Ep 341: [Case Study] Acquiring A Media & Membership Business Doing $2K Net Profit P/mth In 6 Months with AJ

This is what it takes to buy a $50,000 business in six months is making $2,000 net profit per month.

Hi, I'm Jaryd Krause. I'm the host of the Buying Online Business Podcast. And today I'm speaking with AJ. He's a Buying Online Businesses course and community who went from being a corporate employee running a large IT team for a global bank to now owning an online business and looking at buying more online businesses to build a portfolio.

In this pod, we talk about why he went from a failing startup that he tried to decide to buy an online business, how he discovered my stuff and got into this, what business model he chose to go with, and why, out of all the business models and education training he went through.

We also talk about how much what the business is, what it does, how it serves its members, and aggregates content. We also talk about how much he bought the business for, and how much he saved on the acquisition from the listing price.

How much the multiple was and what multiple he actually paid for. We talk about the net profits,' ss making per month. And then we dive into more about the business. We talk about the risks of buying a business.

We talk about how much due diligence he's done, what type of due diligence he did. We talk about it, and I ask him what the harder part is about buying a business, which is fascinating. It's a bit different from everybody else's answer, but it's quite, quite important.

And he ties into why it was the hardest and what you can do to make that easier through your journey. And then I ask him, what would his advice be to first-time buyers, say a friend who was looking to buy a business, which he shares. And we talk about where to go next from here for him and building out his portfolio.

There's so much value in this podcast. We do talk about the due diligence framework. I'm going to give it to you guys for free. Go to buyingonlinebusinesses.com, or just free resources, or check out the resources in the top navigation bar, and you can get that for free.

Made people millions of dollars, saved people millions of dollars. It's what AJ has used, I've used, and so many people have. So go away, grab that, and enjoy the pod.

AJ, welcome to the podcast.

Hey Jaryd, well, thanks for having me.

Absolutely. Thanks for coming on.

It's so good that having you guys come on and share your experience is like gold for people wanting to buy a business. I'm grateful, and everybody else who listens to the podcast and is on the same journey in the course and the community is super grateful for you coming on. And yeah, you're a graduate. Congratulations on your acquisition.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. You know, it's been, it's been an exciting and wonderful journey. Happy to talk about it and happy to share my experience. Happy to tell your listeners what the journey has been like, you know, what's the good and the bad. So absolutely excited to be here.

Cool man. Well, let's start from the start. How do you decide of like, yep, I'm buying an online business? Like, where did that come about? Well, so I started looking into businesses, now, like probably a lot of your listeners who've been in similar situations in the past, you know, where they've been wanting to go on their own, do something of their own. I started with, you know, I had a startup that unfortunately was, you know, one of those, you know, as they say, 90 % of startups don't make it.

I'm one of those 90%, you know, startups are to build something, you know, and then not only just build it, but actually, you know, make it grow it and then make it profitable. Right. So that's where really my journey started about three to four years ago.

Then once that did not work out for me, I actually started looking in the re in brick and mortar space and was interested in buying a brick and mortar business. And, I was actually listening to a podcast where you were a guest on that podcast, and it happened to be that you were talking about digital businesses and online businesses.

I'm like, well, my background is technology. And, know, I didn't even know back then. And this is now we're talking about, a year ago. I didn't even know that such a thing existed, where, you know, people were basically buying and selling digital assets and digital businesses.

So that's really what piqued my interest, right? And I started listening to more of your podcasts, you watching your YouTube videos, Jaryd, as well as you know, a couple of other folks who are sort of in the industry.

And I really like watching, you know, buying online businesses, you know, what you had to share in terms of your own journey, but not just that. Also, you know, you were very pragmatic about this, it's not just, this is not going to be a walk in the park.

You were very realistic. You were sharing true experiences. The people that you were bringing on your podcast and you were sharing their experiences were very realistic. They were glad that they found you because a lot of them did not come from a digital technology or an online background, just like you. Whereas in my case, I did and I thought, this is going to be sort of, this is up my alley.

But now I think I could be farther from the truth because there's so much more. I work in technology and corporate, so different right when you're working for a large organization versus when you're trying to buy an online business so so I'm glad you know i i came across your channel, and a year later i you know I'm a business owner.

Congratulations. Yeah, I'm glad that you discovered it as well, and I'm super glad it's helpful for everybody. Just listening, just one to one podcast can help. There are some little things people can pick up, which is what they're going to get from this as well. And so what was the startup that you started, and how long did you run that before you thought, I've got to pull the pin on this?

Well, the startup was actually interesting; it was in the F&B space. It was in a food and beverage space. It was something that wasn't a pure restaurant thing, but you've probably heard of it, I mean, in these days of Uber Eats and whatnot, you've heard of Ghost Kitchens. So it was more in a combination of what's called the Ghost Kitchen, with an actual retail space, with a digital application. So it was like these three things combined.

I was looking to basically bring a new concept into the F&B industry. And I went into it, I did that for about a year and a half, and that was a year and a half full-time. And that was, I wasn't working then, this was right after COVID.

So it was a lot of sweat, money, and energy that I poured into this for a year and a half. But it turned out that I had an investor lined up from Dubai who started talking, it required a lot of heavy capital because it had that physical presence as well. So not only did it have the application, and not only did it have the ghost kitchen concept, but it also had a physical presence.

But after a year and a half, I was feeling burnt out. And I think in reality, what I realized was that I was not looking to buy myself a different lifestyle. Right. And that's what it was becoming.

Right. And I think that's what really helped me decide to pull the plug on it because I think this is the big stark, and I think this is what you talk about when writing your courses and your podcast is right where you want to make people's lives better, right?

And sort of give them the freedom to spend time with the people they love and do things with the people they love, right? And that comes with a level of independence, right? Which I wasn't getting from that startup.

So that was really my startup journey, right? It was very different from, I brought to the technology aspect to it, but definitely nothing compared to like pure online digital business.

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's it's so refreshing to hear your take on the challenge of a startup, and you're also coming back to the main goal, like the primary reason that you're doing something is to, like you said, you want to you want some time freedom, right?

That's what I think most people's goals are. And we get caught up in the idea of like, I need to start a business, or I need to buy a business, or I need to grow a business, or I need to make more money. It's like we don't know.

Its the goal isn't money. At the end of the day, you can have all the money and be unhappy. Right. The goal is having peace and space and time to do what you love with the people you love.

Like you said, and what's the point if you're just working like you've built yourself a job, like you, most people build a startup, and they build themselves into a job, and that can be done when you buy a business. And I speak to people when I'm, you know, buying a larger business for them is like, you don't just want to go away and like buy yourself a job.

Nobody wants to like to go buy a business, we're just talking off air. The challenges, yeah, buying a business is tough. Who wants to buy a business? Like, nobody wants to buy a business. We just want what that vehicle is going to provide us. Yeah.

And I mean, you know, that, yeah, and I'll just add to that, right? I mean, that does not mean that you can be completely hands off and you cannot think about business, and this is something that you're just going to buy and sort of store it in your closet, and it's going to churn out money, right?

I mean, I want to, I want people to be realistic about it, right? But I think that the key things that you talked about, right? It's the freedom, right? It's the independence that you get, right? It's like, you know, I do things on my own time, but even if I'm not doing it, right? It's continuing to run.

That doesn't mean that I don't pay attention to it. That doesn't mean that I don't do things that require it. I need to get done, but I do them on my own, you know, on my own time. And I do that with however I want to do it, as opposed to working for somebody, right? Which is what I really did for 20 plus years.

Right? So, I think that's the independence that really is. Right. And I want people to understand, you know, it's not, definitely is not something that you buy and forget, right? is not, businesses are not such, you businesses are not, you know, you put money in a bank account and you forget and you earn interest on it, which is not a lot these days in the world, right?

Nobody can earn a living on just pure, you know, savings account interest. But it's so it's you're, you're thinking about it, right? But it's not something that, you know, you have to show up 6 p.m. right every day, five days a week, that's not the goal, right, because then it's a job.

That's right. Like you said before, you get to do the work on your own time. It's just controlling your calendar. When you can truly control your calendar, you truly can control your life, and super valuable. So, how did you decide on what business model to go for, AJ?

So I was just like, again, maybe a lot of your people who go through your course and are part of the Bob community go through, right? I understood what the different business model types are, right? So the content business, the content business space, the e-commerce space, the membership space, the SaaS space.

And I was looking at all of them, right? I actually did DD, and I think I probably submitted maybe like five or six DDs to you over the course of, I think, three or four months. I think I submitted.

Pretty much, I want to say at least three kinds, right? I think I submitted a SaaS DD, I submitted a membership slash SaaS DD, and a content, definitely a couple of content DDs, as well as an e-commerce DD.

I think, so I was open to all of them. I knew sort of the pros and cons. was a little, because of the range, the price range that I was looking at, I was trying to shy away from e-commerce because I wasn't looking to go.

Started with a six-figure business right as my first acquisition.

What's the price range that you were looking at for this first one? Just so people know. If comfortable sharing, course.

Yeah, I was looking more in the below $100,000 price range, above at least $25,000. So, you know, that's the range I was looking at. And I did come across a lot of e-commerce businesses, right? Those were selling for really low multiples, right? Those were in that price range.

But when I did even the first page of your DD, you know, that thing was like, I don't want to come close to this. Right. So there are so many e-commerce businesses I found that are out there on marketplaces that are just, just don't, it's not worth the risk, you know, even, even though, you know, it may not be a million dollar business, right?

But it's, you know, it's my money, right? And I want to be careful where I'm going to spend it. Right. So it wasn't, that's a price range where I was looking at. Right. And eventually I ended up, landed up on this business that I ended up buying was more in the content space, but it also had a membership site to it, right?

Which really attracted me. And I'll tell you a little bit more as we talk about the business, right? And the reason that attracted me was that it had multiple sources of revenue, right? Because I came across a bunch of businesses, pure content businesses that were probably generating 90 % of their revenue from just ads, right? Or some other businesses.

That's really the norm for most media businesses or some other businesses that were generating, you know, a big portion of their revenue just from affiliates, right? And maybe some ads, right? But yes, to your point, as you said, made majority of the content businesses that I was coming across were basically ad-based, right?

And then I actually went pretty far in my DD and put an offer on a business where there were mostly ads, but it was a lot of social media traffic. So traffic was generally diversified. Was, know, SEO traffic, search engine traffic, know, social media, social traffic.

What sort of percentages of traffic would the split be between social media and organic, and just so people know, that you could share in that?

Yeah, so the one that so this is not the actual business that I ended up buying. I'll talk about that in a second.

Okay, then yeah, we'll just... yeah, fair enough.

Good diversification of traffic, but the owner himself was spending about 40 hours on that business a week. And so I sort of steered away from that. And that's when I came to the business that I ended up buying.

Before we come to the business you end up buying, I just want to pause in between some of these things because you're just sharing so much, and there's so much to dig into. How much is that business making in net profit per month that the guy was working 40 hours per week?

It was actually, it was a larger business. Was making about 10,000.

Okay, so he was working 40 hours a week for two and a half grand. So the hourly rate's not too bad for that, really. I didn't know, but if that was making like $2,000 a month, and you do the hourly rate, $500 a week, yeah.

Yeah. This was also the, the, although I said, you know, the range that I was looking at was 25 K to a hundred K. This business was actually priced a little over 200 K, but the seller was open to seller financing and was also, this business was also SVA eligible.

So that's the reason I was actually seriously looking into that, because I think I've shared this with you on one of our email communications, Jaryd, that I have been, I am open to acquiring a business with SBA financing or know debt financing.

It was before I ended up buying a smaller business; I was actually looking at a larger business to acquire with some debt financing. But we can talk now about the business I ended up buying. That was $10,000 a month profit.

Yeah, perfect.

So what is the business that you bought? What's the business model? How much did it cost you? And what was the multiple? What's it making per month? If you're open to sharing, spill what beans you can spill.

Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. So the business that I ended up buying was primarily a content business with a membership component to it. So the business was making money by, you know, with Zoic ads, you know, and that was about, I want to say, 40 % of its revenue.

The rest of the revenue was split between about 50 to 60 % of the entire 60, and the remaining 60 % of the revenue was membership-based. So the business is essentially sort of like an application with a lot of content, right? And some application features. So it was, it's not a mobile application, it's a website application, but it's a paid premium subscription, right?

That gives you access to about, you know, close to about eight or nine additional features that help you organize the content that the business is producing regularly. And that gives you the ability to do things with that content. Because of the engagement, the user community that comes to this website is highly engaged.

This business is basically sort of like a content aggregation site. So it pulls content from a lot of different places. And then it helps the users organize those if they become a premium subscriber.

So it had that membership site to it, and it had the free content site to it that also had advertising revenue. So the good part about this business was multiple sources of revenue, content slash membership, sort of a…

It was listed at, I think it was $62,000. I ended up…

It was making about $26,000 in net profit a year. The owner was asking for a 2 or 24, close to 24x multiple. I ended up buying it for a 19x multiple.

Awesome, congratulations. So you bought it for, what is it, $50k? $60,000?

$50,000. He was listed for $62,000.

Cool. And you bought at a 19 multiple. So what was the monthly, what's the monthly profit on it?

I think the monthly profit on it is now a little over $2,000.

Okay, cool. And it was roughly around 2000 when you purchased it, right?

Yeah, it was actually a slightly higher, and I'll tell you why what happened to me after I ended up buying the business, and I'll tell you what the lesson learned was, right? So it was a before we get into that, can I dive into a couple of more questions? Sure.

So are you saying this is a media business that gets a lot of content from the internet and aggregates it, and then the members can choose what content it narrows down to put in front of them? So, is it basically a platform for people to consume content in specific categories that they want? That's what you mean?

Yes, it's basically they can categorize the content, they can share, they can save some pieces of content as their favorites, they can basically do other stuff with that content, right? They can revisit some of that content, and they can hide some other content.

It's some of those premium features are basically, know, what you can do in terms of applying filters to the content, saving content as favorites, things that you can't just generally do from a browser.

Right, is this, where's it getting content from, and what type of content is it getting, podcasts, YouTube videos, videos, just…

Well, it's actually text and images and some videos, but it's primarily text and images. It's really an aggregator site, right? But it's not an aggregator for video or audio media. It's an aggregator for pure text and image-based content.

Cool, gotcha, gotcha. Awesome, so…

Data entry does require some data entry work every day. So, I end up spending, I would say, on average, under 10 hours a week.

Great, that's awesome. And so I was listed for 62, you bought it for 50, it was roughly a 2K a month net profit. You bought it at a 19 multiple, and he was asking a 24 multiple. So tell me, this is pretty common for my graduates to buy businesses cheaper than they're listed.

I know why, but I would love for you to be able to share with me why you feel you were able to get this for like for cheaper than it was listed and get a good deal. Was it because you had learned so much in the course, or was it just because of how the business was? What are your lessons through that?

I think it was a combination, right? One is clearly when I first had my call with the seller.

She knew that I knew about the space, about online businesses in general. I think the seller had this business listed for a while. I think it was, and I know some businesses have been sitting there on marketplaces. This was actually, I can tell you this, I bought it off Empire Flippers.

I think Empire Flippers, as we know, does things a little differently, right? Because they sort of went to the buyer community and kind of tell them, and kind of make sure that you show them the proof of funds before they'll open up certain listings to you.

So I think that helped because the buyer knew I'm sorry the seller knew that I was serious and I think I went aggressive on my offer right and I think the buyer the seller again I keep on saying buyer the seller did have another offer in the past that fell through so I think the seller and I could sense that the seller was a little more aggressive.

I didn't terms of she really wanted to, I think she had this listed for, I want to say maybe six or seven months now, before I came across it. And so I think she was eager to sell as well, right? Because she wasn't really getting a lot of traction, but I was able to prove one. Hey, I knew what I was talking about.

I did not waste a lot of the seller's time before I was comfortable putting in an offer, right? Because I had done the preliminary due diligence on it. You know, I think it was, you know, some of it was probably luck, right?

Because I think it was timing, right? It was mostly, the seller was aggressive, and you know, she knew I was a serious buyer. So I think she accepted my, mean, we did negotiate. I actually came in even lower than 19X initially. And she basically then reduced her price, and we ended up at $50,000.

Awesome. Yeah, luck. That definitely plays a part in it for sure. Well, congratulations. I want to get to the difference in net profit, how it was when you first bought it, to what it is now, and the changes.

But I also want to ask a couple of things about due diligence. However, the first one is in total, as I know you submitted several businesses to us for review as part of your due diligence. In total, though, how many businesses do you look at?

And over what period of time, how, like I asked this because a lot of people are probably thinking like, Oh, how long does it take you to buy a business? It's not about how long it takes you. It's about the inputs, right?

We don't measure time; we measure inputs. So yeah, roughly what do you think? Like, just off the top of your head, how many did you just look at? Not the ones that you've done a full due diligence and so on, but the ones that you've looked at, like, and what timeframe was that in?

Yeah, so I looked at, I want to say easily, at least 50 businesses, over 50 businesses over a timeframe of, oh, let's see, I want to say six months. I looked at over 50 businesses over six months.

And I am actually, and the reason I kind of moved away from my camera for a second is I'm counting because I have each of the ones that I ended up doing full due diligence on, but I have them obviously in my folders, right?

And yeah, so I would say this whole journey from the time I started looking at it till I ended up buying was looking at over 50 listings and did full DD on about 14 of them, and then ended up buying.

Yeah, awesome. Let's get to the change in monthly profit. So you bought it and were making a little bit more when you first bought it in terms of net profit, is that right? And then that changed. We're going to explain why.

Yeah, so it was actually making the 40 % or so that I talked about, where it was coming from ads. Well, that was a big setback. And this actually happened pretty much during migration. So we had already signed the asset purchase agreement, right? This was no part, no fault of the seller.

Unfortunately, what ended up happening, and this is why I keep on repeating that, you know, understanding, right, and not having all your eggs in one is very important, right? And that goes for your source of traffic, that goes for your revenue streams, that goes for a lot of things when you're looking at a business, right?

And it does vary from business to business, right? And obviously for a SaaS business, right, you're not going to likely have any ad revenue, right? So you're probably only just going to look at, know, who's buying the software, and how many clients are buying the software.

So it varies from business to business, but for something that I ended up buying, the real attraction was the multiple streams of revenue, because what if one stream of revenue shuts down? Well, that doesn't take away my entire business. And that's what actually ended up happening to me for because this business was running Ezoic ads, and the way Ezoic works is when you basically sell a business, right?

The buyer of the business has to have their own Ezoic account so that they can then, you know, hook the business up with their account and then have partner again, partner or integrate with Ezoic, and the ads start to display, right?

And I think it's very similar with the Raptive and MediaWine as well, but because this business was already doing, you know, was already integrated with Ezoic and was, you know, had been for over two years. When I ended up acquiring the business and we started the migration and the seller unhooked the Ezoic account, and I started working with my Ezoic rep to turn the ads back on.

Unfortunately, Google came around and blocked me and said, Well, you're not eligible. And I actually went, submitted an appeal, went through my Ezoic reps, and they reached out to Google. Unfortunately, for one reason or another, which I'm still, I'm not spending too much energy on it at this point, but initially, the first month was a big setback because I was like, this is almost 40 % of my revenue, right?

And so Izoic said, You know, we are a Google premium partner until Google approves you. It's not the site itself. It's something that is associated with the account you have, the Google account that I have.

And maybe it's from my startup. Maybe it's from, don't know yet, because Google is not, unfortunately, Google is not being very transparent about it. I don't know why they would basically not allow me to integrate my new website-acquired website with Ezoe.

Yeah, I've seen this happen before, where Google is just not very transparent around why, but there is a resolution, and you can work on it. You can maybe use another account, but I actually tried it with two different accounts, and it's somehow, it's not just the email address or the Google Workspace account that I have, it somehow links to me, and I'm like, this doesn't make sense because Google has never blocked me.

I've never owned a website that was running ads. So I'm still trying to see if I can bring back that or look at another ad source, right? Instead of going with the Zoic again. Having said that, I think being adaptable and really understanding that I did not end up losing my entire business because it was only 40%.

I actually learned more, and I started collecting a lot of data on what the business, the remaining part of the business, was already producing, right? And what were some of the things that I had, the previous owner had not even leveraged, right?

But really, that's the part that I lost, right? So about 40 % of the revenue. Now I can say I've actually reduced that loss down to only losing 30 % because I've been able to add 10 more percent of my revenue by leaning in on the membership side of the business more.

Yeah, that's amazing. And you can also, like you said before, you can submit the site to other ad platforms as well, while Google is fumbling around or Ezoic is fumbling around, whatever's happening. There are multiple other ones out there that you could get that revenue back now as well. But it doesn't seem like it's a focus for you right now.

Yeah, yeah. And the reason I'm not focusing is because the competitors of this business are purely very heavily reliant on ads, right? And I have a very strong differentiating factor, a competitive edge, and a differentiating factor in this business that I'm the only business that has these premium features that can charge, you know, a small, you know, it's really literally I only charge my subscribers less than a cup of coffee a month.

So it's very low, but that way I can get a lot of subscribers, right? So I'm kind of leaning on that.

Not easy to convert with a lower the same direction than some of my competitors are. Sorry, were you saying something?

I love that. Yeah, I was just saying that it's, it is a lot easier to convert on a lower offer and just go volume that way. So congrats on building that out further and just taking a bit more of that space before you can competitors get in there. The whole journey was the hardest part about deciding what business to buy, finding a business due diligence. What was the hardest part for you and why?

That's an interesting question. I think the hardest part, if I were to put my own on it, would be the decision. I think the decision to really say, here's the business I'm going to put an offer on. I've done my due diligence. I'm confident that this is something that I'm now ready to put my money where my mouth is.

I think that really was my hardest part. Wasn't about... Because I think there's a lot of analysis, a lot of people I feel can fall into that all analysis paralysis sort of mode, where they want the perfect business. And I can tell you,u just with my limited six months of experience, there is no such thing as a perfect business.

There are no unicorns. Unicorns are made; they don't exist. And it's really, right? There's no perfect business because if you really want to find a risk or a con in a business, you're going to find as many as you'd like. It's really what you can live with, what you can manage, what you can mitigate, right?

I think that's really what it comes down to. What are some of the things that you're going to not compromise on and I think I touched on one of them earlier which is I am not willing to spend 40 hours of my week running a business right that's something that I was very clear that I'm not you know even though it made the business may look very attractive to me but my time is is worth more you know my time with for myself and for my family and for the people I love is worth much more than a really sweet deal right and so I think I think it's really you know it's really pulling the plug on, I think I've done, I've gained enough knowledge.

I think I've done good due diligence. I'm confident I can run this thing. I'm confident I can buy this and not regret it later. As a whole, really, that was the hardest part was that decision that, okay, here's a business ready to put an offer on, ready to work with the seller, ready to then sign the check and buy and start running it.

That was really the hardest part. Everything else that came before it was a lot of grit, a lot of work, but I think that's the journey everybody needs to take, right? Until you do that, you're not going to be confident. You're not going to be able to really be able to pull the plug on it, right?

Exactly. How can you be confident in doing anything if you've never done it before? Or you don't know how it's done. Buying a business that you've done your first due diligence on, almost a massive no-no. Why would you do that? Because you don't know the market.

How could you be confident in the valuation of the business if you don't know the market? So it sounds like the training and the exposure and everything you went through is exactly what you needed to go through to be able to have the confidence to decide to pull the trigger on it.

Otherwise, like, why would you like nobody would just go, I'm just going to buy a business off the shelf without knowing anything about it and be confident it's going to be a good investment.

Right, yeah, exactly. And it's still, as I said, think it's still as much as you're confident, as much as the knowledge you've gained, as much as the due diligence that you've done, it is still, think, the hardest decision is pulling that plug.

But I think you have to, part of it is you have to take that leap of faith, because it's just like anything else, riding a bicycle when you didn't let go of the training wheels, right, you'd never learn how to learn how to ride a bicycle, right? So, you know, it's that sort of leap of faith, which I think is still, in hindsight is still what seemed like it was hard, but I'm glad I did.

That's so good to hear. I'm glad you did it as well. It's just the start of something amazing for you and your family and your life. Say a friend came up to you and said, AJ, I'm looking at investing in a business. And you say, well, you could try and buy a brick-and-mortar business, you could buy an online business. What advice would you give to them if they were, for a first timer, looking to buy a business?

Yeah, think it's, you know, don't skip on the learning part, right? I think that's the number one advice, right? Don't, you know, this is not something, you're not going on a vacation, and you're saying, you know, I've never jet skied before, I've never been on a jet ski, and I'm gonna go, you know, go, you know, rent a jet ski and go out on the water, right?

This is not like that, right? So spend the time, energy, and effort to educate yourself, right? There are a lot of resources, meaning buying online businesses included, right? Educate yourself because until you educate yourself, until you really learn, you know, what it is that you're getting yourself into, right?

It's either going to be very scary for you or B, it's going to be an adventure that you're going to regret, right? So, I think, I think the more you're prepared, the more work that you do to educate yourself, to learn sort of as much as you can before, you know, taking that, making that decision.

Know, and weather and time are, time is always relative, right? So whether that takes you, it took me six months, it might take somebody, you know, three months, it might take somebody two years, right? So time is relative to every individual, but that's really my number one advice, you know, really learn.

And yes, you're going to have to take a chance. Life is a chance to some degree. So you're going to have to make that. But once you've gone through that learning curve, once you've built that confidence with real-world data and used people's and learned from people's experiences and a lot of information that they share with you, yourself included, Jaryd, you're going to be much more confident when it comes to making that decision and signing the check.

Yeah, I love that bit of advice, and you're so right. We all take risks every day in our lives. It's a part of life. You mentioned that your friend was going to ask you for some advice about a business buyer.

You just tell them to educate themselves. I'm a big component of saying that education helps you reduce your risk because the more you know about something, the less risky it can be. It's not going to eliminate all risks because, like we said, we're going to have to take risks and investing has risks, but by educating yourself, you can eliminate massive risks to make an educated decision to take that leap of faith and buy the right business.

And yeah, I'm thrilled for you. This is the start of something great. Yeah, congrats, six months in, bought a business, making two grand a month, and it's only upwards from here. Where to from here? What are your goals with online businesses?

So my goal is to basically continue to buy more online businesses, but not having to run, try and run, sell, and read or dozen businesses, right? Because I'm also, again, right? It goes back to, I value my own time, I value my independence. But I think this has given me the confidence to aim higher, right? To go bigger.

I'm actually looking at another business with the debt financing even though it's got a big online component to it it is remotely love run but it's a services business right so it's you know it's very different from what I ended up buying before but you know really really that's really my goal is to you know that I think the key difference between what I already bought and what I'm now looking to to buy and continue to do so in the future is looking at businesses that already have either a GM in place or a team in place because I think I'm, you know, and this is something I did in my corporate career is I manage large teams.

So very comfortable with managing people. But if that's what, you know, one of your listeners is, right, if they come from like a corporate background and are comfortable managing people, right, I think that's another way to look at buying businesses is where you've got a team so that you don't, as they say, instead of you working in the business, you work on the business.

That's sort of my next step in my business acquisition journey is really I want to look at businesses where I can kind of work on the business rather than in the business. I think that's really where I'm looking to go.

I love that. Yeah, one of my old mentors said to me, If you don't have a team, you don't have time. And then another guy that is very famous, Michael E. Gerber, he's been on the podcast. He wrote the book, The E-Myth.

He talks about there's massive difference between a business owner and a business operator. And most people in smaller businesses are operators. And when you transition out of being an operator by having a team in place, you become an owner.

And when you have more time, you're less stressed. And when you're less stressed, you make better decisions. When you make better decisions, your business grows. And so you're just giving yourself some thinking time on strategies on how to grow the business, and then you can employ those strategies to the team.

So yeah, I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled for you. I hope this next acquisition goes really well. If there's an offline with a part online, I hope it goes really well. If you're looking to do something online, I'm here for you, as you know.

But yeah, thanks so much for coming on. On behalf of everybody, they're so grateful that you came on to share because having somebody who's been through this journey is just so inspirational. I've heard my story a million times, but it's good to hear yours. So thank you.

Yeah, no, thank you. Thanks a lot, Jaryd, for having me and giving me the opportunity.

Absolutely. Thanks, everybody, for listening, and I'll see you guys on the next one.