Acquisitions Anonymous - #1 for business buying, selling and operating - Buying a CEO Networking Club Franchise – $1M Business Breakdown

Episode Date: April 28, 2026

In this episode the hosts evaluate a $1M networking club franchise promising passive income—but debate whether it’s a legitimate community business or just a dressed-up social club selling access.Business Listing – https://www.bizbuysell.com/business-opportunity/ceo-life-an-exclusive-club-for-leaders-los-angeles/2459780/Welcome to Acquisitions Anonymous – the #1 podcast for small business M&A. Every week, we break down businesses for sale and talk about buying, operating, and growing them.Looking to build a professional website in minutes? Try Wix: https://wix.pxf.io/c/6898629/3115214/25616?trafcat=templateHubSpot is the backbone for how businesses scale without chaos. Try them out here: https://go.try-hubspot.com/OeG9VrSubscribe for more episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@AcquisitionsAnonymousPodcast?sub_confirmation=1Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.acquanon.com/newsletter💰 Sponsored by:FRANZY - Thinking about buying a franchise instead of an independent business? FRANZY is a free platform built for acquisition-minded entrepreneurs who want to explore franchise ownership without broker bias. FRANZY matches you with franchise opportunities based on your capital, goals, and lifestyle—and includes free coaching from experienced franchise operators. If you're exploring ETA but want a structured, system-driven alternative, check out https://franzy.com/ Viso Business Capital — Get the right SBA loan tailored to your acquisition needs with Heather Endresen’s firm. Sign up for a free live Q&A on SBA loans at https://www.visocap.net and click “Zoom Sign Up” in the top-right corner.This week’s deal is a Los Angeles-based chapter of a CEO networking club called “CEO Life,” listed for $1 million with reported $1.4 million in revenue and $576,000 in EBITDA. The business model centers on recurring membership fees from entrepreneurs and executives who attend monthly events, networking sessions, and global trips. The twist: buyers aren’t purchasing a traditional company—they’re buying the rights to operate a local franchise chapter.Key Highlights:- $1M asking price for a networking club franchise established in 2023- Reported $1.4M revenue and $576K EBITDA from recurring membership fees- Business success depends heavily on recruiting and community management skills- Revenue is sensitive to economic downturns and member churn- Major risk: franchisor incentives may prioritize selling franchises over delivering member valueSubscribe to  weekly our Newsletter and get curated deals in your inboxAdvertise with us by clicking hereDo you love Acquanon and want to see our smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel.Do you enjoy our content? Rate our show!Follow us on Twitter @acquanon Learnings about small business acquisitions and operations.For inquiries or suggestions, email us at [e-mail]

Hey, Michael here. Welcome to Acquisitions Anonymous, the internet's number one podcast about small business, buying, owning, and investing. Today, we broke down a deal that Travis and I found fascinating. And we may have done this deal before on the podcast, but we're almost 500 episodes in. And when Travis started talking about his take on it, I was like, oh, who cares? Let's do it again, because Travis is going to be that good. So I hope you will get as much out of it as I did. And stick around to the end.

You can see what we each thought about the deal and whether you should go after it. Here's the episode. We'll set acquisitions anonymous. Hello, another episode of Acquisition's Anonymous. We don't have 100% beers anymore. And thumbs downing on just the plus inventory line. One of the biggest risk in entrepreneurship through acquisition is buying a business with fragile systems. Unclear demand are a single owner who holds all the knowledge.

Franchising approaches that problem differently. You are buying into an established brand with documented systems, unit level data, and repeatable operating playbooks. The hard part is knowing which franchises are actually worth evaluating. That's why Alex Moresniak, former CEO of 2-U-Londry, built Franzy. Franzy is a free platform that helps acquisition-minded entrepreneurs explore franchise ownership without broker bias. You answer a few questions, and Franzy shows you franchise opportunities that align with your capital, lifestyle, and long-term goals.

You also get free coaching from people who have actually built and scaled franchise businesses. If you are exploring ETA and want to understand whether franchising fits your acquisition strategy, visit Franzy.com. That's F-R-A-N-Z-Y.com. And thanks to them for sponsoring today's episode. Travis, good morning to you. Happy Friday. Good morning to you.

Great to be here, Girds. Yeah, so what's new? You and I were together earlier this week, and then I was like, come on back so we could do a second one. You miss me. I get it. I'm charming. Oh, was there anything new? No, no.

If you're not watching, I grimaced after I said that. Radio's like, oh, this guy's a dick. It's still like fun. It's totally fine. Well, it's just going to be you and me today unless Mills stumbles in. He had something going on on a roof somewhere. Heather is at an ETA conference, and Bill is at some sort of conference as well today. So you and I are the two with nothing better to do.

Ah, fair, fair. It's totally fine. Actually, as soon as I get off this call, I have so many hours worth of rush work to do. I'm behind today, so. But I came anyway. I missed you. Perfect. Well, thanks for being here. Let's do this deal I brought. This may be a deal we've done before, but when I kind of mentioned it to you in the pre-show, you were so funny when you started to talk about it that I was like, oh, who cares? Let's do it again. So it's on Bizby Sell, and it is, I have it up on the screen for you guys watching. It is a deal called CEO Life, and it's an exclusive club for leaders in Los Angeles. And the photo appears to be a bunch of people,

first of all, in some rich person's house. And if I could just go out of red here, Travis, after coming back from Japan, it drives me crazy that all these people are wearing their outside shoes in this house, this person's house. My wife and I are the type of people that when we host a party, we make everybody take off their shoes because shoes are filthy. Supposedly, I was just informed that this is a white person thing in the U.S.,

and people make fun of us worldwide for it, including non-white people in the U.S. They're like, guys, stupid. This is what I've been told, what I was told recently. For wearing shoes in your house? Yes. Yes. Yeah.

We stayed like in Japan for spring break. So I took the kids to Japan for spring break. And, you know, once in a lifetime thing. So, such a good thing to do with the kids. And we stayed in an Airbnb, not at a very nice neighbor. I just totally decent. But they had the whole slipper thing like the Japanese do. Don't wear your shoes in the house.

and the floors were spotless. Just like a total, total pleasure. Like you walk around your bare feet, and it doesn't feel like you're walking around an American house where there's like crap everywhere on the floor. It was just delightful, and it just reminded me of how important the shoe thing is.

So I lived in Asia for 10 years, and I miss it dearly, and that part is wonderful. What I do now, I actually like wearing shoes in the house, so I just have house shoes. Like, they're sneakers. I just wear them,

let them all get in the house and walk around with that. that's great yeah that's like yeah it's perfect um so anyway no i have to this deal business so these people are uh are wearing shoes in the house and it looks like kind of 40 30 40 50 year old kind of professionals having drinks inside of a house with bad lighting and like it's the type of house that like a person who wants to show off that they're wealthy buys with like 20 foot ceilings you know uh by the way i have 20 foot ceilings um too i have 20 foot ceilings um I was like, I realized I just, I realized I just basically like side tangent.

This is, this is worthy of this talk here. For a long time, I've wondered why like RH restoration hardware is that their original name was, like why they've crushed it so much. And they obviously have. And their furniture is very pretty and whatnot. But I realized once I got this house that we're in now, which has gigantic ceilings, like 95, 98% of furniture manufacturers, make things that don't look proper in high ceiling homes, right?

R.H is one of the only ones that does. And that's why you can't go to, you know, most, you can't even go to like crate and barrel and like buy a couch or buy a cabinet and bring it in the home because it just looks silly with the tall ceilings. So anyway, that's how they carved out their niche, which of course, you know, the tall ceilings are kind of a upper class thing. I have tall ceas because this is the house my wife wanted. Though apparently we, I have learned we are starting to not want this house

anymore. That's what I've been informed, mostly because I'm getting random listings sent to me of other houses in the area that are, we're in the downsized phase of life where we're just tired of taking care of a pool. So I'll keep you posted. All right, so back to this deal. So it's an exclusive club for leaders in Los Angeles. A million dollar asking price is what they want. They do not say what cash flow is, but they claim that EBITA is $576,000 and it does $1.4 million in revenue. It was established in 2023. So it is

selling at a little over two times EBDA. I don't understand why they're saying EBDA for

a business like this. It's super low cap X. So anyway, I guess we'll figure that out. So same thing?

I guess so. I don't know. Sometimes I wonder. Okay, so this is a high margin recurring revenue global scalability.

It's a high-end business networking club with an established chapter for sale. This is your opportunity to step into ownership of an established chapter of CEO Life, a premier business networking education,

social, and philanthropic social and philanthropic, club designed exclusively for CEOs, entrepreneurs, business owners, and C-suite executives. This chapter is part of a nationwide model with thriving locations across the U.S. and additional markets continue to open. Each chapter follows a streamlined high-margin system requiring only about five employees slash contractors and just a few hours of the owner's time each week. With a recurring revenue model and national brand backing, this is not just another business, it is a lifestyle business with global scalability. CEO Life is structured to help each chapter partner grow towards $10 million in revenue, with only $1.5 million in costs projected over 5 to 10 years. Supported by corporate marketing

and executive leadership team, the heavy lifting of branding, global trips, and virtual events is handled centrally, allowing to focus locally. The event and member experience, includes one extraordinary in-person event per month hosted in your chapter city, two corporate hosted virtual events monthly, two international global trips annually with all the chapters. CEO life stands behind his chapters. If you decide this isn't the right fit,

we'll buy the chapter back at full purchase price. By acquiring this chapter, you're not only buying into a group of business, you're joining a national movement, uniting top leaders, creating lifelong relationships, and making a difference in communities worldwide. And then they have some videos.

So, yeah, so do you have an idea of, Travis, how would you describe what this business does or what this thing is? There's a lot of interesting stuff here. I mean, it's just a club, right? It's a decentralized club instead of having a clubhouse. You just kind of go from place to place. Is that basically it? You're buying community, buying people to hang out with who are supposed to be similar to you, which is a thing. It's hard.

To me, I think this is like YPO, a version of. those things. There's dozens of these type things that it's like a CEO peer group is what I think. But some of them expand beyond just business and they also do a lot of social and like they get together and do philanthropy together. I'm in Vistage and like we're just all about business. They're very little social. But other ones are different. E.O. is another one that people, I think this is just, is it, it's It sounds like just a knock off of that. Basically, which I think the right ones provide an immense amount of value to people. Yeah.

It was very interesting. There was a franchise. That was the thing that I didn't expect. I thought this was like you're buying the actual group, but it's a franchise. And that last, what was it? If you decide this isn't right, they will buy it back for a full purchase price. Like, what is this? How does this work?

Yeah. this is the only one of these that I've seen that requires you to put up cash to buy the territory Vistage and those guys most people enter it by starting up groups from scratch And then there's a few of them I think like Hampton is fully centralized like they run all of their groups Like there's no partnership with the people facilitating the groups they're self-facilitated They're totally centralized but this is the only one I know where they're like hey buy into the scheme. I use the scheme,

word scheme liberally. This is an interesting one because in theory it can be a great business. I feel like you're having to possibly lean on the franchisor. Is that how you say it? Yeah, a little much here. Where with something like Hampton or your group, you know, it's kind of more based on the founder themselves, I would imagine.

Well, like for Vistage, the way they do it is there are individual local chairs, they call them, who like run their own little mini business under license from Vistage. So they do a revenue share as 1099s with Vistage and they have a non-compete and all this kind of stuff. But they are basically like many entrepreneurs running their own little book of business. And that's for the category of kind of chair driven or like, you know, facilitated groups. I think YPO is that way. Tab is that way. And YPO may or may not have facilitators. I'm not sure.

But then there's other groups like EO and Hampton that I think are totally the members are expected to facilitate them. I've been in those before. I've found them very disappointing where you're self-facilitating. But, you know, I think this appears to be kind of more the model where they expect the person running this local chapter to be in there, like, recruiting CEOs and coaching them and organizing parties and being best buds with everybody. That's the read I have. That makes sense. It seems like it'd probably be a really good fit for the right type of person. I am certainly not that type of person.

But someone who is either, you know, post-exit and looking for meaning and wants to hang out with like-minded people, fine. Or people wanting to break into that kind of realm themselves, you know? You're not quite there, but you want to be around those people. Interesting way to do it. So I started a club. I don't know, snowball, kind of a community a while back. And I was amazed at how difficult it is to really get those things going. Because you have like the chicken or the egg problem.

And it's always like having enough interesting content there, but you don't want to like just force the content from just the founder. You want other people to do it too. And this is a really difficult thing to like get everybody together at the same time. In theory, it's like easy. But in practice, I felt this was like quite hard to do. writing communities is like a whole like what you're talking about is like a whole special set of skills somebody has to love doing I learned it felt like the immense amount of work to me whereas like making YouTube videos or making podcasts and doing what we're doing is it feels like a joy to me like I'm doing this because it's fun like it's super fun yeah uh throwing a cocktail party and like calling up a bunch of people and trying to get them there and all the pressure of the event there are some people who derive so much

energy from that. I found it was an enormous suck trying to run a community and think, like, how am I going to please all these people today? There are people who find joy in that. I do not. I do not. So to your point, I think you got to be the right person to get into this type of business. It's also difficult to know if people are happy because the vast majority of people will be lurkers of some sort. And some people are just very happy being lurkers, but you wouldn't know it. Like, are they miserable? Do they regret buying it? Like, what's the deal here? We just don't know. and I didn't like that pressure. So we actually, I don't know, a few months ago,

we didn't even tell the members yet. I guess we should. We just made it free. We just turned off billing. I was like, the opportunity cost of making this bigger versus my other ventures just isn't there, but I just want a place to hang out with friends.

So let's just make it free and like make it not a thing. But we haven't told anybody. So maybe we should. Here, we're telling people now. It's a questionable sign that nobody's calling you, but like, hey, you haven't billed me yet,

which is a very American thing to do, I guess. So this does say competition is white PO Vistage and other similar membership clubs. So they see themselves, I guess, competing directly with that as I scroll down here on the listing. So I guess the big question of me is, what am I buying here? Like, am I buying a book of business already? Like, do they already have a bunch of members and I'm stepping into that? Is that kind of it? Oh, 100%.

Right? I mean, it's worth nothing otherwise. Yeah. Other than the piece of paper that says this is your territory, that's not, can't be that much. And I'm for sure buying myself a job. Like, there's no way I'm not turning this into my gig. I mean, the description said a couple hours a week and you've got five employees doing it

for you. That's always completely accurate, right? Give me a break. Oh, you don't think so? It's very interesting. The people, you know, so they have these videos here, which are kind of fascinating. They're very well produced. every picture

seems to have alcohol in it. That's the first thing I've noticed about this. This is the first lady she's on the screen right now who she definitely has hit the taining bed and is, every picture has alcohol in it. It's very interesting.

So one thing I looked at joining a peer group like this earlier in my career like 20 years ago and I went interviewed with a group and you're supposed to go to interview by the group and they see if they like you, want to bring you in and stuff like that. And they were like,

we're going to meet at a bar. And it's like, okay, we'll interview you there. I was like, what time? They're like, Tuesday. One o'clock. I was like, okay. So we met on Tuesday at one o'clock

this bar out in the suburbs. And I showed up, and the whole group had already been there for like two hours. And they were all hammered. They were all like, retired CEO life. Yeah.

They were just there and I was like, so is this normal? They were like, yeah, sometimes we'll get together on a Tuesday afternoon and hang out.

And I'm like, okay. And then I started to talk to them about like, what's the group about and what's important to them. They're like, oh,

the camaraderie is amazing. We spend such amazing time together. And then they proceeded to tell me about how at their retreats were the best part. And I was like, oh, cool, what's cool about their retreats?

They started to show me photos. And they were like, basically, just basically look like, like Hugh Hefner's grotto at the Playboy Mansion. And I was like, okay. And they're like, here's us partying. And there's like chicks and bikinis. What?

And I'm like, what? What is going on here, guys? And they're like, yeah, like, well, a couple of us that got divorced, but man, we know how to have a good time. And it was basically like a CEO frat that these guys had created from them. I know not every peer group is the same. But I was like, look, the last thing I want to be is around a problem. bunch of alcohol with chicks of bikinis when I'm like a married man who lost my wife dearly.

And yeah, so I passed on that one. Even just the optics. You could be the best guy ever. It doesn't matter. Like one photo, you're done. There's no, well, it's kind of like, you know, I'll hang out with like young colleagues and stuff on business trips and their single guys. They're like, okay, we're going out to the bars.

I'm like, yep, not me. Like, they're like, why? I was like, there is no upside to any of this. Like, I'm going to be tired tomorrow. I'll be hungover. And best case is, like, somebody gets my phone or gets a phone and takes a picture of me, like with my arms around, like, a 24-year-old girl. Like, not, you know, it's not because I'm doing anything wrong,

but because, like, people hug and stuff. Like, that's just the way it works. So anyway, like, so that's why I just go back to my hotel room. I'm not doing this. So it's the same way I felt about this group that interviewed me. Anyway, business. This is so big to this. But, yeah, I think that just,

ties into this whole thing in terms of, these can be great businesses. Like, you know, just from a fundamental standpoint, you can actually help people. And you said you're in a peer group or no? No, I found the, well, I have a community, but it's just really like a forum of like close individuals, but the mastermind type thing just didn't really connect with me. I've been in several of them. I tried out Hampton, like a lot of people love it. It just wasn't for me. So it doesn't fit with my personality. Yeah. I was in Hampton for a couple of months. Nice people.

Great, yeah. You know, and I think there's, you know, one of my, one of my Port Co. CEOs is in there and he loves it. You know, I think that ties back to kind of the point with all this. Like, it comes down to actually who are the people you're spending time with and what are they doing. And that's where I brought up this alcohol thing and all these pictures. Like this CEO life thing looks like a party group that happens to talk about business. And, yeah, there's, to me, that's a huge turnoff because I'm not a party guy.

Yeah, I'm with you. But let's look at like the kind of like the more than macro view of some of these groups and communities. Like I don't know Hampton's finances, but surely that thing is printing, right? I mean, if you have the distribution of somebody like Sam or somebody like yourself, then, you know, these, these companies could be absolutely amazing. I have no idea how much Sam is in the weeds of this stuff, but he would not have to be. And so I don't know. I don't know if CEO life is quite going to be the same thing as Hampton. I very much doubt that. But it can still be amazing businesses at the same time. I mean, at the end of the day, like, I would just, about the actual listing we're looking at here, what's the stickiness, right? You're going to have churn rates. The churn rate will determine everything. And how are you getting new customers?

What's your customer acquisition strategy? Is it dependent on, you know, the main corporate company coming in and delivering people to you? Are you having this grounds? He's up yourself. There's a lot of questions that I think really determine is this a good deal or is it not? Yeah. Hi, Heather here. When I'm not breaking down deals with these guys, I'm helping people get the right SBA

loans for their business acquisitions. Because when you're buying a business, the best financing isn't one size fits all. There's the best rate, fastest to close, the specific loan structure that you need, or a little of all of those things. That's why my company, Vizzo Business Capital, works with over 30 different lenders to find you the best funding in less time and with less friction so you can focus on the deal. Sign up for a free live Q&A session on SBA loans at VisoCAP.net. Then click Zoom sign up in the top right corner.

That's V-I-S-O-C-A-P.net and click Zoom sign up. So for Vistage, I'm pretty familiar with that model because I've seen people go through their program. They put you through like a two-week virtual training and they basically arm you with, hey, go network and build your first group, right? And for Vistage, the numbers are actually really not very good. I think it's like 15% of people that start their program and become a Vistage kind of licensee, which it costs you nothing to start, just time. And you basically, it's like 15% are running a group at the end of year one.

So, like, it's not good in terms of that kind of stuff. And I think it used to be 10%, and they're pretty excited about making it 15%. basically what they tell them to do is like just go start networking like hell to try to get your first group together and then ideally you get to kind of the 12 to 15 person critical mass to get the group going and then once the groups get going they tend to grow via via referrals like you'll get three to five referrals kind of a month from friends who run into folks and are interested in referring people to the group And like my group that I've been in for over 10 years, like that's how it grows. Like we'll lose one or two members, you know, every quarter, maybe one a quarter, let's say, to a quarter.

But there's one or, you know, the chair is getting referrals and ideally building up the base of kind of folks who turn out for various reasons. Everything from their business sells to they retire to like they just get busy and life gets in the way. But that tends to be how the growth is happening. But for Vistage, it's that chair who's hustling. there's very little that comes from the central organization. So it was interesting is I just Googled CEO Life pricing, right? Like, how much is this in community cost? I mean, you might do the same.

You don't see anything about that. All you see are details about the franchise. And what that is telling me is that the franchise is really being pushed here, not the actual underlying membership, right? Like, Google will serve up the results that people want to see. You know, you can game it a little bit, but over time, Google will learn and show you that. And so most of the people searching this are probably searching for the franchise opportunities instead of how to be in the actual group.

Like, I don't even see that. It's all businesses for sell or franchise stuff. It may not be this one, but it may have been the other one we did. I think we also Googled some of the reviews, and they were. horrible for this thing. It's like, oh, this organization behind it is not kind of what you're looking for and the type of people you want to do business with. I think they have some pretty accusatory, predatory style reviews from people who had signed up for the franchises. And look, based on everything I know, it is pretty much impossible for you to build a group

like this doing only a few hours of owner's time each week. Like, there's just no way. Why don't you believe the listing? I don't get it. It never lies. I mean, the whole, I think if it was something where it's like, look, this needs to be your full-time job, but you can make a half million dollars a year. Like, okay, cool, like, I'm with you. Like, that sounds good. But this, hey, you can just like phone it in and show up to a happy hour once a month and just print checks.

Like, if that was true, why does the national organization need the local franchisee? like what you know does it doesn't make any sense they could they could hire somebody for you know 20% the costs to do that job very easily so they just that doesn't smell right to me yeah I'm with you if you look at the economics though let's say you get members paying $2,000 a month to be part of this which is not crazy for some of these groups and by the way there are some like I know of one in in Austin that is $60,000 per year for people to be part of like and it's like an investor club. I think they call it a lifestyle club or whatever, because there's a whole different other flavor of these for people who are post-economic. Have you seen any of these?

I know that I think I know the one you're talking about. That one, I don't know about the others. There's long angle as well, you know, high net worth. Post-economic. I like that term, though. Yeah. This means you don't give a shit about money. Yeah. He got too much to care. Tiger 21 is the most common kind of E.O. for post-economic. people. So it's designed for, you know, you're sitting on $20 million in cash. Like, what are you going to do with it? You're 60 years old. You sold your business. But the economics back to this one, like if you get people paying $2,000 a month, right? That's $24,000 a year. Once you start to have 15 people in a group, like the economics start to add up really nicely because your costs

don't grow that much, right? You have some staff and you're not paying for big cap You're not buying any real estate. You're hosting stuff in people's houses or offices. It gets really nice really quickly, but you've got to kind of reach a tipping point to get there. That palm tree painting just, I can't quit looking at it. Why in this house do they have that? Anyway, but all right, back back to the thing. So the business itself, there is so much wrong with that palm tree painting.

The first is it's way too big for where they put it. Is this a tanning salon? Like, I would put this in a tanning salon if I owned one. Anyway, but so if you look at like locations for this, I have to imagine Los Angeles to be Primo franchise real estate for this. You know, tons of people, tons of money, right? Like you said, the $2,000 or $1,000 or whatever is way less economically in Los Angeles. But also, from my understanding as a guy who's never lived there, there are so many people wanting to. be in the club in Los Angeles.

And here you can buy your way into a club. A club. It's maybe not the club you want to be in, but it's a club and it's got other successful people in it. Also the perks. It is a filter, right? In a place where everyone wants something to be around other people, you know, kind of like yourself who there's a much higher likely chance that they are in similar life situations as you. this stuff kind of plays. Yeah, I mean, look, I'm totally sold on the idea of these being good businesses. I think it's very easy for them to veer into the corner of like sketchiness or like kind of trashiness or predatoryness, which, you know, the fact you pull up the website for this thing and it's like, okay, who cares about those members? We care about signing more franchisees.

That's not a great side to me. But I'm 100% behind the utility of things like YPO, Hampton, EO, the online community we started called ScalePath that we sold. These are all things that there's a huge amount of value in peer relationships here. The problem is some of this just doesn't smell right

in this particular list. Yeah, 100%. I think going above and beyond to be above board with things and play the long game is really what cements these is especially like the leader, it will flow out from them, right? And if the leader is this franchisor who is really just focused on pushing out memberships, then that kind of deteriorates from the start.

Yeah. There is something else to talk about with these peer groups. I've seen numerous people drop out of them because economic times get bad. So I've seen we've lost people out of my group because they just can't afford it anymore. They've got to cut stuff. there is also you know and by the way

the conference business is the same way if you want people to show up and buy a high ticket conference like when the economy's bad that hurts those conferences speaking from experience not my conference what's that

not my conference oh good good for you but yeah I think that's another downside of this there's a level of sick up county in these peer group businesses which is what it is the early question for you

have you thought about hosting your conference somewhere other than the United States. Oh. Well, we were talking about Miami. And we're also deciding if we're going to keep doing the conference or not. There's big opportunity costs doing it. But yeah, give me the case for doing it somewhere other than the United States. All right. So two, three years ago, I bought a conference in Thailand. And it was a very special deal. Like, it's not open to everyone, this deal that I got. And it is an amazing business, right? Most conferences lose money, break even if they're lucky. Mine is a fantastic business. It's the Chang Mai SEO conference. And the fact that we,

if we hosted this in the United States, it would never work. Like it would be break-even at best. But because the pricing and economics and stuff in a place like Thailand are so much different, it's just an amazing business to own and run. And so I don't know. I think a lot of your attendees to your conference aren't going to fall out of Thailand, but would they go to Mexico? Like, what's the difference in going to Mexico and Miami? Not that much. Right. Right. Right. But your cost could be one-third. And you could even lower the cost, some, the ticket price and still come out way ahead. That is my theory. And also in a place like Thailand, I'm able to throw bodies at problems, right? I think we have, it's like an 800-person conference and we have like, I don't know, 80 people working the thing. And the labor cost is just not, doesn't matter, right? Because the cost of living is so much lower there. We can pay them well. And it all works out. So that is my case for, you know, move it to Mexico City or something like that. Yeah.

We did have a shocking number of attendees for our conference from Australia this time around. Like 10% of people came from Australia all the way to Utah. So how many folks for your conference are from North America versus other places? Off top of my head, maybe a third or from North America? Yeah, quite a lot. Quite a lot. What is the ticket price that you guys charge? I should really know this, but I think it's from like $8 or $900 up to like $2,500.

Right. For something like that, maybe $3,000 for VIP. Yeah. Yeah, because we were at $7,700 this time, but it was super ritzy in terms of stuff, free skiing, all that kind of stuff. But we were, you know, we were in the like 100 to 105 attendee type, type intimacy type stuff.

But I like it. I like the idea. Costa Rica, man. Yeah, yeah, go for it. And people love it. You get to expense a vacation. Yeah. Yeah, you go to Thailand.

I've never been there. Cool. Well, let's, where, where do you stand with this deal? I mean, no. Like, I don't know. If I was going to do something like this, I would be more interested in building it than buying it. Yeah.

Right? Like, I'm totally on the, there's no right answer to building or buying. It's, like, very dependent on the industry and what it is and your skill set. But, like, I don't think I would ever buy this. Yeah. I think personally for me, I'm definitely in the build over by type thing. I think that the big two questions anybody should ask themselves before they get into this business. One is, do you like hitting the ball?

And by that, I mean, like, the Yokevich quote, which is like, do you enjoy like schmoozing with other CEOs. Does that sound like, do you wake up every morning and that's like what you want to do all day? You're like inviting people to breakfast and hosting events. Like if you really like doing that stuff like this is a good business for you. If not like run away. Case in point, King introvert here, not interested. I think number two is asking yourself is the organization you're getting part of whether it's CEO Life, Vistage, Hampton, EO, YPO, like TAB, like does this reflect? who you are as a person and your core values and what you're just in doing. CEO life looks like a party group to me. That's not my core values. It also looks a little like sketchy. So it's not something I would personally want to associate with, but I understand if there's people out there who kind of enjoy that stuff.

So that's my take on it. I'm a pass on this personally, but maybe if you're the type of person who drives a lifted land rover and enjoys that kind of stuff driving around Miami Beach, this is the right stuff for you. Talks about crypto and TikTok. Maybe you like these guys. A reformed multi-level marketer.

This could be perfect for it, right? They're like, ah, this doesn't work. But, but I'm not afraid to talk to people and do this thing. Yeah, here we go. There you go. All right, man, good episode. Thanks for being here. Yeah, this is a fascinating one.

It's a fascinating one. So what's up with Capital Pad lately? Anything? You guys have some good deals coming through? Yeah, we just had a new deal go live this week. Yeah, HVAC company in Canada, pretty stoked about. You know, the HVAC industry is kind of a meme at this point. So we had to go leave the U.S. to find something reasonably priced.

Going like crazy, looking at deals like crazy, which is half the battle, right? Look through dozens and dozens of deals for everyone that we do say yes to. Yeah, we're really happy there. Nice. And so I saw you tweet this morning, the HVAC 1 in Canada, Is that the one that doesn't take credit cards because they didn't want to spend the 3%? Yes. Oh, man.

I get so excited when to hear that. You see this sometimes. Like my landscaper, I almost fired him. It was like, I'm not going to pay this invoice every time, right? You have to take my credit card. I'm leaving. I'm finding somebody else. Great in case in point here.

But also like, so my dad owns a one man HVAC company. And most people he talks to can't afford to replace their unit. These are like $8,000 and $10,000. So they're looking for financing or put it on a credit card. And this company doesn't take it. Like, how many people are they losing off of that 2 or 3%? And you can even give options, right? You pay with a check or a transfer.

It's free. You take a credit card. It's 2% fee. People will still do it. But you're losing people, important customers paying high ticket items because they won't accept it. So absolutely crazy to me. Some of easy wins there.

They were only financing, I think, 5% of the, jobs that they were doing as well. So another easy win. Like it should be like 40% in this industry. So it's a tons of living and fruit already. Wow. Wow. Cool. I'm excited to watch that one. So well, thanks again for being here man. And if you guys listening enjoyed the episode, please go visit Capitol Pad. They're doing cool stuff over there and tell a friend about this episode. We'd love to keep growing the pot. So thanks for being here. Thanks much. All right guys.