What I Learned from Raising $150m for 120 Acquisitions

 Summary

In this conversation, Jon Stoddard interviews Moran, an entrepreneur with a diverse background in acquisitions and domain names. They discuss Moran's journey from military service in Israel to becoming a global citizen with business interests in multiple countries. The conversation explores the evolution of domain acquisitions, the intricacies of business acquisitions, and the inspiring success stories of various entrepreneurs from different backgrounds. Moran, emphasizes the importance of luck, persistence, and innovative deal structures in achieving success, while also addressing the significance of trust and character assessment in business relationships. In this conversation, Jon Stoddard discusses the importance of making logical decisions in business, the value of equity ownership, and the influence of personal development through reading. He shares insights on successful entrepreneurs like Richard Branson and reflects on the mindset required for success. Stoddard also recounts lessons learned from failed ventures, emphasizing the need to evaluate risks and revenue sources. He explores the challenges of navigating regulated industries and shares inspiring stories of unlikely success. Finally, he outlines his future plans for building a community focused on acquisitions and roll-ups.

Takeaways

Moran identifies as a global citizen with multiple residencies.
His entrepreneurial journey began with buying and selling domains.
He successfully turned around an app company to become a top 100 app.
Diverse backgrounds contribute to unique success stories in entrepreneurship.
Luck plays a significant role in Moran's success, alongside persistence.
Innovative deal structures are essential for successful acquisitions.
Valuation multiples are crucial in assessing business worth.
Building trust in business requires time and consistent interaction.
Character assessment is vital in partnerships and acquisitions.
Moran's program emphasizes education and alignment with values. Make decisions when you're logical, not emotional.
Equity ownership varies on a deal-by-deal basis.
Reading diverse materials fosters personal development.
Richard Branson exemplifies a successful entrepreneur.
Success is about mindset and character, not just intelligence.
Learn from failures to avoid future mistakes.
Evaluate revenue sources to minimize risk.
Unicorns can thrive in any industry, even the unlikely ones.
Building a community can amplify success in business.
Future plans include creating a supportive network for roll-ups.

 Watch the Interview:

Jon Stoddard (00:02.83)
Welcome to the top &A entrepreneurs. I've got Moran, over. Moran, how you doing? Welcome to the show. How are you? I'm good, man. I'm looking forward to have this call with you, Let's see where this is going to go. So first of all, I've got to ask you something about you're in Cyprus, but you have an office in Hong Kong. Tell me about this worldwide location now. And you're Israeli too, right? Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. So you're going straight to the killing. So yeah, I'll tell you my backstory. So I'm originally from Israel. I served in the military there. After that, I pretty much became an entrepreneur a few months after finishing with the military. So the reason that you see all the Hong Kong and Cyprus and all that. So right now, don't know, you can call myself a global citizen. So I have residency in few countries. The reason that I have that is mostly for

no kind of like jurisdiction and taxes and all that, because I have a capital event a few years ago and I just didn't want to pay as much. And it was just a great excuse to go out of a, yeah, of a lot of messy other personal stuff in Israel that I can get into as well if you want. Yeah. Well, that's cool. I was in the military too. It's not mandatory. We didn't have a draft like I know Israeli does where everybody serves two years. Yeah. Three. Three. wow.

Yeah, girls serve for two years, guys have to serve three years unless they decide to stay for more. Yeah. So how did you drive into, I mean, first of all, you've got the domain name acquisitions.com. That's fantastic. Because that's what everybody searches for. How did you get that name and where did you start and say, hey, look, I'm going to start buying and selling business. Did you work for somebody else that bought and sold businesses or how'd that go?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So in terms of the domain, just, I don't know, man, a lot of luck and a few good months of negotiations. And I guess I can give a scoop to your audiences. I just got myself rollups.com as well. You know, we can talk about some of the plans for that as well. yeah, yeah. So that could be interesting. So in terms of my way to acquisitions, it's an interesting journey. So I started my journey as an entrepreneur pretty much buying and selling domains, just...

Jon Stoddard (02:21.966)
So that's, guess, what led me to sometimes to somehow understanding this domain world. I bought and sold domains. Some of the domains that I've been selling, I almost built some kind of like a passive income stream. So we built a lot of different content. I'm talking like almost 15 years ago, not literally when we used to, I remember using to outsource stuff for people in the Philippines for like a few bucks, putting like five articles on a website and ranking it higher for like really legit keywords. And then we used to promote other products or affiliate offers or whatnot. So.

Yeah, that slowly led me to a point where then I had an opportunity to acquire an app company that have a few different apps other than portfolio. And that was literally, I don't know, also call it luck, call it my network. So I pretty much got connected to this guy who had different businesses. We own this app company. It was barely making money and he pretty much gave it away from me. just paid him a few thousand dollars over time. And that got me to that world almost by accident. Right. So I went into that business.

We then, so we hired a few employees, we turned around the business at the peak. Once the apps in that company became the top 100 apps in the app stores. So that was a huge, huge achievement. being like next to, so, and it was a very simple app. So the app was like a, used to do tips for iPhone. So literally right now, when you go to iPhone, you have apps that basically just show you how to use your iPhone in a more productive way. So it used to do the same.

So we had like a free version, a paid version, the free one with ads in it, the paid one if you want to upgrade and not have the ads in it. And we just constantly updated the content. Yeah, so that was that. And then slowly after that, I can walk you through some more stuff that went through. right now. So did you kind of say set the domain business in the background? Or is that still viable? I saw that on your LinkedIn that you used to do a lot of domains.

I mean, I have some domains you can say in my portfolio that I'm waiting for if and when someone's gonna buy them, but it's not something that I'm doing on an ongoing at this point. Yeah, I remember that a long time ago, domains used to be just so available and you could just, know, the big ones you could just buy in a reserve. And then somebody started collecting like 300,000 domains and you go, man, I got, there's a business there.

Jon Stoddard (04:43.38)
Yeah, I also, it's funny, you know, I know a of people, so I made some money from also Instagram usernames. kind of like, so I know a of people I have friends who made a lot of money just by having like Twitter handles, but like super simple keywords that then just people bought from them. So I've done it once or twice with Instagram names. So it's kind like just any assets that is in scarcity, I think, and other day have some value, right? Some, something that people might see as something valuable for whatever reason.

I just, I know this is off the subject, but I did some consulting for a company that did some apps for putting stuff in space. the name of the company is Bro Research Organization. And a long time ago, they reserved the keyword BRO. And I was looking through their assets, and they were having a difficult time. said, look, we got to get rid of some of these assets that may be valuable. And I go,

you're getting like a couple of hundred thousand visits to your site for, they're just trash. They don't have anything to do with your stuff. That's because you own BRO. I said, let's go find out what it's for sale and what its value. And it was from $60,000 $100,000. And it's just one of those decisions. said, look, this is trash traffic because they're all talking about bro. Hey bro, hey bro, hey bro. Let's unload it. They didn't want to unload it. I just said, look,

If you don't think that's even associated with your business or you think that's associated with your business and you don't think it's a cashflow to help your cashflow right now, I need to exit, you know, working with you because it doesn't make sense anyway. I was off the subject, but yeah. So look, man, I go to your website from since then you have done, Jesus, like how many, 150 million raised, 75,000 in your network.

Businesses acquired 550 million on over 120 deals. I what kind of deals do you look for and your students you look for? Because there's, know, Jay Jonathan, Carl Allen, Roland Fraser, all these guys have a little bit of a different style on what type of business do you. But what I find is people are joining every one of those groups because they find different opportunities. Like, where do you fit? What do you kind of look for?

Jon Stoddard (07:02.958)
It's a good question. appreciate them all by the way. think they're all great in terms of how do I fit myself? I don't know. I just like to be, think maybe more involved. So I just have one program at this point and just you join and you get access to me basically on a weekly basis to ask me questions, to potentially partner with me. I even just invested with one of my clients deals. So we just bought a missionary company and he used obviously so we can dive in into the structure if you want, but he used leverage, used the bank financing alongside equity. So

me and the network basically invested alongside him. And, you know, I just, just, I think I just like to be more close to the people. So we bought a masonry business, for example, right? It's like, where was that? To be honest, I just gave him the money. I'm not even sure. I think he's from, ideal, but I'm not even sure to be honest. I just saw that I got 20. I'm putting a specific amount of money. He promised me a specific amount of returns. we re the structure is basically for investors is we got

we get dividends 10 % a year, plus we get equity in relation to whatever we get into business. whatever we invest in the business. When you said it's in Idaho, is that what you said? I'm almost sure to be honest, I literally just saw his promise because he's one of my clients. I'm like, Jeff, tell me how much we need. I'll send it over. And he does, you know, he takes it gets all the numbers and say, hey, here's the what it looks like the projections and what you can earn on this and Yeah, so so he went through our process. this helped him.

with everything, right? We help him find a deal, help him analyze the deal. So we have a CFO that's working with us and he helped him basically analyze the numbers and see what offers make sense. We also introduce people to financial institutions. different, so he used SBA. So introducing two different SBA loan providers that we have in our network. So, so the deal flow, the analysis with our CFO, the SBA loan, and then he needed equity. So we helped him with that as well. And he bought four businesses like that the last year in different spaces in the home service construction space.

that's amazing. That's fantastic. What was that guy doing before he was recording businesses? Jason, I'm not even sure to be honest, but we have some weird stories, man. We have a guy that I mean, everyone's coming to us with different backgrounds. We have a guy I'm thinking about Boris love he came to us as a truck driver. He bought a truck company like trucking company with like, what do call it? Like basically in Chicago, they're doing like, doing deliveries with truck. I'm not even sure.

Jon Stoddard (09:25.106)
how that works, right? But so you bought a business doing 13 million a year in revenues. We had a guy, I think the weirdest crazy story we have is a guy, Leo, and we have, by the way, interviews with all of those people, like full 30, 40 minutes interviews on the website, if anyone of you want to check it out, but basically a guy who used to play music for a living, who's originally from Nigeria, living in Ukraine, who bought a multi-million dollar healthcare business in the US. For me- How does that happen?

I know, right? And the beauty is that, and if you're going to hear the interview, he's like, dude, it was so weird because I called business owners and they're like, what? You're from Nigeria? Is this like a prince, like a Nigerian? If you send $3,000, we'll unlock one million. Exactly. That's why I'm so inspired by some of those stories. So what he did, basically he reached to be the deal flow guy. He partnered with one of our community members for the SBA loan.

And then you have a manager in the business that he basically promoted from within. So we have some crazy stories, man. So it's inspiring. I'm telling you, I just had a call yesterday with a guy, Reza from Canada. He just moved from Iran to Canada two years ago and he bought a business, a construction business doing 16 million a year. I had a call with him yesterday to help him potentially continue to grow it out. And that's what's really exciting to see how I can go to clients that I helped by, for example, the first business and see maybe what I can do even further with them.

Wow. I'm just curious, do you find, you know, this is kind of a difference between Americans and immigrants or somebody from another country, are they're hungrier and they see like an open field or is it kind of a mix? I love it. mean, you know, somebody coming from a country that, you know, can't do, doesn't really have capitalism, like comes here and says, my God, this is a playground. I'm just open up. I can do pretty much anything.

good question. We can dive as deep into you as you want on that, on just personality in general. Who is successful in the athlete? Why someone is more successful than someone else? Is it the Is it his experience? Is it his beliefs? Is he willing to study and grow? Is it faith? Is it all of those things? Exactly. Who's in control? Are we even in control of anything that happens in life?

Jon Stoddard (11:48.694)
in a weird simulation. I don't know, man. And it's probably some combination of all, right? In the end of the day. Yeah. Well, back to your, you you had all these domains and all of sudden this guy just says, Hey man, take this off my hands. I mean, that's, that's opportunity meeting kind of luck because you created all this opportunity where it just, it was just there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think for me, I mean, here's the thing, right? I'm working a lot, but I would say that a lot of my

success comes to luck. I'm not, I don't think I'm that smart. Usually nothing in my first language. just that I'm, I think I'm just more persistent than most and I'm just willing to do this. So, so that was, I mean, definitely luck 100%. And then, I mean, I had, I guess some of the other deals were still some luck. So I guess over time I just learned more, right? So when, when luck starts, when luck ends, I don't know, man, you know, just,

I mean, I think Mike is you create that luck because you just push and push and push to be able to get yourself an open shot. Yeah. Yeah. Was that Nigerian guy that purchased that business? he in controlling interest of the company? Because it seems like you'd have to have if somebody put an SBA program, they'd have to be a United States citizen. Is that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. So so you had partners with that?

And then he had an option to buy them for an extra predetermined price for the rest of it. That's fantastic. mean, that's fantastic. we also just, just by the way, with the predetermined price and the option, that's something that you might be interested in hearing. Like we just had a story with one of our guys that we supported. He did a roll-up of 16 companies in less than six months, doing 62 million in EBITDA, almost 200 million in revenues with that similar structure.

Wait, let's talk about that. So was it a roll up? Did he start with funds like a private equity or is he just an option? Just an option to purchase? my God, I love that. So he came in and say, hey, he's obviously pretty good presenter and salesperson say, hey, we'd like to buy your business. What we're going to do is roll it up to get it to a certain even a level. And then we'll

Jon Stoddard (14:07.554)
the end customer in mind, is maybe a private equity firm or public or something else like that. And they said, yes, we want to and what kind of industry would that? Exactly. It's in the online space. I'll just say that because it's, let's just say that for those of you who hear this, you probably, there's a lot of aggregator in that space. Let's just say that in that online space. And yeah, I'm just, I don't want to create too much.

competition for that. But you don't have to tell me just be very generic about it. So it's in the online space. So sorry, what was the question? Well, I mean, tell me about a little bit more about, you know, how she was able to reach all these players and just really good salesperson to say, okay, I'm in, I'm going to sign on the downline because I'd like to see

you know, more money in three to five years or something. Yeah. So, so it went through the process, right? First of all, we had the process of figuring out what's the best sector for him to be, right? Based on his background, experience, contacts, fashion, curiosity. Like I like to tell everyone that, that I'm talking to, I'm like, Hey, if in 10 years from now, you're going to be on a Forbes magazine cover, what do want people to write on you? Like, are you going to be proud saying, Hey, this is my sector, right? Are you going to be proud telling your mom, this is my sector, right? So it started with that. Let's pick the sector. Then let's pick a strategy for deal flow.

Right. So with DealFlo, he picked one deal strategy and he just mastered that one. He just went all in on that strategy. With him, by the way, he just went through masterminds, he used masterminds. So he found different masterminds in that space and he just went all in on that. So all in on masterminds, then created a partnership and relationship with the mastermind holders, giving them some kind of equity or upside from the deal. Then obviously the conversation with the business owners, right?

selling their story, creating the pitch, creating the story, making sure that it's believable, making sure that your offer for the business owner actually makes sense compared to what else they have on the marketplace, right? Negotiating the structure or use and how much the owner stays in the business post acquisition. That was a big part because every owner have different goals, right? Someone who stays, someone who lives, someone to maybe stay for a little bit, someone willing to retain equity, someone to have equity in the holding company. So there's basically, it's a different deal with each person, but

Jon Stoddard (16:23.232)
overall combined becomes one big entity that they then they went out there and pitch for a private equity firm to another just the disoperated. Yeah, explain how that works. But you they don't really own the revenue until what part I mean, until the option is exercise until the option is exercise. So you put an option for whatever period you can negotiate on and then yeah, you can exercise it whenever and they don't put any money down to purchase that.

but do they come in and say, let's unlock some more value or you could see where we can boost revenue and doing this? No, of course. think in general, for everyone who's doing acquisition right now, if you're just a deal maker and you can't really add value to the deal, especially if you want to do a roll up, you're just not a player. You're just a deal maker. A deal maker is not valuable anymore. I think 2021, being a good deal maker used to be really good at, I don't know, the 80s, 90s, right? That the big acquisitions there. Right now, unless you can really add value to a business.

And when I'm saying value, I'm talking everything anywhere from the leadership to operations, to the org chart, to obviously sales, marketing, finance, right? And what are the values for the company? What are the accountability for each employee? What are the KPIs? What is the corporate structure and governance for each owner of each business? Because for example, there's 16 companies in the Trollab. How do you keep each person basically, you know, in control? How do you make sure that this guy is not doing something that the other guy

You don't want him to do, right? How do you make sure that this guy is not doing something completely different? Because people think, okay, I'm going to buy eight companies, but sometimes buying eight companies just means messy of eight more things, right? So it doesn't necessarily mean a good necessarily upside. What are the cross-selling opportunities, the synergy, the cost saving opportunities with those businesses? Who is the first best business to buy? Because sometimes if you don't make the first good acquisition as a platform company that can potentially handle and support all the others, that can be a mistake in itself.

So we supported him to make sure that the first one is a platform company that can support all the other companies and he's buying them in dirt order. So even when he raised capital, he raised it in chunks, right? He told the private equity, hey, here's what is the goal. Like, and obviously it's a matter also negotiation. They gave him a percentage of the total deal. Like that's 62 million EBITDA. Just to give you an idea, other companies in that space, public companies or companies that are raising capital from large institutions for different...

Jon Stoddard (18:47.118)
for similar roll-ups, they're raising 31 multiples of EBITDA. means that- multiples of EBITDA? Yeah. Yeah. Like, if you look at public companies in that space, they're trading like 30 times, 30, 31, 32 multiples of EBITDA. So it pretty much created a billion, multi-billion dollar company enterprise value in less than six months. And he's a unicorn, right? This is like, this is...

This is very unlikely to happen for most people who want to get into acquisition, but this is what's possible. And this is what, that's one of the reasons I just bought Rollups.com, because that's what I want to create. Someone just told me, are you trying to create the biggest roll up in the world pretty much? I'm like, that's good. I'm going to steal that. I'm going to use that sentence. Yeah. And so when they put that option on the company and they say, Hey, look, here's what we need to do to your business. Do they...

grow organically from cashflow or do they, you said they do raise money sometimes to be able to get, know, implement or execute that strategy. Yeah. So in this case, he just raised everything at once. So he sold everything as one group, right? So he raised, he created 16 companies structure and then he raised everything. I know that right now he just closed on a deal that is not necessarily, so we're supporting him with that.

with the operations as well. So he's not necessarily putting options anymore, but he's also taking percentages from upsides, right? So you have the operation, you have the structures right now, you have the platform company. So now you can take, can take some kind of EBITDA number or a multiple and then say, okay, we'll help you and we want whatever from the upside. Yeah. Now, how is that, if you were delivered to see like you have a pitch deck and you're to go raise money from somebody and say, look, but

No, this is an option and it's not really real even for all 16 companies until they're all signed. This is what I'm trying to understand is how they, when you go to investor and go say, hey, we're trying to raise on this multiple, but we don't really own all those companies. They're under option. I didn't say did you raise that 30 times? I'm saying that when he's out there looking at different similar companies at that size, those are the multiples. He didn't raise it that price, obviously.

Jon Stoddard (21:10.434)
that's where the negotiation coming to play. So the reason I'm asking is I have a friend doing this, what you're talking about in financial newsletter industry, in the money newsletter, and those multiples are very high, very high. it's, you can turn 16 companies into a billion dollar company very fast. If you've got a bunch of investors, know, accredited investors on an 1 million email list. Yeah.

100%. And that's the beauty with everything online and technology. mean, look at the biggest companies in the world right now. They're all technology companies, right? Like publicly traded companies. They're technology, they're growing like very fast growing companies. Those are the multiples. That's why you see VC companies, venture capital firms investing in those companies. And that's why they don't care that one out of like nine out of 10 will shut down because they know that one company that will grow fast will get there.

Yeah. And people don't know like a lot of technology firms, like I just, I had a call with, should I mention their name? Their name is Regap and they actually just changed their name. They're a multi-billion dollar company, used the process of venture capital. So they raised capital from some of the biggest venture capital firms in world. I'm talking to Andres and Orvitz and all those guys like in Silicon Valley. And they grew slowly. They have a very minimal product that they grew organically in the beginning, but now they're only growing by acquisitions. Like I talked to a...

someone in their company and, man, I'm getting myself in trouble, but I'll just say that, that, that, they're telling me that internally, everything is in a mess. And what they're doing is they're just got to continue their fast growing base to, to, make sure that the shareholders are happy. Right. Cause when you raise capital from venture capital firms, guess what? They want their exit. They want their returns. Right. And they want to go and liquidate and basically.

have a liquidation, go IPO as soon as possible. So they're constantly buying any companies they can think of. They expanded also their sectors. They used to be focused on one thing, now they're expanding their horizon into different sectors in basically, you could say something similar baseline that they can work with. And that's all they're doing. And she told me everything is in a mess. Everything is in a mess. It may seem to be somebody on the outside, but inside we know.

Jon Stoddard (23:36.3)
Inside we're in a mess, but we just grow the top line number. So that's the most important thing. Now, when somebody goes through your program, do you take a piece of the business as a, or they pay a consulting fee or a mastermind fee? So, yeah, so on the front end, it's just one time payment. It's a consulting fee and then the backend. Cause in the other day, I don't want talk to everyone. don't know. Like I need to know the person first, right? I need to know.

I'm to be honest, I don't want to talk to you. Like at this point, we get hundreds of different people who messaging us on a weekly basis. So I'm not planning to talk to everyone that's want to partner with me and spend time with all of that. But some of my partners, I just give them access to me or whenever they want. Like they have my, they, message me on the same number that my mom messaged me. So, so my goal is to have some kind of a front end education to make sure that you understand my, my way of looking at acquisitions at the world. Let's see if we even vibe together. Let's see if you, we have similar values.

Let's see if you're aligned with my process. And then if it is, I'll show you what we do. But if you want our help in the process, then we can talk about that. Yeah. How do you kind of judge somebody's character, you know, after two, three phone calls? It's really easy. I mean, you know, they're going to be on their best behavior for two or three phone calls and they got a great deal and it looks good and it goes, okay, go ahead. you know, they down the line, you know, like, you know, I was just reading a book by

what's this guy's name, Steven Schwartzman over at Blackstone. he said that everybody at Lehman, when he was working at Lehman, was just arrogant and unethical and out from themselves. And he didn't want to do that. He said, we're never going to take over a business unless they say they want to. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a great question, I think.

probably again, question about life in general, right? How do you judge someone that you meet if you can trust them or not? And I think someone told me in the past that, I don't remember who was that, but he told me you only really know a person after you really know him for like really knowing for one or two years before that, even if you think you know him, don't really know him. Right? So only after two years of intense relationship with someone you really, really know him. So that's first. So it's coming up with the assumption that, you know what? I'll just need to take some kind of a risk here. Right? Second of all,

Jon Stoddard (25:57.482)
by the fact that they go through my process, my funnel, they watch a lot of my videos before they even work with us in the first place, right? It shows me that they somehow align with me and my, I don't know, call it my vibe, my energy, whatever you want to call it, right? So I feel like that's a first filtration. And then I see simple things like, okay, how accountable they are, how much so we're doing like weekly calls with me every week. So I see, okay, who's joining those calls? Who's committed? Who's actually serious about that, right?

who's messaging us every day with questions, who's actually posting. So we have a community with people who's posting, showing us progress and maybe helping others and not just taking care of himself and worrying about himself. I think it comes down to, yeah, just those simple things, easy, consistent, committed, accountable, sorry, willing to help others. And at some point just taking a risk as well.

Yeah, I mean, we're interconnected, interdependent on each other. And it's the really the only thing you can do aside from getting them face to face and do a lie detector test. you you can't, you've got to be able to say like, this is my program. And, and it's also understanding the thing that in the future, no matter, like in the end of the day, I mean, look at how many people get married and eventually divorced, right?

You know, I'm sure when they started, when they started with their marriage, they didn't think that they're going to divorce because they hey, I know this guy, I'm sure I want to live with him for rest of my life. So people change. And I think as long as there's expectations from day one on who's doing what and, again, I'm not married, so I'm not sure I'm the best to give advice on that. But I say, I would say that I'm thinking if I would get married, I wouldn't want to make sure that there's

some kind of expectations of what the downside might look like. And we want to talk about it when we're not emotional. Because when you're emotional, you're just stupid. I mean, when we're emotional, we're just making stupid decisions. So ideally, let's make those decisions when we're logical and when we're in a good vibe, when we're just starting with that exciting process. And if we can't get to those understandings when we're not in an emotional state, then guess what? It's going to be 10 times more difficult later in the future when we are in.

Jon Stoddard (28:10.976)
some kind of a weird emotional state and everyone is, you know, kind of like just afraid and exiting from their subconscious and their, yeah, their primal brain versus like, hey, let's just be logical and normal and good people and try to create win-win scenarios. Yeah, right. Yeah, I heard that. Never make a big decision when you're emotionally down or emotionally high. Yeah. Yeah.

On this 16 company roll up, are you an advisor or an equity owner and stake in that? Yeah. So let's just say that with some of my partners, I'm taking a percentage of equity as well. So, and with everyone is different, right? I would say it's a deal by deal basis with everyone. Yeah. No, it makes sense. And did this person that started this roll up when they came to you, had they acquired a business before? Did they own an e-commerce just one or?

Never, no, they had a business in a healthcare space. that's interesting. And they just moved over to a completely related, unrelated industry? Yeah, so it's a business that's running for almost 15 years. So it's kind of like running, he's still there in the office, but it's almost like running without him at this point. So he's maybe putting like few hours a week into it. So most of his time is right now in the new venture. Yeah. So who do you follow? I mean, I love reading books and I like right now I'm reading the

Stephen Schwartzman's Blackstone. So that's an amazing story. And I just finished Shoe Dog from Phil Knight. He's another great one to follow. Yeah. Who do I follow? Everyone. I mean, I'm exaggerating, right? But I'm trying to, I mean, look, look at my audible. I have like, I don't know if you can see that. have like 840, 874. Can you see that?

or yeah, say 70 something. Yeah. So, so I mean, and yeah, I'm looking at I can go through kind of the first book. So I also have a David Rubenstein book, which is also a Carl Carlisle, private equity. Yeah, I have a lot of Jim Collins stuff. I have a lot of John Maxwell stuff on the leadership. I have 11 rings here by Phil Jackson. What else? So so I have a lot of like, you know, different, what do you call it, like a little

Jon Stoddard (30:32.714)
personal development stuff. I went through some Walton book, Ray Dalio principles, a lot of weird spiritual stuff as well. I'm just looking at some stuff here, like all the Bhagavad Gita and Rumi stuff. And I like to dive into all that. I read through all of Richard Branson's book. Branson is the boss. Yeah, he's the boss. Seriously, I think everyone is thinking about like who's the

I don't know if everyone, it's like, who's the ideal entrepreneur? It looks like, like he got it. He got the success, but he also really enjoys life. That's the guy, right? It's looked like he's always happy. He's like always dressed, dressed like super casual living on an island and owns hundreds of businesses, like multi-billion dollar operation. Also have a shoe dog here. Anyway, can, I have a buddy that follows his business model because it's like an ecosystem that feeds off each other. You know, he wouldn't buy a business that just stand alone.

It's a business that works integrally with a number of other businesses. But even with Richard Branson, I don't know if you can say that necessarily all of his businesses work together. He basically franchises his brand. That's what he's doing. That's the genius. He took one company that had a great brand, great reputation, great way of treating customers. And he basically reproduced it in hundreds of sectors. And he's just partnering with people who are super

What do call it? They just have experience. Already have a good beachhead and good face, you know, a value with them. Exactly. They also have expertise in those areas. So I've read in the book, for example, so he partnered 50-50 with those guys who already sold a chain of gyms and then he partnered 50-50 with them to create a virgin. I think it's, I don't remember, but basically they're gyms. don't, I'm not sure which countries have that, but he's just doing 50-50 and he's acting many times.

also just as an investor, a VC investor. So he's- Or yeah, not controlling interest. He has a lot of businesses where he's saying, you know, I remember the story he told about he had a business where he owned 30, 40 % and the management decided to sell and he said he didn't want to. He just, I didn't have any to sell. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. It is great though. It's truly inspiring. I think even more than the money that he made.

Jon Stoddard (32:56.94)
It's really the level and the expansion of the impact that he created alongside of him just living. It looks like we don't, I don't know him personally, but it looks like living a great lifestyle, having a great family life from everything that I've read. And so like you have a great kids actually went through one of his kids books, like full book, all about how to build operations and businesses that will create the impact and create like different charities and stuff like that. So.

I think when I'm thinking success is definitely on there on the top. Yeah. What would you pay to have lunch with him? Kind of like Warren Buffett sells this one hour's worth of lunch. It's good question. You know, I mean.

I don't know, man. Like what can you really get from one lunch? mean, I think, you know what, I think it's worth everything just for the energy, the vibe and inspiration you get from being next to someone like that. Cause sometimes it's really just about the transfer of energy as woo as I get here right now. But it just being around someone like that, like physically that's really almost force you to step up as a person. You know, it's kind of like, okay, this guy, that's the beauty. Like I met a few billionaires in my life. Like I'm multi billionaires.

And I think every time the realization I had was, he's just a normal human being. He's not more smart. You can't say that that guy isn't something like some of those guys you see, they're sharp, they're focused. It's nuances, but it's not like they're not like a hundred acts better than me or you or anyone out there. And you find out that damn, if that guy did that, mean, you know.

I can probably go through that path as well if I'm willing to make, I think the biggest thing is if you're willing to make the sacrifices, right? Cause most people aren't. it sacrifices and you know, the one thing is like acquiring businesses is like opening a door to new dimension. Cause everybody's just like focused on growing organically, organically, organically, and they'll get 10 % growth per month or per year.

Jon Stoddard (35:04.522)
and they're stuck and that's it. go like, but what is it unlocks these guys billionaires so they could see such a bigger market, such more value and spending time with them that unlocks that? That just opens that door and say, hey, walk through it. This is what I see. Yeah, it's kind of like doing psychedelics, you know? Yeah, and as someone who's done probably a lot of those, not probably, but done a lot of those.

stuff, psychedelics and ayahuasca and all that stuff. It just opens your, your horizon and how you look at the world. And I think you just start to take things less seriously and you see, this is just a playground. You know, we can just play it. And the level of the game that you're going to play is a lot of it comes down to just the level of your. Believing yourself on what's possible. I mean, I don't think, I think that the beauty with business is that unlike like being a professional, sport player and I'm not being like.

I can never be in the NBA. I don't think so. Maybe if I would start playing from, I don't know, age five, maybe. But I mean, I'm looking at some of the people or you know what? Forget about it. Let's talk football, soccer. I played actually most of my life from the age like I think 10, no, from the age of seven to the age of like 18 until I went to the army. Like I tried to be a professional football player, a goalkeeper, and I just wasn't good enough. Now the question is, would I...

Would I be able to be a professional player if I would have the same mentality and commitment that I have today? Perhaps, I don't know. But I think what I'm trying to say is that the beauty with business is that, like you see so many stories of people who are just like normal, you hear their interviews and it's like just small nuances there that they made amazing decisions. They took enough, like the right risk. They were able to better themselves. They were able to stay consistent and focused, right? They were able to have tenacity and go up when...

after they failed, right? It's those things. It's more about the character than, I don't know, like obviously it's part of it, right? But I think when you have all of this combined, you just find like more and more. It's like the harder I work, the luckier I get. It's kind of close that we're here, right? Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about some of your really kind of wild deals that didn't work out. I mean, that you can talk about. I mean, I don't want anybody to get in trouble legally.

Jon Stoddard (37:28.652)
Hold on one second, this happens? should have taken that. Yeah. But yeah, no worries. I can think about a few of them for sure. So I think that the really interesting story that I had, I had a company that's very similar, a website very similar to Buzzfeed, for those of you who, I think they just went public on a Spark media, I think I've read, or they're thinking about going on a Spark. So I bought that business. So I bought a marketing agency and I was able to buy that.

that business for basically just providing value. So pretty much the structure that I told you, we're just like, Hey, let's play a number on your EBITDA. I think I can help you go from here to there. Here's the value I can bring to you and let's go in. And I went to do that business. We grew that business. So did around one million a month. And at some point, so you're talking about failure. Like the way we made money was from Google advertising. So we used to basically what we did. So for those of you familiar with Buzzfeed,

It's basically a website that just shows random, how can you even describe those? Like random viral news. It's just content. It's a content. Yeah. Just, just weird stuff. So we literally just had the option to drive. I'm talking also like, damn, this was like probably seven years ago or 10 years ago. And I'm talking like we were one of the first people to drive traffic from Facebook ads. And back then,

We had what we call out the brain and the bola, which I don't know if you heard, it's kind of like also a media buying site. So we were able to find an arbitrage to buy traffic from super cheap and make money from ads basically, right? So we just created an arbitrage and just like had insane returns on our ad spend. Cause we had a team to just find and curate content. And I'm talking like the weirdest, like I'm, it's funny. Some of those, when you see random ads, I still see some of those websites out there.

And when you see some random ads online of like, hey, click this or hey. Yeah. It's like a parents playing basketball. You're like, why do I want to click on that? But you do anyway. my God, a parent picked up the ping pong ball and put it in the basket. I got to show my daughter this. Exactly. It's just so weird because I remember some of the stuff in that web. Is this seriously some of the most ridiculous content in the world?

Jon Stoddard (39:55.884)
And like I said, you cannot not click on those things. It's literally just like you just have to click on that. my God, they're just going back and forth like a real basketball game. I just wasted 90 seconds of my life. Exactly. And that's how we made a lot of money. Right. So anyway, what I'm trying to say that we have to shut down the business because Google shut down our our ads account and it happened to us more than once. And it's something we're like, OK, we don't play with this.

And I'm talking like a lot of money, like seven figure money that just gone in Google. And we were thinking about suing them, but then we had a few conversations with people who tried suing Google and it just, it didn't feel like it's worth it. Cause just by going to those fights with the Google, mean that in itself can cost you more money than you might even bring back. Assuming that obviously you're losing. So we just kind of like.

Let it go. And have an unlimited bank account to keep that lawsuit open with you forever. Exactly. Right. So we're just like, you know what, let's give up and move on. And it's kind of like, think it's also taught me a great lesson on how like the just the dependency on one or two revenue sources. Right. It's kind like when you're looking at businesses right now, like immediately thinking, okay, what's the revenue source?

where that revenue is coming from? What's the guarantee for that revenue to continue to come to me after I'm the owner of the business, right? What's the potential downside? How can this seller guarantee to me that a dollar will come as soon as I'm going into the business, right? I think anyway, we- Would you say no to that business? If you looked at a business and said, whether it's customer concentrations, 90 % or, you know, ad source or-

is 90%. Would you say no to it? Or would you say, look, we're interested in the business, but here's the valuation and here's why because it's too high a concentration? Yeah. Yeah. So I think it depends on the, on the appetite that I'll have specifically on the deal, right? What's my, what's my upside compared to my downside? And I think everyone is in a different situation to, judge what the risk of these willing to pay. So, I mean, if you'll show me that there's a potential hundred X thousand X upside versus going to zero.

Jon Stoddard (42:22.688)
then I look at it very differently compared to something that might have, I don't know, two times X upside in the next few years, right? So it really depends on what's the kind of the risk reward ratio. And based on that, if you're not talking to, I want to put my time into that potentially risk money or risk someone else's money. Yeah, I don't think there is a strict rule. I think it's just a very important lesson to, okay, like when you see something like that, just make sure you're taking it.

you're taking it seriously and understand, okay, there's a potential downside here and you can get hurt. Yeah, Stephen Schwartzman's blackstone said, you know, one of his golden rules, don't lose money, which is also one above it. Roller, don't lose money. Number two, don't forget that rule number one. Exactly. Your risk on that. How would you look at that deal and say, well, look, you have too much content.

Look, let me go back to the story here. I think I've already said this before. I had an e-commerce business where 90 % of my customers coming in, prospects coming in was Google AdWords. It was a piece of cake. But when they moved from desktop to mobile, killed my business. Went from 13 people bidding on something to four people. So all the cost per acquisition, cost per click just went up 4x. Like killed the business.

You know, that's a big mistake that I've learned for the rest of my life. go like, dude, if I see any business with 90 % customer concentration, eh, you know, how do I minimize my risk there? Well, you don't pay any, any money for it because. Yeah, exactly. And it's gone. Exactly. you see it with so many industries online right now. I you hear every day about different accounts getting shut down on if it's Facebook or Edwards or different e-commerce, platforms like Amazon.

different rules that changes every day. Back days, even when I used to buy and sell domains and I used to, told you, put content on websites, every Google update will basically destroy you. So if you, all of your content is from one traffic source, I don't care if it's SEO, that's why actually you see some of the biggest companies in the world, their main, what do call it? Like getting clients source is actually like very old school stuff. So a lot of them just using really direct outreach, like cold.

Jon Stoddard (44:39.894)
call stuff. Why? Because it's the most reliable. Right? Like in the end of the day, they can't bend your phone, right? If you can systemize that and know how to scale a team like that, that's why you see some of the biggest companies in the world. had a call with a top level guy at Zillow, zillow.com, the real estate site. And you hear their story, just amazing. You know, they started literally cold calling different

Basically brokers are most of their clients. That's how they started selling advertising space for brokers. And he told me that's how we started. We just went out there and reached out to brokers and built ourselves the process and scripts. that's how built. I also think direct mail too, because you really can't stop. Yeah. Yeah. And now, especially with Google, man, with Google and Facebook, I don't know, it's scary. mean, especially with what's going on with the government right now that they don't really like all of those companies. I don't know what's going to happen in the future.

You know, and a lot of small businesses are dependent on, like, I think they said, I don't remember the exact numbers, but around, think 80 or 90 % of ads spent online goes to the big ones like Google, Facebook. I think I'm not sure if Amazon is on the top level, but it's kind like, there's, you know, those, those Bohemian companies and everyone else is almost dependent on them at this point to, create a business. So that's why when you see a company that isn't necessarily dependent on 100%, it's, it's, it shows for a lot of strength.

Yeah, yeah, it's a different time. Is there any industry that you wouldn't work with? I mean, you're kind of talking about like some conservative sites or, you know, military or gun sites. I mean, they just they're getting shut down their payment processes and getting shut down their websites, domains are getting shut down from places like that any industry you wouldn't work in. It's just like, no, you know, highly regulated like banking or just is this too much issue? Or is it?

I never want to say no to anything. mean, because we have seriously some of the stories that I've seen. I it really depends on who you bring into the table. Like if I can bring someone who have a lot of experience in that sector and can show me, OK, what's the downside? What's possible? What's the potential upside? Then I might look at things differently. Right now, when you mention what you mentioned right now with the merchant accounts being shut down, it's not a great thing. I'm like, immediately you want to walk away, right? But I can tell you with any industry, there are

Jon Stoddard (47:04.726)
there are a few unicorns that still find ways to make money, right? I can tell you with literally like, I know people who made a lot of money when like when COVID started with restaurants. I know people who like, I'm in Cyprus right now, I'm just speaking out loud. Like I know people who own here like one guy, specific guy that owns multi, multi hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues for X company, shitty industry, right? Like that's for example, I might not get myself into just morally.

want to get close to that. But when I hear those guys talk, they talk about a lot of competitors that have to shut down because of regulations and licenses that they can't have anymore because a lot of countries shut them down. But those guys still figure it out. Right. So I think that no matter which industry, you'll always find unicorns. There's always like, like to say, when people ask me what industry should I pick? I say, I mean, at end of the day, it comes down to what industry you want to be part of, right? Like

There are billionaires, millionaires in probably any industry you can think of. There's like, if I would tell you that there's a guy who made billions of dollars after he bought a business, no money down, that he's a yogurt factory. Would you believe me? Yeah. Are you talking about the Turkish guy in the United States? Trubani. Yeah. Trubani. Multi-billion dollar company, a guy who bought a business with no money down, yogurt factory, right? If someone would ask me right now, Hey, what sector should I pick? would tell you, dude, the best sector is.

yogurt factory, he'll laugh at me. Right? He was an immigrant from Turkey. I I've lived in Turkey, Incralik a long time ago and you know, he came here and just, there's no money. It's like, but he was a capitalist, which you can't be a capitalist in Turkey. Yeah. And I mean, it's, it's just amazing to see that in the end of the day, again, call it lack of consistency, call it in his case, just trying to create the best product, delivering to his clients, the best service and products and creating more products over time.

really taking care of his employees from what I've heard and he just interested in solving it. Making it taste good. And it tastes good. Yeah, the product is amazing, right? So the product is amazing. So he did so many good things alongside a lot of commitment, hard work, a bit of luck and billionaire from a yogurt factory. How better can it get? Did you meet him? He's one of the guys? No, no, I didn't.

Jon Stoddard (49:29.004)
Do you, do we, would we know the billionaires that you met? So most of the ones that I met are Israelis. I don't know how much true, but I met, for example, maybe, maybe, know, is it technology? Teddy Sagie is kind of top four Israeli, which is people in the world. So he's very much investing in, so maybe people from the UK will know the name because he, he bought Camden in the markets in the UK, which is kind a very big one there. He started his, his

He's staying in an actually online gambling. So he used to have the biggest platform for online. So he had the company that used to have all the softwares for every online gambling in the world, pretty much like he was kind of the dominant player. He took it public very fast. He became a billionaire from that. And since then he's just been investing in his, he's invested in a lot of technology companies, a lot of Israeli companies that have insane exits and they're just killing it. Yeah.

That's amazing. Yeah, it's a big technology sector in Israel. It's really amazing. Yeah. Who's the guy that's at the crowdfunding site that just is going public with that? What was his name? Our crowds? Yeah, I think so. It's an Israeli company. Yeah. Are you going to start a fund to purchase companies? Because yes, no, I'm seeing the face like.

Because a lot of these other guys like Carl Allen started fun to be able to say, hey, man, if I go buy a company, I want to be able to get it real fast. Yeah. So we're already doing that on a deal-by-deal basis. For example, the Masonry deal we just closed is one of the examples. So we do it kind of like a syndicate on a deal-by-deal basis. But I think it's just a normal, make sense next step to raise a larger fund. So we won't have to basically call for capital on every deal, which could just call once and then do more deals. Yeah.

So the syndicate is the, you you got a pretty big list is do they have to be accredited investors outside of the United States or? So you have to be an accredited investors to invest. There is an option to work with unaccredited. I just didn't use it, didn't try it so far, but there are ways to register for non-accredited. I just didn't use it so far. think that we just have enough accredited to begin with. And it just, I think it just a much longer education cycle to explain to non-accredited and what.

Jon Stoddard (51:50.282)
what the downside might looks like. I just, don't know, at least at this point, I don't think I want to play that at that level. And also I've seen what good run card on how it going on. And it's just a mess. don't think it's anyone want to deal with it. Like it looks like a lot of people just complained about his fund. And when I dive into the details, I just found out that there's a lot of non-accredited people who just didn't dive into reading the actual agreement and they complained. So.

Yeah, think it makes sense. Yes or no. Yeah, if you say yes, like, exactly. It's your problem. Yeah. So yeah, it's also just just just the idea that okay, if you made some money, I mean, how can I make it sounds without without me sounding like I'm judge? I'm not judging. I started with nothing right? I came from a single mom home from a very small city in Israel. So but all I'm saying that I think when you don't have money, you're acting a little from scarcity.

and you're just making different decisions, that's all. Well, do make decisions, that's how you know. You just go along that path. Best way is find somebody else who's already taken that path. Yeah. Yeah. How would somebody get involved with you and your course? What's the start? Because the real, man, I've already gotten talked for 55 minutes here, or you haven't. It goes by fast. Yeah, it is. 55 minutes. Yeah, I didn't even notice.

Yeah, just go to acquisitions.com plurals and see what's up. if you want to, and if you guys want to message me privately, I'm happy to. My email is just moran at acquisitions.com. I'll personally answer you. It's not the robot or one of my team members, just me. So if you really want to talk, cause you're a guy that deal with people. So I'm happy. always like to talk to acquisitions. Yeah. And by the way, it might take about 10 hours to answer because he's in Cyprus. He's 10 hours. Unless you're in Europe, then it's going to take less.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So what's next for for you? I mean, are you going to just take pieces of action everywhere? Are you still going to have your own roll up or acquisition and purchase and sell them? So it's all of the above, right? So acquisitions.com is the opportunity for us to find deal flow and to roll up with people. And rollups.com hopefully is going to be kind the next level of that combination combined with what you said on the on the capital side of things.

Jon Stoddard (54:15.372)
So I think that's a good way to end the podcast is like that guy told me, Moran, you're building the biggest roll up in the world. I think that if I would look at that as the North Star, that'll be an awesome path and purpose to have. And that North Star of helping and building the biggest roll up in the world is by helping others create big roll ups on their own. And I'll just be part of that upside with them. So that if you tell me where you want to be in five years from now.

If I could create hundreds of roll-ups with my community where I can be a significant partner with them and support them, not just with finding deals, analyzing deals, raising capital, but also supporting post acquisitions with operations and everything there. That will be, I think, a super exciting and purposeful journey to a walkthrough. Maran, thanks for the time. Great domain name, great conversation. I really appreciate it. Thanks, man. It was great. I appreciate it.

Take care. Thank you. You too.