Summary

In this conversation, Jon Stoddard interviews Christopher Wick, an accomplished entrepreneur specializing in mergers and acquisitions. Christopher shares his journey from starting his first successful business at 24 to making his first acquisition at 29. He discusses the lessons learned from both successes and failures in his entrepreneurial journey, emphasizing the importance of partnerships, creative financing, and setting clear boundaries for success. The conversation also highlights Christopher's focus on e-commerce and his criteria for successful acquisitions, showcasing his philosophy of slow and steady growth in business. In this conversation, Jon Stoddard discusses the importance of human connections in business negotiations, emphasizing that relationships matter more than profits. He shares insights on negotiation strategies, particularly in equity deals, and highlights the significance of having finite goals in partnerships. Stoddard also explains his approach to building sustainable businesses, compensation structures for investors, and the process of creating deal flow. He introduces the Growth Acquisition Partner Program, designed to help entrepreneurs achieve their business goals collaboratively.

Takeaways

Christopher made his first acquisition at 29 after years of consulting.
He emphasizes the importance of partnerships in entrepreneurship.
Failures are valuable learning experiences that shape future success.
Creative financing strategies can lead to successful acquisitions.
Setting clear boundaries helps in making informed business decisions.
E-commerce is a primary focus for Christopher's acquisitions.
He believes in slow and steady growth rather than rapid expansion.
Understanding what the seller wants is crucial in negotiations.
Christopher's journey includes both successes and significant failures.
He aims to help partners achieve their business goals without suffering. Relationships matter more than profits in business.
Authenticity in negotiations can lead to unexpected insights.
Finite goals are crucial for successful partnerships.
Investing in long-term, sustainable businesses is key.
Compensation structures should ensure fair exchange from day one.
Creating deal flow requires consistent outreach and networking.
The Growth Acquisition Partner Program supports entrepreneurs in achieving their goals.
Successful negotiations often involve over-giving strategically.
Understanding the core fundamentals of business is essential for growth.
Education and support for entrepreneurs strengthen the community.

 

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Transcript:

Jon Stoddard (00:02.062)
And we have a guest, Christopher Wick. And he was just on alumni call. So welcome, Christopher, to the top &A entrepreneurs. How are you doing today? I'm doing awesome. And I feel like we're right where we're supposed to belong, the top &A entrepreneurs. I love it, man. They would not have you here on that instructor epic alumni call if you weren't one of the top entrepreneurs. So that's fantastic. So I want to go back to that.

course that you gave and you did your first acquisition at 29. Tell me about that. mean, how did that start? Like at 28 years old, was I thinking I was going to acquire a company then 29 I did it. We're like, what, was it? So my tail is an inspiring tale. It's also a cautionary tale because I fell into the entrepreneur trap. started my very first successful business at the age 24.

which I loved. I poured my heart and soul, worked 80 hour weeks. I later sold that business. So everything I've touched is sold. And by the age of 30, I had helped over 400 companies as a consultant and I loved it. And then I had an aha moment when I was 27 years old, I bought my first investment properties and that was the way that I was going to build wealth while I was hustling as an entrepreneur. And then at the age of 29, I had a moment

And this is the moment that all your listeners can relate to, especially as entrepreneurs, where we have this moment of clarity. And my moment of clarity was, I've already helped 400 plus businesses by consulting. What would happen if I went out and bought these businesses or partner with these businesses instead of just charging wild consulting fees? And when I was 29 years old, that's exactly what I did. I researched for nine months and I looked at all these businesses.

And then I did my very first acquisition and John, was so satisfying because the moment I did my first acquisition, I knew like, this is it. This is what Branson does. This is what Buffett does. This is what Tony Robbins does. Like they own businesses. that first acquisition, I tripled my investment in 11 months. And I realized this is for me. And since then I had done acquisition at least one

Jon Stoddard (02:27.346)
every year consistently and I love it. So I live, eat and breathe mergers and acquisitions. Yeah. So let me go to that first acquisition. What kind of company was that? It was an e-commerce store. What were they selling? Yeah. What were they selling? Yeah. What kind of products was that? They sold jewelry, fashion and accessories. So anything from a kitchen spoon to a cool purse or a neat blanket.

It sold. It was what we call in the e-commerce niche. We call it a general store. We sell a little bit of everything. And that store, and my first time buying a business and buying a staff and doing integration, I'll be totally honest. I had no idea what I was doing. I had helped all these companies personally, hand in hand, but I'd never done it on my own acquisition. There was no courses, no books, no research.

And after that is when I did you buy any of those by business buying courses? Did you do that? Or you just started? back then, and I say back then it was, wasn't too long ago. I'm not too much older than 29 years old, but back when I was doing that, I would search acquisition, entrepreneurship, how to buy a business. There was nothing out there. It wasn't until the year that I joined the Epic program, the ethical profits in crisis. And here's what's bizarre.

I was actually about to launch an ad campaign and the headline was, why would you start a business when you could buy one? Why would you have the startup failure risk when you could buy one? The next week before I launched it, I saw the advertisement for Epic and I knew this is my home. was like a universe talking to you. It really was. And it was outstanding. I was in the five day challenge that we took on day one. knew I'm going to go all in. I'm going to give everything I've got. And since then,

My career has not only continued to grow exponentially, but I've also made valuable connections and what I call my Epic family because truly all the guys and gals, I would do anything. And I opened my calendar for anybody to help them in their also their acquisition journey, because a lot of people on the course, they haven't done a deal yet. Then there's guys like you and I where we've done lots of deals and they want to know.

Jon Stoddard (04:40.162)
How'd you do it? They want to ask the juicy questions. And I'm all about, I'm all about the juicy questions, help serve people at a higher level. Let's, let me go back to those 400 customers, clients who helped. Was that in e-commerce too? Because the reason I asked this was I have a lot of people from Epic reaching out to me going, should I get into this business? And I go, well, do you have any experience in like,

You know, it's really difficult to jump into a business when you don't know the KPIs, the metrics or anything to grow a business if you don't know anything about it. Cause like, it's like the $10,000 parable. can give $10,000 man, like free, give it to them, or you can watch a man earn $10,000 over 10 years. What do you think is going to happen to that one you give it to? It's going to be gone. Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

So the companies I helped as a consultant was in a wide variety of industries. So the answer is no. My first acquisition in e-commerce, I knew nothing about e-commerce, but I had the belief that I could do it. And thank goodness, my first acquisition, I not only was worked hard, studied, learned everything I could about e-commerce, but I also believe in entrepreneurial journeys, we have luck and we have grace. And I am a

definitely humble enough to acknowledge I got lucky and I got lucky because I worked hard and because I studied and because I hired coaches and I hired the people who knew e-commerce and then that became my jam and now in acquisitions I primarily do all online. Now occasionally something delicious will head my way it's in person or it's brick and mortar or it's a service business but really my bread and butter is e-commerce and anything digital. Yeah I mean that's there is a

Another way to look at it goes like, I've never done something before I did something, right? It's easy to that, but you surrounded yourself with like weather books and don't be afraid to drop a name of a book because I don't know anybody that's wise that hasn't read books. Absolutely. And you know, what was interesting about my first acquisition is it was all cash out. I saved up all my pennies to make a really great investment. put all my risk on the line.

Jon Stoddard (06:52.192)
And then I had to advertise the store. So I put all of my money and credit cards on the line. I mean, my only option was to succeed because I bought the business, I bought the advertisements, and thankfully I sold it 11 months later, tripled my profits and my investment in the process. And it was a great learning experience. And you do have to start somewhere because just like you said, before you were in the industry, you weren't in the industry. So when I talked to sellers and potential partners,

I tell them like the fact that you don't know is totally cool. And that's one of the reasons I'm so passionate about partnership because here as entrepreneurs, we get so much into a silo and a vacuum where I'm doing what I'm doing and John's doing what he's doing. But when we come together and I realized, wow, John's got all this experience. I've got all this experience and it works together. That's why I'm so passionate about partnerships. tell people.

I know your industry and I've got the A team, I've got the vendors, I've got the processes. Don't try to do it on your own. That's going to take this long. Let's shorten the gap and let's accelerate your success by working together. And that's what I love. And that's a very important lesson I've learned in the past several years is how important partnerships are and how to work together. Yeah. When you, I want to go back to the, you you bought, you know, a hundred percent of the business with all cash down, which is a

you know, opposite what Roland talks about. And look, I've done it too. I bought two businesses, paid for them out of my pocket, probably overpaid, went through a broker. You know, I did all the mistakes. I mean, how has your strategy changed, you know, from pre-epic to epic? Are you buying all your businesses now epic style or? I have done it, no money out of pocket. And that was a wonderful creative challenge of thinking differently. My first

two acquisitions were before I took the Epic course. And it was traditional, all money out of pocket, you do the deal, all your risks on the line. And I was comfortable with that. And my first acquisition worked extremely well. My second one did not work well and I lost my investment. then, and I talked about that proudly because I learned a lot more in my second acquisition and I became well-rounded. It would be such a seductive story if I was an overnight success and Lord knows,

Jon Stoddard (09:11.138)
You know, one of my mentors says, we've lost more money than we've made and we've still made a lot of money. After doing the Epic course, I really was challenged to think differently. And that's by our mutual friend, Chris Daigle. And he said, I know you've done it with your own money. I know you've done it with your own capital. Your next deal, try not to give yourself a challenge.

Can you do it? No money out of pocket. And I really, I'm a really good advice taker. I am young enough to know, I don't know that much. And so when someone gives me advice, I take it and my very next deal, I did it textbook, no money out of pocket. And it was wonderful. And it's continuing to benefit myself and our stakeholders since that moment. So really what the course and the community has taught me is I still love to use my own money. It's a lot of fun and it makes things very, very real.

But now I've done deal financing, dozens of ways I've done all cash. I've done no cash. I've done seller financing. I've done partnerships. I've done equity release. I've done all these ways. And that's because of the gift to think differently from Epic, because I was taught think differently. Cause when I started investing in real estate, was all my own money. Then when I did my first business, it was all my own money. My second business, all my own money. And then I got the pleasure of getting the challenge from.

our mutual friend, Chris Daigo, where he says, give yourself a challenge to do it with how we're teaching. That's exactly what I did. Can I ask you about that one failure that you did make? I'll just like, I'm pretty transparent about this. I did buy a business, it was courses and I had to shut it down six months later because it was in violation of Yahoo's advertising policies. And you know, that's one of the lessons like, make sure you have an attorney check it over. Like, and don't sign any...

like feel like there's a FOMO to sign contracts. Are you gonna renew the Yahoo contract? Like in 48 hours while you're trying to do this deal, I go, I guess I should. I was all nervous about it. I did. And then six months later they change it you're in violation and my business went to zero and I shut it down. Yeah. I mean, yeah. The fact that you share that, and this is what I want entrepreneurs and my partners to do more often is we have to share all the times we gloriously failed

Jon Stoddard (11:26.316)
because that moment where you had that Yahoo Finance issue, you learned a very, very valuable lesson. And my second acquisition where it was a, a disaster, it wasn't that bad, but it was bad enough to lose my entire investment. But we all walked away as friends, which was great. That taught me so much as an entrepreneur. And I proudly talk about, I'll say my first one, I did really good, triple my investment. My second one sucked and I lost all my money. And guess what?

both of those combinations made my third, fourth, fifth, all of those a success because I knew don't do this. Like don't do the harder lessons that stay with you forever. Yeah. Yeah. And so really my, my failures are open book as well. You know, I always tell people ask the juicy questions because that's what we're all going to learn if we're all upfront and authentic because the ones who

pretend they're successful all the time or they had their fancy cars or things like that. And Lord knows we've all got fancy cars, but when we talk about the reality of what it felt like to fail and what it felt like to have a dream and it was so promising, you thought it was gonna be so good. And then you get all the way to zero. It's like, damn, won't do that again. Are you married? I am. Yeah, was that pretty transparent?

about conversing with your wife and goes like, my God, this thing's gonna fail, it's not gonna go. Well, she has been privy to every deal I've done, because she met me right before I did my first acquisition. So she's heard better conversations than any boardroom ever, because she gets to hear all of it. And really with the second deal, we really thought this was gonna be wonderful. I bought a business in another state. It was a business I had tons of experience in.

And we really were excited that the business was in a different state because we knew I would not get sucked into operations, which me and my wife thought was absolutely wonderful. And so she said, you know, go for it. She's always very supportive. And then I remember when I told her, took me eight weeks in this acquisition. I I put me up all the money. I paid for eight weeks of operations. And then I knew I had made a commitment to myself. I'm out if I lose this much. And I was getting very close to losing that much. told my wife, said,

Jon Stoddard (13:40.686)
The gig is over. I'm going to have to shut it down. I've learned. And she wasn't worried because she has seen me create so much success and losing this one chunk of investment was painful just because you have lots of money doesn't mean it's not painful when you lose money. But she knew it wasn't going to be the end of my entrepreneurial career. She just knew it was going to be a fantastic learning experience to share with John one day. that's beautiful. I mean, what did you identify about that business that said, my God,

Well, how did you come up with that cutoff number there and just say, Hey, I'm out. If it hits this number, you just couldn't turn it around or it just wasn't the dynamics of it. Or, I mean, some people just don't do that. They just, I know I have no, like a guy come to me last year and he goes, Hey, I need an investment. go, well, tell me about your business. Like you've been losing money for four years. I don't know how to help you. Right.

So I think something that entrepreneurs don't do very well, and I can say this because I've done this in the past, is we have our sites focused on what it's going to be like when it's success. We never think about when do we walk away. And something I learned very early on when I've done business partnerships is to plan the divorce before you get married. So whenever I partner with someone new and I love partnerships,

especially with what my acquisition firm does with our Gap Partnership Program. Whenever we sign the legal paperwork on that legal paperwork, it says, and fancy legal mumbo jumbo, I'm going to say a layman's terms, but if this works well, here's what happens, sign here. If this does not work well, this is what happens, sign here. And the reason why I do that is because if we make a commitment in the beginning, hey, John, you and I are going to get into business, but $150,000 is when we walk away. If we lose that much, we walk away.

We close up shop. If we do that, we're going to prevent losing so much more. So when I did my second deal and I done this one deal successfully, thought, I'll just replicate what I did. I totally different. That's like, get that first time success. think you can't lose. know you think, I've just got one of my, one of my colleagues said, wow, you've got the magic touch. yeah. I've got the magic touch. But thankfully I was smart enough to say,

Jon Stoddard (15:59.618)
I'm going into this deal. If I lose this much, I will then have a come to Jesus conversation with my partner. If I lose this much, we're closing up shop and everyone's going home. And that's exactly what happened. We were operating the business. We had that come to Jesus conversation. And then I said, okay, we're about a little bit away from my deadline. If we reach that, y'all already know, because on day one I already said, and I planned my exit plan.

And that's what I do with all my partners. When it's this much, then we're going to sell. When we've lost this much, we're not going to continue on or if this happens. Now, of course, the way that I structured deals today, I helped prevent losing money in stupid ways. I'll tell you the biggest reason why my second guild didn't work. And as an acquisition entrepreneur and as a business investor mentor, this is the cautionary tale. My second acquisition.

was for a business that was technically a startup. that's- Aye, aye, aye, aye. So no profits technically? Yeah. No track record. It had a little bit of track record because it was gaining some momentum, but it was still in a startup mode. And that's why now as an investor, startups, unless it's really juicy, unless it's a unicorn deal, I'm not going to do startups. I do history. I do years of business. I do years of business history with my partners.

But startups are incredibly risky. And that was what was different. My first deal was not a startup. My second deal was, and then I learned a valuable lesson. Don't buy startups. And then of course I joined the ethical profits in crisis business buying course and Roland says, don't do startups. Can we all say this again? Don't buy startups. know. it's like Roland, where were you years ago? And, and, and I'm so grateful now.

because I paid $180,000. Right. And I'm grateful for it. know, and really a lot of entrepreneurs fear success. And I remember I had a tremendous amount of peace when I decided on that second deal that had gone too wrong and lost too much money. had an incredible amount of peace when I said it's over and we've done it.

Jon Stoddard (18:14.786)
and we reached my boundary and now it's time to walk away. So that really that prevented arguments because no one got mad because they all knew, everyone knew what my boundary was and it was all on my dime so they couldn't blame me. And then number two, we all knew what success was going to look like and what failure was going to look like. And when you walk into a partnership like that and when you have clear understandings and clear communication and you write that stuff down.

People don't get mad, they get hurt, they get sad, they wish it turned out differently, they get disappointed, but there's no arguments. When you write it down on paper, we all know what the rules are. Yeah, very clear. How much space was between the time that you said, you know, I'm gonna buy another business. And then I saw Epic and then I bought the business. And was your wife at any time going like, my God, not again, right?

You know, thankfully my success with my first one was larger than my failure in the second. So she, she did, it wasn't turned off. there you go. Yeah. That's good. So I, know, if there was a chalkboard or keeping score, it's like, I'm still up. And so when I was, going through the Epic course, day one, I told my wife, I saw, I finally found a course. I finally found a community of people that I think like, feel like, and trust. This is it. And this is my career moving forward.

I was totally all in. When I had done my first acquisition, I was still running the consulting business that I ran for many years before I later sold that too. And I did my second deal right as I was selling the first deal. So I was definitely on a success streak. And then as I went through the EPIC course, I did my first deal where they teach us the creative financing. And then of course, since then I've done one annually, at least once annually since I was 29 years old.

It's really been a smooth ride. I'm very conservative when it comes to growth. I don't go out and say, want to acquire two dozen companies by next week. I'm very slow and steady wins the race because I love great businesses and great people. I'm not trying to be the biggest entrepreneur that I can be. I'm trying to be the best entrepreneur that I can be. Yeah, I like that. mean, it's a, everybody in this Epic course, thousands of them go like, man, find your own path and you know, don't it's hard. Look,

Jon Stoddard (20:32.074)
I always, somebody came to me and he goes like, how do I duplicate what Patch does? Well, like, okay, join the Marines, get shot, that you don't have a lot of time on the earth and, you're not going to duplicate it, man. You've got to take your own path. Yeah. And Patch is fearless. And that's why I love about him, because when you've been faced with something like he's been faced at war and death, you become fearless. And, and when you do that, you can operate in a way where you realize you have an expiration date. The same thing with Steve Jobs said,

If you remember that you were going to die, you would realize that we're all naked. And I think that is so profound. think it was that speech, graduation speech in 2008 with that Stanford. think everybody should watch that. It's amazing. Yeah. 100%. Absolutely. So why is it, I know you're going at the path of like one per year and that's not bad. Cause there's another guy in Epic that treats his court, Jeff Charlton has a printing company and

St. Louis. mean, he only does one a year. It just sends out 500 letters, does one, go, you know, it's, takes that long to digest and grow and work with it and integrate. mean, why, what's that piece on that? So it's my one year is a minimum. And that's because when I first started buying real estate, the age of 27, I had a aha moment, another entrepreneurial moment of clarity where I realized if I bought investment in property once a year,

I could retire early at this age. And so that's just what I did. Now, of course, there were years where I bought more than one property. And the same thing with acquisitions. Really one is my minimum. And what that puts me in a place of is it puts me in a place of abundance where I don't have to choose any deal. It's like on the call I led last week, I said, just because you can doesn't mean you should. There are hundreds of deals I say no to monthly.

We have a really robust process for a deal flow and referrals and getting people in our pipeline. And I say no to 95 % of the deals. And I really cherry pick who is the entrepreneur and who is the business that I really want to invest in. I want to work with the best of the best. Doesn't mean they're qualified or educated. It's just that I like them. Almost all the deals I've done, I really just like the entrepreneur. I like what they've built. I wanted to help them get from here to there.

Jon Stoddard (22:50.072)
quicker with more knowledge and resources they had on their own. Because what I tell my partners is, if you could have done this on your own, you would have because you're smart and you're hardworking. Now it's time to bring in a growth partner where we can minimize your failures, minimize your expensive learning lessons and get you to where you want to be faster. there are times where I'm leisurely looking at deals and if your minimum is one, everything else is a total bonus.

And so that really, that is my philosophy. I want to be the best, not the biggest, because there are a lot of acquisition entrepreneurs who want to go out and they want to gobble up all the companies and God bless them. I just don't want to work that hard. I want to be able to enjoy my life. You know, I work basically part-time hours doing what I do and running the companies I want to run. There's no sense in me going out and trying to be the hungriest acquisition entrepreneur when I just want to be the best entrepreneur that I can be and help my partners.

be the best they can be. And finally, see some stuff work. Finally, see great results in their business where they also get to live life. And one of my partners right now is getting ready for taking his first vacation in like four years. And I told him, said, dude, that's gonna be one of the first things that we accomplish is getting you to be able to take a vacation. I tell my partners in our GATT program, I want to help you end suffering.

the hustling, the grinding, the working 80 hours a week, that has a total expiration date. the more that we work- It's be a paradox. He's like, I think I have to work harder, harder, harder to get where I wanna go. But it's opposite. It's like, if you fit this in first about your me time, the other stuff falls in place. Yes, yes, absolutely. And that's one of the reasons, when I first started acquiring businesses in my late 20s,

I set really huge goals. was like, you know, if I had 120 companies, here's what I like would look like. And then I realized that was going to look like too much work and not enough leisure and not enough enjoying life. It brings me no greater joy than to work basically part-time as an acquisition entrepreneur. My team is happy. My team is thrilled. I don't do 80 hour work weeks of my team either. I tell them, here's your cutoff. You can not work more than that because you're a human being.

Jon Stoddard (25:09.782)
Right? So I take care of my team. take care of my partners and then I get to enjoy my life, which is great. And that's the whole point of this. Anyways, the whole reason anyone wants to be an entrepreneur is because they want to have freedom. Well, there's not freedom and working 80 hours a week. And I know that because I did that all throughout my twenties. If there was one word that could summarize my twenties, it was hustle. And now thankfully I had grace and I got lucky and I did some really good deals, but there are a lot of people who hustle.

and they don't get lucky or they make a wrong turn. And that's so, so sad and suffering. That's totally unnecessary. Yeah. So what is your criteria look right now? You said e-commerce, it doesn't matter what kind of product it is. It's just as long as the economics are there. And does the elder stay with them or you kind of replace them or what happens? So when I first started my acquisition firm, I really thought I was going to go out and just gobble up businesses.

But I, an entrepreneur, I listened to the market and that's something that's some wisdom I've learned from my mentors and coaches, listen to what people need. And I realized most of the time when the e-commerce store was selling, it was because they'd gotten to a point that they could not get past. It wasn't that they didn't like the business. It wasn't that they weren't good at it, but they got it here and they couldn't take it there. So then I created the Gap Partnership Program, which is our proprietary program.

to take people from here to there and close the gap of where they want to be. So now my work looks like more partnerships and acquisitions, which I love. It's a non-controlling interest kind of come in or you take Depends on the deal. Depends on the deal and the size of the deal. There are some where I've got absolute controlling and there are some where I'm actually a minority owner. It really depends on the entrepreneur, what their goals are. The deal creativity and the numbers are very flexible.

However, our process is a system. We have a recipe for all our debt partners and what they go through. So every entrepreneur is different, but every business follows the same recipe. So it really goes on basically what Roland taught you and I. What does the seller want? My primary question is, what does the entrepreneur want? Even before we start our interview, the first thing I ask you is, hey, what's something I can get you? What do you want? Because I'm always wanting to give. And so now the criteria is,

Jon Stoddard (27:30.006)
I specialize mostly in e-commerce and I love that because it's digital, it's flexible and I've done it many, many times. So it's like the back of my hand. Within e-commerce, I have special niches that I love. I love health and beauty and grooming. I love cosmetics. I love hair care. I love skincare. I love beard care. I love anything that has to do with health, beauty and grooming. I love that niche. And, but then also other things. You know, I was looking at a deal

a couple of months ago and it was a chicken coop business. And you think, on earth would you look at a chicken coop? No, I saw something like that. It was doing like there was a company was doing millions of dollars in chicken coops. The chicken coop industry is a billion dollar with a B billion dollar industry. So yes, I love health, and grooming, but I also look at chicken coops. What's it going to take to make that happen? I don't own a chicken coop. I never will, but I sell chicken coops. Hey, and you know what?

that there is so much opportunity and I also stay very focused. If there is an e-commerce component, I'm all in, even my wife right now, she's looking at buying her first business. And I told her, said, the moment you buy this business, the moment I help you do this deal, I'm going to implement an e-commerce store for this deal. And that e-commerce store will actually be bigger than the brick and mortar and we're going to have a hell of a time. So anything can be e-commerce, but

When people don't specialize and when they say, I'll acquire anything or I'll consult anything, you lose that focus. When I'm focused only on e-commerce and that is the drum I'm beating, that's where I have massive success again and again and again, because I'm following the same recipe. Now that doesn't mean that other things don't come up, but I'm very, I scrutinize those things. Recently there was a

a wonderful tanning salon nearby. And I thought I loved it. It was a cute little tanning salon. I thought it was wonderful. I knew I could add an e-commerce component to sell tanning lotion online. Unfortunately, the numbers just didn't make sense. And I had to be really critical and say, not right now, not no forever, just not right now, because I want really wonderful businesses. I don't buy problems. I don't buy turnarounds. I certainly don't buy businesses that are massively struggling. Yeah. got to, one is, what is the?

Jon Stoddard (29:45.472)
most peculiar thing somebody's asked for when you, you you go, what do you want? go, sometimes they want to vote. Sometimes they want to watch. What was the most peculiar thing somebody asked for? It's like, what do you really want?

I have asked this so much. I am astonished by the answers I get. And I'm going to go back to my chicken guy. When I asked him, what do you want the most out of this deal? He was so authentic and he started tearing up and he said, I want someone who is so passionate about chickens. And I said, okay.

I will help you find someone who's so passionate about chickens. Now that deal ended up not being up our alley. We ended up passing on that deal and he did find someone who is passionate about chickens. And I tell my sellers and my partners, if I'm not your guy, I'll help you find that person. I'll point you in the right direction. Cause nothing sucks more than investing time. And then it's a no. So I tell, Hey, it's no for us, but I'd like to introduce you to some other people. I always keep people in my ecosystem.

That was the wildest thing I've ever heard. I want someone who's passionate about chickens. And I wasn't passionate about chickens, but I could be passionate about chicken coops with all those dollar signs, but that's people. You know, I hear all kinds of things. I hear about family problems. I hear about drama. I've heard stories that could be lifetime movies because they're so juicy. And that is the experience of being human. You know, here in this reality, we have these amazing stories. Every person has a journey. That's why before our interview today, I spent time getting to know you because

you're a human being and I acknowledge the humanity who you are. And the same thing with my business partners. I will take people over profits every single day. And that's not cliche. My team sees me do it every single day. say, this is a really lucrative deal, but it's not the right person. So we're going to pass because I know at the end of my lifetime, my lifetime will not be measured by ones and zeros. My lifetime is going to be measured by the relationships I've created.

Jon Stoddard (31:49.899)
the relationships with people like you, the relationships with your viewers, the relationship like partners, that's what's going to matter at end of my lifetime. And I can say that, you know, people say, well, money doesn't matter. And usually those are people who don't have money. But here I can say to someone with wealth to say money is not the most important thing. I've learned that the hard way. I love that answer. I was just going to add that I do have a chicken story. And we did, my dad was in service for 20 plus years and retired and went all far. We got chickens, got pigs, we got cattle, and there's this one chicken.

and a back problem and you stood straight up. We love that thing. Cause we just, the first, it's the first thing you see in a chicken coop of 30 chickens. It's like this one chicken's just standing straight up. That's awesome. I remember that thing. We even gave it a name, which I don't remember right now. man. That'd be so good if you knew the name. That's a miracle. We loved it. So these deals, it's all e-commerce. What's the most difficult part in this conversation because

once you start talking to just about somebody going, and I'll give you an example. was like, I know a lot of companies like public companies, they're shells. And I said, well, we'll buy your company, but we're not, and we can merge some companies under it, but we're not doing it for a minority interest because you're going to run into the ground. We're just not going to do that. I mean, how do you, what's that negotiation part like to go, well, I'll take 20 % because

You have very clear objective goals. We can take your company to 10X or 20X, whatever that is. How do you get there? Great question. And again, the entrepreneur we customize for the business is a recipe in a system. And every negotiation that I do, and even saying this, I'm proud to say this, even though it may make us look like an easy target, but I am always privy to over give.

And I do that very strategically. If I can over give my time, my equity, my capital, my vendors, my team, I know I'm gonna create a deal that the entrepreneur is going to be thrilled about. Where people lose deals is they negotiate from their place of what do I want? And I live my life by one question. And I know that it's a question everyone is thinking and that question is with them.

Jon Stoddard (34:12.245)
what's in it for me. And I know everyone's living their life. That's a stable and everybody that's done business or read a book and you're just like, gosh, this is like a preconceived notion and just a truth for many people. Absolutely. that's where I operate from. So when I'm doing equity deals, which I love because when we're both have equity, we're both on the same team.

one of the challenges of just doing a straight consulting fee, which I've done many, many years at extremely high rates is sometimes they feel like, you're not really in it with me, you're just in it for the consulting fee. And that's completely natural to feel like, because if you're not standing shoulder to shoulder, you're not headed towards the same goal. Because what does a lawyer want to do? They want to have billable hours. And so when I do equity deals, which are my favorite, I will look at how much is our company worth? How much is my firm charge? How much is my consulting fee? How much are my team and my vendors?

And what's going to make the entrepreneur feel like they're getting a hell of a deal because entrepreneurs want to collaborate. They want to be successful, but they get scared because of risk sometimes. And they get scared because they've tried to before they hired a consultant, they hired a coach and it didn't work. And I tell people, here's what's different. You're not hiring me as only your coach. We're walking this hand in hand and you're going to do an equity release and we're both going to benefit. I ask the question all the time. Would you have to have a hundred percent of a business?

that's worth $100,000 or would you like to have 50 % of a business that's $5 million? I know the choice I would take. I would want 50 % of the $5 million. And when I can help people think differently and realize, wow, there's great benefit and it solves the problem, I'm not alone anymore. It's not just me. It's not just me figuring out.

What stuff is going to stick to the wall? What's going to work when you work with somebody who's got a proven track record and that recipe, not everything is willy nilly. I have like a month by month, month zero. Here's what I do. Month one, here's what I do. Month two, that's what I do. And on our website- write this out? You tell them exactly what's going to happen in these months. And he sees that before he makes, or he or she sees that before he makes a decision to say, I'll give you the-

Jon Stoddard (36:23.127)
They'll see the buckets. So when they're in the courting stage, before they've done, we've had a deal done, they'll see the buckets of things we do in a month. The moment we do the legal paperwork, it's like we take the veil off and we say, here's the buckets, but here's everything in them. And then it's really, they get blown away because it's like, wow, I didn't know that my business could be put into a process like this. And what do people see online all the time? They always see the gurus talking about concepts and quick,

you know, tips and really easy tricks on how to grow their business. And I really go deep. I would rather go deep instead of wide. And I'm going to say, month zero, here's everything that we do. There's no quick tips or little tricks to getting wealthy fast. It's really focusing on the core fundamentals and the five pillars of business, which is what I teach to my partners and clients. There's five pillars of business. There's marketing, sales, finance, operations, and delivery.

Every business has these pillars. And when you do the same things, especially in e-commerce, when I have it down to a system, then it's just following the recipe. And you know, if you follow the same recipe, you're gonna get similar results every time. Where entrepreneurs misstep, and even where coaches misstep, is they'll try to do something different for every business. Customize for the entrepreneur, but keep the recipe the same for any business. Yeah, interesting.

Do you, now you say you only do these acquisitions once a year, are you keeping these businesses or do you sell them and say, you know, go to the owner? I mean, whether you're, you know, 40 % owner or 51 % order, what's, how's that conversation look like? So in our acquisitions, and again, one a year is our minimum, because we do plenty more than that. When we think about the strategy, most of the time,

partners are coming in because they want to see a clear exit in sight. And I was just teaching this to one of our fellow students. She had me on a call and I said, man, next time we have to do Zoom guests. She asked me all these juicy questions and it was all such great content. But one of the questions that she asks is, how do you structure partnerships? And I said, the number one thing to structure a very good partnership is having a finite goal because it's not a marriage.

Jon Stoddard (38:37.281)
When you're getting married, like when I got married to my wife, we didn't have a finite goal. The goal was be happy forever and ever. When you do business with someone, when I partnered with John in his business, it's not so John and I can be happy forever and ever. We have to have a finite goal. So what's your goal? Is it a $1 million buyout? Is it a public buyout? Is it 15 million? Is it having a staff of 50 people? Is it even a goal? So what I do in my partnerships is I establish a finite goal. I'm not just here to grow your business. I'm here to achieve.

this specific goal that the seller or the entrepreneurs told me that they want, that becomes our North star. And that's what I go to. Now, most of the time, my ideal is I'm going to get the entrepreneur to his or hers ideal goal, and I will buy them out. I will acquire them because my strategy, and this is just me as my own unique investor self, is all my real estate is buying hold. I don't do flips, I don't do fixes, I don't do remodeling.

Everything is buy and hold and most of my businesses are too. So I'm not buying a business because fidget spinners are trending this year. I'm buying a business because since the beginning of time, people have washed their hair. Since the beginning of time, people put stuff on their face. That's the stuff that I want. Things that are going to last forever. Now, of course I don't keep them and everything that I touch is what I call SSP, which is scalable, sellable.

I do not do anything that does not fall into those things. So I've bought and sold, I get to enjoy my own capital events. So I live my life really from capital event, from capital event and get paid the entire way there, but with a finite goal. We're exiting for this much. We're gonna keep going until we get this much and even. We're gonna keep going until our staff is this big. It's very finite. So when you ask yourself, how are we doing in our partnership?

Well, if we wanted a staff of a hundred and we have a staff of 50, we're halfway there. How cool is that? Yeah, that's great. I do have a, it's interesting, Minjun, fidget spinners. I was in another mastermind. Sharon Brown gives these virtual cocktails. Yeah, I love Sharon. And somebody brought up in a breakout session, goes like, well, it's a jeans business, but 60 % of the revenue came from masks. And we're all like, well, that's dead.

Jon Stoddard (40:55.693)
And that's a really good example about the mask. I don't buy anything COVID related because in five years, we'll still have the aftershock of COVID without a doubt. But in five years, we're not going to have the hunger and the demand for masks, for shields, for hand sanitizer. I focus on things just like Warren Buffett teaches. He only invests in things that he understands. And these are our lifer type of businesses. Gillette razors. Like I know,

I've been shaving it this way and they'll continue shaving for the rest of their life. Yeah. No one is innovated that the racer blade. No one's innovated that. And same thing. Like we were joking early about the chicken coops since the beginning of time, there's been chickens. And since the end of time, unless they go instinct, we're going to need chicken coops. So those are really solid businesses. When I see something that's new or innovative, I really don't get seduced by those deals because I don't want new and innovative. I want things that we know we're going to have to have.

glasses, we're going to have to wear them. I've got my glasses, you've got yours. Until the end of time, we're going to have some type of eyesight thing. So I invest in businesses that are long term because I want to buy and hold my partner. Some of them like to buy and hold with me and some of them have that finite goal they're trying to reach. Yeah. Do you, how do you structure getting yourself paid when you buy into a, you know, business and it's a non-controlling interest?

I know there's profit plus type of arrangements or do you say like, soon as we hit so many dollars, you're, know, kind of like Kevin O'Leary. He gets paid back by units sold like a 10 % or something. Yeah, there are a thousand ways that you can structure compensation as an investor. One of the things that I teach my partners is you always have to be getting paid. And so when my partners do business with me, they pay us from day one.

We don't do freemium, we don't do all of these zero dollars and a little bit off the top. If there is no base of compensation, it doesn't have to mean it has to be a hell of a whole lot depending on the business. So you might be thinking, you know, have like, gosh, it's probably, you know, $2 million to hire this guy. And it might be depending on the business, but it not always. But since day one, my partners and I structure our compensation plan. When they sign that legal document that says, here's our finite goal.

Jon Stoddard (43:14.751)
If we're successful, this happens. If we're not successful, here's what happens. I put what we're going to pay the partner because we're going to make sure the partner has their owner salary. And then there's the partner payment that they make on day one and they make monthly for the remainder in the lifetime of the deal. And it's going to make fiscal sense. tell my partners.

I'm not going to tell your business to hire anything or do anything that your business cannot afford. It's all understanding the mechanics of how financials work and how cash flow works, how balance sheets work. So from day one, we get paid. That's the short answer, but there are a lot of investors that do it differently. I follow what I teach. I teach my partners, they need to get paid and then my firm has to get paid and my team and myself and all that.

I think the danger is if you've ever been in the startup world, I'll take this equity for it. And someday you'll get rich. Like, there's a million ways to die in the West with startups. Jesus Christ, man, you're going to go broke. You said it so right. There are so many ways to die. And that really in business, there are so many ways to die. And that's why on the call that you saw me lead, there was a student there that was really interested in a startup. I said, hey,

I'm kind of melting inside for you because I'm not seeing where the money is in this deal. And it's not because we need to be greedy, but you have to have fair exchange of compensation. I was taught that very early on by one of my mentors. You have to have fair exchange. And if you're doing a startup and they just give you this fairy dust equity, that means nothing. So I don't do fairy dust stuff. do, here's what you're paying me today. And here's how much equity you're releasing. And here's where our accident is going to look like.

And when everyone knows what the rules are, we all know how to play and win the game. And that feels so good. Don't get into business partnerships with no finite goal. Don't get married. Save, save the be happy forever and ever. Save that for your husband or for your wife. But when you're doing a business partnership, have that finite goal, your North Star. And if you get that great, if you get 75 % where that's great too, but make sure it's easy to understand and everybody knows what we're going for. Yeah, clear objectives. I mean, it makes a better relationship.

Jon Stoddard (45:21.119)
Absolutely. Yeah. So some of these acquisitions you made, have you actually acquired other companies to run on top of them to do that? I will get inspired when I fall in love with an entrepreneur and I fall in love with their business. use that as my hub. And what we do is instead of having our deal flow for a different category, I will change my deal flow for these little hubs that I've got. So for example, if I have a cosmetics company and it's all about

putting lotion on your face. I'm gonna say haircare would go great with this. A digital makeup tutorial would go great with this. A fashion line would go great with this. And I use those habits as my inspiration. And every quarter on my LinkedIn, I will put, these are my quarter's priorities. So on my LinkedIn right now, we have Q2 priorities. Here are the three things we're looking for. So every time, every quarter, I refresh that of what's my inspiration this year. And I will use that and I'll bolt on different businesses.

So one of the ways that my business has become insanely valuable is I start off first with just a cosmetics company, but now we have haircare, makeup, fashion, tutorials, et cetera. And that business just becomes so irresistible and we're sharing customers and it's cross-pollination. It's lovely. And that's where the creativity of myself comes into play, where I get inspired by a genre of an entrepreneur of a business. And I use that inspiration to acquire other things that will matter.

with that. It's really cool. since it's curious, what's the most precious thing? Have you come in, you partner with somebody and it's a non-controlling interest and you you usually see these entrepreneurs that are burnt out. I mean, what happens like, hey, you saved my life or this is fantastic or what's that look like? You're so right, John. And you're so intuitive because

The thing I run into most often, especially when someone has listed their business for sale, and you and I both know 80 % of businesses don't get sold because they're not really businesses or jobs. When I partner with someone and I see that spark in someone, the first thing that they experience is relief because finally they're not alone. Finally they have a plan. Finally it's not only up to them to make a success. Now they're running the race with someone else.

Jon Stoddard (47:38.317)
and they're running the race with someone who's won the race. I've already run it. I've already, I've got my medals. I've got my awards. If you look at my little shelf here, all of these are awards of my businesses. I know the recipe. So when you partner, the first thing they feel is relief. And in my work as a consultant and as an investor and as an acquisition entrepreneur, I have certainly made people a tremendous amount of money. But the precious moments are when I get to talk to my partners or my clients.

about their emotional lives, their marriage that's improved, their relationships with their kids that have improved, their health has improved because now they're working out every day because I told them to. All these things that improve their quality of life that my partners hear about because I say, let's end suffering. You don't need to hustle. If you are serving your business, you are a slave to that. Your business should serve you. Take that vacation, buy your spouse that piece of jewelry.

buy your kids that school sport. Those are the moments I live for. And I have this treasure chest of all these thank you cards that I've gotten from the people I've worked with. And none of those thank you cards, none of them say thank you for helping me make money. They all did, but their thank you card say, thank you for my mental health. Thank you for my body. Thank you for my kids. Thank you for my wife. And that's the stuff that I treasure because at the end of my life, there's a great quote that says,

If there was a monument erected in your honor, what would your monument say? My monument would say that this is all about unconditional love. That's what this lifetime is about. And everything else is an illusion. Everything else is a distraction. And one of the ways I best unconditionally love people is by helping them thrive in their businesses. And that is my life purpose, to help people grow their companies. And that's why at 24, when I started my consulting agency,

It went really, really well because I was living my purpose. And now I get to live my purpose in a way where I'm partnering with people and walking hand in hand with them to achieve their dreams. Because when was the last time someone believed in your dreams? was the last time someone said, Hey, how can I help you reach your dream? That's so nice to hear that. And I love asking that. Yeah, it's all interconnected connectedness. So that's what we yearn for. that's lovely. I do have to ask you, I got a couple more questions and we're almost running out of time here, but

Jon Stoddard (50:03.661)
like your deal flow, where does that come from now? Because that is, and I talked to Adam Lyons about this, like, it was one of the biggest concerns of everybody that goes through Epic. Like, how do I start the deal flow? What do I need to do? What do I need to do first? So deal flow all depends on what you want. And the types of deals that I want are e-commerce. So we spend a lot of our time hanging out on sites.

where entrepreneurs are listing their businesses for sales. I don't do brokers and I don't do brokerage types. So I'm in really the corners of the internet where people are listing their businesses and we have scripts, processes and a recipe to how to evaluate a listing, how to evaluate entrepreneur and my team gets on the line with them. So I'm one of the last people to speak to entrepreneurs and sellers and if they're speaking to me, that's a very good thing. That means they pass a lot of the tests here.

So that's our outreach, but there becomes a stage in your career as an acquisition entrepreneur where people know what you do. So I also deal with that comes in the form of referrals, which is substantially easier. If I reach out to you cold on LinkedIn or some listing, you've already been reached out to by tons of people, but when people say, hey, here's this beauty company online, they really need help. you need to talk to Christopher Wigg.

That's a much better referral. So right now we have our outbound, which we do every single day. And then we also have our colleagues, our clients and our partners send us referrals, which I love. And I've gotten to meet some amazing people, but it's very deliberate. When I started out day one, creating my deal flow. And that was really through the Epic program. I really was diligent about it's this many messages a day, every single day, every single time. And then it just came down to a conversion rate. So in the beginning, it was like every 60 reach outs.

led to one really meaningful call. And that gets better and better the more that we analyze listings, the more that we analyze LinkedIn profiles because I'm everywhere. I'm on Facebook, I'm on LinkedIn and my team is going out and messaging people. And that's awesome because we're evaluating a ton of deals. Yeah, I had this conversation twice today. said, epic members, epic challenge members call me. said, look, if you don't really know you know how to do, it's a process of figuring it out. But you need to take Tony Robbins massive action stuff.

Jon Stoddard (52:24.809)
and a lot of different areas to do that. You will get better at it and your return ratio will get better at it too. But you just have to be patient and see what you can do by the end of the 12 months, not what happens in 30 days, but 12 months.

and have discipline and really commit to the process, commit to, I'm going to send it. Like you were saying earlier, 90 messages a day. And then it got down to 17, but every day can send you to send these messages. Tony Robbins is one of my mentors and great teachers. And he talks about massive action. I remember in the beginning of my deal flow, I started with LinkedIn. Cause I thought this is really the place I want to hang out. It's still my favorite. And like my fourth person I reached out to, I was asking if his business, I was looking for a business that was doing at least a million dollars in revenue.

And he messaged back saying we're doing 20 million. that too much? I said, I'm going to delete this conversation. Swipe white. Right. So now I have better scripts because I want big companies to know that we're not leaving them out. But that was like my fourth message. And I learned through that conversation. So they are going to get better and everyone's going to come up with what their personality is best with. My personality really is best with LinkedIn and these cold reach outs through websites.

And we find companies we love. I'll do research on cosmetics or beauty or grooming brands on Amazon. And I'll go straight to the source. I'll say, I love this product. I love your listing. I'd love to talk with you to see how we can work together. I don't immediately come in and say, hey, I want to buy you. I want to see how can I serve you? once they see my LinkedIn and my interviews on my website and our blogs, they'll know who we are and what we do. But I first want to start off with what do they want? How can I help them get it? Yeah, that's nice.

I gotta go back to something like, do you have a fund now that you acquire these companies with, or is it all Epic, no out of pocket kind of stuff? I know another couple of Epic members working on a fund. That's amazing. And I'd love to learn more about that. Right now I don't have a structured fund. It's all of our own capital. And I say, are as in my company, but it's all mine, my capital.

Jon Stoddard (54:27.949)
and our creative financing. we still, know, a lot of people are really passionate on no money out of pocket. And I love doing that. And that's not always possible. So I do a variety of different things, even like Roland teaches, you know, there's a variety of different things that you can do. And I think the ones who are creating funds, that sounds absolutely fascinating. Yeah. That's a story. Do you know who that Richard Rollins is? The gas monkey garage guy? No, he's got to anyway, he had a show. He just renovates cars, but his dad taught him a long time ago. said, son,

If you go to somebody's house to borrow, buy their car, put a roll of cash in your pocket, because they're not going to wait for you to go get a bank loan. yes. Yeah. Yes. You have to have the money now. And that brings me to one of the topics that you were going to ask today about how fast do you close? And my answer is, is within three calls. I mean, that's how quick we are to know. No way. Really? How we get it done. Yes, it's three calls. And it's a three-step process. If an entrepreneur makes it to the third call, they're going to get an

And I do it really fast because that's what entrepreneurs need. They need certainty. They need to know what's happening with my future fast. Yeah, I got to tell you. So it's inverse thinking like Charles Munger's like inverse thinking. If you draw this out as long as possible, the deal possibilities go down to zero. Yeah, it's almost as if they correlate the longer time it takes, the more the possibility is going to go down. And very quickly, I tell people

Hey, if they're not a good fit, I'm very honest. I'll say, hey, this isn't a good fit for us, but I'd like to recommend you to some people who might be. And then if they are a good fit, I'll say, here's why I'm looking at your business. I love this, this, and this. And I think it's a great fit. And the moment I know I can make an offer, I will tell them, I'm going to make an offer on your business because of these reasons. Let's have a call. Yeah. Wow. That's awesome. Hey, I wrote some notes down here about this gap here. Can you tell me a little bit more about that, what you're talking about? Can you just describe it? All good. Yeah.

The GAP program stands for growth acquisition partner. And this is where we help entrepreneurs close the gap of where they are and where they want to be. If they could have done it on their own, they would have. And I believe that because most entrepreneurs are really smart and really hardworking. The challenge is, is they don't know the rules of the game. They haven't run the race before. They haven't won it. And where we specialize in e-commerce is we've done this. We've got a proven system. And of course that

Jon Stoddard (56:49.975)
process can be applied to other businesses. Bay commerce is my favorite where we partner with entrepreneurs. And what that partnering looks like is it looks like an equity release and a consulting fee. So they're not going to pay all the no's for consulting fees and they're not going to give up the entirety of their company that works so hard to build. We're going to walk shoulder and shoulder and go down the line of their success working towards a finite goal of what we're going to achieve and then help them get there together because it is so relieving to know.

I don't have to come up with all the ideas on my own and they actually know what they're doing. And the GATT program, the Growth Acquisition Partner Program was created because of what I saw in the marketplace. My first goal was I was just going to go and acquire 100 % of companies. And then I found entrepreneurs, they really did want to stay and they really didn't want to make it work. They just got stuck. So that's the GATT program. And the GATT program, not everybody can get accepted in the program. We do an invite only where they can submit their information. They'll talk with

one of our investment managers. And if they're a candidate for the program, they'll eventually talk with me and we'll make a deal of how we can help grow their business to a finite goal. Usually the finite goal is an exit. They wanna have an exit for this amount of money. And we're gonna make all of our efforts, all of our strategies to exiting for that amount of money. Cool. Yeah, I have to ask you about the partnership program. is this, this is for entrepreneurs that own e-commerce company, but what about like if you...

you know, an Epic member says, Hey, I know this guy wants to sell. Do you partner with them also or? absolutely. I've worked a lot with Epic members. do have some paperwork. So if I share with them a deal or they share with me a deal, we also have a success. If this deal works out, here's what we'll both get. And if this deal does not work out, here's what happens. I learned that through trial and error. I shared a deal with an Epic member once and they actually took the deal. I thought,

I could say shame on them, but really shame on me, because I didn't have the legal paperwork. So now we have a little bit of legal paperwork to make sure we have a best case scenario and a worst case scenario. Christopher, this has been awesome. Very informative. I would just like to say thank you for doing this for me. I really appreciate it. Well, thank you, John. Thanks for having me and thanks for doing this podcast, because the more we educate entrepreneurs, the better our entire community will be. Yeah, that's beautiful. I'm going to stop recording right now.