Starting and running your own business can be a headache. However, it doesn’t have to be detrimental, especially when you can reap great rewards.
Roland Frasier, the Managing Partner at DigitalMarketer, talks about buying a company with zero money and getting other people to pay you for the privilege of running it.
Sharing the experiences that led him to his success today, he lends some advice for those who are starting their business aiming to buy a company or negotiating on getting one.
Discover how you can leverage relationship-building techniques as well as technologies and apps to find bigger opportunities to grow your business in today' show.
Co-founder and/or principal of multiple Inc. Magazine fastest-growing companies (e-commerce, e-learning, and SaaS). Serial entrepreneur who founded, scaled or sold two dozen different businesses ranging from digital commerce to consumer products to industrial machine manufacturing companies with adjusted sales ranging from $3 million to $337 million.
Currently CEO of the War Room Mastermind and principal in DigitalMarketer.com, Traffic & Conversion Summit, Praxio.com, Plattr.com, TruConversion.com and Real Estate Worldwide. Through War Room Roland advises over 150 major companies on digitally centric customer acquisition, monetization, referral, retention, revenue and growth strategies.
Roland began his business career selling real estate when he was 18 and gradually moved into real estate syndication and business investments. After law school, he started his own law practice and grew it to one of the top firms in San Diego providing services to entrepreneurs, business owners, marketing and entertainment industry clients.
Before I bring on Roland, let me tell you a little bit about him and what we're doing. He's been a friend of mine for several years. He's one of the most impressive businessmen that I've ever met.
Much beyond a marketer and people who sell things online like myself and other folks. He's the Co-Founder of Native Commerce, All Channels Media, Boost Equity and Boost Events.
He's one of the Managing Partners of DigitalMarketer.com with Ryan Deiss and Perry Belcher. He’s one of the managing partners of the War Room.
I'm in a loss on how to introduce you because you get your hands in everything. You've got hands in all these pots. Many times, people have said, “What do you want to do when you grow up?”
I said, “I want to be Roland Frasier because it's so much damn fun in this world of marketing and business. You're always involved in some really cool stuff.” It's a real honor to have you on the show and to get to dive in and talk.
Thank you.
This is going to be a really fun different show that I'm used to putting out. We're going to dive in. This is what's really cool.
Roland, I'm giving you props because for anybody else reading who is like, “I'd love to do podcasts. I'd love to be a guest on the show.” I've had well over 100 guests in the time that I've been doing this.
I'm reading here the email you sent me, “I was checking out your show, finding out what would be the most interesting things to discuss.”
You took a look at all of the popularity of the various shows. What are some of the hot topics that I think you came up with a list of twenty different things that we can talk about and every single one of them would be fascinating.
I didn't want you to sit there and say, “What's up?” You're an amazing interviewer but I don't know what you talk about on Bacon Wrapped because I haven't had that as much chance to listen to everything.
I've listened to a few, I listened to Tommie Powers and a few of the ones that you've done and they've all been great. I appreciate getting the chance to come up.
It's funny too because the fact that you said like, “Here are some things we can talk about.” Number one, how to be so happy that everyone you meet asks, “Why the heck are you so happy?” You know that you've got that reputation.
Everybody who describes Roland Frasier it's like, “He's always smiling. He's always happy.” Why is that? Why are you so happy?
It's really funny because it is something a lot of people say and I don't realize that I'm walking around like the Joker with this big smile on my face all the time but I think it's designing.
It's a lot of the things that I put in there for other questions but it's really designing your life around the things that make you happy.
Making hard decisions really fast to cut out the things that take away from your happiness and then thinking about like, “I want to design this reality for myself. This is what I want my life to look like.”
“I don't like doing this, but I need to do these three things. I'm going to figure out a reality for myself that has me not doing those things.”
“I'm going to do everything I can to move towards that and I'm not going to accept anything in my life that leads me in the direction of those things I don't like.” Does that make sense?
It does. That’s obviously easier to do the more successful you get because you can say no to things a lot easier. What advice do you have for people out there who are starting off?
They're hustling, they're doing absolutely anything they can to make ends meet and they have to do some stuff they absolutely hate. Is there a way around that or do you have to get really successful before that happens?
Yeah and I'll sound harsher than I want to sound on this, but I don't believe it's true. I think there is always a way that is only limited by our ability to see it at the time and we’re frequently blinded by thinking that we have to do this thing that I hate but doing the thing you hate is killing you.
It's going never to open up the ability for you to do what you want to do. Money is the easiest thing. You and I both know it's really easy to create money by connecting to people who need each other.
If I was in a job, let's say I'm doing a webinar every day, which to me is my idea of the most horrible ring of Dante’s health. I wouldn't want to come on every day and do a webinar.
If my job was that I have to do that, then I'd find a partner that would do that for me. I helped my son do this. My son did a product launch and he had a deal that he was doing all the technical side of the stuff for the folks that were the influencers.
Part of that was doing customer service with the emails and I said, “If you hate doing customer service with email and responding to people, why don't you hire somebody to do that?” He said, “That's part of my job.”
I said, “What if you bifurcate your job and you carve out off that one little bit and say, ‘I'm going to take part of the money that I received with my job and I'm going to pay my buddy who needs money really badly to do that part of it.’”
My first job was as an assistant pro at a tennis court. Assistant pro means you do all the things that the other people there don't want to do, most of which is sweeping the courts and things like that. My job was to sweep the courts.
It was my least favorite thing to do. I hated it because I really wanted to play tennis. There was no solution to that except I went to the equipment rental store and I rented a leaf blower. This is before you had leaf blowers all over the place.
I rented a leaf blower for $15 for half-a-day, I went and blew all the courts dry and then I had all the rest of the time to do that.
The job that I had to do to earn that money was to sweep the tennis courts and do all the other things that they had me do but I looked for the leverage, which is to me, the whole theme in life is where the leverage is? I looked and I said, “How can I not do this thing that I want to do?”
Clearly, there's this resource over here, but you might say, “Those guys aren't going to pay for it.” I'm like, “Freaking what?” I'm going to pay for it and I'm going to make it happen there.
I think that even in the lowest level of minimum wage job, which is what that was, you can find leverage that gets you past the things that cause you to be unhappy and then you're way more productive. I'll give you one more example.
My second job was a runner for a law firm. Runners are the people who gather all the stuff that the attorneys need to get across town to different places really fast for closings of real estate deals and bank transactions and stuff like that.
I got fired from the tennis job and I got fired from this job too. This is why this is advice you have to take as is.
The problem was that I wasn't happy there so I made the decision like, “I'm going to make this a better job that works for me and it's going to be more efficient.” They couldn't think outside the lines that I wanted them to think out of. Take that as part of it but to me that's a blessing.
If you get fired from a job where people won’t do that's causing you not to be able to grow and be happy, then there are lots of other jobs.
With the law firm, it was, “Here's this thing, it needs to go to the bank right now and then come back as soon as you can because you need to pick up this other thing and then you need to take this thing across to the real estate place.”
What I learned was that none of the attorneys talk to each other. I went and talked to all of the paralegals and said, “What do you get going out now?” I would write it all down and I would wait until all of the ones that needed to be delivered within a certain period of time were ready.
I would make a run and go to all the places in sequence and then come back and they never could figure out how I was able to do everything so fast because nobody else has been able to do it before.
Using Leverage For Opportunities: Even in the lowest level of a minimum wage job, you can find leverage that gets you past things that cause you to be unhappy and become more productive.
It's super simple. It's thinking, “Where's the leverage?” The other thing was I learned when I was parking legally that it took me an extra on average 20 to 25 minutes to find a parking place miles away from where I needed to be and then go and walk and then get the thing and go back.
I started parking illegally in alleyways and things like that and I could get in and out. I think I got maybe two tickets the whole time that I was working for those guys.
It's like where I can cut off the time? Where can I make it go faster? Who are the centers of influence that I can connect with? Which in that case were the paralegals and legal secretaries that had this information that apparently the system didn't share with itself. Does that answer your question?
Yeah, 100%. The funny part when you say, “Where's the leverage?” That's one of the things I always think about you and I think like, “What would Roland do? WWRD? When are we going to embrace it? What was wrong with it? Where's the leverage?”
You always seem to think bigger. Look for the most highly leveraged opportunities. I naturally do this as well. In the past, it has been on a smaller scale than the stuff that you've done but I've always thought, “Am I looking too small? Is there something much bigger than I'm missing right under my nose?”
You seem to see quite often and I think of you like a deal maker more than anything else. You have immense knowledge of marketing, you have immense knowledge of business, but you seem be involved in a lot of deals. You've done some really big deals.
What are some of the deals in your history, some of your big favorite business wins and deals that you're most proud of it? Not even most proud of, that it was the most fun because we've always got those ones to pat ourselves on the back on that one, “That was a great experience.”
I think the thing that I'm doing now. I got to come on and be a part of DigitalMarketer and Native Commerce in 2013 and that came in the same way that you're dealing with Jesse that we talked about. That came about the same thing.
I was there adding value because I knew that I wanted to get to know these guys. I wanted to get to know Perry and Ryan Deiss and I thought that they would be good people to do something with because they had skills that were complimentary to mine.
They like to do things that I either wasn't good at or hated doing. I could bring that into the world that I know, which is finance, investment banking, private equity, that stuff.
I really decided that I wanted to get to know those guys. I always looked for the channel of access. The channel of access to them at the time was Traffic & Conversion Summit. At the Traffic & Conversion Summit, I saw that they had this thing, this mastermind called War Room.
I joined it with the specific intent of getting to know them and going into business with them because it seemed to me like that made sense.
Now I'm in there, I have to distinguish myself. I'm like, “How does one distinguish oneself in this situation?” In that one, it was winning Wicked Smart. I was like, “I got to win this Wicked Smart thing where everybody votes on it.”
I have no idea how to do that. I researched the crap out of everything at the time and I found a couple of cool little things that I knew would appeal to them.
I went in and I presented three, not one, because I figured they'd given me more chance to win. Everybody voted on it and I managed to win it.
Perry came over and said, “Let's go have dinner after this is done. I want you to come in and talk to me.” We got to know each other and hit it off and became really good friends.
I helped those guys for a year, several months, maybe a couple of years giving them any kind of help saying, “If there's anything I can do to help support you?” which is my standard sign off anytime I'm talking to somebody.
They had some things that I was able to help them with. When that resolved itself to open up an opportunity to have a partner in the company, I remember sitting down with Ryan and saying “Let's do this.”
That to me was an exciting deal. My first deal with Prudential Securities which was a leveraged buyout deal, that was one I remember.
What'd you do there?
The effort that it takes to buy a $100,000 deal is the same effort as it takes to buy a $10 million deal. Click To TweetI used to work for Prudential Securities from 1996 to 2007.
Were you in New York?
I was in Dallas.
Have you ever read the book by Michael Lewis, Liar's Poker? I don't know if you remember this but the worst job in finance was equities in Dallas because he's a bonds guy like, “I don't want to get those guys that do equities in Dallas.”
I was equities in Dallas and I've read that book before getting the job. The irony was not lost on me. I love the concept of LBOs and whatnot.
It's the same thing. It's that it's too stupid to know that you can't do anything. I started out selling real estate and then insurance for the real estate deals and then security. I got my securities license to put together syndications for that stuff for real estate developments.
In the process of that I was like, “I need to up this game.” I'm like, “How do I get bigger?” I need to go to New York. I got to find the guys in New York.
I started reaching out through anybody that I could, any mentor, any attorney, anybody that I met in my dealings and said, “I want to connect with the investment banking houses because they've got the capital to do the deals that I don't.”
That absolutely seems like the way to be. Through a couple of steps in networking, I hooked up with one of the higher-end guys at Prudential Securities in New York on Water Street, not Wall Street, unfortunately.
I can't say I did a bunch of Wall Street deals, but I did a bunch of Water Street deals. I had a company that was a machine manufacturing company and I took it to them and said, “This seems to me like something that would be a good deal for you.”
I don't know how many times I got turned down by different people before I ran across this one but it's like a book deal. You keep going and pitching it or a record deal. You keep going and pitching it until you find the right ears for it and I did.
He ended up becoming a mentor to me and introduced me to that whole world of things and told me I needed to dress a little different for that crowd, which was interesting as well.
We all have these costumes that seem to help us perform better in different situations. That was a really cool thing. That was the leverage buyout phase of my life.
When I first started practicing law with a couple of friends of mine from law school, we went and opened up the practice. We ended up meeting a couple of people who had been around a little bit longer, but we're good marketers.
We merged with them and that was how I picked up Tony Robbins as a client, Brian Tracy, Denis Waitley and all these other guys that were in the author world. Through Tony's deal, we met Bill Guthy and Greg Renker of Guthy-Renker and ended up talking to them.
They were talking about only typically two in five if we're lucky, one in five on average of these infomercials that we put together. They're the best at that. It's still a 20% to 40% success rate. You need a 60% failure rate.
I said, “Basically you have significant risk. What if I could take that risk off your hands? ‘ll executive produced the infomercials, I'll raise the money and you give me your best deals that you think are going to be the most successful.” They were like, “Alright.”
Fourteen infomercials later with three or four that took off. That was a super amazing deal. All that came out of being too stupid and too stubborn to know that I couldn't do it or to know that I should stop doing it because I was failing.
I think that's the thing, it's that Napoleon Hill Three Feet from Gold thing. Most people are digging and pursuing and they've all got fantastic ideas and they're going at it, but you stop a little bit too soon.
You're too smart because you know it's not going to work or your friends are ready to help you not make a fool of yourself. I'm like, “Screw it all. I don't care. I know I can make this happen.” I think that stubborn creation of your own reality is the key to success.
Using Leverage For Opportunities: Keep going and pitching until you find the right ears for it.
The areas that I want to explore even more involved a lot of this stuff that you talked about. I'll go back to the conversation that we had. One of the things I definitely want to talk to you about getting ownership, owning a business without paying for it.
You're able to open a lot of big doors and figure out what to do when you get there. Sometimes you may have it figured out prior to it but one of the pieces of advice you gave me was, you even said, “Stop consulting.”
I was like, “Wait a minute. That's my bread and butter.” One of the ways you phrased it, and I haven't forgotten this was that you got a lot of skills that much bigger companies and bigger fish would value, pay for and go after them. I was like, “As a consultant?”
You're like, “No.” I'll let you explain this in your words a little bit more, but some of your advice was to find ways that you can add value to companies, to people and make yourself indispensable so that you can create a relationship to where they ask you to stay on board.
It’s much like you talking about with DigitalMarketer, which happens to be your favorite deal. Explain that a little bit more because I got some more follow-up questions.
For the audience out there who may want to hear this, I think and I guarantee you if there's a lot of consultants and people out there who have done this as well. I want them to hear the same advice that I want to hear again.
Number one, you have to be in a position where you want to do more than be a consultant because if you're happy being a consultant and that's what you like, then you should do it. None of this is a consultant is bad or anything like that.
I ended up at dinner with nine people. I was supposed to have dinner by myself. I ended up with a dinner with nine people at a table talking about all those stuff which is funny how things work.
The first thing is that if you don't want to own your own business, that's totally okay. The next thing is if you own your own business, but you're not where you want to be in it, then this is good advice for you.
If you own your own business and you're totally happy, it's important for me to say that. There's no pressure.
When you and I were talking, you were saying, “You've got all these skills, all this knowledge, all this experience, all these contacts, this great show and everything else. I'm going to level up.”
To me, the thing that helps you do that first is the mindset of leveling up is only about finding leverage and finding a bigger pond to be in with bigger fish.
What you're going to do for those people, like what you're doing and the deal that you've got now, is basically the same thing that you are doing for next to nothing for some other people.
It's the same amount of effort and you learn this when you're doing investment banking8-type deals like buying and selling companies. The effort that it takes to buy a $100,000 deal is the same effort basically as it takes to buy a $10 million deal.
Which is why when you're looking for money and people to buy your business, most of the real players are only interested when you get up into the tens of millions of dollars because it's the same amount of work.
They spend their time knowing that the reward for that is much greater. They say no to a lot of smaller deals, which could be fantastic. All of those smaller deals that they're saying no to can be fantastic. It's because if they don't, and Steve Jobs was like, “It's easy to drown an opportunity.”
The thing is if you take all those smaller deals, then you're stuck in the muck of that and you're not able to direct your efforts towards the thing that's going to give you the greatest amount of leverage. It’s to invest that time in finding the bigger deals and you won't need ten smaller deals.
You also said another thing there before I get to the next question. You had a great analogy, something about waves and the waves converging. You even said you're not going to catch the big wave when you're on the seashore picking up seashells or something like that.
When the waves come, it's like a convergence thing. When they come together for the big wave, if you've taken the small one in and you're kicking up the sand on the shore watching, you've made a mistake. It definitely makes sense to wait for the right thing.
One of the things you're like, “Alright,” then I remember leaving with like, “That sounded great role,” and then I'm 100% on board. Where do you find those big waves? Where do you go out and wave? You started to give me some advice about that.
Social media keeps most people in two degrees of separation from anybody else. Click To TweetFor people like me, people who do want to level up and who realize that it takes as much if not more effort to deal with the smaller clients than the big ones. Where are you going to start to find those?
It's all about your network. For most of us that are in the digital world, it's very easy to sit behind your computer and learn new tactics and things like that, but not know anybody that's going to help you move. I've watched and all the big deals are always done outside of the computer.
They're not done on job boards or discussion boards or Facebook groups or things like that. They're done because you meet in person. To me, everything can be designed and you have to design your moving around in your time in a way that connects you with the people that can make that happen.
In your deal you got that connection by being out and meeting the people that you're doing the deal with in person and having the chance to say, not to be smart enough to know that you can't do a deal with a billionaire.
You can't just walk up and end up with a deal with a billionaire, but you can, can’t you? It's to put yourself in the position to have contact either directly or indirectly with the people that you ultimately want to do business with.
You have to decide, who are those people? You have to make that list. This my hit list of the top ten people that I want to be working with.
You reverse engineer, “If I can't get to them directly,” and sometimes you can and sometimes you can't. If you can’t get them to directly, then, “How can I get to them indirectly?” For us, for example, we want to get to Ashton Kutcher because he's doing a deal or Arnold Schwarzenegger or somebody like that.
I've got offers out to both of those guys to appear at an event that we're doing and my contract is you'll present at the event and you'll have dinner with us meeting our partners.
I didn't do it with my money or our money. I did it with the money of the people who are coming to the event and it gives them a wonderful experience but then I'm leveraging the asset of the event to meet the person and making that a condition of the deal.
Some of those deals turn in like with Daymond John, Kevin Harrington, those turned into deals with some people they dealt with, with William Shatner it turned into deals. That would be the way to get the top people are like, “What can I create?”
Joe Polish and Yanik Silver have done a great job of doing that through charities. JT Foxx has done a good job of that by going through charities. Even if you go to the person that's higher up and say, “I want to help you raise money for this thing that you're interested in.”
That cause that they have an affinity to, that would be a way to meet the top people but what you might do and JT Foxx to me is a great example of how to do this.
He wants to meet Donald Trump. He goes two levels down and meets a couple of people that work for Trump and hires them to come out. They say, “That was a great experience.” He's like, “Can you refer me?” He meets the kids and then he meets the guy.
I think you can reverse engineer that strategy to meet anybody you want, but unless you've got that list of the ten people that you want to meet. You know what you're planning to do to add value for them to get towards the end that you want to achieve, then you're just floundering.
If you make that list and you have that very intentional conscious design of the specifics of what you want to happen, then I think you can stair-step your way up and give value all the way around.
I think that's the thing that's missing with a lot of people is that they don't go in, “Where can I give the value?” They're expecting to be paid or to get something right away.
These days especially with social media, most of us are two degrees of separation from anybody we want to know. It's not always easy to get that if you come in, “Can you introduce me to so-and-so?” Why? What's the benefit for all parties, etc? There's an art to doing that.
That’s one of the things I'm pretty adept at. I've had some good success with it. I like it. I'm in awe of your ability to do it.
Remember when you were talking about one of the ways you used the Traffic & Conversion Summit, they've got a big audience. We're going to bring in the biggest people and they’re going to speak but we want the time and the agreement with them.
Ultimately, it's such a genius. A lot of people don't see that. That's below the surface. That's the stuff happening.
Using Leverage For Opportunities: The mindset of leveling up is about finding leverage and finding a bigger pond to be in.
They wonder, “How did you guys leapfrog and get big quickly?” It’s because of smart deals like that. Is there anybody out there you're trying to meet that you're trying to add value to and get a hold on?
We're still a little bit away, but I'll publicly state my goal within the next few years. I'd really like to have Oprah at our Traffic & Conversion Summit.
I think she's an absolutely brilliant, genius person in what she's been able to do with media and creating her own network and everything. She's super high on my list and we're going about it through an affinity charity channel.
It'll be fun to see if we succeed. We fail way more than we succeed. That's the other thing, but I'm not daunted by the fact that I've been turned down by hundreds of people to come to our thing. I'm totally cool with them. I only need one each time.
I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about not too much, just a shift. Several years ago, I came out to an event that DigitalMarketer hosted.
I know you were very instrumental in this Equity Investors Network and it was about consulting for equity and/or buying a company, getting a piece of it sometimes with no money or owning it without having to do anything and it was many things to it.
It was an amazing event and program. It was something that has been in my mind and I think I may have sold my business at the time. It was fresh on my mind. I want to go into this concept a little bit more.
I have done a few podcasts on this. I had a mutual friend, Luke Havard, on the show about equity consulting.
You've done a lot of these deals and not just equity consulting but getting a business. How did you phrase it, you said, “I wanted a business without paying for it.” Let's explore that a little bit more.
I think a lot of people know the what and the why but let's talk more about how you've done it in the past or how you advise people to do it. You and I were talking about this, but let's explore that. It's an amazing topic.
Specifically, my experience has been that number one, there are a lot of people out there who are sitting on money who don't know what to do with it. You have to understand and agree with that. If you don't or you want to talk about how do you access that, we can do that.
You have to understand that to start with. To me, it's intentionality. You always have to have your hit list. “What is it that I want to go after?”
Chances are there might be six businesses that are relatively comparable, maybe of that one that I would prefer because it has more profitability or a better team or something like that in. Let's say there always other candidates in the beauty pageant.
You're looking for the one. You're looking to know what the field is first so that you have more than one. If you're only after one, you're going to make desperate decisions to get it and make it happen because that's human nature and that will be a mistake.
You've got to set your criteria and say, “What can I reasonably expect to get this for that makes sense for me? What can I reasonably expect to pay?” I've had conversations. I remember one deal in particular.
I remember sitting down to the negotiation and I did not have any money. I agreed to pay $2 million for this business knowing that I didn't have the money because I'm too stupid and stubborn to know that I shouldn't do that and I can't make it happen.
I knew that I could make it happen. I was like, “I'm going to make it happen.” I'm sitting there negotiating the deal and then as the deal evolves, it turns out that I don't really need $2 million.
I need $400,000 for a down payment and they're willing to finance the rest over a period of time at no interest. I'm like, “That's fantastic.” I can buy this business not for $2 million, but for $400,000.
All I got to do is go get $400,000 and that may sound daunting, but if you believe that first part, there's a lot of people out there. Certainly, I can find four people that have $100,000 that would like to make money on that at maybe 15% or maybe I need to include them in the deal.
In this case, I was like, “That's fantastic. I agree.” I didn't have the money. “I'm going to pay you the $400,000. It's going to take some time to move things around.”
Figure out where a person’s value lies before you start doing business with him or her. Click To Tweet“I need about 30 days to set for the closing date and we all know that everything that you told me is accurate, but there’s due diligence and all that. It becomes stupid if my lawyers yell at me and my wife does, so I got to do that.” They're like, “Okay.”
I hit every possible person that I knew and got them excited about the business. Here's to me something that I think is really key is I don't sell funding by selling funding.
I sell funding by conversations that I have with people who I'm having dinner with or I'm playing tennis or golf with or something like that.
The conversation is how excited I am about this business that I'm going into? Almost every time, they're like, “Is that something I could get involved with?” It's like, “I don't know because there are risks with everything,” and I'm being honest.
I'm saying, “This is a risky deal. It's not like buying Coca-Cola stock or UPS stock. It's a private deal. I don't know if that would fit.” “No, that sounds really cool. I want what you've got.”
They see Midas touch and my touch is more like Typhoid Mary I feel like sometimes. You sell success by coming across that being happy, being fired up about the deal and being super excited without ever having to say, “I’m wondering, you're rich. Could you give me some money?”
That doesn’t help. Your positioning is all off, but if your positioning is, “What are you doing?” “I'm excited. I found this company that does this and they're the leader in this and I think it's ready to blow up. I can't even believe how lucky I am to be involved with that.”
They're like, “That's really great. Is that something I could get involved with?” Look at the positioning difference that makes. There's a long way of answering that but I think that's helpful information for people to have.
It's the easiest way to raise money to be excited about whatever it is you're doing. I went and I ended up with one person that wanted to put all the money in and they wanted 10% a year and they agreed to loan it for a few years.
I'm in this business with $1.6 million and financing from the seller at no interest and $400,000 in financing from somebody else. I have paid $0 and I own 100% of the business.
The $400,000 is debt?
It’s straight debt. What's cool and of course I tell them, I said, “Here's the deal. I know I don't take equity investors on in deals like this.” That's what I tell them.
“It's because I want you to know that you're going to get your money back no matter what. I will never let my investor lose money. If I have to go and sweep tennis courts, I will pay the money back if it's a bad deal.”
They know that and it positions you better because you're going to get a return on your money instead of being stuck as a minority investor in this business that might or might not ultimately be successful. I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't think it was going to be.
You're protected. I got you. I don't personally guarantee you but there's no way I would let my investors lose money. Now, I've got my $400,000 as my down and my $1.6 million as financing. I own a $2 million business. I own 100% of it and I don't have to do any funding.
I go out and I've always got people who are like, “If you ever get into or find a cool deal, let me know.” I go and now I explain to those people, I'm like, “I bought this business and it's super exciting. I’m all fired up about it,” and they're like, “How can I get involved with it?”
These are people I know a lot better than the funding people because I don't like doing business with people that I don't know how they're going to behave.
To them I go and I said, “I would consider letting you come in if you're willing to do the thing that you're good at, but I need you to have skin in the game.”
I'm getting key people to play in my business who are going to run it because I don't want to. I'm getting them to buy into the business. I'm selling back equity that I've not paid for.
I sold 20% of the business for $800,000 and now I pay my $400,000 guy back early. Plus, I give him an extra $40,000 so he's super happy and he's out of the deal, but he's got $40,000 in a short period of time.
Using Leverage For Opportunities: The easiest way to raise money is to be excited about whatever it is you're doing.
Now, I've got two people who are paying to run the company so I don't have to and I get to keep $360,000 myself.
I can't tell you how many times I've done deals like that. It's super fun and everybody wins. In that deal, everybody got what they wanted and I never had to go dog and pony, “Please give me money.”
Hopefully my readers out there understand why I've said in the past, “I want to be Roland Frasier when I grow up.” It's been a fascination of mine. We were talking about buying businesses and whatnot and potentially looking at another business out there to do something very similar.
A mutual friend, Ace Chapman, even said like, “Why do we think we need to build a business ourselves?” Nothing’s wrong with it except that it's freaking hard. Why do we need to build a business ourselves?
When we need clothes, we buy clothes. When we need a car, we buy a car. When we need a house, we can go to buy a house. Why do we feel as though we need to build our cashflow when we can go out and buy it especially using hyper-creative methods? This is the stuff I can talk about absolutely all day.
This goes back to complete that circle of where you started is EIN, the Equity Investor Network concept was you can buy a business with sweat equity. If you've got a skill and most of the people reading this have some digital marketing chops.
Over and over this happens and it's funny that we're having this conversation because I've had multiple conversations with folks in War Room that are buying businesses.
It seems like it's a really timely thing to talk about. There are so many ways to do it. You and I were talking about that.
You've got an opportunity and there is somebody that's got a business and it's making money and you know that you can add value. You've got digital chops or you've got marketing chops or you have product sourcing or celebrity access or whatever.
You find that thing that you can bring to that business that adds value. The next thing is, “How do I turn this from a contractor or middle person introducing people or a consultant into actual equity in the company?”
The answer to that is you have to figure out where does the value lie and what is the person that you're approaching, what do they want?
What you and I talked about was if you've got somebody that's got a business and it's doing great and they're not really eager to sell, unless you're too stupid to know that you can, you're option probably isn't to buy the company.
What you might do with that person is start out by talking about, “Here's the deal. You're in all these channels but you're not over here.”
“Let's start a new company and let's have the existing company provide a new company with the product or service or whatever at cost and we'll build this new company together.”
All that is an affiliate deal but the difference is that by starting the new company and having that exclusive relationship on that channel, you're creating all the equity in that new company. What you're doing is you're the camel that gets his nose under the tent.
They say if the camel gets his nose under the tent, the rest of the camel soon follows. If you get that deal, then you have the chance to prove yourself. You're starting that first transaction. Perry Belcher introduced the idea of tripwire.
Let's get a transaction done, any transaction because now we're business partners. No matter what, we're business partners. Even though I'm not in the good thing, I'm in this new thing, we're business partners.
I get a chance to prove myself and I'm the most likely candidate to then be able to come in and be your partner in the other thing.
That's something to think about, but here's the deal is then if they go to sell the other thing, whoever's buying it doesn't want the thing that's in that channel. They want the other channel that's being built or has been built as well.
If you're partners with the original owner in NewCo on a new channel, then whoever's buying the company when they buy it is going to buy that out as well.
If you are not creating branded content that is native to the platforms that you want to be on, you're missing out on something good. Click To TweetIt means you get to ride on the multiple that is going to be higher on the existing company than you would if you went and started this other company by yourself and became a wholesaler. Does that make sense?
110% and in the world of marketing and internet marketing especially, we bend around the word joint venture and that's a real joint venture, it's not, “Will you mail for me?”
I would call that a straight equity deal. To me, there's a meter. There's full equity then there's channel equity, which is what I would call that. That's a channel equity deal because you're splitting off a marketing channel and you're getting equity in that.
There's a strategic relationship which is a deeper deal than a joint venture. Strategic relationship is an ongoing, continuing, give and take between people. There's a joint venture which is, “There's this one opportunistic thing that we can do together for this finite period of time. Let's do that.”
There's an affiliate which is, “If you sell some of my stuff, I'll give you a commission.” I think that's the scale and you want to be over here in the equity or channel equity deal, not back here on the affiliate or joint venture deal.
I agree totally. I want to take a couple of questions as I'm going to let my brain decompress because it’s amazing. We have a question, “Starting from scratch, where can someone find people with not only the capital but eager to give you money for business or ventures?”
You were talking a little bit about how which is be excited about it, but if you're starting from scratch, where do you go? Where do you find those folks with money?
I think it's really important that you become a connector of people to give them value. Anytime I can connect people without any expectation of receiving anything, I do. I was watching the Traffic & Conversion live stream recordings because I don't get to see the sessions of Traffic & Conversion.
I was watching them at triple speed and I saw there was a guy, Sean Patrick Simpson, who came out in the middle of Molly and Marcus' presentation and did this cool thing on Facebook Messenger.
I reached out to Sean. This is going to answer your question for us, which can be roundabout. I reached out. I messaged and said, “That was really cool, way to go. You knocked it out of the park and if you would ever like to connect, let me know.”
He reaches out and it turns out he lives in Vegas. He and his wife come out and they were two of the nine people that I ended up at dinner with and we're talking and in 2017, they started a business.
They did seven figures in their first year in the personal development space and he was like, “I'm trying to think about places that I can go to form these strategic relationships and other people who are really successful in this.”
I'm like, “Glen Ledwell has this mastermind for personal development stuff. Let me connect you.” Right there on the spot, I texted him together with Glen Ledwell.
That's the answer to the question if you position yourself by doing that consistently and it doesn't have to be a super long-term play. I think if you aren't doing that now within 90 days of starting to do that.
I end every conversation with, “Is there anything I can do for you?” I mean it. I'm listening. It's not like, “How are you doing?” You're supposed to say, “Good, how are you doing?” Nobody cares.
A lot of people do that exact same thing. They say, “How can I support you?” They really aren't listening to the answer. They think that they have to say it.
You've given value. I've given value to both of those people and I don't know what will come from it, but they're part of my network and they are going to want to do good things for me because I've done good things for them.
To get more specific, in business, if you're looking to do that, then you need to start working with bankers, lawyers, accountants and financial people. Those people will be connected to or will themselves want to invest in your business. They are the people.
It's funny because if you're talking to them about what you're doing, they do not probably have access to the deals that you do. They're like, “That's great.” If they could pass a good deal onto one of their people and do good things for them, then they're going to do that.
I find that accessing capital is super easy if you intentionally say, “I'm going to do my best to create a little mini-network of people who are service providers, as centers of influence to the people that I would want to have as investors. I'm going to send business to them.”
Using Leverage For Opportunities: Accessing capital is super easy if you do your best to create a little network of people who are service providers and centers of influence to the people that you want to have as investors.
I'm obviously going to get a good lunch with them and you connect and you develop a relationship, but then it's going to be, “I'm going to connect them every chance I can.”
When I'm talking to them, not asking for money, but I'm talking to them about this new business and they're like, “That's cool. What are you going to do? “I'm probably going to need to raise about $400,000 for that and then I'm going to do this.”
They're like, “I can introduce you to so-and-so.” That's how it happens and that's how I see it happen in New York and in San Francisco, in the venture deals, everything's an inside deal.
What you got to do is you've got to be the inside person who is in that network that those deals get passed around in. I don't know if that answers this question.
It's huge. I'll add one thing to it because this is one of my strengths is access, influence and building relationships with people in multiple areas that have created a lot of opportunities. There are a lot of folks out there who are, “I’m not a great network. I’m not a great connector.”
They see themselves as having to go out and learn how to be a networker and meet a hundred new people. You really don't if you're smart about it because you only have to know one or two connectors and give a lot of value to them.
I am naturally a connector and connected and smart people and that there are some out there that are probably reading this have been really smart in building a good relationship with me. They know that they don't have to go do the connecting if they know the connector.
Kent Clothier, one of your business partners and one of my close friends and former partners, he used to say, “I don't have to know everybody if I know the people who do,” and that made a big impact.
I know you operate a lot like that. I operate like that. I like to think, listen, “Get me in the game. I can figure it out.”
I'm going to take that, that's really good. I haven't heard him say that. I totally agree and I'm going to add that to my Ryan Deiss one which is, “It's automated if I don't have to do it.” It means it's automated if I don't have to do it and I don't have to be connected if I know the people who do.
It makes your life a lot easier, which goes back to the, “How can you be happy?” Never do anything you don't want to do. “How can you never do anything you want to do?” Get partners to do the stuff you hate, automate everything that you can and get to know people who know lots of people.
We have a question, “What person's biography or life inspired your thinking the most in this direction, the way you think or see reality now?”
The most influential autobiography that I have ever read was Benjamin Franklin's and that leads me into one of the things that people tell me that I'm really good at, which is persuasion and negotiation. I totally got that from Ben Franklin. I totally ripped off Ben.
Here's the deal, what he said there and this has been critical to me in everything that I've done, every interaction that I have, which is you don't win ever by having someone adopt your idea.
By having someone agree that your idea was good or by you suggesting something that they say, “Yes, I'll do that.” You win by leading them through a series of questions to the inescapable conclusion that the best thing that they can do in their own self-interest is the thing that you want them to do.
You can say that's manipulative, but truly the most manipulative thing that you can ever do, the most self-interested thing you can ever do is do things that are in the interest of other people.
When I go into anything, I take this idea from Ben Franklin that you have to make the other person think this and in any deal. This is my partners and most people will tell you I'm never afraid to walk in the fire. I love it.
I love conflict not because I'm a contentious person because I'm not, but because I know that most people are reasonable and most people are not doing what you want them to do.
If what you really want them to do is in their interest, they're not doing it because they don't understand. They might act out by yelling, screaming, calling you names and all other stuff.
I've been through all of that but if you go and say, “What is it that I want that can align with their interests? What questions can I ask them that will lead them to have the idea themselves that this thing that I want is the way they should go?”
If you have that very intentional conscious design of the specifics of what you want to happen, then you can step your way up. Click To TweetI can't tell you. It’s amazing. It works over and over but it's not manipulative other than that you're helping them get what they want to.
What is it that they want? What is the thought pattern there?
You have to say, “What is it that they want that aligns with my interests?” That's your responsibility as a persuader, negotiator, the businessperson is to figure out how you can give.
It's true with customers. It's true with suppliers. It's true with your business partners. It's true with everything. You have to know what they want.
You have to dig that out of them. When you and I were talking about acquiring this company that we were talking about what you were looking at.
My first question to you is, “You've got to find out what they want,” and if you know what they want, then in that very deal, you can say, “I know that if they need $500,000 to go do this project that they want to do, I know I've got to find them that $500,000.”
When I'm negotiating with them to buy that $2 million or $3 million company, I know I got to get them that money.
When I'm talking with them to cut the deal, the very first thing that I'm going to say is, “I want to get you some money down and I know that you want to do this thing with this project so I'm definitely going to get you that $500,000.”
The rest of it sounds like it would be okay. I'm leading off in the direction that is going to take them to the deal that I want but I'm also addressing, I'm not saying, “I really like not to give you any money and have your business now. How about if we do that?”
I don't even start there. I start by looking at the thing that they want the most and I'm going to figure out how to get them that, and then the rest of it is going to be flexible.
That's where I would love may be to drill down a little bit more on because obviously everybody, especially in a situation where somebody's selling their business. What do you want?
They want the most they can get. Ultimately, “I want all cash. I want this.” Is there a way that you figure that out? You take money off the table or you talk more situation.
It’s easy. To me, it's always, “What are you going to do after this? What does life look like after this?” “I'm going to do this and this probably.” I'm like, “Is that ideal? What's the ideal thing that you do when this deal is done?”
They'll tell you because they're excited about that because that's the whole reason they're trying to do the deal anyway. It personalizes the thing and it helps you to see what they want and then you've got to figure out how to go get it for them.
If they say, “I want all cash at six times the value that I ought to get for the company.” That's not a deal you're going to do. You have to realize that you've got to find the deal where somebody's going to be honest with you and reasonable and say, “This is what I want.”
I can't tell you how many times I've come in significantly under what I thought a deal would do because I had identified the thing they wanted. Let's say in that deal they need $700,000 to do the deal and you're probably willing to pay a $1.4 million for it.
I'm going to probably offer him $700,000 because I know that it's going to get them what they want and I'm going to say, “I'll give you $700,000, 100% now.” I'll do that even if I don't have the $700,000 because I know I'm going to go out and get it.
I'll offer them the $700,000 flat and I can't tell you how many times people are like, “Okay,” and you saved yourself $700,000. You bought the business for half of what you were willing to pay for it.
The other thing that I think is really helpful if we're going to talk about negotiating businesses is that you use their projections in selling them on the deal that they're going to take. In this example, let's say that the business is doing $1 million a year in profit because I can do the math on that.
It’s doing $1 million a year on profit and it's been increasing relatively steady. That next year it'll probably do $1.2 million, the next year $1.4 million, the next $1.6 million.
Using Leverage For Opportunities: You've got to find the deal where somebody's going to be honest with you and tell you what it is they want.
I'll say, “I will give you the valuation that you want based on where things are going, but you need to take the risk with me.” I accept your numbers and I'm going to give you 100% of that future money that is coming in.
When it does $1.2 million, I'm going to give you that $1.2 million, I'm going to give you that $200,000. After that, when it does the $1.4 million, I'm going to give you that $400,000 because as long as it does that, I will give it to you.
I'll give you 100% of that. I'm going to give you a $1.4 million, I’m going to give you $700,000 now and I'm going to give you$ 200,000 next year and $400,000 the year after that.
That's going to come up relatively close. I'm saying, the gist of it is offer them like it's judo. It's taking the negotiating force that they're saying of, “You should pay more because it's growing.”
I'm like, “You're absolutely right. I should and you should take the risk because you believe those numbers because you told them to me so I'll give you 100% of that money.”
Now I can shave that off my purchase price and I'm telling them, “You're not lying. It's got to make that.” That works out frequently as well.
In the world of business in marketing and digital marketing and all this stuff, are there any things that you're really excited about, new developments, new trends?
I've been looking into this as well. The whole idea of Facebook Messenger is growing from bots to whatnot. I know DM is taking advantage of some of that. Whether it's that or any other technology trend, anything else that's exciting that's piqued your interest?
I think there are several. Messenger is definitely one. There are a few things that are happening. IAB who defines ad units and things like that, they were rolling it out in 2017.
They've switched from, I think it was 23, I'm not sure if it was 23 different ad sizes that you had to do to basically responsive ads that are done in aspect ratio instead of absolute pixels.
That's a trend that will allow you to take all of your advertising everywhere and not worry about having to spend so much time being sure that all the different sizes are correct.
A lot of people are looking at that more with what should they look at?
It'd be probably new ad sizes from IAB. You could get my deck on trends also because I cover all this stuff and it's on SlideShare.net/RolandFrasier.
I put all my slides on SlideShare. It’s a good resource. The other thing would be the challenge that you have with adblocking. Adblocking has tens of millions of people and growing strong who are blocking out all display ads as many places as they can.
If you are not creating branded content that is native to the platforms that you want to be on, then you're missing out on all of the people who are blocking the ads and they ought to be blocking the ads unless it's something that is of interest to them.
I don't think people should have to suffer through ads they're not interested in. If you can create branded content and there's a lot of examples that I gave of it and resources for finding out what other people are doing and emulating that in the deck that's on SlideShare. It's the one that says trends.
For folks who don't quite understand, what's one example of native branded content?
An example would be in any of the partnerships. I think GEICO did one with one of the gaming teams, TSM, I think from League of Legends did this branded thing where it was a video with the team. It’s behind-the-scenes and some guy that moves in and I'm pretty sure it was GEICO.
That would be an example of it. In my deck, I did a video in bed, I think it may have been Smith and Forester, it was a beer company. They went out and got this famous weightlifter and went to Venice Beach and had him dressed up like an old guy.
He walks in and he's like, “Lifting my day,” that thing. Those are branded content deals where you're taking an influencer that an audience is going to be interested in and putting them in an entertaining situation of some sort, which could be behind-the-scenes.
It could be fake Jackass stuff like that was. It could be something that they're interested in like doing sports or something like that. You then bring the brand in and the brand isn't, “Buy my stuff.” The brand is involved in the actual production of the content.
That's a huge thing. That's for taking care of the ad blocking issue. Non-viewable ads are a big trend that's challenged.
There’s a lot of bad bot traffic. Richard Seppala and SiphonCloud.com for identifying bad bot traffic and then going back to Facebook and Google and saying, “This traffic that I'm I've been charged for wasn't human. I don't want to pay for that.”
They basically say, “Here's your money back.” That cut your ad costs in half. Emojis are becoming huge. Bringing emojis into the things you do and integrate them into branded campaigns and in that deck. There are lots of examples of people that have done it. Disney did it.
You can go to Emoticode.com and you can generate emojis that people can enter in to buy stuff, to do eCom. That's absolutely happening.
There's another company called Emogi.com that they're only on Kik right now, but Kik has 300 million users. It’s a messaging service like Messenger. That is basically ads within emojis.
When you're sending emojis in your code, the ads that you'll send will be similar to the language that you're saying with emojis.
I texted my son, I got a call from Lexus and they said the lease on his car is up and I texted him I'm like, “The lease on your,” and then I did the emoji of the car, “Is about to expire.” It would look at that car and say lease and car and expire and it would know that I want to do that.
The ads that it would then show me would be related to new cars. That's pretty slick. That's going to layer in on top of the messaging applications and be a big deal. I think that's going to be a huge deal.
Two other things and then I'll stop. Auto-follow drones are huge. How can you integrate that into your campaigns?
It could be a lifestyle. You're showing people and you could do a contest where you ask your people to submit auto-follow drone shots of them doing wakeboarding or at their favorite vacation spot or whatever.
It could be of them using a product like a wakeboard or a skateboard or a boat. If you're a travel company, it could be of a destination you're selling. How do you take these things that people are super into and integrate them?
The second thing there would probably be Snapchat Spectacles. Snapchat Spectacles are the Bluetooth glasses that Snapchat released to allow people to connect directly to Snapchat for their point of view experiences.
What contests could you do? Maybe in giveaways like at War Room, we give away auto-follow drones. We're going to give away Spectacles next time for promotions.
Are you giving away auto-follow drones in the War Room?
Yeah, we’ve been giving way drones for years. You win Wicked Smart, you get cool stuff.
Can people find out more about some of this stuff on your SlideShare?
Yeah or message me. I'm on Facebook at Roland Frasier and Roland Frasier Page is my Facebook page. If you go to my page on Facebook and you message TCS 2017 Slides, then you'll see my bot come up and it'll take you directly to the link.
It'll give you the option of getting either of the two 25 freakishly effective marketing hack slide decks or the trends deck.
Are you digging the Messenger bots and all that?
Liar’s Poker
It's the future. It is everything that AdWords was when AdWords came out and Facebook ads were when Facebook came out and retargeting was when retargeting came out. It's the new email. It won't do away with email but it's the place to be.
Are you using ManyChat, Chatfuel, anything else?
I'm using a combination of TrustMSG and ManyChat. I have played with Chatfuel. I find it a little bit more technical.
I was talking to you about it. Chatmatic is pretty cool for that. They all do a little bit of the same in a few different things. I'll stack them on top of each other and it's pretty cool.
I'm going to do a video soon. I've got three or four case studies that I'm running and I'm going to do a video that explains how you can use all these different tools because I haven't seen a lot of them out there in public.
I tried out and have you seen the FeelSocial.co?
No, I haven't.
Check that out. One of the things that allow you to do, for instance, besides a lot of the sending chats and etc. It’s doing funnels and a lot of the things that these do. For instance, if somebody comments on a post and you put a certain one out there, you delegate it.
All you do is a comment on a post. It sends you an email and it basically brings you in and you can even put a delay on there such as wait five minutes, wait ten minutes or an hour or whatever. You can then send an email to the person.
Social Panda makes FeelSocial and Your Message Here and all those. I've been playing with them. I wasn't the earliest adopter. I saw you guys and Frank and some other folks. I'm glad to hear that you think it's such a big thing. Leave to a bunch of marketers that ruin it.
I think lots of people will do it wrong, but that's cool because that means they're doing it. It's definitely all the things that we've done across all the different industries so far.
I think it's in that trends deck, there are five case studies on how we're using it, how other people are using it too.
I'm going to wrap up and ask you the same question. You mentioned this about saying, “How can I support you? Here on the show, I phrase it slightly differently, which is, “What's a nut you're trying to crack?”
Whether it's a person you're trying to meet like Oprah, whether it is a resource you're trying to get, a person you're trying to hire, a skill you're trying to learn, anything.
There are two things that would be super helpful to me. One is I really am about evangelizing the use of the Messenger platform, not just Messenger, but also Kik and Whatsapp and other messaging platforms and how people are using automation within those.
Anybody that's got case studies or stories that they're willing to share with everybody, I want to put together a fantastic resource and make it available to our community. I think everybody wins as this gets popularized. I would love that.
The same thing with influencer marketing, I think that's a big area that a lot of folks that are in direct response don't really appreciate the value of until they see it. I'd like to see some case studies of that and hear what's working for other people.
The last thing is a trend that I forgot to mention which is a huge trend that blows me away how big it is and how fast it's eclipsing every professional sport except NFL and it's on its way to eclipse NFL and that's eSports.
I went to the first TwitchConvention a couple of years ago and how many people were there in San Francisco was amazing. The fact that there are endemic brands which means brands that are related to gaming that advertise, but now non-endemic brands like GEICO and other companies like that are coming in.
It's second to the NFL in terms of gross revenues and the prior. The people are edging up on the service like that. This stuff that they filled out, I think the last League of Legends thing that I bought tickets sold out in eleven minutes. It is a really important place to be and that's in that deck also and that deck is free.
I don't know how expert he is at this, but I know he's been on the cutting edge. He's the one who told me about Twitch a year-and-a-half ago is Adam Lyons. He's really tied in with the nerd community.
He didn't turn me on Twitch, but he showed me what he was doing a year-and-a-half ago and he's like, “Watch me, my girlfriends, friends and all this we're playing Dungeons & Dragons with multiple cameras on. I'm having fun with my friends and I made $500 or a $1,000,” or whatever he made.
He made a bunch of money because you can donate and people are sitting there. If readers don't understand this, people are sitting around on Twitch watching other people play video games and it's almost as big as the NFL is what we're saying.
That's what they're doing. Filled up Staples Center, sold out. He's on one side and five dudes on the other side in the chair as with on the big that's happening in the game and everybody's there on stage. I’m watching.
That's a big deal of it. I think it has slipped past a whole lot of marketers. There are a lot of opportunities to reach your audience and especially your digital native and Millennial audiences in those venues.
This is amazing. Probably by far my favorite interview so far and it's right down the pipe for the stuff that I'm the most interested in. I always value any time that I get to spend with you, whether it's in a mastermind or a dinner or lunch. I cannot thank you enough for being on it.
For our audience, we are going to wrap up this episode. You can subscribe to this show. It's on iTunes. BaconWrappedBusiness.com is my home page. You can get it on android. You can get it on the web.
Give me a review. Let us know how much you like it. I read every single one of them and it helps us with the show.
If there's anybody out there that thinks that you have some tremendous value that you could bring to me or you have any suggestions that people or topics that you'd like us to cover. You can email me directly at AskBrad@BaconWrappedBusiness.com.
I do get a lot of requests for content and for interviews. I have to be pretty selective, but if you get my attention I will be more than happy to invite you on the show. I've got a guest coming up. He owns a company that does Account-Based Marketing. Are you familiar with that, ABM?
It's the hot pot buzzword now. That will be a good one.
I only know a fraction about it, but I'm trying to get on there and pick the brain of somebody who owns a big business in that area.
I think he owns. Thanks again for this. Thanks to all my readers. I'll see you in the next episode. Roland, you have fun in Las Vegas.
Thanks.
Co-founder and/or principal of multiple Inc. Magazine fastest-growing companies (e-commerce, e-learning, and SaaS). Serial entrepreneur who founded, scaled or sold two dozen different businesses ranging from digital commerce to consumer products to industrial machine manufacturing companies with adjusted sales ranging from $3 million to $337 million.
Currently CEO of the War Room Mastermind and principal in DigitalMarketer.com, Traffic & Conversion Summit, Praxio.com, Plattr.com, TruConversion.com and Real Estate Worldwide. Through War Room Roland advises over 150 major companies on digitally centric customer acquisition, monetization, referral, retention, revenue and growth strategies.
Roland began his business career selling real estate when he was 18 and gradually moved into real estate syndication and business investments. After law school, he started his own law practice and grew it to one of the top firms in San Diego providing services to entrepreneurs, business owners, marketing and entertainment industry clients.