The 5 Acquisitions Blueprint I Learned from My FATHER-IN-LAW!

Summary

In this conversation, Jon Stoddard shares his journey from working as a staff accountant to becoming a successful entrepreneur and business owner. He discusses his acquisition of Basin Printing, the challenges he faced in transitioning from employee to owner, and the strategies he employed to grow his businesses. Jon emphasizes the importance of mentorship, negotiation, and understanding financial metrics like EBITDA in making informed business decisions. He also highlights the dynamics of family businesses and the complexities involved in negotiations with multiple owners. In this conversation, Jon Stoddard discusses his journey in business, focusing on the challenges and growth he experienced after acquiring a struggling print company. He shares insights on acquisition strategies, the importance of learning from mentors, and the value of creating partnerships. Jon emphasizes the significance of ethical considerations in business dealings and the entrepreneurial mindset necessary for success. He concludes with advice on embracing failure as a learning opportunity.

Takeaways

Jon acquired Basin Printing two and a half years ago.
He transitioned from a staff accountant to an entrepreneur.
Jon started a marketing company to help struggling businesses.
He faced challenges in scaling his own business.
Jon's father-in-law played a crucial role in his business journey.
He bought a retail business with minimal down payment.
Jon sold the retail business to his manager for a fair price.
Basin Printing experienced significant growth during COVID.
He streamlined operations to improve efficiency.
Negotiating with family business owners can be complex. Those are usually minor numbers.
We were doing about $2 million a year in sales.
I wouldn't be where I am today without my wife.
I offered to buy this print company for two years.
I used all the Epic strategies when I acquired the print company.
It's like having 300 board of advisors.
I want to be able to walk into any company and notice the value.
I just want to bring the value to other people.
I have actually five different acquisitions I'm working on right now.
Just be careful, try something and be prepared to fail.

Watch the interview here:

Transcript

Jon Stoddard (00:00.286)
on the cloud and it's like, re recording. So, welcome to the top and a entrepreneurs. got Jeremiah Townsend on the line. you to tell me what's going on in the background here. You look like that's a store. What? Okay. So this is Basin printing. It's one of the companies that I've acquired. I acquired this one about two and a half years ago.

So I had it about a year before COVID. This is a second location that we opened up last year during COVID. So here, let me move out of the way and I'll just move the camera. So in this case, it's a print shop. So it does printing like flag banners, pop tents, t-shirts, wraps and everything else. I mean, the whole nine yards.

That's a lot of space. Now people walk in there or you just do kind of... So yeah, people actually walk into this facility and I was down here for a meeting this morning. And so I grabbed a laptop and just said, hey, let's set this up and do it here. Yeah, that's fine, man. So two years ago, obviously didn't use any EPIC techniques. I absolutely all EPIC techniques. you did?

So long story short, I've been doing this for about, I've been in doing business stuff for quite a while. I left my family's CPA firm, law firm, and with my father-in-law, I worked with him for three years. He was a big shot for Deloitte and he's a CPA, a lawyer, certified financial planner, and a certified business valuation analyst.

So I got to work with a lot of different things that we deal with in the EPIC program. I got to deal with those in a real life setting, dealing with doctors offices, accounting, legal, transition of ownership, the whole nine yards. And I left that firm as a planned spin off back in 2010. So in January of 2010. are you a CPA or what'd you do from? No, no. So I was a staff accountant.

Jon Stoddard (02:10.709)
My father-in-law had all the degrees and certifications and stuff like that. And he probably had pity on me. And he was like, I gotta help my son-in-law out because he's stupid. So I started off by daughter. married my daughter. I can't let my grandchildren starve. my God. So I worked with him for about three years, but not only did I work with him, I lived next door to him. I moved my family across country.

I lived next door to him and I worked with him and I'd go over to his house in the evening and we'd talk about business. So it was a very, very intense level of business mentorship that I received. And I know most people aren't going to get something like that. It was a very unique experience. know, it's generational that you learn business. mean, there's a lot of guys, know, Richard Branson and all the other billionaires who say, look, it's either one in a million, but a lot of the times family money

is generational, it's taught by the next level, the next level, the next level, and it's from zero or negative to something over 40, 50 years. It's not, it's patience and time. Yeah, and that's what it was is we debated about opening, me getting my CPA license or getting an MBA or something like that, because I'm a five time college dropout. Five times? Five times. I didn't feel successful dropping out the first four.

And, and so, I figured it out. Yes. So my father-in-law one time, cause he taught for an MBA program too, in his spare time, cause he's one of those top type a people. And so I asked him, should I go and finish a degree? He said, not unless you want to go work for IBM or you want to be a CPA or you want to be a doctor or a lawyer. said, but

even if you wanted to be a CPA, you can still be a bookkeeper or an accountant. You just can't be a certified public accountant without getting the degree. So he said, there's a lot of workarounds and you don't always need that. So that's what I did is in 2010, we started a spinoff marketing company to help everybody from the housing collapse. We saw the businesses that were struggling and that was one of the things I consulted a lot with was marketing issues. So how was that transition?

Jon Stoddard (04:34.31)
overly transparent with your father-in-law say, I'm no longer interested in work of you. I want to go buy one of these struggling companies that I have information on. is the funny part. I was not ambitious whatsoever. I was not a born entrepreneur. I had to learn it. If are people made or are they born? The answer is yes, but I had to learn it all. I had to do it all the hard way.

I was happy working for him. That was my goal was to work for him until the day I died. And he invited me into his office and he said, Jeremiah, we need to do more marketing for our customers. And you're really good with this. Every time you're on the phone, you're helping them with marketing issues. So big question is, we're going to start a marketing company. Do you want to do that working for me or do you want to do it working for yourself? Either way, this is what you're going to do.

So I really didn't have an option. Working for myself and I'm not a born entrepreneur, that sounds like you're throwing me out of the nest. Well, that was it. He said, and he told me, he said, you can totally do this. And he said he would own the company. He would provide everything, all the oversight, all the leadership that it needed. But. and accounting, which is fantastic. And so I ended up, I said, what do you think I should do? Because I'm

a stupid kid, right? And this was about 10, 12 years ago. And he's, what do you think I should do? And he goes, you should, he gave me the look, you know, where he's being honest with you and you're a stupid idiot. And he's like, all right, I'm going to be honest with you. And he said, you should do this on your own because you're going to learn things being an entrepreneur that you'll never learn working for me.

And I said, sure, okay. And he thought I'd be great. I talked to everybody. talked to my wife, my pastor, my in-laws, my parents, and everybody said, Jeremiah, you'll be awesome at this. Go do that. And I said, okay. And I went out and I started a marketing company and people would say, what do you do? I have a marketing company. What does that mean? I have no idea. So it was a real trial by fire for me.

Jon Stoddard (06:56.462)
I didn't make any money for about nine months. then things, yeah. Good idea. Yeah. But then things started clicking and I started understanding what I needed to do to make it all work and make it happen. So that was, and when I started that company, I still sat in the same desk that I'd been sitting in for the last several years. I still had the same phone, the same computer. My father-in-law said,

you know, just use my office and you can run everything out of my office. So you don't have to worry about any overhead costs. Yeah. So it was a very planned transition through that. And several years, about two or three years later, after I was doing that, true story. And it's still really weird for me. I'm in my living room praying. going, God, what am I supposed to do? Because I couldn't scale the company. I could.

I helped build a couple of different multimillion dollar companies, totally cool. somebody else's business, right? Yep, marketing other people's businesses. And what I would do is I actually set it up as an online marketing company. People would call asking for help marketing their website or building a website or a Facebook page. And I use that as a soft sell. And I'd say, absolutely, we can do that for you. And then I do an analysis on their entire company for their profit centers.

and their workflow systems. And I would identify where they were efficient and where they weren't efficient. And then we'd create a marketing structure dedicated to making them profitable. Why, why, and this brings up a point, why is it so difficult to have a Jeremiah on Jeremiah's business? You know, where you can have a Jeremiah in somebody else's business, you do great, but you need a Jeremiah for Jeremiah's business.

That is totally true and that's why I joined Epic was so I could ask other people questions. And in this case, I know why, because I was trying to leverage what I could do, what the value that I brought to the company and bringing a strategist is kind of a hard thing to duplicate. Whereas providing a specific service is easy to do.

Jon Stoddard (09:13.198)
And so there I was a couple of years later, I had hired a dozen people and gone through a dozen people and said, and I couldn't find the right mix. And I'm praying in my living room, God, what am I supposed to do? Cause this is what everybody tells me I'm supposed to do. And I think this is what I'm supposed to do. And I get a phone call right in the middle of praying. So this is very important for me. I get a phone call and I said, hold on a minute, God. And are you allowed to put God on hold? I don't know, but he'll forgive me.

Great question. Hold one second. Okay, just hold one second. I gotta get this. So so I pick up the phone and a conference call. Get him on conference and bring I pick up the phone and it's my father in law and he says I have a retail business for sale that I know somebody wants to sell it. I can't tell you anything about it. But do you want to buy it? And this was on a Wednesday. And I go, well, you can't tell me anything about it. But

maybe he goes great i'll send you over the paperwork he sends me the paperwork on thursday i look at it and we discuss the company he says what would you do in this company and and i just have the tax returns i don't even know the company and i said well i'd make these few changes probably it was a small company the there were two owners they made about 75 grand a year and i said i'd make these changes and

75 total between the two. And they were both working. They were both working 50 to 60 hours a week in the business. 120 hours for you know, it gets even better. gets even better. Yeah. So I look at it and I said, Well, if we make all these changes, we could probably make about $125,000 a year or more in this company. And and there he goes, What else I got one not much else. But you know, you got to cut some overhead.

restructure some things, get rid of some phone lines, normal sort of stuff for systems improvements. And I said, we could probably put another 50,000 to the bottom line. So that was a big growth saying we can grow this company by 66%. How were you able to see that? Could you tell that through the expenses on the bank statements or what? Yeah, it looked pretty simple to me.

Jon Stoddard (11:35.082)
All the numbers looked pretty simple. I just asked a couple of questions about the company. So I looked at the company on Sunday with the business owner and we had a handshake deal. So I bought that business for, I put down less than 10 % and the rest was an owner carry. they just wanted out. it gets even better. It gets even better. So I tell them, I told my father in law, this is what I do. He goes, great. Guess what?

I saw, helped somebody buy this company 30 days ago, a great guy, but I helped him buy it. We made all those changes that you just talked about. And now it's 30 days later and he doesn't want the company anymore and he wants to sell it. So, so I walk into the company on Sunday. So like three days later, four days later, and the it's shut down. The owner walked, the new owner walks me through it and.

And he goes, so do you want to buy it? And I bought it for about $150,000. So two times earnings on it. I said, sure. And he shakes hands. goes, you don't want to negotiate? No, seems fair to me. And he goes, what about the sale price? I go, yeah, just talk to Steve about it, my father-in-law. Just talk to him. He'll figure out the details. It'll be fine. You don't even want to.

negotiate on the price at all or look at it. Now, whatever he says is fine. So basically, goes, okay, I figured it'd be a few weeks. Monday, I get an email with all the paperwork already signed, and I get to own the business. So it's less than a week from when I found out to when I actually own the business. that's great. Do you try to set that kind of schedule for all your acquisitions now going, hey, I'd like a 30 day close, a quick close or?

Well, as much as possible. But, so I had that business a few years and as I started owning more businesses, I've only owned a few. I've done a few startups. I've done about 10 different companies in the last 12 years. And so that was kind of being in the right place at the right time, finding a motivated seller, which is obviously what Epic's all about.

Jon Stoddard (13:54.862)
Yeah, yeah, that's the key ingredient that you have to remember versus going to these business brokers and everything else reaching out to someone that's got a nice business and they're on LinkedIn. And if they're not a motivated seller, none of the criteria apply for Epic. Yeah. And in fact, when I had that company after about three or four years, somebody came in and I bought it for 150. Somebody offered me $450,000 on that company.

And I told them no, because I had it fully managed. The staff were running everything. And I was making $100,000 a year off that business without going to work. And I could go do other things. And what did you say to Steve, your father-in-law? Thank you. I've told him thank you so many times. But that was really curious because that's what got me into buying businesses. And so when I bought this print company a couple of years ago,

I actually had to sell that retail company because I needed more cash. That's capital allocation, If you get something that's a higher IRR than the other investment, move it. Yeah. And I sold that business to my manager. beautiful. And I did a partial owner carry. I actually set him up with his bank to do the loan and everything. And I said, hey, can you

help my manager buy this company from me. So I lined everything up. I sold it for a couple hundred thousand dollars. I made a good profit on it. But I sold it to him for a fair price. I sold it to him for a fair price. I told him, I'm not trying to gouge you on this. I could actually try to sell it for more and probably make it, but I want to do that. I want this to be a win. And he goes, sure.

So parcel owner, Kerry, was he able to put down enough that you could take, you know, that deposit and put it on. Yes. So he paid, he put down enough to have the bank financing and the bank finance, the majority. And then I, I carried like 10 % or something. I don't remember how much, but I carried a small portion like that. And I told him, look, I'll make it easy. I was willing to carry a lot more than that too. but.

Jon Stoddard (16:13.366)
I was like, I'll carry up to 50 % if you want me to carry up to 50%. And the bank said, no, we don't need you to carry that much. We'll make this work. And it was a great transition. And he's still making some payments to me now. And it's nice having the money coming every month. Was it a bank SBA loan or just a regular bank? Just a regular local bank. Yeah, because you wouldn't, I guess SBA banks, you're not allowed to be in the business if you get an SBA loan.

So I am not correct. That's true. But I am no longer a part of that company. I'm still good friends with him. He ended up being my manager at that shop. And he and I have a great relationship. That was his first business. And I had everything so streamlined. He hasn't changed a nickel in that business. He hasn't changed anything. And he's like, it just runs. I like it. Beautiful. How's this business going, the Basin Printing? This is great. Basin's doing fantastic.

I ended up negotiating with five different owners when I bought the company. So again, this was before Epic. I looked at the income of the business. did a multiple on the income the business produced based off of EBITDA with an adjustment for the seller's discretionary earnings. And Hey, got to ask, I'm going to stop you real quick because I love reading Warren Buffett and he thinks EBITDA is just trash because it's a

depreciation, amortization, and you need depreciation. You have to take into account a depreciation and amortization, especially in a printing business with, you know, the equipment runs out. I mean, the perfect point is, hey, there's a customer walk by, that's great. There's a guy in St. Louis, did you see the interview on the legs platform where he's probably bought 20 businesses over the years and he's in the printing business? And most of the-

yeah, I saw that one. Yeah, most of the times you'll come in there and go, I want to buy a business. I look at their equipment. It's 20 years old and it's crap, right? So it's just buying a customer list. Yeah. So for printing, anything, printing is a manufacturing process. Some of the older equipment is actually really solid and it'll last years and years. Other equipment, some of the newer digital printing equipment breaks down continuously.

Jon Stoddard (18:36.184)
but there's a lower labor cost to it. So there's the trade-offs to it, right? And so that does have to come into play on it. But EBITDA is still, this is what cashflow generates, but you do have to calculate out the life expectancy of the equipment. So the same thing when I bought this one, we did some asset carve-outs, we did a partial owner carry, and we did some, it was a local bank finance.

And again, I was willing to come in with a couple hundred thousand dollars on this deal. I bought it for about a million dollars and I was willing to put in about a couple hundred thousand. It's all I could really afford at the time on this deal. But the bank's like, no, you don't have to come up with that much. I think the bank only wanted me to put down $50,000 or something. Really? Why? I don't know, but it put more money in my pocket. Yeah, no kidding, man. Look at like, look what I could do with $50,000 and the rest in debt.

I mean, it's an ROI on the 50,000, not on the, yeah. Yeah. So I was like, okay, so we did that. And I've done a couple of other small businesses, either liquidations or mergers and stuff like that. Like this business, after we bought that, we streamlined some of our staffing issues, we streamlined our workflow issues, we increased our turnaround time instead of being a three day, it's a 24 hour turnaround time. So we made a lot of improvements and

When I in, yeah, my customers adore it. So right before COVID, I hate to blame COVID, but right before COVID we had about a, we were growing at about 40 % per year. Ooh, that's nice. Yeah. We had massive, massive growth because of these changes that we had done. And that actually helped us through COVID because the average print shop nationwide went down 50 to 60%.

because of COVID, because they weren't doing work for all the large events. And as we know a couple of people up in Canada with businesses too, they're completely shut down in some places. Now we didn't suffer any losses, nearly that bad business did go down slightly for us, but it wasn't anything like that. And instead of, I knew some of my competitors were down 90%, 90%. And here I am stomping all over everybody. it's...

Jon Stoddard (20:59.693)
I felt a little bit bad. Yeah, that's a you know, we're looking at a business, I got a business partner, we're looking at business and the know, concentration of customers, the largest concentration is 14 % of revenue coming from that customer. It's not you know, we said, hey, you can't have anybody over 25 % or yep, they leave and that's a big drop. Yeah, with this one, my biggest customer was 8%. so beautiful. Yeah, and it

Honestly, it was just there were a lot of things that were mismanaged. The workflows were mismanaged. So we had to restructure management. I replaced the entire management team. had all new managers that I hired in-house from my in-person staff, just restructuring staff. So starting from day one, I did not have to do anything on a day-to-day basis with acquiring this company. that's beautiful. I got to go back to the five owners. Now, they were all

motivated to sell and did you have to talk to them individually or was it kind of a collective? Yes on both. So it was a family. Yeah. And it's actually a really unique history. Basin Printing, they won an award for being the they had the best press operator in the western half of the United States of America. And so some of the national standards for quality and excellent in printing was developed out of our print shop.

So that's really cool. And that was one of the owners who helped develop all of that. it's like, woohoo. But you know, quite frankly, a lot of that doesn't matter with today's technologies. It used to, but it doesn't matter anymore. And so all the different owners, they were fighting. There were just a bunch of bad blood amongst the owners. And not that I was dishonest, I was never dishonest, but I'd have to talk to this owner over here and say, what do you want out of this business? We want out, or we want this, or we want that.

And I would say, okay, and I'd go negotiate with this owner. That way he could get what he wanted and they could get what they wanted. you, so did you have five different, you know, offers to each, not, not saying they're financial offers, but, my God, I need to watch or I need a or what? That was honestly it. That was it. It was a little bit complicated. Two of the owners were really wanting to get out of it. And they kept on coming back and just saying,

Jon Stoddard (23:24.577)
Well, I found another $5,000 or I found another $10,000. And how I approached them, I told them, said, let's look at your EBITDA on this business with a couple of allocations for your seller discretionary expenses. We have to subtract out a manager's salary on this business. So I actually used a kind of a combination between SDE and EBITDA. I said, we have to subtract out the owner's

the not the owner's salary, but a manager's salary, because that's part of the expense of the company. And, and then I'm willing to pay you three times, whatever that number is. And so we said, okay, and every so often, they'd say, I have this other $2,000 change here. I have another $1,000 change there. And I just say, Okay, not a problem. Okay.

Did you find any kind of funny business with that? mean, with the family business, know, hey, it's your business. You can take whatever seller and discretionary earnings you want for at least five years until you, you know, the IRS says it's a hobby and you've to close it. But, you know, families, like you're hiring family and you got, know, Tommy needs this, Bob needs this, Sally needs this. There was absolutely some of that. There was absolutely some of that.

For the most part, those are usually minor numbers. And in this case, those were all minor numbers. And I said, don't worry about it. How are you paying five family members? And I'm just supporting a million dollar business. And then you have your production staff. I that sounds like it's probably tough on the cash flow. So yes and no. So when I bought the company, the company was struggling a little bit. But we did.

they were doing about $2 million a year in sales when I acquired it. They were doing a little bit under. They were actually at about 1.8 million when I acquired them. And so we were growing them and we had them targeting about close to 3 million in sales right before COVID hit. So that was unfortunate. I was really disappointed. Where are you at now? you rebounding? Yeah, we're totally rebounding. Things are coming back. We'll probably...

Jon Stoddard (25:41.589)
I think we'll do a little over 2 million this year. There's still a lot of closures. I'm in Colorado and New Mexico with our two locations. And both of those states are very closed down, very shut down. So they present some unique challenges to growing the company. Yeah. Now, is Stephen your father-in-law? Is he still a visor? Sort of. I don't really chat with him. I mean, he and I see each other regularly.

There's just no big deal. mean, there's no tough questions to ask. So if I have a question, I go ask him, but I worked with him for several years and I've been doing it for several years. mean, aside from the obligation of being, you know, marry my daughter, but that he saw potential in you so much more than you saw in yourself. Yeah, it's, it was really awesome. You know, I can't stress that enough. wouldn't be where I am today.

without my wife and without my father-in-law. Because my wife is the same kind of personality. She's very extremely driven. And at the same time, she's supportive of me in my patriarchal duties, so to speak. She's very, very supportive of me to be the provider of the family, to take care of the family. And she is so driven. have to tell this story about my wife. She was going to medical school when we got

married when we met and everything and she wanted to be a doctor. She got a full ride scholarship for a double doctorate degree for her MD and PhD at the University of Minnesota. So she is smart, she is driven, she was working full-time while going to college full-time and still top of her class and she gave that all up for me.

which, you know, put a lot of pressure on me to perform or something. For the rest of her life. But she's been extremely supportive. And so it's been a massive transition. She and I laugh about that because I tend to be very laid back in some in some sort of personality. I was extremely laid back when we were younger, but now I'm a little more ambitious. So.

Jon Stoddard (27:58.293)
Yeah, it's also, think, a side benefit. You know, like I get, I love reading Warren Buffett and he talks about just being patient. You know, laid back is kind of being patient and waiting for the right time to strike. And when you do, you go big. So, so along those lines, I offered to buy this print company for two years. I approached the owners and every time I saw them for two years, I said, hey, if you ever want to sell, let me know. I like your company.

And so they would say, sure, sure. And then two years later, they came back and we started entering into those negotiations. Yeah, curious. Are you friends with the family? Do they have better relationships now that they're not playing office politics with each other? So it's a little bit sad. This is actually a really sad story. So there was a mom and dad, two brothers and a wife involved.

one of the brothers committed suicide last year. my, yeah. The dad died last year from old age and health conditions. And the mom ended up getting dementia in the last couple of years. And so that's just been the husband and wife team, they moved out of the area to live next to their kids and extended family. So was actually kind of a sad story how all that came together. But it was a good thing that I was able to come in

and acquire the company and help them all move on to their lives. know, things that they wanted to get closer together. Cause I think the friction was created by the business. now that's there was, there was some drugs involved too. So, gosh. Yeah. Drugs, legal issues, other sorts of things. Well, you're in Colorado.

Well, what they were involved with was even illegal here. OK, so what? so epic. How many acquisitions have you made total over the years? About five. About five. That's awesome. Yeah, like four. No, so I only actually own the print company right now. We have two locations.

Jon Stoddard (30:16.437)
I used all the Epic strategies when I acquired the print company, including when we talk about installing management teams, EOS and all of that. Those were things I implemented before I acquired this. The building that I bought here, I did an owner finance with leveraging some of my lines of credit. So it was no cash out of pocket to acquire the property. And then I created some improvements on the building and stuff. So again, that was the same sorts of things they teach you in Epic.

And then I just signed up for Epic. Yeah. And what did you learn? Anything different or was it affirmation what you already knew? A lot of it is affirmation, but let's just face it, the things they teach in Epic are awesome. And the people who are actively involved with these things, it's great being able to bounce these ideas off of each other because there's not a lot of us around.

Yeah, it's like having 300 board of advisors to pitch in their ideas. Like something you didn't say, I've got an experience with that. Here's what you do want to do and what you don't want to do. Yeah, exactly. And we're all on the same page with the approach to do it. So there's a huge value to that. Now, there's also a couple of other things that I have learned from Epic. And that's what I was hoping to learn. I was hoping to learn a couple of little tips and tricks from it.

So it's not that I haven't learned anything, know, it's been very beneficial. do want to put that out there. It's been very beneficial. No, I've talked to some people that, you know, had made 10, 12 acquisitions and they still took Epic training and learn stuff. know, Jerry Seinfeld still goes back to the same comedy clubs, the tiny dives to remember how to connect with audiences. Yeah, that's exactly it.

And the really weird thing is, Roland and I seem to think on the exact same page. I even had my own deal done spreadsheet software I created before I even knew he did deal done software. So yeah, so mean, it's, it's creeple creepy how, weird he that is. I use the pipe wrench strategy two or three times before I even learned there was a pipe wrench strategy.

Jon Stoddard (32:36.557)
I used it once with a vendor and once with a customer. So it's like, you know, learning from Roland and the whole team, it really helps put a lot of meat on the bone that I hadn't put together. So it's really fantastic figuring out some of those things. Yeah. what are your plans? I mean, your plans by more printing companies or other stuff? So this goes back to a post.

you put into Facebook about wanting to acquire no money down businesses. And you were really strict on that. was like, I understand it's, you know, I could be in other people's money, but I want to do it with no money down. So, so the last, several of my acquisitions, I'm always having some cash that I put into the deal. Yeah.

And it's on in a nutshell, you know, you go to the SBA and SBA will carry $3.5 million or somewhere about there under your personal name, you know, $5 million total, but 3.5 D or something. I've been to the SBA process. It's a financial proctology. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. But you only have to come up with five or 10%, depending on how you structure the deal. So it's kind of a contrast or

juxtaposition you it's a lot easier to do a personal guarantee when you're younger when you have nothing to lose than it is a personal guarantee when you're older and yeah, as goes out there, but you're not going to get the loan when you're younger versus. yeah, that's exactly it. So my goal is I see all the value out there and what I really want to do is I want to be able to walk into any company and immediately I'll notice the value that I can bring and I want to be able to bring that to those companies.

So whether it's a baseline deal or fractional CMO deal or whatever the case may be, that's what I wanna do. And I wanna be able to acquire that company because it's a blessing to the customers. It's a blessing to the owners. It's a blessing to everybody for me to be able to bring that value. I think it's a grateful and humble way to look at it. Yeah. So is it a controlling interest, 51 % or could it be 20, 40?

Jon Stoddard (34:56.545)
I just made a pitch this morning to another company and to become a fractional chief marketing officer for that company. So I wouldn't own anything out of it. And it was kind of a CMO baseline deal that, so I would only get paid if I actually created value out of that. So baseline, let's say they're doing a million revenue. And if you get them to 1.5 million revenue, you're going to split sales or income?

I'd split profit. Profit, okay. Yeah, so, and in that case, they're doing a few million dollars in that business. So I mean, those are just different things that I'm looking at. I don't have to have ownership. I just want to bring the value to other people. So when I'm looking at, I am looking at acquiring businesses, I am looking at doing startups, and I'm also looking at doing, just adding value to other people.

through like a CMO thing or some other alternative. It be business or is it printing anything else? It could be anything else. So I've had service related businesses, manufacturing businesses, a fine art restoration company. I've had businesses in every vein that along the lines there, both online and offline. And the value that I really bring to a company is kind of the

high level strategic planning is that strategy. That's honestly all it is. And there's a whole bunch of us in Epic who kind of bring that same value. Are you with other Epic members? I do. fact, it's hilarious. I was talking to a couple of previous Epic members the other day, maybe a couple of weeks ago or something. Maybe it was a month now. And I said,

and they had done a deal together to buy an email marketing company. And they had some really great ideas on strategic planning on something. And I said, wow, I'd really love to help out with that. So we ended up creating a deal, totally just handshake deal. And they said, what do you think we should do here? And I laid everything out for them. It seemed to be very beneficial for them. And they said, wow, what can we do to help pay you back? And I said,

Jon Stoddard (37:22.401)
I want to send out this one email. And it was an email from that Adam Lyons had talked about in one of his presentations on surveying your customers. And I was having a hard time getting my existing email marketing company to do that. And I just said, look, just send out this one email for me and I'd be happy. And they did it for me. They sent it out within the week and I got immediately responses back. So it was like a hugely beneficial thing.

Why was your email marketing company not wanting to send that email? it violation of their user policies or what? No, because they So that was really it. I just didn't, they wanted me to fix a whole bunch of stuff that I shouldn't have had to have fixed. And they should have taken care of and it was just a pain in my butt. So I'm like,

I talked to these other people from Epic. go, I got this problem. Can you just send this for me? And they said, sure. And they took care of it. And honestly, I don't think it would have been, I just didn't want to deal with it. And I, I'm like, I am so thrilled that they sent that out for me and they sent out that email. used Adam's plan on what to send out in the email. And it was hilarious because I got responses back from all my customers from the, I sent it out to six or 7,000 people of my existing customers.

And I said, what do you really hate? What can I do for you? And what do you hate about getting these services done? And so I have a spreadsheet now of all these customers who said, we really want this and we hate it if you do that. So I took that email and I just sent it off to my sales team. And I said, follow up with all of them and provide these services and don't do this. Guarantee we won't do this and provide all these services. Did you find any gold nuggets in there to acquire companies?

So I'm working on a couple of those right now. I have actually five different acquisitions I'm working on right now in related businesses. For any companies I'm acquiring, I'm trying to focus on marketing related companies because of the leverage that I can bring to them. We'll see where those go. I don't know if they'll go anywhere. Yeah, you really do have to have like a hundred in your funnel. I'm not saying everybody has to have a hundred, but if you're just starting to get it. Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (39:48.917)
a hundred in that funnel at some point in time they're going to drop. But along those lines, one of the companies that I work with is they have three different publications. By the way, they had two different publications. I was looking at acquiring a magazine myself because I'm a print shop. I print a hundred thousand magazines a month and I'm going, I should buy a magazine in that way I can sell the printing and advertising and everything. What kind of magazine is it?

That one's a location specific for Durango, Colorado. kind of like a real estate like dinner dining thing or something or? Yeah, it's like check out the cool things that are happening in Durango. So I live in Durango, Colorado. It's a resort town. It's where Jeff Walker lives who does the product launch formula. Yes, yes. I know you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. So so we live in the same area. We live in the same town.

And it's just a resort community. So people want to know what's going around town. What are the restaurants, all that kind of stuff. So it's a location specific magazine. I looked at acquiring it. It wasn't a perfect fit for me. So I got one of my customers to buy the company. So that's cool. Yeah, I know. Isn't that cool? So I got one of my customers. from it or just a referral? It was just a referral. I didn't make any money about it.

but I've also told the customer, said, if you ever take your business elsewhere, I'm going into competition with you. That's sort of a pipe wrench deal right there. So, you know, and we probably do a hundred thousand dollars a year in business with his company. So the cool thing is because of all of this, another publication that he didn't want to do, I said, I passed it off to him. said, this will be a perfect fit for you. He looked at it.

He didn't want to do it and he just passed it back to me. And so now I get to take on this new publication that will actually promote my new facility here in Farmington, New Mexico to all the local companies. Yeah. So do you have all that sales staff in place? Cause a lot of that's, you know, people reaching out and saying, Hey, you need to advertise in Tucson lifestyle magazine. Like everybody else.

Jon Stoddard (42:06.381)
So we have three full-time sales staff members on hand that will take care of that. I'm gonna help them out on this project just because it's helpful for the company to introduce the owner to a new town and everything else. So it'll be beneficial for me to actually go out and meet all these business owners, 500, 1000 different business owners in the area.

or at least make a few of those phone calls and start reaching out to the community. And that's part of the deal flow, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So back to those Epic members, you're working with the email company. Now, you on the cap table now? You own a percentage or? I do not own any percentage of that. They were talking about doing a third party, a third venture or another venture. Yeah. And we're still in talks about that. I don't know how it'll turn out. I think there's some great opportunities there, but.

Who knows? I got to tell you, I had this call, you know, I have a number of calls with potential partners. And I had a call yesterday with somebody that owns an IT company in Epic, really early Epic. And he said, you know, I'm not an employee, I still own stock in the company, but I need to kind of let you know that they may be a conflict of interest. And I probably, you know, probably won't be able to help you out. And I go, you know, that's really refreshing because

A lot of the times dollar signs kind of crosses what it does is mix up your ethical barriers and you want to shift teams real fast when you start seeing dollar signs. I look, I want to do business with that guy. He's not going to come in as a investor. He can't really come in and abort advisors. But if anything changed in the future, I'd love to have them on. Yeah. So that was actually back when I was consulting that exact issue happened to me. So I ended up I was consulting with

several different companies, one of which happened to be a janitorial services company. And I helped them grow in about six months, I helped them grow their company, like quadruple their company from 10 employees to 50 employees. And it was one of the multimillion dollar companies I helped build. And they were just totally focused the wrong direction. It was easy to transfer that. Well, what happened

Jon Stoddard (44:30.635)
was the very next year after I had done that, I had another janitorial company approach me, didn't know I worked with them, and they wanted to either hire me or sell out to me. And I said, I can't, because I have a sincere conflict of interest here. I literally know what all the competition is doing. I can't do that. That would be immoral. Yeah, yeah. Even though, yeah, there's this wall that you

should not cross. And in the investment community, there's the marketing and investment banks, and there's the broker dealers, and there's marketing, and they call it the Chinese Wall. It's probably offensive now, probably shouldn't say that. Whatever. Yeah, that's something they say in New York and, and Wall Street, they just can't do cross that wall, can't be talking to each other. Yeah, there's got to be that fine line of separation. And I know that's, that's happened for a few different companies that I've worked with.

because I worked in consulting and it's a small kind of area that I live in. There's only so many, you know, glass installers and only so many whatever janitorial companies, HVAC companies, whatever. So sometimes that pops up. Yeah, I had this other issue. I was seeking a SBA loan and the guy said, well, curious enough, I'm working on an IT company rollout. And I go, well,

I think you immediately should recuse yourself from offering SBA loans to people doing IT roll ups because I'm not interested in giving you leads for your roll up company. Yeah, exactly. And there's got to be those times when you say, I can't work on that deal because I'm doing something similar. Right up front. Up front. Up front. Up front. Not even, hey, let me take a look at it. No, it's.

Not ask, assign NDA, not ask for the documents, nothing else. Just say right up front. can't work on it. Yeah. Yeah. So Jeremiah, we're always talked for almost an hour here. How do they get in touch with you if they want to do business with you? Got a bit sale, sell a company to you. How do they get in touch with you? man. Just email me. Jeremiah at basin printing.com. Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (46:42.189)
Beautiful. Man, I want to thank you so much. This is a really enjoyable phone call with you or a Zoom call. Absolutely. Absolutely. This is awesome, man. There are so many things I wish I could ask you right now because I have so many other deals that I'm working on. I'm going, man, I have this other presentation or this other thing that, mm, hopefully the rest of the ethic can help Yeah, I love the networking. I pitched a deal to the, you know what gave me a good feeling was I pitched a deal to the

the IT guy I mentioned earlier. And, you know, and I gave him the rationale for the multiple. I gave him like the offer, what we did, what we're at, you know, and the downfalls. And look, he's built a hundred million dollar IT company. So he's a pretty good judge of what a five million dollar company should look like. And he said, yeah, it looks good. I mean, everything looks good and fair about it. I go, man, great training, Roland. Thank you very much. Yeah, I know it's it's fantastic.

having all of that information available. And you know, there's more information than any of us need whatsoever in the Epic program and in the Kajabi portal and stuff like that. There's way more information than people need. You know, it's almost too much information on some level. It's like, here's the streamlined version. They really need to have that streamlined funnel in there. Yeah, Ianna, if you're watching this, put...

put a streamlined funnel in there somewhere. Yeah, I think it probably confuses a lot of people and say, hey, you where do I start because it's information overload or a fire hose to your mouth. And they go, okay, now I got paralysis. Like, which way do I go? You know, and I had a presentation on that yesterday. So I was asked to give an entrepreneur presentation to several new entrepreneurs on pitfalls and issues that they had. And of course, everybody's scared and they're

fearful. They don't know what's going on. And I had to tell them the big thing is, look, just be careful, try something and be prepared to fail. But say, okay, what am I going to learn from this so that I can do it a second time and do it better? Yeah. Beautiful. Let's end on that. Jeremiah, I want to thank you for your time. You're awesome. Have a great day, my friend. All right. Take care.