Ep 367: [Case Study] From 9–5 to Freedom: How Alan & Mel Acquire, Grow, and Sell Online Businesses

It's okay not to know, but to have the mindset that it's going to be new, it's going to be different, it's going to be frustrating at times, but it's also very rewarding, right? And you get to amazing, and more doors open up for you.

It was amazing this summer to take our kids with us, do a whole world school experience, knowing that financially we're okay because we have this business running smoothly now with our 11 VAs who only need us for five hours a week. It's amazing.

Hi, I'm Jaryd Krause. I'm the host of the Buying Online Businesses podcast. And today I'm speaking with Alan and Mel, who are a husband and wife duo who've turned to online business acquisitions and used it to create a lifestyle of freedom and adventure.

We talk about how they got into online businesses versus offline businesses, how they discovered my staff, the work we've done together, and Alan, with a massive background in education technology, and Mel, being a former respiratory therapist with an MBA from Ohio's Fisher College of Business.

They combine their skills to acquire three online businesses and recently exit a one very, very successfully that I also talked about with John and Brian on another podcast.

And their profits have helped them purchase two Airbnb properties and build a third one in Belize. And thanks to their flexibility through the online business ventures, they've recently spent a month in Guatemala and El Salvador with their daughters for a world school program.

And now they're under LOI for their next deal and looking at purchasing more acquisitions into the new year, and just building their wealth. Now they have the lifestyle freedom and the time freedom through their first acquisition.

There's so much about in this podcast. We share about what their biggest challenges are, how they got into online businesses, and the things that they tried and failed at first before they moved to the online business space.

We talked about the first acquisition that they also exited and sold to other clients that are in the, in the Bob community as well, which is in another podcast. We'll just talk about the challenges they face, the advice they would give somebody who was acquiring their first business, and what they've done and achieved to be able to create the lifestyle they have now, and how that's changed for them, and what they want to do in the future as well, in terms of philanthropy and building their wealth.

There's so much value in this pod. We talk about acquiring businesses. If you haven't got my free resource on the due diligence framework, it takes the guesswork out of buying businesses. It's made people millions of dollars. It's saved people millions of dollars. And you can get that at buyingonlinebusinesses.com, which has free resources, linked in the show notes. Let's get into the pod.

Mel, Alan, hello.

Hello?

Hello. Welcome to the pod. It's so good to have you guys on. We've known each other for quite a while now, actually. And just for everybody listening, you guys have done quite an awesome amount of entrepreneurial things.

And I just wanted to chat to you guys about what they are and how that has helped you and changed how you live your life. And since speaking and working with you guys, you've done some really, really cool things. So I don't know where to start here. What, what, like maybe I just asked, why did you turn to the online space to make money? Like what was the, what was your overall goal, and how long ago did you look at this online space?

Sorry, you're sorry.

Yeah, I think 2020 really started to break us, Jaryd. know, like that was the phase of life where we all went remote, and then we started to try to stack W2 jobs to try to make extra income and extra side hustles and everything like that. I guess while I was sort of stacking multiple jobs, Mel was the smart one between the two of us, and looking at alternative ways to you know, she was like, something's not adding up here, right?

We're dumping all this money into taxes. We really never got ahead. We're just doing this hustle. And she was, let's take a step back. Let's look at things a little differently. So she was doing a lot of research while I was sort of doing all of those, those other things, heads down. And so she was really the driving force behind how we got into the online space.

Yeah. To add to that, I've always had a desire to do something for ourselves or kind of do something more entrepreneurial. And I knew working at W2 jobs was at some point going to hit a wall, a ceiling, right? That was not going to work for us.

So I've always been researching, always reading, always watching videos and YouTube videos, and trying to listen to podcasts. So I'm the one who's kind of behind the scenes who was just, you know, believing more about that space and knowing more about it and coming back to share with Alan about it.

So I was always engaged in that space. Yeah, we're definitely opposite. I'm one of the risk takers, he's risk-averse, and I have to kind of pull him in a little bit after a lot of repeating and showing proof, or as much proof as I can, that there's something there. Let's give it a chance.

I think that's beautiful in the relationship, to be honest, because you can balance each other out and equal each other out. If you've got two massive risk takers or two very conservative ones, it's, you you can, you can either burn out and go too fast too soon with the risk taking or being too conservative, not really get in many spaces and do much.

And so I think it's quite complimentary to be honest. It's really, I've struggled within myself, being too I have a risk taker to go, go, go at one stage, and have learned through many mentors and have been helped to slow down, which actually helped me speed up. And yeah, so I'm happy for you guys that you have that dynamic.

And I want to ask, did you try anything? what's, what were some of the things that you tried before you decided to buy a business, or was there anything, or was it just actually, like buying a business is the, is the go?

Yeah, Mel's had a few adventures over the years, and I sort of just always followed along with those. And yeah, they date back pretty much as far as I've known her. She was always trying something.

I mean, I can't remember it specifically because there have been so many that I've done.

She was going to into landing for a while there.

Oh yes, financial lending. We actually went all the way to New York City to do some training for like a week, you know, a couple of days out there. That didn't work out very well. And mind you, this is while I was doing full-time work as a respiratory therapist and he was a teacher.

So I was like, okay, let's try this lending, and I'll just compete with a thousand other people, and all try to convince them that if you don't have great credit, I can give you money. So, that was a lot of work, and not much fruit came from that.

Well, was free social media too. So was more, she would drive around the businesses, and actually, physically, there was no way to reach out online at the time. So it was just a different dynamic.

Yeah, and then was there anything that you did try online? Because I think from memory speaking to you guys, your goal was to make some income online so you could have just more flexibility, right? Like calendar control. Is that right?

Yeah, and I had taught online. The challenge there was that I was teaching on Saturdays and missing the girls' soccer tournaments or whatever it was. So it's the same as trading hours for dollars.

So it was like, well, this isn't really the idea that we had. There wasn't any automation in place there. I was still physically present. But it was nice to have something on our own. Like I was doing this on my own. I'm making a little bit of money, but I'm still kind of physically tied down.

Yeah, I can think of, I did try to do an online credit repair service. So I did sign up for a program for that, and it was legit, and he did some work here and there.

Did you try anything online before buying?

Aside from the online credit repair that I tried to do, but that was like from scratch. That wasn't buying anything. That was just joining a program that existed. You got training on it. And then you try to just get people to repair their credit.

And how was that? Did it go? Like, did you enjoy it? Was it successful, or was it more like just trying something and it didn't work out for you?

Yeah, it was. I believed in it because I knew people needed credit repair, right? Because you know, you know, a lot of people out there are trying to get loans and qualify for this and that, and they're getting turned down because of that. So I knew there was a demand for it. I just didn't like the aspect of constantly almost selling myself and talking about it to convince them, even though it was a good thing, and they could use it.

It was just kind of like a chemo salesperson in that way. It kind of came as annoying to always bring it up and see if you can help someone, and then they kind of say they're interested, and then they ghost you. So then you start over again. So yeah, didn't like that.

Sales are phone sales and even in-person sales. It's not fun. It's demanding. That's for sure. Not for everybody. No. mean, even if it is, even if you're good at it, like I'm quite good at sales and did really well with my business, and then help some other businesses.

Did some sales coaching, but it's just not a long-term thing that you want to be doing. You you're you know, you're pretty much trading your time for money versus what you've done now with your acquisitions and growing them. And then, where did the idea of acquiring come from? Acquiring a business come from? And then how did you even discover my stuff as well? Curious.

After thinking, actually, we weren't looking to acquire. So even though it's in this little small line with the credit repairing and whatnot, we were still thinking that brick and mortar was the way to go.

So I can say we because it was on me. I focused on, like, OK, maybe if we, since I have a health care background, let's look at acquiring a business that's already functioning and running and operating and doing well. But that's brick and mortar we can go to, and we can just take over and improve.

And that was when the assisted living facility idea came in. And so just focus very strongly on that and try atoeven up with the realtor, we're going to see a few of them. But looking at the numbers, what they were selling for, and what the cash flow was, it did not make financial sense. Because in my mind, it's like in a year or two, can we replace this income, our own personal income,e to take to only have this one job, this one business?

Maybe one of us, but not both of us. And even then it was too kind of shaky. So that's when I kind of brought him in a little bit. Like, what do you think of this number? Is this doable? Does this make sense? It comes with real estate, so that's good. Why just tax deductions for that? But then you talk to the owner, and the owner lives and breathes that business.

He's the manager, the director, the this and that. he goes to, does the groceries, and manages all the staff. And that's the only way that cash flow looks decent. But once you take him away, I will replace him with other employees. It didn't look so pretty.

Yeah, the challenge was that you're limited in growth to the number of rooms that the house has to hold the patients. And then if you want to grow, then you have to acquire another location.

And you're going to grow that way. But opening your eyes up to the online space where growth can be exponential all over the world, from the one resource that you have, was kind of an incredible, eye-opening moment.

The ironic thing for me, Jaryd, is that as a software developer, I build these online tools. But I was always about, if I'm going to purchase it, I need to be able to hold it. A car, I physically see the car, the house, I physically see it, I understand that purchase.

And then in the online space, you don't really have anything that you can grab onto and hold. Yet I was creating this stuff. So it just took a while to come around. And I think it was the growth potential that really brought me around in the long run for the online space.

Yeah, that's cool. mean, you're not alone. A lot of people do want to buy something physical that can, they can see physically and touch and, it's just that safety ideology or mindset of like, okay, if everything goes to not so good, we've got some equipment and property that we can sell but if it doesn't go great, then like selling that can be very difficult as well.

You're selling the equipment for a fraction of the cost that you acquire for. It's still like, it's still a failing business, and it's very hard to get rid of, and you're not getting much back for it, really. And this is what you can see. I'm sure you guys would have seen, you know, you've got Cody Sanchez's of the world and a bunch of people like helping people to acquire physical businesses, and then, typically, they say for no money down, like little to no money.

The reality of it is, it's very difficult. Mean, even buying an online business is difficult, but buying a physical business, you've got that. You've got that complexity of scale, which is so much slower. Even if you're not tied to just how many rooms there are, like even if you're buying like a lawn care business or whatever it is, you're limited to a location typically before you need to open up and acquire another location.

It's not; there are always those glass ceilings there that people just don't know to think about yet. didn't, you know, you guys didn't know this yet, like until you got in there and worked out and found out, you know? And then you came to the online space, and you're like, wow, okay. And you came around.

Are you glad you came around? Cause look at your life now, right? Like, what a journey.

I mean, after convincing him a little bit there, you know, and he's,s and mind you, I was willing to go into that space anyway, just for the comfort of him, because again, something tangible. But once you realize the numbers, it just didn't make sense. Even if you were to expand another location or maybe an addition to the homes and make it a 16-room sort of eight that a lot of states require, it's just that the numbers didn't make sense. And I love real estate.

So, to be any business with a real estate attached to it, I was excited forage, but then you also have the headache of maintaining the real estate on top of the business. Yeah, so once we started looking more into all these different websites with those flipper, website closers, or International, so Farnes was like, okay, these numbers look way better, more doable, and there's room here to grow with it, there's room to scale. So let me dive deeper into this space. I've reduced that to him as well.

Yeah, which you did, you jumped in, you started working with Bob, learnt a lot, and saw you submitting a bunch of businesses for due diligence. Did you guys go away and you got finance for this first acquisition, didn't you? And where did you get the finance from? How did that go for you?

Yeah, I think, you know, we dove in, and when we went in, we were all in probably a little bit of a larger deal than we would have originally maybe been comfortable with. But there's sort of that range or that sweet spot where it makes sense to have a business that's not just a side business.

We wanted to go in and leave our full-time jobs. So that required a little bit more buying power going in to do that. But yeah, we went through the SBA process the first time doing it. was a journey, it's, you know, I mean, there's the good and the bad, right? And Mel is great with the numbers in the financial reporting, so she took the grunt of that work on. But the nice thing about the SBA is a low cash injection from the buyer, but it is a process.

Yes. It's an absolute process, right? Like it's just even the process, you know, selling, selling the business as well. The process of buying it is just, it's a finicky thing. And this is, I'm glad that you say that and share with people, it's lie you can use finance, and it's really good because you're able to buy something that's in the mid to high six figure or seven figure range and it can replace your income a single income pretty fast, maybe even two people's income as well.

But there's going to be a journey to get finance ready to acquire the business, to be acquired with finance, and to close. How long did it take for the acquisition, with the full, the first acquisition with finance involved for that one? Do remember?

We started,d so after I found it, I found it on website closers. I'm just searching a whole bunch of different ones. I was like, okay, this one is service-based because I wasn't ready for a product base yet. Just because no experience whatsoever. So we're like, okay, this is service-based and, you know, it's a little more doable, and the numbers look really attractive.

And more importantly, it is SBA-approved. So that was specifically looking for that, just because we did want the lower injection to the business. So once we reached out to the broker, Spoken and Dave, who was really, really helpful, we said, then we were referred from there, I believe, to e-commerce lending to kind of help with that process. So that was, was that October? October, I think, is when we started talking to the sellers. Then we closed in April the following year.

Yep.

It seems like it was a rough process to go that long, but actually, as first-time buyers, that was pretty healthy because number one, the SBA is looking deep into this business. Not that you want to rely on that, but they are going to mitigate risk in the financials.

And also, we got to develop a relationship where we saw consistent performance in the business, which made me feel good. Versu, as I say, if we jumped in and it was only a one-to two-month deal, that might have been too quick for me.

So it was nice to see this business that we were engaged in, and it performed month after month before wetooke over.

Yeah, absolutely.

And it helped because every week we were meeting up with the sellers and the brokers. So they were giving us updates while in the background, things were working,g and the SBA was doing their thing.

So we were able to connect with them. Got the numbers on screen, live accounts, and they gave us more comfort knowing that, OK, the business is not going under. They're still working on it. It's still there. So we're in good hands. So that part was helpful.

Yeah, absolutely. And you bought this business... How much did you buy the business for?

We had it for 1.2, and I mean, we were only able, it was a brilliant negotiation tactic from our lawyer team. We were only, we only did a $65,000 buyer injection.

Well, yeah, and it would have actually been none at all. It would have been zero, you know, going into the details of the negotiation there, because the seller financing option would have been a higher interest rate. So we chose a lower one in exchange for putting in 65k. Otherwise, it would have been zero injection. So that's close.

Wow. 5%, like 5% with the opportunity to have 0% down. Wow, that's crazy. Yeah, how good.

In real estate, I'm so stuck on negotiating deals, and it's really strict, but in business, you can really structure a deal in a lot of creative ways.

There's less legislation in business acquisitions than in property acquisitions. Like, of course, some boxes need to be checked and ticked and stuff like that, but there are just so many variables in business because businesses can just change direction pretty fast.

But real estate, it's the same. You've got tenants, landlords, and a physical location, too many variables with it, which is a beautiful thing about business. mean, and the same with buying real estate, you're like, when I think about investing in stocks or real estate ETFs, whatever it is,s crypto, you don't control the growth.

You know, you can't scale that up faster. You have no control over the growth, but in business, as you do, you control the asset, and you can control the growth, and there's no glass ceilings and you're not sitting in an asset hoping it's going to go up; you are doing something about it, which is a beautiful thing.

And you guys did just that, right? I think you bought, when you bought the business, you had like three or 14 members. And then when you sold it, you had 11. Is that right?

We had 2 when we bought it. Yep, it was pretty much just 2 VAs, and their owner did the sales part of it. And then he had a partner as well, but he wasn't as involved as one of the guys, one of the owners. And the other 2 VAs were the ones behind the scenes, kind of doing the operations. So, yeah.

You're two, okay.

Yeah, know, Mel was really good at building teams, and this is kind of where the two of us have teamed up really well, and I'm more technical. And we're under LOI right now on our next acquisition. And again, was a very, we've kind of been attracted to these businesses where the seller is kind of heavily involved and getting a little fatigued.

And so they're selling at a price that's probably a little more, you know, of a deal because they're ready to move on, and then Mel, we're confident in her ability to build a team around sales and operations and to handle all those time-consuming things. And after doing it that first time, and she did a tremendous job, we're looking forward to doing that again.

It wasn't easy; I was kind of thrown into them. Manji, no experience whatsoever.

It's cool to see that the business comes through; you guys acquire it. then when I had some clients that you guys know and sold to, to throw it out there into the ether, and then you guys go, we're thinking about selling, okay, let's do this. And then you sold it to another person in our community, like Bob.

It was really cool to see what you guys had done in that short period of time with that business. was just like, wow. And yeah, they bought, you sold a great business, and they bought a great business.

And it was just, it's just an amazing, like what you've done with it. Just create, it was already pretty, it seemed like a pretty good business already. Like you, you know, waiting around for six months for that to close on your SBA journey for the acquisition of it, and checking in with them regularly and seeing it's still performing well.

We had the same thing on the buy side, where it was challenging to close with SBA and get everything together with SBA. And we had the same thing happen, where it was beautiful to see the business just stand very, very strong through that process. What were the biggest challenges in the growth of the business?

Probably Mel is listening to me because it's when I complained about tasks, because I wasn't the one who would build a team. am the one who jumps in and does the things. So she was working on taking everything that I was complaining about.

And then that's how she sort of built the team up on what we needed. So, you know, what did we do? We put probably 60 hours a week in for the first few months. And by the time we sold, we were only doing about five hours a week.

Yeah, it was the first month or so was definitely challenging because once we finally opened the curtains fully and dived in, we realized, OK, this is all I work to do here. There's a little more that we probably should have taken more time, as far as I do diligence, you know, but that's OK.

We're here now. Let's figure out how to improve this, and I think it's successful. And the biggest part we noticed was that the lack of having more people, more labor, more help behind the scenes to make the forefront look better, know, and more seamless, and a better process. And unfortunately, making the hard decision of letting one of those two VAs go just because it wasn't working out at the time, and with what they were doing.

So recognizing that early on and just saying, hey, we can keep you, but if you've been at this long and this is the level of performance you're doing, it's just not going to work. There's not enough time to put into this. just letting them go and then trying slowly to hire more people who were more qualified, easier to train, and more likely to succeed, to help him out. Cause he jumped into the sales world part, which he's never done sales.

He's the introvert, I'm the extrovert. You didn't think I'd be the one doing the sales. But somehow it came so naturally to him. He's a little more patient. I think I get too excited sometimes. So maybe it's not good for me to do sales. So he's perfect cause he was calm. He explained things very well.

And so for me to support him in the things that work blockers, had to kind of step back and see, okay, what can I put in place for him to be successful in that role? And how can I eventually replace him now as the salesperson? Because that wasn't what the plan was. was, you know, deep in it.

They were good problems to have, though, as new business owners, because we were getting business, we were getting clients. It was about just having a human in front of them to talk with them. But the bottlenecks were in the operation.

So Saturday morning, getting up real early, Sunday night late, trying to catch up on stuff because the business was moving, it was churning. Okay, now Mel's seeing where the holes exist, where the bottlenecks exist. Let's get this.

We quickly got it to a team of five or six. And then as we grew, the team basically doubled from there. But investing in the team allowed the business to grow. That investment is what allowed the business to grow.

Absolutely. You did it in a way where you've, you're replacing your job, your role in that business, but with a person and a system that is not just going to do the job, but they've, they've got growth as well. As it is, it's a growth system. You built a growth system.

And what did it look like? Mean, let's talk about the hours that were involved when you first bought the business. That's so natural and so normal. And I think it's important for people to understand, like you're drinking from a fire hose when you first buy a business.

Absolutely.

And maybe not just one fire hose, like just multiple fire hoses from multiple directions. And it's a really good value lever to pull on when you buy a business, that may be the owner, who may be involved, maybe more than you would like them to be. Because that might, that's got a little bit of risk, but then also seeing if you can replace them and build growth systems with a team around is a great lever to pull. Typically, when I'm looking at a business, and I'm buying for somebody now to convince them that this owner might spend 30 hours a week on the business or 40 hours a week on the business, but what are those tasks, and how easily replicable are those tasks?

If it's really tied to their knowledge and their career, it's harder to replace them. But if it's, you know, some accounting and bookkeeping and some roles that can be replaced quite easily, where there's a lot of cheap labor out there for that. Right. It's, it's an easier, it can be scary because somebody acquiring something is like, I don't want to be a bookkeeper.

Like I don't want to, I don't want to do that job. Like, I don't want to do sales, but we can hire people to do that. So sometimes when a deal has a little bit more dirt on it, you have to be selective of what, like what dirt you are okay with swallowing for a short period of time until you replace it, and you guys did that great. And how did this, how did this acquisition, like change for change your lifestyle?

As such, were you both working when you first bought it, and then you did one queer, and then how did it evolve to you guys not working in therapy and teaching anymore? How did that evolve?

Yeah, we got out of our jobs pretty quickly,y and it wasn't really by decision. I was in the tech space as a software developer, and it seemed like once Elon Musk took over at Twitter, there wasae mass exodus at all the large companies of developers.

I was at PayPal, and that month that we acquired, they cut my hours in half from 40 to 20 hours. So they made mego from full-time to part-time. And at that point, I just said, I don't want to be half in on building our business and half in on a part-time job.

That's not going to be productive anywhere. So I removed myself from, just said, you know, thanks, but no thanks. I'm going all in on our business. And then it was just a couple of months later for Mel.

Yeah, for me, I had to jump in because I was forced out of my job that I was in. After business school, after leaving respiratory therapy, I went to business school and got my first corporate job. And after working there for four years, now, in a Fortune 5 company, they let me go.

And it's funny the timing because they let me go, I believe it was like July, and we bought the business in April. But by then, we're just kind of seeing where the business is, what needs to be worked on.

So when they let me go, it was like, well, I guess I have no choice now but to jump, you know, head in here 100 % focus on this because this is where we need to replace our income.

So for me, I had to really figure out how to replace my income, and that opportunity being there was a blessing in a way. And Alan realized, like, okay, I need to join her too, and just leave this part-time work and focus on this because we see the potential and we see where there's no ceiling as far as income. So let's focus on that instead.

Yeah, so you know, three, four months in here we are, you know, we were drinking from the fire hose, and then we're,e but we had small growth every month. Like we had this little bit of growth every month. So we, and then once we were fully out, it really started to take off.

But you also get access to capital. Like, once you're running a business and there's capital. So she was like from her business, and we had like a capital offer from Stripe because they're seeing the payments coming in. So then we just went out, and we bought like a small affiliate website, let's replace some of your income and diversify.

So we bought a small business. We don't even understand how it works. We just collect the money every month from the affiliate. And so we never even touched it. It still just brings us a little bit of affiliate. Opportunities start to open up for you in a lot of different ways once you're up and running.

Yeah cool. Okay, so you've done two acquisitions now.

Right, that's quick.

And so this is so hilarious because when you guys jumped on the call, Alan, you mentioned you're looking at more acquisitions, and after the sale of the business, I knew what your goals were,e and it's just to do some totally different things and not acquire or be inan online business. What I think is that you mentioned something about missing the cash flow now that you sold the business, Alan.

Is there any other, what it's, it seems like it's both drawn you guys both back in. Like you've had great experiences, and you've done really well. What other things allowed you to do that have helped draw you back into wanting to acquire more?

May we, yeah, number one, the cash flow was really good in the business. Now with the SBA loan, there were details on like, we've freed up some of our real estate properties, which was a big goal of ours with the sale as well.

So, you know, we have some movement that we can do with our real estate now, because they were tied to the SBA loans. And now we feel a little bit freer there. We have working capital to invest in some things.

But yeah, we do miss the consistency of income from an online business. We miss the credit card points that it's generating when you're flying on your business. I thought we were going to stay out a little longer than we have, but we kind of got antsy after about two months.

Amazing.

Really, seriously, Jaryd, he was like, I need a break. I'm going to enjoy this and just not worry about having a business for a little bit. And he was like, yeah, I'm over it. It's time to look for something else, know, to get back into it. I miss it. I miss the challenges. I miss, you know, problem-solving. So it didn't last very long.

No, that's cool. It's nice, though, to know that you've set yourself up in a way that you're doing a different acquisition now. You're not doing an acquisition because we need to replace our income. We need to get things moving really fast and make a massive lifestyle change.

You've already got the lifestyle change. You're traveling, you're spending more time with your kids and enjoying life more, and it's really cool to see you guys do that. You're doing that before you even sold the business, right? And during the acquisition or the exit, you know, we had you guys traveling, had Brian in different time zones, and I was in Mexico traveling, and we're all just living our lives and having a great time. Of course, there was a little bit of stress involved with the acquisition, too, but we're still able to maintain our lives. Um, or I wouldn't say maintain.

Well, having a good time, thriving really. What are some of the things that you would share now, buying two businesses and exiting that somebody's thinking about? They're listening to you guys, and you've done it. You've been very successful in it, and they're like, we want to replace our income too. What are some of the things you would share in terms of challenges, and how to tackle them?

Personally, being very technical, it's really important. The buyer doesn't have to understand the code base that's attached to the web application or whatever is in an online business, but they just have to understand that it's accessible to them so that they can either pass it on to the development team or there's a good development team that's in place that's going to maintain this application.

That's big to say from you, being in tech and knowing that's not super necessary to know a lot about.

Yeah, you don't need to know about it. You just need to know where it exists and that it's there and that it's easily transferable for your team or your goals or whatever it is,s so that it's just not abstracted in the background. So I'd say the tech stack would be an important thing to make sure that you look into.

And I would say two things for me. would say the mindset and education. Because when you have gotten so used to going to work and getting your paycheck every two weeks and depositing that and seeing it and spending it as you will, and all of a sudden now you're owning a business, especially if you don't have a W2 job or a good time job anymore, you're relying on your own success, you're relying on your own efforts to see what those numbers look like, the mindset has to shift now that you are a business owner.

You run this, you operate this, all the decisions you're making are based on what you know. And that's where the education outcomes are, where you never know everything, but you know enough, you know, to make smart decisions or to outsource and seek help and seek mentors or just do more reading or watching videos or just wherever you can get those resources. But you still want to leap, even if you don't know everything, but recognize that you're going to learn as you go.

Like we didn't know anything about this business we're doing. We are doing e-commerce for the first time. I'm healthcare background, you know, he's a teacher, he's mostly software, but not to this level where this particular business runs this particular way. Like that, you just learn when you jump in, and you get in there, and you start asking questions and doing more research.

So it's okay not to know, but to have the mindset that it's going to be new, it's going to be different, it's going to be frustrating at times, but it's also very rewarding, right? And you get to meet amazing people, you get to have more doors open up for you, and more opportunities. need to spend a whole month in Guatemala.

It was amazing this summer to take our kids with us to do a whole world school experience, knowing that financially we're okay because we have this business running smoothly now with our 11 VAs who only need us for five hours a week. It's amazing. I never thought of that five years ago that we'd be doing that.

But the mindset changed a little, you know, because significantly to say why not? Why not us? Why not try it and just see how far it takes us? And then now that I know, let me educate myself even more and find out what that space looks like, what opportunities are there.

So that needs to be set, that mindset and education, and then the technical stuff will come, think she followed a lot of your trainings and a lot of your videos, Jaryd, too. extremely valuable content that you put out there.

Yeah, very, very valuable. mean, especially if you don't know, right? Go to somebody like you who does this, who talks about it, who interviews people who have experienced this, who have all kinds of backgrounds, and learn from that, learn from their mistakes. You know, they share that as well, right? So you don't repeat them. So you never stop learning.

Yeah. And the big, the big thing is really, it really is the mindset male. So, as you guys know, I do talk a lot about mindset, especially in the course and on the pod. And it's the, it's the biggest roadblock is that people, the people face in terms of getting into the acquisition or buying something is that believing that they can do it. And some people just.

I have this idea that they need to know how to run a business, or they need to know about the space before they acquire it. Before you rode a bike, did you know how to ride a bike?

No, like you had to learn and fall, pick yourself up, learn from the falling mistakes, and keep going until you're riding around a bike, you know, around town, and without training wheels. It's the same with an acquisition.

I would say about 85 % of the people that I talk to are not business owners. 85 % of the clients that I help through businesses have never owned a business, never bought a business. And they have been wildly successful. You guys, like as you guys are, and all the other people that we've talked to on the pod, like I would say 85 % of them had never owned a business or never acquired a business.

And it's the mindset that people need to understand that you're saying Mel is like, you don't need to know how to do it. You don't need to know the space; you will learn things as you go. It's the same with the job. My first job, I didn't go, I can't do this job because I don't know how, like working at Subway. I don't know how to make a sandwich based on how they want me to make a sandwich.

I would just never have done it, but I'd learned on the job. And that's what you do when you buy a business: you buy the business, and you learn the business on the job. And it's fascinating that people may think that every e-commerce business is the same. It's not.

If you think you know how to run one type of e-commerce business and then you buy something else, you're not going to know how to grow it. It's different. Likewise,e even if it's the same vertical, like or similar niche. So I'm really glad you brought up the mindset. Now what's, what's next for you guys? You mentioned a couple of acquisitions. What's what size, what type of businesses, cause you are, you were going to just continue.

You're to do some philanthropy. You're already doing a little bit of philanthropy work, and Alan, you're going to do a little bit with AI, I see. And it seems like now you just like, let's buy more businesses. What's the, what's the future look like for you guys in acquisitions and then also lifestyle?

Right, right. I think we're a little bit over the place, honestly. It's like a nice little mixture going on there. We're a balanced LOI with another e-commerce business, a service-based business. We're this close to thinking we're going to go to the products side, but we shifted out of that.

Yeah, it's email flows. A lot of Shopify sellers help service their email flows and email marketing.

Right. So, a combination of that, I got approved and started my nonprofit, Rising Phoenix Month. So I'm excited about that one, where it's helping mostly international developing countries that are women business owners with understanding business and business operations and financial literacy, like that space,e because I'm passionate about financial literacy.

And so just helping women in that space understand how to run a business, how to operate it, how to be profitable while giving back to their community. So we have that going as well. And of course, the real estate is always there, always looking into that space as well, especially internationally. So we're all over the place a little bit there, but they started with the business acquisition really to help us fund and get to those places. So that was a hugecatalyst there.

And the business, did the business already have real estate, or did the business help you acquire real estate?

We had like 2 properties before the business, just because I said, I love it, and I'm always looking for something, but we were able to acquire more because of the opportunity the business provided us.

Yeah, and really, it was a lot of it. Diversifying income is a big thing, but also for tax purposes. The business was performing so well, we were looking at what we could do. Mean, Mel kind of took on, Mel loves her research, so she took on what can we do to kind of keep money or not pay as much as possible to Uncle Sam, and how can we leverage things in certain ways, and real estate was one of those vehicles.

Yeah, and I like managing, and I like different areas of real estate with the short-term and long-term rentals. And I just mixed it. It was a really good partnership with the business, as well as the tax benefits,s for it to help out with the income.

Yeah, I call it the infinite loop of wealth, which is business, and in real estate, it's the same with business, as you get enough cash built up that you can go and use that as a deposit to acquire property and acquire debt to buy that property. And then also as that property grows, you can build equity naturally in it without you having to work.

And then you can also take equity out of a Healock home equity line of credit and use that, and roll that back into another acquisition using finance again. I help people who have a couple of 100K Healock; they use that as a deposit and then use SBA financing to acquire a business. It's kind of no money down, really, in theory, but it is you taking cash out, and you're increasing your line of credit with your property.

It's a, yeah, it's, it is a really nice flow because you've got a higher risk asset that is typically making a higher return, and you can scale that infinitely. And then you put it, roll it over into a roll equity back into business, or roll it over into real estate, where it's a more stable asset, and you have this high growth, higher risk asset and lower growth, lower risk asset that can help balance it out, and using credit to do so.

It's a pretty beautiful loop that you guys are using as well. And it's allowed this lifestyle, right? Like, are you going to stay where you're at, and do you have more trips planned, or what's life like?

Yeah, mean, I can't sit still. Definitely can't sit still. We just came back, celebrating our 14th anniversary. We were in St. Kitts in Edis, and that was amazing. So we enjoyed that and got a few, got to go to Belize next month. We got a few things planned next year, Colombia, whatnot. So we got a few things going on.

If it were up to her, we'd be traveling the world and not be here in the United States at all. But I think we're just figuring out, like that's a whole other conversation and a whole other leap to take outside of the online business world for us. If it wasn't for like a school schedule for the girls, we would probably be, yeah, we'd be gone all over the place.

Yeah, I'm this close to maybe becoming a homeschool teacher, but probably not. But if I could, we'll pick up and go.

This is the conversation that I have with a lot of my friends here in Indonesia. Everybody works online, or they have an online business. And when it comes to family, it's like, what's best? You, do you stay somewhere? You like you, like you've sort of solved the money problem, and then you have to work out.

Okay. Like I can literally, we can pretty much do live anywhere and work on our own schedule, what do we want to do now, and what's best for us in terms of lifestyle? You fix the money problem, and then you adapt, and you start developing the lifestyle that you want to create.

And you guys have already started doing that, know, world schooling, might be starting to homeschool Mel. And then it's a conversation on what's best for you guys and then what's best for the family, the kids, friendships, socialization, all that sort of stuff.

There are always challenges and things to solve, but it's nice to get the money one out of the way, isn't it?

Yeah. It's a big one. It's a big one.

That's a big one. Congratulations guys. I'm thrilled. I'm really thrilled to be a part of your journey and just so grateful that you guys came on and shared, and I'm sure everybody else as well.

Thanks so much. And I look forward to hearing more about your acquisitions and, as you grow.

Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much for having us, and thank you for the content you put out there. So more people like me, you know, find you and learn and jump in, take the journey.

Yeah, I'll tell you what Jaryd, yeah, I can't thank you enough and as me again being the risk averse person and I still remember the first business acquisition in the document came through with feedback from you and it was like the first comforting moment for me that, this has been professionally analyzed and we've got this feedback to go off of and we're ready for the next step and that even though you wouldn't realize it in the volume of work that you do for me, that was a really big moment.

Awesome. I'm grateful. I'm so grateful. It was a great acquisition, and it's just set you guys up so much. And yeah, looking forward to speaking more with you guys as your journey evolves. Congrats on what you've done.

Thank you.

Thanks, guys.