappy category. Itâs ok, your secret is safe with me. But itâll never be safe with you. There is no hiding from the mirror. So I want you to realize one thing. Just because youâve spent time getting an overpriced MBA, a Ph.D., 10 years in sales, 30 years at a jobâ¦doesnât mean you should keep going. The sunk cost fallacy means humans continue on a path even though they know itâs wrong, because they have âsunkâ a lot of time, effort or money into it. Remember this line: There is no past, only future. So if the future is not one you like, forget the past. --------------------------------------------------------------- Step 2: Why > What Why you are doing this is just as important as what you are doing or how you are going about it. Are you trying to generate steady cash flow for a lifestyle change? Or to stop renting your time for causes you donât believe in? Maybe you want to pass along a cash-flowing asset to your family? Here are the tools I use to get honest about my why: - My daily journal: The [Best Self]() Journal
- â[Manâs Search for Himself â Rollo May]()â
- If you donât know what to buy or build
- â[130 boring businesses]( I love
- â[Trends](=) where ideas come to roost
- Explore your curiosity, and then choose something. It's ok if it's not where you end up, you just need to start. Then iterate. Now, this is the part where you get to choose your own business buying adventure. Here are your two options: - You want to buy a business. Continue to the next section.
- You want to build from the ground up or add to the business you just bought. Skip the next section and go straight to âBuild, operate, optimize.â --------------------------------------------------------------- Buy a business So you want to buy a business? Alright, fam. Step 3: The 10-step business buying journey - The foundation: This is an opportunity. Holy sh*t, I should do this.
- Deal clarity: What is a good deal to me? What would make me happy?
- Origination: How do I find a deal?
- Selling you: How do I position myself as a serious buyer?
- Negotiation: How do I communicate with sellers to get info and then move to close?
- Due diligence and valuation: What is a business worth? How do I value it?
- Financing: Iâm not a multimillionaire, how do I buy this thing?
- Structuring: Price and terms. Learn to speak the language of acquisition.
- Closing: Legal, accountants, paperwork, CYAâ¦get the thing locked down.
- First 90 Days: Holy hell, I own a businessâ¦now what? This is the buying a business journey we teach in our [How to Buy a Small Business]() course. If you are serious about buying a business, I think you should take the course. Why do you think KKR, Blackstone and Sun Capital donât write books or sell courses? Because everyone wants to get rich quietly. Mehâthatâs not fun to me. Iâm a journalist at heart. They should have never let me into the club. --------------------------------------------------------------- Step 4: Find your business If youâre looking for a physical brick-and-mortar business, take section 3 of the course (origination) seriously, or try these tools: - â[Bizscout]( â My favorite tool to buy businesses. In fact, I liked it so much I bought the company. Using a few keywords, Bizscout will pull for you a customized list you can go call to your heart's desire. â
- â[BizBuySell]( for buying brick and mortar.
- â[Loopnet]( for real-estate heavy businesses.
- Weâve got playbooks for other brick-and-mortars â like ice vending, car washes, RVs and RV parks and tiny homes â which you can get your hands on with a [Contrarian Cashflow]( membership. Maybe you want to start smaller with fractions of businesses rather than an entire biz: - â[FundRise]( buy fractional real estate
- â[FranShares]( is a platform for purchasing fractionalized shares of franchises Brick-and-mortar not your bag? Searching for online businesses or online cash-flowing ideas? - â[Flippa](=) to buy an online business outright. We partner with them constantly and I love their UI/UX and analysis.
- If youâre looking to sell digital products for cash flow, check out [Appsumo](=) or [Gumroad](). [Thinkific]() is another great partner if you have online course offerings. --------------------------------------------------------------- Step 5: Incorporate as an LLC or become a sole proprietor. Build a digital home base for your new corporation. --------------------------------------------------------------- â
âStep 6: Set up your finances Now weâre getting closer to what most folks think of when they hear, âstart a business.â Choose your bank (different needs = different personal and business banks, in all likelihood) and put funds in there. If you need funding, look to compare loans with [Fundera](. --------------------------------------------------------------- Step 7: Buy your business Youâre newly incorporated, with a business bank selected and funded, [valuation and due diligence conducted](). Now, make your offer and buy your business. Congratulations, youâre an owner! Donât let it go to your headâ¦this is where the real work begins. â
Build, operate, optimize Step 8: Operational efficiency Increasing operational efficiency is all about tracking worker productivity, keeping maintenance and upkeep costs low, and otherwise managing your PP&E. Whichever flavor of biz you bought (brick-and-mortar or digital), youâre going to need: - CRM â Moral of the story is you need one. [Odoo]( is a pretty solid choice, [Jobber](=) is another. Consider using out-of-the-box software to get started. Use these to communicate with your customers, invoice, follow-up and document.
- Pay your people â If your business is located in the US, use [Gusto](. If you have international contractors, we like [deel](=).
- â[Notion](=) â We use it for content management, but many of our SMBs use it for processes and systems.
- â[Slack]( â The best tool for managing communications overall.
- â[Stripe](=) or another payment processing service â Donât use cash, ever.
- â[Google Drive](=) â The best, easiest and cheapest way to go paperless. Donât keep anything in binders or on desks, just buy a scanner and printer and upload everything.
- Task management â Right now we use Notion for task management, but I actually prefer [Trello](=), [Monday.com](=) or [Asana](. --------------------------------------------------------------- Step 9: Hiring If youâre running a business, you know the unique pain that is the hiring process these days. While we canât take that pain away, we can help shorten its duration. - â[Trainual]( â For training and onboarding new team members to your business.
- â[Upwork]() â We have multiple business leaders who spend 6-7 figures hiring here. --------------------------------------------------------------- Step 10: Marketing Now you need a website and a hosting service. Hereâs our tech stack. - If you can only do one form of marketing for your small business, make it reviews. We wrote [an article]( on how one cleaning company used [NiceJob]( with their CRM. Their customers got an automated text immediately after the job was finished, leading them to Facebook/Google to leave a review. If that went unanswered, the text was followed by two well-timed follow-up emails, each asking for a review. It led to 300+ reviews.
- â[WordPress](=) is where our website is hosted.
- â[Memberpress]( allows us to take digital recurring subscriptions.
- â[99designs](=) for our logos, branding and marketing materials.
- â[Fiverr]() graphic design and misc tasks. --------------------------------------------------------------- Step 11: Media If you used my business buying resources above, you found and bought or are building a âboringâ business. Usually, that means your current business has little search engine optimization, web presence, social media marketing, and may still be using a fax machine to communicate with its customer baseâ¦.you get the idea. Nowâs the time to change that businessâs outdated, antiquated media presence into a kick-ass, 21st-century media star. If you want to learn how to 10x your email list and cashflow, [we built a course on that](. - Build your email list with [ConvertKit](.
- Expand your Twitter reach with [Hypefury](). Thereâs a whole #SMB twitter group.
- Create lead magnets that lead to emails with [Beacon](=). When I first started out, I took cash payments, wrote notes on pieces of paper, sent individual emails, had no CRM, paid people via PayPal. What I mean to say is â I was a nightmare operationally. You, hopefully, are infinitely better than I am. With these tools, I donât think there is any way you wonât be. â â
We donât have to⦠we get to. - Codie â â ð¸ [Ryan's investing again](): "I know about as much about fintech as I did about gin" ð Did you know farmers can't fix their own tractors? [CO is changing that](). ð¦ [This lady](=) lived for 500 days alone in a cave in Spain... on purpose ð¤ What's the [Reverse Flynn Effect](? (Aka, are we getting dumber???) ð [Juul to pay $465M]() (~1% of its valuation) for telling kids vaping is cool ð¿ï¸ Bonus internet palette-cleanser: [chipmunk tries almonds]( for the 1st time. --------------------------------------------------------------- Ready to become part of the Contrarian Crew? There are 2 ways to join: âï¸ [Small Business Acquisitions Course:]() A step-by-step framework on how to build freedom and passive income through SMB acquisitions. It's like a mini-MBA, but one you'll actually use (and at 1/100th of the cost!) âï¸ [Work closely with us in the Unconventional Acquisitions Mastermind]() to buy your first, or next, business if you have a minimum of $50k to invest! â Did someone forward you this email? Tell them we appreciate them. Then, get [your own free subscription.](=)â â Interested in advertising with Contrarian Thinking? Interested in advertising with Contrarian Thinking? â[Get in touch.](â â What Did You Think of This Week's Newsletter? â[ð²ð²ð²ð²ð²F*cking Killer]()â
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--------------------------------------------------------------- Disclaimer â This is the âBe an adultâ section. This article is presented for informational purposes only. The opinions stated here are not intended to recommend any investment or provide tax advice. Neither are they an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to purchase an interest in any current or future investment vehicle by Contrarian Thinking, LLC or its affiliates. All material presented in this newsletter is not to be regarded as investment advice, but for general informational purposes only. Investing does involve risk. We cannot guarantee profits or freedom from loss. You assume the entire cost and risk. You are solely responsible for making your own investment decisions. We recommend consulting with an advisor. By reading/sharing this newsletter or consuming our content on our other channels, you are indicating your consent and agreement to our disclaimer. Make us sad and [Unsubscribe]( ⢠Or Update [Preferences](â 113 Cherry St #92768, Seattle, WA 98104-2205