One M&A Entrepreneur's BILLION Dollar Secret

Summary

In this conversation, Jon Stoddard interviews Chris Daigle, a prominent figure in M&A entrepreneurship. They discuss Daigle's journey, the inception of the EPIC course during the COVID crisis, and the ongoing relevance of crisis management in business. Daigle shares insights on his extensive experience in acquisitions, emphasizing a strategic focus on larger deals rather than smaller ones. He advocates for a monotasking approach to business, highlighting the importance of detachment from outcomes to maintain clarity and focus. The conversation culminates in Daigle's innovative strategy for rolling up financial publishing businesses, aiming to create value through strategic acquisitions and operational efficiencies. In this conversation, Jon Stoddard discusses various strategies for business growth, particularly in the financial publishing sector. He emphasizes the importance of taking action on recommendations, understanding business valuation, and leveraging opportunities in the market. The discussion also touches on the role of SPACs in financing growth, the potential of cryptocurrency as an asset class, and the significance of strategic partnerships in acquisitions. Stoddard shares insights on balancing activity and productivity in deal-making, highlighting the need for a thoughtful approach to business development.

Takeaways

Dr. Daigle's nickname stems from his problem-solving skills.
The EPIC course was born out of the COVID crisis.
Crisis situations can arise from various life events.
Focus on larger deals rather than smaller ones.
Monotasking is more effective than multitasking in business.
Detachment from outcomes leads to better decision-making.
Time is a finite resource that should be managed wisely.
The financial publishing industry is ripe for consolidation.
Strategic acquisitions can yield higher multiples for sellers.
Operational efficiencies can enhance the value of acquired businesses. Take massive action on recommendations to drive success.
Understanding business valuation is crucial for growth.
Financial publishing offers unique opportunities for expansion.
Seeding the market with ideas can create future opportunities.
SPACs can be leveraged for significant growth in businesses.
Cryptocurrency is emerging as a viable asset class.
Strategic partnerships can enhance business value and reach.
Delayed gratification is often necessary for larger deals.
Balancing activity and productivity is key in deal-making.
Building a strong network is essential for business success.

Watch the interview here:

Transcript:

Jon Stoddard (00:00.078)
Cloud. There you go. All right. We have Chris Daigle today, top &A entrepreneurs. Guys, I've been trying to get Chris Daigle going because I love listening to him in all this course. First, I've got to ask you, why do they call you Dr. Daigle?

I solve problems. I solve problems. The doctor. Yeah. It was a nickname that stock. I've always been a bit of a business fixer, through strategy and networking. have a fantastic network and somebody would call him and be, my gosh, the sky's falling. I'd be like, you know what? I got a guy. And it just kind of maybe 15 years ago, I think the first person to call me Dr. Daigle was a guy named Louis Loutman, L A U T A N. And Louis ran up

a global entrepreneurs network. And now I think he's in Medellin, like a lot of nomad entrepreneurs, but it's stuck. Yeah, that's cool. That's cool. hey, let's talk about you give these courses. I mean, you're one of the instructors for the videos for the Epic course. How long have you been involved in Epic? I I said some first.

Yeah. Yeah. So I'll tell you how it started. It was interesting. when COVID hit, right, right at the very beginning, as I mentioned, I have a fantastic network. I reached out to all of the people in my, not all, but a lot of people in my network that were high achievers, CEOs, founders, funders, whatever said, like, what does this mean? just to kind of see if I could get a measurement of the site guys, like what were people going to do? Were they scared? Were they seeing it as an opportunity? And one of those calls was with Roland.

And it was on that call that Roland came up with the concept of EPIC, Ethical Profits in Crisis. And I told him, man, I'd be happy to help. And sure enough, a couple of weeks later, he's like, I'm going to launch this thing. Are you still in? So I've been there since the inception, I guess. Beautiful. Hey, just curious. mean, ethical profits in crisis, I think we're coming out of the crisis. Would you still say we're in a crisis? Or is that going to change the strategy a little bit?

Jon Stoddard (02:15.32)
And the reason I'm ringing this is, you know, I'm talking to a lot of IT guys and the software guys and it's frothy valuations. It's not crisis anymore. Yeah. I think that it would be easy to keep the title because there's always going to be life situations that introduce crisis into a business, a divorce, a sickness, retirement.

partners splitting up in the business, whatever. I think that and kind of what the Epic model does is it provides solutions in environments where there's a high degree of motivation from the seller or the business owner. So I think that that title will still stick. Are we still in crisis from COVID? I would say

it certainly doesn't look that way. I've been doing a bit of travel for business and that sort of thing. And everywhere I've been, was in Dallas for a couple of days this week. was in South Carolina. I was in Florida the week before that. it seems like boom times, honestly. Are they still, complying with masks, in stores and everywhere around? Because in Arizona, if I go to Trader Joe's or if I go to a doctor's office, still masks. Yeah.

So from what I'm seeing, the signs are like, you've been immune, at least in Texas, it said, you know, the signs were, you've been immunized, masks are optional. In South Carolina, it still says masks. There are many stores that I walked into and people weren't wearing masks at all, except for the staff. So I think that, you know, I don't know, but I think it was Jim Cramer that was saying, when this thing's over, it's gonna make the roaring twenties look like, you know, child's play.

I traveled during coronavirus, airports were empty, planes were empty. It was awesome. I mean, not for the economy, but for a traveler who was tired of the, know, the jostling around, it was great. However, in the past, say six weeks, man, bananas, airports are full, flights are full, restaurants are full at the airports, people are out and about. So it's changing. Yeah, that's good. It's coming back. So let's talk about

Jon Stoddard (04:35.955)
since you started, how many acquisitions have you done for yourself or for others? mean, in total. So I guess a macro picture would be that I've assisted over 2000 entrepreneurs in the acquisition process, I guess, at least on the education side. OK, that's crazy. That's a crazy number. yeah. Well, I use that number because that's that many people plus have gone through Epic at this point. think we're on the

13th or 14th cadre. However, I don't really do a lot of one-on-one. It would have to be a real sweetheart deal. And I'll tell you why. I'm very focused on what it is that I do. I'm very clear on what a deal is for me. I play a longer cycle. So I'm working on really big deals. I say really big. mean, I'm working on a roll up that on the high end could be worth a billion dollars, right?

frothy markets, the whole deal. However, it could be worth a billion bucks. Stuff like that. Usually the tempo is a lot slower. yeah, there's not there's not that turnover that you're just, yeah, that's a year to your process to make deals. Yeah. So for me, it's not as much about frequency or quantity. Because I'm because the way I see it,

I've always been this way, a whale hunter. In my business development approach, in my growth strategy for businesses, I've always looked for, let's think big and shoot big. So for me, it's always been about deals that if I only do one deal, it's gonna end up being a big deal. This is my, you can take fireflies out itself.

It's an AI note taker. Yeah, it's cool. I use it too. I'll just leave it going right now. It's gone. So are you working with other Epic members on this deal to do this roll up? No, this is in a space that I have a pretty big footprint as far as network and history of success. is that the email Agora? I mean, not Agora, yeah. Financial publisher.

Jon Stoddard (06:59.713)
Financial publisher. Yeah. You know, I, somebody from Epic called and they said, listen, I got a great deal and I heard them out and it sounded like a good deal. I'd be happy to assist in an advisory capacity. got involved at the beginning with a couple that seemed like they had promise and you know, you got a bet on the jockey and the jockeys at, at this point.

they're probably very capable. At that point, it was more enthusiasm than experience. And it ended up being a bit of a, not a time suck, but you know what? We both learned those parties and I, learned from the process. So I don't really, I find that the short money is a distraction. There's a deal that, know, someone's like, hey, I got business, and I can get it for,

under a million bucks and it's worth two million.

Okay, I don't know that that's really gonna, you know, you hear it's a cliche, it takes just as much work to do the small deals as the big deals. Yeah, yeah. I wouldn't say just as much, however, it's not the amount of, sorry, somebody at the door, it's not the amount of effort that you put into it, it's the distraction, because if you say yes to something, you have to say no to something else, right? That's true. Yeah.

For me, I learned this from... Hold on.

Jon Stoddard (08:37.389)
Yeah, I'll repost it real quick. So going back to what I was saying about, you say yes to something, you have to say no to something else. entrepreneurs have a tendency to say yes a lot. And what ends up happening is diffused focus. They've got a lot of potential deals that are happening or potential opportunities. because opportunities require you to kind of dig in.

and really think about them and all that kind of thing. But if you're thinking about this and, I can't think about that because I got a call here and I got to get this contract out, that's not how I like to operate. Some people can thrive in that. There's a couple of things that I've heard recently. One of them was from Derek Sievers who started a company called CD Baby. And he was talking about travel. I said there was always like an event I could speak at or something. And so my wife was like, you got to make a choice. And he said, I finally realized that it's either

a hell yes or it's a no. Because I was always like, yeah, maybe that sounds cool, right? So for me, it has to be a hell yes for me to pursue it. And also, Jesse Itzler. Yeah, we know Jesse. Jesse from the Navy SEAL, living with the SEAL for 30 days or something. Yeah. And married to Sarah Blakely, the founder of Spanx. Yeah. So Jesse introduced me to this concept of monotasking.

not multitasking, monotasking. And that fits in really well with how I like to do business, how I like to live my life. I, look, when I was younger, I'm not that old now, but when I hadn't achieved a degree of success that I have achieved since, my time was cheaper. So I was okay spending time because I didn't have the money, right? And then at some point,

Survival is not the issue as an entrepreneur anymore, right? Like the bills are taken care of, there's security in the bank and you can stop, you don't have to say yes as much. And when that happened for me, and this is for everybody, you don't have to wait until the money's there and start behaving this way, because this is what big boys and girls do. They don't say yes to everything, they monotask and they dig in and they focus and that results in winning.

Jon Stoddard (11:05.707)
as compared to trying to do a bunch of stuff at once. Yeah, you're familiar with Warren Buffett's at the 20 punch cards. If you were on the planet, I only gave you 20 punch cards to invest in. You're going to focus a lot more about that deal. it. Yeah. Yeah. Same concept. it's like, yeah, and another saying that I heard recently that really impacted me from a guy from

epic, Lewis, from the beta program. It was money comes and goes, but time only goes. When his mentors told me that, was like, damn, that's profound. So I look to live according to that kind of ideal of my time. I really need to pay attention to where I'm spending my time. And doing a bunch of deals at once is not that. That's not you. So what does this deal look like?

I want to jump back just for a minute, because if you go to Chris Daigle's LinkedIn profile and you look at the about section, and he's got this really cool how he segmented it, created it. Like, if you knew me in 1991, if you knew me in 1999, if you know me in 2000, he's working on different subjects. I love this. I do have to ask you though, I could love some kind of marketing strategy and then

and not work at all. Does this work? mean, do you guys get people reaching out to you? here's the thing. I don't care. You don't care? And I don't mean that to be know, flip about the whole thing. However, not having an attachment to the outcome seems to be a very like refreshing and a place of sanity for me. Yeah. That is a Buddhist thing, you know? Yeah. you know,

Actually, I'll tell you who I learned this from was Adam Lyons 15 years ago, maybe more. I'll tell you. Wait a minute, you've known Adam Lyons for 15 years? That's great. Here's how I knew Adam. I knew Adam through the dating world. I had gotten out of a relationship and somehow I got turned on to

Jon Stoddard (13:23.389)
Neil Strauss, not the stuff he was doing with the game, but he did this book called Emergency, which is about second passports and global turmoil and that sort of thing. Neil introduced me or somehow I got introduced to Adam and I hired Adam for a day of dating coaching. And we were in Manhattan and he's the same guy that he was then as far as like his love of life and his zest and all that type of stuff. But one of the things that he told me was like,

If you want something to happen, just, can't be attached to the outcome because that attachment to the outcome is gonna, it's gonna mess up your thought process and it's gonna amplify the importance of something. And he was talking about it in the framework of approaching a pretty girl, right? Or what if she says no kind of thing? And- that's a perfect example. Yeah.

And that's how I look at it with business. Well, what if this business owner says, you know, what if they think, I'm dumb? You know, what if they say, that's a crazy idea. And I just quit worrying about it. And when I did, I just go in there say, hey, this is how it works. And my approach is very straightforward. There's a book called Straight Line Leadership that I was introduced to by Travis Sago. And it's pretty much like, if you want to get to be, just go to be. Just say, listen, you know.

This business, I'm interested in acquiring your business. Here's my purchase price and that's based on a formula that I do. And just like not trying to necessarily be too flowery with the language or not have some agenda, just be like, look, I'd like to buy the business. Looks like this might work for you. Here's how I'd like to structure it. I don't plan on writing you a check at closing though. That's not, that's just not how I invest in businesses. Typically I'm looking for opportunities to.

leverage existing assets or something like that. So I don't know how I'm going to structure the deal. However, it's probably going to look like this and that. Does that work for you? No. Okay. Bye. When you get up to leave the table, that is the strongest sales technique that exists. The just walking away from it and not necessarily as a tactic, but really being like, okay, it doesn't work for me that I understand you need something different than what I'm offering you. That's fine. I got to go.

Jon Stoddard (15:46.221)
I'm guilty of that too. I mean, I get like guilty of like trying to word it correctly to think, my gosh, just this one change of word is probably gonna, you know, he's gonna bait the hook on this one. I think that's a good idea to study the language that you use because it is important. And assuming that you've, you've kind of game planned it a little bit, game plan that approach. Don't game plan necessarily some sort of

Because if you approach it in a very natural, comfortable, confident way, you can't screw up. But if you try to be somebody that you're not, or try to present something that the deal's not, one pinprick in the balloon deflates kind of thing. So not to say that there's not, this is just my opinion, this is just my approach. There's plenty of guys and gals who spend a lot of time really,

precise with the language and using NLP and all that type of stuff. Maybe I get nos when I could have gotten yeses. However, it's an abundant world. There's plenty of deals out there. I don't need every deal to be a yes. Yeah, I like the way that Roland says that these once in a lifetime deals actually come to me like four times a month now. So it's abundant life, right? Yeah.

Yeah, so this big deal you're working on, it's in the email marketing content world that you're trying to assemble. Email is a tactic that's used in the space, but it would be more financial publishing. how that, for those of you who don't know what that is, there are a lot of self-directed investors out there. Those are essentially people that say, look, I've got some retirement money. I've got a 401k. I've made money. I've inherited money, whatever. But I have some means.

that I want to invest in the market, but I don't want to put it in somebody else's hands. I don't want to just give it over to the stock brokers or whoever the certified financial planners and let them do it for me. I want to be educated about where I'm putting my money and that sort of thing. Those people, and I think there's some trillions of dollars that are directed, that are held by self-directed investors.

Jon Stoddard (18:02.731)
Those individuals look for counsel, look for advice, analysis, research, perspective, opinion. And when they do, the industry that I am doing this roll-up in, they're the ones that provide this. are ex-Wall Street people. They're self-directed investors who've been very successful. They're theorists. They're PhDs or whatever, but they're subject matter experts on prognosticating where the market's gonna go.

or evaluating macroeconomics. And self-directed investors and institutional investors now pay for that advice. They pay for access to that analysis, depending on who that person is. I'll give you a fantastic scenario. well, who's an example of that? There's a guy named Jim Rickards. And Jim's main thesis is that there's gonna be a currency war and America will lose its...

status as the world's reserve currency. Because we hold that, because settlements with Kenya and Egypt, they don't occur in each other's currency, they occur in US dollars. Settlements with all these countries in the world, they use the US dollar as the currency that they settle their multinational transactions in. If the US was to lose that status, it would have a major impact on the manipulation or the

the engineering that's been done with the US economy. Absolutely. It's just like you keep ready money and that happens. So people like Jim's thesis, Jim's evaluation on macroeconomics. So people will pay Jim records 50 bucks a year to $15,000 a year, depending on the level of access and the depth of content that he's providing for access to where is Jim putting his money? What does Jim thinks going to happen?

geopolitically that might impact the markets. there's a number of those, call them gurus in this space, there's a number of those gurus out there. The market is very fragmented. There's a couple of big, big players and a lot of small players. However, recently there's been a number of transactions, been four that I can think of that have been eight to 10 figure acquisitions of, or investment valuations of companies that are in this space.

Jon Stoddard (20:28.845)
So now there's all these facts, there's all these investment banks and private equity and venture capital and all these guys that are interested in investing in the space, but they're looking around and all they can find are these small players. As I mentioned earlier, it's just as much work to do the small deal as it is to the big deal. So what I'm doing is I am manufacturing a big deal. I'm getting the small players that have synergies, adding a little secret sauce to the deal to make, to kind of enhance the growth.

forecast of that combined enterprise and that's what I'm shopping to the bigger players. And is that this is kind of like a Wayne Huizinga waste management or Blockbuster. You're looking at all these players and going, you got a great location. I want to buy that block. We're just going to change it from A and B video to Blockbuster video. Yeah, I'm doing it a little different.

I'm not acquiring in advance. As I mentioned earlier, I don't like to get involved in deals where I have to do a lot of risks. So what I'm doing is I am approaching the business owner. Conversation is going to look like this. at the size of business that you look, you know what's happening in our space is a lot of interest and investment. However, the language I'm going to use is a little more intelligently designed, a little more.

Elegant than what I'm going share with you. But the essential concept is Hey, mr. Mr. Guru your business is doing a couple million bucks a year Nobody's gonna buy it and if they do the multiple is going to be kind of low and publishing it's a couple times maybe He but however I'd like to buy your business at three times even up what that's crazy Chris. How are you gonna do that? You're gonna pay me more than my business is worth Yes, so I get an option to purchase their business

at higher multiple than they'd get as an individual. Okay. Now I get enough of those together and now I go approach the bigger fish and the bigger fish is going to pay for the convenience. They're going to pay a higher multiple than what they would do in these smaller businesses. You've seen the models. They're going to pay actually one of the biggest transactions in the space. They pay 24x EBITDA. So I can get them down to 10 times EBITDA. I can get a buyer to purchase this.

Jon Stoddard (22:52.737)
Combined enterprise with a combined EBITDA of say 50 million dollars. I've got five or six publishers. I've got a financial tech company. I've got all these things in there, So now I can take the arbitrage between let's say they're gonna invest. They're gonna buy this at 10x. I'm gonna go exercise at 3x. I keep the difference. That's the theory at least. That's how I'm structuring this. So I don't have to come out of pocket. These guys, the smaller,

Gurus are getting a higher multiple than they'd get if they tried to sell to anybody that would buy a two or $3 million enterprise. The investment banks, private equity, the SPACs, they don't have to go out and try and put all this together for themselves. I've done it and I've negotiated extremely favorable entries. Plus, not only did I do that, but I've said, guys, here's how you grow it, da, da, da, da, da, da. Here's the optimization that needs to occur. Here's the economies of scale that get introduced.

and I'll stick around. I'm to get a piece of the deal, right? Not only the arbitrage from the investment side of things, but I want to take the ride up with these businesses because the model that I've created for growth, I've got the team to execute. It wouldn't be that difficult. It's not going to take me a whole lot of time because my team is in place. I run on a model called EOS. if EOS, some of you might be familiar with scaling up.

or the Rockefeller habits from Bernharn's very similar model. So I'm just gonna, I'm deploying systems in those businesses once acquisition occurs. I'm taking a payday plus I'm getting an ownership interest and the ability to grow those businesses according to the forecast that I sold the investor on.

I love that. I got to make a point here. You've already recommended three books and I just had a call with somebody else in Epic today and I said, look, you're going to be taken. Now you just started, but you got to take massive action. And when somebody recommends a book, get on Amazon five seconds later and order the book and Rockefeller habits I have. And the other one I didn't have, I think I had two of the three that you have. So beautiful. So you have to go back to your strategy. You have to have pretty good contract legal team together.

Jon Stoddard (25:08.781)
to you go out to these guys doing a million, two million years and said, I'll buy you at 3X, keep your option for how long? Is it 12 months to a year or something or plus? My goal is 36 months. 36 months. Yeah. And that's given that they don't go like, that's a great idea. I'll try to shop around or you just have an exclusive or a non-exclusive. Please try to shop at a

Yeah, well, who do you shop around to like, Agoura and that's it, right? You know, and trust me, Agoura doesn't pay retail. Agoura is yeah. Agoura will do if they want something, they'll go get it. Like that penny stock trader guy that they bought his. Yeah. Yeah. So I brokered that deal. You brokered that deal. Nice. What's his name? Tim? Tim something? Yeah. He's Tim Sucks. So, but here's the thing.

Go shop it to Agora. Agora's not gonna pay you. They don't need you, right? And if you wanna sell your business to Agora, you're gonna take a steep discount. So I'm not too concerned. And if somebody does want to go out there and say, hey, I like that idea, I'm gonna do a roll up. Awesome. That means more eyeballs on this model and this space. Like I don't see it as competition. If somebody else is out there chatting these people up, I have confidence that my struck.

that person can do, maybe they can go structured, but they don't know how to grow a business the way I do. So if they're out there having conversations and it gets an investment banker interested, who wants this financial publishing space? And they start looking around and they hear about me because they will, because I'm doing the same thing. They're going to look at the deal and they're going to be like apples to apples. This thing's a lot better. What is this guy doing? And I don't need 24X. I don't need the highest multiple in the space.

I just, I see that African proverb of faster alone, farther together. Go do it, man. Go try it. Yeah. So, and if somebody wants to buy you out, it's, it's my option is the right, but not the obligation to purchase. If I don't want to exercise, go, go for it. Do it. I want people to win. I don't want to like, you know, however, that person is getting a better multiple than they get on their own. Right. And they don't have

Jon Stoddard (27:28.341)
the know-how, the focus, the connections, any of that stuff to be able to grow the business fast enough for them to be able to take advantage of the froth in the marketplace. So, yeah, I'm not concerned about. Do these financial newsletter guys that you reach out to, sometimes is it their intent to start a financial newsletter or do they just do it by accident, you know, and all of a sudden it turns into something?

So a lot of these people, come from the institutional space. They work on Wall Street, they worked in hedge funds, whatever. And in that world, you pay for analysis. Right, yeah. It's a sell side analysis a lot of the times. Yeah. So they get it and they're like, huh, okay, so I'm getting paid to generate this analysis now. I don't want to do the crazy hours.

What is Agora doing? they're selling to self-directed investors. Let me try and take what I do for Wall Street and do it for the smaller guy. And they do. So the typical person, typical guru that would be self-directed or like running their own show, they might have 500 to a couple thousand subscribers to their analysis. They work with me, we can get them to 50,000 subscribers or more. it's- And they don't work any harder.

to go into 500 to 50,000. Exactly. that's, and you know, like there's opportunities in the process. A lot of these guys that I'm talking to about the roll up, I'm now advising them on growth. And now the thing is, well, Chris, aren't you increasing your price? Yes. But remember, I'm not buying it on the price. I'm buying it on multiple. And I'm arbitrage on that multiple. So ideally, if I can get them up faster and show a growth trajectory, they become a better part of story anyway for the investment bank or the

back that's interested in investing, right? So, and I'm getting paid by them in the process. And sometimes if I want to negotiate an earn in so that my option price drops or my, you know, my ownership interest, I'm not buying 100 % of the company at that multiple, I'm buying 80 % because I got 20 % from an earn in. There's just a number of ways that you can structure this stuff. it's really like there's no right or wrong way.

Jon Stoddard (29:48.309)
Yeah, some of these companies you work with, it just one of my clients hired a sell side analysis of a company. And his bragging rights was he was the first analyst to say that Tesla is going to go to three digits. And what I found was is the company didn't pay for that analysis. The analysts paid for that. I mean, the investors paid for the analysis.

Because they're always looking for deals, they're hungry. They have to have constant deal flow. They have to look for a company that's going to go from $50 to $200. Yeah, because their mandate is to the money to work. They have make money with that money. they can't, they have to be, there is a little bit of FOMO and a little bit of urgency on the investment bank side or the PE side. They got to get the money to work. They don't make money if it sits around. yeah, a lot of times they will, they'll fund that.

Yeah, I have to tell you, I was part of that. And we saw probably 300 companies request the report. And they just followed the stock. They asked normal investor questions. And I tell you, it was a public stock. So we had the reggae price at $2 or something. And then once the public, the market price stock hit $4, they jumped in. It was incredible. Yeah. Yeah.

So what is this, how's it going right now? I mean, you're reaching out to these companies and contracts are out. I mean, are you signing companies up? Is that working? Yes. Yes. actually, I haven't allowed anybody to participate yet. What I mean by that is that I'm getting the word out there because it's a small space and I know everybody, not everybody, but I know a lot of the people in the space. I am.

I'm getting the word out and I guess the debut of the opportunity to actually be invited to participate. Because my intention was to, a lot of these folks that are running these business, they're operators, they're not investors. And the idea of a roll up isn't something that they're all aware of. So what I've been doing is I've been seeding the marketplace with the fact that this opportunity exists. So I've allowed for

Jon Stoddard (32:10.381)
the market to start to really like marinate in this concept. Like, wow, that would be awesome to participate in something big like that. Now the debut of the invitation will be occurring at an event in about three weeks in Orlando, Florida. It's called Financial Marketing Summit. kind of, it is, there's not very many events that are as niche down for financial publishers as this event. This is all going to be financial publishers, copywriters, but

investors from outside of the space are going to be there. they're looking for the next company. But the challenge is that they're going to go there and you're going to find all these small companies. But I'm going to be presenting from the stage about the Roland. So I have a feeling this is what's going to happen. My plan is this is what's going to happen. The parties in the audience have been thinking about this or like, yeah, let's talk to Daigle now. The investors who are there are going to go, let's just talk to that guy.

He seems to know what's like, he seems to have the right idea. So I have a feeling it's going to be friction free.

So yeah, I think so. mean, if you're saying like, I'm an independent operator, I got 50,000 on email lists and I could probably get a three X because it's all EBITDA. But here's a guy who said he can get me 24 X and there's it's not going to cost me a dime. I might have that conversation with you. Yeah. And also like people in that space, they know that act like they know that I've done big deals like with the Sykes deal and stuff like that. I ran business development at a division of Agora that

While I was there, we went from about a hundred to three hundred million dollars in a couple of years because of not exclusively. didn't wave my magic wand. It was a team effort. However, big part of that was the deals that I brought to the table. So people in the space know that like I'm capable of doing bigger deals. Right. I'm in negotiations with one of the companies that got a three billion dollar valuation.

Jon Stoddard (34:18.709)
I'm in negotiation with them to I'm sourcing acquisitions for them now because they went public via reverse merger with SPAC at a very big valuation and they need to spend the money. So I'm helping them source deals. got two years to spend it. They got to return it. Well, the SPAC is already like they the SPAC deployed 80 % of their capital into this one deal. So they're they're good. Now the now the public company itself needs to fulfill on the forecast.

with a SPAC you can base valuations on forward-looking projections which you can't really do that on other securities and stuff or with SEC, a traditional IPO let's say. So they need help and one of the big pieces that I'm helping them source is the fintech side of things because that's an easy way to get that valuation because the multiples on technology versus publishing are a lot higher. So NDAs are in place now with that

that company and where I'm presenting them with deals now. So I'm brokering stuff into their business. So you already have a customer in mind and those could be SPAC guys with tons of dry powder out there that looking for cashflow and not only can you aggregate these financial publications to investors, you can also grow them significantly. 5, 10, 20 X or something.

I get it. I love it. It's awesome. just, I, right place, right time, smart guy, good connections that I built and, you know, I'm, I'm not driven by ego. So I think all of those things tell me that it's a good season for me. Yeah. That probably would happen. I mean, are you

Those SPACs are already in place and they have that dry powder to spend. Cause I've seen the reason I bring that up is the SEC, you know, there was in March, there's a 230 nearly something SPACs in April, it dropped to 10 because the SEC cracked down on these things. So when I looked in March, I think there's a site called SPAC track. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that it showed that there was about $140 billion in the phase of searching. I don't need all that.

Jon Stoddard (36:44.405)
I think this deal, I think the deal that I'm working on. That's just in March. I mean, there's January February. So the deal that I'm working on, my target is 50 million in combined EBITDA, but it's not just publishing. There's FinTech in this model that I'm creating, financial services, as well as the publishing and the traffic sources. Because essentially the pitch is, we've got

exclusively financial traffic companies that are very good at driving the eyeballs. Okay. You got that in this deal to the offers, the analysis, you got that in this deal, the analysts, some of those self-directed investors that are buying the analysis are going to want more individual advice. So we've got a relationship with RIAs here. this is kind of upsells. Would you say these are upsells, cross-sells?

You know, yeah, would be upsells almost like an it but if you were to look at it, it would almost be like an ecosystem that I'm Like being able to to generate the interest online to a product that has high conversions with a back end being the fees that would come from a registered investment advisor and the RIA encouraging them to use a certain financial technology stack, right?

So if I can get the person from doing a Google search, how do I buy Bitcoin all the way through? here's the ad, here's the Bitcoin guru, here's the RIA that's going to advise me on my crypto strategy, and here's the platform that he's telling me to, you know, that he's suggesting I conduct my trades on. That is what I'm, that's this roll up. It's not just the publishers, it's the whole. That's kind of the point of distinction and the presentation that I'm doing.

Yeah, I got to ask you a question about that, the Bitcoin, because I knew you were going to get about that. you know, it's Charlie Charles Munger from Bert Schuyter halfway put something out about Bitcoin, just that he would never invest in something like this, because it's something you can create out of thin air. How real is that from what you've seen? I mean, I'm not asking you to be an expert on it. Yeah, I'm not. I'll tell you, oddly enough, I bought my very first Bitcoin today. did you really? Yeah. And it's because I have

Jon Stoddard (39:10.199)
some very smart people in my network, like very smart people that aren't crypto people, they're finance people, but the philosophy and everything that's happening with cryptocurrency, particularly in Bitcoin, these are guys that were Wall Street for 30 years, so didn't want anything to do with crypto when it first came out, but now they're like, it's a viable asset class.

Is it a viable asset class because we're over leveraging and printing money? Or is it because you can have currency between emerging countries, international companies, and they don't have banks there, like Africa, Morocco, or something like that. They don't have banks. It's all through the phone. I think it's all of the above. And if the US were to lose its status as a reserve currency, what would be a safe haven? Gold is great. have gold. However,

Am I going it around? Am I going to be able to conduct business in gold? It would be challenging, right? Unless I was doing stuff extremely local, but with Bitcoin, it's not, and I'm not like, I didn't put all of my money into Bitcoin. I bought some Bitcoin today. So I haven't bought any Bitcoin. I'm a Charles Munger, Berkshire Hathaway kind of Warren Buffett disciple. So

When he says something, he's been right on so many other things that appear pretty great and you're going to miss out on something. then they, he says, no, know, junk bonds are just that junk, right? in agreement. I know people that like all of their investments are in cryptocurrency. Yeah. I don't trust it. I don't trust it that much. However, I'll play some people making a lot of money. You know, like the NFT stuff and Bitcoin.

That to me that short money, let's let's look at a trend over But I guess somebody would say look I bought bitcoin in 2015 The the trend is up, right? but i'm definitely not that guy I can advise there's a guy that I work with his name is mark moss and mark has a fantastic youtube channel and mark's got a very profound thesis on why bitcoin in particular is

Jon Stoddard (41:37.109)
a life raft, a life buoy for a lot of people should the bubble burst and like all signs indicate that at some point there's going, it's just not sustainable what's been happening with the production of fiat fake money. Check out what Mark's got. Mark's, he's a well-respected thought leader in the space. He's an advisor to many, many companies.

And his YouTube channel is free. I think I'm on the Bitcoin. I'm going to say what Charles Munker said. I nothing more to say on that. Yeah. I mean, I'm kind of the same way. Yeah. I want to go back to the Timothy Sykes and his sites, your broker, the deal to Gora. And I'm not asking you to publish a number. can't. You're under non-disclosure. But how did that pitch go to them? Obviously, he does a great job of marketing.

He's a very visible guy, but you know, it's a penny stock deal where you're talking about companies that are trading at, you know, between one cent and a dollar. And if you look at what's happening right now with the SEC, rule 15 to 11, where the SEC is kicking off 3000 companies that are shell companies that are just trading.

where there's no income in the business. mean, for five years, there's no income, but that's the penny stock. How is that sale to Agora saying, it's a viable market, he's got a big audience, we can make a lot of money and this is a good acquisition? I don't think it was so much about the widget that was being sold. I think it was the distribution that Tim had. That was of interest because they were like, can we?

Will some portion of people interested in penny stocks, will they be interested in options trading? Will they be interested in buying like all of the other spectrum of investment strategies that Agora shares? Tim had a big audience, right? How big was it like million or 2 million or something? You know, I don't know exactly. so Tim had a very successful business prior to any deal with the Gora. But here's how it went.

Jon Stoddard (44:02.123)
I happened to know those guys. I was like, hey guys, you want to do a deal with Agora? well, what does that look like? I don't know. Let's figure it out. Right. So they flew up to Baltimore. They had lunch with, a number of different divisions. And ultimately they went with the division of Agora that I represented. and they ended up doing a whole lot of money in a very short period of time because what happened was

Tim now had Agora's marketing budget behind it, as well as all of Agora's infrastructure with all of the analysts and all of the graphic designers and all of the smart people that sat in the rooms and all that kind of stuff. So it essentially let Tim plug into a much bigger infrastructure that allowed them to have a higher velocity of product creation, a higher velocity of customer acquisition, because they could use Agora's money for acquisition. And Agora doesn't need the money back today. There's plenty of money in the bank, right?

They were a lot more tolerant when it came to how long it took to hit an ROI neutral or ROI positive environment, which a smaller business just doesn't, they have to get that capital back to reinvest it. can play a longer game. So it just made a lot of sense to both parties. However, it was a short term, I say short term, was the deal lasted about two and a half years. and Tim, they no longer work together. It's amicable.

but both parties got what they needed from the deal and that one, the sunset has happened on that deal. Yeah, that's cool. So if you're listening to this podcast, you heard a number of like four books he's recommended, a trade show he's going to, instead of a lot of frequency and smaller deals going for the big whole run deal, this is an awesome podcast, man. Thank you so much, Chris. Yeah. you for reaching out and for being patient.

I have been busy as now that you know what I've been doing, doing the front loading on that roll up. And then this week I got stuck in Dallas for two days because of weather. Screwed up the airports and all that stuff. Yeah, yeah. They're probably just not used to the level of business getting back to normal just yet. think was that. Dallas Love Field had like five inches of rain in six hours. yeah.

Jon Stoddard (46:26.573)
big hub for Southwest, it shut them down. Shut down, I don't know, probably canceled 100 flights probably from Dallas. Yeah. It's crazy. But thank you for being patient. I was really glad that you invited me to share my thoughts on this. man, I love it because I think everybody, a lot of people in Epic are seeing 10 deals, 100 deals, and they're getting in their mind that I need to do a whole bunch of deals and

And I go back to what Warren Buffett talks about and said, look, if you only had a punch card and you only had 20 slots, you're going to be very serious about where you say yes and where you say no. Yeah. You know, I think that Adam and I are a great compliment because Adam's much more high velocity and like he's, he loves wheeling and dealing, right? Not that one way is right or the other, because there's people that are like, dude, I need the action. Chris, you too slow, right?

So I think that Adam and I are a great compliment in the EPIC program because people are able to like get the quicker wins or like get a lot of stuff going on. And a lot of times people feel that activity is productivity. Yeah. Right. So I think that for a lot of people that are new to the space, not to say that Adam's stuff is just activity and not productive because Adam's doing very well in his business. Yeah, it's definitely the opposite of that. Yeah. It's very lucrative. Yeah. Yeah.

So I think that it's a good compliment because some people may say, listen, like, I just don't have the time to be as active in the due diligence and then the deal sourcing and all that stuff. And then they hear what I'm saying and they're like, that's more my speed. People hear me and they're like, dude, like that's great, do a big deal. However, I want to make a hundred grand this year extra. I want to make, you know, whatever. want to make an extra 20 grand a month. And for those people, my strategy doesn't make a whole lot of sense because they got to wait. There's delayed gratification for the bigger.

bigger deal. I think it's a great compliment. Yeah, it's kind of reminds me, I don't know if you read, written, read, Andrew Carnegie's biography about Charles Schwab just went around and acquired all the steel makers. JP Morgan. Yeah. think it's on my bookshelf. You're typing. think it's called is that right? Yeah, that's Rockefeller. But same kind of thing. But Carnegie does this kind of the

Jon Stoddard (48:50.605)
sold out to Charles Schwab because he Schwab brokered that deal. said, look, we could buy this guy, this company, this company. And then he went to the investment bankers and sold it to them. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know I'm hoping to do with the Finpub space. Congratulations, man. Anyway, I can help. I want to just thank you for the time today. Thank you, John. I think you just did help you let people know that what I'm doing. So yeah. Well, that was, I would say it was a little bit of a mystery. I mean, you've got

nuggets of wisdom when you come out and your calls, but it goes like, but what does Chris do? Yeah, I do those calls once a week and that's about it. Other than that, it's a lot of thinking. I want to thank you so much, Chris. My pleasure. Thanks for the invite. right. Take care, man. Take care. Bye.