Ep 359: From Real Estate To Acquiring Online Businesses & The Unexpected Mistakes To Avoid  with Julien Jacques

The hard part of buying your first business because, you know, you have these two opposing forces on you. So to be a successful entrepreneur, you are going to be making decisions with incomplete information.

Especially when it comes to business, I would say more so than investing. Like investing, you need to be making decisions rarely and sitting on your hands for a long period of time. Whereas, like when you're actually taking, when you're doing business, you need to have high agency.

I need to constantly be making decisions to move that thing along, which means you'll never have perfect information. And so as an entrepreneur, have these two opposing things, right? Those are tugging away at you. And then you find a business that's like pretty good, okay. It's like, well, let's just go for it.

Hi, I'm Jaryd Krause, host of the Buying Online Businesses podcast. And today I'm speaking with Julian Jacques. He's a former real estate investor and entrepreneur who pivoted into buying online businesses after a year and a half of searching across franchises, retail, and other opportunities.

And he now owns Rocket Powered Sound, a digital product ecom brand that sells sample packs to music producers and has firsthand experience in financing an online business, acquiring and scaling an online business in Canada.

His practical transition from physical assets to online real estate gives him a unique experience and unique perspective on acquisition due diligence, margin dynamics in digital products, and how to turn acquisition opportunities into reliable income streams.

And in his pod, we talk about how he built his real estate portfolio and then why he moved into a high cashflow investing through online businesses, and his journey and experience through online business, and his challenges and how he's overcome them. And there's so much value in this podcast episode.

If you're looking at buying your first online business, you're going to absolutely love this because Julian is just a real, raw human being that sharing his experience so we can all make the right decisions in our lives. And I really appreciate him coming on and sharing his story, and I'm sure you're going to love it. let's dive in.

Julian, welcome to the Pollut Day.

Yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. I'm on vacation, so you're gonna have to forgive my scruffiness.

It's going to be a fun chat, man, because you've done a similar thing to me, but we've done it in different, different sort of orders, right? Like you've lent into online business, and you've acquired an online business.

And I want to talk about that, but I want to go back to the start. Likewise,e I started a couple of businesses and just sucked at it. I failed hard, and you started a couple of businesses, right? And I don't know how that journey was for you, but then you moved into real estate and then back into online business.

What was the reason to move into online businesses and start a business in the first place? it like most of us on the pod wanting to replace your income and have a better lifestyle, or what was the, why did you start leaning into that?

Kind of exactly as you explained it, right? I've been, I guess I would say, I've been in business for 15 years, 20 years now. And I got my start buying. I bought a duplex when I was fairly young, like 23 years old, just when I was finishing university. So I would say that is like the, you know, when my business journey started, but I've always been a business nerd at the end of the day.

Like when I was 16, 17, I'd be reading books. How does this money game work? Like, why is it that Bill Gates at the time was making a million dollars an hour, and my dad was a welder who was making, you know, a lot less than that? And so, yeah, I mean, there were a couple of ways to do it as I learned. investing, investing in real estate is a way, and then owning businesses, right? So it's either starting or buying a business.

And then two, I would say two years ago, like four years ago, I had enough passive income off of my real estate to not live like an amazing life, but you know, to kind of do, do whatever I wanted, really. So I've got a couple of interesting stories in there. As I moved into a small town, I moved to a small town close to Vancouver, and it's like a farming town.

And for a couple of months, I got a job just picking up horse poop. Like that was the job, just go to this barn and just clean the stall. That was like, exactly. And it was awesome because at the time, like real estate was blowing up and everyone and their mother and their sister and their dog were asking me about interest rates and real estate and what's going to happen. was like, I don't know. And I don't kind of get bored with talking about it, and just go off and buy the cash-flowing properties. Yeah, around that time.

I know that in real estate, as well as so many people chasing just right. I was co-hosting a property real estate investing podcast with one of my best mates, actually documenting some of my real estate journey and his, and then other people, like some of the best real estate investors in Australia.

And yeah, it's funny too, the interest rate is like this is the same as acquiring a business as well. And I spoke to somebody about this just yesterday. It's like the interest rate isn't as important as the deal because they can make a high or low interest rate work.

Yeah. I got a loan for my business that was fairly high. It was like 19%, which is really high. And it would have been like 14%. And yeah, to your point, people were, I, when I mentioned the industry, they're like, Whoa, well that's high.

And I'm like, yeah, but like the way that the loan is structured, cause you have to pay it off in five years, it's really only an extra $3,000 a year. And if your decision is based on whether or not you're going to spend $3,000 a year, when you're buying like nearly half a half-million-dollar business, you're not thinking about it.

Like that is not, you can't be scared of that at the end of the day.

It's the deal that can make it work and the structure. And I want to get into this, how you financed your acquisition, but maybe we just go in a bit more of a linear path. Let's maybe we go back to when you bought your first real estate deal, and then we'll come to that later. So you bought your first one when you were about 23, and then you bought any more before you tried to start an online business, or what? Where'd you go to?

Yeah, yeah. No, for sure. Yeah. So I'll kind of go fast on this one. But yeah, I bought a duplex when I was 23. When I was 30, I refinanced it, bought an apartment building, a condo in Vancouver, and then another property.

A few years later, I sold the condo, bought a house, bought another house, and bought another apartment building. And, know, this was me just kind of like riding the real estate wave that we're having both in all strata. I built a reasonably sized real estate fund personally for myself.

Uh, then when I had enough cash flow, man, when I felt I was like, I'm going to be able to retire in no time, but I never really had like a high income. Like, I only ever made like 65 grand a year from my jobs.

This is a really good point that I want to stick to, which is that you don't need a crazy income. You just need to live within your means, invest it, and let the investing really do the heavy lifting for you. Yes. Yeah.

Over this period, so over this period, 23, so you bought three more than you, or you bought four real estate investments, then you sold one, which was a house, then bought another condo, and then you bought another house. And I think you've got to maybe five or six, right? What was that period?

And that, like over the course of five years, six, like since 2017, right? So my net worth is skyrocketing like crazy. But my income was never that high for a couple of reasons. You know, you don't necessarily want to live off of your real estate. It's like not. I did it for a little while, knowing that it's not a good thing to do because you need to save that money. After all, roofs are really expensive.

You know, these roofs are not free. I had always like made sure that I had a lot of capital, and I was like always cashflow positive. And then I bought a business, and that is when things got crazy. So that's a really good story. We'll talk about that, but I want to come to when you bought the business.

Things got crazy. But just for the income and buying, like, was it five, six properties, right? Six real estate investments or five. Yeah, yeah. And so that's what I want to, I want to touch on is you're on a 65k salary. And it's the same with a lot of people. They're not like doing massive six-figure salaries, and you can do this without a six-figure salary.

Yeah, but this is like me like buying and selling just letting that buying well, the real estate world and letting that grow and then taking equity out of that and a little bit of savings and then putting it into buying another one or how did like, what did it mostly look like? Was it a little bit of savings and then a little bit of equity, or mostly equity or mostly savings?

You're doing a good job of describing it like saving a little bit of the cash flows and then Over time there'd be something that needs to be replaced a boiler that kind of thing and that's where most of the money would go towards And then in Canada and Australia, I mean everywhere around the world The prices of real estate were skyrocketing so refinancing and then making sure that it's still cash flows and then I would spend.

You know, my rule was just spend 10 % of the refinancing money, like big chunks of money coming to my bank account on just dumb things. Just whatever, go on the nicest vacation you've ever been on. Um, and then reinvest the remaining capital. I got lucky, like I got lucky, and there was good timing and all that. You know, one example would have been, I bought a very small townhouse or a very inexpensive townhouse.

Repent like right as the pandemic hit and everyone was super nervous and scared and I had I had money in the bank and I went out on a hunt so I like to go hunting that time I just went out for a hunt by myself I drove like six hours in this place called Williams Lake and on my way back as I do I always like Let's take a look around like what are the house prices here? And I had seen one for a four-bedroom house for $79,000.

yeah. And so I knew right away, like I was, I'm buying, like, don't care. I'm buying this thing. Like the math isst makes sense. No matter, almost no matter what. And, yeah. So I liowed up, just knocked on the door as a tenant and asked a couple of questions. asked them, Hey, are you, you, you look like the owner. Are you selling this place? And that's a little hack right there.

If you're looking to buy some stuff, if you're like chatting with a wnant or even like someone who works at a shop, ask them if they're the owner, like that they give out owner vibes that makes them feel pretty good. Andeah, he was happy to let me come into the house and put my mask on to be nice. And then I called up the realtor on my ride. My way back was like, Hey, I'd like to put an offer. And a year later, all the COVID stuff happened, and I sold it for double after refinancing it, taking all my money out.

Cool.

Yeah, so that was like my best deal. I've also lost a lot of money. Yeah, so that's like the best version of it.

Congrats. Luck definitely plays a part. Some of the real estate investments I've done are like what I bought one, we settled about three weeks ago, actually, I bought a four-bedroom place in Australia, it was 680 grand Australian dollars. So it's probably like 500 US or whatever.

With that, so 600, about 680s, four bedroom, two bathroom, my friend who's a real estate, a buyer's agent in real estate. And he bought me a couple of my other ones. He works for this large firm in property, and his boss bought a fofour-bedroomtwo bathroom house a week and a half, two weeks later, in the same area, a little bit bigger land size, but for 750K. Oh wow. Okay. Six, 70K growth in a two-week period, is ridiculous.

But there's Larkin, and there's also Skill; he's a pretty skilled investor as well. What I want to move to this is why you bought, why you decided to buy real estate, and then you decided to buy an online business, and how things got crazy then, like, why did you not keep going with real estate when it's been working for you? And then you what was the what was the reason to get into online business?

I mean, there's a couple of reasons and I had been looking to buy a business for like pretty much at that time when I, you know, when I was picking up horse poop, I was going to like McDonald's, I was going to the hunting shop nearby, going into coffee shops, going to anywhere and just asking questions, you know, trying to find the owner, is this place for sale?

So I'd spent a couple of years lying to figure out what type of business I was interested in. Like, I even looked at a bottle depot place nearby. Anyways, a bunch of, you know, a funeral home. So I looked at a lot of different things, and then I settled on buying an online business because I was looking for lilifestyle business at the end of the day. And I also had a marketing background. I'd been doing digital marketing as well for eight years, so I understood the digital and online world, and that kind of set me on my path to buy something, buy dia gital business.

Yeah. And so you're looking for some... No, why not? Guess to answer your question, like why not put the money in real estate,s because, well, I'm just chasing yield, right? Like I'm chasing profits, and you with businesses, the multiples on your cash on cash, and just the multiples are on everything are a lot higher, right?

However, there's a lot more risk involved. So with real estate, you know, I would say that most real estate investing is like a really amazing side business that you technically probably will only have to work two or three hours a week. Like I still have tenants and stuff, and every once in a while you'll have to like fly down to somewhere or go take it, you know, actually go and do business things.

So it's like the greatest side business that you could be running, but it doesn't provide a lot of cash flow Right. So even if you're in Canada, if you were to own like a 1010-unitpartment building and you're making, let's say 2,50 bucks of cacash flower month, that's pretty good. Right. Are you able to work? Can you live off that?

Get them off that. And that will cost you $1.5 million or, you know, a $300,000, $400,000 down payment. So it's not, you can't live off of real estate. It will go up in value over time as there's more money being added to the money system. And it's, it is truly much more of an investment.

Whereas a business, you can buy them for like 2.5 X of a seller's discretionary earnings or profits, 3X, you know, that kind of thing. Your capacity for it to be able to generate profits is just like a lot higher.

But and cashflow off, know, yeah, I want to add to I want to add to that. We haven't put time in the mix here. Of course, real estate can live off if you buy a bunch really well early, and then later in life, you know, that's grown and compounded.

And then you could probably sell a couple to get rid of some debt and cashflow higher and depending on how big your portfolio is, but I think what you're mentioning is like you can't like in business from day one, you buy something and it's cash flowing and it can pay for your lifestyle and you can still put money in the bank depending on the business you purchase and purchase it and whatnot. But from day one, it's typically cash flow live off it.

Exactly. That's the beauty of buying a business. Like when I bought my first business, what was awesome about it was that on the first day that I bought it, it's just to ding, to ding, to ding, to ding cash coming in.

I didn't have to do any of the work to go off and spend six months to a year building it. Right. It's just money coming. Yeah. And that's an amazing feeling. That was great, like that first day, it's like, wow, I'm a genius. I'm a genius.

Somebody else's deal for you.

It is a genius move. You're buying something that somebody else has built, and you've done the work to be able to get yourself in the financial position to do it. I'm saying that circuit. I know, I know, I know you are. But I still think it's a genius move, right? Like, I started three businesses and sucked and failed and didn't know what I was doing. And then when I started buying them, I was like, okay, this is a way easier way.

I mean, because they've sold their product market.

It's not easier. It's just they've solved product market fit. That is the biggest, hardest part of any business: do you actually have a business? And when you have a business is when people are willing to give you their money for a product in exchange for a thing or a service.

And that can take you six months to a year to do, or you can go off. Yeah. Maybe it's more. Yeah. You know, if you're VC-funded, it might take you five years to figure out if people want to buy this thing.

Right.

Yeah, that's the most difficult part of any business,

Yeah, startup phase. 90 % sometimes more fail. Now, congrats, you bought this business. Where did you find it? How did you go away? Where did you buy it from?

Yeah, so I mean, I did a lot of research. Just, you know, again, I asked around, I was just trying to figure out which business I'd be interested in buying. I think I looked up at your stuff, too. And then I finally found something on BizBuySell. Yeah.

Okay, cool. And yeah, online business on BizBiz. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What's where'd you get your finance? How did you finance it? Sorry, you're gonna say something else. You can share that. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. How they, so yeah, I found it on BizBuySell, and I looked at acquisition.com and a few other ones, but I just found this e. Essentially, it's a Shopify store, and we sell sample packs to music producers who need sounds and presets. You know, if you're using Ableton, you might use Serum and a couple of her things. We sell sample packs for music producers, like dubstep producers, mostly.

And I found it. I found out I found Ron on Biz Buy Sell, and met with the owner, and he seemed like a good person. And one of the rules that I had learned and was like really trying to stick to was don't buy from anyone who is an asshole, and only do business with someone that you'd be willing to let babysit your kid. Yeah. Or babysit your kid is the one that I learned.

And I understood the product because I had been getting into music production a little bit, and I had purchased some of these sample packs, and the numbers looked really r, really good, so he was doing so, I'm gonna, I'm gonna mix up like Canadian dollars and US dollars here, so just throw Canadian dollars if you like. We can just face off Canadian dollars.

Let's just do Canadian dollars. Yeah. Yeah. I guess he would have been doing like 350K Canadian revenue and a 180K profit off of that. And he had owned this business for 10 years, and he had built it up atinto pretty good name for itself. So, like iIf I were to ask dubstep producers, they would know about this, this sample pack business. And he was a good guy.

Whenever you know, whenever I had questions, he was very transparent. And he was also really great after the sale of the business. So I didn't break that rule, but there's so much value in buying from a good person because they're willing to, it's just easier to build a relationship with a good person, and the better relationship you have with somebody.

The more they're supportive, they are, you know, through a transition, and when tricky things pop up through a transition and acquisition, which they're going to, and there's emotions being flown around because there's money involved. If you've got a good person on the other side, they're gonna try and do the right thing, you know, as are you gonna try and do the right thing, and you can get through it together, but there's animosity towards one another.

It just becomes an ugly situation, and then once there's so much tension built up through an acquisition, and you finally close, and there are two people that aren't so great or connected through a decent relationship. It's just that you don't want to spend time with them. You don't want to hear from them. You want nothing to do with them. makes it seem like you bought this thing, and you're in the dark.

And there's a lot of fraud when you're buying a business. You know, one of the things I've spoken to a few people about, and one of the number one reasons people go bankrupt when they buy a business is because they bought it from someone who was some amount of fraud within the business. All right.

Yeah. And so what did you like, what were some of the biggest things you talked about fraud and buying? What were some of the biggest lessons you learned from buying your first deal? Through due diligence, and how many did you look at before buying this one? What, yeah, what did your acquisition journey look like?

Yeah. Okay. So there are a couple of questions. So I'll talk about how I structured the deal, and then I'll talk about my due diligence process. So the way that I structured it was I had, uh, so I had the majority of the cash to be able to buy the business. I bought it for 2.15 times the seller's discretionary earnings. So about 415 Canadian, and I had most of the money, but I decided that I wanted to get some debt on it.

So wI as trying to be responsible and still can pay off debt if I had to, but still not tie up all of my capital and have it kind of working for me in other places. So that's how I structured it. I went with the BDC, which is essentially like a, I don't know what it's called in the United States, but li's the Business Development Bank of Canada.

And I decided to go with them because I'd spoken to Chris Sparling, who is part of Tiny. I told him, you know, I was thinking about getting some debt. And he very sternly, in those 30 seconds b, became my dad and said, only go with the business development bank. Yeah, BDC. And that ended up saving me a hundred grand.

Amazing. So what was your deposit that you put down, and what amount did you finance?

Yeah, so whatever the difference between 415 and 250, I got 250,000, our loan is. That's what I would give an upfront. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And it was 19% over five years, and the business was cash flowing 180 a year anyway. So yeah, all good.

Yeah, yeah, I would have been cash flowing like six grand a month kind of thing. .Yeah. Nice.

And part of the due diligence. So one thing that I learned is that due diligence is for MBA quants and losers. I now believe that if you do a lot of due diligence, you are not buying yourself a good business. And the reason why I say that is because all of my best investments did zero due diligence on.

I had enough information to know that I was getting, but like I gave you that example of that townhouse that I bought, all of the good investments that I've ever made. I just knew the second I looked at it that I was buying this thing. was a hell yes and not a, aybe.

And the problem, the problem with due diligence is that, and I found this to be true for myself, that I had been spending so much time looking for the right business that when I found a good enough business, I thought I understood, or I at least understood parts of it. I understood the product, I understood the marketing.

I knew that the seller wasn't lying to me. know, did instinctively, did something, I didn't even know what QE is, like quality of earnings or something. I didn't know what that was, but I instinctively did those things where I got all of his transactions and rebuilt the P &L and the balance sheet to make sure it matched up with what he was giving me.

So I did a lot of the correct things, but in that process of doing due diligence, I was kind of like convincing myself that this is a good deal for me, when in reality it was not. I really should have just waited longer, and I've been more patient and found the deal where it was like in my face, like you need to buy this. You'd be an idiot not to buy this. So that's one thing that I learned. That due diligence is necessary.

But as an entrepreneur, I would leave due diligence on the sidelines, like for other people to do around you, because you should not be like using your accountant to do those things or something. Aft, er all, you should not be getting yourself convinced through that due diligence process. And anyway, that's an experience.

Yeah, that's a great experience. I, I believe that a lot of people sell themselves into acquiring a business too early because they picture it, they go into a dream state, and they picture themselves owning the business based on what numbers they're looking at and their lifestyle and what their lifestyle will actually look atlikeI tell people that they, you,houldn't prove a business is a good investment, which is what you're doing when you go into the dream state is that you should be proving it's a bad investment if you can't buy.

can't then you must buy and that is alone your due diligence practice and when you when you do this on a couple of businesses you see that they're not good that's when you start to hone that muscle and build that muscle of knowing what a good business looks like which makes it when you get to a good business you're like due diligence is like you're still gonna do due diligence right you're still gonna look at the numbers you're not gonna buy this course.

Yeah, but you're looking for the red flags like you want to say hell yes.

Yeah, and this is the hard part of buying your first business because, I mean, you have these two opposing forces on you. So to be a successful entrepreneur, you are going to be making decisions with incomplete information. And especially when it comes to business, I would say more so than investing.

Like investing, you need to be making decisions rarely and sitting on your hands for a long period of time. Whereas, like when you're actually taking, when you're doing business, you need to have high agency and you need to constantly be making decisions to move that thing along, which means you'll never have perfect information.

And so as an entrepreneur, you have these two opposing things, right? That is, they are tugging away at you. And then you find a pretty good business. Okay. It's like, Oh, well, let's just go for it.

Like I've had successes of just saying like screw it, like let's just do it. Let's move forward and do it. And that has been a successful strategy in some ways, but it's not; you have to have wisdom behind you to be able to do that properly as well.

I agree, or sort of knowing what, like the worst case scenario would be, and knowing that that probably is, like, if that was to happen, you're not going to be in a very, very bad position.

Absolutely, absolutely. Every single time.

Yeah, yeah, like the second business that I ever bought, my dad was like, do not buy this because the numbers didn't make sense because we're translating it from Thai baht. So Thailand money to US money and then to Australian money. And there was each order was a custom order.

This is for suits, we're designing suits and selling suits. Each order is custom, so each oneiss not the same price. And the fabric is all at different prices. And it was just kind of a little bit messy in the books, and it was difficult to understand. And any accountant would have found it difficult to understand.

Okay.

I didn't fully understand the numbers, like to the decimal point, right? But I knew that the business was profitable. And so there was a margin of error that I could account for and be okay if we were still creating products at the highest possible price. And I think that's where you're alluding to is like, if you.

Sometimes it might not completely make sense, but like if you, if the reality of it is like you've still got some margin for error in the deal, then, and then the upside is significant, then great.

And that was the best deal that I've ever bought. Best online business I ever bought. I've got a hundred percent return on my investment. I've got my money back in seven months, you know.

In your case here, the best deals are those where there is upside. Heads, I win a lot and tails, I lose a little. Within that context, did you feel that when you bought this business?

Yeah, absolutely. And I wouldn't say all of the best deals are like that. It depends on where you're at in your life. Sometimes people want to just buy a stable business, or maybe they're buying a business as part of a portfolio that is going to fit in with their portfolio nicely, and it doesn't need to be cash flow heavy from day one.

It depends on the acquisition strategy and where you're buying. But if we're viewing from the lens of a first-time buyer, it's minimal downside, minimal risk for a massive potential upside, which is typically the best sort of deal you can go for as a first-time buyer. That's just for that one type of person acquiring that. That's what you saw in this business, which is why you were able to do a 19 % interest ratfive years period.

For sure. For sure.

And it's still cash flowing, and you were buying a business that doesn't have crazy overhead because it's a digital product. Margins are great. It's very scalable, has a good brand, great owner. You know, you just bought really, really well. So, where to from here? Are you thinking just keep scaling this thin,g or buying more, or what's the…

Yeah, that's right. Margin.

So I want to make sure we're telling the correct story here. So I bought a pretty good business and then totally flubbed it. So this is not a story of success. My friends, this is a story of failure. So I'm here to tell you stories of failure. Vacation or something. Just like, cool, I'm making money, I've made it.

Yeah, that's right. I bought it, and then I just moved to this island. No, I so I bought it,t and then everything was going pretty okay, so I essentially bought what you would call a digital bakery.

So in any kind of bakery you have, you've got your you got your baker who needs to show up at 5 am. You have the people who are the tellers who are selling the baked goods and coffee.

And there are all these different moving parts, and you kind of have to be like a very popular bakery to make any good money. Soo I bought an e-commerce business, a digital bakery, not exactly knowing that I was buying myself a digital bakery.

And so, at the time, you know, we were just getting off of that big COVID boom in e-commerce, which I knew about. So, you know, the COVID boom was real when people, when there were stimmy checks going out, e-commerce was booming. It did really, really well.

Everyone's a DJ and a producer this time as well.

Exactly. And so when I bought it, the revenue went down by like 25%. And part of that reason as well was that the current owner hada really good product, he was just incredibly on point with creating his product, because he had deep industry knowledge of what Dubstep prowere ducers wanted in that moment. And he was also launching new products every single month.

And he had respect, like that community where he, we had a producer who was helping actually create the presets and then also doing YouTube videos. And he wasn't getting paid that well, but this would be the Baker, right?

Yend, and then a few like supporting staff doing things, a nd there were a couple of red flags that I actually now, you know, I should have known things were too good because I was looking at conversion rates on his landing pages and he was getting like eight to 9 % conversons on some of his landing pages.

And I thought to myself, wow, yeah, that's really high, right? That's amazing. And, um, not exactly realizing that the reason why it's not like 2 % or 1%, which is still amazing. Um, it was because he was just so gt like nailing the nail on the head every single time when it came to product.

And so his conversion rates were incredibly high. So when I took over, a couple of things happened. One, again, the COVID boom kind of went down, and then I couldn't know, was that Dubstep producers won, that they won trap music this month, you know.

Thanks.

And so revenues went down 25%, 25%, 30%. And then the main customer acquisition channel was influencer marketing. And there was, yeah, through YouTube. Yeah. And then there were a couple of influencers that he was using. And then, as the COVID boom kind of went down and they were getting fewer monthly sponsorships, they decided we'll takefewers monthly sponsorships. We'll just increase our prices. They essentially, like one of them tripled his price, which made.

The Roraz go down to nothing. It just became pointless to advertise with him. So that had a huge effect on the revenue. And then the Baker left. The producer was like, well, I'm just going to like him, he's young, right? So, but then, he finally got enough confidence, and I'm happy for him.

Like, I think this is great actually. Ase it sucks for me, but in reality, it's amazing for him that each went off and started his own YouTube channel, making his own sample backs. And he's doing, I don't know how he's doing, but I think he's doing all right.

And so, you know, the baker left to go start his own bakery. And then now we're at revenues of like half. So now I'm scrambling. I have a loan to pay, and I'm not able to make my loan payments. And as this is happening, my real estate investments are also not doing well in the sense that the prices of them were going up, but just roofs that need to be replaced in seven years need to be replaced now, you know.

Maybe I was paying a little bit less attention to managing the properties, and now we have plumbing issues every minute. I didn't have a plumbing issue for five years. It seems like for six months it was like, yeah, we have another plumbing issue.

We have another plumbing issue. You gotta do this. So my cash reserves are just dwindling, dwindling, dwindling. And I have a business that is non-profitable when I actually have to pay the loans off. So I call up the bank, and I say, I can't do it. Like I cannot.

I, we need to end the, and I cannot pay my monthly loan repayments. So BDC was great in that they were like, okay, no problem. No interest from here on out. We're just going to stop it. What can you give us?

So I sent them a hundred grand the next day. And then we agreed that they would wait a year and a half, to like, we'd have a year and a half to figure this out. And I would have to sell a property of mine to be able to pay off the remaining.

The Terminable.

That's really reasonable, isn't it? That's quite nice.

Yeah, it was great. Like they're great. And I, you know, that that really helped out a lot. And I was somewhat responsible, and that like I had the reserve, but things weren't working out as well as I anticipated. So I was able to do the right thing and pay as much as I possibly could in that moment. Right. So yeah.

Yeah. Luckily, you had a bit of cash to put into the pot, give t, he bank and sort of let t,h em know like, Hey, it's not like you're just going to run away here. And you've got a year and a half to just, you know, find a new Baker and, and, start baking some goods, guess. Is that, is that where you're at? You're, you're, hunting down some bakers. Do we know any bakers on the pod? If you know any dub set producers guys, all the listeners reach out to Julian.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, that's right. Now, things have kind of evened out, or things have stabilized a little bit. So now the business is it's not what it used to be for sure. It's not giving me that amazing lifestyle that I would hope for, but it's paying the bills, nd it's putting a little bit of money in my pocket.

And so, I like, know, it hasn't been the greatest investment in the world. It's been a giant learning opportunity for me. But that's kind of like where it's sitting at the moment. One of the things that I like the big thing is really like what you learn as an entrepreneur through this process.

So I've really had to learn more leadership skills, like how to actually hire people, how to bring a group together to essentially run the business. Before I was working in the business, a lot as opposed to on the business.

And so now I've got like a small team of people who are running the business for me, the most part, and then I can kind of like higher-level stuff. And honestly, another big thing has been like my networking.

Like it's been great to be able to, nobody wants to help anyone who isn't like doing the thing. Like most successful entrepreneurs are willing to help you, at least with a device, nd are willing to give a little bit of advice on how to move forward if you are acly are taking the steps to do the thing at the end of the day.

Yeah. You're showing that you're doing the work, and then yeah. Yeah.

Wow. Yeah, I agree. It's through buying a business that it teaches you, and owning a business that it teaches you so much agency; you just end up becoming a far more responsible person. It helps you level up, which is really, really valuable not just in business, but yoin ur own life as well.

Like you translate what you've learned from business into your own life. Yeah, it helps you be able to have the capacity to deal with larger problems in life, and I'm less stressed, which I'm sure helped you once you had a child. You're like, I'm not a parent at the moment, but I'm sure it helped at least a little bit.

Yeah, putting like most entrepreneurs that I know have taken responsibility for have put on responsibilities and the burdens of those responsibilities, responsibilities on their own shoulders. When things are going well, it's amazing because you feel an incredible amount of confidence, right?

And then there's always stuff that happens that will. Huge problems that happen that a lot of people are not able to deal with. Like I see it like, like, you know, when I tell these stories of things that I'm dealing with with my brother or others, people, and they're just like, how are you like, what? You know, like, and it's not for everyone.

But you, you get through it, and you feel, yeah, it's great. When it works out, it's awesome, but you're not an entrepreneur unless you've, you will know you're an entrepreneur when you've spent 10 to 20 minutes in your shower crying in your shower because you've made such a colossal mistake that affects you, your friend, your family, and everybody else around you, right?

Like when you're a business owner, you have a lot of, really, you can have a giant effect on people's lives, right? So. And that's why you get the games. Like that's why you, that's why you have to make more than others.

Anyways.

I totally agree. You're, you're, you're playing a game where you can lose a lot, but you can gain a lot in impact with others as well. And it's, I think it's worth it. Uh, you know, I've been doing this business for basically 10 years, and it's, it's been a journey,y and I've shared my, my losses and nearly gone to the, to the dust as well. Coming back and um, yeah.

It'a s tough one. Being a business owner is difficult. It's not for everybody. It has its massive upsides. You just have to work out for yourself where you're at. It's the same thing that we're talking about before. Is the risk minimal for the massive potential upside, and based on where you're at in your life,e and how do you feel?

And for me, when I first got into business, there was no risk because I knew I was going to do this or not. Like, I was getting into business or not because I didn't like my life. You know? So the risk was minimal because I had to do something different. Like, it was pretty muchthe onlyo other option. And I feel like a lot of people like that in their, in their roles and their jobs they have, which is why they turned to this route.

Yeah. Did you have success when you first started?

No, like, no, it was not like I, I started a few small businesses, you know, started like multi-level marketing, and I started like cleaning cars when I was young to be able to buy a boat when I was young.

Then, like that, we made a little bit of cash doing that. was just labor and cleaning cars and stuff. But as I moved into online business, I started two online businesses, and I just failed. Like I tried it. I'm a very dedicated person committed.

But I just committed for too long and realized it way too late that it was a failure. And so, yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, it's pretty rare that somebody starts something and they're successful straight away. think a lot of the people that are successful, they have a backlog of lessons they've learned throughout their life in and out of business that have given them the wisdom and the lens to look through to become successful and make the right decisions.

That's what I see anyway. Like the people who are the most successful investors and business buyers, and successful business people who have just cut their teeth on a lot of things before, and learn a lot of lessons.

And then you hear them like, yeah, you know, overnight success story. You got like a decade of shit that you've just, you've just been swimming through to get to the other side of the island. Like a lot of us.

You just described where it's like a four year journey and they just slog through so much mud to be able to get to the place that they're going and the person who has just was Got into the was just successful from the get-go because they were ting up, you know weights that just Worked for them perfectly in that moment, you know, they had to pick up the lowest weight at the gym and those are the two entrepreneurs that I've met there's no one in the middle there's no one who's like does it for like a year and and still like succeeds, you know.

Yeah, it'san interesting journey. So, where to from here, Julian? You focusing on growing this biz? And do you think you're going to do more acquisitions in the future? What does it look like for you?

Yeah, so right now I am. So right now, like I've got, I got a part-time job. So I've got this business, and I've got a part-time job, and I'm looking to start another project. And, yeah, so I'm not going to talk about it too, too much, but back to what I was saying about building a network and building relationships.

One of the things that I've gained out of this, out of buying this business and meeting really great people, and then building a pretty decent network of other entrepreneurs and successful business people who are willing to place another bet on me. I am, yeah, I'm working on another project, nd we'll see how that goes. I'm going to work my ass off on it and just keep plugging away.

I love that. I love that. I'm an advocate for when you d to is get back into some work, even if it's for somebody else, somebody else, and whilst you reset and get your things going. I did that, you know, when I was doing so gowellgo bac, to work and it hits the ego in a very terrible way. But it's necessary to put your ego aside and check your ego for a little bit to be like, hey, do I just go and drive Ubers around, and like, I'm unfortunately maybe randomly want to pick up one of m,y mates and they're like, what the fuck are you doing?

But it's, it's necessary to check the nd, and, to get ahead again. And, you know, it's like you've said that you've, you've had losses in real estate, losses in, you know, we've all had these challenges, and you're going to come in on top stronger for sure. I'm super excited for you. And I'm so grateful that you came on and shared your story, Julian. Thank you so much. Yeah.

You're welcome. Yeah. Thanks for having me on. And I appreciate what you guys, what you do. And I think it's really important to kind of share the stories of, of regular people who are going out there and just trying to better themselves and you know, buying businesses and all that, because there are successful people and successful entrepreneurs who are like working at like an Elon Musk level, like high intelligence who are incredibly successful and they work their ass off.

But the people that I like to model myself off of are just ordinary, normal people who are just putting in the work and trying to solve those problems. At least for me, as you've seen from this interview, I'm just a regular dude who's like trying to make money.

I'm a business nerd who's trying to make monethere arethere's a lot of us out there. And the more that you meet successful business people, you realizt like a lot of them are just kf like at this level. They're not Elon Musk's, and yeah, we need more of us.

We do, we do. I love that. Yes. Thank you so much for sharing. We do need more of us, and we need to model people so that it's a bit more realistic than 500 hours a week, know? Yeah. Yeah. Julian, thanks for coming on.

If you want to reach out, I'll put your LinkedIn in the show notes as well if you want to reach out. But yeah, thanks again so much. I really appreciate you sharing, and looking forward to seeing where you're at in a year. It's going to be fun. Thank you.

Awesome. Yeah. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it.