Mergers and acquisitions, business.
There's a lot of people getting into the game right now,
Marty, because the Baby Boomers are retiring.
There's this massive economic opportunity
to take over businesses.
And, you know, there's those who have no idea
what they're doing, promoting themselves as though they do.
Then there's those who know what they're doing,
but it's still dangerous to get into a relationship
with somebody if you don't know how to qualify or quantify
how are they gonna do it.
It's not enough to get to their end result, right?
There's a process that matters there.
And I see the depth of your team and intrigues me a lot
where I'm like, man, this guy talks about his story
in a way where you have every right to be pretentious
and condescending, yet you don't.
You know, you show up with a good strong sense of humility.
So what do you see happening right now
in the market of planning and preparing
for business exit strategies?
There's those who aren't even preparing for that at all.
And then there's a whole market trying to create
all sorts of hoopla around the subject,
but you've been in this profession for a while.
Do you mind telling me a little bit about your background
from your perspective?
And what do you see happening in the market right now?
Yeah, so which one would you like me to address first,
my background or the market?
Either one, I like your humility though.
Try to start rambling.
So I guess they should talk about my background a little bit
just so that people know kind of where I come from.
So I built and sold my first business
over almost 25 years ago.
It was not an intentional situation.
We built a business and it was a completely
grassroots business and it was quite successful
fairly quickly and only 18 months
after we started the business, somebody came along
and offered to buy it from us for a million and a half dollars
and I thought, wow, this is easy.
You just build a business, you grow it for a year and a half
and people give you a million dollars.
Turns out it's not that easy,
but that was my start.
From there, I went on and founded a couple
of other companies and started a couple of other businesses
that I sold, wound up acquiring a business,
one of the earliest e-commerce businesses
which was a very interesting situation
because we were doing about a million dollars a year
in revenue and then I had a competitor,
very fierce direct competitor that was doing
about a million and a half dollars a year in revenue
and so we decided to acquire them and it was interesting
because you'd think mathematically,
my little one million dollar business
and their little one and a half million dollar business
when you put the two together, what might happen to that?
And what happened is we did $30 million by the second year
because the synergies of our team were so strong
and the lack of our competition by working together
instead of competing was just exponential growth.
So that's one plus one equals 11.
That's right there.
Thank you.
Then you add another one, you go from 11 to 111,
we need to understand this.
Completely and that's when I started to understand
the power of mergers and venturing and things like that
and I've always tried to live my life growing businesses
through organic means and through relationships
and things like that.
So that's kind of what led me to what I do today
which is full-time acquisitions.
I purchase and sell, occasionally sell businesses
but I mostly buy businesses my own.
I have a very extensive portfolio and a wide range of topics
and partners in a number of my different businesses
and through all of that, I would look at a business and say,
oh, that's a nice business
but I'm not interested in acquiring it, thank you.
And the owner would say, well, if you don't wanna buy it,
do you know somebody who does?
And I'd say, well, yeah, actually I kind of, I think I do.
So let me connect you.
And I started becoming a connector
in the acquisitions world
and that's led to a whole other thing
and you just showed my website up there
which is my acquisitions business, Westbound Road
and I have a team of people who work with me,
a business partner on that.
And so we help advise buyers and sellers
to have successful acquisitions transactions
and what does that mean?
That means everything that it takes for a business owner
to plan, prepare and execute a sale of their business
over a period of time.
So we recommend our clients contact us
a minimum of three years
before they are actually ready to sell their business.
So whereas people might call a business broker
when they're ready to sell their business,
we're very different in that we're very much advisory,
coaching, process oriented
and our goal is to help business owners
to have the most successful exit financially,
intellectually, emotionally, which can't be discounted
and to take care of all of their needs
when they do have an exit.
The biggest message I wanna give out to the audience
is many business owners,
whether you have a business that does
a couple hundred thousand dollars a year
or a couple hundred million dollars a year,
it's shocking how many business owners
do not think about what does an exit for my business
look like and yet 100% of every business owner
will exit their business.
The question is, will they exit on their terms
or on terms completely out of their control
and our goal is to help them exit on their terms
and their timing versus waiting until it's too late.
I love that and those of you listening in,
if you've consulted with ChatGPT or any other AI
about how to sell your business the right way
and you think the plan was rock solid,
you need to be talking to people like Marty
because ChatGPT is not that advanced yet.
It can give you some insights and ideas.
I highly recommend challenging it
to help you understand these things.
Then there's Eric Gaffstrom of Exit Strategy,
phenomenal resource, he's got awesome things.
I highly recommend exploring these things
in the beginning of your visions if possible
because to be able to end, to be able to,
what does they say, start with the end in mind,
begin with the end in mind.
I always say begin with the vision in mind too
and know that your vision usually leads you to a hilltop
where you then have new options right in front of you.
So those are two different realities
and my hope is to help you have people like Marty,
people like Eric, people like John Whaley based out of Texas.
I highly recommend him as well as somebody to counsel with
on these subjects.
The more wise and centered and solid advisors
you can have around you, the more likely you're gonna end up
in a profitable and a great position.
And I think I speak for Marty and I both, right?
That's what we want.
We want people to be educated and know what they're doing,
know where you're going and don't gravitate
towards who you wanna work with.
So Marty, you spent a lifetime trying to learn stuff that,
even business owners, most business owners I think,
I mean, I could be projecting,
but I think we don't wanna think about the end.
Basketball players, a lot of them don't think
about the career afterwards.
We got LeBron James who already prepared his entire career
for afterwards.
Like when he was 18, 19, he was doing it right.
People are following him in that space
because he did it right.
But a lot of them get into the sport,
get out of the sport and have no idea what to do
and what their value is and what their identity is.
So I love the way you put that.
But you've spent your career learning the ins and outs
of all of this.
And I'm not making an assumption, visionaries.
I'm very careful with that.
But what Marty has on his website
and how they go about the building of their team
and the breakdown of being on both sides of the transaction,
he either had to model somebody who knows what they're doing
or Marty's created something based on a whole lot
of experience.
And I believe the latter is true based
on the way it presents itself.
So all that discovery in years previous,
if you could only give three resources
for visionary leaders to focus in on,
what three resources do you recommend
for visionary leaders out there?
With regard to this topic or just in general?
Don't let me limit you, my friend, the box of life
is wide open.
All right, that sounds good.
So interestingly, I have been about,
oh my goodness, we are in the time of this recording,
we are in December of 2024.
So exactly two years ago, probably this week,
I would imagine, or maybe the week after,
I was binge watching some series on TV.
I don't know what it was.
And the series finished and you know how I like Netflix,
you finish it and it says, well,
congratulations, you're done.
Now we recommend this and it pulls up and starts.
And I remember vividly going,
I need to stop wasting my life sitting in front of the TV.
And I said, I wanna get back to reading again.
And so I shut the TV off and I barely have turned it on again
in the two years since that's gone.
And I focused myself on reading both classics
and new classics.
But resource number one that I wanna give you
is to shut off the TV.
If people calculate how much time they're spending,
and the TV that may include watching videos on your phone
or Instagrams or TikToks,
watching Netflix and things like that.
Any of that kind of non-educational screen time,
if you add up how many hours you're giving to that
and how much of your brain cell
and your energy you're giving to that, it's not good.
And so resource number one is something to eliminate,
not necessarily add to you,
which is get rid of that brain numbing screen time.
Love it.
Number two, in the time that I've spent,
I've now read and I've actually calculated it up.
I'm just gonna pull up my spreadsheet.
I have everything I've done on a spreadsheet
with all of my reading and my resources,
materials and everything else.
But it's been a really fascinating process.
I have about 450 hours now into reading,
which doesn't sound like a ton, but if you add it up,
that's about six weeks straight of 24 hour days
in the last two years.
And again, that was all time I replaced watching television.
I'm a great big fan of a couple of old classics,
how to win friends and influence people.
You know, it is a saying that people use as a joke.
It's an old book, it's almost a hundred years old,
but oh, look at you.
Don't you love that?
Look at this OG lead magnet.
Yeah, look at that.
Look at that pamphlet.
The information in that is timeless
and it will help any leader to be more successful
and have a bigger impact on people
and to understand how to work with people
and understand how to have a better life.
Oh, that's so awesome, Jackson, that you've got.
I've got good.
That sits on my desk.
I have now-
There's a lot of things I can put on my desk,
but that's awesome.
I have now read that book probably 10 to 12 times
over 25 years or so, every couple of years.
Highly recommend you get back to it.
So that's a resource that obviously both of us
can very much recommend.
And then from there, I'm a big fan of the Bible.
There is every lesson in the Bible.
There is drama and history and how to lead right
and how to lead wrong.
I mean, you wanna talk about a leadership screw up.
Let's talk about King David.
That guy was a jackass.
And I mean, he slept with his girl
and sent her husband off to get killed.
I mean, the guy was, he was a terrible guy.
The domino effect.
Yeah, but the redemption of his life
and becoming a great leader.
There are so many great stories in the Bible.
If you want to look at the Bible purely
as a leadership manual, there's some incredible lessons
in there and I highly recommend that resource.
Oh, I love that.
You hit hard on these.
This is great.
There's a song that I love.
I think it's by the All American Rejects.
If we're adding to the noise,
if we're adding to the noise, turn off this song.
That song as a teenager actually inspired me
to do just that.
It was kind of my shut off the TV,
one of my moments on that.
And so yes, I can definitely see how, whatever it is,
whether it's music, whether it's TV,
whether, I don't know, you've got an imbalance
and addictive attachment to something
or something that is causing you to unstimulate, right?
And lose sight of priorities or your vision.
Maybe put it in check and see,
is this something that is holding me back
or is it contributing to and helping me move forward
in my best self?
So I love these, Marty.
That was super great.
And reading, we'll add that as a fourth bonus
because it was brought up as ultimately a resource.
So thank you for the addition by a subtraction
with the shut off.
That includes this podcast, my friends.
If this is not contributing to moving your life forward,
then please by all means go do what will contribute.
We'll be right back after the break.
We're gonna dive into Marty's vision
and talk more about preparing for exit
and making sure that if your vision is related
to entrepreneurship and making the most of the transaction
of what can occur when you've created a successful business,
stick around and hear what we have to say.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in.
All right, welcome in to Vision Pros Live.
With Jackson Callum, I'm your show host.
We'll be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs
and guest leaders who are building
fantastic visions out there.
All right, welcome to autopilot.
I mean, Vision Pros Live.
So here I am, just messed up on that transition.
I went right to our ending screen.
And for those of you who are in the podcast realm
or looking to build something awesome
in terms of attracting audiences
and hosting guests and stuff,
you can point to me and say, well, that guy messes it up.
He just air balled his free throws.
And I'll be like, you know what?
I do that all the time.
So thanks for joining us.
Visionaries, get after it.
You don't have to be perfect.
Progress is the way to go.
Super big shout out to Samantha Skelly, actually.
She's a, she helps people with binge eating disorders
and she's got a shirt line that she created that said,
imperfect, but it had an apostrophe.
It says, I'm perfect.
I was like, yeah, go Samantha.
She's got this super great leader.
And in regards to leaders,
we're gonna talk about some sponsors real quick.
One of them is Opradena de este trabajo para Latinos.
That's opportunities for work for Latinos.
That's our homegrown program.
And we're looking for more Latino leaders
to come on that podcast and show to inspire
those who are really building this out with and for.
And that is our digital ambassadors.
These are individuals who have never heard of LinkedIn.
They've never heard of Upwork.
They've never heard of Canva.
They've never read Rich Dad Poor Dad
and other materials like that.
We're helping these individuals become
what the world knows as virtual assistants,
but we're also putting an end to the VA pandemic.
What is that?
Virtual abuse.
I'm tired of seeing it.
I used to contribute to it myself
and think I could get somebody hired
to just do everything for me
and never pay attention to their life.
My hope is that you will join us in this quest
to uplift others while bridging the economic gap
through North America, South America, and rest of world.
We've launched as well opportunities for India.
We've also launched opportunities for Filipinos.
And again, if you happen to be aligned with that message,
that vision, reach out to our team,
find out how you can get involved and help out.
And we'll explore it from there.
That's their podcast, by the way,
Opportunities Latinas Podcast.
They've hosted guests with far more followers
that dwarf the size of most of my leaders
within their first couple of episodes
because of how cool it is what they're building.
So again, go see, even if you don't speak Spanish
or Hindi or Tagalog, you can still get involved.
So there's that.
Last plug for that.
Learnandgrowrich.net, by the way, this is Zach Ullman.
We brought Zach Ullman on as our chief financial officer
at First Class Business.
This is how much we believe in his brand
and love what he's doing at scale
to help us help businesses move forward
with more strategic plans, better forecasting,
better understanding of their financial existence,
the reality that they're in.
Zach has very much shown an alignment
with all things that we stand for,
and he's building at scale.
So you can work directly with him
or you can come through us either way.
It doesn't matter for me if we're all winning.
And if the tides are rising, all ships rise.
I love that quote.
I never get it right, but it's a great one.
Then there's the Water Project.
The Water Project is not homegrown.
It's not something that we're involved in.
I just like to give back to it,
and I really like to talk about it
because I took this for granted for so long.
I didn't realize how many millions of people
don't have access to even the most basic of resource,
such as water.
When it came across my life,
I think I contributed to it
because I liked the transparency that existed.
And so it was fun to just kind of like fund
one little project, knowing what town was going to be helped,
and then seeing them send social media updates
and like picture proof of what happened,
whether it's building these borehole wells or sand dams.
And as I started to really pay more and more attention
to this, I realized like, man,
what would it be like for my kids
to have to walk three to four miles
just to find any source of water
to bring back to their school
instead of focusing on their education?
Or if I had to leave work to go get water for my family,
like what type of economic hardships would that create?
And then look at these kids.
They celebrate water as much or more
than our kids celebrate Christmas.
Like this is super, super special.
So I hope you take the opportunity.
If you're in a financial position to contribute,
everything matters and counts for these individuals.
You can make a generational impact by contributing to it.
And if you're not in a financial position to do that,
my hope is that maybe you'll turn this into a dinner
conversation with friends and family and talk about it.
If there's another cause that is more on your heart
and mind right now, please drop that cause in the comments
because I love to learn about new ways that I can give back.
I know our audience does too.
You might be the catalyst for us bringing
that particular opportunity on the show and talking about it.
We might contribute to it.
We might make them one of these pseudo sponsors, if you will.
So without further ado, we have 8 billion people to help.
And I hope you join me on that.
And right now, it's our opportunity
to help you with some information from Marty Fonke.
So Marty, thank you for joining me on Vision Pros Live.
Thanks for having me, Jackson.
It's my pleasure.
Absolutely.
So you've got a pretty big mountain of gifts
to give to visionaries and entrepreneurs.
In terms of helping them think through this exit strategy,
that alone is something like just a seed
worth planting for those who haven't gotten there yet
and haven't really considered that.
But I want to dive into some more depth with it.
What do you see happening in the market right now?
We didn't quite touch on that in the beginning.
What's going on in the world of preparing for exits?
Have you seen any trends that are concerning?
I will bring up some that I have seen that are concerning.
Because this is a capitalistic venture.
There's a lot of money to be made in this.
And because of that, there's a lot
of wolves in sheep's clothing.
And I'll say there's a lot of sheep's in shepherd's clothing,
too.
And that's almost worse, in my opinion.
So what do you have?
Yeah, there's a lot happening in the space.
So we may or may not have heard the term silver tsunami.
That term is to describe the fact
that there are tens of millions of small businesses
that are owned by the baby boomer generation.
And they need somewhere to hand those businesses off
to when they are ready to retire.
And we're seeing that to the tune of about 10,000 businesses
a day are needing to change hands.
And here's the unfortunate thing is
that many of those business owners have not
had time to plan for that change.
They thought their kids were going to take it over.
And then they find out the kids don't want it.
Or they thought that, you know.
The 24-year-old kid's like, I don't even know what you do.
Yeah, I just want to be an influencer.
And that's all I want to do.
So on that side, on the business owner's side,
we're seeing a very unprecedented time
where transitions are needing to happen.
But people aren't prepared for those transitions.
They have businesses that are not prepared.
The books aren't in order.
There's so many things that need to be done.
And then they go out and say, OK, well, should I sell this?
And then they find out it's practically unsellable.
And many times, I got to tell you,
Jackson, I've had call after call.
They think they're going to sell this business
for millions of dollars because they have in their mind
because they read some article somewhere.
And the reality is it's not worth it.
And that was what they were partly planning
to use for their retirement.
And I've had horror stories.
And I'm trying to help people avoid that.
So we're seeing this opportunity where
all of these businesses coming up for sale
or about to be coming up for sale.
And then over on the buyer's side,
there's some interesting things happening.
And we haven't discussed what your concerning things are.
But I'm going to tell you what I see.
And we'll see if they match.
But there is, on the positive side,
there is a movement afoot called the ETA movement that
is entrepreneurship through acquisition.
What that means is historically, for most of time
in eternity, but certainly in the United States
for most of its successful history,
when people wanted to be really successful,
they'd say, I'm going to start a business.
All right, you're going to start a business.
Great, that's wonderful.
Entrepreneurship has built the backbone of this country
and the good part of the world.
What people have started to understand
in the last several years is that entrepreneurship,
starting a business, one in nine, excuse me,
one out of 10 businesses that are started
will be successful, meaning nine out of 10
are going to fail in the next five years
or the first five years.
Correct.
However, if you have an existing business that
is a business that is already proven,
it's been in business for five or 10 or 20 years,
you have existing customers, cash flow,
you have positive reviews in your community, et cetera.
If you buy that business instead of starting one,
you can take over something that has a nine out of 10
chance of being successful rather than failing
and you instantly have employees, processes, cash flow,
you name it, and all of those things
lead to a much higher odds of success.
So the positive thing I'm saying is ETA,
and ETA is even being taught in universities now.
There are some universities with ETA entrepreneurship
through acquisition programs and courses,
and that's a wonderful thing.
Now, what we're seeing is something
that's concerning in the world, and that
is a rise of people talking about, well, 20, 30, 40 years
ago, we used to see no money down real estate.
Get your fortune doing no money down real estate.
You can buy all these houses for no money down
and turn them into rentals or flip them and get rich,
whatever, guys showing up with Ferraris in their driveways
and all this kind of stuff.
Today, we're seeing that same kind
of trend in no money down business acquisitions
being touted a lot of different places.
And the unfortunate thing is that that's
a little bit of an unrealistic expectations.
There's not a business owner in the world
who has a successful, thriving business,
and that business is operating properly,
has a great team in place, and it's profitable.
There's no business owner in the world
that's just going to hand you their business for no money
down.
That's completely unreasonable, but yet we're
seeing a lot of that out there.
And we're seeing that movement kind of causing people
to maybe start to want to acquire businesses thinking
they can do it for nothing and thinking that there's
no risk in doing that.
And that's something that is concerning to me
because it's putting a perception in the marketplace
that owning a business is easy, buying a business with no money
down is easy.
And the reality is it's tough.
Entrepreneurship is tough.
Being a visionary and having a successful, thriving business
is tough, and it's not for everyone.
I think entrepreneurs in a lot of ways are born, not made.
And if you're not born to it, there's
some people who are just born to be employees.
And there are some who are born not to be,
and you need to know what's good for you.
So those are some highs and lows I'm seeing out there
in the world today.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on what you're seeing out there,
Jackson, and any topics you want to cover.
For sure.
I'll play devil's advocate and angel's advocate
on this reality.
Also double down with what you said.
No, entrepreneurship is not meant for everybody.
Look, if you're blind, you might learn how to read through Braille,
but you're simply not going to read a book until the technology
comes out to fix that.
If you're deaf and you can't hear the music,
you can't hear the music.
It is what it is.
And they learn to celebrate and appreciate life.
And we all have certain adversities like that in life.
But I don't have the frame for a sumo wrestler,
or I don't plan to.
So there's certain pursuits in life that, yeah,
I mean, you can be stubborn and go for it.
I could become a sumo wrestler probably,
but that's not necessarily the best path for the gifts
I've been given.
And I hope those of you listening in realize
that Marty and I, we're not trying to push you out
of entrepreneurship and say you're not qualified as much
as be self-aware of what you are capable of or aren't
capable of doing.
And know that there's extreme consequences that
come with the path of entrepreneurship
that represent challenges that most of the world
doesn't understand.
And people like Elon Musk said it, you have to be crazy.
It's like eating glass.
And Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn, said,
it's like pushing an airplane off of a cliff
and repairing it while it's going down.
You've got to be freaking nuts to go after this stuff,
not drinking the Get Rich, Quit Kool-Aid.
Good luck if you do that.
So the devil's advocate a little bit.
I got interested.
You got to tell me what ETA stands for again,
because I looked up ETA movement on Google,
and it ain't popping up.
So you're ahead of the trend.
Entrepreneurship through acquisition.
Through acquisition.
There you go.
So the good news is, Marty, you're
going to become one of the top people and relate to this
if you keep talking about it, because Google is unaware
of what that stands for.
It's pushing ETA, SA manufacturers, Swiss, Switzerland
stuff.
But it is a great thing to be ahead of the trend,
ahead of the curves on realities like this.
It is only a matter of time before those three words catch
on with Google.
As you mentioned, especially with the backbone
of universities getting involved and seeing that
as an opportunity.
I'll put Angel's advocate on the side of people giving you
a business for nothing down or similar to that.
It reminds me of the microloans that
exist in Africa predominantly.
Do you remember the name of the company that has the microloans?
Kiva?
Kiva, right?
Yeah, Kiva.
Yeah, I made a few of those for Luke.
Ask it.
It's different.
It's a different philosophy and idea.
But the reason why I bring it up is
that's actually one of the things first class business
is planning and doing, and we do.
And she's my executive assistant.
She had an existing infrastructure.
I was her first client ever as she
spammed me for Facebook ads or something like that,
and maybe helping and assisting.
And because of her persistence and her diligence
and her consistency and her reliability,
and I decided to give her a shot.
Like, hey, did you do this with AI or did you do this manually?
And we got into a conversation, but we build her business
for her for free.
It expands our brand.
She's got her own podcast.
She wanted to do a lot of it by herself,
and we give everybody absolute freedom to do what they want.
Six weeks later, I'm looking at it going, hey,
maybe thought about maybe incorporating the team
to help you on these so that it actually moves forward.
And she's like, yeah, I'm starting to see that now.
I was like, plus, it'll help you better
relate with our clients because you'll
know what they're going through.
And they have the same desire as you,
they want to do everything.
So I don't think that it's kind of like the gun.
You can use a gun for a lot of things,
but did you pull the trigger with the intent
to shoot somebody?
Did you aim it at somebody and accidentally pull the trigger?
It doesn't matter.
The resource, water can drown and water can save lives.
Fire can burn, and fire creates this wonderful electricity
somehow, too.
So all you entrepreneurs out there, considering these paths
and looking at it, if I were to give advice,
it would be look for the who.
Look for who's doing things the way
that you want to do things, the values, the virtues they
stand for.
And if the why and the purpose exists,
then consider aligning with it.
And I will definitely have my finger
on the pulse of this ETA movement.
I'm probably going to try to crack that algorithm now
that you mentioned it as much as we should both do that
so that people find the best possible resources as they
consider these opportunities.
You said 10,000 a day.
You also mentioned 9 out of 10 chance of success.
There's variables that are associated with that,
beyond the fact that the business survived.
And I'm pretty infamous or famous,
depending on who you ask, for saying 96% of businesses
lose within 10 years.
And 4% survive.
And you know why that is, right?
Well, I'm going to finish that thought.
I hadn't finished the part that I'm infamous for.
The 4% who survive, as a young entrepreneur,
I believe, well, they must have made it.
They must be awesome.
But when you become really, really good at consulting,
you begin to realize they have higher levels of debt.
They have a higher risk tolerance.
They've got more jaded families.
Their life freaking sucks a lot of time.
And they have not figured out frameworks
that have created balance for themselves.
Very few have been able to repeat that success
multiple times.
And they live a hyped up life based on virality
and based on this public image they
have to maintain that doesn't align with the reality they
actually have going on behind the scenes.
And so I am super curious.
And again, why am I calling attention to this, my friends?
Not because Marty's wrong.
Not because there isn't the outlier in those scenarios.
It's actually doubling down on Marty's thoughts.
It's the reality that if we can figure out
those variables of what causes the 9 out of the 10 success,
and we can capitalize on those for our own visions
and for our own lives, we can actually
produce those types of results with more vigor.
But we're not going to do that by reading some stupid article,
skimming some stupid article, and trying
to figure it out the lazy way.
We've got to actually pay attention to the variables.
So can you walk us through, out of the ones
that have the 9 out of 10 chance for success?
What are the variables that were factored in
to get to that conclusion?
So I kind of touched on those earlier.
If you're acquiring a business, the infrastructure
is already there.
It has a strong foundation.
You build your house upon sand that's going to wash away.
If you build your house upon a rock,
it's going to have a firm foundation.
I love that you said infrastructure.
It's not talked about enough.
Most of them do not have infrastructure
even after 10 years.
So what does a solid infrastructure
look like to you?
So I'm a big fan of operating systems in businesses.
And when I say operating systems,
I don't necessarily mean software.
I'm talking about a process procedures operating system.
So there's a couple of out there.
We call them procedures, resources, and templates
for a small business.
So there's EOS, and there's Gazelles, and Rockefeller
Habits.
There's numbers, scalable.
There's a number of operating systems out there that basically.
So let's talk about franchises for a minute.
I don't do much with franchises just
because it adds a whole layer of complexity that I don't love.
But franchises are successful for a reason.
When you go to buy a franchise business,
say you buy a McDonald's.
First of all, they got to know, do you have the financial
resources to support this while it's not making money
until it does.
Once you buy a McDonald's, they give you an operating system.
They tell you, this is what your building must look like,
the colors you can use, the uniforms
your people have to use, every training manual,
the temperatures you have to cook the hamburgers to.
They give you every single thing about the business
is built into an operating system.
And that's why franchises have been
so successful over the years.
Because somebody can come in, take over a business.
The foundational operating system
is there to help you be successful.
And then you can put a little bit of your own secret sass
on top and then put your hard work into it
and make it successful.
So if your business isn't a franchise,
if it's your own independent business that isn't a franchise,
it should have a foundational structure, an operating system
that's just as strong as if it was a franchise
with all of those things that you just mentioned, Jackson.
I love that.
So the E-Myth is a book I read.
It's the one book I regret not reading the moment
it came across my desk.
That and FiberSolutions is a team with Patrick Linciani.
Those two paved an entirely new path for me.
So that's one aspect.
And I would say it's a pretty big aspect.
Like that's a big portion of the foundation
that we also build with.
Are there other elements that help move the business
owner towards that chance of success?
Or if somebody is going to buy a business that's
been in operation for more than 10 years,
what else should they look at?
So the other thing we talk about is the stages of the owner
exit.
When people think about owner exits,
they only have one thing to think about.
Well, the owner sold the business and left.
Well, there are a number of stages to the owner exit.
And where the ownership is in that stage
can have a big impact on things.
So stage one is exiting the front line.
So if you're a plumber and you have a plumbing business
and you are out there every day cleaning drains and fixing
pipes, you are on the front line.
You have not exited any portion of your business.
So you need to exit that front line.
The next that first exit is going from the front line
to management.
So you need to be as the owner.
You should be managing all the plumbers who are out there
doing the work.
But you should be managing, supervising, leading, coaching,
et cetera.
And you should have an appointment center.
And you should have a billing person.
And you should have managing your assets of your business,
your trucks and your tools and everything else.
But you're still day to day involved.
So that's the next exit you need to look for.
How do you exit then the management?
And so you've got to look at how do I move up to the next.
And that's when you start to be able to become
more of that visionary.
Maybe you hire a general manager or chief operating officer.
And they're handling a lot of the day to day.
Not every single employee there reports to you.
And maybe you're providing more CEO type level role,
where you're maybe looking at doing acquisitions
and growing your business more through acquisitions
or new joint ventures and partnerships
with huge partners to bring you new business.
Maybe the new developers coming to town
and they're going to build a 500 subdivision unit.
And you get the deal for all of that.
So your company's doing all the plumbing for all of that.
So you're doing some big deals.
You're doing high level things.
You're not day to day.
So that's the next exit.
And then the next exit from there
is truly that visionary status.
Like your connection with the business
is providing the vision to the team
and the long-term planning,
the long-term growth strategy for everybody to come on board
and kind of being the cheerleader.
And that's kind of the ultimate.
And then obviously the exit out of the business
from a financial and ownership standpoint is the last.
So there's multiple exits to an ownership strategy
and it's not always just selling the business
and walking away.
And where a current owner is in that level
can substantially impact where a new owner
might be able to step in and take over.
So those are just something to consider.
Those are huge, fantastic things to consider.
What I say next is going to sound like,
I know more than Marty here or that my-
Paul, should you do?
And I'm not sure about that.
But I appreciate your humility on it.
But I get to color commentate my friends.
So keep in mind,
he gets to lay all the hard work foundation
of how we talk through all of this.
And we have different paradigms and perspectives
that actually harmonize,
because we're trying to use analogies
to pull this stuff together, right?
Stages, steps, et cetera.
I don't see the stages the same way,
but I see it more like a triangular effect.
And that's what the E-Myth really aims for
is we all have within us a technician,
a manager and a visionary.
And they're not linear for usually the most successful
people in the world.
It's actually the opposite of what you talked about.
You got Walt Disney, who was like pure visionary
and kept screwing everything else up.
And so I look at it kind of like spirituality,
mental fitness and our physical fitness, right?
Those three, they all exist simultaneously.
They can all be dealt with.
We end up developing different strengths
depending on what we gravitate towards
or what life provides us.
But there's not necessarily an A to Z route on those
that is a one size fits all for everybody.
Again, I don't think Marty was saying that,
but I do worry that some of you may have heard it that way.
Going towards the Rocket Fuel book by Gina Wickman,
N-E-O-S, like you talked about.
Love, Gina, yep.
I like it.
I won't say love.
I love him as a human being.
And they made some pretty nasty fallacies in that book
in relation to the visionary integrator relationship
that I would like to talk to Gino about at some point
or his team, because they don't honor
the integrator enough as they hard sell the business owners
on why the visionaries need an integrator.
Nonetheless, just a gratitude optimization opportunity there.
But they talk exactly about what Marty's talked about
and they're super successful.
And these are pathways that we can all learn
from his visionaries that,
look, you may not wanna scale everything right now.
You may also wanna scale to billions of dollars.
The principles of getting there are not too different
than the principles of your typical exercise.
Do 10,000 steps per day.
Do 100 pushups, do 100 sit-ups.
Control your eating habits.
And most of us would be quite fit in life if we did.
I don't do all of that every day, I try to now.
But I could be in super fit shape
if I just stuck to those basic principles.
And that's what I love about what Marty's talking about.
Every single one of the principles he's talking about
are principles that we abide by with our brands
and with ourself.
And what I'm hoping that you'll,
what is the difference that I'm alluding to?
If you're a visionary,
don't feel like you have to be a technician.
If you gravitate towards being a manager,
don't feel like you have to be a technician.
And bring people in, team members in,
and consultants like Marty,
who can help you bridge those gaps as you go,
because you don't have to have that all figured out.
And I've never met a solopreneur who's successful.
Just a bunch of people who pretend they are,
or they step on the heads and shoulders and faces
of the people who've actually helped them build
to where they're at.
So that's one of their acts to bury real quick
for those of you solopreneurs out there.
Wantrepreneurs.
The next piece of this puzzle,
moving back towards exit then.
Let's talk to those people who,
maybe their vision's not at scratch,
but maybe they've been at it for eight days or eight years
and they still feel pretty lost.
With evaluating, is there an exit opportunity?
How do I know my business is gonna be valued at?
Is the tool exit strategy the go-to?
Holy grail of figuring that out.
Do you have a tool that you recommend?
How can a business owner understand more or less
what the value of selling their business would be
when they're ready to do so?
Yeah, that's actually the number one question people ask.
I'm working on another project, on a book project,
and we've done some extensive research on,
what are the top questions business owners have
when they think about selling?
Number one question is, what's my business worth?
Unfortunately, there's no easy answer for that.
There is no tool you can just go plug it in, right?
That makes me happy.
Yeah, if you got a car, you can go put it in Edmonds or KBB
and you can look up the value.
With a house, you can hire a real estate person,
man, do some cops.
Businesses are far different.
They're very complex, organic beings and-
I gotta pause, I gotta pause right here, Marty.
Huge pause, guys.
This is what made me so excited
about Marty coming on this show.
The amount of faith that you just won in me, Marty,
because you're not going after the simple market,
the one that wants everything easy.
There's so many people that wanna oversimplify
and make it sound like it's easy.
And that literally gets me pushed away.
And I'm like, yeah, I'm done with this guy.
Oh, no, he's just trying to make it sound good
because he can make a buck on this.
So thank you, thank you for saying it's hard
because it is hard.
You can continue.
Yeah, yeah, and people get frustrated with me.
Well, just give me an, what's the multiple?
There is no the multiple, right?
I gotta buy fingers for you.
Exactly.
And so you need,
if you're really seriously considering exiting your business,
you need three people on your team.
You need an attorney who understands acquisitions,
who's going to legally protect your process.
You need a tax professional, again,
who understands business and acquisitions
to properly advise you on various tax strategies
because how you do tax strategies
can impact the valuation of your business.
And you need an acquisitions professional
to help you with the valuation and negotiation of your deal.
Those three people should be working together
and they should give you the answer,
what's my business worth?
However-
I'm gonna put a little plug in for you real quick.
I'm gonna make an assumption
and it's okay if I'm wrong in this assumption
because I don't want you to have to say it for yourself.
Do you conveniently already have
an attorney, a tax professional
and an acquisition professional baked into your team?
I have many of all of those.
There's no one-
No, for example.
So you got-
There's pretty much-
Specialists in different sectors-
And I share that on Marty's behalf
because it's just like if he had to say it for himself,
guys, it would just feel like, well, how convenient?
It's not a matter of convenience.
It's a matter of being smart enough as an entrepreneur,
as a builder to know, well, dang,
if I need somebody who's gonna constantly
have to paint walls, I should probably hire a painter.
So my devil's advocate side says,
if I wanted to work with your company,
but I wanted my own tax professional
and I wanted my own attorney involved with the process,
what would that look like?
Yeah, absolutely.
And that's what we would help you do
is find those, if you don't have those resources,
we would help you find them.
Right, but if I do, y'all could work with my professionals.
Absolutely, every transaction we are involved in,
so we do the advising, right?
We can help advise you on the right steps
to exiting your business.
That's the part we do.
I'm not here to sell anybody on my services or anything else.
I'm truly here to inspire and motivate this,
just kind of get the spark going in everybody's brains.
But if you wanted to work with us, great.
You wanna work with somebody else,
that's fantastic too.
But every transaction needs at least
those three people involved.
And you wanna make sure that they have experience
and know what they're doing.
Don't hire an attorney who also helped you
fight your traffic ticket last week.
That's not who you need.
They need to have acquisitions experience.
So, but when, just to kind of close out
the value conversation.
So another example that I give to people
that kind of helps that light bulb go off,
if you own a very expensive piece of jewelry,
let's say it's $100,000 diamond,
and you go and have it appraised for insurance purposes.
An appraiser may look at that and say,
"'Yep, that's $100,000 replacement value.
"'You insure it for 100,000.
"'If it gets stolen,
"'then that's how much the insurance company
"'is gonna give you.'"
However, if you go to sell that diamond,
you are not getting $100,000 for that diamond.
You might get 50,000 if you're lucky.
And that's kind of how it is with business,
business valuations to some degree.
It's so painful when it's your baby as a business.
It is, it is.
It's probably worth less than you think it is,
because most people have an emotional value
to their business that a buyer is not going to pay for.
But either way, your obligation as the owner
of the business is to understand
what is the value of your business today,
and then what does the business need to look like later on
when you want to prepare for your exit.
And you can't know what the later number is
until you know what today is and build from there.
So seek professional counsel on that
and get the answer from the people who can answer it.
Super, super sound advice.
I appreciate that a lot.
I've learned a lot today, but there's one big thing
I really wanna learn before we close out.
Do you have a hard stop at the top of the hour?
I wanna make sure to respect your time.
I think I do.
I do.
We'll be as fast as we can then.
So if this was your last chance ever to speak, Marty,
what powerful lesson can other visionaries learn
from your experience?
Oh, okay.
Well, nothing to do with acquisitions,
but everything to do.
When I was in high school,
my life was going in a bad direction,
and I was put into a diversion program.
And the diversion program was modeled on a curriculum
created by Zig Ziglar,
and it was called the C with the top program.
I learned a phrase in that program
that I have tried to use as the guidance
for my life ever since.
And it has served me quite well in low these many years,
as you see the gray in my beard.
It's been a while since I was in high school.
But the phrase I learned as a 17-year-old malcontent
was you can have anything in life you want
if you help enough other people get what they want.
And I don't think it gets any more visionary than that,
which is just help others,
and the world will take care of you.
That is phenomenal.
And thank you, Zig Ziglar.
Help enough other people to get what they want.
And I hope that just rings loud and clear for people.
I don't make these pauses on these shows on accident,
my friends.
I want you to internalize that.
I want you to think through the value of that.
I also want to put on here Zig Ziglar and Marty Fonke,
because it doesn't necessarily matter who said it first.
What matters is the legacy carries on,
and on that we continue to value information like that.
It's one of those quotes that I've heard enough times
to remember when somebody says it,
but to remember the source reminds me
of other things I've learned from Zig Ziglar,
which reminds me of other opportunities to double down
and triple down and secure these principles in my own life.
And I hope, visionaries, you take the opportunity
to do the same thing with the things that truly matter to you.
Marty, this has been an absolute honor and privilege.
I want to respect your time.
We're going to wrap this up fast.
And below this podcast, you'll see the action steps
that you can take to get involved with Marty's brand.
Personally, I'm going to be taking that step myself.
I'm looking at what does it look like to work with Westbound
Road.com.
I've already checked out the website part,
but I'm excited to explore what you all are doing for the sake
of all the clients that we work with,
because we're always looking for who can be that 1 plus 1
equals 11 moment that helps all of us
gain that much more stability, that much better
infrastructure, that much better plan,
so that everybody ends up winning.
Below that, you'll see the resources, my friends,
as well, the things that we talked about today.
Zig Ziglar makes that list now as well.
Of course, he's a legend in the space of inspirational growth.
If you don't know who that is, it's
kind of one of those Babe Ruth, Michael Jordan moments.
So without further ado, last big call to action,
top right corner.
If you're a visionary, even if it's
the first time you're sharing the vision or stepping
into that, there's a big old button that says, be our guest.
We'd love to meet you.
We'd love to hear about how you're helping in the world
if you've got the heart of a servant
and want to help individuals improve their lives.
There's likely a massive amount of purpose driven behind you,
and we'd love to explore that with you.
And we look forward to seeing all of you on next episode
of Vision Pros Live.
Marty, this is amazing, man.
Thanks for joining me today.
Jackson, thanks for having me.
It was my pleasure and honor, and I
hope I was able to provide good value to your audience.
I trust you did.
That was easy.
I learned a lot myself, so I know everybody else.
If you didn't, go back, listen with a pen,
because there's no way that you couldn't have found a time
to value out of this, all of you.
We'll see you soon.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show,
and thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision.