Acquisitions Anonymous - #1 for business buying, selling and operating - How a 1-Hour Workweek eBook Business Generates $400K Cash Flow!

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

Welcome back to another episode of Acquisitions Anonymous! This time, we dive into a fascinating online business for sale – a subscription-based eBook company in Tampa, Florida, with a claimed 35% net margin. The kicker? The owners say they only put in about an hour a week! 😲We're joined by special guest Kameron, a senior from the University of South Carolina, for fresh insights on evaluating deals as a young entrepreneur. Together, we discuss red flags, the subscription model, customer acquisition costs, and some eye-raising conversion rates. Could this business be a gold mine or a risky venture with hidden catches?👀 What’s Inside:- Deal Overview: $1.5M asking price, $400K in cash flow- Business model pros & cons- Customer retention & acquisition analysis- Kameron’s perspective on young entrepreneurship and the appeal of online businesses- And… why we have our doubts about the “1-hour workweek” claim!Stay tuned to hear if we think this eBook venture is worth the investment or just another too-good-to-be-true pitch. Special thanks to Acquisition Lab for supporting today’s episode!🌟 Interested in Acquiring a Business? 🌟Our sponsor, Acquisition Lab, provides a proven framework, tools, and community to help you go from business search to close with confidence. Founded by Walker Deibel, author of Buy Then Build, Acquisition Lab offers a vetted program for serious buyers. Check them out at acquisitionlab.com or contact Program Director Chelsea Wood at [e-mail] to weekly our Newsletter and get curated deals in your inboxAdvertise with us by clicking here Do 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]

Let me ask the very first red flag, right? This is a high margin, proven business where the owners barely have to work. Why is it so cheap? So you've got to churn out 50, quote unquote, books a month, which is not a small amount of work. If it's what I think, then the content is not just total garbage, which is what I would assume. This is Acquisition Anonymous. Hello, another episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. We don't have 100% here. Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. I'm Mill Snow, one of your co-host, me, Bill, and Michael. are joined today by Cameron, a student at the University of South Carolina, who brings a deal. He brings an online business. It is a really interesting business.

Based in Tampa, Florida, they're asking about $1.5 million for it, $400,000 in free cash flow on about a million in revenue. And they are a subscription and kind of one-time purchase business that writes and sells e-books. It's like self-help, mindset, relationships, dating. They have a lot of data about their lifetime value, their customer, about their database of how many subscribers they have, the customer acquisition costs. We have to make some inferences about exactly what they do and how they do it. But there's some interesting stats and some really interesting figures for this real high margin business, fairly recurring revenue. We talk about Cameron's kind of perspective on this as a 21-year-old. And like, would you buy something like this?

How would you go about buying something like this? What are the pros and cons of this versus a more traditional career path? coming out of school. So it's a really fun episode. Hope you enjoy. Stick around for a quick word from our sponsor. This episode of Acquisitions Anonymous is sponsored by Acquisition Lab. Acquisition Lab and their team, they've been longtime supporters of the pod and they provide a really great service for people who are looking to acquire a business. So it's created by Walker Dival, who's become a friend, the author of Buy, Then Build, How to Outsmart the Startup Game. So Acquisition Lab is an accelerator with a highly vetted cohort-based educational and support community for people who are serious about buying a

business. So a lot of our listeners like you, you tune in every week to our deal reviews. You want to get in on buying a business. You know, you're on this podcast because you're trying to learn how to buy a business. But if you're not quite sure where to start, acquisition lab is a great place to start. So they exist to help people buy a business and to navigate all those complexities of the process, everything you hear us talking about on the show. They provide a proven framework, tools, and resources that support you all the way from search to close. They do it. There's a whole bunch of educational material and support.

So if you're serious about buying a business, check out AcquisitionLab.com or you can actually email the program director Chelsea Wood directly. Her email is Chelsea at buy then build.com. Welcome back everybody to another episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. We have a special guest today. But also we have Bill and Michael, which we haven't been together in many episodes. So I miss you guys. Great to see you. So glad to be back. The gang is back together. We're missing Heather, but the OG crew is here today.

She is too busy. That's what it comes down to. Heather is too busy. Closing deals. Heather's closing deals. I'm making sales. Yeah. All right. We also have Cameron, who is from the University of South Carolina, and I would say we're friends. We just met face-to-face like 20 minutes ago. But Cameron, is at the University of South Carolina in the Moore School? And he's in the finance. Scholars Program, which I went and talked to about the podcast, maybe a month and a half, two months ago. But he's a senior. He's about to graduate and go work in investment banking. And we kind of thought, let's have a new person's perspective. Most of our listeners are people who don't necessarily look at thousands of deals or haven't looked at thousands of deals. So we'll get Cameron's perspective. He brought three interesting businesses, and we picked one. So I'm going to share it on the screen. And then I'll read it. And then we'll kind of go from there and meander as our conversations do. So this is on Biz by Sell. It's an online subscription membership program of self-improvement e-books. It's based in Tampa, Florida, and it's relocatable.

They also say in the headline picture that there's seller financing available. By the way, whenever it seems like we do a Tampa deal, immediately my radar goes off. Oh, this is going to be some scammy stuff. Just every single time Tampa comes up. All Tampa businesses are scams, is what Michael would say. Everything from Tampa is problematic. So let's see how it goes.

There's no legitimate businesses there. Asking price $1.5 million. Topline revenue, $1,27,000. They say they have EBITDA and cash flow. They're using those interchangeably of $396,000. The business has been around since 2020, and they don't list any furniture fixture and equipment, FF&E.

I say this is a 35% net margin, 55% membership rate, 5,000 plus active subscribers business. Website Closers has this listing presents an e-commerce brand that strives out their customers improve themselves with their unique line of personal development e-books. They offer thousands of products across a range of categories such as mindset, health, business, and finance, lifestyle, and family and dating. Products are available on their branded website through both a monthly subscription model and a one-time cost of $14 per book.

wide variety of e-books, targeting all ages in the audience, subscription service for this, quote, personal development niche. They have a system in place to add 50 e-books every month that helps them increase and maintain their customer interest. They say the monthly subscriptions doubled in the past year to 5,000 plus with a 55% membership conversion rate. I'm guessing that's people who buy one book, 55% of those convert to a subscription. and they have $100 customer lifetime value in 35% net margins.

They have a dual revenue model, purchases and subscriptions, 35% net margins. A lot of this we've already talked about, four times return on CAC, 55% membership conversion rate, 70,000 email database, minimal owner workload, strong team in place. Their customer service is handled by two contractors with a third party managing their social media. Let's see. Operations have been streamlined to the point that the two owners have a workload of about an hour a week and their time is spent on monthly check-ins with their marketing team, content creation approval, and answering the occasional question from a customer service department. They say that the business could be doubled in the next six to 12 months with the right strategy.

They're willing to stay on board post-acquisition in a strategic role that says the business has three employees. and Ron Matheson from website closers has the listing. All right. Cameron, you brought this deal. What do you think about? What do you like about it? Yeah, I think the subscription model is very interesting, especially with the 55% conversion rate.

I really wonder how they get that conversion rate so high. And also on the return on customer acquisition costs and lifetime value, really would want to double click into that and kind of dive into the dual revenue model. Do you guys think that they're, so they're not like, this isn't one of those websites that takes a book and like makes a Cliff Notes version of it and repackages. I think they're writing content, right? Yeah. This smells like standard, gum road, think and grow rich. Here's how to pick up women.

The stuff you find on school or gum road or anything kind of stuff that I'm like, there's so much money in this, but I feel so dirty being anywhere near it. I think that's this type of content. Do you think these are human written or do you think this is AI? They're adding 50 books a month. I would be shocked if they're not AI now or done through Upwork type folks at the very least. I think they got to this place by hiring Ghost Rider's like crazy to write books for them. It probably depends on what an e-book is, right?

If it's 40 pages, it's probably not a real 200 to 300 page book length book. Probably more like a glorified PDF, I would think. There's a screenshot here on this picture, too, on Biz by Sell, that I think the value of this goes up, right, if they have their own app and they're constantly redirecting you back into the app for your membership versus, you know, hey, it's just we're going to email you a PDF ebook or something like that. Yes. So my mind goes to, I think we understand what the business does. We have alignment there. They're like an online portfolio plus a bunch of marketing funnels to sell people ebugs. And then when they buy one, they try to sell you a subscription.

They try to sell you more ebugs and they spam the hell out of you. I think that's what they do. We're good. I'm sure it's like it says they sell you a one book for $14. I mean it's like one book is $14 or the subscription is $12.95. Yeah. Or something like that. Yeah.

Exactly. That's how it's kind of getting. Let me ask the very first red flag, right? This is a high margin, proven business where the owner is. barely have to work. Why is it so cheap? Like to me, it's like cash flow is, what do they have it as? Over 400?

I need to scroll my thing over. Yeah, 400, exactly. Just under 400. And they're asking 1.5 for it. So that means they'll probably take 1.2 for it. So they're asking three times, three times basically free cash flow for something that's an hour a week of work. Like, what is the story?

It's not actually an hour a week of work, Michael. Oh, yes. I forgot everything you read on the internet. It's a lie. But continue. I mean, I think what this functionally is is more work than sounds. You've got to churn out 50 quote unquote books a month, which is not a small amount of work. You also constantly have to acquire new people.

I mean, these people are churning like crazy, I would imagine. I'm sort of the one. Yeah, they say 55% convert, but they don't say anything about the churn. Well, so convert, I think, would be like 100 people go to the website, 55% of people subscribe, which to Cameron's point is bananas. Like a good e-com conversion rate would be 5%. Yeah. You know, or like 10%. So the other thing that makes me wonder here, I really want to know how they're acquiring customers.

It would not surprise me if one of these owners has an owned media channel, like where he is a YouTube star or an Instagram. Instagram personality or whatever and is plugging this stuff. And maybe some of the books are by him. I mean, you just don't get a 55% conversion rate from cold traffic on Facebook ads. You just don't. I mean, I think, though, the 55% conversion is probably of the people who buy a book, 55% convert to a membership. But either way, either way, I think the points. still remains. If it's, if it's what I think, then the content is not just total garbage,

which is what I would assume, right? If you're putting out 50 pieces of content a month, regardless of what the content is, it can't be that high quality. But if they're, if they are converting that many, then maybe, I don't know, maybe they've figured something out. I mean, they've also got, they said they got a $100 lifetime value and a four X return on KAC, which means their KAC is 25 bucks. That is pretty low. Like, that's, a pretty good cack. Like our cacks are multiples of that selling dog supplements. So like you can't, I don't think you're getting a $25 cack running Facebook ads to cold traffic unless you're a celebrity or something. I would be really interested to understand the marketing funnel on this thing because

they're either brilliant marketers or they're cheating by being famous. I was going to say also the runway on on adding 50 new books a month. I don't know how long that can continue to last. If they're producing bad content, like you guys said, then maybe that could continue. But I really want to dive into the quality of the books for sure, because 50 books a month sounds like a lot. To pushback on that, anybody that buys a $15, like how to think and grow rich ebook on the internet is not really expecting more at peace. It's not that many steps above a cheesecake factory menu for most of these folks in terms of what they're reading and looking for. In my humble opinion, But why do you need 50 new ones a month?

I don't know. You got to think. Are they rewriting the old ones? Like so it looks fresh? It could be or it could be very clickbaity. You know, like they could have, I think if it was like Instagram or TikTok driven,

they probably would have mentioned that. But there's all those clickbait things, you know, that are like, I see these Twitter threads all the time now where it's like, you know, I'm like, why do you think that I need the tips on like

how to seduce a woman at the bar or something? You know, like, what is the targeting here? But it's got to be like lowest common denominator stuff like that, right? Broad targeting, you know, applicable to everybody. A lot of people anyway. So, Cameron, how old are you, Cameron? 21. Oh, that's such a good age, dude.

So happy for you. So, you know, like all three of us would trade everything we have to be your age again. That's how cool it is. It's so awesome. You have your whole world. So have you ever been a customer of something like this? Would you buy something like this, Cameron? After I called it basically Cheesecake Factory.

Pretend I didn't say that part. If I hadn't insulted you first, would you be a customer of this? Or do you know people who are your friends? Yeah, that's a better way. I honestly would say from a subscription standpoint, it's very difficult to kind of get someone to subscribe to this. At least I would think, at least in my age range. but as far as simply buying a book, I could see myself seeing an interesting one and purchasing it.

I think he's frozen. Another way to ask this question is, do you have friends who think the Cheesecake Factory menu is high literature? Probably not. You would not see yourself buying one. Okay. I didn't mean it. It wasn't an insulting thing.

I was just like maybe I'd misunderstand the target market here. So, okay. So as you think about this business, there's the stuff you like about it, like the subscription model, the cat conversion and stuff. like that. Like, do you think for somebody in your shoes, right, you're getting ready to graduate college or looking to be entrepreneurial and think about this stuff?

Like, how do you feel about this business as a fit for you as a young person or like my first business? Yeah, I think it sounds, at least on the surface, as kind of a highly autonomous business, I'd say, especially looking from the surface seems like something that someone like my age could feel comfortable purchasing isn't something that seems to be very, very difficult, especially with it being online and people in my age range kind of being comfortable with that fact. So I think, I think is especially the retention metrics and the high margins definitely make it

more attractive for someone like me. Yeah, and maybe this is a question for the group. Like, why do we think these guys are selling? In general, because it's not sustainable. I mean, like, is business is three, to four years old, three and a half years old right now, starting in 2020. And they're cranking out 50 books a month. And you probably can only say, like, go talk to the pretty girl so many ways, you know,

or, you know, save money, thinking girl rich, you know, spend less than you make. Yeah. Yeah, like, like how many different ways can you say this stuff? Also, in a less disparaging way, like, it's possible these are entrepreneurs in their board, right? But they've been doing this for three and a half, four years and they're going, I don't want to write, they can grow rich 10 more times. I'm over it. Give me $1.2 million. I want to go do something else. Yeah, I think the hockey stick growth on this business is probably staggering. And they're like, wow, I can't believe we're making this much money. We never anticipated making this much. Yeah, I guess that's a possibility here. These people are potentially accidental, accidentally rich. And they're like, oh, like, let's get out while the going's good.

before it gets crazy. Hey, Michael here, I want to let you know that I'm hosting a conference, first time I've ever done it, and it's called Holdco Conference 2025. If you want to learn how to manage multiple businesses at once, how to incubate new companies, or how other whole co-owners and operators run their fleet of companies, then should come to Utah next spring. We've got a ton of great speakers, including Walker Dibble, who wrote Buy Than Build and founded Acquisition Lab. Plus, we're hosting it at an all-inclusive mountain resort so you can hit the slopes at the end of the day. So please go to holdcoconference.com for your tickets and get 10% off with your discount AAPOD.

That's holdcodeconference.com and use code AAPod for 10% off. Now, back to the show. So, honestly, the red flag for me on this whole listing, it's like where there's smoke, there's fire, is the phrase family and dating intentionally included at the back of the topics list, not the front, with mindset leading at the front. The combination of that and Tampa, Florida, and website closers, the combination of those three things put all of my red flag antennas up. I mean, website closers is known for taking anything that other brokers will not always deign to represent. So I'm being a little bit facetious about Tampa.

I don't have a personal vendetta like Michael does against Tampa. of Florida. I do have a personal internet against website closures. However, though, they have, they have shown me a lot of garbage, and I've witnessed them do some things that I would consider to be less than ethical. So that plus kind of the dating mindset, lifestyle, like, I just wonder if this is grosser than you would want to touch when you sign the NDA. Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah. So I just, I'm curious Cameron, like, you're part of a different generation. By the way, I'm old AF. I'm 49, so like, might as well be dead. But like, as you look at this as a potential, like as an entrepreneur, considering this and you're a part of a different generation than I am.

Like you hear our kind of reluctance and yuckiness for this type of content. Like, how do you think about it? Like, do you, like, do you recoil about it? Like, do you, how would that impact, or do you just see it as business as business no matter what and this kind of stuff is whatever? How do you, how do you see that as a fit and how do you think about it? Yeah, definitely raises the red flags from the standpoint of not being sustainable and kind of too good to be true, if you will. I think that's one thing that kind of jumped off in me, not looking at, you know, thousands of businesses like you guys. But right off the bat, you know, some of the metrics just don't seem sustainable and kind of seem like, you know,

the sellers kind of getting out of the opportune time. So definitely those kind of things jump off the page and make me a little bit more skeptical when looking at it, listen like this. Is technology going to kill this business? Yeah, you guys made a great point with the AI writing books. I think that is something that is on the precipice, if not already happening. So I definitely think that there is some of that, some of that risk in here. While you could leverage it, I think I wouldn't be willing to bet on a business like this from that standpoint. I think all of this business, whether this business is good or bad or gross or palatable, is going to

come down to the customer acquisition engine, right? A little bit of the content in the books, but really the customer acquisition engine. Like if they have a really, if they're not relying on some kind of celebrity or they're not relying on some sort of like scammy affiliate or something, if they have a way to scale this at $25 tax and the content is not gross, this is potentially interesting because you know what I know is not going out of style, getting rich, getting laid, right, and making money, right? People are going to want to do that until the end of time. So if you can continually attract people who want to do those things, right, you're going to have a business, even if the books are AI written. So like, I'm focused on the quality of the customer

attraction funnel here, right? Is it scalable. And if I can bring people who are interested in those topics in repeatably, I can sell them all kinds of things, right? Assuming that we're not too far off the gross side of the spectrum here. If they've got a repeatable customer acquisition engine, I'm interested. If not, they're just going to drown in a sea of AI content, right? And there's no moat here. But the moat is, you know, if everybody's got the same AI slop, do you have a customer acquisition engine that convince, and a brand, right, that convinces people to read your

slop? And I mean, the reality is, so AI is like the big thing right now. I had a copier salesman in my office today telling me they make AI copiers now. And I was like, what does that even mean? Like it knows what I want to print before I need to print it. So it's like there's always the misuse, right, of the hot word of the day or the hot topic of the day. But like I think this, to your point, Bill, it's all about the customer acquisition model. I'm just, I'm so curious.

Like you could, if the customer acquisition model is truly unique, you could take out mindset, right? And put in whatever the new invoked thing is in a couple years. But like this business isn't that old. So if they've, if they've just exploited, if they found some way to exploit some weird, quirky customer acquisition niche, I think those things play out much more quickly than every four years. I mean, we've probably had, you know, 15 different, like weird kind of quirky. schemes of customer acquisition that have emerged in four years. Yeah, with the subscriptions doubling in the past year, I wonder what they did different recently as well.

That's one thing I would want to dive into too. I know they said they managed it through a third-party vendor, but is there some sort of strategy that they recently implemented to double that more recently? That makes me think something about AI, right? I mean, that's roughly the timeline of when, AI really kicked in about a year ago, and this is a content business, and now they're cranking out 50 books a month. I wouldn't be surprised to find they were launching two books a month before, and now they're launching 50 books a month with the help of AI, and maybe it's

creating a more interesting value prop, and they're converting more people and retaining more people, et cetera. I would worry about the durability of that. I wonder, too, where their customer base is. They don't say anything about, you know, domestic versus international. Why is it, Michael? They're at the line at Cheesecake Factory. That's where their customers are. Getting ready to read the menu for deep thought. Anyway, please continue.

Like, there is something about this, though, that would be kind of intriguing. Like, what if they have figured out, like, for example, like, this is what, you know, I don't know, you know, Latin American men. Like, if their audience is like Latin American men, right? Or Southeast Asian men or women or something like that, then all of a sudden. And you go, okay, well, maybe maybe the niche then informs their customer acquisition strategy in some way, shape, or form versus if it's just, you know, if it's just males in the United States or something like that, then I think it's less appealing, less intriguing to me. That's true. Except if you're selling ebooks to tie men, I do not need to own that business. Buyer business fit.

Like, I don't know Jack about that. Yeah. Like, I don't, I'm out. I mean, let's be real. this is 26-year-old dudes who live in their basement with their mom's basement who need help with their mindset, want to get jacked, want to make money, and want to learn how to talk to women. It's pretty strict. But that is a bottomless demographic, Michael.

I know. I know because you know what. I procreated two of them. They're down that way. They got my credit card. Yeah. They're making more of them. And it's like the most base desire.

Like that's not going away. But it is competitive. The most bizarre thing, and Cameron, I guess you're part of this generation, so you can refute it if you want or not. But like my kids as teenagers are so disinterested in doing things and growing and doing grown-up stuff. Like getting them to get their driver's license, getting them to talk to women, getting them to want to get jobs. Like it is just like, like we're sometimes we're like leave the house. Like go do something bad. Like please, like go, you know, please go try that stuff.

They're like, nah, it's just, why would I want to do that? Like, I'll save it for later. Like, they're just, they're totally disinterested in it. So, anyway, we'll see if that could do you. I don't know. Kera, do you think that's an overgeneralization just because my kids are totally boring? No, I definitely think COVID definitely did something to the generation, especially younger generations, maybe less so people around my age, but definitely the younger generations

definitely got impacted by COVID and a little bit more, I guess you could say, boring. So Cameron, switching gears a little bit. Do you want to do this deal? Do you like this deal? Pretend like the past 20 minutes where we were pooping all over it didn't happen. Do you want to try to do this deal? I definitely want to learn more. I definitely probably, you know, sign the NDA and get more information about the deal just because of the off-the-page numbers.

But I would definitely be very skeptical around deliciting this. Not only because of the business might not have future growth, but also. also because it's in Tampa. I think like the bear case for this or the maybe the hedged, you know, approach to this is, let's see you buy this business for a million bucks. It's throwing off $400,000 a year. If there's some, I don't care if it's not growing. Actually, I don't even care if it's declining.

But is there a path to where you're, you know, pulling $2 million? you know, net of tax out of this business over the next 15 or 20 years? Like, I don't know. It probably falls off a cliff fast at some point. But is there kind of a coupon that could be clipped from this for five years and you return your principal and you have a return on that invest in capital? Well, I mean, I think that's where I was asking Cameron, like, okay, you're not going to get an SBA loan on this. I don't think anybody has, all the banker has to do is just open up the content and be like, okay, this isn't for us. But, but like, I think if you can go in, Cameron, and you can figure out, like,

what's a good thesis around this? Like, I think you could raise money for it. Like, it's a, to Mills's point, like, there's a relatively quick payback on it. And that's kind of, I think it's kind of a perfect deal to raise money around. Like, because there's this service that people who raise money, sometimes do for people investing money, which is the people who invest the money sometimes don't want to put their money directly into something that's unsavory, but they will put it with a manager who will do something slightly unsavory.

And I just basically described like Apollo, the private equity firm, right? Like tons of endowments give them money and then they run around to be total jerks and inhuman and callous to people. But the actual endowments are insulated from all that. So I think that's the service maybe you could provide here if you do this deal. Like you come up with an investment thesis, you prove you can make sense. somebody a lot of money really quickly. I think you could raise money on this deal if you wanted to. At the very least, raising money in this deal will force you to diligence it not just in your own

head. Oh, yeah. Right? Yeah, I mean, that's one of the things that, especially as a young investor, raising money will do is you get a whole bunch of older people who've done it around the table and they go, this is crazy. We're not investing in this. Or this is great. Let's go. You're kind of free opinions, right? Yeah, but you're forced to actually have an opinion and stand up for it. And then deal with conflicting opinions. So anyway, Cameron, that's my pitch for you. What do you think? Or do you think this is, you just, you just have curiosity for it.

Yeah, I think it would be extremely interesting, especially in my position, to kind of diligence to further, especially with the back end of investors. So I think it would be a great opportunity. Yeah. Cameron, for people, we put money into it. You're going to have to fight some actual rich people. We just play them on TV. But in all seriousness, I don't know.

Mills, you're about to say so, but I would challenge you, Cameron, if you like this deal, like go sign up for it, diligence. And then we're desperate for good content. So we'd welcome me back to tell us what you learned that you can share beyond NDA. Yeah, I'd love to. Maybe. So Mills, where were you going to say? The other thing I was going to say is, you know, Cameron, like, how many people in your shoes,

so you're graduating college undergrad, you have a job lined up. I think, like, you, from what I know about, like, the program you're in at South Carolina, like you've worked your butt off. How many people are just, you know, in your shoes, you're going heads down and they're like, I'm just going to work in investment banking and it's going to be 80 hours a week and I'm going to do this for, you know, however many years, versus how many people like that you know in this type of program are thinking about something like this, whether it's a side hustle at the lower end of the spectrum all the way to like, I want to acquire a business instead of get a job out of college. Yeah, definitely encountered it more

this summer, speaking with some of my colleagues who, you know, maybe parents have done this or are interested in doing it in the future. So I definitely think there's a certain subsect of individuals who are really interested in doing this long term rather than following the, you know, cookie cutter path of working a corporate job for many years. So I think that energy is coming back in our generation, especially with those who have parents who are entrepreneurs. Bill worked in investment banking so he can, you know, tell, you probably good and bad stories. I mean, my take on it, and I've actually said this to a lot of younger folks who say, hey, should I go to investment banking or should I buy a business? My general

take on it is go into investment banking, which is maybe not what people would think I would say. But, you know, I didn't invest in banking for two years after school and then I did another three years in private equity. And I would have had no idea how to buy a business, operate a business, talk to sellers, any of those things. Like, I was coming out of college. I was an unbroken pony, right? Like, I needed to go learn how to wear a suit, learn how to work 80 hours a week, learn from people who were older than me who had done it. It made me so much better to have done that investment banking stand.

Also, when you come out of school, you have zero capital. You have negative capital. Go work in investment banking for five years. You might accumulate some capital of your own, right, and be able to participate in the deal and not just be working on straight sweat equity. You'll build a network of awesome people who do banking with you, who then, you know, I'm now almost 40, like all of the people that I was shotgunning beers with in the investment banking bullpen are now like CEOs of businesses. You know, like you plant those seeds and they grow into some pretty impressive people. So I'm very pro going to get a real finance job, even if and especially if you want to buy a business.

Buying of businesses is not going out of style. but you can only go work eight hours a week in investment bank for, you know, a couple of years before you do all for that crap. Yeah. And I think if I could add to that, Bill, I think another place you can, other places you can learn a lot is going to work with or for somebody who's buying and selling businesses. Like, I think that's there, like who's investing their own money and you can do it as, you know, part of a PE firm or working for a family office that's doing it. Those are all kind of there. I think it's another path as well. And then I do think there's a lot to learn also from going to work for the type of entrepreneur that you want to become.

So like go find if you want to work in a small business at some point, like go work for that type of entrepreneur and get a chief of staff role or one where you can see everything going on and get exposed to and develop those skill sets. Like I think that's another path. I would not recommend going to get an individual contributor junior job at a place like at a place like that if you're trying to learn from a great entrepreneur. But to Bill's point, like in terms of making and seeing how deals happen, all that kind of stuff, like investment banking is a better choice than selling think and grow rich e-books, I think, straight out of college. Anyway, we'll totally support you because it would be hilariously awesome to talk about. All right.

Anything else on this one, guys? Cameron, thanks for joining us, man. Get the book and see just like if we were totally wrong about this. I hope we're totally wrong. And like whoever's businesses is is like these jackasses, you know, It's like, you know, self-help for young women to do, you know, great things or something. We were totally off base. But it would be really interesting to learn what this is.

Something is going on. They can acquire customers very, very cheaply, and they're scaling it very, very quickly. We are maybe just skeptics by nature. I don't know. Cameron, you were great, man. Thanks for joining us and for bringing us a fun deal. Yeah. Thanks for being here, Cameron.

I apologize. I apologize for Mills's behavior. It was just totally unacceptable, you know, the spot. Yeah, he's just way to go, Mills. I abuse college kids. That's what I do for a line. You come to speak at the four guys university. You make him come on our podcast.

You subject them to some people who are like, what are you going to do about this? Here's all the problems with your generation. Here's the problems with you young people. But look, hey, Cameron, like, I guess we're, we know what you're going to do next post-graduation, but we're not talking about it on a podcast. and but I think it's just like you got a bright future ahead of you man like I was just really impressed

with how you handled to yourself your demeanor positivity quick on your feet in terms of answering stuff so I think we're excited to you know hopefully come to come back someday you'll be so rich you'll buy this podcast from us and take it to the moon and make it the thing it could always be but yeah you got a bright future ahead of you man I really appreciate it all right thanks everybody for tuning in to another episode of Acquisitions Anonymous if you enjoyed it we will love for you to go to our website and look at more deals like this. If you're interested in online-based businesses, e-commerce, manufacturing, service-based businesses, we have all those tags on our website, acqueu-unanon.com. And thanks for tuning in.